The raid in Venezuela? CIA work. The long history of US interventions in the “backyard”

It was the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that attacked one with drones port facility on the coast of Venezuela in early Decemberthe first known US raid against a target within the borders of the Latin American country. Donald Trump said on Monday that US forces had struck and destroyed a pier used by alleged drug traffickers, confirming what he said in an interview on 26 December: “It’s a large facility where ships depart from… the area of ​​the pier where ships load drugs… It’s the deployment area, that’s where they deploy, and now it’s gone.” CNN revealed that the CIA conducted the operation.

At the beginning of 2025, Trump authorized the CIA to conduct operations in Latin Americabut until now the United States had officially limited itself to conducting attacks at sea against suspected drug traffickers, destroying over 30 vessels in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean since September, and killing around eighty people in the raids (the last two last night).

The drone attack on Venezuelan territory would have destroyed a pier and some moored boats, without causing casualties. According to an anonymous source cited by Cnn, it would have been a largely symbolic raid“since it is one of the many port facilities used by drug traffickers departing from Venezuela.” According to the US government, these docks are used by the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang to store drugs and transfer them onto boats for subsequent shipment to the US or Europe.

A long history of US interventions in Latin America

The CIA and the US intelligence services in general boast a long history of interventions, more or less secret, in Latin America. Over the last two centuries, The United States has repeatedly conducted military operations in the subcontinent, which it has long considered its “backyard.”. Starting in the late 1800s, when Washington launched the so-called Banana Wars, a series of military interventions in Central America to protect the interests of US companies operating in the region.

Starting point, the «Monroe Doctrine»named after then-President James Monroe, who first declared in 1823 that «America belongs to the Americans»warning European powers to refrain from any interference in their zone of influence. In 1904, with the «corollario Roosevelt»named after President Theodore, who waged war on Spain for the control of Cubathe White House claimed the “right to intervene” in the internal affairs of Latin American countries.

There was a pause under the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt who introduced the «Good Neighbor Policy»pledging not to invade or interfere in the internal affairs of Latin American countries. But the “truce” was broken during the Cold Warwhen to prevent the expansion of Soviet influence, Washington financed numerous operations, mostly coordinated by the CIA, founded in 1947, to overthrow elected left-wing leaders in the region.

Under the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, the CIA supported the coup against the president-elect of the United States in 1954. GuatemalaJacobo Arbenz Guzmán, and five years later elaborated a plan to train exiles to invade Cuba to overthrow Fidel Castrowho had just won the civil war against the dictator Fulgencio Batista. The challenge to the “lider maximo” continued under the presidency of the Democrat John F. Kennedy, who ordered the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961.

In the 1960s, the CIA financed anti-communist groups that in Brazilin 1964, led to the coup against President João Goulart and the establishment of a pro-American military dictatorship that lasted until 1985, and in Ecuador to the 1963 coup against the pro-Soviet Carlos Julio Arosemena and the banning of the Communist Party. Similar operations took place in Bolivia, on two different occasions: with the 1964 coup d’état led by General René Barrientos Ortuno against the elected president Victor Paz Estenssoro and then again in 1971 with the financing of the officer Hugo Banzer who deposed the president Juan José Torres, guilty of having nationalized several US companies in Bolivia.

It’s in the seventies, with the infamous Operation Condorthat the CIA has sullied its reputation with an indelible stain, supporting brutal and murderous regimes. In Chile, he financed the coup forces that overthrew left-wing president Salvador Allende in 1973guilty of wanting to nationalize the copper companies present in the country, many of which are US-owned. General Augusto Pinochet remained in power for 17 years.

In 1975, under the presidency of Gerald Ford, the CIA openly supported right-wing military dictatorships in six Latin American countries – Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay – through a transnational network called Operation Condor. The objective was the repression, including through “disappearances”, torture and death, of political dissidents, left-wing exponents and communist sympathizers. Dictatorships used a shared database to monitor their movements in a ruthless man (or woman) hunt. Among the victims were also many minors and pregnant women whose newborns were stolen, especially in Argentina.

The interference of the United States and the CIA in internal affairs south of its borders continued throughout the 1980s and for a good part of the 1990s, particularly in Central America. For example, during the civil war in El Salvador (1980-1992), where in December 1981, the elite Atlacatl Battalion of the Salvadoran army, trained and equipped by the US; led a real massacre in the village of El Mozote, killing around a thousand civilians, including women and children.

In 1983 the United States opted for the military invasion of the small Caribbean island of Grenada, with theOperation Urgent Fury who deposed the Marxist-Leninist Prime Minister Mauricand Bishop. Six years later, under the presidency of the Republican George HW Bush, Operation Just Cause was launched: the invasion of Panama and the capture of the dictator Manuel Noriega, a former US ally, now accused of drug trafficking.

The Venezuela case

Maduro like Noriega? Venezuela is not Panama and a land invasion does not seem like a viable option even for the US military. Thirty years ago 30,000 soldiers were needed, but ten times as many would not be enough in the enormous South American country. Trump’s strategy, according to analysts, focuses rather on pressure to push Nicolás Maduro to spontaneous surrender and a “protected escape” to a friendly country – Russia, China, Cuba or some African state – to avoid ending up in chains like Noriega. But for now the Venezuelan leader is resisting the siege.

Maduro does not give in, on the contrary he accelerates the process towards collectivization and the “armed phase of the revolution”, taking inspiration from the Maoist concept of “prolonged popular war” in the event of an attack on the country. The chavista leader he ordered to “distribute weapons” and to “prepare national defense” even in factories and workplaces, then unleashed a wave of popular mobilization throughout the national territory to quickly create the new Integral Bolivarian Base Committees: bodies with political, paramilitary and social surveillance functions, whose objective is to organize a widespread espionage network among citizens.

The chess game between Washington and Caracas could therefore still be very long. On the skin of millions of Venezuelan citizens and the thousands of people locked up without trial in the prisons of the Latin American country.

December 30, 2025 (changed December 30, 2025 | 10:45)

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