The Two Sides of the Abyss and the Specter of American Intervention in Latin America

Foreword: A Call for Solidarity in Times of Barbarism

A warning must be issued here: The material from CECOT contained in this article documents extreme forms of human degradation. It is not for the faint of heart - and yet it is an unvarnished mirror of what happens when human beings are no longer seen as individuals with inalienable dignity, but only as a threat, a statistic, a variable to be eliminated in an equation of fear. In Nayib Bukele’s torture hell CECOT - this architectural monument to dehumanization in El Salvador - tens of thousands vegetate under conditions that mock every civilizational achievement. The partially covertly recorded video footage from this complex shows tightly packed bodies, naked bodies lined up like cattle before slaughter, human beings stripped of their individuality and merged into an amorphous mass of misery. This is hell on earth, concealed behind the euphemism of “security policy” - a hell that operates with the tacit approval, if not active support, of Washington.

When the Trump administration announced that around 139,000 people had been deported, Thomas Homan spoke of “good numbers” - as if human suffering were an Excel spreadsheet to be optimized. Homan, this technocrat of cruelty, who as acting director of ICE under Trump 1.0 perfected the machinery of deportation, embodies the cold rationality of a system that does not understand immigration as a human reality with all its facets of hope, despair, and will to survive, but as a “security problem” to be solved with industrial efficiency. Back in power under Trump 2.0, he presents deportation statistics with the emotional distance of a financial controller presenting his quarterly results - blind to the torn families, traumatized children, and destroyed lives behind every number.

The shocking truth is that almost 75 percent of those deported have committed no crimes - except the “crime” of being born on the wrong side of an imaginary line, having the wrong skin color, speaking with the wrong accent. They are collateral damage of a policy that has elevated fear to currency and hate to strategy. A world policy that believes it can politely look away while the foundations of humanity erode.

In addition, a recent investigation by Human Rights Watch - in close cooperation with other organizations - essentially confirms the same statistics that we have been publishing for months based on our own data. According to this, nearly 72 percent of people in US immigration detention have no criminal record. You can find the link to the full report here: https://www.hrw.org/report/2025/07/21/you-feel-like-your-life-is-over/abusive-practices-at-three-florida-immigration?utm_source=chatgpt.com

But we - and by this “we” I mean all those who still believe in the indivisibility of human dignity - will not be deterred by this orchestrated barbarism. On the contrary: Right now it is our moral duty to support people who are plunged into the greatest distress by the human-rights-violating policies of the US and its vassals. The NGOs on the ground, which under the most adverse conditions try to preserve a minimum of humanity, need our solidarity - not only financially, but also politically, with physical assistance and morally. They are the last bastions of civilization in a world that threatens to slide into barbarism.

Latin America may seem geographically far away to many, but the politics of dehumanization know no borders. They have already arrived here, creeping into our laws, our discourse, our normality. The nighttime knocks on the doors - at the “wrongly” married spouses, at the “illegal” families, at all those the system has marked as superfluous - are no longer a dystopian vision of the future, but a present reality. Perhaps it is your friends, your acquaintances, your neighbors who will be the next to be targeted.

“It was still time,” a poet once wrote about the eves of catastrophe. There is still time to resist the beginnings, even if these beginnings are already advanced. There is still time to resist the normalization of the unbearable. There is still time to raise our voices for those whose voices have been taken. For from hell, as history teaches us with merciless clarity, the only way is down. And if we allow hell to become the new normal, then sooner or later we will all be its inhabitants, at least morally.

The following article analyzes the recent escalation of American intervention policy in Latin America - not as an abstract geopolitical phenomenon, but as a concrete threat to millions of people whose only “crime” is to have been born in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is an appeal to our collective conscience, but more than that: It is a call to action. For solidarity that is exhausted in words is not solidarity. It must be lived, practiced, fought for - every day anew, against all resistance, despite all setbacks.

