I realize this is beginning to sound like the lyrics of a song by Brazilian singer-songwriter Roberto Carlos — “,” one of my favorites, to be precise — but those were the images that came to mind when I read what seemed at first like a bureaucratic piece of news: In 2025, Cubans Venezuelans as the largest group of refugees seeking protection in Brazil.��

Behind this statistical milestone lies a stark reality: a growing wave of displacement that, above all else, demands an urgent humanitarian response. I saw it firsthand in Vietnam, Cambodia and Tibet. We are seeing it now with Cuba. Nobody leaves home for sport. Nobody abandons their language, childhood friends, neighborhood and a lifetime of accumulated references simply because they woke up one morning eager to start over somewhere else. When people cross borders carrying their lives in a suitcase, desperation is usually involved long before any sense of adventure or opportunity.

But something else caught my attention: the common denominator. Cuba and Venezuela have different histories, different governments and different problems. Yet both have spent years living under US sanctions and economic restrictions. Their crises cannot be explained solely through American policy. To claim otherwise would be intellectually dishonest. At the same time, it is impossible to ignore the effects that decades of economic pressure can have on entire populations.

This gap between cold numbers and living flesh is what brings me back to the main point. When I criticize the US, I am not talking about its people, but its foreign policy. This distinction matters to me. I didn’t learn it from textbooks or bureaucratic reports. I found it on the road. I put a face to it in airports, hospitals, refugee camps, temples and villages that still carry on their skin the deep scars of decisions made thousands of miles away.

The lasting echoes of conflict: Vietnam, Cambodia and Tibet

My first real lesson on this geographical chasm came in 1999. I spent nearly a year crossing Southeast Asia, the most transformative experience of my life. I would arrive in a country chasing one story and leave with ten in my bag. At every turn of that journey, the physical traces of the Cold War and superpower interventions were impossible to escape.

Vietnam was perhaps the clearest example. When I visited the country, roughly 25 years after the Vietnam War had officially ended, I reported on children born with severe deformities in areas exposed to chemical agents used during the conflict. I spent days speaking with doctors, parents and researchers. I walked through hospital corridors that I have never forgotten.

I remember a French doctor explaining why certain regions showed a much higher concentration of cases. I remember another mother holding her child, who had been born without one leg and with severely underdeveloped arms. I still have the photograph somewhere.

Most of all, I remember the discomfort of asking questions in the presence of so much suffering. The war had ended in history books. For those families, it had not.

I came back from Vietnam with the feeling that some wars continue long after the last shot is fired. They continue in bodies, illnesses and in the children and grandchildren of people who never fought in them.

I wrote about some of those experiences in my first book, Sem Pauta (Without Assignment). It is out of print now, although copies occasionally appear on second-hand marketplaces. If I ever manage to recover a digital version, I’ll make it available on my website.

The same feeling returned in Cambodia. There I encountered another chapter in the story of what happens when entire nations become pieces on a geopolitical chessboard. The rise of the (members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea) is often presented as though it emerged in isolation, detached from its historical surroundings. It didn’t. It grew out of a much larger context shaped by Cold War rivalries and by the obsession of great powers with expanding or containing spheres of influence.

Years later, I experienced something similar in Tibet. I went there as a reporter and came back haunted by the questions the trip left behind. What began as a journalistic assignment eventually evolved into a much deeper investigation, one that decades later became my master’s dissertation on the tulkus — the reincarnated spiritual masters of Tibetan Buddhism — and the sophisticated succession system developed to preserve Tibetan Buddhism under Chinese rule and against the constant threat of cultural erasure.

It was there that I understood something maps never show. When powerful nations compete for territory, influence or hegemony, the bill is usually paid by people who happened to be born in the wrong place at the wrong moment. Flags change. Speeches change. Justifications change. The people buried beneath history remain people.

Yet when I read that Cubans have become the largest refugee group arriving in Brazil, my mind doesn’t go first to diplomatic briefings or economic reports. It goes back to those hospital corridors in Vietnam. To conversations in Cambodia. To monasteries and long discussions in Tibet.

Unveiling the human stories behind displacement

Today’s defining rivalry is no longer between Washington and Moscow. The Soviet Union belongs to the past. The central competition now runs largely through Washington and Beijing. China continues its remarkable ascent. The United States remains the world’s dominant military power.

It goes back to people I met along the way, all of whom seemed to be fighting for the same thing: preserving something that mattered. A family. A culture. A sense of dignity. Sometimes simply survival. Perhaps that is why I struggle to see refugees as numbers. Numbers do not cross borders. People do. And they are almost always carrying far more than can fit inside a suitcase. This is why we must look past the spreadsheets and demand a diplomacy that values human survival over geopolitical leverage. We need to see the faces behind the numbers before the next family is forced to pack their lives into a suitcase.

[ edited this piece.]

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When Venezuela’s contemporary history is eventually written, the 26 years of an era that once promised sweeping change — not only for the country, but the world — may well be remembered as the darkest period since the Captaincy General of Venezuela declared its from Spain. They may even eclipse the traumatic decade between 1811 and 1821, which began with the of Independence, was followed less than a year later by an strikingly similar to those that devastated the country only days ago, and descended into a brutal War of Independence that claimed countless lives and destroyed immense wealth before culminating in the of Carabobo. By remarkable coincidence, that decisive battle took place on June 24 — exactly 205 years before this year’s earthquakes.

Since then, Venezuela has endured many difficult chapters: the of the 19th century, successive during much of the 20th, and, in contrast, periods of genuine progress, including the discovery of at the dawn of the 20th century and four decades of between 1958 and 1998.

The twin earthquakes that struck several Venezuelan cities on that ill-fated Wednesday on June 24 appear to have altered the country’s trajectory as profoundly as the earthquake of 1812. Until then, Venezuela had been living in a peculiar — and in many respects artificial — political reality. Under the patronage of the United States, the country seemed poised not only for a fundamental economic reorientation through foreign investment, debt restructuring and long-overdue reforms, but also for an orderly political transition leading to the restoration of democracy.

The earthquakes away those expectations overnight. They shattered not only the assumptions held by Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez’s transitional government, but also those of the Trump administration and even Venezuela’s democratic opposition. Perhaps the only people who never fully embraced this optimism were ordinary Venezuelans themselves, whose daily lives have long served as a painful reminder of the enormous gap between official promises and reality.

A difficult reconstruction

Rebuilding after a disaster of the magnitude that struck Caracas and other cities is always an immense undertaking. Saving lives, treating the injured, housing displaced families and designing an effective reconstruction strategy would challenge even the strongest state. In Venezuela, however, these tasks are proving far more difficult — and are likely to be considerably less successful.

The earthquakes have become the ultimate stress test for a regime that has spent years not merely colonizing society but systematically dismantling the state’s operational capacity. Unsurprisingly, its response has been weak, ineffective and in many cases counterproductive.

International and domestic media alike, no longer subject to the level of censorship seen in previous years, have documented the unfolding rescue effort in remarkable detail. Social media has done the same, offering minute-by-minute accounts that reveal an unmistakable reality: the Chavista state — a state shaped by the political and economic system of former Venezuelan President Hugo ���á����� — has been largely absent from coordinating the thousands of volunteers, foreign rescue specialists, medical teams and humanitarian organizations working tirelessly to save lives and provide shelter. Even more striking has been the absence of Venezuela’s armed forces, whose various branches have played only a marginal role in the emergency response.

There exists a striking contrast with previous disasters. Following the 1967 Caracas , the Venezuelan state responded with competent institutions and effective coordination. The same was largely true after the devastating of 1999 that ravaged the central coast, less than a year after ������� assumed the presidency. In both cases, governments possessed functioning institutions, trained personnel and, above all, the political will to act. Today, with only a few notable exceptions, particularly parts of the public hospital system, that institutional DNA appears to have largely disappeared.

This failure carries profound political consequences. It exposes the uncomfortable truth that the emperor has no clothes. The official narrative portraying Venezuela as a country on the verge of recovery has been revealed for what it is: sheer rhetoric.

Likewise, the mythology surrounding the supposed invincibility of Chavismo (the leftwing movement based on ���á�����’s principles) — which is already badly damaged after former Venezuelan President Nicolás �Ѳ���ܰ���’s — has suffered another severe blow. Rodríguez’s provisional government now appears to have entered a potentially irreversible downward spiral.

Trump’s three-stage strategy begins to unravel

The earthquakes have not only shaken Venezuela’s provisional authorities; they have also severely disrupted the Trump administration’s strategy toward the country.

What had been presented as a carefully sequenced three-stage plan — stabilization, recovery and democratic transition — has suddenly been reduced to a single overriding objective: survival and reconstruction.

The optimistic repeatedly voiced by US President Donald Trump — that everything was proceeding smoothly, that cooperation with the provisional government was complete and that Venezuelans were “dancing in the streets” — now rings increasingly hollow. Public opinion surveys that had reported improving expectations and even unusually high levels of support for Trump are almost certainly no longer relevant.

The human alone is staggering: over 2,000 fatalities, a figure that may rise substantially; roughly 11,000 injured; and nearly 30,000 people housed in hospitals or emergency shelters as of July 1. Material destruction has been equally devastating. The quakes collapsed approximately buildings and severely damaged the structures of many more, including a long list of large and small businesses. Much of what remains of Venezuela’s already diminished middle class has suddenly lost its principal assets, with little prospect of replacing them anytime soon.

The economic consequences are equally severe. Economists expect GDP to by between 6% and 9%, effectively erasing the ambitious growth projections associated with what had become known as the Trump Plan. Reconstruction will necessarily take precedence over virtually every other policy objective.

This does not mean that planned investment in Venezuela’s oil sector will come to a complete halt. Most production facilities lie outside the hardest-hit areas, although the El Palito refinery in the country’s central region represents an important exception. Nevertheless, the positive impact of renewed energy investment on the broader economy will inevitably be diluted by the enormous losses inflicted by the disaster.

Administration officials have reiterated that Venezuela enjoys Washington’s full support during the reconstruction phase. Yet history offers reasons for caution. The mixed — and often deeply disappointing — record of American reconstruction efforts in and suggests that expectations should remain modest. Ultimately, Venezuela will have to rely primarily on its own resources and its own society to rebuild.

The administration’s relationship with Rodríguez’s provisional government may also evolve. Thus far, Washington has offered it unwavering support. But if the government increasingly appears incapable of managing the crisis — or worse, becomes an obstacle to relief efforts, as numerous rescue have already suggested — the Trump administration, whose overriding concern is political success (or at least the appearance of success), may eventually begin to view the provisional government less as a partner than a liability.

The democratic opposition: the least damaged political actor

At the time of writing, among Venezuela’s three principal political actors, the democratic opposition appears to have emerged in the strongest relative position.

It bears no direct responsibility for the state’s inadequate response to the disaster. Instead, opposition organizations quickly mobilized to coordinate rescue efforts, establish international contacts, expose governmental shortcomings and deploy volunteers to assist victims while largely avoiding overt political exploitation of the tragedy.

Even opposition leader María Corina Machado, despite the Trump administration consistently her, expressed her willingness to to Venezuela to assist with coordination efforts. She offered a message of compassion and national solidarity at a moment when both are desperately needed.

The opposition’s longstanding for free and genuinely competitive elections will almost certainly be postponed by the immediate demands of reconstruction. Yet it is entirely possible that, faced with the overwhelming burden of rebuilding the country, the Trump administration may seek to reduce its own political responsibility for Venezuela’s future. Likewise, the outcome of the upcoming US midterm elections could reshape Washington’s domestic political landscape and accelerate pressure for a democratic resolution to Venezuela’s crisis.

Whatever path events ultimately take, Venezuela’s democratic forces must be prepared to govern sooner rather than later. As the old Spanish saying goes, dawn will come — and then we shall see.

[ edited this piece.]

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Paz now faces more than an economic and social crisis. He faces a direct test of governability as his government accuses former president Evo Morales and groups aligned with him of fueling the blockades at a time when Morales faces an and a pending criminal case.

Who is protesting?

The protests are not one single movement. They teachers, transport workers, labor unions, the Bolivian Workers’ Organization (COB), Indigenous groups, rural farming communities and groups aligned with Morales. Some are protesting genuine economic pain, which the current government recognizes. Others appear to be part of a larger political effort to weaken the new government.

The road blockades have turned the protests into national paralysis. Santa Cruz matters because it is not just another department; it is Bolivia’s economic engine and one of its most important food-producing regions. When roads out of Santa Cruz are blocked, the effects are felt far away in La Paz, El Alto and the western highlands. Food, fuel, medicine and basic goods become to move. Prices rise quickly. In some markets, chicken prices have reportedly risen by as much as , reaching five times their normal price in parts of the country.

Meanwhile, Santa Cruz is excess production that cannot reach markets, forcing producers to waste part of their harvest and causing direct economic damage in the region. For families already struggling with high inflation, this is not just an inconvenience. It is a direct threat to daily survival.

This is why the crisis cannot be treated as ordinary protests. Bolivia has a long tradition of marches and road blockades. But when blockades isolate cities and threaten the supply of food and medicine, they become a test of whether the state can still function.

Why are they protesting?

The protesters have several stated complaints. One is Law 1720, which allowed small rural properties to be converted into medium properties upon the owner’s request. The government argued that this would allow rural landowners to use their property as collateral, access credit and reactivate investment. Many Indigenous and rural organizations, deeply skeptical of government land reforms, the law would turn protected communal land into a financial asset and expose poor families to losing it.

is another cause. Paz inherited a fragile economy and decided to remove fuel subsidies. That decision angered many Bolivians, especially as they questioned both the price and quality of the fuel being sold. Teachers and public workers have also protested over wages in a country still suffering from high inflation and a rising cost of living.

The question of constitutional reform is even deeper. Paz wants a of the 2009 Constitution to attract investment in sectors such as hydrocarbons and mining. His supporters see this as necessary to rescue an economy under pressure. His opponents see it as a threat to the state-centered model built under Morales, especially over natural resources.

These complaints help explain some of the anger. But they do not fully explain the organization, timing and political direction of the blockades. This is where Morales enters the crisis.

Why the government believes Evo Morales is fueling the unrest

Paz’s government Morales and groups aligned with him of fueling the blockades. Morales denies this and says the accusations against him are political persecution. But his legal and political position makes the crisis impossible to separate from his personal future.

Morales has been in rebellion after failing to appear in court in a case involving accusations of aggravated human trafficking connected to an alleged relationship with a minor while he was president. He denies wrongdoing. He remains in the Chapare, a coca-growing region that has long been his political and union stronghold, protected by loyal supporters.

For Paz’s government, this matters because Morales has a direct political interest in weakening the administration. If Paz stabilizes Bolivia, Morales becomes more isolated and more vulnerable to prosecution. If Paz collapses, Morales and his movement can argue that the government that followed nearly 14 years of rule by his political party, Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), has failed and that only their return can restore stability.

This does not mean Bolivia as a whole is rising against Paz. In many cities, citizens have marched in of democracy and against the blockades. In Santa Cruz, attempts to strategic roads have led to violent confrontations, including a police operation in San Julián that left dozens injured. The crisis is not simply a national protest movement. It is also a struggle over whether organized groups can paralyze a landlocked country whose major cities depend on a limited number of access roads.

That is why the blockades have become so powerful. A relatively small but organized movement can choke supply routes, isolate cities and create shortages far beyond its actual numbers. This is the government’s central accusation: that groups loyal to Morales are using blockades, violence and supply disruption to force a political crisis.

The Paz government has also described some actors involved in the unrest as linked to “.” That language should be understood as the government’s accusation, not as a label for every person protesting. Paz’s government argues that organized groups tied to Morales’s coca-growing stronghold in the Chapare are using the blockades to destabilize the country while Morales the arrest warrant and pending criminal case.

What Paz does next matters for Latin America

Paz has the door to dialogue. He has invited different sectors to negotiate, attempted to speak with groups marching from different departments and Law 1720 after it became a central source of conflict. He has also promised to complete his mandate by 2030. But the blockades have continued, and some groups still demand his resignation.

On June 20, after nearly seven weeks of unrest, Paz declared a nationwide , later ratified by more than two-thirds of the Legislative Assembly. The decree prohibits road blockades that disrupt transportation and essential supplies and allows the armed forces to provide limited support to police. By the following day, most blockades had been lifted or following agreements with protest groups, although some remained in Cochabamba and the Chapare. The measure can remain in force for up to 90 days, but may be lifted earlier if the blockades and violence end. Political analysts have that it could strengthen Paz if order is restored quickly and without excesses, but weaken his government if the measure becomes prolonged or disproportionate.

This is where the government faces its most dangerous balance. A democratic state cannot allow organized groups to starve cities into submission. But if the government uses emergency powers too broadly, it risks turning a governability crisis into a legitimacy crisis.

For Latin America, Bolivia is now a regional test. If Paz fails, the message will be that elected governments trying to move away from the old socialist-populist model can be paralyzed before they govern. If Paz succeeds, stabilizes the country and Morales is finally tried in court, Bolivia could become one of the most significant defeats of the Latin American populist-left structure built during the �������-Morales era.

The question is no longer only whether Paz can pass reforms. The question is whether Bolivia can move from street veto power to constitutional government.

[ edited this piece.]

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It was in this airspace that two helicopters met in a tragic . They crashed mid-flight, plummeting toward the Recreio dos Bandeirantes neighborhood in Rio’s West Zone. Six people died, including the pilots and passengers of both aircraft. The accident made the skies a national headline and raised a question that extends far beyond the technical investigation: What does this disaster reveal about contemporary Brazil?

Part of the case’s national significance stems from the identities of some of the victims. Aboard one of the helicopters were American singer , an artist with millions of listeners on streaming platforms; Argentine influencer and YouTube content creator Gaspar Prim Díaz, known as Gaspi; music video director Lucas Vignale; and Brazilian music producer Lucas Brito Chaves, known as Lucas Frota. The presence of internationally recognized figures amplified media coverage and transformed a local tragedy into global news.

But we must not reduce the incident to a mere reflection of our contemporary fascination with celebrities. What happened over Recreio dos Bandeirantes sheds light on the silent transformations of Brazilian urban life: the growing occupation of airspace, the extreme prioritization of speed and the inequalities that shape mobility in large cities. The tragedy is a window into understanding today’s Brazil.

We often treat accidents as isolated events — a human error, an operational mistake, a mechanical glitch. But major tragedies also serve as social x-rays, illuminating normally invisible structures.

Rio’s helicopter collision is not merely a matter for aviation investigators. It occurs at the intersection of trends that have been reshaping Brazil’s major cities: the proliferation of private air travel, the strain on urban traffic systems and the constant effort to save time in increasingly congested metropolises.

Brazil’s crowded skies

For decades, the helicopter symbolized the exceptional. It was the aircraft of choice for rescue operations, police work and medical emergencies. Today, in cities like Rio and São Paulo, it has also become an everyday means of for businesspeople, artists, executives and people seeking to escape ground traffic jams.

The Brazilian landscape has created a peculiar situation. While millions spend hours each day riding buses, trains and cars, a small portion of the population uses air corridors to cross the city. Brazilian inequality was long evident in the geography of cities, but now we see it high above them. Traffic jams still exist, they’ve just shifted to a different altitude.

The accident exposes a Brazilian contradiction. The country has one of the largest helicopter fleets in the world and simultaneously grapples with overburdened public transportation systems. While one segment of the population jostles for space on buses, trains and subways, another turns the sky into a daily route.

The Recreio collision brings to light this rarely discussed reality: The skies over Brazil’s major cities have grown increasingly crowded.

Rio, especially its coastal areas and regions with intense business activity, sees constant aircraft traffic. Anyone observing the horizon of Copacabana or Barra da Tijuca can see this easily. Helicopters appear, disappear, cross paths and follow invisible corridors. Airspace is an urban infrastructure just as important as avenues and tunnels.

According to experts on Brazilian television network TV Globo, helicopter operations do not function exactly like those of commercial airplanes. For most flights, pilots operate under visual flight rules. This means they must maintain visual contact with their surroundings, identify obstacles, monitor other aircraft and make decisions in real time. One of the experts compared this system to car traffic on a highway.

This helps dispel a widely held misconception. The sky is not an empty space where aircraft fly in isolation. It has traffic flows, preferred routes, crossing points and areas of higher operational density. In cities with intense air traffic, constant coordination is essential for safety.

Selling speed to the wealthy

There is also a cultural dimension to this incident. In recent decades, speed has ceased to be merely an advantage. It has become a commodity; companies, services and apps alike sell it. Private air travel has come to market with exactly the same promise: the possibility of escaping delays, traffic jams and the limitations imposed by the city. The helicopter has become one of the most visible symbols of this logic.

The separation between poorer ground-commuters and wealthier air-fliers creates a radically unequal urban experience. Those who depend on public transportation measure the city in hours. Those who cross Barra by helicopter measure the same distance in minutes. These two groups have unequal access to time.

When two helicopters collide, it is not merely an aviation accident. A symbolic rupture also occurs. The space that usually represents efficiency, exclusivity and speed shows its own limits.

The and images of the tragedy are shocking for this reason. Viewers can see scattered debris, fire, downed wreckage and aircraft fragments striking nearby areas. The sky, usually associated with the idea of technological freedom, suddenly becomes a scene of vulnerability.

The investigation ahead

The Center for Investigation and Prevention of Aviation Accidents () is investigating the crash. The causes remain unknown. Certain hypotheses naturally come to the investigators’ attention: communication problems, limited visibility, failures in situational awareness or specific operational circumstances.

However, aviation experience shows that accidents rarely result from a single cause. They most often arise from a combination of factors that, taken individually, would seem insufficient to produce a tragedy. A decision made under pressure, a misinterpretation, an unexpected operational condition — disaster usually stems from the convergence of these elements.

The six deaths have devastated families and made for a complex investigation. In the coming months, experts will reconstruct flight paths, examine equipment, analyze communications and attempt to determine why those aircraft were in the same spot in the sky at the exact same moment.

When CENIPA concludes its investigation, it is likely to reveal which technical factors brought the two aircraft catastrophically close together. It is unlikely, however, to answer why the skies over Brazil’s major cities have become an increasingly contested space.

This is less an aeronautical question than a social one. Perhaps it makes the accident more than an aviation tragedy.

[ edited this piece.]

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But , if it is to mean anything at all, must be consistent. And consistency is precisely what is missing when many of these same voices rally behind Argentina’s President Javier Milei, portraying him as a libertarian and as a brave fighter against government overreach.

This includes libertarian organizations such as the Foundation for Economic Education, which described him as the libertarian President. The Cato Institute, a famous American think tank that describes its as “to keep the principles, ideas and moral case for liberty alive for future generations,” Milei to address a Conference on the “Rebirth of Liberty in Argentina.” And of course, Milei tries to portray himself as a defender of liberty, famous for using his political catchphrase “Viva la libertad, carajo! (Long live liberty!)”

Argentina has had a long history of authoritarian rule, most infamously under the Peronist regime. Milei’s rhetoric and promises of liberty and economic prosperity played a key role in winning the votes of many Argentines. 

But strip away the slogans and what remains is not liberty, but something far more familiar: the reproduction of authoritarian power under a new aesthetic.

True liberty is not reducible to economic deregulation or hostility toward the state in the abstract. Freedom was inseparable from protection against oppression and coercion. Liberty meant basic rights cannot be traded away in the name of state efficiency. A political project that erodes rights while claiming to expand freedom is not liberal; it is incoherent. Under Milei, Argentina has seen precisely this contradiction play out in practice.

Attacks on reproductive freedom

One of the clearest examples of Milei’s illiberal agenda is abortion. On January 14, 2021, Argentine President Alberto Fernández signed Argentina’s into effect after Senate Approval in December 2020, thereby abortion. This was a of bodily autonomy, particularly for poor and rural women. It was not a gift from above; it was the hard-won result of decades of organizing. For years, women campaigned and fought for the right to have abortions; they brought together a coalition of several feminist groups under the “,” with a simple demand that women not die from illegal procedures and have the right to bodily autonomy.

But Milei has made no secret of his hostility to this achievement, even describing abortion as “” and openly aligning himself with efforts to dismantle access.

Lawmakers from Milei’s Party, La Libertad Avanza, even introduced a bill to abortion rights. Even though Milei’s spokesperson said the lawmakers were acting independently and that signing the bill was not part of Milei’s agenda, Milei said he wished to hold a on whether to repeal the country’s landmark 2020 legislation.

While the law technically remains in place, access has been deliberately . Funding for reproductive health programs has been slashed, abortion pills have become harder to obtain and healthcare providers report a climate of fear and uncertainty that discourages them from offering care.��

reported last year that they received at least four times as many reports of barriers to abortion as in the previous year, potentially reflecting an increase in barriers to access. As , this has created a situation where abortion is legal in theory but increasingly inaccessible in practice, especially for those without resources.��

Liberty that depends on wealth, geography or political favor is not liberty. It is a privilege.

Indigenous rights, state violence and the collapse of property protections

Perhaps the most revealing contradiction of Milei’s presidency is found in his government’s of Indigenous communities, particularly the Mapuche. Milei repealed Argentina’s Indigenous territorial emergency law, stripping communities of legal protection against eviction and land dispossession. Human rights organizations have that this rollback effectively nullifies Indigenous legal personhood and opens the door to unchecked state and private encroachment.

But the problem goes even deeper than Indigenous rights alone. What is happening here is an assault on private property itself, carried out by the very state that claims to defend it. As documented by , in February this year, Jorge Millán’s home in the small Patagonian town of El Maitén was violently raided. Millán, a member of the Indigenous Mapuche community and a journalist working at La Radio Comunitaria Mapuche Petü Mogeleiñ, described the incident plainly:

“It was total madness,” Millán . His home was invaded by Argentine military border police officers, who told him they were searching for Molotov bombs or anything that could start or accelerate a fire. “They arrived unexpectedly and violently.”

This was not a protest camp. This was not contested land. This was a private home, raided without evidence, under a presumption of guilt rooted in ethnicity and political association. If private property means anything in a liberal tradition, it means protection from arbitrary state intrusion. When armed officers invade a civilian’s house looking for hypothetical weapons, without due process, property rights cease to exist in any meaningful sense.

Supporters of Milei often justify these actions using the language of order, security or anti-terrorism. But history is clear on this point: Every authoritarian project claims exceptional necessity. The Mapuche are framed as dangerous, criminal or disruptive and that framing becomes the excuse for suspending rights that supposedly apply to everyone.

has documented how Mapuche women in particular face aggravated persecution, blending racism, sexism and political repression into a single apparatus of state violence.

This is not the defense of liberty. It is its inversion.

Crushing dissent and protestors

The same pattern appears in the government’s response to some protests held by his opponents. 

Argentina knows better than most what happens when a state decides that protest is an enemy. In March 1976, the country’s democratic government was overthrown in a military coup that brought seven years of brutal dictatorship. 

Between 10,000 and people were killed or disappeared; dragged from their homes at night, tortured and in many cases thrown from aircraft into the sea. Among them were journalists killed or disappeared between 1973 and 1980. The lesson the regime drew from this era — that dissent is destabilization, that protest is subversion — is one Argentina spent decades learning to unlearn.

Milei has not disappeared. But his reaction towards protestors and dissent is still worth examining carefully. Retirees demonstrating against economic hardship have been met with brutal police repression, including beatings, injuries and intimidation, as by the International Federation for Human Rights. More than a hundred people were arbitrarily detained, including two children and at least 20 protesters had to be hospitalized due to the repressive actions of the police.

They also reported that government officials had launched threats of removal against Judge Karina Andrade, who released all those detained due to the clear failure of police officers to meet the minimum requirements for verifying the legality of the detentions, such as the circumstances of the manner, place, time and specific accusations against each detainee.

Reporters without Borders (RSF) has that Milei’s first year in power saw a sharp decline in Press Freedom. RSF recorded at least 12 physical attacks on journalists in 2024, with some of them perpetrated by the police. This was after security minister Patricia Bullrich implemented a security protocol designed to control and limit public protests.��

Human Rights Watch has similarly Argentina’s abusive response to demonstrations, citing arbitrary detentions and excessive force. Amnesty International concluded that more than 1,100 people were injured in protest during Milei’s first year in office. A government that treats protest as a security threat rather than a democratic right is not preserving order; it is protecting power from accountability.

Hypocrisy without borders, beyond labels

This pattern is not unique to Milei, nor to Argentina.

Conservatives who condemned authoritarianism in Venezuela often support mass surveillance, war and police violence at home, such as in the US under President Donald Trump. Some libertarians rightly denounce the surveillance state, yet fall silent when state power is used against indigenous communities or women exercising bodily autonomy in Argentina. Many communists rightly criticize in Guantanamo Bay and the Kent State Massacre; yet many often openly praise a party that is putting Uyghurs in concentration camps and perpetrated the Massacre of Student Protestors at Tiananmen Square.

Different ideologies. Same moral failure.

What unites these political figures is not ideology, but the instrumental use of moral language to justify power.

[ edited this piece]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post No, Javier Milei Is Not a Champion of Liberty appeared first on 51�Թ�.

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 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.

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 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 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 US supported right-wing, repressive governments in Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Honduras and Uruguay during those Cold War decades. However, beginning with the 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 US began to push Latin America aside and focus elsewhere, sending its “” 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 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 Iran (with as-yet-unknown consequences). Meanwhile, Latin America experienced a bit of what (under entirely different circumstances) US President Richard Nixon’s advisor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, once termed, “.”

An evil harvest

As it happened, however, during the 1980s and 1990s, the US 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 war of the 1980s, numerous Salvadorans, fleeing government repression, sought asylum in the US. Thousands would settle in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Once the war in El Salvador in 1992, many of them headed home again. Some brought 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 US alone, although our current president is doing his best to drive us in that direction. (Fond as he is of , 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 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 “,” 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 oscillation, which periodically warms the Pacific Ocean’s surface, bringing fierce rainfall to the west coast of the US 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 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 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 former US President Joe Biden’s administration, 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 our current US President, Donald J. Trump, and his new best friend, Nayib Bukele.

In El Salvador: Trump’s BFF, Nayib Bukele

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has called himself “the world’s .” He’s young, handsome and extremely popular in his own country. Originally a man of the left, while mayor of 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 Trump, don’t miss the PBS Frontline on the subject.)

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 into El Salvador’s congress to force it to accept a $103 million loan from the US to underwrite the US–El Salvador anti-gang Plan Volcán, 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, a sweep mistakenly caught some MS-13 members who were supposed to be protected and, in retribution, murders spiked once again. As 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 the constitution so that he could serve consecutive terms as president ad infinitum, while also building the now-notorious “terrorism confinement” prison, where torture and sexual abuse have become daily occurrences.

When Bukele with 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 had 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 US would pay El Salvador to imprison 250 mostly Venezuelan immigrants to this country in the CECOT mega prison. The transfer of those men (over the of a US District Judge James Boasberg) was chronicled in carefully-produced 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 the Trump administration claimed, members of Venezuela’s quasi-gang Tren de Aragua, but ordinary citizens caught up in ICE 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 that was temporarily by the new editor-in-chief of CBS News, Bari Weiss.

In truth, though, $6 million was chump change to a Salvadoran government used to 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 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 ��������ٴDz�����’s Anti-Corruption and Justice unit, was . 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 Trump is ever more desperately focused on the Middle East, maybe some of us should still be focusing on El Salvador. Bukele (elected democratically like 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 , , or the US. Here are a few bits of guidance from that metaphorical manual:

• Attack the judiciary, as Trump & Company every time they get an adverse federal ruling;
• Capture the legislature and make it do your will, whatever gerrymandering or it takes in Trump’s case;
• Attack the and civil society , labeling them, as Trump has, “enemies of the people” and “domestic terrorists;”
• Plan to rule indefinitely, as Trump he’d like to do.

Oh, and it doesn’t matter how evil your partners in crime turn out to be, whether it’s Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Russian President Vladimir Putin, or Bukele. In his eagerness to play the strongman, Trump has climbed into bed with the world’s coolest dictator — and the criminals of MS-13.

But, as Bullock 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.

[ first published this piece.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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A major step was announced on April 7, with the presidential decree creating the Servicio Universal de Salud (Universal Health Service [UHS]), which aims to integrate the country’s three main public health institutions — Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), Institute of Social Security and Social Services for State Workers (ISSSTE) and IMSS-Bienestar (IMSS-Wellbeing) — so that citizens can receive care at any public facility regardless of their previous affiliation. For implementation, the initiative will rely heavily on digital platforms.

This integration is intended to improve access and reduce fragmentation, but it faces significant logistical and infrastructural hurdles. Out-of-pocket spending currently accounts for of total health expenditure, exposing households to substantial financial risk and catastrophic expenses. In Mexico, such high out-of-pocket costs reflect the limited financial protection offered by the current system and underscore the importance of progressing toward comprehensive coverage.

Historical legacy and policy inheritance

Mexico built its health institutions for a nation that never existed. IMSS, founded in 1943, and ISSSTE, established in 1959, were designed as social security institutions for formal sector industrial and government workers, respectively. The country’s largely informal labor force, as well as individuals from rural and Indigenous communities, have historically remained outside the formal health care system. Successive economic crises, fiscal austerity and the 1990s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) weakened public infrastructure while the private sector grew rapidly. Earlier attempts at universalization .

Achieving effective UHC by 2030 will be extraordinarily challenging. According to the latest Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data, 5.9% of GDP on health, with primary health care receiving a disproportionately low share, far less than the average for OEDC nations of around 9.3%. Per capita spending stands at just $1,588, compared to the of $5,967. This underinvestment severely limits the capacity to expand and improve primary and community-based services.

Hospital infrastructure is also critically limited: Mexico has only 1.0 hospital bed per 1,000 inhabitants — one of the lowest (or near-lowest) in the OECD (average 4.2). Life expectancy is 75.5 years, about 5.6 years below the OECD average. Preventable mortality (243 per 100,000) and treatable mortality (175 per 100,000) remain substantially higher than (145 and 77, respectively).

Past digital health initiatives have faltered due to incompatibility among data systems, high costs and , as noted in the  comparative analysis of electronic health records. Previous pilot projects to create integrated electronic health records encountered delays and budget overruns, largely because of incompatible platforms and . These challenges highlight the need for robust, interoperable digital systems supported by reliable infrastructure.

Today, chronic conditions predominate in Mexico’s health burden. Overweight and obesity affect approximately 75.2% of the adult population, with obesity affecting approximately 37% of adults (higher among women at around 41%). Diabetes prevalence continues to rise, with many cases undiagnosed and regional disparities persisting, according to the latest .��

The Healthy Republic Plan and recent advances

The Plan República Sana focuses on five core objectives: strengthening prevention, reducing waiting times, renewing IMSS-Bienestar infrastructure, modernizing drug procurement and digitizing medical records. Yet these are evolutionary steps rather than a complete transformation.

The April 2026 decree for establishing the UHS may add momentum. (starting January 2027) proposes cross-institutional care for key services, including emergencies, high-risk pregnancies, heart attacks, strokes, breast cancer diagnoses and ongoing treatments. A Universal Health Credential is rolling out progressively, beginning with adults aged 85 and older in April 2026. Registration for the general population is scheduled throughout the remainder of 2026, with the goal of broad coverage by the end of the year.

(The Clinic Is Ours) was developed as part of Mexico’s new Health Care Model for Wellbeing (MAS-BIENESTAR). It aims to guarantee free, high-quality healthcare for uninsured and underserved populations — specifically people without access to social security institutions such as IMSS or ISSSTE, including in rural areas, indigenous communities, and low-income urban neighborhoods.

Importantly, however, the program’s focus is on improving the physical infrastructure and equipment of the clinics themselves, rather than on the community’s actual health needs. There are no opportunities for broader participatory governance or decision-making in health service planning, monitoring or policy formulation. Ultimately, approval of the rests with the health authority. In this context, many residents lack any real sense of participation or ownership in .��

New pharmaceutical sovereignty initiatives seek to boost domestic production and reduce . However, the to the National Compendium of Health Supplies (CNIS) allow distributors to request product inclusions more easily and removed the requirement to publish maximum unit prices. These changes have raised concerns about reduced transparency and risks of less rigorous oversight, higher prices and more opaque procurement practices.

Other promising elements of the Plan República Sana include expanded telemedicine and digital integration — such as a universal electronic health record, the digital health credential and remote . However, these efforts face serious challenges in that they lack sustained new funding and clear .

Meaningful consultation with frontline workers and communities has also been virtually absent. As a result, the initiatives risk encountering familiar problems: medicine and equipment shortages, staffing gaps and infrastructure deficits. Digital advances may also widen inequalities in regions lacking reliable electricity, internet and basic supplies. 

Persistent challenges: fragmentation, workforce and governance

The vision of a seamless network linking IMSS, ISSSTE and IMSS-Bienestar faces real barriers. Legal, fiscal and operational differences — including incompatible data platforms and longstanding institutional fragmentation — have caused past digital integration attempts to fail. 

Medical training still prioritizes specialization over primary and community care. New public universities have increased enrollment, but curricula remain hospital-centric and few incentives exist for people to become family doctors or community health workers. analysis notes that medical curricula in Mexico continue to emphasize hospital-based specialization, with limited attention to primary care and community health.

According to the 2021 Mexico: health systems review, while efforts are underway to promote primary care roles, the medical education system still faces significant obstacles in fully integrating community-based training and providing for clinicians to practice in rural and other underserved areas.

Policy directions for meaningful progress

Delivering on the Plan República Sana and the new UHS will require three core shifts:

• Make prevention the organizing principle. Balance digital and technological targets with sustained investment in community-based care, public health education and addressing social determinants such as nutrition, environment and inequality.��
• Advance decentralization with transparency. Empower regional and municipal teams with resource control while mandating open procurement data and performance reporting.��
• Strengthen collaboration and accountability. Incorporate frontline workers and citizens into planning, organization and evaluation. Shared governance and transparent, measurable targets will be essential.

The path forward

President Sheinbaum’s administration has linked health policy to broader social welfare goals more explicitly than at any time since the 1940s. Her April 2026 presidential decree establishing the Servicio Universal de Salud is a significant step toward dismantling fragmentation and advancing the constitutional right to health for all.

However, true transformation by 2030 will require more. It demands sustained increases in public health investment, a reorientation of the medical workforce toward prevention and chronic disease management, transparent governance and genuine interoperability of data and services. If these conditions are met, Mexico could move substantially closer to realizing a Healthy Republic — one that delivers equitable, high-quality care while effectively addressing the heavy burden of chronic conditions.

[ edited this piece]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Colombia’s vote is not merely a domestic political contest. It is a test of how security policy, narcotics enforcement and leader-to-leader diplomacy will interact in an era when personality often carries as much weight as formal alignment. For Washington — and for investors and multinational firms with exposure to Latin America — the implications extend well beyond Bogotá.

A fragile foundation: Colombia’s shifting security landscape

For decades, Colombia has been one of Washington’s closest security partners in South America and one of the region’s largest economies. That relationship is now under strain. Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “” strategy — an effort to halt military confrontation with armed groups and bring them to the negotiating table — has triggered security conditions, the rearming and territorial expansion of criminal and insurgent organizations, and record-high cocaine production.

Colombia’s security posture is a direct US national security issue. A new from the National Bureau of Economic Research links the surge in Colombian cocaine production since 2015 to roughly 1,500 US overdose deaths per year, with fentanyl contamination — now reaching one in four tested cocaine samples — dramatically the toll. Washington must evaluate regional partners with these realities in mind. However, policy alone does not explain why this bilateral relationship feels so fragile. Increasingly, personality plays a part.

The role of personality in foreign policy

In the current US political environment, interpersonal relationships between leaders matter more than they have in decades. Where public persona ends and policy begins is an increasingly gray area. Colombia firsthand after a series of social media clashes escalated tensions between Petro and US President Donald Trump, jeopardizing decades of cooperation in a matter of days. Relations ultimately stabilized through private diplomacy, but the episode underscored how tone, respect and personal chemistry matter today at least as much — if not more — than ideology.

