The United States, which on Saturday (January 3, 2026) attacked Venezuela and is said to have abducted its President, has a long history of military interventions and support for dictatorships in Latin America.

On multiple occasions the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro — who Donald Trump says is now in U.S. hands — accused Washington of backing coup attempts.

Here are the main U.S interventions in Latin America since the Cold War.

1954: Guatemala

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 U.S. company United Fruit Corporation (later Chiquita Brands).

In 2003, the United States officially acknowledged the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) role in this coup, in the name of fighting communism.

1961: Cuba

From April 15-19, 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.

The fighting left killed more than a hundred on each side.

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.

1970s: support for dictatorships

Washington backed several military dictatorships, seen as a bulwark against left-wing armed movements in a world divided by Cold War rivalries.

It actively assisted Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet during the September 11, 1973 coup against leftist President Salvador Allende.

U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger supported the Argentine junta in 1976, encouraging it to quickly end its “dirty war,” according to U.S. documents declassified in 2003.

At least 10,000 Argentine dissidents disappeared.

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 U.S. support.

1980s: wars in central America

In 1979, the Sandinista rebellion overthrew dictator Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua. U.S. President Ronald Reagan, concerned about Managua’s alignment with Cuba and the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), secretly authorised the CIA to provide $20 million in aid to the Contras (the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries), partly funded by the illegal sale of arms to Iran.

The Nicaraguan civil war, which ended in April 1990, claimed 50,000 lives.

Reagan also sent military advisers to El Salvador to crush the rebellion of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN, far left) in a civil war (1980–1992) that resulted in 72,000 deaths.

1983: Grenada

On October 25, 1983, U.S. 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.

At the request of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), Reagan launched Operation “Urgent Fury” with the stated goal of protecting a thousand U.S. citizens.

The operation, widely deplored by the UN General Assembly, ended on November 3, with more than a hundred dead.

1989: Panama

In 1989, after a contested election, president George W. Bush ordered a military intervention in Panama, resulting in the surrender of general Manuel Noriega, a former collaborator of U.S. intelligence, who was wanted by U.S. justice.

Some 27,000 GIs took part in Operation “Just Cause”, which officially left 500 dead.

NGOs put the toll significantly higher, in the thousands.

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.

Published – January 03, 2026 07:12 pm IST

Washington:

The United States on Monday seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s plane in the Dominican Republic and flew it to Florida, saying it acted over violation of US sanctions.

United States officials moved to take the aircraft, a Dassault Falcon 900EX private jet used by Maduro and members of his government, with the Justice Department saying the jet was “illegally purchased.”

“The Justice Department seized an aircraft we allege was illegally purchased for $13 million through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States for use by Nicolas Maduro and his cronies,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

Aircraft tracking site Flight Radar 24 showed that the jet flew from Santo Domingo to Fort Lauderdale on Monday morning.

The US says that in late 2022 and early 2023, individuals affiliated with Maduro allegedly used a Caribbean-based shell company to conceal their involvement in the illegal purchase of the jet.

– ‘False’ victory claim –

The aircraft was then illegally exported from the United States to Venezuela through the Caribbean in April 2023.

Since May 2023, the plane has flown almost exclusively to and from a military base in Venezuela.

The South American country was rocked by protests when Maduro was declared the winner of a disputed July 28 election, with dozens killed and more than 2,400 people arrested.

The opposition claims it won by a landslide and that it has the voting records to prove it.

The leftist Maduro government, brushing off accusations of authoritarianism, has resisted international pressure to release vote tally numbers to back up its claim of victory.

“Maduro and his representatives’ have tampered with the results of the July 28 presidential election, falsely claimed victory, and carried out wide-spread repression to maintain power by force,” a US National Security Council spokesperson said.

The seizure of the plane “is an important step to ensure that Maduro continues to feel the consequences from his misgovernance of Venezuela,” they added.

The United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries have refused to recognize Maduro as having won without seeing detailed voting results.

Violence that accompanied the protests left 27 people dead and at least 192 wounded.

Since 2005, Washington has imposed sanctions on Venezuela that target individuals and entities “that have engaged in criminal, antidemocratic, or corrupt actions,” according to a Congressional briefing document.

“In response to increasing human rights abuses and corruption by the government of Nicolas Maduro, in power since 2013, the Trump Administration expanded US sanctions to include financial sanctions, sectoral sanctions, and sanctions on the government.”

Caracas was yet to comment on the seizure.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)