The United States has long meddled in Latin American affairs, positioning itself since the early 1800s as protector of the hemisphere and intervening at least 41 times over the past century to change governments.
By the early 2000s, that attitude had provoked zero tolerance for imperialism across the region. Opposition to U.S. intervention was a principle that united diverse swaths of Latin American opinion.
Now, that might be changing.
Why We Wrote This
“Yankee go home” was once a popular Latin American anti-imperialist slogan. Now, trying to control a drug-fueled wave of violence, some in the region are having second thoughts about the United States.
As insecurity in the region has grown more intractable and deadly in recent years, the taboo against seeking U.S. military assistance has softened among many citizens and some politicians tired of drug-related violence and crime – and eager for a speedy solution.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to Mexico and Ecuador this week to hammer out new security agreements.
U.S. behavior in Latin America this year has pushed decadeslong limits. The Trump administration has threatened to retake the Panama Canal, authorized U.S. military action against drug cartels operating in Mexico, and deployed U.S. military forces off the coast of Venezuela, which Tuesday destroyed a speedboat that President Trump said was carrying drugs, killing 11 people aboard.
That approach has met with a certain amount of understanding in the region.
In June, Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa pushed through parliament a constitutional amendment permitting foreign military bases on Ecuadorean soil, after the number of homicides increased sixfold between 2019 and 2023.
A Mexican opposition senator appeared recently on Fox News to argue – in line with Donald Trump’s administration – that organized crime has “infested” the Mexican government and that help from the U.S. to fight cartels would be “absolutely welcome.”
And some of Venezuela’s neighbors have suggested that unseating that country’s undemocratically elected leader Nicolás Maduro could improve security in the region.
“Insecurity and narco-trafficking are so worrying … that there are segments of the population who want a solution to the problem, no matter where it comes from,” says Jorge Buendía, director of Buendía & Márquez, a Mexican polling firm.
Cooperation, but no invasion
Over the past seven months, the U.S. has deployed more than 8,000 troops along the Mexican border, declared six Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and most recently gave the Pentagon a directive to use military force to fight Latin American cartels, opening the way to U.S. operations on Mexican soil.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum quickly dismissed that idea. “We cooperate, we collaborate, but there is not going to be an invasion,” she said in August.
Latin American leaders have invoked past U.S. meddling in the region to rally domestic support. But attitudes to U.S. intervention have “never been black and white,” says Christopher Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House.
“There has always been a constituency in Latin America for U.S. intervention,” he says. “They have had the ear of policymakers in Washington to say ‘Hey, these guys are bad. Take them out!’” he says.
Those divisions typically fall along political lines – made clear on Mexico’s Senate floor in late August as two legislators from opposing parties ended up in a brawl on national TV over the subject.
Some Latin American opposition leaders have “lost their ability or their interest in organizing and resolving [leadership change] through democratic means,” Dr. Sabatini says. He points to Venezuela’s opposition, which has repeatedly sat out elections in protest against Mr. Maduro.
There is a sense among some politicians that “the Yankees may need to deliver, because the regime is too corrupt” to fight by democratic means, Dr. Sabatini says.
Is U.S. help essential?
In the days following news that Mr. Trump had asked the Pentagon to use military force against some Latin American drug cartels, Arturo Herrera, a media consultant in Guadalajara, was puzzled by Mexican media coverage.
One opinion piece in a national daily argued that any unilateral military operation by the U.S. would be almost “unanimously rejected” by the Mexican public, something that, from conversations Mr. Herrera had had with friends and family, did not ring true.
He took to social media to test his theory, asking in a poll on the social platform X on Aug. 16, “Would you reject a U.S. military operation in Mexico to combat narco-terrorists?” Of the 7,128 accounts that responded, 93% said no, they would not reject that kind of action.
The cartel problem “is impossible for Mexico to resolve on its own,” Mr. Herrera says. “They have their own intelligence, political influence, communications systems, missiles, and weapons. We will need outside help.”
Mr. Buendía, the pollster, suspects that support for U.S. military intervention in Mexico may depend on whether it was carried out unilaterally, or cooperatively. He believes there is far more public support for the latter approach.
When the U.S. acts unilaterally, says Ignacio Sánchez Prado, professor of Latin American studies at Washington University in St. Louis, “It creates the need for the Mexican government to assert sovereignty first and foremost,” potentially wasting opportunities for bilateral wins.
The “Pink Tide” ebbs
In 2006, four years after a failed coup against Venezuela’s then-President Hugo Chávez (which the U.S. was accused of tacitly approving), Mr. Chávez said in a United Nations General Assembly speech that Washington acted as if it “owned the world.”
He scored points at home where he was wildly popular, and in many parts of the region where the “Pink Tide” of populist, leftist leaders dominated politics.
Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters
Since then, the political landscape has transformed. Nearly eight million Venezuelans have fled simultaneous humanitarian, political, and economic crises under Mr. Maduro’s leadership.
Many citizens and some politicians in states near Venezuela are eager for the United States to take action against Mr. Maduro. The governments of Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago publicly supported the arrival of U.S. forces in the Caribbean in late August.
But in Colombia, Venezuela’s neighbor, President Gustavo Petro called a potential invasion there “the worst mistake.”
Many Latin Americans, wearied by violence, seek domestic leaders who rule with an iron fist, says Beatriz García Nice, a nonresident fellow at the Stimson Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C. “We don’t necessarily need the Americans to come,” she says.
However, many Colombians say they are in favor of U.S. involvement.
A U.S. military intervention to remove Mr. Maduro “should have been done a long time ago,” says Yeni Esperanza Moreno Mojica, a shopkeeper in Cúcuta, a Colombian city on the border with Venezuela.
Whatever it takes, she says, her priority is security.
Mie Hoejris Dahl contributed reporting from Colombia.