A similar dynamic is playing out across Latin America. Leaders with little ideological alignment have maintained productive ties with Washington by avoiding public confrontation and cultivating personal rapport. Mexico’s President, Claudia Sheinbaum, exemplifies this approach. Despite having campaigned on a platform largely at odds with Trump’s priorities, she has successfully fended off trade penalties and US intervention by increasing security cooperation and staying in close, regular contact with both Trump and US Ambassador Ronald Johnson.

This dynamic looms large as Colombia approaches its next election. By 2025, most ceasefires had collapsed, extortion had risen, mass displacements returned to post-2016 peaks and public perceptions of insecurity reached their highest level in a decade, according to Global Guardian’s 2026. The next government must now decide whether to continue pursuing negotiated coexistence with armed groups or pivot toward a more militarized security strategy.

The stakes for Colombia’s 2026 election

If left-leaning candidate Senator, who is aligned with Petro’s political movement, prevails, security policy is likely to resemble a more tactical version of Total Peace. While less likely to draw Trump’s ire due to Castro’s considerably more stoic temperament, the continuance of Total Peace would likely prolong tensions with US officials concerned about narcotics and insurgent expansion.

Right-wing outsider Abelardo de la Espriella, who has modeled his own political brand after Trump as well as El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, promises a tougher security posture. While such an approach may appear more aligned with US priorities, Colombia is not El Salvador. Attempting to replicate hardline models could provoke direct confrontation with well-armed insurgent and criminal networks capable of sustained retaliation, increasing violence over the medium term.

Center-right candidate Paloma Valencia offers perhaps the most conventional path forward. A seasoned legislator and vocal critic of Petro’s peace strategy, Valencia favors a return to security-first governance — stronger military operations, less tolerance for armed-group negotiations and, most crucially, close cooperation with Washington. As at a recent campaign event, perhaps equally to her supporters as well as the White House: “No Colombian government can sort out the security question unless the US helps us.” While Valencia’s strategy, which resembles a return to traditional Colombian confrontation against armed groups since the 1960s, would likely push back insurgents in the long term, it would almost certainly increase violent retaliations in the coming years.

In other words, Colombia’s election offers no easy security solution, only different types of risk. Election-period violence, insurgent interference and cartel retaliation remain real risks regardless of who wins. Armed groups have their intention to influence elections by attacking polling sites, political offices, police stations, government buildings and other electoral infrastructure. Such tactics reflect a broader regional trend in which non-state actors increasingly treat democratic institutions as strategic leverage points — blurring the line between political contestation and operational risk for companies with personnel and assets on the ground.

Operational risks for companies in Colombia

For companies in the country, risk planning can no longer be hypothetical as extortion demands, employee coercion, kidnapping threats and pressure to provide logistical support to criminal groups are of the operating landscape. This is the reality in Colombia, as well as any other international hub, as the geopolitical climate heats up and longstanding international relations are called into question.

International relations between the US and Colombia, as well as other countries in Latin America and beyond, continue to be shaped less by formal policy frameworks than by who holds power, how they relate to Washington and how security conditions evolve on the ground.

The US has demonstrated that it will work with governments across the ideological spectrum, provided core security interests are respected and personal channels remain functional. For Colombia’s next president, the lesson is clear: When national security cooperation depends heavily on US partnership, public confrontation can carry real costs.

Colombia’s 2026 election may not determine whether Washington remains engaged in the region, but it will test the terms of that engagement. In an era where diplomacy is increasingly personalized and security threats are transnational, even longstanding alliances must be actively managed. Stability is no longer inherited. It is negotiated.

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51�Թ� has been shining the light on Guyana for some years now. On January 6, 2020, retired British diplomat Ian McCredie published an article with 51�Թ�. Officials from the State Department showed up to see him afterward. The reason: McCredie wondered whether the West might lose Guyana to the Chinese. In retrospect, his worries have proved exaggerated.

The US is back with a bang

Since US President Donald Trump took charge in January 2025, the possibility of China dominating Guyana has become highly unlikely. In November 2025, the National Security Strategy of the United States of America that the US would “assert and enforce a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine.” This doctrine, first by President James Monroe in 1823, declared that the New World fell within the sphere of influence of the US. This declaration came at a time when the Spanish and Portuguese empires were collapsing because of the Napoleonic wars, and the US did not want the Europeans to return as colonial masters to the Western Hemisphere.

Over the course of two centuries, the US grew in power, and so did the scope of the . In the 1840s, President James K. Polk warned Britain and Spain not to establish footholds in Oregon, California or Mexico’s Yucatán. In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt added the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which claimed the right for the US to intervene in the domestic affairs of a Latin American country “in cases of flagrant and chronic wrongdoing.” This was part of Roosevelt’s Big Stick policy, which saw US domination of the Western Hemisphere as a moral imperative.

American domination of Latin America increased relentlessly after Roosevelt. In the first half of the 20th century, the US was the dominant industrial power in the world with an insatiable hunger for commodities. Latin America’s resources and, to a lesser extent, markets were extremely valuable to the US. American domination continued uncontested right till the end of World War II.

The glow of victory in World War II and decolonization movements around the world made communism and socialism popular worldwide. China turned communist and India socialist. In the Middle East, Iraq, Syria and Egypt turned to socialism as well. Latin America was no exception, and a full-blown global Cold War broke out.

During this period, the US intervened in the domestic affairs of numerous Latin American countries to contain Soviet influence. Sometimes, this meant supporting military juntas that conducted human rights abuses, including unlawful killings and widespread torture. The Soviet-backed regimes were no better. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington has expected Latin America to align increasingly with the US. Except for Cuba and Venezuela, this largely happened.

Yet a new challenger appeared in the 21st century. The biggest and fastest industrial revolution in history has occurred in China since Deng Xiaoping began his economic reforms in 1978. In 2001, China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) and became the workshop of the world. Trade with the rest of the world, including Latin America, soared. A November 2022 for the European Parliament tells us that China has become the second-largest trading partner of Latin America & the Caribbean (LAC). Between 2000 and 2020, China-LAC trade has grown 26-fold from $12 billion to $310 billion. Joining the WTO clearly worked out for China.

China’s trade with Brazil, the biggest country in the LAC region and the South American continent, is the most pertinent example of one of the most striking economic phenomena in the history of global trade. Today, China is Brazil’s biggest trading partner, with both the EU and the US lagging quite far behind. China-Brazil trade grew 50-fold from $3.2 billion in 2001 to $158 billion in 2024, as the graph below from CEIC shows.

China is hungry for Brazilian commodities from soybeans, cotton, sugar and beef to wood, oil and iron ore. In a nutshell, China has a ravenous hunger for the output of Brazil’s mines, ranches, farms and forests. China is also investing heavily in power utilities, ports and railways. BYD, the world’s largest electric vehicle (EV) company, has made its biggest investment outside Asia in Brazil. BYD has built its factory on a site that was once owned by Ford, the iconic American automaker. BYD’s market share in Brazil’s EV market is already 74%, an example of Chinese green tech, with its “new three” sectors of solar panels, lithium-ion batteries and EVs, rapidly growing in Latin America.

The Trump administration has decided to counter Chinese influence in Latin America and reclaim top dog status in what has historically been Uncle Sam’s backyard. The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, also now known as the , aims to reassert American predominance in the Western Hemisphere. Many American politicians and policymakers believe the US is overextended. The logical implications of America First mean that the US has to put America first.

Numerous Republican sources in Washington, DC, have told this author that Trump’s efforts to rename the Gulf of Mexico, acquire Canada, control the Panama Canal and take over Greenland are actions to enforce this doctrine. The spectacular military operation against Venezuela, which saw American troops bringing back Nicolás Maduro in chains, is the cherry on the cake in the brief life of the Donroe Doctrine.

Basking in the glory of the Venezuela military operation, Trump himself referred to the Donroe Doctrine, that “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.” Guyana has emerged as a critical place for the US to impose the Donroe Doctrine.

Guyana, global energy dominance and Petro Reset

Because of its extensive oil reserves and the supply-side shock due to the war with Iran, Guyana is increasingly important to the US. During the ongoing US/Israel–Iran War, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has successfully blocked the Strait of Hormuz. This means that around 20% of the oil and gas that flowed out of the strait no longer get to their intended destinations. About 33% of the global supply of fertilizers has also been disrupted.

Not only fuel and fertilizers, but also aluminum, refined products and industrial inputs can no longer reach Europe, Asia and even North America. Demand for the dollar has dropped because the countries of the Persian Gulf have historically priced all these exports in dollars. The Gulf countries no longer are circulating these dollars into Western assets and indeed might even start selling these assets to pay for food, industrial imports and consumer goods as well as the expenditures of their generous welfare states. The specter of dollar flows changing direction, a “Reverse Gulf Stream,” is increasingly giving many policymakers in Washington sleepless nights.

In this context, Guyana becomes really important. No one can block off Guyana’s oil because the country’s coast is on the Atlantic Ocean. Plus, the petrodollar bargain in which the US guaranteed the Gulf states’ security in return for pricing energy/commodities in dollars and then investing these dollars in American assets has no challenger in Latin America. The longer the IRGC can block the Strait of Hormuz, the more important Guyana becomes.

Guyana increases in strategic importance because of a related idea gaining increasing currency in the Trump administration. To drive economic growth and enhance national security, the White House aims to “American energy dominance.” Part of this involves deregulating and Sarah Palin’s “Drill, baby, drill!” Part of this involves championing coal and unleashing nuclear energy. As yet, a largely unspoken part of achieving this dominance also involves a “smash and grab” of Venezuelan energy in what many enthusiastically call the “Petro Reset.”

In simple words, the Petro Reset is good old Uncle Sam taking over Venezuela’s oil. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), Venezuela has the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves of 303 billion barrels in 2023. These account for 17% of the global reserves. Despite such vast reserves, Venezuela produces only about 1 million barrels per day, comprising only 0.8% of total global crude oil in 2023. So, the untapped energy potential is huge.

Venezuelan extra-heavy crude is hard to refine and only refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast have the ability to do so at scale. Therefore, it “to integrate the largest oil reserve on the planet directly into the world’s most sophisticated refining complex.” In corporate terms, the Trump administration is engaging in “a hostile takeover of a distressed asset with massive upside potential.” 

American control of Venezuela would bring an additional three to five million barrels of oil per day online within a few years, creating a historic supply glut. The price of oil would collapse. Petrol, called gas in the US, would fall from the pre-war $3.00 to the post-glut $1.00 per gallon. Fuel costs determine everything from the cost of wheat to the cost of Amazon packages. Economists call this cost-push inflation, which would go down dramatically. Needless to say, the logistics dividend for the American economy would be spectacular.

The Petro Reset would also dollarize the Venezuelan economy. At the moment, the Venezuelan currency is worthless, and the country is suffering from hyperinflation. Getting rid of the bolivar and adopting the dollar would eliminate hyperinflation and stabilize the economy. Arguably, there is a jolly good precedent. In January 2000, Ecuador dollarized its economy. Many claim this to be a great success. Dollarization would stabilize the prices of goods and labor in Venezuela. Combined with the cheapest energy in the Western Hemisphere, this could create a manufacturing hub that rivals Mexico. 

As of now, nearly eight million Venezuelans, about 23% of the population, have fled the country. If the US stabilizes the Venezuelan economy, this flow would reverse. In fact, other Latinos might make their way from Chicago to Maracaibo. Fixing Venezuela is in the US national interest.

There is also another tiny little benefit from this Petro Reset maneuver in geopolitical chess. Venezuela claims Essequibo, a 159,500-square-kilometer region west of the Essequibo River that constitutes roughly two-thirds of Guyana. In December 2023, Maduro conducted a in which Venezuelans supposedly claimed sovereignty over Essequibo, which is rich in oil, gas and other minerals. In 2024, Maduro signed into law the referendum approving annexation. In December 2025, Guyana this move. This did not stop Maduro from organizing elections that elected a governor and lawmakers for Essequibo, even though none of the region’s 125,000 inhabitants got to vote.

Maduro is now behind bars. In an off-the-record remark by a dashing military officer, “the US now has a gun to Delcy Rodriguez’s head,” and �Ѳ���ܰ���’s successors have to behave. Not only does this give Washington control of Venezuelan oil, but it also guarantees Guyanese security. With Maduro gone, Venezuela cannot threaten or annex Essequibo. With oil prices rising, American oil majors are already taking a at Venezuela. In American eyes, Guyana is the prettier of the two Latin American sisters. An English-speaking democracy with free and fair elections governed by common law is much more investable than a Spanish-speaking country still ruled by a repressive regime that has rigged elections.

Highly investable, safe and secure

In January, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods told Trump that Venezuela was “uninvestable,” but he is unlikely to have any such reservations about Guyana. In the first quarter of 2026, Exxon Mobil revenue of $85.14 billion and net income of $4.18 billion in Guyana. The company is already involved in several oil exploration and production projects in the country, including the , which is one of the largest oil discoveries in the world in recent years. With Maduro gone, Exxon is likely to increase investment in Guyana. Others might follow suit, too.

Guyanese President Irfaan Ali was reelected in September 2025. His centrist credentials give investors confidence. Guyana has emerged as the biggest winner from Trump’s foreign policy moves against Venezuela and Iran. Guyana is a safe and secure energy source for the US. With an increasing American focus on securing supply chains, Guyana is also important for securing critical minerals and rare earth elements. Since Guyana’s security depends completely on the US, the country is unlikely to succumb to anti-American left-leaning populism that Spanish and Portuguese speakers in Latin America find highly seductive.

There is another reason why the US is interested in Guyana. Historically, the big three — gold, bauxite and diamonds — drove the Guyanese economy. Now, other minerals like manganese, coltan and lithium are attracting attention. Manganese is vital for steel production and battery technology, coltan for the manufacturing of capacitors for cell phones and laptops, and lithium for electric vehicle batteries. Because of these minerals, Guyana fits into American priorities of nearshoring and securing supply chains. 

Finally, Guyana is the only English-speaking country in Latin America. Thanks to the legacy of the British Empire, Guyana has a common law system similar to that of the US. As alluded to above, unlike other Latin American countries, Guyana does not have the tradition of Bolivarian socialism or left-wing populism. To underscore a point made earlier, this makes Guyana far more attractive to American business than Venezuela. 

The surge of American investment into Guyana is a unique “gold rush” moment, driven by a combination of massive natural resource discoveries and a strategic shift in global supply chains. Even as the American hold on the countries of the Persian Gulf weakens, Guyana is emerging as a replacement South American Gulf state for Washington.

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From engagement to economic strangulation

Aramburú opens by revisiting the Obama administration’s normalization efforts, which included restoring diplomatic relations, loosening travel restrictions and removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. LeoGrande notes that the two governments signed 22 bilateral agreements during Obama’s final years in office, reflecting an attempt to build cooperation around mutual interests.

Today, he says, the relationship has deteriorated dramatically. “The situation today in the bilateral relationship is probably as bad as it has ever been,” LeoGrande states. Alongside the traditional embargo imposed in 1962, the Trump administration has added new pressure through secondary sanctions targeting countries that export oil to Cuba, and foreign firms doing business in Cuba.

According to LeoGrande, Mexico, Algeria and Angola all halted shipments after Washington threatened economic retaliation. Russia remains willing to provide oil, but not enough to offset the losses. This has resulted in a worsening energy crisis that has disrupted transportation, electricity production and industrial activity across the island.

LeoGrande argues that the contrast between Obama and Trump reflects two fundamentally different theories of change. Obama believed greater engagement would gradually encourage economic and political opening. Trump’s approach, by contrast, seeks to “strangle the Cuban economy” until Havana accepts US terms.

Oil, leverage and the limits of regime change

The conversation then broadens into a larger debate about US regime-change strategies. Aramburú compares Cuba to recent US confrontations with Venezuela and Iran, questioning whether Washington’s objectives are clearly defined or driven by a broader ideological hostility toward socialism and anti-American governments.

LeoGrande points to Venezuela as an example of inconsistency. The US publicly pursued regime change while Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro held office, yet Washington later appeared willing to work with the post-Maduro government so long as American oil companies regained access to the Venezuelan energy sector.

A similar logic may exist in Cuba. Current negotiations reportedly focus heavily on economic questions, including property claims, foreign investment and access to Cuba’s strategic minerals. Yet political demands remain a major obstacle, particularly calls from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio for leadership change in Havana.

For Cuban officials, sovereignty remains non-negotiable. LeoGrande argues that negotiations could succeed if they remain focused on economic normalization, but they are unlikely to survive any attempt by Washington to dictate Cuba’s political system.

A society under pressure

The discussion also explores the severe humanitarian effects of Cuba’s energy shortages. LeoGrande describes hospitals struggling to maintain electricity, factories closing for parts of the week and public transportation nearly collapsing because of fuel scarcity. Farmers often cannot move crops to market, further worsening food shortages.

Simultaneously, Cuba’s own economic failures have compounded the crisis. LeoGrande notes that the government delayed market reforms for years and became overly dependent on tourism. Attempts to unify Cuba’s currency system in 2021 also contributed to inflation and instability.

Even traditional pillars of the economy are weakening. Cuba’s sugar sector, once central to national identity and exports, has deteriorated so badly that the country recently had to import sugar. Cuba now needs major foreign investment to rebuild critical industries and modernize infrastructure.

Still, LeoGrande highlights some areas of resilience. China has supplied solar technology that is helping Cuba slowly expand renewable energy production, while the island’s biotechnology sector continues to demonstrate significant scientific capacity despite sanctions.

Generational divides and the Cuban diaspora

Aramburú raises the question of whether internal political change could eventually emerge from younger generations. LeoGrande describes a growing divide between older Cubans who remember the revolution’s early years more positively and younger Cubans whose experience has been dominated by austerity and economic stagnation.

Yet he remains skeptical that widespread unrest will produce regime collapse. “There’s no organized opposition,” LeoGrande explains, arguing that many critics eventually emigrate rather than build sustained movements inside Cuba. Dissatisfaction is widespread, but the state still retains strong institutional control.

The Cuban diaspora remains another major political force, especially in Florida. Cuban Americans have historically exercised outsized influence over US policy because of their concentration in a key electoral state and their strong focus on Cuba-related issues.

However, the community itself has become increasingly divided. Some supported Obama’s normalization efforts, while others continue backing a hard-line embargo strategy. Trump’s immigration policies have also created tensions by ending many of the special protections historically granted to Cuban migrants.

Negotiation or collapse?

The conversation concludes by considering possible future scenarios. LeoGrande argues that a direct US invasion of Cuba remains highly unlikely. Such an operation would alienate parts of Trump’s political base, impose enormous economic burdens on Washington and potentially trigger a prolonged guerrilla conflict.

Instead, he believes negotiations remain the only realistic path forward. “The only option for the United States to get something that it wants from the situation is to sit down at the negotiating table with the Cuban government,” he says.

Still, continued economic pressure risks producing another migration crisis similar to the Mariel boatlift or the 1994 raft exodus. For LeoGrande, the deeper tragedy is that ordinary Cubans continue paying the highest price for a geopolitical conflict that has lasted more than six decades.

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A crisis without a clear breaking point

Fernández-Guevara describes Cuba’s present condition as a “polycrisis,” borrowing the term as it applies to the island from scholar Mayra Espina. The country is confronting several overlapping emergencies at once: economic decline tied to Venezuela’s reduced support, structural adjustments to a harsher global market, severe demographic loss through migration and the corrosion of the solidarity networks that once helped people endure hardship.

This has brought grave social consequences. Infant mortality has risen, life expectancy has fallen and the energy grid is in near collapse. Blackouts have become routine, disrupting hospitals, schools and daily life. Fernández-Guevara goes so far as to say the situation is in some respects worse than the crisis that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Even so, he resists declaring that Cuba is on the verge of collapse. As he notes, “Everyone who has forecasted the change in government in Cuba has been wrong for 67 years.” That does not make the current situation any less severe. It means only that suffering alone has not translated neatly into regime change.

Why Cuba never fully embraced the China or Vietnam model

Khattar Singh presses Fernández-Guevara on why Cuba has not taken the same path as China or Vietnam, both of which incorporated major elements of capitalism while preserving one-party rule. Fernández-Guevara explains that Cuba has repeatedly opened parts of its economy, then pulled back once private wealth began to accumulate too visibly.

He recalls a remark from someone close to the Cuban government: “Cuba wants to have a country that makes millions and millions of dollars but without any millionaires.” That paradox lies at the heart of the Cuban system. The leadership wants growth, foreign exchange and investment, but remains wary of the inequalities that market reform can unleash.

This pattern has produced a stop-start cycle of reform and retrenchment. Tourism was opened. Small private restaurants, or paladares, emerged. Independent drivers and other small entrepreneurs found room to operate. But each time the private sector began to develop social and economic weight, the state moved to contain it.

Fernández-Guevara suggests that Cuba has not followed a long-term strategic reform plan so much as it has improvised under pressure. It has had to adapt not only to the global spread of capitalism, but also to shifting regional politics and the collapse of older support systems.

Sovereignty, memory and the rejection of foreign pressure

For Fernández-Guevara, the key to Cuba’s endurance lies not only in institutions, but in history. He believes many outside observers underestimate how central national sovereignty remains to Cuban political identity. Cubans may be deeply critical of their own government, but that does not mean they welcome external intervention.

He points to a long history of US involvement in Cuban affairs. After the war of 1898, the United States intervened directly and then imposed the Platt Amendment, which embedded US power in the island’s constitutional order. Washington later backed Batista, including after his 1952 coup against a constitutional government. That memory still shapes how many Cubans understand foreign pressure today.

As Fernández-Guevara puts it, “national sovereignty is a very important thing” in Cuba. The 1959 revolution, despite all its failures and contradictions, still carries symbolic weight because it is seen by many as the moment Cuba definitively resisted outside domination.

That helps explain why US pressure does not always produce the outcome Washington expects. Hardship can fuel anger, but it can also reinforce a siege mentality, strengthen nationalist sentiment and push people to rely more heavily on one another.

Trump, Rubio and the logic of maximum pressure

The conversation then turns to US President Donald Trump’s renewed focus on Cuba and the role of Secretary of State Marco Rubio in shaping policy. Fernández-Guevara argues that the Trump administration sees Cuba as unusually weak after the pandemic, the collapse of tourism, currency unification and the continuing deterioration of the energy system.

He contrasts this with the years of US President Barack Obama’s administration, when normalization created what he remembers as a mood of genuine optimism. Cubans repaired homes, opened businesses and believed the long freeze with Washington might finally end. Trump’s first term halted that opening, and US President Joe Biden largely continued the same restrictions. Then came Covid-19 and a disastrous currency reform, which compounded the damage.

From Fernández-Guevara’s perspective, the current administration appears to believe this is the best possible moment to force concessions. He describes that approach as “the bluster of the art of the deal,” with foreign policy treated as a coercive business negotiation.

Yet he is careful not to pretend that Washington’s aims are fully clear. Economic liberalization appears to be one goal. Tourism and foreign capital may be another. But whether the US wants a negotiated transition or a more confrontational outcome remains uncertain.

Why Cuba still endures

Khattar Singh closes by asking the most important question: If life in Cuba is so hard, why has the system not broken? Fernández-Guevara says that Cuba lacks a coordinated opposition of the kind seen in Venezuela, while still retaining a powerful state structure, especially through the military. Protest exists, but it remains fragmented and localized.

At the same time, ordinary Cubans have decades of experience surviving under pressure. Communities share resources. Families improvise. People leave when they can, adapt when they cannot and continue living inside a system that has taught them endurance.

This is what outsiders miss. Cuba is not simply a failing state waiting to tip over. It is a society marked by exhaustion, pain and uncertainty, but also by a long political memory and a stubborn resistance to external designs. That is why the country’s future remains so difficult to predict.

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Today’s situation, with the loss of Venezuelan energy support, is somewhat reminiscent of Cuba’s experience with the devastating economic impact of the Soviet Union’s in the 1990s, and it may be tempting to draw comparisons between the two periods. At that time, the Castro regime was forced to confront similar challenges: material shortages, isolation and civil unrest. However, today’s reality is characterized by new factors: the physical absence of Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro; the widespread use of social media; resumed flights to and from the US since 2016; and increased liberalization and warmer diplomatic relations.

No matter how valuable ending the longest-running communist government in the Americas may seem, US President Donald Trump seems to be trying out a new for foreign intervention: decapitating regimes while keeping the establishment intact. This model clearly prioritizes business opportunities over democratic values. However, it’s not only uncertain whether it could be applied to Cuba, but also whether this is actually the plan. All of which makes it particularly difficult to imagine what could happen next.

Historically, international observers have oscillated between fascination and outrage towards Communist Cuba. In the early years of the revolution, this fascination was understandable. Cuba was a potent for activists in the 1960s and for the global civil rights movement. However, as the revolution shifted toward military autocracy rather than democratic ideals, the initial romanticism faded. This group of observers, largely comprising European baby boomers who rebelled against post-World War II imperialism, has seen its initial fervor tempered by time. Reflecting a broader evolution in leftist thought, they continue struggling to reconcile Cuba’s social achievements with its authoritarian political regime and the continuous, increasing and deepening impact of the US trade on these revolutionary ideals since 1962.

The Cuban Revolution officially began with the 1953 of the Moncada Barracks by a group of revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro, who was relatively unknown at the time. The uprising aimed to overthrow ’s illegitimate military dictatorship and the systemic corruption and poverty it fostered. Specifically, the movement demanded economic independence from US imperialist interests and the restoration of political liberty through an armed uprising of the working class.

After the attempted coup, Castro, a trained lawyer, was tried and imprisoned by Batista’s regime. During this trial, he delivered an iconic defense speech that ended with the famous words, “History will absolve me.” Indeed, he was pardoned after 22 months due to a general amnesty and went on to lead Cuba for life. However, total absolution by history is doubtful and yet to come.

After his release from prison, Castro adopted July 26 — the date of the attack on the Moncada Barracks — as the name of his revolutionary movement: the Movimiento 26 de Julio. By January 1, 1959, the rebels, including the iconic Comandante Ernesto “Che” Guevara, had successfully overthrown the dictatorship. In response to Batista’s pro-US regime, the revolutionaries had campaigned with slogans such as: “Cuba sí, yanquis no!” (“Cuba yes! Yankees no!”) and “Yanquis, vayanse!” (“Yankees, go away!”).

Shortly after Castro and his group took control, the US intervened militarily in 1961, but was defeated at the Bay of Pigs. This defeat solidified the first self-proclaimed communist revolution in the region, which would become the longest-standing regime of its kind in the Western world. It is now approaching its seventh decade.

The revolution as an unfinished process

After years of rumors that he was dead and that his government was keeping him alive to prevent a political collapse, Castro died on November 25, 2016, at the age of 90. Following Castro’s illness in 2006, his younger brother Raúl assumed provisional power. By 2011, Raúl had solidified his position as leader of both the presidency and the Communist Party. This appointment communicated a strong stance on hierarchy and kinship. Yet, Raúl ultimately delegated governance in 2019, eight years later.

Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, Cuba’s current president, is a direct descendant of the Castro regime, having been personally appointed by Raúl Castro. Born in Villa Clara Province on April 20, 1960, Díaz-Canel was born one year after the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Although Díaz-Canel holds onto the revolutionary ideals of his predecessors, he is facing unprecedented times. Amid escalating instability and unrest, he called for dialogue on Monday, March 23, while not capitulating on the Revolution, stating:

We don’t want war; we want dialogue. But if that space isn’t provided, we are ready. I tell you this with the deep conviction that I hold, which I have shared with my family, that we would give our lives for the Revolution.

Díaz-Canel said this in a conversation with Pablo Iglesias, the Spanish founder of the left-wing political party Podemos, and former vice president of Spain. Iglesias arrived in Cuba on March 24, 2026, as part of the humanitarian convoy. There, he Díaz-Canel on behalf of his media organization, Canal Red. With the support of figures like Iglesias and British politician Jeremy Corbyn, the Nuestra América mission delivered 20 tons of aid, including solar panels, to help alleviate the island’s severe energy crisis.

The convoy’s name invokes the legacy of (1853–1895), the “Apostle of Cuban Independence” and a foundational figure in the development of the nation’s identity. In his influential 1891 essay, Nuestra América, or “,” Martí contended that Latin American nations should develop governance systems grounded in their unique social realities instead of imitating foreign models. By warning against “the giant of the north” and calling for cultural sovereignty, Martí’s manifesto remains a powerful symbol that the modern mission seeks to reclaim. In fact, both Díaz-Canel and Iglesias reiterated Martí’s accusations that the US is responsible for Cuba’s structural problems of the past several decades, that the 1959 Revolution eliminated “all miseries and evils.”

The blockade of all trade and diplomatic relations with the US, coupled with the nationalization or expulsion of the private sector, did not stop the steady stream of tourists, primarily from Europe, from arriving on the island. Despite the gradual disenchantment of many, a sense of mysticism about Cuba as an oasis outside of capitalism began to emerge.

For as long as I can remember, I have heard the same tropes in stories by foreigners who visited the island in the ‘90s and ‘00s. One recurring theme was the idea that Cuba was “suspended in time.” People often mentioned the old cars, which were rare in other urban landscapes. In a dimmer note, Fidel, who had once that Cuba would no longer be the “brothel of the Western Hemisphere,” later used that same imagery in a 1999 speech, infamously , “Cuba has the cleanest and most educated prostitutes in the world.”

In his 1965 work, , Virgilio Piñera famously referred to “the curse of being completely surrounded by water.” Writing from a first-person perspective while sitting in a café in Havana, Piñera captured an insular reality that visitors, often distracted by the island’s tropical allure, could never truly grasp. This metaphorical curse reveals a less paradisical side of the nation, grounding its international isolation in a bittersweet reality.

Piñera’s sentiment mirrors the devastating truth in Fidel’s later remarks about the island’s “cultured” prostitutes. Both the poet’s verses and the leader’s words acknowledge a reality that, despite its high ideals, remains trapped by its circumstances. Piñera’s image remains profoundly expressive today, as Cuba faces renewed media attention and political turmoil, making this sense of cursed isolation feel as relevant as ever.

Following a period of diplomatic warming that began in 2015, US–Cuba relations shifted from a hopeful path toward greater understanding to extreme hostility under the Trump administration. By 2025, Marco Rubio, a former senator from Florida and Cuban American, had become one of the loudest advocates for this shift. A Gen Xer, Rubio belongs to the first generation of diaspora children who have historically migrated to Miami. This group has traditionally been fiercely opposed to the regime they fled.

Today, many of them see the current moment as the opportunity they’ve been awaiting for decades. Hispanic outlets Univision and Telemundo Miami have the various demonstrations, many of which were led by Cuban activist Ramón Saúl Sánchez, who on the exile community at the iconic Cuban restaurant to support the protests occurring on the island. The Free Cuba Rally, which through Washington, DC, featured slogans such as “Trump” and “Cuba Next!” calling for US action.

Founded by Cuban exiles in Valencia, Spain, in 2014, the news outlet Cibercuba has been a relevant source that divulges information from inside the island. It has extensively covered the protests of the last few weeks against constant outages and the growing precarious situation. According to Cibercuba, there have been pot-banging , fires started in the middle of roads, and people taking to the streets regardless of the significant military and police presence.

Though their demands are diverse and sometimes conflicting, protesters in Cuba and the diaspora are united in their response to the same lack of coherence embodied by an unfinished revolution and an authoritarian regime. Unlike the diaspora, protesters on the island largely US intervention. They call for freedom and anti-authoritarianism, yet they never question their own autonomy. They correctly believe that their future is in their hands, more on immediate needs than on challenging the entire economic system. Despite its flaws, the revolution’s accomplishments should be recognized, such as ensuring that and remain for all. 

Taking all of this into account, it’s reasonable to conclude that Cuba is experiencing its most severe economic and social crisis in decades. Nevertheless, Díaz-Canel has taken a defiant position against Washington, considering the one-party political system and the decades of cultural and structural revolution that sustain him. Even as it prepares for potential American aggression, the Cuban government refuses to negotiate its political system and its national sovereignty.

Perspectives from the Island: the case of Beto

I traveled to Cuba for the first and only time in January 2018, spending the first eight days of the year in Havana. I flew from Miami, a route that had only direct service in December 2016. I remember the other passengers, most of whom were not tourists, rushing to stand up as soon as the plane landed. Their urgency seemed to reflect the extraordinary experience of taking a direct flight after decades of needing to take indirect routes, such as via Cancún, or of being unable to travel at all due to visa or the risk of state retaliation for those in exile.

Coming from a place where unlimited internet access was the norm, the intermittent service during that short trip felt unusual. Access was a luxury; you had to go to a hotel or somewhere with Wi-Fi, or buy a $5 data card that lasted 30 minutes. For the majority of Cubans, this was a significant expense, as average monthly salaries among the lowest in the world. According to a 2025 , this digital divide persists as Etecsa, the national telecommunications enterprise, continues to restrict and raise the price of monthly data top-ups.

This atmosphere of restricted access and slow change makes the current shift in US foreign policy feel like a long-awaited opportunity. However, the notion of a tipping point once again reveals its tantalizing and procrastinatory nature. To understand how this pivotal turning point was perceived beyond the official headlines, I reached out to my Cuban friends living abroad.

One of them is Beto, a chef and owner who has lived in Madrid for over 20 years. When he responded on Monday, March 16, he was visiting family in Cuba, 30 minutes outside Havana. He stayed in touch throughout his week-long trip, and I am fortunate to be able to share some of his insights here.

Beto began his testimony by recounting how difficult it was to move around the island. His brother had to buy fuel on the black market just to pick him up from the airport, paying between eight and ten dollars per liter. Beto could only afford this expense because of his life in Spain. This corroborates reports of a severe decline in fuel supply, despite Beto’s testimony that money was circulating. 

On the drive from the airport to his hometown, which usually takes place on a busy highway toward Havana, there were no other cars. In a video he , the empty horizon could be seen in both directions, interrupted only by a car that eventually passed them. According to Beto, the airport itself also felt empty. His Iberia flight, designed to carry over 200 passengers, landed with only 60 people on board. The rental lots were empty, yet filled with cars no one was renting. “Havana doesn’t even have fuel for the planes,” Beto explained. He noted that his flight had to detour to the Dominican Republic just to refuel for the return trip to Madrid. He added that due to limited resources, tourism and travel for non-urgent matters have become extremely difficult these days.

This perception of a shortage is indicative of a broader energy crisis in which access to electricity depends on having the right technology. This takes us back to Diaz-Canel’s recent with Pablo Iglesias. Overall, the Cuban President’s tone was optimistic. Diaz-Canel mentioned that even amid an intensified blockade, Cuba is on the path to energy sovereignty. He highlighted the importance of solar panels, electricity generated from sugarcane fields and the increased use of electric motorcycles for various services, describing all of it as a form of “creative resistance.”

Overall, listening to Beto confirmed both Diaz-Canel’s description of advancements in renewable energy and the fact that it is insufficient. During the most recent national blackout, Beto said that only people near power plants or with solar panels were able to power their electronics. This was the case in his father’s village. To cope with the heat, he said he used a battery-powered fan for up to five hours at a time in his father’s house. A tropical storm on Monday night also helped cool the air.

Based on what he saw and experienced on this trip, the state-run food supply system, which used to equitably distribute food despite its imperfections, has nearly vanished. A new reality has emerged in which private enterprises import food and sell it at higher prices than in Madrid. Beto also shared photos of solar energy kits and kerosene stoves being sold on social media. The flyers provide contact information and state that payments must be made in cash in US dollars, and that delivery is available for an additional cost.

In addition to the photos of electronics, Beto shared a video with me depicting the unique blend of eras and economic systems found on Cuban streets. In the video, bicycle-powered taxis rattle past an old Polish Fiat, an iconic Soviet-era car, that has been modified to include a solar panel on its roof. The car was parked outside a bar called Tómatela Fría, where reggaeton music played from a speaker. During my short visit in 2018, I noticed that music, mostly reggaeton, was always playing on the streets. Seeing that it’s still the norm gave me a sense of reassurance that other reports didn’t.

Throughout the week, Beto and I were able to communicate with each other more than twice a day, albeit intermittently. He relied on airport Wi-Fi or Etecsa offices for internet access. There, you can pay 40 cents an hour for a connection to their Wi-Fi, which is powered by generators. When he described this situation to me, he paused and said it was all a “strange, high-speed transformation caught between socialism and capitalism.” As citizens increasingly take to the streets, Beto’s ambiguity sums up the reality of existing in the long-term middle ground between the two systems that polarized the second half of the 20th century.

As proof of the exceptional circumstances due to intensified protests and government dissent in the days prior, Beto sent a picture showing military helicopters circling overhead and armored vehicles moving through his father’s neighborhood. While the townspeople attempt to maintain a facade of normalcy by selling everyday goods in private stalls, intermittent electricity and the shadow of helicopters serve as constant reminders that the country is transforming into something entirely unknown.

Against this backdrop, Beto told me that when people in Cuba talk about the importance of money from family members abroad, they often ask each other, “¿Tú tienes fe?” While “fe” means “faith” in English, it actually stands for Familiar en el Extranjero, or “family member abroad.” This refers to receiving remittances from places such as Miami or Madrid. The double meaning of faith speaks to the concept of the hybridity of the two systems that Beto mentioned earlier. The anecdote also conveys a sense of truth when considering that faith may be the only unifying factor among the different positions, regardless of the indeterminate results.

The curse of being completely surrounded by water

The curse of being completely surrounded by water condemns me to this café table. If I didn’t think that water encircled me like a cancer, I’d sleep in peace. In the time that it takes the boys to strip for swimming, twelve people have died of the bends … The eternal misery of memory. If a few things were different and the country came back to me waterless, I’d gulp down that misery to spit back at the sky … The uniform of the drowned sailor still floats on the reef. It makes you want to jump out of bed and find the main vein of the sea and bleed it dry.

— The Whole Island, Virgilio Piñera

In closing, I would like to return to Virgilio Piñera’s poem and his words: “The curse of being completely surrounded by water.” In the poem, he also speaks of finding “the main vein of the sea and bleeding it dry,” building to a crescendo of intensity. Following the success of the Revolution, Piñera was one of many intellectuals who initially supported the movement. However, the revolutionary promise soon turned into systematic censorship. Piñera was arrested at the beginning of a period of state repression that intensified throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s.

In his posthumous memoir, (1993), Reinaldo Arenas, a writer of a later generation, explains how he, like Piñera, was imprisoned because of his homosexuality and his stance as a dissident public writer. The title, Before Night Falls, refers to how he had to write by the last rays of sunlight while hiding in parks as a fugitive. It �ɲ�����’t until 1980 that the Cuban state stopped homosexuals criminal figures, and the Ley de Ostentación Homosexual was repealed.

However, prosecutions due to sexual orientation didn’t stop overnight (it was not until 2019 that a new constitution was approved in Cuba that included regarding gender rights, and it �ɲ�����’t until 2022 that same-sex marriage was legalized). Arenas was able to flee during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift , which began when a bus crashed into the Peruvian embassy, causing a massive refugee crisis. To be granted permission to leave through Mariel, Arenas had to “” his homosexuality. He eventually settled in Miami and then New York, where he died by suicide while awaiting death from AIDS in 1990. In his suicide note, he explicitly blamed Fidel Castro for his death.

It’s hard to reconcile heartbreaking stories like Arenas’s with the continued loyalty of other prominent figures. As I have striven to convey in this piece, we find ourselves in limbo, torn between disillusionment and faith. Silvio Rodríguez, a renowned musician, exemplifies the latter. The government recently him a Kalashnikov rifle in recognition of his loyalty. Interestingly, in his popular 1993 song “,” or “the fool,” Rodriguez sang that deciding what the world deems foolishness may also be a stance: “Could it be that foolishness was born with me?/The foolishness of what now seems foolish/The foolishness of embracing the enemy/The foolishness of living without a price.”

On March 16, the day I spoke with Beto, Trump escalated his rhetoric, he could “take Cuba in some form” and do as he pleased there, adding that such a thing would be “an honor.” Once again, when we bring together the rhetoric of Rodríguez and Trump, we feel as though we are traveling in time. As the “giant of the North,” in Martí’s words, confronts Cuba, the island remains caught between the remnants of communism and an emerging informal capitalism. Cubans are resisting creatively, as they always have, even when struggling in the context of an accentuated decades-long blockade. Currently, their system of governance is holding strong, albeit while being cornered in their search for a path forward.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post All Eyes Are on Cuba, and No One Knows How Its Future Could Play Out appeared first on 51�Թ�.

