On September 20, 2006, Hugo Chávez stepped up to the granite podium of the United Nations General Assembly. A day earlier, from that exact same spot, the President of the United States, George W. Bush, had spoken. Chávez crossed himself, said that the room still smelled of sulphur, and the hall burst into laughter and applause. It was not the speech Chávez had originally intended to give, but rather the direct result of the deep indignation caused by hearing Bush speak as if he owned the world. The major media of the North latched onto the sulphur phrase and have tried to caricature it. But it is the rest of his intervention that remains fully relevant, 20 years later.

Chávez arrived at the General Assembly with a book in hand, “Hegemony or Survival” by Noam Chomsky. His warning was simple yet devastating: the United States’s pretense of dominating the world put the very survival of the human species at risk. At that time, US troops were occupying Iraq. A few weeks earlier, Israel had bombed Lebanon under Washington’s diplomatic protection. In the capitals of the global north, the “end of history” was still being celebrated, the idea that liberal capitalism was humanity’s definitive horizon. Chávez said that this thesis had been proven false in barely a decade, and that now the future of the world had to be defined.

Twenty years later, plunged into an even greater systemic crisis, we can see that every phrase of Chávez’s speech remains relevant.

From hegemony to hyper-imperialism

In 2006, the United States seemed like an empire at the peak of its power. Today it is an empire in relative decline, and therefore more dangerous. The Tricontinental Institute for Social Research has called this new stage hyper-imperialism: imperialism exercised in an exaggerated and agitated manner by a power that compensates for the loss of its economic hegemony by relying on the two areas where it still dominates, war and the control of information.

An empire’s hegemony is usually lost in three stages: first in production, then in finance, and finally in the military. The United States has already lost productive primacy: China is today the world’s largest economy measured by purchasing power parity. The reign of the dollar is beginning to be questioned, and many countries are opting for transactions in their own currencies. But military supremacy remains intact. The bloc led by Washington groups around 50 countries and concentrates about three-quarters of global military spending. The United States maintains around 900 military bases abroad. More than one in four countries on the planet lives under its sanctions.

An empire that declines economically while retaining its weapons is tempted to resolve its decline by force. The dilemma that Chávez borrowed from Chomsky, hegemony or survival, has become literal. Permanent war and climate catastrophe today threaten the very conditions of life.

The veto and the UN that doesn’t work

The least-cited part of the speech was perhaps the most prophetic. Chávez stated that the United Nations system born after World War II had collapsed. The General Assembly had become a merely deliberative space, without the capacity to change the terrible reality of the world. Back then, Chávez made four concrete proposals:

First, expand the Security Council to include Third World countries as permanent members. Second, create transparent methods for conflict resolution. Third, eliminate the veto, and fourth, strengthen the General Secretariat.

His example was Lebanon: a US veto had allowed the country to be torn apart before the eyes of the world. Unfortunately, over two decades, the UN’s strength to prevent wars and genocides has progressively diminished. That same mechanism criticized by Chávez has allowed a new genocide in Gaza. That inaction of multilateralism permitted the kidnapping of the sitting Venezuelan president. However, the conclusion is not to abandon the UN, but to contest it.

The debate on a “multipolarity” that reproduces rivalry between great powers is insufficient. What the South needs is true multilateralism, defending the United Nations Charter as the common heritage of the world’s peoples. It is the same Charter upon which, in 1955, the ten principles of the Bandung Conference were built.

“We are men and women of the South”

Chávez did not arrive in New York alone. He came from Havana, where more than fifty heads of state had just relaunched the Non-Aligned Movement. “Havana was the capital of the South for a week,” he said. And then he added a phrase that sums up a political identity: “we are men and women of the South.”

The Global South is not a cardinal point. Australia is in the southern hemisphere and belongs to the North; Cuba, Vietnam, or Burkina Faso are in the northern hemisphere and belong to the South. It is a historical category: they are the peoples of former colonies and semi-colonies and socialist projects, whose struggle for sovereignty has not yet concluded. Their weight has changed. By 2007, the economies of the South surpassed those of the North in purchasing power parity, and in recent years they came to represent nearly 60 percent of world product. BRICS and the Belt and Road Initiative have begun to create something that did not exist in Bandung’s time: material conditions for cooperation among the peoples of the South.

