By William Camacaro

New York

One of the casualties of Washington’s get-tough immigration policy is the plight of children separated by U.S. authorities from their parents. The political party of “family values” has caused needless trauma for these migrant children and round the clock anxiety for parents desperately waiting to be reunited with their loved ones. 

The Venezuelan government, which has a longstanding policy–vuelta a la patria–of assisting the repatriation of their citizens– has reported that at least 66 children have been illegally held  in the United States since their parents were deported to Venezuela. At this writing the author has been unable to obtain information as to their circumstances or whereabouts. 

The most well-known case of a Venezuelan child held in the U.S. after her mother was deported is that of a two-year-old girl, Maikelys Espinoza. After an international campaign brought her plight to light, the United States repatriated Maikelys to Caracas on May 14, 2025 returning her to her mother’s embrace. Today, families’ pleas for the return of their children recall her story and have stirred the sympathy of the Venezuelan public.

This situation recalls the case of Cuban citizen Elián González, who, as a child, was known as “the raft boy,” and found himself at the center of a major international incident in 2000. He was found adrift on an inner tube after the boat carrying him, his mother, and other migrants en route from Cuba to the United States capsized. The child’s custody became the subject of a dispute between his father in Cuba (who was offered money by the U.S. to come and live here) and his relatives in Miami. The case caused an international uproar, filled with legal and media battles between Cuban and North American authorities. He was finally reunited with his father on June 28, 2000. Today Elián is a leading voice for resistance to more than a half a century of economic warfare waged by Washington against the Caribbean island.

The present case is also fraught with political complications. Given Washington’s antipathy toward the Bolivarian revolution, President Maduro’s administration has been under relentless attack since 2013, having to endure threats of direct military intervention, fanciful accusations of drug trafficking, and a previously unheard-of bounty of $50 million for the arrest of  Venezuela’s president. Despite these threats, Caracas has remained steadfast in defending Venezuelan migrants and seeking the return of all of the children who are being held in the United States against the will of their families.

So far, 21 children have been repatriated to Venezuela. This is in addition to the 252 Venezuelan migrants who were deported by the United States to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador and released on July 18 after a humanitarian exchange. According to government official Camilla Fabri Saab, Deputy Minister of International Communication of the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry and leader of the campaign to bring the children home, more than 10,631 Venezuelan migrants have been repatriated so far this year.

Each day that these children are separated from their families robs them of parental love during their formative years. For both the minors and their families time is of the essence. Accordingly, Caracas persists in demanding that they be reunited with their families, calling demonstrations and orchestrating a broad media campaign across official outlets.

A group of parents has issued the following open letter addressed to the First Lady, Melania Trump

Open Letter Page 1

Open Letter Page 2

Open Letter Page 3

William Camacaro is a  Senior Analyst for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA). He is a co-founder of  the Venezuela solidarity network and holds a Master’s Degree of Fine Arts and a Master’s Degree in Latin American Literature from City University of New York. He has published in the Monthly Review, Counterpunch, COHA, the Afro-America Magazine, Ecology, Orinoco Tribune and other venues. He has organized delegations to Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela.

Banner Photo: Credit – María Isabel Batista/Ultimas Noticias

Photo: Elián González, Reunited with his father in Cuba. Credit – Granma

By William Camacaro

New York

Since the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998 Washington has waged a relentless war against the Bolivarian revolution. The Trump administration continues to deploy political, economic and military measures aimed at the overthrow of Venezuela’s government and the reversal of advances in regional independence and integration: the two pillars of the Bolivarian cause. At the present juncture, it is critically important to make no mistake about Washington’s duplicitous policy towards the Maduro administration of simultaneous negotiation and intensifying aggression. This aggression is not a mere show to placate the Trump administration’s hard line anti-Chavista allies in Miami; it is an imminent threat to Venezuela’s national security and part of a strategy to recuperate U.S. domination of the Americas. 

On June 12, 2024, newspapers astonishingly published Donald Trump’s incredibly candid opinion: “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken all the oil.” This is why it comes as no surprise when Miami-based Venezuelan opposition journalist Carla Angola comments that Donald Trump is interested in having absolute control of Venezuela’s oil reserves. She adds that the opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado is promising the United States government absolute control of these natural resources, not because this radical sector of the Venezuelan opposition is interested in managing them, but rather in privatizing them.

Orchestrating Regime Change in Venezuela

The threat to Venezuelan security is no exaggeration. Last week Venezuelan intelligence discovered three kilograms of TNT planted in Caracas’s Plaza de la Victoria, a location of significant public importance. Officials said the bomb, which was found near gas pipelines,could have caused catastrophic destruction and an incalculable loss of life. Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello announced that a coordinated investigation with several security agencies successfully dismantled this plot, revealing a sinister connection between far-right opposition elements and their international allies.

This terrorist plot cannot be written off as an isolated incident. Washington is pulling out all the stops to prepare public opinion for new acts of aggression by portraying President Nicolas Maduro, through U.S. corporate media, as a narcotrafficker with a price on his head. 

The most recent and series of  attacks against the Bolivarian Revolution began with a press release by  the U.S. Treasury Department on July 25 of this year. Titled “Treasury Sanctions Venezuelan Cartel Headed by Maduro,” the release designated the so-called “Cartel of the Suns” as a terrorist entity and named President Maduro as its head. It further pointed to his alleged relationships with both the Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel, and accused them of being “violent narco-terrorists.” A few days later President Donald Trump directed the Pentagon to prepare options for the possible use of U.S. military force against drug cartels designated as terrorist organizations  authorizing military intervention in countries with drug trafficking. This came weeks after Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of being the head of the “Cartel of the Suns.” In a further escalation, Rubio stated that the recent designation of the “Cartel of the Suns” as a “terrorist organization” now provides a pretext for Washington to use military and intelligence tools against Maduro and his allies. 

All of these accusations sound very ominous, but there is no evidence for them. This narco-mythology is viewed by some political analysts as political cover for eventual attacks on not only Venezuela but also its regional allies like Nicaragua, Cuba, and Bolivia. For this reason Venezuelan security forces have issued strong statements of loyalty and defiance in the face of threats from the North.The Trump administration is doubling a reward to $50 million for the arrest of President Maduro, accusing him of being one of the world’s largest drug traffickers and working with cartels to flood the U.S. with fentanyl-laced cocaine. Historically, rewards of this magnitude for political leaders are rare. The first similar historical case was the reward for the apprehension of Pancho Villa after his raid on Columbus, New Mexico, on March 9, 1916. The reward for Pancho Villa was $5,000, while a smaller reward of $1,000 was offered for his lieutenants. More recently, the State Department formalized its “Rewards for Justice” program in 1984. Its first high-profile case was Manuel Noriega of Panama in 1989, accused of drug trafficking. The reward for Saddam Hussein in 2003 was $25 million.

Drug trafficking ruse for U.S. intervention

Washington demonstrates its contempt for the people of the Global South by treating their presidents as pawns, making accusations without any evidence, and imposing unilateral and illegal sanctions against those who resist imperial domination. This latest bizarre accusation should remind us of the allegations of the existence of weapons of mass destruction that served as an excuse to destroy Iraq, murder a million people, displace thousands from their homes, and deprive the nation of control over their natural resources.

The hypocrisy of the narco-mythology could not be more blatant. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has publicly supported former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, particularly in the context of Uribe’s recent conviction for witness tampering and bribery. Rubio’s statements have drawn criticism from some who view it as interference in Colombia’s judicial system. Rubio’s defense of the former Colombian president is nonetheless troubling given that the same entity he leads designated Alvaro Uribe in 1991 as a major drug trafficker, a member of the cartel of Medellin and a personal friend of Pablo Escobar. .

Colombian President Gustavo Petro affirmed that his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, has backed the fight against drug trafficking on the border and that this “support has been forceful and must continue.” Petro warned last Sunday that a military operation against Venezuela without the approval of “brother countries” would be an act of aggression against Latin America and the Caribbean. 

There have also been a series of strong pronouncements from Tegucigalpa, Havana, Managua, La Paz and the Caribbean countries against this designation that seeks to stigmatize the Bolivarian Revolution. After the US attorney general accused the Venezuelan president of working with the Sinaloa Cartel, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum responded, “Mexico has no investigation under way and no proof that Maduro is linked to the Sinaloa Cartel.” 

The statements by Secretary of State Rubio and Attorney General Pamela Bondi are extremely ridiculous, especially considering that the U.S. has been engaged in a “war on drugs” in Colombia for over 50 years.  Since the 1990s, this war has resulted in over 450,000 deaths. Far from diminishing drug production, this war has seen Colombia become the world’s largest drug producer.

It is notable that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in its most comprehensive annual report on the subject, the 2023 World Drug Report, states that Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia are the main cocaine producers. The same report identifies Australia, New Zealand, US, and Spain as the largest cocaine consumers worldwide. Curiously, Venezuela is not mentioned in any of these reports, neither as a producer nor as a major consumer.

At a press conference on August 9, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello reported that a foiled plot was sponsored by “narco-gangs” of the far-right Venezuelan opposition, in direct coordination with the US government. The plot involved a criminal group from the Zulia region, led by Francisco Javier Linol, and a representative from Colombia’s Guajira Cartel. The authorities arrested José Daniel García, who confessed to being offered $20,000 to carry out the attack. This confession led to the capture of 13 other individuals in Venezuela and an additional suspect in Colombia. 

Cabello’s said “This proves the ties between narco-paramilitarism, the fascist far-right, and the U.S. government… It confirms the script we’ve long warned about.” This underscores the Venezuelan government’s perspective that these are not isolated incidents but part of a larger, orchestrated plan. Two days later, in Monagas state, Cabello displayed a new, massive cache of explosives, including various types of explosives and electric detonators, found in boxes inside a warehouse.

History of US attacks on the Bolivarian Revolution

These actions are paralleled by diplomatic attacks. On August 6th of this year, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States (OAS), an organization from which Venezuela withdrew, launched a virulent attack on Venezuelan democracy. The Rapporteur on the Rights of Afro-Descendants, Gloria Monique de Mees, accused the government of a systematic violation of human rights and the imprisonment of more than 900 political prisoners. This accusation, coming a day before the foiled attack and Rubio’s militaristic rhetoric, adds another layer of coordinated pressure and raises questions about the political motivations behind such reports.

Since its inception in 1998, the Bolivarian Revolution has endured a large number of attacks. The first major blow was the 2002 coup d’état against the elected leader Hugo Chávez. This coup, which was widely celebrated by the corporate media, was ultimately reversed thanks to the massive public support that saw people take to the streets, risking their lives to defend the constitution and demand Chávez’s return to power. This was an unprecedented situation in Latin American history. The celebratory tone of the US media at the time is revealing. For example,the New York Times initially welcomed his removal before being forced to retract its triumphant narrative just a day later when Chávez was reinstated. Shortly after, at the end of that year and beginning of 2003, a brutal oil strike occurred, causing losses of billions of dollars.

After President Nicolás Maduro assumed the presidency, the attacks evolved into multiple hybrid forms, including assassination attempts. One of the most audacious was a drone attack on August 4, 2018, during a live-streamed military event in Caracas. Two drones loaded with explosives were detonated near the platform where Maduro was speaking. This event set a grim precedent as the first assassination attempt using commercial drones against a head of state.

In 2019, a virtually unknown congressman named Juan Guaidó swore himself in as interim president of Venezuela with the immediate support of the U.S. and the European community. This was followed in 2020 by another attack on Venezuelan democracy through a mercenary invasion known as “Operation Gideon.” 

Following the 2024 presidential elections, rioters ( comanditos ), some with firearms, took to the streets to demand foreign intervention, leading to small skirmishes in Caracas. The attacks against the Bolivarian Revolution are innumerable, and what has been truly amazing is its capacity to resist and reinvent itself in the face of every challenge.

Current threat

Despite this history of attacks, there is a belief among some supporters of the Bolivarian Revolution that relations with the U.S. are improving. They point to dialogue and the continued operation of Chevron in Venezuela as evidence of an evolving more cooperative relationship. The reality is that it is in Washington’s interest to maintain a foothold in the Venezuelan oil business. 

The Trump administration, however, has so far carried out only symbolic actions at détente. Concrete actions would involve dismantling the sanctions and eliminating the bounty on the president and members of his cabinet. They are not going to eliminate them. They do not want Venezuela to stand on its own two feet. The talks underway between Washington and Caracas do not preclude an attack on the constitutional government of Venezuela..

The proximity and interconnectedness of these events—the terrorist plots in Caracas and Maturín, the alleged links to Colombian paramilitary forces and the Venezuelan far-right, and the explicit threats from the United States—serve as a grave warning. 

For Venezuela and its supporters, these incidents are not coincidental; they represent a coordinated effort to destabilize the nation through a combination of domestic terrorism, international political pressure, and the looming threat of military intervention. The government’s successful dismantling of these plots has, for now, averted major disasters, but it also confirms the ongoing and complex nature of the threats facing the country.

The Bolivarian Revolution is a project of Latin American integration that represents the search for social justice; it is a project of liberation. Washington commits a huge injustice by deploying more than a thousand unilateral and coercive measures against Venezuela, as these only bring hardship and death to the nation’s most humble citizens.  

It is essential to reflect on the fate of Augusto Sandino, who, after leading a 21-year guerrilla war against the U.S. military occupation of Nicaragua, successfully expelled foreign forces from his homeland. A revered revolutionary and emblem of anti-imperialist resistance, Sandino was tragically assassinated by the Somoza regime shortly after initiating a dialogue with representatives of the North American government, following a dinner at the national palace—a dinner with the enemy.

Photo Credit: VTV

William Camacaro is a  Senior Analyst for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA). He is a co-founder of the Bolivarian Circle of New York “Alberto Lovera” a holds a Master’s Degree of Fine Arts and a Master’s Degree in Latin American Literature from City University of New York. He has published in the Monthly Review, Counterpunch, COHA, the Afro-America Magazine, Ecology, Orinoco Tribune and other venues. He has organized delegations to Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela.

By John Perry and Roger D. Harris

By escalating deportations, ending humanitarian protections, and cutting remittances, Trump’s immigration policy threatens to destabilize Latin American economies and exacerbate humanitarian crises. Ironically, this might trigger a new wave of migration.

The economic importance of Latinos living and working in the US is enormous: if they were in a separate country, it would be the world’s fifth largest economy, bigger than even India. President Trump is recklessly attacking Latino migrants, inflicting calculated cruelty and disregarding the consequences for their home countries.

Disastrously, US immigration policy affects the very victims of Washington’s destabilization campaigns in Latin America and Caribbean, which drive people to leave their homelands in the first place. In effect, by exporting hardship, the hegemon paradoxically ends up importing immigrants. First Washington sanctions states based in part on allegations that they violate human rights. Then, the US contradicts itself by claiming those very sanctioned countries are deemed safe enough for deportation. 

Further, implementation is selective, privileging right-wing allies and punishing progressive states. The economic fallout from reduced remittances and mass deportations is not only politically opportunistic but has grave humanitarian consequences.  

Take the case of Haiti, which Human Rights Watch says is on the “edge of collapse.” Armed gangs control most of the capital, over a million Haitians have been displaced and there is acute food insecurity. The State Department’s travel advisory puts Haiti at its highest level of risk (level 4): avoid traveling there because gun crime is “common” and kidnapping is “widespread.” 

Yet, over at Homeland Security, Haiti is declared “safe” for people to return. Secretary Kristi Noem wants to force 348,000 Haitians who have temporary protected status (TPS) and another 211,000 who have humanitarian parole to leave for what Black Agenda Radio describes as “a country in turmoil.” 

Migrants – a threat worse than communism to nativist America

Under President Biden, Washington’s ideology-driven immigration policy led to the “humanitarian parole” program. Citizens of the targeted countries – Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela – were said to be “fleeing communism” and warranted preferential treatment. Trump has ended the parole scheme for those countries and the TPS protection for Nicaraguans and Venezuelans (Cubans never had TPS protection), yet their revolutionary governments now suffer even tougher US coercive economic measures than those imposed during the Biden administration.

Come Trump’s second term, US immigration policy sharply limits the pathways for Cubans to enter the US legally. Over a half a million Cubans in the US lost their status and work permission with the termination of humanitarian parole. Visa restrictions limit family, student, and visitor entry. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is now allowed to deport Cubans and other migrants to countries other than their own, with as little as six hours’ notice. Meanwhile US-Cuba bilateral immigration talks are indefinitely suspended. 

Trump’s malice against Cuba – a nation already teetering under the six-decade illegal US blockade – is causing a mounting humanitarian crisis. Tightening the economic embargo followed further restrictions on foreign investment and expanded sanctions. Biden’s earlier attempts to strangle the Cuban economy cut remittances sent by migrants from about $800 million in 2019 to just $35 million by May 2024. Trump’s new measures could sever the lifeline completely. Cuba is, of course, now looking to the BRICS countries, and specifically China, as alternative sources of investment and support.

Meanwhile Nicaragua, which has 93,000 in the parole scheme and about 4,000 under TPS, is deemed “safe enough” for its citizens to return home, according to US Homeland Security: 

“Nicaragua has become a worldwide tourist destination, while also promoting sustainability and revitalizing local communities. Technological innovation is empowering local farmers and fishers, making the agriculture industry more competitive and profitable… Nicaragua continues to show stable macroeconomic fundamentals, including a record-high $5 billion in foreign reserves, a sustainable debt load, and a well-capitalized banking sector.”

No one seems to have told Kristi Noem that her cabinet colleague Marco Rubio regards Nicaragua as an “enemy of humanity.” His officials briefed the New York Times that the country was “perilous for tourists.” 

Last month, President Daniel Ortega reassured Nicaraguans that the country’s “doors are open,” urging them to leave the “terror” of the US. Nicaraguan Eddy García, who along with 77 others arrived on a deportation flight in February, said that they were welcomed by officials, given refreshments and then offered transport home: “I’m extremely happy to be back because now no one is going to throw me out.” 

Opponents of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government have, until Trump’s shift in policy, argued that an “unprecedented wave” of migrants fled the country as a result of government “repression” following the failed coup attempt in 2018. Opposition figures are struggling to explain why, if this were the case, so few Nicaraguans are being sent back. In the six months until June, they accounted for less than one percent of the 239,000 migrants deported. 

Another political shift has been the marked hostility to Venezuelan migrants. By the end of Biden’s term, over half a million Venezuelans had been accepted under TPS and 117,000 given “humanitarian parole.” Under Trump, these Venezuelans are denounced for “invading” the US. Some are even accused of being affiliated to the violent Tren de Aragua gang, a dubious claim which, Trump baselessly asserted, is directed by Nicolas Maduro’s government. 

Meanwhile, US-Venezuela talks on migration continue. The Venezuelan government, for its part, has welcomed returning migrants under its “Return to the Homeland Plan.” The US deported over 200 Venezuelans, dubiously linked to gangs, to El Salvador where they were incarcerated and tortured in the infamous CECOT prison. They have recently been freed thanks to a prisoner exchange agreement between Washington and Caracas. Caracas’s other priority is to reunite children, thrust into foster care in the US, back with their deported Venezuelan parents. 

Driven out by ICE

Apart from the prospect of being dispatched to one of El Salvador’s notorious prisons or  being abandoned to an unknown fate in a remote country like South Sudan, thousands of Latino migrants are leaving the US on their own in the face of escalating threats from ICE.

Wilfredo, from the city of Masaya, Nicaragua, had voluntarily flown back from Miami with two others. Many more Nicaraguans were on the same flight anxious to leave, he told us, before ICE officials kidnapped them, took all their belongings and put them, handcuffed, on deportation flights. “The ‘American Dream’ has become a nightmare,” he said.

Even long-time naturalized citizens in the US are terrorized. In liberal Marin County, CA, Venezuelan-born Claudia now takes her passport with her whenever she leaves the house for fear of being seized. It’s happened already to other naturalized citizens. 

Costa Rica and Panama were persuaded by Trump to accept around 500 deported asylum seekers from third countries as diverse as Iran, Cameroon and Vietnam. These migrants are now in limbo, receive little assistance and – in most cases – are unable to speak Spanish. They have been pressured to accept repatriation flights to their home countries but many face persecution if they do so. 

Duplicitous immigration policy

The treatment of migrants from most Latin American countries contrasts sharply with Washington’s approach towards El Salvador. It has 174,000 citizens living in the US with TPS and – like Haiti – this protection was offered after the country suffered severe earthquake damage. However, El Salvador has been conveniently judged as “unable” to accept the return of so many of its citizens; their TPS continues. 

