América Latina & Caribe

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/63988

On June 24, the collision of the South American tectonic plate with the Caribbean one caused a major release of energy from the depths of the Earth, leaving a trail of destruction in Venezuela. The 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes that rocked the country caused thousands of deaths and the collapse of hundreds of structures.

While we try to process the trauma and return to something that resembles “normalcy,” Venezuela, already battered by years of sanctions and the recent US military attack, now faces the challenge of rebuilding itself in the broadest sense of the word and in an ever more complicated context. With that in mind, we have to start by asking: who is in charge of the country and its future?

Using the natural disaster as the perfect excuse, US forces have taken over operations at La Guaira port and the Simón Bolívar International Airport. US servicemen have set up shop in the air traffic control tower, surveillance drones fly over Caracas, and US helicopters patrol the disaster areas on their own.

This dangerous trend did not start on June 24. In recent months, in unapologetic fashion, the US has been setting the Venezuelan political agenda, notwithstanding the subtle or absurd efforts to conceal it.

For instance, at the end of May, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that Acting President Delcy Rodríguez would visit India to negotiate oil deals. Rubio openly offered Venezuelan crude to India as part of its campaign against Russian exports. The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry pretended not to have heard anything and confirmed the trip two weeks later.

Back in February, the Venezuelan government denied rumors that businessman and recent minister Alex Saab had been detained, only to surrender him to US agencies months later. And despite having all that time to come up with a proper explanation, the official line was that authorities supposedly “found out” that Saab is Colombian and had a fake Venezuelan ID. In Venezuela, sometimes the chutzpah reaches such extremes that people prefer to just move on. Many officials promised we would soon know more details about the Saab case, including his collaboration with US agencies, but we’re still waiting.

Later, in June, the government’s quick-response “Miraflores al Momento” social media account put a “fake news” label on a news story about the alleged presence of US military forces in southeast Bolívar state. Then, days later, Trump himself broke the news that the Southern Command in coordination with the CIA had killed alleged Tren de Aragua leader Héctor “Niño” Guerrero in Bolívar state. The extrajudicial killing spree that began last year in the Caribbean, always sadistically bragged about by Trump and his goons, had reached Venezuelan soil.

In response, the Venezuelan government had no alternative but to put out its own statement, reporting a “joint operation” and praising its success. After years of preaching about the danger represented by the CIA, it is now welcome to operate freely in Venezuela as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Niño Guerrero was not executed for our safety, but rather to clear the way for Western mining corporations. No one has said this explicitly but it’s not hard to connect the dots. What’s next? Private security contractors like in Iraq? What’s certain is that we won’t be the ones enjoying those gold profits. It’s substituting one mafia for another, except this one is white-collared.

Another example of a political agenda decided far away from Caracas is a new “dialogue” process with an opposition faction headed by Dinorah Figuera, president of a way-beyond-expired opposition-majority National Assembly, elected in 2015. Through an avalanche of communiqués, we were told that this process will set up “an agenda with concrete milestones and schedules” to “strengthen democracy.”

Figuera means nothing to 99 percent of Venezuelans and she confessed she came to meet National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez on the instructions of the US State Department. She is the perfect example of the rottenness spawning from Washington, heading a “parliament” years after its term ended because the US still recognized it as Venezuela’s “sole legitimate authority” and there were still hundreds of millions of dollars in Venezuelan assets abroad to manage, or pilfer… She didn’t clarify much about the upcoming negotiations, beyond platitudes about “coexistence” and “democracy”.

Once more it was up to Washington to offer details. In its own statement, the State Department announced the talks aimed to rebuild “democratic institutions,” appoint a new electoral council, establish “guarantees” for political participation and the “protection” of civil liberties for open political debate.

Of course, no tale of US influence over Venezuelan politics could be complete without María Corina Machado. The far-right leader is getting antsy while on the sidelines, with no moves to play except trying to get Trump’s attention. For example, after the killing of Niño Guerrero, she wrote that “all these achievements were unthinkable six months ago. Therefore, we recognize and thank President Trump.”

Having been left out of the recent dialogue initiative, notwithstanding the repeated coronation ceremonies from her acolytes, Machado saw a golden opportunity to recoup political capital with the natural disaster in Venezuela. She has a comms apparatus standing at the ready for photo ops and video testimony, showing how she is somewhere and the government is not. But the Trump administration showed little appetite for this kind of circus, and despite Machado being airborne to Curaçao en route to Venezuela, ordered her to turn around.

The explanation is simple: the White House is not done in terms of tying down with shamefully anti-sovereign energy deals and burying us in debt until the second coming of Christ. As such, it is not the time for turmoil.

And though certain Machado aides announced that she would defy Trump, the truth is that she has stood pat, at least for now, while waiting for Washington winds to change.

At the end of the day, Rodríguez, Figuera, Machado, and many others are fighting for their place in the spotlight. But the Trump administration is the one writing the script, and even more so after the earthquakes. Though the tale may seem farcical at times, it is ultimately a tragedy for the Venezuelan people.

Jessica Dos Santos is a Venezuelan university professor, journalist and writer whose work has appeared in outlets such as RT, Épale CCS magazine and Investig’Action. She is the author of the book “Caracas en Alpargatas” (2018). She’s won the Aníbal Nazoa Journalism Prize in 2014 and received honorable mentions in the Simón Bolívar National Journalism prize in 2016 and 2018.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

The post Who Is in Charge in Venezuela? appeared first on Venezuelanalysis.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/63936

In this interview with Matias Maiello, Emilio Albamonte, a member of the leadership of the  PTS (Party of Socialist Workers), the sister organization of Left Voice in Argentina, returns to the question of self-organization and its relationship to revolutionary strategy.

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On Monday, June 29, the first of the FIT-U (Workers Left Front-Unity) forums was held at the initiative of the PTS (Party of Socialist Workers). During the discussions, the different positions of the FIT-U member organizations were clearly expressed. The Partido Obrero (PO) and Izquierda Socialista advocated for the development of “FIT-U support committees,” without responding to our proposal, which aims to promote the immediate coordination of all  sectors of the working class in struggle. The MST (Socialist Workers’ Movement), for its part, expressed its agreement with the idea that FIT-U is insufficient, in and of itself, and that a new stage lies ahead. For us, this new stage involves building a movement that works toward the creation of a party of the new working class. All the organizations that participated in the forum tend to downplay the profound political differences between us, even though these differences clearly emerged during the forum itself. These differences range from the concept of the party that needs to be built to fundamental issues, such as the war in Ukraine, where some organizations are siding with the Ukrainian military as if it were possible to ignore NATO’s role in leading it. Regarding the workers’, peasants’, and people’s rebellion in Bolivia, these organizations argue that by adopting the slogan “All power to the COB,” they are not endorsing a leadership that already betrayed the workers, peasants, and indigenous communities in January and are doing so again today. In your opinion, how should this debate be approached to prevent it from becoming a mere discussion of party politics?

Precisely, to avoid getting bogged down in internal discussions, I’d like to begin by taking a step back and starting with a reflection recently made by Ángel Luis Parras during a recent interview. He is a comrade with extensive experience, who led the LIT (International Workers’ League) for many years and who has just broken with that organization, along with other comrades from Corriente Roja in the Spanish State, with whom we are currently engaged in a process of fusion. Parras recalled that Nahuel Moreno repeatedly stated that revolutionaries have two fundamental and permanent strategies: the mobilization of the masses and the building of the party. However, Parras emphasizes that, in light of the great lessons of the 20th century, this formula lacks a crucial element: the question of self-organization, that is, the creation and development of working-class organizations, not only during the culminating moments of a revolutionary process, but throughout its preparation. He drew a conclusion that seems particularly accurate to me: taken in isolation, “mass mobilization” leads to complete objectivism; as for “party building,” when it is not accompanied by a policy aimed at guiding self-organization, it leads to a conception entirely dominated by a logic of party apparatus. Parras notes that this conception of the role of self-organization constituted a central element of convergence with our international organization, the Current for Permanent Revolution (CPR-FI). His reasoning struck me as particularly relevant because it touches on a question that lies at the heart of possible points of convergence with other currents.

I think this is precisely the heart of the debate that took place at last Monday’s forum, a debate that actually goes back much further. Because when mass mobilization is separated from self-organization, it often ends up being reduced to mere rhetoric. Take, for example, the slogan “Milei out” put forward by the PO (Workers’ Party). Taken in isolation, it amounts either to spontaneously betting that the masses will solve the problem themselves and drive out Milei — which is completely at odds with Engels’ idea that insurrection is an art — or it is a mere phrase. Conversely, building the party without pursuing a systematic policy in favor of self-organization leads to building an apparatus for its own sake, accumulating militant forces and resources — something a bourgeois party can do as well. What distinguishes a revolutionary party from a bourgeois party is that its construction cannot be conceived separately from the objective that Marx famously expressed: the emancipation of the workers will be the work of the workers themselves. The task of revolutionaries is not to “represent” the working class. On the contrary, they must devote all their energies to helping it organize itself, to establishing its own institutions, so that it becomes a hegemonic force. If we do not understand this, we do not understand what Marx meant.

This is, in fact, the only way a vanguard party can work towards organizing the masses. Trade unions and student centers, now mostly devoid of substance, must be wrested from the control of bureaucracies. This is obviously a very important task, but the inherent corporatist limitations of these organizations mean that they cannot, on their own, offer a comprehensive response to the offensive tasks facing the working class — if we are thinking in terms of a revolution and not merely of maintaining the status quo and seeking to “prosper” within the capitalist system and the bourgeois regime. This is why the PTS and our international current, make the permanent struggle for grassroots self-organization one of its defining characteristics, against the fragmentation imposed by bureaucracies, whether they are workers’, students’, or from social movements, and regardless of their political leanings. The struggle for workers’ democracy, for the effective independence of the workers’ movement from the state, and for the coordination of sectors in struggle is crucial to overcoming the passivity and demoralization that bureaucracies seek to impose. It is directly linked to our strategy, which, from a revolutionary perspective, consists of establishing workers’ councils (“soviets”) to overthrow the capitalist state. Without this struggle, it is impossible for the working class to emerge as a hegemonic force.

The FIT-U has played and continues to play a very important role in Argentina as  a revolutionary left-wing pole that defends class independence. It is clear that a new situation has arisen due to the newfound popularity of Myriam Bregman and the revolutionary left in the country. How do you envision the struggle for self-organization in this context, also taking into account the profound upheavals in the international situation?

The revolutionary party must be what one might call a strategic multiplier. If it is merely a machine, it risks veering towards trade unionism in even-numbered years and electoralism in odd-numbered years. The essential point is that it serves to coordinate, mobilize, and organize forces that, without it, would remain scattered.

When we were still a small group, after the break with the old MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo), we had to confront the fall of Stalinism and the realization of Trotsky’s most pessimistic hypothesis: the restoration of capitalism in the USSR and the Eastern Bloc countries. At that time, our essential task was not only to defend Trotskyism against Stalinism, but also to preserve the prospect of world revolution and to reclaim Trotsky’s theoretical legacy. If we hadn’t done so, we would have had to start from scratch, going back sixty years. We knew that the situation would eventually, sooner or later, bring about the reappearance of more revolutionary tendencies, even if it took time, because we had just suffered a terrible defeat that would mark an entire era. That is why we called our international organization the “Trotskyist Fraction”: we were a fraction that was fighting to rebuild the Fourth International in the middle of the political desert of the 1990s.

In this context, in 1995, at the height of Menemism1Named after the Peronist president at the time, Carlos Menem., Fredy Lizarrague, Manolo Romano, and I wrote an article titled “Soviet Strategy in the Struggle for the Workers’ Republic.” This title might have seemed anachronistic just a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and in a way, it was. But we wanted to bring back to the forefront what seemed to us to be a crucial question. I don’t want to bore readers by going over historical details, but it seems to me that they are relevant to  our thinking. Why did we speak of Soviet strategy and not Soviet tactics? Because, while the united front is a tactic, the soviets are not. Self-organizing bodies are on the same theoretical plane as the revolutionary party because, like it, they are strategic multipliers: they amplify the power of the class, centralize it democratically, and expand it at the same time. That is why every advance of the real movement is worth more than a dozen programs.

Furthermore, the absence of self-organizing bodies is never without consequence: it leads to getting lost in other strategies. This is precisely what we analyze in our book Marxism, Strategy, and the Art of War with regard to the revolutions that followed the end of the Second World War, led by “party-armies” as in China or Vietnam. These revolutions were victorious, but they developed without soviets and without workers’ democracy. They were led by bureaucratic parties that had adopted strategies based on the peasantry and protracted warfare, giving rise to states that were bureaucratized from their inception. The way in which the class seizes power is not without consequence for the type of state that emerges from the revolutionary process. Quite the contrary, in fact. The revolutionary party must also wage an immense battle within these self-organizing bodies so that they effectively contribute to building the hegemony of the working class, without being neutralized by the bourgeois state, as has happened in many revolutionary processes.

However, the situation has changed profoundly compared to the political wilderness of the 1990s, during which we were trying to reclaim Trotsky’s theoretical and political legacy. It is also for this reason that, at our 14th International Conference last year, we renamed our organization from the “Trotskyist Fraction” to the “Current for Permanent Revolution.” Today, the parameters have changed: it is no longer enough to preserve a Trotskyist identity; it must be given concrete weight in the class struggle. We are confronted with wars like those in Ukraine and Iran, the genocide in Gaza, the rise of more radical right-wing forces, new processes of class struggle, and the emergence of left-wing political phenomena in many countries. It is no longer simply a matter of resisting as a “faction” by merely defending our program within a reactionary situation, but of seeking to connect with the phenomena developing in the field of class struggle and to intervene in the situation with a clear strategy. This is why we are also calling, along with organizations from other countries, for the building of a movement that seeks to construct an International of the Socialist Revolution.

It seemed important to recall these points before returning to the discussion on the FIT-U in order to emphasize that this is not a purely circumstantial debate. Throughout the defensive period we have gone through, the PTS was the main force initiating the creation of class-independent fronts. Before the FIT, we spearheaded the “FITAS” with Izquierda Socialista, which had just broken with the MST, and the Nuevo MAS, while the PO was still refusing to participate in the front. Then, in 2011, we formed the FIT with the PO, accepting that Altamira would lead it, before he himself broke with the FIT after his break with the PO. In 2019, when the MST accepted the FIT program, we were among the main proponents of its integration, thus giving birth to the current FIT-U. Even today, we consider it extremely important to have created a political space for the class-independent Left, in a country historically marked by Peronism2Peronism encompasses a wide range of center and center-left political currents in Argentina. It loosely refers to President Juan D. Perón’s bourgeois nationalist developmentalism, but Kirchnerism — first led by Néstor Kirchner, then by by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — has been Peronism’s dominant wing since the turn of the century. as an expression of class reconciliation.

But the situation has changed, and that is precisely what we are discussing today as we talk about how to capitalize on the newfound popularity of Bregman and the revolutionary left on the national political scene. The fact that the MST deems it necessary to discuss the transformation of the FIT-U is a step forward: it recognizes that a front that merely engages in electoral propaganda while [Argentinian President Javier] Milei deals new blows to the working class every day is insufficient. We are no longer living under the stabilized neoliberalism of the 1990s: the world order itself is cracking. The question is whether the forces we have accumulated serve as strategic multipliers capable of creating institutions that can, in time, challenge state power, or whether we are simply engaging in electoral posturing.

This is a debate that extends far beyond Argentina. In France, for example, our comrades in Révolution Permanente garnered nearly 7 percent of the vote in several municipalities during the last local elections, allowing them to secure two city council seats in Saint-Denis, a working-class suburb of Paris, in their very first electoral contest. How will they combat Mélenchon’s Popular Front strategy? In my view, they should focus on creating institutions that belong exclusively to the workers and youth of Saint-Denis. This is therefore not a local or circumstantial debate, but a central issue that compels us to reflect on the revolutionary Left we must build.

Let’s be clear: we are not at all opposed to the idea of ​​running a major election campaign, quite the contrary. What we are saying is that running a major election campaign without creating these committees and coordinating bodies for the various sectors of the working class will leave us considerably weakened in the face of the major confrontations to come.

You emphasized the need to unite forces that remain scattered today. This fragmentation of the working class is often analyzed as follows: job insecurity, the rise of gig labor, and the decline of unionization have supposedly transformed the working class into a collection of individuals, while simultaneously fostering an individualistic retreat that the Right Wing has been able to capitalize on. Given this diagnosis, what role does self-organization play in rebuilding our collective strength?

That’s a good starting point for revisiting why the issue isn’t about mobilizing the masses “in general,” nor about building just any party. We must understand that self-organization is the key to the situation. As I said in another interview, the bourgeoisie today exercises its domination by possessing an “expanded state,” or what Gramsci calls the “integral state,” that is, dictatorship plus hegemony. Thanks to this expanded state, it seeks to create consensus, relying in particular on the collaboration of the bureaucracies of the trade unions, the student movement, and social movements, etc. Faced with this gigantic apparatus, the working class finds itself reduced to a collection of scattered individuals. This was, in a way, Margaret Thatcher’s ideal when she asserted that society doesn’t exist and that only individuals do. The very essence of the struggle for self-organization lies in preventing the masses from remaining scattered in the face of this expanded state. The problem is that, with the exception of the PTS, the rest of the Argentinian Far Left is not committed in its practice — quite the opposite, in fact — to fighting to create institutions of self-organization. This is our main difference with the other forces of the FIT-U, beyond the major programmatic divergences we mentioned earlier regarding the war in Ukraine, for example, with the MST (Socialist Workers’ Movement) or IS (Socialist Left). And this difference is constantly expressed in practice, in our intervention alongside the labor movement, in the student movement, and so on.

This is a debate that goes beyond the FIT-U and the political phenomenon we are discussing in Argentina. Let’s take the case of Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). His victory in the New York mayoral election reflects a leftward shift in the consciousness of significant segments of American youth. What is our fundamental criticism? It’s not limited to the fact that he is reformist and we are revolutionary, which is an obvious difference. The core of our criticism lies in the fact that, even in defending its own program, DSA does not create institutions specific to the mass movement that would allow workers themselves to decide and intervene directly in the situation and fight for the program they voted for. Everything then depends on the goodwill of elected officials and the concessions they manage —or fail — to extract from the Democratic establishment. Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of the Jacobin magazine and a member of DSA, asserted that Mamdani should create people’s assemblies and use them as a counterweight to the pressure of the establishment. Very well. But this had no practical effect, which is hardly surprising since, at the same time, DSA continues to support Democratic Party candidates. And even if such assemblies were established, a crucial question would remain: would they be assemblies intended to exert pressure on the imperialist bourgeois state, or would they be organs of self-organization in the service of the struggle, capable of becoming instruments serving the power of the working class?

