What’s Left in Latin American and the Caribbean: Year 2024 in Review
December 26, 2024
Street mural showing a face of a person crying with the face partially covered by a scarf with the map of Latin America and the Caribbean. Photo: Rebelion/file photo.
By Roger D. Harris and John Perry – Dec 25, 2024
The progressive regional current, the “Pink Tide,” could be better called “troubled waters” in 2024. The tide had already slackened by 2023 compared to its rise in 2022, when it was buoyed by big wins in Colombia and Brazil. Then, progressive alternatives had sailed into power replacing failed neoliberal policies. Since, they have had to govern under circumstances that they inherited but were not their own making.
Brazil’s “suicidal veto” in August, which excluded Venezuela and Nicaragua from the BRICS trade alliance, was indicative of triangulating between the US and regional allegiances. The action likely pleased Washington but shattered an already tattered progressive unity in the region.
Brazil, along with Colombia and Chile, respectively represent the first, fourth, and fifth largest regional economies, all of which are faltering. Their left-leaning presidents – Boric of Chile, Petro of Colombia, and Lula of Brazil – are up for reelection in December 2025, May 2026, and October 2026, respectively. All lack parliamentary majorities at home, face strong rightist opposition, and have growing right-leaning evangelical populations making their prospects problematic. With such precarious positions, challenging the hegemon of the north is risky.
Boosting progressive prospects, left-leaning Claudia Sheinbaum became Mexico’s first female president in October with a landslide 60% of the vote and a coalition holding a 73% parliamentary majority. Mexico represents the second largest regional economy and has been an outstanding proponent of regional unity.
Great power competition
The US is further projecting its military presence in the region, being by far the largest source of military aid, supplies, and training. Much ink has been spilt on the second coming of Donald Trump. He is likely to maintain the bipartisan and increasingly aggressive projection of US power in the region and, indeed, globally, as enshrined in Biden’s National Security and National Military strategy documents.
In this, the 201st year of the Monroe Doctrine, Washington is intent on trying to contain China’s growing influence in the region and to a lesser extent that of Russia and even Iran.
China is now second only to the US in terms of regional trade volume. Its Belt and Road Initiative now includes 21 of 26 of the region’s eligible countries. The China-dominated BRICS trade alliance, where Brazil is an original member, expanded this year when Bolivia and Cuba joined as “partner countries.”
China has been cautious about military involvement in what the US has long maintained as its sphere of influence. Russia has been less so, declaring Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua as strategic partners.
Washington’s supply-side solutions
Regional challenges include narcotics trafficking and migration. Washington’s solutions have been to attack the sources while ignoring the causes.
Typical of the inside-the-beltway mindset, Will Freeman in Foreign Affairs blames Washington’s “neglect” of the region for these problems when the opposite is the case with widespread US interference and sanctions against Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.
Besides, the Yankees have never “neglected” the region as evidenced by many US-backed coup attempts. The corporate press’s inattention to the Global South should not be confounded with an imperialist project perfectly capable of multitasking.
Migration
US President Biden made various attempts to restrict migration and outpaced Trump in the number of deportations, according to Reuters. Although surpassing Trump’s record, former President Obama still holds the title of “deporter in chief.”
Washington acted against companies flying migrants to Nicaragua, where some countries like Cuba have visa-free entry, by threatening or imposing sanctions. Nicaragua was falsely accused of “trafficking” migrants.
Biden nevertheless welcomed more educated or entrepreneurial migrants under his “humanitarian parole” program, which gives permission to enter the US and work for two years. Initially offered to Venezuelans, it was later extended to people from Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua, with over half a million arrivals by late 2024.
US president-elect Trump’s promise of massive deportations is a concern to the many regional countries where emigration is an issue. The practicalities of implementation are formidable, including whether countries will agree to receive returnees. Significant numbers returning could be destabilizing in a country like Honduras, where remittances contribute 26% of GDP and poverty levels are high.
The other pandemic – illegal drugs
The role of the US and its Drug Enforcement Administration, in most countries in the region, is problematic. Washington’s staunchest allies repeatedly turn out to be major drug pushers. Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández is now in US federal prison on drug charges.
The corporate press in the US continuously runs sensational reports about drug kingpins in Latin America but curiously none on the US side of the border. How is it that the US is the biggest consumer, but we don’t hear about cartels who distribute the drugs at home?
“The unspoken truth known to virtually all parties in the Drug War,” according to The Nation, “is that the net flow of drugs is unlikely to change so long as consumption in the US continues to grow.” This highlights the fallacy of “supply side” solutions while ignoring the demand side.
Political opposites Nicaragua and El Salvador have had successes in keeping narcotics-related violence at bay. El Salvador has wielded “la mano dura” (the iron fist), while Nicaragua uses community-based policing. The two countries have among the lowest homicide rates in the region.
Meanwhile neighbouring Costa Rica has seen an unprecedented surge of drug-related violence. Mexico along with Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Honduras, and Guatemala have all had to deploy their militaries in major operations to wrest control of prisons and/or parts of their national territories from narcotics cartels.
What’s left
In the absence of a world socialist bloc, countries striving for socialism must engage in the international capitalist market. There they are vulnerable to economic warfare designed to overthrow their political leadership. The ever-tightening US sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua are designed to ensure that socialism does not succeed; to strangle in the cradle all possible alternatives to the established imperial order.
While Washington may seek to accommodate social democracies by cooption, nothing but regime ruination is slated for the states explicitly striving for socialism. The sobering reality is that countries striving for socialism, struggling for survival, are retrenching and being forced to adopt neoliberal remedies.
China, Russia, and Iran offer vital life support, but do not rise to the level of the socialist solidarity of the former USSR.
Biden renewed US sanctions against Nicaragua in November by again proclaiming it was an “unusual and extraordinary threat to national security.” Nicaragua has allocated only 3% of its budget to the military, while a full 61% addresses social welfare, especially public health.
For the 32nd time in so many years, the US blockade of Cuba was condemned by the UN General Assembly in October. Biden imposed yet more sanctions and continued Trump’s listing of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism. Life is simply hard in Cuba under the US siege and is getting harder. This has led to unprecedented levels of out migration.
The left in Bolivia is consumed by internecine warfare between former president Evo Morales and his former finance minister and now president Luis Arce, while the economy declines precipitously. Presidential elections are scheduled for next July, with prospects for the left to continue in power looking increasingly dim.
In 2022, left-leaning Honduran President Xiomara Castro replaced the neoliberals who initially came to power in the US-backed 2009 coup. Castro, herself, may be next in line for a US-backed coup. Castro inherited security forces trained in the US, corruption, drug violence, and a weak economy. She is trying to wrest control of the country back from “mafia style” domestic and foreign corporate forces, before facing reelection in 2026.
Venezuela’s pivotal role
The leading left role of Venezuela is pivotal in the region. For example, were the leftist government of Venezuela to fall, the futures in particular of Lula in Brazil and Petro in Colombia – both countries sharing a common border with Venezuela – would be uncertain.
Against the seemingly unsurmountable US blockade, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has led a remarkable economic turnaround with one of the highest GDP growth rates in the hemisphere. Three-quarters of the national budget is now allocated to social programs. Still, the most vulnerable have benefited the least, which is the aim of US sanctions.
President Maduro was reelected to a third term in July. But the US and its allies have waged a campaign to delegitimize the election as part of their larger regime-change efforts. Washington actively interfered in the election, backing the extreme rightwing candidacy of political unknown Edmundo González. Four months later, the US anointed González “president-elect.” Now in voluntary exile in Spain, González threatens to return to be inaugurated in January, amid fears of US military intervention.
The US has surrounded Venezuela with bases in Colombia (a NATO “global partner”) and a US Security Cooperation Office in Guyana. Offshore, the US has bases in the Dutch colonial possessions of Aruba and Curaçao and an agreement to deploy forces to Trinidad and Tobago in the event of a “conflict” in Venezuela.
A year ago, the disputed Essequibo territory between Venezuela and Guyana became an international flashpoint. The US Southern Command conducted joint air operations with Guyana. What is in essence an oil company landgrab by ExxonMobil is disrupting regional unity and is a Trojan horse for US military interference.
What’s right
A populist right has emerged regionally and globally, a symptom of the failure of neoliberalism and the inability of social democracies to provide an effective alternative.
Javier Milei assumed the presidency of Argentina a year ago, a “dream victory” for Washington.
The ultra-right enfant terrible abandoned his campaign threats to dollarize the economy, incinerate the central bank, and break relations with China. But he has presided over a radical privatization program, slashed spending on public welfare, and devalued the currency. This has precipitated a 53% poverty rate, the highest in 30 years. The crusader against “left culture” has somewhat curbed inflation and has an approval rating a little short of 50% in South America’s second largest economy.
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has trampled civil liberties in a draconian crackdown on gangs while managing a precarious economy. He enjoys astronomical approval ratings. In contrast, the unelected president of Peru, Dina Boluarte, is the world’s most unpopular head of state, presiding over an economy in a harshlatin america and the caribbean resistencia recession.
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, from the country’s richest family, plans to allow US military bases there. Noboa runs for reelection in February, where he is neck-and-neck in the polls with leftist Luisa González. Noboa beat González in the previous election, but his approval ratings are tanking due to ongoing security and energy crises and a stagnating economy. Unsurprisingly, the US is interfering in the elections.
A better world is possible
The deliberately failed state of Haiti is what an alternative future might be like under Yankee beneficence. US-led attempts to control Haiti have left the country in ruins. Activist Seth Donnelly describes the “slow motion genocide” there.
A more progressive world is likely to be a multipolar. It is slowly developing in Latin America, haltingly and with setbacks, many due to US imperialism. Washington’s “rules-based order,” far from orderly, is under threat worldwide, and nowhere closer than in Latin America.
Elections in Latin America in 2025
December 28, 2024
A woman votes in the Ecuadorian consultation and referendum in Madrid, Spain, April 21, 2024. Photo: Luis Soto.
Several Latin American countries will go to the polls in 2025 to elect various officials, from presidents to municipal councilors, and there will be an unprecedented election in the region.
Ecuador
The electoral calendar will start in Ecuador on February 9. On that day, Ecuadorians will elect the president, vice president, and 151 members of the National Assembly for the 2025-2029 term. If a second round of the presidential election is necessary, it will be held on April 13, 2025.
There are 16 presidential and vice-presidential candidates running in the elections. Among the candidates is the current president, Daniel Noboa, who is aiming for re-election, and his vice-presidential running mate is María José Pinto.
In Ecuador, indefinite re-election is prohibited since the consultative referendum carried out in 2018, during Lenín Moreno’s term, established that elected authorities may be re-elected only once, consecutively or not, for the same position. However, for the 2025 elections, Noboa can participate, and if he wins, it will be counted as his first term. Hence, he could seek re-election in 2029, given his current mandate is the product of exceptional elections held in 2023 after former President Guillermo Lasso applied the “cross death” mechanism midway through his term in 2021, leading to the dissolution of the parliament as well as his government.
Another candidate on the list is Luisa González, who participated in the extraordinary elections of 2023 and came in second place. She will once again be the standard bearer of the leftist movement Revolución Ciudadana (RC), led by former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017), which will run in alliance with the Renovación Total (Reto) party. Her running mate is Diego Borja, former minister of Economic Policy (2008-2010).
Daniel Noboa (left) and Luisa González (right).
The remaining 14 presidential tickets are formed by:
Henry Kronfle and Dallyana Passailaigue, for the Social Christian Party (PSC);
Leonidas Iza and Katiuska Molina Soledispa, for the indigenist movement Pachakutik;
Wilson Enrique Gómez and Inés Díaz Chiran, for the United Society Plus Action Party (Suma);
Francesco Tabacchi and Blanca Sacancela, for the Creating Opportunities (CREO) movement, led by former President Lasso;
Jimmy Jairala and Lucía Vallecilla, for Democratic Center;
Andrea González and Galo Moncayo, for the Patriotic Society Party (PSP);
Jorge Escala and Pacha Terán, for Popular Unity;
Pedro Granja and Verónica Silva, for the Ecuadorian Socialist Party (PSE);
Iván Saquicela and María Luisa Coello, for Democracia Sí;
Henry Cucalón and Carla Larrea, for Construye;
Juan Cueva Vivanco and Cristina Reyes, for the Acción Movilizadora Independiente Generando Oportunidades (AMIGO) movement;
Carlos Rabascall and María Alejandra Rivas, for Democratic Left;
Víctor Araus and Stephanie Cristina Carrera, for the People, Equality and Democracy (PID) movement;
Luis Felipe Tilleria and Karla Rosero, for Avanza.
For the first time, Ecuadorians will elect 151 legislators to the National Assembly, as until now, the body was made up of 137 members. This increase of 14 parliamentarians is due to the increase in the country’s population, according to the latest census.
Mexico
On June 1, Mexico will hold its first Extraordinary Election of the Federal Judiciary.
In this election, which will be held within the framework of the judicial reform promoted by former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and approved in September, judges for at least 881 positions will be elected for District Courts, Circuit Courts, the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power of the Federation (TEPJF) and its regional chambers, the recently created Tribunal of Judicial Discipline (TDJ), and nine ministers of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN).
The state court of Mexico City.
Arturo Zaldívar, general coordinator of Policy and Government of the Presidency of Mexico, reported that as of mid-December, at least 11,015 people registered to run for office are advancing in the process.
Bolivia
Bolivians will participate in general elections on August 10 to elect the president, vice president, 36 members of the Senate, and 130 members of the Chamber of Deputies for the 2025-2030 period.
The electoral process will officially start on April 12, announced Tahuichi Tahuichi Quispe, a member of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.
A woman votes in La Paz, Bolivia, October 18, 2020.
Although this process is not yet underway, some names of pre-candidates are already making the rounds, including former President Jorge Quiroga (2001-2002), businessman Samuel Doria Medina, former presidential candidate Chi Hyun Chung, the current mayor of Cochabamba, Manfred Reyes Villa, and businessman and former Minister Branko Marinkovic.
Within the ruling leftist Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), former President Evo Morales and current President Luis Arce, who could seek reelection, are currently being considered.
Argentina
In Argentina, there will be no presidential elections this year since current President Javier Milei just completed one year in power. However, the country will hold midterm legislative elections on October 26, which are also important for the ruling party.
On that day, 127 of the 257 seats in the Chamber of Deputies for the 2025-2029 legislative period will be renewed, as well as 24 of the 72 seats in the Senate for the 2025-2031 term.
Recently, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni did not rule out that he could be the candidate of the ruling party, La Libertad Avanza. “If the president asks me, of course,” he responded in a press conference when asked about it.
Chile
On November 16, Chileans will vote to elect their new president for the 2026-2030 term, in addition to electing 155 members of the Chamber of Deputies and 23 senators out of the 50 Senate seats. If a presidential runoff election is necessary, it will be held on December 14.
The president of Chile, Gabriel Boric. Photo: Lucas Aguayo Araos.
Among the names making the rounds as possible candidates are former President Michelle Bachelet, Deputy Vlado Mirosevic, Minister Carolina Tohá, and former Minister Francisco Vidal for the ruling party. As for the opposition, the former mayor of Providencia, Evelyn Matthei, and former presidential candidate José Antonio Kast are being considered.
Honduras
Honduras will go to general elections on November 30 to elect the president, 128 deputies of the Congress of the Republic, 20 legislators of the Central American Parliament, 298 mayors and deputy mayors, and 2,092 councilors.
For the moment, the current minister of defense, Rixi Moncada, and deputy and vice president of the Congress, Rasel Tomé, are being considered as pre-candidates for the ruling leftist Liberty and Refoundation party (Libre).
On the opposition, there is the wife of disgraced former President Juan Orlando Hernández, Ana García Carías, journalist and Deputy Jorge Alberto Zelaya, former mayor and former presidential candidate Nasry Asfura, and Carlos Urbizo Solís for the National Party. For the Liberal Party, the pre-candidates are Deputy Jorge Cálix, the former party President Luis Zelaya, former presidential candidate Salvador Nasralla, and Deputy Maribel Espinoza.
Other elections
Suriname will hold parliamentary elections on May 25, where 51 members of the National Assembly will be elected.
In Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro announced in August that a “mega-election” will be held in 2025 to elect the 23 state governors, 335 mayors, and the members of the 23 state legislative councils and 335 municipal councils.
Belize, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago will hold parliamentary elections, and Guyana will hold elections to elect its president and the 65 members of the National Assembly.
Whether Biden or Trump, US’s Latin American Policy Will Still Be Contemptible – Migration, Drugs, and Tariffs
Posted by Internationalist 360° on January 29, 2025
John Perry and Roger D. Harris
With Donald Trump as the new US president, pundits are speculating about how US policy towards Latin America might change.
In this article, we look at some of the speculation, then address three specific instances of how the US’s policy priorities may be viewed from a progressive, Latin American perspective. This leads us to a wider argument: that the way these issues are dealt with is symptomatic of Washington’s paramount objective of sustaining the US’s hegemonic position. In this overriding preoccupation, its policy towards Latin America is only one element, of course, but always of significance because the US hegemon still treats the region as its “backyard.”
First, some examples of what the pundits are saying. In Foreign Affairs, Brian Winter argues that Trump’s return signals a shift away from Biden’s neglect of the region. “The reason is straightforward,” he says. “Trump’s top domestic priorities of cracking down on unauthorized immigration, stopping the smuggling of fentanyl and other illicit drugs, and reducing the influx of Chinese goods into the United States all depend heavily on policy toward Latin America.”
Ryan Berg, who is with the thinktank, Center for Strategic and International Studies, funded by the US defense industry, is also hopeful. Trump will “focus U.S. policy more intently on the Western Hemisphere,” he argues, “and in so doing, also shore up its own security and prosperity at home.”
According to blogger James Bosworth, Biden’s “benign neglect” could be replaced by an “aggressive Monroe Doctrine – deportations, tariff wars, militaristic security policies, demands of fealty towards the US, and a rejection of China.” However, notwithstanding the attention of Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, Bosworth thinks there is still a good chance of policy lapsing into benign neglect as the new administration focuses elsewhere.
The wrong end of the telescope
What these and similar analyses share is a concern with problems of importance to the US, including domestic ones, and how they might be tackled by shifts in policy towards Latin America. They view the region from the end of a US-mounted telescope.
Trump’s approach may be the more brazen “America first!,” but the basic stance is much the same as these pundits. The different scenarios will be worked out in Washington, with Latin America’s future seen as shaped by how it handles US policy changes over which it has little influence. Analyses by these supposed experts are constrained by their adopting the same one-dimensional perspective as Washington’s, instead of questioning it.
Here’s one example. The word “neglect” is superficial because it hides the immense involvement of the US in Latin America even when it is “neglecting” it: from deep commercial ties to a massive military presence. It is also superficial because, in a real sense, the US constantly neglects the problems that concern most Latin Americans: low wages, inequality, being safe in the streets, the damaging effects of climate change, and many more. “Neglect” would be seen very differently on the streets of a Latin American city than it is inside the Washington beltway.
Who has the “drug problem”?
The vacuum in US thinking is nowhere more apparent than in responses to the drug problem. Trump threatens to declare Mexican drug cartels to be terrorist organizations and to invade Mexico to attack them.
But, as academic Carlos Pérez-Ricart told El Pais: “This is a problem that does not originate in Mexico. The source, the demand, and the vectors are not Mexican. It is them.” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum also points out that it is consumption in the US that drives drug production and trafficking in Mexico.
Trump could easily make the same mistake as his predecessor Clinton did two decades ago. Back then, billions were poured into “Plan Colombia” but still failed to solve the “drug problem,” while vastly augmenting violence and human rights violations in the target country.
A foretaste of what might happen, if Trump carries out his threat, occurred last July, when Biden’s administration captured Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. That caused an all-out war between cartels in the Mexican state of Sinaloa.
Sheinbaum rightly turns questions about drug production and consumption back onto the US. Rhetorically, she asks: “Do you believe that fentanyl is not manufactured in the United States?…. Where are the drug cartels in the United States that distribute fentanyl in US cities? Where does the money from the sale of that fentanyl go in the United States?”
If Trump launches a war on cartels, he will not be the first US president to the treat drug consumption as a foreign issue rather than a concomitantly domestic one.
Where does the “migration problem” originate?
Trump is also not the first president to be obsessed by migration. Like drugs, it is seen as a problem to be solved by the countries where the migrants originate, while both the “push” and “pull” factors under US control receive less attention.
Exploitation of migrant labor, complex asylum procedures, and schemes such as “humanitarian parole” to encourage migration are downplayed as reasons. Biden intensified US sanctions on various Latin American countries, which have been shown conclusively to provoke massive emigration. Meanwhile Trump threatens to do the same.
Many Latin American countries have been made unsafe by crime linked to drugs or other problems in which the US is implicated. About 392,000 Mexicans were displaced as a result of conflict in 2023 alone, their problem aggravated by the massive, often illegal, export of firearms from the US to Mexico.
Costa Rica, historically a safe country, had a record 880 homicides in 2023, many of which were related to drug trafficking. In Brazil and other countries, US-trained security forces contribute directly to the violence, rather than reducing it.