Despite the supposedly unsafe conditions used to justify TPS, the State Department downgraded the risk of travel to El Salvador to its lowest level, ranking it as one of the safest countries in Latin America. “Just got the US State Department’s travel gold star: Level 1: safest it gets,” Bukele boasted.

Remittances from the country’s estimated 1.4 million migrants in the US provided El Salvador with a vital 23.5% of its national income in 2022. Bukele’s White House visits, hosting Marco Rubio at his home and, above all, incarcerating migrants on behalf of the US – along with groveling before Trump – paid off. But it has also evoked the indignation of human rights defenders both in the US and throughout the region.

In a further attack on migrants, Trump is hitting them with new taxes on the remittances they send, which provide 23% of Central America’s GDP. Migrants struggling for survival are taxed in this way while the wealthy can move money abroad – through bank wires, investment accounts, shell companies, and real estate purchases – without similar penalties.

Many Latin American economies will be further strained by a combination of falling remittances, returning migrants who initially lack jobs, and, in some cases, harsher economic sanctions. Meanwhile, their exports to the US are being hit by new tariffs. Trump appears to be exacerbating the economic conditions that drove many migrants north under his predecessor’s administration.

Banner Photo: Credit VTV (https://www.vtv.gob.ve/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/MIGRA.png)

Nicaragua-based John Perry is with the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition and writes for the Grayzone, London Review of Books, FAIR, and CovertAction. Roger D. Harris is with the Task Force on the Americas, the US Peace Council, and the Venezuela Solidarity Network.

By Roger D. Harris and John Perry

With the Trump imperium passing the half-year mark, the posture of the US empire is ever clearer. Whether animated by “America First” or globalism, the objective remains “full spectrum dominance.” And now with the neocon capture of the Democrats, there are no guardrails from the so-called opposition party.

Call it the “new cold war,” the “beginning of World War III,” or – in Trump’s words – “endless war”– this is the era that the world has entered. The US/Zionist war against Iran has paused, but no one has any illusions that it is over. And it won’t likely be resolved until one side decisively and totally prevails. Ditto for the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. Likely the same with Palestine, where Israel is perpetrating genocide against the Palestinian people. Meanwhile, since Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” the empire is building up for war with China.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the empire’s drive for world hegemony assumes a hybrid form. The carnage is less apparent because the weapons take the form of “soft power” – sanctions, tariffs, and deportations. These can have the same lethal consequences as bombs, only less overt. 

Making the world unsafe for socialism

Some Western leftists vilify the defensive measures that Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua must take to protect themselves from the empire’s regime-change schemes. In contrast, Washington clearly understands that these countries pose “threats of a good example” to the empire. Each subsequent US president, from Obama on, has certified them as “extraordinary threats to US national security.” Accordingly, they are targeted with the harshest coercive measures. 

In this war of attrition, historian Isaac Saney uses the example of Cuba to show how any misstep by the revolutionary government or deficiency within society is exaggerated and weaponized. The empire’s siege, he explains, is not merely an attempt to destabilize the economy but is a deliberate strategy of suffocation. The empire’s aim is to incite internal discontent, distort people’s image of the government, and ultimately dismantle social gains. 

While Cuba is affected worst by the hybrid war, both Venezuela and Nicaragua have also been damaged. All three countries have seen “humanitarian parole” for their migrants in the US ended. Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was also withdrawn for Venezuelans and Nicaraguans. The strain of returning migrants along with cuts in the remittances they had been sending (amounting to a quarter of Nicaragua’s GDP) further impact their respective economies. 

Higher-than-average tariffs are threatened on Venezuelan and Nicaraguan exports to the US, together with severe restrictions on Caracas’s oil exports. Meanwhile, the screws have been tightened on the six-decade US blockade of Cuba with disastrous humanitarian consequences.

However, all three countries are fighting back. They are forming new trade alliances with China and elsewhere. Providing relief to Cuba, Mexico has supplied oil and China is installing solar panel farms to address the now daily losses of electrical power. High levels of food security in Venezuela and Nicaragua have strengthened their ability to resist US sanctions, while Caracas successfully dealt a blow to one of Washington’s harshest migration measures by securing the release of 252 of its citizens who had been incarcerated in El Salvador’s torturous CECOT prison.

Venezuela’s US-backed far-right opposition is in disarray. The first Trump administration had recognized the “interim presidency” of Juan Guaidó, followed by the Biden administration declaring Edmundo González winner of Venezuela’s last presidential election. But the current Trump administration has yet to back González, de facto recognizing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. 

Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition is also reeling from a side-effect of Trump’s harsh treatment of migrants – many are returning voluntarily to a country claimed by the opposition to be “unsafe,” while US Homeland Security has even extolled their home country’s recent achievements. And some of Trump’s prominent Cuban-American supporters are now questioning his “maximum pressure” campaign for going too far.

Troubled waters for the Pink Tide

The current progressive wave, the so-called Pink Tide, was initiated by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s landslide victory in 2018. His MORENA Party successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, won by an even greater margin in 2024. Mexico’s first woman president has proven to be perhaps the world’s most dignified and capable sparring partner with a U.S. president  who has threatened tariffs, deportations, military interventions and more on his southern neighbor. 

Left-leaning presidents Gabriel Boric in Chile and Gustavo Petro in Colombia are limited to single terms. Both have faced opposition-aligned legislatures and deep-rooted reactionary power blocs. Chilean Communist Party candidate Jeanette Jara is favored to make it through their first-round presidential election in November 2025, but will face a challenging final round if the right unifies, as is likely, around an extremist candidate. 

As the first non-rightist in Colombia’s history, Petro has had a tumultuous presidential tenure. He credibly accuses his former foreign minister of colluding with the US to overthrow him. However, the presidency could well revert to the right in the May 2026 elections.

Boric, Petro, Uruguay’s Yamandú Orsi and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met in July as the region’s center-left presidents, with an agenda of dealing with Trump, promoting multilateralism and keeping their distance from the region’s more left-wing governments. 

With shaky popularity ratings, Lula will likely run for reelection in October 2026. As head of the region’s largest economy, Lula plays a world leadership role, chairing three global summits in a year. Yet with less than majority legislative backing, Lula has triangulated between Washington and the Global South, often capitulating to US interests (as in his veto of BRICS membership for Nicaragua and Venezuela). Regardless, Trump is threatening Brazil with a crippling 50% export tariff and is blatantly interfering in the trial of former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, accused of insurrection. So far, Trump’s actions have backfired, arousing anger among Brazilians. Lula commented that Trump was “not elected to be emperor of the world.”

In 2022, Honduran President Xiomara Castro assumed office after being elected in November 2021, inheriting what many observers have described as a narcostate subservient to Washington; she has tried to push the envelope to the left. Being constitutionally restricted to one term, Castro hands the Libre Party candidacy in November’s election to former defense minister Rixi Moncada who faces a tough contest with persistent US interference. 

Bolivia’s ruling Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) Party is locked in a self-destructive internecine clash between former President Evo Morales and his ex-protégé and current President Luis Arce. The energized Bolivian rightwing is spoiling for the August 17th presidential election. 

Israeli infiltration accompanies US military penetration

Analyst Joe Emersberger notes: “Today, all geopolitics relates back to Gaza where the imperial order has been unmasked like never before.” Defying Washington, the Hague Group met in Colombia for an emergency summit on Gaza to “take collective action grounded in international law.” On July 16, regional states – Bolivia, Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – endorsed the pledge to take measures in support of Palestine, with other states likely to follow. Brazil will join South Africa’s ICJ complaint against Israel.

At the other end of the political spectrum are self-described “world’s coolest dictator” Nayib Bukele of El Salvador and confederates Javier Milei of Argentina and Daniel Noboa of Ecuador. As well as cozying up to Trump, they devotedly support Israel, which has been instrumental in enabling the most brutal reactionaries in the region. Noboa duly tells Israel’s Netanyahu that they “share the same enemies.”

In February, the US Southern Command warned: “Time is not on our side.” The perceived danger is “methodical incursion” into our “neighborhood” by both Russia and China. Indeed, China has become the region’s second largest trading partner after the US, and even right-wing governments are reluctant to jeopardize their relations with Beijing. The empire’s solution is to “redouble our efforts to nest military engagement,” using humanitarian assistance as “an essential soft power tool.” 

Picking up where Biden left off, Trump has furthered US military penetration, notably in Ecuador, Guyana, Brazil, Panama, and Argentina. The pandemic of narcotics trafficking, itself a product of US-induced demand, has been a Trojan Horse for militarist US intervention in Haiti, Ecuador, Peru, and threatened in Mexico. 

In Panama, President José Mulino’s obeisance to Trump’s ambitions to control the Panama Canal and reduce China’s influence provoked massive protests. Trump’s collaboration in the genocide of Palestinians motivated Petro to declare that Colombia must leave the NATO alliance and keep its distance from “militaries that drop bombs on children.” Colombia had been collaborating with NATO since 2013 and became the only Latin American global partner in 2017. 

Despite Trump’s bluster – what the Financial Times calls “imperial incontinence” – his administration has produced mixed results. While rightist political movements have basked in Trump’s fitful praise, his escalating coercion provokes resentment against Yankee influence. Resistance is growing, with new alliances bypassing Washington. As the empire’s grip tightens, so too does the resolve of those determined to break free from it.

Credit Main Photo: Teri Mattson, Workers’ Summit, Tijuana, at the U.S. Border Wall

Roger D. Harris is with the Task Force on the Americas, the US Peace Council, and the Venezuela Solidarity Network. Nicaragua-based John Perry is with the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition and writes for MR Online, the London Review of Books, FAIR and CovertAction, among others.

By Fred Mills and Evelyn Gonzalez Mills

Silver Spring, MD

Joaquín Domínguez Parada, a renowned Salvadoran attorney and tireless advocate for refugees of war and persecution, passed away on Thursday, June 26, 2025, four days after his 77th birthday in El Salvador, leaving a legacy of love, integrity, and moral courage.  He lived a relatively short period of time in the United States, about ten years, but left an indelible mark on our lives and communities.  

In the 1980’s, at a time when tens of thousands of Central American refugees were being denied asylum and deported back to the violence of civil war, Joaquín stood as a steadfast advocate. Through his tireless efforts, a generation of migrants found not only dignity, protection, and legal defense, but also a voice to fight for their human rights, to end the repression in El Salvador, and to challenge  U.S. intervention in the region.

For those of us in the solidarity movement, Joaquín set a lasting example. He was a guiding light, comrade and friend, advisor and mentor, and a talented artist. He made clear that it was time to assume co-responsibility for the safety of Central American refugees, and to oppose U.S. support for the oligarchic forces in El Salvador responsible for massive human rights violations and the forced displacement of tens of thousands of Salvadorans.

We remember Joaquín not only for his courageous work, but for the moral clarity with which he carried it out. Despite the relentless pressure of adversity and what appeared to be insurmountable odds, he retained a sense of humor and unwavering commitment that inspired others to fight on.

In 1980, Domínguez Parada was among the thousands of Salvadoran refugees who fled the escalating civil violence, settling in Washington DC. In 1981, he joined forces with attorney Patrice Perillie, who had recently graduated from the American University Washington College of Law, to form the non-profit Central American Refugee Center (CARECEN). As co-director, Domínguez Parada provided pro bono legal services to thousands of Central American refugees as part of an intense struggle to stem the tide of deportations perpetrated by the Reagan administration.

As CARECEN launched its legal fight for justice and dignity for refugees, a broad-based solidarity movement—including labor, faith, student, and human rights advocates—mobilized to oppose U.S.-backed wars in Central America. CARECEN not only defended asylum seekers but also pushed for broader immigration reform and an end to U.S. intervention in El Salvador’s civil war, contributing to outcomes like Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans. Recognizing the  need to expand its urgent mission, CARECEN offices were established in other major cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Houston.

In 1982, on the second anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero, he participated in a hunger strike in Lafayette Park, alongside other prominent human rights activists, to draw attention to the atrocities being committed both at home and abroad because of U.S. intervention in El Salvador.

Domínguez Parada was a tireless leader in the community. As CARECEN carried forward its vital work on a limited budget, it helped lay the foundation for other essential grassroots initiatives. Among these were the founding of the Central American Refugee Committee (CRECEN)—with Evelyn Gonzalez elected as its first Coordinator—and, in partnership with Plenty International, La Clínica del Pueblo in 1983, where both of us, along with many others, served as volunteers. This free health clinic, established to serve Central American refugees and staffed by volunteer doctors, nurses, and community members, provided a safe and dignified space for medical care. Guided by the classic training manual Donde No Hay Doctor, La Clínica expanded its corps of community health promoters, who became the heart of its mission. To this day, La Clínica remains a beacon of community-based health services.

After the civil war in El Salvador, Domínguez Parada returned home to help rebuild the country’s legal institutions. In 1994 his doctoral thesis titled La ley Simpson-Rodino, consecuencias jurídicas y sociales para los salvadoreños en Estados Unidos (The Simpson-Rodino Law: Legal and Social Consequences for Salvadorans in the United States) was published by the University of El Salvador. He served as a municipal judge in San Salvador, helped implement the city’s first ordinance on minor infractions, and later led the Police Appeals Tribunal, promoting accountability within the post-war Civil National Police. In keeping with his commitment to community, he was a strong advocate for the preservation of the historic Shangri La neighborhood where he used to live.

In March 2025, we had the privilege of visiting Joaquín in San Salvador, sharing moments of reflection on a life devoted to social justice—especially during those harrowing years when so many of our Central American brothers and sisters faced persecution and exile. He expressed a deep serenity in knowing he had given his all to the struggle for human dignity. Joaquin expressed gratitude to his first wife Marta Castrillo, her sister, Carolina, and their mother, Maria Pineda, for their unconditional support and love upon his return to El Salvador.  He reminisced about his late beloved son, Camilo; remembered with much affection his mother, Alicia Ulloa de Dominguez, an elementary school teacher who worked hard to raise her three children after losing her husband; and he evoked his life with Patrice Perillie, his second wife and companion in the struggle for refugee rights. He expressed a heartfelt desire to visit the United States—to learn about CARECEN’s continuing successes, reconnect with old friends, meet the new stewards of its legacy, and once more walk the familiar streets of Columbia Road and Mount Pleasant in Washington, DC.

With Joaquín’s passing, El Salvador and its diaspora has lost one of their most steadfast champions. We ask his family and friends to accept our deepest condolences. We take his legacy to heart as we navigate today’s perilous crossroads. Joaquín’s moral courage in confronting state violence and repression continues to guide our path, especially now, as we witness, in the United States, a campaign of state-sanctioned terror, where masked agents—unidentified and unaccountable—storm homes and workplaces, even court houses, sweeping up immigrants en masse and vanishing them into the machinery of deportation.  In honoring Joaquín Domínguez Parada, we renew our commitment to the world he struggled to bring forth—a world where no human being is illegal, and every sacred life holds the weight and wonder of a universe.

Photo of Joaquín Domínguez Parada: Credit Corolina Castrillo

Photo of Joaquín Domínguez Parada with first wife Marta Castrillo, Maria Pineda, and Carolina Castrillo: Courtesy of  Carolina Castrillo

Banner Photo of Joaquín Domínguez Parada and Patrice Perillie ca. 1981: From Carlos E. Vela Facebook.

Fred Mills is professor of philosophy at Bowie State University and English Language Editor for COHA.

Evelyn Gonzalez Mills is academic counselor at Montgomery College.  She met Joaquín Domínguez Parada and Patrice Perillie in 1981 and became a volunteer receptionist for CARECEN when it first opened. She later served as a board member of CARECEN.

By Tamanisha J. John

Toronto, Canada

Introduction

The Caribbean region is an important geostrategic location for the United States, not only due to regional proximity, but also due to the continued importance of securing sea routes for trade and military purposes. It is the geostrategic location of the Caribbean that has historically made the region a target for domineering empires and states. As both geopolitical site and geostrategic location, U.S. foreign policy articulations of Caribbean people and the region have been effectively contradictory, but the contradiction has allowed the U.S. to maintain its hegemonic position: Caribbean peoples in U.S. foreign policy are rendered backwards, unstable, and dangerous or targets of xenophobic harassment; while the physical region is rendered as a place where U.S. foreign policy must maintain one-sided power relations, lest these sites come under the influence of other states that the U.S. views as impinging upon its sphere of influence. One can most readily look to Haiti to see these contradictory dynamics at play. Haiti has not had democratic elections for two decades and instead has been under United Nations (UN) sanctioned “tutelage” or occupation via the CORE group, of which the U.S. is a part.^[i] Over the past two decades, Haiti has been subject to a massive influx of U.S. manufactured weapons that fuel gun violence and murder in the country.^[ii] Meanwhile those Haitians fleeing this violence to the U.S. have been met with whips at the U.S.-Mexico border, deportation flights from the U.S., and dehumanizing mythological hysteria accusing Hatians of  “eating pets.”^[iii]

Given the domineering impact of the U.S. and its allies in Canada and Europe in the Caribbean region, states in the region remain deeply dependent on foreign investment and tourism from these powers. ‘Foreignization’ of Caribbean economies makes it hard for the peoples of the region to make a living. Many Caribbean governments, neoliberal in orientation, willingly support this dependent development scheme by promoting migration for remittances, service industries for tourism, and temporary foreign worker schemes abroad due to lack of worthwhile opportunities at home. A large part of what maintains this dependent relationship—that many would find to be demeaning in most circumstances—is the securitization of the Caribbean region by the U.S. and its allies, as well as the invocation of “shared cultures,” rooted in colonial histories which continue to impose multiple hierarchies of domination on Caribbean peoples.

Washington’s aim of permanent hegemony in the region is being challenged by an increasingly multipolar world, and this accounts for the US attempt to limit China’s influence in the Caribbean. For example, U.S. tariff assaults on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) stems from U.S. insecurities about China’s economic growth alongside its manufacturing and technological developments.^[iv] China’s extension of infrastructural, technological, and other tangible material developments to states lower down on the global value chain, and at smaller costs to them is referred to by the U.S. and other western policy makers as “China’s growing influence.” This includes states in the Caribbean, which have not only become consumers of products from China but have also increased their exports to China since the 2010s. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. fears that China is gaining too much influence in the Caribbean given its developmental hand there. Although the U.S. is not directly competing with China on development initiatives, Washington’s reluctance to support meaningful progress in the Caribbean—where U.S. corporations continue to profit from structural underdevelopment—has led it to pursue strong-arm diplomacy as a symbolic stand against China instead.

China’s alternative to dependent development challenges Western Hegemony in the Caribbean

Western capitalist modernity, as an ideological, political, and socioeconomic project, is threatened by improvements to the global value chain. The issue at hand is that the U.S. and the Western-led capitalist system have long relegated states of the ‘Global South’ to lower positions on the global value chain. This has rendered development elusive for many states, to the sole benefit of Western corporations and their allies. Lack of development in places like the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and Latin America actually benefits capitalist enterprises headquartered in the ‘Global North’ which extract surplus value by exploiting cheap natural resources, labor, and land in these regions. China’s accelerated advancement within the global value chain—alongside the rise of other partner states positioned lower on that chain—has not depended on economic or political subordination to the west. This trajectory is actively interpreted as eroding Western hegemonic dominance—even as the improved developments of states like China within the global value chain, have expanded global capitalism. Since 2018, the U.S. tariff assault on China, which has intensified under the second Trump administration, is a direct response to China’s economic growth propelled by China’s added value to the global value chain. In essence, the fear is China’s rise, while not reliant on the west, has made the West more reliant on importing cheap products and manufactured goods from China.

After the global 2007/8 financial crisis, China’s expressed strategy was to diversify its exports and import markets through helping other states improve their own conditions in the global trade value system. This of course, was due to the negative impacts felt by China in its export markets from the 2008 global financial crisis. Since then, China has increased the internal demand within China for Chinese goods, which also saw the purchasing power of Chinese citizens rise. This helped the growth of a middle class in China, and also allowed the Communist Party of China (CPC) to think more broadly about its continued growth strategy. By the early 2010s China sought to develop a wider external market that was not dependent on the U.S. and the other Western states. As China began formulating a broader development strategy, the growing purchasing power of Chinese citizens made the U.S. and other Western countries increase demands on China to have unfettered access to China’s internal market. The 2010s thus became rife with false accusations by Western commentators of China manipulating its currency to amass reserve wealth, and maintain competitive exports^[v] – which helped to spark Trump’s trade assault on China in 2018, and again during the second Trump administration in 2025.

