Madrid.- The US airstrike this morning against several targets inside Venezuela, where Nicolás Maduro has been captured, as announced by President Donald Trump, is the sixth military intervention by Washington in Latin America in the last 75 years and the first so far this century.
The American president,
Donald Trump, confirmed that the United States has carried out
"successfully a large-scale attack against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolás Maduro - whom he accuses of drug trafficking -, who has been, along with his wife, captured and taken out of the country by air".
You may be interested in: http://Venezuela tras la caída de Maduro: ¿fin del chavismo o inicio de una transición incierta?
Venezuela denounced that the missile attack from US helicopters on civilian areas of Caracas, as well as other places in the country, has caused deaths to "military and civilians" and admitted that it does not know the whereabouts of Maduro and his wife.
Here are the main interventions of the United States in Latin America in the last 75 years:
Bay of Pigs – Cuba
On April 15, 1961, B-26 aircraft sent by the United States bombed Cuban bases to annihilate the Revolutionary Air Force and facilitate the landing at Playa Girón of the so-called Brigade 2506, composed of exiles and mercenaries trained by the CIA in Guatemala and Nicaragua.
The next day, the then Cuban president, Fidel Castro, declared the socialist character of the revolution that had brought him to power in January 1959 and, on April 17, Brigade 2506, made up of about 1,500 armed men and supported by planes and ships of the US naval force, tried to land at Playa Girón, in the Cuban Bay of Pigs, about 180 kilometers southeast of Havana.
The attack sought to overthrow Castro and establish a government that had been formed in Miami, but it was suppressed by the Cuban Army.
The Bay of Pigs invasion had occurred in the context of the Cuban regime's rapprochement with the USSR and its failure was a serious setback for the American president, John F. Kennedy, while bolstering the Castro regime and embittering relations between the two countries from then on.
Dominican Republic
On April 28, 1965, then-U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson sent 20,000 marines to the Dominican Republic to quell the civil conflict that the country was experiencing after Juan Bosch, who had come to power after the death of dictator Leónidas Trujillo in 1961, was deposed by the military.
The U.S. aimed to prevent the country from falling into the hands of communism and creating "a second Cuba" in the Caribbean.
The U.S. placed General Antonio Imbert Barrera at the head of the Government and in September 1966 the North American troops left the country, shortly before presidential elections were held in which Bosch was defeated by Joaquín Balaguer, who had been part of the Trujillo dictatorship's Administration and who would remain in power until 1996.
Granada
On October 25, 1983, nearly 2,000 U.S. Marines, along with a symbolic force of 300 soldiers from other small Caribbean countries - Jamaica, Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent - invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada to overthrow the military regime that had seized power six days earlier, on October 19, after executing the head of government, Maurice Bishop, three of his ministers, and numerous civilians.
The coup, of communist influence, had overthrown a Government that had come to power in 1979 also after a coup - in this case bloodless - and had established a Government supported by Cuba and recognized by the U.S. and the United Kingdom.
The then-U.S. President, Ronald Reagan, justified the so-called 'Operation Urgent Fury' on the need to protect the lives of the thousand Americans residing on the island and restore democratic institutions.
Most of the US troops left the country on November 1, 1983.
Panama
In the night of December 20, 1989, with George Bush in the White House, 26,000 U.S. soldiers entered Panama to dismantle the country's Army and capture dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega, accused of drug trafficking, in the 'Just Cause' operation.
More than 500 people died, 314 of them military personnel and the majority Panamanians, according to data declassified by the Pentagon in 2019, although humanitarian organizations raise the number of Panamanian civilians killed to between 500 and 4,000.
Noriega, who ruled the country between 1983 and 1989 and had been a CIA collaborator, surrendered thirteen days later to the United States troops that surrounded the Apostolic Nunciature in Panama in which he had taken refuge after the invasion.
Haiti
On September 19, 1994, more than 23,000 U.S. military personnel peacefully occupied Haiti to facilitate the transition to democracy and the return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the first Haitian president elected in democratic elections (1990), who had been overthrown on September 30, 1991, by a military coup led by General Raoul Cedras.
The arrival of the military took place hours after a US delegation, led by former President Jimmy Carter, reached an agreement with Cedras for the entry of US troops into Haiti, the departure of the coup government from the country, the return of Aristide, and the calling of future elections.
Aristide returned to Haiti on October 15 and resumed his term. At the end of March 1995, the American forces transferred command of the peace operation to the UN, and in June legislative and municipal elections were held, which the opposition denounced for favoring Aristide's party.
Almost a decade later, in February 2004, the United States would again deploy Marines in Haiti, this time as part of an international coalition authorized by the United Nations, following an armed revolt that led to Aristide's departure.
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