Mass deportations from the US, promised by Trump, could worsen these problems, as happened in El Salvador in the late 1990s. They would also affect remittances sent home by migrant workers, exacerbating regional poverty. The threatened use of tariffs on exports to the US could also have serious consequences if Latin America does not stand up to Trump’s threats. Economist Michael Hudson argues that countries will have to jointly retaliate by refusing to pay dollar-based debts to bond holders if export earnings from the US are summarily cut.
China in the US “backyard”
Trump also joins the Washington consensus in its preoccupation with China’s influence in Latin America. Monica de Bolle is with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a thinktank partly funded by Pentagon contractors. She told the BBC: “You have got the backyard of America engaging directly with China. That’s going to be problematic.”
Recently retired US Southern Command general, Laura Richardson, was probably the most senior frequent visitor on Washington’s behalf to Latin American capitals, during the Biden administration. She accused China of “playing the ‘long game’ with its development of dual-use sites and facilities throughout the region, “adding that those sites could serve as “points of future multi-domain access for the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] and strategic naval chokepoints.”
As Foreign Affairs points out, Latin America’s trade with China has “exploded” from $18 billion in 2002 to $480 billion in 2023. China is also investing in huge infrastructure projects, and seemingly its only political condition is a preference for a country to recognize China diplomatically (not Taiwan). Even here, China is not absolute as with Guatemala, Haiti, and Paraguay, which still recognize Taiwan. China still has direct investments in those holdouts, though relatively more modest than with regional countries that fully embrace its one-China policy.
Peru, currently a close US ally, has a new, Chinese-funded megaport at Chancay, opened in November by President Xi Jinping himself. Even right-wing Argentinian president Milei said of China, “They do not demand anything [in return].”
What does the US offer instead? While Antony Blinken proudly displayed old railcars that were gifted to Peru, the reality is that most US “aid” to Latin America is either aimed at “promoting democracy” (i.e. Washington’s political agenda) or is conditional or exploitative in other ways.
The BBC cites “seasoned observers” who believe that Washington is paying the price for “years of indifference” towards the region’s needs. Where the US sees a loss of strategic influence to China and to a lesser extent to Russia, Iran, and others, Latin American countries see opportunities for development and economic progress.
Remember the Monroe Doctrine
Those calling for a more “benign” policy are forgetting that, in the two centuries since President James Monroe announced the “doctrine,” later given his name, US policy towards Latin America has been aggressively self-interested.
Its troops have intervened thousands of times in the region and have occupied its countries on numerous occasions. Just since World War II, there have been around 50 significant interventions or coup attempts, beginning with Guatemala in 1954. The US has 76 military bases across the region, while other major powers like China and Russia have none.
The doctrine is very much alive. In Foreign Affairs, Brian Winter warns: “Many Republicans perceive these linkages [with China], and the growing Chinese presence in Latin America more broadly, as unacceptable violations of the Monroe Doctrine, the 201-year-old edict that the Western Hemisphere should be free of interference from outside powers.”
Bosworth adds that Trump wants Latin America to decisively choose a side in the US vs China scrimmage, not merely underplay the role of China in the hemisphere. Any country courting Trump, he suggests, “needs to show some anti-China vibes.”
Will Freeman is with the Council on Foreign Relations, whose major sponsors are also Pentagon contractors. He thinks that a new Monroe Doctrine and what he calls Trump’s “hardball” diplomacy may partially work, but only with northern Latin America countries, which are more dependent on US trade and other links.
Trump has two imperatives: while one is stifling China’s influence (e.g. by taking possession of the Panama Canal), another is gaining control of mineral resources (a reason for his wanting to acquire Greenland). The desire for mineral resources is not new, either. General Richardson gave an interview in 2023 to another defense-industry-funded thinktank in which she strongly insinuated that Latin American minerals rightly belong to the US.
Maintaining hegemonic power against the threat of multipolarity
Neoconservative Charles Krauthammer, writing 20 years ago for yet another thinktank funded by the defense industry, openly endorsed the US’s status as the dominant hegemonic power and decried multilateralism, at least when not in US interests. “Multipolarity, yes, when there is no alternative,” he said. “But not when there is. Not when we have the unique imbalance of power that we enjoy today.”
Norwegian commentator Glen Diesen, writing in 2024, contends that the US is still fighting a battle – although perhaps now a losing one – against multipolarity and to retain its predominant status. Trump’s “America first!” is merely a more blatant expression of sentiments held by his other presidential predecessors for clinging on to Washington’s contested hegemony.
The irony of Biden’s presidency was that his pursuit of the Ukraine war has led to warmer relations between his two rivals, Russia and China. In this context, the growth of BRICS has been fostered – an explicitly multipolar, non-hegemonic partnership. As Glen Diesen says, “The war intensified the global decoupling from the West.”
Other steps to maintain US hegemony – its support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the regime-change operation in Syria and the breakdown of order in Haiti – suggest that, in Washington’s view, according to Diesen, “chaos is the only alternative to US global dominance.” Time and again, Yankee “beneficence” has meant ruination, not development.
These have further strengthened desires in the global south for alternatives to US dominance, not least in Latin America. Many of its countries (especially those vulnerable to tightening US sanctions) now want to follow the alternative of BRICS.
Unsurprisingly, Trump has been highly critical of this perceived erosion of hegemonic power on Biden’s watch. Thomas Fazi argues in UnHerd that this is realism on Trump’s part; he knows the Ukraine war cannot be conclusively won, and that China’s power is difficult to contain. Accordingly, this is leading to a “recalibrating of US priorities toward a more manageable ‘continental’ strategy — a new Monroe Doctrine — aimed at reasserting full hegemony over what it deems to be its natural sphere of influence, the Americas and the northern Atlantic,” stretching from Greenland and the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego and Antarctica.
The pundits may not agree on quite what Trump’s approach towards Latin America will be, but they concur with Winter’s judgment that the region “is about to become a priority for US foreign policy.” His appointment of Marco Rubio is a signal of this. The new secretary of state is a hawk, just like Blinken, but one with a dangerous focus on Latin America.
However, the mere fact that such pundits hark back to the Monroe Doctrine indicates that this is only, so to speak, old wine in new bottles. Even in the recent past, an aggressive application of the 201-year-old Monroe Doctrine has never seen a hiatus.
Recall US-backed coups that deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya (2009) and Bolivian Evo Morales (2019), plus the failed coup against Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua (2018), along with the parliamentary coup that ousted Paraguayan Fernando Lugo (2012). To these, US-backed regime change by “lawfare” included Dilma Rousseff in Brazil (2016) and Pedro Castillo in Peru (2023). Currently presidential elections have simply been suspended in Haiti and Peru with US backing.
Even if Trump is more blatant than his predecessors in making clear that his policymaking is based entirely on what he perceives to be US interests, rather than those of Latin Americans, this is not new.
As commentator Caitlin Johnstone points out, the main difference between Trump and his predecessors is that he “makes the US empire much more transparent and unhidden.” From the other end of the political spectrum, a former John McCain adviser echoes the same assessment: “there will likely be far more continuity between the two administrations than meets the eye.”
Regardless, Latin America will continue to struggle to set its own destiny, patchily and with setbacks, and this will likely draw it away from the hegemon, whatever the US does.
CELAC Could Challenge Trump’s Policies
Posted by Internationalist 360° on January 30, 2025
Luana Ibelli
Colombia will preside over CELAC in 2025
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has raised his voice; Brasil de Fato correspondent talks about recent events.
The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) will hold an emergency meeting on Thursday (30), with immigration as one of the key issues on the agenda. This union’s meeting in Santiago could be a tool to exert pressure against Trump’s policies.
The newly sworn-in President of the United States, Donald Trump, has started his anti-immigration policy as promised during his campaign. In his first days in office, Trump implemented several measures against undocumented immigrants, including deportations, sending troops to the Mexican border, and arresting over 500 people.
On Saturday night (25), the first flight with 88 Brazilians deported from the United States arrived in Brazil. The passengers were transported in handcuffs. The Brazilian Foreign Ministry announced that it would request explanations from Trump’s administration for what it described as “disrespect for fundamental rights.”
The next day, Sunday (26), Colombian Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo, after facing similar issues with their citizens being transported back, stated that they would “overcome the impasse with the United States” by accepting the deportation flights of their irregular citizens in the US.
The clash between the United States and Colombia began earlier on Sunday when Colombian President Gustavo Petro banned two military planes carrying deportees from landing in Colombia. Petro insisted that the deportees should be treated with dignity and respect, and that he would only receive civilian flights. Trump’s reaction was immediate: on his social network, Truth Social, he announced a 50% tariff on Colombian products, along with other sanctions and retaliations.
Petro’s response was swift: in a lengthy letter published on social media, he referred to Trump as a “white slaveholder,” announced he would raise tariffs on US products, and directed Colombia’s exports to the rest of the world. Petro also criticized the immigration policies and the treatment of Colombian citizens, emphasizing his resistance to both torture and Trump’s actions.
Following the announcement that the tariff standoff with the United States had been resolved, the White House said it would suspend sanctions and tariffs against Colombia. Shortly after, Colombia’s foreign minister and ambassador Daniel García-Peña announced they would go to Washington to further discuss the deportation agreement between the two countries.
On Monday (27), on Brasil de Fato’s program Central do Brasil, international correspondent in Venezuela, Lorenzo Santiago, reported on the clash. He spoke to sources in Colombia and noted that the general assessment is positive about Gustavo Petro’s firm stance against Trump’s policies, despite US power prevailing.
“For the militants of the government, of the Historical Pact, it was a positive and important step by Petro to put up these barriers to the United States, even if, at the end of the day, these threats and harassment by the US government prevailed. The Trump administration threatened to add more 25% tariffs on Colombian products. Today, Colombia’s exports are much more dependent on the United States than the other way around, with approximately 37.9% of Colombian exports going to the United States, so it would have a tremendous impact on Colombian exports,” he explains.
“This is the main tool that Latin American countries have today, a union to apply pressure. Just as Petro signaled, all the Latin American countries receiving these deportees can put tariffs on US products. It’s obvious that this is where the correlation of forces in Latin America comes into play, because there are other players, such as the Chinese, interested in putting industrialized products, the main export point for the United States, into the hands of Latin Americans. Tinkering with this makes life easier for the Chinese but puts up barriers so that the United States doesn’t impose such measures.”
President Lula is meeting Tuesday (28) with Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira to discuss the deportation of Brazilians from the United States. The meeting will also be attended by the Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, and the Director General of the Federal Police, Andrei Rodrigues. The conversation comes after the repercussions of the treatment during the first deportation flight under the Trump administration over the weekend.
Bolivia: Elections and the Crossroads of the Plurinational Project
Posted by Internationalist 360° on January 30, 2025
Oscar Rotundo
In August 2025 there will be presidential and congressional elections in the Plurinational State of Bolivia and political actors are beginning to show how they will stand before the electoral event.
During 2024, the divisions in the governing party were deepening from the institutional level to the social movements, leading the MAS-IPSP to a rupture that transcends political differences and puts at risk the continuity of the plurinational project by facing divided a right wing that for the next elections has a single and historic objective, to dismantle the unfinished plurinational project and return to the neoliberal federal republic.
MAS never again
This is the clear slogan that the different right-wing opposition forces are raising as a banner for the next elections, summoning diverse sectors of society, liquefying political and even ideological differences.
Meanwhile, in the streets the discontent generated by the economic situation and by the judicialization of Evo Morales is being expressed. On January 13, La Paz and Cochabamba were the scene of fierce confrontations between police forces and political and trade union demonstrators.
Trade unionists of El Alto stand up demanding immediate solutions to the economic crisis caused by the administration of Luis Arce, the expanded multisectoral that brings together representatives of the trade union, agricultural, transport, business and productive sector, held a meeting in Santa Cruz de la Sierra to demand the national government the repeal of the seventh additional provision of Law 1613 of the General State Budget (PGE) 2025, threatening the executive with mobilizations across the country for January 27.
Former President Evo Morales has joined this agenda, supporting what was agreed in the multisectoral assembly, proposing the elimination of the seventh additional provision of Law 1613, of the General State Budget (PGE) 2025, arguing that, “The Government must eliminate the seventh provision of Law 1613 (…), which was put into effect de facto (…), which was put into effect de facto (…), which was put into effect de facto (…), which was put into effect de facto (…). ), which was put into effect de facto because it was not approved by the Legislative Assembly”, adding that, ‘This norm violates private property, the source of work and food production, rights guaranteed by the Political Constitution of the State’.
The aforementioned additional provision of Law 1613 states: “with the purpose of guaranteeing the availability and supply of essential foodstuffs, the competent entities are empowered to activate actions of control, inspection, confiscation and/or seizure of products, to the actors of food commercialization, who store or withhold and/or pretend to increase the prices of the same”.
The government tries to fight against speculation and shortages, used as a political tool to destabilize the economic and social situation and to deteriorate the political situation.
In a pincer maneuver, the right-wing parliamentary opposition and the “evista” MAS, block international credits destined to works for different regions of the country and loans for US$ 1 billion, a situation that aggravates the execution of social aid and infrastructure policies. The lack of dollars, medicines and fuel play an important role in the popular discontent.
“Communal march for life”
Under this slogan thousands of demonstrators organized behind the figure and leadership of Evo Morales arrived in the city of La Paz carrying the following proposal to the national government.
A 12-point plan approved at the end of 2024:
1. Solution to the shortage of the family food basket and regulation of prices to guarantee accessibility.
2. Solving the fuel shortage.
3. That the government guarantees the free availability of dollars.
4. To resume and promote the lithium exploitation plan designed during Evo’s administration.
5. Annulment of the articles of the PGE 2025 linked to international credits and sale of gold reserves; demand the annulment of the confiscatory articles.
6. Demand economic policies to support the country’s bank borrowers.
7. Abrogation of decree 5225, which declares an environmental pause.
8. Abrogation of decree 4732.
9. Immediate removal of de facto magistrates from the Judiciary and trial of self-appointed judges.
10. Liberation of the detainees of Parotani, Mairana, El Alto.
11. Report on high-risk economic operations for the retirement system carried out by the Gestora.
12. Demand the immediate cessation of political persecution and Lawfare applied against social leaders and leaders of social organizations, who are being judicially persecuted, that the government stops any plan of physical elimination of their leaders.
It should be recalled that the sectors related to Evo Morales accuse the government of political persecution and Lawfare and this Tuesday 14 was to appear before the courts in Tarija, a situation that did not occur, generating a new summons for January 17.
It should be mentioned that the sectors related to Evo Morales accuse the government of political persecution and Lawfare, and this Tuesday, January 14, he was supposed to appear before the courts in Tarija, a situation that did not occur, generating a new summons for January 17.
This document was not received and in the tumult there was a strong repression that caused injuries and 41 detainees, for this reason, the Unity Pact related to Evo Morales ratified that the vigil will continue until the Government receives its 12-point petition and meets these demands.
After this situation, former president Evo Morales expressed, “I denounce before the world that Bolivia is ruled by a fascist tyranny that uses the police to repress the people”.
To this clear escalation of the conflict between forces that have the same origin must be added the declarations of Wilfredo Chávez, Evo Morales’ defense lawyer, which he expressed in an interview to La Razón Plus:
Just as Evo Morales’ sector qualifies the government, but specifically President Luis Arce as “fascist tyranny” and “traitors”, the reactionary right wing does not contemplate differences and speaks of the MAS-IPSP government as if it were a monolithic structure qualifying it as “socialist”, “communist” and “corrupt” which represents failure, as expressed by the former coup minister Branko Marinkovic:
When we see that the rest of the right-wing opposition raises the same argument, we cannot speak of division of interests as expressed by the lawyer Wifredo Chavez, convinced that people differentiate the policy developed by Lucho Arce as Evo Morales’ minister of economy, with that of Lucho Arce as president, who by the way was proposed by Evo Morales himself in a conclave in Buenos Aires when he had been overthrown by the coup d’état of 2019.
A dangerous arm wrestling match
In full agitation with electoral purposes, the arm wrestling within the government shows two possible frameworks from the former united forces of the MAS IPSP, on the one hand, the one led by President Luis Arce, his MAS and the social, trade union and intercultural movements and Bartolinas that support him, and on the other hand, the forces enrolled behind Vice President David Choquehuanca and the mayor of El Alto Eva Copa. Then there is the force led by Evo Morales, whose bishop is the president of the Chamber of Senators Andrónico Rodríguez.
All these represent the Plurinational State as a project. Opposing this construction is the rest of the opposition, which has proposed in different ways the dismantling of the Plurinational State and the return to the old constitution and the federal republic framed with the neoliberal policies emanating from the U.S. State Department.
To achieve this goal the right wing has resorted to coups d’état and secessionist attempts such as those raised with the separation of the “Media Luna” back in 2008, but in this arm wrestling of projects, they had never encountered this tremendous antagonistic separation that like a cancer puts in mortal danger what has been achieved by the popular struggle.
“Union must save us, how division will destroy us if it comes to be introduced among us.”The Liberator Simón Bolívar posed in a letter addressed to General Rafael Urdaneta dated in Ocaña on October 27, 1814.
Let us hope that in our beloved Bolivia sanity reigns in the face of senselessness.
Panama: Self-Determination and National Popular Unity in the Face of Imperialist Irredentism
Posted by Internationalist 360° on February 2, 2025
Abdiel Rodríguez Reyes
The peoples have the right to decide their own collective destiny as established by the Bandung Conference in 1955 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966, which was not gratuitous but a product of the struggle of the peripheral countries for their decolonization. Amid this reality, the United States never gave up extending the Monroe Doctrine to the present day. Making the situation worse, imperial irredentism becomes explicit with President Donald Trump. The Panamanian people’s distrust of the political elite at this juncture is being reproduced in the collective imagination in a marked disinterest in Trump’s imperial irredentism. He is looking for the annexation of territories, even if they do not share borders with the US, as in the case of Greenland and Panama. And it is not the whim of one person, in this case of Trump, but an imperialist rationale.
In the face of Trump’s threats to annex territories, “recover” others such as the Panama Canal, and outrage countries like Canada, Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, and Venezuela with false claims and sanctions, one way to resist is the organization of the peoples and the implementation of a common agenda whose content is the self-determination of the peoples, regional integration, and popular national unity. The Panamanian political elite will not necessarily defend the best interests of our people. The United States is our main trading partner, and we maintain a relationship of dependence with the colossus of the North. Our elite is the sepoy in that relationship. It shows its servility every time it can. With the noose around its neck, it kicks the ground. Recently, given the altercation on social media between Presidents Gustavo Petro and Trump, the government of the Republic of Honduras, occupying the pro tempore presidency of CELAC, called an urgent meeting to address the situation, but it was cancelled due to “lack of consensus.”
In the case of Panama, the Panamanian political elites have more than a century of negotiating with the Americans for their own benefit. It will be up to the people to organize themselves to protect their own, just as they did on January 9, 1964. The interests of the people are not necessarily the same as those of the elite, although they may coincide at times. The underlying problem is not Trump but imperialist irredentism. Today, it is Trump; tomorrow, it will be another president, and that irredentist rationality underlies in the background. Therefore, it is necessary to tactically and strategically design defense and resistance mechanisms. It is imperative to direct actions towards a different regional correlation of forces in terms of Latin American unity until the constitution of a new “historical bloc,” as Gramsci would say.
Following the irredentist spirit expressed by President Trump on his social network Truth Social and in his presidential inauguration speech, the United States Federal Maritime Commission convened a hearing to discuss the alleged Chinese presence in the Panama Canal. Internationalist Julio Yao analyzed the Commission’s resolution. He concluded with the need to consult the International Court of Justice if the US requests do not constitute a violation of international law. These requests are clearly interference. In particular: “The US cannot urge Panama to take action against the United States. The US cannot urge Panama ‘to reaffirm its commitment to the Treaty of the Permanent Neutrality of the Canal’ since Panama has always done so, contrary to the US, which has violated it every time and exclusively to satisfy its security interests for its armed forces.”
That is the basic argument of imperialist irredentism, invoking the Treaty of the Permanent Neutrality of the Canal and the Operation of the Panama Canal, in particular the DeConcini Amendment, which makes it possible for the United States “to take military measures on Panamanian soil without the consent of the government of Panama.” To justify this action, the US has resorted to falsehoods about the Chinese presence in Panama up to the number of deaths in the construction of the Canal by the Americans in 1914. Historian and diplomat Omar Jaén Suarez clarified this last point in a recent article: “Mortality in the construction of the Interoceanic Canal… between 1904 and 1914, there are only 350 American deaths (6%) according to the Isthmian Canal Commission, while Afro-Antillean employees killed were 4,049 (72%)… The data do not show more than 6,280 deaths among the employees of the French canal companies from 1881 to 1903.” Thus, imperialist irredentism is based on fallacies to justify its interest in recovering the Canal.
As Greg Grandin, a professor at Yale, points out in a recent article in the New York Times, the “uninhibited language [that Trump uses] increases the volatility of an already volatile world.” This shock tactic, in which one of Trump’s main weapons is social media, seeks to cause destabilization in order to achieve its goals. Ultimately, MAGA (Make America Great Again) is Trump’s dream for “a new American empire,” as Grandin put it. To do so, he will need to bend his already kneeling partners further to his will. This is where the anti-imperialist and decolonization positions become important—when many had given them up for dead. It is not a question of taking out a Panamanian flag at the last minute and invoking an abstract patriotism, unlike the Panamanian people, who are organized and conscious of their history of struggle and remember their martyrs of the generational struggle to recover our sovereignty.
