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THE TRUMP COROLLARY  
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Eric Ross
December 7, 2025
TomDispatch [[link removed]]

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_ U.S. Imperialism in Latin America from the Monroe Doctrine to
Maduro _

Aircraft carrier U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford which has been deployed in the
Caribbean near Venezuela.,

 

In recent months, the Trump administration has escalated a
DECADES-LONG CAMPAIGN
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against the Venezuelan government and people. The renewed,
intensifying threats of REGIME CHANGE
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justified through FALSE OR INFLATED CLAIMS
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that Nicolás Maduro, its president, is DIRECTING NARCO-TERRORISM
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States, serve as a convenient pretext for deeper and more direct
intervention.

A recent wave of EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGS
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at sea, the directing of the CIA to launch COVERT OPS
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inside Venezuela, the surge of U.S. TROOPS
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into the Caribbean, the reopening of a long-shuttered NAVAL BASE
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in Puerto Rico, and the deployment of the aircraft carrier the U.S.S.
GERALD FORD
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in the region represent striking but not surprising developments.
These are little more than the latest expression of an ideological
project through which Washington has long sought to shape the
hemisphere in ways that would entrench U.S. power further and protect
the profits of Western multinationals.

That formal project dates back to at least the 1823 MONROE DOCTRINE
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the U.S. unilaterally claimed Latin America as its exclusive sphere of
influence. Its revival today is unmistakable and DISTINCTLY DANGEROUS
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As Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth DECLARED
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echoing the language of that two-century-old policy, “The Western
Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood, and we will protect it.”

The results of that doctrine HAVE LONG BEEN CLEAR
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immense profits for the few and violence, political upheaval, social
dislocation, and economic devastation for the many. While
Washington’s imperial desires in the hemisphere have long been met
by movements challenging U.S. dominance, these have repeatedly been
forced back into the subordinate position assigned them in a global
capitalist order designed to benefit their not so “GOOD NEIGHBOR
[///Users/tomengelhardt/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Mail%20Downloads/34689DC8-407A-4D30-8507-5D678FF8AB60/good%20neighbor?utm_source=xxxxxx-general&utm_medium=email].”

It’s no accident that, by the mid-1970s, Latin America had been
transformed into a hemisphere dominated by U.S.-backed right-wing
authoritarian regimes. Entire regions like the SOUTHERN CONE
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became laboratories for repression, as Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil,
Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay formed a coordinated bloc of military
juntas. With direct support from Washington, those regimes oversaw
what came to be known as OPERATION CONDOR
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establishing a transnational network of state terror. Its consequences
were catastrophic: 50,000 killed, tens of thousands “disappeared,”
and hundreds of thousands tortured and imprisoned for the so-called
crime of harboring real or perceived leftist sympathies.

During that earlier period, Venezuela had been largely spared the
brutal excesses of direct U.S. interventionism in the region (due in
part to the repressive rule of successive U.S.-supported
strongmen JUAN VICENTE GÓMEZ
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PÉREZ JIMÉNEZ
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changed in 1998, when HUGO CHÁVEZ
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MADURO’S [[link removed]] far
more popular predecessor, became president and pursued policies of
POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY
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NATIONALISM
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aimed at ensuring the nation’s vast oil reserves (the LARGEST IN
THE WORLD
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served Venezuelans rather than being siphoned off to enrich foreign
corporations. From then on, Venezuela BECAME THE LATEST TARGET
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of Washington’s efforts to undermine, discipline, and ultimately
neutralize “troublesome” progressive governments across Latin
America.

To fully understand Washington’s current warpath in the region,
it’s necessary to revisit earlier episodes in which the U.S.
intervened, violently and anti-democratically, to shape the political
destinies of countries in the hemisphere. Three cases are especially
instructive: Cuba, Guatemala, and Chile. Together, they illuminate the
long arc of U.S. imperialism in Latin America and clarify the dangers
of the present confrontation.