The Echo of History

In the streets of Mexico City, Caracas, and Quito, an echo reverberates through time - an echo that carries within it two hundred years of American hegemonial policy. Donald Trump’s recent directive to the Pentagon authorizing the use of military force against Latin American drug cartels has triggered a tectonic fault line in the continent’s collective psyche. What is presented in the marble halls of Washington as a surgical strike against the cancer of the drug trade is revealed south of the Rio Grande as the revenant of a policy that generations of Latin Americans have paid for with blood, tears, and broken sovereignty. The significance of this decision can only be understood in the context of a centuries-old power asymmetry that, since James Monroe’s fateful proclamation in 1823, has forced the American double continent into a hegemonial order. The Monroe Doctrine, originally conceived as a shield against European colonial ambitions, mutated over the decades into a Damocles sword hanging over every progressive movement, every national self-determination, and every democratic uprising that ran counter to Washington’s interests.

The history of American interventions in Latin America reads like a compendium of imperial overreach, whose individual chapters are connected by a common thread: the subordination of Latin American sovereignty to the geostrategic and economic interests of the United States. The Mexican-American War of 1846-1848 under James K. Polk not only stripped Mexico of half its territory - an area that today comprises California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas - but also left a deep wound in the Mexican national consciousness that has not healed to this day. The collective memory of this territorial mutilation permeates Mexican identity like a phantom limb, reactivated with every new threat gesture from the north. Theodore Roosevelt’s “Big Stick” diplomacy at the beginning of the 20th century perfected the art of military intimidation. The separation of Panama from Colombia in 1903, orchestrated to secure canal rights, demonstrated Washington’s willingness to redraw national borders at will. The subsequent occupations of Haiti (1915-1934), the Dominican Republic (1916-1924), and Nicaragua (1912-1933) established a pattern of direct military control that shaped entire generations and deformed political cultures.

The Cold War transformed this open policy of violence into a subtler but no less destructive game of covert operations. Guatemala 1954: The democratically elected government of Jacobo Árbenz falls victim to a CIA-orchestrated coup because its land reform threatened the profits of the United Fruit Company. The result: four decades of civil war with over 200,000 dead. Chile 1973: Salvador Allende’s socialist government is overthrown with active CIA support, Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship leaves thousands disappeared and tortured. The list could go on: Brazil 1964, Argentina 1976, Nicaragua in the 1980s - everywhere American interference left traces of devastation.

Trump’s classification of Latin American drug cartels as terrorist organizations marks a dangerous escalation in this historical continuity. The legal sophistry of this categorization hardly conceals its true intention: it creates the legal framework for unilateral military actions on foreign territory. The Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico, the Tren de Aragua in Venezuela, the various groups in Ecuador and Colombia - they are all declared legitimate targets of a military machine whose precision strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria have already proven their devastating inaccuracy. The reaction of Mexico under President Claudia Sheinbaum was unambiguous and historically conscious. Her categorical rejection of any form of military intervention reflects not only the traumatic memory of 1848, but also the understanding that military solutions cannot address the complex socio-economic roots of the drug trade. In Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro instrumentalizes the threat to consolidate his authoritarian rule while simultaneously stoking legitimate fears of a repetition of past intervention patterns.

The Human Rights Catastrophe: Predictable Collateral Damage

The human rights implications of Trump’s military order are catastrophic in their predictability. History teaches us that military interventions under the guise of combating drugs invariably hit the civilian population hardest. The “collateral damage” - a euphemistic term that turns human suffering into military statistics - will manifest in destroyed communities, traumatized families, and a further erosion of already fragile state structures. The experiences from Colombia’s decades-long drug war are instructive: Despite billions of dollars in American military aid and countless operations against cartels, the cocaine trade continues to flourish, while rural communities are crushed between the fronts. Farmers who grow coca out of economic necessity are criminalized and displaced. Indigenous communities lose their ancestral territories. Human rights defenders and journalists are squeezed between state repression and criminal violence. A military escalation would exponentially amplify these dynamics. The cartels, long woven into the social and economic fabric of their areas of operation, would respond to external military threats with increased terror against the civilian population. History shows that asymmetric conflicts of this kind do not contain violence - they diversify and intensify it.

