Commentary: Interventionism lingers on despite Obama's upcoming Cuba visit

U.S. President Barack Obama's upcoming visit to Cuba, though a historic move, cannot reverse the fact that the United States has not yet dropped its ideology of interventionism in Latin America.

The visit, the first by a sitting U.S. president in 88 years, comes after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry claimed in 2013 that the United States is ditching the Monroe Doctrine, which fenced Latin America as a U.S. backyard.

But Kerry's words were drowned out by recent U.S. actions that demonstrated that Uncle Sam has yet to retrieve its meddling hand from Latin America.

U.S. President Barack Obama on March 3 extended an executive order that describes Venezuela as a security threat, drawing fire from a host of Latin American countries, which accused Washington of seeking to destabilize Venezuela, the most prominent critic of the United States in the region.

Cuba and Ecuador said that the U.S. action constituted an intervention in Venezuela's internal affairs and sought to dismantle the Bolivarian revolution, which liberated much of Latin America from colonial powers.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said the United States was seeking to repeat the actions it has historically taken against Cuba.

In addition, the United States allegedly waged a smear campaign against Bolivian President Evo Morales in a referendum in February, leading to an unexpected result that prevented him from standing for re-election in 2019.

Interventionism, at the core of the Monroe Doctrine, has been an important part of Washington's Latin America policy and has helped the United States drive out European influence in Latin America.

In recent decades, the United States has carried out blatant military interventions in the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Cuba, Chile, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Haiti.

In 1989, U.S. troops invaded Panama and took its leader Manuel Noriega for trial and imprisonment in the United States.

Besides military interventions, Uncle Sam has also used NGOs as agents to subvert governments it did not approve of by financing opponents.

According to declassified documents, the United States was involved in coups in Chile, Venezuela and Honduras and secretly helped anti-government demonstrations in Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia and Salvador.

Those interventions by the United States have led to a collapse of its reputation across Latin America, where its influence is diminishing.

In 2011, 33 countries founded the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States with the glaring absence of the United States.

The collective defiance forced Washington to make adjustments in its Latin America policy, but recent developments suggested that it is very hard for U.S. policymakers to get rid of the centuries-old interventionist habit. Endi