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Category: Venezuela

  • Abrego Garcia’s Wrongful Deportation Case More About Individual Rights Than Trump’s Foreign Policy

    Trump administration officials have repeatedly claimed that judges who order the administration to take action to bring deported Venezuelans back from the El Salvador prison where the U.S. sent them are meddling in the conduct of foreign policy.

    “The foreign policy of the United States is conducted by President Donald J. Trump − not by a court − and no court in the United States has a right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on April 14.

    His comments refer to cases including that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran man who was deported to El Salvador on March 15, 2025, without any due process.

    The post Abrego Garcia’s Wrongful Deportation Case More About Individual Rights Than Trump’s Foreign Policy appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Human Rights Watch Outflanks Trump

    It’s been over 100 days since Donald Trump’s return to the presidency. Most NGOs to the right of the Heritage Foundation are alarmed about his confrontational international posture and related erosion of the rule of law.

    Human Rights Watch (HRW), a supposedly liberal organization, is also concerned. But their problem is that the president hasn’t gone far enough – at least in the case of Venezuela. HRW’s latest report on Venezuela calls for intensified illegal measures that cause misery and death, outflanking Trump from the right.

    At issue for HRW is last July’s Venezuelan presidential election that saw Nicolás Maduro declared the winner.

    The post Human Rights Watch Outflanks Trump appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Human Rights Watch Outflanks Trump

    It’s been over 100 days since Donald Trump’s return to the presidency. Most NGOs to the right of the Heritage Foundation are alarmed about his confrontational international posture and related erosion of the rule of law.

    Human Rights Watch (HRW), a supposedly liberal organization, is also concerned. But their problem is that the president hasn’t gone far enough – at least in the case of Venezuela. HRW’s latest report on Venezuela calls for intensified illegal measures that cause misery and death, outflanking Trump from the right.

    Ignoring the US hybrid war

    At issue for HRW is last July’s Venezuelan presidential election that saw Nicolás Maduro declared the winner. Beyond issues with supposed electoral irregularities lies the elephant in the room that is utterly disregarded by HRW. The US hybrid war against Venezuela was the biggest obstacle to free and fair elections. Venezuelans were under economic siege with coercive measures aimed at pressuring them into backing the US-backed opposition.

    Also telling is the opposition’s refusal to submit their electoral records to the Venezuelan supreme court, when summoned to do so because they do not recognize the constitutional order in Venezuela. Legally, there was no way for them to claim victory even if they had legitimately won.

    Post-election protest demonstrations were predictable. The opposition, which has a long history of anti-democratic street violence, threatened them if it lost. HRW characterizes the riots as mostly peaceful, while accusing the government of responding with a “brutal crackdown.”

    Yet the widespread damage of public property such as health clinics, government offices, schools, and transportation facilities – along with murders of government security personnel and party members – were inconvenient facts entirely ignored in HRW’s over 100-page report. Such actions can hardly be called peaceful, nor blamed on the government.

    A cure worse than the disease

     For argument’s sake, let’s not contest HRW’s claim that the books were cooked in Venezuela’s presidential election in order to examine the NGO’s solution.

    On April 29, the US State Department celebrated 100 days of “America first” accomplishments, highlighting the revocation of oil importing licenses and the establishment of potential secondary tariffs on countries that still dare to import Venezuelan oil.

    The next day, HRW’s report demanded even harsher punishment. Frustrated that the “Trump administration appears to be prioritizing cooperation” with Venezuela, HRW called for expanding sanctions and deepening pressure. And this is despite Washington’s plans to further maximize its maximum pressure campaign to achieve regime change in Caracas.

    Specifically, HRW urged the US and other states to “counter Maduro’s domestic carrot-and-stick incentives that reward abusive authorities and security forces, making them loyal to the government” by imposing even more “targeted sanctions.”

    Further compounding the impact of individual targeted sanctions is the reality of overcompliance. Even individual sanctions end up contributing to collective punishment. A 2019 statement by HRW recognized that “despite language excluding transactions to purchase food and medicines, these sanctions could exacerbate the already dire humanitarian situation in Venezuela due to the risk of overcompliance.”

    But now the 1,028 existing unilateral coercive measures (the correct term for sanctions) on Venezuela by the US and its allies apparently aren’t enough for these sadists.

    HRW admits that these coercive measures have “failed to make a dent” in correcting what they see as bad behavior. Why then persist if ineffective? Perhaps, because they’re very effective in punishing errant states and warning others.

    HRW also lobbied for yet more foreign intervention in Venezuela’s internal affairs: “Foreign governments should expand support for Venezuelan civil society groups… a sustained and principled international response is crucial.”

    Selective sanctimony on sanctions

    HRW criticized the Trump administration’s sanctions targeting the International Criminal Court (ICC) because they might potentially “chill” the tribunal’s ardor to go after Venezuela.

    Revealingly, this particular HRW report shows no concern that Trump’s sanctions might stifle the court’s prosecution of the US/Zionist genocide in Palestine. What HRW is instead focused on is having the court “prioritize its investigation” of Venezuela.

    HRW never mentions in this report that the US does not accept the ICC’s jurisdiction over itself. In other words, this report fails to criticize Washington’s evading accountability as long as the ICC can be weaponized against Venezuela.