But, although there is a new mood in the Global South today, the spirit of Bandung is not yet there. In 1955, the strength of those governments came from organized masses that prevented them from abandoning the liberation program. Chávez’s speech was precisely that: the voice of Latin American twenty-first-century socialism, of peoples pushing their governments. It was, for Latin America, a kind of Bandung from below. Today, that spirit faces an “angry tide” and needs to be rebuilt.

Peoples, not governments

There is a fundamental element in that 2006 speech that we cannot forget. Chávez distinguished between the US government and its people. He said that if one walked through the Bronx or San Francisco, one would find people who want peace. The working class of the North, impoverished and battered by deindustrialization, is not the enemy of the peoples of the South. It is a possible ally. Specially today when it is persecuted by a renewed McCarthyism that sees terrorism in those who raise their voices for social justice.

When Bush accused those who opposed his war of being extremists, Chávez replied that it was not about extremism: the world was awakening and peoples were rising everywhere. Today, aggression takes multiple forms. It takes the face of military actions, lawfare, unilateral coercive measures, or the confiscation of national resources. But its objective remains the same: to discipline anyone attempting a sovereign path.

The future doesn’t just arrive; we must organize it

The speech closed on a note of optimism. Chávez said that there was a dawn on the planet, visible in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Twenty years later, that optimism requires precision. The future is not a date on the calendar, but a rupture that must be built. Hope is not passive expectation, but a practice that requires organization, discipline, and internationalism.

The sulphur that Chávez smelled in 2006 has not dissipated; it has grown denser and spread beyond the diplomatic corridors of New York. That is why that speech does not belong to a record of the past, but to our current agenda. It reminds us that the South has a voice, that the UN can and must be contested, and that the North’s hegemony is not a natural law. What is missing, as in Bandung, is what has always made the difference: the peoples must organize.

Carlos Ron is Co-coordinator of the Nuestra America office of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He was a Venezuelan diplomat and served as Vice Minister for North America (2018-2025).

This article was produced by Globetrotter. 

Spanish reality show “Survivor” (Supervivientes) has been filming on the land of the Afro-Indigenous Garífuna peoples in Honduras since 2006. The filming of “Supervivientes,” as well as other versions of the “Survivor” show, have sparked intense local protests over land, human rights, restrictions to fishing access, and forced evictions.

In 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) found that the filming of the reality show violated several rights of the members of the Garífuna community. But it wasn’t the first time the Honduran government has been found in violation for its treatment of the Afro-Indigenous people of Central America. In total, the Inter-American Court has issued warnings four times regarding the mistreatment suffered by this community.

This story, though not entirely recent, has resurfaced in recent weeks when, on July 6, nearly two hundred police officers arrived in San Juan to evict several community members, claiming they were on property that did not belong to them.

However, the Garífuna assert that these lands belong to the community, and therefore an eviction order cannot be issued for communal lands that, in essence, are being targeted for privatization in favor of private interests (particularly those of the Rosenthal family, one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in Honduras). The dispute led to the arrest and prosecution of five community members by the Honduran judicial system. Those detained are Deinor Mejía, Irbin López, Carlos Fernández, Onil Hernández, and Sara Acosta.

Protests against evictions

Following this, several members of the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH) arrived in the capital, Tegucigalpa, to protest in front of the Supreme Court against what they consider to be unfair treatment. They set up the “Viva Berta” Camp and plan to remain there until the proceedings against the five defendants are concluded and the court stops treating the matter as if it were a criminal case.

Furthermore, OFRANEH has rejected the intentions of Supreme Court President Wagner Vallecillo to establish dialogue forums to resolve the conflict, as the organization defending the rights of Black Hondurans asserts that this would imply recognizing that these territories do not belong to the peoples settled there – a fact already established several years ago by international courts and specifically recognized in 2023 by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which ruled that the territories of San Juan belonged to the communities settled there.

Thus, while the government promotes negotiations, the Garifuna people continue to resist what they see as an onslaught by private interests that are using the Honduran government to their advantage in order to strip them of something that – despite the racist rhetoric of certain media outlets – is rightfully theirs by virtue of hard-won rights.

