Talk:United States involvement in regime change in Latin America

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 18 January 2021 and 27 April 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): WishIWasOnWiki. Peer reviewers: 00matthew2000, CharlesH.Woo.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:34, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Deletion of sourced material--Bolivia and Venezuela

@Jamez42: Please explain your deletion of well-sourced material on both Bolivia and Venezuela, and what you would do to rectify any concerns. I have created two sections here, one for Bolivia and one for Venezuela. --David Tornheim (talk) 10:09, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Bolivia

@Jamez42: Please explain your deletion of well-sourced material re: Bolivia and what you would do to rectify any concerns. --David Tornheim (talk) 10:09, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

@David Tornheim: You continue to say the content that you are adding "well-sourced". yet in this case the paragraph that you're referring to includes only a single source, which is based in declarations by Evo Morales. There also seems to be original research problems and weasel wording, the paragraph said that "many" agreed with this theory, and yet Al Jazeera seems to quote only Morales on this. The paragraph failed to mention which actions are considered as "regime change", and not to mention a non neutral WP:LABEL of "ousted".

If I may, I would also like to advice you to add other parameters to the sources, per the reference format of Wikipedia, such as author, title, publisher name and date. --Jamez42 (talk) 12:15, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

@Jamez42:, here are more sources on US involvement:

https://theintercept.com/2020/06/08/the-nyt-admits-key-falsehoods-that-drove-last-years-coup-in-bolivia-falsehoods-peddled-by-the-u-s-its-media-and-the-nyt/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/world/americas/bolivia-election-evo-morales.html

Feel free to add a Bolivia section. Hrodrik (talk) 07:16, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Neither of the articles seem to deal with involvement of the US governement and rather appear to be analysis of reporting by media outlets. Even if it was the case, it should also be evaluated if the actions were deliberate and were aimed at a change of government. --Jamez42 (talk) 10:24, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Venezuela

@Jamez42: Please explain your deletion of well-sourced material re: Venezuela and what you would do to rectify any concerns.

Your explanation at Talk:United_States_involvement_in_regime_change#Venezuela_2 does not justify the deletion of this material. I addressed your concern of using the word "crippling", by putting it in quotes. . There you had said:

The U.S. efforts for regime change in Venezuela intensified in January 2019 with the increase of crippling sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and warnings. is not the best phrasing that can be included, and labels such as "crippling" do not help at all with neutrality. Particular care should be taken considering that because there is an extensive history of WP:SYNTH and WP:NPOV complaints about the article.

I believe I addressed your concern by putting "crippling" in quotes as is the word "debilitating". Both words are int he WP:RS. How do you propose to change that so that it is no longer a problem. I also changed January 2019 to 2019, since the WP:RS for 2019 clearly states that the sanctions have been increasing.

Particular care should be taken considering that because there is an extensive history of WP:SYNTH and WP:NPOV complaints about the article. I do not see the point of complaining about past problems. The issue is the new material. Are you claiming that the addition is not WP:NPOV and/or is WP:SYNTH. If it is not WP:NPOV, what would you do to fix that? I already asked you before this exact same question in the other section and you never answered the question.

If you claim it is WP:SYNTH, I see no validity to such a claim. The material is in all the referenced material. If you claim it is not, please state exactly what has been synthesized in the sentences that is not in the WP:RS. In this section above you asserted WP:SYN as well, but were not able to prove it.

I also included new WP:RS, but you have asserted no problem with it. --David Tornheim (talk) 10:09, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

@David Tornheim: See the response in the main article's talk page. --Jamez42 (talk) 12:16, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Venezuela 2020

@David Tornheim: I noticed you copied some info from the main US regime change article, but there is actually some content on Venezuela already listed here, just in a separate "Accusations" section. I would support merging the two sections and moving the content to the main part of the article, rather than the strange special-case section it exists in now, but as it is the two sections are redundant. — cmonghost 👻 (talk) 23:28, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

@Cmonghost: Yes, I support combining them, but we should get rid of material that has nothing to do with regime change effort by the U.S. such as:

Chávez died in office in 2013, and was succeeded by Nicolás Maduro. Maduro's presidency has coincided with a decline in Venezuela's socioeconomic status, with crime, inflation, poverty and hunger increasing. Analysts and critics have attributed Venezuela's decline to both Chávez and Maduro's economic policies, while Maduro has blamed speculation and economic warfare waged by his political opponents.

