Venezuela

The Andes

Trump officials push Venezuela regime change

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced that he is ready to declare a state of emergency in response to aggression by the United States. Such a declaration would give the army control over public services and the country’s oil industry, which Venezuelan leaders say the US is preparing to grab. US officials, led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA director John Ratcliffe, are reported to be pushing plans to overthrow Maduro. The US has increased its naval presence in the Caribbean and launched repeated deadly strikes on civilian vessels in international waters off Venezuela. President Trump has claimed, without evidence, that the vessels were carrying drug traffickers. Rubio recently described Maduro as a “fugitive from American justice” who leads a terrorist and criminal organization bringing narcotics into the US, posing an “imminent, immediate threat.” (Image: Grunge Love via Flickr)

The Andes

Popular protests turn deadly in Ecuador

Widespread protests in Ecuador, sparked by cuts to fuel subsidies, reached a boiling point, as an indigenous land defender was killed by the armed forces, a government aid convoy was reportedly attacked by protesters, and 12 soldiers went missing. Meanwhile, the government continued to advance its plan to rewrite the constitution—an initiative that has further intensified public anger. Undeterred, the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE), which initiated the nationwide strike, announced that it would extend the action. (Photo: CONAIE via Peoples Dispatch)

The Andes

US ‘decertifies’ Colombia as drug war partner

The United States decertified Colombia as a reliable partner in the War on Drugs, citing a rise in coca cultivation and cocaine production. While the White House waived the crushing sanctions that usually come with decertification, the decision underscores the strained relations between the US and Colombia under Trump. The administration was quick to blame Colombian President Gustavo Petro directly, arguing in its submission to Congress that the “failure of Colombia to meet its drug control obligations over the past year rests solely with its political leadership.” The administration also decertified Venezuela, Bolivia, Afghanistan and Burma. While these latter countries have been frequently decertified over the years, this marks the first time Colombia has been decertified since 1997. (Map: PCL)

Central America

Podcast: MAGA-fascism and the struggle in El Salvador II

Kilmar Abrego García, released from extrajudicial detention in El Salvador, now fights deportation to Uganda. Hundreds of the Venezuelans sent by the US to the Salvadoran prison gulag have now been returned to Venezuela in a prisoner swap. But El Salvador remains on the growing list of human rights offenders cultivated by the Trump regime as surrogate detention states. The Trump State Department’s farcical “Human Rights Report” seeks to sanitize dictator Nayib Bukele’s anti-crime police state. And adding to the Orwellian nature of the Trump-Bukele axis, the US Justice Department has dropped charges against MS-13leaders who collaborated in the consolidation of the new Salvadoran dictatorship. In Episode 293 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg exposes the perverse charade. (Photo: Policía Nacional Civil de El Salvador via InfoDefensa)

The Caribbean

US destroyers menace Venezuela

Three US Aegis guided-missile destroyers have been dispatched to waters off the coast of Venezuela, as part of what the Trump administration calls an effort to counter threats from Latin American drug cartels. The mobilization follows Washington’s decision to increase the bounty for the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, doubling it to an unprecedented $50 million. In response to the increased US military presence in the Caribbean, President Maduro announced plans to mobilize 4.5 million members of the territorial militia across the country. “Rifles and missiles for the rural forces! To defend Venezuela’s territory, sovereignty and peace,” he proclaimed. (Photo: US Navy via Latin America Reports)

Watching the Shadows

Trump plans transfer of thousands of migrants to Gitmo

President Donald Trump’s administration plans to increase the number of undocumented migrants being transferred to the US Naval facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, according to government documents obtained by the Washington Post. The documents state that 9,000 undocumented immigrants are currently being vetted for transfer to Guantánamo, with the first transfers to begin this week. (Photo: Spc. Cody Black/WikiMedia via Jurist)

Watching the Shadows

Trump issues new ‘travel ban’ proclamation

President Donald Trump issued a proclamation implementing a nearly full travel ban on nationals from a dozen countries, severely restricting potential entry into the United States. The proclamation is based on an executive order issued on Trump’s first day in office that laid the foundation for the administration to enact extensive immigration controls. Commentators have harshly criticized the ban, pointing out that it disproportionately affects Muslim-majority and African countries. Amnesty International’s secretary general Agnes Callamard lambasted Trump for the action, calling it “discriminatory, racist and downright cruel.” The restrictions bear a striking resemblance to Trump’s 2017 travel ban, which blocked travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries. (Photo: Minneapolis protest of 2018 Supreme Court decision upholding Trump’s first travel ban. Credit: Fibonacci Blue/Flickr)

North America

MAGA-fascism, Orwell and the cannabis stigma

Trump is pointing to Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s tattoos to justify his indefinite detention without charge in the ultra-oppressive Salvadoran prison gulag. These notoriously include a cannabis leaf, demonstrating the continued propaganda utility of the “Reefer Madness” stigma, even as a multi-million dollar legal industry emerges. But the White House actually added the characters “MS13” (name of the notorious Salvadoran gang) to the shot of Abrego Garcia’s knuckles in a crude photoshop job—despite transparent denials from Trump. Lubricating the emerging transnational mass detention program with this Orwellian post-truth stratagem, the Trump regime meanwhile moves toward actual deportation of US citizens. Bill Weinberg raises the alarm in Episode 277 of the CounterVortex podcast. (Photo: Donald Trump/Truth Social as seen, e.g., on CNN)

Watching the Shadows

Trump boasts 100 days of deportation and detention

At a Michigan rally to commemorate the first 100 days of his term, Donald Trump focused onhis border crackdown and deportations above all else. While he bragged in his speech of firing “unnecessary deep state bureaucrats,” his racist attacks on migrants took center stage. Those attacks accelerated and entered uncharted territory the following week: the administration launched massive immigration raids, targeted sanctuary cities in an executive order, prosecuted migrants for breaching a recently declared “military zone” near the border, separated families, and even deported US citizens. (Photo: WikiMedia via Jurist)

Watching the Shadows

Trump-Bukele detention deal heads for clash with courts

The Trump administration’s deportation policies took center stage this week as Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele visited the White House, courts continued challenging the legality of the deportations, and a Maryland senator travelled to El Salvador in an attempt to make contact with a man known to have been wrongfully deported. With Trump now openly defying the federal courts—and, in fact, seeking to expand indefinite detention of deportees in El Salvador’s prison system—the long-awaited showdown between the executive and judiciary appears to have arrived. (Photo: WikiMedia via Jurist)

Mexico

Trump-induced migration crisis in Mexico

President Donald Trump’s migration crackdown has been credited with reducing flows northward towards the United States, but it is leaving hundreds of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers trapped in a legal limbo further south, anxiously wrestling with what to do next. People on the move are now stranded in precarious living conditions across Mexico, more exposed than ever to violence, abuse and privation. (Photo of Tapachula migrant camp: Daniela Díaz for The New Humanitarian)

The Andes

Venezuela: Trump restores sanctions on Chevron operations

President Donald Trump announced that the US government is revoking a special permit granted to energy giant Chevron to pump and export Venezuelan oil. The move, which reverses a 2022 decision by Biden to allow the company to bring Venezuelan oil to US markets by exempting it from economic sanctions, removes one of the South American country’s few economic lifelines at a time of deepening crisis. In his post on TruthSocial, Trump claimed that the Venezuelan government had failed to keep up its side of the original bargain to meet “electoral conditions.” He also charged that the “regime has not been transporting the violent criminals they sent into our Country…back to Venezuela at the rapid pace that they had agreed to.” (Photo: Luis Ovalles via Dialogo Americas)