Now, we should note bodies of self-organization can very well emerge under a conciliatory leadership, like the soviets of February 1917 during the Russian Revolution, led by Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. But even in this case, they represent immense progress because they provide a space where revolutionaries can directly challenge the leadership of the struggle under the watchful eye of the mass movement. It is within this framework that discussions with other FIT-U organizations take place. It is important to remember, as Trotsky recounts, that the soviets did not arise from a pre-established plan. In their beginnings, they were modest struggle organizations, strike committees, which, faced with the crisis triggered by the disastrous Russian defeat against Japan, evolved rapidly and, during the 1905 revolution, transformed into a new form of political organization. This new organization allowed for both the centralization and expansion of the struggle while simultaneously laying the material and potential foundation for a new type of state that would transcend bourgeois democracy. No one “decreed” them, but neither would they have emerged on their own without the conscious intervention of revolutionaries to develop them.

You mentioned the issue of the “expanded state” and the nationalization of mass organizations. This is a phenomenon in which Peronism played a central role in Argentina.

All the organizations of the FIT-U, including the PTS, strongly denounce the role of Peronism, and rightly so. But something fundamental is often forgotten: the consciousness of workers has been shaped for decades by Peronism. Today, it is a trade-unionist consciousness, to use the terms of Lenin’s What Is to Be Done? In the eyes of this trade-unionist consciousness, the only struggle should be for wage increases; often it doesn’t even consider it necessary to fight for better working conditions, especially in workplaces where overtime, holidays, and grueling work rates are exchanged for a halfway decent wage. On this subject, for example, we have engaged in a very important debate with the PO regarding its intervention in the Fate struggle.3A tire factory in northern Buenos Aires that recently closed, leaving 900 workers jobless. One cannot deliver a radical speech on the need for a general strike and then, in practice, never truly coordinate with other sectors, nor seek to radicalize any struggle, but instead constantly seek the “possible” agreement, which always involves concessions. . For example, despite our appeals, there is no ongoing coordination between the workers of Fate and Georgalos, even though these two companies are only a few streets apart, which weakens both struggles. Generally, the PO claims to agree with us, but in practice, it maintains its policy of separate struggles.

This is a long-standing discussion with the other factions within the FIT-U, because the syndicalism of the revolutionary left often ends up resembling that of Peronism, with the difference — not insignificant, but insufficient — that it doesn’t betray the workers. By this I mean that it avoids collective struggles, that it separates union struggles from political struggles: in even years, “we fight”; in odd years, we campaign in elections. This runs counter to everything we learned from Lenin’s critique of trade unionism in What Is to Be Done?, where he contrasted the ideal of a “trade union secretary” — who is content to support the economic struggle against employers and the government — with that of a  “tribune of the people,” capable of responding to any manifestation of oppression and linking it to the overall picture of capitalist exploitation by highlighting the historical importance of the proletariat’s emancipatory struggle. Lenin said that trade-union politics is precisely the ideology of the bourgeoisie within the working class. The question that we, who denounce Peronism, must therefore ask ourselves is this: to what extent do we constitute an alternative to Peronism? If we reproduce, through a left-wing stance, the separation between the trade union and the political spheres, it is clear that we do not.

Our response is to view all struggles, however small, as moments linked to a single, overarching strategy that combines union and political dimensions and culminates in the general strike. This strategy also seeks to prepare its militant forces for self-defense, which constitutes a link in Engels’s “art of insurrection.” It’s about giving visibility to our ideas and winning the sympathy of the exploited, as we did during the major confrontations around the Pan-American Highway, or in struggles that sometimes resulted in victories, like those of the Kraft factory in 2009 or the Donnelley factory in 2014, but also in certain defeats which, because the retreat was well-managed and the lessons learned were clearly explained, did not lead to demoralization. The case of the Lear factory in 2014 is a case in point. When the management of SMATA (the automotive workers’ union) wanted the factory’s internal committee4Internal committees are union bodies that operate within the workplace; they are composed of delegates who work there and are elected by the employees. They can be established within a factory or company, but there can also be internal committees in schools, bus lines, the subway, or any other workplace. to sign a document stipulating that new workers would be hired at 30 percent less than permanent employees, our comrades were forced into a very tough six-month struggle, which we ultimately lost. In this case, as in others, we believe it is better to lose control of the internal committee after a hard-fought battle than to retain positions representing the workers by bowing our heads.

Experience also shows that giving in to management’s maneuvers — which aim to gain the support of internal committees and unions in the general assembly to legitimize their attacks on workers and which constantly threaten layoffs — offers no protection whatsoever. If management’s attacks go unanswered, they inevitably end up dismantling the activist forces in the workplace and sometimes lead to site closures or the dismissal of the most combative workers.

In short, the struggle against adaptation to trade unionism and electoralism, against the division between union and political struggles, against unions that have been gutted by bureaucracy, is an integral part of the fight against Peronism. Without this struggle, denouncing Peronism is nothing more than empty rhetoric.

Let us return, then, to the FIT-U forums and the responses that the other forces participating in them have given to our proposal. The PO and IS are proposing “FIT-U support committees.” What, in your view, is the difference between their proposal and ours, which consists of setting up united front institutions or coordinating bodies, while organizing committees to serve the creation of a party of the new working class?

EA: The proposal from the PO and IS is to create FIT-U committees and even a FIT-U congress or national assembly. In my opinion, this is both an electoral and sectarian proposal. Why? Because this proposal amounts to requiring people who want to organize to fight against Milei to first be members of FIT-U or, at least, to support it. Yet there are thousands of workers with Peronist ideas, or independent workers who want to fight against Milei and who, according to this logic, have no other option than to first agree to join FIT-U in order to participate in the struggle. Our approach is precisely the opposite. We want to create united front institutions where Peronists, non-affiliated workers, and even workers who disagree with Bregman, Nico del Caño, the PTS, and the FIT-U, but who are committed to a serious struggle against Milei and the bosses, can all participate. We want to mobilize people who adhere to various ideologies, not select them based on a prior political agreement. This is the heart of the united workers’ front tactic as conceived by the Third International: “Strike together, march separately.” Precisely because it involves fighting alongside those who are not in complete political agreement with our positions. If it were otherwise, this tactic would simply be meaningless.

Regarding the type of party to be built, we may or may not agree with the other forces within the FIT-U, and it is legitimate for each faction to defend its own strategy. What cannot be justified, however, is the FIT-U’s failure to promote forms of united front capable of uniting the various militant sectors and exerting pressure on the bureaucracies of the major unions, on student leaderships, and on mass organizations. If we do not create these united front institutions, designed to forge links between the different militant sectors — such as coordinating bodies, for example.; iIf there are no organs capable of making the bureaucracy pay politically for its passivity, it is impossible for the broad sectors that today sympathize with the revolutionary left to have the necessary strength to curb the government’s attacks, defeat Milei, and for us to be able to convince them of a revolutionary program and strategy.

Numerous examples could be given that illustrate this argument in the negative. In Marxism, Strategy, and the Art of War, we revisited the case of Greece, where Syriza came to power after dozens of days of general strikes. This example clearly shows that when a united front fails to develop within the class struggle, the movement’s energy dissipates into a series of isolated actions that lack continuity. Meanwhile, reformist forces and proponents of class collaboration, ultimately gain strength because they appear as a kind of “lesser evil” in the eyes of the exhausted masses, who can no longer see any other alternatives. Trotsky had already observed this in his analyses of the situation in France in 1922: he explained that reformists gain a foothold among the workers all the more easily when the ideas and practices of a united front against the bourgeoisie are less deeply rooted within the workers’ movement, because reformism thrives on the disorientation and demoralization of the working class when it fails to see that another path exists. The rise of Syriza thus testifies to this dynamic: it represents the electoral manifestation of the impotence to which the bureaucracies have condemned the Greek mass movement.

During the debate forum, the PO asserted that it would be a “political crime” not to establish a FIT-U committee in La Matanza, where Multicolor leads SUTEBA5SUTEBA is the teachers’ union in the Buenos Aires region, and Multicolor is an opposition and combative faction within the union. What we do will depend on how the discussions progress. The central issue, in any case, remains whether or not we create coordinating institutions; and on this point, we should be able to reach an agreement, while maintaining the differences that separate our organizations. In this context, comrades from IS and the PO presented as an alternative the  Combative Union  Plenum [plenario sindical combativo]. But, at best, this is a meeting of leaders. What we are talking about, for our part, is organizing the vanguard of our class by bringing together the rank and file of the various organizations in coordinating bodies. Not to hold  mere meetings among union and party leaders. As Christian Castillo stated at the forum, the question is whether we can mobilize the railway workers of Haedo and the teachers of La Matanza to create a regional coordination capable of confronting Milei and the Peronism of Espinoza and Kicillof. This discussion will need to be explored further in future forums because, as Christian and Laura Liff emphasized, we are still too weak to mobilize the necessary forces to defeat Milei, and that is why establishing these united front institutions is crucial.

This is the heart of the fundamental discussion. We must create a revolutionary party, but because of the differences between our various currents, it is very difficult to begin by creating joint committees. On the other hand, creating self-organizing institutions in every factory, every university, every hospital, applying the tactic of unity of action and, in the direction of the class, that of the united workers’ front — as conceived by the Third International: “Strike together, march separately,” that is, striking the class enemy together without mingling our flags with those of the reformists and centrists — can allow us to articulate and mobilize forces not only defensively, but also offensively.

I am somewhat more pessimistic about the possibility of immediately building a common party, given the depth of the programmatic and strategic differences that separate our organizations. But I am optimistic that our comrades will reflect and that we can establish these kinds of common bodies for struggle; and that, based on this shared practical experience, we can bring our positions closer together. Serious convergences have never arisen from diplomatic agreements, but from shared practice in the class struggle.

Let us consider the relationship between the two proposals that we are formulating within the PTS: promoting united front institutions and building committees for a party of the new working class.

With the proposal of the committees, our goal is to organize the immense sympathy that exists for Bregman, Nicolás del Caño, and Alejandro Vilca in Jujuy, to name just a few of our highly regarded and respected comrades. Among the comrades joining the committees, a number of people are coming because of the electoral strength the polls show us, and of course, we want to integrate them into the committees and discuss with them. At the same time, we have the task of mobilizing those who wish to play a more active role, because we want the committees to be actively involved in the struggles at hand. From this perspective, one of the most important immediate tasks of the committees should be precisely to promote the coordination of the militant sectors and the revolutionary Left; in other words, to bring to life the united front of struggle we have been talking about from the beginning. But, in the committees, we are also debating the program and strategy that a party of the new working class, a revolutionary party, should embody. It is for this purpose that we published the manifesto “How Do We Change History?,” which attempts to satisfy the political and ideological thirst we observed among comrades joining the committees. In many committees, open study and discussion groups are already being established.

We are only at the beginning of this experiment, but the initial results are very encouraging. Between the meetings we organized over the past two months — at Ferro stadium here in Buenos Aires, as well as in the cities of Jujuy and Neuquén — and the first committee meetings, we brought together between 12,000 and 15,000 people, some of whom participated in several activities. The meetings in Jujuy and Neuquén drew 1,000 and 1,500 people respectively, and the one in Buenos Aires, about 6,000. The hundred or so committees, which have formed in approximately ninety cities across the country, brought together nearly 7,000 people at their first meetings. A particularly significant fact is that about 12,000 people contacted us online to join the committees, including from cities and provinces where we don’t have a presence. This is just the beginning compared to the millions of people who say they are ready to vote for Bregman today, but it shows that there is a significant segment ready to organize.

The key lies in the content we will give to the committees. We hold regular meetings because we want to make them militant committees, not electoral committees that meet only once and end up being nothing more than a contact list. We want committees that debate national and international politics, the revolutionary program and strategy, that launch major campaigns in support of the struggles against the Milei government and the bosses, that foster the emergence of new forms of self-organization, broad coordinating bodies for the militant vanguard in every workplace, in every city. In other words, we want the development of these forms of self-organization to be one of the central objectives of every committee. At the same time, we want the committees to expand and for every comrade to be able to play an active role in their development. We are not ultimatists: we do not claim that all this will develop overnight. And the pace at which we move towards building a real party will also depend on the evolution of the class struggle.

To refute the idea that these discussions about committees, self-organization, or the united front are merely circumstantial or secondary debates, I would like us to place them more firmly within the framework of the major strategic debates that have marked the history of Marxism. It is striking, moreover, to see that contemporary academics, who have nothing to do with Marxism — I am thinking, for example, of the military historian Lawrence Freedman — sometimes devote more attention to these questions than the revolutionary Left itself.

I’m glad you mentioned Freedman, because he’s an author we should be discussing much more on the Left. He’s probably the most prestigious historian of military strategy in the English-speaking world, an emeritus professor of military studies at King’s College London, a figure in the British academic establishment, and obviously beyond suspicion of any adherence to Marxism. And yet, in his major work, Strategy: A History, he devotes nearly a quarter of the book to what he calls “strategy from below” and takes seriously the ideas of Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Luxemburg, Lenin, and Gramsci. In other words, a serious bourgeois author understands that Marxism is a first-rate strategic school, whereas many Marxists despise strategic thinking or consider it a secondary issue. In our view, on the contrary, strategic thinking is the central issue of Marxism.

It is worthwhile to revisit Freedman’s understanding of Lenin. According to him, Lenin’s great strategic innovation lies not in transforming Marxism into a military theory, but in making revolutionary strategy a political theory of seizing power, in which organization, consciousness, circumstances, power relations, and insurrection constitute so many moments within the same strategic process. He believes that Lenin fills a gap in Marxist theory that Marx had not fully addressed: Lenin does not modify the theory of class struggle, but rather theorizes, on a strategic level, how to conduct it leading to the conquest of power.

This is remarkably evident in Lenin’s Clausewitz notebooks, the famous 1915 Tetradka, which even Carl Schmitt — another reactionary but serious thinker — considered one of the most extraordinary documents in world history. Lenin begins with Clausewitz’s famous formula that war is the continuation of politics by other means. But this formula raises a preliminary question: what is politics? For liberalism, politics is the administration of the state. For Lenin, following Marx, politics is the concentrated expression of the class struggle for state power. Thus, when Lenin reads Clausewitz, he transforms the very content of this formula. Two major conclusions follow from this. First, a revolution is not simply a spontaneous explosion but the continuation of the political struggle when the crisis of the state leads to a decisive confrontation between classes. Secondly, neither the party nor the insurrection obeys purely military criteria: force only makes sense if it responds to political objectives defined by the class struggle.

The weakness in Freedman’s reading lies in his assumption that the Leninist party is the great strategic multiplier of the revolution — which is true — but without taking into account Trotsky’s reflections, who saw the soviets as another immense strategic multiplier. The soviet fulfills a dual strategic function that no other organization accomplishes: it broadens the struggle — by integrating ever-larger sectors, including unorganized sectors, as well as forces allied with the working class — and, simultaneously, it unifies these different forces against the state. The party and the soviets are the two strategic multipliers: the party concentrates the vanguard around a revolutionary program and strategy; the soviets organize the masses as a political subject. Neither of these strategic multipliers can bring about victory independent of the other: without a party, the councils fall into the hands of conciliators, like the German Räte during the 1918-1919 revolution; without soviets, the party is either powerless, or it substitutes itself for the masses, as in revolutions led by party-armies.

What do you say to the people who have enthusiastically joined the committees because of the electoral prospects opened up by the new location of Bregman and the revolutionary Left, and who feel that we are now talking about something else?

The first thing I would say is that there is absolutely no debate within our ranks about the need to conduct a major election campaign. When the time comes, we will run it to the fullest, as we have done every time we have had to fight on the electoral field.

The elections offer us an exceptional platform to educate millions of people and allow them to identify their class enemies, as we did during the last campaign by denouncing those who are the true masters of the country and affirming the need to break with the IMF. Bregman’s popularity increased enormously during the presidential debate. Journalists very far removed from our views, like Ignacio Zuleta, a columnist for Clarín, even went so far as to say that, during the debate, there were four candidates who all said the same thing… and Bregman.

We will in no way relinquish our ability to use elections as an instrument of class struggle. However, we maintain that if we are also able to mobilize these forces through coordination bodies and united front bodies, then we will have enabled the FIT-U to play a considerably more advanced role than the already very progressive work of programmatic agitation it currently carries out.

How do you fit your point of view into a broader strategic discussion?

This discussion can be linked to the major classic debates on strategy in the history of Marxism — particularly the polemic between the “strategy of attrition” and the “strategy of overthrow” that pitted Karl Kautsky against Rosa Luxemburg from 1910 onward. This was the first major debate in which concepts from military strategy were explicitly introduced into Marxist political discourse. At that time, faced with the rise of struggles and the political crisis of the German Empire, Kautsky advocated a “strategy of attrition,” the main focus of which was to wait for elections and prepare for them. Luxemburg, who considered this approach passive, argued instead for a broad campaign of agitation, organizing all kinds of meetings, in order to promote the prospect of a mass general strike capable of unifying the struggles taking place at the time.

Contrary to the caricature often presented, Luxemburg did not advocate an anti-electoralist position at all. She shared with Kautsky the idea that the crisis opened up immense electoral prospects for the Social Democratic Party. However, she categorically refused to separate these electoral prospects from the need to develop the actual class struggle movement. This is a central point of divergence between the “two strategies.” Ultimately, a line closer to Kautsky’s prevailed, with the well-known results: in 1914, the Social Democracy, which had become a gigantic electoral and trade union machine, was unable to oppose the war; and during the 1918-1919 revolution, the absence of a revolutionary party was a decisive factor in the defeat of the revolutionary process.

Today, this debate demonstrates that there is no solution without defeating Milei and preventing the destruction of the proletariat’s living conditions. And these tasks will not be resolved in the voting booth. As I said at the beginning, we cannot simply “represent” the working class; our task is to help it organize, to establish its own institutions so that it becomes a hegemonic force. But this task does not diminish, either for Rosa Luxemburg in her time or for us today, the immense importance of political activism in the electoral arena.

Do you want to add anything?

I would first like to return to what defines a Trotskyist activist today. Is it defending the self-organization of the working class or managing small, competing apparatuses? Our answer is: defending self-organization. We have significant programmatic and strategic differences with the other forces of the FITU, and we will not conceal them because we want as many comrades as possible to engage in these debates. That is why we proposed organizing these forums. But if we manage to develop together bodies for coordination and united front institutions in every workplace and place of study, I am convinced that this shared practical experience can bring us much closer than any diplomatic agreement.

Alongside this proposal, I believe we should promote open meetings of the FIT-U parliamentary group. An “open parliamentary office,” with Bregman and del Caño present, open to all FIT-U members, and in which intellectuals, labor leaders, and figures from social movements could also participate, would allow us to discuss street politics, parliamentary politics, and their interrelationships. Parliamentary seats, which we always dedicate to the struggles, should also function as deliberative forums open to all who wish to participate in the movement.

If we succeed in implementing everything I’ve outlined during this interview — the committees, the coordinating frameworks, the self-organizing bodies, the united front imposed on the major trade union and political organizations, the open parliamentary office — then the FIT-U will become a far more powerful force than it is today, far more powerful than a mere electoral front. That is our gamble, and that is what we want to discuss in the upcoming forums.