In the same line as Grandin, Panamanian lawyer and academic Alonso Illueca wrote in El País: “Based on a tradition buried in the mid-twentieth century, Trump relaunched on January 20, 2025, the expansionist policy of Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine.” This is not only to our detriment, particularly given his “criteria” for the management of the Canal, but also, as the world policeman, he starts a crusade against the left as in the days of the Cold War. It is no coincidence that the presidents present at Trump’s inauguration have something in common: they hate the left. His inauguration was a full portrait of his ideology, surrounded by billionaire tech moguls. We will see a display of digital capitalist fetishism and harassment of the left and human rights defenders.
We do not see a political elite defending the best interests of the Panamanian people in the face of imperialist affront. Instead, they are busy protecting their own privileges. Popular unity is nothing more than unity based on collective interests. Without the self-determination of the peoples, regional integration, and national popular unity on the table, the abstract patriotism of the political elite will negotiate its privileges within the framework of imperialist irredentism.
The US’ Coercion Of Panama Over The Canal Presages Impending Military Tensions With China
Andrew Korybko
Feb 03, 2025
The US wants to preemptively neutralize as many of the means as possible through which China could asymmetrically respond to this scenario in plausibly deniable ways such as by having its company that controls port facilities on both sides of the canal shut down transit in the event of a crisis.
Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino declared after meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio that his country’s 2017 memorandum of understanding with China on the Belt & Road Initiative won’t be renewed and that it might even terminate the deal earlier. His policy shift was preceded by Trump threatening that “something very powerful is going to happen” if Panama doesn’t neutralize China’s influence over the canal and follows Rubio elaborating on the US’ perceived threat assessment.
He told Megyn Kelly last week that the Hong Kong-based company which built port facilities on both sides of the canal is under the Chinese government’s control and could thus shut down transit through that waterway as part of Beijing’s contingency planning in the event of a crisis with Washington. It’s unimportant whether others share this assessment since all that matters is that this is how Trump 2.0 sees everything and is the reason why it’s coercing Panama over the canal.
That observation presages impending Sino-US military tensions since the US wouldn’t preemptively make these moves without expecting a possible worsening of relations with China. Trump already escalated his famous trade war with China over the weekend by imposing additional 10% tariffs on it but that on its own likely won’t lead to a full-fledged crisis between them. Rather, it’s the US’ opposition to China’s regional territorial claims over Taiwan and the East and South China Seas that could result in this.
Accordingly, there are reasons to expect that the US will more forcefully push back against those aforesaid claims in the coming future, ergo the need to secure the Panama Canal just in case tensions spiral out of control and Beijing orders its company there to shut down transit as a plausibly deniable asymmetrical response. That could greatly harm the US economy together with greatly impeding the US Navy’s ability to rapidly build up its capabilities in the Indo-Pacific in response to a regional crisis there.
Trump 1.0’s National Security Strategy in 2017 already declared China to be the US’ strategic competitor so it follows that his second administration would build upon that by more muscularly containing China. Prior to that, it’s imperative that the US preemptively neutralizes as many of the means as possible through which China could asymmetrically respond to that in plausibly deniable ways, with the Panama Canal scenario being among Trump 2.0’s priorities due to its importance in American grand strategy.
Likewise, remaining bogged down in Eastern Europe fighting a hopeless proxy war with Russia that Rubio admitted that Ukraine can’t win and is actually leading to its destruction has kept tens of thousands of US troops on the other side of Eurasia, hence the need to end the conflict sooner than later so they can subsequently redeploy to the Indo-Pacific for containing China instead. This explains the urgency with which Trump 2.0 wants to at least freeze that conflict and might thus make some concessions to Russia.
Readers can learn more about how that might look here, which is beyond the scope of this analysis, but the point is that everything that Trump is now doing on the world stage is connected in one way or another to his administration’s preparations for impending military tensions with China. Some plans like neutralizing China’s influence over the Panama Canal are more clear-cut while others like his threats to tariff the EU aren’t as easily understandable in this context but they’re all perceived by him in this way.
Seems like you can't wait for a war with China, Andy. Careful what you wish for...
*****
President of Honduras Outlines Emergency Strategy on Migration
February 2, 2025
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The president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, addresses the nation regarding the crisis created by US President Donald Trump's migrant deportation plan. Photo: Government of Honduras.
The president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, announced the enactment of the national emergency strategy for the protection of Honduran migrants. The mechanism, launched last Tuesday, January 28, includes an action program for Hondurans in an irregular migratory situation in the United States, as well as those in transit and returned to Honduras. The president attributed the worsening of displacement of people “with the implementation of a neoliberal economic model that deepened dependence, inequality, environmental degradation and violence.” She also announced that the government will be immediately sending a technical mission of verification and support to Honduran migrants on the southern border of the United States and the northern border of Mexico.
Below is a transcript of the Honduran president’s nationally televised address:
Human mobility is a social, economic and political phenomenon that has occurred throughout the history of humanity. The displacement of people, whether within or outside our country, has worsened with the implementation of a neoliberal economic model that has deepened dependency, inequality, environmental deterioration and violence.
Public-private corruption and the hoarding of wealth are inherent to the capitalist system. My government of democratic socialism inherited a country hijacked by a national and transnational elite of public-private corruption with very high levels of indebtedness and plunder. This impoverished our country for 12 years and seven months of narco-dictatorship.
During my presidential term, deportations of Hondurans from the United States between 2000 and 2024 have decreased by at least 50%. In 2022, 88,000 Honduranswere deported from the United States. In 2023 that number was 58,000 people. In 2024 that number came down to 44,000.
In 2021, a total of 319,000 Hondurans were arrested in the US. In 2024, according to official data from the United States Customs and Border Protection office, that number was 140,000, which means a decrease of approximately 56%.
It is currently estimated that there are 1.8 million Hondurans in the United States, of which we have been informed that 261,651 have a deportation order and are not in the custody of the United States immigration service. Meanwhile, 1,349 with deportation orders are in the custody of said agency. According to official data from the Immigration and Customs Control Service, the immediate expulsion of migrants from several Latin American and Caribbean countries, including Honduras, announced by the United States, undoubtedly generates a humanitarian and economic crisis in our nation, for which urgent and comprehensive solutions have been discussed.
Facing these drastic immigration policies, as president of Honduras, I reiterate my willingness to maintain a close dialogue with the United States of America, so that our policies of reciprocity and respect are confirmed by both nations for the benefit of our peoples.
I inform the Honduran people that I decree and promulgate the national emergency strategy for the protection of Honduran migrants, which includes an action program for the following migrant groups:
Hondurans with an irregular immigration status in the United States
Honduran migrants in transit
Honduran emigrants who have returned
These emergency action programs force us to make cuts in public administration and budgetary efforts amid the difficult conditions in which we find ourselves in our country. The programs include: economic and social reintegration, training, capacity building and employment opportunities, provision of credits and financing for small and medium-sized enterprises, education, scholarships, validation of their studies, health, psychological and social support, especially providing protection for migrants in vulnerable status, legal assistance, family reunification, temporary shelters and hostels.
1. For Hondurans with an irregular immigration status in the United States, the priority actions will be: legal assistance and advice that will be provided to our nationals through the signing of agreements with organizations advocating for the rights of illegal migrants in the United States of America; signing of bilateral or multilateral agreements with other countries on immigration matters that promote the protection of the rights of migrants in vulnerable conditions; by enabling the migrant line through the national emergency system 911, the following service channels will be created— 911 Conecta mobile application; service channels via WhatsApp instant messaging; 24/7 telephone service through the migrant 911 line with the purpose of providing immediate guidance on legal avenues through the 911 Immigration module; primary medical psychological care through the 911 telemedicine and crisis intervention psychology units; facilitation of personal identification documents through mobile phones that urgently organize and implement the third phase in eight cities in the United States during 2025.
New consular offices will be created according to priority needs in cities where more Hondurans reside.
New offices in consular buildings will be created to increase by two fold the issuance of passports and to expedite the issuance of the national identification document.
The provision of consular appointments must be effective to facilitate the required documentation to our compatriots.
Participation of migrants in organizing a constant dialogue through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Consular Network with the diaspora of compatriots.
For unaccompanied minor migrants, consular agents must intensify their efforts to identify and reunite them with their families in the United States.
Member institutions of the recently created Migration Governance Council will carry out a massive communication campaign on television, radio, and digital platforms, aimed at informing and protecting the rights of migrants.
2. Protection of migrants in transit: The following actions will be implemented: strengthening of consular mechanisms and agreements with the governments of the transit countries of Guatemala and Mexico. We will contract and, through our air force, coordinate humanitarian return flights for all Hondurans located in Mexican territory who wish to return to their homeland. We will provide legal advice through our consulates in Mexico to all of our compatriots and we will sign agreements with Mexico for their protection.
3. Returned migrants: Aware of the emergency that the new deportations announced by the United States represent, the difficulties that our migrants face, and the responsibility that we have assumed as a State for their well-being, we announce the creation of the program Brother and Sister, Return Home. Through this program, economic and social opportunities will be provided for the reintegration of migrants into their families, society, and their homeland. Likewise, until services are implemented, we will advocate for an orderly return that meets the conditions of dignity and security that our compatriots deserve through private flights, which the government of Honduras is willing to finance for their return, as well as the following actions: expansion of the maximum response capacity for the care of returned migrants, providing comprehensive treatment that includes food, medical and psychological care, telephone service, hygiene kit, clothing, transportation to their place of origin, lodging, and proper care in cases of those requiring protection due to violence.
Through a bonus, I will provide each returned migrant with a stipend consisting of $100 or its equivalent in lempiras through the Red Solidaria conditional cash transfer program. We will provide a food supply of between 75 and 80 pounds to each returned migrant through the Secretariat of Social Development (SEDESOL). For returned migrants, we will facilitate the management and process of capital financing and granting of guarantees through credit agencies, which the State, via BANADESA and BANHPROVI, will also be able to join the already established program of rural and urban savings banks in their communities.
Through the SENPRENDE service program for entrepreneurs, returned migrants will be given the opportunity to access seed capital of $1,000 or its equivalent in lempiras to encourage the start of successful ventures in the country. My government of democratic socialism will expand the offer of jobs in infrastructure, security, and the environment, the latter through the Andrés Tamayo reforestation program, a plan approved by the Defense and Security Council, Zero deforestation by 2029 and the three Green Battalions that are already operating in the country.
I will create, via executive decree, an economic incentive for the formal and informal sectors of the economy for the hiring of returned migrants, and instruct the institutions of the newly created Migration Governance Council to immediately carry out, within the next 72 hours, a technical mission to verify and support migrants on the southern border of the United States and on the northern border of Mexico.
Migrants are not criminals. They are human beings and we must treat them as such. Migration is a human right, not a crime.
Argentina: Unprecedented anti-fascist, anti-racist march against Milei
February 4, 2025 Euge Murillo
Feb. 2 —
“Thank you for so much beauty to fight cruelty”, was a phrase that slipped in, almost a whisper, very early on when the Plaza del Congreso began to fill up for an anti-fascist and anti-racist march in opposition to Milei, which was unexpected, spontaneous and multitudinous.
One million people mobilized in the City of Buenos Aires – according to the organizers – as a result of the fuse lit by the LGBT community. A multicolored ray of light illuminated a day that will not go unnoticed. Is it a turning point? Is it finally a standstill? It remains to be seen whether the summer heat, impregnated in thousands and thousands of bodies, will drop or continue to rise. What is certain is that the march on February 1st was a massive and distinct call that sprang from an anti-fascist and self-convened assembly, and that multiplied throughout the country and the world. February precipitated a weariness and a hunger for change.
Photo: Enrique Garcia Medina
“My first march”
At 4 in the afternoon, the march led by transvestites, trans people, gays, non-binary people and lesbians left San José and Avenida de Mayo, a riot of color, the starting point for a political event: “I had never been on a march before, but after the president’s speech I said ‘Enough!’ and I came.” Says Flor – 14 years old – looking at the 14-meter-wide head of the march. There are 50 of them holding the flag with their fingers tightly pressed together, fingers wrinkled with red and black nails. Fingers of trans kids and lesbians. Anti-fascist and anti-racist pride, a beautiful flag, painted the day before on the sidewalk of Bonaparte Hospital. That detail, evidence of what this march was, a confluence of struggles, an intersectoral vibration, a profound encounter to, as Flor said in her first march: “Say Enough”.
“It is vital to install anti-fascism,” says Violeta Alegre, trans activist and DJ. “Now we are certain that it was not installed before, regardless of the progress we have made in human and civil rights. It is important to understand that fascism is not like Mussolini’s, there are other tools that allow it to be reconfigured, through technology and social networks.” She says, just before getting on the truck located behind the head of the march. Music, a montage and voguers – ballroom dancers – applauded: “Unity of all queers, and those who don’t like it, fascist, fascist.We can’t cope, we can’t make ends meet, we defend life against the fascist project, against the fascist project,” they chanted. Behind them, LGBT organizations, feminists and a square full of trade unions, Peronists and leftists. The entire spectrum of the opposition was at the march.
The popular festival without police
The Archbishopric of the City of Buenos Aires asked that the cathedral not be fenced off for the march, Judge Ramos Padilla issued a preventive habeas corpus without anyone asking him to, with the aim of preventing the security forces from intercepting people or transport. The streets around Avenida de Mayo were closed from early on and the street was a popular celebration, with LGBTIQNB+ pride in the air. The march broke the repressive protocols that were applied by Minister Patricia Bullrich throughout 2024.
The color of diversity that fascists hate. Photo: Enrique Garcia Medina
The call was overwhelming. During the week there was a rumor that it was going to be a march that a large sector of society was going to join, but no one could predict it would be this large. And it became a reality, as happened with the “University March” in 2024 or with the “2×1” march during the government of Mauricio Macri. “There are things that this society does not negotiate,“ says a woman who is holding a camera in one hand and a walking stick in the other. She is sweating and suffering from the heat of the mid-afternoon: ”I am a pensioner, my grandson is gay and he is 13 years old, I am not going to allow this government to do whatever it wants.” ‘Where is your grandson?’ the reporter asks her. “Dancing over there,“ she says.
Anti-fascism in the square
“I think the most interesting thing about this event is that it puts at the center of the debate a policy of profound humanization of the different ways of existing in the world,” says Lucia Portos, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Gender and Diversity of the Province of Buenos Aires. For her it is a commitment to solidarity and to the creation of networks of relationships that challenge the institutional framework and propose the creation of community, unmasking the group of people who use cruelty as a tool,” she explains, adding: ”I believe that today’s march is a turning point that should also lead to a questioning of the logic of democratic representation that is subject to an urgent demand, that of assimilating the priorities set by popular organization and communicate them in order to build a majority that can effectively put a stop to the violence. The governor, Axel Kicillof, also took part in the march with the column from the province of Buenos Aires.
“The joy of having together organized a political event full of tenderness and political determination,” said Marta Dillon, activist, lesbian and feminist. “These people say no to you, Milei, we are not willing to tolerate your policy of extermination. We are not going to let fascism in.”
Photo: Enrique Garcia Medina
An unforgettable march that marks a turning point
“Our anti-racist discussion in relation to today’s march, and to this government, seeks to denounce the cuts and the losses in public policies and reparation measures for our communities, historically marginalized and violated due to structural and institutional racism in Argentina,” says Alejandra Pretel, member of afroslgbtiq+ and co-founder of Afrocolectiva, who was part of the anti-fascist assembly:
“For the president’s message to be replicated in the country and in the world is very dangerous,” says Yokarta, a sex worker who marches with AMMAR (Sex Workers’ Union). “It enables them to rape us in the neighborhoods where we work, to bring back the police raids and to arrest me for whatever reason. With that discourse, it’s to see if the police like us or not and that can’t be,” she says. ‘If the president says we are dangerous, then the police are going to take reprisals against us, every time he sees me, because I am a sex worker, a migrant or trans,’ she explains.
Transversality was colored, from the specific problems of the LGBT community to poverty pensions, all in the same march: “It is essential to fight against the hollowing out of health policies, especially those that provide or allow abortion, access to comprehensive health care for LGBT people, HIV medication and hormone treatment,” says Cesar Bisutti, lawyer, anti-prison activist and worker in the gender equity department of the Ministry of Health of the Province of Buenos Aires.
The day was a necessary day of beauty responding to cruelty, in the form of murmurs and celebration, with skin in the sun and make-up far removed from the constant tear gases that repeatedly challenge social protest. A stop, a hindrance and a message replicated in the world against the far right. The day after, there will be some relief and now the fuse of fighting back will already be lit.
Trump and the spoils of Latin America
Telma Luzzani
3 Feb 2025 , 12:00 pm .
For Donald Trump, Panama represents a geopolitical laboratory (Photo: Agencies / Archive)
Panama Canal, Greenland, Gulf of Mexico, Canada: Donald Trump has given a new twist to the historic American pillage in Our America. Since the law is not on his side, the White House uses the same tactics as always: lies and bullying - the New York Times editorial of January 21 uses the word "bully" - but now without masks.
Will he be able to? With Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, Trump believes he can. With Venezuela, it seems he cannot. As the New York newspaper reports, Trump is sending his foreign minister, Marco Rubio, to the five Central American countries after having lashed out at them during the first ten days of his government with threats of using military force if they do not obey his dictates.
With Venezuela, however —for now— the magnate was less arrogant and sought dialogue. His envoy, diplomat Richard Grenell —who does not accept that there are only two genders, as his boss said in his inauguration speech, since he declares himself gay—, met on the last day of January with President Nicolás Maduro with an open agenda.
The British newspaper Financial Times on Saturday gave a version of what was negotiated. The United States would relax sanctions against Caracas, cancel the reward it is offering on Maduro's head and increase its oil purchases. In exchange, Miraflores has already released six of the eight Americans imprisoned, accused of being spies and plotting against Venezuela, and would accept the deportation of its compatriots.
Marco Rubio's trip, from February 1 to 6, began in Panama, the country from which the US president intends to seize the bioceanic canal and where he seeks to implement the imperial "master plan" to face the new multipolar world that is already looming. To understand this Trumpist maneuver, the first step is to know the true history of the Panama Canal. The second is to verify what the White House's real motive is and, be careful!, not to believe that it is just, as they want to sell it to us, a matter of security and an alleged Chinese siege.
The true story
One of the most interesting historians of the United States, William Appleman Williams (1921-1990), explained how the expansionist drive of his country emerged at the end of the 19th century. "Economic practice, intellectual analysis, and national sentiments became so amalgamated that there was a strong and dangerous current of thought that defined the essential well-being of the United States only in terms of its activities abroad," he wrote in his 1980 book Empire as a Way of Life .
In this context, control of the Gulf of Mexico, the bioceanic passage and the Caribbean Sea for commercial and military missions was and continues to be key. This is how another notable American historian from New York University, Greg Grandin, sums it up: "In order to appropriate the Panama Canal, President Roosevelt and the banker JP Morgan, in 1903, took the province of Panama from Colombia and created a new country, opened a new interoceanic route and installed a military base." By then, the United States had already taken over half of Mexico, dominated Cuba and had bought Alaska (1867), among other similar actions.
How did the United States manage to get the canal? Very briefly. First, the Roosevelt administration, with the help of JP Morgan, bought the canal concession from the French company "Compagnie universelle du canal interocéanique" for 60% less than its value. Since 1880, the company had been building complex locks to compensate for the difference in level between the two oceans. In addition to having corruption problems, the "Compagnie" was the target of international press operations that damaged its image and brought it to the brink of bankruptcy.
The next step was to divide Colombia. Washington instigated a section of the Panamanian bourgeoisie to become independent with the promise that, without Bogotá, they would do big business. When the conspiracy succeeded and "independence" was declared on November 3, 1903, several American warships were already stationed off the Panamanian coast. Coincidentally or not, the cable that made communication between the province of Panama and Bogotá possible was damaged. The Colombian government only reacted on the 6th, but the United States and France, at the speed of light, had already recognized the new nation.
The Canal Zone, opened in 1914, was crucial for the United States throughout the 20th century. Among many other uses, it was a strategic point during the two world wars and a training site for invasions such as Vietnam. As far as our region is concerned, it was the headquarters of the Pentagon's Southern Command and the sinister School of the Americas, a training center for Latin American military personnel and dictators who violated human rights and ravaged our countries during the last century.
The Panamanian people have tried many times to regain sovereignty over the canal. On January 9, 1964 — since then Martyrs' Day — the Southern Command unleashed a ferocious massacre against students who were trying to raise the Panamanian flag alongside the American one on the canal. A decade later, Democratic President James Carter signed with his Panamanian counterpart, General Omar Torrijos, the Neutrality Treaty (1977) by which "only the Republic of Panama will manage the canal and maintain defense sites and military installations within its national territory" after December 31, 1999.
