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What Progressives Can Learn From Mexico About Avoiding a Right-Wing Backlash
Mexico’s continuity may reflect not only the material results achieved by the government, but also the broader narrative through which those results were understood.
Jun 26, 2026
The recent presidential election in Colombia highlighted a striking political paradox. New data from the country’s national statistics agency shows that the national poverty rate fell to 28% in 2025, the lowest level ever recorded. Nearly 1.8 million Colombians moved out of poverty in a single year, while extreme poverty and income inequality also declined. The figures represent a significant social achievement and continue a multi-year trend of improving living standards.
Yet, despite this advance, Colombians elected right-wing lawyer and businessman Abelardo De La Espriella, whose nationalist and law-and-order platform marks a sharp contrast with the policies of outgoing President Gustavo Petro. The outcome suggests that even significant social and economic progress does not necessarily translate into electoral support for the government that helped produce it.
Nor is Colombia unique. Across the region, electoral cycles have repeatedly shown that social progress does not necessarily produce lasting political loyalty. Similar patterns can be seen in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, and elsewhere in South America, where periods of progressive governance have often been followed by the election of more conservative leaders or governments with markedly different priorities.
Former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa offered one explanation for this phenomenon. He argued that when people escape poverty and enter the middle class, many become primarily concerned with preserving their newly acquired status. As a result, they may become less supportive of policies aimed at extending similar benefits to others. Whether or not one accepts this interpretation, it highlights an important political challenge: The very success of progressive social policies may alter the interests, expectations, and priorities of the people they benefit, making long-term political continuity more difficult to sustain.
The very success of progressive social policies may alter the interests, expectations, and priorities of the people they benefit, making long-term political continuity more difficult to sustain.
There is, however, one notable exception: Mexico.
Mexico presents an important counterexample. The presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador was followed by the election of Claudia Sheinbaum, who belongs to the same political movement and has pledged to continue much of the same agenda. Rather than producing a backlash, the governing project maintained broad popular support through a successful leadership transition.
Why Was Mexico different?
Part of the answer may lie not only in policy outcomes but also in political identity. While many progressive governments in South America have defined themselves primarily through ideological labels such as socialism or the left, Mexico’s governing movement increasingly describes itself through the concept of Mexican Humanism. Although its policies share many objectives with progressive governments elsewhere, the language is notably different. Mexican Humanism emphasizes dignity, community, solidarity, and national culture rather than ideological affiliation.
This distinction may matter. Political projects framed primarily in ideological terms can reinforce divisions between supporters and opponents. Projects rooted in shared cultural and ethical values may be better positioned to build identification across traditional political boundaries. From this perspective, Mexico’s continuity may reflect not only the material results achieved by the government, but also the broader narrative through which those results were understood.
The Colombian election therefore raises a broader question for Latin America. If poverty reduction, lower inequality, and improved social indicators are not enough to guarantee political continuity, what is missing? Is the decisive factor economic performance, security, media influence, political organization, or something deeper within a nation’s culture?
Mexico suggests that political durability may depend on more than effective governance alone. It may also require a shared sense of identity and purpose that transcends conventional ideological categories. The most interesting question may not be why some countries move from the left to the right, but why Mexico has not.
This article was first published on Pressenza.
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US Citizens Must Stop the Madness Their Empire Imposes on Them and the World
Today, the United States has the opportunity to prove to itself and to the world that the mistakes committed by its government do not reflect the desires of the US people.
Jun 11, 2026
Since January 2026, when the intensification of US policies aimed at suffocating the Cuban people began, I have had the opportunity to travel to the island three times. Each time I return with my heart a little more broken, but also with a stronger conviction that we need to defend Cuba.
As a Mexican, I have received, on behalf of my compatriots, thousands of expressions of gratitude and hugs that the Cuban people send to the Mexican people. Every time I am there, I speak about the empathy and understanding we have toward Cuba, about the great efforts ordinary Mexicans make to bring a few kilos of rice to collection centers. And when I listen to Cubans, I learn a little more about the deep history that unites us.
But as a Mexican American and a binational activist, I also carry the weight of understanding the average US citizen. After many years of living in the United States, I continue to be surprised by how deeply the dream of democracy lives within people there, despite the fact that the country has been experiencing a deepening democratic crisis for years.
The deprivation imposed by Washington on the Cuban people for decades is now being reflected within the very core of the empire itself. It is suffered not only by migrants, Native Americans, Black communities, and the historically oppressed. Today, that same yoke has reached a white middle class that is beginning to feel the collapse of freedoms originally created for them.
Only the people of the United States—and no one else—can carry out the transformations their own country needs.
Fortunately, people in the United States can learn much here from Latin America—and Cuba in particular. They can learn from the region’s long history of struggle against Washington’s domination—and from the long construction of democratic processes from below that go far beyond just elections.
The resilience and social fabric the Cuban people have built are unique, just as unique as the oppression caused by the blockade the US government has maintained for all these decades. The United States needs public healthcare, free access to university education, and affordable housing. It needs to stop investing the billions it spends on war and instead invest that money in its own people. Cuba has done that.
The dream of democracy in any country is built beyond the ballot box alone, through projects that people themselves embrace and carry out. Today, the United States has the opportunity to prove to itself and to the world that the mistakes committed by its government do not reflect the desires of the US people. Today, as C. Wright Mills said 60 years ago, “Cuba’s voice must be heard in the United States, because the United States is too powerful and its responsibilities to the world and to itself are too great for its people not to hear the voices coming from the hungry world.”
The United States is preparing for another electoral cycle while its policies of war and interventionism throughout the Global South get reaffirmed.
At the same time, the island of 10 million inhabitants is preparing to continue resisting in the face of the possibility of an attack. In Cuba’s “Family Guide for Protection in Case of Military Aggression,” one can read recommendations for what to pack in a backpack: identification, a radio, candles, food, medicine, and toys to help distract children.
A recently published poll by the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), a think tank based in Washington, DC, reveals that more than 60% of US citizens oppose a war with Cuba. At the same time, solidarity networks with Cuba in the United States—which have existed since the beginning of the blockade—are reactivating with renewed strength.
But can US citizens truly stop the madness their own empire imposes on them and on the rest of the world? Let us hope so, because only the people of the United States—and no one else—can carry out the transformations their own country needs. Only then will Cuba, the United States, Mexico, and the rest of the world be free.
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Manufacturing Consent for Trump's Invasion of Cuba
The indictment of Castro is a page taken from Trump’s playbook on Venezuela from earlier this year. And the stage is being set for something much worse to come.
May 30, 2026
These days, most of Havana’s streets are fairly empty of cars, but full of people walking or riding bicycles, electric bikes, electric “tricycles,” or scooters. Trash has piled up on most corners where regular pick-up has become impossible given that the garbage trucks have no gasoline. The average conversation starts off with comparing who’s gone the longest without electricity. The sympathy flows, as you exchange stories of what else you are going without: water, gas, food, medicine, transportation. People list the family members they haven’t been able to see and the medical appointments they’ve missed. Inevitably, someone will say better days are coming—“because they have to”—and to keep moving forward.
