Leaders of nations in Latin America overthrown either directly by the USA or in coups with US involvement:
🇬🇹 Jacobo Árbenz, Guatemala, 1954
🇵🇾 Federico Chaves, Paraguay, 1954
🇨🇺 Fidel Castro, Cuba, 1961
(attempted)
🇬🇾 Cheddi Jagan, British Guiana, 1964
🇧🇷 João Goulart, Brazil, 1964
🇩🇴 Juan Bosch, Dominican Republic, 1963/65
🇧🇴 Víctor Paz Estenssoro, Bolivia, 1964
🇧🇴 Juan José Torres, Bolivia, 1971
🇨🇱 Salvador Allende, Chile, 1973
🇺🇾 Juan María Bordaberry, Uruguay, 1973
🇦🇷 Isabel Perón, Argentina, 1976
🇬🇩 Maurice Bishop, Grenada, 1983
🇵🇦 Manuel Noriega, Panama, 1989
🇭🇹 Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti, 1991 & 2004
🇻🇪 Hugo Chávez, Venezuela, 2002 (attempted)
🇭🇳 Manuel Zelaya, Honduras, 2009
🇧🇴 Evo Morales, Bolivia, 2019
🇻🇪 Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela, 2026
John Pilger to former CIA Latin America Chief Duane Claridge: What right do you have to do what you do in other countries?
Claridge: National security interests
Pilger: The people you do it to have no say
Claridge: Well that’s just tough
Pilger: Is it ok to overthrow a democratically elected government?
Claridge: It depends on what your national security interests are
On this day in 1954, John Foster Dulles and the United Fruit Company organise the landing of the CIA’s Exile Army to Guatemala to begin the coup against President Jacobo Árbenz.
Árbenz had become enormously popular, with an Agrarian Reform policy which saw uncultivated portions of large land-holdings expropriated in return for compensation and redistributed to poverty-stricken agricultural laborers. Approximately 500,000 people benefited from the decree.
Árbenz had threatened to nationalise the United Fruit Company, which was an arm of US imperialism. John Foster Dulles owned significant stock in the United Fruit Company.
The coup was led by CIA asset General Castillo Armas, what would follow would be 4 decades of US-backed brutality by successive dictatorial regimes, which fought to protect US interests. Among the horrors was the genocide of the Maya people.