On the screen of a seized cellphone, the country barely fits. It fits in names, invitations, contacts, suggested favors, denied payments, hurried official statements and a succession of messages. Even when they do not prove the crimes the social media mobs crave, they reveal plenty about the environment in which a mid-sized bank was able to grow, seduce, promise, escape and, ultimately, crumble. Banco Master has become a matter for the police, the regulators, the deposit insurance fund, Brasília and the Supreme Court. It is too much of a bank to be mere gossip. There is too much gossip to be just a bank.

The question arose early and bears repeating: What is the true scale of the Banco Master case? Not the — the one that obsesses over helicopters, parties, Coldplay performing at a Sicilian engagement and penthouses for sale on the day of an arrest. The real dimension. The size of the hole. The design of the mechanism. The proximity to power. What has been proven. What remains mere noise. And, above all, what this case tells us about Brazil when the subject is money, oversight and people who learned to circulate where the door should have been bolted.

At first glance, the plot is familiar. A mid-sized bank grows too fast, pays a premium to attract liquidity and bets that the market will continue to believe what is written on its balance sheet. Master was exactly that. But that is not enough. The bank’s collapse turned into a financial, criminal and institutional scandal because it bundled together suspected banking fraud, a multibillion-real bill for the Credit Guarantee Fund (FGC), an investigation into former high-ranking Central Bank officials and a trail of connections that pushed the crisis into the Supreme Court’s (STF) orbit.

The scale and impact of Banco Master

For the international reader, it is best to translate without an excessive accent. Banco Master was not large enough to topple the Brazilian financial system. It was not a “tropical .” But it was large enough to expose significant cracks in how Brazil supervises mid-sized banks, in the almost anesthetic comfort the deposit insurance fund offers investors and in the ancient intimacy between markets, politics and institutions. Had it been liquidated, Master held less than of the country’s banking assets. Still, its failure would trigger an estimated 40.6 billion Brazilian reais from the FGC and affect roughly 800,000 creditors. Less than 1% in size. 40.6 billion Brazilian reals in trouble. The number does the talking.

At the center of the story is , the bank’s controller. Master grew by offering high-yield securities, particularly certificates of deposit (CDs), to retail investors through investment platforms. This model, in itself, is neither a crime nor original. Mid-sized banks do this. They pay more to compete with giants that have the brand, the reach and the comfortable lethargy of loyal clients. The flaw appears when trust begins to fray. When the market believes, a high rate looks like an opportunity. When it stops believing, that same rate smells of desperation.

Here enters one of the Brazilian peculiarities that best explains the speed of expansion. The FGC, though private and funded by the banks themselves, functions in the mind of the average investor as a quasi-public safety net. It generally covers up to 250,000 Brazilian reais per Tax ID per institution. In practice, this produced a dangerous habit: many bought mid-sized bank CDs looking first at the yield and only much later, or never, at the quality of the issuer. The guarantee became a sedative. When Master collapsed, the sedative turned into a debt.

This detail matters because the case is not just about one banker, one bank and eventual fraud. It is also about incentives. When the market learns it can take more risk because an institutional cushion exists, caution evaporates. The investor thinks they are being clever. The platform loves the high-converting product. The bank gains momentum. The entire system kicks the can down the road. Until the day it comes back.

In 2025, the unease surrounding Master ceased to be market gossip and became a visible crisis. Doubts about liquidity and asset quality began to circle the bank. The proposed exit was an with Banco de Brasília (BRB), a state-owned bank controlled by the Federal District government. The plan envisioned BRB purchasing a relevant portion of Master’s assets, specifically the “prime” ones. Suddenly, the banking crisis acquired a political face.

The moment a state-owned bank enters the stage to absorb choice pieces of a troubled private institution, the nature of the debate shifts. It is no longer just about balance sheets. It is about who gets the meat and who is left with the bone. Critics viewed the operation as a transfer of attractive assets to a public institution, with the remaining risk remaining distributed among creditors, investors and the FGC. The operation was eventually stalled by the Courts and later by the Central Bank.

The formal rupture would come on November 18, 2025. On that day, the Central Bank the extrajudicial liquidation of Banco Master, Banco Master de Investimento, Letsbank, and a brokerage firm within the group. The allegation was blunt: “severe liquidity crisis, sharp financial deterioration, and grave infractions of systemic rules.” In the same context, the Federal Police moved forward with investigations into fraud linked to credit securities, and Vorcaro ended up arrested. The Central Bank maintained that there was no systemic risk. Perhaps there �ɲ�����’t. But there was already, by any measure, an institutional disaster.

Extrajudicial liquidation is a technical term for something quite simple: The regulator steps in because the house can no longer explain itself. From there, the dismantling begins — counting assets, attempting recoveries, defining creditors, triggering the guarantee. It is not a movie-style bankruptcy with a judge and slamming drawers. It is an administrative surgery. And every surgery, when it finally arrives, is already too late for those who only wanted a remedy.

Until that point, one could still argue the case was large but sectoral: a supposedly broken bank. A bitter bill; investors scrambling to understand their coverage limits; a regulator trying to convince the country that the fire was contained. Then, the story moved to a different floor.

Regulatory capture and institutional failures

In March 2026, that the investigation had begun targeting two former high-ranking Central Bank officials: Paulo Sergio Neves de Souza, former Director of Supervision, and Belline Santana, former Head of the Department of Bank Supervision. The suspicion is that both may have provided informal counseling to Vorcaro while still occupying or orbiting sensitive roles linked to system oversight. Messages described in the investigation reportedly indicate prior review of regulatory documents, strategic guidance, and signs of attempted influence through gifts and sham consulting contracts. The defense teams deny any wrongdoing. They deny it because they must. But the point has been made.

This is the nerve of the case. If it is proven that a troubled banker received privileged advice from the very person meant to watch him, the problem stops being a banking issue and becomes one of regulatory capture. The technical jargon describes a banal scene of Brazilian life: The inspector begins to behave like a consultant for the inspected. The gate remains in place, but the padlock is already in someone’s pocket.

This is what gives the episode a stature beyond the financial hole. Master may not be the largest bank to fall. It may not yet be the largest scandal in absolute volume. But it touches a more corrosive point: the hypothesis that the control environment itself was contaminated. It is not just the thief lurking around the safe; it is the suspicion of a conversation in the hallway between those who hold the key and those who shouldn’t even know where it is kept.

The Supreme Court’s role and public perception

The crisis reached the Supreme Court. Here, it is wise to take a deep breath, lower the social media adrenaline and separate what exists from the hunger for scandal. In the case of Justice Dias Toffoli, in February that a Federal Police report cited references to him in data extracted from Vorcaro’s phone and mentioned allegations of payments to a company linked to the Justice, along with invitations to social events. Toffoli’s response was objective: He never received payments and never had a relationship with Vorcaro. Later, he reportedly decided to recuse himself and step down as the case’s rapporteur. The STF, in a note signed by its Justices, reportedly expressed personal support for Toffoli, stating there was no legal impediment to his staying, though he preferred to step aside.

Thus far, there is no consolidated public proof of Toffoli’s illicit involvement. There is a reference in investigative material. There is a mention of alleged payments. There is the Justice’s denial. There is a declared recusal. There is reputational damage. But reputational damage is not evidence. In high-profile cases, the difference between the two is usually the first casualty.

With Alexandre de Moraes, the temperature rose through the channel Brazil currently masters best: the partial capture of a message, the accelerated circulation of screenshots and the outsourcing of conclusions to the nearest shouting match. The STF’s was direct. According to a note from the Communication Secretariat, after analyzing the disclosed material, the messages attributed to the context were reportedly not sent to the Justice’s contact, but to others in the banker’s contact list. In plain English: The Supreme Court asserts that the screenshots do not demonstrate communication between Vorcaro and Moraes.

Here, too, the distinction matters. Is there, to date, proven compromising communication involving Moraes? No. Is there enough noise to amplify public suspicion of proximity between the case and the top of the Judiciary? Yes. And this “yes” is enough to contaminate the environment. In institutional matters, the wear and tear does not always come from a proven crime. Sometimes it comes from the combination of suggested contact, a toxic context and a succession of episodes that give the public the feeling that the same old names are, once again, standing too close to the smoke.

This caution is not pedantry. It is method. The case already produces enough noise on its own. There is political, social and institutional proximity suggested by reports, meetings and references in seized material. That exists. It is one of the reasons the case grew so large. But is there, today, airtight public proof of criminal participation by STF Justices? No. What exists in a robust and verifiable way is something else: Toffoli denied payments and links to Vorcaro and recused himself; Moraes denied the messages were directed to him; and the Supreme Court attempted to contain, via official note, the reading of direct contamination of the Court.

This point is decisive because Brazil suffers from a recurring narrative disease: Either everything is mundane, or everything is the greatest conspiracy in history. The Banco Master case needs neither of these crutches. The question of whether it is “the greatest heist and corruption case in Brazilian history” requires a journalistic handbrake. Not yet. What benchmark reporting points to is something more precise and more serious: The episode may become the largest banking fraud in the country’s history and is already treated as a multibillion-real scandal that has shaken the Central Bank’s reputation. This is massive. And it remains different from decreeing, without a verdict or conclusive evidence, that we are facing the largest corruption case in Brazilian history in a broad sense.

However, there is a visual element that helps explain why the case boiled over so quickly outside technical circles: Vorcaro’s lifestyle. Not because luxury proves fraud — it doesn’t. But because excess, when paired with fragile liquidity, suspect assets and asset-tracking, organizes the public imagination with unparalleled efficiency.

Opulence and public outrage

The eventual lifting of the banker’s bank secrecy reportedly revealed arrangements for an event in Sicily featuring performances by Coldplay, David Guetta, and Andrea Bocelli, with an estimated cost of over (roughly 198 million Brazilian reals). The number has the delicacy of a punch. It doesn’t prove the crime. But it offers the exact image of the kind of disconnect that transforms a financial case into an elite soap opera: While the bank sinks into doubt, the controller’s private life seems to operate on the scale of a landlocked principality.

Other episodes bolstered this portrait. Reports surfaced that Vorcaro’s daughter’s 15th birthday party allegedly cost around Brazilian reais. Messages reportedly pointed to a hurried attempt to sell a penthouse in São Paulo for 60 million Brazilian reais on the day of the banker’s first arrest. Brazilian authorities have been tracking luxury real estate, artwork and other assets in Florida linked to Vorcaro and his family in search of asset recovery. Bloomberg Law reported that the bank’s liquidator accuses the controller’s family of participating in a scheme that allegedly diverted over $1 billion from Master, including through luxury assets abroad. An accusation is not a conviction. But an accusation with this profile repositions the case on a different level of gravity.

Money, here, functions less as a moral judgment and more as a dramatic contrast. The point is not to attack champagne, expensive singers or Miami real estate as if the problem were merely bad taste. The point is different. When a bank grows by distributing high-yield securities to small and medium investors under the tranquilizing shadow of the FGC, and later enters liquidation with a 40.6 billion Brazilian real bill for that fund, every display of opulence by the controller begins to function as an involuntary allegory of the system. The party is not the proof. The party is the caption. What is solidly established, even without exaggeration, would already suffice for a major crisis.

The anatomy of a systemic mirror

Banco Master reportedly grew too much and too fast with expensive funding. Its model reportedly depended on the persistent belief that assets and guarantees would withstand the run. An exit via a state-owned bank was attempted. The Central Bank intervened late, according to critics, and technically, according to its own defense. The FGC inherited a multibillion-real bill. And investigations began to describe a network of influence that includes former regulators, political connections and the fringes of the Supreme Court.

The case, therefore, is not just the story of how a mid-sized bank broke. It is the story of how it managed to grow so much, circulate so close to power and produce a hole of this scale without being contained sooner. It is a question about chronology. About complacency. About the selective slowness of institutions. About the old Brazilian habit of treating warning signs as market noise until the truck is already in the living room.

There is also a deeper, perhaps more Brazilian, irony in the anatomy of the case. Master did not topple the system. There was no national banking panic. There was no apocalypse that the jargon-heavy headlines love to anticipate. The system remained standing. And yet, precisely because it was not a systemic collapse, the episode became more revealing. It shows that a bank does not need to be massive to expose a country. It only needs to be ambitious enough, well-connected enough and tolerated for long enough.

In the end, the true dimension of the Banco Master case perhaps lies less in the isolated size of the hole than in the kind of intimacy it revealed. Intimacy between private risk and collective coverage. Between supervision and undue proximity. Between the market and the State. Between the promise sold to the investor and the bill passed to the system. Between regulators’ technical routine and the Brazilian fascination with people who confuse access with immunity.

Institutions look solid from a distance. Up close, they depend on small things: distance, procedure, timing, shame, closed doors, unanswered phone calls. The Master case is the chronicle of an environment in which some of these small things reportedly failed at once. And when they fail together, a mid-sized bank ceases to be just a mid-sized bank. It becomes a mirror. And the country, once again, does not like what it sees.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Master Paradox: How a Mid-Sized Bank Exposed the Cracks In Brazil’s Power appeared first on 51�Թ�.

When impeachment becomes routine

Geurts begins by explaining that presidential turnover in Peru has become normalized. “It has become a kind of a folkloric event to change presidents,” he observes, capturing how this otherwise extraordinary situation has become routine. The immediate triggers may vary, from corruption allegations to political maneuvering, but the underlying mechanism is clear.

Congress holds the decisive lever. With 87 out of 130 votes, lawmakers can remove a president, and since 2016, they have repeatedly exercised that power. Geurts traces this shift to a narrow election that year, when a razor-thin presidential victory collided with a hostile congressional majority aligned with former autocratic President Alberto Fujimori’s political legacy. That confrontation set a precedent. Once Congress realized it could unseat presidents, it began using impeachment as a tool of political strategy rather than a last resort.

From 2000 to 2016, presidents often governed with minority support but survived by negotiating with Congress. That political culture has now eroded, replaced by constant brinkmanship between the two branches.

Presidency weakened, Congress empowered

The result is a system in which the president formally controls the executive but operates under persistent threat. Geurts argues that, in practice, Congress has emerged as the dominant force. Political parties within it act less as coherent ideological blocs and more as shifting alliances, often driven by short-term interests.

This fluidity produces what he describes as a “cat and mouse game” between Congress and the executive. While the president retains the theoretical power to dissolve Congress after repeated votes of no confidence, lawmakers have strong incentives to avoid such outcomes. Many benefit materially from their positions, while others maintain ties to powerful local or even illicit economic networks.

The removal of interim President José Jerí in February illustrates this dynamic. Although the allegations against him — contacts with lobbyists and questionable appointments — were relatively minor by local standards, Congress found a procedural workaround to remove him without the required supermajority. The episode illustrates how politicians often bend legal mechanisms to serve political ends.

Fragmented politics and the 2026 test

Looking ahead, the electoral landscape offers little immediate reassurance. With dozens of parties and candidates, Peru’s political system is highly fragmented. Many parties function less as enduring institutions and more as vehicles built around individual candidates or narrow interests.

Geurts bluntly notes that some of them are backed up by lobbies of informal, sometimes even criminal, sectors. Such fragmentation makes it easier for outsider or disruptive candidates to reach the decisive second round of presidential elections, often without broad-based support.

Still, reforms tied to the 2026 elections may begin to reshape the system. A new electoral threshold will require parties to secure at least 5% of the vote and representation across multiple districts to enter Congress. This could reduce the number of parties and encourage more stable coalitions.

Simultaneously, Peru will return to a bicameral legislature, reintroducing a Senate abolished in the 1990s under Fujimori. In theory, a second chamber could improve the quality of legislation by adding scrutiny. In practice, public skepticism runs deep, with many Peruvians viewing the Senate as little more than an expansion of political patronage.

Peru’s economy defies the chaos

One of the most striking aspects of Peru’s situation is the disconnect between political instability and economic performance. Despite constant leadership changes, the economy has remained relatively stable. Strong institutions, particularly an independent central bank, have insulated monetary policy from political turbulence, while high commodity prices have supported growth.

Geurts recounts a telling remark circulating in the region: “The real president of this country is the president of the central bank.” This reflects both the strength of economic governance and the weakness of political leadership.

Yet this stability has limits. Without a functioning government capable of investing in infrastructure and addressing rising crime, economic growth remains constrained. Analysts suggest that Peru could grow significantly faster under more stable political conditions.

Public frustration without revolt

For ordinary Peruvians, the constant churn in leadership has produced a mix of frustration and resignation. Citizens express dissatisfaction not only with politicians but also with public services, from healthcare and education to infrastructure. Rising crime, particularly extortion in poorer urban areas, has deepened the sense of insecurity.

And yet, widespread unrest has not materialized. Geurts attributes this to a combination of economic resilience and daily necessity. Much of the population works in the informal sector, relying on daily income to survive. As he explains, “They have no time to go to the streets because every day they go to the street, there is no income.”

This tension between dissatisfaction and survival helps sustain the status quo. Peru’s political system may be unstable, but it persists because the conditions for large-scale upheaval have not fully coalesced.

Incremental reforms and institutional adjustments offer some hope for the upcoming elections. But as Geurts cautions, these remain aspirations rather than guarantees. For now, Peru continues to navigate a fragile equilibrium, where political disorder coexists with economic continuity, and where stability remains an open question.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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These achievements are politically because they concern not only Spanish as a language, but also what the language, music and the artist himself represent. In light of the of violent racism and civil rights against Hispanic, Latinx, Latin American and immigrant individuals in the US, both in and in , recognizing and representing these groups is of the utmost importance.

A cultural moment that challenged national narratives

Bad Bunny’s popularity speaks to the resilience of the Latinx diaspora and the undeniable truth of a multilingual, multicultural and multiracial America. It’s safe to assume that almost every person of Caribbean, Latinx or Latin American descent who watched the halftime show felt emotional and experienced a much-needed sense of pride.

However, US President Donald Trump as a “slap in the face to our country” on his social media account. Based on this characterization of the show, I infer that the president recognizes the halftime show as a challenge to his idea of the nation.

Indeed, it was a slap in the face when considering what Bad Bunny’s masterful performance challenged. The reason for the slap is not because it was “terrible” nor because “nobody understands this guy,” as Trump alleged. No, the performance was a slap in the face because it challenged the long-held beliefs of those who support colonialism and white supremacy.

For a country whose greatness is tied to the dispossession of indigenous populations and immigration, it served as a reality check and a historical reminder. Negating the significance of the performance shows an inability to recognize the large Spanish-speaking population in the US and a lack of insight into the shared history of the Americas.

This collective history includes the fact that indigenous populations in the Americas, including parts of the US, were by Spain before the US existed. Spanish was once a colonial language, but today, it is also a symbol of cultural rebellion against Anglo-imperialist ideals of homogeneity, especially given the racialization and criminalization of Spanish speakers.

In the same social media post mentioned earlier, Trump added that the performance “made no sense.” However, the performance struck a chord precisely because it resonated with a large global audience and was deeply relevant to history.

From viral artist to symbol of the Americas

Through this spectacular production, Bad Bunny showed the world that America has multiple meanings and identities — and that more than one person can define them. Since he first went viral in 2016 with his SoundCloud hit “”, and going from working in a supermarket in San Juan to the multimillionaire he is today, Bad Bunny’s artistic persona reflects the multifaceted, complex and intersectional character of the Americas.

In one of the songs from his 2023 Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va A Pasar Mañana (No One Knows What Tomorrow Will Bring), called “,” Bad Bunny tells the story of how he went from humble beginnings to attending the famous Monaco Formula 1 Grand Prix. As he says in , he is hanging out with actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, discussing topics that only billionaires can understand. During the performance hosted by the NFL, when “Monaco” was playing, he delivered a message in Spanish directly to the camera that said, “I never stopped believing in myself. You should also believe in yourself. You’re worth more than you think. Believe me.” Minutes later, he took a moment to whisper, “Puerto Rico, never stop believing in yourself.”

The above parallel between his own journey and that of Puerto Rico is just one example of the many tributes he has paid to his homeland since he began making albums. Bad Bunny’s massive representation has always occurred alongside his public denunciation of Puerto Rico’s involuntary dependency on the US.

For example, “,” a 2018 hit, was the first of many protest songs and Puerto Rican anthems written by Bad Bunny. The song alludes to the messages that Puerto Ricans sent to their loved ones in the diaspora after the caused by Hurricane Maria, which exposed the island’s structural neglect. These anthems, along with some of his public statements and at protests, are a lesser-known aspect of his fame. His unique, melodic, gravelly voice and his ability to blend depth and emptiness in his lyrics with Afro-Caribbean rhythms sometimes overshadow his activism. However, his cultural relevance has caught the attention of academics. Numerous panels, and have been developed around him.

In addition to taking a political stance on Puerto Rico, many of his greatest hits, such as “” and “,” focus on the freedom to express gender and sexuality, central themes to his popularity. All of these songs were featured in the halftime show. However, his latest album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos, was the key focus in the show’s production. This is noteworthy because the album on the disputed history of Puerto Rican sovereignty. Given the resurgence of imperialism under the Trump administration, the fate of Puerto Rico becomes particularly relevant. This resurgence is evident in Trump’s renewed territorial expansionist efforts, such as his interest in and his interventionism abroad, as seen in .��

Puerto Rico has remained the last occupied Spanish-speaking territory since Italian explorer Christopher Columbus set foot on the island in 1492, and the US the island from Spain in 1898. After invading the island, the US made Puerto Rico a free-associated state, granting some rights but taking many others away. These include the right to vote in US elections and, most importantly, the right to national sovereignty. In this regard, the “Lo que le pasó a Hawái” or “What Happened to Hawaii” is one of the most powerful in Debí Tirar Más Fotos, as it conveys the hope that Puerto Rico won’t suffer the same fate as Hawaii and be forced into US statehood.

The nation’s is a contested subject in Puerto Rico and the US Congress. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for instance, has been one of the most advocates of the Self-Determination Bill, and Puerto Ricans have held displaying the complexities and divisiveness of existing in the ambiguity between statehood and self-determination. As I mentioned earlier, Bad Bunny has long advocated for Puerto Rican independence. For example, he has publicly that he “would never want to see Puerto Rico become a state.”

Cultural pride and memory on the halftime stage

Another major theme of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance was his tribute to and recognition of the Puerto Rican, Latinx and Caribbean communities in the US. Through props and imagery, the production not only denounced a long history of resistance to cultural homogenization and erasure but also honored the profound influence of the diaspora on the US’s cultural heritage and social fabric.

For example, Bad Bunny brought the iconic Highland Park Mexican in Los Angeles to the stage, while also paying homage to the importance of the Caribbean in New York City and to the development of Latinx music genres based there, such as salsa. During his halftime performance of “,” the stage was designed to resemble a classic New York street, featuring a bodega next to a Dominican barbershop. The song opens with a remix of “Si te quieres divertir, solo tienes que vivir un verano en Nueva York” by the El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, which translates to “If you want to have fun, you only have to spend one summer in New York.”

With all eyes on him during the performance of “Nuevayol,” Bad Bunny sang about one of the city’s attractions, “Un shot de cañita en casa de Toñita,” as Toñita, the octogenarian heart and soul of the last Caribbean in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, handed him a drink. As he gradually became the global phenomenon he is today, Bad Bunny made rare appearances at this small social club, located in a Nuyorican neighborhood on the verge of , in the heart of trendy, homogenized Williamsburg.

Bringing Toñita to center stage at the halftime show in San Francisco embodies the struggle of Latinx and Caribbean diaspora communities against gentrification, developers, and other forms of attempts at erasure. Just as the Caribbean Social Club provides a physical and symbolic space for the hispanophone immigrant community, the opening scene of the original “Nuevayol” music video features the Puerto Rican flag flying atop the Statue of Liberty — a well-known entry point for immigrants. In line with the overall sentiment of the song, this tribute to the 1977 Puerto Rican Nationalist of the statue also signals the legitimacy of the immigrant presence in the US.

Bad Bunny’s portrayal of the Nuyorican experience is part of the broader history of the Puerto Rican diaspora’s grassroots activism and art. The first large wave of Puerto Rican immigration to New York in the 1950s. This set the stage for a vibrant second generation of Nuyorican artists and activists who flourished in the 1960s and 1970s. For example, the Nuyorican Poets established a groundbreaking hub for slam poetry in the Lower East Side, and the Young Lords was a pivotal civil rights group. One of the Young Lords’ most notable protests against the lack of public services in their neighborhoods occurred in 1968 when they took over a Methodist church in Harlem and converted it into a daycare center. Given this history, Bad Bunny’s proud representation of Boricuas in the US cements his position within the long tradition of Latinx artists and activists who have fought against the neglect and of their communities while raising awareness through protest art.

Similarly to how Bad Bunny made his way into the most popular American sporting event despite the longstanding institutional exclusion of those he represents, Nuyorican and Latinx communities have historically forged numerous artistic and cultural paths. As previously mentioned, the confluence of rhythms and ethnicities in New York City’s cultural landscape laid the groundwork for the creation of salsa, the most globally influential Latinx genre to date. Although salsa rhythms originated in Cuba and Puerto Rico, the genre did not become established until the founding of the Brooklyn-based , which made 1960’s New York central to its formation.��

In Bad Bunny’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos, salsa takes center stage as he blends orchestral salsa with Puerto Rican , as well as his upscale reggaeton and dembow production styles. Of all the songs on the album, “,” meaning “unforgettable dance,” stands out because it reinterprets and reestablishes the genre. During the halftime show, “Baile Inolvidable” followed Lady Gaga’s performance of a salsa-inspired version of her hit “Die with a Smile.” Bad Bunny danced to “Baile Inolvidable” with Lady Gaga, symbolizing a sense of binational and bilingual unity through rhythm and dance. In several early , before achieving (and maybe even surpassing) Gaga’s global fame, Bad Bunny Lady Gaga as his biggest idol. Their Super Bowl collaboration sends a message of unity and serves as a testament to Bad Bunny’s success story.

A moment of justice: Ricky Martin and the politics of language

His second guest was his fellow Puerto Rican, Ricky Martin. Martin is an iconic Latino artist from a previous generation who “La Copa de la Vida” at the 1999 Super Bowl. The National Football League made him translate the song to “The Cup of Life.” Because Ricky Martin �ɲ�����’t allowed to sing in Spanish in the ‘90s, his a cappella performance of “Lo que le pasó a Hawaii” during Bad Bunny’s halftime show has been called an “.” This moment of vindication alone conveys the symbolic intensity of the entire show.

Right before Ricky Martin’s emotional performance, we saw Bad Bunny give his Grammy to a young child and whisper, “Puerto Rico, cree siempre en ti.” The camera stayed on the child for a moment, allowing us time to reflect. Some that the boy represented either Bad Bunny’s past self or Puerto Rico. Others speculated that he was Liam Conejo Ramos, the five-year-old boy who was infamously detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and later . Although the child was an actor, the speculation sheds light on what was on people’s minds as they watched the performance.

Shortly after the shot of the child holding the Grammy Award, Martin’s voice is heard singing the chilling words: “Quieren quitarme el río y también la playa, quieren el barrio mío y que abuelita se vaya. No sueltes la bandera,” which translates to “They want to take my river and my beaches. They want my neighborhood and my grandma to leave. Don’t let go of the flag.” Soon after, Bad Bunny is seen holding a large Puerto Rican flag in the middle of a sugarcane field. The flag is light blue instead of the official darker shade. Incidentally, this flag was from 1948 to 1957 due to laws intended to suppress Puerto Rican nationalism. This moment of him in the field holding the unofficial flag resonates, as stated, with his long-term making of protest anthems.

One such protest anthem is the hit “” (or “The Blackout”), in which a female voice states the same sentiment as in “Lo que le pasó a Hawaii” with the words “No me quiero ir de aquí, que se vayan ellos,” or “I don’t want to leave, let them be the ones to go.” Furthermore, the official video of the song features a short documentary on the human impacts that foreign interests have had on the island.

The song “El Apagón” also has its own epic moment in the Super Bowl. As dancers dressed as sugarcane workers climb electric posts, Bad Bunny sings, “Everyone wants to be Latino, but they lack flavor, energy and reggaetón.” The 2022 version of the song is a testimony to the long-lasting aftermath of Hurricane María in 2017 and the insufficient US aid that left the island without electricity for days. “El Apagón” immediately became an anthem and a form of historical memory for the island’s neglect.

In addition to exposing the unequal and racialized distribution of public aid, the song unveils a centuries-long, systemic colonial worldview. Both “Lo que le pasó a Hawai” and “El Apagón” epitomize what groundbreaking Black feminist scholar Bell Hooks termed “imperialist nostalgia” in her 1992 Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance. This concept describes the paradox by which imperialism destroys and enslaves conquered territories while simultaneously idolizing and mystifying them as paradises to be exploited and visited, or as fashionable aesthetics to be imitated. Thus, the idea that “everyone wants to be Latino” carries significant implications.

“Seguimos Aquí”: identity, sovereignty and the power of presence

Toward the end of the halftime show, a group of flag-holders takes the stage and surrounds the , a signature prop from his latest world tour. From the overhead camera view, we see all the flags being raised. First is the US flag, followed by the Puerto Rican flag and then the flags of all the other nations in the Americas. Throughout the show, we have seen flags emerge as a recurring theme in the symbols employed to vindicate national identity and self-determination. After focusing on the flags, the camera moves to Benito, who is grabbing a football.��

Holding the football, he begins, “God bless America.” Then he continues, “Be it Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and so on.” Bad Bunny made a point of acknowledging all the countries in the Americas. He did so with a traveling shot, walking toward the viewer while continuing to carry the football and looking into the camera the entire time. In the still photo of the larger composition, the flags surround him in the background. Further back, a neon sign reads, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.” These are the same words he when he received the 2026 Best Album Grammy, directly addressing ICE’s actions toward immigrants and protesters. In addition to what the larger frame shows, listing all the nations asserts their identities and their right to be recognized as sovereign entities with horizontal relationships with one another.

Though not at the top, the US was included on the list of countries stretching from south to north, appearing just before Canada. After finishing the list, he held up the football he had been holding and displayed a message written on it. He then read the message aloud: “Seguimos aquí,” which means “We are still here.” By making a touchdown gesture with the ball, a symbol of victory, Bad Bunny physically expressed the same message written in “Seguimos aquí,” which encapsulates the unwavering presence of Latinx communities in the face of ongoing supremacist, colonial and imperialist endeavors.

The triumphant touchdown momentarily resolved the debate over whether the halftime show was an affront or a source of pride. For at least one cinematic moment, Benito and those he represents claimed victory. “Seguimos aquí” is written in the present tense, expressing the idea of always having been there and a sense of continuity. The surrounding the halftime show ultimately serves as a reminder of historical power struggles over narratives, such as those concerning the use of Spanish and the right to occupy spaces of representation. Despite the government and armed forces’ attempts to undermine indigenous sovereignty and fundamental civil rights, Bad Bunny’s halftime performance shone as a much-needed moment of beauty and vindication.

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“You can’t imagine how it touches every part of our lives,” she sobbed. “It’s a vicious, all-encompassing spiral downward. With no gasoline, buses don’t run, so we can’t get to work. We have only three to six hours a day. There’s no gas for cooking, so we’re burning wood and charcoal in our apartments. It’s like going back 100 years. The blockade is suffocating us — especially single mothers,” she said, crying into her hands. “And no one is stopping these demons: Trump and Marco Rubio.”

We came to Holguín to deliver 2,500 pounds of lentils, thanks to fundraising by CODEPINK and the Cuban-American group Puentes de Amor. On our last trip, we brought 50-pound bags of powdered milk to the children’s hospital. With Trump now imposing a brutal, medieval siege on the island, this humanitarian aid is more critical than ever. But lentils and milk cannot power a country. What Cubans really need is oil.

Cuban costs

There were no taxis at the airport. We hitchhiked into town on the truck that came to pick up the donations. The road was eerily empty. In the city, there were few gas-powered cars and no buses running, but the streets were full of bicycles, electric motorcycles and three-wheeled electric vehicles used to transport people and goods. Most of the motorcycles — Chinese, Japanese or Korean in manufacture — are shipped in from Panama. With a price tag near $2,000, only those with family abroad sending remittances can afford them.

Cubans don’t pay rent or have mortgages; they own their homes. And while national healthcare has deteriorated badly in recent years because of shortages of medicines and equipment, it remains . This system is gasping but not abandoned. When my partner, Tighe, had an asthma attack, we went to the clinic and he was breathing in albuterol mist from a nebulizer within minutes. No insurance forms, no bill, just care delivered competently with a smile. That’s what health care looks like when it’s treated as a human right.

The biggest expense for Cubans is . Markets are stocked, but prices are out of reach — especially for coveted items like pork, chicken and milk. Even tomatoes are now unaffordable for many families.

Holguín was once known as the breadbasket of Cuba because of its rich agricultural land. That reputation took a severe hit last year when Hurricane Melissa through the province, destroying vast areas of crops. Replanting and repairing the damage without gasoline for tractors or electricity for irrigation is nearly impossible. Less food means higher prices.

Production across the economy is grinding to a halt. Factories can’t function without electricity, and many skilled workers have given up their state jobs because wages are so low. Jorge, whom I met selling bologna in the market, used to be an engineer at a state enterprise. Verónica, once a teacher, now sells sweets she bakes at home — when the power is on. Ironically, while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio claims he wants to bring capitalism to Cuba, US sanctions are the very private sector that most Cubans now depend on to survive.

Blame and survival

I talked to people on the street who blame the Cuban government for the crisis and openly say they can’t wait for the fall of communism. Young people told me that their goal is to leave the island and live somewhere they can make a decent living. But I didn’t meet a single person who supported the blockade or a US invasion.

“This government is terrible,” said a thin man who changes money on the street — an illegal but tolerated activity. But when I showed him a photo of Rubio, he didn’t hesitate. “That man is the devil. A self-serving, slimy politician who doesn’t give a damn about the Cuban people.”

Others put the blame squarely on the US. They point to the dramatic improvement in their lives after US President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro reached an and Washington eased many sanctions in 2014–2016. “It was the same Cuban government we have now,” one man told me, “but when the US loosened the rope around our necks, we could breathe. If they just left us alone, we could find our own solutions.”

Cubans are only surviving this siege because they help one another. They trade rice for coffee with neighbors. They improvise, saying the phrase, “no hay, pero se resuelve” (“we don’t have much, but we make it work”). The government provides daily meals for the most vulnerable — the elderly, the disabled, mothers with no income — but it becomes harder each day as the state has less food to distribute and less fuel to cook with.

At one feeding center, an elderly volunteer told us he spends hours every day scavenging for firewood. He presented us with a chunk of a wooden pallet, nails and all. “This guarantees tomorrow’s meal,” he stated, his face caught somewhere between pride and sorrow.

Can Cuba endure?

So how long can Cubans hold on as conditions worsen? And what is the endgame?

When I asked people where this is leading, they had no idea. Rubio wants regime change, but no one can explain how that would happen or who would replace the current government. Some speculate a deal could be struck with Trump. “Make Trump the minister of tourism,” a hotel clerk commented, only half-joking. “Give him a hotel and a golf course — a Mar-a-Lago in Varadero — and maybe he’d leave us alone.”

Who will win this demonic game that Trump and Rubio are playing with the lives of eleven million Cubans?

Ernesto, who fixes refrigerators when the power is on, places his bet on the Cuban people. “We’re rebels,” he told me. “We defeated Batista in 1959. We survived the Bay of Pigs. We endured the when the Soviet Union collapsed, and we were left with nothing. We’ll survive this, too.”

He summed it up with a Cubans know by heart, from the great songwriter Silvio Rodríguez: “El tiempo está a favor de los pequenos, de los desnudos, de los olvidados” — “Time belongs to the small, the exposed, the forgotten.”

In the long sweep of time, endurance outlasts domination.

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Six years ago, the US government stimulated scenarios following the fall of Maduro, predicting societal and infrastructural collapse. Now, the world is a version of that scenario unfold in real time. Trump’s pledge of “no new wars” is being tested by the dramatic US military operation on January 3, 2026, in Caracas, resulting in the capture of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Administration officials have since teased the possibility of further military action if Venezuela fails to cooperate with US demands, including oil resources and political transition.

Proximity changes everything

Since the infamous kidnapping of Maduro, the US government has mobilized its communications efforts to counter domestic and international backlash. Trump’s initial strike on drug trafficking boats in the escalated into an oil and now direct military involvement. 

Mainstream outlets like and have drawn direct comparisons to the excuse used for former US President George W. Bush’s 2003 of Iraq. Whether or not Trump recognizes these comparisons, Venezuela’s proximity to the US fundamentally alters risks. Unlike distant Middle East conflicts Americans experienced during the War on Terror, war here could spill closer to home and increase the risks of conventional war on our continent. Such a conflict would directly threaten US national security and regional stability and spell out long-term hemispheric chaos. 

It would likely trigger mass displacement and intensify refugee flows towards the border, straining border infrastructure, law enforcement and local humanitarian systems. Yuma, Arizona, as a cautionary example: During the 2021–2022 migrant surge, border patrol agents, local hospitals and food banks were overwhelmed. A larger influx of migrants also leaves room for transnational crime, trafficking and cartel expansion. US war games guerrilla-style attacks on oil refineries and prolonged conflict, similar to the sectarian that followed Bashar al-Assad’s fall in Syria.

Within Venezuela, this could shatter remaining institutions and destabilize surrounding countries like Colombia and Brazil, which are geographically even closer to the US. It also opens a space for American adversaries to play the “hero” and establish a stronghold in the hemisphere. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has already weapons as a sign of support, in the way he did with Assad in Syria, which secured permanent military bases. China, as Venezuela’s buyer of crude oil, has extended support to the Maduro-aligned leadership amid the blockade.

Regime change efforts offer stark warnings from recent history. In Syria, the that once surrounded the fall of Assad in late 2024 is with the explosion of and of vengeance killings of minorities — the Druze, Christians and Alawites — often downplayed by the transitional government under Ahmed al-Sharaa. Western leaders are choosing to avoid embarrassment from a “former” in the first place. 

In Iraq, the US involvement toppled Saddam Hussein but unleashed years of destruction in the political and city infrastructure after American withdrawal. US military intervention has rarely produced any democratic or positive outcomes for the local populations, and chances are high that it’ll be the same in Venezuela.

Pragmatic solutions

A more effective alternative to hemispheric stability is economically incentivized negotiation. Sanction relief, access to US markets, mediation and other calibrated pressures have delivered results in cases like the normalization agreements and the Iran nuclear framework. These approaches could align with �Ѳ���ܰ���’s recent public appeals for “peace, not war,” including his recent of John Lennon’s “Imagine” at a November 2025 rally.

President Trump should align US interests with regional stability rather than try to justify a new conflict with the oil , proving his adversaries right about the well-being of Americans being last on his administration’s list.

Moving forward

War at our borders is nothing like war in the Middle East. Americans would feel the direct striking consequences, such as refugee pressures and criminal spillover. Unilaterally to run another sovereign country a concrete plan for democratic transition or a clear exit strategy undermines civilian protections abroad and heightens danger at home. 

Strategic restraint has been absent from US foreign policy for too long. At this moment, serious diplomacy — not reckless escalation — is urgently needed.

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Trump’s precision operation

Vivas outlines the scale and sequencing of the Operation Absolute Resolve, which involved a large US naval presence in the Caribbean, strikes on drug-trafficking routes and the interception of oil shipments bound for China, India and Cuba. The final phase unfolded in the early hours of Saturday, January 3, when US forces launched a helicopter raid on Fuerte Tiuna, �Ѳ���ܰ���’s heavily guarded residential compound in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas.

According to Vivas, the operation’s success depended on surprise, intelligence and timing. The compound, often misunderstood as a single residence, is closer to a fortified city, staffed largely by Cuban security personnel rather than Venezuelan forces. When Delta Force units moved in, resistance collapsed quickly. Around 40 Cuban guards were killed, while US forces reportedly suffered no casualties.

