GT investigates: Unveiling US’ long-standing geopolitical, economic and ideological intrigues in Latin America

"The United States seems to be destined by Providence to plague Latin America with misery in the name of liberty," Simon Bolivar, who was born in Venezuela and later played a central role in the Latin American independence movement, once wrote in a letter in 1829.

The apprehension and warnings that Bolivar voiced nearly two centuries ago, appeared to have found renewed validation at the onset of 2026 at his birthplace. In the early hours of Saturday local time, the US military launched a military strike against Venezuela, and forcibly seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, who were subsequently transported to the US, and stood their first court trial there on Monday.

The US' move is not an isolated incident but rather the inevitable continuation of two centuries of the Monroe Doctrine, a mindset that treats Latin America as the US' own "backyard," commented experts in international relations reached by the Global Times.

From geopolitical hegemony, to economic plunder and to its sugar-coated munitions of ideological penetration, the US has long wielded these three "axes" against Latin America, seeking to reduce the region to an instrument for advancing US interests and realpolitik ambitions, Xu Yanran, an associate professor at the School of International Relations, Renmin University of China, told the Global Times.

Axe of geopolitical hegemony

The US' forcible seizure of Venezuela's leader faced strong criticism from both partners of the US and other countries at an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Monday. Within the US, "anti-war protests are planned in over 100 cities," Newsweek reported on Sunday.

And this is merely the latest blow of the axe with which the US has long hewn its geostrategic dominance into Latin American soil. For decades, the US has consolidated its position there through a series of intrigues, which include strategic declarations that normalize its hegemony, a sustained military presence that reinforces de facto control, and the building of exclusive organizations and events that squeeze out opposition - all to ensure that the region remains subordinate to US interests, Xu said.

"America for the Americans." Ever since the then president James Monroe issued that motto in 1823, the Monroe Doctrine has served as the US' putative theoretical justification for intervening in Latin America against the European powers. The Trump administration's 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) went further still, openly designating Latin America as sphere of influence of the US - a posture widely dubbed "Monroe Doctrine 2.0" by media and think tanks and tantamount to a blunt, unapologetic hegemonic threat to the region, according to Xu.

Behind that threat lies a longstanding and substantial US military presence in Latin America - the alarming fuel that powers this axe of geopolitical hegemony the US brandishes toward the region. The US maintained roughly 76 military bases across Latin America, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

The US is adept at direct military intervention in the region under various pretexts. In December 1989, under the guise of a counternarcotics effort, the US mounted "Operation Just Cause," deploying some 27,000 troops to invade Panama, according to the website of US Army Special Operations History. Its most recent forcible seizure of the Venezuelan president was, at least ostensibly, also conducted under the pretext of "counter-narcotics."

The attack on Venezuela on January 3 leaves no room for doubt: The US no longer behaves as the peaceful democracy it proclaims to be, Evandro Menezes de Carvalho, a professor of international law at the Federal Fluminense University in Rio de Janeiro, told the Global Times in a previous interview.

"Today, American hegemony is sustained not by the multilateral institutions it once championed but by the projection of raw force," Carvalho commented.

Axe of economic plunder

"The underdevelopment of Latin America derives from the development of others and it continues to feed it," Eduardo Galeano wrote this statement in his book "The Open Veins of Latin America," which eloquently argues that the West has long plundered the region's natural resources to bankroll its own progress.

Over 50 years have passed since its publication, and the phenomenon described continues to unfold across the American continent as the US tries to lock this resource-rich land firmly in place as a dependency for resource extraction and a market for dumping goods.

This plunder is primarily reflected in the control of energy and natural resources, which can be exemplified by the "food imperialism" established by the US. Michael Hudson, a US economist used this term in an interview with US news website The Grayzone, to explain how the US, by influencing the World Bank, provided loans not to help countries like Chile or Venezuela grow their own food, but to produce plantation crops needed in the US that could not be grown domestically, so that "countries have become more and more dependent on the US for food."

The US further strengthens its economic control over the region by controlling key transportation infrastructure in Latin America.