    The ICC has, in fact, been blatantly politicized regarding Venezuela. Caracas has requested in vain that the ICC investigate US coercive measures that have caused over 100,000 civilian deaths in Venezuela, constituting a crime against humanity.

     The HRW report is sanctimonious about the “brave efforts of [opposition] Venezuelans who risked—and often suffered,” but is callously unsympathetic regarding the devastating effects on the population at large of the very measures it is advocating.

    HRW laments the US administration’s cutting funding to astroturf “humanitarian and human rights groups” promoting regime change in Venezuela. But it does not express sympathy for ordinary Venezuelans suffering economic hardship, food insecurity, or lack of medicine due to broader US sanctions. Notably absent from this report is acknowledgement of the humanitarian consequences of Washington’s unilateral coercive measures.

    The human rights organization’s primary critique of the enormous humanitarian toll of the unilateral coercive measures is that they have “failed to produce a transition.”

    Sanctions kill

     The HRW report frames US sanctions as supposedly justified efforts to enforce imperial restrictions on Venezuela and not as part of a regime-change hybrid war.

    As Venezuelanalysis reported: “US economic sanctions against Venezuela are a violent and illegal form of coercion, seeking regime change through collective punishment of the civilian population.” Investigations by the UN’s high commissioner for human rights found “sanctions that threaten people’s lives and health need to be halted.”

    Even HRW’s own World Report 2022 cited UN findings that sanctions had exacerbated Venezuela’s economic and social crises. Yet HRW apparently considers the burden warranted, which invokes Madeleine Albright’s infamous defense of Iraq sanctions: “we think the price is worth it.”

     Follow-the-flag humanitarianism

     HRW has long maintained a “revolving door” relationship with the US government personnel. The organization is also significantly associated with George Soros and his Open Society Foundations. UN Independent Expert and human rights scholar Alfred de Zayas describes how HRW and similar NGOs have become part of what he calls the “human rights industry,” instrumentalizing human rights for geopolitical agendas.

    Unilateral coercive measures are a major component of the US imperial tool kit. But HRW opportunistically fails to note that such sanctions are illegal under international law. In fact, Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective penalties against protected persons.

    As Mark Weisbrot with the Center for Economic and Policy Research observes, HRW has “ignored or paid little attention to terrible crimes that are committed in collaboration with the US government in this hemisphere,” while it “has repeatedly and summarily dismissed or ignored sincere and thoroughly documented criticisms of its conflicts of interest.”

     HRW recognizes that the coercive measures against Venezuela, which impact the general populace, have not succeeded in imposing an administration subservient to Washington – what they euphemistically call “restoration of democracy.” So why continue advocating more sanctions and support for Venezuela’s far-right opposition? The answer is that Washington’s NGO epigones talk “reform” but aim at fomenting insurrectionary regime change.

    The post Human Rights Watch Outflanks Trump first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Cuban Exodus

    So long as Cubans’ rage and despair remain, the government cannot afford to curtail emigration. And there is no end in sight.

    This post was originally published on Dissent Magazine.

  • They Are Making Venezuela’s Economy Scream

    Before 2017, Venezuela relied on its oil revenue for 95% of its export earnings. Moreover, oil revenue has been critical for financing the government’s progressive social agenda. This loss has caused inflation in Venezuela to soar: according to official Central Bank of Venezuela numbers from 2019, the highest inter-annual inflation rate was 344,510%, meaning prices increased by a factor of 3,400 in a single year. This is an unimaginable disaster for any country and an enormous strain on the population.

    While Venezuela has been under attack by the US government and its allies since Hugo Chávez’s first election in 1998, Trump’s 2017 Executive Order 13808 set off a new wave of financial sanctions that denied Venezuela access to international credit markets, severely undermining its ability to sell oil abroad.

    The post They Are Making Venezuela’s Economy Scream appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • US Abduction Of 2-Year-Old Venezuelan Girl Constitutes Human Trafficking

    In a statement issued this Monday, April 28, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil condemned the separation of a 2-year-old Venezuelan child from her mother as an act of “extreme violence,” calling it “absolutely unacceptable and unthinkable in the 21st century.”

    The statement emphasized that this incident reflects a broader pattern of migrant rights violations, directly contravening international frameworks such as the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child and the United Nations Charter. “This represents yet another egregious case of family separation, forcibly removing a child from their emotional and biological bonds,” it declared.

    The post US Abduction Of 2-Year-Old Venezuelan Girl Constitutes Human Trafficking appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Venezuela’s Journey Toward Real Democracy

    The term “democracy” triggers different reactions when it comes to Venezuela. For local far-right forces, democracy has been nonexistent since 1998 and can only be restored by dismantling everything that evokes popular power, self-determination and social justice. 

    In the hawkish eyes of the United States, “democracy” is an excuse to punish sovereign nations with economic sanctions and blockades until regime change is achieved. Whether elections are fair and free is irrelevant for US “democratic” standards, as are human rights abuses, as long as a country complies with US interests.

    The post Venezuela’s Journey Toward Real Democracy appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

  • For-profit jailer Bukele targets Venezuela on Washington’s behalf


    This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • US Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Further Deportations Of Venezuelans

    The US Supreme Court temporarily blocked the deportation of Venezuelans who are detained in North Texas under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a controversial 18th-century military law.