Isolated incident or state policy?

However, in the Honduras of right-wing President Nasry Asfura, a law known as the Agroindustrial Law, the Employment and Economic Development Zones (ZEDE), was recently passed. This law authorizes law enforcement to act as they did on the day of the eviction, even though it contradicts the rulings of the IACHR, which could lead to another case against the Honduran state. 

OFRANEH asserts that this is part of a long-standing pattern of the Honduran state’s actions against Indigenous peoples. For two decades, various institutions have promoted the dispossession of lands in favor of private interests, they stated. In one such example, the National Agrarian Institute reportedly failed to recognize more than 172 hectares for the Garifuna people but did recognize them for the company Promotur, a firm linked to Jaime Rosenthal Oliva, a prominent Honduran banker and politician who died in 2019. 

This organization has also denounced the clear ties between the Rosenthals and the Supreme Court of Justice, which could jeopardize fair treatment and recognition of the territories in favor of Indigenous peoples.

For their part, several United Nations special rapporteurs have called on the Honduran government not to carry out more than 1,000 eviction orders that would affect tens of thousands of peasant, Indigenous, and Afro-descendant families. These orders would jeopardize not only territorial rights but also the food security of thousands of people, as these families rely primarily on working the land for their livelihoods.

On October 4, nearly 160 million Brazilians will go to the polls to elect their next president, vice president, members of Congress, governors, and state legislators from the country’s various states. If no presidential candidate receives more than 50% of the valid votes, a runoff election will be held on October 25.

At this time, 13 presidential candidates are vying for the presidency in Brasília, although polls clearly point to two candidates vying for the presidency of Latin America’s most economically powerful country.

On one side is Brazil’s current president, the former union leader and progressive Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula served as president from 2003 to 2011 with very high approval ratings, although following corruption allegations, he was imprisoned and sentenced to nine years.

However, after over 500 days in detention, a judge ordered his release, ruling that the proceedings were flawed. The Supreme Court of Justice called the incident a “historic error.” Following that, Lula faced off against then-far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and defeated him in the 2022 election. Now Lula hopes to be re-elected once again.

At the forefront is none other than Jair Bolsonaro’s son, Flávio Bolsonaro, who has leveraged his father’s reputation to boost his own. This is because Jair Bolsonaro was found guilty of several crimes that, according to the Brazilian justice system, were intended to prevent Lula’s inauguration and promote a coup d’état. Jair Bolsonaro is currently in house arrest for those crimes.

Consequently, a significant portion of Brazilian society, as well as international politicians such as Donald Trump, consider Bolsonaro’s imprisonment to be unjust. This explains how his son Flávio – a lawyer and businessman who currently serves as a senator – has managed to garner significant support in his bid to win the presidency on October 4.

Thus, two clearly distinct political and economic models are pitted against one another. Lula belongs to a political tradition that seeks to strengthen the state, reduce extreme poverty, invest in social programs, and diversify trade partners (such as China and India), all in line with a clearly pro-sovereignty discourse.

For his part, Flávio Bolsonaro promises to continue on his father’s path: economic neoliberalism, reducing the size of the state, building closer ties with the private sector, and – perhaps most importantly – placing Brazil once again under the influence of the Trump administration, which supports the far-right candidate.

Read more: Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro all set to face off this October in Brazil’s presidential election

Clearly, a victory for the far right – which is close to Washington – would represent a sharp shift in the region’s current economic and political course. Brazil accounts for nearly 50% of the region’s total GDP, so a victory for a Trump ally would drastically alter not only the political landscape but also the economic one. On the other hand, a victory for Lula would signal a “halt” (probably the most significant of all possible outcomes) to the wave of victories by the Latin American right and far right – allies and supporters of US hemispheric and military policy – that have swept the electoral landscape in recent years.

What do the polls say?

Since the start of the presidential race, Lula has maintained a lead over his political opponent. However, that lead has been narrowing as the weeks have gone by, raising the possibility that the runoff election, scheduled for October 25, will be a very close race. This is because, it appears, neither candidate will manage to secure more than 50% of the vote to win in a single round.

