Three or four years ago, I wrote a column for Gloucester Daily Times here in Massachusetts in which I described the sordid, bipartisan, history of the United States’ involvement in Latin America generally, and Central America specifically. (Central American Triangle)

That letter predated Donald Trump’s election and included some pretty harsh criticisms of administrations of both parties. From  1954 until 2009, the US government, its military, and its intelligence services have aided and abetted right-wing military coups that ousted or attempted to oust, democratically elected presidents and governments in Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Venezuela, and Honduras.

In 2009, the US was the only member of the Organization of American States to refuse to even recognize that the Honduran military had forcibly removed the democratically elected Jose Manuel Zelaya from the presidency – let alone condemn it. The refusal to call the military coup a “military coup” was a cynical way of avoiding being in violation of a US law that would have required the Obama/Clinton foreign policy team to suspend military aid to Honduras in the aftermath of the military overthrow of a duly elected leader.

The Obama/Clinton foreign policy team then enabled the coming to power of a succession of corrupt, right-wing governments that guaranteed the US military’s continued access to the strategically important Palmerola Air Base in Honduras. The Obama/Clinton team’s enabling of the coup, and its support for a succession of corrupt, right-wing governments, set Honduras on a downward social, economic, and political trajectory that has played no small role in the exodus of desperate Honduran refugees now seeking asylum in the US.

Donald Trump recently announced he was cutting $450 million in humanitarian aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador because those countries’ governments are not doing enough to stop refugees from setting out for the United States to request asylum here.

Ironically, most of the money Trump is cutting does not go to those governments. Most of the US humanitarian aid has gone to non-governmental organizations and non-profit groups directly involved in efforts to fight poverty, gang and domestic violence, and promote educational and healthcare initiatives.

So, Trump’s punitive action is actually likely to exacerbate the refugee crisis, not alleviate it. But that is a concept that is just a little too nuanced for Trump and his white nationalist, cult followers to grasp.

What Trump didn’t cut was military funding to the corrupt governments of men like Juan Orlando Hernandez in Honduras and Jimmy Morales in Guatemala. That money spicket is still flowing freely and generously. The continued US military support of the corrupt, incompetent, oppressive, and murderous Orlando Hernandez regime in Honduras reveals the hypocrisy long inherent in US-Latin America policy.

If the Trump administration’s concerns for democracy and human rights in Venezuela are genuine, why isn’t it also applying sanctions on the Orlando- Hernandez government in Honduras and calling for a coup to topple it?

Orlando Hernandez’s re-election in 2016 was condemned by international observers as corrupt and rigged. But because he guaranteed the US continued access to the Palmerola Air Base, the Obama administration looked the other way. In early 2017, when Hondurans took to the streets to protest the election results, and to demand an end to Orlando Hernandez’s corrupt regime, he unleashed the US-funded and trained Honduran military on civilian protesters. Dozens of people were killed in cities and towns around the country.

The Trump administration uttered not a word of protest, and tens of millions of dollars in military aid and equipment continued, and continue, to flow into Tegucigalpa.

Yet, in the case of Venezuela, the Trump administration seems ready to send in the Marines to topple Nicolás Maduro, a man who was re-elected under fraudulent circumstances, a man who is an incompetent, corrupt, and oppressive dictator, much like his US-backed counterpart in Honduras.

The hypocrisy of the Trump administration’s Latin policies, and those of virtually every administration that preceded it could not be on more glaring display than in the ways it condemns and seeks the ouster of one dictator in one country, while it coddles and cajoles the dictator of another.

The Trump administration cares not a whit about democracy, human rights or the wellbeing of the Venezuelan people, any more than it cares about democracy,  human rights, or the wellbeing of the Honduran people.

The Trump administration, and every administration before it, only care that the needs and interests of the United States are met. If that means invading a country to topple a dictatorial leader who stands in the way of that objective, so be it. If it means propping up a dictatorial leader somewhere else to achieve US goals and interests, well, that’s perfectly fine too.

Many Americans choose to ignore this troubling reality but, rest assured, the rest of the world is well aware of it and, as a result, it is fair to say the United States is quickly becoming a country that more people fear than respect.

Thirty plus years ago, Ronald Reagan dubbed the USSR an “Evil Empire”. During my five months back in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica this winter, that little Caribbean town where sixteen different languages are now spoken, awakened me to the sad reality that the United States is now seen as the world’s “Evil Empire” by increasing numbers of the world’s people.