Because McKinsey said so

Just funding and supporting multinational drug cartels, overthrowing and assassinating democratically elected leaders and politicians and installing psycho dictators who torture and murder their citizens, sponsoring and coordinating with ultra-violent militias to control popular political sentiment, and maybe a little light military intervention from time to time.

If you don’t think the US (as a state actor) bears a substantial amount of responsibility for the current state of Latin America, I’d suggest that you may not be as well informed as you might assume. Really don’t mean to be a dick here, but the broad history of US intervention in LatAm is not especially debatable, and easily researched.

Edit: the now deleted (lol) comment said “last I checked we aren’t dropping bombs on South America”, or something to that effect (I think that’s a literal quote but if not it was very close).