According to a poll by the MDA Pesquisa Institute, Lula holds a solid lead over Bolsonaro: 40.06% to 30.4%. Augusto Cury comes in third with 6% of the vote, while the remaining candidates trail behind this mark. According to this poll, in the event of a runoff, Lula would win with 47.3% against Bolsonaro’s likely 40%.

However, other polls paint a different picture, in which Lula remains in the lead but by a very narrow margin. This is according to an AtlasIntel poll, which shows Lula with 46% of the vote, while Bolsonaro would receive 44% in the first round. In the runoff, the gap would disappear, and both candidates would receive nearly 47% of the vote (a technical tie).

A corruption scandal that is shaking up the political landscape

However, everything could change in the wake of a scandal that has rocked Brazilian politics. In late 2025, the former owner of Banco Máster SA, Daniel Vorcaro, allegedly committed a serious case of bank fraud. Since his arrest in March 2026, his conversations, friendships, and connections have all been under close investigation.

One of the people who has come under scrutiny is Flávio Bolsonaro, who confirmed that he had asked the banker for money to make a film about his father called “Dark Horse”. The Federal Police are investigating this case to determine whether Bolsonaro participated in any illegal activity.

Meanwhile, Lula’s inner circle has also been affected. The judge who ordered Jair Bolsonaro’s arrest, Alexandre de Moraes, is alleged to have exchanged messages with Vorcaro. Moraes has been portrayed as a judge close to Lula and thus Bolsonaro and his supporters have seized on the revelation of the messages to call for Moraes’s removal and indirectly accuse the government of suspicious activities.

The debate has led to a serious crisis within the Brazilian judiciary because a decision to investigate Moraes was postponed, prompting accusations of political bias among the judges.

Latin America and the Caribbean countries are being re-colonized. This time it is not by Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, France, and Portugal, but by the United States.

At a period of time the United States had an anti-colonial position and had advocated for the ending of colonialism. That was one of the features of the Monroe Doctrine that has become somewhat obscured since the US became so bellicose.

Today, in a de facto way it has become a super colonial power. It is imposing its will on regions and countries. Those that stand up for their rights are sanctioned, destabilized and sometimes physically removed.

The fact that it used its military might to kidnap a sitting president, President Maduro of Venezuela, is a clear indication that the United States has decided to ignore international law and to get its own way.

Strikingly, only the President of Brazil protested vigorously. Our Caribbean leaders have generally been tight lipped.

The United States has gone even further. They have, using the guise of fighting drugs, established a strong military presence in the region. They have been murdering hundreds of persons traveling in small boats in the Caribbean. Without producing a scintilla of evidence, without attempting to board the boats and get evidence, the US just killed the occupants. We may never know if any were really involved in drug trafficking.

There has been a deafening silence from Latin America and the Caribbean leaders to those atrocities. As if these events were not enough, many of the governments in the region are, on the request/orders from the United States, acting against their countries’ best interests. The ending of the cooperation in health with Cuba which was in place for more than fifty years and which benefited millions of the region’s citizens, is a case in point.

That has left a massive gap in the health sector of the region. The US has not provided any assistance to help with the dislocation and shortage of technical personnel created by their insistence to remove Cubans.

The US is now also pressing regional governments to stop doing business with China. Many governments are beginning to comply with those orders as we see more big contracts going to US companies, despite some of those companies having poor performance records.

If some newspaper stories are to be believed, (and they have not been countered) in some cases Chinese contractors won bids for certain projects, but they were not given the jobs, they went to US firms instead.

The US and other Western countries have ignored us and kept us in a state of underdevelopment since independence. Now that we are getting assistance from China to build important and much needed infrastructure to facilitate socio-economic progress we are getting push back from the US.

It appears that they want to keep us in a state of perpetual underdevelopment and in poverty.

We see the open intention to super exploit our natural resources and labor for the benefit of big business in the US. They are mainly interested in our natural resources. They do not add value in the region nor establish any type of manufacturing. Those are reserved for the rich, developed countries.

The recent “deal” with Venezuela is worse than highway robbery. Venezuela has to provide oil and gas to US companies at cost for one hundred years. This is barefaced robbery and has demonstrated that Venezuela is now a de facto colony of the US. This will not benefit the poor in the US. It is designed to enrich the huge corporations.