On 20 May 2018, Maduro was reelected in an election that had the lowest voter turnout in Venezuela's modern history, which as a result was described by some analysts as a show election, The majority of nations in the Americas and the Western world refused to recognize the validity of this election and of the pro-Maduro Constituent Assembly, initiating their own sanctions against him and his administration as well, although allies such as China, Cuba, Iran, Russia and Turkey offered support and denounced what they described as interference in Venezuela's domestic affairs.

Maduro was inaugurated for a new term on that date, which resulted in widespread condemnation. On 23 January 2019, the President of the National Assembly, Juan Guaidó, was declared the acting President by that body. Guaidó was recognized as the legitimate president by several nations, including the United States and the Lima Group, as well as the Organization of American States. Maduro disputed Guaidó's claim and broke off diplomatic ties with several nations who recognized Guaidó's claim.

Regarding this last paragraph, something simple indicating that the U.S. was backing regime change by backing Guaido should be included without mentioning all the other details that are talking points for Guaido.

We should also mention the U.S.'s putting a bounty on Maduro's head, sending naval ships with allegations of drug-trafficking. (It's certainly relevant to the recent Macuto Bay raid.)

And we should mention the U.S.'s denial of being involved with the Macuto Bay raid, but include those who have said that the U.S. was aware, involved, and/or supported it. I have seen some WP:RS on that. I'm not sure that having former Green Berets and a U.S. based company makes it relevant to U.S. regime efforts except to the extent the WP:RS tries to link it to the administration. Maybe it being a U.S.-company alone could be relevant, but I don't believe this article includes privately-backed coups as much as state-sponsored and supproted coups.

Anything else that is missing?

I believe it would be better to work this one out until it is somewhat stable before having to deal with a copy of the change to the other article. But I suppose that is up other editors, and I might change my mind based on how this is going... --David Tornheim (talk) 00:04, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

@David Tornheim: I agree with most of this. Most of the content surrounding Maduro's election is not relevant, but the information about the US and its allies disputing the validity of the elections can be retained (in a more WP:NPOV form) since this has been used as a justification for the regime change efforts. I haven't seen WP:RS linking the Silvercorp coup attempt to the US other than (as you note) the bounty, which served as an incentive for Goudreau et al., but if there are sources for this then it can certainly be included. — cmonghost 👻 (talk) 01:46, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

@Cmonghost: Please feel free to start, or we can discuss changes first. I was about to start, but I see some challenges: (1) It would be nice to merge without the POV tag coming with. (2) Each of the paragraphs I suggested deleting end with U.S. regime change efforts. So with that in mind, I am breaking this up into three sections for each paragraph, to see if we can agree on how to fix the problem of WP:SYN and only including context to the extent that the WP:RS does. --David Tornheim (talk) 13:50, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

I also feel that we should prefer WP:RS--especially high quality scholarly work (e.g. Noam Chomsky)--that independently assesses actions as U.S. involvement in regime change, rather than focus on the U.S. or Venezuelan governments' more subjective interpretations. --David Tornheim (talk) 14:24, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

References

I would like to point out that the Canary is generally unreliable and not high quality per WP:RSP--ReyHahn (talk) 18:40, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Regarding Venezuela, 2019 to present should probably be the only period included into this article. Of course while introducing this section, you can mention and attribute to the Bolivarian govenment something like "The Chávez and Maduro governments have stated that the United States has attempted regime change on numerous occasions, including the 2002 coup attempt, x, x, x. In 2019, ...". Though the United States has traditionally denounced the Bolivarian government in Venezuela, overt efforts for regime change have only been seen since 2019. Other than that, the rest is speculation and theories. I am on the fence for including Operation Gideon only because the US was not directly involved. However, the US did support Guaidó, who initially supported a similar operation.----ZiaLater (talk) 17:58, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

@ZiaLater: I made this change based on your recommendation. Please feel free to add in "x, x, x." to fill it out. --David Tornheim (talk) 23:14, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Economic warfare

Current text:

Chávez died in office in 2013, and was succeeded by Nicolás Maduro. Maduro's presidency has coincided with a decline in Venezuela's socioeconomic status, with crime, inflation, poverty and hunger increasing. Analysts and critics have attributed Venezuela's decline to both Chávez and Maduro's economic policies, while Maduro has blamed speculation and economic warfare waged by his political opponents.