Originally published in Spanish on July 5 in Ideas De Izquierda.

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| ↑1 | Named after the Peronist president at the time, Carlos Menem. | | ↑2 | Peronism encompasses a wide range of center and center-left political currents in Argentina. It loosely refers to President Juan D. Perón’s bourgeois nationalist developmentalism, but Kirchnerism — first led by Néstor Kirchner, then by by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — has been Peronism’s dominant wing since the turn of the century. | | ↑3 | A tire factory in northern Buenos Aires that recently closed, leaving 900 workers jobless. | | ↑4 | Internal committees are union bodies that operate within the workplace; they are composed of delegates who work there and are elected by the employees. They can be established within a factory or company, but there can also be internal committees in schools, bus lines, the subway, or any other workplace. | | ↑5 | SUTEBA is the teachers’ union in the Buenos Aires region, and Multicolor is an opposition and combative faction within the union. |

The post The Revolutionary Left in Argentina and the Question of Self-Organization: An Interview with Emilio Albamonte appeared first on Left Voice.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/63944

After 50 days of protests and roadblocks, Rodrigo Paz’s government finally managed to turn the situation in its favor. The bureaucracy of Bolivia’s largest trade union confederation, the COB, betrayed both the Federation of the 20 Túpac Katari Provinces and the self-organized committees of the city of El Alto by reneging on its commitments to them. This betrayal paved the way for the government’s crackdown. Just hours later, it issued Decree No. 1740, declaring a state of emergency and militarizing the country’s roads. The retreat of the peasant organizations was confirmed four days later, when the government announced that all roadblocks across the country had been cleared.

However, far from resolving the political crisis, fuel shortages persisted even after the blockades were lifted. Long lines at gas stations continued for days, underscoring not only the Paz administration’s inability to guarantee a reliable fuel supply but also the ongoing risk that the fuel being distributed is “junk” — the term widely used to describe the contaminated fuel that Paz and his officials have distributed in recent months.

This situation further exposes the weakness of a government held together only by precarious support from the middle classes, one that was able to avoid being forced out of office only thanks to the cooperation of COB leaders.

Additionally, it should be noted that Paz also remained in power thanks to U.S. political  intervention, primarily in the political arena. Washington openly supported him through the appointment of Minister Justiniano, who has well-known ties to the United States; negotiations with the IMF; and the return of the Drug Enforcement Administration. All of these were signals of support for the Paz administration. We must view this as part of the U.S.’s “Donroe” doctrine, which has entailed U.S. interference in Latin America through support for right-wing and anti-popular regimes. In this sense, Paz must continue to pursue his neoliberal policies if he wishes to curry favor with President Trump. This once again puts anti-imperialist politics on the agenda across the continent.

Far from a resounding victory — as some fervent advocates of a heavy-handed approach have claimed — what we are witnessing is a sort of temporary suspension of the conflict. An analyst from Beni in northeastern Bolivia described the current situation as a “pressure cooker.” While Paz may have scored a point, the reality is that the apparent resolution of the social conflict has exposed another crisis that the government has been unable to resolve: the supply of hydrocarbons.

Another challenge facing the government is the economy, with the World Bank forecasting a 3.2 percent contraction in 2026 — the worst performance in Latin America. This “specter” hangs over the government by limiting its room to maneuver and ability to develop any kind of social pact. On the contrary, it will face greater pressure to implement austerity measures. Some of these elements are already visible in the devaluation of the boliviano. How much more pressure will inflation, devaluation, and other factors exert?

The appearance of normalcy that the Paz administration is trying to project is threatened whenever its allies — from Libre, Tuto Quiroga’s party, or the Civic Committees — demand and press for “punitive measures” against the protesters, calling not only for the arrest of Evo Morales, but also for the militarization of the Chapare and criminal proceedings against the leaders of the COB; the largest peasant and Indigenous trade union in Bolivia, the CSUTCB, Túpac Katari; and Nilton Condori and Evo Morales.

Others, such as Representative Alarcón, are once again promoting the “Anti-Blockade Law” bill, in open defiance of the popular sectors that have taken to the streets. They believe they have shifted the balance of power between the classes enough to impose their entire austerity agenda and imprison union leaders. They are demanding that the government enforce the state of emergency much more aggressively. They support the government while simultaneously undermining what little social base it has left, and are betting on capitalizing on its weakness by turning Rodrigo Paz into a pawn for Quiroga’s far-right agenda.

Beyond these challenges and the Paz administration’s dependence on the Right, it is also necessary to examine the dynamics and pressures coming from the working classes in both rural and urban areas — the very sectors the government has supposedly just defeated. Doing so requires carefully examining the strengths and weaknesses of the recent mobilization, the nature of its demands, and the way these evolved from corporate and industry-specific grievances to ultimately focus on a single demand: the president’s resignation.

Finally, we need to develop a sensible perspective on the balance of power between the social classes in conflict — one that allows us to place the recent conflict within a broader historical context, to see where we’ve come from, and, above all, to formulate some hypotheses about the dynamics of the crisis and the class struggle in the coming period, bearing in mind that neither side in the conflict has been defeated and that the crisis is far from over.

The Strategic Problem Facing the Working Class, and Corporatism as an Obstacle

During the nearly two months of blockades and protests, the burden of the struggle fell primarily on the peasant movement in the west and the precarious workers in the city of El Alto. Unfortunately, the COB leadership refused at every turn to carry out work stoppages at workplaces, as they had declared at the May 1 general assembly. This central issue regarding the mobilization was discussed on multiple occasions with the COB and the FSTMB, a mine workers’ union. For several weeks, as the mobilization continued to grow, the balance of power with the central government became deadlocked, creating a situation we defined as an “unstable equilibrium.”

The government attempted on several occasions to break this equilibrium and shift the balance of power in its favor through repression. It tried this strategy in Parotani, Cochabamba; Río Abajo in La Paz; and San Julián in Santa Cruz, where it did not hesitate to use armed civilians who, alongside the police and the armed forces, attempted to break the blockade. They were defeated.

But from the perspective of the protesters, the only way to tip the balance in favor of the workers and the mobilized masses was to bring the urban and working-class forces into the struggle. It was not enough for the COB to mobilize only union committees. Faced with the government’s attempts to shift the balance through repression, the movement needed a response that brought the working class as a whole into the conflict. This never occurred.

Two days before the COB’s capitulation, the SMTMH, another mine workers’ union, signed an agreement with the government under which each worker would receive a bonus of 5,000 bolivianos for not participating in the protests, according to a congresswoman from Paz’s PDC party. Similarly, the Colquiri miners’ union signed an agreement to allow foreign investment in the mine.

The COB’s National Executive Committee, including its leader, Mario Argollo, saw no need to publicly challenge these agreements. Worse, they entered into dialogue with the government, disregarding the resolutions and agreements signed during the conflict and giving the government carte blanche to declare a state of emergency and militarize the sectors that rejected negotiations. Bringing wage workers in the conflict would have made it possible to directly target agro-industrial and mining businesses, as well as corporate interests in general. San Cristóbal, along with the entire mining sector, continued to export without interruption, while the peasant movement maintained its plan of action. Urban and rural teachers abandoned the mobilization when their leaders signed an agreement for a 2,500-boliviano bonus. The narrow corporatist and unionist mindset of the union leaderships provided fertile ground for the “Peace” policy — which sought to grant privileges to certain sectors and leaders — to take root, facilitating the betrayal by Argollo and other leaders.

Another point worth considering is that, while the focus of our discussion has been on the leadership’s responsibility during the process, it must also be noted that there was no emergence within the workers’ ranks of a “vanguard” from the organized strategic sectors that would have challenged the agreements. Had a current or movement emerged among the ranks of the mining and factory workers affiliated with the COB that questioned the negotiations, Argollo’s betrayal would have been more difficult — or at least more costly.

Future class struggles will require a conscious fight to foster the emergence of anti-bureaucratic and militant sectors among unionized workers as an alternative to the bureaucratic leadership of the COB and its departmental and regional confederations.

The Anti-Bureaucratic Phenomenon, Blockade Committees, and Self-Organization

In just over six months, the Paz administration not only exhausted the political capital it was lent — which had enabled it to win the election — but also found itself confronting two waves of mobilization and struggle by workers, peasants, and the masses. The first took place in December and January in response to DS 5503, and the second began — if we’re to pinpoint a date — on May 1 and resulted in more than 50 days of protests and blockades.

The provocation by Paz and the parliamentary right wing began with an attempt to implement an extremely harsh austerity plan that would not only reshape the entire economic structure but also violate constitutionally guaranteed rights. The response from workers and the people was immediate, and on Christmas Eve 2025, an intense wave of protests began, demanding the repeal of DS 5503. These protests continued until the end of January, at which point the movement was signaling the possibility of a nationwide uprising.

The COB leadership — which had been renewed a couple of months earlier after Juan Carlos Huarachi and the MAS-aligned bureaucracy came under heavy criticism — took advantage of the expectations that had built up among grassroots sectors during the mobilization. It used these expectations to sign an agreement that repealed Decree 5503, but nonetheless preserved the gas price hike with the COB’s approval. This betrayal of the mobilization allowed the Paz administration to buy a few months’ time, during which it attempted to impose further attacks on workers and the people through new and additional decrees, as well as laws that were fast-tracked through the right-wing parliament. At the same time, the betrayal rapidly eroded the new COB leadership’s credibility. It triggered a process among broad sectors of the population and precarious workers characterized by deep mistrust of union and social movement leaderships — a process rooted in anti-bureaucratic sentiment, that, in turn, fueled a wave of self-organization as this new cycle of struggle began in late April.

Among the regulations issued by the government was Law 1720, which provided for the conversion of small agricultural holdings into medium-sized ones, thereby facilitating the development of a land market and opening the door to land grabs by agribusinesses and bankers. The onset of indigenous mobilizations in the lowlands demanding the law’s repeal coincided with protests by healthcare workers, teachers, and transportation workers. This convergence of protests marked the beginning of a growing movement that culminated in the massive public assembly on May 1, called by the COB. Faced with Paz’s refusal to discuss the various lists of demands, the assembly ultimately called for an indefinite general strike, with Paz’s resignation as its sole demand.

From that moment on, as new sectors joined the mobilization alongside rural communities that had begun blocking roads, a profound anti-bureaucratic movement also took shape. Fueled by the mistrust sown by the COB’s betrayal in late January, this movement unfolded with an intensity not seen in previous cycles of struggle. Dozens of blockade and mobilization committees emerged. After rejecting lukewarm or cowardly leaders, these committees began to take charge of the blockades and the struggle.

Thus, after rejecting the leadership FEJUVE, a federation of neighborhood councils, the city of El Alto mobilized under the direction of these committees, which emerged from self-organized neighborhood assemblies and town hall meetings. This launched one of the most significant self-organizing movements in recent years, with an intensity not seen even during the Gas War or the Water War. This phenomenon, fueled by deep mistrust of the leadership, made it possible to incorporate thousands of workers, residents, students, and all those who had felt betrayed by Paz’s attacks into the mobilization process. Those involved pushed forward with demands for his resignation, in many cases bypassing their own organizations and natural leaders.

It was these committees — together with peasant organizations affiliated with Túpac Katari and, to a lesser extent, with the CSUTCB — that sustained the national mobilization for more than 50 days, while the COB, as the formal leadership of the conflict, limited itself to mobilizing union committees without ensuring the implementation of a plan of action in mining centers, factories, and service companies.

It was these committees that repeatedly demanded at national plenary sessions and mass assemblies that the COB and the FSTMB move from words to action and ensure work stoppages — the only way to impact capitalist, state, and private profits. Ultimately, it was these committees that, following the betrayal by Argollo and the COB’s National Executive Committee, issued a statement signed by D8, D7, D5, and D14 condemning the COB’s call for dialogue with the government, declaring that “our dead are not up for negotiation.”

The radicalism expressed by the self-organized committees was a genuine expression of the will to fight among the mobilized rank and file. Driven by their distrust of the union bureaucracy’s methods, these sectors developed mechanisms of direct and participatory democracy through assemblies and town hall meetings. This radicalism also shaped the resolutions adopted by major organizations such as the COB, CSUTCB, and Tupac Katari, which demanded Paz’s resignation and the continuation of mobilization until that objective was achieved. The possibility of dialogue with the government was therefore ruled out from the outset, pushing these organizations toward broader and more sustained mobilization.

These political developments — grassroots self-organization, combined with mistrust of and vigilance toward leaders as an expression of anti-bureaucratic sentiment — are new developments that had not appeared in the same way in previous processes of class struggle.This includes the historic struggles of the Water War and Gas War, although the roots of these developments can clearly be found in those experiences. El Alto, Senkata, and District 8 have long been centers of struggle and resistance, including during the 2019 coup. The accumulation of these experiences, combined with the recent betrayal in January, created the conditions for this rapid development of grassroots democratic organization.

This process had certain limits. We have already noted the absence of an anti-bureaucratic workers’ vanguard. We must also recognize that the anti-bureaucratic phenomena described here developed most strongly in El Alto, where committees emerged that rejected their leadership. The peasantry, by contrast, disciplined itself and followed its leadership even when it decided to call off the mobilizations. This does not mean, however, that there were no challenges to leadership within peasant sectors. There were instances of leaders being confronted through acts of rejection, including accusations of betrayal, claims that they had been bought off, refusal to recognize their authority, and even physical confrontations such as whippings and stone-throwing.

Blockades and Supplying Those on Strike: Territorial Power

Throughout the 50 days of protests, one of the most pressing problems that arose was that of supply, particularly in the cities of La Paz and El Alto. As some Túpac Katari leaders noted, the prolonged nature of the conflict began to exacerbate social and political polarization. Right-wing groups sought to break the deadlock through confrontation, as they tried and failed to do in San Julián. On the other hand, the prolonged nature of the conflict also led to fatigue among the mobilized sectors and a growing need to find a solution to food supply problems.

The peasant leaders lacked a strategy to break the deadlock and, with it, the process of attrition. However, through self-organization efforts in the town councils and assemblies of Senkata, attempts were made to overcome this impasse in the struggle. The D8 committee sought to launch various initiatives to remedy the situation, such as the establishment of supply committees, communal kitchen committees, liaison committees with the Achocalla community, markets organized by the blockade committees, and press committees, among others. All these initiatives were aimed at resolving the various problems that the mobilization had brought to light. Unfortunately, these initiatives never fully materialized due to the defection of Argollo and the COB. Nevertheless, they were beginning to point the way toward strengthening the mobilization, easing the pressure for food, and encouraging urban workers to join the struggle.

The importance of these emerging forms of self-organization — as well as the will expressed in the town hall meetings for these committees to begin taking on tasks such as supply, security, and feeding the protesters — lies in the fact that they take on a strategic character and serve as seeds for dual power. If each roadblock began to objectively express the territorial power of the protesters, then the development of these forms of self-organization and their expansion into urgent tasks such as supply, food distribution, and defense represented the beginning of a process through which that territorial power could acquire conscious agents. These agents would not only strengthen the mobilization itself but, more importantly, begin constructing institutions that, in opposition to state authority, could express the power of those below — the mobilized sectors — and their potential to envision a government of workers and peasants.

This is significant because, while the blockades succeeded in making their political point, as a method they prevented the movement from gaining the social hegemony necessary to bring down the Paz government. Specifically, the blockades took a toll on and exhausted the rural areas and isolated the peasants from the urban population, fostering a politicization that the government sought to exploit in the face of shortages and the daily hardships affecting millions. Had a grassroots supply system been developed, it would have closed this gap by strengthening unity among peasants, the general population, and workers across rural and urban areas.

The Problem of Future Clashes

As we noted above, the conflict is not over; the crisis has not been resolved, nor have any defeats crushed the opposing sides. There is a sort of suspension of the struggle, due to the COB’s betrayal and the retreat of the other mobilized sectors as a result of the state of emergency. This implies — or foreshadows — a return to mobilization stemming from the government’s inability to restore order and stability for capitalist businesses. Nothing prevents the masses from returning to the struggle, driven either by the audacity of the right wing — which wants to see Paz’s neoliberal plan through to the end — or by a new wave of decrees that further undermine the quality of life for rural and urban masses, or by a new wave of repression. Such episodes are “common” in Bolivian history.

This means that, in the face of a new wave of struggle, we must step up our methods of struggle and organization. We cannot start from scratch; we must draw on the experience we have accumulated in self-organization and in the struggle against bureaucracy, expand the committees, and develop them further so that they become bodies that unite everyone who wants to fight and coordinate future struggles.

If we want to break the government’s resistance in an upcoming struggle, we must strengthen and develop Soviet-style organizations, the seeds of which, we hypothesize,  may lie in the blockade committees that emerged in El Alto, seeking to coordinate among committees, organizing assemblies and town hall meetings, and participating in expanded meetings of other organizations to unite and add strength to the struggle. If these committees are maintained and developed — even under a state of emergency — they can serve as an important link between the peasants and organizations in the city.

Furthermore, as we have emphasized previously, it is essential to fight for the incorporation of wage workers — especially the large ranks of miners and energy workers — into future struggles; to unite exploited sectors in both rural and urban areas; and to develop a political approach toward the broader masses affected by the crisis, the student movement, and all oppressed sectors of society.

The Role of the Left in a Mass Mobilization that Tended Toward Politicization

During the conflict, the various leftist forces played a shameful role — if they weren’t simply absent. For example, Evo Morales — followed by Evo Pueblo and the other remnants of “Evismo” — said a couple of days ago that the demand for Paz’s resignation was exaggerated. They remained on the sidelines of the “popular rebellion” — the term Evo used to describe the mobilization — and, in response to attacks from the right seeking to hold him responsible, he declared that at no point did his supporters call for Paz’s resignation. In line with this stance, the Communist Party of Bolivia — which initially stood with Morales and later with Arce — only recently, in mid-June, issued a brief statement calling for dialogue while completely ignoring the repression and the popular demand for Paz’s resignation. In doing so, they positioned themselves to the right of Argollo and the entire union bureaucracy.

Special mention goes to the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (POR) and the urban teachers’ union in La Paz, which they lead. In both the first mobilization in January and the second in May and June, the urban teachers’ union mobilized against attempts to defund education, in support of a wage increase, and in support of the COB’s list of demands. Moreover, teachers — both urban and rural — along with healthcare workers and factory workers, had been mobilizing prior to the rally at the Cabildo on May 1. However, as became clear in the first days of May, the mobilization of these sectors always remained within the framework of the labor union struggle. The POR was the organization that most emphatically defended this approach, which, incidentally, was positioned further to the right than Argollo’s bureaucracy.