Khattar Singh notes the global disbelief that followed the first videos on social media, which many assumed were fabricated. The lack of visible resistance and the speed of the operation made the outcome appear almost unreal. For Vivas, however, the operation reflected months of preparation and a clear strategic intent. It also demonstrated that Washington was willing to act unilaterally and decisively, outside traditional diplomatic frameworks.

Betrayal at the top

The operation raises a central question: Why did Venezuela’s military and political elite fail to respond? Vivas argues that key figures inside the regime may have facilitated �Ѳ���ܰ���’s downfall to preserve their own survival.

He points to the rise of Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as acting president and the continued influence of her brother, President of the National Assembly of Venezuela Jorge Rodríguez, who has long overseen negotiations with both the US and the Venezuelan opposition. In Vivas’s view, the absence of resistance suggests coordination rather than paralysis. As he puts it, “They just double-crossed Maduro, and they just offered him on a platter.”

Formally, the Rodríguez leadership condemned the operation, but Vivas argues this response was largely performative. In practice, the interim leadership is operating under intense US pressure, particularly over oil exports and revenues. Control of shipments, escrow accounts and destinations effectively places Venezuela’s most important economic lever under external supervision.

This arrangement, Vivas suggests, explains the regime’s internal fragility. Those excluded from the alleged conspiracy now face a serious query: If Maduro was expendable, who is safe? Sporadic unrest by paramilitary groups and armed colectivos reflects this underlying uncertainty.

Oil as leverage, not salvation

Oil dominates the strategic logic of the operation, but Vivas cautions against assuming a rapid recovery of Venezuela’s energy sector. Production has fallen from a peak of 3.3 million barrels per day to roughly 900,000. Refineries are degraded, infrastructure has collapsed and the country now imports gasoline from Iran.

Even with the world’s largest proven reserves, Venezuela’s oil is heavy and technically demanding. Restarting production requires years of investment, advanced processing and institutional stability. Vivas estimates that meaningful recovery would take at least two to three years, even under favorable conditions.

He is skeptical that US energy companies, beyond Chevron Corporation, will commit serious capital. Property rights remain uncertain, inflation approached 700% by the end of 2025 and Venezuela carries massive sovereign and corporate debt. In a global market with ample supply and soft prices, Venezuela is a high-risk proposition. Oil, in this context, functions less as an economic windfall than as a geopolitical bargaining chip.

Venezuela’s uncertain future

�Ѳ���ܰ���’s removal delivers a major blow to Russia, which had supplied Venezuela’s arms and valued it as a strategic foothold near the United States. Vivas argues that Moscow stands to lose the most, noting that “the one that loses more is Russia.” China, by contrast, appears more adaptable, shifting its energy focus toward neighboring Guyana while gradually reducing its exposure to Venezuela.

Regionally, the operation sends a warning. Leaders in Colombia, Brazil and beyond are forced to reassess Washington’s tolerance for defiance. Vivas describes Trump’s negotiating style as coercive but transactional, recalling that “once you put the gun on the table, then you go and negotiate.”

Looking ahead, Vivas expresses sympathy for Venezuela’s democratic opposition but remains pragmatic. “I would love that Edmundo �ҴDzԳ�á����� Urrutia, who is the legitimately elected president of Venezuela, could take power,” he says, yet he doubts that such a transition is currently sustainable. Chavista forces — supporters of late Venezuelan President Hugo ���á�����, whose ideologies Maduro carried on — still dominate the military, judiciary and security services, while non-state armed actors further complicate the landscape.

For now, Venezuela’s future hinges on whether the interim leadership carries out reforms under US pressure and whether those reforms are meant as genuine change or merely a survival strategy. The outcome remains uncertain, but one thing is clear: Power projection, not diplomacy, has reshaped the Venezuelan equation — and the effects will extend far beyond Caracas.

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Operation Absolute Resolve

Bouchard describes Operation Absolute Resolve, a tightly executed raid in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas involving US Delta Force, the CIA and US Southern Command. He says the raid included low-altitude Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopters, precision strikes on select military and political targets, and a rapid extraction of Maduro and Flores. Khattar Singh notes there are no reported US casualties so far, while reporting suggests dozens of deaths on the Venezuelan side, with many reportedly Cuban security personnel.

Bouchard’s assessment separates tactics from strategy. While he disagrees with the broader objectives, he characterizes the speed and coordination as startlingly effective, noting “how quick it was, how seamless it was.” Khattar Singh emphasizes the “live” aspect of the moment: a head of state being seized in a social media environment where evidence of major clashes would surface quickly if they occurred.

The Venezuelan military’s silence and Cuba’s role

A major thread is what neither man can yet explain with confidence: the apparent absence of Venezuelan military resistance. Khattar Singh points out that Maduro previously showcased air power in public drills, including General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon jets and Russian Sukhoi aircraft, yet “not a single jet” appears to have been scrambled during the raid. Bouchard agrees, saying, “we’ll only know the complete truth in 10, 20 years when they declassify.”

He offers multiple working theories. One possibility is restraint from the top. Maduro may have calculated that direct engagement would trigger a larger US occupation and decided survival of the broader regime mattered more than fighting for his own position. Another possibility is a deeper compromise inside the system, including the idea that key figures were “flipped,” bought off or instructed to stand down.

On the ground, Bouchard links the reported casualties to a longstanding security dynamic. He argues Maduro distrusted portions of his own apparatus and relied heavily on Cuban protection. Purges in the Venezuelan military and inner circle may have created incentives to outsource security to personnel seen as more loyal, disciplined and ideologically reliable. That might explain why the fiercest resistance, to the extent it occurred, appears to have come from Cubans guarding the presidential residence rather than from regular Venezuelan forces.

Proxy governance and Machado’s sidelining

After the capture, Maduro was reportedly transferred first to �ҳܲ��Գ�á�Բ����� Bay and then to New York to face charges tied to narco-terrorism. Bouchard explains the administration’s public framing. It is presented as a law-enforcement operation to apprehend a wanted fugitive with a bounty, reinforced by “War on Terror” language meant to widen legal and political cover.

But he argues those charges function as a pretext rather than the true driver. In his telling, narco-terrorism rhetoric echoes earlier US justifications for force and is designed to make a dramatic action feel procedurally legitimate.

The conversation then shifts to who runs Caracas now. Bouchard says Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez assumes control with backing from the ruling party, while Washington signals it can pressure her to comply. He also says the CIA may prefer governing “by proxy” rather than mounting a full occupation, keeping the state machinery intact enough to maintain stability and oil production while making leadership responsive to US demands.

That framework sets up the politically awkward question of María Corina Machado. This well-known opposition figure appears absent from the immediate post-raid arrangement. US President Donald Trump has commented that Machado lacks domestic respect and reads it as intentional sidelining. Bouchard floats several explanations: Trump’s personal grudges, the optics problem of installing a figure whose pro-oil messaging has been highly public and an intelligence preference for a less overt “coup signature” that does not inflame chavista supporters or provoke regional backlash.

The “Donroe Doctrine”

Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine,” as many call it, is a more aggressive Monroe Doctrine posture in a multipolar world. Bouchard says the administration’s rhetoric toward Mexico, Colombia and Brazil has sharpened, with leaders branded as “narcos,” “terrorists” or “communists.” He identifies Mexico and Colombia as the most immediate focus, noting operational feasibility in Mexico and sharper ideological confrontation in Colombia.

Bouchard frames Colombian President Gustavo Petro as uniquely defiant, predicting intense resistance to US pressure. He also points to the diplomatic and financial tools Washington already uses: visa revocations, cuts to security cooperation, and pressure campaigns that can escalate alongside military threats. Cuba enters as a separate but related case, with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s long-standing hard line and renewed talk that Cuba’s capital of Havana could be next.

But what is the Trump administration’s motive? Bouchard argues drugs and migration work as political messaging, but he doubts they explain the policy reality. He notes fentanyl supply chains point primarily to Mexico and China, not Venezuela, and he questions the logic of using military force as a standard response to trafficking. From his perspective, the center of gravity has shifted to oil, gold and strategic denial of China’s access to Venezuelan energy. “I think this is about money,” he states.

The final exchange broadens to Beijing’s next move if Venezuela is effectively closed off. Bouchard suggests China may look harder at Mexico, Colombia and Brazil for energy and commodity access. He also notes that Washington has floated sanctions against exporters to China and Russia. For Khattar Singh and Bouchard, the situation reads as a signpost of an emerging order where major powers increasingly enforce spheres of influence, raising the stakes for Latin America as a contested strategic zone rather than a secondary theater.

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For three decades, many in Washington saw the post-1945 order in very different terms. The American political thinker Robert Kagan famously described it as a “” — an artificial space of relative peace and prosperity, fenced off from the global “jungle” of historical great-power rivalry and tended by US power and alliances. The job of American statecraft, in this view, was to keep the garden alive: expand its borders cautiously, prune its institutions and keep predators at bay.

Trump’s Venezuela operation marks a break with that metaphor. This is not Iraq 2003. There is no talk of a broad “coalition of the willing,” of democratization or of weapons of mass destruction. There is an indictment in a US court, a helicopter raid and an to restore Venezuelan oil production under US guidance — “we’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground,” as Trump put it. The logic is not Wilsonian gardening; it is frankly transactional destroyer-boat diplomacy.

For Trump and his advisers, Venezuela is a test case of a new Monroe Doctrine updated for the twenty-first century: shut out China and Russia, discipline unruly left-wing governments in the hemisphere and secure cheap resources and leverage over migration and narcotics flows. The National Security Strategy’s “” spells this out: Latin America is to be kept “free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets,” and governed by regimes that “cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations.”

Trump’s Venezuela move vindicates neither the liberal center nor its most strident critics. It reveals, instead, how much of our politics — on the populist right and, in a different way, on parts of the left — has slipped back into a geopolitical language of spheres of influence and transactional deals. And it sends a powerful signal to other autocrats, especially in Moscow and Beijing, that the old rule-book of territorial carve-ups may be back in business.

The new Monroe Doctrine as transactional geopolitics

From the White House’s standpoint, the case for attacking Venezuela has shifted over time. Maduro was first as a narcoterrorist heading the so-called Cartel de los Soles; the Justice Department in 2020, and Trump placed a bounty on his head. But specialists in counternarcotics have long questioned whether that organization exists in the form described, and the administration has not presented a clear threat to US national security that would meet UN Charter standards for the use of force.

In practice, the more compelling explanation is strategic and commercial. The new National Security Strategy asserts the right — indeed the necessity — for the US to dominate the Western Hemisphere, keep out extra-regional powers, and secure access to energy and critical minerals. Trump has been unusually blunt about wanting control of Venezuelan oil, which he insists rightly belongs to US companies and, by extension, to American consumers and “the people of Venezuela” once they align with Washington.

This is an old pattern in new clothes. President James Monroe’s 1823 doctrine warned European powers not to meddle in the Americas; President Theodore Roosevelt it into a charter for gunboat diplomacy and “international police power” in the Caribbean and Central America. Trump’s version adds 21st-century targets: Chinese loans, ports and telecoms; Russian military advisers, bases and energy stakes.

What’s missing is any sustained concern with Venezuelan democracy. Washington is sidelining opposition figures like María Corina Machado and Edmundo �ҴDzԳ�á����� — widely seen as the rightful winners of the 2024 Venezuelan election — in favor of a “transition” negotiated with elements of the Maduro regime and US energy firms, with Trump announcing that the US will “run” Venezuela for now. Even sympathetic analysts warn that there is no coherent “day after” plan and that a dash to restart oil production could trigger a scramble for assets and a new cycle of corruption and conflict.

This is regime change, but not in the Iraq mold. It is closer to what The New Statesman “a new era of rogue superpowers,” in which great powers overtly claim regional spheres as their own and use pretexts — drug trafficking, terrorism, separatism — to justify “snatch-and-grab” operations against unfriendly leaders.

From Lebensraumto the “Donroe Doctrine”

Seen in this light, Trump’s Venezuela operation is not an aberration but an extension of a much older tradition of thinking about space and power. In late-19th-century Germany, figures like German geographer and ethnographer Friedrich Ratzel and Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellén drew on German biologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel’s popularized Darwinism to describe states as organisms competing for space. Ratzel coined the term  to capture the territorial conditions a people needed to flourish; Kjellén of the state as a living being whose borders were never permanently fixed. This intellectual climate helped normalize the idea that great powers were entitled to expand at the expense of weaker neighbors.

German political geographer and his interwar school of Geopolitik popularized a language of heartlands, buffer zones and pan-regions — “continental blocks” and civilizational spheres that should be organized under a dominant power. The legal and conceptual term �Ұ���ß�����ܳ� — a large space ordered around a hegemon — was developed most systematically by the conservative jurist Carl Schmitt, whose on international law in the late 1930s justified regional spheres under German leadership and attacked universalist notions of sovereignty. Haushofer provided the maps and rhetoric; Schmitt provided the juridical theory.

Together, they portrayed Germany as a cramped “middle state” unjustly constrained by Versailles, surrounded by hostile powers and lacking the living space that Britain, France and the US had achieved through empire. This story resonated far beyond the far right.

German Dictator Adolf Hitler radicalized it into a necropolitical program: Eastern Europe, especially Ukraine and Russia, was to be cleared and resettled to secure German existence for a “thousand years.” Political activist and Marxist Franz Neumann, in his powerful 1942 analysis of the Nazi state, , saw clearly that geopolitics in this guise was not a neutral science but “nothing but the ideology of imperialist expansion” — a language that made war over territory seem natural, even inevitable.

After 1945, this vocabulary became disreputable in Europe, but the underlying logic persisted elsewhere. The Soviet Union asserted a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe; the US asserted one in the Americas. Monroe’s hemispheric exclusion and Schmitt’s �Ұ���ß�����ܳ� ideas found an echo across ideological lines. Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine” speaks directly to that heritage. He is explicit that the Western Hemisphere is America’s unquestioned domain, where “nonhemispheric competitors” such as China and Russia are to be denied serious footholds. He is equally open about wanting a sphere that matches, symbolically, those of Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The goal is not a rules-based order but a negotiated cartel of empires.

What the right misunderstands — and what the left forgets

A powerful strain of the populist right — including Trump himself — embraces this shift. In Trump’s practice, “America First” has meant not pure isolationism, but mercantilist hard-power politics within a self-defined sphere: over drugs and migration; Colombia and Brazil with tariffs and sanctions; flirt with the idea of or making Canada the “”; and now, physically remove an unfriendly leader in Caracas.

Alongside this, there is indeed a genuinely isolationist current in the Make America Great Again (MAGA) coalition — voices who want to cut aid to Ukraine, avoid confrontation with Iran or China, and focus exclusively on domestic culture wars. The Tucker Carlson/“no more foreign wars” is real. But when push has come to shove, Trump’s own version has dominated: rhetorical Fortress America at home, selective coercion and deal-making abroad, especially in what he considers “our” hemisphere.

The right’s critique of the post-1990 order is not entirely wrong. It is true that globalization eroded the industrial base of many communities, that liberal interventionism produced disasters in Iraq and Libya, and that US elites have too often cloaked raw power in lofty rhetoric. What is wrong is the conclusion: that the cure is to abandon alliances, normalize spheres of influence and treat neighboring states as bargaining chips. That is how Europe sleepwalked into catastrophe a century ago.

The contemporary left, for its part, is divided. The strand that matters most for this argument is not authoritarian “campism” that reflexively sides with any regime opposed to Washington, but a more mainstream current that sees international law, multilateral institutions and transnational activism as sufficient to contain aggression, and that views almost any use of US power abroad as suspect.

Here, too, there is a long pedigree: the disillusionment of 1918, German novelist Erich Maria Remarque’s  (All Quiet on the Western Front), the interwar peace movements’ faith in Kellogg-Briand, the “” internationalism of US Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, the mid-century cult of the UN. That tradition continues today in climate accords, human-rights campaigns and pandemic-era defenses of “the international scientific community.”

The left is right to stress interdependence and to highlight Western hypocrisy. But it often underestimates how far regimes like Putin’s or Xi’s have moved beyond the rules-based order, and how little they care for the constraints of law when core interests — as they define them — are at stake. In practice, a world in which the US renounces any hard-power role while others pursue spheres of influence would not be more peaceful; it would be more dangerous, especially for smaller democracies like Ukraine, Taiwan, or now perhaps Colombia and Mexico.

A dangerous precedent for Moscow and Beijing

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Maduro coup is not what it says about Trump’s worldview — that is no secret — but what it signals to other major powers. The administration has justified the operation by pointing to �Ѳ���ܰ���’s US indictment on drug-trafficking charges; officials present the raid as an arrest operation, not a war.

Critics have been quick to note how easily this logic can be repurposed. Commentators have pointed out that one could easily imagine Beijing indicting a Taiwanese president on spurious grounds and citing Trump’s precedent to “execute an arrest warrant” across the strait — or Moscow doing the same with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine. Senator Mark Warner, the Democratic vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has that if the US asserts a right to use force to capture foreign leaders it accuses of criminal conduct, “what prevents China from claiming the same authority over Taiwan’s leadership? What stops Vladimir Putin from asserting a similar justification to abduct Ukraine’s president?”

This plays directly into the hands of Moscow and Beijing, both of which already treat neighboring democracies as wayward provinces within their historical spheres. Putin speaks of “” Ukraine; Xi speaks of “” Taiwan. If Washington now abandons any pretense of respecting the UN Charter, its objections to those projects will ring even more hollow.

In the longer term, Trump’s move may also accelerate the very multipolarity he claims to resist. Latin American governments that fear US volatility will quietly hedge with China, diversify trade and seek diplomatic cover in BRICS-style forums. A hemisphere that experiences the US primarily as a capricious sheriff, not a partner, will be less receptive the next time Washington asks for solidarity over Taiwan or Ukraine. Trump appears to believe that the world can be stabilized if the great powers simply agree on who owns which sphere. In reality, he is endorsing a crude version of the Athenian historian : the strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must.

Old maps, new dangers

From Ratzel’s Lebensraum to Roosevelt’s corollary, from Schmitt’s �Ұ���ß�����ܳ� to Putin’s “Russian world,” the temptation to divide the globe into tidy zones of influence has always been strongest when empires feel threatened, and elites lose faith in universal rules. It is understandable that, after the fiascos of Iraq and Afghanistan, many on both right and left have turned away from the rhetoric of liberal order.

But Trump’s Venezuela gambit is not a corrective to those failures; it is a relapse into an older, more brutal way of thinking about the world — one that will be eagerly imitated by other strongmen if it goes unchallenged. It shows that the US is not withdrawing from world politics, as isolationists claim, but reentering it on explicitly neoimperial terms in its own backyard. That should worry not only Venezuelans, but also Ukrainians, Taiwanese and anyone else whose security depends on the idea that borders cannot be redrawn at will.

The left is right to insist that we cannot bomb our way to a just world order. The right is correct to insist that power and geography still matter. Both are wrong if they think the answer is to abandon the attempt to build and enforce common rules — whether by retreating into small utopias of cooperation or by cutting deals over other peoples’ sovereignty.

We are unlikely to return to the liberal triumphalism of the 1990s. But we do not have to accept a future in which rogue superpowers arrest each other’s enemies across borders, parcel out regions and call it stability. Kagan’s liberal garden was always more fragile and partial than its defenders admitted. The alternative, however, need not be a jungle of competing empires. The first step is recognizing when our own governments have started to talk like the geopoliticians of the past — and refusing to pretend that this is anything other than a return to a past we thought we had left behind.

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In fact, US President Donald Trump has long prepared for a confrontation with Venezuela, conducting in the Caribbean Sea for the past few months. Trump’s intentions seemed evident in his stern to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro regarding the alleged infiltration of US territory by Venezuelan citizens with drugs, supposedly at the behest of Venezuela’s government.

However, the truth behind the attacks is quite different and relates to Venezuela’s vast natural reserves, including oil, coal and gold, which Trump has been eyeing to serve his country’s ever-rising energy security challenges. Beyond resources, the US to expand its sphere of influence by establishing a US-supported new regime in Caracas — a core pillar of its foreign policy since the end of the Second World War.

Disturbingly, Trump has supposedly bypassed Congress and singlehandedly executed his executive orders through Washington’s awesome military power against Caracas. The most disturbing part of this attack is the arrest of Maduro and his wife, who were brought back to the US to face trial in a US court. This plan is reminiscent of the US’ of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in its fierce attack on Baghdad 20 years ago. They brought him to the US to face flimsy court proceedings, ultimately imposing the death penalty on him. It is possible that the same treatment could befall Maduro and his wife while in US custody.

Sovereign equality under siege

What kind of sovereign equality is this that superpowers, such as the US or Russia, and other major powers, including China, Germany, England, France and Israel, are able to violate it? Indeed, Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine is a blatant violation of the principle, and Israel’s years-long military campaign to stamp out Hamas forever, along with its campaigns against other Arab countries, further erodes respect for sovereignty. International relations remain the most lawless field, where the age-old brute principle, “might is right”, prevails, or naked power rules the roost.

While the US has already fabricated grave charges against President Maduro to justify this attack on Venezuela, the international community is at the many international tensions, skirmishes and wars occurring throughout the world. These include China’s around Taiwan and throughout the South China Sea, between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, in Pakistan and in parts of Africa.

Additionally, the US Iran’s nuclear establishment last year in June and has made threats to launch strikes again to destroy Tehran’s covert nuclear weapons program. Iran’s attack on Pakistan in January 2024 and India’s likely Operation Sindoor 2.0 also created panic in Islamabad. All these together gravely harm the barely emerging peaceful and secure environment of the Asian continent.

Escalating global tensions and the threat of war

While Russia, China and Iran are already allied against the US’ actions for different reasons, the blunt warning by North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-Un may further complicate the already volatile and grave situation in the world, possibly leading to a Third World War, in which the use of nuclear weapons by many belligerent countries is not ruled out. This potential nuclear holocaust threatens catastrophic loss of human life, ecosystems, property and the environment.

In this volatile context, the emerging saner voices of national leaders, religious personalities and responsible people across the world must unite — as the masses in the US, France, and other countries of Europe and elsewhere are doing — against any highhandedness or bullying by superpowers like the US, Russia, a fast-ascending China or any state whatsoever. These voices must condemn the gross lawlessness of these superpowers by launching a collective international opinion to demoralize and isolate them from the global mainstream.

Since the UN Security Council is powerless due to the veto power of the five permanent members, the UN General Assembly must unite to restrain such irresponsible actions in the common interest of peace and security worldwide. Maduro, along with his wife, must be released from the US’ illegal custody and safely returned to his position in Venezuela to face trial for human rights violations. The US must be for this illegal invasion, and Trump must compensate the losses incurred by the victim nation and be tried for the war crimes committed so as to restore the solemn principle of “sovereign equality of the nation-state system” intact in letter and spirit.

Ultimately, the people of Venezuela must be allowed to choose their own leader, not President Donald Trump or any other foreign power. Such interference would indeed set a dangerous precedent, as no sovereign national leader will be safe in their own country.

[ edited this piece.]

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Responses from Beijing and Jakarta

Beijing’s reaction was swift and unequivocal. It the US operation as a violation of international law and called for dialogue over unilateral action. Chinese officials framed the capture as an erosion of the international legal order and reiterated China’s opposition to external intervention, consistent with its long-standing diplomatic positions.

Indonesia a more restrained tone. Jakarta urged all parties to pursue a peaceful resolution, emphasized respect for international law and called for de-escalation, while avoiding direct criticism of Washington. The carefully calibrated language reflected Indonesia’s preference for neutrality and its effort to preserve diplomatic space.

Together, the two responses revealed differing diplomatic styles, but also a shared emphasis on stability and legal principles.

How the episode shapes China–Indonesia engagement

The significance of the Maduro episode lies in how it may influence Indonesia’s reading of China’s broader diplomatic posture. Beijing’s emphasis on sovereignty and nonintervention aligns with themes that resonate in Indonesian foreign policy. At the same time, Jakarta places a premium on consistency and predictability in its external partnerships.

The Maduro incident directly impacts how China interacts with Indonesia on multiple fronts. First, the episode reinforces Indonesia’s preference for steady and measured engagement. While China’s position underscores its normative stance, Jakarta’s focus remains on maintaining balanced relations with all major powers. This places importance on continuity in China’s approach to Indonesia rather than shifts driven by external crises.

Second, the incident also draws attention to how principles are applied across different contexts. Indonesia closely observes China’s behavior beyond rhetoric. The contrast between Beijing’s defense of sovereignty in Venezuela and its near Indonesia’s Natuna Islands continues to shape perceptions. Although Indonesia is not a claimant to the Spratly Islands, it has consistently rejected China’s maritime claims where they overlap with Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone near the Natuna Islands, making Chinese activity in those waters a sensitive issue in the bilateral relationship.

Taken together, these factors suggest that China’s engagement with Indonesia is shaped not only by shared positions on international law but by how those positions are reflected in regional practice.

Economics as a stabilizing pillar

remains the foundation of China–Indonesia relations. Trade, investment and large-scale infrastructure projects under the Belt and Road Initiative anchor the partnership and provide resilience against political uncertainty. The Maduro episode may encourage Beijing to emphasize the economic dimension of the relationship more strongly, providing tangible benefits while avoiding overtly confrontational rhetoric. Economic ties are a key lever in ensuring Indonesia remains a partner in Southeast Asia, particularly as Jakarta balances US security cooperation and regional leadership ambitions.

Indonesia’s importance magnifies this dynamic. As Southeast Asia’s largest economy and a leading Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member, Jakarta plays a central role in China’s regional strategy. Beijing’s ability to accommodate Indonesia’s preference for neutrality and multilateral engagement will influence both bilateral ties and China’s broader standing in Southeast Asia. Careful management of economic cooperation remains essential to sustaining trust.

A stress test for engagement

The US capture of Maduro is unlikely to trigger an immediate shift in China–Indonesia relations. Instead, it functions as a stress test for how external developments interact with existing dynamics in the relationship.

For Indonesia, the episode reinforces the importance of strategic autonomy and balanced diplomacy. For China, sustaining engagement with Indonesia will depend on aligning its global positions with regional expectations, while maintaining economic cooperation and sensitivity to Indonesian concerns. Maritime conduct near the Natuna Islands remains a quiet but enduring reference point.

Viewed this way, the Maduro episode illustrates how developments far from Southeast Asia can influence the context in which China and Indonesia manage their relationship — not through rupture, but through careful adjustment and sustained engagement.

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Thus began what US forces dubbed “.” The name implies finality; the strategy is a century-old relic. The initial pretext — a “law enforcement operation” — evaporated by the press conference’s end, when Trump’s laid bare the true motive: “we are going to be taking a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.” The administration has since clarified that a primary objective of this protectorate is to extract Venezuelan oil as “reimbursement” for US investments predating former Venezuelan President Hugo ���á�����’s rise in the late 1990s.

The geopolitical context

This intervention unfolds at a critical moment when US global power is in decline, and China has become the trading partner for most of South America. While diminished, the US retains overwhelming military supremacy in the Western Hemisphere, enough to intervene unilaterally in countries to pursue its narrow interests. Venezuela, home to the world’s largest oil reserves, presents a strategic target.��

The unilateral intervention sends a clear message to Beijing: this hemisphere remains a US sphere of influence, where Washington can still intervene unilaterally to secure resources and block rival access. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson the US attack, referring to it as “hegemonic acts” that compromise peace in Latin America and the Caribbean.��

The Trump Corollary: reviving the Monroe Doctrine

In less than 24 hours, the world witnessed what might be called the “Trump Corollary” in full view: the use of military force abroad to secure resources under the banner of “America First.” This is not a new doctrine but an old one reheated — a reassertion of a century-old imperial recipe that treats Latin America, as Trump calls it, “,” as a backyard for extraction.

In essence, Trump is reactivating the Monroe Doctrine, which shaped 19th- and 20th-century US policy toward Latin America. This doctrine envisioned that US interests in the region would be pursued at any cost, including control of the region’s natural resources.

The intended political settlement follows an equally cynical colonial script. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has expressed willingness to collaborate with �Ѳ���ܰ���’s vice president, — a committed Chavista who served as Foreign Minister during the ���á����� era — to ensure a “stable transition.” This reveals the envisioned endgame: a managed arrangement where key figures of the old regime are retained to facilitate control and resource extraction, while Venezuela’s genuine democratic forces remain sidelined. This is regime manipulation, not democratic restoration.

The parallels to past interventions are striking. The last US unilateral intervention in the region occurred in Panama in 1989, when US troops captured de facto president General and transferred him to the US to stand trial on drug-trafficking charges — a script now repeated with Maduro.

Wider implications

The consequences of this action ripple far beyond Venezuela’s borders, threatening stability across multiple dimensions.

The intervention resurrects the specter of gunboat diplomacy in Latin America. The message to Cuba and Nicaragua — left-wing governments long dependent on Venezuelan oil — is unmistakable: you could be next. This reignites fear and instability throughout the region, ensuring it remains on edge, dominated by the ghost of past US interventions. The rhetoric echoes the traditional US justification for the embargo on Cuba: recovering assets after the expropriation of American property.

Perhaps most significantly, this action irreparably shreds the fragile veneer of a rules-based international order. By unilaterally toppling a government and seizing its resources in its declared “home region,” the US does not just violate a norm — it annihilates the principle of sovereign equality. On what conceivable ground can it now object to a Russian “peacekeeping” mission in Moldova or a Chinese blockade of Taiwan? Moral authority, once voluntarily surrendered, cannot be reclaimed. Washington instantly forfeits its voice to condemn aggression in Ukraine or instability in the Taiwan Strait

This aggression arrives at a moment of profound global fragmentation, when collective action is desperately needed yet increasingly impossible. Trump claims to break from his predecessors, but his “boots on the ground” in Venezuela follow a well-worn path — the same path that led to protracted quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, creating failed states rather than democracies.

The likely future

The eerie calm in Caracas suggests key regime figures are prepared to negotiate a transition — on US terms. Based on Trump’s declarations, the US-led transition in Venezuela will not hesitate to coopt these figures in service of extracting Venezuelan oil. Meanwhile, Corina Machado — the main opposition leader to Maduro, who the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025 — and — the elected president in the 2024 election — will likely be sidelined.

The recipe is tragically familiar: a noble slogan, a swift invasion, a lucrative resource and a pliable local elite. The ingredients for a long-term disaster are all present. The only thing “absolute” about this operation is the certainty that it will leave Venezuela more shattered and the world more perilously divided.

This is not statecraft; it is tired and brutal imperialism, repackaged for a new era.

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What analyst Andres Izarra had described as a poker match in which Donald Trump held a weak hand due to his proclivity to bluff has suddenly turned into a geopolitical chess game. It is still unclear whether the special operations team that seized Maduro acted solely on local intelligence or whether betrayal at the top levels of government played a role. What is clear is that �Ѳ���ܰ���’s fall is no minor development — Venezuela has entered an entirely new phase. Leaders must navigate this time of unpredictability and avoid the fog of war if they wish to secure Venezuela’s future.

�Ѳ���ܰ���’s capture marks a new era

Regarding the legal grounds for capturing the active president of a sovereign country — independently of him having lost a presidential election — two angles are worth mentioning. From a strictly US , Maduro was indicted in 2020 in a court of law on charges of helping to transport cocaine and working with narco-terrorist organizations. The charges against him are reminiscent of others, such as and the former military leader of Panama, Manuel Noriega, who had also been captured by US forces back in 1998. Therefore, in the US’s view, there is legal precedent and just cause for �Ѳ���ܰ���’s capture.

From an international perspective, the capture of Maduro infringes basic tenets of international law. The world we live in today has seemingly changed abruptly from the one inherited after World War II, especially after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. UN Secretary General António Guterres that US actions “constitute a dangerous precedent.” However, the UN cannot pass resolutions against the US for its recent actions because of the veto power the US holds in the UN Security Council. Today, the United Nations architecture is at its weakest since its inception.

Within Venezuela’s borders, politicians are also responding to the actions of the US. María Corina , the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner, has declared that this moment marks the beginning of a new era. She continues to insist that under Edmundo �ҴDzԳ�á�����   — opposition leader and of the 2024 Venezuelan election — the democratic movement is prepared to govern. Her confidence may prove overly optimistic, or it may signal a pledge to play a more direct role in shaping the transition ahead. Either way, her responsibility, and Venezuela’s at large, is unmistakable: to defend the popular will expressed during the July 28, 2024, elections, and to assert the democratic leadership’s claim to govern.

For now, however, the crisis is a two-player confrontation between the remains of the Chavista elite and the Trump administration. The Nobel Peace Prize recently awarded to Machado in Oslo was a global acknowledgment of the democratic movement’s legitimacy. It is a recognition that Washington has yet to fully embrace, aside from the occasional sotto voce recognition and a 2025 from Secretary of State Marco Rubio. US President Donald Trump has even that Machado doesn’t have the “respect” of the Venezuelan public. 

Only when the fog of war lifts will it be possible to discern the real role the democratic forces will play. What is certain is that there is no clear return to the status quo ante. What comes next is unknown, and both Venezuela and the US must choose their paths carefully. 

Two scenarios are emerging

The first, more cautious scenario involves with Delcy Rodríguez, �Ѳ���ܰ���’s successor, to reach an arrangement that might unlock large-scale U.S. investment in Venezuela’s oil sector. But most American energy companies remain to invest in a country where property rights and basic legal guarantees are absent. The ���á����� years already demonstrated the risks: expropriations without compensation that helped drive the collapse of the oil industry.

Even if democratic leaders keep being sidelined from these negotiations, �ҴDzԳ�á����� Urrutia and Machado retain overwhelming popular support from the Venezuelan public — expressed unequivocally in 2024 and never withdrawn. Despite imprisonment, exile and clandestine life of the vast majority of its leadership, Venezuelans continue to back them. Under such conditions, a Rodríguez government would face from the public to make internal concessions, especially now that it is weakened by the capture of its main leader. That includes more than 1,000 political prisoners detained by the Chavista regime, creating conditions for a more open polity or agreeing to new elections. 

The second scenario is what Trump has called the “”: another military action aimed at dismantling what remains of the dictatorship. Such a move would inevitably force Washington to engage with Machado and �ҴDzԳ�á�����. They possess the internal political legitimacy to govern and the credibility to negotiate with institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as the credibility to offer partial amnesty to the military, security forces and government officials that are not involved in high crimes. Overall, Trump’s suggestion that the United States would govern Venezuela is not taken seriously even within his own circle. 

Legitimate leadership must fill the power vacuum in Venezuela

Intermediate outcomes — or a combination of the above — are possible. This includes some form of Chavista regime survival under conditions like those prevailing today, though that scenario doesn’t seem highly likely. Firstly, if �Ѳ���ܰ���’s capture resulted to some extent from being double-crossed by part of the regime’s leadership, this surely has created a environment at the top not amenable to internal stability and cohesion. 

Secondly, as mentioned by both Trump and Secretary Rubio, economic pressure will continue. Venezuela’s inflation for 2025 was nearly and it could potentially reach 680% in 2026. This will compromise any attempt at normalizing economic life in the country, as well as responding to the demands of the Trump administration to propel the oil industry to higher production levels. As everyone knows, the oil industry in Venezuela — exploration, drilling and refining — is near total , as well as the electrical and other infrastructure allowing it to improve productive capacity. 

Finally, as widely documented, the Chavista leadership elite — known as the — has amassed vast fortunes. It seems likely that, given the growing internal uncertainty, some of its top figures (and their families, who enjoy the comforts of capitalism) will seek to protect their assets and salvage what they can.

The path ahead will be difficult: Chavismo still controls the military, security forces, the judiciary and regional governments. Rebuilding the country will require a series of partial negotiations with each of these power centers, as well as transitional justice measures for those not implicated in serious crimes. Venezuela has entered a period of profound uncertainty, and the chess match has only just begun. As the fog of war and competing narratives begin to clear, the facts will surface — and with them, the direction of the wind that will shape the country’s future.

[ first published a version of this piece in Spanish.]

[ edited this piece.]

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If you enjoy geopolitical melodrama, 2026 promises to be a record-breaker. But records aren’t the only thing being broken. With his foray into a presidential bedroom in Caracas, Trump has ensured that any notion of international law or a “rules-based order” has been smashed to smithereens.

In the West, January is traditionally a time of cocooning, digesting and detoxifying after the excesses of “the 12 days of Christmas.” Here in France, January stands as the month that offers us 31 days to get back into contact with all our relations as we communicate our meilleurs ���ճ�x to everyone we know or are in contact with. The usual translation of meilleurs voeux is “best wishes.” But the word ���ճ� also means “vow” and is, in fact, the origin of the English word. In English-speaking countries, the closest cultural equivalent to the obligatory meilleurs ���ճ�x in France is the ritual we call the New Year’s resolution, which is a kind of vow to oneself. We’re all expected to come up with one or more benign intentions that we then “resolve” to accomplish.

Last Saturday, to honor the new year, Trump “Operation Absolute Resolve” in Venezuela. It was nothing less than a brazen assault on a sovereign nation that ended with the successful kidnapping of a sitting president based on the pretext of his having violated a US law. Most ordinary citizens rarely carry out any of their New Year’s resolutions for more than a few days. Trump’s “absolute resolve” sets a new standard.

After Trump’s well-orchestrated act was carried out so “absolutely,” the administration went into “Mission Accomplished” mode, forecasting a future of sunlight for the American people, oil companies and even Venezuelans (as a kind of afterthought). Investigative journalist Seth Hettena attempted to bring us back to reality, accurately that “questions about legality, geopolitics, and consequences will demand answers in the days ahead.” After describing a complex operation cleanly executed thanks to “good intelligence” (i.e. this was a covert action led by the CIA, including bribery and recruitment of �Ѳ���ܰ���’s inner circle), Hettena provides his own guarded, provisional answer to the question of consequences: “What comes next, however, may prove far more complicated than what happened before dawn.”

Domestically, this could herald a much-needed constitutional crisis around the question of executive authority to declare war. In particular because the administration chose not to notify even the “Gang of Eight” (top Congressional leaders) prior to the strike. This stands as a direct challenge to theWar Powers of 1973. Then there is the question of how the court in the Southern district of New York will handle the trial of a foreign head of state for crimes no honest observer believes he should be accused of.

A hard reign’s a-gonna fall

The international consequences will likely be greater. The absoluteness of Trump’s resolve reinforces and exaggerates the impression the people and leaders of other nations are beginning to have of Washington’s lack of respect for or utter indifference to any other government’s sovereignty. In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff, , clearly stated what Washington thinks of nearly every other country in the world that cannot be called a superpower:

“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

This message was clearly directed at the nations of Europe, a group that includes some former superpowers. One prominent member of that group is Denmark, which happens to control a landmass the Trump administration is seeking to annex: Greenland. Miller’s argument boils down to this: “You may be our ally, even within the world’s oldest and most powerful military alliance, NATO, which was designed specifically to prevent its members from going to war with one another, but we have decided to annex your territory by force and are thus justified by ‘laws’ that date from ‘the beginning of time.’”

Miller is Jewish and a committed Zionist. Does this reflect his political or theological thinking? Is he referring to the first day of Creation in the Book of Genesis, when God created day and night, effectively starting time? The reasoning he employs resembles that of the current Zionist regime in Israel that justifies its deeds, including genocide, by affirming its belief in fundamental laws from the past that overpower and cancel the effect of modern laws.

This formulation of the principle behind US foreign policy marks a shift in the former “rules-based order” recently championed with numbing regularity by former US President Joe Biden’s State Department. Biden’s and all earlier administrations were no stranger to the use of hard power as evidenced by the number of wars and military interventions the US has initiated or been involved in since the end of World War II. Officially, one can count five to seven major wars. According to a by the Congressional Research Service, the “U.S. launched 251 Military Interventions since 1991 and 469 since 1798.”

In other words, Miller’s belief in the law of hard power fails to qualify as an innovation. The practice and scope of hard power has undergone an obvious acceleration over the past 35 years. Before 1991, which marked the end of the Cold War, things were paradoxically calmer. Looking backwards, some may see the period between 1945 and 1991 as a kind of golden age in which US administrations put at least as much faith into developing soft power as they did to exercising hard power.