All the presidents who followed Carter (Ronald Reagan, George Bush I and Bill Clinton) sought shortcuts to avoid complying with the agreement. But in 1999 it was fulfilled. Today Trump wants military force to prevail over the law. The Trumpist slogan - some say it was already used by Reagan - is "achieving peace through force." Panama is his first test laboratory.
China and the multipolar world are coming
Accepting that Trump's speeches mix deliberately contradictory concepts, lies, unverifiable references, defamations, persecutory phrases and half-truths will help decode some of the lines of action of the new Republican government.
The case of the Panama Canal is a good example. An unverifiable reference with shades of defamation and persecutory echoes was heard from Marco Rubio when he said that China wanted the bioceanic passage for "dual use: they look like civilians, but they can be converted into military installations." Or when Trump said that American ships are charged more than Chinese ones. Or when the American Senate accused Panama of "exploiting a strategic route" (!!). Proof that the American president is lying is his statement, on the very day of his inauguration, that "the Panamanians have totally violated the spirit of the treaty."
The reality is that the American power sector that Trump refers to is fully aware of the decline of the great power, in a world that is undergoing a change of hegemony and system, and has decided to take drastic measures to avoid the fall. Trump has admitted this several times in his speech. "A wave of change is sweeping through the country. From now on, the decline of the United States is over," he said on January 20.
The complete change of tactics that the current president faces involves banishing the absurd Democratic illusion of inflicting a definitive defeat on Russia or weakening China by igniting a conflict through Taiwan. Trump and his transactional idiosyncrasy want to reverse the progressive marginalization of the United States in Eurasia; compete with the new commercial corridors of the Arctic —and benefit from its natural resources—; slow down de-dollarization as much as possible —and deal with the 35 trillion dollars of debt recognized by the Treasury last year— and regain the lead in the technological race, among other very tough challenges.
In this context, maintaining a tight grip on Latin America – its zone of influence, its backyard, already visited by Russia and China – appears to be a vital necessity. It will be done with Hollywood narratives, with a lack of ethics and with military force. The deportations of the week are a clear example.
As in Argentina, the academic and press media are trying to establish the idea that looting, deportations or violence are less of a crime if they are "announced in advance." This is not the case. The one who gives notice may not be a traitor, but he is still a criminal - and a confessed one at that.
El Salvador to Receive U.S. Dangerous Criminals and Deported Migrants
Inside a Salvadoran prison. X/ @giu33liana
February 4, 2025 Hour: 8:11 am
President Bukele even offered to house criminals with legal residency in the United States.
On Monday, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele agreed to allow the United States to deport undocumented migrants who commit serious crimes to his country and also offered his prisons to house dangerous U.S. criminals currently incarcerated.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made this announcement after a three-hour meeting with Bukele at the Salvadoran president’s estate on Lake Coatepeque.
During the meeting, they agreed that El Salvador would accept “the deportation of illegal foreigners in the United States who are criminals of any nationality, whether they belong to MS-13 or Tren de Aragua, and house them in its prisons.”
However, Rubio also surprised many by explaining that Bukele even offered to “house dangerous U.S. criminals” in his country’s prisons, including those who are U.S. citizens as well as those with legal residency in the United States.
“No country has ever made an offer of friendship like this,” Rubio stated at a press conference at the hotel in the Salvadoran capital where he is staying.
Rubio discussed this matter with U.S. President Donald Trump and said that Bukele’s offer is “just a sign of what an incredible friend he is to the United States.”
During his meeting with Rubio, Bukele himself had previously hinted that they would finalize a “historic” migration agreement between the United States and El Salvador.
President Mulino Says Panama’s Sovereignty Is Not in Question After Meeting With Rubio, His Actions Point In Opposite Direction
February 3, 2025
Panamanian president José Raúl Mulino speaks at a press conference after meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio this Sunday in Panama City (Panama). Photo: EFE/Gabriel Rodríguez.
Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino stated that in the meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, he conveyed that “the sovereignty of Panama is not in question,” and that Panama’s sovereignty over the world’s second busiest waterway is not up for discussion. Yet, contradictorily, he stated that he would review agreements involving China and Chinese businesses, and announced further cooperation with the US on migration.
In this regard, Mulino said that the ports at the entrances to the canal, both on the Atlantic and the Pacific sides, do raise concerns for the United States, as two of them are operated by a company headquartered in Hong Kong, based on agreements signed in 1997. “So far I have no evidence to give a further opinion,” he said, adding that his government is awaiting the results of an audit that is underway on those ports, after which it will be possible to determine “how much our national interest is or is not affected by that concession.”
These statements were given by the Panamanian president in a press conference on Sunday, February 2, following the meeting with Rubio, which took place amid threats from US President Donald Trump to regain US control of the Panama Canal in retaliation for alleged “Chinese control” over it.
“There is no doubt that the canal is operated by our country and that will continue to be the case,” Mulino declared, adding that he does not see a “real threat” of the United States using military force to take control of the canal.
“I do not feel that there is any real threat at this moment against the treaty, its validity, and much less of military force being used to seize the Canal,” Mulino said.
“Can people remain calm?” journalists then asked him. “I would say yes,” he answered.
Mulino said that the meeting with Rubio “was highly respectful and cordial,” and added that a “path was opened for the construction of a new stage in the relationship” between the two countries.
“I did not feel at all any climate of controversy or disrespect; I felt a very proactive atmosphere,” he claimed.
According to the president, it is up to the authorities of the Panama Canal, due to the autonomy that they have by constitutional mandate, and not to his government, “to clarify all doubts” that the Trump administration has about the administration of the waterway.
However, a controversial statement by the Panamanian president raised concerns about the sovereignty of the nation and its government. Mulino said that Panama’s memorandum of agreement with China as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, under which the Asian country made broad investments in Panama during previous administrations, will not be renewed. “We will study the possibility of terminating it early,” Murino said.
Trump’s attempts to seize the canal and Rubio’s visit sparked protests from Panamanian social movements. Marches and demonstrations have been going on in the country since January 30 in defense of national sovereignty and against what many call Trump’s Monroe Doctrine 2.0. On Monday, February 3, Kawsachun News reported on complaints about student protesters being detained, along with raids on homes.
Meanwhile, Rubio continues his Central America tour, visiting El Salvador on Monday, and then continuing to Costa Rica and Guatemala. The tour will conclude on February 6 in the Dominican Republic.
Trump Flagrantly Violates the OAS Charter
Posted by Internationalist 360° on February 1, 2025
Reason2Resist with Dimitri Lascaris
Trump’s second administration is only a few days old, but within that brief period of time, Trump has engaged in broad-ranging aggressions against Latin American states.
Trump has used threats of massive tariffs to deport hundreds of migrants to Mexico, Colombia and other Latin American states. With no evidence that Cuba sponsors terrorism, he has put Cuba back on the U.S. list of state-sponsors of terrorism. Trump has also designated drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, but Trump’s most provocative move could well be his threat to seize the Panama Canal.
In effect, Trump has launched a frontal assault on the Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS), which declares that “No State may use or encourage the use of coercive measures of an economic or political character in order to force the sovereign will of another State and obtain from it advantages of any kind.”
On January 30, 2025, Dimitri Lascaris discussed these developments with José Luis Granados Ceja. José Luis is a journalist and political analyst based in Mexico City. He’s a staff writer with Venezuela Analysis, covering regional and international issues, and writes a monthly opinion column for the Mexico Solidarity Project. José Luis is also the co-host of the Soberanía podcast.
“He is declaring war on the Panamanian people”: unions respond to Rubio’s visit
Marco Rubio visits Panama to impose US interests on President Mulino, while organized workers fight for self-determination and sovereignty.
February 04, 2025 by Pablo Meriguet
Panamanian workers take the streets during Marco Rubio's visit with President Mulino. Photo: SUNTRACS
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to Panama on February 1, to personally “negotiate” with Panamanian President José Mulino on the impositions that the Trump administration is demanding from the Central American country.
It seems that the main objective of Rubio’s visit was to drastically limit the agreements that Panamanian authorities reached with Chinese authorities in 2017 to improve trade with Chinese companies.
Rubio has said that China’s influence in Panama is unacceptable and that if this does not change, the United States “will take the necessary measures to protect its rights.”
According to the Trump administration, Panama has violated the terms of the treaty that returned the canal to the Central American state in 1999. Recently, Trump made the claim that the canal is being administered by China. This has been flatly denied by Panamanian authorities.
US strategic interests infringe on Panamanian sovereignty
For the time being, it seems that Rubio’s pressure had an effect.
After a meeting lasting a little over an hour on Sunday, February 2, Panamanian authorities announced that the 2017 agreements with China would not be renewed.
In addition, a series of arrangements were reached that social movements argue will jeopardize Panamanian sovereignty:
The United States will further supervise the Darién, a jungle area through which thousands of migrants from South America and the world pass every month on their journey to the United States.
The US is exploring the establishment of a military airstrip in the Darién to “improve” its massive deportation project. This in effect would serve as a US military base.
Mulino will provide Panamanian intelligence on money laundering to US authorities.
Mulino promised to reconsider the concession of two Panamanian ports to a Hong Kong-based company.
Mulino agreed to the creation of a technical commission to evaluate the current status of the Panama Canal.
The Panama Canal Authority informed the US Secretary of State that it would work with the US Navy to “optimize the priority transit of its vessels through the Panama Canal.”
These agreements demonstrate a significant increase in US influence in Panama’s national matters. However, despite Washington’s satisfaction with the meeting, not everyone was excited about Rubio’s visit.
Panamanian workers resist US violations of sovereignty
Days before Rubio’s visit, students from the state university clashed with the police during a protest against the Secretary of State’s trip to Panama.
On the day of the visit, several popular and union groups called for a “patriotic day” to oppose the expansionist intentions of the United States and the surrendering attitude of the Mulino government. Slogans such as “One territory, one flag,” “This country is not for sale,” and “Panama is not for sale,” were shouted throughout the demonstrators’ march. Several protesters burned images of Trump and Rubio.
Workers organized with SUNTRACS demonstrate against US interference in Panamanian national affairs. Photo: SUNTRACS
One of the most important actors in the protests against Rubio’s visit was SUNTRACS (Unified National Union of Workers of the Construction and Similar Industries), an organization with more than 40,000 members.
Its leader, Saúl Méndez, explained that despite President Mulino’s seemingly sovereign statements, his government has demonstrated a submissive stance toward US interests and has not disclosed everything discussed in the meeting:
“A refugee concentration camp is going to be created in the Darién. It is a [covert] gringo military base where US warplanes can land…to attack other Latin American peoples.”
Méndez called on “the Panamanian people to pay attention to what the government and the United States are discussing,” especially what the Trump administration announces in the coming days, as Panamanian authorities cannot be expected to be transparent concerning bilateral agreements.
Panamanians demonstrate against US interference in Panamanian national affairs. Photo: SUNTRACS
“We will react to this situation and we repudiate Rubio’s presence in Panama,” said Méndez, because for the Secretary of State, “the sovereignty and self-determination of the Panamanian people do not matter.” He has issued an “ultimatum,” to make it clear that the Canal is a priority of the United States.
“He is declaring war on the Panamanian people,” Méndez asserted.
Rubio’s tour continues
It is no coincidence that the first trip abroad for the new top US representative is to Latin America, and specifically to Panama, a country that has always served as a significant economic and military stronghold for the United States. Panama has a special geostrategic position because it is a connection point between South and Central America and it contains the coveted canal, which connects the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. 3% of world trade transits through this channel.
Trump has repeatedly stated his opposition to the taxes that US ships must pay when transiting through Panama. He has even gone as far as threatening to “take back control of the Canal.” This refers to the period during the 20th century, when the United States controlled the Canal. In 1977, the US was forced to cede control over the Canal in the Torrijos-Carter agreements, after a long struggle for Panama’s sovereignty carried out by leftist political and popular organizations.
Symbolic act of rejection against Marco Rubio’s visit to Panama. Photo: SUNTRACS
For now, despite Mulino’s assurances that “The Canal will not be negotiated,” it seems that the Panamanian government will not mount greater resistance to the geopolitical ambitions of the Trump administration. Instead, the popular trade unions–who strongly condemned Rubio’s visit–have vowed to continue their fight for sovereignty and self-determination of the Panamanian people.
Meanwhile, Rubio will continue his first international tour, with planned visits to El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic.
Milei’s crypto scandal sparks calls for his impeachment
The Argentine President promoted a cryptocurrency that promptly collapsed after its price increased. The opposition is demanding impeachment proceedings against the president. More than 117 complaints regarding $LIBRA have been filed in the Argentine courts.
February 18, 2025 by Pablo Meriguet
Argentine President Javier Milei with tech and crypto trader Hayden Mark Davis who led the launch of $LIBRA. Photo: Javier Milei / X
Last Friday, in yet another bizarre and possibly illegal move, Argentine President Javier Milei promoted a new cryptocurrency called $LIBRA on his X account (he has since deleted the post). The cryptocurrency skyrocketed and promptly collapsed, leaving the thousands of people who bought $LIBRA with almost nothing. The post now has him in hot water, and the libertarian president faces diverse accusations from political opponents and angry citizens of promoting a pyramid scheme, indulging in insider trading, and committing fraud. Calls for his impeachment grow by the day, with many indicating that the scandal began far earlier than his post last week.
$LIBRA
On Friday, February 14, the President wrote on X, “Liberal Argentina grows!!!! This private project will be dedicated to incentivizing the growth of the Argentine economy and funding small Argentine companies and ventures. The world wants to invest in Argentina. $LIBRA.”
The president’s message triggered an avalanche of over 40,000 purchases of $LIBRA resulting in a spike in value to USD 4 billion.
Despite the initial euphoria, a select group of digital wallets decided to withdraw more or less USD 100 million from the company, which caused panic and the collapse of the cryptocurrency, leaving thousands of enthusiastic buyers with their money practically gone.
Thousands of social media users quickly denounced the alleged scam promoted by none other than the President. According to these allegations, Milei carried out the famous “Pump and Dump,” which consists of artificially inflating the price of an asset (through his public influence) so that other beneficiaries would then sell their assets en masse and thus earn huge amounts of money.
Milei quickly deleted his message from X and published a new statement “A few hours ago I posted a tweet, like so many other infinite times, supporting an alleged private venture to which I have no connection whatsoever. I was not aware of the details of the project and after I became aware of it I decided not to continue disseminating it (that is why I have deleted the tweet).”
In response to the accusations of an alleged scam, Milei said: “To the filthy rats of the political caste who want to take advantage of this situation to harm, I want to say that every day confirms how lowly politicians are, and increases our conviction to kick their asses out.”
Freedom of speech or scam?
According to some legal experts, the Argentine President did not incur any criminal offense by promoting an asset. Rather, it should be proven whether there was bad faith in Milei’s message, computer fraud, abuse of authority, or whether the President benefited in any way from the variations in the $LIBRA exchange rate.
Attorney Jorge Grispo wrote that there are no elements to prove that Milei incurred in the crimes of economic benefit for this case, swindling, computer fraud, or abuse of authority. Milei, according to Grispo, had only exercised his right to freedom of expression and opinion: “To attempt to criminalize the opinion of a president is tantamount to restricting an essential right and sets a dangerous precedent for democracy. Under no circumstances can it be interpreted that the publication of a tweet constitutes a criminal offense.”
However, in the last hours, more than 100 criminal complaints have been lodged in the Argentine judicial system regarding the case of the cryptocurrency promoted by Milei. The Argentine justice system will now have to determine whether President Milei had criminal responsibility in a case that has left thousands of families without savings.
The opposition calls for impeachment
For their part, several groups of the opposition have publicly stated that the $LIBRA case does constitute a criminal offense for which the right-wing libertarian president is responsible. The governor of the Buenos Aires Province Axel Kicillof said, “Javier Milei promoted and was part of a multi-million-dollar scam, by X…before the whole world. Those who enriched themselves in millions of dollars acted in combination with him, although he later said he had been duped… This is unprecedented. It is a typical pyramid scheme with cryptocurrencies and there are many, many people here and in other countries who were deceived.”
In addition to the criminal complaints, the Peronist-Kirchnerist opposition bloc Unión por la Patria has requested the initiation of an impeachment trial.
In an article published in Argmedios, Julián Pilatti echoed that Milei carried out a pyramid scheme. He pointed out that it has been proven that some members of his government had more than seven meetings with operators of the company that manages the cryptocurrency in question. In addition, on January 30, Milei met with US businessman Hayden Mark Davis, who had declared a few hours earlier that he was an advisor to Milei and worked alongside the president’s team on asset tokenization projects in Argentina. The main financier of $LIBRA, according to Davis, is Julian Peh, a Singapore-based businessman, who also met with Milei back in October 2024.
“While Milei already had ties with Novelli (a crypto “trader”) since 2020 and even went so far as to publicize some of his incursions into the crypto world, with Davis and Peh, he held meetings in the Casa Rosada and Olivos. With all these elements, it is difficult to consider that the head of state “was not aware” of the details of the launching of the $LIBRA coin,” Pilatti states.
Lawyer and political leader Juan Grabois agreed with this argument: “The most scandalous fact is that the project developer had met with Milei only a month ago. It was not a coincidence, it was not a confusion, it was not a mistake: it was premeditated. If government officials, friends, or frontmen participated in this looting, we are facing one of the greatest acts of corruption in Argentine history.”
A series of accusations against Milei for swindling
This is not the first time that Milei promoted businesses that soon collapsed and led to accusations against him. In 2021, Milei posted on Instagram “I had the pleasure of meeting the offices of CoinX World and their team. They are revolutionizing the way of investing to help Argentines escape inflation. From now on you can simulate your investment in pesos, dollars, or cryptocurrencies and make a profit. Write to them at CoinX World on my behalf so they can advise you as best they can.”
The case was denounced in 2022 before the National Securities Commission due to the people who blindly trusted the word of the then-congressman.
In an interview with Radio Con Vos after the collapse of CoinX, Javier Milei acknowledged that he received money in exchange for promoting the company, which was later denounced as a possible pyramid scheme. However, Milei maintained that he was not responsible for any scam since all he had issued was an “opinion… [about a] well-structured business.”
For now, it remains to be seen which path the Argentine justice system will take: that of acquitting Milei of the crimes of which he is accused or of conviction. If the allegations are true, it would constitute one of the most shameful events in the economic and political history of the South American country.
Cryptogate: Milei Justifies His Role in Multimillion-Dollar Scam with an Arranged TV Interview
February 19, 2025
Milei shakes hands with an acquaintance. Photo: Chequeado.
Argentine President Javier Milei faces a political and judicial storm after the resounding fall of the cryptocurrency $Libra, which he actively promoted on his social media networks and that today is facing 112 criminal complaints for widespread fraud. In an interview with Jonatan Viale on TN, the president denied responsibility, although a leaked recording from the channel revealed a previous “arrangement” regarding the questions that addressed the case and the tone of the TN interview.
Milei, questioned about his connection to the $Libra project —which multiplied its value before collapsing, affecting 40,000 investors—tried to distance himself from the crisis. “I didn’t promote it, I spread it,” he said.
His central argument was that those affected acted voluntarily, like “someone who goes to a casino.”
“Everyone was aware of the risks,” said Milei. “It is a problem between private parties; the state plays no role,” he added, dismissing the possibility that his public support for the scheme, as president of the country, may have influenced investor confidence.
This stance contrasts with the evidence that clearly shows how Milei himself publicized $Libra on June 14 on his networks, tagging its creators and celebrating the initiative as part of his vision of turning Argentina into a “technological hub.”
“I am a fanatical techno-optimist,” he stated, comparing his support for the project with inaugurating an industrial plant: “Are you responsible for the operation of the plant afterwards?”
The shadow of the «arrangement» on TN
The condescending tone of the interview on TN did not go unnoticed. The leaked video makes it clear that there would be a prior agreement to modulate questions and approach, avoiding uncomfortable pressures on the president. Unsurprisingly, this revelation aggravated the criticism of Milei, who stands accused of illicit association, fraud, and violation of the Public Ethics Law.
In the interview that was published hours before, the president commented on an investigation by the Anti-Corruption Office: “that they investigate us all, including me? That has never happened in Argentina.” He assured that he had not received money for promoting $Libra and, in his defense, quoted a businessman named “Davis” who is linked to the project: “Davis says that I did not take anything.”
The opposition mobilizes
Unión por la Patria is encouraging the state to mount a political trial of Milei for “poor performance,” while the Civic Coalition and radical sectors are demanding a parliamentary investigation. The Left Front is demanding that Milei provide explanations on national television. In contrast, the PRO (the Republican Proposal) defends him.
The judicial complaints, placed before Judge Servini, detail that Milei violated his duties as a public official by using his public image to endorse a project without regulation. The plaintiffs —among them experts in law and technology— emphasize that his presidential support provided false legitimacy to $Libra, facilitating the scam.
While Milei insists that his “passion for technology” is to blame for his enthusiasm for the crypto project, the victims demand answers. Investors told the media that they trusted the president: “If the president supported him, I thought it was safe,” said one. The Prosecutor’s Office must determine whether his public enthusiasm crossed the line into complicity.