References

Problem: WP:SYN. The background should only be included to the extent that WP:RS mentioning economic warfare does. The main focus of the content should be on U.S. involvement in regime change efforts, not on the history of what was going on in the country prior to the U.S. getting involved. --David Tornheim (talk) 14:10, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Sanctions in 2018

Current text:

On 20 May 2018, Maduro was reelected in an election that had the lowest voter turnout in Venezuela's modern history, which as a result was described by some analysts as a show election, The majority of nations in the Americas and the Western world refused to recognize the validity of this election and of the pro-Maduro Constituent Assembly, initiating their own sanctions against him and his administration as well, although allies such as China, Cuba, Iran, Russia and Turkey offered support and denounced what they described as interference in Venezuela's domestic affairs.

References

Problem: WP:SYN. The background should only be included to the extent that WP:RS mentioning sanctions whose purpose is regime change does. The main focus of the content should be on U.S. involvement in regime change efforts, not on the history of what was going on in the country prior to the U.S. taking some action. --David Tornheim (talk) 14:10, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

23 January 2019

Current text:

Maduro was inaugurated for a new term on that date, which resulted in widespread condemnation. On 23 January 2019, the President of the National Assembly, Juan Guaidó, was declared the acting President by that body. Guaidó was recognized as the legitimate president by several nations, including the United States and the Lima Group, as well as the Organization of American States. Maduro disputed Guaidó's claim and broke off diplomatic ties with several nations who recognized Guaidó's claim. Maduro's government says the crisis is a coup d'état orchestrated by the United States to topple him and control the country's oil reserves. Guaidó rejects the characterization of his actions as a coup, saying that his movement is backed by peaceful volunteers.

References

Problem: WP:SYN. The background should only be included to the extent that WP:RS mentioning U.S. involvement in regime change does. The main focus of the content should be on U.S. involvement in regime change. --David Tornheim (talk) 14:10, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Maduro reelection is relatively important is what officially lead to many government to not accept Maduro legitimacy, break relations with Venezuela and subsequently support Guaidó, including US.--ReyHahn (talk) 18:44, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree with this, as said above, the information about the US and its allies disputing the validity of the elections can be retained (in a more WP:NPOV form) since this has been used as a justification for the regime change efforts. It can definitely be slimmed down though. — cmonghost 👻 (talk) 21:45, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Merging "Accusations" with main text

@David Tornheim: I removed a POV notice, but my intentions was not to merge that section with the section above!--ReyHahn (talk) 19:44, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

@ReyHahn: @Cmonghost: suggested moving the material and I agree. I don't see why it should not be moved. --David Tornheim (talk) 19:47, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Because it is mostly minor involvements or Maduro's just accusing US.--ReyHahn (talk) 19:54, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

@ReyHahn and David Tornheim: This has been discussed quite a bit in a previous discussion, but the main problem with the Accusations section, in my view, is that it involves WP editors' judgment about whether or not content should be labeled as "accusations" or actual regime change efforts, which gets us into WP:OR and WP:SYNTH territory. Moreover, there are aspects of the situation that clearly don't pertain to "accusations" but concrete actions taken by the US (such as sanctions or bounties placed on officials). Better to accurately describe the regime change efforts and/or accusations in the main part of the article, and if the reliable sources indicate that a particular event is only an accusation, that can be made clear in the text. — cmonghost 👻 (talk) 20:52, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Exactly. That is what is done in the United_States_involvement_in_regime_change, where accused or accusation comes up seven times, and there is no distracting section titled "Accusations". That section didn't come into existence until July 2019 and never had strong support in either article. --David Tornheim (talk) 21:41, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

I have really had a hard time following Talk:United States involvement in regime change, I do not know if a consensus was ever reached to decide what constitutes an "involvement in regime change", but we should clearly detail what has officially led to it and be clear that it is established as so outside for sources that are not partial to (or deliberately against) US or Maduro.--ReyHahn (talk) 21:24, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

I don't think a consensus was ever reached on what constitutes "regime change" for the purposes of this article, unfortunately. From a quick glance, I think the sources currently in the section look pretty solid (looks like mostly mainstream newspapers and scholarly sources) but if there are specific objections to any, we can of course discuss them. — cmonghost 👻 (talk) 21:37, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

U.S. involvement in regime change is a scholarly term. We use what the WP:RS does. We discussed this before:

A title such as "United States involvement in regime change, in regime preservation, in foreign election interference and in attempts and combinations of the foregoing" would be quite awkward and not in keeping with general WP style. It's sufficient that the title conveys the thrust of the article. The introduction clarifies the scope by providing a more comprehensive description. Also as noted by others in this section, this broader scope is consistent with how scholars in this field understand the scope of regime change actions.--NYCJosh (talk) 22:56, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Agree per NYCJosh. NYCJosh: This issue has been resurrected at Talk:United_States_involvement_in_regime_change#Scope_2. --David Tornheim (talk) 23:04, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

--David Tornheim (talk) 21:48, 27 May 2020 (UTC) @NYCJosh: You are quoted above. --David Tornheim (talk) 21:49, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

There isn't a consensus to remove the POV tag, even less to merge the sections. It's dissapointing that this was done without seeking further discussion or notifying previous involved editors. Pinging @Cambalachero, Dereck Camacho, Oska, Jogarz1921, Sangdeboeuf, and ZiaLater: (SandyGeorgia asked not to be pinged until a consensus was reached. As ReyHahn accurately points out, the section currently only deals with "minor involvements or Maduro's just accusing US", something that I pointed out some months ago in the section talking about the Accusations:

(...) Chávez accused the United States of being involved (...)
(...) while Maduro has blamed speculation and economic warfare waged by his political opponents (...)
(...) In early 2015, the Maduro government accused the United States of attempting to overthrow him. (...)
(...) In 2016, Maduro again claimed that the United States was attempting to assist the opposition with a coup attempt. (...)
(...) Maduro's government says the crisis is a coup d'état orchestrated by the United States to topple him and control the country's oil reserves.

The whole section consists in paragraphs with these statements. Terms such a "accused" and "blamed" does not appear to be in other sections, which is why Venezuela has its own -- Jamez42 (talk) 20:46, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

It's very frustrating and a pity that so much explanation has been disregarded. It's important to note that not only has the definition of regime change has been disputed, but also if the named events constitute said change, or if there was even involvement by the US at all, as it is the case with the 2002 coup.

@David Tornheim:, I ask you to please restore the section to its original version, which means restoring the POV tag and splitting the section. --Jamez42 (talk) 17:34, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

I would love to say something but I honestly do not have an opinion, I can see good points in both positions. --Dereck Camacho (talk) 18:16, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Jamez42: I am sorry for taking out the POV tag, I did not understand the whole problem. I thought that the discussion was closed and as nobody contested the content in "accusation" section in a while I discarded the template. David was around and decided to add more content and merge sections with accusations, in part because the template wasn't there anymore. I propose that we revert to the previous "stable" version.--ReyHahn (talk) 18:18, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

No need to apologize @ReyHahn:, the content of the section is arguably alright without the POV tag if they are described as "Accusations", which is contrary to David's changed. Now that the discussion has been retaken, the section can be further improved, but for that we have to discuss the original version. --Jamez42 (talk) 18:29, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

I want to note at first I did not find ReyHahn's diff where they removed the tag; in any case, if the tag is to be restored, the section should be split first. --Jamez42 (talk) 23:52, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

@Jamez42: There has never been consensus for the accusations (aka allegations) section per #Unnecessary_"accusations"_section. That section is incompatible with the article and United States involvement in regime change. Cmonghost and I have not ignored your arguments; you have ignored ours. You have ignored the consensus that does not support the section. You were the first editor to add the Allegations section on 10:24, 8 July 2019. I believe you were the only editor to keep adding more accusations and allegations, e.g. [1], [2], [3].

Every time Cmonghost or I deleted the "Accusations" section, you put it back: 2 Nov 2019, 31 Dec 2019, 6 Jan 2020 --David Tornheim (talk) 01:45, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Let's not put the cart before the horse. The last stable version was not disputed for several months (WP:SILENCE) and ReyHahn specifically said that they did not want to merge the sections. If we are to comment when Venezuela's section was first included, the section was added on 5 February 2019 by a SPA, was completely unreferenced and had serious neutrality issues. Also, "deleting" is not the same thing as merging.

If the sections are to be merged, its current content has to be significantly trimmed. I think that the events that fit the closest to the article is the Agence France-Presse memo, and even then this should be further discussed. --Jamez42 (talk) 13:32, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Please read WP:SILENCE more carefully. An edit standing for a given period of time does not automatically confer consensus.