THE RISE OF _PLATTISMO_ IN CUBA

Cuba had long been a crown jewel in Washington’s imperial
imagination. By 1823, American political elites were already casting
the ISLAND AS ESSENTIAL
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to the future of the United States. President John Quincy Adams, for
instance, DESCRIBED CUBA
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then a Spanish colony, as “indispensable” to the country’s
“political and commercial interests.” He NOTED
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be “forcibly disjointed from its own unnatural connection with Spain
and incapable of self-support,” it could “gravitate only towards
the North American Union.” Thomas Jefferson SIMILARLY MAINTAINED
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the possession of Cuba was “exactly what is wanting to round out our
power as a nation.” In that spirit, during the 1840s and 1850s,
Presidents Polk and Pierce sought to PURCHASE CUBA
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from Spain, overtures that were repeatedly rejected.

Those efforts unfolded during a period of rapid U.S. territorial
expansionism, marking a time when Washington regarded continental
conquest as both a “PROVIDENTIAL DESTINY
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and a political and economic imperative. When ostensibly legal
mechanisms like LAND PURCHASES
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could be invoked, they were embraced. When military force offered a
more expedient path to territorial acquisition, as with the WAR OF
AGGRESSION [[link removed]] that
stripped Mexico of half its territory and delivered what became the
American Southwest to U.S. control in 1848, it was undertaken with
little hesitation.

The opportunity to pursue longstanding ambitions in Cuba and
inaugurate the U.S. as an overseas empire arrived with the
SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR [[link removed]] of 1898.
In that conflict, Washington intervened in anti-colonial uprisings
from Puerto Rico to the Philippines, not to champion genuine
liberation but to ensure that any subsequent “independence” would
be SUBORDINATED
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to U.S. strategic and economic interests. What emerged was a political
order deliberately engineered to keep Cuba firmly tethered to the
priorities and power of the United States.

That would be codified in the 1901 PLATT AMENDMENT
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nullified Washington’s earlier assurances of Cuban sovereignty and
granted Washington the right to establish military bases (including
GUANTÁNAMO
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substantial control over the Cuban treasury, and the ability to
intervene whenever the U.S. DEEMED IT NECESSARY
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safeguard its arbitrarily defined notion of what constituted “Cuban
independence” or to defend “life, property, and individual
liberty.”

In practice, Cuba emerged from the war as a dependent protectorate,
not a sovereign nation. That model was soon codified for the entire
hemisphere with the ROOSEVELT COROLLARY
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the Monroe Doctrine issued in 1904, which granted the United States a
self-appointed mandate to police the region to maintain “order.”

In Cuba, that arrangement would serve Washington’s interests for
decades. By 1959, on the eve of the Cuban Revolution, U.S.
CORPORATIONS CONTROLLED
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90% of the island’s trade, 90% of its public services, 75% of its
arable land, and 40% of its sugar industry. Meanwhile, the vast
majority of Cubans remained landless, disenfranchised, and mired in
poverty.

By breeding staggering inequality, Washington’s imperialism rendered
Cuba ripe for revolution. In 1959, following years in exile, Fidel
Castro RETURNED TO THE ISLAND
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to overwhelmingly popular support, having launched an armed struggle
after attempting to run in the 1952 elections that the
Washington-backed Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista CANCELLED
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Rather than confront the policies that had produced the revolution,
U.S. officials moved to make an example of Castro, waging an OBSESSIVE
CAMPAIGN
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to undermine his revolutionary government and punish the population
whose support had made his ascent possible.

Washington pursued everything from ill-fated invasions to
assassinations, plots that, in October 1962, brought the world to the
BRINK OF A NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST
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It also imposed a punishing ECONOMIC BLOCKADE
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designed to choke the island’s economy, render socialism a
stillbirth, and deter other nations from challenging U.S. hegemony.
Those efforts foreclosed the possibility of constructive engagement,
which Castro had initially signaled he WAS OPEN TO
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pushing Cuba decisively into the Soviet orbit, and creating the very
outcome Washington claimed it had sought to avoid.

