US interventions in Latin America

Washington orchestrated dozens of regime changes in the region in the 20th century alone, including via direct military invasions

Back to old ways: Maduro’s capture follows a long list of US interventions in Latin America

4 Jan, 2026 

The US occupation of the Dominican Republic in 1965. ©  Getty Images / CORBIS / Hulton-Deutsch Collection

The US operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is just the latest chapter in a long list of interventions and regime changes staged by Washington throughout Latin America over the past century.

With the adoption of the Monroe Doctrine in the 19th century, the US essentially declared the Western Hemisphere to be its own backyard. Under this policy, the US played a role in staging dozens of coups and government overthrows in the 20th century alone, including several cases of direct military intervention and occupation, reaching a peak during the Cold War.

The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, told a press conference on Saturday that the operation to capture Maduro had been “meticulously planned, drawing lessons from decades of missions.” According to the general, “there is always a chance that we’ll be tasked to do this type of mission again.”

READ MORE: The Monroe Doctrine is back – dressed up as a war on drugs

RT looks back at some landmark cases of US interference that shaped the history of Latin America.

When regime change succeeded…

Guatemala, 1954

In June of 1954, Guatemala’s elected president, Jacobo Árbenz, was ousted by a group of mercenaries trained and funded by Washington. The reason for the first US-backed Latin American regime change of the Cold War era was a land reform that threatened the interests of the America’s United Fruit Corporation.

The CIA acknowledged its role in the coup and declassified relevant documents only in the 2000s, revealing what would become a template for future US intervention: the strategy involved psychological operations, elite pressure, and engineered political outcomes beyond the coup itself.

Dominican Republic, 1965

A decade later, Washington resorted to direct military intervention to steer a crisis in a Caribbean country to its benefit. Citing a “Communist threat,” the US sent its military to Santo Domingo to crack down on supporters of Juan Bosch – the first democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic, who had been overthrown by a military junta.

The US dispatched over 20,000 troops to the island in Operation Power Pack to support anti-Bosch forces. Subsequent elections in 1966, which were marred by allegations of fraud, brought a US-backed candidate to power. The US occupation led to increased repression in the Dominican Republic and sowed distrust towards Washington’s interventionism in Latin America.

Chile, 1973

Less than a decade later, another democratically elected president – Salvador Allende – was ousted in a US-backed coup in Chile that would become the most-cited example of Washington’s disregard for democratic procedures in Latin America.

Prior to the coup, the CIA had been conducting covert operations and spreading anti-Communist propaganda since the mid-1960s to prevent Allende from becoming president in the first place. After his election in 1970, Washington spent three years and another $8 million on covert activities, while expanding contacts with the Chilean military and the militant pro-coup opposition.

The 1973 US-backed regime change led to a 17-year-long dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet. During that period, tens of thousands of people were imprisoned for political reasons, many of whom were subjected to torture.

… and when coup attempts failed

Cuba, 1961

In April of 1961, a force of Cuban exiles heavily backed by the US landed on the south coast of Cuba to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. Castro himself had come to power on the Caribbean island after a left-wing revolution overthrew US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

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The Bay of Pigs invasion ended in disaster, as the Cuban military led by Castro himself defeated the 1,500-strong force in just two days. The attempted coup pushed Cuba closer to the Soviet Union and set the stage for the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The failure also opened the way to the US Operation Mongoose, a campaign of attacks on civilian facilities in Cuba and covert action designed to undermine Castro’s government.

Nicaragua, 1979

Washington also sought to reverse the outcome of another Latin America revolution that ousted US-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza and brought the Marxist Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua to power in 1979. US President Ronald Reagan secretly authorized the CIA to provide $20 million in aid to militants opposing Ortega, known as the Contras. The scheme was partly funded by sales of arms to Iran in violation of the US’s own embargo.

The plan led to the 1986 Iran-Contra scandal in the US and plunged Nicaragua into a decade-long civil war that claimed 50,000 lives. It still failed to achieve its goal, as Ortega retained power. While he lost re-election in 1996, Ortega returned to power a decade later and remains the country’s president as of early 2026.