While conversations in the West hinged on conspiracy, the CPC acknowledged that neither internal consumption nor reliance on the U.S. and Western markets would promote long-term sustainable development and growth of China’s economy. Greater emphasis was placed on increasing and improving relations with other developing states. In essence, helping the development of states lower down on the global value chain would be necessary—in order to make them consumers (thus importers)—of products from China. This became part of China’s long-term strategy to diversify its import and export markets. Thus, after the 2008 global financial crisis and especially after 2010, China’s investment in places like the Caribbean had a marked and noticeable increase. A decade later, this strategy has proven beneficial to China’s growth and development – as well as to growth and development of other developing countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean with more states engaging in, and pursuing trade and other relations with, China.

The impact of U.S. tariffs and fees on the Caribbean

Despite growing U.S. security concerns over China’s engagement in the Caribbean, the region remains largely dependent on the United States, and Caribbean states consistently run trade deficits in favor of the U.S. These trade deficits usually come at the expense of local Caribbean growers, producers, and artisans. According to Sir Ronald Sanders, Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador to the United States: “In 2024, the United States ran a $5.8 billion trade surplus with CARICOM as a whole. For a tangible illustration, Antigua and Barbuda’s imports from the U.S. exceeded $570 million, while its exports in return were a mere fraction of that total.”^[vi] Given Caribbean regional economic dependence on the U.S., Canada and Europe, many Caribbean people seeking employment and/or asylum opportunities typically see the U.S. as a destination of choice, contributing to the large Caribbean diasporic communities in North America and Europe. These Caribbean diasporic communities not only send remittances and goods back to their home countries to support family, friends, and communities – but also facilitate Caribbean state’s exports into the U.S. It is important to underscore these dynamics, as the longstanding U.S.-Caribbean relationship—rooted in dependency—remains firmly entrenched, despite growing investments in the region from China.

The U.S. tariff assault on China extended into a wider tariff assault by the U.S. against multiple countries, including states in the Caribbean. By April 3, 2025 the U.S. had imposed tariffs on 24 Caribbean countries: a 10% tariff on 23 of them,^[vii] and a 38% tariff on Guyana^[viii]—a Caribbean nation with extensive relations with China^[ix]—excluding its exports of oil (dominated by U.S. and other foreign corporations), gold, and bauxite. The U.S. tariffs on Caribbean states—levied amid fragile post-pandemic recovery and lingering hurricane damage—underscores a troubling, though not surprising indifference to the region’s economic vulnerability and ongoing efforts toward stabilization and renewal.^[x] During this time, the U.S. introduced a series of tariff increases on China, peaking at a 145% tariff after April 10, 2025, before settling on a 10% rate through an agreement reached on May 13, 2025.^[xi] In addition to the tariffs that Washington placed on China, the U.S. also announced that it would issue port fees on Chinese built ships entering U.S. ports. In all, these tariffs and fees being imposed by the U.S. meant that there would likely be negative impacts borne by Caribbean states that import U.S. goods, and Caribbean states that export goods to China. The overall impact of the tariffs and fees would be two-fold: First, U.S. consumers of goods imported from the Caribbean would have to pay more to access those goods. Second, increased costs accrued to Caribbean state’s importing U.S. goods due to port fees, would make it more cost effective for those Caribbean states to import more goods directly from China. However, in the immediate term, Sino-Caribbean trade, lacking established relationships on a wide range of import products, has the potential to lead to import shortages – particularly of food and other essential imports from the U.S.—in the Caribbean. Given global backlash from the shipping industry, the U.S. revised and changed its decision regarding port fees a week later,^[xii] and three weeks later, on April 28, it reduced the tariff on Guyana to 10%.

Political commentators recognize, contrary to the denials by the Guyanese government, that the initially high tariffs placed on Guyana were motivated by U.S. tensions with China. According to former Guyanese diplomat, Dr. Shamir Ally,^[xiii] and Guyanese political commentator, Francis Bailey, Guyana “is caught in a geopolitical battle between the US and China. Or more specifically – Washington objects to Beijing’s “very strong foothold” in Guyana.”^[xiv] This was made clear, when prior to the Trump administration’s announcement of the tariff’s on Guyana, Guyanese President, Irfaan Ali, pledged that the U.S. would “have some different and preferential treatment” from Guyana^[xv]— given a shared stance between the two countries in relation to Venezuela.^[xvi] This pledge by Guyana’s president took place within the context of the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to the Caribbean, during which Rubio chastised the construction of infrastructure in Guyana that he deemed subpar, and alleged must have been built by China, even though it was not.^[xvii] These kinds of geopolitical posturing by Washington stoke antagonisms, ignoring the negative impacts of Caribbean dependency, including that of Guyana. Caribbean economic dependency on the U.S. (Europe and Canada) will not be completely ameliorated by China, and neither will China be able to fill the role of the West for Caribbean exporters who, given histories of enslavement, indentureship, and colonialism, rely on diasporic taste and preferences for ‘niche’ exports (e.g., artisan goods, arts, entertainment). Given the high degree of U.S., Canadian, and European ownership in the Caribbean’s industrial and manufacturing sectors, the region’s capacity to produce “finished products” on an exportable scale remains limited. Despite the continued dependency relation of Caribbean states on U.S. markets, however, China can positively impact Caribbean economies by helping to diversify their trading partners, and by increasing local opportunities for people within Caribbean states, based on the kinds of new (or improved) infrastructure typically developed in partnerships with China.

Though on the rise, the trade relationship between China and states in the Caribbean is still quite limited. Caribbean states that are a part of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) saw a notable increase in their exports to China, from less than 1% of their total exports in the 1990s and 2000s, to between 1% and 6 % of exports going to China after the 2010s.^[xviii] The majority of exports from the Caribbean to China from the 2010s forward have been agricultural and mineral in nature. Alongside the growing export potential of CARICOM states to China since the 2010s, there has also been an increase in Caribbean states importing Chinese goods. States such as Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Guyana, Jamaica, and Suriname import about 10% of their goods from China. On the other hand, states like the Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago import less than 10% of their goods from China. The overall trend, then, is that CARICOM states have added some diversification to their trading partners since the 2010s but continue to remain firmly within the Western trading bloc. Given the structured dependency of Caribbean economies, they tend to import more from their trading partners than they export to them. However, as political analyst Daniel Morales Ruvalcaba points out, as a trading partner, China’s commitment to South-South partnerships has meant that trading disparities between itself and CARICOM states are “offset by investments flowing from China to the Caribbean […] broadly categorized into three key sectors: port infrastructure development, resource extraction, and the tourism industry.”^[xix] This way of tending to the trade disparity has had beneficial impacts—that can also be seen very visibly by those who live and visit states in the Caribbean. Additionally, China’s investments have not been limited to CARICOM states, or to states that recognize China and not Taiwan. For instance, China invests in Belize, Haiti, St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines—these are Caribbean states that recognize Taiwan.^[xx]

While China does not play a dominant import-export role in the Caribbean, given the system of dependency into which the Caribbean is already integrated, it also does not pose a security threat to the Caribbean region, despite Washington’s portrayal of China as a “bad actor.” The PRCs commitment to non-interference makes it extremely unlikely that China would use the Caribbean as a springboard for a security confrontation with Washington and its NATO allies. China does, however, have a strategic partnership with Venezuela, largely limited to a defensive posture given its relations with other states in the region, including the Caribbean. Further, with the large security presence of the U.S. and its allies in the Caribbean, China would have nothing to gain from an offensive military posture in the region. Though self-evident, this explains why the U.S has chosen to frame China’s presence in the Caribbean not in economic terms, but as a technological and geopolitical “threat”—going so far, on multiple occasions, as to allege that China is constructing covert surveillance facilities in Cuba to conduct espionage on the U.S.^[xxi]

The China-Caribbean “threat” from the U.S. Perspective

In 2018, Washington signaled its intent to limit Chinese investments in infrastructure, energy, and technology abroad; by 2023, U.S. Southern Command identified the Caribbean as a key region where China’s growing economic footprint should be restrained. In its effort to push China out of the Caribbean tech sector, the U.S. has allowed U.S. and other Western companies to develop 5G networks in Jamaica at virtually no cost in the short term—effectively subsidizing the infrastructure to block Chinese involvement and investments in the sector. This campaign has gone so far as to include veiled threats of sanctions toward Jamaica and other regional nations should they pursue connectivity projects with China.^[xxii] Since the 1940s, the U.S. has viewed government-controlled economies as threats to the Western capitalist order—a label that readily applies to China. In 2025, the trade offensive against China is markedly more severe, driven by Washington’s explicit goal of curbing the spread and stalling the advancement of China’s high-tech industries—an effort aimed at preserving U.S. dominance in the sector, which is increasingly seen as under threat. The trade war, which began openly during Trump’s first term, has only intensified in his second—driven in part by the growing influence of high-tech capitalists closely aligned with his administration. China’s advances in artificial intelligence, seen with the public release of DeepSeek AI, has only accelerated the U.S. assault.

According to  U.S. and other pro-Western security analysts who view China as a “threat” in the Caribbean, this threat manifests in three primary ways. First, they point to China’s development of internet-based infrastructure in Caribbean nations which they claim enables Chinese espionage operations that target the U.S. from within the region. Second, they highlight the fact that most Caribbean states recognize the People’s Republic of China, rather than Taiwan, under the One-China policy—a position they attribute to questionable dealings with Beijing, rather than to the exercise of Caribbean political agency in matters of state recognition. And lastly, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is portrayed as a nefarious development scheme that allows China to assert its influence globally. Notably, these accusations that form the “threat” narrative amongst U.S. and other pro-Western security advocates don’t hold up against the slightest scrutiny.

First, there is no evidence that there are “Chinese spy bases” in Cuba or in any other country in the Caribbean—despite these accusations being levied by both Trump White Houses, and various U.S. Republican politicians in Florida.^[xxiii] Second, the PRC does invest in, and maintain diplomatic relations with, Caribbean states that recognize Taiwan.^[xxiv]  This suggests that the PRC does not force a One-China policy on states in the Caribbean with which it has cooperative relations. Commenting on Sino-Caribbean relations, Caribbean leaders themselves often note that the recognition of China and not Taiwan is due to support for China safeguarding its sovereignty and territorial integrity, of which they include national reunification.^[xxv] Ultimately, the alleged “nefarious” nature of the Belt and Road Initiative stems from its core premise: that developing countries receive meaningful support from China to pursue their own development goals. Such efforts inevitably draw scrutiny from the U.S. and the Westbroadly, as genuine development in the ‘Global South’ is often perceived as a challenge to Western capital and hegemony. The BRI also encourages signatory states to build greater regional relationships with their Caribbean neighbors. It reflects a highly agentic approach, in stark contrast to the traditional way U.S. and other Western initiatives are typically implemented.

Ultimately, the BRI is seen as a threat by Western policymakers because they would prefer China not pursue its own global initiatives. Given that the BRI also supports states in developing technological infrastructure and other advancements—with backing from China—these efforts are viewed by the U.S. as a strategic threat, ensuring the initiative will remain a target of sustained opposition. In the Caribbean, the U.S. push to end their tech relations with China comes off as brash, given that U.S. technology investments in the region have declined since the mid-1990s, while China technology investments have increased.^[xxvi] In fact, the U.S. (and its Western allies) seem to only understand China’s investments, including the BRI, as lost market share. In essence, Washington and its Western allies seek to control economic development in the region. Two years ago for COHA, John (2023) argued that the U.S. and its allies were increasing their “diplomatic” presence in the Caribbean to maintain geostrategic influence, given China’s growing economic investments there.^[xxvii] John maintained that the dismal track record of capitalism—led first by the Western European powers and later by the United States—has entrenched Caribbean states in a position of structural dependency within the global capitalist system. Key features of this dependency include persistently high levels of unemployment, underemployment, poverty, and a heavy reliance on labor exportation. This dependence made the region very receptive to Chinese investment.

John (2023) concluded that influence is gained only where it aligns with local interests—and that investments from the PRC stood in stark contrast to Western strategies, which for decades have indebted Caribbean states, privatized their economies in ways that deepened foreign control, and consistently disregarded regional calls for reparations. This track record, it was argued, would only lead to increased militarization in the Caribbean by the U.S. and its Western allies, who have no tangible goal of helping Caribbean states to develop—but want confrontation with China. Two years later and the concluding remarks still stand.

Concluding Remarks: Dependent Development is the price of Western Capitalism in the Caribbean

In the Caribbean, the U.S. and its Western allies have long profited from—and perpetuated—the notion that foreignization is the norm. This extends beyond economic structures to encompass both domestic and foreign policies that effectively surrender the state, and its people, to massive  exploitation by foreigners. Some governments and local elites have been brought on as “shareholders” to maintain this backwards dependent status. That is because imperialism, especially in the Caribbean, has always been intent on establishing what Cheddi Jagan called “a reactionary axis in the Caribbean.”^[xxviii] U.S. ‘influence in the Caribbean region has historically centered around controlling the “backwardness” and “unstableness” of its people, in order to keep U.S. geostrategic and geopolitical interests intact. This is done in conjunction with Caribbean political elites, who subject their own Caribbean populations in perpetual servitude to Western capital. Caribbean neoliberal states have a disregard for the rights of their citizens (and diaspora), favoring almost exclusively (and predominantly) Western foreign corporations and wealthy individuals. Cuba, however, stands out as an exception to this trend, and this is why it has been under relentless attack by Washington for more than 62 years.  It is important to point this out, given that some in the Caribbean political elite classes also share the same regressive rhetoric from the Westabout the “threat of China” to produce reactionary mindsets and views amongst large swaths of Caribbean people— so that their hand in maintaining Caribbean dependency is not critiqued.

Caribbean people struggling to improve their societies for the better are continuously warned by the U.S. and its Western and Caribbean allies that they must maintain themselves in a dependent position. The truth is: So long as the majority of individual Caribbean states are importing finished products and agricultural goods from the U.S., Canada, and Europe—and to a smaller extent now China—the Caribbean will never have trade surpluses with these states. Lack of local businesses and the foreignization of Caribbean economies compound this contradiction that is perpetuated by the entrenched Western-led economic system. Political elites in the Caribbean frequently disregard local protests and locally developed alternatives that could threaten Western foreign corporations and investment. There is a real need for enhanced regional integration for Caribbean people, not only states, to improve their lot within the prevailing system. People will continuously be let down by formations like CARICOM, so long as these associations are dominated by Western development frameworks and have individual member states who care more about aligning their security interests with the West instead of their own region. While neoliberalism in the Caribbean is often attributed to structural constraints and the limited capacity of states to regulate foreign capital, such explanations fail to account for the extent to which Caribbean governments have themselves normalized and actively advanced neoliberal policy frameworks. The promotion of neoliberal policies both prolongs, and makes systemic, foreign dependence and domination.

U.S. fear mongering about China in the Caribbean is propaganda. It only serves to prevent people from questioning why Caribbean states are dependent and why there is rampant foreignization of Caribbean economies. Who owns these corporate entities that make life hard in the Caribbean? The “threats” from the U.S. perspective boil down to the fact that China, in the Caribbean, is taking advantage of Western policies that make the Caribbean exploitable. It is often noted—and indeed observable—that China imports its own labor for development projects in the Caribbean. However, this practice is neither new nor unique; countries such as the United States, Canada, and various European powers have long employed similar strategies. Understandably, this reliance on imported labor has generated frustration among Caribbean populations, particularly given the region’s high levels of unemployment and underemployment. Many local workers are both willing and able to acquire the necessary skills and trades to work on infrastructure and development projects that come to the region. Local Caribbean firms and entrepreneurs would also seize the opportunity to participate in these projects—including local sourcing of materials. But this beneficial type of development is not presently feasible given how Western capitalists have integrated Caribbean states into the global capitalist system.

The efforts of the Trump administration to cast China as a security threat in the Caribbean and to portray doing business with China as a security risk, have largely been unsuccessful. In the Caribbean, China simply takes advantage of Western policies that have made the region highly favorable and open to foreign investment, foreign entrepreneurs, and government dealings—in the form of Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) and Letters of Agreement (LOA)—with other states and corporations. The acceptance of these MOUs and LOAs receive minimal, to no input from Caribbean citizens. Debt traps have been normalized in the Caribbean by the Western capitalist system, making the Caribbean one of the most highly indebted regions in the world. Today, propagandists tend to invoke the myth of the  “Chinese debt-trap” to attribute to China this false label of being engaged in “debt trap diplomacy”—a term popularized in 2018 during the first trade assault against China.^[xxix] In response to this myth, progressive commentators tend to highlight that China forgives a lot of debt, and has even helped Caribbean states to restructure debts owed to various financial institutions.^[xxx] However, the biggest elephant in the room is that even if China ceased to exist in the Caribbean region, the region would still be one of the most indebted within the Western capitalist system. The debt-trap narrative not only deflects attention from the significant role Western powers have played in producing Caribbean indebtedness, but also unjustly shifts the burden onto China to forgive obligations for which Western capital is responsible.^[xxxi] Lack of transparency in investment agreements and investor tax benefits, including profit repatriation, in the Caribbean has been normalized by laws first written by various European empires and later by Western capitalists that crafted structural adjustment policies. Yet, such arrangements, historically established by U.S. and Canadian capital interests, are often rebranded as evidence of corruption within the China–Caribbean relationship. Those concerned with the persistence of Caribbean dependency should critically engage with its structural causes and actively challenge Western propaganda regardless of the source from which it emanates.

Endnotes

[i] Pierre, Jemima. 2020. “Haiti: An Archive of Occupation, 2004-.” Transforming Anthropology 28(1): 3–23. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/traa.12174.

[ii] Kestler-D’Amours, Jillian. “‘A Criminal Economy’: How US Arms Fuel Deadly Gang Violence in Haiti.” Al Jazeera, March 25, 2024. web: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2024/3/25/a-criminal-economy-how-us-arms-fuel-deadly-gang-violence-in-haiti.

[iii] Mack, Willie. Haitians at the Border: The Nativist State and Anti-Blackness. Carr-Ryan Commentary. Harvard Kennedy School, 2025. web: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr-ryan/our-work/carr-ryan-commentary/haitians-border-nativist-state-and-anti-blackness.

[iv] Ziye, Chen, and Bin Li. “Escaping Dependency and Trade War: China and the US.” China Economist 18, no. 1 (2023): 36–44.

[v] Wiseman, Paul. “Fact Check: Does China Manipulate Its Currency?” PBS News, December 29, 2016. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/fact-check-china-manipulate-currency.

[vi] Loop News. “More Caribbean Countries Respond to New US Tariffs,” April 4, 2025, sec. World News. https://www.loopnews.com/content/more-caribbean-countries-respond-to-new-us-tariffs/.

[vii] TEMPO Networks. “Here Are All The Caribbean Countries Hit By Trump’s New Tariffs.” Tempo Networks, April 3, 2025, sec. News. https://www.temponetworks.com/2025/04/03/here-are-all-the-caribbean-countries-hit-by-trumps-new-tariffs/.

[viii] Grannum, Milton. “Oil, Bauxite, Gold Exempt from US Tariff.” Stabroek News, April 4, 2025, sec. Guyana News. https://www.stabroeknews.com/2025/04/04/news/guyana/oil-bauxite-gold-exempt-from-us-tariff/.

[ix] Handy, Gemma. “Was China the Reason Guyana Faced Higher Trump Tariff?” BBC, April 28, 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjeww5zq88no.

[x] John, Tamanisha J. 2024. “Hurricane Unpreparedness in the Caribbean, Disaster by Imperial Design.” Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA). The Caribbean. https://coha.org/hurricane-unpreparedness-in-the-caribbean-disaster-by-imperial-design/.

[xi] Grantham-Philips, Wyatte. “A Timeline of Trump’s Tariff Actions so Far.” PBS News, April 10, 2025, sec. Economy. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/a-timeline-of-trumps-tariff-actions-so-far.

[xii] Saul, Jonathan, Lisa Baertlein, David Lawder, and Andrea Shalal. “United States Eases Port Fees on China-Built Ships after Industry Backlash.” Reuters, April 17, 2025, sec. Markets. https://www.reuters.com/markets/global-shippers-await-word-us-plan-hit-china-linked-vessels-with-port-fees-2025-04-17/.