From the "Viva la Libertad Project" to "Cryptogate" A journey through Javier Milei's crypto scam
18 Feb 2025 , 4:35 pm .
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Milei once again runs a scam in the world of cryptocurrencies (Photo: Archive)
The recent financial scandal surrounding the cryptocurrency $ LIBRA has put Argentine President Javier Milei at the center of an unprecedented scandal in Argentina, Latin America, and perhaps the world . His initial endorsement of this digital asset , followed by a sudden distancing, has unleashed an avalanche of criticism and complaints .
Now, from different financial and political sectors, they have described the matter as a fraudulent scheme of market manipulation. Senator for the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR), Martín Lousteau, pointed out that "this is designed as a scam and President Milei is part of it. It is the second time that, as an official, [Milei] advertises assets from the crypto world that end up being a scam."
It is recalled that in 2021, when the libertarian leader was a deputy, he recommended CoinX , an investment platform that was later investigated for fraud. The National Securities Commission (CNV) banned its operations after determining that it was not authorized to offer investments. In 2023, the company faced formal complaints for fraud and police raids.
The premeditated rise and fall
On February 14, 2025, Milei used her X account to promote a project called "Viva la Libertad Project" , in which she claimed that investments in cryptocurrencies would serve to "fund small businesses" . In other words, it was presented as a mechanism to raise financial resources to boost operations, projects or the expansion of businesses.
The cryptocurrency $LIBRA, linked to this project and backed by Milei's message about the free market and economic decentralization, experienced a vertiginous increase in its value, reaching $4,978 per unit in a matter of hours.
But the bubble soon burst. Suddenly , the Argentine president deleted his post without giving any explanation, which triggered panic among investors and caused the value of the currency in question to plummet , falling below one dollar and, from then on, thousands of investors saw their money disappear in a matter of seconds.
Cryptoasset specialists have identified this episode as a "rug pull ," a fraudulent scheme in which the creators and promoters of an asset artificially inflate its value and then sell their stakes and abandon the project before it collapses, thereby ensuring a fraudulent extraction of money.
Luis Eduardo Daza , a financial intelligence consultant, confirms what happened and explains that this "happens with people who influence the market. This crypto is a project and cannot be classified as viable because it does not have specific support and is based more on trust. The president makes some comments promoting it and causes it to increase in value. The same owners take advantage of the rise and investors keep the losses."
The figures reflect the magnitude of the scam: just nine people managed to capture nearly $87 million , while more than 44,000 investors were caught in the fall.
This shameful scandal has opened an investigation into Milei's role in such a scheme since his direct promotion was the trigger for the artificial boom for massive dispossession.
The scam was repeated within hours
When it seemed that the controversy had exhausted its surprises, Milei reignited the scandal . On February 17, the Argentine president shared on X a message from economist Darío Epstein , in which the "complex steps" to acquire $LIBRA in its first hours of trading were detailed , in a forced attempt to cover up the overflow of the "cryptogate".
Again, other users interpreted the publication as a new endorsement of the digital asset, which unleashed a wave of instant purchases whose end is known: the price of $LIBRA, which had been in free fall, made an unexpected jump from 38 to 77 cents , only to collapse again minutes later.
Epstein ’s post broke down five steps required to acquire $LIBRA, which included creating a digital wallet and trading on a decentralized exchange in less than two hours.
But the market does not work with nuances. For investors, any gesture by Milei on the subject carried weight and his publication was enough to generate a new express bubble that, as expected, lost all its value in minutes , again.
The loss records were also updated, now it is about more than 74 thousand investors who lost a total of 286 million dollars . On the other hand, reports on the flow of money in the blockchain revealed that a few privileged players made extraordinary profits.
The most successful account pocketed $8.5 million in less than three hours, while the total haul for those who gained access with privileged information is estimated to exceed $100 million.
The interview: clarifies and darkens
Javier Milei's recent interview with Argentina's TN news channel has sparked a wave of questions and ridicule due to the divergence between the version broadcast on television and the original recording posted on YouTube.
The raw material, later released on the platform, showed how journalist Jonatan Viale questioned Milei about his role in promoting $LIBRA, pointing out the difficulty of dissociating his presidential investiture from the dissemination of a financial asset .
At a critical moment in the interview , when the State's involvement in the judicial investigation into the case was being addressed, and Milei insisted that she had spread the word "as a citizen," presidential advisor Santiago Caputo burst onto the set to stop the line of questioning and suggest repeating the president's response .
During the interview, Milei adopted a defensive stance, insisting that her intention in mentioning $LIBRA on the social network was simply to "spread" a project she considered innovative, and not a promotion with personal interests.
However, this response did not address the central question of the debate: to what extent can a head of state absolve himself of the political and ethical responsibility of promoting a financial asset without regulatory guarantees?
The journalist also presented data on the losses of investors who dared to bet on Milei's project and also pointed out the profits of a few, to which Milei responded that apparently the majority of those affected were not Argentines: "Those affected were not 40 thousand, but barely 5 thousand, and that, in addition, they were not Argentines, but international financial operators who knew perfectly well the risk they were running. It's like someone playing Russian roulette and gets hit by the bullet," he said, minimizing the impact.
The lack of details about the government's ties to cryptocurrency promoters, the intervention of its team of advisors in the interview and the omission of key information have weakened confidence in the administration's transparency.
The Argentine president has described the controversy as an attempt by the "caste" to discredit his administration, suggesting that the pressure on the case responds more to political interests than to a legitimate concern for financial regulation.
In this way, the current episode , including the one with CoinX, only confirms a pattern of conduct in which Milei uses her image and influence to promote speculative schemes that end up harming those who participate.
Furthermore, the rise of cryptocurrencies in Argentina responds to a broader phenomenon of distrust towards traditional banking institutions in a context of chronic economic crisis and high inflation.
However , the lack of regulation has allowed figures such as the Argentine president to take advantage of this situation, promoting fraudulent digital assets in a context of rampant speculation.
The question that remains is: what consequences will this scandal have for Milei?
To date, more than 100 complaints have been filed against Milei. The Judiciary of the Nation has opened a file to evaluate whether there are grounds to initiate a criminal investigation against the president and other possible suspects, however this approach implies a sign of complicity.
The accusations include fraud, negotiations incompatible with public office, violation of Public Ethics and illicit association. The first complaint was filed by former deputy Claudio Lozano , activist María Eva Koutsovitis and lawyers from the Observatory of the Right to the City. The complainants maintain that Milei promoted the "Viva La Libertad Project" and the operation with the token, without the proper support of the National Securities Commission, which would have generated a scenario of lack of protection for investors.
Thus, the $LIBRA scandal is not just another chapter of financial fraud within the crypto world, but the materialization of an ideology that, in its crudest (libertarian) version, reduces the economy to the law of the strongest. Under the banner of the supposed absolute freedom of the market, without regulations or controls, what really emerges is a system where large financial predators swallow small investors with total impunity.
Milei's crypto scam exposes his libertarian dogma: abuse of power is justified as "market risk" and fraud as a "demand-side correction." The victims of this fraud, lacking regulations to defend them, are forced to settle for the whip of the invisible hand of the market and its "natural" laws.
Argentina: Short Term Stability, Long Term Crash and the Oligarchy Wins Again
Argentinian Oligarchs Doing What They Have Always Done: Rinse & Repeat
Roger Boyd
Feb 23, 2025
As Argentina has always been, the vassal landowning, mining and financial oligarchy conspire with foreign capital to loot the country, then create a crisis where all the costs are dumped on the people. Then rinse and repeat. Menem in the 1990s was the looting, 1998-2002 was the crisis and 2003 to 2015 was the recovery. 2015-2019 was the setup (Macri taking on huge amounts of IMF debt to facilitate ruling class capital flight), 2019-2023 was the weak progressive response, and 2023 to now is the looting. As it has always been …
The US oligarchy has been able to spend five decades looting without a culminating crisis (there have been repeated rescues from crises from the 1980s onwards) because of the previous strength of the US economy, its position as a dominant global power, and the US$’s role as the reserve currency. We are getting closer and closer to the day when the US will become much more like Argentina.
Javier Milei is playing the same game as Carlos Menem did in the 1990s, a completely unsustainable fixed exchange rate kept afloat by asset sales to foreign currency holders and and the bribing of US$ depositors to maintain foreign exchange reserves while attempting to dollarise the economy (surrendering national financial management to the Gringo Fed).
Milei started by devaluing the Argentinian currency by 54% on December 12th 2023, with a 2% devaluation each month since then. At the same time he slashed state spending to produce a small primary surplus of 1% of GDP vs. the very small primary deficits of less than 1% of GDP in previous years; no real achievement as spending cuts were nearly offset by a collapse in revenues due to a crashing economy. The collapse in the economy was ameliorated by an end to the very bad harvests that have plagued the heavy agricultural exporters recently. In addition, the unconventional oil and gas fields in the Vaca Muerta geologic formation started to deliver natural gas through the Nestor Kirchner pipeline to Buenos Aires; started under the presidency of the Kirchners. This both reduces imports, and will drive exports as the pipeline is extended into Brazil. Overall the GDP contraction was 3.8% in 2024. At the same time, the social state has been gutted as well as many labour protections; a neoliberal’s wet dream. The volume of imports collapsed at a rate of around 25%. What remains of the manufacturing sector was also damaged, as industrial production fell 9.4%. Underlining the scale of the economic disruption was the more than 25% fall in construction activity.
Mauricio Macri was the right-wing president who came to power in December 2015 when the government debt to GDP ratio was only 52.5%. By the time he left in 2019, that ratio was 90% after he intentionally foisted an unneeded massive IMF loan on the country which was used to fund oligarch capital flight after he floated the currency and removed capital controls. The end result was an inevitable currency depreciation and reinstatement of capital controls. The fundamental issue with the following progressive Fernandez administration is that it would not default on what was so obviously a corrupt loan (and carried out against the IMFs own rules). Instead he worked to pay down the debt while the economy still grew, which peaked at over 100% of GDP in 2020 before falling to 76% of GDP in 2022 and then rising in 2023 due to an economic contraction caused by the effects of anti-Russia sanctions, higher US$ interest rates, and a major drought that hit agricultural production. In this way the Macri hooligan was allowed to make way for the Milei destroyer, after 15 years of progressive government that had been undoing the disaster created by Menem in the 1990s.
Able to take advantage of the darkness before the light of recovering agri-business production (post drought) and the shale oil and gas revolution. Milei was a destroyer carefully groomed by foreign capital and a media-owning Argentinian oligarch, and placed in power within the window of opportunity; just like Hitler was in 1933. Even just a year later, and the opportunity may have been gone. Let us remember that Milei may be president, but he does not have a big following in the legislature. But amazingly he has been able to drive his policies through, showing that the Argentinian oligarchy directed their political courtier minions to align with Milei. Just in the same way they managed to direct Kirchner’s Vice President Julio Cobos to break a tie in the legislature in 2008, voting against his own government, to stop the taxes on the agri-business oligarchs required to break their hold on the country. He had been a member of the right-wing RCU party before joining Kirchner to become VP upon which he had been expelled by the RCU. After his traitorousness, he was welcomed back to the RCU after a job well done for his real bosses. Very much like the traitorous Lenin Moreno who set back the Ecuadorian majority by at least a decade after he was elected president in 2017 and immediately turned his back on his electoral platform and the gains made under his erstwhile mentor and colleague Correa; paving the way for the chaotic, violent narco-state that Ecuador has now become.
Milei’s December 2023 massive currency devaluation ballooned the debt in nominal GDP terms, as so much of it is denominated in the US$. With high domestic inflation through 2024 not reflected in a falling exchange rate, the US$ based debt then fell back as a share of nominal GDP. In the year since December 2023, domestic Argentinian inflation ran at a rate of 117.8%, with December monthly inflation still running at 2.7% (higher than the monthly exchange rate depreciation). At the end of 2024, with the domestic inflation as reported by the government of 117.8%, the real value of the Argentinian currency compared to prior to the 54% depreciation (and monthly 2% depreciations) was 78.63%. In real terms the currency has still depreciated by 21.37%, against the US$. But the US$ was at 103.86 on the ICE Futures DXY index on December 12th 2023 and rose to 106.95 a year later, an appreciation of 3%; so the actual undervaluation against a basket of currencies is only 19%. There is also the question of whether or not domestic inflation is being underreported, one that is backed up somewhat by US$ prices and the lines of Argentinians at the Chilean border to buy cheaper in that country. If that is true then all of the devaluations may have been undone by domestic inflation already. It is also given credence by the price shocks experienced by tourists, with Argentina now the most expensive South American country when measured in the US$. If so, real Argentinian wages have fallen much more than officially stated in real terms, GDP growth is significantly overstated, and the currency is now more overvalued than before December 2023. In addition, the economist Eduardo Garzon Espinoza argues that other statistical games have been played to inflate the economic output numbers, with only 30% of the economy (primary industries and finance) having recovered while the rest of the economy is still in decline (including manufacturing). Underlining the continuing move toward a primary-product and finance focused low wage economy that is reliant upon imports for manufactured goods; deindustrialization on steroids.
The actual US$ external debt was US$282.8 billion in September 2024, as against the US$266 billion in 2023; i.e. Milei has increased the amount of US$ external debt that has to be serviced through export earnings and capital inflows. In 2023 Argentina exported US$73.7 billion and had a trade deficit of US$6.9 billion; during a period of significant drought that affected agricultural exports. In 2024 imports collapsed to US$60.8 billion producing a trade surplus of US$18.9 billion as exports were helped by the recovery in the agricultural sector and the increased domestic oil and gas production. The Central Bank has now reduced the monthly currency depreciation level against the US$ to 1%, while inflation in January was 2.2% and expected to be 23.2% in 2025 as a whole (using the official inflation numbers). This will result in much of the remaining official undervaluation of the Argentinian currency being reversed, or if the Argentine government is lying about inflation an even more overvalued currency.
Argentina’s main exports are soybean meal, corn, soybean oil, wheat, oil and gas, soybeans, meat, other agricultural products, and metals. About 9% of exports are vehicles. The country is fundamentally a raw materials exporter and manufactured goods importer, with its biggest trading partners being Brazil and China, followed by the US, Chile, Germany and Paraguay. It has a fundamental mismatch between its export earnings and its US$ debt and exchange rate linkage to the US$. There will be no rerun of the recovery in agricultural exports, and as the real value of the currency continues to appreciate exports may be negatively affected. In addition, any economic recovery will rapidly suck in imports as domestic demand recovers from very depressed levels. The removal of currency controls and the floating of the exchange rate that has been announced for 2025 looks like a pipe dream unless the external US$ debt is significantly reduced. The only other option would be a renewed significant domestic deflation to drive down real wages, further impoverishing the general population; which could only be done with much increased autocracy and state repression. A stop gap is the very high interest rates which are 29% and offer a high US$ yield even after the 1% a month depreciation against the dollar is taken into account. While the Argentine state is slashing social spending it is providing extremely high investment returns, net of the monthly devaluations, for foreign and local investors; an organized looting. This produces short-term capital flows which would rapidly exit as a move to a floating exchange rate was threatened. Also, a tax amnesty has brought US$20 billion into the country; rewarding oligarch tax dodging.
Milei has done the easy bit, aided by a recovery in the agricultural sector with related exports helped by a drought in major growing areas of Brazil (which that country is now recovering from), increasing domestic oil and gas output, and 5% GDP growth in 2024 in China, 3% in Brazil, 2.8% in the US and 2.2% in Chile; and cuts to US$ interest rates in 2024. This year and next year will be the much harder bit. The US and the domestic oligarchs have regularly utilized foreign debt as a way of extracting wealth from Argentina and disciplining its population through austerity. Each time this fails, the oligarchs are allowed to front run the inevitable currency collapse; rinse and repeat. When will be the next inevitable collapse? Anything that slows down the global economy, such as Trump’s threatened tariffs, or a reduction in the massive US government deficits, would make life much harder for Milei. Any further increase in the value of the dollar, perhaps driven by Trump’s tariffs that make it harder for other countries to earn dollars, would also make things harder for Milei. The 25% US tariffs on steel and aluminum imports will also have a very negative effect on the US$600 million of Argentine steel and aluminum exports to the US. A year from now the shine may very well be off Milei. Perhaps once more we will hear the sound of pots and pans being beaten in the streets of Argentina.
In December 2024, Argentina’s foreign exchange reserves were US$24.3 billion and a US$4.3 billion payment to creditors was made in January 2025, with another equal amount due in July 2025. A large amount of these reserves are due to a swap agreement with China worth US$18.3 billion and US$4.5 billion in gold; net reserves are most probably negative. Argentina is surviving on the return of oligarch tax dodging monies, hot money flows, the Chinese swap agreement and FX earnings from the 0.6% of GDP current account surplus that could quickly disappear. Notably the Argentine trade balance with Brazil swung from a surplus in December to a deficit in January, with Argentinian exports falling significantly and Brazilian exports rising a small amount. Looks like that current account surplus will be gone pretty quickly! The reality is that more IMF debt will have to arranged to bolster the FX reserves; more debt to pay for operating needs is never a good arrangement and it will most probably come with IMF conditions of greater domestic deflation.
The real success of Milei’s government may be a social and economic revolution that crushes the Argentinian progressive middle class and turns the country into one of even more extreme wealth based on the colossal agricultural estates, extractive industries, finance, media, state corruption and general rentiership. With very little domestic industry, and the mass of the population living on meagre and declining wages, with the great social institutions such as universities greatly diminished.
An extremist version of the future of so many of the Western nations, especially the traditionally Anglo-Saxon ones. As Pryluka notes:
After a year in government, it seems rather than simply trying to follow in the footsteps of the US or Europe, Milei is interested in transforming Argentina into something else. A country with a long tradition of strong middle classes, limited inequality, and the provision of basic public services by welfarist policies, Argentina is now facing the possibility of losing the already damaged institutions that underpin the country’s success vis-à-vis other Latin American economies during most of the twentieth century. The dismantling of the welfare state, the attempts to promote tax benefits for the rich, and the complete deregulation of the economy risk turning Argentina into a country where economic growth is guaranteed by low salaries and a total lack of regulation over foreign companies. The combination of such a model with t
A Trumpian and Muskian fever dream, no wonder they are so happy with a Milei that has worked so hard to gain the good graces of the US and its Zionist genocidal vassal. This has not stopped Trump imposing tariffs on the country though, nor the US imperial judiciary from rewarding oligarch debt vulture funds that bought up Argentine debt many years ago at distressed levels and now want the face value paid to them. Milei has now proposed the withdrawal of Argentina from the South American Mercosur trade bloc in exchange for a free trade agreement with the US; something that would severely damage South American economies (including Argentina’s) and their cohesion in the face of a new US drive to once again dominate its “backyard”. The Mercosur, of Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay (with associate members of Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Panama, Peru and Suriname), may very well fall apart if Argentina leaves. Milei’s utter vassal kowtowing knows no bounds, no matter what the cost to the Argentine people. With the neoliberal extremist German AfD under its co-leader Weidel shifting more in favour of the US recently, funded by the German son of a Nazi banker (as well as those hiding behind him), it is becoming more and more like a less entertaining version of Milei’s movement. Being readied for its own moment of opportunity, its own 1933.
Milei is delivering Argentina to the national vassal oligarchy and their foreign bosses, back to the future of an increasingly deprived population within a primary-commodity and finance dominated economy ruled over by an extractive oligarchy and with much of its social institutions destroyed. All ready for the next inevitable financial crisis, capital flight, and oligarch enriching massive currency depreciation. Rinse and repeat as Argentina continues its journey from the relatively rich nation that it was at the start of the twentieth century to an utterly impoverished one in the present.
At the World Economic Forum (WEF) the global oligarchs and their courtiers welcomed and celebrated one of their most obedient and productive servants, where he told them exactly what they wanted to hear; Argentina will be fully opened up to their extractive profiteering. At the WEF, they call this “Freedom”. Here is his speech below, starting from 9 minutes 15 seconds onwards, a wonderful fellating of the oligarchs and a celebration of his fellow oligarch servants.
Telling them that the West represents “the pinnacle of human achievement” due to the joys of “Liberalism”; nothing about widespread colonialism, genocide, ethnic cleansing, racialized slavery, and mass slave labour and exploitation and the destruction of the advanced nations of India and China (who provided much of the technology used by the West in its rise from irrelevant obscurity). And nothing about two world wars started in the cradle of the West. Then he rails against the majority working to wrest a more equitable share of the wealth of the nation from the oligarchs; how dare the little people make demands upon the oligarch ubermensch! And those pointing out the need to limit exponential growth in the face of Anthropogenic Climate Change; how dare environmentalists seek to limit the unbridled profiteering of the ubermensch! And he rails against the “culture war” which was promulgated by the oligarchs themselves to blunt the class-driven politics and awakening of Occupy Wall Street; a target served up on a platter. There are also not really citizens, but only tax payers; insouciantly bringing in a property/income requirement for true citizenship into his discourse. What a bravura performance, he should have just stood there and repeatedly screamed “Heil Der Ubermenschen” combined with that Musk “controversial hand gesture”, with the below playing in the background and surrounded by Ayn Rand books.
