A History of the C.I.A.’s Involvement in Latin America, From Bay of Pigs to Chile Coups

Americas|Poison Cigars, Propaganda and Coups Litter C.I.A. History in Latin America

The United States has a long and, often sordid, history of intervening in Latin America. Washington once went to war with Mexico, landed troops on Cuba and invaded Panama to depose its ruler.

But for much of the 20th century, U.S. involvement in the region was in the hands of the C.I.A.

Now, long after the Cold War’s end, the Trump administration has secretly authorized the agency to conduct covert action in Venezuela, according to U.S. officials, stepping up a campaign against the country’s authoritarian leader, President Nicolás Maduro.

The order has once again raised the specter of operations by an agency that had its hands in coups, assassination plots and the contra fight against Nicaragua’s leftist government in the 1980s.

Here are some of those high-profile operations.

A coup in Guatemala

When Guatemala’s democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, was overthrown in a coup in 1954, the Eisenhower administration described it as an uprising against a Communist government allied with the Soviet Union.

But the coup had been supported by the C.I.A., which drew up assassination lists and discussed recruiting exiles to take part, according to files released decades later. President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved a request to give the insurgents bombers, and C.I.A. pilots helped build an opposition force.