They systematically opposed the slogan “Paz must resign,” because, as they said, they considered it an electioneering slogan, since his resignation would mean Vice President Edmand Lara’s ascension to power and the calling of new elections. However, reality is different. The slogan “Paz must resign” emerged in town hall meetings, expanded meetings, and assemblies as an expression of rejection of all the measures in Paz’s austerity plan, as well as a response to the government’s refusal to discuss the demands and petitions of the mobilized sectors.This radical slogan had strategic value because it allowed for a bridge to be built between this discontent and the question of what to do once Paz resigned — a provisional government or a constituent assembly? In other words, deciding the country’s future was put on the agenda.

Paz, seeing the mobilization grow, shifted his policy from rejecting all dialogue to attempting to demobilize the movement by calling for dialogue while harshly repressing the protests. At this point, the demand for resignation became an obstacle for Argollo’s union bureaucracy and for all those leaders who had only driven the mobilization to strengthen their positions in potential negotiations. While Argollo, in order to enter into dialogue and betray the mobilization, had to go back on his own word, renege on the agreements he had signed with Túpac Katari, and abandon the demand for resignation, the POR did not need to do so, since from the outset they refused to uphold the demand for resignation and were willing to sit at the negotiating table “if the government invited them.” They stopped mobilizing very early on — just like the rural teachers — after Paz offered a bonus of 2,500 bolivianos.

The POR’s role is even more despicable, given the part that urban teachers could have played had they opened the schools to support the protests, serving as rest centers and hubs for organizing the mobilization. But the POR went into hiding, forgetting its grandiloquent statements about the unity of the working and peasant masses. They did not seek to ensure that the teachers’ union, within the COB, served as a concrete bridge between the peasants and urban workers. Their union positions were used to negotiate a bonus, not to advance the mobilization.

In this sense, the POR are consistent trade unionists, but in terms of the class struggle, they were reformists who acted to the right of Argollo, covering up their capitulation with general slogans about the People’s Assembly or the workers’ and peasants’ government. Within the POR, these statements have no value whatsoever.

From the LOR-CI, part of the Current for Permanent Revolution, we seek — to the best of our ability — to throw ourselves into the mobilization to strengthen it and be a revolutionary force by encouraging all forms of democratic self-organization that the mobilized people have set in motion, fostering coordination, and seeking to help raise awareness of what tens of thousands in the streets were setting in motion. We are referring to the supply committees, self-defense committees, and communal kitchens, which in the final days of the conflict had begun to be discussed in several of the mobilized sectors. In short, we fought not only for the “formal” working class to join the general strike but also for it to do so by uniting with the vanguard of the mobilization — namely, the peasant movement. All of this work constantly sought to build a bridge between the masses’ demand for “Paz’s resignation” and the need for a workers’ government — that is, to build a bridge aimed at achieving, through mobilization, a provisional government of the organizations engaged in the struggle.

At La Izquierda Diario, we were out on the streets from the very beginning, covering the demonstrations and the organizing efforts, giving a voice to the sectors in conflict that were fighting against betrayal, denouncing every move by the government and each of its ties to capitalist interests, and exposing every attempt at dialogue as a trap. Likewise, as part of our international network of publications, we sought to influence those militant sectors in the struggle, but we also fought to break through censorship so that the Bolivian rebellion would have an impact on millions of workers, young people, and activists around the world. This was reflected in an impressive growth in our usual reach, with visits to our website increasing several-fold and, above all, on social media — which was the most widely used communication channel among the mobilized sectors. In this regard, for example, we went from receiving between 100 and 200 visits to our website per day in January to more than 800 during the peak moments of the mobilization; and in May alone, we had 1.7 million views on Facebook and Instagram, reaching hundreds of thousands of people.

In this effort, we paid special attention to District 8 and the development of its committees and councils; our involvement there sought to foster tendencies toward self-organization and anti-bureaucratic tendencies. But our intention was also to break through the media blockade imposed by the press and the racist, anti-Indigenous establishment, which was trying to sway public opinion in favor of the government.

Amid the repression, we promoted ProDHCre, an organization of human rights professionals working against state repression, which today stands on the front lines in defense of those detained and persecuted as a result of the Argollo agreement. ProDHCre has sought to serve as a leading voice in the defense of detainees and in denouncing repression.

From within the university community, we sought to go against the grain through Combate Rojo, where we had to face attacks from the university administration and right-wing factions that were trying to demoralize us, in order to bring the conflict to the university, earning us the reputation of being “the left” at Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz.

Likewise, as part of our international current, we helped organize the human rights mission that came from Argentina to observe human rights violations under the Paz administration. Furthermore, this conflict was part of the CRP’s internationalist activism, with contributions from comrades in Chile, Brazil, and Argentina, as well as actions in Europe and a campaign that reached around the world, seeking to strengthen the struggle for a revolutionary solution to the rebellion — but also to ensure that the rebellion would have an impact on millions seeking an exemplary alternative to the right that transcends the failed experiences of conciliatory approaches and the betrayals of the bureaucracies. While the government authoritatively accused us of “foreign interference” and asked for money and advice from right-wing politicians in the United States or Argentina, we championed the unity of the peoples of Latin America and the world and internationalist activism in support of our cause.

Based on these lessons, we are preparing to continue organizing throughout the country, recognizing that the government has not managed to defeat the mobilized forces but is instead steering through this state of emergency, while the COB’s mediating role — with this latest betrayal — erodes its legitimacy for future struggles. We are consciously preparing for future clashes; we know this isn’t just around the corner, but the pressure is certainly mounting.

The post Bolivia: Strategic Lessons from the Workers’, Peasants’, and People’s Rebellion appeared first on Left Voice.

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Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Thursday that her government intends to pursue criminal charges over the deaths of 17 Mexican nationals in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Associated Press reported that Sheinbaum's administration will submit a request "to state prosecutors' offices and the US Department of Justice, asking them to consider criminal charges against those responsible for the deaths." The request, according to AP, "will be accompanied by civil lawsuits against the companies that operate the detention centers in an effort to put an end to human rights violations in those facilities."

Sheinbaum said her government decided to urgently move forward with its likely doomed push for accountability after an ICE agent killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston earlier this week. Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national, had been living in the US for more than three decades.

Mexico's president called the killing "sad and regrettable," arguing that it "appears to have been targeted."

"We are going to do everything in our power, because we cannot stand silent," Sheinbaum said Thursday. "We cannot turn a blind eye to the Mexicans who have died."

According to a recent report by Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch, "the mortality rate of deaths in ICE custody is at its highest level in over a decade and has more than doubled since [US President Donald] Trump’s second term began."

"The rate is nearly four times that of the Biden administration, and more than two and a half times as high as that of the first Trump administration," the report found, noting that a record 71,000 people were in immigration detention in January 2026. "The surge in deaths is much worse than what one would expect even considering the much higher number of people in detention."

Deaths in ICE custody have drawn international alarm, with the United Nations high commissioner for human rights saying last month that "the lack of transparency and clarity surrounding the circumstances of these deaths in custody undermines accountability for them."

“I call for prompt, independent, impartial and effective investigations into all deaths in ICE custody," said Volker Türk. "Those responsible for violations of the law must be held to account, and the rights of the victims’ families to truth, justice and reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence must be upheld."

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The U.S. has attacked Venezuela through various means for decades and kidnapped President Maduro but is now claiming to assist with earthquake relief. If it’s role in Haiti is any guide, that so-called aid from the U.S. is a Trojan Horse bringing more plunder and control.

For decades, the U.S. has waged a carefully planned and unrelenting attack on Venezuela’s economy using unilateral coercive measures, commonly known as economic sanctions, to destabilize and destroy the country’s socialist Bolivarian government. Though the earthquakes that devastated the nation were not caused by the U.S., the destabilization of the Venezuelan government, economy, and infrastructure was. The damage from those sanctions was so pervasive that any natural disaster large enough would be catastrophic, leading to foreign aid being used not only to produce enormous capitalist profits for foreign interests but also to bring the country more firmly under U.S. control. This is the situation Venezuela faces today.

George W. Bush imposed the first coercive measures against Venezuela in 2006. Democratically elected President Hugo Chávez had the nerve to criticize the U.S. for its bloodthirsty response to 9/11 and refused to support or participate in the U.S. sham counterterrorism efforts. Chávez did so in a very public and embarrassing way for Bush, as he declared from the lectern at the United Nations that George W. Bush was the devil, and that the podium that Bush had just delivered his own remarks from still smelled like sulfur. Bush responded by declaring Venezuela a state sponsor of terror along with Cuba and Iran (notice a pattern here). Bush also claimed that Venezuela refused to adhere to international counternarcotics agreements, breathing life into the claim that the Bolivarian government was a sponsor of narcoterrorism. But even before that, in 2004, Bush restricted non-humanitarian aid to the country, claiming they weren’t doing enough to stop human trafficking. Bush did all of this after the failed U.S.-backed coup against Chávez in 2002 that was tied to his administration.

The aggression toward Venezuela did not end with the Bush presidency. In December 2014, Obama signed the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act after U.S. intelligence agencies and the Department of State claimed that the Venezuelan government was committing human rights abuses against government opposition members. This was done in response to the Maduro government charging opposition members with engaging in conspiracies to overthrow him. Obama imposed sanctions on seven Venezuelan officials, and in  March 2015, he issued an Executive Order implementing these sanctions and expanded them to block their visas and freeze the U.S. property of the targets. Obama publicly declared Venezuela an “…extraordinary threat to the national security of the United States.”

In response, President Maduro said in a nationally televised speech, “President Barack Obama, representing the U.S. imperialist elite, has personally decided to take on the task of defeating my government and intervening in Venezuela to control it.” One of the impacted Venezuelan officials, Diosdado Cabello, said, “What is being planned are attacks against our land, against our country, military attacks.” It took the U.S. a few years, but…

President Donald Trump imposed more, wider-reaching economic coercive measures in 2017 during his first term. In addition to recognizing unelected opposition figure Juan Guaido as president of Venezuela, Trump also sanctioned the state-run oil company PDVSA, denying the government access to U.S. financial markets. He froze PDVSA’s assets and finally imposed a near-complete economic embargo on the country. And in 2020, the Trump Justice Department indicted President Maduro on charging the president and 14 others with narcoterrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine, and gun charges. It also accused him of coordinating with the leftist guerrilla peasant militia Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Founded as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, which sought to redistribute land and resources that the Colombian government denied to the desperately poor peasants in rural areas. After years of fighting with the government, FARC was officially dissolved in the 2016 Peace Accordwith the Colombian government. They are now a legal left-wing political party, initially called the Common Alternative Revolutionary Force and later renamed the Comunes (Commons). Trump then issued a $15 million bounty for information leading to Maduro’s arrest. Not to be outdone in attempting to enact regime change in Venezuela, President Joe Biden doubled the bounty to $25 million, with no additional indictments added.

The measures barred Venezuela from importing equipment, spare parts, and industrial chemicals to maintain its oil production facilities and shipping capabilities. Oil infrastructure across the country deteriorated, and oil production was driven far below the previous 3 billion barrels a day at its 2008 height to barely above 300,000 barrels a day.

While many people accurately note that the U.S. is after control of Venezuela’s enormous oil reserves, the country’s mineral wealth is also crucial to the U.S. and much of the world, as it includes bauxite and rare earth minerals critical for weapons systems, satellite manufacturing, and AI technologies. When we consider the struggle we are engaging in to stop the proliferation of these technologies from being used to violate our privacy, whatever freedom we have left, our environment, and our very lives, consider that the U.S. pursuit of these materials has already directly caused the instability, suffering, worsened health outcomes, and deaths of tens of thousands of Venezuelans.

Venezuela relies largely on oil exports to fund its public sector commitments; the collapse of oil exports crippled its primary source of public revenue, making it impossible to import essential goods like food and medicine. The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) estimated that 40,000 Venezuelans died due to economic coercive measures between 2018 and 2019 alone. Former U.S. Special Rapporteur Alfred de Zayas estimated the deaths to have been over 100,000 by 2020. But this is neither unexpected nor unwanted by the U.S. government. Economic sanctions are designed to cause so much hardship for the people of a country that they will rise up in frustration and anger at their own government. U.S. officials understood that imposing economic sanctions on the country would prevent it from importing not just materials to maintain the oil sector but also necessities for the Venezuelan people, such as food, medicine, fuel, and even toilet paper. But public infrastructure, from hospitals and office buildings to apartment buildings and water systems, also fell into disrepair as materials needed to maintain it could not be imported due to sanctions. With the physical buildings weakened, the country was far more vulnerable to disasters like the June 2026 earthquakes than it would have been had the sanctions not been in place.

By the time Trump returned to the White House in 2024, despite the immense damage already done to the country’s economy and infrastructure, they had not done what successive U.S. presidents wanted: to bring about the collapse of the Bolivarian government in Venezuela. Trump imposed more measures after his return to office, doubled Biden’s bounty increase on Maduro to $50 million, and eventually carried out the violent kidnapping of President Nicholas Maduro and First Combatant Cilia Flores in the pre-dawn hours of January 3, 2026, with the help of the Navy and Marines of the Southern US Command (SOUTHCOM), which also carried out the indiscriminate murders of Caribbean fisherfolk in the months prior to the kidnapping. The bounty was never paid to anyone. He also added to the original 2020 indictment against Maduro by adding his now-kidnapped wife and National Assemblywoman Flores, and adding charges of “…narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the United States.” They are both held in separate solitary confinement cells in the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, NY, awaiting their sham trials.

It is an obscenity that the same SOUTHCOM is now deploying forces to Caracas to provide post-disaster air traffic and airport support. But it is a greater crime that the U.S. has positioned itself and its interests to finally get what it wants – control of Venezuela’s oil and minerals sectors and eventual privatization of public services that define the Socialist Bolivarian government – even if it is a natural disaster that provides them the perfect opportunity to achieve it. This, after expropriating Venezuela’s oil industry and profiting from selling the stolen crude, Trump sending a measly $150 million in “aid” to the country he stole their sovereign materials from is a settler colonial level insult.

This is “disaster capitalism,” popularized by Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine, but a well-documented aspect of imperialist plunder. In the process of imposing economic shocks through sanctions by an external entity or through the implementation of neoliberal policies internally, Klein explains how governments and corporations exploit the shock of an unplanned, catastrophic event to impose radical, wholesale austerity and control. Disaster response becomes the vehicle for enormous foreign investment and development, foreign control of that development, and ultimately the usurpation of the existing but weakened state in favor of the foreign governments and corporate interests behind the aid money. Economic policies that would be rejected under normal circumstances are more easily imposed on an already vulnerable state when that state and its people are rendered desperate by a natural disaster.

The use of disaster relief as a Trojan Horse for neoliberal plunder and control after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti may give us a terrifying vision of what could be in store for Venezuela today.

The earthquake in Haiti was used as a pretext for the US to assert near-total control over the country’s recovery, if not the country itself, along with its foreign allies in the UN-imposed Core Group that governs the island nation. Aid and reconstruction, and the billions of dollars for it, were directed by those and other foreign governments and contractors, bypassing the Haitian state under then-president René Préval. International entities justified this by claiming Haiti was hopelessly corrupt. What they were, however, was in disarray after the earthquake destroyed much of the government’s infrastructure, including the National Assembly and the National Palace, and years of imperialist control usurped its sovereignty.

But this excuse was needed to justify the Haitian government seeing very little of the billions of dollars pledged for relief and reconstruction. The Associated Press reported in 2013that CEPR found that out of the $1.15 billion pledged, only 1% went to Haitian companies. They found instead that “…the ‘vast majority’ of the money it could follow went straight to U.S. companies or organizations, more than half in the Washington area alone.” And what was constructed was for the benefit of foreign corporate and Haitian comprador interests, who had the protection of the United States government to bend Haiti to all of their will.

The $224 million Caracol Industrial Park, built with reconstruction funds allocated through the recovery mission co-chaired by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, is a continuing example of disaster capitalism and the nefarious ways that Western imperialists profit from natural and human catastrophe.

In 2011, scores of farmers and other residents were evicted from their fertile agricultural land, far from the impact zone, to make way for its construction. They were given little notice to leave and insufficient compensation. They fought for yearsto secure a reparations agreement with the Haitian government and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in 2018, which included new land, jobs, equipment, and other compensation. Many finally received reimbursement in 2020, but not all, and not nearly enough for what was taken from them by the U.S., the IDB, and USAID, who were the major funders of the project.

The park was designed to attract foreign garment companies with tax exemptions and cheap labor, as wages were promised to be kept as low as $1.75 a day. The garment companies did come, and the Clintons promised hundreds of thousands of jobs. But fewer than 10,000 were produced, and they were at the same low rate of less than $2.00 a day that Haitians had been fighting to raise for years before the earthquake against a small group of Haitian manufacturing, import/export, and political elites controlling the country’s existing manufacturing industries with the backing of the U.S. government. When the Haitian government passed a law in 2009 to raise the country’s minimum wage for garment workers to $3 a day and $5 a day for other sectors due to the people’s agitation, foreign companies and the Haitian elite colluded with the U.S. State Department and, with a study from USAID that said raising the minimum wage would make the garment sector economically unviable, successfully blocked the legislation.

While Bill and Hillary Clinton have never admitted involvement in suppressing Haitian wages, Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State under President Barack Obama when the State Department cables thatWikiLeaks publishedrevealed the covert wage-suppression scheme that resulted in legislation being passed in the U.S. to favor the Haitian elite and foreign investors: the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement (HOPE) Acts I & II. There was no way the Clintons were not involved, as it was the Clinton Foundation through which they did much of their work in Haiti, and Haitians hold them responsible for the abysmal outcome.

By the end of 2011, one year after the earthquake, most of the promised aid had not been disbursed, and what was went to projects unrelated to housing, feeding, or providing any aid or support to the displaced, like the Caracol Industrial Park.  The scandal was compounded by revelations that some major aid organizations achieved very little with the funds they received, so no one could really account for where the billions of dollars went, other than into the pockets of non-Haitians.

Today, Haiti is still among the poorest countries in the world. Haitians have continued to protest not just against the minimum wage, but also the lack of sovereignty and human dignity imposed upon them as they endure a rise in U.S.-fueled gang violence, attacks on Haitian immigrants from this administration, continued control from the UN-appointed Core Group with no elected leadership chosen by them, and another UN invasion/intervention to quell unrest.

This is the future that the U.S. wants for Venezuela. To make Venezuela like Haiti or something close to it, at least in the manner of creating a dismantled state that the U.S. can swoop into, plunder, and control. Although Haiti and Venezuela may not be perfectly similar in many ways, but the use of an earthquake to further imperialist takeover of a country already weakened by relentless Western hegemony in response to the successful liberation struggle of largely Afro-descendent and Indigenous peasantry to free themselves from European settler colonial domination and capitalist exploitation are complementary examples of how a natural disaster is be used to deepen imperialist control under the guise of aid, instead of the most powerful and wealthiest country in the world using that power and money to help suffering human beings. And then the same country calls those states failed, and demonizes the government and the people as immature, unable to govern themselves, and an example of the failures of socialism or communism.

