President Trump’s military action in Venezuela is not the first time our country has intervened in Latin America and the Caribbean. The list is long, the pattern distressingly familiar.
These assaults always begin with the pretext that “American interests” are threatened. The interests are those of corporations whose CEOs feel unfairly treated by local governments.
Throughout much of the 20th century, our leaders unseated elected presidents in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala at the behest of the United Fruit Company (https://www.thecollector.com/the-banana-wars-how-the-us-plundered-central-america/).
These countries posed no threats to our way of life. Their governments did insist that United Fruit pay local taxes and live up to their commercial agreements.
United Fruit executives saw these constraints on corporate profits as unreasonable and used their connections in Washington to get better deals at the barrel of a gun.
In the Venezuelan case, President Trump wants to regain drilling leases in that country for Big Oil. So far, we the taxpayers have paid over $700 million blockading and raiding Venezuela.
The price rises by $9 million/day (https://fortune.com/2026/01/08/us-blockade-venezuela-cost-700-million-rising-daily/). President Trump, like his predecessors, is willing to spend our tax dollars and risk lives to serve corporate, not national, interests.
The vast majority of Americans did not share in United Fruit’s profits. The benefits of the president’s actions in Venezuela will only enrich Big Oil’s executives and investors.
Our government’s actions invariably end by destabilizing the countries where we intervene. U.S. occupation of Nicaragua (1927-1932) led to the Somoza dictatorship.
The CIA’s overthrow of Guatemala’s elected president in 1954 sparked a 40-year civil war there.
A robust democracy is unlikely to arise from President Trump’s actions in Venezuela. The goal is regime change to advance corporate gain, not the uplift of Venezuelans.
The American people have never benefited from the money we spent or lives we risked in Latin America. These actions did not make America great. They incited resentment and fear among those we invaded.
For all our sakes, please urge our elected representatives to restrain this and every future president from taking military actions in the interests of corporate profits.
Edward Schortman
Granville, Ohio