    In a brief order issued on Saturday, April 19, the US Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration not to expel migrants held at the Bluebonnet Detention Center “until further order of this court.”

    The ruling comes just hours after a federal appeals court similarly blocked the US government from moving forward with eliminating temporary legal protection, better known as TPS, for some 350,000 Venezuelan migrants, who would be at risk of imminent deportation.

    The post US Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Further Deportations Of Venezuelans appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Latin America Three Months into the Trumpocalypse

    Nobody is complaining anymore about Latin America and the Caribbean being neglected by the hegemon to the north. The Trump administration is contending with it on multiple fronts: prioritizing “massive deportations,” halting the “flood of drugs,” combatting “threats to US security,” and stopping other countries from “ripping us off” in trade. The over 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine is alive and on steroids.

    But has Washington taken a sharp right turn, qualitatively departing from past practices, or simply intensified an already manifest imperial trajectory? And, from a south-of-the-border perspective, to what extent are the perceived problems “made in the USA”?

    Externalization of problems

    The view from Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is that the Yankees have a problem; they project their issues onto their southern neighbors. An extreme example is Barack Obama’s baseless declaration in 2015 of a “national emergency” – subsequently reaffirmed by each successive president – because of the “unusual and extraordinary threat” posed by Venezuela.

    From Washington’s imperial perspective, problems are seen as coming from the south with the US as the victim when, as in the case of Venezuela’s national security, reality is inverted.

    Another case in point: migration is seen as a supply-side conundrum; “they” are “invading us.” In practice, deliberate past US policy (Trump has largely ended these practices) encouraged migration from Venezuela, Nicaragua, and especially Cuba to weaken their governments.

    More to the point, as has been admitted by some of the perpetrators, the main driver for migrants to leave their homes and face great risks in transit are not pull factors, such as a purported love of “our democracy,” but push factors. These range from capitalist exploitation of Central America’s Northern Triangle to the impoverishment caused by US unilateral coercive measures in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

    As for drugs, trenchantly pointed out by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to her US counterpart, the US itself harbors cartels, is the largest narcotic consumer market, exports the majority of armaments used by drug barons and hosts money laundering banks.

    Rather than “ripping off” Uncle Sam in trade, the LAC region runs lopsided deficits in service industries, a trade benefit conveniently ignored when Trump’s tariffs were calculated. US firms also benefit from LAC as a low-cost source of inputs and assembly for their supply chains. The imperialist narrative conveniently omits crediting its access to strategic resources at favorable terms and the dominance of US firms and dollar-based finance. Various trade agreements, which Trump treats as giveaways, in practice favor US corporations. Unequal exchange is established as a key factor in underdevelopment of the LAC region, despite Trump’s assertion of the opposite.

    Finally, gang violence is another US export: literally so in the case of the notorious Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 gangs which originated in Los Angeles and whose members were deported by US authorities to El Salvador.

    Migration becomes “invasion”

    Biden’s ambivalence on migration, tightening aspects of border controls but encouraging more than half a million Latinos to enter the US via “humanitarian parole,” gave Trump an opening. He sold his working class base the notion that migrants were not just taking US jobs but were “criminals.” His populist argument appears to side with US workers, but doesn’t impact the corporate elites who support him.

    In fact, deportations have not increased, but are now much higher profile and overtly political. So Venezuelans are arbitrarily characterized as gang members and sent to prison in El Salvador. Deportations to other countries have involved waving the big stick: supposed “allies,” Costa Rica and Panama, have even been obliged to accept asylum seekers from elsewhere, rejected and abandoned by Washington.

    The “war on drugs” risks becoming a literal war

    Trump’s anti-drug policy has maintained a decades-long focus on supply-side enforcement with a renewed emphasis on deploying military assets to attack cartels and interdict drug shipments.

    What has distinguished his approach is not so much the policy itself, but the blunt and often unilateral manner in which it is being implemented. Support is overtly conditioned on political alignment with Washington’s objectives.

    So troops are deployed on the southern border and Mexico’s cartels are threatened with drone attacks, with no promise to consult Mexican authorities. Alleged members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang are treated as terrorists, and wartime legislation is deployed against them as supposed agents of a narco-terrorist state.

    Hemispheric security

    The focus of current US policy in the region is countering Chinese influence, particularly Beijing’s investments in infrastructure, telecommunications, and energy. “The expanding role of the Chinese Communist Party in the Western Hemisphere,” Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio complains, “threatens US interests.”

    Yet while the US approaches geopolitics as a “zero-sum game” in which its military dominance is a priority, China professes to follow the principles of “equality and mutual benefit,” offering carrots rather than waving a stick.

    China’s economic penetration has been spectacular, making it the region’s second largest trading partner and the first in South America itself. However, Trump has succeeded in forcing Panama to leave China’s Belt and Road Initiative, while Brazil and Mexico, the region’s two largest economies have yet to join, presumably due to US pressure. In Peru, users of a major port developed by China may be threatened by special tariffs.

    The US International Development Finance Corporation’s budget is slated to double. According to Foreign Policy, it should be strengthened still further to combat China’s influence. However, China has an enormous head start, and the US will struggle to catch up, especially as its other development agency, USAID, has had its budget decimated.