As U.S. officials are on the ground in Venezuela openly “coordinating” with the Interim President Delcy Rodriguez, it must be understood that this is done with the threat of her own indictment and imprisonment on bogus charges of narcotrafficking, human rights abuses, corruption, or grave robbing, depending on how amusing the U.S. wants to be with the sham accusations over her head.

And now, the U.S. is poised to use this unbelievably tragic disaster as an even bigger cudgel to force the Venezuelan state to concede much, much more, seizing this opportunity to tighten its control over the country’s oil and mineral resources, effectively absorbing it into the U.S. sphere of influence, to be used as a weapon against the rest of the U.S.’s designated enemies, Cuba, China, and Russia. Venezuela has had friendly relations with all of these countries, and all countries that the U.S. is also softening up with sanctions, embargoes, and threats of worse treatment.

We must expand and deepen the struggle against the U.S. re-colonization of the Western Hemisphere and join our struggling brothers and sisters in the Global South for an end to imperialist aggression, hegemony, and gangsterism, and we must target the enemy in whose camp we reside with clarity and purpose.

Because natural disasters will never stop happening. But disaster capitalism never has to happen again.

Not if we destroy capitalism and the empires that are erected upon it.

Jacqueline Luqman is a radical activist based in Washington, D.C.,as well as a co-founder ofLuqman Nation, an independent Black media outlet available on YouTube (hereandhere) andFacebook.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Source: Black Agenda Report

The post Disaster Capitalism in Haiti Gives a Glimpse Into the Imperialist Shock Doctrine That Could Rattle Venezuela Long After the Earthquakes appeared first on Venezuelanalysis.

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After three weeks of uncertainty, shifting trends during the vote count, and a margin of just a few tens of thousands of votes, Peru now has a president-elect. Far-right candidate Keiko Fujimori won the presidential runoff against Roberto Sánchez and will bring Fujimorism back to the Government Palace, twenty-six years after the fall of the regime led by her father, Alberto Fujimori.

The National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) completed the count of 100 percent of the ballots on Monday, June 29 and confirmed her victory with 50.13 percent of the vote, compared to the 49.86 percent obtained by rival candidate Roberto Sánchez. The final margin was just 49,641 votes out of more than 18 million valid ballots, one of the narrowest margins in Peruvian electoral history.

The result must be formally announced by the National Elections Jury, which will resolve the final administrative issues before officially declaring the victory. The presidential inauguration is scheduled for July 28, when Fujimori will replace interim President José María Balcázar to begin a five-year term.

A Vote-by-Vote Count

The election was marked by extreme parity throughout the process. For much of the count, both candidates took turns leading, and it was only in the final days that Fujimori’s lead began to solidify until it became irreversible.

One of the decisive factors was the vote from Peruvians living abroad, where the conservative candidate received significantly more support than she did within the country. In fact, one statistic sums up the exceptional nature of this election: Keiko Fujimori became Peru’s first president to be elected despite receiving fewer votes within the country than her rival. Her victory was made possible by the weight of the overseas electorate, especially in the United States and Europe.

Roberto Sánchez rejected the result and announced that he would not recognize a potential Fujimori administration, alleging fraud in the vote abroad. So far, he has not presented any evidence to support these accusations, while both electoral authorities and international observation missions have ruled out any irregularities that could have altered the result.

The Return of Fujimorism

The election represents much more than a simple change of government. It signifies the return to power of the political movement built by Alberto Fujimori, whose presidency from 1990 to 2000 was marked by sweeping neoliberal economic reforms, the strengthening of the state’s repressive apparatus, and numerous human rights violations for which he was later convicted.

For more than two decades, Fujimorism managed to remain one of the country’s main political forces even without holding the presidency. Keiko Fujimori lost the 2011, 2016, and 2021 elections in succession, but at the same time consolidated a political apparatus with a strong parliamentary presence and an enormous capacity to influence governance. During those years, the Congress — dominated by her far-right party Fuerza Popular — drove the downfall of several presidents and became one of the main factors behind Peru’s prolonged institutional instability.

Her electoral victory also represents a new advance for conservative sectors in Latin America, in a regional context where various right-wing movements have regained positions in government but have failed to establish stable governments. Cases such as those in Bolivia and Chile are clear examples of this situation

The Electoral Map: A Country Split in Two

While the result was close, the electoral map once again revealed a rift far deeper than mere competition between two candidates.

Keiko Fujimori achieved her best results in Metropolitan Lima, across much of the coast, and, especially, among Peruvians living abroad.

There, she gained the support of broad sectors of the business community, professionals, the urban middle class, and voters who identified her candidacy with the promise of restoring political order and combating the rise of organized crime.

In contrast, Roberto Sánchez once again won decisively in the Andean south and in numerous rural regions of the interior, where rural communities and Indigenous peoples — historically left behind by Peru’s economic development — predominate. Although his vote share declined compared to the first round, this is most likely due to his shift to the right, in an effort to appease the powerful sectors. Regions plagued by higher levels of poverty, informal employment, and a weaker state presence overwhelmingly backed a candidate identified with the working classes. In addition, absentee voting and invalid ballots increased.

This territorial distribution reflects much more than a mere geographical difference. It reflects the existence of two profoundly different social realities.

While Lima and the major economic centers concentrate the wealth generated by decades of pure and simple extractivism through the export of minerals and raw materials, vast regions of the interior continue to endure low wages, poor infrastructure, scarce public investment, and enormous social inequalities. That contrast was once again reflected at the polls.

A Society in Crisis

The new president will inherit a country in the midst of a protracted political crisis.

Since 2016, Peru has experienced an uninterrupted succession of governments, impeachments, resignations, and interim presidencies that have severely eroded the legitimacy of its institutions. Compounding this are the rise of organized crime, increasing insecurity, and deep mistrust of the political system as a whole.

The wounds left open by the coup against Pedro Castillo in December 2022 remain fresh, and Castillo remains imprisoned on the false charge of having staged a self-coup. The crackdown on the protests that swept the country in the months that followed left dozens dead, especially in the Andean regions, which today once again voted overwhelmingly against Fujimorism.

For this reason, although Fujimori spoke during the campaign of “national unity” and promised to govern for all Peruvians, a significant portion of the population identifies her political camp with the very same power bloc that backed Castillo’s removal from office and the government that led the repression of those protests.

What the Ballot Box Cannot Resolve

For millions of workers, peasants, Indigenous peoples, and young people, the runoff election represented a chance to prevent the return of Fujimorism to power. The immediate result is a defeat for that political hope. Nonetheless it by no means eliminates the social causes that gave rise to the enormous support Sánchez received in the country’s poorest regions.

Demands for living wages, job security, the strengthening of public health and education, the defense of natural resources, recognition of the rights of peasant communities and Indigenous peoples, and justice for the victims of the repression in 2022 and 2023 will remain relevant regardless of the government’s political affiliation.

Therefore, while the return of Fujimorism represents a victory for the Peruvian right, it also opens up a new landscape for grassroots organizations. The decisive issue is not merely who governs, but who has the capacity to impose their interests on society.

Workers, peasants, Indigenous peoples, youth, and the working classes need to build their own strength to fight for living wages, job security, funding for health care and education, the defense of natural resources, democratic rights, and better living conditions for the vast majority. All of this must be viewed through the lens of a government of workers, peasants, Indigenous peoples, and the working classes — one based on democratic bodies emerging from their own organization and mobilization.

As the experiences of Peruvian and Latin American history itself show, these achievements have been the result of the independent organization and sustained mobilization of workers, peasants, students, and Indigenous peoples.

On July 28, Keiko Fujimori will once again place Fujimorism at the helm of the Peruvian state. But the political struggle that has raged in recent years is far from over. The close election result confirmed the return of the right to power, though it also made clear that the country remains deeply divided and that the social causes that fueled the rejection of the current model remain intact.

This article was first published in Spanish at La Izquierda Diario on June 29, 2026.

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Xi extends condolences over deadly earthquakes in Venezuela
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday sent a message of condolences to Venezuelan acting President Delcy Rodriguez over the strong earthquakes that rocked the country.

Upon learning that the powerful earthquakes have caused heavy casualties and significant property losses, Xi, on behalf of the Chinese government and the Chinese people, mourned those killed in the earthquakes and expressed sincere sympathy to the bereaved families and those injured.

China, Xi said, stands ready to provide assistance to Venezuela in disaster relief and reconstruction.

He also expressed confidence that under the leadership of the Venezuelan government, the Venezuelan people will overcome the disaster and rebuild their homes at an early date.
China to offer additional aid to quake-hit Venezuela
China has decided to offer additional aid to Venezuela for post-quake relief and reconstruction, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said here on Monday.

The additional emergency material assistance is worth 100 million yuan (about 14.67 million U.S. dollars), following the cash assistance that has already been provided, spokesperson Guo Jiakun made the remarks at a daily press briefing.

Chinese firms in Venezuela mobilize relief efforts after powerful quakes
Several Chinese-funded enterprises in Venezuela have mobilized relief efforts after two powerful earthquakes struck the country, Xinhua learned Friday from the Chinese Embassy in Venezuela.

The companies responded quickly to the disaster and, under the guidance of the Chinese Embassy, coordinated with local Chinese communities and business associations to take part in relief work, according to the embassy.

Their efforts included providing heavy machinery and medical supplies and deploying rescue teams, the embassy said, adding that the companies are contributing to the disaster response through concrete action.

The Chinese government and the Red Cross Society of China will provide emergency humanitarian aid to Venezuela respectively, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told a regular press briefing on Friday.

Guo emphasized that China stands ready to provide further support to Venezuela as the situation unfolds.

Overseas Chinese in Venezuela donate 500 tons of quake relief supplies
Overseas Chinese in quake-hit Venezuela have donated about 500 tons of relief supplies, according to the Chinese Embassy in Venezuela.

The supplies were donated by the Federation of Chinese Associations in Venezuela and other Chinese community groups as of 4 p.m. local time (2000 GMT) Saturday.

The supplies, including bottled water, biscuits, diapers, milk, rice, sugar and fish, have benefited nearly 10,000 families affected by the disaster.

Two consecutive quakes, measuring magnitude 7.2 and 7.5, hit Venezuela on Wednesday.

The death toll from the earthquakes has risen to 1,430, Venezuelan National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez said Saturday.

Amid rubble and aftershocks, Venezuelan rescuer puts Chinese-trained skills to work
“I am deeply saddened by the disaster in Venezuela, but I take some comfort in knowing that I can use the skills my Chinese mentors taught me to help my compatriots,” said Pitney Delgado on Friday, his eyes red after more than 50 hours of continuous work.

Two powerful earthquakes above magnitude 7 struck Venezuela on Wednesday evening. Venezuelan officials said Friday that the death toll had risen to 1,430.

Delgado, who works at a Chinese restaurant in Caracas, recalled that when the first quake hit, the kitchen stoves were still burning as the ground suddenly began to shake violently.

“My first reaction was to get everyone to open space. I left without taking anything. I just shouted: ‘Go, go quickly!’” he said.

He urged colleagues to evacuate and only returned to retrieve essential belongings after ensuring everyone had reached safety during a brief pause in the shaking. “My instinct was not to save my own things, but to get them out first,” he said.

Delgado said years of working with Chinese colleagues had left him with a lasting impression of their “warm hearts,” strengthening his willingness to help others in times of crisis.

That commitment was reinforced by a practical skill: more than a decade ago, while working at a Chinese company, he learned to operate heavy machinery under Chinese mentors.

“They are my compatriots. How could I stand by and do nothing?” he said, tears streaming down his face.

He first met Jiang Wangbing, now president of the China-Venezuela Chamber of Commerce, in 2015, when he began learning crane operation.

“It was a huge machine weighing dozens of tons,” Delgado said. “At first I was nervous. One mistake could damage property or hurt someone.”

With patient and standardized instruction, he said he mastered basic crane operations within a week. “The training was very focused. They wanted you to learn everything,” he said.

After the earthquakes, the China-Venezuela Chamber of Commerce quickly mobilized cranes and heavy machinery for rescue operations at collapsed buildings. Delgado joined without hesitation.

He said he could not stop working after seeing on social media people digging through rubble with their bare hands. “Without machines, how could we clear the debris?” he said. “It would be impossible.”

Equipment remained scarce and had to be rotated among multiple sites. By the time of the interview, more than 50 hours had passed since the earthquakes, and Delgado had not rested, having already worked at three collapsed sites.

With his help, seven people were rescued. Two were confirmed alive after treatment, while five did not survive.

“It is a pity we could not save the other five,” he said, covering his face as he cried.

Asked about working under dangerous conditions, he said: “There were aftershocks and unstable structures. Of course, I was afraid. But when I thought people might still be trapped, I could not stop.”

“As long as I am needed here, as long as there are still people to rescue, I will keep working,” he said.

After a brief interview, Delgado returned to the collapsed site. The engine roared again as the crane arm slowly lifted.

Jiang said the chamber had deployed two cranes and one demolition machine for round-the-clock rescue operations. Under the coordination of the Chinese Embassy in Venezuela, it was also gathering supplies from Chinese-funded enterprises, with lighting equipment and excavators to be added.

Following the earthquakes, several Chinese-funded companies in Venezuela launched relief efforts and coordinated with the embassy and local associations to provide machinery, medical supplies, and rescue teams.

Viet Nam deploys military disaster relief team to earthquake-hit Venezuela
The Ministry of National Defence of Viet Nam has decided to deploy an 82-member military humanitarian and disaster relief team to Venezuela to support search and rescue operations and post-earthquake recovery efforts following the devastating earthquakes that struck the South American country on June 24.

The deployment comes after two deadly earthquakes caused severe casualties and widespread damage in Venezuela. To support relief efforts, the Viet Nam People’s Army has established a humanitarian assistance mission comprising command personnel, a military engineering search-and-rescue unit, medical personnel, and a canine search-and-rescue unit.

During the mission, the Vietnamese force will use search dogs to locate victims trapped under collapsed structures, conduct urban search-and-rescue operations, provide emergency medical assistance to survivors, and carry out other humanitarian tasks to help Venezuelan authorities and local communities recover from the disaster.

Logistical preparations have also been completed. According to the General Department of Logistics-Technical Services under the ministry, relief supplies, including food, drinking water, medicines and equipment, were assembled, inspected and packed on the morning of June 28.

The military-run joint stock Company 22 mobilised its workforce to operate around the clock, producing 50 tonnes of compressed ration bars, three tonnes of canned meat and 3,000 litres of clean water for the relief mission. The supplies have been transported by Brigade 971 to Noi Bai International Airport for loading and shipment to Venezuela as scheduled.

The relief shipment carries not only essential supplies but also the solidarity and goodwill of the Vietnamese people toward those affected by the disaster. Viet Nam had sent search and rescue teams to Turkey in 2023 and Myanmar in 2025.

Ministry assigns mission to military relief team heading to earthquake-hit Venezuela
The Ministry of National Defence held a meeting in Ha Noi on June 28 to assign tasks for the force tasked with supporting relief operations in Venezuela following the devastating earthquakes that struck the South American country on June 24.

Accordingly, an 82-member military contingent was assigned to carry out humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations in Venezuela, marking Viet Nam’s third overseas military deployment for international disaster response.

Addressing the event, General Nguyen Tan Cuong, Chief of the General Staff of the Viet Nam People’s Army (VPA) and Deputy Minister of National Defence, stressed that the mission carries profound international significance, reflecting the Party and State’s foreign policy, and contributing to enhancing the country’s reputation in global disaster response and reaffirming the traditional friendship and comprehensive partnership between Viet Nam and Venezuela.

He noted that many members of the contingent had previously participated in earthquake relief missions in Türkiye in 2023 and Myanmar in 2025, where they demonstrated the professionalism and responsibility of the Viet Nam People’s Army, and left positive impressions on the international community.

Cuong praised relevant agencies and units for completing comprehensive preparations in personnel, equipment, logistics and organisation, while urging the team to maintain discipline, unity and determination in fulfilling the mission.

He stressed that the operation will be demanding and potentially dangerous, requiring close coordination with personnel from the Vietnamese People’s Public Security force, international rescue teams and Venezuelan authorities and people. He instructed the team to comply with local laws, ensure the safety of personnel and equipment, actively assist local communities within their capabilities, and uphold the image and traditions of the VPA throughout the mission.

Major General Pham Hai Chau, Deputy Director of the Department of Search and Rescue under the General Staff of the VPA, said preparations had been completed in coordination with relevant agencies.

The contingent comprises 82 personnel, including 26 officers and 56 professional servicemen, organised into four components, namely an 11-member command group led by Major General Pham Van Ty, Deputy Director of the Department of Search and Rescue; a 31-member engineering search-and-rescue team equipped with victim detection devices and concrete cutting equipment; a 30-member medical team carrying medical equipment, medicines and supplies; and a rescue team using trained search dogs consisting of 10 members and eight search dogs.

The mission will transport about 88 tonnes of equipment and relief supplies, including 50 compressed ration bars, 1,600 tents and 15 generators.

The cargo have been transported to Noi Bai International Airport under the direction of the ministry’s General Department of Logistics-Technical Services. Personnel, equipment and search dogs will travel by commercial aircraft from Noi Bai to Maiquetia International Airport near Caracas before continuing by road to the operational area with logistical support from the Office of the Vietnamese Defence Attaché in Venezuela.

The mission is expected to last around 20 days. During the deployment, the team will regularly report progress to the General Staff and the Ministry of National Defence for timely direction and coordination.

Viet Nam’s Ministry of Public Security deploys rescue team to VenezuelaThe Ministry of Public Security held a departure ceremony in Ha Noi on June 28 for a 41-member search and rescue team heading to Venezuela.
The deployment comes after the June 24 earthquake in Venezuela, which authorities reported caused severe human and property losses. By June 28, the disaster had claimed more than 1,400 lives, left over 50,000 missing, and caused extensive damage to homes and infrastructure.

Following instructions from Viet Nam’s Party and State leadership, the ministry decided to send a specialised team to support searching for missing victims, rescue and emergency response operations, and post-disaster recovery efforts.

Speaking at the ceremony, Deputy Minister Senior Lieutenant General Le Van Tuyen said the deployment reflects not only humanitarian support but also international solidarity and the traditional friendship between Viet Nam and Venezuela.

The mission was organised jointly by the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of National Defence. Team members include specialists experienced in collapsed-structure search operations, emergency medical response, communications, logistics, and rescue command.

The delegation is also equipped with specialised rescue vehicles, search devices, medical supplies, and logistical support so operations can begin immediately upon arrival.

At the ceremony, Estela del Valle Quijada Suarez, Chargé d’Affaires of the Venezuelan Embassy in Viet Nam, expressed appreciation to Viet Nam’s Party, State, Government and Ministry of Public Security for the timely assistance, describing the mission as a symbol of friendship, solidarity, and mutual support between the two countries’ people during a difficult period.

