The US under President Donald Trump is crafting a confrontational approach toward Latin America that signals a willingness to use military force against drug cartels, discarding the Biden administration’s preference for carrots over sticks to coax countries into alignment with US interests.

As The New York Times summarizes, Donald Trump’s declared war on Latin American cartels poses a dilemma that goes beyond public security. The designation of these groups as terrorists and the order to the Pentagon to use force against them intersect with a past of interventions that still weighs heavily on the region’s collective memory.