Latin American leader use the activities of the CIA after WW2 to stir up hatred of capitalism. It goes back even further for some. Augusto César Sandino’s hatred of the U.S. dates back to Taft/Roosevelt. It’s easy to use a company like United Fruit to brainwash people into believing capitalism is bad, therefore socialism is good.
May it be taking land from Mexico, over throwing a true democratically elected government and supporting a dictator in Chile, back stabbing the Argentinians in the Falkland war where we backed the UK, having a bunch of dictators on the CIAs payroll, a war on drugs which panders to populist national politics but where we pressure other governments to cooperate... In Nicaragua we overthrew the government twice in a matter of 12 years.
I do not agree with commies and they tend to run a country into the ground, but nonetheless, this government was elected: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat Ironically, many of the things Allende did are not to far off from what we are doing ourselves today - de facto socialized health care, education, massive expansion of our food stamp and public school lunch programs... Ultimately, we got rid of him because he screwed with big business, i.e. the US mining operations in Chile.
On a personal level many folks to our South like us. Sure, there are some that will hold a grudge, but for the most part, the people are smart enough to separate the actions of our government from the citizen. Many have family in the US. Many folks from here retire in Guatemala, Belize, Mexico. Many folks there come here for business or health care and education. In some communities, they are kept afloat by the money sent home by their children working in the US. Of course there is massive movement south for leisure with places like Mexico and Costa Rica being the primary destinations.
However, our short sighted policies which are amoral at best and sometimes violent, self declared lordship over this entire continent while we talk about “sovereignty” elsewhere when convenient (Monroe doctrine which while we do not talk about is still basically what we go by), the treatment by our government for some of their people... Many folks to our South do not like our government, not even in Mexico. The term “Gringo” is not a term of endearment.
***Poverty, crime, lack of opportunity, and oppression, make for fertile ground for anyone offering an alternative, may that be a Nazi, commie, khomeini, Qaddafi... ***
Even in the US during the great depression and its aftermath the commie and Nazi parties were highly popular (we just do not like to remember that). When people are pushed down, hungry, and fear for their life, they want something different and if it’s bad enough, and lasts long enough, they don’t care if it’s under a red flag or with brown shirts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism_in_the_Americas. Many celebrities and industrialists were part of this movement, to include Lindbergh and Ford.
Sadly, what these people do not realize is that when you support these whack-jobs, what follows is just as bad if not worse than before, examples: Castro, Chavez...