In three years he will most probably be gone, or installed as yet another autocratic leader of Argentina; a country which so many Nazis escaped to after WW2. Not bad for a man utterly in debt to the creator of his public image and success, the Argentine-Armenian oligarch Eduardo Ernekian; the nation’s fourth richest man. Behind so many right-wing “fighters for freedom” and “populists” are the oligarchs who funded and nurtured their political rise; as with Weidel, Le Pen, Reagan and Trump, as in prior times with Mussolini and Hitler. Milei has also followed Trump in endorsing a shitcoin to cheat his supporters out of their money, now feigning ignorance of the details.
The same oligarchs are behind the curtain for many of the “progressive” leaders, such as the Getty family servant Newsom. But the latter’s usefulness is waning as “liberal democracy” is losing its power to deceive the majority into supporting the oligarchs. Milei is the future that the oligarchs have planned for the majority in the West and the Americas, the untermenschen.
The Trump 2.0 administration is looking to Latin America and the Caribbean as a place to recover from its geopolitical decline (Photo: Bangkok Post)
One month after taking office, Trump attacks Latin America
When Donald Trump announced that Marco Rubio would be his Secretary of State and Mauricio Claver-Carone the State Department's special envoy for Latin America, a couple of days after winning the 2024 election, it became very clear what his strategy would be for the world and, especially, for the aforementioned region. Hawks among hawks, both are children of Cuban emigrants and have always adhered to the most interventionist policies against the governments that the US establishment had in its sights. Within that spectrum are, of course, the Cuban revolution, the Bolivarian government, the Sandinista government, the Honduran government of Xiomara Castro and even, at one time, that of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
The Bible on which Rubio placed his left hand to take the oath of office was still warm, this January 21, when he said that his inaugural visit would be to Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.
The president himself had indicated what the central objective of his new period in the White House would be: closing his borders, applying tariffs without hesitation, making China his main enemy, the BRICS as the second and defending the dollar at all costs. Thus, he ordered the name of the Gulf of Mexico to be changed, a measure that Google and Apple Maps obediently complied with with a diplomatic parenthesis, but which for not doing the same implied a punishment for the AP news agency, and he even proposed incorporating Canada into the Union or buying Greenland.
With Latin America, the offensive began —not surprisingly— against unregistered immigrants, which led to a strong clash with the Colombian government of Gustavo Petro. He had already received criticism from the Mexican Claudia Sheinbaum for his attempt to appropriate the toponymy of the Gulf. The Aztec leader then challenged the Mexican government to call that part of the North American territory that belonged to her country until the mid-nineteenth century "Mexican America ." The attempt to recover the Panama Canal, which passed into Panamanian hands after an agreement between Jimmy Carter and Omar Torrijos in 1977, finalized on the last day of 1999, as challenging as it sounded, was fundamentally aimed at China, as will be seen.
Now, when the first month of his second administration is almost up, it could be said that Trump's methods are rude and arrogant. In any case, they reveal a typical strategy of gamblers who want to appear strong: hitting the table to make the chips jump, shuffling and dealing again. But sometimes he fails and showed that, if necessary, he can back down, always trying not to be too obvious. The easiest thing for some analysts and the hegemonic media is to call him crazy, an epithet that deep down he likes. Trump enjoys kicking the board and giving pushes that seem senseless. However, as those familiar with the Republican's network stressed, Polonius's phrase to describe Hamlet fits him perfectly: "Even if it is madness, there is also method."
He who warns…
In his inaugural address, Trump clearly stated what his primary objectives would be. On the one hand, he stated that "the decline of the United States is over." But this was his way of acknowledging that the country has been in decline for decades. It is also clear that he knows where this debacle lies: due to globalization, which after the dissolution of the Soviet Union crowned market freedom on a planetary scale, resulting in the main industries being on the other side of the borders. Some as close as Canada or Mexico, most of them in China. That is why he said that January 20 should be called "Liberation Day." He then assured that the United States "will once again be a manufacturing nation."
He then continued without restraint: "President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent. He was a businessman and he gave Teddy Roosevelt the money for many of the great things he did, including the Panama Canal, which has been foolishly given away (…) after the United States spent more money than ever before on a project and 38,000 lives were lost in building the Panama Canal."
Marco Rubio elaborated on this issue in an interview with host Megyn Kelly, which he posted on the State Department's website. The summary would be: the canal is of central interest to the United States and is now in the hands of a Chinese company, therefore the Chinese government. It was built with American investments and "a few years ago Panama made the decision to ignore Taiwan and align itself with Beijing (…) one of the main investments they have —Chinese companies— is in two port facilities on both sides of the canal (…) if there is a conflict and China tells them to do everything possible to obstruct the canal so that the United States cannot participate in trade, so that the United States military and naval fleet cannot reach the Indo-Pacific fast enough, they would have to do it. They would have to do it and they would do it," warned the new official.
Some clarifications: for the Asian giant there is only one China, so whoever recognizes the government of Taiwan cannot have diplomatic relations with Beijing. Nicaragua in 2021 and Honduras in 2023 "derecognized" Taipei. Guatemala's Bernardo Arévalo is trying to stay in the middle of this dispute even though China is the second commercial partner of the Central American country, but the US is the first. In this part of the world, only Paraguay maintains relations with Taiwan.
Another: the canal was inaugurated in 1914 and was indeed completed by American capital, although the work had been started by the French in 1881. Uncle Sam's geopolitical desires explain the failures of the project by engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps - the same one who had built the Suez Canal in 1860 - and the second independence of Panama, in 1903. Until then the isthmus had been a province of Colombia, which it had joined in 1821 after liberating itself from Spain.
Third detail: The Republican McKinley assumed the first office in 1897 and was re-elected for a new term in 1890. However, he would be assassinated in September 1901 shortly after beginning his mandate. He was succeeded by his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt, who would govern until 1909. Under the McKinley administration, war would be unleashed against a Spanish empire in its long decline in 1898. Thus, the United States extended its tentacles towards the Caribbean by taking over Cuba and Puerto Rico, and to the Indo-Pacific, over the Philippines and Guam. Hawaii would be annexed to the Union in 1898, in exchange for the payment of its foreign debt.
The ill-fated 25th president was in favor of applying heavy taxes on imported goods to protect national industry and American labor, and as a representative for Ohio he managed to get the MxKinley Tariff passed, a law that raised import rates, on average, to 50%. It must be said that at that time the United States was in full development and, after the civil war, was the most powerful emerging power. The bloody battle had been won by the t-shirt manufacturers and not by the cotton producers, Arturo Jauretche would say, so that the discourse of free trade was no longer to the liking of its ruling class.
The Conquest of the World
This was also the beginning of a new expansionist policy, which was intended to complete the "Conquest of the West" against the native populations, and which was followed to the letter by the first Roosevelt, with his policy of the big stick. "Teddy's" catchphrase was Speak softly and carry a big stick: you will go far. Indeed, he started the final stage of the construction of the Panama Canal and launched the Great White Fleet on a trip around the world just to demonstrate the naval power of the American navy.
It was Teddy Roosevelt, moreover, who applied the Monroe Doctrine with the greatest emphasis and without much dissimulation in the Caribbean basin and further south. This foreign policy presented to Congress by President James Monroe at the end of 1823 established a de facto division of the world: no European country could interfere in the continent, which had the protection of its independence from Washington, among other things. It is not necessary to say the real meaning of this position in these 201 years and more, summed up in the phrase "America for the Americans" of the north.
Teddy extended this interpretation to the entire world and, speaking softly but displaying his warships as big as clubs, he settled disputes between France and Germany and achieved the signing of the peace agreement between the Tsarist empire and the Japanese, which earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906. He intervened in internal politics in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Central America.
Another historical reference recognized by Trump is the 7th president, Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), of whom he had hung a portrait in the Oval Office during his first term, then removed in 2021 and now put back up, in place of that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Teddy's distant nephew.
Jackson had also been mistreated by the press and the establishment , who called him a "donkey." He knew how to use the force of his opponents and accepted the challenge in such a way that the donkey became the symbol of the Democratic Party, which he had founded in 1828. He is labeled a "populist" because he had achieved a large popular support and is remembered for his Indian Removal Act, by which Aboriginal communities were displaced from their ancestral places to use those lands for farming and ranching. It looks too much like Trump's project for Gaza.
A year before the end of his term, Jackson recognized the Republic of Texas, created after a rebellion by Anglo-Saxon farmers. This was the starting point for the American advance into Mexican territories, which was crowned first with the incorporation of Texas into the Union in 1847 and, a year later, after a war against Mexico, with the appropriation of half of its original territory.
The cards are on the table
Latin American governments and international organizations rejected the threat to the Panama Canal from the start, and after Rubio's meeting with President José Raúl Mulino, things seemed to calm down. The Panamanian said that his country would not give up sovereignty over the canal and denied that he had signed an agreement, as the Secretary of State had reported, to stop charging more fees to U.S. government ships that transit through that waterway.
By then, the clashes with Sheinbaum and Petro due to the wild deportations of migrants were in the news. The Colombian first disqualified the manners and refused to receive the plane with the expelled, but then had to slow down several times because the case generated a new political crisis. The Brazilian Lula da Silva initially tried to lower the decibels: he sent a plane so that the repatriated citizens could at least travel decently. But then he questioned the president's manners, which he called bravado. "I respect that President Trump was elected by the American people to govern the United States. But he was not elected to rule the world."
The Mexican head of state also had ups and downs. The Mexican economy is supported in part by migrants - many of whom are settled and voted for Trump - and by the colossal trade surplus with the uncomfortable neighbor to the north. Following the threat of 25% sanctions if they did not take action against fentanyl smuggling, Sheinbaum ordered the deployment of 10,000 troops to guard the border, as did Canadian Justin Trudeau. This is how they managed to suspend the customs tax.
From Nayib Bukele, Rubio received an extra gift: the Salvadoran offered his nation's prisons to house — for a modest fee, it is understood — common prisoners from the US or even deported illegal immigrants of any nationality. Trump declared that he would use the Guantanamo base for the same purpose.
The Cuban government is especially intolerable for Trump. McKinley-Roosevelt had obtained that strategic island where the first socialist revolution in Latin America began in 1959. It was John K. Kennedy who decreed the trade embargo in 1961, but Barack Obama in 2014 had opened up to reestablishing relations with the then president Raúl Castro. He did not lift the blockade but the embassy was reopened and visits to the island by relatives of exiles and the transfer of remittances were facilitated. Obama acknowledged that isolating Cuba had only served to isolate the US from Latin America…
It all went backwards in 2017 with Trump, who now further tightened some measures still in force. There was a comedy step that puts in black and white the confusion with which American diplomacy is handled. Joe Biden removed Cuba from the list of nations sponsoring terrorism on January 14, Trump included it again on January 21. Under Obama, that measure had lasted longer: it was removed from that list in April 2015 and re-inscribed on January 21, 2021. Trump's attachment to Miami is well known, where he has his residence Mar a Lago and voters of Cuban origin who follow him fervently. But now they will no longer be able to travel to visit their relatives. Again.
The Venezuelan question and the Brazilian case
Another Latin American boil for Washington is the government of Nicolás Maduro. In an adventure that could have ended in tragedy, on February 23, 2019, the then senator Marco Rubio and the director for Latin American Affairs of the National Security Council, Claver-Carone, together with other dinosaurs such as Elliot Abrams, were close to endorsing an invasion of the Caribbean country from Colombia. Trump even gloated in a report pointing out how good it would be to "keep all that oil." An obscure deputy, Juan Guaidó, in that farrago, had been designated "interim president" and in that context many of the Venezuelan assets abroad were blocked or directly confiscated in the United Kingdom and the United States.
This time, something curious happened. After the elections last July, in which the opposition denounced fraud and claimed to have won by a landslide, the candidate Edmundo González Urrutia was gaining recognition as president-elect in the European Union and in right-wing Latin American governments. The Biden administration hesitated, taking its time on the recommendation of Itamaraty, which does not want a permanent crisis on its Brazilian border, but finally recognized him as president. A few days before Trump's new swearing-in, González Urrutia traveled to Washington expecting to be received by the still-elect, but left empty-handed. Maduro, who assumed a new mandate on January 10, received a special envoy from Trump, Richard Grenell, at Miraflores Palace. They agreed to forget the past and start relations from scratch. It is not known how the story will continue, but when the White House announced the closure of the USAID agency, secret payments to thousands of journalists around the world began to come to light, many of them in the region. And also about the financing of regime change plans such as the so-called Operation Gedeon. Many high-ranking opposition members are trembling at what may be revealed in the near future, including Guaidó.
To end this chapter of Trump 2.0's relations with Latin America, we must talk about Brazil. It is known that Jair Bolsonaro is Trump's favourite and one of his most loyal followers when they coincided in the administration. Brazil is one of the founders of the BRICS group, in 2009, and is in the running to lead not only in South America but to be a key player in the 21st century. The BRICS are also on the radar of the 47th US president. He is not unaware that they are already the most powerful economic bloc and it will not take long for them to become so militarily as well, if they wanted to. But, in addition, everything indicates that they will slowly but persistently move away from the dollar as a trade and reserve currency. Will the 100% tariffs with which they threaten anyone who dares to trade in any currency other than the green one with the phrase In God we trust be enough ?
Another question: Where does following an administration like the one promoted by Donald Trump lead? At the time of writing this article, the Casa Rosada assured that Javier Milei would not go with complaints about the tariffs on national steel and aluminum exports that the White House announced for the entire world, without exceptions. The response of the Argentine authorities was that this matter could be resolved with a Free Trade Agreement with the United States, like the one that, under the name ALCA and for the entire region, was discarded in 2005 in Mar del Plata…
Launched: ‘US/NATO Out of Our Americas Network’
February 23, 2025
US/NATO Out of Our Americas Network's poster showing a map of the hemisphere with a different orientation along with portraits/photos of Alexander Petion, Simon Bolivar, Angela Davis, Hugo Chavez, Che Guevara, among others. Photo: US/NATO Out of Our America Network.
The Next Phase of the Struggle for a Zone of Peace in Our Americas: Mass-Based ‘US/NATO Out of Our Americas Network’ Launches.
The Zone of Peace Campaign has announced the official launch of the US/NATO Out of Our Americas Network. Member organizations involved with the campaign and which form the Zone of Peace Campaign’s Popular Steering Committee, include Alliance for Global Justice, Friends of the ATC (Nicaragua), Assembly of Caribbean Peoples, Black Alliance for Peace, Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration, Diaspora Pa’lante Collective (US/Puerto Rico), MOLEGHAF (Haiti), Movimiento Evita (Argentina), Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition, Observatorio de los Derechos Humanos, Organization for Caribbean Empowerment, Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN) (Colombia) Red de Organizaciones Afrovenezolanas (ROA) (Venezuela) and World Beyond War – Latin America.
Below is a press release on today’s launch.
The Next Phase of the Struggle for a Zone of Peace in Our Americas: Mass-Based ‘US/NATO Out of Our Americas Network’ Launches
February 21, 2025 – On February 21st, a date that holds profound historical significance as the anniversary of the assassinations of Malcolm X and Augusto C. Sandino, the Popular Steering Committee for a Zone of Peace in Our Americas proudly announces the launch of the US/NATO Out of Our Americas Network. This initiative, inspired by the enduring legacies of Malcolm X and Sandino, among other revolutionary leaders in Our Americas, seeks to extend their visionary work in the struggle for people(s)-centered human rights, self-determination, and liberation from the US/EU/NATO Axis of Domination and the vicious system of western white supremacy. This launch marks the next phase of the multi-faceted Zone of Peace campaign and perhaps its most important, building its mass base that will execute the successful expulsion of these nefarious forces in our region.
Malcolm X, a towering figure in the struggle for liberation, and Sandino, the Nicaraguan revolutionary who fought U.S. imperialism, both embodied the spirit of resistance against oppression. Their lives and sacrifices remind us of the urgent need to confront systems of domination and exploitation that continue to threaten the sovereignty and well-being of peoples across Our Americas and beyond.
The US/NATO Out of Our Americas Network is a collective effort to challenge the presence and influence of U.S. and NATO military, economic, and political interventions in Our Americas through the masses of our people(s). We stand in solidarity with movements across the hemisphere working to dismantle imperialism, militarism, and colonialism, and to build a world rooted in peace, justice, and popular sovereignty. The network provides a platform from which to coordinate antimilitarist, anti-imperialist struggle under the demands of the Zone of Peace campaign, such as ending U.S./NATO militarism in the Americas, opposing imperialist intervention in Haiti, returning Guantanamo Bay to Cuba, and ejecting U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) from our region.
On this historic day, we honor the memory of Malcolm X and Sandino by reaffirming our commitment to their ideals. We call on all who believe in the principles of sovereignty, self-determination, and people(s)-centered human rights to join us in this vital struggle. Together, we can create a future where Our Americas are truly a Zone of Peace, free from the pan-European domination that has ravaged our region for over 5 centuries, and centered on the dignity, sovereignty and self-determination of all peoples.
Southcom’s Double-Speak – Every Accusation Is a Confession
Posted by Internationalist 360° on February 20, 2025
Francisco Dominguez and Roger D. Harris
Admiral Alvin Holsey demonstrated selective outrage over the fear of multipolarity in the Western Hemisphere. The Southcom commander confirmed the official US military doctrine for the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region on February 13, before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
In a poorly disguised assertion of US hegemony, Holsey envisioned, “an enduring commitment to democratic principles…to engender security, capability, democratic norms, and resilience that fuel regional peace, prosperity, and sovereignty.”
Threats to the vision of a Pax Americana
Foremost of the “threats to this vision” is the “methodical incursion into the region” by China, secondarily by Russia, and a distant third by Iran.
Holsey charged China with a “long-term global campaign to become the world’s dominant strategic power in the Western Hemisphere” and Russia with continuing support for “anti-American authoritarian regimes” and spreading “misinformation throughout the region.” Meanwhile, the “theocratic regime” in Iran, “seeks to build political, military, and economic clout in Latin America… where it believes cooperation is achievable.”
These “malign actions,” Holsey argued, run against US national interests, threaten our sovereignty, and pose a “global risk.” Not questioned, of course, is the US presence in the region as part of Washington’s official “full spectrum [world] dominance” posture.
Rather, he lauded US regional military programs: acquisitions of F-16s by Argentina and Black Hawk helicopters by Brazil, the International Military Education and Training program spanning 27 regional countries, and the Joint Exercise Program with over 10,000 participants from 38 countries.
Unlike the US with 76 regional military bases, neither China nor Russia has formal alliances, joint command structures, or large-scale military agreements in the region. In contrast, Colombia is a NATO “global partner,” Argentina and Brazil are “major non-NATO Allies,” and Chile is a key cooperator with NATO. The US is making Guyana a military hotspot, while the US occupation of Cuba with the Guantánamo naval base is rendered invisible.
Holsey also cited humanitarian assistance as “an essential soft power tool,” later adding “with empathy and compassion at the forefront.”
“Erosion of democratic capitalism”
The admiral’s double-speak continued with the claim that the Western Hemisphere suffers from an “erosion of democratic capitalism, which in too many countries is being replaced by…authoritarianism.” Not mentioned is the recent US support of Bukele in El Salvador, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Moreno, Lasso and Noboa in Ecuador, Boluarte in Peru, Añez in Bolivia, Uribe and Duque in Colombia, or Milei in Argentina.
China is accused of interfering in “our south,” a new euphemism of “our backyard,” but with the same chauvinistic implications. Holsley testified that Chinese presence “at strategic chokepoints such as the Panama Canal imperil the US’s ability to rapidly respond in the Indo-Pacific should a crisis unfold.” Might such a contingency include US military deployment to the Asia-Pacific, which has been the practice since at least 2003?
The admiral charged China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with doing what the US has consistently failed to do; namely going “beyond raw materials and commodities to include” infrastructure improvements. China accomplished becoming the region’s second major trading partner and the first specifically in South America in less than two decades, where the US had previously enjoyed nearly uncontested dominance for well over a century.
Holsey lauded the region’s abundant natural resources (20% of the world’s oil reserves, 25% of its strategic metals, etc.). That these are resources which US multinationals have been pillaging, leaving little in return, remained unstated.
Meanwhile, China is accused of chicanery by providing benevolent short-term benefits to leave regional countries “vulnerable to unsustainable debt, environmental degradation, and informational security risks.” In fact, “no country…owes Chinese creditors more than it owes other major creditor categories, including bondholders, Paris Club creditors, multilateral development banks (MDBs) or other creditors.”
And what are the security risks? Satellites for Venezuela and Bolivia? DeepSeek? Technology transfer? Millions of anti-COVID vaccines?
Outlandishly, the admiral asserted that “the malign activities, harmful influence, and autocratic philosophy of China are a direct threat to the democratic will.” In contrast, he claims the US “offers economic prosperity, sustainable development, and true partnership.” This would be laughable if it weren’t so tragically false. Consider Haiti, under US domination, where the country is in ruins and any pretence of democratic elections has long been dropped.
Predictably, Holsey also charged Russia with “malign” aims because it “seeks to undermine the US regional interests” by supporting “like-minded authoritarian regimes in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.”
His concern with Russia’s “state-controlled media to disseminate disinformation and propaganda,” is far eclipsed by the 6,200 journalists and the 707 non-state media outlets in more than 30 countries financed by USAID. This is without mentioning the Western giant media conglomerates that overwhelmingly dominate the world’s news reporting.