    Militarily, Trump has increased the visibility and scope of US security operations in the region. Joint exercises, port calls, and programs like the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative continue to be ramped up. While Latin American leaders at April’s CELAC summit called for the region to be a “zone of peace,” Trump threatens war:

    • Panama has been strong-armed into accepting a greater US military presence, in what has been dubbed a camouflaged invasion.
    • Ecuador’s President Noboa is accepting US military help as well as the private mercenaries of Blackwater’s Erik Prince, in his own “war” against gang violence.
    • Marco Rubio has warned Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro that “we have a big navy, and it can get almost anywhere,” threatening to deploy forces in neighboring Guyana.

    NATO’s presence in the region has been growing with Colombia already a “partner” and Argentina working to become one. The latter’s collaboration is vital to the West’s military role in the South Atlantic. Its president Milei has become tellingly ambivalent about his country’s claim to the British-occupied Malvinas islands, which are key to strategic dominance.

    War by other means – tariffs and sanctions

    Washington’s enormous machinery of unilateral coercive measures (aka “sanctions”), now total 15,373 (of which over 5,000 were imposed in Trump’s first term). The US blockade of Cuba has been tightened, and it is even attempting to throttle Cuba’s extraordinarily effective and popular medical missions abroad. Rubio issued an ominous warning: “The moment of truth is arriving, Cuba is literally collapsing.”

    Sanctions against Venezuela have also been strengthened, despite Trump initially hinting at a more collaborative approach. Nicaragua has so far evaded new sanctions, but is threatened both with exclusion from the regional trade agreement (CAFTA) which benefits its exports, and with the loss of its remaining multilateral source of development finance.

    The region escaped relatively lightly from Trump’s “Liberation Day” declarations, with a new, minimum 10 percent tariff. Mexico still faces heavy tariff barriers and higher “reciprocal” tariffs on some other LAC countries – Guyana, Venezuela and Nicaragua – have been postponed until July.

    Prospects for LAC unity or sowing seeds in the sea

    Fragmentation of regional unity has been a long-standing US policy objective. Trump, in particular, openly disdains multilateralism, which is really another term for opposition to US imperialism.

    Left-leaning electoral victories in Mexico (2018), Chile and Honduras (2021), and Colombia and Brazil (2022) have bolstered regional unity. This so-called Pink Tide added to the successes and leadership of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela and their respective socialist revolutions.

    But upcoming elections in Chile and Honduras (November), and Colombia and Brazil (both 2026) could significantly reverse those gains. Continuation of leftist rule in Bolivia after this coming August’s election looks dim, given bitter splits in its ranks. In a reportedly fraudulent election in Ecuador, the leftist challenge to the incumbent Noboa appears to have failed. However, current rightist hegemony in Peru’s 2026 election could be challenged.

    Foreign Affairs predicts: “Widespread frustration over organized crime throughout the hemisphere, as well as social changes such as the spread of evangelical Christianity, mean that right-wing leaders may be favored to win upcoming elections.”

    The future for progressive unity is therefore uncertain and has constrained LAC’s response to the Trumpocalypse. The Organization of American States will not question US imperialism. The alternative regional mechanism, CELAC, was set up without Washington’s participation, in part to rectify the OAS’s deficiencies. A broad, anti-imperialist statement drafted by Honduran President Xiomara Castro for its recent summit was heavily watered down by Argentina and Paraguay, who then rejected even the weakened version (Nicaragua also rejected it, for the opposite reasons). CELAC ended up decrying sanctions and calling for LAC to be a zone of peace, but failed to explicitly support Cuba or Venezuela against US aggression.

    The multilateral body with a potentially strong but as yet unclear regional influence is the BRICS, of which Brazil is a founding member and now has associates Cuba and Bolivia. Other LAC countries are keen to join. But (in another show of regional disunity, this time on the left) Venezuela’s and Nicaragua’s recent applications were blocked by Brazil.

    From Biden to Trump – a bridge or a break?

    Independent of the theatre surrounding Trump’s performance style – inflammatory language, threats, and public ultimatums – his underlying policies are mostly aligned with the bipartisan consensus that has long guided US policy for the region. These include support for market-oriented reforms, militarized security assistance, antagonism to leftist governments, and containment of Chinese influence.

    When the actual consequences are examined, what might be called the “Biden bridge” underlies, at least in part, Trump’s distinctively confrontational practices. For instance, in March 2020, Trump placed a $15M bounty on the head of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Biden reciprocated, upping the ante to $25M in January 2025. Or, compare the number of deportees in Trump’s term to-date in 2025 to a comparable period in 2024, when Biden booted out even more migrants.

    Under Trump’s first administration, Biden’s interim tenure, and now Trump’s return, deportation machinery remained largely intact, enforcement funding stayed robust, and private detention centers prospered. In effect, Biden normalized the enforcement-heavy model, just without Trump’s nativist overtones.

    In short, Washington’s regional policy has become increasingly shaped by institutional inertia and bipartisan enforcement consensus, rather than sharply divergent ideological commitments.