[xiii] Credible Sources interview on February 26, 2025. Guyana in U.S.-China Crossfire? Ex-Diplomat Weighs In, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtCNBiKdj-0

[xiv] Handy, Gemma. “Was China the reason Guyana faced higher Trump tariff?” BBC, April 28, 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjeww5zq88no.

[xv] Chabrol, Denis. “Guyana Pledges ‘Preferential’ Treatment to US.” Demerara Waves, March 27, 2025, sec. Business, Defence, Diplomacy. https://demerarawaves.com/2025/03/27/guyana-pledges-preferential-treatment-to-us/.

[xvi] John, Tamanisha J. “Guyana, Beware the Western Proxy-State Trap.” Stabroek News, December 25, 2023, sec. In The Diaspora. https://www.stabroeknews.com/2023/12/25/features/in-the-diaspora/guyana-beware-the-Western-proxy-state-trap/.

[xvii] Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Guo Jiakun’s Regular Press Conference on April 3, 2025. Beijing Says That Road in Guyana Criticised by Rubio Is Not Built by China, 2025. https://youtu.be/6gljwDyW1qk?si=2QXhDUythljBsIcJ.

[xviii] Morales Ruvalcaba, Daniel. 2025. “National Power in Sino-Caribbean Relations: CARICOM in the Geopolitics of the Belt and Road Initiative.” Chinese Political Science Review 10: 28–48. doi: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41111-024-00252-4.

[xix] Ibid.

[xx] Ibid. 

[xxi] Qi, Wang. “Hyping Chinese ‘spy Bases’ in Cuba Slander; Shows US’ Hysteria: Expert.” Global Times, July 3, 2024. https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202407/1315376.shtml.

[xxii] Pate, Durrant. “US Warns Jamaica against Chinese 5g.” Jamaica Observer, October 25, 2020. https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2020/10/25/us-warns-jamaica-against-chinese-5g/.

[xxiii] Belly of the Beast. Investigative Report. May 30, 2025. Big Headlines, No Proof: Inside the Hype Over “Chinese Spy Bases”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF87JJp8WIo

[xxiv] Bayona Velásquez, Etna. “Chinese Economic Presence in the Greater Caribbean, 2000-2020.” In Chinese Presence in the Greater Caribbean: Yesterday and Today, 599–661. Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: Centro de Estudios Caribeños (PUCMM), 2022.

[xxv] Loop news. “T&T, Caribbean countries pledge support for One China policy.” May 6, 2022. https://www.loopnews.com/content/tt-caribbean-countries-pledge-support-for-one-china-policy/

[xxvi] Ricart Jorge, Raquel. “China’s Digital Silk Road in Latin America and the Caribbean.” Real Instituto Elcano, April 21, 2021, sec. Latin America. https://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/commentaries/chinas-digital-silk-road-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean/.

[xxvii] John, Tamanisha J. 2023. “US Moves to Curtail China’s Economic Investment in the Caribbean.” Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA). https://coha.org/us-moves-to-curtail-chinas-economic-investment-in-the-caribbean/.

[xxviii] Jagan, Cheddi. “Alternative Models of Caribbean Economic Development and Industrialisation.” In Caribbean Economic Development and Industrialisation, 3 (1):1–23. Hungary: Development and Peace, 1980. https://jagan.org/CJ%20Articles/In%20Opposition/Images/3014.pdf.

[xxix] Chandran, Rama. “The Chinese “Debt Trap” Is a Myth.” China Focus, August 26, 2022,  http://www.cnfocus.com/the-chinese-debt-trap-is-a-myth/

[xxx] Hancock, Tom. “China renegotiated $50bn in loans to developing countries: Study challenges ‘debt-trap’ narrative surrounding Beijin’s lending.” Financial Times, April 29, 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/0b207552-6977-11e9-80c7-60ee53e6681d

[xxxi] Kaiwei, Zhang and Xian Jiangnan. “So-called “debt trap” a Western rhetorical trap.” China International Communications Group (CN) , September 14, 2024, https://en.people.cn/n3/2024/0914/c90000-20219659.html

Featured image: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (centre) poses for a group photograph with representatives from the Caribbean countries that share diplomatic relations with China, May 12, 2025, at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, Beijing
(Source: Chinese State Media)

Tamanisha J. John is an assistant professor in the Department of Politics at York University and a member of the US/NATO out of Our Americas Network zoneofpeace.org/ 

Original article: https://cispes.org/article/resistance-mining-grows-environmentalists%E2%80%99-trial-approaches

By Maximiliano Véjares

Washington DC

Chile’s recent local elections, in which moderate, traditional parties staged a comeback, offer a promising sign of political stability. Following five years of uncertainty marked by a social uprising in 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic, and two unsuccessful attempts to rewrite the Pinochet-era constitution, the country appears to be approaching a turning point.

Historically recognized as a model of democratic transition and economic progress, Chile’s recent challenges have cast significant doubt on its democratic resilience. However, the recent election outcome suggests that the period of uncertainty may be drawing to a close.

The center-right Chile Vamos coalition demonstrated its strength by surpassing the far-right Republicanos in their competition for dominance in that sector. Simultaneously, the center-left Socialismo Democratico coalition increased its vote share vis-à-vis the more left-leaning Communist Party and Frente Amplio. Mayors, municipal and regional (states) councilmembers, and governors, are much more evenly distributed across the ideological spectrum than before the elections.

Chilean Democracy Undergoes Dramatic Shifts Since 2019

Since 2019, the country’s democracy has undergone dramatic shifts. That year, a widespread social uprising triggered the election of a constitutional assembly reflecting deep-seated demands for systemic change. In September 2022, however, the population decisively rejected a progressive constitutional draft, with 63% voting against it. Undeterred, political elites attempted a do-over, now with a reformed electoral system, hoping to elect a more balanced constitutional assembly. Despite these efforts, the strategy backfired. Republicanos secured a plurality of votes and the chance to veto decisions in the new assembly, resulting in a conservative draft. Ultimately, the latest proposal met the same fate as its predecessor, with 55% of Chileans rejecting the new constitutional project.

Given these rapid political transformations, last November’s local election results offer a promising sign of renewed stability for Chile. Voters appear to have moved beyond the climate of uncertainty, shifting away from supporting outsider candidates who promised sweeping economic and social restructuring and instead gravitating towards more moderate, centrist political alternatives.

Despite hurting citizens’ aspirations to rewrite the Pinochet-era constitution, the instability caused by years of institutional uncertainty is most likely over. Every significant coalition has agreed not to attempt new constitutional changes in the near future. The new political landscape indicates an emergent recalibration of Chile’s party system.

Despite the good news, some fundamental challenges remain. Political parties and Congress continue to suffer from extremely low public trust, with recent polling indicating that only 8% and 4% trust these institutions, respectively. Moreover, an electoral reform implemented in 2015 that replaced the archaic Pinochet-era binomial system incentivizes politicians to act as individual political entrepreneurs rather than committed party-builders.

The increasing personalization of politics has consequently made legislation and governance increasingly tricky. Recognizing this fragmentation, a cross-party group of senators has proposed a bill to raise the vote threshold required for an electoral list to enter Congress, with the explicit goal of reducing the number of parties in Congress. Improving the institutional design could help political elites enhance policymaking to face the country’s most pressing challenges: rising public safety concerns and a stagnating economy

Chile’s political stability is critical not only for its citizens but also for the global energy landscape. As a significant contributor to the energy transition, the country commands an extensive share of the world’s lithium and copper reserves and production. With the United States and China seeking to develop resilient supply chains and invest in renewable energy infrastructure, Chile is positioned to play a pivotal role in the emerging geopolitical dynamics of critical mineral production and clean energy development.

The Presidential Race Heats Up

Together with more centrist incumbents at the local level, two issues will lurk behind the presidential and legislative elections of November 2025: economic stagnation and escalating public safety concerns. Evelyn Matthei, a right-wing moderate and the daughter of Fernando Matthei—a former military junta member—is the clear frontrunner. A recent poll shows that 22% of citizens would support her if the election were held this week, positioning her ahead of all left-leaning presidential hopefuls. The poll also indicates that Matthei would defeat every contender in a potential runoff, including the far-right Kast. On the contrary, the poll suggests every left-leaning candidate would lose against Matthei in a runoff. In the case Kast made it to a second round, he could be defeated by left leaning former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, should she have a change of heart and decide to run.

Matthei faces two far-right challengers: José Antonio Kast and Johannes Kaiser. In the 2021 election, Kast beat Chile Vamos but was ultimately defeated by Gabriel Boric in the runoff. Kaiser, a polarizing far-right politician, left the Republicanos party in 2023. Current polling indicates Kaiser’s candidacy is gaining traction, with 8% of voters expressing potential support—a trajectory that suggests growing political momentum.

It is unclear who the contenders on the left will be. Gabriel Boric’s government (2021-2025) is relatively unpopular, with an average approval rating of 30%. Such context makes it hard for many left-leaning political figures to dissociate from the government. Thus far, former president Michelle Bachelet is the only competitive candidate, although at this time she still loses against Matthei in the polls mentioned above. Recently, former President Bachelet indicated that she will not run for a third time.

Lately, the coalitional dynamics within Chile’s left have shifted rapidly. The once-powerful Socialismo Democrático has lost support after endorsing the 2019 wave of demonstrations which, according to research conducted in 2024 by CADEM, are now viewed with disapproval by a majority of respondents. Meanwhile, the more progressive Frente Amplio has emerged as the dominant force among left-leaning parties.

Looking ahead to the June 2025 primaries, two distinct scenarios could emerge if left-wing candidates gain momentum. Under Socialismo Democratico leadership, we would likely see a more market-oriented approach, leveraging their extensive governmental experience and networks of skilled technocrats. On the other hand, if a candidate from Frente Amplio or the communist party prevails, the presidential race would likely center on increasing state control over natural resources and expanding wealth redistribution programs.

Although primary elections are not mandatory, it has become common for large coalitions to nominate their presidential candidates through this mechanism.

Whatever happens next year, the institutional uncertainty stemming from the constitutional discussion has mostly dissipated. If political elites create a more balanced electoral system and find a way to jumpstart the economy, Chile may be back on track on the road to economic progress and democratic stability.

Photo Credit: Universidad de Chile.

Maximiliano Véjares holds a PhD. from Johns Hopkins and an MA from the University of Chicago. He is a senior research associate at Johns Hopkins University’s Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab and a nonresident fellow at American University in Washington, DC. His academic interests are the origins of political development, including democracy, state capacity, and the rule of law. Beyond His scholarly work, Maximiliano has broad professional experience in government and international organizations.

St. Lucia during and post Hurricane Beryl

by Tamanisha J. John

Toronto, Ontario

Whenever a hurricane hits in the Caribbean, people rush to point out that it is an indicator of “disaster capitalism” and/or that “disaster capitalism” will surely come. While I agree that non-governmental organizations (NGO) and other organizations profit from disasters in the Caribbean region, and have a long history of doing so, I am less inclined to believe that “disaster capitalism” exists there unless one takes an ahistorical view. Disaster capitalism in the Caribbean can only exist in those states whose revolutions have been defeated and/or undermined, but overall, there has been no massive structural changes in these states. The region is already, and historically has been, ultra-accommodating to capitalism. Disaster capitalism refers to “the use of the shock of disastrous situations to dismantle state participation in the economy and to implant structural changes in the form of laissez-faire capitalism” (Schwartz, 2015, p. 311). To claim that disaster capitalism will come to the Caribbean region would thus indicate a marked period of state participation in the Caribbean that provided for the peoples living there.

Instead, all states’ independence was marked by US interventions given the ideological and economic struggle of the Cold War and the neoliberal turn, which attacked state input and intervention in the market. Caribbean states’ independence was marked by debt and lack of access to capital. It occurred alongside financial institutions’ proliferation of structural adjustment policies whose implementation was necessitated for states in the region to acquire access to loaned capital (John, 2023). Though struggles for nationalizations did occur – in industries like mining, banking, insurance, and others – harsh retaliations from the US and Canada made them unsustainable (John, 2023, p. 134) – with no real reductions in foreign ownership “despite the changes in legal forms of ownership” (Thomas, 1984, p. 168-9). Thus, large foreign ownership of resource extractive industries and financial institutions remained a feature of Caribbean societies when they became independent – just as it also marked the colonial landscape in these spaces. The foreign players that controlled corporations, land, and industries in these countries did change somewhat, but this was also typical with imperial rivalries (Caribbean states themselves having been subject to multiple phases of European colonization throughout their histories).

It was Walter Rodney, who in his 1972 text How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, put forward a critique of the thesis that capitalism had to develop prior to ushering in socialism – which was Marx’s estimation – given that this thesis went against the trajectory of capitalist development in both the Caribbean and in Africa, where the capitalist logics of extraction with disregard for these societies left them in almost permanent states of underdevelopment, that only physical and ideological anti-imperialism could rectify. One of the consequences of this underdevelopment, I argue, is the lack of hurricane preparedness. The logic of “getting people back to work” and “security” in these colonized spaces have always trumped wellbeing for the people and environment – precisely because the people in them have always been categorized as disposable, while the natural resources have been reduced to instruments for the generation of profit. This ideology was true under European empires, and now true under US hegemony in the region – where foreign imposing actors continue to have more say on preparedness, wealth distribution, land ownership, security, economic development, and entrepreneurship (innovation).

In a Region Prone to Hurricanes, Unpreparedness is an Ideological Policy Choice

“Hurricanes are not random phenomena. Atmospheric conditions and physics limit their movement” (Schwartz, 2015, p. xvi). In the Caribbean, the Yucatán Peninsula, the Gulf of Mexico, and the South-Eastern United States, we have come to expect a lack of preparedness whenever hurricanes strike. Though Hurricane Beryl’s strength and early formation in June was unprecedented for the Caribbean’s hurricane season, what is precedent is the lack of regional preparedness for hurricanes in a region prone to have them – no matter when these hurricanes form. Forming around June 25th it was clear that Beryl would break the record for earliest formed Category 5 hurricane by the time that it made way into the Caribbean. This was due to the unusually warm temperatures registered in both the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea as early as March, various heatwave advisories and warnings were placed on the region acknowledging that the summer 2024 would be “hotter than usual” (Loop News 2024). When news of Beryl’s formation first spread, people expected the worst given unusually hot increases in temperatures (+4°c) for the region so early in the year.

Making landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in one of the smaller islands of Grenada, Carriacou, on July 1st Beryl would destroy 95% of the infrastructure there before strengthening to a Category 5 hurricane. It would bring even worse devastation to a smaller island of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Mayreu, where reports proclaim that island to have nearly been “erased from the map” (AP News 2024). In its Caribbean path, Beryl brought devastation as a Category 5 and 4 storm to Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, Tobago and northern Venezuela, Barbados, and the southern portion of Jamaica. In its North American path, Beryl brought devastation as a Category 2 and 1 storm to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, before making landfall in Texas and Louisiana. Thereafter the storm was experienced elsewhere in the form of a tropical cyclone and massive downpours of rain. Beryl eventually tapered off in Canada on July 11th where it left heavy rain that caused massive flooding (due to Canada’s neglected flood systems). Beryl’s death toll currently stands at 33, with the storm causing 6 deaths “in Venezuela, 1 in Grenada, 2 in Carriacou, 6 in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, 4 in Jamaica […] at least 11 in the Greater Houston area, 1 in Louisiana, and 2 in Vermont.” (TT Weather Center 2024)”

Now that the storm has passed, people in impacted areas must contend with the loss of life, destruction of physical infrastructure – including homes and businesses, the lack of food and other basic products, as well as the lack of power and electricity. While contending with loss, victims of this severe weather will start to question the inability of their governments – rich or poor – to adequately address the post hurricane scenarios that they find themselves in repeatedly. This discontent with unpreparedness is now prevalent even before the hurricane season itself has ended.

A Note on Cuba’s Hurricane Preparedness, The Importance of Ideology

One of the most infuriating elements of hurricanes in this region is the “disaster” narratives that come after them, which falsely assert the “naturalness” of unpreparedness given the chaos of the disaster itself – when unpreparedness is, in fact, an ideological policy choice. Poorer states in this region are shackled by an unwillingness of the state to drastically deviate from “larger institutional constraints from which the logic of colonial administration derived its central purpose” and are inherited (Pérez Jr., 2001, p. 133-4).  On the other hand, richer states are shackled by their individualist ideologies which offer “vigorous critiques of government expenditure” which leave preparedness up to “market-driven, neoliberal economic policies,” that turn state and local responsibilities over “to charitable institutions, to churches, or to the victims themselves and their communities” (Schwartz, 2015, p. 300).

When looking at states in the Western Hemisphere which frequently experience hurricanes, Cuba stands out as a state which tends to fare better in the post hurricane environment given that state’s policies of shared responsibility towards its people. This even as Cuba has been subjected to a draining embargo and sanctions which places a burden on economic growth there. Yet still, Washington maintains that Cuba’s successful hurricane response and disaster mitigation strategies amount to “the exchange of liberty for effectiveness” (Schwartz, 2015, p. 293-4). Though couched in this language of ‘liberty,’ mitigating the loss of life ensures one’s longtime enjoyment of liberty – as opposed to dying for ‘liberty’s’ sake during a hurricane (or other disasters like the COVID-19 pandemic). For example, Cuba’s hurricane preparedness in relation to the US stands out. Cuba’s disaster response compares a bit more favorably to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). FEMA “oversaw 15 times more deaths from hurricanes than Cuba from 2005 — the year that Katrina struck New Orleans — to 2015” (Wolfe, 2021).

This is because Cuba’s disaster preparedness is proactive, prioritizing human life and well-being given the ideological foundations of its revolution that transformed political, social, economic, and environmental relations in the country. US disaster preparedness on the other hand prioritizes profit at the expense of people – it is reactionary and reactive, often blaming victims of hurricane disasters for the lack of state preparedness.

The Caribbean Hurricane as Natural Phenomena, the Disaster as Colonial Inheritance

Hurricanes are not experienced equally amongst states in the Western Hemisphere. People living on Caribbean islands tend to experience the worst effects of hurricanes when they do strike, and it is also people on these same islands which tend to have less resources to recover from the impacts of a hurricane. Though Cuba’s hurricane preparedness is commendable, infrastructure and livelihoods there are still devastated by hurricanes. Many of the Caribbean islands are geographically located “in the Atlantic Hurricane Alley, [and] the region is sensitive to large-scale fluctuation of ocean patterns that are disrupted by warming seas” (Zodgekar, et. al 2023, p. 321). Additionally, populations and infrastructure on these islands tend to be concentrated on the coast – a colonial holdover – given that European “settlements were established directly in the path of oncoming hurricanes (Pérez Jr., 2001, p. 8). Initially due to lack of knowledge, this trend remained unchanged amongst Europeans given the need to export what was being extracted from these islands using the ports developed on the coasts.

Historically, environmental disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, and droughts) throughout the 1600s-1900s would consolidate land amongst the wealthiest European settlers on different islands and would foil settler attempts to diversify agriculture on islands. This was because wealthy settlers could more easily recover and rebuild what was lost in the aftermath of a hurricane, due to their ability to access credit from Europe and resort to using their own fortunes (wealth and networks). On the other hand, smaller settlers unable to rebuild and recover from hurricane losses had a harder time accessing credit – and creditors within Europe viewed loaning to smaller settlers as a financial burden. If these smaller settlers were already in debt, the passing of a hurricane meant that they would either have to work off debt by giving all that they had to a creditor in Europe, or one on the island, by entering into a credit arrangement with a wealthier plantation owner (Mulcahy, 2006, p. 86-8). These losses were quite frequent, as it is known that these phenomena made it so that some European creditors in Europe would amass plantation wealth, even if they themselves had never visited a Caribbean island or formally engaged in plantation life (Mulcahy, 2006, p. 87-8).

These dynamics, in part, explain the predominance of the cultivation of sugar (and rice in what would become the South-Eastern United States) within the region, and even then, “plantership […] necessitated deep pockets (or strong credit) to survive its constant and rapid fluctuations” (Mulcahy, 2006, p. 66). “Without access to credit, smaller farmers were forced to sell their lands to wealthier and more secure planters, who thereby expanded their landholdings and production capabilities” (Mulcahy, 2006, p. 86). This consolidation of larger and wealthier plantations also made other concerns arise, namely the depopulation of settlers from the islands, as debtors opted to leave in the aftermath of storms, and later the transfers of estates to owners outside of the colonies (Mulcahy, 2006, p. 86-7). In essence, settlers’ decision to flee in the wake of, or after, a hurricane shaped population dynamics and demographics in colonies. They also shaped the lack of hurricane preparedness in colonies. Wealthier planters on the islands, and Europeans in Europe, who could suffer from hurricane losses (hurricanes themselves not being guaranteed every season), rebuild afterwards, and recover previous losses given the profit from plantation trade goods – had less incentives to plan ahead if they were not as risk of losing everything they had amassed in their life after a hurricane.