Vietnam Airlines operates special flight carrying rescue teams, relief supplies to Venezuela
Viet Nam Airlines on June 29 operated a special flight transporting search-and-rescue and humanitarian assistance teams, equipment and relief supplies to Venezuela to support recovery efforts following the recent devastating earthquakes in the South American nation.

Flight VN66, using Airbus A350 aircraft, departed from Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi at 00:45 am on June 29. After a technical stop at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport in France, the flight continued its journey and is scheduled to arrive at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Caracas, Venezuela, at 12:10 pm local time on the same day.

The flight is carrying 124 personnel from the Ministry of National Defence and the Ministry of Public Security, along with 10 search-and-rescue dogs and approximately 25 tonnes of humanitarian supplies, specialised equipment and rescue gear to support relief operations in the earthquake-affected areas.

To ensure the timely deployment of the mission, Viet Nam Airlines mobilised extensive resources, including ground service personnel and a dedicated flight crew of 23 members. The national flag carrier also completed logistical preparations and flight clearance procedures within a short timeframe to meet the urgent requirements of the mission.

A representative of Viet Nam Airlines said each special flight demonstrates the carrier’s organisational capacity, sense of responsibility and commitment to serving the nation and the people, as well as its readiness to undertake international missions under both normal and extraordinary circumstances.

Venezuela’s Earthquake Death Toll Reaches 1,450, Public Utilities Gradually Recover and Mass Transit Operations Resume

The airline noted that the allocation of aircraft and operational resources for the special mission may affect schedules on some regular routes in the coming days, potentially resulting in flight time adjustments or aircraft substitutions. It pledged to provide timely updates and assistance for passengers, ensure all customer rights and benefits are protected in accordance with regulations, and minimise any inconvenience caused by operational changes.

The carrier has previously undertaken a number of important humanitarian and evacuation missions. Most recently, it transported relief supplies to Myanmar and repatriated Vietnamese rescue personnel after they completed earthquake-response operations there in 2025. Earlier missions included evacuation flights for Vietnamese citizens from Ukraine in 2022, the transportation of Vietnamese workers from Libya in 2011 and 2014, and support for Vietnamese nationals in Japan following the devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

(Socialist China)

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/60261

Chanting, “We are not partners, we are workers,” hundreds of workers across Mexico who provide rides and deliveries through apps held a two-hour work stoppage on May 15 demanding fair rates, an end to unjustified deactivations, and ultimately, a collective labor agreement with app giants like Uber, Didi, and Rappi (two Uber Eats-style delivery platforms).

The National App Workers Union (la Union Nacional de Trabajadores por Aplicación, UNTA) said the work stoppage included workers in five states and Mexico City. They were joined by app workers in at least 15 countries who held similar stoppages during peak hours.

President Claudia Sheinbaum advanced a landmark federal labor law reform in 2024 recognizing Mexico’s 1.2 million app-based workers as employees — granting them access to social security, profit-sharing, and federal housing credits. But the bar to access these benefits remains too high, workers say: only 10 percent of app workers earn enough to be eligible.

Luis Fernando Mora Reyes, an app worker for seven years and the union’s Secretary of Training and Culture, said he took inspiration from the Flint Sit-Down Strike at General Motors in 1936-7, a landmark in the organizing of auto workers in the U.S.

“Getting off your motorcycle or [out of your] car, and sitting on the sidewalk with a group of workers while you’re discussing, talking, exchanging ideas about the union,” he said, “it reminded me a lot about these images of strikers within the plants at Flint.”

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/60227

This article by Alma E. Muñoz and Arturo Sánchez originally appeared in the June 27, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo expressed her condolences yesterday for the victims of the earthquakes in Venezuela’s north-central region during the first call she held yesterday with Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, to whom she reaffirmed Mexicans’ support for the Venezuelan people.

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan Embassy in Mexico set up a collection center at its premises, located at Schiller 326, colonia Polanco, in Mexico City, to receive donations for those affected by the earthquakes recorded on Wednesday.

The center is operated by the Mexican Coordinator of Solidarity with Venezuela, an organization that, faced with the insistence of Mexican citizens and Venezuelans residing in Mexico to send humanitarian aid, asked the diplomatic mission to open a space to concentrate the support. The embassy provided its facilities for that purpose.

There, personal hygiene products, basic medicines, and non-perishable food are being received in order to channel them to the population that needs them.

Through a message circulated on social media, the embassy stated that “in the face of the beautiful displays of solidarity from the Mexican people and from the Venezuelan men and women who reside in Mexico,” those interested in donating non-perishable supplies must go directly to the headquarters of the diplomatic mission.

It clarified that it “is not coordinating with any organization or government body that requests money or operates as a collection center” outside the indicated headquarters.

The Venezuelan ambassador, Stella Lugo, expressed her government’s gratitude for “the solidarity and support” of President Claudia Sheinbaum and the Mexican government for sending emergency personnel and supplies to the Bolivarian republic.

She also thanked “the displays of solidarity and cooperation expressed by various institutions, organizations, movements, and the Mexican people in general toward the people of Venezuela in these moments of difficulty.”

Regarding the call she held with Rodríguez, Sheinbaum Pardo stated that “Mexico is already deploying humanitarian aid in the affected areas; we are attentive to additional needs,” she said, while the first brigade that arrived in that country —250 soldiers and 18 dogs— began search and rescue operations. Meanwhile, the transfer of 26 nationals and a Vietnamese delegation made up of 12 people is being considered on a return flight.

In difficult times, the president added, “our nation stands in solidarity with brother countries,” and she offered to send all the aid requested of it. “Solidarity always above all else. It is part of the culture that comes to us from the original peoples,” she emphasized.

The brigade is made up of the Yumare grouping and, according to the report given to her by the head of the Secretariat of National Defense, General Ricardo Trevilla Trejo, they have already delivered to the Venezuelan authorities 10.7 tons of medical supplies that were part of the IMSS-Bienestar inventory and 8.4 tons of tools and rescue equipment.

Among them, helmets, knee pads, elbow pads, gloves, and lamps; first-aid kits; electric power generators and motorized cutting equipment, which were transported on three planes.

Sheinbaum Pardo highlighted the readiness of the Army and the Navy in search and rescue operations and said that, in the case of Venezuela, “as they request more, whatever we can give, or if necessary, also call on the citizenry for more widespread support,” noting that in Mexico collection centers have even been opened.

For its part, the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs reported that the staff of the Mexican Embassy in Venezuela managed to establish contact with 73 Mexicans residing or in transit in that country, all of them located in good health and in safe places.

The foreign ministry added that 26 nationals voluntarily expressed their intention to return to Mexico and are waiting to be repatriated on the Mexican Air Force flights participating in the humanitarian assistance airlift.

• 

  News Briefs

  Venezuela’s Embassy in Mexico Opens Collection Center for Earthquake Victims

  June 27, 2026June 27, 2026

  Sheinbaum reaffirmed Mexico’s support in a call with Delcy Rodríguez.

• 

  Mañanera

  People’s Mañanera June 26

  June 26, 2026

  President Sheinbaum’s daily press conference, with comments on support for Venezuela, relations with Spain, cultural heritage, international cooperation, recovered corruption funds, and El Universal’s correction.

• 

  News Briefs

  Meeting With Felipe VI Was Achieved Thanks to Spain’s Recognition of the Abuses of the Conquest: Sheinbaum

  June 26, 2026June 26, 2026

  The King also pledged a session on indigenous peoples at November’s Ibero-American Summit in Madrid.

The post Venezuela’s Embassy in Mexico Opens Collection Center for Earthquake Victims appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/59786

Ecuador secured a historic 2-1 victory over Germany in New Jersey this thursday, marking their first-ever triumph against the Europeans to qualify for the World Cup round of 32 knockout stage.

Against all odds, the Ecuadorian national football team achieved an unprecedented milestone on North American soil. Just hours before kickoff, Argentinean manager Sebastian Beccacece faced intense criticism from fans at the stadium when his name was announced over the loudspeakers.

The victory represents the first time in football history that the South American nation has defeated Germany in an international match.

RELATED: Brazil Advances Undefeated After Victory Over Scotland at World Cup

The match began in the most challenging way for the South American side. Germany capitalized on their opening offensive play, with midfielder Leroy Sané scoring just two minutes into the match. However, the Ecuadorian players maintained their composure and responded immediately to the early setback.

Only seven minutes later, midfielder Nilson Angulo found space at the edge of the penalty box, clinicaly placing a right-footed shot past goalkeeper Manuel Neuer to equalize. Following the equalizer, the tactical landscape shifted completely. The German team conceded possession and opted to rely on quick counter-attacks, while the South American squad pressed forward with high intensity.

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Ecuador played with the absolute conviction that a draw was insufficient to keep their tournament dreams alive, driving their offensive lines forward and showing the competitive spirit that characterized them during the South American qualifiers.

Knockout Stage Reached

The decisive moment of the match arrived following a defensive misunderstanding between Manuel Neuer and defender Jonathan Tah. Although German defender Antonio Rüdiger temporarily saved his team with a goal-line clearance, the Ecuadorian offensive pressure persisted. In the subsequent play, forward Kevin Rodríguez won a crucial header, setting up Gonzalo Plata who executed a precise finish to score the winning goal, sealing a historic comeback for the so-called “La Tri.”

With this monumental victory, Ecuador secured third place in Group E with a total of 4 points. This point tally mathematically guarantees their qualification to the round of 32 as one of the eight best third-placed teams in the competition, making it impossible for other rivals to displace them.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/58395

On Saturday, Bolivian president Rodrigo Paz declared a state of emergency throughout the country, authorizing the deployment of police and the Armed Forces to crack down on protests. The move follows more than 50 days of roadblocks and demonstrations that have challenged a government that has been in power for just seven months, yet has implemented anti-worker austerity and privatization measures.

Just days earlier, the leadership of the COB, Bolivia’s largest trade union confederation, sat down to negotiate an agreement with the government as a way out of the crisis. However, various peasant and Indigenous groups, as well as organizations that have continued to mobilize, questioned those negotiations and have stayed in the streets.

For weeks, the government had sought to wear the protests down through arrests, criminalization, and partial negotiations with union leaders. Despite signing a law last month allowing the use of the Armed Forces, Paz had avoided declaring a state of emergency. But the persistence of the protests, and the strategic weight of sectors such as the miners, revealed the limits of that policy.

The miners’ entry into the conflict brought to the forefront the historic role played by these workers in Bolivia. The mobilizations led by this sector, together with peasants, teachers, and others, were one of the main factors that prevented the government from quickly stabilizing the situation.

In the face of this offensive, we must reject all criminalization and repression against those fighting for their demands. No to repression against protesters and organized communities! Down with the state of emergency!

The way out of the crisis cannot come from militarization or top-down deals, but from the independent organization of workers, peasants, and the poor to impose a solution favorable to the masses.

Originally published in Spanish on June 20 in La Izquierda Diario.

The post Rodrigo Paz Declares State of Emergency in Bolivia to Crush Protests appeared first on Left Voice.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/57442

When Congress approved a $1 billion Energy Resilience Fund for Puerto Rico in 2022, the money was desperately needed. Multiple hurricanes had battered the island’s notoriously fragile electric grid, and lawmakers envisioned the money supporting rooftop solar and battery systems that could provide resilient backup power during emergencies.

The Biden administration’s Department of Energy developed a plan to distribute the funds to about 40,000 low-income Puerto Ricans, many of whom live with health conditions requiring access to reliable power. Biden officials envisioned a network of solar and battery systems that would keep medically vulnerable Puerto Ricans safe during storms and reduce reliance on the island’s unstable grid.

The Trump administration has different ideas.

The plan all but disappeared after President Trump took office last year. Trump’s DOE has since redirected a large share of the funds to the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or PREPA, the bankrupt utility that operates the island’s grid. The money is now poised to shore up PREPA’s fleet of power plants, which largely run on fossil fuels, and $50 million will fund a new natural gas pipeline. The administration has defended the decision by arguing that PREPA’s infrastructure improvements will ultimately benefit a broader swath of the island’s population.

The process by which Trump’s DOE unilaterally redirected the resilience funds, seemingly against Congress’ intent, has so far been shrouded in secrecy. But public records obtained by Grist under the Freedom of Information Act shed new light on how Trump’s political appointees engineered the change. The documents show that the DOE gave PREPA unusually favorable treatment, in part by soliciting no competing bids for the funds, fast-tracking the review process, and using Trump’s executive order announcing an “energy emergency” as the justification for the award.

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Most eyebrow-raising, perhaps, was the way that the DOE waived its typical requirement that grant recipients pony up substantial funding of their own to contribute to project costs. Exceptions are sometimes made for indigent recipients or economically distressed communities, but for large organizations such as PREPA — which has nearly $4 billion in annual revenue — the agency typically requires a 50 percent cost share.

In PREPA’s case, the DOE accepted just a 1 percent cost share, noting that the utility was under “significant financial stress” and that waiving the cost-share requirement is “necessary in order to provide a more stable foundation for Puerto Rico to begin to perform long-term energy planning and repairs.”

Some critics who have worked at the agency in the past are unsatisfied with this explanation.

“The 1 percent cost share is potentially unprecedented for a DOE award of this size, and to a recipient with this much cash flow,” said a former Biden administration DOE official, who spoke under condition of anonymity due to concerns it would affect their current employment. The former official noted that in order for such an exception to be legal, it must have been made by the secretary of energy, Chris Wright, himself. “Congress decreed that cost-share waivers are only supposed to be available via a secretarial determination. They weren’t intended to be used often, and they haven’t been.”

A spokesperson with the Office for Electricity at the DOE said that the agency “carefully evaluated procurement options and determined that a noncompetitive, sole-source award to PREPA was justified” and that achieving the goals of the energy resilience fund required the use of PREPA. The spokesperson acknowledged that the “reduction from the standard 50 percent cost share is significant,” but noted that the determination was made under authority provided by the Energy Policy Act.

“PREPA continues to face severe fiscal constraints while maintaining responsibility for critical generation and transmission infrastructure,” the spokesperson said. “Requiring a 50 percent cost share would not have been feasible and would have delayed urgently needed grid stabilization and repair activities, undermining the core purpose of the Puerto Rico Energy Resilience Fund.”

The agency seemed well aware that its decision to award the funds to PREPA without considering competing applicants — and without seeking congressional approval for reallocating the funds from their intended use — would likely draw scrutiny. A section titled “Sensitivities” in a memo drafted by the head of the agency’s Grid Deployment Office highlighted that the decision to waive a 30-day congressional notice period, not seek other bids, and “the cost-share reduction may generate negative commentary, as the initial monies were planned to fund solar installations for multi-family housing (limited to common areas), community-based healthcare facilities.” The memo also went on to state that the “sole source designation to PREPA may raise objections to fairness, and perceived undue favoritism.” (“Sole source designation” is the term of art for a noncompetitive award to a single vendor.)

Puerto Rico’s electric grid has long been fragile. The average resident on the island experienced more than 70 hours of outages in 2024. When Hurricane Maria made landfall in 2017, the island’s more than 3 million residents lost power for weeks. It took PREPA more than nine months to restore power to some parts of the island. In the aftermath of the deadly disaster, Congress allocated more than $17 billion to modernize the grid. But almost a decade later, PREPA has completed very few projects with that massive influx of funding, and the utility has continued to navigate bankruptcy proceedings since 2017. The resilience funds being redirected to PREPA are in addition to this earlier allocation. The DOE memo acknowledges these issues, noting that “all parties involved are in less than desirable financial condition.”

“It is really surprising that DOE would plan to send these sums to PREPA itself, given its record of federal spending,” the former Biden administration official added.

Still, Trump’s DOE came to the conclusion that PREPA was best suited to receive the funds. The memo argued that even if the agency had undergone a time-consuming competitive process — one that would have taken 18 months — it would have ultimately selected PREPA because the operator has sole ownership of the island’s grid. “Given the urgency of the situation, there is no other entity in Puerto Rico with the breadth of capability, asset ownership, and legal mandate to execute energy emergency response, grid stabilization, and recovery projects at this scale,” according to the document.

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Last month, more than 40 congressional Democrats sent Secretary Wright a letter demanding to know why the agency had redirected the resilience funding. The lawmakers asked for a briefing that would detail the agency’s justification for moving funds to PREPA.

“DOE’s lack of transparency, wasteful reuse of the funding, disregard for congressional intent, and potentially illegal cancellation of contracts — combined with the resulting increase in energy poverty and loss of energy security — raise serious questions about the Department’s uses of the Puerto Rico-Energy Resilience Fund,” the letter said.

The lawmakers were particularly concerned about the funds being used to build a natural gas pipeline. On its website, the DOE does not detail funding of the pipeline directly but instead refers to the project as “fuel supply security between San Juan and Palo Seco.” In internal documents, however, the DOE plainly notes that it intends to allocate $50 million to construct a natural gas pipeline. According to reporting in El Nuevo Día, a Puerto Rican publication, local authorities have already been working on building a natural gas pipeline connecting power stations in San Juan and Palo Seco, which is about 9 miles away.

“Trying to force a liquefied methane pipeline project onto the people of Puerto Rico would help lock in the need to import fuels — keeping methane gas prices exorbitant for decades to come, putting ratepayers on the hook for funding it, and adding to already astronomical electricity costs,” the lawmakers’ letter reads.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Inside the government’s push to divert Puerto Rico solar funds to a bankrupt utility on Jun 17, 2026.

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When I say that I need help, I am not exaggerating. I am a mother trying to care for my children completely on my own, and there are days when I do not know how I will provide their most basic needs.

I need your donations to help me buy food for my children, medicine for my little daughter, and clean water for my family. Every day is a struggle, and the weight of these responsibilities feels heavier than I can bear.

It breaks my heart to keep asking, but I have no other choice. My children depend on me, and I cannot let them go hungry or without the care they need. If you are able to help, even with a small donation, you will be giving my family hope and helping us survive another difficult day.

Please don’t scroll past our story. We truly need your support. ❤️ https://gofund.me/00439328 #Gaza #GazaGenocide #MutualAid #HelpGaza #Donate #SupportFamilies #EmergencyRelief #HumanitarianAid #SaveGaza #FreePalestine

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/55119

By Geraldina Colotti  –  June 5, 2026

As the Latin American continent faces a new wave of reactionary counteroffensive, Bolivia is emerging as the epicenter of a relentless class struggle, where the logic of transnational capital seeks to subjugate the sovereignty of a nation that has dared to rebuild itself on plurinational foundations. For over a month, the country has been rocked by protests, demonstrations, and more than 90 roadblocks in at least seven departments.

The response from the government of Rodrigo Paz has followed the script characteristic of the colonial restoration plans dictated from Washington: the Senate’s approval of the State of Emergency Regulation Law and the public entry onto the scene of the Pentagon and the US Department of War.