This week alone, the US Department of Justice indicted Raul Castro, the former head of state, who’s now 94 years old and largely out of public life. In addition, the Supreme Court gave a green light to Cuban-American-owned companies with property claims in Cuba from 67 years ago to sue tourist industry actors who “profited” from that land. Secretary of State Marco Rubio continues to grow more and more publicly agitated with Cuba’s refusal to bow to his demands, and Trump’s consistent incoherence shows an absolute lack of any clear policy position towards Cuba, aside from one that may economically benefit him and/or his family.
The indictment of Castro is a page taken from Trump’s playbook on Venezuela from earlier this year. There, the administration indicted a sitting head of state, Nicolas Maduro, as a legal pretext for a military intervention, which was labelled an “emergency” and thus not an act of war that would require Congressional approval. The administration staged a geopolitical coup d’état involving international kidnapping, acts of war in plain violation of international law and the U.N. Charter, and then imprisoned that leader as a message to the world of what happens to those who defy US interests. Such indictments serve as purportedly fixed legal fictions for shifting political pretexts. In Venezuela it was supposedly the state’s support for criminal enterprises and gangs, which was the justification for the Trump administration’s stated reason for the extrajudicial killing of nearly 200 civilians in piracy actions in the Caribbean. Once Maduro was kidnapped and jailed, the administration has stopped talking gangs and narcotrafficking rings.
In Cuba, the Justice Department’s indictment of Raul Castro is a clear response to the political forces that commanded it. As the island nation is not complying rapidly enough to the changes demanded by Washington, the administration has escalated its threats, military preparations, and legal actions, albeit largely symbolic in nature.
Rubio’s Escalation of Threats as Campaign Messaging
For decades, Marco Rubio has pushed for privately what the Cuban-American community in south Florida has not achieved in nearly 70 years: to run Cuba’s political and economic system remotely from Miami and Washington. These remote “owners” of Cuba have driven and financed Rubio’s political career, leading to this moment where he is adamantly (though unsuccessfully) trying to sell the American public that Cuba is a national security threat while simultaneously telling Cubans that their government is too weak to protect them. That inherent contradiction and incoherence, long the basis of US policy towards Cuba, have never been more dangerous than at this moment when Rubio’s rage and blind ambition to cause widespread destruction is bolstered by Trump’s monarchical goals.
The contradictory discourse is present in nearly every aspect of Cuba policy. Just this week, Rubio issued an Orwellian statement in response to the ICE arrest of Adys Lastres Morera, the sister of the head of GAESA, a Cuban entity that is connected to large swaths of the Cuban economy. Rubio was right to point out that “[f]or far too long, the family members of terrorist organizations, repressive anti-American regimes and other bad actors . . . have been given a free pass to enjoy the privileges of living in the United States,” but the United States also has a long tradition of granting sanctuary to terrorists, dictators, and war criminals. In particular, Latin American leaders, generals, and intelligence operatives that have long done the US bidding in propping up violent regimes have been granted refuge in south Florida, the home of Rubio and other elected officials who have promoted violence over diplomacy.
Yet what makes international cooperation, collaboration, and survival possible is not just insisting upon respect for international law and human rights by all governments, but strengthening their ability to do so through dialogue and diplomacy. The Trump-Rubio administration has clearly not been serious about using diplomacy to solve global conflicts, and that holds true in Cuba as well. The administration has tried to identify potential “opposition” I Cuba or political leaders it can “work with” like Delcy Rodriguez in Venezuela. Real US diplomacy looks quite different. Twelve years ago, it brought to Cuba a boom of economic activity, a thriving private sector, better financed public institutions, and riveting cultural exchanges for over a million US residents who found in Cuba a rich cultural, musical, artistic, and academic partner.
Trump and Rubio, though they might articulate the same goals, have different ulterior motives. Their goal is not, and has never been, economic opportunity for Cubans. Instead, they want an economic boon for Cuban-Americans aching to exert political and economic control over a land many have never even visited. Although Florida no longer plays a significant electoral role in US-Cuba policy, Rubio’s recent video talking to the Cuban people—and his messaging in general in escalating threats and aggression towards Cuba—is clearly intended to rally his base. What has caused widespread anxiety and fear among millions in Cuba has nevertheless excited his political base in south Florida.
Inside Cuba
These days in Havana, Cubans are experiencing a duality that has existed for generations who have lived under the threat of US military aggression and the daily reality of economic warfare. Cubans are exhausted. They are increasingly anxious and have reached the bottom of the well of hope. There is a saying that the last thing you lose is hope, meaning it is what you hold on to until the very end. Cubans are at the very end of their ability to see a hopeful future.
I get asked questions daily. Should I take my kids to a shelter? Will the United States bomb Havana? Where is it safe to go? Why don’t US citizens stop their government?
Cubans are experts at survival, and that’s exactly what they continue to do. As US Southern Command sends the aircraft carrier Nimitz into Caribbean waters, Cubans continue to carry on with daily life like they have done decade after decade. Most days, those around me look for an electric tricycle to take them to work or their child to school or have added a child seat to their bicycles. Cars that run on gasoline have become what one of my friends calls “garage adornments.”
Given the daily threat of military intervention and the four-month long oil blockade, activities like sleep have become a luxury. Many families cook or wash clothes at 3:00 a.m. when they get 1-2 hours of electricity. My friend sleeps on the floor with her son near the front door where air drafts can keep them cool in the sweltering heat and humidity. Most of us go without water for days at a time because lack of electricity makes pumping and distributing water impossible. Another dear friend went 35 days with no water while she, her mother, and her toddler spent weeks traveling from house to house bathing and washing clothes. Cooking and cleaning become infinitely more difficult with no water, gas, or electricity. Some daycare centers use coal to cook lunch for undernourished children.
While we live under the perpetual threat of US military aggression, children continue to play in the street with sticks and deflated balls, families continue to find ways to get to work and buy food, and the deep spiritual and religious traditions that sustain many Cubans are turned to over and over again. War has a name and a face. It’s not just a vague “government.” Here there are millions of people who owe the United States nothing and instead have only demanded to live in peace, in their homeland, however flawed it may be.
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Bolivia Lawmakers Overturn Limits on ‘Martial Law’ as Mass Uprising Demands Ouster of President
"They call us all bandits and thugs," said protesters, who have been met with a police crackdown. "We are democracy."
May 25, 2026
Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz, who is facing calls for his resignation as Indigenous and labor organizers lead protests across the country, could declare a "state of exception"—described by local reporters as "essentially martial law"—as soon as Monday night after the country's Senate overwhelmingly voted to overturn a law regulating the government's ability to crack down on protests.
According to Bolivian reports, the Chamber of Senators on Sunday overturned Law 1341, which since 2020 had imposed strict time limits on emergency measures, ensured certain violable rights could not be suspended under a state of exception, required legislative oversight, and made the president criminally liable for exceeding the law's perimeters.