As far as the difference between dissent and silence is concerned, if you voice dissent, failure to make your dissent heated and continuous does not constitute silence and therefore does not constitute consent. Withdrawing from communication with a tendentious or quarrelsome editor does not give that editor consent to do what they like. Similarly, in the presence of a revert, there is neither silence nor consensus.

The lengthy discussions about this issue on this talk page are evidence enough that there has not been "silence". — cmonghost 👻 (talk) 16:16, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm well aware of that; nearly five months is still quite a long time. --Jamez42 (talk) 16:25, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

But WP:SILENCE is not about time, it's about silence, and there has not been silence: there has been vigorous disagreement. — cmonghost 👻 (talk) 17:06, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Trimming

Above Jamez42 says: "If the sections are to be merged, its current content has to be significantly trimmed." I agree that much of the text that Jamez42 added can be removed: [4], [5], [6]. Is it okay to remove all of that? --David Tornheim (talk) 17:01, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

To be clear, I'll copy a brief version of the section from 4 January:

On 23 January 2019, the President of the National Assembly of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, was declared the acting President of the country by the body, disputing Maduro's claim and sparking a presidential crisis. Guaidó was recognized as the legitimate president by several nations, including the United States. A memo obtained by Agence France-Presse described that the US Agency for International Development would divert $41.9 million to the crisis in Venezuela, for uses including "interim government staff salaries or stipends, work-related travel and other costs necessary to ensure full deployment of a transparent financial management system and other activities necessary for a democratic transition."The New York Times reported that the new sanctions imposed by Donald Trump in August 2019 were part of "his campaign to remove Nicolás Maduro from office."

I still have doubts regarding the relevance of the section when compared to other historic events and so self-evident coups and fear that the only merit for its inclusion in WP:RECENTISM, but it might be a good compromise for the current positions. --Jamez42 (talk) 13:27, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

There was never any support for that version. --David Tornheim (talk) 23:00, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

What do you mean with "there has never" been? I'm proposing a middle ground and consensus changes; just yesterday ZiaLater expressed that regarding Venezuela, 2019 to present should probably be the only period included into this article. Not only did you trim a single paragraph, but you also changed the wording from the reasons of the sanctions from "human rights violations" to "Venezuela is a threat to U.S. security", which is something that wasn't even discussed or brought up here.

Pinging @SandyGeorgia:, since both the tag was removed and the sections were merged without an agreement. --Jamez42 (talk) 09:40, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

There was consensus to merge the sections when I merged them. Cmonghost originally proposed it, and I agreed and did the merge. There was never support for the "accusations" section.

Your version is not a compromise. It's is primarily a one-sided piece to promote Guaido as the path to a "democratic transition". This is a particularly surprising claim given his "government's" support for a violent coup with Operation Gideon (2020) and his failure to hold elections within 30 days as an "interim president" as required by Article 233 that he used to declare himself president.[7] All by a man who never ran for election as president and was almost completely unknown to Venezuelans when he made himself president, and whose "government" is not recognized by the U.N.

This article is to focus on U.S. involvement in promoting regime change, not Wikipedia's efforts to assert that Guaido is more legitimate than Maduro.

As for ZiaLater's proposal, he suggested we put: "The Chávez and Maduro governments have stated that the United States has attempted regime change on numerous occasions, including the 2002 coup attempt, x, x, x. In 2019, ...". Although I don't agree completely on reducing everything down so simply (since other WP:RS has made similar claims), I did add that sentence, and asked Zialater if s/he wanted to fill it out as Zialater had initially proposed.

In that same edit, I started removing the lengthy material on accusations you had added [8], [9], [10]. I asked you above if it was okay to remove all of that, but I have not gotten a clear answer from you (or anyone else). That seems the easier way to deal with the problem created by the accusations section, which should not be primarily about what Maduro and Chavez have said, but instead about what WP:RS says about U.S. efforts at regime change. The entire 'accusations' section seems written primarily to discredit Maduro and Chavez rather than an WP:NPOV section about U.S. meddling in Venezuela. --David Tornheim (talk) 20:33, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