THE FALL OF GUATEMALA

CASTRO [[link removed]] did not
return to Cuba alone. He arrived alongside the Argentinian ERNESTO
“CHE” GUEVARA [[link removed]],
who would become a key ideologue of the revolution, bringing with him
a commitment to constructing a global, anti-imperialist movement. The
two first met IN 1955 IN MEXICO CITY
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where Castro was organizing in exile and Guevara had resettled after
working as a doctor in Guatemala, a country he had entered to support
the democratic spring of President JACOBO ÁRBENZ
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The democratic experiment in Guatemala was abruptly and violently
extinguished in 1954, when a U.S.-BACKED COUP
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that experience, Guevara carried with him an indelible lesson about
the reach of U.S. power and Washington’s willingness to deploy force
in defense of corporate interests, along with the profoundly
antidemocratic and destabilizing consequences of U.S. intervention
across the hemisphere.

That coup in Guatemala was carried out in service to that country’s
real center of authority, the Boston-based UNITED FRUIT COMPANY
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Founded in 1899, United Fruit consolidated its foothold there through
a series of preferential corporate arrangements, as successive
strongmen ceded vast tracts of land and critical infrastructure to the
company in exchange for personal enrichment. In the process, Guatemala
was transformed into the archetypal “BANANA REPUBLIC
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United Fruit CAME TO DOMINATE
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Guatemala’s agricultural and industrial sectors, transforming itself
into one of the most profitable corporations in the world. It secured
extraordinary returns through its monopoly power, wage suppression,
and the criminalization of labor organizing. Its influence extended
into the HIGHEST LEVELS
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of Washington. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had represented
United Fruit as a senior partner at the law firm Sullivan and
Cromwell, and his brother, CIA director Allen Dulles, had previously
served on that company’s board.

Árbenz regarded United Fruit not just as a threat to Guatemala’s
sovereignty but also as an engine of injustice. In a country where 2%
of the landholders controlled 72% OF ALL ARABLE LAND
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than half controlled by United Fruit), much of it left deliberately
fallow, he sought to challenge a system that denied millions of
peasants access to the land on which their survival depended. His LAND
REFORM PROGRAM [[link removed]] applied only to
uncultivated land. The government proposed purchasing idle tracts at
their declared tax value (based on the company’s own assessments).
Yet because United Fruit had SYSTEMATICALLY UNDERVALUED
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holdings to evade taxes, the company refused.

Árbenz’s policies, driven by the fact that he was a nationalist
(not a communist), were committed to dismantling Guatemala’s
imperial dependency. His objective WAS TO TRANSFORM
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as he put it, “Guatemala from a country bound by a predominantly
feudal economy into a modern capitalist state, and to make this
transformation in a way that will raise the standard of living of the
great mass of our people to the highest level.” Yet, in the
ideologically charged climate of the early Cold War years, such New
Deal-style reforms were recast by Washington as incontrovertible proof
that a “SOVIET BEACHHEAD
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taking root in Central America.

By 1954, U.S. officials insisted that they had “no choice” but to
intervene to prevent the country from “falling” to communism. The
SUBSEQUENT COUP
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orchestrated propaganda campaign, the financing of a mercenary army,
and the aerial bombardment of Guatemala City. The combined pressure of
all of that coerced Árbenz into resigning. In his FINAL ADDRESS
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condemned the attacks “as an act of vengeance by the United Fruit
Company” and stepped down in the hope, quickly dashed, that his
departure might preserve his reforms.