"Abrogating Law 1341 does not remove the state of exception from Bolivia’s legal architecture," according to The Rio Times. "It removes the apparatus that prevented that constitutional clause from being exercised at the executive’s sole discretion."
Joseph Bouchard, who has reported for Drop Site News and The Intercept from Latin America, said far-right groups linked to the 2019 coup in Bolivia have demanded "a return to martial law, to use lethal force against opposition with impunity, and crack down on opposition as much as possible."
"Many of these groups are openly fascist and white supremacist," said Bouchard.
The law was overturned about three weeks into nationwide protests against Paz, who took office about six months ago. Protesters allied with former President Evo Morales have expressed anger over the administration's decision to end a fuel subsidy that was essential for working people amid an economic crisis. The demonstrators—comprised of a broad coalition which includes Indigenous groups, labor unions, and farmworkers—have demanded higher wages and an end to privatization and the broader neoliberal project under Paz.
The protests have been met with a crackdown by police, in La Paz and at the sites of dozens of road blockades around the country.
Last week, the country's public prosecutor issued arrest warrants for at least two organizers, including Mario Argollo, executive secretary of the top Bolivian labor union, Central Obrera Boliviana (COB).
On Monday, TeleSUR reported that COB refused to engage in talks with Paz's government until the charges against Argollo are dropped.
Bouchard reported that if Paz's government implements a state of exception, "the measures would mean security forces could arrest anyone, for any reason, and use extraordinary measures against all opposition."
The overturning of Law 1341 struck down limits on "the use of lethal force by the security forces," he said.
Only three senators aligned with Vice President Edmand Lara voted against repealing the law.
According to The Rio Times, Lara "has been politically distancing himself from Paz almost since inauguration."
"No measure can stand above human life," said Lara, expressing "profound concern and indignation" over the Senate vote.
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'Hondurasgate': A Symptom of Deeper Crises in Honduras and a Warning for Latin America
If no-holds-barred measures were deployed in the Honduran elections, they might be anticipated on a much bigger scale, again with little restraint, when the prizes could be Latin America’s biggest economies.
May 25, 2026
Governance in Honduras shifted sharply to the extreme right within months of National Party’s Nasry Asfura taking office on January 27, succeeding the Libre party’s progressive Xiomara Castro. In November 30 elections, the National Party was trailing a poor third before US President Donald Trump threatened to end all aid to Honduras unless Asfura won. Even then, Asfura had only a wafer-thin plurality, which might well have disappeared had the electoral council not broken its mandate by halting the count before all the votes had been tallied.
Compounding this blatant interference, Trump announced just two days before the election that he was pardoning former Honduran President and National Party stalwart, Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been extradited to the US and was serving a 45-year sentence for narco-trafficking. Corporate media treated Trump’s pardon as just a typically blatant political maneuver. Yet they have since largely ignored what appears to be a much bigger element of the same plot.
The Emerging Regional Offensive
The wider conspiracy has been revealed in a trove of leaked audio recordings, now dubbed “Hondurasgate.” The 37 recordings appear to show that Hernández—still in the US—is preparing a return to Honduran politics and, in league with Republican Party officials, is actively producing propaganda directed against progressive governments across Latin America.
Claims by Hondurasgate investigators that the recordings have been independently verified now appear to be at least partially substantiated by a separate investigation commissioned by Drop Site News. BBC Mundo recently interviewed Hernández and asked for his response to the controversy, but received no response.
The blatant US intervention exemplified by Hondurasgate may be an ominous foreshadowing of likely interference in the upcoming elections in Colombia (this month), Brazil (October), and Mexico (2030), all currently governed by progressives.
Shocking as the revelations are, Hondurasgate is symptomatic of a much more ambitious project to exploit Honduras and impose the “Donroe Doctrine” across the region. Whether or not the recordings are all genuine, the wider project is very much alive.
Power Consolidation Through Lawfare and Repression
Since taking office, Asfura wasted no time consolidating control over Honduran institutions. The elections left the Libre party with fewer than one-third of the seats in the National Congress, reverting to the historic pattern in Honduras in which the National and the Liberal parties—both neoliberal and subservient to Washington—swap power. This has enabled Asfura to move quickly against his enemies.
Marlon Ochoa, Libre’s representative on the electoral council and the first official to call out the electoral fraud, was impeached by Congress on fabricated charges, received death threats, and fled the country.
The sitting attorney general, also from Libre, was dismissed. The Supreme Court president was forced to resign, while other leading congressional members were impeached. Many of those kicked out of their jobs also had their US visas revoked.
“It is a political lawfare operation in which Honduran institutions are acting against the country’s own legal framework to eliminate political opponents,” wrote Diario RED. Carmen Haydeé López, Libre’s press officer, describes the moves as “state capture” by the ruling National Party.
Worse may follow: “If we have to kill people so we can have peace of mind, we’ll do it,” Hernández says in the Hondurasgate audios. Further, “If we have to resort to repression to control the country, we’ll do it.”
Far-right operative Roger Stone—a Trump associate said to have orchestrated Hernández’s pardon—even called for the US to kidnap Xiomara Castro and her husband, former president “Mel” Zelaya, “like they did with Maduro.”
Return to the Narco-State
These developments signal Honduras’ return to the corrupt and criminal neoliberal order that prevailed after the 2009 military coup and lasted until Xiomara Castro’s presidency in January 2022.
For most of this earlier period, Juan Orlando Hernández dominated politics, transforming Honduras into a “narco-state.” Over the years, he facilitated the trafficking to the US of at least 400 tons of cocaine, accepted huge bribes (including $1 million from Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán), and ran a regime marked by extreme violence.
The leaked recordings show Hernández expects a reconfigured judiciary to clear him of outstanding charges in Honduras. This would pave the way for his return and even to make a run for president again in 2029.
Rolling Back Social Gains and Imposing Austerity
In the meantime, Asfura has moved rapidly to dismantle the Libre government’s modest achievements. Castro had begun to invest heavily in a public health service that fell apart during the Covid-19 pandemic. Asfura halted construction of three hospitals her administration had partially completed. He also withdrew a popular subsidy for electricity bills benefiting 600,000 low-income families.
In the last few weeks, Honduras has witnessed widespread protests against the weakening of workers’ rights, a march organized by 30 campesino movements against legislation that strengthens the hands of big landowners, and student demonstrations over cuts in university budgets.
Another worrying hint of a return to the narc-ostate has been a sharp increase in homicides, extortions, kidnappings, and femicides. Violence peaked on May 21, with 24 violent deaths in two incidents: 19 peasant farmers murdered in a land conflict and five people killed in a gang assault on a police vehicle.
Cuts in public spending and attacks on the rights of the 60% of Hondurans living in poverty constitute Asfura’s austerity program. But Asfura’s and Hernández’s aims are for a much wider transformation of the country.
