U.S. INTERVENTION IN LATIN AMERICA
In the early 20th century, they called it gunboat diplomacy. The US would typically send naval vessels and marines to Latin America to achieve one policy goal or another: for example, in Colombia in 1903 to secure Panama to build the canal; in Mexico in 1914 as a reaction to the Mexican Revolution; in the Dominican Republic in 1916 to collect debts.
After the hiatus of the New Deal and World War II, a period during which the US emphasized friendly relations with Latin America and removed US troops from the area (and when Latin American cultural influence in the US was extensive), came the Cold War, resulting in multiple US interventions using US troops, the CIA and other instruments to get rid of governments it thought were too leftist, in big countries (Brazil) and small ones (Panama) alike.
Now we have the removal of the president of Venezuela and the bombing of the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. Trump says he will “run” Venezuela. Fallen by the wayside are international law, Congressional approval, and the consent of the Venezuelan people. These are unimportant to Trump in relation to his objectives: to show who is boss in the Western hemisphere, to get rid of an uncooperative leader, to control the largest petroleum reserves on the planet.
Sources: The New York Times,1/4/26; North Carolina State: Timeline of US Latin America Relations Since 1823; Harvard Review of Latin America, May 2005