Venezuela

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)

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)

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)

Central America

Panama feels pain of Trump migration crackdown

An eight-year-old Venezuelan girl died and 20 survivors were rescued by Panamanian authorities from a shipwreck during a journey from Panama’s northern port of Llano Carti to the Colombian border. Trump’s crackdown on migrants has triggered a “reverse flow” that is leading a growing number of asylum seekers to take a sea route back to South America to avoid crossing the Darién Gap—the perilous jungle trek connecting Panama to Colombia. (Photo: Note left on Darién Gap trail reads: “They’re robbing further up, form big groups!!” Credit: Peter Yeung/TNH)

The Caribbean

Will US-Cuba deal survive Trump?

Outgoing President Joe Biden informed Congress in his final days in office that he would lift the US designation of Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism (SSOT), as part of a deal facilitated by the Catholic Church to free political prisoners on the island. The Cuban government announced it would release 553 prisoners who had been jailed in connection with the 2021 protests on the island. However, the durability of the deal was immediately cast into doubt. Just one day after the policy change, Republican Senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, said during his Senate Confirmation hearing that Cuba belongs on the SSOT list. (Photo: Falkenpost/Pixabay)

Planet Watch

World war or world revolution?

In Episode 239 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg provides an overview of the protest waves and uprisings going on across the planet—in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Bangladesh, India, China, Serbia, Venezuela, and in Israel. This as worldwide protests in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza continue. Amid ongoing protests against Netanyahu in Israel, there have also been protests against Hamas in Gaza. Despite internal dangers and contradictions in all these upsurges, there is a sense that we could be approaching a revolutionary moment such as that seen in 2011—the year of the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. And with the planet on an accelerating trajectory toward world war, the linking of these upsurges through conscious solidarity and the infusion of anti-war content to their demands is urgently mandated. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo via Twitter)

The Caribbean

Podcast: geopolitics of the Essequibo dispute

In Episode 205 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg looks at the recent re-escalation and (hopefully) denouement of the dispute over Esequibo—an oil-rich territory controlled by Guyana and claimed by Venezuela. Ironically, this claim was first asserted by the conservative, anti-communist Venezuela of the 1960s to help destabilize the anti-imperialist Guyana of Cheddi Jagan. Today, the left-populist but increasingly nationalistic regime of Nicolás Maduro even entertains hubristic claims to sovereignty over Venezuela’s other much larger neighbor, Colombia. But this revanchism appears to mask the fact that “revolutionary” Venezuela largely remains a petro-state with a rentier economy, vulnerable to drops in the global oil price, even if Chinese corporate exploiters have been replacing gringo ones. With the recent easing of sanctions, US giants like Chevron have even returned to Venezuela—while the extractivist model results in indigenous resistance. Contrary to the dogmas of left and right alike, the real root of the Venezuelan crisis is that the country is insufficiently socialist. Listen on SoundCloudor via Patreon. (Map: SurinameCentral via Wikimedia Commons)

North America

Biden admin to expand Title 42 expulsions

President Joe Biden announced that the US is to extend a parole program previously offered only to migrants from Venezuela to those from Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti, allowing them to apply for residency—but reiterated that his administration will continue to enforce Title 42, in compliance with a recent order from the Supreme Court. In fact, under his new policy, Title 42 expulsions are to increase, with Mexico agreeing to accept expelled Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians. A provision of the Public Health Service Act allowing for summary expulsion of migrants at the southern border, Title 42 is in effect pursuant to a Centers for Disease Control order of March 2020 as a COVID-19 emergency measure. The policy shifts as litigation over Title 42 has been batted back and forth in the US courts has led to confusion in cities on both sides of the border. Squalid encampments have sprung up in Matamoros, Reynosa and other Mexican border towns as migrants await entry to the US. (Photo via FWS)

New York City

NYC: island emergency camp for asylum seekers

New York City workers have started erecting a series of sprawling tents in vacant parking lots on Randall’s Island, between the East and Harlem rivers, to house undocumented migrants and asylum-seekers. The so-called “Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers” are to hold some 500, officially for no more than five days. At least two more tent cities are planned, with Orchard Beach in the Bronx named as another possible location. Gov. Kathy Hochul has ordered National Guard troops to help staff the centers. Since the spring, some 17,000 asylum-seekers have arrived in New York—many sent to the city on buses by authorities in Texas. The city has already opened 42 emergency shelters to deal with the influx, and Mayor Eric Adams has declared a state of emergency. (Map via Google)