    That is not to say the policy has been static. In fact, the trajectory has been precipitously to the right. Warning that the “anti-leftist component of Trumpism can’t be overstated.” Latin America analyst Steve Ellner predicts, “when threats and populism lose their momentum, the anti-communist hawks may get their way.”

    So, there is a “Biden-bridge” in the sense of the continuation of a trajectory of increasingly aggressive imperialism from one president to the next. But there is also a “bridge too far” aspect, of which dumping migrants in El Salvador’s pay-by-the-head prison is (so far) the most extreme example.

    If there is an upside to Trump’s return to the Oval Office, it is that he unapologetically exposes the core imperialist drive for naked domination, making explicit the coercive foundations of US hegemony in the region. While Trump pays scant regard to international commitments, disregarding trade treaties, his predecessors – Biden, Obama, Clinton, and Bush – all promoted the “rules-based order” to reflect US priorities, conveniently replacing international law.

    Trump’s policies have been a stark amplification of enduring US priorities. They have revealed the structural limits of regional autonomy under Yankee hegemony, especially as Trump’s new territorial ambitions stretch from Greenland to Panama. The strongarm underpinnings of policies, previously cloaked in the hypocritical language of partnership, now take the form of mafia-style threats.

    The post Latin America Three Months into the Trumpocalypse first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Latin America Three Months Into Trump

    Nobody is complaining anymore about Latin America and the Caribbean being neglected by the hegemon to the north. The Trump administration is contending with it on multiple fronts: prioritizing “massive deportations,” halting the “flood of drugs,” combatting “threats to US security,” and stopping other countries from “ripping us off” in trade. The over 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine is alive and on steroids.

    But has Washington taken a sharp right turn, qualitatively departing from past practices, or simply intensified an already manifest imperial trajectory? And, from a south-of-the-border perspective, to what extent are the perceived problems “made in the USA”?

    The post Latin America Three Months Into Trump appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Trump Targets Migrants Amid Human Trafficking Allegations

    Donald Trump has launched an aggressive campaign that targets Latino migrants – particularly Venezuelans – as scapegoats in a broader geopolitical agenda. Bolstered through a controversial alliance with the Salvadoran president, Trump has overseen mass deportations, detentions in Guantánamo Bay and El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, and invoked 18th-century war powers to justify these actions.

    Trump’s brutal attacks on the working class have been supplemented by the systematic demonization of immigrants – many of whom are themselves working class. During his electoral campaign, Trump not only promised large-scale deportations but, pandering to a far-right base, vilified migrants to unprecedented degrees.

    The post Trump Targets Migrants Amid Human Trafficking Allegations appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • 19-Year-Old Was Not Whom ICE Was Looking For. Now He’s in an El Salvador Prison.

    As U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen headed to El Salvador on Wednesday morning to demand the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, some social media users urged him to find out more about the status of another young man who immigration agents reportedly wrongly sent to the Central American country’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center — despite the fact that he had no criminal record.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Trump Targets Migrants amid Human Trafficking Allegation

    Donald Trump has launched an aggressive campaign that targets Latino migrants – particularly Venezuelans – as scapegoats in a broader geopolitical agenda. Bolstered through a controversial alliance with the Salvadoran president, Trump has overseen mass deportations, detentions in Guantánamo Bay and El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, and invoked 18th-century war powers to justify these actions.

    Trump’s brutal attacks on the working class have been supplemented by the systematic demonization of immigrants – many of whom are themselves working class. During his electoral campaign, Trump not only promised large-scale deportations but, pandering to a far-right base, vilified migrants to unprecedented degrees.

    In his 2015 campaign, Trump vowed to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. And upon returning to the presidency in 2025, Trump again promised to round up millions in what he boasted would be the largest deportation operation in US history.

    However, as the record shows, immigrant deportations are, unfortunately, a bipartisan project. Contrary to Trump’s grandiose rhetoric, once in office for his first term, he deported less than one million rather than the 11 million he claimed would be expelled. That was less than the 1.6 million evicted by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama in a his first 4 years in office. While Democrat Joe Biden still holds the record for the most deportations in a year, Trump is determined to beat it.

    To this end, Trump and his ultra-conservative Project 2025 confederates would like to end birthright citizenship, which would disproportionately affect nearly 65 million Latinos in the US. Arbitrary arrests, deportations, and the revocation of documentation – even for legal residents – are escalating daily, with Latino immigrants being the primary target in operations rife with racial profiling.

    Trump is also trying to terminate the Humanitarian Parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV), although the revocation has been halted pending legal proceedings.​ Ironically, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, once a vocal advocate for Cuban immigrants, now spearheads policies stripping them of legal protection.

    Trump’s Fictional Gang Scare

    Trump’s demonization of migrants affords him a patina of populism by falsely posing as a supporter of US workers erroneously threatened by aliens. Of course, Elon Musk’s buddy is no friend of the working class.

    There is another more deeply political underpinning to Trump’s campaign related to Venezuela. Trump has falsely accused some Venezuelan migrants of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang on the flimsiest of reasons such as a tattoo in support of a football club. Thus immigrants, especially from Venezuela, are conflated with criminality. In fact, studies show US immigrants do not commit crime at a higher rate than the native-born.