One of Castro’s reforms was to declare illegal the private model cities or “ZEDEs,” which Hernández and his predecessor initiated in the face of community protests. Asfura has reversed her decisions, thus neutralizing huge pending lawsuits filed against Honduras by the libertarian investors in two ZEDEs, Próspera and Morazán. US investor and billionaire Trump adviser Peter Thiel is a key figure behind Próspera. The congress is now exploring how to promote more of these libertarian “states within a state” that ride roughshod over the rights of local communities.
Militarization and Reassertion of US Hegemony
Another payoff for Trump in return for Hernández’s pardon is the promise of a second US military base in Honduras. Because of its strategic position in Central America, the US already has the huge Soto Cano base, which Castro threatened to close. Soon, according to Marlon Ochoa, the US will install another base on the island of Roatán, further strengthening Washington’s naval domination of the Caribbean.
If built, it will be part of a wave of US militarization in the region, with a strengthened base in El Salvador and US troops newly deployed in Panama.
Another dramatic change is the restoration of close ties with Israel. During Castro’s presidency, Honduras (along with Colombia and Nicaragua) was one of Latin America’s fiercest critics of the Gaza genocide. Hernández, when president, had close links with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who (according to the Hondurasgate recordings) had "everything to do" with Hernández’s pardon.
This month, Israeli President Issac Herzog embarked on a diplomatic tour of Central America, stopping in Panama and attending the inauguration of Costa Rica’s new President, Laura Fernández. While in San Jose, Herzog met Chile’s new right-wing President José Antonio Kast and Honduras’s Nasry Asfura who, despite his Palestinian ancestry, identifies as a Christian Zionist. Asfura’s administration is part of a broader regional trend in which Trump-aligned governments (such as Bolivia’s) restore ties with Israel that were severed by their predecessors.
Asfura is reportedly planning legislation to encourage investment by US and Israeli AI firms. Honduras’s abundant water resources and renewable energy infrastructure would be central to such projects. Yet several of these developments have proven highly controversial with rural communities, including the notorious hydro project which led to the murder of Berta Cáceres.
Testing Ground for the “Donroe Doctrine"
Gerardo Torres Zelaya says that “Honduras is not an isolated case: It is a testing ground for a new offensive against our democracies.” Torres Zelaya, a former vice minister in Castro’s administration, believes that what is at stake is not just the outcome of an election, but progressive Latin American governments being subjected to offensives that “no longer operate according to traditional rules.”
He adds that the region now faces hybrid warfare, strategically combining disinformation, economic coercion, criminal networks and, if required, military force. Trump’s intervention in Honduras raised the stakes further when compared with previous electoral interference. Yet even that was soon surpassed by the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
In March, Trump assembled his regional allies in pursuing his “Donroe Doctrine” to create the “Shield of the Americas.” Nasry Asfura was there, of course, along with his opposite numbers in El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Panama.
The blatant US intervention exemplified by Hondurasgate may be an ominous foreshadowing of likely interference in the upcoming elections in Colombia (this month), Brazil (October), and Mexico (2030), all currently governed by progressives. If no-holds-barred measures were deployed in the Honduran elections, they might be anticipated on a much bigger scale, again with little restraint, when the prizes could be Latin America’s biggest economies. Hondurasgate signals that Trump will not act alone; his accomplices will be the 12 members of his “Shield of the Americas.”
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Bolivian Government Charges Labor Leader With Terrorism as Police Crack Down on Protests
The leader of the country's main labor federation said officials were responding to protesters who have marched hundreds of miles in recent days with "militarization and repression instead of listening to the people."
May 19, 2026
A leader of Bolivia's main labor federation, the Bolivian Workers' Union, said late Monday that the country's public prosecutor is "trying to silence" mass protests that have included Indigenous communities, miners, peasants, and teachers in recent days, as the government issued arrest warrants for labor and grassroots organizers.
TeleSUR reported that State Attorney General Roger Mariaca confirmed his office was charging Mario Argollo, executive secretary of the union, known in Spanish as Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), with public instigation to commit crimes and terrorism.
“They will not subdue us in the struggle we have undertaken," Argollo said in a statement. "They are trying to silence us as leaders with popular actions and criminal charges."
Drop Site News also reported that the public prosecutor issued an arrest order targeting Justino Apaza Callisaya, a leader of the Federation of Neighborhood Councils of La Paz (FEJUVE), "an influential grassroots organization tied to urban protest movements and labor mobilizations."
The office is also reportedly investigating "several individuals" following COB's declaration of a general strike on May 1.
"The accused are being investigated for extremely serious offenses including: public incitement to commit crimes, criminal association, terrorism, financing terrorism, attacks on transportation security, [and] attacks on public services," reported Drop Site.
The mass mobilization has included dozens of road blockades across the country as the union and other groups have demanded the resignation of President Rodrigo Paz, whose administration ended a fuel subsidy amid an economic crisis; higher wages; and an end to privatization, including through Law 1720, which opponents say would allow the transfer of Indigenous and peasant land to corporations.
Protesters have spent days marching from their communities to La Paz, where thousands were met by riot police armed with tear gas canisters on Monday.
Al Jazeera reported that some protesters brandished "dynamite sticks and slingshots" as they arrived in the capital city.
An unspecified number of protesters were injured Monday as the government deployed the police and the military to try to break the road blockades, Al Jazeera reported. TeleSUR said that at least four demonstrators were reportedly killed. About 90 arrests were made.
The US State Department said Sunday that it supported Paz's efforts to "restore order for the peace, security, and stability of the Bolivian people."
COB said the government was responding with "militarization and repression instead of listening to the people."
"History will remember who defended the citizenry and who turned their backs. No force should be above the people or their rights," said COB.
The arrest documents and government investigations, said Drop Site, showed that "the Bolivian government is escalating its response to the protests by describing parts of the strike movement not simply as civil unrest, but as potential terrorism and organized criminal activity."
A student leader at the Public University of El Alto told Drop Site, "No matter what the Paz government attempts to do, repress the protesters or sanction us as terrorists... we will continue to uphold the sovereignty and rights of our peoples."
A former Altiplano mayor and Aymara social leader was direct about the betrayal: "This government was clearly elected with a mandate from the social movements and from indigenous peoples — who have been stabbed in the back the minute they entered office. They have attempted to… pic.twitter.com/tS80WqG1Zi
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) May 18, 2026
An Indigenous leader told the outlet that Paz's government "was clearly elected with a mandate from the social movements and from indigenous peoples—who have been stabbed in the back the minute they entered office. They have attempted to use the state to go after the very forces that got them to power."
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A Warning From El Salvador
While President Trump is ever more desperately focused on the Middle East, maybe some of us should still be focusing on El Salvador, where President Bukele (elected democratically like Donald Trump) is following the same strongman handbook that Trump has been using.