The voices of Evo Morales and Wilma Colque in Bolivia’s struggle
In this scenario of resistance and siege, the voices of indigenous leader and former president Evo Morales Ayma and of leader Wilma Colque, representative of the Coordinating Committee of the Six Federations of the Tropics of Cochabamba, have the value of an indispensable theoretical and practical testimony. Their analyses were part of two important international forums dedicated to solidarity with the Bolivian people and to denouncing the imperialist attack on the Patria Grande: one promoted by Argentinian popular organizations, and the other organized by the Bolivarian Socialist Workers’ Central of Venezuela (CBST).

Instead of being mere chronicles of a regional crisis, their analyses reveal the invisible threads connecting domestic neoliberalism with global strategies for the plundering of strategic resources. The context in which these denunciations resonate is no accident.

The Bolivarian Socialist Workers’ Central of Venezuela, faithful to the tradition of proletarian internationalism and aware that imperialist aggression does not respect geopolitical borders, has transformed its weekly meetings into an ideological stronghold: more necessary than ever at this moment of maximum aggression and growing imperialist blackmail against the Bolivarian Revolution, following the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores. Discussing Bolivia in Caracas, or in forums of continental solidarity, means recognizing that the fate of the peoples of the region is closely intertwined.

The criminalization of Bolivian popular forces, the combined use of lawfare and open violence, are not isolated phenomena, but rather follow the same script applied against every attempt at self-determination in the continent. In this space for coordination, the vanguard of the labor and peasant movements has denounced how the current US administration is encircling the anti-imperialist axis, identifying the fall of plurinational Bolivia as the necessary piece for the economic recolonization of the entire region, which began with the blackmailing of Venezuela.

The global nature of the confrontation has been laid bare without filters by the statements of US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. Through his X account, the senior White House official has cast aside the mask of formal diplomacy, labeling the leaders of the Bolivian social organizations spearheading the protests as “narco-terrorists.”

The use of this linguistic and legal category is not new in the history of Latin America; it is the same security paradigm used during the darkest years of Operation Condor to justify political extermination and the annihilation of popular movements. Hegseth, speaking on behalf of the Department of War and the nascent Anti-Cartel Coalition of the Americas (A3C), reaffirmed Washington’s unconditional support for the right-wing government of Rodrigo Paz Pereira, warning that the United States “is watching what is happening in Bolivia” to ensure that a return to the old status quo of “criminal domination” is not permitted.

Evo Morales Ayma’s response to this explicit act of interference was immediate and forceful. The leader of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS-IPCP) underscored how the United States seeks, once again, to exercise colonial control over the nation’s internal affairs. In his address at the CBST’s international forum, Morales dismantled the empire’s narrative.

Evo Morales, former president of Bolvia.

“While the people struggle to defend their economy, their natural resources, and their right to determine their own destiny, the United States is once again meddling to support a government that is increasingly under scrutiny,” he said. “Now they are once again resorting to the rhetoric of ‘narco-terrorism’ to stigmatize social protest and the legitimate demands of those who defend democracy, sovereignty, and our common goods. Bolivia needs neither guardianship nor threats.”

The former president then drew a lucid picture of the ongoing coup d’état that is suffocating the country. This is not merely a government crisis, but a complex operation that Morales defines as a veritable “judicial Plan Condor.” The first step in this strategy has been the structural hollowing out of democratic institutions and the outlawing of genuinely revolutionary forces. Morales explained in detail how magistrates and judges have operated outside the constitutional mandate to strip the MAS-IPCP of its social base, preventing the most popular leaders from participating in politics.

This “preliminary electoral scam” allowed the rise to power of neoliberal forces led by Rodrigo Paz, an administration that today governs without a real consensus. The macroeconomic and social data presented by Morales are telling: rampant inflation, a return to dependence on the dictates of the International Monetary Fund, and a de facto devaluation of the national currency have destroyed workers’ purchasing power.

However, facing this institutional violence, the Bolivian people have responded with resistance and with numbers that refute the legitimacy touted from the government palace. Morales highlighted the historic result of the “Null Vote” in the latest municipal elections, which reached levels of 80% in single-member districts and saw the defeat of the government’s project in 169 municipalities.

This data aligns with current urban polls, which show popular rejection and a disapproval rating of President Paz’s administration nearing 87%. Bolivian neoliberalism, therefore, relies exclusively on bayonets and external support from the US Southern Command. The legal pillar of this authoritarian restoration is the Law on the Regulation of the State of Emergency, approved by the Senate at the end of a dramatic session in which three ministers of state participated, and now sent to the Chamber of Deputies for final approval.

An analysis of this bill reveals a subversive design aimed against the 2009 Plurinational Constitution itself. As Senator Wilder Veliz strongly decried—and as has been echoed in international forums—the State of Emergency Law grants a veritable “carte blanche” to security forces to repress and kill protesters. The law establishes that the armed forces may intervene in internal security operations whenever the police’s operational capacity is deemed insufficient, extending military control over “critical infrastructure,” water systems, telecommunications, and strategic roadways.

The most disturbing and brutal element of the law is the introduction of a presumption of legality and good faith for actions carried out by the military and police during a state of emergency. In practical terms, this means that the use of lethal force against roadblocks and popular assemblies will be considered legitimate a priori by the state, guaranteeing legal impunity and even government technical and legal assistance to those who carry out the massacres.

As Senator Veliz pointed out, this provision openly violates international human rights treaties and systematically paves the way for a political genocide against communities in struggle.

Wilma Colque and the materiality of land: the agrarian crisis
While Evo Morales’s analysis defines the macro-political framework, the testimony of Wilma Colque, a prominent representative of the indigenous and peasant organizations of the Tropics of Cochabamba, restores the material reality of the daily drama experienced by the grassroots. Hers is not a theoretical abstraction, but the story of barren land, of work in the fields, and of hunger rearing its head once again in homes.

Wilma Colque, indigenous peasant leader of the Tropics of Cochabamba.

Colque condemned the devastating impact of fuel shortages and smuggling, a crisis caused by the Paz administration’s policies of rampant deregulation.

Bolivian agriculture, particularly in highly producing regions such as the Tropics, has undergone a profound process of mechanization over the past 20 years: the land is no longer worked solely by the tireless manual labor of the hoe, but through the use of tractors and machinery that are now paralyzed by the lack of diesel.

This disruption of the production chain has led to the collapse of food exports, such as banana crops, and to a dramatic food shortage in urban centers.

The social consequences of this economic disaster directly impact future generations: Colque estimated that 30,000-40,000 elementary school children have dropped out of school in recent months due to poverty and families’ inability to guarantee basic subsistence, a phenomenon similarly reflected in the dropout rate that is emptying the country’s public universities.

A central theme of Wilma Colque’s discourse concerns the defense of indigenous identity against the attempt at assimilation and symbolic annihilation carried out by the new neoliberal elites. The leader denounced with indignation the hypocrisy of right-wing candidates who, during election campaigns, do not hesitate to don the traditional poncho, take photos with women in polleras, and stammer phrases in native languages to win over the rural vote.

Once in power, however, those same garments and bodies become the targets of tear gas, rubber bullets, and lead projectiles fired by the police. In this context, the reappropriation of symbols becomes a revolutionary act. The Wiphala, Colque highlighted, is not an electoral flag or the logo of a political party: it is the millennia-old emblem of Andean resistance, a cosmogonic code that unites peoples across borders, extending to communities in struggle in Peru.

The Paz government’s attempt to ban or diminish the value of plurinational symbols responds to the colonial desire to erase the political subjectivity of indigenous peoples, reducing them once again to subordinate and invisible labor. The analytical convergence between Morales and Colque reaches its climax when they point out the true driving force behind the Bolivian crisis: control over strategic mineral reserves, primarily lithium and rare earths—metals essential to the West’s technological and industrial transition.

Bolivia in Crisis: In Conversation With Evo Morales

Bolivia possesses the largest lithium reserves on the planet, located in the heart of the geographical region known as the Lithium Triangle. While in neighboring countries, such as Kast’s Chile and Javier Milei’s Argentina, this resource has been completely sold off and handed over to US and European multinationals without any real benefit to local populations, the Bolivia of the plurinational revolution had initiated a model of sovereign industrialization with the state as the main actor.

Rodrigo Paz’s government operates as the internal agent tasked with dismantling this sovereign model to align with the extractive demands of Washington and the major corporations of Silicon Valley. To achieve this economic objective, the militarization of the territory has become an urgent necessity. Wilma Colque issued a detailed report that lifts the veil on the new forms of cyberwarfare and technological espionage being deployed on the ground.

“A surveillance system operated directly by US agencies,” she said, “has penetrated the tripartite borders between the departments of Cochabamba and La Paz. They have installed high-tech equipment capable of intercepting telecommunications signals, monitoring every call, every message, and every movement of union leaders. We know exactly where these bases are located, and we know that the ultimate goal is the capture of our brother Evo Morales, to display him as a political trophy for imperialism.”

In addition to this digital surveillance network, there is the old strategy of corruption and internal dirty war. Enormous financial resources, derived from international loans that never translate into public works for the people, are being funneled through briefcases containing up to $100,000 to buy the loyalty of compliant leaders, divide historic unions, and fracture the cohesion of the Coordinating Committee of the Six Federations of the Tropics of Cochabamba.

Facing a repressive apparatus that has equipped itself with special legal instruments to legalize the massacre and with foreign technologies for social control, the response coming from the communities in struggle is not one of submission, but of historical dignity. The conclusion of Wilma Colque’s speech resonates as a manifesto of political ethics for the entire continent. Indigenous women—the mothers who have seen generations of their children fight against the military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s—stand today as the guardians of the future of the Patria Grande.

The message is clear: if the Paz government decides to declare a state of siege over the weekend, social movements will take to the streets with their children to engage in mass civil disobedience, withdrawing young people from the barracks and employing tactics of territorial self-defense, such as controlled power outages and the disruption of internet networks to blind the state’s espionage apparatus.

Bolivia’s struggle, as articulated by Evo Morales and Wilma Colque in international forums, demonstrates that the conflict is not about supposed institutional stability or the bureaucratic management of a crisis. What is at stake is the choice between being an extractive colony subordinate to the Pentagon’s geopolitical needs or remaining a sovereign Plurinational State, where the land, lithium, and the fate of men and women belong to those who work them and defend them. “We are millions,” the indigenous leader recalls, “and we are willing to die, but not to bow our heads.”

(Resumen Latinoamericano English)

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/55385

This article by Iván Evair Saldaña originally appeared in the June 7, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

Zumpango, State of Mexico. — Amid applause, President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo entered one of the hangars at the Santa Lucía Military Air Base driving the first Mexican electric vehicle, Olinia 1, during its official unveiling. The car will go on sale starting at 150,000 pesos per unit and will be on the road beginning next summer.

“Mission accomplished… Olinia means movement — to move, in Náhuatl: movement of ideas, of creativity, moving with innovation, with hope, moving toward new horizons,” the federal president said minutes later.

Olinia 1 was presented by the project director, Roberto Capuano Tripp, as “the vehicle that millions of people in Mexico need” and as the first product of an industry that, he said, “we are watching being born before our eyes,” before cabinet secretaries, the governor of the State of Mexico Delfina Gómez, diplomats and business leaders.

It is also the result of 18 months of collective work in which institutions, research centers and public universities — such as the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN) — participated, in addition to specialists and companies from China, the United States, India and Germany, as well as Mexican companies that collaborated on the design, integration and manufacture of the unit and all of its parts from scratch.

“Building a national industry does not mean isolating ourselves; it means learning, integrating capabilities, and developing our knowledge step by step. But our goal is very clear: by 2030 we expect to reach 75 percent national integration, building capacities in the areas where we need them. And to achieve this, Olinia is being built as a Mexican company, with mixed participation,” Capuano announced.

Photo by Roberto Garcia Ortiz

It is a compact plug-in electric vehicle designed to maximize interior and exterior space, with capacity for up to six people and equipped to transport people in wheelchairs. It has a 14.7 kWh battery with a range of 125 km.

Capuano Tripp announced that they are working on a plan to deploy charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, with the goal of installing tens of thousands of charging points across the country by 2030. As a first stage, he said, there is already a project to set up 2,000 chargers in the State of Mexico, Mexico City and Puebla, in coordination with the Secretariat of Energy and the Federal Electricity Commission.

“In addition, this effort is paving the way to achieve a massive replacement of taxis in those three states. The vehicle is designed for a low operating cost of 49 cents per kilometer, five times less than a gasoline car. That means savings of up to 50,000 pesos a year in gasoline.”

“Let’s talk operating costs. A gasoline vehicle has an approximate cost of 2 pesos and 40 cents per kilometer. A motorcycle, one peso per kilometer. With more than 125 kilometers of range per charge, Olinia 1 achieves an operating cost of 49 cents per kilometer… To give an idea of what this means in practice, a driver who covers 75 kilometers a day in an Olinia versus a gasoline car can save more than 50,000 pesos a year just in fuel. This vehicle will end up paying for itself with the savings it generates,” said Imelda Vega, a researcher at the Instituto Tecnológico de Puebla.

Rosaura Ruiz Gutiérrez, head of the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation (Secihti), said that Mexico’s scientific community responded to the challenge President Sheinbaum Pardo set for them. “This is not just about an electric vehicle; what we are seeking is to spur the creation of an industrial sector with enormous growth potential. Of course, launching a national electromobility industry does not mean we have to travel that road alone,” she said.

Photo by Gabriel Monroy / Presidencia

Olinia, a Car Built with Mexican Talent

During the event, the President of the Republic highlighted that Olinia 1 demonstrates that the creativity, knowledge and innovation of Mexicans — which has ancestral origins in their indigenous peoples — can be transformed into technological development and well-being.

“That creativity and that innovation is in each and every Mexican. And there are also dozens of examples of scientists, technologists, philosophers, artists, Mexican men and women who have transformed the world. From color television to the birth control pill, advances and new research in astronomy, biotechnology, the interpretation of history, literature, philosophy — Mexican men and women who, day after day, generate knowledge,” she noted.

She also said that Olinia breaks with the idea that the country can only assemble vehicles or adapt innovations from abroad.

“This is not just about manufacturing an electric car; it is about demonstrating that we are capable of imagining it, designing it, developing it, and making it a reality. For a long time Mexico was spoken of as a country destined solely to produce what others imagined. We were told that we could not, that we should not. We were told that innovation was reserved for other places, that Mexico was made only for the maquila, that our role was to receive technology, not develop it, to receive ideas, not create them — but that is false,” she emphasized.

She also stressed that the project will spur new careers, specialties and lines of research in Mexico in areas such as batteries, software, artificial intelligence, advanced electronics, new materials and clean energy.

“The Seed” of Mexico’s New Electric Car Industry

For Sheinbaum Pardo, Olinia “is the seed” of a new national industry and of an innovation ecosystem based on collaboration among universities, research centers, the State and private initiative, as part of a new stage of technological development for the country.

Finally, she presided over the symbolic signing of the Olinia 1 prototype, an automotive industry tradition that recognizes those who took part in the creation of a new model.

“That is why Olinia represents much more than an electric car: it represents a seed — the seed of a new ecosystem of innovation built from Mexico, the seed of a national industry that can grow from the bottom up, driven by the knowledge, creativity and work of thousands of Mexican women and men; the seed of a mixed economy in which universities, research centers, the State and the creative initiative of society collaborate to develop new technologies, new solutions and new national capacities,” she emphasized.

The president closed her speech by noting that “Olinia is transformation, and Mexico is in transformation,” where “what seemed impossible is being made possible.”

The event concluded with President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo signing a piece of the Olinia 1, an automotive tradition that honors those who took part in its development.

Hoy presentamos Olinia, el auto eléctrico creado por jóvenes mexicanas y mexicanos. pic.twitter.com/IkexSRtTDY

— Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo (@Claudiashein) June 7, 2026

• 

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The Venezuelan Government said this Sunday that it has “well-founded doubts” about the process being carried out by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) regarding the territorial dispute with Guyana over Esequibo, after Georgetown assured that the court would rule in favor of the validity of the 1899 arbitral award.

Acting President Rodriguez Reaffirms Venezuelan Sovereignty Over Essequibo Before The Hague: Venezuela Expresses Serious Doubts About ICJ Process After Guyana Statements

“It is striking that the Guyanese authorities magically dare to take for granted the content of a future decision by the International Court of Justice,” the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry said in a statement published on Telegram.

In his opinion, this stance demonstrates Guyana’s “clear disregard” for international law and confirms Venezuela’s “well-founded doubts” about the course of the ongoing process at the ICJ.

Venezuela rejected these statements by the Government of Guyana and reiterated that it has never given his consent to submit the territorial dispute over Esequibo to the jurisdiction of the court.

“Said controversy can and should only be resolved under the Geneva Agreement, that is, through a practical, satisfactory and mutually acceptable arrangement,” it added. Likewise, he insisted that it will not recognize the ICJ’s decision, “whatever it may be.”

#Comunicado La República Bolivariana de Venezuela rechaza firmemente las declaraciones proferidas por el Primer Ministro de la República Cooperativa de Guyana, en relación con la eventual decisión de la Corte Internacional de Justicia sobre la demanda unilateral írritamente… pic.twitter.com/RKtoVYHjk3

— Yvan Gil (@yvangil) June 7, 2026

Guyana’s Prime Minister, Mark Phillips, assured on Saturday that the ICJ, after concluding eight years of proceedings, would rule in favor of the validity of the 1899 arbitral award, in the face of the border dispute with Venezuela over the Esequibo region, a territory of almost 160,000 square kilometers.

Likewise, the Guyanese Prime Minister remarked that the court’s judgment will be legally binding for both Guyana and Venezuela under the United Nations Charter and the Statute of the International Court of Justice.

Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s acting president, defended in May before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) her country’s sovereignty over Essequibo Guyana, emphasizing the 1966 Geneva Agreement as the only valid mechanism to resolve the territorial dispute.

She affirmed that Venezuela will not renounce its rights and that her appearance before the ICJ represents the voice of a people who love justice and international legality, not an act of rebellion.

Venezuela to ICJ: Guyana Seeks to Legitimize Colonial Fraud with 1899 Award

Rodríguez highlighted that the Venezuelan people, through a consultative referendum, ordered the defense of the territory of Essequibo Guyana, which is sought to be achieved through peaceful means and assistance before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to preserve international legality and show Venezuela’s truth.

She denounced a judicialization strategy by Guyana, driven by the interests of transnational energy companies, seeking unilateral control of the area after the discovery of natural resources.

The Venezuelan vice president presented documentary evidence dating back to 1777, confirming Venezuela’s sovereignty over Essequibo Guyana, emphasizing that it is not just an economic interest, but part of its inalienable historical moral, despite the British blockade that prevents access to key documents for Venezuela.

(teleSUR)

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This Monday, thousands of teachers from the National Coordination of Education Workers (CNTE) launched an indefinite national strike in at least ten Mexican states — Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero, Morelos, Michoacán, Zacatecas, Chihuahua, Sonora, Sinaloa, and Quintana Roo. They have blocked major roads, occupied the Ministry of Education headquarters in Mexico City, set up camp in the Zócalo (Mexico City’s main square), and blocked the Nogales border crossing into the United States. Statues of footballers erected by the state for the World Cup have been toppled, a symbolic gesture that carries a clear message: no World Cup as long as Mexican workers endure austerity.