Venezuela was forced to abandon its long and well-known principle of standing in solidarity with the oppressed people of Palestine. It is now forced to recognise the Fascist, Apartheid Israeli regime that continues to bomb defenseless civilians in makeshift camps in Gaza, the West Bank (where ethnic cleansing is taking place) and in East Jerusalem.

Today the sovereignty of our countries is already severely compromised. If we don’t stand up now it would be completely lost.

Donald Ramotar is a former President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana (2011-2015).

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

A little over a month into his term, far-right President Abelardo de la Espriella continues to advance a security agenda that often conflicts with certain rights historically won by Colombians.

This time, De la Espriella has signed a decree allowing police access to university campuses. In several Latin American countries, the prohibition of police access to universities has been established through student struggle to prevent abuses by authorities against student movements.

Thus, universities have historically become places where students seek refuge from repression, arrest, and regroup during times of intense social mobilization.

This was evident during the 2021 protests, known as the “National Strike,” in which students, workers, left-wing political parties, young people, and others took to the streets to protest against the right-wing government of Iván Duque. The mobilization, which lasted several months, was considered a true “social upheaval,” and many experts have seen in it the consolidation of a democratic alternative (the government of Gustavo Petro) to decades and decades of right-wing rule.

During these protests, universities became hubs of popular mobilization, driven primarily by the youngest members of society. On university campuses, protesters were able to regroup, defend themselves against police repression, and coordinate new demonstrations – among other things – always protected by the fact that police are barred from entering university grounds.

De la Espriella calls popular protests “terrorism”

Clearly, De la Espriella seeks to nip this possibility in the bud – that is, to prevent universities from once again becoming coordination centers for the protests. Many have speculated that the president is signing this decree precisely because he knows that his radical neoliberal agenda could spark major protests, and in this way, he hopes to proactively undermine the protest movement.

Read more: One month of De la Espriella’s administration in Colombia

Whether or not this is De la Espriella’s primary intention, only time will tell. What is certain is that the president views university autonomy as an obstacle to the implementation of his security agenda, which also includes curtailing the ability of informal opposition political groups to participate in public life.

“Under no circumstances will I allow public universities to continue to be sanctuaries of violence. I respect and guarantee peaceful protest, but I will not allow universities to continue to be used as sanctuaries of vandalism and crime,” said De la Espriella on X.

Furthermore, true to his combative rhetoric, he compared social protests to terrorism – a common trope in the historical discourse of the Colombian right: “University autonomy is not a blank check for impunity: I have issued precise instructions for a national protocol of action that allows us to distinguish between the legitimate exercise of protest and acts of violence, flagrant offenses, danger, or extraordinary disturbances of public order that require intervention by the authorities. The university is for knowledge and ideas, not to serve as a refuge for violence and terrorism.”

A violation of the Constitution

However, the opposition has viewed this decision as a serious attack on university autonomy. Ana Erazo, a member of the House of Representatives from Valle del Cauca, wrote: “It is an ATTACK ON UNIVERSITY AUTONOMY and a direct threat to the young people at the country’s public universities. With this, Mr. Abelardo de la Espriella is beginning to reveal what could become a BRUTAL RETALIATION against the student movement, against its ability to organize and mobilize, and against thousands of young people who historically have not supported his political agenda.”

Some universities have joined in this criticism. One of them is the National Pedagogical University, whose academic council stated that in the past, “the serious consequences of resolving conflicts within public universities through militarization have been demonstrated on repeated occasions.” Furthermore, the council stated that university autonomy is one of the pillars of Colombian democracy, along with freedom of thought and research, among other things. Losing autonomy means jeopardizing these values of the republic, it stated.

For his part, former presidential candidate Iván Cepeda said that De la Espriella’s measure contradicts Article 69 of the Constitution, which guarantees university autonomy. Regarding the announcement, Cepeda also said: “Such an announcement is not only an affront to university autonomy. It also demonstrates, once again, the authoritarian and despotic nature of De la Espriella, who seeks to stigmatize, persecute, and violate the rights of Colombian youth and the university community. Colombia has not forgotten the victims of police abuse during the National Strike, nor the history of security forces intervening on university campuses, resulting in student deaths. Young people cannot once again be persecuted or treated as an internal enemy and an enemy of the state.”