Transnational criminal organizations and Russian acolytes
Holsey reported that transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) engaged in drug trafficking are connected to the “death of thousands of US citizens.” Not only that but, “TCO-driven corruption and instability open space for China, Russia, and other malign actors to achieve strategic ends and further their agendas.”
Yet, as Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum noted, organized crime and drug distribution are prevalent within the US itself, which is the largest market for illicit drugs and the source of most weapons used by the cartels to the south. She rhetorically asked: “Who is in charge of distributing the drug? Who sells it in the cities of the US?…Let them start with their country.”
Venezuela is presented as exemplifying the “devastating effects and consequences of authoritarian rule.” Citing the “widespread inability to access life-sustaining necessities” driving economic refugees from Venezuela, Holsey warned: “The large numbers of migrants transiting the region strains our Partner Nations.”
Nicaragua is accused of harbouring a global positioning system, a vaccination plant, and a police academy, all of which are collaborations with Russia, which – horrors – “enjoys the diplomatic status of an embassy.” The “repressive Ortega-Murillo regime” joined the BRI and a free trade agreement with China, including building “a massive solar power plant.”
“Instead of addressing the ongoing humanitarian crises,” the Cuban “authoritarian regime” is accused of “strengthening ties with our Strategic Competitors and adversaries.” Hypocritically, he mourns: “The long-suffering populace does not have sufficient access to medicine, food, and essential services.”
Outrageously omitted are the effects of draconian Yankee unilateral coercive measures (aka sanctions) on what Holsey calls the “ideological acolytes” of Russia. His narrative blames the victims for the severe consequences of Washington’s sanctions imposed to deliberately produce what the admiral laments.
“The challenge”
“Time is not on our side” were the possibly prescient words by the commander of Southcom to the senators about the LAC region, which is “on the front lines of a decisive and urgent contest to define the future of our world.”
This may be because the US is not prepared to accept that sovereign and independent nations enter into beneficial trade agreements about their raw materials and infrastructure and join multipolar bodies such as BRI and BRICS. The ultimate logic of US policy is to prevent the region from being part of a multipolar world. As the admiral admitted, “we have redoubled our efforts to nest military engagement with diplomatic, informational and economic initiatives.”
A New Haiti? Daniel Noboa Asks for Foreign Troops to Enter Ecuador
February 26, 2025
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa at an official event giving tactical vehicles to the Ecuadorian Army. Photo: Presidencia Ecuador.
By Pablo Meriguet – Feb 20, 2025
On February 19, the Communication Secretariat of the Presidency stated that the government of the right-wing Daniel Noboa “proposes, temporarily and in the context of the war declared against narcoterrorism, the incorporation of special forces from allied countries to support and strengthen the actions of the Armed Forces and the National Police. In this sense, President Noboa ordered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to…make the approaches to coordinate efforts and establish cooperation agreements for this purpose.”
According to article 5 of the Ecuadorian Constitution, “Ecuador is a territory of peace. The establishment of foreign military bases or foreign installations for military purposes will not be allowed.”
Several decades ago, the Ecuadorian right-wing sought to reform this article to again allow the establishment of foreign military bases and the incursion of military troops into Ecuador.
Noboa’s support for foreign military bases
Daniel Noboa, who is himself a US citizen in addition to being Ecuadorian, has expressed on several occasions his desire to reform the constitution for the entry of foreign military bases. For this very reason, the aforementioned official communiqué concludes, “In this context, the National Assembly is urged to pronounce itself on this and other initiatives, such as the partial reform of article 5 of the Constitution that seeks to eliminate the prohibition of establishing foreign military bases in the country.”
It could very well be that this is one more maneuver in the ongoing electoral campaign. However, it is evident that Noboa genuinely has, as one of his central objectives, the entry of foreign troops into the country. The statement has been applauded by the most reactionary sectors of the country, who for several decades have been requesting the re-entry of the US military, supposedly to diminish the power of criminal gangs. A few weeks ago, the government already allowed the entry of US vessels and military groups to the Galápagos Islands. Hence, it is no surprise that Noboa insists on undermining the sovereign spirit of Article 5 of the Constitution, thus allowing more US military influence in Ecuador.
However, the communiqué does not speak exclusively or specifically of the entry of US troops. So, a model similar to that of Haiti could be repeated, according to which troops from third countries enter national territories with serious internal conflicts and thus seek to “pacify” the society, while wealthy countries finance the expeditions without risking their soldiers.
In the face of Noboa’s announcement which has been described as surrendering and unpatriotic, progressive presidential candidate Luisa González expressed that the solution to the increase in crime should be different, namely, the reinforcement of the police and military forces: “Our Police and Armed Forces face crime without equipment or support. Now, the government admits its failure and seeks outside help, instead of strengthening those who give their lives for our security. Before looking outside, let them answer what they have done for those who protect us. True leadership is demonstrated at home.”
January 2025 saw record-breaking violent murders
One of the most pressing concerns for Ecuadorians is security. Ecuador went from being a country that had some, albeit limited, security problems, such as assaults, home robberies, etc., to a country plunged into insecurity. As a result of their increasingly relevant role in the distribution of cocaine and other drugs to markets in the global north, the power of criminal gangs dedicated to drug trafficking, extortion, arms sales, contract killings, etc., has increased.
Before 2019, the number of violent deaths never exceeded 1,000. However, after the internal war between the criminal gangs started, violent deaths began to spike in a frightening way.
Year Violent Deaths
2016 959
2017 972
2018 994
2019 1,187
2020 1,372
2021 2,464
2022 4,015
2023 8,004
2024 6,847
These are figures that no Ecuadorian would have expected just 10 years ago.
Although violent murders were reduced by 7% in 2024, Ecuador continues to be one of the most dangerous countries in the world. In 2023 (the most violent year in the country’s history) the rate of violent deaths was 47.2 per 100,000 inhabitants, while in 2024 it stood at 40.4 per 100,000 inhabitants, a decrease that the government of right-wing Daniel Noboa touts as a victory after it declared war on criminal gangs. However, the overall trend continues to fuel uncertainty about the future of the country. In 2024 alone, an average of 19 people were murdered every day in Ecuador, a country of about 18 million people.
A foreign military incursion is Noboa’s only plan to address the crisis
The government of Noboa, which is seeking reelection during the second round of elections against Luisa González, has not known how to respond to the sharp increase in violent deaths that occurred in January 2025: 750 were killed according to data from the National Police. In Manabí alone, one of the most turbulent provinces, violent crimes increased by 141% in 2024.
January has become the most violent month in the history of Ecuador. Most of the deaths are centered in the provinces of Guayas and Manabí (where Noboa lost in the last elections to candidate González). Before the horror and uncertainty of Ecuadorians, Noboa again “plays the card” of a purported incursion of foreign troops to alleviate the serious security crisis.
Time will tell if he finally achieves his goal or if, on the contrary, the sovereign and patriotic spirit prevails in thwarting his well-known ambitions.
Ecuador: The Stakes in the April 2025 Election Run-off
February 24, 2025
Ecuadorian heavily armed soldier patrolling a border checkpoint near a sign reading “welcome to the Republic of Ecuador.” Photo: Karen Toro/Reuters/file photo.
By Francisco Dominguez – Feb 23, 2025
Ecuador’s presidential election on February 9, 2025, resulted in a technical tie between the two leading candidates: Daniel Noboa, the wealthiest individual in Ecuador and the incumbent president, and Luisa González, the candidate of the Citizen Revolution movement, founded by former president Rafael Correa. With a voter turnout of 83%, Noboa secured 44.16% of the vote, while González garnered 43.98%. The only other candidate of significance was Leonidas Iza of the Pachakutik indigenous movement, who received 5.3%. The remaining 13 candidates combined for just 6.6% of the vote. Since no candidate achieved a decisive majority, a run-off election between Noboa and González is scheduled for April 13, 2025.
During the campaign, Daniel Noboa, desperate to secure a first-round victory, violated numerous electoral norms. His government reportedly spent over US$12 million on publicity firms to disseminate misleadingly positive information about his administration and negative propaganda against Luisa González, who, as in the 2023 election, faced death threats. Noboa’s campaign also relied on thousands of unidentified online trolls to amplify his messaging. In a particularly controversial move, he militarized the country’s ports and closed its borders on the eve of the election. Additionally, he bypassed constitutional protocol by refusing to appoint his official vice-president, Verónica Abad, as acting president while he campaigned. Instead, he illegally appointed unelected individuals to the role.
Ecuador’s mainstream media heavily promoted a pro-Noboa and anti-González narrative, predicting a landslide victory for Noboa in the first round. Three polling companies were authorized by the electoral authority to conduct exit polls. However, one firm, Estrategas, released a fraudulent poll claiming Noboa had 50.12% of the vote compared to González’s 42.21%. It was later revealed that this poll was conducted by an obscure individual named Diego Tello, whose background and affiliations remain unclear.
Noboa’s presidency has had devastating consequences for Ecuador. His policies have exacerbated labour insecurity, commercial liberalization, and financial deregulation, driving the country’s public debt to 67% of GDP, up from 38% in 2016. Financial deregulation in a dollarized economy has facilitated massive capital flight and speculative investments, while also enabling money laundering and illicit activities tied to the drug trade.
By December 2024, over 5 million Ecuadorians (out of a population of 13 million) were living below the poverty line, and 58% of the economically active population worked in the informal sector without registered employment. Noboa raised the VAT from 12% to 15% to fund his controversial law-and-order policies, further straining household incomes. Despite temporarily stabilizing electricity supply ahead of the election, his administration failed to address the root causes of the energy crisis, which had plunged the country into prolonged blackouts and rationing.
Ecuador’s economic growth in 2024 was a meagre 0.3%, reflecting the depth of the crisis. Meanwhile, Noboa, a member of Ecuador’s wealthiest family with an estimated fortune of US$1.3 billion, has remained insulated from the hardships faced by ordinary citizens.
The energy crisis, caused by drought, underinvestment in hydroelectric and thermoelectric infrastructure, and government neglect, led to widespread blackouts lasting up to 14 hours and severe rationing. This sparked mass discontent and further damaged the economy.
Perhaps the most alarming aspect of Ecuador’s crisis is the surge in violent crime. In 2024, the country recorded an average of one homicide every 75 minutes. Since 2020, 16 prison massacres have occurred, the latest in November 2024 claiming 15 lives. Homicides increased by 245% between 2020 and 2022, and by 75% in the first half of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022. The murder rate for children and adolescents rose by 640% between 2019 and 2023, reaching a historic high of 40 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2024, the most violent in the country’s history.
A particularly shocking incident was the murder of four children—Ismael, Josué, Saúl, and Steven—by a military patrol in a crime with clear racist undertones. Authorities initially attempted to cover up the incident, a stark contrast to Ecuador under Rafael Correa’s presidency when it was one of Latin America’s safest countries.
Noboa’s response to the escalating violence, which is closely linked to drug traffickers using Ecuador as a transit route, has been to replicate Colombia’s failed “war on drugs” model. He declared a state of emergency for three months, labelling drug cartels and their armed gangs as “non-state belligerent forces” and framing the situation as an “internal armed conflict.”
Since Lenin Moreno’s betrayal of the Citizen Revolution, Ecuador has transformed from one of Latin America’s safest countries into a major transit hub for Colombian cocaine trafficking to Europe. This shift has brought rampant corruption, criminal control over prisons, and legislation that facilitates money laundering. A recent study implicated Ecuador’s financial system in laundering US$3.5 billion in illegal assets, alongside an unrelenting wave of criminal violence.
The Correista vote was fractured in 2017 when Lenin Moreno, the Citizen Revolution’s presidential candidate, betrayed the movement. Guillermo Lasso, the right-wing candidate, won majorities in the Sierra and Amazonas provinces, areas that had previously supported Rafael Correa in 2013. This division deepened after Moreno embraced IMF-inspired neoliberal austerity measures during the pandemic, benefiting multinational corporations and powerful economic groups at the expense of the middle and working classes. Moreno’s government also unleashed brutal repression against mass protests, including an indigenous uprising in October 2019 that resulted in at least 8 deaths, 1,340 injuries, and nearly 1,200 arrests.
In 2013, Rafael Correa won 23 of Ecuador’s 24 provinces. By 2017, Moreno secured only 13 provinces, with Lasso winning the remaining 11, primarily in the Sierra and Amazon regions. This trend continued in the 2021 election, when CIA-supported candidate Yaku Pérez of Pachakutik won 13, mainly in the Sierra and Amazonas provinces in the first round, most of which went to Lasso in the second round. A similar pattern emerged in the 2023 election, with Luisa González winning 14 provinces, Noboa securing 6, and Christian Zurita (who replaced the assassinated Fernando Villavicencio) winning 4. Pérez’s support collapsed from nearly 20% in 2021 to less than 4% in 2023.
In the table below we can see the Citizen Revolution electoral strength under Rafael Correa presidency and the steady electoral improvement since their defeat in 2021:
Citizen Revolution Electoral Performance (2006–2017 and 2021–2024 in percentages)
Year 2006 2009 2013 2017 2021 2023 2024
1st Round 22.84 51.99 57.17 39.16 32.72 33.61 44.00
2nd Round 56.67 —- —- 51.16 47.64 48.17 —–
Although the Citizen Revolution lost the presidency in 2021, its political defeat began with Lenin Moreno’s betrayal. Moreno, who served as Correa’s vice-president from 2006 to 2013, was elected president in 2017 with the support of Citizen Revolution voters. However, within a year, he launched a vicious campaign against Correa and his allies, using lawfare to ban Correa from running for office and persecuting Citizen Revolution leaders. Correa’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, for ‘instigation and terrorism,” forcing him to seek asylum in Mexico in 2019. Many other national Citizen Revolution leaders such as Paola Pabón, Virgilio Hernández and Christian González, who, charged with “rebellion” for opposing Moreno’s repression and neoliberal policies, were forced into exile to avoid imprisonment, while Correa himself sought asylum in Belgium.
Moreno also dismantled key institutions, withdrawing Ecuador from UNASUR and ALBA, shutting down Telesur, recognizing Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó, and allowing the U.S. to establish a military presence in the Galápagos Islands. His appalling mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic and the arrest of Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London further tarnished his legacy. Correa said that to have allowed the British police to enter Ecuador’s embassy in London to arrest Assange was “one of the biggest betrayals in Latin America’s history.” By the end of his presidency in 2021, Ecuador was in ruins, with Moreno’s approval rating at just 5%.
Despite these challenges, the Citizen Revolution has maintained a strong parliamentary presence. In the 2009 National Assembly elections, it became the largest party with 59 out of 124 seats, increasing to 100 out of 137 in 2013. Although its representation declined to 74 seats in 2017, it remained the largest bloc. After enduring persecution under Moreno, the movement still secured 49 seats in 2021, 52 in 2023, and 67 in 2025.
The technical tie between Noboa and González, each with around 44% of the vote, highlights the decline of traditional parties. Pachakutik’s performance, though modest, could be decisive in the run-off. The April 2025 election presents a promising opportunity for the Citizen Revolution to return to power and revive the progressive policies of the Correa era.
However, Ecuador’s oligarchy, through Moreno, Lasso, and now Noboa, violating legal and constitutional norms and plunging the country into economic and social chaos, has systematically reversed the gains of the Correa years. In the two months leading up to the run-off, the oligarchy may resort to extreme measures to retain power, including potential electoral interference and violence.
Noboa, who expected a first-round victory, has already begun questioning the election’s legitimacy, alleging fraud without evidence. International observers from the Organization of American States, the European Union, and Ecuador’s National Electoral Council have confirmed the transparency and reliability of the results.
The democratic process faces significant threats, particularly given Noboa’s militarization of the country and the potential for U.S. interference. The U.S. Southern Command has sought to establish a military base in the Galápagos, raising concerns about external influence in the election, which, under Trump, is likely to intensify.
On February 19, 2025, President Noboa put forth a proposal for the deployment of foreign troops to Ecuador, intending for them to collaborate with the national army and police in the fight against what he termed ‘criminal bands.’ He did not clarify the origins of these foreign troops, raising significant concerns. Currently, the only foreign military presence permitted in Ecuador is that of the United States, which operates under a special agreement established by former President Guillermo Lasso during his administration from 2021 to 2023.
Noboa has been advocating for a constitutional amendment to allow the establishment of foreign military bases, a move that not only contravenes the existing constitution but also represents a blatant infringement on national sovereignty. His apparent commitment to further militarizing Ecuador suggests that the upcoming second round of elections may occur with the Executive branch overseeing both national and international military forces.
Since the adoption of Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution, the oligarchy has sought to dismantle its progressive provisions and destroy Correismo as a political force which, if successful, would end Ecuador’s democracy. This effort has been supported particularly by US imperialism, which has exploited Ecuador’s resources and undermined its democracy.
The global solidarity movement must remain vigilant, demanding respect for electoral laws, an end to militarization, ceasing the use of lawfare against opponents and the lifting of the state of emergency. The people of Ecuador must be allowed to vote freely, without the heavy-handed tactics that have characterized the governments of Moreno, Lasso, and Noboa.
Ecuadorian Parliament Supports President Noboa’s Proposal for Entry of Foreign Troops
Ecuadorian National Assembly. Photo: @AsambleaEcuador
February 26, 2025 Hour: 7:50 am
The presence of foreign special forces would be aimed at supporting the fight against drug trafficking gangs.
On Tuesday, the Ecuadorian National Assembly approved a resolution supporting President Daniel Noboa’s initiative to reach international cooperation agreements for the entry of foreign forces to assist in the fight against criminal gangs.
Besides declaring national and foreign organized crime groups as enemies of the state, the resolution establishes that the National Assembly’s Security Commission will evaluate the actions and results of the international cooperation agreements. To this end, the Police, the Armed Forces, and the Ministries of the Interior and Defense must report on their progress in international cooperation every fifteen days.
Previously, the full Assembly heard from experts in various legal fields, who agreed that an international military cooperation agreement does not require approval from the National Assembly. The Constitution’s Article 419 establishes eight cases in which cooperation treaties require ratification or rejection by the National Assembly. “Foreign military cooperation is not one of them,” said lawyer Miguel Molina.
Constitutional expert Gustavo Silva noted that Articles 107 and 109 of the Law of Jurisdictional Guarantees establish that the Executive Branch must decide whether to sign an international agreement.
El presidente gringo y payaso neoliberal Daniel Noboa ha pedido el ingreso de tropas extranjeras a Ecuador a pocos meses de las elecciones presidenciales, donde se enfrentará a la candidata izquierdista Luisa González. La decisión ha provocado indignación, y los opositores lo… pic.twitter.com/8RCGJNTwd5
— CATERINA (@Caterin49788702) February 21, 2025
The text reads, “Daniel Noboa, the gringo president and neoliberal clown, has called for the entry of foreign troops into Ecuador just months before presidential elections, where he will face leftist candidate Luisa Gonzalez. The decision has sparked outrage, with opponents accusing him of using the crisis to tighten control and pave the way for foreign military bases. While Noboa claims the move is intended to tackle cartel violence, critics warn it threatens Ecuador’s sovereignty and could be a step toward consolidating his grip on power before the election.”
Last week, President Noboa proposed the possibility of temporarily allowing special forces from other countries to enter Ecuadorian territory to combat transnational organized crime in support of the Police and the Armed Forces.
Noboa ordered the Foreign Ministry to “respect the constitutional framework and use the appropriate diplomatic channels” to initiate discussions with allied countries, coordinate efforts, and establish cooperation agreements for this objective.
At the beginning of 2024, Noboa declared an “internal armed conflict” to confront criminal gangs responsible for the surge in violence affecting the country. He also defined the criminal gangs, mainly engaged in drug trafficking, extortion, and illegal mining, as “terrorist” groups.
The Trumpists Agitating To Coup Honduras
Nate Bear
Mar 05, 2025
Prospera, a Peter Thiel-backed crypto ‘city’ running unregulated medical experiments on a Honduran island may very well be the spark for a US coup against Honduras this November.
Prospera, if you haven’t come across it before, is a libertarian mini-state which is funded by crypto investors and tech oligarchs including Thiel and DOGE recruiter Marc Andreessen. Operating outside of Honduran law and run by a small council of venture capitalists and crypto libertarians who set their own laws and regulations, Prospera is under threat from the president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, who wants to strip it of its special legal status.
Castro says that Prospera is an affront to Honduran sovereignty and should never have been given the go-ahead in the first place, a go-ahead granted by a right-wing businessman who became president after Castro’s husband was ousted in a military coup backed by the US. After Castro won power back from the right in 2021, she made it a priority to rein in what William Gibson might call an outlaw city.
The tech oligarchs behind Prospera fought back at Castro’s attempts to shut them down and are suing Honduras for billions of dollars. The fight has made headlines in recent months, not least because the damages Prospera is seeking could conceivably bankrupt the country. Almost no attention, however, has been paid to how this fight is turning Prospera into a cause célèbre for influential Trumpists who have begun calling on this American outpost to be defended against Castro’s socialist government.
One prominent Trumpist to latch onto Prospera as a symbol of everything right about American capitalism and adventurism and everything wrong about Latin American socialism is Roger Stone, a 50-year confidante of Trump and his political hitman.
