The Donroe Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine works toward authoritarian dominance in Latin America.
Trump’s favorite in Colombia is Abelardo de la Espriella, the right-wing “populist” millionaire who, as a child, tortured and killed cats with explosives, similar to the notorious serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and David Berkowitz. His wealthy family backed Álvaro Uribe, candidate of the Colombia First party of Antioquia, as president despite Uribe’s links to drug traffickers and paramilitary groups.
Espriella, aka El Tigre, won the Colombian presidential race earlier this month, defeating President Gustavo Petro, described as a “left-wing South American firebrand” by the corporate media. Petro, who traded insults with Trump, claims the election was stolen. He did not attend Espriella’s swearing-in ceremony at Santiago de Cali University, outside Bogotá.
He was joined at the inauguration by several conservative presidents from across the region, including Argentina’s Javier Milei, Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa and Chile’s José Antonio Kast. Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche was there as part of the U.S. delegation. Spain’s King Felipe VI and FIFA President Gianni Infantino were also in attendance, The Associated Press reported.
Milei, described as “the darling of fascists and other right-wing extremists the world over,” and self-described as an “anarcho-capitalist,” champions a minarchist ideology emphasizing neoliberal privatization, deregulation, and austerity measures.
Daniel Noboa, from Ecuador’s financial elite, crushed Correismo, the leftist ideology of former president Rafael Correa. Raya Revista, a Colombian digital media outlet, reported in 2025 that the Noboa family-owned banana company is implicated in exporting more than half a ton of cocaine since 2020 to several European countries.
In Chile, a former organizer for Jaime Guzmán’s Movimiento Gremialista, José Antonio Kast, was elected president in 2025. Movimiento Gremialista is characterized as a far-right gremialismo credo influenced by Francoist-corporatism (a fascist nacional-sindicalista ideology inspired by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany). He is a founding member of the anti-communist Madrid Forum and counts Donald Trump and Javier Milei as allies.
Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, was not mentioned as attending Espriella’s inauguration. However, like the above, he is part of the Trump administration’s attempt to install neoliberal-friendly “conservative” governments in Latin America. “El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has become a poster boy of the international far right and a key ally of the Trump administration, offering his country’s prison system as a MAGA labor camp,” Jacobin reported in April.
“The Monroe Doctrine has shaped U.S. foreign policy for over two centuries,” Marco Rubio’s State Department declares in a video posted to social media this week. “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”
The original doctrine was articulated by President James Monroe on December 2, 1823, during his seventh annual State of the Union Address to Congress. The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine is a disfigurement of the original, which opposed European interference in the Americas. The Trump Corollary (dubbed the “Donroe Doctrine” by the New York Post) expands upon the original Monroe Doctrine’s principles by adopting a more isolationist stance.
While both doctrines share the common theme of excluding foreign powers and intervention, the Trump Corollary signifies a shift towards prioritizing US interests with greater intensity. Critics argue that the Trump Corollary represents a militarized foreign policy, prioritizing US dominance in the Western Hemisphere over diplomatic solutions. This approach undermines the sovereignty of Latin American nations.
The Pentagon’s top policy official, Elbridge Colby, the grandson of the late CIA director William Colby, described the Donroe Doctrine as “a fundamental change in our approach to the Western Hemisphere,” and cited drug trafficking, illegal migration, and the influence of external powers (primarily China) as matters directly tied to US national defense, according to the Latin Times.
“President Donald Trump has turned the Western Hemisphere into a war zone as part of what he and others have called the Donroe Doctrine,” notes The Intercept.
This bastardization of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine has been used to justify strikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean; an attack on Venezuela and the abduction of its president; CIA operations in Mexico; joint counter-cartel operations in Ecuador dubbed “Operation Total Extermination”; and increased military and intelligence operations elsewhere in Latin America.
Trump cynically exploits the so-called war on drugs to impose US hegemony on Latin America and further reverse the so-called “red tide.” In 2025, the administration imposed 50% tariffs on Brazil, one of the highest rates globally, to destabilize democratically elected left-wing President Lula da Silva.
The administration threatened to forcibly “take over” and colonize the Panama Canal, violating the Central American nation’s sovereignty. Trump’s Pentagon also abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of narcoterrorism. Prior to the election victory of Abelardo de la Espriella, the US imposed sanctions on Colombia’s democratically elected President Gustavo Petro.
The US effort to rearrange the political environment in Latin America is hardly new. Between 1898 and 1994, the US overthrew no less than 41 governments in Latin America. “Direct intervention occurred in 17 of the 41 cases,” writes John Henry Coatsworth, a historian of Latin America and a former provost of Columbia University.
These incidents involved the use of U.S. military forces, intelligence agents or local citizens employed by U.S. government agencies. In another 24 cases, the U.S. government played an indirect role. That is, local actors played the principal roles, but either would not have acted or would not have succeeded without encouragement from the U.S. government.
Notable cases involve the 1954 coup in Guatemala (in response to land reform that threatened American business interests), the overthrow and assassination of Chile’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende (in response to his socialist policies), intervention in Haiti to protect US business investment, and the invasion of Panama to arrest the former CIA asset, Manuel Noriega, on trumped-up charges of drug trafficking.
Following the overnight coup in Venezuela, and the quagmire in Iran, Trump set his sights on Cuba. “Cuba is gonna fall pretty soon,” he told CNN earlier this year. “Cuba’s ready—after 50 years . . . I’ve been watching it for 50 years, and it’s fallen right into my lap because of me; it’s fallen, but it’s nevertheless fallen right into the lap. And we’re doing very well.”
Mel Gurtov, a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University, writes that Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel, “has little choice but to deal with Trump,” despite the fact Trump and his Secretary of State “want nothing less than a dismantling of Cuba’s political-economic system.”
Trump wants to replace Díaz-Canel and Partido Comunista de Cuba with a compliant regime and install a leader along the lines of Venezuelan vice president Delcy Rodríguez, someone who will cooperate with the US, as she did prior to the abduction of Maduro. Rodríguez and her brother Jorge assured US and Qatari officials through intermediaries ahead of time that they would welcome Maduro’s arrest. After Maduro was abducted, Rodríguez became president.
Installing a leader along the lines of a Milei or Espriella, however, will be difficult, as the Cuban people have indicated they will resist any attempt at regime change. “In the face of the worst scenario, Cuba is accompanied by a certainty: any external aggressor will clash with an impregnable resistance,” Diaz-Canel said.
The same was said of Venezuela and, despite preparations to resist, the government imploded like a house of cards, largely due to the cooperation of Rodríguez, afraid she would face the same fate as Maduro. In 2018, she was designated as a DEA “priority target.” Furthermore, it is believed Maduro was betrayed by contacts within his inner circle.
Article posted with permission from Kurt Nimmo