Right-wing and far-right governments in Latin America have adopted a very similar discourse regarding insecurity. The leaders share a narrative that describes how in the 1980s and 1990s, a sort of neoliberal panacea reigned supreme, but then, as if speaking of a biblical plague, the progressive governments of the early 21st century arrived. Then, their story goes, through rampant corruption, they destroyed paradise on earth and brought about various evils such as insecurity, migration, and the destruction of traditional values.

Thus, several of these new – and not-so-new – right-wing governments have won the presidency, almost always in elections where they prevailed by a narrow margin, asserting that the solution to the “disaster” is to return to radical neoliberalism and implement a security policy that restores an order which, they claim, existed before the “original sin.” This “salvation,” no doubt, will come hand in hand with military, intelligence, and operational oversight from Washington – an ally that, they say, was alienated by regional center-left governments. The most serious consequence of this distance was the infiltration of drug trafficking into all strata of society.

It matters little or not at all to these new governments that during the era of progressivism, the region enjoyed a certain positive level of security, as argued by critics of the far right. In the case of Ecuador, this supposedly only happened due to an alleged peace pact between the center-left governments and criminal groups. So that peace was, in reality, merely the prelude to what would later erupt.

A US-backed regional security program

In light of this, the region’s security policy appears to be nearly identical across all countries governed by the Latin American right and far right: 

• Expand the executive branch’s power to declare states of emergency and prolong them over time (sometimes for years, as has happened in El Salvador and Ecuador, with the consequent erosion of individuals’ constitutional guarantees); 
• Sign security agreements with the United States and become part of its hemispheric military and security policy (such as the well-known “Shield of the Americas”); 
• Attempt to facilitate US military and intelligence operations within each country’s territory (whether or not there are military bases on the ground); 
• Promote extradition proceedings to the United States; 
• Increase security spending while cutting spending in other areas such as health care, education, and housing; 
• And various other measures.

However, with the exception of El Salvador and, to some extent, Chile, the results these governments promise – to reduce organized crime and insecurity in the region through the quasi-militarization of daily life and security agreements with Washington (which many accuse of undermining sovereignty) – have not materialized.

Read more: Shield of the Americas, military operations, and decorations: Rubio’s fruitful visit to South America

Ecuador, which is facing the most serious security crisis in its history, has failed to reduce violence as promised by the executive branch, even though the country is currently under a nearly permanent state of emergency and foreign military operations are underway. According to some experts, 2026 could become the second most violent year in the country’s history, with nearly 5,000 homicides in just six months. The Noboa administration says that positive results take time and that better days are ahead. The local elections at the end of the year will surely provide a better gauge of the government’s credibility than any speculation.

In Chile, Kast managed to rally support to win the election by focusing on his security policy, which asserts that the rise in insecurity in Chile is largely due to migration from other South American countries. In response, he promised to build various infrastructure projects that would prevent new migrants from entering the country, similar to the US border wall. For now, the government is celebrating a reduction in certain crime rates, although several polls indicate that the public still feels concerned.

In Colombia, the recently inaugurated government of Abelardo de la Espriella has declared that the time for peace talks with certain insurgent groups is over and has resumed the country’s long-standing policy of waging war against insurgent and drug-trafficking groups. So far, there have already been several dozen deaths, with the bodies displayed as war trophies that the president showcases in his addresses to the nation. It is still too early to tell whether De la Espriella’s war will have a direct impact on reducing insecurity, which, according to the executive branch, spiked during Petro’s administration – a claim that Petro categorically denies.

For now, Washington has expressed its support both verbally and by providing funds to many of these countries to bolster their security, while also carrying out actions in the region, such as those already mentioned in Ecuador or operations in the Caribbean Sea. Furthermore, during a recent visit by Rubio to Peru, the secretary of state stated that US forces will act wherever invited by local governments, which foreshadows new military operations in South America.