The movement stems from a contradiction that has become unbearable for Mexican workers. The government of Claudia Sheinbaum has spent at least $3 billion on infrastructure for the World Cup, which begins on June 11, while simultaneously imposing drastic budget cuts to public education. On May 15, Sheinbaum granted a 9% salary increase for teachers — a concession immediately dismissed as “crumbs” by the CNTE, which has refused to accept it. Far from appeasing the movement, this minor concession has fueled anger at the double standards faced by Mexican workers. As one protesting teacher summed it up: “Who will benefit from the World Cup? Big bosses and bankers! How is it possible that there is so much money for them while we and our children are increasingly insecure?”

The teachers’ demands are clear and strike at the heart of the neoliberal political project that has allowed the country’s bourgeoisie to further entrench exploitation. The mobilized workers are demanding the repeal of the 2007 ISSSTE law and the 1997 IMSS law, which successively privatized civil servants’ pensions by transferring them to AFORE (pension funds managed by banks). They are also calling for the cancellation of the 2012 Education Reform, which imposed a managerial evaluation system, competitive exams, and performance-based criteria on teachers, completely destroying job security for education workers. Finally, they are demanding a 100% increase in base salary and a significant increase to the education budget, which historically has been used as the adjustment variable to compensate for the economic crisis and has been a primary target of budget cuts for decades.

At the heart of the struggle is also the issue of pensions. “A decent pension is not a luxury, it’s a right,” read the protesters’ placards. Before 2007 teachers could retire after 28 years of service for women and 30 for men. The ISSSTE reform imposed a points-based system, raised the retirement age, and entrusted retirement savings to private banks. As a result, teachers now retire with only 30% of their salary, while bankers pocket the profits from managing the funds.

Claudia Sheinbaum, who had made repealing this reform a central plank of her 2024 presidential campaign, is now responding to protesters with police repression. Police were deployed in force to prevent demonstrators from reaching the Zócalo. At least five teachers were seriously injured, one of whom lost an eye after being hit by tear gas fired at close range.

Sheinbaum is now rejecting the teachers’ demands, explaining that conditions are no longer favorable for withdrawing the reform and that “there is no money,” after having allocated $3 billion for the FIFA World Cup.

The teachers are not alone. Student groups from various universities have joined the movement, as have farmers. The ISSSTE law does indeed concern all state workers — administration, justice, public services — and it is in this spirit that the striking teachers are calling on all these sectors to join the mobilization. The CNTE is now calling for an indefinite general strike ten days before the start of the World Cup. The timing is working in the teachers’ favor, as they are aware that the pressure on the government, which has invested colossal sums in the event, could force them to give in.

This movement reveals the full contradiction of Claudia Sheinbaum’s government. Presented as one of the most progressive governments in Latin America, it nevertheless responds to teachers’ basic demands with contempt, empty promises, sham dialogue, and repression. Behind the rhetoric of “transformation,” what is clearly visible is the continuation of a social model deeply hostile to workers: there is supposedly no money to repeal the 2007 ISSSTE law, nor to guarantee decent pensions, yet billions are poured into the demands of FIFA and large corporations.

The CNTE strike thus exposes a conflict that extends far beyond the teaching sector. What is at stake is not only teachers’ salaries, but the future of all Mexican workers subjected to precarious employment, the erosion of pensions, and the plundering of their social rights by banks and retirement fund administrators.

This is why the teachers’ call to extend the mobilization to students, parents, and workers in the public, healthcare, university, and private sectors is crucial. Faced with a government attempting to stall through dead-end negotiations, the only way for teachers to win their demands is by expanding the strike, organizing assemblies in workplaces, and building a genuine balance of power that can defeat Sheinbaum’s austerity program. Regardless of the immediate outcome of the negotiations, the CNTE’s mobilization demonstrates that Mexican workers will no longer settle for crumbs, and that they can pave the way for a broader struggle against all neoliberal attacks.

Originally published in Révolution Permanente.

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True to his neoliberal orthodoxy, Chile’s ultra-conservative president, José Antonio Kast, ordered the implementation of a broad plan to reduce public spending that includes a nearly universal 3% spending cut across almost all ministries, though he promised there would be no cuts to social benefits and rights.

At the same time, the Kast administration has launched an ambitious legislative reform aimed at significantly reducing taxes (by 23 to 27%) for various business owners in order, according to the administration, to boost the country’s growth to 4%.

Thus, Kast advocates for a significant reduction in the size of the government, including its spending, while also committing to improving the situation of leading companies, which, according to the administration, will radically improve the Chilean economy – even if this causes, as the president himself said, “pain.”

Furthermore, in line with his campaign promise, Kast announced a bill to strengthen immigration controls, under which he seeks to deport nearly 330,000 undocumented migrants from Chile. For example, he has sought to obtain greater powers to carry out deportations, such as extending the detention period for undocumented migrants (currently five days) and imposing harsher penalties on criminals involved in organized crime.

Anti-government protests

These and other controversial measures have led hundreds of students from the Chilean Student Confederation, the Teachers’ Association, and various workers to protest against the government on June 1, while the president delivered his first address to the nation at the National Congress in the city of Valparaíso, after three months in office.

Protesters took to the streets in Santiago and Valparaíso to demonstrate against Kast’s policies, which they said are aimed at dismantling hard-won social and economic rights, as well as public services such as health care and education, among others.

The protest was suppressed by the national police (Carabineros), who harshly dispersed the students using water cannons, dogs without muzzles, and tear gas.

And while Kast stated that social services would not be affected, protesters claimed that the austerity measures would cut USD 6 billion from the state budget, which would directly impact hospital care.

In this regard, Cecilia Olivares, of the National Confederation of University Professionals in Social Services, told DW: “This mobilization is against the policies aimed at dismantling public health, education, and all social rights.”

In addition, protesters pointed out that Kast seeks to intimidate those who demonstrate in the streets by creating the Registry of Vandals and Incivilities, under which social benefits like free college tuition and the Universal Guaranteed Pension will be revoked for anyone who commits serious offenses. This has been seen as a way to undermine protests and instill fear in young people if they take to the streets to demonstrate.

These measures by Kast, coupled with the repeal of more than 40 environmental decrees and the sharp increase in fuel prices, have caused his popularity to plummet. According to the Plaza Pública Cadem poll, 58% of the population currently disapproves of Kast’s performance after just 12 weeks in office.

Zoe. , June 4, 2026

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After several weeks of protests, Bolivia’s right-wing President Rodrigo Paz told the press that the serious social crisis the country has been facing for nearly a month “is reaching a breaking point.”

“The country needs order, and this is reaching a breaking point … Time is running out. We call for dialogue,” said Paz, under mounting pressure from social movements that seem to be giving the government no respite.

Protests erupted after the government attempted to pass a law that would repeal the exemption of land from seizure – a right won by farmers to prevent the loss of their primary source of livelihood due to debt or any other circumstances.

Paz defended the decision, saying it would allow the poorest Bolivians to access credit, although the opposition saw the law as a mechanism to hand over land to large national and international capital interests.

Bolivia is a country rich in natural resources, such as natural gas, zinc, silver, lead, tin, gold, oil, as well as lithium, for which the country holds the world’s largest reserves – a fact that has attracted the attention of major technology companies. Together with Argentina and Chile, Bolivia forms the so-called “lithium triangle,” a strategic zone for large technology firms.

Following the harsh crackdown, farmers, teachers, students, Indigenous people, and other groups of citizens joined the protests, demanding improvements in their conditions. In the face of the Paz government’s harsh response, the demands for greater rights quickly turned into a unanimous call: “Paz must resign!”

The government has been reluctant to step aside. On the contrary, it has sought international support, particularly from the US, its main ally, as well as from other right-wing governments in the region.

More power to Paz

However, faced with the strength of the protests, which show no signs of diminishing in intensity or mobilization capacity, Paz has also decided to consolidate more power to confront an opposition that has blocked several key roads and clashed violently with law enforcement.

In fact, on May 26, Congress repealed a law that placed limits on the president’s ability to declare states of emergency. Following the same approach as Bukele in El Salvador and Noboa in Ecuador, Paz appears to have found in states of emergency a new way to more easily call upon the military to address his problems.

According to politicians close to Paz, the measure aims to streamline social control mechanisms and prevent impunity for violent groups. This was expressed by Carlos Alarcón, who argues that the new rule prevents “violent groups that claim to represent the people” from evading the law.

However, other opposition lawmakers believe the decision will only further fuel the protests. According to center-right representative Edwin Valda, of the Christian Democratic Party, the measure will lead to “greater violence,” while leaving the social groups that are protesting “unprotected”.

The UN expresses concern and calls for respect for human rights

For its part, the United Nations expressed concern over the situation in Bolivia. In a statement, its Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said that rising tensions could lead to an even more severe crisis.

“All actions by security forces must strictly comply with international human rights law. Any use of force by law enforcement officials must be consistent with the principles of legality, necessity, proportionality, precaution, and non-discrimination. Any allegation or reasonable suspicion of unlawful use of force or other human rights violations by these officials must be investigated effectively, impartially, and in a timely manner,” the UN Human Rights Office reported.

Regarding the greater authority that Paz now has to declare states of emergency, the UN Human Rights Office reminded the government that its obligations to international human rights laws “remain in force”. The Office also called on “the authorities and the mobilized sectors to prioritize dialogue and adopt de-escalation measures. It is urgent to prevent further violence and seek peaceful and democratic solutions.”

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Speaking before the UN Security Council on Tuesday, May 26, Cuban Foreign MinisterBruno Rodríguez stated that Washington’s decisions, which amount to an “act of war,” could lead to a “humanitarian catastrophe” if they continue to be enforced, as they “kill and cause suffering” among Cubans. In light of this, he called on the international community to intervene and allow Cuba to exercise its right to exist.

“The oil embargo that the US imposes on Cuba is equivalent in its effects to a naval blockade, which is an act of war and genocide that subjects the Cuban population to conditions that threaten their integrity and existence and constitutes a cruel and indiscriminate ‘collective punishment’ that today causes deaths, as reflected in the doubling of the infant mortality rate, from 4.0 to 9.9 per thousand live births, or the reduction in life expectancy for children with cancer from 85% to 65%,” said Rodríguez.

Cuba has been cut off from reliable access to fuel since December 2025.

While its trade with Venezuela, one of its primary oil suppliers, was already inhibited due to the US Naval blockade on Venezuela imposed in December, the commercial route was further blocked following January 3, when US forces attacked Venezuela and took then-President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores prisoner (now detained in New York). As a first order of business after the January 3 attack, Washington ordered the suspension of all crude oil shipments to Cuba, which relies heavily on hydrocarbons for the functioning of the country at nearly every level (electricity, health, education, production, transportation, trade, etc.).

At the end of January, Washington threatened to impose tax sanctions on any country that sells oil to Cuba. Only one Russian ship has arrived in all of 2026. The situation has rapidly worsened for the civilian population. Added to this is an economic and commercial blockade that has been in place in Cuba since the 1960s and which, together with the energy blockade, aims to destroy the revolutionary process that began in 1959.

Against diplomatic hypocrisy

The Cuban foreign minister also took the opportunity to criticize the statements made by the European Union’s High Representative, Kaja Kallas, who, according to Rodríguez, applies a “double standard” when speaking about Cuba: “It lacks objectivity and betrays a marked double standard not to recognize that the illegal, cruel, and unjust collective punishment that the US government imposes on the Cuban people – with an unprecedented tightening of the blockade, the oil embargo, and the military threat – constitutes the main causes of the difficult situation Cubans face today.”

“Nor has there been any expression of concern or support for the many European companies and citizens who are being threatened and harmed by the latest US measures, which are clearly extraterritorial and illegal,” Rodríguez said in response to Kallas’ statements.

“A bloodbath”

Furthermore, Rodríguez, echoing the words of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, emphasized that if the United States were to attack Cuba, it would be provoking “a bloodbath.” On several occasions, Trump has said he is considering the possibility of attacking Cuba to put an end to the revolutionary government, a move that has been categorically rejected by Havana and its allies, such as Russia and China.

In this regard, the Cuban foreign minister said: “A military attack would lead to a bloodbath. Thousands of Cubans would die defending the homeland and sacred values and causes, and young Americans would also perish, with no cause or ideal to defend, dragged into violence by an imperialist, neo-fascist policy of domination, plunder, and conquest.”

A few days ago, the US justice system filed charges against Raúl Castro, the Revolution’s highest-ranking living leader, for the downing of two aircraft in the 1990s that had entered Cuban airspace and, despite requests from the Cuban military, did not leave its territory.

Some analysts have seen in this accusation a script very similar to the one followed by Washington before attacking Venezuela, namely, the initiation of legal proceedings against senior leaders of countries that are allegedly a threat to the United States, an increase in military personnel in the area, and subsequently the assassination or capture of senior government leaders to bring about a political transition controlled by Washington.

In this regard, Rodríguez said: “Cuba is not a threat to the United States. It is the government of that country that constantly threatens our people with military aggression and, through its punitive measures, causes severe harm to Cuban families … We denounce the infamous and arbitrary filing of criminal charges against the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz. It is a morally despicable act that abuses the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, manipulates the location of the downing of the planes that occurred in Cuban air and maritime territory, ignores the terrorist and illegal missions these planes frequently carried out, in violation of U.S. laws, and disregards the right of states to self-defense,” Rodríguez told Fox News.

Rodríguez thus emphasized that his government remains open to dialogue and to welcoming US businesspeople and tourists to strengthen the “deep and historic ties” that unite the American and Cuban peoples. However, he also stated that if a military attack were to occur, Cuba would respond: “Let no one doubt that should the moment arrive – a moment we hope will never occur – the people of Cuba will fight to the bitter end. Homeland or death! We shall overcome!”

The post Cuba denounces US oil embargo as “act of war” at UN Security Council appeared first on Peoples Dispatch.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/52977

While acknowledging a request for US support in fighting drug cartels, Guatemala's president on Thursday refuted reporting by The New York Times claiming his government "has agreed to carry out joint strikes with the United States military inside its territory"—action that would violate the country's Constitution.

Citing "three people familiar with the talks," the Times reported that "President Bernardo Arévalo of Guatemala agreed to both airstrikes and other military action in a call with [US] Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth... with operations to start as early as next month."

However, Arévalo's office pushed back in a statement stressing that “there is no agreement authorizing foreign military operations by any country in national territory."

The presidential statement said that Guatemalan Defense Minister Henry Sáenz wrote to Hegseth "to request US cooperation in operations led by Guatemalan security forces against narco-trafficking organizations as part of a strategy launched in 2024."

"This request falls within the framework of existing bilateral agreements on the matter, and adheres to constitutional provisions and laws regarding cooperation agreements on civil and military security," the office added.

Arévalo's office stressed that Guatemala's Constitution stipulates that foreign military forces can only be deployed in the country if authorized by a two-thirds vote of the national Legislature.

A source from Arévalo's government told El País Thursday on condition of anonymity that the Trump administration has been exerting "great pressure" for two months.

“What they offered us is to select one or two places to bomb and televise everything," the source said. "But we have been clear that this is not going to happen. It cannot operate a US military force in the country, simply because it is unconstitutional."

Arévalo's office said it is seeking US assistance in training, strategic and tactical support, and intelligence sharing, pointing to recent actions against drug trafficking, including the capture of an arsenal in Las Cruces, Petén, the seizure of a narcotics laboratory in Ayutla, San Marcos, and the capture of numerous suspected narco-traffickers.

Asked during a Thursday press conference about the possibility of joint combat operations like those reportedly carried out by US and Ecuadorian forces in the South American nation, Arévalo claimed unfamiliarity with the details of the agreement between those two countries.

Progressive US lawmakers are demanding answers about “reports of serious human rights violations and the bombing of what appear to have been civilian facilities" in Ecuador, including a "dairy and cattle farm with no known links to armed groups or drug trafficking" where unarmed civilians were allegedly tortured.

Arévalo brushed off a suggestion that his request for US cooperation could open the door to human rights violations in Guatemala, telling reporters that "the best defense against any violation of human rights is our respect and commitment to the laws of the republic and to current legislation."

While Guatemala does suffer from serious narco-trafficking issues, many Guatemalans are wary of US intervention, given past meddling including the 1954 CIA-orchestrated overthrow of reformist President Jacobo Árbenz, which was followed by decades of right-wing repression, civil war, and a US-backed genocide against Indigenous Mayan peoples during which around 200,000 people were killed.

In March, the Trump administration lifted longstanding restrictions on arms transfers to Guatemala.

“Now, our soldiers are going to have access to modern technology, radars, night viewfinders," Sáenz told La Hora on Friday.

The defense minister said he discussed closer counter-narcotics cooperation with the United States during the “Shield of the Americas” summit, during which senior officials from over a dozen nations—most of them ruled by right-wing governments—gathered at President Donald Trump's golf resort near Miami.

In addition to Guatemala, the Trump administration has been trying to pressure other Latin American nations into launching joint military operations against narco-traffickers. President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico has vehemently rejected US requests, even as President Donald Trump has threatened "to do something" about cartels in her country.

“The epicenter of cartel violence is not Mexico, it’s the United States,” Sheinbaum defiantly declared in March. “The cartels are fueled by the United States’ demand for drugs and armed with US weapons, and thanks to the United States, they are able to orchestrate enormous bloodshed and chaos throughout Latin America.”

In January, Trump ordered the bombing and invasion of Venezuela, whose president, Nicolás Maduro, was abducted to the United States on dubious "narco-terrorism" allegations that were then significantly walked back.

Trump has also threatened to attack Colombia, Panama, and Cuba, whose people are bracing for what many observers fear is an impending US war. If Trump does order military action against Cuba, it would be the 12th country he's attacked during the course of his two White House terms. Trump also ordered the ongoing bombing campaign targeting boats his administration claims—without providing evidence—were smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. Around 200 people have been killed by the US strikes.

As Nick Turse of The Intercept reported Wednesday:

Trump has turned the Western Hemisphere into a war zone as part of what he and others have called the Donroe Doctrine. This bastardization of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine has been used to justify strikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean; an attack on Venezuela and the abduction of its president; CIA operations in Mexico; joint counter-cartel operations in Ecuador dubbed “Operation Total Extermination”; and increased military and intelligence operations elsewhere in Latin America.

Experts contend that, like the boat strikes, any airstrikes carried out against drug cartels would likely constitute illegal acts of murder, even if conducted with the permission of governments in targeted countries.

“As with the boat strikes, depending on the facts, further attacks could amount to premeditated killings outside of armed conflict, which some of us lawyers would refer to as murder,” former US State Department lawyer Brian Finucane told The New York Times on Thursday.

“Congress never authorized any of these strikes," he added. "So US personnel who participate in these actions could face consequences down the road, after the Trump administration.”

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