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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Robert Tait in Washington

Trump’s military pressure on Maduro evokes Latin America’s coup-ridden past

a man speaking
Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, gives a press conference in Caracas, Venezuela, on 15 September 2025. Photograph: Jesús Vargas/AP

The ghosts of sometimes deadly Latin American coups of the past are being evoked by Donald Trump’s relentless military buildup targeting Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s autocratic socialist leader, whom Washington has branded a narco-terrorist.

Salvador Allende, the democratically elected Marxist president of Chile toppled in a military coup in 1973, and Rafael Trujillo, the longstanding dictator of the Dominican Republic who was assassinated in 1961 in an ambush organized by political opponents, are just two regional leaders whose fates serve as a warning to Maduro.

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