May 06, 2026
Recently, I had the opportunity to stand in a friend’s kitchen eating pupusas, the Salvadoran national food, while listening to an update on conditions in Central America from Cristosal’s Noah Bullock. Cristosal is a key Central American human rights organization engaged in legal advocacy, forensic investigation, and amplifying the voices of people who are experiencing—and resisting—repression in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Noah offered considerable detail on the conditions in those countries, but his basic message for us living so far away was simple: No matter how dark the road gets, we keep on walking. We know the sun will rise again.
So, while most of the world (and the media) is all too reasonably focused on the ever-evolving, increasingly disastrous conflicts in Iran and Lebanon, I found myself instead thinking about the countries to our south.
Benign Neglect?
During the years when our main political work involved opposing US aggression in Latin America, my partner and I used to believe that the whole region would be better off if the imperial eye were focused on other parts of the world. Most Central American countries may be poor, but they’re more likely to prosper during times when Washington isn’t treating them as backyard gold mines, or pawns in a global conflict.
Take Nicaragua, for example. US Marines first occupied that country early in the last century and, by the 1920s, had helped establish a dynastic dictatorship there that would last until 1979. During that time, US companies profited endlessly from various forms of resource extraction, including the gold of the Las Minas (The Mines) area, comprised of the towns of Siuna, Rosita, and Bonanza; lumber from various parts of the country; and palm oil from its Atlantic coast.
During the 1980s and 1990s, the United States planted seeds in Central America that would eventually bloom as twin disasters for the region: the rise of international gangs and the ravages of climate change.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the United States used its Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union as a pretext for directly meddling in the lives and politics of countries across Latin America. Bogus threats of a communist takeover, for instance, excused the CIA’s 1954 overthrow of Jacobo Árbenz, the democratically elected president of Guatemala. Carlos Castillo Armas was then installed as president, the first of a long series of dictators, much to the satisfaction of that US commercial giant, the United Fruit Company, which proceeded to treat the country as its own private orchard.
When Chilean President Salvador Allende supported nationalizing his country’s two biggest copper mines, their US owners benefited from a 1973 CIA-backed coup that overthrew him. The newly installed dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet then launched a campaign of terror, torture, disappearances, and the murder of tens of thousands of Chileans over his 17 years in power.
Similarly, the United States supported right-wing, repressive governments in Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Honduras, and Uruguay during those Cold War decades. However, beginning with the Nicaraguan revolution in 1979, most of those countries managed to rid themselves of their repressive rulers in the last two decades of the 20th century.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the United States began to push Latin America aside and focus elsewhere, sending its “Harvard boys” off to Russia and points east. Like the Chicago Boys of the 1970s, who remade Chile’s economy as a model of laissez-faire capitalism, those young Harvard economists sought to offer similar “benefits” to the benighted former Soviet Socialist Republics. Their efforts led to a fire sale of state industries and birthed a class of oligarchs whose successors still rule Russia and various former Soviet republics.
Then, beginning with the first Gulf War against Iraq (also in 1991), and especially after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, the US acquired a new, if amorphous, “enemy” and launched the Global War on Terror. Washington’s geographic focus then turned to Central Asia, the Middle East, and northern Africa, as the US began what would prove to be disastrous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and now (with as-yet-unknown consequences) in Iran. Meanwhile, Latin America experienced a bit of what (in entirely different circumstances) President Richard Nixon’s adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan once termed “benign neglect.”
An Evil Harvest
As it happened, however, during the 1980s and 1990s, the United States planted seeds in Central America that would eventually bloom as twin disasters for the region: the rise of international gangs and the ravages of climate change. While Mexico’s gangs are largely homegrown affairs, those in El Salvador began as US imports. During the dictatorships and guerrilla wars of the 1980s, numerous Salvadorans, fleeing government repression, sought asylum in the United States. Thousands would settle in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Once the war in El Salvador ended in 1992, many of them headed home again, some bringing the gang culture of California with them, including Mara Salvatrucha (also known as MS-13) and the 18th Street gang, both from the Los Angeles area. I got a glimpse of that form of migration in 1993, when I spent a few days in El Salvador. On a wall in the capital city, San Salvador, I saw the tag of a gang from my very own neighborhood in San Francisco, the XXII-B, or “Twenty-two-B” crew. That stood for the corner of 22nd and Bryant streets, the very corner of San Francisco where my partner and I were then living. We’d watched them grow up on our block. They were never a big deal in San Francisco, nor did they really become so in El Salvador, unlike MS-13 and the 18th Street crew.
As for climate change, we obviously can’t pin all the blame for that on the United States alone, although our current president is doing his best to drive us in that direction. (Fond as he is of fake awards, perhaps someday he’ll get one for the World’s Most Devastating Climate Changer.) Until 20 years ago, however, the US was the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and, though now leapfrogged by China, it remains historically by far the world’s largest user of fossil fuels.
One result of the intensifying global climate emergency is a series of devastating droughts in Central America, which lies within the “Dry Corridor,” running from southern Mexico to Panama. That region, inhabited in many places by subsistence farmers, has historically experienced cycles of wetness and drought, corresponding in part to the El Niño oscillation, which periodically warms the Pacific Ocean’s surface, bringing fierce rainfall to the West Coast of the United States and severe drought further south. In recent decades, climate change has been lengthening the drought periods and multiplying their effects. Increased heat reduces soil moisture, while rising seas contaminate estuaries and aquifers, leaving less water available for farming. A new round of droughts began in 2014 and, in 2018 and 2019, farmers across Central America would lose 75% to 100% of their main food crop, corn.
Worse yet, on our ever-hotter planet in this era of ever-more-intense climate change, the strongest El Niño in 140 years is predicted to begin later this year.
It turns out that not only has the US historically treated Central America terribly, but its neglect of the region in our era has hardly been benign. Under such circumstances, it shouldn’t be a surprise that, by the end of Joe Biden’s presidency, the combination of US “exports”—murderous gang violence, political repression, and drought—had led record numbers of migrants to our southern border, desperately seeking asylum in this country. And that brings us to Donald J. Trump, and his new best friend, Nayib Bukele.
In El Salvador: Trump’s BFF Nayib Bukele
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador has called himself “the world’s coolest dictator.” He’s young, handsome, and extremely popular in his own country. Originally a man of the left, while mayor of the capital, San Salvador, from 2015 to 2019, he succeeded in reducing the murder rate there not through repression but by mending the “tejido social”—the social fabric. He rebuilt the city center, providing streetlights and surveillance cameras, thereby creating a safer central area for street vendors. He also opened up educational and recreational opportunities for the city’s youth. In addition, he made cosmetic changes symbolic of progressive politics like renaming Roberto D’Aubuisson Street, so-called in honor of a death-squad leader.
Bukele claimed that such measures alone had produced a genuine decline in the city’s disturbing murder rate. But investigations have since shown that he also followed in the footsteps of previous Salvadoran presidents by making pacts with the gangs to reduce visible violence. (For an exploration of Bukele’s agreements with them and later with Donald Trump, don’t miss the PBS Frontline film on the subject.)