In a blog post titled ‘How President Trump Can Crush Socialism and Save a Freedom City in Honduras’ and written with all the fluency of a neurolinked gibbon, Stone says that the future of Prospera has ‘major implications for US policy and the future of freedom throughout the world.’ He goes on to say that
‘Trump has quite a bit of leverage at his disposal to upend Castro’s fledgling regime’ and that ‘Honduras could be liberated and Castro’s regime upended without firing a single shot or deploying a single troop.’ To achieve this he says Trump should pardon the disgraced former president, Juan Orlando Hernández, colloquially known as JOH, who is in prison in the US indicted on drug trafficking charges, and back him in the November elections.
Another high profile Trump ally to position the fight for Prospera as being in America’s interests, is Erik Prince, the former CIA assassin and founder of US state department mercenary contractor Blackwater. In a November tweet Prince said that the threats faced by Prospera should be ‘intolerable for the Trump administration’ because of the strategic importance of Honduras and the fact Prospera is trying to ‘bring civilisation’ to Honduras. (Charter/network/free cities as an effort to reclaim an imaginary of western civilisation is a common theme among tech-crypto libertarians).
If Erik Prince, a man with a history or robbing and looting impoverished states, has you, an impoverished state in his sights, that’s an ominous sign.
Prince’s post was retweeted by the great and good of Prospera including Niklas Anzinger. Anzinger runs Infinita City, the arm of Prospera focused on extending the human lifespan and running unregulated medical experiments to this end. (If you’ve watched the Netflix documentary about Bryan Johnson, the tech billionaire who wants to live forever, and who I wrote about here following his rough brush with covid, you might remember he visited Prospera to get injected with a novel gene therapy not available anywhere else in the world).
Anyway Anzinger has tweeted a couple of times about the upcoming elections in Honduras. He responded to Stone’s January blog post about ousting Castro by saying ‘we’re working on it!’ and just the other day tweeted ‘we expect the next elections in Nov 2025 to lead to a friendly administration that affirms our rights.’ Adding to the sense that something is being cooked up was the founder of Prospera, Erick Brimen, thanking Prince for his intervention and saying he was excited for some of Prince’s “magic” to come in 2025.
Weird.
Maybe these are just things you say.
But maybe not.
Another group to have visited Prospera in recent weeks are Republicans for National renewal, a MAGA-aligned group founded by Mark Ivanyo, a former staffer in Trump’s first term Department of Justice. They touted Prospera as ‘similar to President Trump’s proposed Freedom Cities’ and also took aim at Castro, saying Prospera was ‘a bastion of pro-Americanism, economic freedom & Bitcoin acceptance in socialist Honduras.’
Prospera was also visited last week by Cremieux, an anonymous twitter account regularly retweeted by Elon Musk (and likely run by more than one white crypto-libertarian type) that helps set the libertarian discourse.
Given these links it’s inconceivable that Trump hasn’t heard about Prospera and the threats to its existence. Marco Rubio, a man aggressively hostile to anything that looks or smells like socialism in Latin America, almost certainly has as well. It was telling that he didn’t bother visiting Honduras on his recent trip to Latin America, his first outside the US.
Prospera is just one of a number of crypto-based, parallel institution states-within-states that tech oligarchs are trying to establish around the world. With Trump having embraced crypto libertarians as his ticket back to power, we should expect him to defend and advance their interests, not least because of their potential, as in the case of Prospera, to be the tip of the imperial spear in the developing world.
The combination of Rubio as head of the state department and Prospera libertarians in the White House is extraordinarily dangerous for Honduras. The US has always had strategic incentives to see left-wing candidates defeated in Latin America, but now it has very personal incentives as well. Marc Andreessen, who has been hanging out with Trump and recruiting for DOGE, and his co-investor Thiel are both heavily invested not just financially in Prospera through their VC fund Promonos, but ideologically in the concept of parallel states-within-states.
For them to see Prospera fall would be a double hit.
For developing countries like Honduras, Prospera demonstrates the dangers of allowing libertarian American capital the freedom to establish shadow legal entities within your territory. They might provide a few low-paid service industry jobs, but if they turn on you, they’ll threaten to bankrupt you. Or coup you. Or both.
Then there are the moral questions that arise from allowing billionaires to operate zones of exit outside regulatory oversight.
Biohacking and longevity experiments are a central component of Prospera, and regular articles on longevity research now pop up in traditional media, normalising the field. But longevity researchers often appear dangerously enamoured with eugenics. For example, a presentation this week at Prospera by a professor from George Mason university said that selecting embryos for IQ might soon be possible and could boost global innovation by hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is an outrageous, preposterous statement that rests on two fallacies: IQ exists as a measurable metric (it doesn’t) and creating economic growth (by optimising humans) should be the singular goal of humanity. This is essentially an argument for eugenics-powered capitalism.
These people are monsters and the dangers of allowing them ever-expanding control of our institutions is obvious.
There is also a massive irony at the heart of Prospera.
The network state ideal is motivated in large part by the bird-brained desire to exit the political and establish zones of pure apolitical capitalist freedom outside of neoliberal bureaucracies. Yet in Prospera, these crypto coiners have found themselves at the centre of political intrigue and have had to resort to suing Honduras through the investor-state dispute settlement, a little-known but central component of global capitalism’s neoliberal bureaucracy.
That feeling when you’re forced to turn to neoliberalism’s bureaucracy to save yourself from neoliberalism’s bureaucracy eh?
Which really tells us everything you need to know.
Crypto libertarians are the neoliberals they pretend to reject.
Plain old capitalists, modern-day colonisers trying, like every coloniser before them, to bend the world to their will.
The outcome in Honduras will go some way to determining whether they succeed.
Police attack retirees in Buenos Aires, March 5, 2025. X/ @Editor_76
March 6, 2025 Hour: 9:15 am
Workers and fans of a soccer team joined the protests of retirees in Buenos Aires.
On Wednesday, the Buenos Aires police once again repressed retirees who had gathered near Parliament to demand their pensions, request coverage for medications, and protest budget cuts at the National Institute of Social Services for Retirees and Pensioners (PAMI).
For the third consecutive week, security forces cracked down on the retirees’ Wednesday march using batons, tear gas, and other riot control equipment.
Following the Anti-Protest Protocol established by Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, police cleared Entre Rios Avenue and assaulted the retirees.
Meanwhile, as the march advanced from Hipolito Yrigoyen to Entre Rios avenue, a motorized unit of the Federal Police circled the protesters to prevent them from stepping onto the street and blocking traffic lanes.
OTRA VEZ LA POLICÍA DE PATRICIA BULLRICH REPRIME A LOS JUBILADOS.
Le sacan la plata de los medicamentos para comprar gas pimienta. En el medio de está oleada de calor y apagones masivos, los jubilados se movilizaron porque su situación es crítica. Las jubilaciones están en su… pic.twitter.com/LOArktcnbX
— Gabriel Solano (@Solanopo) March 5, 2025
The text reads, “Once again, Patricia Bullrich’s police are repressing retirees. The government is taking money from medicines to buy pepper spray. In the midst of this heat wave and massive blackouts, retirees have mobilized because their situation is critical. Pensions are at their lowest point. And, due to the moratoriums, thousands of people will not even reach retirement.”
“They threw gas at me. I’m a press worker. I wear a mask, but they took advantage of the moment when I went to help a colleague and sprayed me with gas,” a photojournalist told C5N.
The newspaper Pagina 12 reported that fans of the Chacarita soccer team, social activists, and workers joined the retirees’ protests at Congress.
“Those who are here deserve our support. They could be my father, my grandfather, or my uncle. We need people from other soccer clubs to come as well. We are all workers… Beating a retiree is the lowest thing that can happen, and it does nothing for the country’s future,” said a Chacarita fan.
In August 2024, far-right President Javier Milei opposed the Pension Law, which guaranteed an increase in retirees’ pensions based on inflation rates. His decision sparked protests that continue to this day.
The city of #BuenosAires, #Argentina, collapsed after a blackout that affected several locations in the capital, including the Pink House, the Ministry of Economy, and the National Congress. pic.twitter.com/6Yqz6mneAk
— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) March 5, 2025
teleSUR/ JF
Must have hit that man pretty hard to knock out his denture. Does that cop have a father?
Argentina’s Milei To Inaugurate Legislative Sessions At an Half-Empty Congress
Stock photo of January 23, 2025 of the president of Argentina Javier Milei speaking during a panel at the 55th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. Photo: EFE/ EPA/ Michael Buholzer
March 1, 2025 Hour: 1:36 pm
The Argentine president, Javier Milei, will open this Saturday night the legislative session before a half-day Congress, due to the absence of 50% of the opposition.
he scandal over the ‘cryptofiasco’ $LIBRA, the appointment by decree of two judges of the Supreme Court and the request to resign from the governor Axel Kicillof to intervene in the province of Buenos Aires for cases of insecurity, were some of the factors that motivated the absence of opponents.
Deputies, senators and governors of Unión Por la Patria have announced in a statement that they will not be present this March 1 at the opening of 143° ordinary sessions, considering that the country lives under “an increasingly authoritarian and violent government”.
The Argentine left bloc also decided to leave, while the so-called ‘dialogist opposition’ – which has sought consensus with the government-will have a reduced presence.
The president of the centrist Radical Civic Union (UCR), Martin Lousteau, confirmed on his social networks that he will not attend, nor will some legislators from the center-right Federal Meeting and the Civic Coalition (center).
The presence of 329 legislators, consisting of 257 deputies and 72 senators, as well as all 23 governors and the mayor of the city of Buenos Aires is ruled out. So far, only three leaders have confirmed their presence, although others could send their deputy governors on their behalf.
Under an aesthetic similar to that of last year, the head of state will speak from a lectern by national network from 21:00 hours, the time of greatest audience on Argentine television, trying to imitate the style of American presidents during their state of the Union speeches.
The rest of the reserved seats and boxes will be occupied by representatives of the ultra-right Libertad Avanza, Milei’s party, and its allies from the conventional right Propuesta Republicana (PRO), who for about 45 minutes will appreciate from the front row the political agenda of the Executive for this 2025.
Trial against ousted president Pedro Castillo begins in Peru
The accusations against Castillo are based on a speech in which he called for a Constituent Assembly. Castillo affirms that this is a rigged trial to destroy the democratic option of the Peruvian people.
March 05, 2025 by Pablo Meriguet
Pedro Castillo visiting the Amazon region after an earthquake during his presidency. Photo: Twitter/ Pedro Castillo
The trial against former Peruvian President Pedro Castillo began in Peru on March 4. Castillo is accused of rebellion, abuse of authority, and disturbing the public peace for allegedly attempting to dissolve the National Congress at the end of 2022. Castillo has been held in jail for over two years since his dismissal by the Congress. Also accused are the former president of the Council of Secretaries of State, Betssy Chávez, and the former First Secretary, Aníbal Torres. The latter has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Castillo appeared without a lawyer at the opening of the oral trial in the Special Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, presided by Judge José Neyra Flores. According to the former president, a few hours before the beginning of the trial, he notified the subrogation of the four lawyers that were part of his defense, because, according to him, there was no sense in the trial as a whole: “I do not accept a public defense lawyer either…I have dispensed with the services of all my lawyers. I have subrogated them yesterday, in the content of this writing it is clear.”
Regarding the trial against Castillo, Colombian President Gustavo Petro said “This trial of a president of the republic is for being poor and leftist. An insult to the American Convention on Human Rights and an insult to democracy. The popular will that elected him president was mocked.”
What is the basis for the trial of the former president?
The accusation is based on a speech he gave on December 7, 2022, in which he announced his intention to convene a Constituent Assembly and dissolve the Congress after continuous attempts by the opposition to depose him from his functions and prevent any type of legislation in favor of his government program from being carried out.
Following Castillo’s speech, most of his ministers resigned. Opposing political forces and the armed forces declared that it was a self-coup d’état. The Peruvian Congress dismissed him that same afternoon and installed his Vice-President Dina Boluarte. Castillo was apprehended by the National Police and has been in prison ever since.
These incidents were followed by intense and historic protests throughout the country that lasted several months against the Boluarte government. Castillo’s former VP ordered the brutal repression of the demonstrators, causing the death of dozens of them and hundreds more to be injured, acts for which her government is now being investigated and which have been repudiated by international human rights organizations. Some have called the Boluarte government a coup government and, therefore, de facto.
Castillo argues that the trial against him is a political trial orchestrated and controlled by his enemies to destroy him and annihilate the legacy of his government. He has said that he is being held hostage in jail. In a message he clarified, “Today, in an act of patriotic protest, I refuse to participate in this judicial circus and I do not recognize those who have been designated as my executioners. I am the only one responsible for the political speech of December 7 in which I did not commit any crime of rebellion against others. None of my co-defendants has any responsibility, neither directly nor indirectly, neither before, during, or after the events. They will not be able to twist the truth or bend the will of the people. The struggle continues and sooner rather than later, we will triumph!”
Castillo posted on X, “Since December 7, 2022, I was illegally imprisoned after a coup d’état orchestrated by those who did not accept the triumph of the people. They accuse me without evidence, with witnesses manipulated by the prosecution. This trial is a farce of an oral trial, not a process of justice. From the constitutional judges to the Constitutional Tribunal controlled by the coup perpetrators, they have closed all legal avenues for my freedom and restitution.”
According to Castillo, the December 7 speech “does not constitute any crime or constitutional infraction. Political speech that today resounds with greater force in the face of the worsening of the general crisis of the State, corroborating the speech with reality; what I rightly said, and for which, from my prison turned into my trench of struggle, together with the people, today I reaffirm myself, in the imperious need for a new Political Constitution, in the unanimous rejection of the congressional dictatorship and the politicized justice system, as well as in the repudiation of the current usurper and murderous government.”
Replicating the coordinates of the Gulf of Tonkin in Essequibo
5 Mar 2025 , 10:56 am .
The US military presence in Guyana has escalated to provoke Venezuela (Photo: US Southern Command)
On February 18, the Guyanese government reported an alleged attack against its troops on the banks of the Cuyuní River in the Venezuelan territory of Essequibo. According to Georgetown, six Guyanese soldiers were injured when alleged "Venezuelan" gunmen opened fire during a resupply mission.
However, Venezuela categorically rejected these accusations, calling them a "vile montage" designed to manipulate public opinion and cover up the repeated violations of the international legal framework committed by Georgetown in the disputed territory.
In an official statement, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil denounced that this incident was a false flag operation orchestrated to justify the growing militarization of the area with the support of the United States Southern Command.
According to preliminary information gathered by Caracas, the injured were not Guyanese troops on regular missions, but elements linked to illegal mining that operate in the region with the protection of the army and police of the neighboring country.
The Cuyuní River incident cannot be understood as an isolated event; it is the first sign of a new agenda of provocation against Venezuela.
Such operations, historically used as a framework for military interventions, sanctions or interference in various regions, follow a well-defined pattern: covert maneuvers are carried out to blame the adversary and create a narrative that legitimizes subsequent measures of force and aggression.
Joint Military Operation "General Domingo Antonio Sifontes"
On March 1, Guyanese President Irfaan Ali , nicknamed the "Zelensky of the Caribbean" due to his role as a representative figure or "proxy" in the conflict against Venezuela, accused this country of incurring in waters that, according to his version, belong to Guyana.
Ali stated that "at approximately 7:00 a.m. on Saturday , a Venezuelan Navy patrol vessel entered Guyana's waters" and that "during this incursion the Venezuelan vessel approached several assets in our exclusive waters."
These statements, published on his Facebook account, lack legal basis since the waters in question are still pending delimitation and are part of the territorial dispute regulated by the Geneva Agreement.
The Guyanese further noted that Georgetown "has put its international partners on alert after a Venezuelan military patrol vessel reported floating production, storage and offloading vessels (FPSO) in the Stabroek block were operating in disputed international waters."
These statements seek to extrapolate the dispute and generate a victim narrative, ignoring the fact that ExxonMobil has no right to exploit resources in that area.
In response, the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) reported the presence of 28 foreign drilling vessels and tankers in waters yet to be delimited, which are operating under the consent of the Ali government.
Its activities, which include the exploitation and marketing of hydrocarbons, flagrantly violate international law and the 1966 Geneva Agreement, the only legal instrument in force that governs the practical and satisfactory solution of this territorial dispute.
In response, the Venezuelan institution carried out the joint military operation "General Domingo Antonio Sifontes", aimed at safeguarding the integrity of the maritime spaces of the Venezuelan Atlantic Coast. During this maneuver, the ocean patrol vessel AB Guaiquerí (PO-11) carried out surveillance and monitoring tasks that provided evidence, through satellite images, of the presence of foreign vessels in the disputed area.
Venezuela has repeatedly denounced that Guyana acts as a proxy for foreign powers and facilitates the exploitation of natural resources to the detriment of the country's historical and legal rights.
The FANB categorically rejected the statements of the Guyanese president, as well as the biased positions of some regional organizations that, far from contributing to a peaceful solution, promote hostility and warlike policies .
International complicity
The Organization of American States (OAS) and several foreign governments issued statements that not only ignore the legal framework established in the 1966 Geneva Agreement but also show clear complicity in a sensitive issue in terms of regional security.
The OAS unequivocally condemned the actions of the FANB, calling them "acts of intimidation" and a "clear violation of international law."
The United States, through its undersecretary for the Western Hemisphere , called them "unacceptable" and a "violation of Guyana's maritime space." The US government, which has openly supported Guyana and ExxonMobil, warned that "further provocation will have consequences for the Maduro regime."
The United Kingdom, through its Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, David Lammy , also joined the campaign against Venezuela, and defined the deployment of the FANB as a "provocative act."
France has expressed its "concern" over the incursion of the Venezuelan patrol boat into the "exclusive economic zone of Guyana" and urged Venezuela to respect the "sovereignty and territorial integrity of Guyana."
These actors are attempting to legitimize greater interference in the region.
The Gulf of Tonkin precedent: forcing the casus belli
History has repeatedly shown how the United States, in its eagerness to justify military interventions and hostile actions, has forced incidents that serve as excuses to escalate conflicts.
One of the most emblematic examples of this strategy was the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 , a pivotal event that marked the beginning of Washington’s massive involvement in the Vietnam War. Such a historical precedent has alarming parallels with the current situation facing Venezuela on its eastern border.
In August 1964, the US government reported two alleged North Vietnamese attacks on the destroyer USS Maddox in the aforementioned area. Notably, the second attack, reported on August 4, never occurred. Subsequent investigations, including the "Pentagon Papers" declassified in 1971, revealed that the incident was a fabrication.
Despite this, then-President Lyndon B. Johnson used both episodes to petition Congress for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized a military escalation without a formal declaration of war. This argument allowed the United States to increase its military presence in Vietnam from 60,000 to 500,000 troops, marking the beginning of one of the longest and most devastating wars of the 20th century.
The CIA's involvement in covert operations in the region, as well as the subsequent declassification of documents, confirmed that the US government was looking for an excuse to intensify its intervention in Vietnam.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident was nothing more than a political manipulation designed to sustain a war that responded to geopolitical and economic interests, and not to a real threat.
Venezuela is currently facing a similar situation, in which external actors, in complicity with Ali's government, are seeking to construct an argument to support intimidating actions against the Bolivarian nation.
The recent statements by the OAS, the United States, the United Kingdom and France, condemning the legitimate actions of the FANB in Essequibo, are part of a pre-established and deliberate script to present Venezuela as an aggressor in this regional scenario.
The strategy is intended to escalate the conflict and establish grounds for possible interference, as occurred with the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
Changing Trump's agenda: an ongoing psychological operation
In this context, it is clear that a carefully orchestrated psychological and media operation is underway to capture the attention of the US administration, particularly President Donald Trump.
By presenting Venezuela as an imminent threat, the White House is being pressured to prioritize this controversy as a regional security issue. The logic is simple: if that government perceives that the stability of the Caribbean and access to the region's energy resources are at risk, it is more likely to intervene or reinforce its support for Guyana.
However, this also reflects an internal dynamic in the United States. Trump, known for his more pragmatic and less interventionist approach to foreign policy, has shown a preference for retreat in international conflicts.
This represents a challenge for sectors of the US political class that have historically promoted coercive agendas against Venezuela. For these actors, the tensions with Georgetown are an opportunity to open a new front of attention that forces Trump to take a more active position, even if this goes against his natural tendency to retreat.
In fact, the characterization of Irfaan Ali as the "Zelensky of the Caribbean" is due to the fact that this individual presents himself as a victim of external aggression, which facilitates the mobilization of foreign support, as is the case with Ukraine.
This discourse, amplified by the media and allied political actors, is ultimately aimed at capturing Trump's attention and forcing his administration to take concrete measures, whether through sanctions, military support or a greater presence in the region.
The Cuyuní River incident, the unfounded accusations from Guyana and the biased statements from international organizations clearly aligned with Washington seem to follow a well-known pattern: fabricating a threat to justify hostile actions in defense of ExxonMobil's private energy interests.
Following the coordinates of the Gulf of Tonkin, where a fabricated incident served as a pretext for the military escalation in Vietnam, an attempt is currently being made to construct a narrative that presents Venezuela as an aggressor with a view to justifying a new international offensive of aggression.
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(@Caterin49788702) February 21, 2025