In smaller island states’, where plantation systems were heavily disrupted or stunted in growth due to geography of the land (especially in the Lesser Antilles), even fewer attempts were made to develop any infrastructure which could protect against storms (Mulcahy, 2006). To be clear, this does not mean that these landscapes were spared from destruction which made the impacts of hurricanes worse: deforestation, overgrazing, and over-cultivation of Caribbean islands during centuries of European colonialism that included dispossession of indigenous groups and the enslavement of Africans, also impacted how hurricanes came to be experienced. While planter consolidation, rebuilding, and profits have so far been underscored here – the elephant in the room is that all of this occurred alongside the massive death toll of enslaved Africans who suffered the most both during and after the passage of a hurricane. Outside of the high death tolls for enslaved Africans on the islands, once a hurricane passed, the ultimate goal in the colonies became the reestablishment of ‘law-and-order’ given fears of slave revolt in the wake of destruction (Mulcahy, 2006; Schwartz, 2015). Although slave-revolts post hurricane remained a consistent fear of settlers, slave revolts did not occur after a hurricane due to its disproportionate toll on enslaved populations who were “often the most debilitated by the shortage of food and the diseases that followed the hurricane” (Schwartz, 2015, p. 49).

Caribbean Indigenous Peoples Blamed European Imperial Settlement for Increased Hurricane Devastation

From historical accounts, we know that the Spaniards were the first Europeans to experience a hurricane within the Western Hemisphere during Columbus’s second voyage in 1494/5 (Pérez Jr., 2001; Mulcahy, 2006; Schwartz, 2015). The hurricane experience was unlike anything that Europeans had observed in Europe, and it was from this experience that they sought out intel from the indigenous peoples in the Caribbean. For Caribbean indigenous peoples, “the great storms were part of the annual cycle of life. They respected their power and often deified it, but they also sought practical ways to adjust their lives to the storms. Examples were many: The Calusas of southwest Florida planted rows of trees to serve as windbreaks to protect their villages from hurricanes. On the islands of the Greater Antilles—Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico—the Taino people preferred root crops like yucca, malanga, and yautia because of their resistance to windstorm damage. The Maya of Yucatan generally avoided building their cities on the coast because they understood that such locations were vulnerable to the winds and to ocean surges that accompanied the storms” (Schwartz, 2015, p. 5). Further, Indigenous representations of hurricanes were overall accurate and are similar to modern meteorological mapping of these storms. Europeans also learned from Caribbean Indigenous groups that you could “track” when a hurricane would strike. These developments meant that Indigenous Caribbean knowledge of the hurricane was not only limited to the occurrence of storm, but also meant that Indigenous Caribbean societies factored in preparedness for hurricanes within their worldviews.

Given Caribbean Indigenous knowledge of hurricanes, it is these same people who also recognized that the changes to the landscape by European colonialism contributed to the increased devastation caused by hurricanes between the 1600s-1900s. As such, English colonists who would also come to experience the hurricanes report that “several elderly Caribs stated that hurricanes had become more frequent in recent years, which they viewed as a punishment for their interactions with Europeans” and the main “alteration that our people attribute the more frequent happenings of Hurricanes” (Mulcahy, 2006, p. 35). What these settler accounts reveal about Indigenous Caribbean peoples is what Schwartz notes in his 2015 book, Sea of Storms: A History of Hurricanes in the Greater Caribbean from Columbus to Katrina, that although “hurricanes were a natural phenomenon; what made them disasters was the patterns of settlement, economic activity, and other human action” (p. 74). Nonetheless, colonial ecological and environmental destruction in the Caribbean – which increased the felt impact of hurricanes – remained worthwhile for Europeans given the high profits to be made from export crops, which kept people there to rebuild after hurricanes. Mulcahy in his 2006 book, Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624 – 1783, writes “European settlers and colonists were engaged in a never-ending struggle against nature in their quest for wealth” (p. 93)

Additionally, the European empire’s responses to hurricanes also influenced decisions to stay. Because colonial societies in the Caribbean were stratified along racial and other social hierarchies – hurricanes presented opportunities for large scale consolidation of plantation property on islands which privileged wealthy plantation owners. Additionally, smaller merchants and plantations which could not recover post hurricane were sometimes forced to transfer ownership to merchants in Europe – who never had to visit these properties while amassing wealth from them thereafter (Mulcahy 2006, p. 88). Disaster relief to the colonies thus came to be historically designed as a way for further economic integration, and “assistance to the colonies in times of disaster would bring wealth and affluence to the empire” (Mulcahy 2006, p. 162). Disaster assistance – while increasing inequalities between all peoples in the colonies – did overall benefit imperial capitalism and patriotism within the empire, amongst loyal subjects, especially amongst elite classes, who received the majority of aid based on their losses.

Banking on Hurricanes and Absolving Empire of Responsibility: Debates in Europe

While debates in Europe raged regarding enriching the already wealthy within the colonies with disaster relief – these debates did not change the post-hurricane reality of which those most needing of aid (Indigenous groups, enslaved Africans, indentured workers, small merchants, and small planters) were the least likely to receive it, which was true across all of the different European colonies (Pérez Jr., 2001; Mulcahy, 2006; Schwartz, 2015). “Vulnerability to the hurricane itself was a function of the material determinants” around which colonial social hierarchies were arranged (Pérez Jr., 2001, p. 111). In Europe, debates focused primarily on creditors, so it was argued that the wealthy were more primed to repay creditors when/if they received disaster relief after a hurricane. On the other hand, the proliferation of print news meant that individuals and organizations (e.g., the Church) could send aid to the colonies after disaster struck. Previously, when disaster struck it would take months for news to reach those in Europe, even as the disruptions in trade were more readily felt. Moreover, it was hard for the public in Europe to understand the scale of destruction caused by hurricanes in the Americas, given that this kind of natural disaster did not occur in Europe.

With the establishment of print media, the destruction caused by hurricanes and the damages that they did to plantation systems – which would require a lot of assistance to recover – was made much more readily available to people who could empathize and assist in recovery efforts. Within the British empire, some newspapers even published who would send what amount and type of post disaster relief to the colonies, which undoubtedly contributed to the charitable giving of some wealthy individuals (Mulcahy 2006; Schwartz 2015). Given that the voyage from Europe to the various colonies was long, there was illegal trading between different colonies to provide relief to one another faster – including with the United States, even after the American Revolution.

It is this colonial history which still shapes the lack of hurricane preparedness in a region prone to have them. Thus, most scholars on hurricanes in the region continue to highlight the colonial and slave legacies which have shaped regional unpreparedness to hurricanes. Though the United States is a wealthier country today with the capabilities to develop hurricane preparedness – even if only within its own borders – it is elite US security interests and ideological leanings which have prevented it from doing so. Additionally, historians like Schwartz (2015) make a compelling argument that “the United States, by its military and political expansion into the Caribbean after 1898, its foreign policy objectives in the Cold War, and through its advocacy of certain forms of capitalism joined with its ability to impose its preferences on international institutions, has also influenced the way in which the whole region has faced hurricanes and other disasters” (Schwartz, 2015, p. xviii-xix). This implies that the United States – like the European empire’s past – also has a stake, or interest, in regional hurricane unpreparedness for both political, economic, and security objectives.

US Imperial Extensions in the Caribbean, Impact on Hurricane Preparedness

From this overview of the history of hurricanes in the Caribbean, the Yucatán Peninsula, the Gulf of Mexico, and the South-Eastern United States a few things become clear: hurricane preparedness has never been a concern for colonial capitalist development. Hurricane disasters came to be recognized as extremely ruinous to those occupying the lowest rungs of colonial societies, aid was given to the wealthy people who were understood as being able to put aid to better usage, and disaster situations consolidated preferred modes of accumulation in otherwise “chaotic” and uncivilized landscapes. Thus, outside of patriotic tales and misremembering of the storm events, historically “hopes of communal solidarity” in the wake and aftermath of hurricanes “were either naïve or disingenuous [… with] social divisions ha[ving] always shaped the responses to hurricanes (Schwartz, 2015, p. 68-9). Given strict colonial hierarchies, the maintenance of order – to dissuade slave revolts and looting – were always preeminent concerns of empires and those with wealth and power. This is important to plainly state, given that little has changed in today’s experience with hurricanes in the region.

Today’s granting of conditioned relief and temporary debt removals still serve to subordinate Caribbean states to the Western capitalist system and the US security apparatus. Those areas hardest hit by storms and less likely to receive aid, continue to be occupied by the poor populations that are largely non-white/Euro peoples. Settlements on islands continue to be concentrated on coasts, where the tourist industry quickly rebuilds its infrastructure post-hurricane and are the first to receive aid. This at once dispels the myths that recovery is impossible, as it happens in the large coastal areas owned and controlled by foreign hotel chains and entities which quickly beckon tourists back to their “lovely beaches” less than a day after a hurricane. Preparedness for hurricanes in the Caribbean islands are “subordinated to political, military, or what today would be called ‘security’ concerns” (Schwartz, 2015, p. 276). I would include economic and ideological concerns as well. These latter concerns are maintained by the wealthiest states in the hemisphere – the United States and Canada.

Hurricane Flora in the 1960s claimed the lives of over 5,000 Haitians under the Duvalier dictatorship – which failed to even warn Haitians about the arrival of the hurricane so that disorder against Duvalier would not take over the country. The lack of preparedness was accepted by both the United States and Canadian governments given their fear of communism in the Caribbean region. Thus “unlike Haiti’s U.S.-backed right-wing president, François Duvalier, Castro’s Communist government ordered residents living in the hurricane’s projected path to evacuate their homes, and if they were unable, to stay and prepare appropriately for the storm.” This preparation and the establishment of Cuba’s defense system in 1966 accounted for significantly less deaths (1,157) in Cuba (Wolfe, 2021). Today, unpreparedness remains a feature in most Caribbean countries that put corporate interests and the interests of the US (and its allies) security objectives above the prioritization of human life and livelihoods in the Caribbean.

As further illustration of this point, even though the 2004 Hurricane Jeanne hit Cuba a lot harder than Haiti – killing 3,000 Haitians – no Cuban lives were lost due to the hurricane (Wolfe, 2021). The historical and present-day case of Haiti is both informative and a cause for worry as we expect future hurricane seasons to be quite bad. Not only is Haiti a fully privatized economy (Wilentz, 2008); but it is also one that has been under the tutelage of the CORE group – a group composed primarily of foreign ambassadors from the US, France, Canada, Spain, Brazil, Germany, and a few representatives from the European Union (EU), the United Nations (UN), and the Organization of American States (OAS) – for over two decades. The CORE group’s tutelage of Haiti has been exceptionally negative, as these states and their ambassadors secure their own corporate and labor interests in the country at the expense of that state’s democracy and national sovereignty (Edmonds, 2024). Thus, disaster preparedness in Haiti has never been an agenda item – and has only gotten worse as those governing the country continue to benefit from political, economic, and environmental disasters there. Present day armed intervention and occupation in Haiti, further makes it unlikely that Haiti will be able to weather the next hurricane season.

Hurricane Unpreparedness, A Note on Canada

It is important to remind here that although much is said about US imperialism and security concerns trumping human rights and pro-people development in the region – Canada is not exempt from this critique. For instance, although Canada touts that its military base (OSH-LAC) in the Caribbean is a “support hub” – that also seeks to assist states experiencing disasters, of which hurricanes are included – in 2017 when Category 5 Hurricane’s Irma and Maria wreaked havoc on Dominica, OSH-LAC warships monitored the situation but provided no on the ground help to Caribbean peoples there (John, 2024, p. 12-3). The Canadian government also enacted restrictive migration policies towards those fleeing from the hurricane and its damages. This practice would be repeated by Canada again in 2019 during the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian in The Bahamas (John, 2024, p. 12-3). Given that I am currently living in Canada, it is important to point out that Canada is a state that frequently touts progressive rhetoric on climate change, resiliency, and disaster preparedness in the Caribbean region. However, Canada’s actions continue to render the Caribbean region unprepared alongside the actions of the US.

In the 2023 Canada-CARICOM summit hosted by Canada, Caribbean prime ministers sought to place climate issues and climate infrastructure at the top of the agenda – however, Canada was mainly concerned with getting support for an armed intervention in Haiti (Thurton, 2023). Haiti remains the most unprepared country in the Caribbean when disasters hit, which made Canada’s insistence on armed intervention and occupation even more tone deaf. Haiti’s unpreparedness is directly tied to US, Canada, France, and CORE group members tutelage and rejection of Haitian democracy ever since that country’s integration into the Western capitalist system via US occupation. These examples illuminate the fact that the wealthier states in the Western Hemisphere, namely the US and Canada, actively disregard the lives of those impacted by hurricanes and other natural disasters to their south – while first and foremost safeguarding their own economic, ideological, and security priorities. In my analysis of ‘south,’ the Caribbean, the Yucatán Peninsula, the Gulf of Mexico, and the South-Eastern United States are included.

Conclusion

Ideologically, the promotion of capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism in the Caribbean (of which the South-Eastern United States, the Gulf of Mexico and Yucatán Peninsula is included) continues to pose an obstacle to disaster preparedness in a region prone to hurricanes.  More importantly, the promotion of these harmful ideologies often comes at the expense of human life. Nothing makes this clearer than the fact that it is the revolutionary state – which is also the most heavily economically sanctioned state in the region – Cuba, that continues to be the most prepared state in times of disaster. This stands in stark contrast to other Caribbean states and to wealthier states, like the US, which mandate regional unpreparedness. Today, while we await (but hope that it is not so) a bad hurricane season, the Caribbean region is more militarized than it has been since the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century. Militarization is directly due to US security objectives that aim to keep China’s investments (thus competition) out of the region. This policy is backed by Canada, which seeks to advance its own corporate interests in the region.

The US and Canada continue to militarize the Caribbean region, exacerbating climate change and neglecting the urgency of developing resiliency infrastructure. In fact, militarization in the Caribbean region today (and in Africa and Asia) occurs alongside the tightening of both the US and Canadian borders given hostile narratives towards immigrants and immigration within them. This even with the region’s long history (as has been pointed out) of people fleeing the region both during and after a hurricane. All of which indicates that while these states are undoubtedly deepening the climate crisis with their global “security” endeavors, they view the people harmed and negatively impacted by their actions as disposable.

Postscript

Three months after the writing of this document, 5 hurricanes – Debby, Ernesto, Francine, Helene, and Milton – have impacted peoples and infrastructure in the south. The 2024 Atlantic Hurricane season thus far (October 11th, 2024) has taken almost 400 lives – with the actual figure being uncertain, given that the damage from Milton is still being assessed. Each storm is estimated to have cost between $80 – $250 billion (USD) in damages across the region. While governments talk about costs and recovery efforts to get economies “back on track” and provide people with temporary and conditional aid – which is the post disaster norm – we are presented with an uncomfortable, yet undeniable fact: states in the region, whether by colonial inheritance or commitment to capitalism, are banking on unpreparedness continuing well into the future. We must be proactive in defeating this dangerous ideology that places people’s lives, livelihoods and the physical environment at stake; while perpetuating, in its aftermath, conditions that make it so.

References

Clark, John I, and Léon Tabah, eds. 1995. Population and Environment Population – Environment – Development Interactions. Paris, France: Comité International de Coopération dans les Recherches Nationales en Démographie (CICRED). http://www.cicred.org/Eng/Publications/pdf/c-a1.pdf.

Direct Relief. 2024. “Direct Relief Responds as Hurricane Beryl Impacts the Caribbean. The Region, Watchful and Ready, Will Weather the Storm Today.” Direct Relief. https://www.directrelief.org/2024/07/direct-relief-responds-as-hurricane-beryl-impacts-the-caribbean-the-region-watchful-and-ready-will-weather-the-storm-today/.

Edmonds, Kevin. 2024. “CARICOM, Regional Arm of the Core Group, Sells Out Haiti Again.” Black Agenda Report. https://www.blackagendareport.com/caricom-regional-arm-core-group-sells-out-haiti-again.

Forecast Centre. 2024. “Atlantic Canada Next in Line for a Soaking, Flood Risk from Beryl Remnants.” The Weather Network.https://www.theweathernetwork.com/en/news/weather/forecasts/atlantic-canada-next-in-line-for-a-soaking-flood-risk-from-beryl-remnants.

IFRC. 2024. “Humanitarian Needs Ramp up in the Aftermath of ‘unprecedented’ Hurricane Beryl, Signaling New Reality for Caribbean.” The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). https://www.ifrc.org/press-release/humanitarian-needs-ramp-aftermath-unprecedented-hurricane-beryl-signaling-new-reality.

Jobson, Ryan C. 2024. “Hurricane Beryl at the Gates: The Grenadines and Caribbean Autonomy.” Medium. https://medium.com/clash-voices-for-a-caribbean-federation-from-below/hurricane-beryl-at-the-gates-the-grenadines-and-caribbean-autonomy-86834fb43bcd.

John, Tamanisha J. 2023. “Canadian Imperialism in Caribbean Structural Adjustment, 1980-2000.” In Class Power and Capitalism, Brill Publishers, 136–79.

John, Tamanisha J. 2024. “Capitalism, Global Militarism, and Canada’s Investment in the Caribbean.” Class, Race and Corporate Power 12(1): 25.

Loop News. 2024. “Caribbean 2024 Heat Season Could Climb to Near-Record Heat.” Caribbean Loop News. https://caribbean.loopnews.com/content/caribbean-2024-heat-season-could-climb-near-record-heat.

McGrath, Gareth. 2024. “Hurricane Beryl Was the Earliest Category 5 Storm. What Could That Mean for NC?” Star News Online. https://www.starnewsonline.com/story/news/local/2024/07/11/what-hurricane-beryl-the-earliest-category-5-storm-could-mean-for-nc/74288495007/.

Mulcahy, Matthew. 2006. Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624 – 1783. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

NACLA. 2024. “This Week: Hurricane Beryl Slams the Caribbean, a Victory for Midwives in Mexico, Venezuelan Elections, and More.” https://nacla.salsalabs.org/july_12_24?wvpId=37c1b636-52b7-44b5-af75-9a38617519d5.

NASA. 2024. “Carriacou After Beryl.” NASA Earth Observatory. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/153039/carriacou-after-beryl.

Pérez Jr., Louis A. 2001. Winds of Change: Hurricanes & The Transformation of Nineteenth-Century Cuba. Chapel Hill & London: The University of North Carolina Press.

Rodney, Walter. 2018. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Verso Books.

Schwartz, Stuart B. 2015. Sea of Storms: A History of Hurricanes in the Greater Caribbean from Columbus to Katrina. Princeton University Press.

Thomas, Clive Y. 1984. Plantations, Peasants and State: A Study of the Mode of Sugar Production in Guyana. Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Afro-American Studies.

Thurton, David. 2023. “Caribbean Looks to Trudeau to Put Quest for Climate Change Funding on the World’s Agenda.” CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/caricom-trudeau-caribbean-1.6999106.

TT Weather Center. 2024. “Hurricane Beryl Death Toll Now At 33.” Trinidad and Tobago Weather Center. https://ttweathercenter.com/2024/07/11/hurricane-beryl-death-toll-now-at-33/.

VOA News. 2024. “Remnants of Beryl Flood Northeast US.” VOA News. https://www.voanews.com/a/remnants-of-beryl-flood-northeast-us/7694063.html#.

Wagner, Bryce, and Cristiana Mesquita. 2024. “In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Beryl Nearly Erased the Smallest Inhabited Island from the Map.” AP News. https://apnews.com/article/hurricane-beryl-mayreau-island-caribbean-bb64fc9b61da76685704b8f42f97736c?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=fffcba4b-3154-47e9-b4ce-e0349f4225db.

Wilentz, Amy. 2008. “Hurricanes and Haiti.” Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/la-oe-wilentz13-2008sep13-story.html.