Donald Trump’s secretly signed directive allows the Pentagon to use military force against certain Latin American drug cartels that his administration has designated as terrorist organizations. This crosses a previous red line: tasks traditionally falling within the realm of law enforcement are now to be taken over by the military. The White House aims to stem the flow of fentanyl and other drugs - including through operations at sea and on foreign territory. Military planners are already developing scenarios, but the project raises serious legal questions: whether killings outside of an armed conflict authorized by Congress could be considered murder remains unresolved. It is also unclear which legal opinions from the Pentagon, the State Department, or the Justice Department exist. USS Gravely in the Gulf of Mexico

Since returning to office in January, Trump has ordered the National Guard and active troops to the southern border, increased surveillance, and officially declared cartels such as Tren de Aragua, MS-13, or Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles to be terrorist groups. For Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, whom Washington labels as a cartel boss, the bounty has been doubled to 50 million dollars. Secretary of State Marco Rubio justifies the designation by saying that it allows “all elements of American power” to be used against these groups. Lawyers disagree: the terror lists permit sanctions, but no acts of war without a mandate. In the past, US troop deployments in Latin America - from Panama in 1989 to naval operations on the high seas - have always skirted the edges of international law and under the Posse Comitatus Act, which largely prohibits the military from acting as police.

Trump’s new order apparently targets direct arrests or targeted killings of cartel members. This would not only touch on the ban on presidential assassinations, but also raise questions about detention without a congressional mandate. At the same time, the administration has largely disempowered internal legal oversight bodies such as the Judge Advocates General and the Office of Legal Counsel, replaced key positions, and signaled that it intends to interpret Trump’s constitutional powers as broadly as possible, while the US is using secret drones over Mexican territory, officially only for reconnaissance. At the border, Northern Command flies U-2 aircraft, RC-135 Rivet Joints, P-8 planes, and drones - part of an escalation strategy that increasingly blurs the lines between law enforcement, intelligence operations, and acts of war.

Tourism as Hostage: Economic Upheaval

One particularly perfidious aspect of military interventions is their impact on tourism - a lifeline for many Latin American economies. Cartels, cornered by military pressure, would likely adapt their tactics and possibly target tourists as symbolic objectives or bargaining chips. The kidnappings and attacks of the 1980s and 1990s in Colombia and Peru, when the conflict between the state, paramilitaries, and guerrilla groups escalated, offer a grim preview of possible scenarios. Mexico’s Riviera Maya, Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands, Colombia’s Caribbean coast - these tourist jewels would become high-risk areas. The economic domino effect would be devastating: millions of jobs in the tourism sector would be at stake, local economies would collapse, and the resulting social disruption would ironically reinforce exactly the conditions that enable the drug trade in the first place.

The Complicity of Silence: International Reactions

Remarkable and troubling at the same time is the muted international reaction to Trump’s military order. The European Union, trapped in rhetorical defense of multilateralism, confines itself to diplomatic platitudes. The United Nations, paralyzed by the US veto power in the Security Council, remains largely silent. This international apathy perpetuates a system in which great power politics triumph over international law and the sovereignty of smaller nations is reduced to a bargaining chip.

The Organization of American States (OAS), historically an instrument of American hegemony despite contrary rhetoric, struggles with its own irrelevance. Latin American regional organizations such as CELAC or UNASUR, weakened by ideological rifts and economic crises, lack the cohesive strength to mount effective resistance. This institutional weakness creates a vacuum that favors unilateral actions.

