The Black Footprint of the United States in Latin America: Over a Hundred Years of Impunity

The bombing of Venezuela and the illegal imprisonment of Maduro are the latest in a catalog of US atrocities spanning more than a century.

The black footprint of the United States in Latin America: over one hundred years of impunity

"Are you worried about America?""No, it's not, it's just the truth."In an interview given to the journalist Vicky Dávila in 2009, Hugo Chávez left the journalist during Radio Cadena Nacional in Colombia (and today the highest representative of the president in his country) was speechless when he responded with his clarification about the supposed attack of the United States on Venezuela.The President of Bolivia made a brief review of the actions of the White House in Latin America in the last decades: Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Chile, Brazil, Panama ... The bombings ordered by Donald Trump against the working methods in Venezuela and the illegal detention of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, make the list of Washington. during more than 100 years of impunity in what is still remembered behind it.

Since William Walker's filibuster and the occupation of Nicaragua by the American column Los Inmortales in 1856, the United States has not stopped intervening in Latin America, continuing, in an open spirit, into the 21st century.In keeping with his egocentric vision of history, Trump wants to write his intentions regarding the region into the national security strategy approved in December.The "Trump consequences" of the Monroe Doctrine, which support military intervention and the plunder of natural resources in Venezuela, have taken shape.More than a hundred years have passed since wartime leader Theodore Roosevelt signed another amendment to the doctrine.The "Roosevelt Corollary" of 1904 marked the beginning of a long era of military aggression, support for coups, and strategies to destabilize democratic governments south of the Rio Grande.Gunboat diplomacy began in the area.

During the first half of the 20th century, various US governments applied this interventionist policy to all countries they considered to be against their interests (and those of North American companies).One way or another, they put their military boots or their destabilizing dollars on Batista's Cuba or Somos' Nicaragua (where they had previously maneuvered to depose the popular hero Augusto Cesar Sandino).But if there is one country that has suffered from the constant encouragement of the United States, it is Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, which since 1915 has been subservient to Washington's patterns.

In 1954, it was the turn of Guatemala's democracy, when its progressive president, Jacobo Arbenz, expropriated the plantations of the United Fruit Company, an American banana company.Arbenz, who won the election in 1950, was forced to leave the country, and Washington imposed a military junta.Since then, direct intervention or support for the military coup has not stopped.At the same time, future representatives of a number of Latin American countries were trained in the military academy "School of the Americas", established in the mid-1940s.

Cube, I USA

After Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba in 1959, all alarms went off in Washington.Attempts to kill the leader of the Cuban revolution numbered in the dozens.A desperate attack by US-backed anti-Castro forces at Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs) in April 1961 took another turn.Any other revolutionary efforts in the area had to be cancelled.And at the same time, all democratic processes of a popular nature should be stopped.Continuation.In 1963, President Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic was deposed, and two years later, 40,000 marines invaded the country on the orders of President Lyndon Johnson, fearing that a new Cuba would be born in the Caribbean.

In addition to conducting direct military operations, the United States supported Central American dictatorships in the 1970s that were fighting militias.This is what he did in Nicaragua and El Salvador.The Sandinistas succeeded in ousting Anastasio Somoza in 1979, but were later forced to fight a long war at the hands of the Contras, anti-Sandinista fighters supported and trained by Washington.This battle was the key to the defeat of the Sandinista Front for National Liberation in the 1990 elections. Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front will face a terrible fate.Ronald Reagan's (1981-1989) support for the Salvadoran government was instrumental in forcing the rebels to enter into peace negotiations.

One blow at a time

In military coups in South America in the 1960s, the black hand of the United States was more or less heavily present. Brazil's progressive president Joao Goulart was overthrown by the armed forces in 1964 with the involvement of the White House and the ITT Corporation, according to documents released by the United States National Security Archive in 2004. The coup, led by General Humberto deAlencar Castillo Branco, led to a long dictatorship198.

Several bombs swing caracas in the middle of tensions with the US

American involvement in the coup against Salvador Allende was even more apparent.The fall of Allende cannot be understood without the help of the CIA.President Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger did not want to see Chile's socialist attempt at the ballot box as a success.They encouraged and financed the anti-democratic opposition, employers and the military in their ongoing processes of involution to weaken the government of national unity.On September 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet staged a military coup that would usher in the darkest period in recent Chilean history, a brutal dictatorship that would last until 1990.

Washington cooperated with the coup plotters in Argentina, who seized power under General Jorge Videla in 1976, establishing the bloodiest dictatorship in South America, with some 30,000 people missing. The United States would also act as a conductor in the dark Condor program. The program is a network created in the mid-1970s by various regimes in the Southern Cone (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia)kidnap, torture and kill anti-fascist dissidents in those countries.

Over the years, US involvement has not waned.In 1983, it invaded Grenada under the pretext of curbing Cuban and Soviet influence on the island.In 1989, it did the same in Panama: an invasion of some 25,000 marines killed hundreds in the streets of the capital under the pretext of arresting its president, Manuel Antonio Noriega, on drug-trafficking charges.Allegations are now a pretext for Trump to bomb Venezuela and illegally detain Nicolás Maduro.