In his eagerness to play the strongman, Donald Trump has climbed into bed with the world’s coolest dictator—and the criminals of Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13.
His 2019 election to the presidency began his full-scale shift to the right and toward what has now become full-on authoritarian rule. In 2020, he ordered soldiers into El Salvador’s congress to force it to accept a $103 million loan from the United States to underwrite the US-El Salvador anti-gang Plan Vulcan, which involved the massive incarceration of accused gang members (along with many innocents). At the same time, Bukele made an agreement with MS-13 to spare some of its key members in return for a reduction in the capital’s murder rate, which did indeed drop steeply during the first years of his first term as president. But in 2022, some MS-13 members who were supposed to be protected were mistakenly caught up in a sweep and, in retribution, murders spiked once again. As Cristosal’s Noah Bullock explained in that talk I listened to recently, the gangs have the power to dial visible street violence up or down. They use violence as a way to communicate with both El Salvador’s citizenry and its government. A display of corpses on street corners is a way of sending messages to both of them.
In 2021, having captured a majority in the legislature, President Bukele took control of the judiciary, too, by ordering an increasingly supine congress to oust the five members of the Supreme Court of Justice. Then, following a landslide reelection victory in 2024, he rewrote the constitution so that he could serve consecutive terms as president ad infinitum, while also building the now-notorious CECOT “terrorism confinement” prison, where torture and sexual abuse have become daily occurrences.
When Bukele met with President Trump at the White House during his first term, it was clear that the admiration was mutual. Trump could, of course, only dream of exercising the kind of control Bukele by then wielded over all three branches of the Salvadoran government. In 2025, after Trump’s second inauguration, he and Bukele met again and struck a deal: The United States would pay El Salvador $6 million to imprison 250 mostly Venezuelan immigrants to this country in the CECOT mega prison. The transfer of those men (over the objections of a US federal judge) was chronicled in carefully-produced videos of Salvadoran soldiers frog-marching their shackled captives into CECOT, pushing them to their knees, and forcibly shaving their heads.
As investigations would later reveal, those men were not, as claimed by the Trump administration, members of Venezuela’s quasi-gang Tren de Aragua, but ordinary citizens caught up in Immigration and Customs Enforcement roundups. Except for a few Salvadoran citizens, who remain in CECOT to this day, they were eventually freed. Those who were released, however, described weeks of torture and sexual abuse in, among other places, a CBS "60 Minutes" report that was, for a time, spiked by the new editor-in-chief of CBS News, Trump admirer Bari Weiss.
In truth, though, $6 million was chump change to a Salvadoran government used to hundreds of millions of dollars of largesse from Washington. In this case, however, Bukele got something he wanted a lot more than money. The US was holding a group of nine extradited MS-13 leaders, and MS-13 wanted them returned to El Salvador. Hoping to keep the retributive killing in his country down, Bukele wanted them back, too. There was, as The Washington Post reported in October 2025, only one problem: Some of those prisoners were US informants, who had assisted the FBI in disrupting MS-13 activity in this country. Federal law prohibited turning them over to El Salvador, but Trump assigned Secretary of State Marco Rubio to work things out with Bukele. According to the Post:
To deport them to El Salvador, Attorney General Pam Bondi would need to terminate the Justice Department’s arrangements with those men, Rubio said. He assured Bukele that Bondi would complete that process and Washington would hand over the MS-13 leaders.
Rubio’s extraordinary pledge illustrates the extent to which the Trump administration was willing to meet Bukele’s demands as it negotiated what would become one of the signature agreements of President Donald Trump’s early months in office.
Not surprisingly, repression against the press and civil society continues in El Salvador to this day. Many opposition journalists have had to flee the country. In May 2025, human rights attorney Ruth López Alfaro, head of Cristosal’s Anti-Corruption and Justice unit, was arrested. She remains in prison as of this writing. Shortly after that, Cristosal made the difficult decision to move its offices to Guatemala in order to continue its human rights work in greater safety.
Eyes on El Salvador
These days, it’s all eyes on Iran. But while President Trump is ever more desperately focused on the Middle East, maybe some of us should still be focusing on El Salvador. President Bukele (elected democratically like Donald Trump) is following the same strongman handbook that Trump has been using. The steps are the same for aspiring autocrats around the world, whether in Hungary, Russia, or the United States. Here are a few bits of guidance from that metaphorical manual:
- Attack the judiciary, as Trump & Company have done every time they get an adverse federal ruling;
- Capture the legislature and make it do your will, whatever gerrymandering or electoral finagling it takes in Trump’s case;
- Attack the press and civil society organizations, labeling them, as Trump has, “enemies of the people” and “domestic terrorists”; and
- Plan to rule indefinitely, as Trump repeatedly hints he’d like to do.
Oh, and it doesn’t matter how evil your partners in crime turn out to be, whether it’s Bibi Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin, or Nayib Bukele. In his eagerness to play the strongman, Donald Trump has climbed into bed with the world’s coolest dictator—and the criminals of Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13.
But, as Noah from Cristosal told our little gathering the other day, we have to keep on walking through the dark, knowing that every act of solidarity and resistance brings the dawn that much closer.
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Trump: American Gangster
The president is using the power of the US military to steal the wealth of Latin American countries to enrich himself, his family, his closest business associates, and US corporations.
May 04, 2026
Some lawmakers have grown so alarmed by the Trump administration’s actions in Latin America that they are beginning to accuse the administration of gangsterism.
Representative Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) saw the possibility of gangsterism at the start of the second Trump administration when he warned that the United States could “join the ranks of gangster nations,” but there is a growing sense in Congress that the day has arrived.
At a congressional hearing last month, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) asserted that the Trump administration is exploiting the US military to take Latin American resources for US corporations. Castro seemingly channeled the anti-war critiques of Smedley Butler, the US military hero of the early 20th century, who condemned war as a racket and lamented his exploitation as a racketeer for capitalism.
“For decades, our men and women in uniform who volunteered to protect our country became mercenaries ordered to risk their lives to protect the profits of US corporations,” Castro said. “Today, President Trump is ordering them to do so again.”
The Case of Venezuela
The Trump administration’s critics in Congress have been warning about the administration’s gangsterism due to its actions in Venezuela.
Since the Trump administration directed a military operation earlier this year to seize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and take control of the country’s oil and minerals, several lawmakers have suggested that the administration has begun to employ force and intimidation as its basic tools of statecraft.
Lawmakers have condemned the administration for conducting a military operation without congressional approval, meddling in Venezuela’s internal politics, displaying contempt for Venezuela’s political process, facilitating corruption in Venezuela and the United States, and using the US military to take control of Venezuela’s resources.
Now that the Trump administration has moved against Venezuela, establishing new leadership and doling out profits from its resources, lawmakers anticipate that it will move against Cuba next.
“You are taking their oil at gunpoint,” Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this year.
Although Congress has not held the president accountable, as the Republican majority in each chamber supports the president, critics have kept pressure on the White House, prompting officials to defend the administration’s actions.
