The history of CIA interventions in Latin America without authorization (2)

Published at: 14/11/2025 05:00 PM

With the objective of documenting and retracting the collective memory of the times that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has invaded Latin American countries without asking for permission, to bring “democracy and freedom”, we now present the interventions they made starting in the 70s.

Between 1973 and 1985, Uruguay was governed by a military dictatorship that, according to the documents found, it was detailed that the CIA created a security office in Montevideo and from there, for the ten years prior to the coup, the police were trained so that they could contain leftist rebels and guerrilla fighters. To achieve this, the U.S. agency provided equipment and manuals to the Charrúa army.

In Chile, in 1973, a military junta, led by Augusto Pinochet, overthrew the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, and gave way to a dictatorship of almost 17 years. Declassified CIA documents confirmed the involvement of the North American country in the coup against the elected president. It also channeled funds to Allende's political opponents and to organizers of strikes and riots, the agency financed propaganda against the elected government, mainly through the newspaper El Mercurio, and used companies as a means to disguise the origin of the funds. In addition, the United States managed the actions of the Armed Forces, instructing senior Chilean military officers to actively support the coup d'etat, which was an important factor in its execution.

In the same way, Argentina experienced a military coup on March 24, 1976, which installed a new dictatorship calling itself the National Reorganization Process. It lasted almost eight years and, under the protection of the United States through the CIA, brought a regime of state terrorism.

With the help of dictator Jorge Videla and his military junta, the army carried out a systematic plan to kidnap, torture and eliminate opponents, causing thousands of missing persons and suppressing the identity of hundreds of children. Thousands of individuals were tortured and killed, many on Death Flights, where detainees were thrown alive from planes into the sea.

To carry out those tortures, the CIA provided the so-called 'Torture Manuals', declassified by the Pentagon in the 1990s. Years later, those Argentine soldiers were tried and their actions were described by the courts as genocide.

In the case of Nicaragua, during the 1980s, the CIA tried to overthrow the revolutionary government of the Sandinista National Liberation Front in Nicaragua. First it was through covert operations and then by providing weapons and money to the counterrevolutionary guerrillas.

Those dollars came from clandestine arms sales to Iran . The issue led to the Iran-Contra scandal in Washington, which evidenced the funding of counterrevolutionaries associated with the political right in the countries. Later investigations indicated that the funding was maintained with money from drug trafficking, with the CIA as the administrator of those funds.

The intervention of the United States in Panama has been permanent, since the creation of the country is linked to its North American “brother”. In 1903, the United States sent warships to support separatist groups that sought not to be part of Colombia. Finally, the Republic of Panama became independent, allowing the United States to immediately take control of the canal.

Almost ninety years later, the United States intervened again in that country, with the objective of capturing President Manuel Noriega. The White House accused him of being a drug trafficker and by December 1989, thousands of U.S. soldiers were sent to Panama to capture the president. After several weeks of fighting, Noriega surrendered on January 3, 1990.

“For Panamanians, this intervention was traumatic. It remained in the collective imagination as the double game that the United States can play to defend its interests,” said the writer Luis Alberto Villamarín.

The U.S. intervention also led to the dissolution of Panamanian military forces. Currently, Panama and Costa Rica are the two countries on the continent that do not have an army.

From this, it can be concluded that the development of Latin American countries was strongly marked by the presence and strengthening of the United States as a capitalist power, since for years it exercised unprecedented hegemony over the continent, with a single purpose: the consolidation of a commercial structure that would support their economic development, the protection and expansion of their properties and investments and guarantee the support of the governments of turn to fulfill their imperial objective.

AMELYREN BASABE/Mazo News Team