you also changed the wording from the reasons of the sanctions from "human rights violations" to "Venezuela is a threat to U.S. security", Does it need to be discussed that I put what was actually in the source? There is no mention of alleged "human rights violations" in the cited WP:RS. --David Tornheim (talk) 21:05, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Having an editor make a proposal and you making it because you agree with them is definitely not a consesus, specially given these circumstances and when both ReyHahn and I have said specifically that we disagree with a merge. WP:FORUM is particularly important right now; the current political crisis is already controversial and complex enough to have more inflammatory responses, not to mention that it has been discussed endlessly in other articles and may continue to do so in their talk pages. This article is about "regime change", not about the political crisis, so there should be an agreement on what constitutes that. The "Accusations" section is precisely to lower that bar; if the section is to be merged, it should be about facts and not about accusations, and from what it appears, the 2019 information seems to be more suitable for that. --Jamez42 (talk) 11:29, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

@Jamez42: The "Accusations" section is precisely to lower that bar; if the section is to be merged, it should be about facts and not about accusations, and from what it appears, the 2019 information seems to be more suitable for that. This perfectly demonstrates the problem with the "Accusations" section. By drawing an arbitrary distinction between events that you personally believe meet the level of "facts" and those you believe only meet the level of "accusations", you are inappropriately inserting your personal opinion into the encyclopedia. If reliable sources describe the US as attempting to engage in regime change efforts, such as installing Guaidó and/or ousting Maduro, or supporting organizations within Venezuela that engage in such efforts, those efforts should be included in a single section, with appropriate context. The current two-section situation, where one section is for events Jamez42 believes occurred, and one is for events Jamez42 does not believe occurred, is untenable. — cmonghost 👻 (talk) 03:29, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

To say that I'm the only editor with this position and on top to that to claim that it is merely based on "personal opinions" would be to ignore the rest of the editors that have expressed the same disagreement, such as ReyHahn ("I removed a POV notice, but my intentions was not to merge that section with the section above!", "Because it is mostly minor involvements or Maduro's just accusing US", "I propose that we revert to the previous "stable" version") and ZiaLater ("regarding Venezuela, 2019 to present should probably be the only period included into this article"). If the content is merged then its content should reflect regime change backed by reliable sources, just like the previous Accusations included accusations backed by reliable sources, as it has been repeatedly stated; as simple as that. --Jamez42 (talk) 17:03, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

• AlmostFrancis When you reverted my edit, you asked in the edit-summary, Why did you remove so much well sources and pertinent content. The idea of trimming out the accusations is being discussed in this section (#Trimming (permalink)) directly above. Please also note that I changed:

"United States ordered sanctions...for human rights violations"

to

"United States ordered sanctions...claiming Venezuela is a threat to for human rights violations"

reflecting the WP:RS that was cited: this article.

Please also compare this with what is in the more comprehensive article United States involvement in regime change. The current version of the corresponding Venezuela section is much shorter. Discussion resumed here about merging in the #Unnecessary "accusations" section. If this and past discussions are hard to follow, please feel free to ask questions. --David Tornheim (talk) 05:05, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

For the record: the three edits that keep getting mentioned ([11][12][13]) were copies of content from the Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro articles, as it is clearly tated in the edit summaries, and were a response to this version. In it, the only mentions in the section were the 2002 coup and Maduro's declaration that the presidential crisis was a a coup d'état orchestated by the United States to topple him and control the country's oil reserves, without mentioning details of US involvement. It's also quite different from the current version, even if the edits were removed. --Jamez42 (talk) 12:44, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

@David Tornheim: If we include the paragraph that I proposed above as the content of the section, the removal of the edits would be alright for me, as well as the inclusion of Venezuela into the main History section. --Jamez42 (talk) 12:58, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Discussion taking place on user talk page

FYI. A discussion about this page is taking place on a user talk page here:

• User_talk:ReyHahn#United_States_involvement (permalink)

--David Tornheim (talk) 06:25, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Dispute resolution noticeboard

I made a dispute resolution request about the article on 14 March. As it is natural in these situations, it is difficult to put a finger on which is the middle ground of this discussion. Based on the statements in the WP:DRN, apparently what we can all agree on that is that the content about Venezuela needs to be modified and possibly trimmed; post 2019 events seem to be less disputed than the rest of the content. Please let me know if there's anything left to add. If we can say what we agree with, solving the disagreements should be easier. --Jamez42 (talk) 14:25, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

I'll be bold and remove the section about Venezuela. When the section was first added by a dynamic IP, concern was expressed that the addition was motivated by WP:RECENTISM. Three years later, in an article that is mostly about coups and invasions, not any regime change has happened in the country and the United States has not been involved in any attempt thereof, as the section itself states.