At the congressional hearing last month, State Department official Michael Kozak claimed that the intervention in Venezuela advanced US interests. He cited the Monroe Doctrine, which marks Latin America as a sphere of influence. Like the president, he boasted that the United States now controls the country’s resources.
“We’ve got very significant control over the oil revenues at this point,” Kozak said.
Several Democratic lawmakers responded with strong criticisms. They condemned the Trump administration for acting so aggressively in the hemisphere, and they warned that its actions would create a backlash against the United States.
Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.) described the administration’s approach as “shameful.” She insisted that the United States should not be “reviving a policy of domination and subjugation in the Western Hemisphere through the Monroe Doctrine.”
Castro repeated his warning that the Trump administration is focused on commerce and profits. He suggested that the president is using the US military to enrich people close to him.
“What has happened now is that there’s a group of folks that the president favors in his circle that is able to commence commerce and make money off of, whether it’s valuable minerals, oil, anything else in Venezuela,” Castro said.
Kozak expressed disagreement with Castro’s analysis, but he acknowledged that the Trump administration has established significant controls over Venezuela. Once again, he boasted that the Trump administration controls the country’s resources.
“People can lift oil and sell it on the open market, but all that money goes into an account that we have control over,” Kozak said. “All the revenues that are coming from the mining sector and everything, instead of going into their bank accounts, are coming into the Treasury accounts, and then we can dole it out as we see fit.”
The Case of Cuba
Now that the Trump administration has moved against Venezuela, establishing new leadership and doling out profits from its resources, lawmakers anticipate that it will move against Cuba next.
For months, President Donald Trump has been openly threatening Cuba. He has moved to block oil shipments to the country, causing an economic crisis. Knowing that he has put tremendous pressure on the Cuban government, he has demanded that the country’s president leave office.
“I do believe I’ll be having the honor of taking Cuba,” Trump said in March. “I think I could do anything I want with it, if you want to know the truth.”
Critics are giving serious consideration to the idea that Trump’s wars are a racket and that Cuba may be next.
Although the Trump administration’s military intervention in Iran has shifted its focus away from Cuba, the administration is maintaining an economic stranglehold over the island nation, making its recovery impossible. The US military continues blocking the free flow of oil to Cuba, even while Trump demands the free flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. The few oil shipments that have reached Cuba, for instance a recent tanker from Russia, have provided little relief.
At the congressional hearing last month, several lawmakers argued that the Trump administration is a major reason why Cuba is facing such tremendous hardship, including island-wide blackouts and preventable deaths at hospitals and health clinics.
“We cannot ignore our own country’s role in the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Cuba,” Castro said.
Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.), who recently visited the country, made the strongest criticisms. Warning that the administration’s policies are causing tremendous harm to the Cuban people, he indicated that the Trump administration is violating international humanitarian law.
“We have engaged in collective punishment,” Jackson said.
The congressman also accused the Trump administration of trying to make life so miserable for the Cuban people that they would rise up and overthrow the Cuban government. He described it as a failed “policy of starving” Cuba.
“It was one of the most cruel things I had ever seen in my life,” he said.
Just as the Trump administration has been able to get away with its actions in Venezuela, however, it has been able to continue its policies toward Cuba. The administration maintains support among Republicans and some Democrats, few of whom oppose the administration’s goal of regime change.
The president, who knows that he faces little opposition in Congress, continues threatening to direct a military intervention in Cuba, even citing the operation in Venezuela as a precedent.
“In January, our warriors flew straight into the heart of the Venezuelan capital, captured the outlawed dictator Nicolás Maduro, and brought him to face American justice,” Trump said last month. “And very soon this great strength will also bring about a day 70 years in waiting. It’s called, ‘A New Dawn for Cuba.’”
War Is a Racket
When Smedley Butler spoke against his exploitation as a racketeer for capitalism nearly a century ago, he made a criticism of the American way of war that was considered to be so radical by US leaders that it has been largely excluded from mainstream political discourse.
Only a few politicians, such as former Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas), have cited Butler and his warnings. Rarely, if ever, does the mass media report on war as a racket in which the country’s leaders are exploiting US military forces as gangsters for capitalism.
Today, however, some elected leaders are beginning to issue the same kinds of warnings about the Trump administration. Alarmed by the president’s insatiable lust for wealth and power, they are starting to suggest that the president is engaging in a kind of gangsterism across Latin America. The president, they say, is using the power of the US military to steal the wealth of Latin American countries to enrich himself, his family, his closest business associates, and US corporations.
“By any measure, this is the most corrupt administration in American history,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said earlier this year.
Now that the Trump administration is openly pillaging Venezuela and getting away with it, several lawmakers are warning that it may apply the same approach to other Latin American countries.
“It’s making me think that the goal in Cuba is going to be the same,” Castro said at the hearing in April. “It’s who’s going to go over there that’s friends with the president to make money and who’s going to profit off of Cuba and the Cuban people.”
Indeed, there is a growing sense in Congress that the Trump administration is turning to gangsterism. Moving beyond standard establishment critiques of the president’s contempt for norms and traditions, critics are giving serious consideration to the idea that Trump’s wars are a racket and that Cuba may be next.
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Rights Groups Warn Countries to End Complicity in Trump’s High Seas Murder Spree
As the death toll rises, governments "cannot plausibly claim ignorance of the risks" of supporting the US military in the Caribbean and Pacific, said a coalition.
Apr 24, 2026
With the death toll in the Trump administration's bombings of boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean hitting at least 180, a global coalition of rights and policy organizations is warning governments that they "cannot plausibly claim ignorance of the risks" of continuing to support the United States' deadly policy in the region, and demanding that countries "stop facilitating extrajudicial killings" carried out by the US military.
The Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) spearheaded the statement now co-signed by at least 125 human rights groups, drug policy organizations, and veterans' groups, warning that just as US military officials and personnel have risked potential criminal liability by taking part in at least 52 boat bombings since September, third countries that are aiding the US in the attacks may be taking similar risks.
"Third states can incur legal responsibility for aiding or assisting another state in their commission of internationally wrongful acts, including extrajudicial killings and crimes against humanity," reads the statement, whose signatories include Amnesty International, Oxfam America, and the Friends Committee on National Legislation. "Forms of cooperation such as intelligence sharing, access to military bases, and the provision of logistical support may meet the threshold for aiding and assisting where they facilitate the identification, tracking, and targeting of vessels."
As El País reported Thursday, a number of countries have confirmed they are cooperating with President Donald Trump's targeting of boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, which the administration has claimed is aimed at stopping drug trafficking in the region.
The US military has not publicly released evidence that the people it's killed were actually "narco-terrorists" as it's repeatedly claimed; the family members of some of the victims have filed legal complaints, saying their loved ones were not involved in the drug trade.
A small number of victims were identified last year by The Associated Press, which found some were struggling fishermen or other workers who took low-level jobs helping drug traffickers to navigate the Caribbean. Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America has compared the killings, if they have targeted the drug trade at all, to "straight-up massacring 16-year-old drug dealers on US street corners.”
