A lot of our faculty freshman scholars can have observed and skim concerning the Jan. 3, 2026, U.S. army operation in Venezuela that culminated within the arrest of its chief, Nicolás Maduro, and his spouse, Cilia Flores. The U.S. has charged Maduro and Flores with conspiracy and drug trafficking. Maduro and Flores are imprisoned in New York Town, watching for trial.
Some newbies this semester will most likely say Maduro’s bizarre arrest violates global regulation. Others might view it as a decisive step within the U.S.’s battle towards narco-terrorism.
That’s partially for the reason that U.S has no nationwide curriculum, and highschool historical past lessons steadily depend on academics’ discretion, much more so than in different content material spaces. This ends up in historical past being taught a large number of other ways throughout colleges.
As students of Latin American historical past and historical past schooling within the U.S., we all know that almost all American highschool scholars be told concerning the historic civilizations in Latin The united states and a couple of different key flash issues in historical past.
However few, we suspect, will perceive Maduro’s arrest as a part of an extended historical past of the U.S.’s interventions in Latin The united states, stretching again to the Monroe Doctrine within the 1800s. President James Monroe presented this overseas coverage in an 1823 speech, pronouncing that the U.S. would now not permit Eu colonization or interference within the Western Hemisphere.
Nicolás Maduro and his spouse, Cilia Flores, are observed in handcuffs after touchdown at a Big apple helipad on Jan. 5, 2026.
XNY/Superstar Max/Contributor by the use of Getty Pictures
A partial, skewed historical past
In highschool international historical past lessons, academics within the U.S. steadily depend on case research and examples to signify historic tendencies.
Highschool scholars are most likely to be told concerning the Inca, Maya and Aztec civilizations as representatives of pre-Columbian Latin The united states. They examine Spanish conquistadors comparable to Hernán Cortés, who overthrew the Aztec empire, and Francisco Pizarro, who conquered the Incas within the early 1500s.
They’ll find out about how maximum Latin American nations, together with Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and Guatemala, won independence within the early 1800s.
Regularly, scholars find out about those nations’ fights for independence, with the case instance of the Haitian Revolution. They’ll find out about Simón Bolívar, the grand Venezuelan army officer and liberator who performed a decisive position within the independence actions of nations together with Venezuela, Colombia and Bolivia.
Scholars additionally steadily find out about more moderen eras, together with the Cuban missile disaster, a deadly tipping level between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that introduced the sector with regards to nuclear struggle in 1962.
However total, in U.S. historical past lessons the U.S. is usually the principle persona and Latin The united states is handled as a spot the place the U.S. exerts energy.
An instance of this narrative comprises the U.S.’s failed try to overthrow the Cuban authorities in 1961, all through the Bay of Pigs invasion.
What US highschool scholars omit
It isn’t surprising that scholars who realized this model of Latin American historical past in highschool would have many questions on Maduro’s fresh arrest – together with who the longtime chief is.
A fuller publicity to Latin American historical past would come with, amongst different issues, courses about neoliberal capitalism, which has lengthy formed the politics, economies and societies of Latin The united states. This can be a U.S.-government supported coverage that promotes much less inner authorities intervention and extra free-market capitalism.
Even supposing maximum Latin American nations completed independence simply 30 to 40 years after the U.S., now not all presidential administrations within the U.S. totally authorized those international locations’ freedom.
In 1904, Theodore Roosevelt added an extra textual content known as a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, mentioning that the U.S. may intrude within the inner affairs of any Latin American nation in circumstances of wrongdoing.
By way of the overdue 1800s, the U.S. had conquered greater than part of Mexico’s territory and annexed Puerto Rico. It additionally started occupying Cuba in 1898, after Spain misplaced the Spanish-American Struggle and keep an eye on over the island.
The U.S. militarily and politically then sponsored a 1903 revolution that gave Panama independence from Colombia. Panama’s independence resulted in a treaty that allow the U.S. construct and keep an eye on the Panama Canal for almost a century.
A political caricature from 1898 criticizing American overseas coverage displays Uncle Sam using a bicycle with globes of the western and japanese hemispheres for wheels.
Bettmann/Contributor by the use of Getty Pictures
A powerful affect
Total, the U.S. intervened in Latin The united states greater than 40 occasions from 1898 to the mid-Nineties.
A few of these interventions concerned coups towards democratically elected officers – together with Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán in Guatemala in 1954 and Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. Those coups steadily resulted in civil wars or enduring army regimes that the U.S. claimed have been essential to battle the unfold of communism.
Chile was once then a few of the nations – together with Argentina and Uruguay – that applied financial insurance policies within the Nineteen Seventies that saved markets open to overseas companies and governments, fostering dependence on wealthier international locations.
Some Latin American nations, together with Mexico and Brazil, struggled financially within the Nineties.
The U.S. and global monetary establishments gave conditional loans that promoted austerity – which means elevating taxes and slicing public spending – and marketplace liberalization, which reduces governmental restrictions over an economic system. Those loans stabilized some economies within the brief time period, but additionally made different issues, comparable to inequality and debt, worse.
Within the early 2000s, a number of nations, together with Brazil, Ecuador and Bolivia, elected left-leaning leaders who advocated for choices to this U.S.-backed financial coverage. In the end, although, their reforms have been steadily restricted and now not politically strong.
A extra whole historical past
Right through a Jan. 4, 2026, press convention, President Donald Trump used a brand new time period, the “Donroe Doctrine,” to explain his management’s plans to assert dominance within the Western Hemisphere.
Sooner or later later, Vice President JD Vance doubled down: “This is in our neighborhood,” he mentioned in an interview about Maduro’s seize. “In our neighborhood, the United States calls the shots. That’s the way it has always been. That’s the way it is again under the president’s leadership.”
Finding out a extra whole model of Latin American historical past in highschool received’t save you our faculty scholars from bringing inquiries to magnificence concerning the U.S.’s seize of Maduro, and why Trump has mentioned the U.S. will “run” Venezuela.
However this data may lend a hand our scholars ask extra advanced, nuanced questions, comparable to whom nationwide safety methods in fact receive advantages essentially the most.
Figuring out Latin The united states isn’t simply a demand for decoding headlines about Venezuela however a prerequisite for American citizens to grasp themselves and their position on the planet.