Wolfe, Mikael. 2021. “When It Comes to Hurricanes, the U.S. Can Learn a Lot from Cuba: Cuba Devised a System That Minimizes Death and Destruction from Hurricanes.” The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/09/01/when-it-comes-hurricanes-us-can-learn-lot-cuba/.

Zodgekar, Ketaki, Avery Raines, Fayola Jacobs, and Patrick Bigger. 2023. A Dangerous Debt-Climate Nexus. NACLA Report on the Americas. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714839.2023.2247773.

Photo Credit: InOldNews, by Delia Louis
Description: Depicts St. Lucia during and post Hurricane Beryl
License info: Creative Commons taken from Flickr.

About the author: Tamanisha J. John is an Assistant Professor at York University in the Department of Politics

Roger D. Harris

Roger D. Harris is with the human rights organization Task Force on the Americas, founded in 1985. He has been active with the #FreeAlexSaab Campaign.

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) receives the news of the passing of the great Argentine Mexican philosopher, Enrique Dussel on Sunday, November 5, with deep sadness and extends our condolences to the family, the members of the Association of Philosophy and Liberation (AFyL), and other loved ones of Dr. Dussel.

Dussel has inspired multiple generations of thinkers and activists to see that philosophical reflection and political activity are not separate domains. His work has generously opened many critical and transformative paths so that we could see the task of liberation calling for deeper theoretical reflection alongside everyday practices. Philosophy and liberation are entangled in the everyday.

Dussel was a founder and the most prominent voice of the philosophy of liberation. This is a school of critical-ethical theory and praxis that emerged in Argentina in the 1960’s, and now informs the decolonial turn that engages scholars around the world. The critical history advanced by the philosophy of liberation takes its point of departure from the perspective of the victims of European modernity and engages in a detailed critique of the history and philosophy of modernity.

Dussel’s work locates the start of modernity with the conquest of Amerindia (1492): “Modernity, colonialism, the world-system and capitalism are aspects of the same simultaneous reality and are mutually constitutive of each other.” The philosophy of liberation exposes the racist and Eurocentric underside of modernity which sought to justify the horrific sacrifice of millions of human beings on the altar of the primitive accumulation of capital. The myth of modernity is seen in the colonizer’s claim to racial superiority in carrying out a civilizing mission sanctified by the will of God. The myth of modernity, and the coloniality which it established, did not disappear with the independence of colonized nations. Today, modernity has reached its apex as a “rules-based order” that even sanctions genocide.

For Dussel, we have a collective responsibility to defend human life and the biosphere by the long arduous task of practicing a politics of liberation. The goal, argues Dussel, is not another version of modernity, or even postmodernity, but rather transmodernity.  In a transmodern world, there would not be a single world hegemon to call the shots, no exceptional nations with an inherent right, divine or secular, to dominate other nations. The transmodern alternative promotes cooperation by a diversity of nations and cultures which converge around certain shared integral ethical principles: that we ought to advance human life in community; use inclusive democratic procedures to decide on policy, and do only what, given the circumstances, is feasible.

So long as enough of us retain our sensibility for the plight of the Other, and are willing to take co-responsibility for the Other and the earth’s ecosystem, life on the planet is not doomed. Dussel’s legacy calls on us to carry forward his liberatory vision into tomorrow. The future remains open to us if we dare to enter history. And that open future depends on our collective ethical commitment to cross over the wasteland of militarism, poverty, and racism to build a transmodern world, a world “in which many worlds can fit.”

Dussel is referred to by several generations of students and scholars as “The Teacher”

Photos courtesy of Jorge Alberto Reyes López

Philosopher Don Deere contributed to this memorial essay.

Sameer Gupta and Armaan Johal

From Toronto, ON

Although Mexico has maintained a ban on genetically modified (GM) corn since the 1990s, the move by Mexican President Andres Manuel Luiz Obrador (AMLO) in 2020 to eventually ban the import of GM corn in order to promote domestic cultivation of native varieties has threatened to spark a trade war with the United States. But in recent months, an interesting wrinkle developed, as it became evident that the Canadian government was actively involving itself in the dispute by backing the U.S. opposition to the Mexican law. Canadian officials agreed with Washington’s claim that the ban lacked scientific merit, and that it also threatened provisions concerning market access guaranteed by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This dispute is part of a wider trend within relations between Mexico and its North American partners since the progressive Obrador won the Presidency in 2018. Obrador framed his Presidency as a rejection of neoliberal dogma which has dominated Mexico since the late 1970s, a highly symbolic gesture that has unsettled ostensibly centre-left governments in both Canada and the United States, and introduced a level of discord within the NAFTA relationship that is unprecedented since the agreement came into force 30 years ago.

Corn is native to Mexico and there is a long history of cultivation and consumption dating back to at least the Aztec period. Today corn is widely consumed in the form of tortillas, a staple food for millions of Mexican households. However, since NAFTA came into force in 1994 Mexico’s corn consumption has become increasingly dependent on imports from abroad – chiefly from the US. But an equally important development was growing fears about cross-pollination of transgenic corn with native varieties in Mexico, following the introduction of GM crops in the US in 1995. The threat this trend posed to food security and rural agrarian economies – and by extension to biodiversity and Indigenous lifeways – saw Mexico bar the domestic cultivation of GM crops in 1998.¹ Foreign biotech firms have waged a decades-long legal campaign² against that ban, which Obrador now seeks to extend to the growing percentage of corn that is sourced from outside of the country.

Despite objections from Canada and the US, there is reason to be concerned about the ecological and health impacts of GM crops and the industrial practices (like using carcinogenic chemical glyphosate) associated with their use.³ Additionally, Mexico has long maintained a database documenting public health concerns related to GM foods showing links to elevated risk of cancer and obesity.⁴

A Fight Decades in the Making

NAFTA, a free trade agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the US in 1992, is now being used to coerce Mexico to abandon its initiative on banning GM corn, and to submit to the whims of the U.S.’s heavily subsidized corn industry, for which Mexico is a leading export destination. Despite the fact that Canada does not export corn to Mexico, it is not surprising that Canada has gotten involved in Mexican efforts to protect and control its corn production and consumption. Canadian officials, including Minister of Trade Mary Ng, have explicitly said that they fear such a move might threaten the market access of Canadian biotechnology firms in other Mexican sectors, and more importantly, potentially undermine the appeal of GM products on the whole.⁶ This move, they suggest, would directly threaten the operations of Canadian firms globally. Canada is now using NAFTA as the mechanism to threaten agricultural reforms in Mexico, and in general the trade agreement itself has loomed large over Mexican politics for three decades now.

When NAFTA went into effect in 1994, it was argued by some that the deal would actually be a catalyst for positive social development by promoting liberal democratic governance and converging regulatory standards across North America – similar to the 1994 North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation. This assumption stemmed from 20th century development theory, which posited that integration of poor countries into an “open” global market (by opening up their economies to foreign investors) would eventually see convergence of incomes with rich countries. But as Sachs & Warner argued, there was no empirical evidence of this trend forthcoming, even after decades of globalization-led development, and indeed Mexico would not prove to be an exception.⁷ The one-sided elimination of agricultural subsidies would see Mexican agricultural output devastated and its market captured by US-based exporters, driving up prices and causing significant rural unemployment and displacement in Mexico.⁸

Thus, even as manufacturing jobs moved to Mexico, economic migration to the United States and Canada from Mexico intensified, swelling urban populations and ensuring wages stayed relatively low within North America, even as trade volumes between the NAFTA countries exploded. In the wake of accelerating inequality in all three countries, and stubbornly high poverty levels in Mexico throughout the 2000s, the 2020 renegotiation of NAFTA — now rebranded as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) — claimed to address these concerns by emphasizing balanced trade and greater attention to social impact.⁹

The brewing fight over genetically modified corn reveals how NAFTA’s commitment to equalization of regulatory regimes remains one-sided, imbued with colonial logic that continues to perceive Mexico as a permanent laggard in the realm of sustainability and human rights, with no scope for its internal democratic processes to stake leadership on these issues by contradicting the neoliberal orthodoxies promulgated by both Ottawa and Washington. Mexico’s position has consistently been informed by the precautionary principle, an emerging doctrine within environmental law which permits states to restrict new innovations with the potential for harm, even in the absence of scientific consensus.¹⁰ This approach has been largely rejected by the United States, as it steadfastly refuses to ratify the Convention on Biological Diversity, which “endorses a precautionary approach to risk assessment.”¹¹ Even though Canada has ratified that agreement, its insistence that Mexico’s claims lack scientific merit belies its ostensible acceptance of the precautionary principle.

And so while this self-serving form of equivalency is broadly applied throughout trade agreements between Canada and Mexico such as NAFTA, there is reason to believe there are ulterior motivations for seeking stronger labour standards or ecological protection in Mexico. Rather, they were critical in allaying concerns that the agreement would unduly undermine Canadian standards of living. By requiring that Mexico work toward improving its labour, environmental, and other such social standards until they were deemed “equivalent” to those of its NAFTA partners, Canada and the US could credibly claim to be eroding the comparative advantage of lower-cost Mexican labour which threatened Canadian manufacturing jobs.¹² Progressively higher standards would improve quality of life for Mexicans, to the point where firms relocating production to Mexico could not count on winning North American market share merely by “cutting corners” on labour rights and environmental standards. The flipside of this convergence would see Canadian and American workers accept stagnant wage growth in largely non-unionized workplaces, as well as social benefits strangled by years of austerity.¹³

NAFTA also allowed Canada and the U.S. to influence the direction of neoliberal reforms in Mexico, privileging paradigms like consumer choice, voluntary action, and limited state intervention. One such example of dangling regulatory equivalency as a precondition for the elimination of trade barriers is the Canada-Mexico Organic Equivalency Arrangement which came into effect earlier this year.¹⁴ However, that agreement, which seeks to give Canadian consumers “more choices that meet Canada’s high organic requirements” is characteristic of this attitude implicit in the concept of equivalency that Mexico had no capacity to improve living standards and quality of life independently of the parameters outlined and pursued by its NAFTA partners. While consumer choice as the solution to growing demand for safer and healthier foods might be acceptable in wealthy Canada, the choice to purchase higher cost “organics” is simply not a credible solution in Mexico, where household incomes are far lower.¹⁵ That is partly why the Mexican government has instead resorted to raising minimum standards, through more stringent regulations concerning the production of corn intended for human consumption.

Further, these trade agreements were pursued by all three NAFTA countries because it allowed Mexican big business to enlist Canada and the U.S. as leading stakeholders in Mexico’s legislative process. Following NAFTA’s implementation in 1994 they would collectively manage reform in Mexico over the following two decades, guiding it according to the whims of the continental system that they presided over – even when their neoliberal reform agenda contradicted the wishes of campesinos (landless farmers), Indigenous communities, and workers.¹⁶ The Mexican government even attempted to remove the ban on GM corn cultivation in 2009, before a Supreme Court ruling restored it in 2013.¹⁷ Now when there is a progressive government in power in Mexico which takes a much more critical view toward both neoliberal economics and the commercial agreements which undergird it, Canada’s willingness to join this U.S.-Mexico dispute speaks to the neocolonial asymmetries which Canada seeks to preserve in its relations with Mexico.

Canada claims there is “no scientific basis”¹⁸ for Mexico’s claim that imports of GM corn present health and ecological risks, deploying tactics which one expert in Mexico likened to those once used by the tobacco industry.¹⁹ Meanwhile, in pursuing the ban Mexico seeks to improve its food security, preserve its biodiversity, and ensure livelihoods for rural and Indigenous communities by promoting the cultivation of its extensive endowment of native corn varieties. In doing so, it is drawing upon cutting-edge frameworks and epistemologies like the precautionary principle, something that Canada should welcome if it is genuinely concerned about Mexican biodiversity. But even as it is confronted with compelling evidence of the risks posed by GM corn, Canada insists on using mechanisms established by NAFTA in order to halt the initiative. Canada alleges that Mexico’s policy would introduce “asymmetry in North American regulatory conditions,” even though the relationship is already asymmetrical –  which is what both Canada and the US are seeking to maintain; while purporting that there exists equivalencies on health, safety and the environment .²⁰

Toward a New Paradigm of Equivalency

Mexico certainly is not opposed to restoring a degree of equivalency. In fact, President Obrador has shown a willingness to compromise on the implementation window, as well as limiting the ban to yellow corn meant for human consumption (the majority of yellow corn is used for livestock feed and other industrial purposes). Even though this has been the case, instead of pressing for a middle ground which takes seriously the emerging facts and unique ecological heritage about which Mexico is concerned, Canada has followed the lead of the US by utilizing NAFTA to the advantage of Canada’s corn and biotechnology sectors – the latter in which Canada maintains significant interests. Mexico has even offered to collaborate with Canada on GM research to no avail. As one Mexican politician supportive of the ban said, Mexico’s neighbours have no right to “intervene in the decisions that the Mexican government is making to safeguard human rights related to this issue.”²¹

Canada should take this point seriously. After all, it has its own history of conflict with the US over differential regulatory regimes and bouts of protectionism to preserve domestic jobs, price stability, and health standards – with disputes over dairy being but one recent example.²² Instead, it would be wise for Canada to consider a wider range of social values like sustainability, employment, and Indigenous values that should override the principles of market access, or at least warrant additional scrutiny and higher standards. Mexico, like Canada, is a democracy, and it would be highly undemocratic if the popular mandate of an elected leader seeking to make good on promises to protect human and environmental rights were summarily overruled via dispute resolution mechanisms introduced by free trade agreements, where the plaintiffs are poised to enjoy strongly favourable odds.²³

One alternative to these “Investor-State Dispute Settlement” mechanisms is greater recourse to domestic jurisdiction, where for example the imperative to protect national biodiversity through a GM corn ban was upheld by the Mexican Supreme Court in 2013, and again in 2021.²⁴ While valid concerns about corporations exercising “regulatory arbitrage” could be addressed through treaty-based mechanisms, establishing common rules around corruption and rule of law as part of trade agreement negotiations may allow domestic social forces room to exercise greater leverage over the terms of foreign investment, extract fairer benefits, and impose stronger conditions in exchange for market access.²⁵ This would also provide an incentive to NAFTA partners to consider a bidirectional concept of equivalency in their negotiations over market access, recognizing the unique development needs, goals and risks each country faces, rather than seeking to impose particular sustainability and development solutions which will ensure steady profits for the domestic industries of rich countries which sit at the top of global value chains.

Contrary to popular discourses around ‘globalization,’ the nation-state has hardly been displaced as the principal organizer of the international economy by corporations and multilateral institutions. While both certainly have come to the fore, they remain in large part manifestations of the structural power of western countries, and especially the US. As such, in many cases – including the corn dispute – the idea of investor-state disputes is really a myth. These are disputes between national economies, and thus they should be resolved bilaterally rather than through adherence to supposedly universal principles of sound economics which nearly always align with the national interests of the advanced capitalist countries. Equivalency under this model would become bilaterally negotiated, rather than about adherence to a universal – and decidedly neoliberal – concept of governance.

Conclusion

As this dispute on Mexican corn winds its way through the mandated resolution process, it becomes increasingly clear that free trade agreements are not politically neutral instruments which seek to rationalize the international investment landscape and help all investors exploit competitive advantages wherever they might exist, free of unhelpful market distortions. Instead, they have been used by certain states to dominate foreign markets and exploit them as peripheral sources of low-cost inputs to their own national value chains. Reestablishing the bilateral state-to-state dimensions of trade and investment can thus help reassert the role of national politics in driving urgently required reform of the rules governing global capital and commercial flows. Furthermore, this reconfigured approach to investment relations can help bring the imperatives of economic development into harmony with the necessity of protecting biodiversity, ensuring traditional livelihoods, and bolstering consumption in regions experiencing high rates of poverty, underdevelopment and mass migration, particularly in the Global South.

Currently, Canada has the opportunity to evolve the terms of free trade agreements in collaboration with a developing country partner with a radically different political valence from those Mexican administrations which have managed the expansion of Canada-Mexico relations post-NAFTA. The AMLO administration seeks to move away from the neoliberal policies which failed to deliver substantial poverty reduction, accelerated environmental degradation, and even contributed to the intensification of political violence. Mexico’s progressive turn, as epitomized by its resolve to confront the creeping infiltration of GM crops into its agricultural system, mirrors wider exhaustion with the neoliberal project among large sections of Canadian society. Seizing upon this emerging consensus around ecological sustainability, safety, and nutrition in the North American food production system, Canada should work both bilaterally and multilaterally to champion Mexico’s innovative approach to evaluating GM crop safety, and work constructively to phase out harmful practices by Canadian biotechnology firms.

In failing to take these steps and instead opting for an assault on Mexico’s biodiversity, Canada’s demand for the repeal of Mexico’s GM corn import ban reveals the neocolonial designs harboured by the architects and defenders of NAFTA – and the hollowness of its expressed claim to improve the lives of Mexico’s poorest and most marginalized.

Armaan Singh Johal is a senior majoring in Political Science at York University (Canada).

Sameer Gupta is a senior majoring in Work and Labour Studies at York University (Canada).

Editorial assistance was provided by Tamanisha J. John, Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at York University and Jill Clark-Gollub, Assistant Editor/Translator at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA).

Photo by Erik Aquino on Unsplash

Endnotes 

1. McAfee, K. (2007). Beyond techno-science: Transgenic maize in the fight over Mexico’s future. Geoforum, 39(1), 148–160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2007.06.002
2. Yet another country delivers a crushing blow to gmos. Thrive Market. (2015, November 12). https://thrivemarket.com/blog/yet-another-country-delivers-crushing-blow-gmos
3. Lopez-Hernandez, Erenesto. Gmo Corn, Mexico, and Coloniality. Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law. (n.d.). (2020). https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1030&context=jetlaw
4. Documentos y actividades en bioseguridad – CONAHCYT. (n.d.-a). https://conahcyt.mx/cibiogem/index.php/sistema-nacional-de-informacion/documentos-y-actividades-en-bioseguridad
5. “Mexico 2021 Export Highlights.” USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, fas.usda.gov/mexico-2021-export-highlights. 2022.
6. “Canada and US Challenge Mexico’s Ban on GM Corn.” CBAN, cban.ca/gmos/issues/trade/canada-and-us-challenge-mexicos-ban-on-gm-corn/#:~:text=Canada%20does%20not%20export%20any,white%20corn%20is%20non%2DGM. 2023
7. Sachs, Jeffrey, and Andrew M. Warner. Economic Reform and the Process of Global Integration. Harvard Institute for International Development, Harvard University, 1996.
8. NAFTA’s Legacy for Mexico: Economic Displacement, Lower … – Citizen, www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/migration/nafta_factsheet_mexico_legacy_march_2018_final.pdf. 2018.
9. Brodsky, Ally, et al. “Labor, Environment, and . . . Gender? What the USMCA Could Mean for the Inclusion of Gender in Future U.S. Trade Agreements.” CSIS, https://www.csis.org/analysis/labor-environment-and-gender-what-usmca-could-mean-inclusion-gender-future-us-trade
10. Jose Felix Pinto-Bazurco, et al. “The Precautionary Principle.” International Institute for Sustainable Development, https://www.iisd.org/articles/deep-dive/precautionary-principle
11. Maize & Biodiversity: The Effects of Transgenic Maize in Mexico: Key Findings and Recommendations: Commission for Environmental Cooperation, Secretariat Report. The Commission, 2004.
12. Bown, C. P., & Claussen, K. (2023, October 12). The rapid response labor mechanism of the US-mexico-canada agreement. PIIE. p. 31 https://www.piie.com/publications/working-papers/rapid-response-labor-mechanism-us-mexico-canada-agreement
13. Semuels, A. (2016, April 19). “good” jobs aren’t coming back. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/onshoring-jobs/412201/
14. Agency, Canadian Food Inspection. “Canada and the Mexico Reach Arrangement for Trade of Organic Food.” Ca, Government of Canada, 15 Feb. 2023, www.canada.ca/en/food-inspection-agency/news/2023/01/canada-and-the-mexico-reach-arrangement-for-trade-of-organic-food.html.
15. Crouch, David. “Fair Trade Food Schemes Battle to Promote Better Standards.” Financial Times, Financial Times, 7 Jan. 2019, www.ft.com/content/83247fda-e0f1-11e8-a8a0-99b2e340ffeb.
16. Hackbarth, Kurt, et al. “American Think Tanks Are Fueling the Mexican Right.” Jacobin, 4 Sept. 2022, jacobin.com/2022/04/us-think-tanks-amlo-morena-energy-reform-baker-institute.
17. “Mexico’s Corn – DW – 11/17/2010.” Com, Deutsche Welle, 17 Nov. 2010, www.dw.com/en/genetically-modified-corn-takes-root-in-mexico/a-6239684.
18. “Canada Joins US in Trade Dispute Hearings against Mexico’s Proposed Ban on GM Corn.” AP News, AP News, 9 June 2023, apnews.com/article/mexico-us-canada-gmo-corn-usmca-trade-0132baa2f950dacdde7de41a611bcb58.
19. “Mexican Scientists Refute U.S., Canadian Claims of Genetically Modified Corn’s Safety.” The Organic & Non-GMO Report, non-gmoreport.com/articles/mexican-scientists-refute-u-s-canadian-claims-of-genetically-modified-corns-safety/. Accessed 6 Nov. 2023.
20. “Canada and US Challenge Mexico’s Ban on GM Corn.” CBAN, cban.ca/gmos/issues/trade/canada-and-us-challenge-mexicos-ban-on-gm-corn/#:~:text=Canada%20does%20not%20export%20any,white%20corn%20is%20non%2DGM. Accessed 6 Nov. 2023.
21. Barrera, Adriana, and Cassandra Garrison. “Exclusive: Mexican Official Says US Refuses to Cooperate on GM Corn Studies.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 3 Aug. 2023, www.reuters.com/science/mexican-official-says-us-refuses-cooperate-gm-corn-studies-2023-08-03/.
22. “United States Establishes Second USMCA Dispute Panel on Canadian Dairy Tariff-Rate Quota Policies.” United States Trade Representative, ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2023/january/united-states-establishes-second-usmca-dispute-panel-canadian-dairy-tariff-rate-quota-policies. Accessed 6 Nov. 2023.
23. Frieden, Joel Trachtman and Jeffry, et al. “U.S. Trade Policy: Going It Alone vs. Abiding by the World Trade Organization.” Econofact, 5 Oct. 2023, econofact.org/u-s-trade-policy-going-it-alone-vs-abiding-by-the-world-trade-organization.
24. Wise, Timothy “Mexico’s Highest Court Rejects Appeal of GM Corn Ban.” FAO, Food Tank, 2021, foodtank.com/news/2021/10/mexicos-highest-court-rejects-appeal-of-gm-corn-ban/.
25. Johnson, Lise, et al. Alternatives to Investor-State Dispute Settlement – Columbia University, scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1152&context=sustainable_investment_staffpubs. Accessed 7 Nov. 2023.
26. Zavala, Oswaldo. Drug Cartels Do Not Exist Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican Culture. Vanderbilt Univ Press, 2022.