For more than a century, the US has sought to profit from the Panama Canal at Panama's expense. According to Xinhua, on November 3, 1903, US troops landed in Panama and engineered the country's secession from Colombia. Just 15 days after Panama declared independence, it was coerced by the US into signing the unequal Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty that granted the US the right to construct the canal and to permanently use, occupy, and control the waterway. Another treaty was signed in 1977 requiring the US to hand over the canal to Panama on December 31, 1999. However, at the beginning of 2025, the Trump administration reiterated threat to retake Panama Canal "or something very powerful" will happen, CNN reported.

According to the History Labs of University of Maryland, in the 1930s, a US company United Fruit Company (UFC) gained control of 42 percent of Guatemala's land, and was exempted from paying taxes and import duties. The UFC not only owned all of Guatemala's banana production, it also owned the country's telephone and telegraph system.

The US is also good at strengthening its "dominant position" in trade with Latin America through various trade agreements. According to a report by the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, whether it is the North American Free Trade Agreement between Mexico and the US, or the free trade agreements between the US and Central American countries, they are all designed to provide US companies with production advantages and to allow them to disproportionately accumulate wealth and profits, while partner countries receive asymmetric benefits.

The US has also frequently wielded economic sanctions to pressure countries in the region that do not conform to its policy agenda. Over the past seven years, the US sanctions severely crippled Venezuela's oil industry, causing the country to lose oil revenue equivalent to 231 percent of its GDP between January 2017 and December 2024, according to transnational think tank Tricontinental Institute for Social Research.

"By creating these countries' distorted economic structures, weakening their industrial manufacturing and sustainable development capabilities, and imposing unequal economic agreements or economic sanctions, the US firmly controls the industrial order and trade structure in the region," Sun Yanfeng, a research fellow from the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times.

Axe of ideological infiltration

In the latest US NSS report, the Trump administration outlines its vision for a new global order centered on the core principle of "America first." This strategic layout serving "America first" is not isolated from history; it continues the long-standing US strategic inertia of viewing Latin America as its "backyard."

Furthermore, its ideological penetration is a key flexible tool to maintain this sphere of influence and shape a regional order aligned with US interests, experts noted.

For a long time, "promoting democracy" and "protecting human rights" have been common slogans used by the US to interfere in Latin American affairs, brandishing its axe of ideological infiltration targeting Latin America. Under these disguised pretenses, the US has systematically infiltrated Latin American social trends, fostered pro-US forces and interfered in elections through various means such as financial support, public opinion manipulation and political maneuvering, Xu pointed out.

Infamous institutions like the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have long funded opposition groups and "civil society" organizations in countries such as Venezuela and Cuba. In September 2021, Stephen Kinzer, a former reporter of The New York Times, published articles in the New York Review of Books website unveiling that the NED collaborates with the CIA and USAID to support insurgent forces in other countries in a bid to overthrow regimes that the US dislikes.

According to the articles, early members of the NED board of directors were mostly warmongers, and among the board members are former federal senators enthusiastic about regime change in Cuba and Nicaragua.

The US also instigated the "color revolution" in Bolivia through the NED and some other social organizations, forcing the then president Evo Morales to resign and go into exile. Over the years, the US has groomed anti-Morales forces. Between 2013 and 2018, the NED and USAID provided, by various means, $70 million to the opposition in Bolivia, according to a fact sheet on NED released by the Chinese Foreign Ministry in 2022.

Xu told the Global Times that US intervention is self-serving rather than mutually beneficial. Many tragedies have shown that, the three "axes" of geopolitical hegemony, economic plunder and ideological infiltration the US hews on Latin America have only torn apart society and led to persistent political unrest - this is the crux of why US involvement in Latin America "only makes things worse," Xu said.

In recent years, the voices of Latin American countries for unity, self-strengthening and opposition to intervention have been on the rise, and this reflects the awakening of the subjective consciousness in Latin America and the exploration of a truly independent and autonomous development path, Xu said.

A growing number of countries have realized that relying on external powers cannot bring stability and prosperity; strengthening internal regional unity and cooperation is the correct direction to respond to external intervention and achieve common development, the Chinese expert noted.