Despite the disastrous wars in Korea and Vietnam, the second half of the 20th century demonstrated that hard power can coexist alongside soft power. That was the secret of the success the US achieved throughout the Cold War, allowing Washington to credibly position itself as the “leader of the free world.” While the CIA was busy nevertheless overthrowing governments in Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Indonesia, Bolivia and elsewhere, it was also collaborating with Hollywood, Madison Avenue and prestigious such Encounter and Ramparts to promote the image of a nation seeking peace, harmony, pleasing entertainment and democracy while promoting US-inspired arts across the globe.

Trump’s team has no time for soft power. First of all, it’s expensive and its effects are at best long-term. As soon as he returned to the White House for a second term, Trump defunded USAID, the most significant official platform for spreading US soft power. Second, the focus on soft power inconveniently lowers the level of fear they believe to be the principal factor of motivation in politics. If other populations lose the habit of cowering in fear, buoyed by the idea that ultimately it was all about learning to get along and work together in peaceful pursuits, some of those foreigners may get the idea that revolt is possible.

The problem Hettena hints at is that such policies and brazen actions such as the one that played out last weekend in Caracas may produce blowback on the part of entire populations, who increasingly perceive the US as a threat to their way of life rather than a model to aspire to. And more significantly, it also provokes strategic resistance on the part of governments that increasingly seek the means of detaching themselves from US influence. When hard power becomes too visible and eclipses soft power, allies and partners begin to panic as they increasingly feel compelled to seek other sources of comfort.

Gordon Gekko in the Oval Office

When US President George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq to remove the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) they “knew” (and not just suspected) Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was hiding, most commentators not affected by the reigning sycophancy of the media said it was really about “the oil.” Only the most astute appeared to be aware of the fact that it was also the persuasive powers of the Israeli government that convinced Bush’s neocon administration to go to war with the nations that made Tel Aviv uncomfortable. As early as 2001, with the start of the war in Afghanistan, conservative Republican (but anti-neocon) Pat Buchanan in an with the title, “Whose war is this?,” described the pressure coming from Bush’s neocon friends to “widen the war to include all of Israel’s enemies.”

In a television interview ten days after September 11, a very serious General Wesley Clark , with comic brio, his discovery at the Pentagon of a classified plan by the Department of Defense to invade seven countries in the Middle East over five years. The plan appeared derived from the neocon “Clean Break Memo” drafted for newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996. So, not only were the critics right that access to Iraq’s oil rather than fear of non-existent WMDs was at the core of Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, the neocon clique that ran the government had literally fused aggressive Netanyahu’s Zionist extremism with US foreign policy, making it “logical” to conduct a regime change war in Iraq.

Fast forward to 2025, when a new Republican president, Trump, claimed that Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s president, was the head of a drug cartel and that justice required he be arrested and tried in New York. But, as soon as the deed was accomplished, Trump revealed his true motives, similar to Bush’s: . “We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground, and that wealth is going to the people of Venezuela, and people from outside of Venezuela that used to be in Venezuela, and it goes also to the United States of America in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused us by that country.”

This isn’t just access to oil. In Trump’s formulation, this is an updated version of Gordon Gekko’s celebration of greed in Oliver Stone’s 1987 movie, Wall Street. When Bush proclaimed his mission to remove Hussein’s WMD, all the media and most honest citizens believed those dreaded weapons existed. No reasonable person took Trump’s campaign against narco-terrorism seriously. As soon as Trump began bombing small boats in the Caribbean, the media mocked his claim that this constituted a threat to the US justifying extra-judicial killings. They knew it was about the combined interest of a cheap geopolitical power play and the desire to confiscate Venezuela’s resources.

In his Mission Accomplished speech, Bush celebrated ridding the world of an evil dictator, always an appealing argument for Americans who have been trained to hate dictators. Bush was, of course, lying when he Hussein was an “ally of al-Qaeda” and that the successful military operation had prevented terrorists from potentially acquiring WMDs from the regime. But he never admitted, not even years later, that controlling Iraq’s oil was part of his agenda.

Trump, on the contrary, seized the occasion to use the idea of controlling oil and other Venezuelan resources, with the following : “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country, and we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so.” He added, “We need total access. We need access to the oil and to other things in their country that allow us to rebuild their country.”

Greed is indeed good, as Gekko affirmed. Maria Corino Machado, whom many in the Trump administration hope to see as the future new Venezuelan president made it equally : “And American companies are in a super strategic position to invest. This country of Venezuela is going to be the brightest opportunity for investment of American companies, of good people that are going to make a lot of money.”

It’s unlikely that such a rosy outcome will come as easily as Trump and Machado make out. But Trump, to use one of his favorite expressions, “holds all the cards” and, like Miller, apparently believes he has done so “since the beginning of time.”

*[The Devil’s Advocate pursues the tradition 51�Թ� began in 2017 with the launch of our “Devil’s Dictionary.” It does so with a slight change of focus, moving from language itself — political and journalistic rhetoric — to the substantial issues in the news. Read more of the 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary. The news we consume deserves to be seen from an outsider’s point of view. And who could be more outside official discourse than Old Nick himself?]

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Having served as a senior US diplomat in Iraq during the US occupation of that country and as a member of the US armed forces in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, I witnessed firsthand how such undertakings can quickly turn sour. 

America’s unlearned lessons

The American track record of invading foreign countries, ousting leaders it didn’t like and installing more acceptable ones has not been a good one. Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq turned out disastrously for America, despite some initial positive results. Latin America, with the possible exception of the of Panama’s de facto ruler, General Manuel Noriega, in 1989, has been an especially bad region for American adventurism. The expression, “Yanqui go home,” was born south of America’s border some 125 years ago with invasions, covert actions and occupations on some dozen or so occasions, and in some countries — in particular and — multiple times. In , where I also served as a US diplomat, people remember America’s history of coming in uninvited. Although some entrenched, well-monied pro-US classes were happy to do America’s bidding, running the country afterwards.

Have the Americans not learned the lessons of history? The long and short answer is that while many Americans have, US leaders become seduced by the idea, “We can do it differently.” In his post-invasion press conference, Trump shockingly , “We will run the country.” Even more astonishingly, he said it won’t cost the US anything because US oil companies will come in, revive its flagging oil sector and produce the revenue necessary to get the country back on its economic feet. 

America and the world have heard it all before. Call it the great deception. Somehow, the new crowd — be it Lyndon Johnson, George W. Bush, Donald Trump and others before them — believes that American ingenuity and determination “will get it right this time.” It’s a tantalizing mirage that seemingly appears regularly throughout 19th and 20th-century US history. It has reappeared in this century.

It’s worth asking, “Why Maduro?” 

Maduro, as oppressive as he was in his own country, presented no verifiable threat to the US. The effective of tankers carrying Venezuela’s oil abroad, on which �Ѳ���ܰ���’s regime depended for vital hard currency earnings, would have eventually strangled the nation’s finances and created conditions for �Ѳ���ܰ���’s fall. Trump’s repeated references in his Saturday press event to Venezuela’s oil resources raise justified concerns for Americans. Is that what this is all about? Doesn’t the US have what it needs? For now, yes. Even so, aren’t there plenty of countries willing to sell America their oil? Yes. Shouldn’t we be investing in renewable energy sources as China and others are now doing? Yes again.

Opposition to invading a foreign country, however, shouldn’t prevent anyone from celebrating the removal of a brutal and much despised dictator, at home, in the region and around the world. Maduro the presidential elections in August 2024, which he verifiably lost by a wide margin. He and his autocratic predecessor, Hugo , destroyed one of Latin America’s most thriving democracies and prosperous economies. Since 2015, an estimated Venezuelans have been forced to flee the country, more than a quarter of its population then. They took refuge mostly in the US but also in neighboring countries and in Europe. They are justifiably �Ѳ���ܰ���’s ouster. 

And while he was not the real drug threat the US administration cast him to be — that would be the flow of fentanyl into the US primarily through — he did little to thwart what modest flows emanated from or passed through his country. And he likely took his cut of the profits. He will deserve whatever judgment the US courts find against him.

Venezuelan governance or American occupation?

So, what comes next? America running the country cannot and should not be the answer. As euphoric as many Venezuelans may be to see �Ѳ���ܰ���’s departure, they will be anxious to take back the country they began losing in 1998 following ���á�����’s first election as president. Many will want to see the real winner of the 2024 election, Edmundo , in the office he legitimately won. And what of Maria Corina Machado, a hugely popular Venezuelan politician forced into exile by Maduro and the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize ? She would have run in the 2024 presidential election had she not been illegally barred and removed from the ballot by Maduro. 

These are all decisions for Venezuelans, not the US. They won’t want the Americans to decide the country’s political and economic future, especially in regards to the management of their oil resources. Now that the usurper of their democracy has been evicted from the presidential palace in Caracas, they do not want it reoccupied by some Yanqui overseer.

Aside from the predictable reaction of Venezuelans to a US occupation, there is the looming question of how the US will do it. The of Iraq was accomplished with more than 150,000 troops and thousands more diplomats, aid workers, various advisers and myriad contractors, not to mention thousands of forces and diplomats from countries that were also involved in the Iraq transition. It was costly and plagued with problems, despite the many experts from the Pentagon, State Department, USAID and elsewhere who eventually were able to manage an acceptable turnover to the Iraqis. Such experts are now long gone from the State; USAID no longer . Most in the Pentagon are already preoccupied with Russia’s occupation of Ukraine and threatening behavior toward Eastern Europe, and with America’s major challenge, China. 

Does the US even have the depth of personnel resources with the necessary expertise to effectively manage a peaceful, democratic transition in Venezuela? If, as Trump asserts, America will run the country, then specifically who does he have in mind? What is the plan and who will be in charge of executing it? How long will it take? What resources will be necessary? Even if Venezuela can eventually be self-supporting, its oil sector will likely take years to resume what had once been normal operations.

A democratic transition also assumes that there will be no resistance. Has the Trump administration considered how troops and police forces loyal to Maduro might react? In 2003, the Bush administration didn’t, and America and Iraq paid an enormous price in lives and resources for its unpreparedness. Former Iraqi forces opposed to the US, terrorists from elsewhere in the Middle East and Iran wreaked havoc in the country. There’s no word yet at this early stage, but it’s safe to assume that some, perhaps many, Venezuelans may decide to take up arms against whatever follows, especially if the occupation drags on. Will the US be expected to confront them? If not, then who? And if so, is the US prepared for a protracted, perhaps low-grade guerrilla war? The American people have been down that road before and likely won’t be happy. Nor will neighboring countries.

Another self-inflicted blow to America’s image

International reactions have been predictably critical of Trump’s decision. Some have chosen to be quiet, especially America’s allies. Countries in Latin America are especially angered. Mexico is left to if it may be on Trump’s hit list now. Action against Mexico would be exponentially worse and troublesome for the region and the US. There is also the and , both of which Trump has claimed should be American. The US action also undermines the world’s opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

So, are we back to the 18th and 19th centuries, when larger nations snatched up smaller ones for no other reason than they just could under whatever guise was fabricated? If so, China’s plans in Taiwan become more . Ditto its actions in , Rwanda’s in the Democratic Republic of and Ethiopia’s in . However despicable Maduro, America’s action does not augur well for the rule of law or the international order America helped to establish. America’s already declining image abroad has just taken another major blow, this one self-inflicted, like so many previous.

This is a destructive act for America itself. Congress does not appear to have been consulted. In fact, the US administration may have to Congress when its senior representatives told members of Congress that the US does not support regime change or military action in Venezuela. Where and how will the administration get the funding required for running Venezuela? Will an already supine Congress simply give in to an increasingly autocratic president? 

Trump’s MAGA base cannot be pleased. Having supported a president who promised no more wasteful foreign wars, they must now ponder their president having started one of his own. The rest of the country is also feeling unsettled. America has been down this road of foreign wars it started before, only to watch the bus drive off the cliff in terms of lives lost, limited resources expended and increased national debt.

Trump claims he has brought justice to Maduro and Venezuela. At what cost?

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�����Բ�����������’s , which ended with the toppling of Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year increasingly authoritarian premiership, was the first of this Gen Z Protests wave. What started as dissent against quota-based recruitment to government jobs quickly grew into a massive pro-democracy and anti-corruption movement, in which were killed, and the incumbent fled across the border to India and has since been sentenced to death.

In the last 18 months, similar Gen Z protests have emerged in more than 20 countries worldwide, from Mozambique to Mongolia, Paraguay to the Philippines. There are ongoing protests in 11 countries.

From local sparks to a global Gen Z uprising

The triggers for resistance are often incidental and varied in different contexts. In Serbia, the of a rooftop in the Novi Sad railway station, where 16 people were killed, led to a spontaneous eruption of protests among the student community against government corruption and negligence. In Madagascar, a peaceful September protest against the persistent failures of state-owned companies’ provision of power and water in the capital into widespread unrest spearheaded by a Gen Z online movement, and a military coup has since replaced the President.�� 

But there are between these disparate protest movements: the erosion of democratic rights, rising authoritarianism, corruption and economic stagnation. Each protest has learned the lesson of the last, taking from online culture and other protests to create independent movements, each with a recognizable Gen Z signature.

Gone are the “There is no Planet B” placards of 2020’s Fridays for the Future , which blossomed globally but were most prominent in the capital cities of Europe, Australia and North America. Now, protestors are taking inspiration from online meme culture. “Ok boomer, time’s up” became a rallying cry for the successful protests in Nepal this past September. A skull-and-crossbones flag from the Manga One Piece has become a of protest across countries, and Pikachu is no longer a beloved Pokémon but a firebrand provocateur.��

The protests themselves are an expression of a generation that has grown up in a global social media age, who pride themselves on absurd humor and nihilism, and ironically, are willing to die for it. 

And while their methods and motivations might be unconventional, with Nepal’s election via the app Discord providing the best case in point, Gen Z protestors have been remarkably successful. Governments have been overthrown in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Madagascar. Major policy changes have been achieved in Timor-Leste and Kenya.��

Not since the of 2011 and 2012, when pro-democracy protests deposed rulers in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen, has a protest movement caused so much political upheaval in such a short time.

Climate change and global protests

There were many contributing factors to the political instability that rocked the Arab Region over a decade ago. But the of climate change, especially when combined with bread and butter issues like affordability, corruption and authoritarian overreach, are an explosive cocktail. Indeed, widespread droughts wiped out around of livestock across eastern Syria in 2011, while severe weather-induced in 2010 saw price spikes on key foods cascade across the region.�� 

With protests ongoing around the world, it would be difficult to attribute all current Gen Z protests to a single climate event. In fact, climate change has been noticeably absent as a rallying call for the movements altogether.

At a cursory glance, that might be surprising. It was only six years ago that more than protesters took to the streets around the world for the Global Climate Strike. The phrase “Gen Z Protest” has its origins in a by the French Market Research firm Ipsos, which looked at climate action and intergenerational conflict. Since then, climate activism hasn’t gone away, but it has undergone a reckoning. The last major global climate strike took place in ahead of the 26th UN Climate Conference (COP26) in Glasgow.

For a while, the COP process provided a lightning rod for protest. But the hosting of three subsequent COPs in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Azerbaijan significantly curtailed the space for such campaigns. 

One noticeable outcome of COP30 being hosted in democratic Brazil has been a welcome return of newsworthy peaceful protests. This was best exemplified when 90 protestors from indigenous communities the negotiators’ entrance to object to resource extractivism in the Amazon.

Why climate change is missing — and why that matters

A decade on from the landmark Paris Agreement, there has been little progress in annual greenhouse gas emissions. However, there have also been wins along the way. China continues to hurtle forward in its staggering rollout of . Recently, the European Union announced that it was on track for its 2030 emissions .

However, anthropogenic greenhouse gas are still higher than they have ever been. Even the Secretary-General of the United Nations has warned that exceeding the warming target, even temporarily, is inevitable.

During that period, activism and protest movements have had to adapt to a more turbulent and impoverished world, rocked by the economic and social shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical tensions, major military conflicts and the advent of artificial intelligence. The World Bank estimates that global growth in this decade will be the slowest since the .

Key figures in the climate movement, while not abandoning their roots, have since chosen to devote their energy to pressing humanitarian disasters. In September, Greta Thunberg and 170 other pro-Palestinian protestors were by Israeli forces as they sailed an aid flotilla to Gaza.

The flare-ups of protest led by Gen Z are a response to a fragmented and dangerous world order. It is not surprising, then, that the center of gravity of this new wave of protests lies in developing economies and fragile democracies, and that its chief protagonists are local activists focused on bread-and-butter issues.

Climate change will exacerbate the conditions for political instability. The World Economic Forum estimates that for every degree of warming, of global GDP is lost. The world is currently on course for 2.7 °C warming by .

The nature of that instability could derail climate action and see a slide towards authoritarianism. This is already happening in the United States, where a in climate migrants crossing the US-Mexican border has been used to justify the Trump administration’s homeland security policies. The Gen Z protests might demonstrate an antidote to this in the long run, ironically, precisely because they do not tackle climate change head-on.��

Accountability and the rule of law are prerequisites for international climate action. Corruption and inequality are blockers to addressing both rapid mitigation and adaptation, the latter being a significant challenge in the developing world. 

In this day and age, some of the most effective climate change activism might not be about environmental collapse, but rather about reinvigorating the democratic contract between governments and their people.

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and , social movement , representatives of the and from left-leaning parties joined together in many cities to support women’s rights. Protestors carried placards saying, “Marielle lives.” This message references Rio de Janeiro’s former councilwoman, , a women’s rights activist who was in 2018. The statement reminded everyone that violence against women is not constrained to domestic relations, as remarked by Marielle’s sister, Minister for Racial Equality , in the event in the capital of Brasília.

Not even five blocks ahead of the Sao Paulo demonstration, however, 1,200 people had for a different cause: hardline supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, organized by Sao Paulo’s vice-mayor, Colonel Mello Araújo, demanded amnesty for him. Bolsonaro is a notorious who recently lost his house arrest privileges after using a soldering iron to with his ankle monitor. As his ally, Sao Paulo State Governor Tarcísio de Freitas has cut of the budget to fight violence against women since 2024; this move mirrors Bolsonaro, who cut of the funding to fight gender-based violence between 2020 and 2022.

With of the police, neo-Pentecostal pastors and of Brazilian politics, Araújo told the media there was only one agenda for protests that Sunday: amnesty for Bolsonaro. It was not a lack of judgment or a faux pas by the city’s second-in-command, but a clear message from the right-wing state and municipal governments that the safety of 54% of Brazilians does not matter.

Misogyny in Brazil

Brazil is no stranger to femicide and all forms of violence against women. Since , and racism have been intertwined, with a patriarchal Christian imposing gender roles and behavioral standards on a largely population. From the struggle of women to get basic and rights to the ongoing fight to achieve full body , Brazil has mistreated its female population for centuries.

Misogyny is still a socially acceptable political , as former Brazilian President — the only woman to ever hold that position — during her term and impeachment. Brazilian women than men despite being better educated, and experience life conditions. Certain professions, such as those in the law field, women despite them graduating in higher numbers than men. Sexism runs rampant in Brazilian and . Women in Brazil suffer discrimination at work for getting despite law protections, are subject to and have medical care, as doctors ignore their complaints more often.

Racial and income aggravate these issues. Domestic violence occurs in all female demographics but is for young, black and lower-income women. Poor black women in Brazil are targets of , despite this demographic being the in public universities thanks to affirmative action. The insidious combination of racism and misogyny, however, has yet to be extirpated from Brazilian society if the vulnerability of this population, who represents of Brazilians, is to be reduced.

Progress in femicide law and behavioral change

The country has seen strides to reduce gender inequality since the 1988 promulgation of the most recent , which institutes gender equality in its 5th Article. Previous civil law changes improved the agency for women to remove themselves from dangerous relationships. For example, the nation divorce until 1977, when it became a legal process, but still required a cause and a mandatory minimum of legal separation. The whole process could be contested, generally by the man, at any moment. The law was generally applied unfavorably to women, especially if they were accused of adultery. Courts could only implement the current “no-fault” process after a constitutional amendment in 2010 dispensed with the need for judicial agreement. This led couples to divorce in  for several years.

“Crimes of honor,” which practically allowed men to kill their wives, were only in 1991. Adultery, often used as a defense in domestic violence cases against women, was in 2005. One of the most infamous cases in Brazil, in which both the moral slander of a woman’s behavior and the “defense of honor” were used to acquit a murderer, was recently adapted to film: the of socialite Ângela Diniz by entrepreneur Doca Street, her then-boyfriend, with four close-range gunshots to her face. In his 1976 trial, he pleaded guilty of “killing for love,” initially received a two-year prison sentence and immediately saw release.

The trial focused on Diniz’s “immoral lifestyle;” she was separated but not divorced from her husband, and therefore was an adulterer and sinner. The opposite of Our Lady of Immaculate Conception, the media described Diniz as a woman who was “begging to be killed.” Public prosecutors appealed, and Street was re-sentenced in 1981, this time to 15 years in prison. The media circus led to one of the first campaigns against domestic violence in Brazil: “Quem ama não mata” (“Those who love do not kill”).

The most important legal turning point came with the creation of the landmark Maria da Penha in 2006, based on the infamous 1983 against Maria da Penha Maia Fernandes by her husband, after the authorities ignored her pleas for help. The case ended up in the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights of the Organization of American States in 1998 — it found Brazil negligent in her case.

The new law defined domestic violence more broadly, including, in addition to physical violence, psychological, sexual, moral and patrimonial violence by partners regardless of gender or cohabitation, understanding these as a breach of human rights. It also created specialized courts and support mechanisms for victims, including shelters and protection measures for women threatened by their partners, and increased sentences for offenders. Its efficiency, however, is highly dependent on sociocultural factors and regional implementation. Some suggest the law has decreased hospitalizations and deaths caused by domestic violence, and increased case notifications.

In 2015, Brazil enacted the , adding femicide to the Penal Code as an aggravated form of homicide and a hate crime, with much higher sentences. Its implementation still encounters sociocultural and regional obstacles. Then in 2023, after two years of deliberation in the Brazilian Supreme Court, the “legitimate defense of honor” argument, used by Street in his first trial, was definitively unconstitutional. It cannot be called on any phase of a femicide case, from the investigation to the trial by jury.

Beyond legal instruments to protect women, federal, state and municipal governments, social movements and even companies created strong campaigns that reviewed traditional Brazilian attitudes that fostered domestic violence. In 2018, Magazine Luiza, one of Brazil’s largest retail stores — famously founded and headed by women — picked on the old saying, “Em briga de marido e mulher, ninguém mete a colher” (“No one should poke their nose into a husband-and-wife fight”). The urged the population to “yes, poke [their] noses” and intervene, call the police or anonymously denounce cases. The slogan later found adoption by the National Campaign to Fight Violence Against Women, or “,” which defines a yearly month-long awareness campaign about the Maria da Penha Law.

The of campaigns appears to depend on adopting the behaviors recommended by them and the multiplication of behavior-changing ideas through social contact, or “word-of-mouth” actions.

Misogyny, Bolsonarism and Brazil’s digital sphere

Violence data is tracked by the Institute for Applied Economic Research, a public institution linked to the Brazilian Ministry of Planning and Budget. Its interactive Atlas da Violência (“Atlas of Violence”) pools homicide rates from 1980 up to 2022, allowing users to select particular years and states, gender, race and age. However, it does not discriminate between femicide, manslaughter or felony murder. Overall murder rates fluctuate in the country, but have been since 2017.

The murder rate of women, however, from 5/100,000 in 1997 to 3.8/100,000 in 2022, including manslaughter and robbery-homicides. A more detailed view comes from the Observatory on Violence Against Women, a committee from the Brazilian Federal Senate designated to study femicide rates and accompany legal cases. It identifies an unsettling in this type of crime since 2022, with the state of Sao Paulo having the highest numbers in 2025. Renata Furbino, a professor of criminal law from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, affirms that, despite the laws already in place to protect women, it is necessary to understand the present of society to interpret and combat these trends.

Digital campaigners from , a non-profit organization fighting misogyny in global politics, published a study about Brazil that highlighted the of misogyny against Brazilian women in public life. They identified organized actors who coordinated social media attacks towards women in leadership roles, most connected to politicians such as Bolsonaro and his allies, and pseudo-intellectuals such as the self-proclaimed philosopher and far-right guru Olavo de Carvalho.

Men have so frequently targeted women in the Brazilian digital sphere that entire are published on the phenomenon, alleging that Big Tech companies organize and foster the attacks. A study from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro shows that digital misogyny is a from social media platforms, with algorithms pushing disinformation and fraudulent ads that demean women in all digital channels. Misogyny is , and tech companies found a gold cauldron in Brazil, as the nation’s digital presence is one of the largest worldwide. Dubbed the “Social Media of the Universe,” Brazil is the second largest market on Facebook, with over 65 million users. Its netizens spend more than a day interacting with others online.

This is such a hotbed for social media misuse that Supreme Court Minister Alexandre de Moraes X owner Elon Musk for circumventing Brazilian laws against hate speech and spreading disinformation. Moraes even temporarily blocked X in the whole country until Musk paid the fine.��

Misogynistic efforts from Big Tech platforms are growing more hostile. Recently, Meta content from organizations advising on reproductive rights across the world, regardless of whether abortion, queer rights and transgender support are legal in a country. These accounts enable cisgender and transgender women to deal with body autonomy and domestic and social violence, providing an anonymous, discrete way to access information and guidance while they seemingly browse their social media.

Progressive lawmakers are still fighting for pieces of legislation that may ameliorate this shameful scenario in Brazil. In 2024, after intense lobbying by Big Tech companies with far-right congressmen, then-President of the Chamber of Deputies Arthur Lira a vital bill meant to regulate the spread of fake news through social media. The caucus all but stopped any bills trying to halt hate speech in social media, forcing the Supreme Court to the responsibility of digital platforms with the content they host. Another bill, which legally misogyny to racism, would make social media bullying against women a non-bailable offense and carry higher sentences. The ongoing public consultation of the Senate about this bill has not yet reached the greater public, but already has over support for its approval.

The digital sphere also fostered and spread throughout Brazil imported movements such as “,” “” and the “,” bringing in concepts such as masculine supremacy, extreme misogyny and justification for . Together with ideology, which is intrinsically linked to gender-based violence, neo-Pentecostal churches have pushed to gender equality for at least a decade. They have found social media perfect for convincing battered, socially-isolated and hopeless that they are divinely entitled to rule over, and even , the women who reject them.

Far-right populism, such as that personified by , attracts during economic crises, while women tend to be attracted to progressive movements under the same circumstances. Misogyny may be the differential, also by racism and cruelty, to the point that Brazil now has a saying when gender- and race-based violence happens: “Nem todo Bolsonarista, mas sempre um Bolsonarista” (“Not all Bolsonarists, but a Bolsonarist”). Femicide during Bolsonaro’s term, and researchers understood this hike in numbers to be connected to a virtual “ to kill” granted by the presidency.

A perfect example of the explosive mix of misinterpreted mythical Christian biblical masculinity, militarism, the money-oriented Prosperity Gospel and far-right conservatism is the movement, created by an evangelical pastor in Guatemala and imported to Brazil in 2017. Claiming to transform “woke” and “weak” men into “heroes,” the movement charges high fees to take men on hikes in nature, teaching them to up their feelings and “soldier up” when in distress. This strategy led to in 2025.

Despite claiming to teach Christian love, on March 8 — International Women’s Day — two ���𲵱�Ի�á�����Dz� members violently a woman in the city of Cuiabá, state of Mato Grosso, beating her in front of security cameras after an argument at a restaurant’s playground. The group later expelled the two wealthy entrepreneurs after social backlash. Progressive religious leaders continue to the movement and point out the link between this Christian interpretation and increasing femicide numbers.

Digital media platforms became for Bolsonarism and the growth of misogynistic hate speech in Brazil, a phenomenon that is involved with the on January 8, 2023, and receives strong from Big Tech companies. When the Bolsonarist caucus in Brazilian legislative houses became a majority during Bolsonaro’s 2019–2023 presidential term, it employed disruptive strategies to create during votes on human rights, gender equality and race equality topics, using inflammatory moments as snippets for social media. For the 2023 election, they used Telegram to question the validity of Brazil’s and, as the main group inside “deep web” environments and the “influence-sphere,” managed to gain an even larger for the current legislative term.

Using social media techniques such as polarization, false identity, emotion, defamation (often targeting women, ethnic minorities and LGBTQIA+ politicians) and conspiracy theories, far-right politicians and influencers digital platforms to destabilize social discourse and feed into Brazil’s ingrained prejudices. They produce virtue signaling short videos inside Congress and post them on TikTok, Instagram and X, showing far-right politicians preaching against “woke” congressmen, in particular female, transgender and black left-wing representatives. In January 2025, Chief of Staff Rui Costa warned that the opposition in the legislature behaves like “spoiled brats” and one cannot build hospitals with “.”

The most recent push to achieve amnesty for the perpetrators of the coup attempt brought and authoritarian moves by conservative President of the Chamber of Deputies Hugo Motta, of the Republicanos party. On December 9, Motta ordered Legislative Police to forcefully remove a progressive lawmaker, cut the live feed of the TV Câmara public television network — an unprecedented move after re-democratization — and the press from the building, physically journalists like Universo Online reporter Carolina Nogueira. Bolsonarist lawmakers took the opportunity to pronounce their prejudices and hate speech for their audience, and instances of violence against women repeated on the tribune.

The next night, on December 10, Congress held a vote to left-wing Congressman Glauber Braga for kicking a far-right activist from the Movimento Brasil Livre (Free Brazil Movement). The debate inflamed Bolsonarist congressman Paulo Bilynskyj, the proud grandson of a who is infamous for his involvement in his girlfriend’s . At the session, Bilynskyj Congresswoman Duda Salabert, a transwoman, saying he would “break her face” if he could. Motta then called Congresswoman Benedita da Silva, a black 83-year-old veteran of the center-left Workers’ Party, a liar, told her that her party was against the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution and her microphone mid-speech. Da Silva managed to return to the microphone and read him the signatures on her copy of the Constitution: She was actually the of the Constitutional Commission.

A bizarre tale can serve as a summary of Brazil’s situation of mixing neo-Pentecostal religions, Bolsonarism and femicide. A film about Bolsonaro’s life, Dark Horse, is in in Brazil, directed by American filmmaker Cyrus Nowrasteh, written by Bolsonarist congressman and actor Mário Frias and starring actor Jim Caviezel as Bolsonaro. The production company, headed by executive producer Karina Ferreira da Gama, has no experience in cinema. Yet it received 108 million reais (over $19.5 million) to install overpriced Wi-Fi systems in Sao Paulo’s low-income communities — which it never properly delivered — and raised funds for neo-Pentecostal festivals.

The whole convoluted deal, as by news agency Intercept Brasil, involves large amounts of public funds being transferred to the production company and its subcontractors. One of these subcontractors, Alex Leandro Bispo dos Santos, received over reais (over $2.1 million) from Dark Horse’s production company and inadvertently helped trigger the massive protests against femicide around the country. On November 29, following a violent domestic altercation, Santos’s severely beaten 25-year-old wife Maria Katiane Gomes da Silva after falling from the tenth floor of their apartment building. Police arrested him a few days later, when doubted his account of her suicide, and abundant of his violence came to light.

Brazil’s femicide struggle persists

The actions taken by Motta and the Bolsonarist caucus in Congress to pass a disguised amnesty to Bolsonaro and the military involved in the coup attempt triggered yet another country-wide . Called by popular progressive organizations in just three days, supporters held massive in all Brazilian capitals, with calls to remove Motta from the presidency of the Congress, and continued for indigenous rights and against femicide. In the city of Recife, feminist groups and female politicians made their known. The northeastern Brazilian capital has a strong feminist and has acted as a haven to guarantee legal abortion rights that other Brazilian states .

When asked their views on the anti-femicide protests, the women who attended illustrated how important these mobilizations were. Artist Lia Letícia, who works with the relations of patriarchalism, race and gender, that femicide has always happened in Brazil. Since the European invasion in the 16th century, indigenous women, and later African women, were raped, traded and killed with impunity. Violence against women is a tragic part of Brazilian past and present. “Now, we are coming together and talking about it, so this is a step forward,” Lia Letícia affirms.

Cultural producer and actress Irma Brown agrees that femicide has always been present. “Brazil was born from , so all gender-based, racial and class violence end up falling on women, especially women of color,” she says. The current situation allows for free discussion, but violence against women is still naturalized across Brazil and bringing the topic to the streets can illuminate this issue. Lia Letícia and Brown believe that instead of an actual growth in femicide in the last months, we are seeing high profile cases and open dialogue on the topic, rather than an actual increase of numbers. In fact, recent governmental statistics show an overall in cases of lethal violence against women between 2023 and 2024.

Photographer Camila Silva agrees that these cases were highly publicized, and the media pushed the discussion forward, but women faced gender-based violence all their lives in Brazil. “We all know friends and relatives in some sort of domestic violence situation, and hear about femicide cases all the time,” she says. She believes there was a turning point for women’s rights born from collective action which allowed for women to get positions of power, but masculine fragility could be the reason for many of these instances of violence. Illustrating this is the case in which a public servant his two female superiors at a public technical school in São Paulo, as he could not accept being “ordered around” by women. Silva feels men should be part of the conversation and take action: “A man can say ‘well, I do not do that,’ but he needs to act more strongly, as he is actually part of this constant struggle.”

Artist Juliana Notari points out that the recent cases were not only in Sao Paulo: Highly-publicized cases came from several Brazilian states, and she agrees that Brazil has always been a violent place to women, with statistics being aggravated by race and class. A shocking happened in Recife, where a man provoked a fire and killed his wife and four children. “We had an extremely misogynous far-right president, and the far-right is notorious for its violence, racism and . He validated this type of violence.” Far-right politicians still act in the Congress and Senate, and social media pushed the global swing to the extreme right, but “the same digital platforms that feed red-pilling are also used to push forward .” She urges people to focus on black women, the most common victims, and to push left-wing leaders to better understand the demands of women, as they are still ignoring crucial issues like the right to abortion.

Notari’s 2020 artistic intervention, titled “,” which was exhibited during Bolsonaro’s term and represented historical violences against women and nature, went around the world and incurred the wrath of far-right politicians and bloggers. Olavo de Carvalho used his platform to the artist and make her a target for and harassment. The installation earned and raised important discussions of patriarchalism, gender violence and body autonomy, and how is still uncomfortable with female issues.

Dr. Ana Paula Portella, a sociologist and author of the , Como Morre uma Mulher? (“How Does a Woman Die?”), has been researching violence against women since the 1970s. She sees this new wave of protests to combat violence against women as a very positive step, reminding that this movement has been organized for more than 40 years.

“We have a very solid, very strong social feminist movement, and since before Ângela Diniz’s murder we were organizing in this direction, to denounce patriarchal violence,” Portella says. She explains that despite the last 20 years of governmental support through policies to fight gender-based violence, and an excellent structure to remove women from dangerous situations, society itself offered very little support. “We have seen efficient policies and services at municipal, state and federal levels, but we haven’t seen such massive social support. [The recent cases] were a shock, and I am seeing this popular manifestation for the first time. We had the #MeToo movement in 2015, but it was almost restricted to social media. This time, it spilled over to the streets.”

Portella says that Brazil has been a part of the White Ribbon , a global action movement of men and boys to end male violence against women, for almost 30 years. But only now are men, including the Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, publicly that “this struggle is also mine.” It is crucial we make it clear that violence against women is a men’s, not a women’s, problem: “Women are victims of a man’s motion, and to end violence it is necessary to interrupt this motion.” She affirms that men become violent by repeating a set of attitudes, words, thoughts and concepts, which unfortunately are also introjected by some women. Men must take responsibility to stop the violence.

“I see these movements of the last two weeks in a very positive way, if this trend is maintained,” she adds. We need to wait and see if this was a fatuous initiative to gain popularity on social media or a genuine effort. “Men need to stop beating up women, and they won’t stop just because of the threat of 40 years in jail.” This comments refers to the changes in law that increased the sentences for rape, domestic violence and femicide, including the creation of a new criminal classification for such cases. “It is not the punishment that solves the problem: the problem will be solved when men , ‘I will stop.’”

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That hasn’t kept the Venezuelan dictator from trying. President Nicolás Maduro has already offered Venezuela’s , invited US President Donald Trump to and even serenaded him with a terrible version of John Lennon’s “.” So far, none of that has worked. But kudos to his social media team for those .

Here is one last solution Maduro hasn’t tried: giving Trump a personal peace offering.

Personality diplomacy

Trump’s brand of domestic and international politics is one of personality. He has a big ego and loves to be flattered. Petting Trump’s back is what has helped New York Mayor endear himself, rehabilitated and helped countries and companies like Apple dodge billions of dollars in .��

This approach to foreign policy is tried and true. For millennia, leaders have given each other peace offerings to stop conflicts. More than 3,000 years ago, states sent gold to to maintain good relations. The English did the same with the 25 centuries later. Spain and Portugal members of their monarchies to prevent wars.

Maybe Maduro has a personal reserve of gold bars lying around, or a daughter () to offer Barron? Is turning the Miraflores Palace into a Trump Hotel Caracas in the books? Build Trump the largest-ever statue, or throw him a giant military parade? He also seems to like Venezuelan ladies; Venezuela won the Miss Universe pageant four times when he ran it. Okay, last one: Give him the Isla Margarita as free real estate. In the interest of peace, nothing should be off the table.

An ideology built on ego

The business magnate has very little ideological core. Trump has flipped on most issues (except maybe for ) and has campaigned on both sides of every policy debate. He has campaigned and governed for and against , , , , the and .

What lies at the core of his belief system, however, is his supreme belief . Trump’s only allegiance is to Trump. His ideology is whatever will help bring him power, wealth and, most importantly, attention. The man would do just about anything for his own personal ego — including perhaps for president in the first place.

He bears this quality in common with lots of other leaders with a cult-like following and authoritarian instincts, including President Juan Perón of Argentina, Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Like Trump, these men were also highly susceptible to personal flattery. Perón, whose governing philosophy was similarly incoherent to Trump’s, insisted on being referred to as “El Líder” (“The Leader”) and surrounded himself with innumerable sycophants who would buy into his worship, like his own wife Evita, who called him “Mi General” (“My General”). 

Hussein’s petty idolatry was most epitomized by his obsession with praise and self-portraits at all levels of society, including in schools, hospitals, music and poetry. Kissing the ring was rewarded with political favors, wealth and status, while critics were immediately tortured and killed. Similar to Trump’s , the Madman of Iraq had every government gathering start and end with extolments of his own qualities.��

Mussolini also maintained a tightly curated image as a scrupulous strongman who gets things done, like running the trains on time — which, turns out, quite true — and bearer of a new Golden Age worthy of Caesar. He routinely appeared at plays and sporting events (sound familiar?) and looked on menacingly, seeking idolization. All criticism, no matter how substantive or small, was treated as a direct affront to Il Duce and, thus, to Italy’s Greatness.

Like other charismatic wannabe autocrats, the key to Trump’s mind is through his heart. Flatter him, and you might be rewarded with favors. Cross him, and you will be subjected to the ferocious fire of a thousand suns until you are condemned to the ash heap of history. Maduro might want to give that option a shot if he wants to stay alive long enough to actually learn the lyrics to “Imagine”.

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The have drastically altered the legislative landscape, significantly strengthening Milei’s position. LLA secured 13 of the 24 contested Senate seats and 64 of the 127 lower-house seats. This marks a substantial gain, as before the elections, his party held only six Senate seats and 30 seats in the lower house. Although it does not hold an outright majority, the LLA is now the most powerful minority bloc in Congress.

These gains are relevant because his prior , characterized by radical spending cuts and deregulation, faced various political obstacles, including opposition lawmakers who overturned his vetoes of bills to increase funding for state universities, people with disabilities and children’s healthcare.