References

Castañeda, Jorge G. 2014. “NAFTA’s Mixed Record: The View from Mexico.” Foreign Affairs, vol. 93, no. 1, pp. 134–41.

Cavanagh, John, et al. 2002. “Debate: Happily Ever NAFTA?” Foreign Policy, no. 132, pp. 58–65.

Klassen, J. (2014). Joining empire: The political economy of the new Canadian foreign policy. University of Toronto Press. Pp, 5, 205.

Staff, N. (2023, August 25). Canada to join U.S. trade fight with Mexico over genetically modified corn products. CityNews Halifax. Web: https://halifax.citynews.ca/2023/08/25/canada-to-join-u-s-trade-fight-with-mexico-over-genetically-modified-corn-products/

By Tamanisha J. John

From Toronto, Ontario

On March 8, 2023, General Laura J. Richardson of the United States (U.S.) Southern Command gave testimony at a congressional hearing wherein she issued a warning to U.S. lawmakers about the expansion of Chinese influence in the Caribbean that were at odds with purported U.S. interests in the region.^[1] Richardson advised policy makers in the U.S. to “pay more attention” to the Caribbean (and Central and South America) because “proximity matters.”^[2] To raise the issue to a level of “threat” for U.S. policymakers, Richardson claimed that China had “increased its support for anti-U.S. regimes in the region” of which the usual suspects Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua were mentioned.^[3]

Although China’s investment and trade with Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua are minimal in comparison to other states in the region,^[4] General Richardson expresses an urgent need for U.S. reengagement with the Caribbean region – where historically this sort of engagement by the U.S. was only used to counter “threats” like communism, socialism, Black Power, and any expression of anti-imperialism. These left leaning movements challenge U.S. interests in maintaining a global capitalist system that supports liberal theories of development via free-trade, open-markets, and privatization, for the states in its “backyard.” Washington considers growing Chinese economic ties in the region at odds with U.S. interests.

Three months after Richardson’s testimony, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris made an official visit to The Bahamas to co-host a US-Caribbean Leaders Meeting with Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis. Notably, it was the first time that a high-ranking U.S. official had visited The Bahamas since it gained independence in 1973.^[5] During the meeting, VP Harris stated that given “longstanding requests from Caribbean partners,” the Biden-Harris administration would be expanding U.S. diplomatic presence in the Eastern Caribbean region by opening two new embassies.^[6] However, this enhanced U.S. diplomatic presence in the Caribbean belies an earlier claim made by U.S. officials in 2018 that “the cost of establishing a United States Embassy in Antigua and Barbuda or any other member state of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) would be prohibitive.”^[7]

Reframing U.S. and its Allies’ Security Interests in the Caribbean as “Diplomatic”

The U.S. (and its allies like Canada) are pursuing a strategy of “boosting a diplomatic presence” in the Pacific and the Caribbean, to both counter and undermine China’s investments and influence with states in these areas.^[8] The geostrategic importance of these (maritime) regions for the U.S. and its allies gained increased urgency given the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between China and the Solomon Islands in 2022,^[9] and a cooperation agreement between China and Cuba signed earlier this year,^[10] followed by subsequent unfounded speculation about China “spying” from a base location in Cuba.^[11] As it stands right now, the U.S. has a diplomatic presence in two out of the seven countries in the Eastern Caribbean. This means that realistically there are only five states where the two embassies can be built. Those are: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, and St. Lucia.

Antigua and Barbuda have aggressively made the case for a US embassy to be housed in their country for a number of years, and given the announcement, they have ramped up those efforts. There was previously a U.S. embassy in Antigua before it closed in 1994, and of OECS countries today, Antigua has the most approved visas (and highest visa burden) to the US of OECS states. Antiguan Chief of Staff in the Prime Minister’s Office, Lionel Hurst, has also revealed in July of this year that Antigua has designated a plot of land for use by the U.S. government in case the island is chosen for an embassy.^[12] However, to the chagrin of the Antiguan government, U.S. officials have yet to announce which two countries will be selected to host the embassies, even as a reception was hosted by the U.S. Embassy on Jumby Bay Island to celebrate independence.^[13] While Antigua wants visa issuing streamlined for its citizens, an increased U.S. diplomatic presence in the formerly neglected Eastern Caribbean would not be aimed at alleviating visa burdens or addressing long standing requests from the region, but rather at countering China’s inroads in the region.

The U.S. is also not alone in trying to counter China’s influence in the region. U.S. Western allies in Europe are also renewing their engagement with states in the region, having hosted the third EU-CELAC summit after eight years on July 18th and 19th. At the summit, the “long-standing partnership” and “shared values and interests” were reaffirmed with the ultimate goals being transnational policing and multilateral security.^[14] Canada has also made the effort to specifically reach out to Eastern Caribbean states that could house U.S. embassies, again with the aim of making bilateral and multilateral collaborations closer.^[15] Given where Canada’s engagement has been, Antigua, St. Lucia, and Dominica are all strategically positioned to house one of the two U.S. embassies being planned for the region. Canadian officials have visited both Antigua^[16] and St. Lucia^[17] quite recently to discuss closer collaboration and bilateral relations – and all three countries recently became part of Canada’s visa-free travel program.^[18]

Since the mid-1990s, given declining U.S. interest in its “backyard,” Canada has assumed the role of enforcing and maintaining positions that are in sync with Western capital and security objectives. Thus, in 2004, Canada not only planned the coup d’état which took place in Haiti against its democratically elected left-leader, but also helped to facilitate the entrance of U.S. troops there.^[19] Canada also has an Operation Support Hub for the Latin America and Caribbean region (OSH-LAC) stationed in Jamaica that conducts military exercises and operations in the region alongside U.S. military forces and Jamaican Defence Forces (JDF).^[20] These military exercises are also framed within the language of transnational cooperation while advancing purely security aims.

Antigua,^[21] St. Lucia,^[22] and Dominica^[23] are strategically situated islands near maritime transport lanes, the former two of which the U.S. has previously used from the early 1940s to the early 1990s to project a military presence in.^[24] Given the formation of a paternalistic army in Domnica subservient to its conservative politics, Dominica has a history of “loaning out” its bases, and officers, for U.S. (and other European) uses and training.^[25] If you were to look at a map of the Eastern Caribbean countries, a U.S. embassy in both Antigua and either St. Lucia or Dominica covers proximal grounds to the other three Eastern Caribbean countries where the U.S. has no presence. Additionally, (and historically) the conservative nature of governance in OECS states like Antigua, St. Lucia, and Dominica often saw these countries’ governments support reactionary U.S. foreign policy towards countries like Haiti and Grenada. This history will undoubtedly come into consideration when the U.S. decides on the next locations of its two embassies in the area – just as Canada’s decision to have Jamaica host OSH-LAC considered Canada’s longtime security ties, with the JDF conducting espionage on its leftist Caribbean and South American neighbors.^[26]

The current location of expected U.S. embassies is important for a number of reasons, foremost amongst them being the geographic location of the Eastern Caribbean. The Eastern Caribbean lies off of the coast of South America – where states like Venezuela are frequent targets of U.S. intervention, and where Guyana has recently had a massive amount of crude oil being extracted by Exxon. According to Goldman Sachs, Guyana is a “geopolitical swing state” that “offers the U.S. an alternative to Venezuela” in Latin America.^[27] And just as in the case of Venezuela, the U.S. and Canada seek to curtail “Chinese influence” in Guyana.^[28] For this reason U.S. politicians have recently made state visits to Guyana, attention which this country has not received since its independence in the late 1960s.^[29] While it is known that states like Haiti and Cuba are frequent Caribbean targets of intervention by the U.S. and its allies – the current “diplomatic” buildup in the Eastern Caribbean should also be given attention.

Unlike Haiti and Cuba which are surrounded by a Western “diplomatic” presence that facilitates intervention, that is not the case for the Eastern Caribbean which, if brought into a similar security orbit as countries like Jamaica, can be swayed to agree to intervention in the Caribbean and in South America. As a bloc, an important goal of the OECS is to coordinate foreign policies, wherein these Eastern Caribbean states meet yearly to “harmonize the[ir] strategy in foreign policy” given their individual size.^[30] This point is not to belie the general re-engagement of the U.S. and its allies in the Caribbean region as a whole. For instance, it is still the case that Haitians are protesting against foreign intervention in their country,^[31] and the U.S. is also doing upgrades to its embassy in Cuba after years of neglect.^[32]

History Matters: How U.S. Embassies in the Caribbean Help U.S. Security

As has been disclosed, the U.S. embassy in Antigua closed in 1994 “because of the strategic insignificance of [the Eastern Caribbean]” and “to shift resources to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union” (Griffith 1996, p. 25).^[33] As such, it comes to no surprise that the U.S. has long considered the value of the Caribbean in purely strategic terms as it regards competition with other “powers.” In fact, “it took congressional pressure, especially from the Black Caucus, to reverse the decision on [closing] Grenada[‘s]” embassy (Griffith 1996, p. 25), given the U.S. invasion a decade prior following internal turmoil of the Grenadian Revolution.^[34] Prior to 1994, Washington deployed a diplomatic and military presence in these countries to counter Marxist, communist, and potential revolutionary left movements in the Eastern Caribbean states. Most notably, repressing revolutionary fervor helped in the creation of the OECS during Ronald Reagan’s tenure as U.S. President and continued under Bill Clinton’s presidency.^[35]

Increased globalization via the proliferation of neoliberal policies and structural adjustment in the Caribbean during the late 1980s and into the 1990s, meant that U.S. security interests in the Caribbean no longer needed to be diplomatically supported, as economies in the Caribbean opened, privatized, and became debt burdened – otherwise, dependent. Propaganda tactics that U.S. embassies helped to proliferate became less necessary as the “threat of communism” declined in its “backyard.” Also, in the Eastern Caribbean, the recession in the 1980s and the end of the Cold War marked an official deprioritization of the area in US geostrategy; especially due to successful interventions against, and/or failures of, revolutionary and left-reformist groups and governments in that area. The interests that did remain were largely in the security realm regarding narcotics, border patrolling, military and police training, as well as technology and equipment testing and upgrades.

Typically, a U.S. embassy “has officials to gather information and perform “liaisons” on political, economic, commercial, military, scientific, intelligence, financial, maritime, labor, agricultural, aviation, law enforcement, tax, educational, cartographic, geodesic, and geological matters”^[36] (Schmitz 1995). This kind of information became unimportant to collect in the Caribbean, when the region became successfully integrated into the U.S. preferred liberal regime of political and market governance. The effects of this lack of data have been noted, as it is partly one of the reasons why general data gathering on Caribbean states is difficult. Instead, security assistance became the preferred method of engagement with the Caribbean – with “security threats” mostly involving external mandates regarding immigration, general policing, drugs, and surveillance for “antiterrorism.”^[37]

Renewed interest on the part of the U.S. to open new embassies in the Eastern Caribbean region means that the U.S. security state and U.S. policy makers perceive Chinese investments as a threat – thus, we should expect these two new embassies to have a broader security purpose. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) and its ruling Communist Party invoke this history of the U.S. “fighting communism.” More accurately, the U.S. was fighting democratically elected left-governments and movements in the Caribbean region during these states’ national liberation movements and after they achieved independence during the “Cold” War. It is quite logical to surmise that increased economic investments by the PRC which fund big infrastructure projects in the region worry U.S. policy makers. PRC investments are often compared to Caribbean states’ decades-long integration into the liberal regime, which has not alleviated poverty, unemployment, inequality, or environmental destruction in the region.

Influence is only gained where it makes sense, and PRC investments that provide infrastructural, developmental, and economic assistance stand in stark contrast to the preferred Western strategies of aid with strings attached, which indebts Caribbean states, privatizes Caribbean economies, and continues to ignore Caribbean calls for reparations. Increased U.S.“diplomatic” presence in the Caribbean, in response to economic investments made by the PRC, reminds us that “states are not equally free to act across the globe,” and that the existence of spheres of influence are more accurately described as geostrategic security zones for extending the influence of states..^[38] That the U.S. plans to increase its diplomatic presence in the Caribbean now should be understood as another ploy of external subversion – which exploits Caribbean people’s needs (i.e. the ability to to process visas) – to advance U.S. geostrategic aims vis-a-vis the PRC.

End notes

[1] “Chinese Actions in South America Pose Risks to U.S. Safety, Senior Military Commanders Tell Congress,” https://news.usni.org/2023/03/08/chinese-actions-in-south-america-pose-risks-to-u-s-safety-senior-military-commanders-tell-congress

[2] “US generals warn China is aggressively expanding its influence in South America and the Caribbean,” https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/08/politics/china-south-america-caribbean-us-military/index.html

[3] “China expands its economic reach into the United States’ backyard,” https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2023/05/15/china-expands-its-economic-reach-into-the-united-states-backyard/

[4] Ibid.

[5] “US VP Kamala Harris and PM Davis Co Host US Caribbean Leaders Meeting in The Bahamas,” https://rb.gy/89f3o

[6] Ibid.

[7] “Establishment of a US Embassy in Antigua is off the cards says DCM,” https://antiguaobserver.com/establishment-of-a-us-embassy-in-antigua-is-off-the-cards-says-dcm/

[8] Zhang, Denghua, Diego Leiva, and Mélodie Ruwet. 2019. “Similar Patterns? Chinese Aid to Island Countries in the Pacific and the Caribbean,” https://dpa.bellschool.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/publications/attachments/2019-04/ib2019_9_zhang_chinese_aid_final.pdf

[9] “China-Solomon Islands Security Agreement and Competition for Influence in Oceania,” https://gjia.georgetown.edu/2022/12/02/china-solomon-islands-security-agreement-and-competition-for-influence-in-oceania/

[10] “China Makes Official Donation of $100 Million to Cuba,” https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/China-Makes-Official-Donation-of-100-Million-to-Cuba-20230118-0014.html

[11] “US confirms China has had a spy base in Cuba since at least 2019,” https://apnews.com/article/china-cuba-spy-base-us-intelligence-0f655b577ae4141bdbeabc35d628b18f

[12] “Antiguan Gov’t designates land for US Embassy,” https://caribbean.loopnews.com/content/antiguan-govt-designates-land-us-embassy

[13] Ibid.

[14] “EU-CELAC summit, 17-18 July 2023.” https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/international-summit/2023/07/17-18/

[15] “Canada backs Caribbean’s resilience fight, provides financial assistance for SIDS.” https://barbadostoday.bb/2023/07/19/canada-backs-caribbeans-resilience-fight-provides-financial-assistance-for-sids/

[16] “Antigua and Barbuda in closer collaboration with Canada,” https://antiguaobserver.com/antigua-and-barbuda-in-closer-collaboration-with-canada/

[17] “Canada Reinforces Bilateral Relations with Saint Lucia and Wider Region,” https://thevoiceslu.com/2022/10/canada-reinforces-bilateral-relations-with-saint-lucia-and-wider-region/

[18] “Canadian High Commissioner tweets Dominica, Grenada in CAN+ program,” https://caribbean.loopnews.com/content/canadian-high-commissioner-tweets-dominica-grenada-can-progam

[19] “New documents detail how Canada helped plan 2004 coup d’état in Haiti,” https://breachmedia.ca/new-documents-detail-how-canada-helped-plan-2004-coup-detat-in-haiti/

[20] “JDF to partner with Canadian and US forces for ‘Exercise LEAD WING’,” https://our.today/jamaica-defence-force-to-partner-with-canadian-and-us-forces-for-exercise-lead-wing/

[21] “Antigua and Barbuda (04/01) ,” https://2009-2017.state.gov/outofdate/bgn/antigua/11557.htm

[22] “St. Lucia (11/03) ,” https://2009-2017.state.gov/outofdate/bgn/saintlucia/35644.htm

[23] “United States Completes First Maritime Vessel Upgrade in Dominica,” https://www.southcom.mil/MEDIA/NEWS-ARTICLES/Article/2519426/united-states-completes-first-maritime-vessel-upgrade-in-dominica/

[24] “The U.S. Bases in Antigua and the New Winthorpes Story.” antiguahistory.net/the-us-bases-in-antigua.html

[25] Phillips, Dion E. 2002. “The Defunct Dominica Defense Force and Two Attempted Coups on the Nature Island.” Institute of Caribbean Studies, 30 (1). pgs. 52-81

[26] Sean M. Maloney. 1998. “Maple Leaf Over the Caribbean: Gunboat Diplomacy Canadian Style?” in Canadian Gunboat Diplomacy: The Canadian Navy and Foreign Policy, ed. Ann L. Griffith, Peter T. Haydon and Richard H. Gimblett (Halifax: The Center for Foreign Policy Studies, Dalhousie University, 2000), 147- 183.

[27] “Guyana can shift politics of energy in LATAM, offer U.S. preferred alternative to Venezuela crude – Goldman Sachs snr. executive.” https://oilnow.gy/featured/guyana-can-shift-politics-of-energy-in-latam-offer-u-s-preferred-alternative-to-venezuela-crude-goldman-sachs-snr-executive/

[28] VICE News. “Undercover In Guyana: Exposing Chinese Business in South America.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOOFSJqBYTY

[29] “US Congress delegation visiting Guyana.” https://www.caribbeannationalweekly.com/news/caribbean-news/us-congress-delegation-visiting-guyana/

[30] “Strengthening International Relations between the OECS and other Countries.” https://www.oecs.org/en/international-relations-oecs-and-other-countries

[31] “Opposing Occupation and Intervention in Haiti.” https://www.blackagendareport.com/opposing-occupation-and-intervention-haiti

[32] “U.S. gives Havana embassy a facelift after years of neglect.” https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-gives-havana-embassy-facelift-after-years-neglect-2023-06-10/

[33] Griffith, Ivelaw L. 1996. “McNair Paper 54: Caribbean Security on the Eve of the 21st Century.” Institute for National Strategic Studies. https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/23612/mcnair54.pdf

[34] Ibid.