The section already mentions contradictory content regarding involvement in this venture, or even its intent, including that tn December 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated that the United States did not plan a military intervention in Venezuela; while saying that "we have said that all options are on the table", he also said that "we have learned from history that the risks from using military force are significant", as well as Michael Shifter's statement, president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank, that "military action of the United States against Venezuela would be contrary to the movements of the Trump administration to retire troops from Syria or Afghanistan." Not only that, but when María Corina Machado, leader of right-wing party Vente Venezuela, stressed the importance of a military option, Elliott Abrams, the United States Special Representative for the country, described María Corina's proposal as "surrealist", even going it as far as to mock and compare it to Gabriel García Márquez's magic realism.

The closest statements supporting this is AFP's memo regarding the divertion of US funds to Guaidó's "interim government, including office supplies; there has been a long standing consensus that support is not the same as involvement, particularly when it isn't clear how a regime change is taking place. This support is more akin to a debate club or model of United Nations for Guaidó, contrary to programs such as Syria's Timber Sycamore, where there has been explicit funding to weaponry and training to armed rebel groups.

At the end, this sabre-rattling and empty threats appear to have had a more domestic interest, rather than a foreign one, aimed at winning votes from the Cuban and Venezuelan diaspora in the swing state of Florida and that never followed through (and apparently never will). As such, the section should be removed. On top of it all, the article still has length issues and could benefit from the removal of a section that borders on the fringe. I'm open to any comments regarding this change. --NoonIcarus (talk) 14:10, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Terrible.

Sorry but this article is terrible. It ignores the larger context of the Cold War and America’s perception of the threat of the spread of Communism. The influence of NSC 68 is ignored even though it drove America’s foreign policy during the Cold War. https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsc-hst/nsc-68.htm

Also, some sections have nothing to do with US involvement in regime change in Latin America. Fr example, the first part of the Panama section. If a student gave this to me for a grade, he’d get a ‘D’ at best. --97.79.29.52 (talk) 12:39, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Hello friend. Thanks for pointing this out. Your comments sound reasonable, so if you have time, I would encourage you to start editing the article and fixing the issues you see. If you delete content, make sure to justify it in the edit summary. Use inline citations as much as possible and for anything that might be challenged by other editors. There are two ways to edit: source editor and visual editor. I recommend visual editor since it makes inline citations very easy (just hit the "cite" button). Also, feel free to create an account to get access to some quality of life features such as pinging, watchlist, and others. Happy editing. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:32, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

It is extremely biased, but unfortunately that's Wikipedia, and we can't change it. There is no point in getting into an edit war with jobless leftists, who will ultimately win with numbers and sympathetic admins. jej1997 (talk) 19:48, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Ten Tragic Days

In the article, 1913 Mexico coup d'etat isn't mentioned. The government of president Madero got overthrown by Gen. Huerta with financial and political support from the American embassy. I suggest it to be added.

Trimming and removing sections

Some of these sections need to be trimmed or removed. There is undue weight about human rights abuses of regimes in some sections and little about actual us involvement in changing the regime like in the Argentina section, which also doesn't specifically detail any mention of involvement in the coup. Some sections should be completely removed like Uruguay which doesn't even allege any involvement of the us in the coup. Other section that should be removed are Peru and El Salvador that only discuss us support for regimes which isn't what this page is about. The Panama section gives undue weight to claims that Omar Torrijos was murdered. GelShick92 (talk) 11:03, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

@GelShick92: The trimming should be done just like in the main article. Likewise, it has eebn established that preservation of power should not be included either. --NoonIcarus (talk) 11:37, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

@NoonIcarus: I removed and trimmed as discussed. The Argentina and Bolivia sections still don't really discuss US involvement in regime change. It just says they supported the coup which is vague. The Panama section should be changed because there still undue weight about assassination conspiracies. If anything, more should be mentioned about Noriega's overthrow.GelShick92 (talk) 10:39, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

@GelShick92: I have continued with the trimming, please let me know if there are further improvements that could be done. --NoonIcarus (talk) 18:52, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

@GelShick92: --NoonIcarus (talk) 19:17, 5 September 2021 (UTC)