The response in Latin America to the U.S. military intervention in Venezuela on Jan. 3 has been divided, ranging from strong condemnation to cheerful approval.
It is unsurprising that Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — one of Latin America’s most important leftist leaders — declared that the Trump administration “crossed an unacceptable line” and created “an extremely dangerous precedent for the entire international community.” The operation “recalls some of the worst moments of interference” and “threatens the preservation of the region as an established zone of peace,” Lula noted.
These views were echoed by other leftist leaders in the region. Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the operation an unjustified act of aggression. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum called for dialogue and negotiation as “the only legitimate means for resolving conflicts.” Chile’s outgoing President Gabriel Boric and Uruguay’s President Yamandú Orsi both expressed concern over the implications of the Venezuela intervention for relations between the U.S. and Latin America.
It’s worth noting that none of these regional leaders has been particularly supportive of Nicolás Maduro. Several of them have expressed forceful criticisms of his increasing authoritarianism — particularly in the aftermath of Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election, in which Maduro declared himself the winner but refused to present voter tallies or other proof of the results, leading to mass protests in the country. These progressive regional leaders criticized the Trump administration’s Venezuelan intervention not on the basis of any support for Maduro, but as a matter of sovereignty — a theme with deep roots in a region deeply scarred by previous U.S. meddling.
At the other end of the spectrum, center-right and far-right leaders — who are on the rise across Latin America — have expressed support for the U.S. operation, albeit with varying levels of enthusiasm. Argentine President Javier Milei, a self-defined anarcho-capitalist and one of Trump’s most ardent allies and admirers in the region, claimed that the Trump administration’s actions in Venezuela represent the promotion of freedom on the continent. Panamanian president and professed U.S. ally José Raúl Mulino expressed hope that the events in Caracas would eventually open the way for Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo González’s ascension to the presidency.
Presidents Daniel Noboa of Ecuador, José Jerí of Peru, Santiago Peña of Paraguay and Chile’s president-elect, José Antonio Kast, all rejoiced at the news of Maduro’s ousting, which they claimed was a necessary measure to end authoritarian rule and pave the way for the return of democracy in Venezuela.
Bolivia’s center-right President Rodrigo Paz and Guatemala’s centrist President Bernardo Arévalo were a bit more reserved. While both see Maduro’s departure as key for a democratic transition in Venezuela, they questioned the legality of the U.S. military intervention.
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, who is often effusive in his support for Trump, and until recently was considered to be his closest ally in the region, has been oddly quiet about the Venezuelan operation. This could be to avoid placing himself in the middle of rising tensions between the U.S. and China, given El Salvador’s increasing dependency on trade with Beijing.
Intergovernmental organizations in the region have likewise struggled to find the right tone for their responses. Latin America’s main diplomatic body, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States — created in 2011 as an alternative forum to the U.S.-conceived Organization of American States (OAS) — failed to reach a unanimous position on the U.S. intervention in Venezuela. For its part, the OAS urged calm and restraint from all involved parties, declaring in a standard bureaucratic statement that “the path forward must be based on the will of the Venezuelan people and the country’s constitution.”
Reactions from regional media also varied. On the one hand, important media outlets such as Globo in Brazil, La Nacion in Argentina and El Mercurio in Chile were somewhat critical of the Venezuela operation, arguing instead for democratic and nonviolent methods. Other traditionally centrist and center-right publications, such as Letras Libres in Mexico and Semana in Colombia, were more supportive. They have raised questions, not about the wisdom of removing Maduro, but about leaving his regime in power.
More broadly, Latin Americans are split in their reactions to the U.S. intervention. Most Venezuelans who have sought refuge in neighboring countries in recent years, along with segments of their host societies, approved of the operation. More organized sectors, such as scientific and labor organizations, have expressed concern or disapproval. Brazil’s Academy of Sciences, for instance, saw the intervention as an egregious violation of the United Nations Charter and warned that it could destabilize the entire region at a time when the priority should be the promotion of sustainable development for its populations. Important unions, such as Brazil’s Central Unica dos Trabalhadores (Unified Workers’ Central) and Argentina’s Confederacion General del Trabajo (General Confederation of Labor), also expressed grave concern that the wealth of natural resources in the region could lead to further interventions by more powerful nations.
Latin American intellectuals have also been mostly critical of the U.S. operation. One of the region’s most active and influential academic organizations, the Latin American Council of Social Sciences, for one, called it a historical setback in terms of the political autonomy and territorial integrity that most nations in Latin America have achieved in the last four decades. And even intellectuals who were happy to see Maduro removed from power have been critical of the means by which this was achieved. Jorge Castañeda, author of the seminal book “Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War” (and former foreign minister of Mexico), gave voice to this ambivalence. “I both regret and applaud that they did it,” he told the PBS News Hour. “I regret it because this is a unilateral action that violates international law. And I applaud it because they got rid of a dictator who stole an election.”