Read more: The ugliness of Latin America’s angry tide

Without a doubt, the growth of US influence and presence in South America is undeniable. But it would be a mistake to think that this is something new. The history of Latin America in the 20th century has shown how Washington has managed to steadily increase its military presence in the region by invoking various justifications that have proven very effective in winning public support, especially those concerning the security of the population.

Decades of US intervention in Latin America

During World War II, the United States significantly increased its military presence in the region under the pretext of defense against potential military actions by the Axis powers, specifically Japan and Germany. Thus, the United States and its powerful fleet established several military bases in South America and succeeded in getting virtually all governments to align themselves with Washington’s geopolitical interests.

Shortly thereafter, Washington justified increasing its military presence in the region to halt the dangerous “communism” that, they claimed, would sweep through the region and had become a cause for concern not only for US security but also for the internal security of each country, where “dangerous” revolutionaries would destroy the social foundations of each nation. Thus, the United States and a large portion of the Latin American militaries carried out joint intelligence and other operations to promote, by any means necessary, the destruction of leftist political movements in the region – which meant killing thousands of Latin American revolutionaries through various methods, such as the imposition of bloody military dictatorships (such as those in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, etc.) and/or boycott and conspiracy operations against anti-imperialist governments, such as Castro’s Cuba, Allende’s Chile, or so many other political movements violently aborted through the active participation of US and local forces.

However, the socialist bloc collapsed in the 1990s and brought on a crisis within the revolutionary left. Right-wing governments, incidentally, took advantage of these events to promote ultraliberal economic policies, but began to lack a new justification for expanding military and police forces, and the US presence in the region. 

One exception to this was Colombia, where the internal war served as a justification for the establishment of several US bases during the 21st century.

Read more: The ‘War on Drugs’ has always been more about war than drugs

Now that drug trafficking has become the region’s primary security threat, Latin American right-wing forces, alongside Washington, have once again raised the alarm about the threat of insecurity to promote securitist policies and an increased US military presence. Nazis, communists, and now narco-terrorists seem to be the lineage of a political strategy designed not only to promote a greater military presence in social life but also to advance neoliberal policies that are often accompanied by the aggressive influx of international capital, which typically appropriates the economic resources of this part of the Third World. 

For we must not forget that every cycle of increased security-oriented policies has been followed by lucrative and substantial profits for the wealthiest in Latin America and around the world.

Abelardo de la Espriella has now been in office for one month. The far-right president won the election by a narrow margin over leftist Iván Cepeda (less than 1% of valid votes), despite allegations of irregularities made by then-President Gustavo Petro.

However, De la Espriella dismissed the allegations of irregularities and began his administration by attempting to demonstrate military strength, an overt religious faith (for which he had to issue a public apology), and a clear alignment with Washington’s political doctrine.

The earthquake and the return to a state policy of war

However, just three days after he took office, a powerful earthquake struck the western part of the country, leaving more than 300 dead and nearly 5,000 injured. The government’s actions drew controversy. His supporters applauded the government’s response, while critics accused the administration of exploiting the tragedy to boost his public image and giving certain countries – such as Israel – priority in search-and-rescue efforts, while denying entry to rescue teams from other countries.

Added to this is the rhetoric of a return to all-out war against subversive armed groups and criminal organizations that De la Espriella already put forward during his election campaign. But this has not been merely a matter of rhetoric. Since taking office, the executive branch has ordered a series of attacks against positions held by these groups, some of which were engaged in peace talks aimed at their demobilization.

In fact, De la Espriella canceled the peace negotiations, which had been resumed by the Petro administration as part of his “total peace” policy.

Read more: President De la Espriella cancels peace talks in Colombia

In addition, the government’s death-defying political communication strategy has caused quite a stir. In some videos, the president can be seen walking among the bodies of alleged “bandits and terrorists” (as the government calls them), which, according to the Executive Branch, number 40, in addition to the capture of nine people allegedly linked to illegal organizations.

But the bombings have also drawn significant domestic criticism. In the Guaviare Department, three minors were reported killed following the bombings ordered by the president, which were part of a series of attacks that left a total of about ten people dead. And while De la Espriella said that armed groups are responsible for the deaths of the minors, he has not been able to escape criticism from human rights organizations that view indiscriminate bombing as a dangerous threat to innocent people and the civilian population.

