The United States has a long and often controversial history of intervening in Latin American affairs. From warring with Mexico to deploying troops in Cuba and invading Panama, its interventions have shaped the region for centuries.
However, for much of the 20th century, a significant portion of U.S. involvement in the region was managed by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Even today, long after the Cold War’s end, the agency’s actions continue to make headlines. For instance, the Trump administration secretly authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, intensifying a campaign against President Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian rule.
This renewed focus on covert action once again brings to light the agency’s past operations, which included orchestrating coups, planning assassinations, and engaging in conflicts like the contra fight against Nicaragua’s leftist government in the 1980s.
Let’s explore some of these infamous high-profile operations.
A Coup in Guatemala
When Guatemala’s democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, was overthrown in a coup in 1954, the Eisenhower administration publicly described it as an uprising against a Communist government aligned with the Soviet Union.
However, declassified files later revealed that the coup was heavily supported by the CIA. The agency created assassination lists and discussed recruiting exiles to participate. President Dwight D. Eisenhower even approved a request to provide the insurgents with bombers, and CIA pilots actively helped establish an opposition force.
Árbenz had also made powerful enemies in a major U.S. corporation, the United Fruit Company. His government sought to confiscate unused land owned by the company for redistribution under a land reform program, offering compensation based on the understated value the company had declared for tax purposes.
Following the coup, Guatemala plunged into three decades of civil war under a succession of military leaders. An investigation by the Roman Catholic Church later found that 150,000 people were killed and 50,000 forcibly disappeared during the conflict, with an estimated 80 percent of casualties caused by Guatemalan troops.
The Bay of Pigs Invasion
After Fidel Castro’s rise to power in Cuba in 1959, his government’s relationship with Washington rapidly deteriorated. The CIA soon began developing invasion plans, providing arms and training to an anti-Castro force at a clandestine base in Guatemala.
The agency executed its disastrous attack in April 1961. The plan involved Cuban exiles, supported by the CIA, attempting to overthrow Castro’s Communist government while CIA pilots bombed parts of the Cuban air force. Approximately 1,500 Cuban exiles were deployed to the island, but they were outnumbered, underequipped, and swiftly defeated by the Cuban military, which captured nearly 1,200 of them.
A scathing, 150-page review of the operation revealed that almost none of the involved CIA officers spoke Spanish and that the agency had created a “complex and bizarre organizational situation” with minimal chance of success. The report concluded, “The agency was going forward without knowing precisely what it was doing.”
Assassination Attempts
The CIA initiated at least eight plots to assassinate Fidel Castro, according to a Senate Intelligence Committee report that was partially released in 1975 and fully disclosed much later.
Some of these plots were elaborate. One scheme, “involving the use of underworld figures,” went as far as sending poison pills and deploying teams to Cuba. Another plan included providing a Cuban dissident with weapons and various assassination devices, such as a poison pen. The agency also explored schemes involving cigars treated with botulinum toxin, an “exotic seashell” rigged to explode underwater where Castro often dived, and a diving suit contaminated with tuberculosis bacteria.
A CIA agent also assisted a team of Bolivian soldiers in capturing Che Guevara in 1967, a mission that ultimately led to Guevara’s execution. Furthermore, in 1975, the CIA supplied weapons to dissidents who assassinated Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, the authoritarian leader of the Dominican Republic.
A ‘Coup Climate’ in Chile
As soon as Salvador Allende assumed office as Chile’s Socialist president in 1970, the Nixon administration began planning actions against him, concerned he might inspire similar movements in other countries. Declassified U.S. documents reveal that the CIA aimed to “create a coup climate” by exerting maximum pressure on the Chilean government.
These covert operations included a CIA-funded anti-government propaganda media campaign, blocking international loans to Chile, secretly funding efforts to foment strikes, and assuring the Chilean military of full U.S. support.
Handwritten notes by the then-CIA director detailed some of President Nixon’s instructions: “One in 10 chance, perhaps, but save Chile”; “not concerned risks involved”; “full-time job — best men we have”; “make the economy scream.”
A Senate committee investigating covert actions in Chile found little evidence directly linking the U.S. government to the military coup that eventually transpired, according to the State Department. In that coup, in September 1973, surrounded in the besieged presidential palace, Allende ultimately ordered everyone with him to surrender before he took his own life.
The military junta was subsequently led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who consolidated power over the next 16 years in a repressive regime accused of widespread torture, executions, and disappearances.