    In a highly redacted document, the US designated the Tren de Aragua to be a “transnational criminal organization” (TCO) in December 2024. This came after the Venezuelan government largely dismantled the gang in September 2023 at Tocorón Penitentiary, demonstrating the government’s antagonistic relationship to the gang. But its existence was being politically weaponized by the US.

    On his first day in office, Trump initiated the process of designating the gang as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), legally making it a crime to provide it material support. In so doing, a circle of conflation was being constructed from migrant, to criminal, to gang member, and then the big leap to terrorist.

    The final link in the circle of conflation was Trump’s invocation on March 15 of the Alien Enemies Act accusing the Venezuelan government of an “invasion” of the US by the Tren de Aragua.

    A media campaign – spearheaded by Trump in concert with far-right Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and US senators like Ted Cruz– has propagated the myth of a Venezuelan government-backed Tren de Aragua cartel flooding the US with criminals. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has described this as “the biggest lie ever told about our country.”  To wit, El Pais verified the gang is “without the capacity to be a national security problem” in the US. The New York Times demonstrated that the Tren de Aragua is “not invading America.” And Trump’s own US Intelligence Community assessment concluded that the gang was not acting on the Venezuelan government’s orders.

    Alien Enemies Act

     Trump’s invocation of the Alien and Enemies Act serves dual purposes. It is a legal pretext to justify mass expulsions. At the same time, it is a salvo in Washington’s renewed “maximum pressure” regime-change campaign against Caracas.

    The application of the Alien Enemies Act for deporting individuals based on alleged gang affiliations is unprecedented and has raised legal and ethical concerns. While being adjudicated in the courts, the archaic 1789 war-time legislation is being used to target Venezuelans and Nicaraguans, even though the US is not at war with these countries…at least not officially. Nevertheless, some have been sent to detention facilities like the notorious internment camp in Guantánamo Bay.

    The administration’s lack of transparency regarding deportation criteria has been staggering, as has its blatant disregard for due process. Many deportees were detained without evidence, arrest warrants, or probable cause – let alone justification for imprisonment.

    The degrading treatment of detainees in Guantánamo has drawn wide condemnation as has the administration’s obsessive drive to deport Latinos – whether undocumented, temporary, or permanent.

    Migrants Vanish into Trump’s Offshore Prison

    Trump is also shipping Venezuelan migrants and lesser numbers of Salvadorians to El Salvador’s CECOT prison, a so-called “Terrorism Confinement Centre,” where conditions are subhuman. No visitation, recreation, or education are allowed at the extremely overcrowded facility. Lack of medical care and abuse are rampart, with reports of over 300 deaths in custody, some showing clear signs of violence.

    The Trump administration struck a deal with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, paying $6 million to detain 238 Venezuelans branded “foreign terrorists.”

    Meanwhile, Bukele boasted about the financial benefits of the arrangement. His Ocio Cero (zero leisure) prison labour program will, he said, contribute to the economic self-sustainability of the prison system, which critics say is tantamount to human trafficking.

    Trump and Bukele both falsely claim to have no power to bring back a mistakenly deported Salvadoran legal immigrant. Kilmar Armando Abrego García is now held at CECOT, even though a US judge ordered his return and despite the US Supreme Court’s ruling to do so. Instead, Trump and Bukele declared their intention to expand the scheme. Trump floated deporting even US citizens to CECOT, with Bukele responding: “Yeah, we’ve got space.”

    BPR (Bloque de Resistencia y Rebeldía Popular), a Salvadoran human rights organization denounced the Trump-Bukele pact as “arbitrary and dehumanizing,” violating international law and making El Salvador complicit in Trump’s criminalizing immigration policies. They demanded the Supreme Court nullify the detentions, arguing they violate constitutional protections against foreign judicial overreach.

    Venezuela’s government has also taken action. Attorney General Tarek Williams Saab petitioned El Salvador’s Supreme Court for habeas corpus relief for detained Venezuelans. President Maduro condemned the deportations as kidnappings and sought intervention from the U.N. by contacting Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

    President Maduro has vowed to fight for the repatriation of every wrongfully detained Venezuelan. This struggle must be joined by the international solidarity movement, demanding the immediate release of all unjustly imprisoned migrants.

    The post Trump Targets Migrants amid Human Trafficking Allegation first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Communal Feminism: A Conversation With Moira Blanco Cardona

    Broadly speaking, the project dates back to 2018, when we began promoting the idea of anti-patriarchal communes—calling for the gradual dismantling of patriarchy within communities and, by extension, across society. Then, in 2019, the proposal for a national organization emerged: the Communard Union. The Union was conceived as a political and social instrument to unite and integrate the communal movement into a single organization with a socialist horizon.

    The Communard Union was born with the aim of regrouping and promoting the communal movement at a time when it had been rendered practically invisible.

    The post Communal Feminism: A Conversation With Moira Blanco Cardona appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Venezuelan authorities arrest 2 journalists in connection with crime report

    Bogotá, April 11, 2025—Venezuelan authorities should immediately release journalist Nakary Mena Ramos and her camera operator husband, Gianni González, drop all charges against them, and ensure they can do their jobs without fear of reprisal, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday.

