President Donald Trump has in recent months authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct covert operations in Venezuela and said President Nicolás Maduro’s days are numbered, amid a buildup of U.S. forces in the region — with the latest escalation being U.S. forces’ seizure of a large oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast.
Trump has also alleged that Maduro and his top security officials are at the head of a narcotics organization, the Cartel de los Soles, that is sending drugs and violent criminals to the United States. The administration’s threats signal the possibility of direct U.S. military action in the country — and evoke the fraught legacy of CIA-backed regime change in Latin America.
During the Cold War, worried about the spread of communism, the U.S. supported right-leaning leaders and military factions in Latin America, helping them seize power through coups that ushered in dictatorships. It also trained regional militaries through institutions such as the School of the Americas, graduates of which include dictators as well as soldiers who have been implicated in human rights abuses in the region.
The consequences have been severe. A 2023 study of the economic, political and civil society effects of CIA-sponsored regime change in five Latin American countries found that they caused “large declines in democracy scores, rule of law, freedom of speech, and civil liberties,” and a 10 percent reduction in per capita income, on average.
The study “should be a sobering reminder that past U.S. interventions in Latin American have not had desirable results,” said Robin Grier, a co-author and an economics professor at Texas Tech University.
Brian Finucane, senior adviser for the U.S. Program at the International Crisis Group, concurred. “U.S. efforts at regime change through military intervention in Venezuela seem more likely to lead to greater instability and violence in the near term than a stable democracy,” he said.
Here are some prominent instances.
Guatemala
A CIA-backed coup in Guatemala saw the ouster of the country’s democratically elected leftist president, Jacobo Árbenz, in 1954. The operation — code-named PBSUCCESS — was aimed at removing “the menace of the present Communist-controlled government of Guatemala,” and combined psychological warfare as well as economic, diplomatic and paramilitary action, according to a declassified CIA staff analysis.
The land reforms implemented by Árbenz — involving the seizure and redistribution of uncultivated portions of large plantations, for compensation — threatened the interests of the Boston-based United Fruit Company, which owned vast banana plantations in the country. In response, the company mounted an anti-Árbenz campaign, with the U.S. government later painting the country as a communist outpost under Moscow’s influence.
According to the CIA document, the agency trained a rebel group led by Guatemalan Gen. Carlos Castillo Armas in Honduras. Separately, the CIA planned to form sabotage teams to attack communists and their property. Psychological warfare tactics included sending coffins, nooses and fake bombs to communists, the document said.
On June 16, 1954, CIA-supported forces under Armas entered Guatemala, while U.S. operatives simultaneously tried to persuade the military to remove Árbenz. Though that effort did not succeed, the momentum changed on June 25, according to a separate CIA memorandum, when Castillo’s forces beat back a counterattack and later bombed a fortress in Guatemala City. The U.S.-backed pressure campaign forced Árbenz to resign soon after, and he then took asylum in Mexico with “more than 120 government officials or Communists,” according to the CIA.
The CIA also considered assassinating Guatemalan leaders, reviewing a list of 58 targets and training some gunmen for the job, but the killings were not carried out.
Castillo ultimately took power, and Guatemala endured oppressive military regimes before the country plunged into a civil war in 1960 that lasted 36 years — with the Indigenous Mayan population bearing the brunt of the toll.
Ecuador
On July 11, 1963, the Ecuadorian military toppled left-leaning President Carlos Julio Arosemena Monroy in a U.S.-backed coup to push Ecuador to break diplomatic ties with Cuba.
“President Arosemena didn’t want to break relations, but we forced him,” former CIA officer Philip Agee told The Washington Post in 1974. “We promoted the Communist issue and especially Communist penetration of the government.”
The CIA worked closely with an international network of labor unions that served as effective instruments of political influence in Latin America, said Agee, who served as the case officer for such groups in Ecuador.
In his book, “Inside the Company: CIA Diary,” he described in detail the tactics employed by the CIA in the country, including infiltrating important branches of the government such as intelligence agencies and building relations with key opposition figures.
The CIA, Agee wrote, placed anti-communist propaganda in the media, fabricated material to discredit revolutionary groups, engineered police crackdowns and used stink bombs to disrupt meetings. The military junta seized power in July after a drunken, anti-American speech by Arosemena at a banquet, as detailed in a CIA telegram.
The junta declared martial law, banned the Communist Party of Ecuador, restricted civil liberties and suppressed left-leaning activity, particularly in education.
Brazil
In March 1964, Brazil’s military ousted left-wing President João Goulart, who had promised a slew of reforms, including nationalizing foreign-owned oil refineries and expropriating some agricultural lands.
Days before the coup, Lincoln Gordon, the U.S. ambassador to Brazil, wrote in a cable to the State Department: “If our influence is to be brought to bear to help avert a major disaster here — which might make Brazil the China of the 1960s — this is where both I and all my senior advisers believe our support should be placed.” The cable also referred to “covert support” from the U.S. for street protests and encouraging anti-communist sentiment across society.
The American government prepared an overt support plan, dubbed Operation Brother Sam, which involved positioning naval assets off the Brazilian coast and arranging for the delivery of fuel and ammunition in case the Brazilian military requested assistance. (The coup unfolded quickly and these resources were ultimately not deployed.)
The military-led dictatorship lasted 21 years under five generals and was characterized by rampant detention, torture and disappearances of union leaders, political activists and opposition figures.
Chile
Covert U.S. operations influenced nearly every major election in Chile between 1963 and 1973, with the 1964 election serving as the most prominent instance of extensive intervention, according to a congressional report.
Washington actively worked to undermine leftist candidate Salvador Allende by supporting the Christian Democratic Party’s Eduardo Frei Montalva, who was elected president in September that year.
In that election alone, the CIA spent $3 million — equivalent to $31 million today — to influence the outcome of the election, the report said.
More than half of Frei’s campaign was financed by the U.S., some via secret, non-attributable payments, the congressional report said. As part of its “scare campaign” in the local media, the CIA distributed images of Soviet tanks and Cuban firing squads, the congressional report said. Another project sought to weaken Chile’s largest communist-led union.
Some of the concern over Allende also had to do with Chile’s biggest export: copper. “If Allende wins and stays in power, we are in trouble. For example, he will probably nationalize the copper mines,” a national security memorandum from March 1964 read. Subsidiaries of two American-owned companies were responsible for most of Chile’s copper output at the time.
The CIA also attempted to foment a coup in 1970 by providing weapons to some Chilean officers. Allende was elected president that year, after which the CIA spent $8 million funding opposition groups and media.
Allende was ultimately ousted in another U.S.-supported coup in 1973 amid economic turmoil and political polarization in the country. Chile then endured a 17-year dictatorship under Gen. Augusto Pinochet, during which more than 3,000 people were killed and tens of thousands tortured.
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