![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/4JVBT2S_AFP__20260103__89JV9Y4__v2__HighRes__TopshotVenezuelaUsConflictCrisis_jpg.jpeg\")
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\nA burnt missile interceptor vehicle is seen at La Carlota air base in Caracas on January 3, 2026, after US forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro after launching a “large scale strike” on the South American country.
\nPhoto: FEDERICO PARRA\/AFP\n<\/p>\n
The United States, which on Saturday attacked Venezuela and is said to have abducted its president, has a long history of military interventions and support for dictatorships in Latin America.<\/p>\n
On multiple occasions the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro — who US leader Donald Trump says is now in US hands — accused Washington of backing coup attempts.<\/p>\n
Here are the main US interventions in Latin America since the Cold War.<\/p>\n
1954: Guatemala<\/p>\n
On June 27, 1954, Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, president of Guatemala, was driven from power by mercenaries trained and financed by Washington, after a land reform that threatened the interests of the powerful US company United Fruit Corporation (later Chiquita Brands).<\/p>\n
In 2003, the United States officially acknowledged the CIA’s role in this coup, in the name of fighting communism.<\/p>\n
1961: Cuba<\/p>\n
From April 15 to 19, 1961, 1,400 anti-Castro militants trained and financed by the CIA attempted to land at the Bay of Pigs, 250 kilometres (155 miles) from Havana, but failed to overthrow Fidel Castro’s communist regime.<\/p>\n
The fighting killed more than a hundred on each side.<\/p>\n
1965: Dominican Republic<\/p>\n
In 1965, citing a “communist threat”, the United States sent Marines and paratroopers to Santo Domingo to crush an uprising in support of Juan Bosch, a leftist president ousted by generals in 1963.<\/p>\n
1970s: support for dictatorships<\/p>\n
Washington backed several military dictatorships, seen as a bulwark against left-wing armed movements in a world divided by Cold War rivalries.<\/p>\n
It actively assisted Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet during the September 11, 1973 coup against leftist president Salvador Allende.<\/p>\n
US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger supported the Argentine junta in 1976, encouraging it to quickly end its “dirty war”, according to US documents declassified in 2003.<\/p>\n
At least 10,000 Argentine dissidents disappeared.<\/p>\n
In the 1970s and 1980s, six dictatorships (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil) joined forces to eliminate left-wing opponents under “Operation Condor”, with tacit US support.<\/p>\n
1980s: wars in Central America<\/p>\n
In 1979, the Sandinista rebellion overthrew dictator Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua. US president Ronald Reagan, concerned about Managua’s alignment with Cuba and the USSR, secretly authorised the CIA to provide $20 million in aid to the Contras (the Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries), partly funded by the illegal sale of arms to Iran.<\/p>\n
The Nicaraguan civil war, which ended in April 1990, claimed 50,000 lives.<\/p>\n
Reagan also sent military advisers to El Salvador to crush the rebellion of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN, far left) in a civil war (1980-1992) that resulted in 72,000 deaths.<\/p>\n
1983: Grenada<\/p>\n
On October 25, 1983, US Marines and Rangers intervened on the island of Grenada after prime minister Maurice Bishop was assassinated by a far-left junta and as Cubans were expanding the airport, presumably to accommodate military aircraft.<\/p>\n
At the request of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), Reagan launched Operation “Urgent Fury” with the stated goal of protecting a thousand US citizens.<\/p>\n
The operation, widely deplored by the UN General Assembly, ended on November 3, with more than a hundred dead.<\/p>\n
1989: Panama<\/p>\n
In 1989, after a contested election, president George H. W. Bush ordered a military intervention in Panama, resulting in the surrender of general Manuel Noriega, a former collaborator of US intelligence, who was wanted by US justice.<\/p>\n
Some 27,000 GIs took part in Operation “Just Cause”, which officially left 500 dead.<\/p>\n
NGOs put the toll significantly higher, in the thousands.<\/p>\n
Noriega would spend more than two decades in prison in the United States for drug trafficking before serving additional sentences in France and then Panama.<\/p>\n
-AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A burnt missile interceptor vehicle is seen at La Carlota air base in Caracas on January 3, 2026,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-216703","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-public-radio","14":"tag-radio-new-zealand","15":"tag-rnz","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}