The enhanced representation in Congress will make it easier for Milei to push ahead with his controversial program to slash state spending and deregulate the economy. Financial markets rallied following Milei’s victory, seeing it as a sign that his political survival has kept his economic experiment — and crucial — alive. With stronger congressional support, he is likely to implement more radical changes ahead of the 2027 presidential election.

The context of Milei’s endorsement

Milei’s victory in the midterms came two years into his presidency. Radical spending cuts and free-market reforms have defined his administration. He pledged to shrink state spending by taking a to it, and has since cut budgets for education, pensions, health, infrastructure and subsidies, in addition to laying off tens of thousands of public-sector workers.

The support for Milei, even amidst the painful austerity, is rooted in a deep dissatisfaction with previous governments and a desire for an end to decades of economic mismanagement.

The midterm election result shows that many Argentines remain unwilling to return to the model (which called for the state to take a leading role in the economy to ensure cooperation between businesses and labor). Milei blames this model for the country’s long history of economic woes. Before Milei took office, inflation had hit annually, and the country was experiencing a profound economic crisis.

Supporters, including US President Donald Trump, credit Milei with taming inflation, cutting the deficit and restoring investor confidence. The elections were significantly marked by the intervention of Trump, who, in a late-September social media post, publicly conditioned a promised US financial lifeline for Argentina on Milei maintaining political momentum and winning the elections. This threat, wielded against a precarious and heavily indebted economy, served as a powerful form of through financial pressure.

Voters’ apathy helped Milei’s political coalition. The for the election was 67.9%, the lowest in a national election in decades, suggesting widespread apathy toward politicians across the spectrum. Some voters — hardcore Milei libertarians, swing voters seeking stability and anti-Peronist urban professionals — backed Milei reluctantly, believing the country is on the right path to the desired economic stability. 

The painful price of austerity

Milei’s favorable midterm election, however, is not a universal endorsement of his policies, which have come at a heavy cost. Critics argue that the price of his austerity has been high with social hardship, rising debt and threats of cuts in essential services. 

Retirees, people with disabilities and young people are particularly affected by the pension cuts and job losses that Milei’s austerity has inflicted. With budget cuts, the public services, among the best in Latin America, are crumbling.

Concerns exist that essential funding laws for people with disabilities, which Milei previously vetoed, could again be “in danger” with his strengthened position. The vetoes of bills boosting funding for state universities and children’s healthcare have also been contentious. Despite the promise of “financial freedom,” household debt for daily necessities is at a record high, with out of ten Argentine families taking on debt to cover basic necessities. In 2021, this scenario was milder, with out of ten experiencing financial stress.

The question going forward is whether the general population will start to feel better off, or if the ongoing pain of some of his budget cuts will test people’s patience once more. For now, an important proportion of voters have shown they are prepared to give him more time.

Weak opposition

In the midterm election, the Peronists, the left-leaning group that dominated national politics in Argentina since the country’s democratization in the 1980s, under the electoral coalition Fuerza Patria (FP), failed to enlarge their congressional seats in both houses. With almost of the total votes, FP maintained the same number of seats in the Senate, nine seats in total, and reduced their presence in the lower house by three seats, holding a total of 47 seats.

This electoral failure followed a resounding Peronist victory in Buenos Aires’ provincial legislature election in September, where FP won roughly of the vote. This optimistic result for FP proved misleading; metropolitan Buenos Aires, the largest electoral college in the country with 17.5 million voters, does not reflect the national mood. In effect, Milei’s rise to power comes from his large support from the countryside and such as Cordoba and Santa Fe.

FP’s difficulty in resonating with the wide variety of voters in Argentina outside Buenos Aires has weakened the coalition’s opposition to Milei in Congress. With their legislative power diminished, the Peronists’ primary opposition to Milei will now likely shift decisively from Congress to the streets, setting the stage for a period of heightened social conflict alongside radical legislative change.

Known for its mobilizing capacity, Peronists will likely exert further pressure on Milei by protests and strikes. They have already been doing this, but until now, the main opposition was exercised by blocking or striking down Milei’s legislative actions.

A deepening democratic erosion

Milei won because voters prefer painful liberalization to a return to failed Peronist governance, and because international financial pressure and political fragmentation helped sustain his political coalition. But this choice comes at a high price: the acceleration of democratic erosion.

According to the , Argentina has suffered a long-term erosion of democratic checks and balances, with legislative and judicial constraints on the executive weakening since the early 2000s — a decline that began under prior Peronist administrations. Under Milei, however, this trend has sharply accelerated, marked by severe declines in executive oversight and respect for constitutional norms.

His renewed electoral mandate is likely to deepen this deterioration, further strengthening the presidency at the expense of other institutions and hastening the decline of judicial independence and democratic accountability.

This congressional empowerment also arrives as Milei faces a critical test of institutional integrity: that his sister and Chief of Staff, Karina Milei, received kickbacks from a pharmaceutical company. In a climate where economic outcomes dominate political conversations, such ethical dimensions risk being overshadowed, signaling how public institutions can be captured by private interests and deepening the process of democratic decline.

In the current scenario, the 2027 election appears favorable to Milei’s reelection. His radical discourse, disregard for institutional checks and close alignment with Donald Trump strengthen his position against any opposition candidate. If his austerity program succeeds in delivering economic stability, a significant share of Argentines seems willing to tolerate it — even at the cost of further democratic erosion.

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Conflict at home

To understand the government’s approach, the domestic context matters. Ecuador’s has framed the security crisis as an “” and decided to advance further domestic militarization. The country’s deep security crisis, which currently claims a day, has ushered in a political reset in the government’s actions.��

As a consequence of the consistent violence, this crisis has secured President Daniel Noboa a backed by a legislative majority and broad electoral support for his tough-on-crime style. The strategy Noboa is deploying borrows from Latin American models built for different threats. Declaring an “internal conflict” mirrors Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s war-like approach in security crisis. Furthermore, the labeling of local gangs as terrorists echoes how Colombia has historically treated guerrilla groups. However, Ecuador is not fighting the same kind of conflict as Colombia and El Salvador.��

Ecuador’s criminal landscape is shaped by fragmented gangs tied to international organized crime. Most Ecuadorian gangs merely operate as logistical partners, to Europe and running tied to foreign networks. Framing these gangs as terrorists in a domestic war ignores the larger source of conflict in Ecuador’s security crisis. Thus, the Ecuadorian government doubles down on a flawed reading of the conflicts. Further, Noboa’s adoption of mano dura has not stopped at Ecuador’s borders; it now defines the country’s foreign policy.

A shift in foreign policy

The shift is already playing out in ways that leave Ecuador’s traditional foreign policy instincts behind. Once sovereignty-first, Ecuador’s diplomacy now functions as a platform to enlist in its war on crime, including moving tooverturn a on foreign military bases. With Ecuador planning to host in Manta and having reached out to Blackwater paramilitary to support Ecuadorian training, the government has paved the way for foreign military presence. Simply put, the government now sees foreign policy as an extension of its domestic mano dura.��

Global relations and the source of the problem

While Ecuador is receiving international aid, the misreading of Ecuador’s situation by its government has important implications for foreign policy and resolving the conflict. By defining a transnational crisis as a domestic war, Ecuador isolates the problem to its borders and forces itself to bear the blame and burden of a crisis it did not create . Rather than shaping a narrative of global responsibility, Ecuador’s government is turning inward and viewing the crisis as a domestic issue. With this perspective, Ecuador is relying on militarized partnerships to control and resolve a conflict within its borders.

The diplomatic cost of how Ecuador’s government presents its situation is not minor. By narrowing the crisis to Ecuador’s borders, the government sidelines the potential cooperative partnerships it needs to lead an internationally coordinated response. 

Among the most critical and most overlooked partnerships are with cocaine-consuming countries like those in Europe and the Americas. Though absent from Noboa’s rhetoric on where the crisis is located, these regions are central to the violence Ecuador faces. The demand in these areas sustains the trade and, by extension, the violence.

Ecuador’s global relationships and next steps

Ecuador has shown no clear interest in building coalitions with consumer countries, specifically holding them accountable for the current security crisis. Since taking office, Noboa has made to Europe and the US, focusing on security cooperation, technology transfer and intelligence sharing, rather than raising the these countries have as consumers.��

In early , the government hosted the mayors of Antwerp, Rotterdam and Hamburg (Europe’s key cocaine ports) in Quito, Ecuador. However, the gesture lacked meaningful follow-up from either side as a strategy to build long-lasting coalitions with consumer nations, and next steps were not finalized. Thus, Ecuador’s actions, along with these meetings, will not be able to move beyond symbolism. To fix the transnational issue, consumer countries must be treated not only as enforcement partners but as direct actors in a market that is driving Ecuador’s collapse.

Mano dura has equally undermined Ecuador’s regional coalition-building. In a region where is deeply intertwined with neighboring countries, coordinated Latin American action is essential to confront the cross-border networks that sustain it. Ecuador’s recent actions have done the opposite to support Latin partnerships.

In late 2024, Ecuador hosted the in Cuenca, a biennial meeting where Latin American and Iberian heads of state gather to discuss regional cooperation. This time, none of the Latin American attended. Their absence followed Ecuador’s controversial raid on , which violated international law and drew widespread condemnation.��

While the Latin American boycott from the conference was not officially declared, the message was clear: the Ecuadorian government’s actions eroded regional trust. What could have been a platform for building a shared security strategy became a symbol of diplomatic isolation and a missed opportunity, shaped in part by the same mano dura logic the government applies at home.

What is at stake for Ecuador’s future is the chance to build bridges and strategically position itself on the global stage. Ecuador has an opportunity to lead on a crisis with global roots. But by framing the security crisis as an internal issue and doubling down on militarized partnerships, the government has narrowed down its options to resolve the matter. The current trajectory may deliver a short-term impact, but the government risks long-term stagnation. Furthermore, the Ecuadorian government may miss the chance to reshape policies around the world when countries are willing to support Ecuador.

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US–Venezuela tensions

Khattar Singh opens by asking what has pushed the standoff into potentially military territory. Vivas situates the crisis in a broader geopolitical context. He argues that Trump is attempting to reshape international rules and create a more compliant strategic space in the Americas, while simultaneously addressing what Washington sees as the growing influence of narcotics trafficking across the region.

Vivas stresses that Venezuela is different from Latin American countries like Colombia or Mexico. There, drug cartels are private organizations. In Venezuela, the state itself links together criminal networks involving narcotics, gold smuggling and armed groups. Senior military figures are embedded in this system, often described as the Cártel de los Soles (“Cartel of the Suns”). Removing Maduro, in this view, would both strike a regional criminal network “in the head” and eliminate its political coordinator.

Conflict around the corner?

The situation has seen dramatic public signaling. Trump has demanded airspace restrictions over Venezuela, while Maduro has staged televised rallies alongside armed civilians. Yet Vivas cautions against assuming that war is inevitable. He describes the Trump administration as a loose coalition: Some actors want full regime change, others are focused narrowly on dismantling criminal networks.

Trump’s negotiating style matters here. Vivas notes that Trump often escalates rhetorically or economically before backing into talks, suggesting the confrontation could still end at the bargaining table. As he puts it, “Every day that goes by tends to reinforce… this possibility that there is no attack.” Simultaneously, negotiations are exceptionally difficult because Maduro cannot safely relinquish power while facing potential International Criminal Court indictments and the absence of reliable international safe havens.

�Ѳ���ܰ���’s options

Khattar Singh presses Vivas on how Maduro is reading the moment. Vivas describes him as a political survivor who has weathered sanctions, diplomatic isolation, the hemisphere’s worst economic collapse in decades and a mass exodus of nearly nine million Venezuelans. �Ѳ���ܰ���’s regional allies are dwindling, but Vivas believes the regime is betting that US pressure is largely a bluff.

According to Vivas, �Ѳ���ܰ���’s core assumption is that Washington will not deploy boots on the ground and that military threats are a “poker face.” That calculation has, for now, reinforced discipline within the armed forces. A coup remains unlikely because the military was deliberately fragmented — an architecture designed with Cuban assistance to prevent coordinated action unless a rupture emerges at the very top.

Rubio’s role

The discussion turns to US domestic politics. Vivas argues that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been unusually influential because he has fused the political case for restoring democracy with the criminal case against Venezuela’s alleged narco-state. In the current institutional turbulence inside Washington, Rubio has the advantage.

Still, kinetic decisions ultimately rest with the military. Rubio is not a soldier, and once planning moves from rhetoric to execution, generals determine what is feasible, how fast it could happen and at what cost. Political pressure may shape intent, but operational realities constrain outcomes.

US military action?

Khattar Singh asks whether limited strikes are plausible. Vivas downplays Venezuela’s military capacity, describing militias as largely symbolic and regular forces as poorly equipped, with aging aircraft and unreliable air defenses. He suggests that targeted actions — such as strikes on illegal gold operations in the south, which generate major off‑the‑books revenue — would be difficult for Venezuela’s capital of Caracas to counter.

Such moves would not require an invasion and could be framed as attacks on criminal infrastructure rather than the country itself. Whether Washington chooses that path depends partly on Trump’s domestic pressures and his need for a visible foreign policy win.

What Venezuelans feel

Vivas believes public sentiment inside Venezuela is bleak but pragmatic. Credible surveys suggest most Venezuelans want Maduro gone and would not view strikes on regime infrastructure as attacks on the nation. After opposition victories were overridden, he argues, the government lost legitimacy in the eyes of many citizens.

The prevailing mood, Vivas says, is cautious resignation rather than mobilization. There is little appetite for defending the regime, and many in the military are in a “wait and see” posture, calculating which way events will break.

What if Maduro is ousted?

If Maduro falls, Vivas warns, the hardest work begins. Venezuela faces enormous debt, nonexistent economic data and shattered institutions. Any stabilization would require reconstructing basic statistics before engaging the International Monetary Fund, preserving parts of the military not implicated in war crimes and negotiating with governors, most of whom remain aligned with chavismo — the political system and ideology established by former Venezuelan President Hugo ���á�����.

Vivas anticipates a transitional government rather than an immediate handover to last year’s elected leadership, followed by complex, multi‑track negotiations over courts, prosecutors, elections and security. Events are moving fast, he concludes, and assessments could change overnight as pressure continues to build.

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A recent wave of at sea, the directing of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to launch inside Venezuela, the surge of into the Caribbean, the reopening of a long-shuttered in Puerto Rico and the deployment of the aircraft carrier in the region represent striking but not surprising developments. These are little more than the latest expression of an ideological project through which Washington has long sought to shape the hemisphere in ways that would entrench US power further and protect the profits of Western multinationals.

That formal project dates back to at least the 1823 , when the US unilaterally claimed Latin America as its exclusive sphere of influence. Its revival today is unmistakable and . As Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth , echoing the language of that two-century-old policy, “The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood, and we will protect it.”

The results of that doctrine have long been : immense profits for the few and violence, political upheaval, social dislocation and economic devastation for the many. While Washington’s imperial desires in the hemisphere have long been met by movements challenging US dominance, these have repeatedly been forced back into the subordinate position assigned to them in a global capitalist order designed to benefit their not-so “good neighbor.”

It’s no accident that, by the mid-1970s, Latin America had been transformed into a hemisphere dominated by US-backed right-wing authoritarian regimes. Entire regions like the became laboratories for repression, as Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay formed a coordinated bloc of military juntas. With direct support from Washington, those regimes oversaw what came to be known as , establishing a transnational network of state terror. Its consequences were catastrophic: 50,000 killed, tens of thousands “disappeared” and hundreds of thousands tortured and imprisoned for the so-called crime of harboring real or perceived leftist sympathies.

During that earlier period, Venezuela had been largely spared the brutal excesses of direct US interventionism in the region (due in part to the repressive rule of successive US-supported strongmen and ). That changed in 1998, when , far more popular predecessor, became president and pursued policies of and aimed at ensuring the nation’s vast oil reserves (the in the world) served Venezuelans rather than being siphoned off to enrich foreign corporations. From then on, Venezuela became the of Washington’s efforts to undermine, discipline and ultimately neutralize “troublesome” progressive governments across Latin America.

To fully understand Washington’s current warpath in the region, it’s necessary to revisit earlier episodes in which the US intervened, violently and antidemocratically, to shape the political destinies of countries in the hemisphere. Three cases are especially instructive: Cuba, Guatemala and Chile. Together, they illuminate the long arc of US imperialism in Latin America and clarify the dangers of the present confrontation.

The rise of Plattismo in Cuba

Cuba had long been a crown jewel in Washington’s imperial imagination. By 1823, American political elites were already casting the island as to the future of the United States. President John Quincy Adams, for instance, , then a Spanish colony, as “indispensable” to the country’s “political and commercial interests.” He ominously that, should the island be “forcibly disjointed from its own unnatural connection with Spain and incapable of self-support,” it could “gravitate only towards the North American Union.” Thomas Jefferson that the possession of Cuba was “exactly what is wanting to round out our power as a nation.” In that spirit, during the 1840s and 1850s, Presidents James K. Polk and Franklin Pierce sought to from Spain, overtures that were repeatedly rejected.

Those efforts unfolded during a period of rapid US territorial expansionism, marking a time when Washington regarded continental conquest as both a “” and a political and economic imperative. When ostensibly legal mechanisms like could be invoked, they were embraced. When military force offered a more expedient path to territorial acquisition, as with the that stripped Mexico of half its territory and delivered what became the American Southwest to US control in 1848, it was undertaken with little hesitation.

The opportunity to pursue longstanding ambitions in Cuba and inaugurate the US as an overseas empire arrived with the of 1898. In that conflict, Washington intervened in anticolonial uprisings from Puerto Rico to the Philippines, not to champion genuine liberation but to ensure that any subsequent “independence” would be to US strategic and economic interests. What emerged was a political order deliberately engineered to keep Cuba firmly tethered to the priorities and power of the United States.

That would be codified in the 1901 , which effectively nullified Washington’s earlier assurances of Cuban sovereignty and granted Washington the right to establish military bases (including ), substantial control over the Cuban treasury and the ability to intervene whenever the US deemed it to safeguard its arbitrarily defined notion of what constituted “Cuban independence” or to defend “life, property, and individual liberty.”

In practice, Cuba emerged from the war as a dependent protectorate, not a sovereign nation. That model was soon codified for the entire hemisphere with the to the Monroe Doctrine issued in 1904, which granted the United States a self-appointed mandate to police the region to maintain “order.”

In Cuba, that arrangement would serve Washington’s interests for decades. By 1959, on the eve of the Cuban Revolution, US 90% of the island’s trade, 90% of its public services, 75% of its arable land and 40% of its sugar industry. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Cubans remained landless, disenfranchised and mired in poverty.

By breeding staggering inequality, Washington’s imperialism rendered Cuba ripe for revolution. In 1959, following years in exile, Fidel Castro to the island to overwhelmingly popular support, having launched an armed struggle after attempting to run in the 1952 elections that the Washington-backed Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista . Rather than confront the policies that had produced the revolution, US officials moved to make an example of Castro, waging an to undermine his revolutionary government and punish the population whose support had made his ascent possible.

Washington pursued everything from ill-fated invasions to assassinations, plots that, in October 1962, brought the world to the brink of a . It also imposed a punishing designed to choke the island’s economy, render socialism a stillbirth and deter other nations from challenging US hegemony. Those efforts foreclosed the possibility of constructive engagement, which Castro had initially he was open to, pushing Cuba decisively into the Soviet orbit, and creating the very outcome Washington claimed it had sought to avoid.

The fall of Guatemala

did not return to Cuba alone. He arrived alongside the Argentinian Ernesto , who would become a key ideologue of the revolution, bringing with him a commitment to constructing a global, anti-imperialist movement. The two first met in in Mexico City, where Castro was organizing in exile, and Guevara had resettled after working as a doctor in Guatemala, a country he had entered to support the democratic spring of President .

The democratic experiment in Guatemala was abruptly and violently extinguished in 1954, when a toppled Árbenz. From that experience, Guevara carried with him an indelible lesson about the reach of US power and Washington’s willingness to deploy force in defense of corporate interests, along with the profoundly antidemocratic and destabilizing consequences of US intervention across the hemisphere.

That coup in Guatemala was carried out in service to that country’s real center of authority, the Boston-based . Founded in 1899, United Fruit consolidated its foothold there through a series of preferential corporate arrangements, as successive strongmen ceded vast tracts of land and critical infrastructure to the company in exchange for personal enrichment. In the process, Guatemala was transformed into the archetypal “.”

United Fruit came to Guatemala’s agricultural and industrial sectors, transforming itself into one of the most profitable corporations in the world. It secured extraordinary returns through its monopoly power, wage suppression and the criminalization of labor organizing. Its influence extended into the of Washington. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had represented United Fruit as a senior partner at the law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, and his brother, CIA director Allen Dulles, had previously served on that company’s board.

Árbenz regarded United Fruit not just as a threat to Guatemala’s sovereignty but also as an engine of injustice. In a country where 2% of the landholders controlled of all arable land (more than half controlled by United Fruit), much of it left deliberately fallow, he sought to challenge a system that denied millions of peasants access to the land on which their survival depended. His land reform applied only to uncultivated land. The government proposed purchasing idle tracts at their declared tax value (based on the company’s own assessments). Yet because United Fruit had its vast land holdings to evade taxes, the company refused.

Árbenz’s policies, driven by the fact that he was a nationalist (not a communist), were committed to dismantling Guatemala’s imperial dependency. His objective was to , as he put it, “Guatemala from a country bound by a predominantly feudal economy into a modern capitalist state, and to make this transformation in a way that will raise the standard of living of the great mass of our people to the highest level.” Yet, in the ideologically charged climate of the early Cold War years, such New Deal-style reforms were recast by Washington as incontrovertible proof that a “” was taking root in Central America.

By 1954, US officials insisted that they had “no choice” but to intervene to prevent the country from “falling” to communism. The relied on an orchestrated propaganda campaign, the financing of a mercenary army and the aerial bombardment of Guatemala City. The combined pressure of all of that coerced Árbenz into resigning. In his , he condemned the attacks “as an act of vengeance by the United Fruit Company” and stepped down in the hope, quickly dashed, that his departure might preserve his reforms.

Power would soon be transferred to the military regime of , while US President Dwight D. Eisenhower that “the people of Guatemala, in a magnificent effort, have liberated themselves from the shackles of international Communist direction.” In reality, United Fruit had expanded its influence, while the country descended into decades of state terror. The that followed claimed more than 200,000 lives, including a against the indigenous Ixil Maya people, carried out with direct .

The crushing of Chilean socialism

If Guatemala exposed Washington’s readiness to destroy a modest social democracy in the name of communism and in defense of corporate power, Chile demonstrated the full, violent maturation of unrepentant Cold War interventionism. When the socialist physician won the presidency in 1970 in a democratic election, Washington immediately went on the , launching a covert, sustained campaign to strangle his government before it could succeed.

Allende sought to expand social welfare and the economy. His program called for the nationalization of strategic industries, the expansion of healthcare and education, the strengthening of organized labor and the dismantling of entrenched monopolistic landholdings. Those initiatives drew support from a broad, multiparty alliance rooted in Chile’s peasants as well as its working and middle classes. Above all, aimed to reclaim the nation’s mineral wealth from foreign capital, especially the US-based copper giant , whose staggering profits bore few meaningful returns for the Chilean population.

President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger found that intolerable and quickly came to regard Allende not just as a symbolic but a to US power in the region. After all, a successful socialist state achieved through the ballot box risked demonstrating that another political and economic path was indeed possible.

What followed was a coordinated campaign of economic, social and political destabilization. The CIA funneled millions to Chile’s opposition parties, business associations and media outlets. It financed strikes and disruptions designed to create and weaponize scarcity, to (in ) “make the economy scream” and erode confidence in Allende’s Popular Unity government. US officials also cultivated ties with reactionary factions in the Chilean military, encouraging coup plots and ultimately directly supporting the of Allende on September 11, 1973.

What emerged was one of the bloodiest dictatorships in the hemisphere in the twentieth century. General regime would carry out widespread torture, disappearances and extrajudicial killings, while US-trained economists radical neoliberal policies (similar to the now being implemented by Javier Milei in Argentina with the help of a US President Donald Trump ) that dismantled social protections and opened Chile’s economy to foreign capital.

Hands off Venezuela

In every instance where the United States intervened in Latin America, leaving tens of thousands dead and entire , it was never really communism that Washington feared. What alarmed policymakers and the corporate interests they served was the prospect that nations in the hemisphere might escape the economic architecture of US dominance.

When Hugo ���á����� completed the nationalization of Venezuela’s oil sector in , he followed a long and perilous trajectory established by regional leaders who dared to confront US power. In doing so, they committed what Washington considered the “cardinal sin” of asserting sovereign control over national resources within a hemisphere it had long treated as its strategic preserve. These leaders demonstrated, however briefly, that it was possible to stand up to the United States, but that such defiance would ultimately be met with overwhelming force.

Independent powers in this hemisphere going their own way were the threat that Washington and Wall Street could never tolerate. It’s the same reason the United States is once again maneuvering toward open conflict in Venezuela. To proceed down such a path will, of course, mean reenacting some of the most catastrophic chapters of US foreign policy. The lesson of such imperial adventurism in Latin America is unmistakable. When Washington interferes in other nations, the outcome is never stability or democracy but their absolute negation.

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While voters will choose between personalities, the real protagonist of Chile’s political is the institutional architecture that survived both the 2019 social uprising and the abortive constitutional rewriting efforts. The independent central bank, the structural fiscal rule, the debt limit and a political culture steeped in technocratic policymaking have collectively constrained what any politician can credibly promise. Economics, not ideology, is now setting the boundaries within which politics operates.

This phenomenon reflects a broader pattern visible in Chile’s long-run indicators: Even as social expectations surged in the 2010s, institutional inertia kept the macroeconomic regime remarkably stable. Political coalitions have shifted, but the guardrails of fiscal prudence and monetary independence have produced what scholars call an equilibrium of constrained divergence — parties rhetorically drift apart while practically converging on the same policy frontier.

The frontier is not defined by electoral preferences, but by institutional constraints — fiscal rules, inflation-targeting mandates, market discipline and the credibility premium embedded in Chile’s economic governance. Thus, administrations of very different ideological profiles end up selecting from the same narrow menu of feasible macroeconomic choices, even when their stated ambitions diverge dramatically.

Institutional anchors after the Estallido Social

Chile forged its current political equilibrium in crisis. The 2019 did not erupt because the country’s institutions were weak, but because expectations had outgrown what the existing model could deliver. Inequality, stagnant wages and frustration with elite governance created a combustible mix. Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s in 2021 reflected this anger as he campaigned on redistribution, gender rights, climate action and a wholesale constitutional rewrite.

But the public’s of two proposed constitutions in 2022 and 2023 brought the country back to a familiar center of gravity. Chileans demanded renewal, not rupture. Boric’s administration, confronted with legislative fragmentation and deteriorating fiscal conditions, pivoted toward the middle — scaling back ambitious tax reforms, abandoning pension nationalization and moderating its climate industrial policy.

Rather than signaling a revolutionary break, Chile’s recent political cycle reflects a recalibration of expectations. After years of mobilization and constitutional ambition, voters ultimately their preference for stability even while demanding reform. The electorate experimented with the outer limits of institutional change. Then, through democratic means, it redirected the political system toward continuity. What emerged is not the collapse of the old order but a post-utopian pragmatism: a recognition that social transformation must occur within, rather than against, Chile’s established democratic structures.

The IMF–PIIE view: a macro framework that resists populism

International observers agree that the resilience of Chile’s macroeconomic institutions has shaped this convergence. According to the International Monetary Fund’s 2024 Article IV , Chile is:

1. lowering inflation faster than most Latin American peers,
2. re-establishing inflation-targeting credibility,
3. strengthening its structural fiscal rule and
4. stabilizing debt under the 45% of GDP limit.

This framework leaves little room for fiscal adventurism. As the IMF notes, Chile’s adjustment path hinges on continued discipline in public spending, prudential independence and credible policy guidance. Deviations have immediate costs: higher spreads, weaker currency and political backlash from a middle class wary of macro instability.

The Peterson Institute for International Economics () reinforces this view, arguing that Chile remains one of the region’s strongest macro performers precisely because its institutions insulate long-term policy from short-term politics. Chile’s central bank is trusted, its fiscal rule transparent and its regulatory regime stable. These fundamentals survived the social uprising and the constitutional turbulence, and now guide electoral behavior.

In this sense, Chile is approaching what some analysts describe as a “macro-technocratic constitutionalism” — a constitutional order in which policy is insulated from electoral swings and where credible-commitment mechanisms and expert-driven rules carry more weight than popular mandates. Populism is not defeated by ideology but neutralized by institutional design.

The left and right have centered

The two leading candidates reflect the power of these economic guardrails.

Jara, despite her longstanding Communist Party affiliation, has ideological ambition. In an with Spanish publication El País, she explicitly states, “No trabajo con lógicas refundacionales.” (“I don’t work with foundational logics.”) She presents a more pragmatic, centrist agenda. An early version of her campaign proposed nationalizing copper and lithium, but this idea has since been dropped. Her early pledge to nationalize copper and lithium has disappeared. Her team now emphasizes industrial policy that creates space for private-sector growth, wage policies that remain within fiscal bounds and housing strategies reliant on blended public–private financing.

Kast, long known for staunch cultural conservatism, has toward security, fiscal prudence and administrative efficiency. His proposal to cut government spending by 1.7% of GDP is framed not as austerity but as rationalization. His pledge to abide by the debt rule reflects political realism: Violating Chile’s fiscal guardrails would doom any conservative government’s credibility.

Both campaigns now accept that the economic model built since the 1990s — that of open markets, macro stability, investment protection and technocratic regulation — cannot be dismantled without enormous economic and political costs.

Candidates have adjusted to the rules, not the rules to the candidates.

The politics of constraint

This convergence is not necessarily a sign of a failing democracy. In fact, it a system where institutions shape political incentives, as stressed by the IMF, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Parliamentary Research Service, which highlight how Chile’s institutional framework constrains policy discretion. But it also exposes a paradox: The same macro stability that secures Chile’s credibility narrows the space for structural transformation.

Chile’s productivity has for over a decade, with national productivity data showing little to no productivity growth since 2012. Its pension system requires modernization, a challenge emphasized repeatedly in policy assessments of Chile’s long-term fiscal and demographic pressures. The lithium sector demands regulatory clarity, with analysts and multilateral institutions noting that uncertainty in governance and concessions has slowed investment. Crime and migration now dominate public concern, overshadowing long-term economic priorities, as US Congressional Research Service show security overtaking economic issues in public opinion.

Yet none of the candidates propose the type of deep institutional modernization — tax redesign, labor reform, innovation strategy — that economists argue is necessary for a new growth cycle. The macro constraints that discipline populism may also discourage ambition. The result is a politics of constrained imagination: parties may signal ideological differences, but their governing space is tightly circumscribed by fiscal rules, regulatory stability and central-bank .

Congressional arithmetic and future governance

Complicating the picture is the likely composition of Congress. Projections from the European Parliamentary Research Service that the center-right and radical right may secure a majority in both chambers. If Kast wins, he would be one of the few post-transition presidents with a legislative majority aligned with his coalition. That would ease security reforms and administrative restructuring, but could also embolden more polarizing factions.

If Jara wins, she faces the opposite problem: negotiating with an unfriendly Congress that will block redistributive or labor reforms. Her presidency would resemble the first years of the Boric administration — ambitious proposals tamed by legislative reality.

Either way, the macroeconomic framework remains intact because no plausible congressional configuration can alter the constitutional or central-bank architecture.

The real battleground: security, migration and state capacity

Security and migration have as pivotal issues in Chile’s 2025 presidential race, especially as rising gang violence and immigrant flows shift public concern from traditional economic issues to law-and-order priorities.

Leading candidate Kast is on mass deportations, fortified border barriers and a tough-on-crime agenda inspired by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. Kast’s opponent, Jara, community policing and institutional reform as her crime-control strategy.

Crime is now being treated as an economic variable. A recent study by CLAPES UC, a research center at Chile’s Pontificia Universidad Católica, the country loses around 2.6% of GDP annually to violence and its effects on business. As a result, the electorate increasingly views public order as integral to economic growth rather than separate from it — making security the potential axis for policymaking in the next decade.

A country at a crossroads

Chile’s election may not mark a dramatic pivot between left and right but rather a test of how political competition operates within the country’s long-standing institutional framework. Rather than abrupt ideological swings, Chile’s trajectory is defined by an institutional architecture that disciplines political change and limits sudden policy reversals.

This is Chile’s quiet counterrevolution. It is not a revolt of ideology, but a reaffirmation of a technocratic tradition that began in the late 20th century and has survived crisis after crisis. It is imperfect, constrained and sometimes unimaginative, but it has proven resilient in ways that few democracies can claim today.

Whoever wins the presidency will face a society demanding security, inclusion and better living standards, but neither will dismantle the economic architecture that underpins Chile’s global reputation. Ultimately, the most powerful actor in Chilean politics is not a candidate, but a framework: a set of institutions that has turned economic rationality into political reality.

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The key points of Belém were the “joint decision,” the shifting positions of the European Union, the objections of large oil-producing countries and the enormous efforts of Brazilian diplomatic coordination to deliver on implementation of the Paris Agreement. In parallel with the diplomatic conference, Belém welcomed a vigorous presence of civil society, a powerful expression of its commitment to social justice in the fight against climate change.

The decision to join forces: strategy, scope and limits

In the context of the climate negotiations, the Brazilian presidency of the COP created the — a “joint decision” strategy to untangle sensitive issues and stitch together a single package of decisions that included finance, adaptation, just transition, trade, gender and technology. At the end of the conference, this package resulted in the approval of 29 documents that sought to advance on multiple fronts without leaving behind urgent demands from the Global South.

Among the financial measures approved, concrete allocations of to the Adaptation Fund and to adapt the health sector to climate impacts stand out. The presidency also proposed reformulating climate finance reporting, linking it to the New Collective Quantified Goal for Climate Finance (), seeking greater transparency between “provided” and “mobilized” resources.

On the other hand, financial ambition fell short of what was necessary: the task-force proposal foresees adaptation financing by 2035 compared with 2025, but without a clearly defined base value. This gap reflects the historical difficulty of the multilateral system in translating political commitment into measurable financial flows — a challenge that, according to climate finance experts, is reflected in the current adaptation finance gap, estimated at around $340 billion. This amount is forecast to reach $1.35 trillion by 2035.

No binding target was delivered to finance adaptation, and the multilateral ambition to mobilize trillions for clean infrastructure remains without clear accountability mechanisms. The recognition that historical goals have not been met gained space in the final text, but without new and effective structures that guarantee the flow of resources where they are most urgent.

Among other points in the task-force decision, advances were made on information integrity and the fight against climate disinformation — essential to confronting denialism, including promoted by parts of the fossil-fuel industry. There were also developments on carbon markets and discussions on high-integrity rules — a necessary subject for robust accounting of carbon credits, which remains controversial given cases of fraud and technical errors worldwide.

The EU’s position: defensive pragmatism

The European Union played a decisive role in the final design of the “joint decision”. European officials adopted a pragmatic stance: supporting the negotiated package as long as it did not include provisions they considered unfeasible or unsupported, especially those related to the energy transition. In negotiations, European representatives conditioned their greater willingness to finance adaptation on the inclusion — from their point of view — of balanced measures in the energy transition.

This stance produced two key effects: (1) the EU helped ensure approval of the package, avoiding a total impasse; (2) at the same time, its bargaining limited the financial ambition of the final text, contributing to less binding wording on goals and responsibilities. Observers interpreted this strategy as a balance between pro-climate rhetoric and cautious practice — especially relevant after the United States’s direct absence, which altered traditional leadership dynamics.

Objections from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, China, India and Russia: blocking the fossil roadmap

One of the most sensitive points in the Belém negotiations was the so‑called “roadmap” for moving away from an economy dependent on fossil fuels — an explicit priority of the Brazilian presidency. Although the initiative gained important political support, especially from the Global South and activist leaders, it did not make it into the final texts due to a lack of consensus. Fossil-fuel-producing countries (notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), as well as major emitters such as China and India, and to a lesser extent, Russia, and even Japan, raised .

These objections ranged from practical issues (timing, socioeconomic impacts and energy security) to geopolitical positions defending industrial and revenue interests. For many of these countries, formal commitments to abandon fossil fuels would entail high political and economic costs, requiring guarantees of finance, technology transfer and just treatment for workers and communities. This bloc managed to bar inclusion of the roadmap in the joint decision, relegating it to a parallel initiative — albeit one that faces growing political pressure.

Brazilian diplomatic leadership: sewing consensus and maintaining the agenda

Brazil, as COP30 president, worked intensively to transform the ���ܳپ���ã�� effort into a political reality. The presidency’s strategy combined multilateral diplomacy (bilateral and multilateral negotiations), global visibility — placing the Amazon at the center of discussions — and bridge-building among groups of countries. The presidency the creation of an international just-transition mechanism, with a draft to be presented by June 2026 and contributions open until March 15, 2026, aiming to establish an instrument to organize finance, technical cooperation and capacity building.

This action produced results: presented new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) during COP30, and a package of decisions elevated just transition as an institutional priority. However, the Brazilian effort coexists with internal contradictions — part of the government promoted a roadmap for renewables even as the state authorized auctions at the mouth of the Amazon, renewed contracts for gas and coal thermal plants through 2040, and faced a Congress about to review vetoes and make environmental licensing more flexible.

These internal tensions erode the policy coherence needed to transform international commitments into robust domestic policies. Even so, the efforts of Brazilian climate leadership deserve attention and recognition.

Colombia–Netherlands initiative: a promising path to the end of fossil fuels

Facing the impasse on including the energy transition roadmap, Colombia and the Netherlands a joint initiative to organize the first international conference on “Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels” in April 2026. This initiative deserves attention and applause for inaugurating an alternative strategic path to the unanimity-based system of UN climate conferences. It points to a promising mobilization of more than 80 countries to address the transition from coal, oil and gas to renewable energies, in parallel with COP processes.

By shifting the debate to a dedicated forum with technical and political focus, the coalition creates space to build operational consensus, finance transition guarantees and design social and labor protections. This parallel path is a necessary complement to global negotiations on the planet’s foremost climate agenda: ending the use of fossil fuels.

Civil society, Indigenous peoples and the pulse of climate democracy

Belém experienced one of the highest levels of civil society participation in COP history after three years of conferences in less receptive environments for public demonstrations. At COP30, more than Indigenous people engaged inside and outside the negotiations, defending territorial rights among many demands; hundreds of parallel events addressed themes related to the Amazon’s socioenvironmental values and standing-forest bioeconomy. The streets were filled with a estimated at 70,000 people — a clear popular demonstration for global climate action. Science was prominent: a scientific pavilion brought climate scientists into direct contact with the COP presidency.

Civil society demanded ambition, integrity of information and climate justice — reinforcing that serious policy must articulate science, human rights and broad social participation. The launch of the Tropical Forests Forever Fund (), which raised nearly $7 billion, was welcomed by some sectors; others criticized its governance and reliance on private funds, reflecting the debate on financing forest protection without offloading public responsibility.

The end of deforestation by is an imperative for Brazil to reach its NDC. Efforts have been made to decrease present deforestation to reasonable levels, which will continue in the coming years. Nevertheless, the TFFF figures and other funding sources suggest that they are below the zero-deforestation ambition needs.

The event also exposed shortcomings in COP infrastructure: thermal discomfort in the Amazon heat and humidity, and a small fire that was quickly controlled but interrupted use of some spaces for an afternoon and led to a few hospital visits without major consequences.

What lies ahead

At the slow pace of consensus-based diplomacy, attention now turns to in Turkey, with Australia chairing negotiations. Key points to watch for a minimally positive meeting include guaranteed and meaningful inclusion of civil society; a real commitment by hosts to halt approval of new coal projects; concrete progress on adaptation finance with numerical targets; operationalization of the just-transition mechanism; and consolidation of technical processes that make the fossil-fuel roadmap a negotiable agenda rather than mere rhetoric. A Pre-COP in the Pacific, responding to the needs of island states threatened by sea-level rise, and the selection of a negotiation president with the capacity to unite interests will be decisive.