Power would soon be transferred to the military regime of CARLOS
CASTILLO ARMAS
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower TRIUMPHANTLY PROCLAIMED
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“the people of Guatemala, in a magnificent effort, have liberated
themselves from the shackles of international Communist direction.”
In reality, United Fruit had expanded its influence, while the country
descended into decades of state terror. The CIVIL WAR
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than 200,000 lives, including a GENOCIDAL CAMPAIGN
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Ixil Maya people, carried out with DIRECT U.S. SUPPORT
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THE CRUSHING OF CHILEAN SOCIALISM

If Guatemala exposed Washington’s readiness to destroy a modest
social democracy in the name of communism and in defense of corporate
power, Chile demonstrated the full, violent maturation of unrepentant
Cold War interventionism. When the socialist physician SALVADOR
ALLENDE [[link removed]] won
the presidency in 1970 in a democratic election, Washington
immediately went ON THE WARPATH
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sustained campaign to strangle his government before it could succeed.

Allende sought to expand social welfare and DEMOCRATIZE THE ECONOMY
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His program called for the nationalization of strategic industries,
the expansion of healthcare and education, the strengthening of
organized labor, and the dismantling of entrenched monopolistic
landholdings. Those initiatives drew support from a broad, multiparty
alliance rooted in Chile’s peasants as well as its working and
middle classes. Above all, ALLENDE’S AGENDA
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aimed to reclaim the nation’s mineral wealth from foreign capital,
especially the U.S.-based COPPER GIANT ANACONDA
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whose staggering profits bore few meaningful returns for the Chilean
population.

President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger
found that intolerable and quickly came to regard Allende not just as
a SYMBOLIC BUT A REAL THREAT
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to U.S. power in the region. After all, a successful socialist state
achieved through the ballot box risked demonstrating that another
political and economic path was indeed possible.

What followed was a coordinated campaign of economic, social, and
political destabilization. The CIA funneled millions to Chile’s
opposition parties, business associations, and media outlets. It
financed strikes and disruptions designed to create and weaponize
scarcity, to (in NIXON’S WORDS
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“make the economy scream” and erode confidence in Allende’s
Popular Unity government. U.S. officials also cultivated ties with
reactionary factions in the Chilean military, encouraging coup plots
and ultimately directly supporting the OVERTHROW OF ALLENDE
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September 11, 1973.

What emerged was one of the bloodiest dictatorships in the hemisphere
in the twentieth century. General AUGUSTO PINOCHET’S
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regime would carry out widespread torture, disappearances, and
extrajudicial killings, while U.S.-TRAINED ECONOMISTS
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imposed radical neoliberal policies (similar to the FAILED ONES
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now being implemented by Javier Milei in Argentina with the help of a
DONALD TRUMP BAILOUT
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that dismantled social protections and opened Chile’s economy to
foreign capital.

HANDS OFF VENEZUELA

In every instance where the United States intervened in Latin America,
leaving tens of thousands dead and entire SOCIETIES DESTABILIZED
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it was never really communism that Washington feared. What alarmed
policymakers and the corporate interests they served was the prospect
that nations in the hemisphere might escape the economic architecture
of U.S. dominance.

When Hugo Chávez completed the nationalization of Venezuela’s OIL
SECTOR IN 2007
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he followed a long and perilous trajectory established by regional
leaders who dared to confront U.S. power. In doing so, they committed
what Washington considered the “cardinal sin” of asserting
sovereign control over national resources within a hemisphere it had
long treated as its strategic preserve. These leaders demonstrated,
however briefly, that it was possible to stand up to the United
States, but that such defiance would ultimately be met with
overwhelming force.

Independent powers in this hemisphere going their own way were the
threat that Washington and Wall Street could never tolerate. It’s
the same reason the United States is once again maneuvering toward
open conflict in Venezuela. To proceed down such a path will, of
course, mean reenacting some of the most catastrophic chapters of U.S.
foreign policy. The lesson of such imperial adventurism in Latin
America is unmistakable. When Washington interferes in other nations,
the outcome is never stability or democracy but their absolute
negation.

_Copyright 2025 Eric Ross_

_Eric Ross is an organizer, educator, and PhD candidate in the history
department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst._

* U.S. imperialism
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* Latin America
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* Monroe Doctrine
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* Nicolas Maduro
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