Trump's military pressure on Maduro evokes Latin America's coup-ridden past

[marmar]

(Guardian) The ghosts of sometimes deadly Latin American coups of the past are being evoked by Donald Trump’s relentless military buildup targeting Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s autocratic socialist leader, whom Washington has branded a narco-terrorist.

Salvador Allende, the democratically elected Marxist president of Chile toppled in a military coup in 1973, and Rafael Trujillo, the longstanding dictator of the Dominican Republic who was assassinated in 1961 in an ambush organized by political opponents, are just two regional leaders whose fates serve as a warning to Maduro.

Allende is believed to have killed himself, although some doubt that explanation, as troops stormed the presidential palace in the Chilean capital, Santiago, in a coup – fomented by then president Richard Nixon’s administration – that ushered in the brutally repressive military regime of Gen Augusto Pinochet.

The CIA is believed to have supplied the weapons used to kill Trujillo.

Guatemala’s elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, escaped into exile after being overthrown in a 1954 coup also instigated by the CIA. But the event triggered a 30-year civil war that killed an estimated 150,000 people and resulted in 50,000 disappearances. ........................(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/01/trump-maduro-venezuela-coups

[leftstreet]

1. DURec

[dutch777]

2. Thought this was the guy against foreign adventures? Like Gaza he has no real workable plan for the future.

These things don't fix themselves and frequently end up going from bad to worse. He has seemed to acknowledge that in the past but guess now that he is the Big Guy he can't help going for it. As long as there is a market here and elsewhere for drugs, someone, somewhere will process and provide them. This is a big game of Whack-a-Mole. Wasting a huge number of military resources in what seems clearly an illegal operation. Leaving the Med and Europe with no aircraft carrier task force to do this-- nutso.