Despite these differences, the range of reactions across the region indicates widespread concern about the way U.S. military action was carried out. To be sure, Operation “Absolute Resolve” was somewhat different from what happened in Guatemala in 1954, when the CIA engineered a coup against a democratically elected government, and in the Dominican Republic in 1965, when the U.S. deployed thousands of troops to prevent what then-President Lyndon Johnson called a “communist dictatorship” in the country. In both of those cases, Washington sought to obtain support and legal legitimacy for its actions from regional organizations: In 1954, the OAS approved a resolution declaring communism a “foreign ideology” that threatened the hemisphere’s political integrity, which the Eisenhower administration used to make the case that it had the legal basis to act (never mind that Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz was not in fact a communist). In 1965, the intervention in the Dominican Republic was framed as an OAS peace force led by Brazil.
This time around, in contrast, there wasn’t even an attempt to work with regional governments.
Regardless of its actions in the region in the past, the U.S. did not seek unanimous support for its military action in Venezuela, an unlikely prospect given the political fragmentation across Latin America. And perhaps, as is becoming increasingly well evidenced, the Trump administration no longer sees the need to seek regional legitimacy.
The only legal basis the Trump administration bothered to provide for its actions was a domestic one. As Secretary of State Marco Rubio put it in an interview on ABC News, “This was an arrest operation. This was a law enforcement operation.” Maduro, he said, “was arrested on the ground in Venezuela by FBI agents, read his rights and removed from the country.”
Even governments traditionally aligned with the United States, such as Guatemala, have expressed apprehension that the events in Venezuela could become the new pattern for how the U.S. government will behave in the region.
This is where the global rivalry between the U.S. and China needs to come into focus. The two countries are locked in a multidimensional competition for global hegemony, and predominance in the Western Hemisphere is even more relevant for the U.S. today than it was two centuries ago, when the Monroe Doctrine declared the region subject to its influence alone. If America’s hopes of projecting power globally are to be taken seriously, Latin America’s growing ties with China need to be reversed.
But will this course of action on the part of the U.S. be considered a sign of America’s might?
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the global struggle for influence between Washington and Beijing forms the backdrop for the Venezuela intervention. Trump made a point of declaring that “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”
He also announced that the U.S. would likely control Venezuela for years and that whatever costs American taxpayers might incur in the process would be offset by forthcoming oil revenues. He even posted a fake Wikipedia page calling him the interim president of Venezuela, highlighting who is calling the shots there.
Trump’s statements make clear that the U.S. actions were at least to some degree motivated by economic factors. That is an old story, but there is something new at work here. The operation in Venezuela seems to signal to the region itself, not just to outside actors, that the Western Hemisphere is an exclusive realm of the United States — and that it is ready to act, forcefully if needed, to guarantee that this proposition is not challenged.
It is reasonable to conclude that the Trump administration would not be acting so aggressively and unilaterally had Chinese influence in the region not grown so dramatically in recent years. The actions might also be grounded in the notion that for America to be made “great again,” the historical dependence of Latin American countries on the United States must be continued and assured. Should this require military actions, so be it. And should any regional nation dare resist, they would be doing so at their own peril.
No longer grounded in the Monroe Doctrine, but rather on what has been dubbed the “Donroe Doctrine” — which seems aimed at setting the region back to the old pattern of interventionism in the 20th century — the United States does indeed seem ready to act ever more overtly as the hemisphere’s only superpower, by whatever means necessary. This was made clear in Trump’s recent remark to The New York Times that he doesn’t “need international law” and that the only constraint on his power is his “own morality.”
Whether Trump’s course of action might be effective in reversing China’s growing regional influence is still an open question. Regional leaders are increasingly cognizant of the rising tensions across the continent, where the dominant strategy many nations had sustained for years — that of attempting to maneuver between the U.S. and China, without having to pick a side — may no longer be tenable. But can their countries afford to cut ties with China in the absence of similar trade deals and investment opportunities from the U.S.? Moreover, will China passively accept being forced out, or short of that, having its interests in Latin America seriously challenged?
These are some of the key questions that will likely shape the course of the region in the years ahead. These are dynamics that precede Trump’s return to the White House, but which have become more overt and urgent because of his demonstrated willingness to use imperial power to reshape the Western Hemisphere.
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