A return to neoliberalism

Ultimately, the contrast between Petro’s and De la Espriella’s administrations seems so evident that many wonder whether it is precisely this political distancing that serves as the compass guiding the new government – or whether Colombia is, in fact, attempting to establish a new form of state.

To understand this transformation, BreakThrough News spoke with Danilo Urrea, philosopher at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, who sees in this first month a clear shift toward a return to a state policy of war – one that had previously been implemented with negative results: “In Colombia, this was historically known as the era called ‘La Violencia,’ which was one of the worst periods the country has ever experienced in terms of the barbarity it generated.”

“The president presents the killing of people to the country as a success,” he added. “But he also does so with an aesthetic and a semiotics that portray death, murder, and the like as a possibility for the country. And in a context like Colombia’s – where we have the highest death toll on the entire continent, surpassing even the combined death tolls of all the region’s dictatorships – this shows us that it is a step backward in terms of the possibility of building a country based on dialogue and reconciliation.”

Urrea also says the current government is trying to push the idea that the country it has inherited is in a disastrous financial situation, which is why it must promote a radical neoliberal policy: “We’ve identified efforts to promote a supposed economic turnaround for the country through old formulas that have already been tried and proved disastrous for social cohesion, for the territories, and for the relationship between humans and nature – with negative impacts on the communities living in the very places where this return to an extractive economy is once again being proposed.”

Furthermore, he warns that in the short time De la Espriella has been in office, there has been a setback in environmental and labor matters: “He has also come under attack during this first month, as he has begun to dismantle the gains made in terms of wages, recovery, overtime pay, and certain labor protections … which had been restored under President Petro’s administration through reforms and which this administration is now once again rapidly undoing with the stroke of a pen, supposedly to improve economic conditions. That, in very general terms, is what we’re seeing and what’s projected: the deregulation of all social benefits, of all the hard-won gains; the complete dismantling of all reforms; and the surrender of the country – in the areas of health, education, food, and all fundamental rights – to privatization processes primarily for the profit of transnational corporations.”

A new (old) geopolitical doctrine

Following the Petro administration’s attempts to defend the Palestinian people against Israel’s onslaught, as well as its various clashes with Washington’s hemispheric geopolitical agenda, Urrea asserts that Colombia has joined a regional strategy of control orchestrated by Washington: “The rise of the far right, which is well known … Through this administration, Colombia has become yet another outpost of U.S. imperialism’s advance across the region. And obviously, this has far-reaching consequences for the geopolitics of Latin America and the Caribbean in particular.”

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Furthermore, Urrea highlights the historical importance Colombia – a country with access to both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea – has held in the United States’ geopolitical strategy to control natural resources: “From a geopolitical standpoint, conditions are being created for Colombia to once again become one of the countries that facilitates U.S. military control – but above all, control over the natural resources and assets that are so coveted in this era of challenges for the United States in terms of its economic capacity, its dispute with China, and everything related to critical minerals.”

What is the opposition doing?

Urrea notes that, for now, the opposition parties have not managed to formulate a clear response to De la Espriella’s project. First, he points to a certain caution regarding a state policy that promotes violence and war: “There is obviously a great deal of fear regarding the actions I mentioned earlier – this language of violence, death, and murder. And obviously, in a country like Colombia, this has repercussions for the ability of those opposed to the current regime to act. Furthermore, because there has been an increase in the targeted killings of social leaders in various parts of the country, especially in areas most affected by geopolitical disputes as well as conflicts over economic and commercial control, illegal economies, and so on.”

However, Urrea notes that a coordinated opposition to the popular sectors could emerge, and the people might offer a peaceful and better-coordinated response: “We should consider an opposition that stems more from the popular sector, and there, I believe, there is also fear about how to react in the face of a violent scenario, a dangerous scenario, and manipulation. But I believe that organizations are now focusing on analyzing what the main peaceful and strategic causes might be to address the current situation. It seems to me that one of these fundamental aspects will undoubtedly be, and is already taking shape in the country through popular organization and mobilization, the defense of the environment, the defense of territories that are already being targeted for the control and exploitation of natural resources by transnational corporations, and the issue of fracking.”

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