    “The Venezuelan government’s crackdown on the press has persisted for months, intensifying following the July 28 disputed reelection of President Nicolás Maduro,” said CPJ’s Latin America program coordinator, Cristina Zahar, in São Paulo. “Public scrutiny is a crucial component of democratic accountability and a free press, and Nakary Mena Ramos and Gianni González must be freed without condition.”

    A criminal court on April 10 ordered Mena, a reporter with the independent news site Impacto Venezuela, to remain in detention at a women’s prison on the outskirts of the capital city of Caracas on preliminary charges of “hate crimes” and “publishing fake news,” according to the National Press Workers Union (SNTP).  

    Impacto Venezuela posted that Mena, 28, and González, who is being held at El Rodeo II prison near Caracas, were denied access to private lawyers but assigned public defenders.

    A pro-government journalist criticized Mena’s report on rising crime in Caracas – a sensitive issue for the government –a day before she and González went missing on April 8 near a public square in downtown Caracas. Minister Diosdado Cabello has also criticized the report, calling it “a campaign to instill fear in people.” 

    Impacto Venezuela defended Mena’s report as based on interviews with average citizens and supported with government information.

    The arrests of Mena and González come amid a sharp rise in oppression against Venezuelan journalists by Maduro’s authoritarian government, which has created a heightened environment of fear, stigmatization, and criminalization of independent voices. 

    CPJ’s calls to the attorney general’s office in Caracas did not receive any reply.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Mexico’s Sheinbaum Calls On CELAC To End Blockade Of Cuba And Venezuela

    At the 9th Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum condemned economic blockades against any country and singled out those imposed on Cuba and Venezuela by the United States.

    “We reject, as Mexico has historically done, trade sanctions and blockades…” said Sheinbaum. “No to the blockade of Cuba. No to the blockade of Venezuela,” the Mexican president stated during her speech at the summit, held in Honduras, on Wednesday, April 9.

    The post Mexico’s Sheinbaum Calls On CELAC To End Blockade Of Cuba And Venezuela appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Venezuela, 2002: When the people overturned a coup

    These were days of marches.

    Huge marches. 

    That wrapped themselves around the capital, Caracas

    And, in particular, the higher-class eastern side of the city.

    It was April 2002.

    President Hugo Chavez had been elected four years before. 

    He’d promised a revolution. A Bolivarian revolution—named after South America’s greatest Independence leader, Simon Bolivar.

    And Chavez decreed dozens of laws hoping to turn the tides on the concentration of wealth in the country. They would hand large estates over to small farmers and redirect the profit from the state oil company to social services.

    But the businesses and the elites did not want Chavez’s revolution.

    Venezuela’s Chamber of Commerce, Fedecamaras, led strikes, marches, and protests.

    And now, those marching in the streets promised to take down the government. 

    Some even carried the American flag.

    But as they approached the presidential palace toward the west of the city, shots began to ring down upon them.

    Snipers sat high on rooftops firing into the crowd. 

    One person fell. And then another. 

    18 deaths. Almost 70 injured.

    The news cameras captured the chaos. The people cowering. 

    They filmed people being carried away. 

    They said the supporters and troops of president Hugo Chavez were firing on unarmed protesters.

    This was the message spread on the mainstream TV channels across Venezuela and abroad.

    The message that spread like wildfire.

    But those carrying out this bloodbath were not the supporters and troops of president Hugo Chavez.

    They were members of the metropolitan police. And they were carrying out a coup.

    Rebelling officers in the Venezuelan military used the killings as the pretext to detain the president

    And accuse him of ordering the massacre.

    The leaders of the coup said there was a vacuum of power. They said Chavez had resigned. 

    Pedro Carmona, the head of Venezuela’s Chamber of Commerce, swore himself in as the de facto president.

    Flanked by supporters, Carmona, dissolved the National Assembly, the Supreme Court. 

    He suspended the attorney general, elected mayors and governors.

    Carmona and his allies would rule the government on their own.

    His de facto government led a violent witch hunt after Chavez government officials.

    Meanwhile, the mainstream press looked away and played cartoon reruns.

    But the people were not having it. 

    Those from Venezuela’s poorest communities had seen their lives improve under the short four years since the election of president Hugo Chavez.

    And they had seen their hopes dashed by the unelected leaders of the country’s business class and ruling elites.

    So they descended from the hillsides of the poorest communities across Caracas and amassed outside of Miraflores, the presidential palace. 

    They refused to recognize Pedro Carmona’s de facto government. 

    They would not leave until Chavez had returned.

    And that is what happened…

    On April 13, Chavez’s presidential guard expelled Carmona and the coup leaders from the presidential palace. Pressure from both the people and loyal military forces led to the collapse of the coup government. It was unprecedented. The people and the military united together to defend their democratically elected leader. 

    They rescued president Chavez

    Who was flown back to Miraflores and returned to power.

    The people would not be silent.

    The people had overturned a coup.

    ###

    Hi folks. Im your host Michael Fox.

    Today in Venezuela, April 13, is remembered as El Dia de la Dignidad, the Day of Dignity. A day of grassroots resistance.

    Some people in Venezuela are still confused about what happened between April 11 and April 13, 2002. The media manipulations was so great that it left a tremendous legacy of confusion.

