Latin American leaders give mixed reaction to Maduro’s capture

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No sooner had explosions rocked Caracas than Latin American leaders weighed in on the U.S. military operation to extract Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and bundle him to the United States to face drug charges.

Many voiced misgivings. “The action recalls the worst moments of interference in the politics of Latin America and the Caribbean and threatens the preservation of the region as a zone of peace,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wrote on X.

But a litany of leaders backed the intervention.

“The time is coming for all the narco-Chavista criminals,” Ecuador’s conservative President Daniel Noboa said in an X post.

“Freedom advances!” said Argentine President Javier Milei, the libertarian firebrand and staunch ally of U.S. President Donald Trump. “We celebrate the fall of the narco-terrorist dictator Maduro.”

The reactions underscored deep divisions over U.S. military intervention in Latin America, a region long aggrieved by U.S.-backed regime changes – often serving commercial interests or supporting military dictatorships during the Cold War.

But the full-throated support from the leaders of at least seven Latin American countries showed a recent rightward shift in regional politics, weariness with Venezuela’s revolutionary socialist regime, and the emergence of Trump-aligned politicians – who have successfully campaigned on populist approaches to security and migration.

Anti-Yanqui attitudes of past decades also stir fewer passions now, according to analysts.

“People of the region are tired of crime, drug trafficking, stagnant growth. And if the U.S. is willing to take care of this problem for them … there’s a sizable number of people who would welcome that,” said Eric Farnsworth, senior associate with the Americas Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The left appeared ascendant in Latin America earlier this century under the leadership of then-Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, who plied neighbours with cheap oil and helped allies win elections in countries such as Bolivia and Ecuador.

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Unity also appeared to be easier: A 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela drew regional condemnation. And Mr. Chávez fomented opposition to U.S initiatives such as hemispheric free trade and rallied regional opposition to the Iraq War.

But Venezuela’s collapse during the 2010s – with the economy shrinking 80 per cent since Mr. Maduro took power in 2013 after Mr. Chávez died of cancer – prompted nearly 7.7 million people, roughly 20 per cent of the population, to emigrate.

The experience radicalized the political right, while discrediting the left, according to analysts. Mr. Maduro’s approval rating wallowed at just 14 per cent across the region, according to an October poll for AtlasIntel and Bloomberg.

“The crisis of the Latin American anti-imperialist left is so profound that a person like Trump is capable of influencing the decisions of many countries,” said Rafael Archondo, a Bolivian commentator.

Mr. Archondo pointed to Argentina, where a U.S. currency swap line propped up the country’s sagging peso ahead of October’s midterm elections, rescuing Mr. Milei and his libertarian project.

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Mr. Trump pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández in December, despite the latter being convicted on U.S. drug-trafficking charges. He also endorsed Mr. Hernández’s National Party, which narrowly won the December presidential election.

Far-right candidate José Antonio Kast won the presidential election in Chile on a platform of combatting crime, building a border wall and deporting migrants.

“You’re seeing the diffusion of Trump talking points, or Trump-like positions, in the region,” said Nicolás Saldias, senior Latin America analyst at the England-based Economist Intelligence Unit and a Canadian national.

The Trump administration’s immigration raids and pressure on Mexico to halt migrants reaching the U.S. southern border, he added, “has now given a permission structure for right-wing governments in the region to do something similar.”

The October poll from AtlasIntel and Bloomberg showed 53 per cent of Latin American respondents backing U.S. intervention in Venezuela, while 34 per cent were opposed. Just 18 per cent of U.S. respondents to an October YouGov poll said they would support a military overthrow of Mr. Maduro.

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How much the region is swinging rightward – or becoming less anti-American – or simply voting out left-wing governments after a previous leftward shift remains an open question.

“In a lot of the countries, you’re seeing anti-incumbency,” said Will Freeman, fellow for Latin American studies at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. “The left has been in power in most places since 2019, 2020.”

U.S. action on Venezuela comes as Mr. Trump revives the Monroe Doctrine, which warned foreign powers some 200 years ago to stay out of the hemisphere.

“American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,” Mr. Trump said Saturday.

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The ouster of Mr. Maduro raised uncomfortable questions about Mr. Trump’s further intentions for the region.

“It’s ‘I’m speaking to Venezuela so that Latin America hears me,’” said Brenda Estefan, professor at the IPADE business school in Mexico City.

She pointed to Mexico as an example, where the Trump administration could speak through coercion. The country must review the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on free trade this year and the Trump administration is expected to put all its priorities on the table: security, migration and commerce.

“This is a clear signal,” she said of the U.S. intervention in Venezuela, “because the main reason is not drug trafficking and it’s not migration and it’s obviously not democracy.”