COP30 in Belém renewed the political agenda by placing the Amazon at the heart of negotiations and by structuring a joint package of decisions that seeks to reconcile justice, adaptation and transition. At the same time, it made clear that without binding financial commitments, consistent social inclusion and domestic policy coherence, progress will be slow.

The Colombia–Netherlands initiative for a conference dedicated to ending fossil fuels is a promising beacon: it offers a technical-political forum to translate political pressure from Belém into concrete measures. If Brazilian diplomacy and global coalitions can convert the “joint decisions” momentum into operational instruments and real finance, COP30 may be remembered as the starting point of a historic turning point — led, above all, by the civil society that occupied Belém and demonstrated that the world wants, and can, accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.

Geopolitical conflicts and multilateral fissures persist, but Brazilian leadership at this COP advanced agendas despite contradictions. The resistance of oil-producing countries and the absence of the United States shaped resistance to consensus-based diplomatic agreements. Still, Belém sent a strong signal from civil society and a considerable coalition of countries willing to pursue the end of fossil fuels — a positive and promising outcome for a polarized world dominated by the capital of the old fossil economy.

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Chile’s unique economic landscape

Khattar Singh begins the conversation by asking Geurts to quickly summarize what makes Chile unique. Geurts explains that Chile is an interesting case due to its relatively high development rate, boasting one of the highest GDPs per capita in South America, second only to Uruguay. A significant differentiator is the formal economy: only 30% of the population works in the informal sector, a stark contrast to Peru and Bolivia, where that figure ranges between 70% and 85%. Chile also possesses the best universities in Spanish-speaking South America and a generally good educational system.

However, Geurts notes that Chile shares similarities with other Latin American nations, particularly its reliance on exporting minerals and foodstuffs. Furthermore, Chile is exceptionally dependent on one single mineral — copper — making it the world’s largest copper producer. Critically, despite its economic success, Chile suffers from high unequal income distribution, demonstrated by a high Gini coefficient of 430, which is higher than neighboring countries like Peru, Uruguay or Argentina. While the outside world views Chile as an “economic miracle” with high growth rates, better education and healthcare, Chileans themselves often feel they could be doing better, especially given the high cost of living and the limited opportunities for low-income people.

The frustration of 2019 and political polarization

Khattar Singh steers the conversation toward the drastic political changes since the 2019 mass protests. Geurts details how this social upheaval came unexpectedly while the country was under a conservative center-right president. The protests were triggered by an increase in public transport costs, quickly expanding beyond Santiago to include students, workers, the unemployed and poor people across the countryside. The core issue was widespread frustration and the demand for more from politics.

Historically, Chilean politics had alternated predictably between a center-left bloc (like former President Michelle Bachelet) and a center-right bloc (like former President Sebastián Piñera). Voters grew frustrated because they saw little difference between the two main blocs and felt that their votes led to “nothing happening”. This frustration triggered a kind of polarization, leading people to turn toward extreme political views.

On the left, this brought a “new kid on the block,” Gabriel Boric, a student leader during the upheaval who later became president. On the right, the more liberal center-right shrunk, while a more radical right-wing party, the Republican Party of current presidential candidate José Antonio Kast, gained strength. Geurts also highlights the emergence of even more radical figures, such as Johannes Kaiser, a libertarian who wants to slash the government and crack down on crime.

On the left, while the candidate Jeannette Jara is a communist, Geurts offers a nuanced view, explaining that her track record as a labor minister shows her to be quite moderate. She was highly effective at brokering deals with opposition parties to achieve significant policy goals, such as reducing the workweek from 45 to 40 hours and establishing a basic retirement schedule for poor people.

The 2025 election and mandatory voting

Khattar Singh notes that the 2025 presidential election, which ended its first round on November 16 and will culminate in a runoff on December 14, has fundamentally been shaped by the anger and dissatisfaction following the 2019 mass protests. Geurts explains that voters are “on the move,” seeking more radical options because they believe the center parties have failed to deliver change. Currently, electoral priorities are focused on the crime rate, immigration and unemployment, topics more strongly addressed by the right.

A major factor influencing the results was the introduction of mandatory voting, which was a consequence of the 2019 events. Previously, less than half the population voted, but with mandatory voting, the turnout nearly doubled. Geurts points out that the new voters are often those more alienated from politics, less interested in complex proposals and thus more likely to vote for “simple solutions”.

This environment fostered the rise of third-party candidates like Franco Parisi, a populist who tried to distinguish himself as “neither a communist nor a fascist”. Parisi proposed simple solutions, such as eliminating value-added tax on medicines and lowering politicians’ incomes, and used populist tactics like calling career politicians a “cast”.

Regarding the global perception that Chile has swung structurally to the right, Geurts warns Khattar Singh that news often simplifies complex situations. While the vote currently favors the right due to immediate priorities, Geurts argues that structurally, the center-left and center-right voters are usually balanced (around 50% each), and the vote shifts based on current priorities.

Contrasting visions for Chile’s future

The presidential runoff pits Kast against Jara, offering Chileans a complex choice. Geurts details their sharply contrasting political leanings:

— Jara represents the traditional left, emphasizing protection for the poor, investment in healthcare and education, increased taxes on the wealthy and subsidies for the disadvantaged.

— Kast represents the far right, advocating for a better environment for private enterprise, relaxing labor laws and lowering taxes for companies.

Their approaches also diverge significantly on the critical issues of crime and immigration. Jara proposes more technocratic solutions, such as establishing intelligence services to track the money to reduce crime, acknowledging that these measures take time to bear fruit. Her plans for migration aim to help migrants adapt to Chilean society.

In contrast, Kast proposes radical, immediate and “Trumpian” measures. He wants to significantly reduce migration, proposing 2,000 flights to remove illegal immigrants (who would pay for their own tickets), and suggesting excavating a ditch along the northern border, utilizing the military and police for enforcement. Geurts suggests that if the population seeks immediate, radical solutions, they might favor Kast.

Potential for political deadlock and regional trends

Khattar Singh expresses concern that even if Kast wins, he could face a political deadlock, as his party lacks a congressional majority. Geurts confirms this, noting that Kast and his allies (the center party of Piñera and Kaiser) would fall short of a majority in the House of Representatives and hold only half the seats in the Senate. Kast would need to build coalitions, possibly with Parisi’s party. Geurts views this need for cooperation as beneficial for democracy, noting that former President Boric also had to work with moderate opposition to get things done. However, this necessity prevents major structural changes, risking renewed voter frustration and a vicious cycle of political shifts.

Finally, the discussion turns to why such “drastic changes politically” are occurring across Latin America, citing examples like Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador. Geurts argues that domestic factors primarily drive these changes — voters reacting to crises in their own countries, such as Argentina’s deep economic crisis or Bolivia’s lack of dollars and fuel.

Regarding the increasing prominence of “Trump-like figures” in Latin America (such as President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador and President Javier Milei in Argentina), Geurts advises caution in using the caricature, noting that figures like Milei and US President Donald Trump differ significantly in power and economic policy. However, he notes that leaders like El Salvador’s Bukele have gained popularity by effectively addressing major problems, such as crime. Geurts concludes that a common frustration pervades reasonably wealthy and democratic Latin American societies: people do not feel progress, witness widespread corruption and see poverty reduction stall. This leads voters to seek radical solutions, sometimes from the populist left but increasingly from the populist right, particularly since many left-wing populists have “messed up with the economy”.

Khattar Singh ends the conversation by emphasizing that the mandatory voting requirement has significantly shaped the outcome and will determine Chile’s future.

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Geurts argues that Paz’s election signals the collapse of a political and economic model that has dominated Bolivia since 2006. But whether the new direction can endure remains an open question.

Rodrigo Paz wins in Bolivia

Geurts begins by describing the election as “definitely a turning point in Bolivia,” not merely a reaction to incumbents or fatigue with the MAS establishment. In his view, the key story is the end of the 21st-century socialist model associated with former Bolivian President Evo Morales and his party. For years, that model relied on centralized control, gas rents and heavy subsidies. As reserves dried up and the Central Bank was used as a political checkbook, the model became exhausted.

Paz’s election victory reflects the public’s desire for a new approach that reopens the country to private enterprise and global markets. The shift will also reshape foreign relations. Bolivia is expected to move away from its alignment with Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Now, experts believe it will seek stronger ties with neighbors like Argentina and Chile, as well as the United States to the north.

Paz’s victory, Geurts says, is like a “Cinderella story,” as he was a complete underdog who defied expectations and rose to great heights. In the first round, he trailed badly in the polls but ended up ahead of the field. In the runoff, he defeated former Bolivian President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, a political heavyweight, despite running on a much vaguer economic message. Paz presented himself as the less threatening option, a leader who promised change without the sharp edges of shock therapy.

Fixing Bolivia’s economy

Sworn into office on November 8, Paz has inherited an economy strained by inflation, shrinking gas output, fiscal deficits and a severely overvalued currency. Much of the crisis stems from years of underinvestment in the energy sector and an exchange-rate policy that encouraged imports while stifling private exports.

Paz offered few specifics during his campaign, but he may be forced to make tough choices as president. That includes seeking International Monetary Fund support — something Bolivian voters associate with austerity and foreign interference — and potentially floating the exchange rate. Paz has rejected the idea publicly, favoring a strategy of backtracking. Geurts insists that gradual adjustments do not “solve the issue of overvaluation.”

Despite these challenges, Paz is beginning his term with a sizable parliamentary advantage. His party and two allied pro-business parties together hold more than 80% of seats, giving him the votes needed for structural reform. These alliances are reinforced by personal and political ties: Quiroga has pledged cooperation, and Bolivian politician Samuel Doria Medina — whose party is the third-largest — has lent advisors and political capital to Paz.

Still, the president faces internal complications. His own party grew too quickly to be cohesive or experienced. His vice president, former Bolivian police officer Edmand Lara Montaño, is controversial for the radical way he expresses himself in public, such as stating it is his job to hold Paz accountable and denounce the president if he finds corruption. Implementing an economic overhaul will require discipline across a coalition that was not originally built for governing.

Polarization in Bolivia

Bolivia’s divides are longstanding: highlands versus lowlands, indigenous versus urban, MAS loyalists versus opponents. Roughly 70% of Bolivians now live in cities and are deeply embedded in the national economy. These voters urgently want dollars, fuel and stability; if Paz can deliver those basics, they will likely stay with him.

But the MAS base remains powerful. Morales, who is now breaking with his own party and forming a new movement, Evo Pueblo, still commands intense loyalty in the northern Chapare region. According to Geurts, his supporters there “really see him like a kind of a messiah.” Road blockages, marches toward the Bolivian political capital of La Paz and political agitation could quickly return. Managing Morales will likely be Paz’s primary challenge.

The state bureaucracy provides another hurdle. Key judicial and prosecutorial posts remain filled with MAS appointees. Paz will need to overhaul these institutions carefully to avoid accusations of politicization while still enabling effective governance.

The right-wing’s rise in Latin America

Zooming out, Geurts argues that Paz’s win is part of a broader regional cycle. From President Javier Milei in Argentina to President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador and conservative gains in Peru, much of Latin America is turning away from statist economic models and toward leaders promising discipline, security and markets.

Latin American neighbors see Bolivia’s shift as more evidence that the 21st-century socialist wave has crested. Even though left-wing governments in Colombia and Brazil remain in power, they no longer resemble the transformative projects once seen in Bolivia, Ecuador or Venezuela.

For now, Paz represents a break from Bolivia’s past. His leadership will test whether the region’s new right-leaning cycle can move beyond rhetoric and deliver results.

[ edited this piece.]

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51�Թ�’s Video Producer Rohan Khattar Singh speaks with Pablo Bejar, a country risk analyst with experience at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, about the stunning outcome of Bolivia’s recent presidential election. On October 19, the contest entered a runoff between Senator Rodrigo Paz Pereira and former Bolivian President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga — a social democrat from the Christian Democratic Party and a center-right technocrat, respectively — marking the first center-right face-off in roughly two decades.

For Bejar, this moment signals a profound shift in Bolivia’s political trajectory after years under the rule of the Movement Toward Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo, or MAS).

Bolivia demands change

Bejar describes the faceoff as “a unique opportunity,” underscoring the symbolic end of the MAS era. After 20 years of dominance, the socialist movement that rose with former Bolivian President Evo Morales and was governed under his successor now commands only around 8% of the vote across its affiliate parties. Opposition parties have seized control of parliament, and roughly nine in ten Bolivians have expressed a desire for “complete, radical change.”

This discontent was visible long before election day.  Shortages of diesel, gas, hard currency, and the highest inflation levels seen in almost 40 years left citizens exhausted by the economic crisis. Bejar argues that the MAS government rode a long-gone commodity boom and completely failed to sustain its gains. Once Bolivia’s gas fields declined and foreign reserves dwindled, the macroeconomic stability, democratic alternation of power and liberalizing reforms and investments of the 1990s and early 2000s — later harnessed but ultimately squandered by the Morales-Arce MAS governments from 2006 to 2025 — gave way to deep structural economic scars.

The youth vote

Nearly half of all ballots came from young voters who have known no political reality other than MAS rule. Their turnout reflected frustration rather than ideology: They wanted jobs, stability and honest governance. Bejar explains that many of these voters were hoping for change, and their votes tipped the balance against the establishment. The shortages of foreign exchange and basic goods — particularly diesel and gasoline — as well as inflationary pressures, convinced much of the population that the system itself had failed.

Khattar Singh observes that this generational shift carries regional echoes. Latin America’s youth, from Buenos Aires in Argentina to Quito in Ecuador, have grown up skeptical of populist promises. Bejar adds that this sentiment could reshape the continent’s political balance as younger generations favor pragmatic competence over charisma.

Paz vs. Quiroga

Paz and Quiroga offered distinct yet overlapping visions. Paz, the son of former Bolivian President Paz Zamora, served as a mayor and senator but has never led the national government. Bejar says Bolivians consider him “more of a social democrat,” emphasizing his anti-corruption platform. His popular vice-presidential running mate, Edmand Lara Montaño, is a former policeman whose appeal lies with lower-income, less educated and former MAS voters. Quiroga, by contrast, is a veteran figure: He briefly served as president after the death of Bolivian President Hugo Banzer in 2001 and represents the country’s traditional technocratic bloc.

Paz’s campaign was unprepared for its own success. It lacked a full slate of congressional candidates and has now recruited new members — some of them former MAS politicians. A further complication lay in internal divisions: Paz and his running mate appear to hold disparate views on policy, particularly over subsidies and fiscal discipline. Quiroga, Bejar suggests, exploited these contradictions, but it was not enough.

Quiroga’s preliminary advantage

Quiroga’s greatest strength was his experience. With over three decades in politics, he offered voters a sense of stability that contrasted with Paz’s untested optimism. His long association with the pre-MAS era of the 90s could have alienated rural voters, but Bejar argues that his administrative credibility might’ve won over those who prioritize competence over novelty. Moreover, the cordial relationship between the two candidates, rooted in Quiroga’s past service as finance minister under Paz’s father, lent the race an air of civility unusual in Bolivian politics.

The runoff was unpredictable. Bejar believes the outcome hinged on which candidate could better convince voters that he represented real, sustainable change rather than a recycled elite. And in the end, that was Paz — he the runoff with 54.5% of the vote against Quiroga’s 45.5%, confirming that Bolivia’s electorate favored renewal over experience.

Libertarianism on the rise

Khattar Singh closes the discussion by situating Bolivia’s vote within a continental pattern. Across Latin America, libertarian, right-leaning and more pragmatic candidates have recently triumphed in Argentina, Ecuador and El Salvador, respectively, and with a high likelihood of change from the left in the upcoming presidential elections in Chile and Colombia next year. Bejar sees these results as evidence of a broader ideological turn. The victory of Argentinian President Javier Milei — a libertarian — was a major boost to advocates of free markets and lower state interventionism, and a warning to leftist governments across the region and the world. Populations frustrated with high levels of bureaucracy and corruption, and coupled with severe economic mismanagement, are gravitating toward smaller governments, fiscal restraint and lower taxes.

Whether Bolivia’s own rightward movement will produce renewal or relapse remains to be seen. For now, the electorate has spoken clearly: After two decades of one-party leftist rule, Bolivians are ready to follow a different path.

[ edited this piece.]

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A president falls yet again

Boluarte’s removal marks yet another moment in Peru’s unending cycle of political collapse. Since 2016, the country has cycled through six presidents: Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (July 2016–March 2018), Martín Vizcarra (March 2018–November 2020), Manuel Merino (November 2020), Francisco Sagasti (November 2020–July 2021) and Boluarte (December 2022–October 2025). Each fell to scandal, impeachment or resignation. Boluarte’s downfall followed mounting corruption allegations and her failure to build a functioning coalition in Congress. Her administration, he argues, became defined by paralysis. She lost both legitimacy and leverage as street protests intensified and opposition lawmakers united against her.

The impeachment vote passed overwhelmingly after revelations that Boluarte allegedly accepted undeclared gifts from major business groups. Yet, as Geurts points out, corruption charges in Peru often mask deeper structural tensions. Successive governments have governed on razor-thin mandates, and Congress, which is fragmented among dozens of small parties, wields disproportionate power to unseat presidents. The result is a system built to fail, where institutional weakness becomes a political weapon.

Enter Jerí

Into this vacuum steps Jerí, a relatively unknown centrist congressman who built his career on anti-corruption rhetoric and pragmatic dealmaking. Khattar Singh presses Geurts on whether Jerí’s rise reflects genuine reformist momentum or another tactical reshuffling among elites. Geerts answers that Jerí’s appeal lies in his neutrality. He is neither the street nor the establishment. That ambiguity, Geurts suggests, helped him gain temporary support from both weary voters and opportunistic lawmakers.

Still, Peruvians remain deeply skeptical. Jerí has inherited a nation exhausted by political drama, economic stagnation and protests that have repeatedly paralyzed mining regions — vital to the country’s export economy. Geurts notes that Jerí’s first challenge will be survival itself. Peru’s presidency has become a poisoned chalice, its occupants crushed between an ungovernable Congress and a furious populace demanding change.

A crisis of governance, not just of leaders

Khattar Singh steers the conversation toward institutional decay. Why, he asks, has Peru been unable to produce stable governments despite holding regular elections? Geurts points to a long erosion of party systems dating back to the 1990s, when President Alberto Kenya Fujimori Inomoto dismantled traditional political structures. Since then, Peruvians have voted for personalities rather than parties, giving rise to fragmented parliaments and weak mandates.

Geurts argues that what looks like political instability is really a chronic failure of governance. Presidents lack disciplined coalitions to pass reforms, while Congress thrives on obstruction and short-term dealmaking. Each new administration promises to root out corruption, only to become ensnared in the same web of patronage and impunity. Public trust, already fragile, collapses further with each impeachment. The recurring turmoil, he says, is about the broken state.

Geopolitical ripples

Peru’s domestic turmoil has also attracted the attention of outside powers. The United States views Peru as a key ally in regional stability and mining supply chains, while China remains the largest investor in the country’s infrastructure and mineral sectors. Geurts observes that every leadership crisis in the Peruvian capital of Lima raises questions about where future contracts and loyalties will fall. Washington and Beijing, he points out, compete quietly through loans, trade and diplomatic pressure rather than open confrontation.

Neighboring countries, too, are watching closely. Bolivia, Chile and Brazil all depend on stable cross-border supply networks. Each time Peru’s government collapses, investors grow nervous and capital flees. Khattar Singh notes that this volatility weakens the credibility of democratic governance across the region, reinforcing cynicism about whether elections can deliver real progress.

Can Jerí break the cycle?

As the conversation turns to the future, Khattar Singh and Geurts agree that Jerí faces an impossible balancing act. The new president must rebuild credibility with the public while negotiating with the same Congress that deposed his predecessor. Geurts doubts that any president can govern effectively without systemic reform — reducing Congress’s unchecked power, strengthening political parties and overhauling campaign finance laws. Yet he concedes that even small gestures toward transparency could buy Jerí time.

The interview closes on a sober note. Peru’s turmoil is not the product of one corrupt leader but of decades of institutional erosion. Whether Jerí endures or falls, stability will remain elusive until Peru rebuilds the foundations of democratic trust.

[ edited this piece.]

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We will arrive at COP30 in Belém in Pará, Brazil, this November, with the planetary budget for greenhouse gas emissions rapidly reaching its limit in less than five years. We are rapidly the 2°C limit — a “very uncomfortable” scenario for human life and the survival of countless species. Tipping points are just around the corner, and adaptation, once secondary, has risen to the “A-side” of the climate crisis.

The cost of inaction and the urgency of adaptation

In 30 years of exhaustive COPs, nations have failed to do their mitigation homework. Now, climate adaptation needs to be addressed first, and this is happening in a context of renewed climate denialism, in favor of an economy still dependent on fossil fuels. The costs of neglecting mitigation, transition and adaptation have escalated dramatically.

In 2008, the renowned Stern Report estimated the need for just over $500 billion annually for mitigation and a few billion for adaptation. Almost 17 years later, the costs exceed $9 trillion per year, with $5.4 trillion for mitigation, $3.4 trillion for climate transition and “only” $300 billion for adaptation — a figure that, according to experts, will be $1.35 trillion annually by 2035.

We missed a historic opportunity to pay a “payable bill” 15 years ago. Today, climate costs, especially for adaptation, fall on governments. Who will invest in renovations and construction to accommodate billions of people in scorching temperatures? Who will pay for coastal fortifications against rising sea levels? Who will bear the exponentially increasing damage from “climate disasters”? How can we invest in infrastructure without a financial return?

The introduction of the Green Climate Fund () and other funds is commendable, but they fall far short of what is needed. If the oil industry, with its net worth of over $100 trillion in reserves, had contributed significantly in 2008, the drama of climate finance would be much less. We would be at COP30 celebrating a world below 1.5°C.

Brazil and COP30: a decisive moment

COP30 in Brazil emerges as a crucial turning point. Adaptation takes center stage in climate negotiations. Those who understand and work toward this idea will adapt more easily to the world that awaits us. We need to understand the interest-bearing nature of governments and appropriate the best knowledge from the risk industry and multilateral funds.

Capitalism, especially neoliberal capitalism, demands returns, even if they are patient and combined with philanthropy. The basic assumption is always profitability. So who will invest in retaining walls, rebuilding public roads and repairing flood damage? Governments. But financial markets demand austerity, and public debts, such as Brazil’s, already commit a large part of budgets to honoring financial commitments. 

We have a paradox: governments need to allocate more resources to adaptation, but their debts and climate costs continue to grow. There is no money today, much less tomorrow, for climate adaptation needs.

Given the scarcity of resources, climate financing must be structured with a view to risk avoidance, prioritizing costly and scarce public and private efforts over remediation in the future. Investments in prevention and the construction of resilient structures are much cheaper than paying the bill after the damage has been done. Insurance experts that prevention today costs five times less than repair. This ratio may soon be 15 times more expensive, given the exponential increase in climate events.

Modeling future scenarios can no longer be based solely on the past. The climate events ahead are unknown. Climate science has competently predicted a 1.5°C increase as a viable ceiling for a decent life, but it also warns that increases above 3°C will not allow human life on Earth, except perhaps for a billionaire elite.

The challenges of climate finance have become the main item in the negotiations. The viability of our life on the planet requires a commitment to remain between 1.5°C and 2°C at most. The deadline for this is eight years or less. If denialist governments and industries continue to generate high emissions and invest minimally in sustainable solutions, we will see an increase in inequality and unpredictable impacts on the living conditions of the majority.

In another fifteen years, we will have a world that is financially rich in the hands of a few, but poor in biodiversity, with nature and ecosystems devastated, under indebted governments incapable of caring for their people. This is not the climate adaptation scenario I hope for our home, Planet Earth.

I still believe that global rentier capital can understand that adaptation is for everyone. An environmentally and socially possible world is challenged in its resilience by every tenth of a degree increase in temperature. Adaptation must come first and foremost as a chance for future generations to live a possible life here on Earth.

The paths are still possible. They involve understanding the need to make investments now and forever, with less profitability and an unconditional love for the lives of all planetary beings. There can only be one side of life for everyone on Earth. It is “Side A” of climate adaptation.

[ edited this piece.]

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From aristocrat to activist

Vivas was stunned to learn Machado had won the Nobel Peace Prize. The award recognizes her as the leading figure in Venezuela’s long fight for democracy and freedom. For over 20 years, she has challenged authoritarian power — first under Venezuelan President Hugo ���á�����, then under Maduro — in a country that, in Vivas’s words, has spent the past decade under “a very crude dictatorship.”

Born into privilege, Machado turned toward public service early in life. Under ���á�����’s rule, the government expropriated her father’s metalworking empire. Her mother, a national tennis champion, inspired her commitment to social causes. Machado founded nonprofits for abandoned children and later established Súmate, a group promoting electoral transparency. When she ran for Congress, she won the highest vote share in the nation, solidifying her reputation as one of the government’s most forceful critics.

A new hope and a dangerous victory

By 2023, her image began to shift from right-wing hardliner to unifying reformer. In opposition primaries that year, she captured an overwhelming 92% of the vote, igniting a sense of hope Venezuela had not felt since ���á�����’s early years. Her campaign promise — to bring home the nearly nine million Venezuelans living abroad — resonated deeply across the country.

Though barred from running in the general election, Machado helped rally support for veteran diplomat Edmundo �ҴDzԳ�á�����, who won roughly 70% of the vote in a contest the Maduro government refused to recognize. �ҴDzԳ�á����� fled to Spain after �Ѳ���ܰ���’s administration jailed his son-in-law. Machado went underground, continuing to coordinate the opposition from hiding.

The Nobel effect

Machado’s Nobel Prize thrust her into the global spotlight and, paradoxically, offered her a measure of safety. Vivas believes the award shields her from arrest, since targeting her now would deepen �Ѳ���ܰ���’s diplomatic isolation. More importantly, it restores legitimacy to a fractured opposition, transforming what was once a two-sided standoff between Washington and the Venezuelan capital of Caracas into a three-way dynamic that includes the Venezuelan democratic movement itself.

Across Venezuela, the news of the award felt, Vivas says, like “fresh air.” It revived hope and renewed attention from abroad. While Maduro dismissed the Nobel Prize as a political ploy, international solidarity grew: Spanish and American musicians wrote songs in her honor, and democratic activists across Latin America rallied to her cause.

Critics, allies and the Trump connection

Machado’s critics accuse her of being too close to the United States, citing her ties with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and her viral conversation with Donald Trump Jr. about privatizing Venezuela’s oil sector. Vivas rejects these charges, noting that US policy toward Venezuela has long been bipartisan. Both parties, he argues, see the country’s crisis through the lens of democracy and human rights rather than partisan interest.

He also insists that her call for privatization is not ideological but practical. Venezuela’s once-mighty oil industry — which produced more than three million barrels per day before collapsing under corruption and debt — cannot recover without private investment. Rebuilding, he says, requires rational policy, not political purity.

Critics condemn Machado for her open support of Israel, even during the ongoing Gaza conflict. Vivas reminds listeners that Venezuela historically maintained close ties with Israel and that Machado has not endorsed any particular military action.

After winning the Nobel Prize, Machado phoned US President Donald Trump to dedicate the award to both the Venezuelan people and to him. Vivas interprets the gesture as a calculated act meant to secure continued US backing. In his view, Venezuela’s democratic transition won’t happen without US support.

What’s next for Venezuela?

The Nobel Prize has rekindled international interest in Venezuela’s fate. With �ҴDzԳ�á����� in exile and Machado in hiding, the opposition now operates through dispersed networks and quiet acts of defiance — from university campaigns to movements demanding the release of political prisoners.

Vivas argues that lasting change depends on two forces working together: readiness inside the country and sustained external pressure from democratic allies. The challenge, he warns, is to keep the movement alive under relentless repression.

Khattar Singh concludes that this is no ordinary peace prize. It has turned a persecuted dissident into a global symbol and returned Venezuela’s struggle for freedom to the world’s attention.

[ edited this piece.]

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US–Venezuela tensions

Relations between Washington and the Venezuelan capital of Caracas have been tense for decades. The conflict deepened after the rise of former Venezuelan President Hugo ���á����� and deteriorated further under Maduro. As Vivas explains, the early Trump administration pursued a “maximum pressure” campaign designed to remove Maduro from power. Yet over time, that posture shifted. The administration’s rhetoric now emphasizes national security over regime change — a pivot that reflects both declining enthusiasm within the Republican Party and an attempt to frame the Venezuelan issue for a domestic audience.

The new narrative links Venezuela to terrorism and narcotrafficking, particularly through the “cartel of the suns,” a network of military and political insiders accused of running drug operations from within the state. These allegations justified a naval deployment to the Caribbean involving warships, stealth jets in Puerto Rico, and a nuclear submarine. While Pentagon statements warned that any aggression from �Ѳ���ܰ���’s forces would be met in kind, Vivas stresses that a full invasion is “totally out of the picture.” Venezuela, he notes, is far too large, and such a move would dwarf the 1989 Panama invasion that required 25,000 troops.

Cartels or oil?

Khattar Singh asks whether the focus on cartels conceals a more traditional motivation: access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. Vivas rejects the theory outright, pointing out that the industry is in “pretty bad shape.” Production has collapsed from over three million barrels per day to roughly half that figure, and much of Venezuela’s heavy crude requires expensive refining technology that few facilities possess.

Vivas concludes that oil can no longer drive US policy. Instead, he suspects the security narrative helps Washington sell its approach internally. Behind the public rhetoric may lie other objectives — pressuring Caracas to cooperate on deportations or creating leverage to push Maduro toward negotiations.

Who supports Maduro

�Ѳ���ܰ���’s survival has baffled outside observers. Vivas explains that the regime functions as a coalition of vested interests, centered on the military. With Cuban assistance, the armed forces were restructured to make coups nearly impossible. Security agencies monitor officers and politicians alike, ensuring loyalty through surveillance and lucrative side deals.

As oil wealth declined, illicit economies replaced ideology as the main source of cohesion. Drug trafficking, gold smuggling and corruption now underpin the system. Vivas recounts a case near the Colombian border where a landowner was jailed after refusing to sell land coveted for drug operations, highlighting how criminal networks and state actors intertwine. Colombian insurgents such as the National Liberation Army also operate freely inside Venezuela, sustaining this hybrid order.

Maduro, Vivas says, serves as the cement holding it all together. His fall would shatter the current structure. While democracy’s return would face immense obstacles — the regime dominates the courts, media and oil sector — Vivas doubts that the coalition could survive without its central figure.

What Venezuelans feel

Khattar Singh turns the conversation to public sentiment. Vivas believes most Venezuelans have lost faith in elections after the July 28 contest, when the opposition’s clear victory was nullified by the government. For many, it proved that ballots alone cannot end authoritarian rule.

The despair extends to the diaspora. Around 800,000 Venezuelans live in the US under temporary protection, asylum or refugee status. Many risk deportation yet cannot return to a country suffering hyperinflation, chronic power outages and institutional decay. Vivas suggests that, despite their disillusionment, many quietly welcome American pressure as a potential catalyst for change.

Gen Z in Venezuela

Asked about the younger generation, Vivas compares Venezuela to Nepal, where youth movements recently drove political reform. He argues that Venezuelans have not surrendered completely. The country’s 40 years of 20th-century democracy left a collective memory of freedom that resists authoritarian normalization. Nonetheless, frustration is intense. Young people, seeing few prospects at home, increasingly choose emigration over activism.

�Ѳ���ܰ���’s allies

Internationally, Maduro stands more isolated than ever. “Nobody wants to take […] a selfie with Maduro,” Vivas jokes. His only dependable allies remain Cuba and Nicaragua, while former regional partners now keep their distance. The regime further alienated neighbors by reviving claims to annex the Essequibo region between Venezuela and Guyana, provoking Brazil to deploy troops along its northern border. Even Cuba, despite its alliance, has sided with Guyana on this dispute.

For Vivas, this combination of diplomatic isolation, economic collapse and creeping military pressure leaves Maduro in his weakest position yet. Still, he cautions, the Venezuelan regime has repeatedly shown a remarkable capacity to adapt — and its end, however near it may seem, is far from guaranteed.

[ edited this piece.]

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Following his speech, he a gathering of pro-Palestinian protesters and journalists outside the UN building using a megaphone, where he urged US soldiers to disobey President Donald Trump’s orders. His exact words were:

The people united will never be defeated. We are going to present a resolution ordering the United Nations to form an army to save the world, whose first task will be to liberate Palestine. From here, from New York, I ask all soldiers in the US Army not to point their guns at humanity. Disobey Trump’s orders, obey the orders of humanity.

Washington responds: visa revocation and diplomatic fallout

In response, the US State Department announced on that it was Petro’s visa due to his “reckless and incendiary actions.” This is the second time a Colombian president has had his visa revoked by the US. The first was during former US President Bill Clinton’s first term in 1996, due to his alleged connection to the Cali drug cartel and Colombia’s refusal to extradite drug traffickers. In August 2025, Arturo Arias, the ex-president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, that the US had canceled his visa after he voiced his criticism of Trump on the internet.��

Petro’s visa cancellation appears to have added him to the list of current or former presidents banned from entering the US. This list also includes Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, who was unable to attend the UN assembly for this .

A fractured relationship: Colombia and the United States through history

The revocation of Petro’s visa is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the United States’ decades-long challenging relationship with Colombia, a pivotal nation in the South American political landscape. This relationship is typically portrayed by endeavors to combat drug trafficking, the contradictory romanticization of figures like Pablo Escobar by popular culture — as depicted in the Netflix series Narcos — and the cloaking of the shared history of North and South American decolonial struggles for independence and the contributions of figures like Gabriel García Márquez (the Colombian Nobel Prize winner in literature in 1982 and author of One Hundred Years of Solitude [1967]).

More specifically, setting aside magical realism, the relationship between Petro and Trump has been brief yet intense, and it has been defined by a series of mutual accusations that began in January of this year. 

Petro initially rejected two planes carrying Colombian deportees, arguing that they were not receiving dignified treatment. However, the two countries later reached an amid threats of tariffs.

Petro’s rhetoric of resistance and the echo of Bolívar

Petro chose to address the US president directly. In this missive, which begins with a confessional tone, he writes:

Trump, I don’t really like traveling to the US. It’s boring, but I must admit that there are some good things about it … I don’t like your oil, Trump. You’re going to destroy the human race because of your greed. Maybe someday, over a glass of whiskey, which I accept despite my gastritis, we can talk frankly about this. But it’s difficult because you consider me inferior, and I’m not, nor is any Colombian.

In his lengthy letter, Petro suggests taking a historical journey and recalls the against Chilean President Salvador Allende, which elevated Augusto Pinochet to power. He appears to be defending Colombia’s global standing, highlighting aspects such as “Colombia is the heart of the world, and you misunderstood that. This is the land of yellow butterflies, the land of Remedios’ beauty,” drawing a literary parallel to one of the most stunning scenes in One Hundred Years of Solitude.��

Among other references to the past struggles of the US civil rights movement, Petro contradicts his willingness to share a whiskey with Trump when he adds, “I do not shake hands with white slave owners. I shake hands with white libertarians, the heirs of Lincoln, and black and white peasant boys of the United States.”

In this X message, Petro uses the plural form of “Americas,” making it clear that Colombia will no longer look northward. He also mentions Venezuelan statesman and military officer Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), the hero of South American independence — also known as El Libertador, “the liberator” — highlighting the shared, collective and plurinational history of the Americas, which he believes Trump does not represent. 

He draws attention to Trump’s immigrant past and lack of Native American ancestry, referring to him as an “immigrant” as well: “I raise a flag and, as Gaitán said, even if I am alone, it will continue to fly with Latin American dignity, which is the dignity of America, which your great-grandfather did not know, but mine did, Mr. President, immigrant in the United States.”

Although several months had passed and the scenario was different, Petro maintained the core sentiment of his aforementioned X epistle when he addressed the UN General Assembly. was equally assertive and combative.

Climate, conflict and calls for a new world order

He addressed made by the US government one week prior to the assembly, in which they claimed that neither Venezuela nor Colombia was cooperating in the fight against drug trafficking.��

These statements were made amid the involving the US troops’ launch of a missile at a small boat in Caribbean waters in early September. The US alleged that the ship was trafficking drugs. Standing before the UN, Petro that an investigation was underway to determine if Colombian civilians were aboard the boat. He stressed the importance of initiating due process against the US officials who ordered the missile strike.��

From the podium, Petro provocatively proposed that “Drug traffickers live elsewhere. They live in New York, a few blocks away, and in Miami. They make deals with the DEA. They live in luxury, not poverty. Not in the Caribbean or Gaza.”

The Colombian President also devoted much of his speech to discussing the climate crisis and clean energies, such as green hydrogen and decarbonization. He praised the “enormous absorbent sponge of the Amazon rainforest”. He also accused the “most powerful government in the world” of not believing in science: “That is called irrationalism, and it was that same irrationalism that filled Hitler’s Germany.”

When it was his turn, Trump devoted a significant portion of to the UNGA to criticizing renewable energy and rejecting the scientific consensus on climate change. He claimed that clean energy sources, such as solar and wind power, are less effective and more expensive than fossil fuel alternatives.

Speaking from the UN podium, Petro adopted the tone of the Latin American independence heroes he mentioned in his January letter when he proposed the creation of a UN armed force. He made statements such as, “There is no superior race, gentlemen. There are no chosen people of God. Neither the United States nor Israel are chosen by God. Ignorant fundamentalists of the extreme right think that way. The chosen people of God are all of humanity.”

After this, he added that diplomacy had run its course and urged the UN to establish an armed force to protect the lives of Palestinians: “Words are no longer enough. It is time for Bolívar’s sword of liberty or death because they are not only going to bomb Gaza and the Caribbean, they already are, they are attacking humanity, which cries out for freedom.”

From Bolívar’s dream to a divided continent

In addition to his defiant tone toward Trump and his call for the US military to rebel against him, Petro’s recent public statements are notable for their repeated mention of Bolívar. During his visit to New York, he granted an to the BBC News World based in Manhattan. The words chosen for the headline of the interview’s video were “Trump has failed to understand that Bolívar’s children are not subordinates.”

Bolívar, the “Liberator of America,” fought against the Spanish crown for 20 years to achieve independence for Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. Born in Caracas to a family of Creole nobility, Bolívar received a European education. He then brought what he had learned about liberation in France to the other side of the ocean.��

In August 1819, Bolívar crossed the Andes mountain range and defeated Spanish troops in the , achieving independence for the region of New Granada, now Colombia. Interestingly, in 1691, Palenque, located in present-day Colombia, was the first colonial settlement to African slaves, who became the first officially freed black slaves anywhere in the Americas.

One of Bolívar’s greatest hopes was a grand confederation of all the former Spanish colonies in America, inspired by the United States’ model. To this end, in 1826, he convened the to organize a confederation of American nations that would support and cooperate with each other for the common good. However, as we know, he did not achieve his goal.��

Nowadays, the differences among countries in the region continue. In the current state of affairs, Trump is favored by Ecuadorian President and Argentine President ,who distance themselves from other regional leaders, such as Chilean President and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who oppose US interventionism.��

Domestic backlash and regional uncertainty

2026 will be a pivotal year for South American politics, with upcoming presidential elections in countries such as Peru, Brazil and Colombia. A map that has always been of strategic imperial interest to the United States, as evidenced by its long history of interventions in regime changes. According to the , “In the slightly less than a hundred years from 1898 to 1994, the US government has intervened successfully to change governments in Latin America a total of at least 41 times.”

Since the late 20th century, the international relations between Colombia and the United States have been marked by bilateral efforts against drug trafficking, such as the , signed in 1999 between the administrations of Colombian President Andrés Pastrana Arango and Clinton, who signed it into US law as an approval of an aid package to both keep drugs outside the US shores and “help Colombia promote peace and prosperity and deepen its democracy.”