Despite the lack of evidence to back up the administration's claims about the operation, the Dominican Republic has allowed the US to refuel military planes and transport equipment at one of its air bases and its Las Américas International Airport, and the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago expressed support for the boat bombings when they began in September. The island nation has reportedly allowed the transit of military aircraft and the installation of a US radar system for surveillance.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro said in November that his government would no longer share intelligence on drug trafficking with the US, but he later walked back the threat, saying intelligence would be shared provided it "will be used for seizures without undermining human rights."
Trump also convened a "Shield of the Americas" summit last month to announce the creation of a coalition of 17 countries in the region, including Argentina, Costa Rica, and Paraguay, which will focus on "bilateral and multilateral operations against cartels and terrorist organizations.”
Legal experts have warned that although Trump informed the US Congress last October that the administration views the US as being in an "armed conflict" with Latin American drug cartels, the military has clearly violated international law by targeting defenseless survivors of its boat bombings.
"The United States is not in an armed conflict with anyone in Latin America. That means the people on these boats are civilians. Civilians, including those suspected of smuggling drugs, are not lawful targets," said the ACLU last month.
Experts have said the bombings meet the definition of extrajudicial killings—or simply murder—and one top US military lawyer warned before the operation began that US service members could face legal repercussions for carrying out the attacks at the direction of Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Despite the alarm raised by legal experts, "we are witnessing a continuation and a truly worrying normalization of these attacks against vessels," Annie Shiel, US director of CIVIC, told El País on Thursday. “The United States is committing extrajudicial killings or murders, plain and simple.”
The group and its fellow signatories warned states like the Dominican Republic and Trinidad and Tobago could also be held legally responsible if they provide aid or assistance to the US when it is committing acts that violate international law.
"All states must immediately cease or refrain from providing any assistance that could contribute to these unlawful killings," reads the statement. "Failure to do so facilitates the continuation of this lawless campaign, undermines the rule of law, and risks incurring legal responsibility under international law."
The groups emphasized that in addition to putting countries at risk for legal liability, governments that facilitate the boat killings are exacerbating harm to their own communities.
"Families awaiting the return of their loved ones may never know what happened to them and have no access to recourse," they said. "Coastal communities have witnessed human remains washing up on shore and fear for their lives when they trade and fish, sowing psychological trauma and undermining livelihoods."
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From Boat Murders to Kidnapping Maduro, Trump Spending Billions on 'Donroe Doctrine' Militarism
“Across the country people are going bankrupt and dying prematurely because of lack of healthcare, but the US government has billions to spend on imperialist violence to enrich corporations," said one researcher.
Apr 23, 2026
As the basic needs of millions of Americans are sacrificed upon the altar of waning US global domination, an analysis unveiled Thursday revealss that the Trump administration has spent billions of dollars on illegal military aggression against Venezuela and civilian boats alleged without evidence to be smuggling drugs off the coast of Latin America.
The Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson School of International and Public Affairs published an analysis by a pair of researchers who "found that spending on Operation Southern Spear and Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela, the Caribbean, and the Eastern Pacific cost at least $4.7 billion from August 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026."
The researchers—Hanna Homestead of the Institute for Policy Studies' National Priorities Project and Jennifer Kavanagh of the think tank Defense Priorities—also found that "costs will continue to mount as some naval assets and aircraft remain in the region and strikes continue."
"This estimate is only partial due to lack of information, and does not include long-term budgetary costs such as veterans benefits," an introduction to the analysis states.
BREAKING: Since August 2025, the U.S. has spent at least $4.7 billion on operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, including the operation to oust Maduro. [THREAD, 1/11]
[image or embed]
— The Costs of War Project (@costsofwar.bsky.social) April 23, 2026 at 8:41 AM
In addition to the financial burden, the analysis notes the human costs of enforcing the so-called "Donroe Doctrine."
"While not the topic of this paper, they are essential to note at the outset," the publication states. "The raid and capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro during Operation Absolute Resolve resulted in approximately 75 known fatalities. These include 32 Cuban personnel killed, at least 23 Venezuelan security officers killed, and at least two civilian deaths."
US strikes "against unarmed vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific between September 2, 2025 and March 31, 2026 have killed at least 163 people," the authors added. "In addition, at least one American service member died while deployed to the Caribbean in February 2026 when two US ships collided."
The toll from Trump's boat-bombing spree has since risen to more than 180 following additional reported strikes. Survivors of somemi bombings allege they were tortured by their US captors. The US military and Trump administration have provided no solid evidence to support their claims that the boats were transporting illicit narcotics.
Homestead and Kavanagh noted in their analysis that "to date, Congress has not authorized the use of force in the Caribbean or Eastern Pacific and the Pentagon has not provided information about costs of Venezuela-related operations, even as they continue to mount."
There have been more than 50 boat bombings since Trump launched his campaign last September. Relatives of people killed in or missing after the strikes insist their loved ones were fishers with no links to the drug trade, an assertion echoed by leaders in Venezuela, Colombia, and some Caribbean island nations.
Multiple war powers resolutions aimed at reining in Trump's ability to wage war on Venezuela or bomb boats on the high seas without congressional authorization have been rejected by the Republican-controlled Congress.
In addition to the bombing and invasion of Venezuela and the boat strikes, the Trump administration has deployed troops to Ecuador as part of a joint campaign against alleged drug gangs dubbed Operation Total Extermination. Trump has also ordered the military to plan an invasion to seize the Panama Canal, threatened to "take" Cuba, possibly attack Mexico and Colombia, invade and annex Greenland, and somehow make Canada the "51st state."
That's just in the Western Hemisphere. Overall, Trump has bombed seven countries around the world since returning to the White House and 10 nations over the course of his two terms—including Iran, where he launched an illegal war with Israel.
The Costs of War Project rose to prominence by tracking the human and financial price of the so-called US War on Terror, which since September 2001 has resulted in over 940,000 direct deaths, including at least 432,000 civilians, in five studied countries, at a monetary cost of around $8 trillion.
Homestead and Kavanagh wrote in their analysis that the $4.7 billion figure "is a conservative estimate, and the greatest costs may yet be to come," as "operations do not have a clear end date and are actively expanding."
"They carry significant human, financial, and strategic costs and risk," the researchers contended. "American taxpayers, who are increasingly unable to afford basic needs, have a right to know how their tax dollars are spent."
Homestead told The Intercept on Thursday that "across the country people are going bankrupt and dying prematurely because of lack of healthcare, but the US government has billions to spend on imperialist violence to enrich corporations—from Venezuela to Iran—without any regard for human rights, life, or rule of law."
“This situation illustrates why greater restraint on Pentagon spending—which primarily benefits private contractors—is so necessary," she added.
This, as Trump seeks a record $1.5 trillion allocation for military spending in the next federal budget—despite the national debt approaching a staggering $40 trillion—while proposing billions of dollars in cuts to vital social programs.
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