The ambivalence of Latin American reactions reveals a tragic dialectic. While the overwhelming majority rejects any form of foreign military intervention, there are voices - often from the desperate middle class of authoritarian-ruled countries - that see American force as the last hope for liberation. The anonymous woman in Maracaibo, who hopes for Maduro’s overthrow, embodies this tragic longing for external salvation, born of powerlessness in the face of internal oppression. This ambivalence is historically rooted. In every era of Latin American history there have been factions that called Washington as liberator - from the conservative elites of the 19th century who sought American protection against liberal reforms to the economic elites of today who see their salvation in neoliberal integration. This internal division weakens resistance to external intervention and perpetuates patterns of dependency. The fundamental misconception of military approaches lies in their inability to address the structural causes of the drug trade. Narcotrafficking is not the cause but the symptom of deeper socio-economic pathologies: extreme inequality, systematic exclusion, corrupt governance, and the integration of illegal economies into formal power structures. Military force can eliminate cartel leaders, but it cannot eradicate the poverty that drives tens of thousands into the arms of criminal organizations.

Prohibitionist policy itself, with its criminalization of addiction and its creation of lucrative black markets, perpetuates the cycle of violence. As long as demand in consumer countries - primarily the US itself - remains unbroken, and as long as alternative development paths for marginalized communities are lacking, every military “success” will be only temporary, a Hydra that grows two new heads for each one cut off.

Sovereignty Lost: The Erosion of International Law

Trump’s military order represents a frontal assault on the fundamental principles of international law. The principle of state sovereignty, codified in the UN Charter and countless international treaties, is being put up for negotiation. The doctrine of “Responsibility to Protect,” originally conceived for cases of genocide and crimes against humanity, is being perverted into a justification for unilateral military action against criminal organizations. The alternative to military intervention does not lie in passivity, but in a fundamental paradigm shift. Successful models of drug policy - from Portugal’s decriminalization to Uruguay’s regulated cannabis market - demonstrate that health and social policy are more effective than violence. Investments in education, healthcare, and economic alternatives for marginalized communities address the roots of the problem, not just its symptoms.

Regional cooperation, based on respect for sovereignty and shared responsibility, could create more effective mechanisms for combating transnational crime. Strengthening democratic institutions, fighting corruption, and promoting inclusive development are long-term strategies that are more sustainable than short-term military “solutions.”

The Shadows of the Past, the Dangers of the Present

As the shadows of American gunboats once again fall over Latin America, the continent stands at a historic crossroads. The decisions of the coming months will determine whether the region falls back into old patterns of subordination and violence or whether it finds the collective strength to pursue alternative paths. History teaches us that military interventions do not solve problems - they only shift and intensify them. The true victims are always the weakest: the indigenous communities in the mountains of Mexico, the farmers in Colombia’s coca plantations, the youth in the favelas who see no future between state and cartel. Their voices, often drowned out by the roar of violence and the rhetoric of power, remind us: the price of intervention is paid in human lives, and the bill is always higher than promised.

The international community has a responsibility to break its silence. Defending Latin America’s sovereignty is not just a matter of regional stability, but a test of the validity of international legal norms in the 21st century. In a world where power increasingly triumphs over law, Latin America’s resistance to renewed intervention could become the litmus test for the future of the international order. The past, as it turns out, is never truly past in this hemisphere. It lurks in the corridors of power, in the dreams of hegemons, and in the nightmares of the oppressed. Yet perhaps in this historical consciousness, in the collective memory of past suffering and struggles overcome, lies the strength to resist. The peoples of Latin America have learned that true liberation does not come from outside, but grows from within - laboriously, painfully, but authentically. This lesson, written in blood and preserved in tears, could be their greatest weapon against the return of the gunboats.

Investigative journalism requires courage, conviction – and your support.

Investigative
Behind every article – especially our in-depth investigative reports – lies significant journalistic effort and financial investment. We do not wish to fund our work through paywalls, but through your voluntary support. How often and in what amount you contribute is entirely up to you – whether as a one-time or recurring contribution.