[35] Cole, Ronald H. 1997. “OPERATION URGENT FURY Grenada.” Joint History Office.

[36] Schmitz, Charles A. 1995. “Cato Institute Policy Analysis No. 245: Changing the Way We Do Business in International Relations.” Cato Institute. https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/History/Monographs/Urgent_Fury.pdf

[37] “Watching the Neighbors: Low-Intensity Conflict in Central America,” https://www.statecraft.org/chapter17.html

[38] Schmitt, Michael N. “The Resort to Force in International Law: Reflections on Positivist and Contextual Approaches.” The Air Force Law Review. https://www.afjag.af.mil/Portals/77/documents/AFD-090108-035.pdf

Banner Photo: Creative Commons

Tamanisha J. John is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at York University

John Perry, Masaya, Nicaragua

On the fifth anniversary of the 2018 coup attempt in Nicaragua, conflicting accounts of the violence and killings still persist. The mainstream media has characterized the opposition protests as generally peaceful and cases of opposition violence as counter violence against brutal repression of dissent by the government.  John Perry has written a series of articles that call into question this one-sided narrative, and his appeal to empirical evidence and lived experience have broadened the parameters of debate. In this article, Perry revisits the case of  the murder of police officer Faber López Vivas, a case that highlights the need for impartial investigation of the events of 2018.

According to Amnesty International (AI), five years ago the Nicaraguan government committed an extraordinary and horrendous crime. In October 2018, AI published a report, Instilling Terror,^[1] concerning the violent coup attempt that took place in Nicaragua in April-July of that year. Among the incidents they covered, they gave prominence to a claim that on July 8, 2018, Faber López Vivas, a young member of the national police force’s Directorate of Special Operations, was the subject of a possible “extrajudicial execution” by his fellow police officers. The report alleged that two days earlier, disenchanted with his duties as a police officer, he attempted to resign. But he wasn’t allowed to leave his post peacefully. Instead, his superior officer threatened him with death for being a “deserter” and then, apparently acting under orders, some of his colleagues carried out the threat. On July 8 they allegedly took him away (to the capital’s main prison), tortured and killed him. According to a private pathologist’s report quoted by AI, when his family received the corpse there were multiple signs of torture. Some family members recalled that in his last telephone conversation with them the day before, Faber had said: “If I don’t call you tomorrow, it’s because they’ve killed me.”

AI’s version of events comes from a “relative” of Faber’s, who is unnamed but appears to have been his mother, Fátima Berlamina Vivas Tórrez. On July 9, 2018, she gave various press and video interviews denouncing the police for killing her son.^[2] Her account formed a central part of Amnesty’s case that the Nicaraguan government was operating “a state strategy of repression” in response to largely peaceful protests. After setting out her version of events in full, AI only briefly mentioned that the official explanation of Faber’s death was that he had been shot by “armed terrorists.”

Concerned about the apparently limited scope of AI’s investigation, an informal group of community and political activists in Nicaragua (which included this author) decided to look in detail at the events of July 8, and I have drawn on this collective work in producing this critical retrospect. As well as examining all the available video and other evidence surrounding the incident, including police reports, an interview was conducted with an eyewitness to Faber’s death, and Faber’s partner, who was still grieving his death, was also interviewed. This alternative account of the events, based on these different sources, is compared with that presented by AI and subsequent versions offered by Faber’s mother.

Background to the events

The background needs some explanation. During the attempt to overthrow Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government in 2018, which began with three deaths (including one police officer) on April 19 and escalated in the following weeks, it was agreed with the Catholic Church that a “national dialogue” would be set up in an attempt to negotiate a peaceful outcome to the conflict. After false starts, the dialogue opened before TV cameras on May 16. Agreement was reached that the government would confine police forces to their quarters and order them not to use firearms. In return, the opposition agreed to begin removing the multiple roadblocks which had been set up across the country. But instead of de-escalating their attacks, the opposition intensified them, overrunning several cities, putting armed groups at the roadblocks on main highways and setting siege to police stations.

Some of the worst violence occurred in Jinotepe and Diriamba, neighboring cities on the Pan-American highway in the department of Carazo. Roadblocks trapped some 400 long-distance trucks for a month. Their drivers, from all over Central America, were unable to leave and were often threatened or even robbed at gunpoint.^[3] On June 19, the rebels hijacked two fuel tankers and attempted to explode them close to Jinotepe’s police station.^[4] Many Sandinista supporters were attacked, tortured or murdered. On June 29, Bismarck Martínez Sánchez, a municipal worker, was kidnapped at a roadblock, tortured and killed, with his body not found until nearly a year later.^[5] The body of Sandinista member Robert José Castillo Cruz was found in a garbage dump on July 5,^[6] days after he had denounced opposition forces for killing his son. A summary of human rights violations in the two cities up to July 7 was presented to the Organization of American States on July 11:^[7] it included only deaths of Sandinista sympathizers or government officials, as no deaths of opposition members had been reported in either city over the whole period from April 21.

The police operation on July 8

By early July, the government had abandoned hope of a peaceful end to the conflict and had decided to use force to regain control of key cities. The operation to recapture Carazo began in the early hours of July 8. According to his partner Edith Valle Hernández, a fellow police officer, Faber López Vivas, temporarily based in the capital, Managua, was selected for one of the police units that would take control of the roadblocks in Jinotepe. He phoned her at 3.00am to say he was leaving on a mission, although he couldn’t say where. When she failed to answer he left another message, at 4.00am, telling her he loved her. Edith saw the message when she woke at about 7.00am: by then Faber was almost certainly dead.

According to official reports and the eyewitness we interviewed, Faber’s unit reached Jinotepe’s police station before daybreak on July 8, avoiding the roadblocks by using minor roads. He was among the first groups of officers who set out to tackle the roadblocks at about 6.00am. Only 200 meters from the police station, they came within range of a sniper located in the tower of the nearby National Autonomous University. Faber was shot and died instantly from a bullet in the forehead. A colleague, Hilario de Jesús Ortiz Zavala was hit in the leg, fell to the ground and was then killed by the sniper with two more shots. Other officers were injured and the bodies were dragged back to the police station. Later the sniper fled and other police regained control of the highway. By mid-afternoon police and volunteer police had full control of Jinotepe, at the cost of three more deaths among the volunteers,^[8] and four among the opposition fighters at the roadblocks. CENIDH (Centro Nicaragüense de Derechos Humanos), one of the local human rights bodies often cited by AI, included Faber’s and Hilario’s names in its list of nine fatalities that day in Carazo.^[9]

Later that day, the bodies of the two police officers were taken to the Instituto de Medicina Legal (IML – the official morgue and forensic facility) in Managua by ambulance, arriving at 5.00pm, where Faber’s death was recorded as homicide, with nine bullet wounds and no evidence of torture. In preparing this article, we asked IML for a response to AI’s version of events: they replied by email, confirming how Faber died and that his body showed “no signs of torture, struggle or defensive wounds”.

Political differences within Faber’s family

When Edith, his widowed partner of three years, was interviewed in depth in April 2019,^[10]  she said there was an irreparable political difference between Faber and his mother. He and Edith were strongly pro-Sandinista, but his mother sided equally strongly with the opposition, to the extent that she spent time at one of its notorious roadblocks at Lóvago in Central Nicaragua. There she was photographed being embraced by one of its leaders, Medardo Mairena, later convicted of some of the most heinous crimes during the coup attempt.^[11]

Edith also said that Fátima Vivas made no secret of her political allegiance and attempted repeatedly to persuade Faber to leave the police, but he was proud of his work and only a short time before had been featured in a training video which can still be seen (at 1.18^[12]). According to Edith’s account, because Faber cut off communication with his mother, she turned her attention to his partner. Edith showed us a message from Fátima on her phone in which she urged her to leave the police, lamenting that Faber was a lost cause as he “preferred to kill his people”. Soon after July 8, Fátima cut off contact with Edith and denied that her son had ever had a relationship with Edith.

The mother’s changing versions of the events

In the days after her son’s death, Fátima gave numerous interviews. Initially she was quoted in La Prensa as saying that he had been shot by police in the forehead,^[13] asserting that only police would have been able to do that, and that it was punishment for having tried to resign the previous day, July 7, when she had also spoken to her son. A different interview^[14] confirmed that she had been shown the fatal head wound while in the morgue. However, she then started to give varying accounts. In a video interview for El Nuevo Diario (no longer available since the newspaper closed), she said it was a day earlier, on July 6, that Faber had tried to resign, and that was also the last day she spoke to him. She said she first heard of his death when she realized that photos showing his body had appeared in social media early on July 8, and then repeated her accusation that he had been shot by police.

But also in El Nuevo Diario,^[15] she was quoted as saying that he had died as a result of torture, rather than being shot, and that this had happened in a prison in Managua. Signs of torture were identified by an unnamed private doctor. Later still she said that this had been confirmed by an unnamed pathologist, who found no signs of him being shot (the video clip notably avoids showing Faber’s face, where the gunshot wound would have appeared; it does however appear to show his fingernails intact, despite the commentary saying they had been pulled out).^[16] The private pathologist’s report, never made public, was provided to Amnesty International on July 29.^[17]

Two years later, Fátima’s anger focused on the fact that the government had named a new police station in Faber’s honor.^[18] Her account evolved still further:^[19] Faber was now said to have suffered 24 hours of torture, he had “hundreds of knife wounds” delivered more than 12 hours before he died, his eyes had been gouged out.^[20] He was finally killed by a blow to the head, and this had all been verified by two forensic specialists. However, these injuries do not align with those quoted in the report provided to AI. In a further inconsistency, Fátima now says that for security reasons pathologists never gave her written reports, only verbal descriptions of the injuries. She also fails to explain how Faber could have been tortured for 24 hours when there are several reports of him being alive and well on the morning of July 8, just before he was shot.

Move on to 2022, and Fátima is again furious about the aftermath of Faber’s death.^[21] While an uncle, Arlin López, was present at an official ceremony to recognize the sacrifice made by Faber and the other 21 police officers who were killed in 2018, Fátima laments that the government has granted a pension to his partner, Edith Valle Hernández, described by Fátima as his “false wife.”

Of course, it is to be expected that a mother, emotionally recounting the circumstances of her son’s murder, might not be able to produce consistent accounts at different times, especially as she conceded that she was 170km away from the incident when it occurred. Nor has she ever claimed to have spoken to any eyewitnesses. That the accounts are heavily laden with accusations against the government might also be expected from someone who was and remains an opposition supporter and is now in self-imposed exile.

Amnesty International’s role is called into question

What is surprising is that Amnesty International relied totally on her account. Why was this, when AI had already noted some of the inconsistencies? Why did they not search out someone who had witnessed the murder or who might have either corroborated or challenged her account? Edith Valle said that AI never contacted her even though their researchers were in touch with Faber’s mother and his brother, both of whom were in communication with Edith by mobile phone. Given the unlikelihood of the scenario – police torturing one of their own colleagues – should AI not have exhausted other explanations before reaching the conclusion that it was a “possible extrajudicial execution?” Yet by giving the incident such prominence in their report and subsequent publicity, AI gave the impression that the evidence they had seen was overwhelming.

More broadly, why did AI not fully explain the context of events in Jinotepe and other nearby areas in early July? They make no mention of the other police officer killed that morning, whose murder by a sniper has never been contested, nor do they mention that police officers had been injured or kidnapped by opposition fighters only days previously. In nearby Masaya, a policeman was tortured, killed and his body burned at a Masaya roadblock on July 15. These crimes, unmentioned by AI like the notorious attack on police in Morrito on July 12, were also the subject of numerous false reports^[22] that they were carried out by the police themselves. These other crimes provide contextual evidence in support of the government’s assertion that Faber López fell victim to the opposition, one of 22 police officers killed during the 2018 conflict, along with more than 400 injured, mainly by firearms.

These questions were part of a report, Dismissing the Truth, published in early 2019 by the Alliance for Global Justice.^[23] It responded in detail to Amnesty’s October 2018 report Instilling Terror, and looked at several of the incidents it covered, including Faber’s death. It carried a foreword by Camilo Ortega, a Nicaraguan living in the US who had been an Amnesty International “prisoner of conscience” because he left the US army having seen its actions in Iraq. After publication of Dismissing the Truth, repeated attempts were made to contact AI, in different ways, initially with no response at all.

Eventually, a direct message to the chair of the AI International Board, Mwikali Muthiani, produced a reply in June 2019, but it simply reiterated what AI had done to compile its reports and made no reference to our criticisms, much less made any attempt to answer them. A request was then made to use AI’s formal complaints procedure, but this was rejected. AI’s reply said that “there is no other process to address your complaint,” even though their website says such complaints “help the organization to learn.” A subsequent friendly offer to meet at AI’s London office to discuss Dismissing the Truth went unanswered. In November 2019, the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign Action Group published a briefing showing the errors in Amnesty international’s reporting about Nicaragua and the details of their failure to respond to criticism.^[24] Again, there was no reply.

For some reason, AI seems to believe its reputation puts it above censure, even though there are multiple examples of Amnesty’s work in various parts of the world being challenged from a progressive standpoint – for example in Eritrea, Libya^[25] and elsewhere. This is inherently contradictory in an organization that campaigns against impunity, calling on political leaders to face up to criticism but appearing to ignore any directed at AI itself.

It is Amnesty’s standing with governments and international bodies that is crucial because – when convenient to them – they will cite its human rights judgments in support of their own policies. In the case of Nicaragua, every time AI accuses the Ortega government of operating “a state strategy of repression” it adds credibility to the US administration’s hostility towards it. Former President Trump labeled Nicaragua an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”,^[26] and this designation has been repeated by President Biden. AI aligns itself with the US government and conventional media narrative about events in Nicaragua in 2018, fails to challenge it, and disparages the alternative perspective held not just by the Nicaraguan government but by many ordinary Nicaraguans. As an article on Amnesty’s work elsewhere^[27] commented, “Amnesty International’s intervention in Nicaragua, and refusal to see the situation as anything other than a black and white narrative of good vs. bad, reflects the neo-colonial, imperialist lens through which the NGO views the world.”

As human rights lawyer Alfred de Zayas has recently pointed out,^[28] AI has even advocated imposing sanctions, or “unilateral coercive measures”, on Nicaragua and other countries, “…although the evidence is overwhelming that such UCM’s harm the most vulnerable in those countries and constitute a form of ‘collective punishment’. Indeed, sanctions kill.” Amnesty’s one-sided assessments help to justify US actions when it toughens its sanctions regime, as it is currently threatening to do in Nicaragua’s case. Such sanctions have allegedly cost the country up to half-a-billion dollars annually in lost international support,^[29] depriving it of resources needed to strengthen its health system, improve education services, and continue the poverty-reduction programs which have earned praise from bodies like the World Bank and IMF. Amnesty International’s undiscerning criticisms are not only unprofessional, they also harm the ordinary Nicaraguans whose human rights AI claims to protect.

John Perry is a COHA Senior Research Fellow and writer living in Masaya, Nicaragua. He is part of a collective of authors supporting historical memory to facilitate healing and reconciliation for the Nicaraguan people.

Lead Photo from https://www.tortillaconsal.com/tortilla/node/6141

Sources

[1] “Nicaragua: Instilling terror: from lethal force to persecution in Nicaragua,” https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr43/9213/2018/en/

[2] See https://100noticias.com.ni/nacionales/91482-madre-de-faber-lopez-lo-torturaron-hasta-matarlo/ – other interviews published at the time are no longer available.

[3] “Transportistas panameños en Nicaragua son atacados por desconocidos,” https://www.panamaamerica.com.pa/provincias/transportistas-panamenos-en-nicaragua-son-atacados-por-desconocidos-1107902

[4] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4z3W4cXolo

[5] “Nicaragua conmemora a Bismarck Martínez y a Héroes de Piedra Quemada,” https://www.el19digital.com/articulos/ver/titulo:91624-nicaragua-conmemora-a-bismarck-martinez-y-a-heroes-de-piedra-quemada

[6] “Militante sandinista aparece muerto en un basurero en Jinotepe, Carazo,” https://www.laprensani.com/2018/07/05/departamentales/2444929-militante-sandinista-aparece-muerto-en-un-basurero-en-jinotepe-carazo

[7] See https://www.el19digital.com/app/webroot/tinymce/source/2018/00-Julio/Del09al15Julio/Miercoles10Jul/TERRORIST%20ACTIVITIES%20IN%20JINOTEPE%20AND%20DIRIAMBA.pdf

[8] The clearance of the roadblocks and the arrest or dispersal of those manning them were necessarily major, complex operations, given the numbers of roadblocks and the weapons held by opposition forces. For this reason, volunteer police were recruited, with firearms experience, who accompanied the regular police in large numbers as they entered cities such as Jinotepe which had been under siege for around three months.

[9] Reported here (and in other media): http://telenorte.info/2018/07/08/operativo-deja-varios-muertos-en-carazo/

[10] “FABER LOPEZ VIVAS : ‘Not one step back…’,” http://www.tortillaconsal.com/tortilla/node/6141

[11] See https://www.tortillaconsal.com/tortilla/node/6141 (fourth image on page)

[12] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGrXfM-7C9U&feature=youtu.be&list=PLnThQJH986vV5nxfaOBVmBbQnZC_k9x3P

[13] “Madre de oficial muerto en masacre de Carazo acusa a la Policía Nacional de ejecutarlo,” https://www.laprensani.com/2018/07/09/nacionales/2446193-madre-de-oficial-muerto-en-masacre-de-carazo-acusa-la-policia-nacional-de-ejecutarlo

[14] “Me lo torturaron por pedir la baja,” https://www.univision.com/noticias/america-latina/me-lo-torturaron-por-pedir-la-baja-la-madre-de-un-policia-asesinado-en-nicaragua-denuncia-que-lo-mataron-sus-propios-companeros

[15] The source is no longer available, but interviews over subsequent days repeat this allegation – see below.

[16] “Madre de Faber López: Lo torturaron hasta matarlo,” https://100noticias.com.ni/nacionales/91482-madre-de-faber-lopez-lo-torturaron-hasta-matarlo/

[17] According to the AI report Instilling Terror, footnote 107.

[18] See https://www.policia.gob.ni/?p=54231

[19] “Fátima Vivas a Rosario Murillo: Dejá de usar el nombre de mi hijo,” https://www.despacho505.com/fatima-vivas-a-rosario-murillo-deja-de-usar-el-nombre-de-mi-hijo-a-tu-favor/

[20] “’No quiero que ninguna unidad de Policía lleve el nombre de mi hijo’, dice madre de Faber López Vivas,” https://www.lamesaredonda.net/no-quiero-que-ninguna-unidad-de-policia-lleve-el-nombre-de-mi-hijo-dice-madre-de-faber-lopez-vivas/

[21] “Madre de policía Faber López indignada por ascenso póstumo: Eso no devolverá la vida de mi hijo,” https://nicaraguaactual.tv/madre-de-faber-lopez-indignada-por-ascenso-postumo/

[22] “17 policías muertos durante la crisis sociopolítica en Nicaragua,” https://lajornadanet.com/nicaragua/17-policias-muertos-durante-la-crisis-sociopolitica-en-nicaragua/#.Xx3Cbud7lPY

[23] “Dismissing the Truth: Why Amnesty International is Wrong about Nicaragua,” https://afgj.org/dismissing-the-truth-why-amnesty-international-is-wrong-about-nicaragua ?

[24] “NSCAG calls Amnesty International to account,” https://www.nscag.org/news/article/288/NSCAG-calls-Amnesty-International-to-account

[25] See https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2015/01/12/amnesty-international-to-instigate-regime-change-in-eritrea/; https://humanrightsinvestigations.org/2011/08/31/amnesty-racist-rebel-atrocities-libya/

[26] “Trump: ‘Nicaragua Continues to Be a National Security Threat’,” https://dialogo-americas.com/articles/trump-nicaragua-continues-to-be-a-national-security-threat/

[27] “MWN Investigation Reveals Amnesty International’s Reckless Double Standards,” https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2020/07/308817/mwn-investigation-reveals-amnesty-internationals-reckless-double-standards/

[28] “The Weaponization of Human Rights at the Human Rights Council,” https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/07/03/the-weaponization-of-human-rights-at-the-human-rights-council/

[29] “Testimonio del Ministro Ivan Acosta al Tribunal Internacional de los Pueblos,” https://www.tortillaconsal.com/bitacora/node/1888