A fundamental aspect of the Plan Colombia was indeed supporting of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country’s largest insurgent group, founded in the 1960s, and the National Liberation Army (ELN), both designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the US State Department.��

Álvaro Uribe, elected Colombian president in 2010, began formal peace talks with the FARC in 2012. It �ɲ�����’t until US President and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos’s terms that the peace process actually reached its culmination in Colombia, after only four rounds of negotiations, and with the governments of Chile, Cuba, Norway and Venezuela as hosts, mediators and observers.��

The peace agreement called for the guerrillas to hand over their weapons to a UN commission. It also contemplated that international aid, especially from the United States, would be needed to invest in neglected rural areas and create economic alternatives to drug trafficking.

Unlike the FARC, remains active, particularly along the Colombia-Venezuela border. During his presidency, Petro has pursued the idea of achieving “” by disarming the ELN. However, negotiations in July after the ELN attacked civilians in the Catatumbo border region.��

Due to its involvement in , peasant agriculture and the centuries-long indigenous struggle for land sovereignty, it seems that the ELN continues to hold significant .

Returning to Petro’s controversial visit to New York, during the BBC News World interview, journalist Tom Bateman asked Petro, “Are you concerned that taking this approach of resisting the US administration risks further isolating your country?” Petro responded that he believes it is President Trump who is isolating himself from the world regarding his position on the Palestinian genocide. 

However, a quick review of mainstream Colombian media shows the opposite: the president is facing fierce opposition in his own country. Journalist Daniel Coronell that Petro is “building his pedestal as a martyr” and “dragging Colombia down with him.” 

Former Foreign Minister Juan Carlos Pinzón the Colombian media outlet Semana, “This country does not need clowns.” Pinzón, who is presenting himself as a potential presidential candidate and former ambassador to the United States, also said, “We will resolve the issue with Israel immediately.” The newspaper ran the headline, “Petro without a visa but with a megaphone.”

Francia Márquez, the current Vice President and representative of the Afro-Colombian community, is a prominent figure on the left in Colombia. However, in recent months, her relationship with Petro has been filled with , despite their cordial appearance together at the UN. Adding to the political tension, Manuel Uribe, a future Colombian presidential candidate, was shot and earlier this year. US Secretary Marco Rubio Petro’s inflammatory rhetoric for the assassination.��

Colombia clearly has its own internal and historical struggles to tackle. Only time will tell how Petro’s continued antagonism toward the United States will affect the Colombian general elections next year and how the region’s new leaders in 2026 will align with or oppose the United States’ imperialistic endeavors.

[ edited this piece.]

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While Central American countries rely on remittances to boost their economies and keep families afloat, this dependency undermines future economic development and comes with a devastating human toll. 

The importance of remittances and why they’re here to stay 

In recent years, the importance and quantity of remittances sent to Central America have continued to increase. In, remittances sent to Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras accounted for $45 billion, making up 23% of the region’s total GDP.

Remittances fill the gap of inadequate government-provided welfare and employment programs capable of providing sustainable wages. Remittances also what local wages cannot, and are used to afford basic necessities, including food, rent, medicine and school supplies. With an insufficient amount of work and low wages available in Central American countries, people are often forced to leave for places where they can make over   the amount they would at home to better provide for their families.��

The human cost of emigration 

The decision to leave home in search of work doesn’t only come with the cost of leaving everything one knows behind, but also puts one’s life in . The most common route migrants choose to take while searching for suitable wages is north through Central America, to Mexico, and across the US-Mexico border.��

Three major natural obstacles: the jungle, desert and rivers all contribute to casualties for migrants in unfamiliar environments due to starvation, heat exhaustion and dehydration. Crossing through cartel-dominated areas in Mexico is extremely perilous, and migrants face the constant threat of being abducted, beaten or killed. In total, migrants from Central American countries accounted for almost 500 migrant deaths or disappearances in .

On top of the human cost that often comes with making the journey, many families suffer from the burdens of migration back home. Women often have to work harder to raise their children when their male family members leave. Families become separated and lose contact due to deportations, and children are sometimes left to fend for themselves.��

Many families gather all they have to pay Coyotes to assist in their journey across the border, which can be an insurmountable financial burden for some. Despite all the trouble and danger migration threatens, families take the risk out of necessity. 

A never-ending cycle of dependency 

The more countries continue to on remittances, the fewer resources and incentives they have to reform their economy. Qualified laborers, such as engineers, nurses and teachers, are especially likely to leave because of the lack of job opportunities and the opportunity to multiply their wages abroad. This movement of skilled labor creates a “” that weakens the domestic labor force.��

Although the current extent of the economic damage caused by the absence of skilled labor in Central American countries is unclear, the long-term effects of declining skilled labor bode ominously for these countries’ future economies. 

Young people are more likely to leave, cutting into the next generation of workers needed to grow a weak economy. Brain drain itself can be more harmful than the economic benefits of remittances, leaving little potential for growth in affected countries. 

The cycle of remittance dependency begins when an insufficient number of quality jobs encourages people to leave to support their families. This emigration hinders the absorption of skilled young workers into local labor markets. This labor vacuum discourages investment in new jobs and opportunities, prohibiting sustainable work and further encouraging families to seek international support. The lack of jobs makes emigration all the more necessary, continuing the cycle and intensifying an economy’s reliance on remittances.

Furthermore, caused by remittance-dependent economies can drive up local prices for people left behind without foreign support. People who can’t afford the cost or the sacrifice of migrating are affected by these inflated prices, which cause local wages to become even less valuable. This vicious cycle plagues Central America, making a sustainable shift away from dependency on remittances an increasingly difficult goal to accomplish.��

The US’s role

The United States plays a key part. As the most popular destination for Central American migrants, US  immigration enforcement policies have a large impact on remittance patterns. Remittances from Central Americans grew in as a result of harsher deportation threats, causing migrants to send more money back home.��

Additionally, proposals to tax remittances in the United States could weaken vulnerable economies and harm families in Central America. The US’s proposed on remittances, effective January 1, 2026, would cost Guatemala $200 million. While such a small levy on paper, it will drastically affect families who will have less support than they need to live on.

The movement towards increased enforcement and taxation of remittances would disproportionately harm the most vulnerable and likely fuel even more migration. The United States’ most effective option for mitigating immigration is to invest in the growth of local infrastructure and job markets, thereby decreasing the need to migrate from countries in the first place. As long as local economies remain unstable, people will be forced to leave to support their loved ones back home, despite any attempts to close off borders. 

Looking ahead

Generally, people don’t want to leave home. They are forced to do so out of financial necessity. People who commit to leaving everything behind to embark on a costly and dangerous journey often don’t feel they have any other choice. 

This situation in Central American countries leaves their economies unsustainable and incapable of supporting themselves without remittances. The dependency on emigration benefits no one, and to shift away from it, significant investment in domestic infrastructure is imperative to create lasting jobs.

[ edited this piece.]

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These phenomena are consistent with Minsky’s financial fragility , which emphasizes how cycles of excessive risk-taking and leverage generate recurrent financial instability. The comparative perspective underscores that recurring sovereign crises are rarely random; rather, they reflect the interaction of structural vulnerabilities, policy missteps and endogenous financial dynamics — crisis cycles driven by forces within the economy itself rather than external shocks.

The serial defaulter

A serial defaulter is a sovereign borrower, typically a country, that has a history of repeatedly failing to meet its debt payment obligations in a timely manner, often experiencing multiple default spells over time. Few countries illustrate this term better than Argentina. Since gaining in 1816, the nation has defaulted on its sovereign debt , most recently in 2020. Each episode follows a familiar rhythm: optimism and capital inflows during commodity booms, excessive borrowing to finance fiscal expansion and an eventual collapse as global conditions tighten or domestic credibility erodes.

The 2001–2002 economic and financial , among the most dramatic in modern financial history, saw GDP contract by over 10%, unemployment surge to 25% and poverty rates exceed 50%. Two decades later, Argentina once again unsustainable debt and inflation surpassing 95%. These recurrent crises are not mere cyclical misfortune — they reflect systemic failures embedded in institutional and financial structures.

At the core lies fiscal dominance, the subordination of monetary policy to government financing needs. Argentina’s Treasury has historically relied on central bank credit to cover persistent primary deficits, undermining central bank credibility, fueling inflation expectations and discouraging demand for Argentine peso-denominated assets.

compounds the problem. Distrust of the domestic currency leads Argentines to save and price assets in US dollars, limiting monetary policy effectiveness and creating balance-sheet mismatches — when debts are in one currency and assets in another. When the peso depreciates, dollar-denominated liabilities surge, amplifying crisis dynamics.

These vulnerabilities are reinforced by institutional fragility — weak fiscal rules, politicized policymaking and unpredictable regulatory frameworks. In such an environment, even carefully designed reforms struggle to gain traction.

The 2001 crisis and its aftershocks

The 1990s opened with cautious optimism. Under the of 1991, Argentina pegged the peso one-to-one to the US dollar to end hyperinflation and restore credibility. At first, this plan yielded striking results: Inflation collapsed, capital inflows surged and investor confidence returned. Yet the system rested on fragile foundations — continuous external financing and strict fiscal discipline — that proved impossible to sustain.

Global shocks soon exposed these weaknesses. The Russian and Brazilian crises of the late 1990s Argentina’s export competitiveness and triggered capital flight. Growth stalled, debt dynamics turned explosive and International Monetary Fund (IMF) support proved insufficient to bridge the widening gap between fixed exchange rates and fiscal laxity. In December 2001, Argentina defaulted on in sovereign debt; this was the then-largest default in history. The collapse left enduring scars on public trust in both domestic institutions and the international financial system.

After abandoning the currency board — a system that fixes the domestic currency’s value to another — in 2002, Argentina’s economy rebounded sharply. A global commodity boom and a newly competitive exchange rate fueled growth averaging between 2003 and 2008. The administrations of Presidents Néstor and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner pursued expansionary fiscal policies focused on redistribution and domestic demand.

But the recovery masked familiar vulnerabilities. Public spending and subsidies soared, inflation data became increasingly opaque and the central bank once again financed fiscal deficits. Capital controls distorted investment incentives, and by the mid-2010s, inflation expectations were entrenched while foreign reserves dwindled. The foundations of macroeconomic instability had quietly reemerged.

When President Mauricio Macri took office in 2015, he pledged to restore credibility through liberalization and fiscal reform. Early market enthusiasm was palpable: by 2017, Argentina had issued a , symbolizing renewed investor confidence. Yet fiscal consolidation, or the reduction of government deficits and debt accumulation, lagged. Inflation remained stubbornly high and rising external debt deepened the country’s exposure to global volatility.

By 2018, sudden capital outflows forced Argentina to seek another IMF rescue — this time a record program. Despite temporary stabilization, the plan suffered from overoptimistic assumptions, limited domestic ownership and politically costly austerity. Recession returned, social tensions escalated and Macri’s government was voted out in 2019.

President Alberto Fernández inherited an economy already under strain. In 2020, Argentina restructured about of debt, but the pandemic soon reignited crisis dynamics. Emergency fiscal spending, financed largely through monetary expansion, drove inflation into triple digits even as reserves dwindled under a maze of multiple exchange rates and import restrictions.

The IMF’s 2022 Extended Fund (EFF) aimed to promote gradual fiscal consolidation and tighter monetary control. Yet structural weaknesses — fragmented governance, inconsistent implementation, and eroding credibility — undermined progress. By the mid-2020s, Argentina once again stood at the intersection of economic fragility and political fatigue. Its recurring crises served as a reminder of the enduring tension between sovereignty, populism and macroeconomic discipline.

The 2025 bailout and emerging fault lines

By mid-2025, Argentina once again stood on the brink of financial collapse. President Javier Milei’s administration secured an emergency stabilization package jointly backed by the IMF and the US Treasury. The arrangement combines short-term liquidity, policy conditionality and bilateral support designed to restore market confidence and avert a full-blown balance-of-payments — a severe economic emergency in which a country cannot fulfill its payment duties.

US President Donald Trump, who regards Milei as a kindred ideological ally, has stepped in to Argentina’s stabilization effort. This September, Washington agreed to extend a $20 billion Federal Reserve to Argentina and expressed readiness to purchase Argentine sovereign bonds in secondary markets. This extraordinary gesture underscores both geopolitical and financial stakes.

Simultaneously, the IMF Executive Board approved a 48-month EFF valued at (479% of quota). It came with an immediate $12 billion disbursement and a first review scheduled for June 2025, tied to an additional $2 billion tranche. The program is intended to catalyze further multilateral and bilateral financing and facilitate Argentina’s gradual reentry into international capital markets.

Despite this unprecedented support, the stabilization effort remains precarious. Equity markets have tumbled, capital outflows have intensified and the peso faces relentless depreciation pressures. The central bank, while nominally independent, has intervened heavily in currency markets to contain volatility that threatens to unravel early disinflation gains. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that “all options” remained on the table, signaling Washington’s commitment but also its growing anxiety over Argentina’s policy credibility.

Structurally, Argentina’s economy remains both diverse and constrained. Agriculture and natural resources account for roughly of GDP and generate more than 60% of export revenue — around $35 billion in 2024, led by soybeans, corn and beef. Despite the currency collapse, export volumes remain near record highs, sustaining a large trade surplus. Services, including finance, logistics and tourism, represent approximately 60% of GDP, while manufacturing, food processing, automotive production and mining contribute the remaining 25%.

Yet the country’s external position — what Argentina earns from abroad versus what it owes — remains chronically fragile. Total external debt, estimated at around $400 billion, imposes an annual interest burden exceeding $10–15 billion. This drains hard currency and undermines the current account. The paradox persists: Argentina earns dollars through strong exports yet remains starved of liquidity — a reflection not of trade weakness but of deep-seated credibility deficits and recurring policy reversals.

Why reforms rarely last

Argentina’s crises are as much institutional as economic. Short political horizons, fragmented coalitions and public distrust generate time-inconsistent policies. Each government inherits imbalances, implements partial stabilization and then succumbs to electoral pressures.

The inflation-tax mechanism — which erodes debt through rising prices — creates incentives for short-termism. IMF programs often act as temporary stopgaps rather than durable solutions. Credibility, once lost, is hard to regain. As Columbia University Professor Guillermo Calvo , even orthodox policies fail if agents anticipate reversal.

Breaking Argentina’s debt loop requires credible fiscal and monetary institutions. Independent fiscal councils, binding expenditure rules and inflation targeting insulated from political interference are essential.

Dedollarization, which aims to reduce the country’s reliance on the US dollar, demands restoring trust in the peso through consistent policy and transparent governance. Fiscal and inflation data must be reliable to rebuild confidence. Equally important is fostering broad political consensus: Durable stabilization requires institutions that outlast administrations, as seen in .

Toward a credibility-based framework

Argentina’s economic history reads like a laboratory of macroeconomic dysfunction, where short-term imperatives repeatedly override long-term credibility. Fiscal dominance and dollarization persist not through ignorance but as a balance of mistrust among citizens, markets and the state.

Breaking this equilibrium requires a new contract of credibility: monetary institutions insulated from fiscal capture, fiscal rules that survive electoral cycles and data transparency that earns trust. Credibility is not declared — it is accumulated through consistent policy.

Argentina’s challenge is entanglement, not isolation. Its fragility mirrors, on a smaller scale, the credibility dilemmas confronting advanced economies. The difference lies in degree, not kind: When trust erodes — whether in pesos or treasuries — the cost of restoration multiplies.

Stabilization, therefore, is not about inventing new policies but sustaining consistent ones long enough to reanchor expectations. The real challenge is political, not technical: transforming credibility from a temporary byproduct of crisis management into a durable public asset.

Only by achieving this can Argentina escape its chronic oscillation between hope and disappointment, turning macroeconomic stability from an exception into the norm.

[ edited this piece.]

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US–Venezuela tensions

Singh notes “quite a bit of escalation” in recent weeks. US forces have carried out multiple strikes on Venezuelan boats allegedly carrying narcotics bound for the US, the latest (at time of recording) on September 15, 2025. The Pentagon has also moved aircraft and naval assets into the Caribbean, prompting speculation about preparations for war.

Moran characterizes the American strategy as one of “maximum pressure and minimum coherence.” While Washington tightens sanctions, it still allows Chevron Corporation to operate oil wells in Venezuela. The policy makes little sense because Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., the state-owned giant, controls all exports and has even blocked shipments over unpaid fees. Since Chevron cannot pay in dollars, it compensates the regime in crude oil — effectively free oil for Maduro. Pursuing this policy while increasing military pressure, Moran argues, demonstrates the inconsistency at the heart of US strategy.

Trump wants war?

The US buildup includes Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fighter jets in Puerto Rico and Navy destroyers near Venezuelan waters. Washington calls the attacks anti-narcotics operations, while Maduro claims they hit civilians. Moran believes a full invasion is unlikely, but intermediate military actions remain possible.

He argues that Maduro “has had a terrible track record” and accuses him of aiding drug networks like Cartellis de Solas and Tren Aragua. Moran agrees with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s condemnations, viewing the regime’s narco-terrorism links as a financial lifeline amid cash shortages. He predicts growing military escalation in the region.

Can Maduro respond?

Maduro claims to have mobilized eight million militia volunteers, but Moran says intelligence suggests the move is largely symbolic. He doubts Venezuela’s ability to counter modern US operations, arguing that its forces would struggle severely.

Moran sees the regime’s show of unity as political theater: Maduro must project national cohesion, yet the ground reality is very different. Once richer than many European countries, Venezuela now faces extreme poverty, food shortages and hyperinflation. Moran expresses sympathy for ordinary citizens and says the regime’s loss of legitimacy is “hard to overstate.”

Drugs or oil?

Venezuela holds the world’s largest oil reserves, but sanctions restrict sales mostly to China, India and Iran. The US has recently resumed small-scale purchases, a move Moran criticizes. When Singh asks whether this conflict is about oil or drugs, Moran replies that “the simple answer to that is it’s about the drugs.”

Moran labels the renewed oil purchases a “very bad misstep” akin to the era of US President Joe Biden, forced by high energy prices. The administration of US President Donald Trump both revoked and later restored oil licenses, undercutting its own maximum pressure campaign. Such policy swings, he says, expose Washington’s strategic incoherence.

China and Russia

Over ten million Venezuelans have fled abroad, destabilizing neighbors like Colombia. Moran highlights the territorial dispute over the Essequibo region with Guyana, calling Venezuela’s annexation threat an “existential threat to […] Guyana.” Guyana is firmly aligned with the US, while Brazilian President Lula da Silva performs a “delicate balancing act” — opposing war but sympathetic to Maduro.

Among global patrons, Moran believes China wields far greater influence than Russia. He rejects the claim that US drilling deters Chinese dominance, calling it “a fever dream” designed to justify Chevron’s presence. The oil output gains from this policy, he adds, are extremely unfortunate.

Will tensions spike?

Moran predicts further action against the Venezuelan capital of Caracas. He foresees strikes stronger than recent boat attacks but short of invasion. Moran insists Trump is “not a war hawk” yet “not an isolationist.” He will use force if he deems it in the national interest.

Given deployments, Moran does not see this conflict simply disappearing, though he stops short of predicting regime change. If US forces down Venezuelan aircraft, Maduro will face a dilemma: retaliate and risk collapse, or stand down and appear weak. “If he starts bombing or really messing around with US military personnel,” Moran warns, “this is going to end badly for him.”

Moran concludes that a decisive attack would end �Ѳ���ܰ���’s regime, but limited conflict now seems more likely than peace.

[ edited this piece.]

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Unlike the ELN, FARC was a predominantly rural guerrilla group, focusing on agrarian reform and social rights. Up until the 2016 between FARC and the Colombian government, FARC remained steadfastly devoted to communist ideology with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the Colombian government and a communist-agrarian state. This differs significantly from the ELN, which despite originally forming as a result of leftist ideology, its viewpoints over time.

Evolution of the ELN

The early days of the ELN were heavily influenced by Marxist-Leninist ideology, particularly Foco theory, created by the Argentine-Cuban Marxist revolutionary . The theory depended on guerrilla centers to spark revolutionary sentiment, as well as liberation theology to the group by radical priests. By 1965, the ELN had published the “Simacoto Manifesto,” their goals. 

The ELN continued to rely on Foco theory, which is rooted in the experiences of several of its leaders, including Fabio Vásquez Castaño, one of the founders of the ELN. The ELN began to from its original ideology in the 1980s and 1990s. As the group reached its peak of nearly 5,000 fighters, it began into new geographical territories beyond its original municipality of San Vicente de Chucurí, not only throughout Colombia but also into Venezuela. 

New territorial control meant that the group could no longer rely on outside funding for support, at which point it began engaging in drug trafficking, extortion and kidnapping to its operations. Major attacks targeted government infrastructure, particularly in the energy sector, as ELN became increasingly frustrated with the Colombian government’s decision to its natural resources to foreign companies. Despite significant efforts by the Colombian government to a deal, the 2016 Peace Agreement excluded the ELN. 

Instead, the ELN used this as an opportunity to its operations into former FARC territories. Coinciding with this rise is the ELN’s presence in Venezuela, where the group allegedly controls upwards of . Both the and administrations have allegedly offered the ELN various forms of backing — ranging from economic aid to political and military support. In return, the ELN has provided combatants for government-backed militant activities and loyalty to both Venezuelan regimes, signaling the emergence of a new kind of mercenary force.

Is the ELN a Mercenary Force? 

To assess whether the ELN qualifies as a mercenary force under international law, it is necessary to examine the group against the six cumulative criteria outlined in Article 47(2) of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions. of the Additional Protocol defines a mercenary as:

Any person who: (1) is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict; (2) does in fact take a direct part in the hostilities; (c) is motivated to take part in hostilities essentially for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party; (d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict; (e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and (f) has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.

Despite the ELN’s initial ideology-driven recruitment efforts, recent intelligence reports indicate the Venezuelan government contracted the group to violent missions on its behalf — including operations against Colombian state forces and rival armed groups such as FARC dissidents. This would arguably satisfy the first and second requirements of the definition of a mercenary, as this would involve recruitment for an armed conflict taking place in Colombia and would involve the ELN’s direct participation in hostilities.

Furthermore, the ELN would noticeably satisfy the third requirement, given that the motivation for involvement in hostilities has in recent years shifted from donations to support the mission to donations for criminal activities. The ELN’s of lucrative drug trafficking routes and high-producing coca cultivation zones near the border with Venezuela means it can offer significantly higher salaries to its members than they would receive in the armed forces.

Moreover, to satisfy the fourth requirement, members must neither be nationals of a party to the conflict nor residents of territory controlled by such a party. This a challenge, as many ELN members are Colombian nationals and reside in Colombia, a party to the conflict. However, evidence that some foreign fighters and actors with external affiliations are involved, further complicating the classification. 

The fifth requirement includes demonstrating that members are not a part of the armed forces of a party to the conflict. In this respect, the ELN clearly meets the criteria. Lastly, the ELN must not have been sent by a non-party State on official duty as members of its armed forces. This criterion also appears to be satisfied, as any involvement by other States — such as Venezuela — seems to the ELN acting more as a proxy or non-state contractor, rather than as a formal member of that State’s armed forces.

The Future of the ELN 

While the ELN may not meet all six legal criteria to be classified as a mercenary force under international law, there is a compelling argument that elements of the group now as de facto mercenaries, serving the strategic and economic interests of external actors such as the Venezuelan state and transnational criminal networks. 

It is reported that Mexican cartels like Sinaloa and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) have developed partnerships with the ELN to the flow of illicit substances throughout Latin America and beyond. Similarly, the Russian mafia has been developing ties with Venezuela and the ELN, rifles and ammunition. 

These external actors contribute to the permissive environment in which the ELN operates, enabling the group to the strategic and economic interests of foreign stakeholders rather than its original ideological objectives. This of state and non-state interests carries significant implications for regional stability and the future of the ELN.

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In one event, supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro called for amnesty for the “rioters” of the attack, those who invaded and vandalized the buildings of the Three Powers in the capital, Brasília, in an attempted coup d’état.

In another instance, defenders of democracy, in a more organic and subtle manner, demonstrated against this same amnesty and a Proposed Constitutional Amendment (PEC) that would shield politicians from investigations, showing that organized civil society is attentive to regressive movements.

The difference between the two groups, however, is deeper than simple political disagreement; it is rooted in a historical distortion that echoes the nation’s darkest times.

Reversed history

The main banner of Bolsonaro’s supporters is amnesty for those who participated in the January 8th protests — particularly Bolsonaro, who was to 27 years in prison for attacks on democracy. The narrative propagated is that they deserve the same pardon that was granted to political prisoners and exiles during the (1964–1985).

This comparison is not only fallacious but dangerously distorted. In 1979, the was a historic achievement of social movements and the opposition. Pardon was granted to those who fought for freedom and against the oppression of an authoritarian regime. They were the victims of the state, the defenders of democracy.

The amnesty was, therefore, a victory for civil society against dictatorial power. Today, the request for amnesty is for the invaders and coup plotters, for those who attacked democratic institutions. It is the exact opposite. It is not about forgiving those who fought for freedom, but about absolving those who tried to destroy it.

To understand the gravity of the situation, one must look beyond the headlines. The pro-amnesty demonstration, led by the former president, took place on September 7, the date that celebrates Brazil’s independence from Portugal.

However, in a scene that shocked many Brazilians, a giant was unfurled in the middle of the crowd. This act, more than a mere show of support, is a glaring contradiction. The search for help and identification with a foreign superpower on the day of national independence reflects a departure from any real patriotism, suggesting loyalty to external ideals that do not align with Brazil’s sovereignty.

In contrast, the demonstration against amnesty, which gathered to defend democracy, proudly displayed the Brazilian flag, symbolizing the defense of the nation and its institutions. It was a milestone for a country that has become divided, especially due to the actions of former President Jair Bolsonaro in recent years.

The desperate movement

In the theater of global politics, few scenes are as strange and revealing as that of a Brazilian congressman seeking diplomatic help in Washington. Recently, in an unprecedented move, Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro to the United States in an attempt to pressure the American government to intervene in the legal situation of his father, Jair Bolsonaro.��

The goal was clear and bold: to avoid the former president’s conviction and force political amnesty through the veiled intimidation of American figures such as President Donald Trump. But what this strategy ultimately revealed was the fragility of a political movement and the resilience of Brazil’s democratic institutions.

The being promoted is that Jair Bolsonaro is a victim of political persecution. The argument, repeated ad nauseam, is that he deserves the same amnesty granted to opponents of Brazil’s 1964 military dictatorship. This historical farce that the congressman tried to export has already been explained above. The attempt to equate the two scenarios does not hold up in any court of reason or history. Eduardo Bolsonaro’s trip was merely an attempt to give international weight to a fallacious narrative, presenting his father not as a defendant, but as a political martyr.

Eduardo Bolsonaro’s plan was simple but naive: to pressure the Brazilian judicial system through Donald Trump’s influence. The congressman participated in closed-door meetings, made public appearances and gave interviews in the hope that the weight of US conservative politics would intimidate Brazilian institutions. But the plan, in practice, fell apart. 

Brazil’s legal and judicial system, in a demonstration of its independence and strength, followed its course. The Supreme Court and judicial bodies did not allow themselves to be influenced by external pressures, whether they came from demonstrations on Paulista Avenue or from political corridors in Washington. The condemnation of Jair Bolsonaro for his anti-democratic acts is clear proof that this strategy failed.

Eduardo Bolsonaro’s bold move to seek the support of a foreign leader in an attempt to reverse an internal Brazilian decision evaporated on Tuesday (September 23) during the UN General Assembly, when Trump said that the Brazilian president is “a nice guy” and that the two leaders should meet soon, without specifying how or where. 

Current Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva responded that he hopes the possible meeting will take place “soon,” “like two civilized human beings,” and without “room for jokes.” Responding to a question from Brasil about whether he fears any kind of “embarrassment,” Lula said he is “very optimistic about the meeting.” “Trump turns 80 in June next year. I turn 80 in October this year. There is no reason for joking around in a relationship between two 80-year-old men. I will treat him with the respect he deserves as president of the United States, and he will certainly treat me with the respect I deserve as president of the Federative Republic of Brazil.”

Democracy in turmoil

It served as a reminder of how fragile some views of sovereignty can be. By seeking the intervention of a leader from another country, Eduardo Bolsonaro not only exposed the weakness of his own movement but also disrespected the principle that Brazil should resolve its own problems according to its own laws.

In the end, the trip and the attempts at intimidation did not result in amnesty or acquittal for his father. Instead, they served to demonstrate the strength of Brazilian democracy, which remained steadfast. This lesson, both for Brazil and the rest of the world, is a reminder that justice and the law must prevail over show diplomacy and blind family loyalty.

The coup movement, despite not being immediately successful, left deep scars. The attempt to delegitimize the elections, constant political instability and the denial of scientific and historical facts are symptoms of a broader crisis. 

Economically, the climate of uncertainty drives away investment and undermines stability. Socially, the fabric of the nation is frayed, with families and friends divided by political lines that seem insurmountable. The current struggle is not only for freedom, but for a basic understanding of what reality is and respect for the rules of the democratic game. 

The approval of an amnesty would be a dangerous signal, a testament that impunity for anti-democratic acts is possible, opening the door to future coup attempts.

Brazil in 2025 is at a crucial moment. Resistance to amnesty is not just a reaction to an act of violence, but an active defense of the future. Civil society, the independent press and democratic institutions, such as the Supreme Court, are being tested. 

The lesson that Brazil can offer the world is that democracy is not something that can be taken for granted. It needs to be defended, valued and, above all, understood. The history of 1979 shows us that forgiveness is for those who fight for freedom, not for those who try to imprison it.

Today’s battle is to ensure that history does not repeat itself in reverse, with the executioners being treated as heroes and the defenders of the law as enemies. It is a global call for vigilance.

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Brazil witnessed for the first time the trial of the architects of a plan to destabilize institutions and the democratic rule of law. The seriousness of the charges and the importance of the verdict for the country’s future reflect the unprecedented nature of the case.

Bolsonaro is the tenth head of state to be punished for this crime in the world, and the first in Brazil’s history. The newspaper conducted a survey of leaders convicted since 1946 and identified a total of 186 convictions of 128 heads of government in 69 countries. Most of these convictions, however, were for corruption crimes, not attempted coups.

Brazil has experienced at least or coup attempts since the end of the monarchy in 1889. The most infamous and damaging was the seizure of power by force in , when a military uprising overthrew President João Goulart, ushering in a 21-year dictatorship.

Jair Bolsonaro this stance throughout his political career, since the 1980s, and refused to call the regime that was imposed a dictatorship, classifying it as a period of “order and progress” (which is the motto written on the Brazilian national flag).

When he voted of the impeachment of then-President Dilma Rousseff in 2016, he dedicated his vote to Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, “the terror of Dilma Rousseff,” in his words — Ustra had tortured the president during the dictatorial regime.

The decision and the sentences

The final decision was four votes to one. Justices Alexandre de Moraes (rapporteur), Flávio Dino, Cármen Lúcia and Cristiano Zanin voted for conviction, while Luiz Fux voted for acquittal. The sentences, based on evidence such as notes, live videos, use of the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (ABIN) for espionage and draft coup documents, were established as follows:

Jair Bolsonaro: Sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison, to be served in a closed regime, in addition to a fine of more than Brazilian Real (about $80,000). The former president and the other defendants were sentenced to ineligibility for eight years, added to the eight years already determined by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) in 2023. The reporting minister, de Moraes, pointed to Bolsonaro as the leader of an armed criminal organization that sought the violent abolition of the democratic rule of law.

Other defendants: Walter Braga Netto (general and former minister), Almir Garnier (admiral and former Navy commander), Anderson Torres (former Minister of Justice), Augusto Heleno (general and former Minister of Institutional Security), Paulo Sérgio Nogueira (general and former Minister of Defense) and Alexandre Ramagem (federal deputy and former director of Abin) were also convicted, with prison sentences ranging from 16 to 26 years. Mauro Cid, Bolsonaro’s former aide-de-camp, received a two-year open prison sentence, benefiting from a plea bargain.

The defendants were convicted of various crimes related to the attempted coup, including armed criminal organization, violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, aggravated damage to federal property and deterioration of listed heritage sites.

Context: The chronology of the alleged coup

What led Brazil to this decisive point was a series of events that, according to investigations by the Federal Police (PF) and allegations by the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), form the basis of the indictment.

According to the complaint, the plot began in March 2021, when the STF former President Lula’s convictions, and his release from prison made him eligible to run for office. From then on, Jair Bolsonaro’s support group allegedly began a campaign to question the electoral system and delegitimize the possible victory of an opponent. In , the PGR and the PF indicated that a criminal organization had been structured with plans to interfere in the elections.

After Bolsonaro’s by Lula in the presidential election in October 2022, the movement allegedly became more radical, with supporters camping in front of Army barracks calling for military intervention. Investigations revealed the existence of a , the “Green and Yellow Dagger,” which was reportedly presented to military commanders in December 2022 but was rejected by the Army and Air Force leadership. The complaint points to the existence of a “coup decree,” which provided for the annulment of the elections and the arrest of Supreme Court ministers.

The crisis reached its peak on , 2023, with the invasion and destruction of the headquarters of the Three Powers in Brasília, in acts that investigations by the PF and the Joint Congressional Investigating Committee (CPMI) concluded were part of a planned and financed mobilization. In July 2023, the investigation also a draft decree on Law and Order at the home of former Justice Minister Anderson Torres, which would confirm plans to arrest Minister Alexandre de Moraes and annul the election.

The culmination of this investigation occurred in November 2024, when the PF Bolsonaro and 36 other individuals. The PGR formalized the complaint to the STF in February 2025, and the court accepted the request in March 2025, turning the accused into defendants.

Trump on the scene: the international dimension

The trial took on a complex international dimension. The lawsuit is a domestic matter, but the shadow of US President Donald Trump looms over the case with profound political and diplomatic consequences.

According to analysts, the relationship between Brazil and the US is experiencing a deepening crisis, with Washington tariffs on Brazilian products and sanctions against members of the Supreme Court. These measures are seen as a direct reaction by the Trump administration in support of Bolsonaro. 

The strategy of rapprochement with the US was articulated by federal deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the former president, who to the country to ask for international support and seek “fair punishment” for de Moraes and the Federal Police.

Trump’s support for Bolsonaro was not limited to statements. The American president spoke out against the legal proceedings, calling them a “witch hunt,” and imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian products. The US government then announced sanctions against de Moraes, revoking his visa and those of his family members, and opened a trade investigation against Brazil, accusing the judiciary of “censoring” American technology companies. Experts believe that these acts of intimidation and bullying reflect Trump’s personal affinity with Bolsonaro, as both have been of attempting to overturn election results and incite their supporters.

The political and diplomatic consequences of this interference are notable. US pressure has worn down Brazilian public opinion and, according to , has reinforced the perception that Bolsonaro participated in the coup plot. However, this interference does not seem to have changed the opinion of his most loyal supporters. In the political arena, the growth of about Bolsonaro had led parties to rethink the costs of a strong defense of the former president.

The protagonists and the next steps

The progress of the process reflects the actions of two key figures: Alexandre de Moraes and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

As rapporteur for the investigations, de Moraes has become the main face of the judicial response. His have been marked by conducting investigations, authorizing searches and seizures, and now, by reporting on the trial, with a vote that points out that the defendants not only planned but also initiated concrete actions to discredit democracy.

For his part, Lula has taken on the role of defender of the rule of law, vehemently the acts of January 8 and defending the work of the PF and the judiciary. His stance has reinforced the autonomy of institutions and the country’s democratic legitimacy in the eyes of the international community.

The defendants’ defense can still appeal the decision, which prevents immediate imprisonment. Bolsonaro is currently under provisional , and the final decision on where he will serve his sentence will be made after all appeals have been exhausted. The loss of the convicted men’s military rank will be reviewed by the Superior Military Court (STM) after the final judgment.

This trial was not just an isolated case. It served as a global reminder that democracy, even in consolidated nations, is not immune to internal (and external) threats. The way Brazil dealt with this plot determined the strength of its institutions and its reputation as a nation that, above all, submits to the law and the Constitution.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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You’ll never know me, so my sincerity here could not be greater. I’m from the country you recently tried to impose a barrier over, even though your nation has had a trade surplus over us , and this year, , reaching $1.7 billion. I’m from Brazil, the fifth-largest country and the economy in the world. It wouldn’t surprise me if you don’t know anything about us, since your only visit here was for a in Rio, with your former wife Ivana, in 1989.

I’m one of the millions of Brazilians who were historically seduced by the greatest soft power of your nation over the last decades. And you got huge profits from it. Brazil has the fourth most users of , the third of and fourth of . From 2004 to 2024, we jumped from the 11th to most frequent visitors of your country. Hollywood has earned an incalculable fortune with us. From 2009 to 2019, in Brazil was 77%, against 13% from national movies and only 1% from China. We are the second with the most subscribers of , the largest VOD market in Latin America and one of the biggest globally, reaching subscriptions by 2027.

Millions of us also felt your government’s hard power in different ways in recent history, like when the US supported the 1964 that led to 21 years of military dictatorship, secretly supporting opposition leaders and police training to overthrow the democratically elected president João Goulart during Brazil’s best attempt at deepening reforms, like the long-awaited agrarian reform. Ironically, the US provided support to the dictatorship through , which you recently . Over those two decades, we witnessed deaths, human rights abuses, censorship and political repression under the dictatorship your government supported. In fact, it resembles what we are watching in your streets now.

But the reason for this letter is to express my shock at how fast you are melting US soft power in all areas, except, maybe, sports. Diplomacy, science, arts, entertainment and political values were all pillars of soft power that the US was admired for by other nations and cultures for almost a century are going down the drain faster than the hair on your head.

And if you think about it, soft power is the only long-term power the US can rely on after World War II, which, by the way, was the last war your nation had won in traditional terms, followed by the loss of Vietnam war, the mess left in the Gulf War, the false pretext of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction that led to a new war and hundreds of thousands of since the 2003 invasion and the shameful withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in 2021.

I know you love bombs just like Putin and your other role models in Doctor Strangelove. But deep down, you know you can never rely on nuclear weapons as hard power. Those weapons, tested by your government over civilians 80 years ago in Japan, triggered a worldwide race for the same device and initiated the Cold War, making the world a more dangerous place with weapons that can eliminate civilization in the hands of countries like North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and, of course, your own. No one can use it; otherwise, your golf club, hotels, mansions and family lifestyle will turn into dust.

And then there is China. The second-richest nation on Earth is learning to use soft power as fast as you melt yours. First, diplomacy: China has Israeli actions in Gaza and has a better relationship with Russia for a possible mediation over Ukraine. Although Beijing only stands on for peace, Xi Jinping uses diplomacy rather than blunting imposing tariffs or sabre-rattling with nuclear power to get his way.

Second, science. China has become a scientific superpower faster than any other country. , Chang’E 6 returned soil samples from the far side of the moon for the first time; developed the first primitive-based vision processor with complementary pathways, the first optical storage device with petabit capacity; a new approach in helium-free cryogenic technology and a treatment with genetically engineered CAR T cells for refractory autoimmune diseases.

Third by arts and entertainment. China’s domestic films are thriving. ‘’ became the only movie in history to reach $1 billion at the box office in just one market and the only non-Hollywood film to cross $2 billion globally. China’s music economy became the fifth-largest recorded music market in the world in 2023, with growth, making it the fastest in the world, with cultural policies emphasizing international competitiveness and developing talents by formal education and independent labels.

At last, there is social media. Since you got back to power, Chinese influencers flooded TikTok with very popular videos showing how fast and modern their cities became; one , with perfect English, has gone viral with a bold critique on how America killed its middle class and guys like you blame China; there’s even , called Chinese Trump, with the exact same voice, showing the beauties of Chinese culture and habits.

We Brazilians will survive your random tariffs. We’ve been through worse with previous US administrations. As you read in the , it’s pointless to distortedly use the Magnitsky law over our Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes and cut his credit card as a veiled pretext to save your friend, former extreme-right president Jair Bolsonaro, now in house arrest for supposedly leading a coup after the 2022 presidential election.

After 44 years, and half my life researching cultural soft power, I found myself divorcing Mickey Mouse and flirting with pandas. Which, by the way, is a Chinese tool of diplomacy and wildlife conservation since 1941. Soft power.

[ edited this piece.]

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