    But there have been in-depth investigations, including the documentaries, The Revolution Will Not be Televised and Llaguno Bridge: Keys to a Massacre. This last film, I actually helped to translate and narrated into English more than 20 years ago. If you are interested in watching or learning more, I’ll add links in the show notes. 

    This is episode 19 of Stories of Resistance, a new podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times.

    If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, leave a review, or tell a friend. You can support my work and find exclusive pictures and background information on my patreon… patreon.com/mfox.

    As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

    On April 13, Chavez’s presidential guard expelled the coup leaders and returned Chavez to power. 

    Pressure from both the people and loyal military forces led to the collapse of the coup government. The people and the military united together to defend their democratically elected leader.

    If you’re interested in more background, you can check out the following documentaries:

    The Revolution Will Not be Televised (2003)

    Llaguno Bridge: Keys to a Massacre (2004): Host Michael Fox helped to translate and narrate this documentary in English.
    In English: https://vimeo.com/40502430
    In Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ9jE1c0XPE

    This is episode 19 of Stories of Resistance — a new podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

    If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

    Written and produced by Michael Fox.

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • Maduro Declares Economic Emergency Against US Tariff War

    Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro signed an economic emergency decree on Tuesday, April 8, during a televised meeting with telecommunications and economic leaders. He framed the move as a response to what he called a US-led “tariff war” destabilizing global trade systems, alongside the revival of the “maximum pressure” strategy aimed at suffocating Venezuela’s economy.

    The decree, pending approval by the National Assembly, seeks to bolster Venezuela’s economy amid escalating international tensions and US aggression.

    President Maduro accused the US of dealing a “definitive and total blow” to international trade institutions, including the World Trade Organization (WTO), in an effort to impose “single hegemonic dominance” over global economic rules.

    The post Maduro Declares Economic Emergency Against US Tariff War appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Meet The DC Think Tanks Impoverishing Masses Of Latin Americans

    Sanctions are a form of hybrid warfare that harms or even kills the target populations at little cost to the country imposing them. In Latin America alone, US sanctions (correctly known as “unilateral coercive measures”) have killed at least 100,000 Venezuelans. The US blockade of Cuba has been so destructive that one in ten Cubans have left the country. Sanctions have similarly deprived Nicaraguans of development aid worth an estimated $3 billion since 2018, hitting projects such as new water supplies for rural areas.

    Who formulates these devastating sanctions, covers up their real effects, works with politicians to put them into operation and promotes them in corporate media?

    The post Meet The DC Think Tanks Impoverishing Masses Of Latin Americans appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Meet the DC Think Tanks Impoverishing Masses of Latin Americans

    These top Washington think tanks are lobbying lawmakers for sadistic sanctions on some of the hemisphere’s poorest countries while raking in millions from corporations and arms makers.

    Sanctions are a form of hybrid warfare that harms or even kills the target populations at little cost to the country imposing them. In Latin America alone, US sanctions (correctly known as “unilateral coercive measures”) have killed at least 100,000 Venezuelans. The US blockade of Cuba has been so destructive that one in ten Cubans have left the country. Sanctions have similarly deprived Nicaraguans of development aid worth an estimated $3 billion since 2018, hitting projects such as new water supplies for rural areas.

    Who formulates these devastating sanctions, covers up their real effects, works with politicians to put them into operation and promotes them in corporate media? In a perverse contrast with the poor communities hit by these policies, those doing the targeting are often well-paid employees of multi-million-dollar think tanks, heavily funded by the US or other Western-aligned governments and in many cases by arms manufacturers.

    A study in corruption: top think tank lobbyists and their funders

    Chief among these groups is the Wilson Center, which claims to simply provide policymakers with “nonpartisan counsel and insights on global affairs.” Boasting a $40-million budget, a third of which comes from the US government, the organization is headed by the former Administrator of USAID, Amb. Mark Green.

    In 2024, the Wilson Center boosted its efforts to meddle in Latin America with the creation of the “Iván Duque Center for Prosperity and Freedom,” naming its newest initiative for the wildly unpopular former Colombian president largely remembered for his violent crackdown on students protests, his obsessive focus on regime change in Venezuela, and intentionally crippling the 2016 peace deal meant to end decades of civil war in Colombia.

    While Duque has not produced much in the way of scholarship since joining the Wilson Center, he is living his best life at Miami nightclubs, where he’s frequently seen in as a guest DJ or regaling partiers with renditions of Spanish language rock hits.

    Ivan Duque, chair of the Wilson Center’s newest Latin America initiative, at a Miami nightclub

    As Mark Green explained, the Iván Duque Center “is a way for us to reaffirm both the importance of the Western Hemisphere in American foreign policy and the promise that democracy and market-centered economics must play in the region’s future.” When it comes to nations that oppose US foreign policy in the region, it’s also a way to fund their most vocal critics, who receive a stipend of $10,000/month upon being named Wilson Center fellows.

    Other Duque fellows include right-wing Venezuelan putschist Leopoldo López, who graduated from Kenyon College and Harvard Kennedy School, two schools closely linked to the CIA, before attempting to orchestrate coups against the Venezuelan government in 2002, 2014, and 2019.

    Also on the Wilson Center payroll is former US ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield, another regime change fanatic. Six years ago, when Caracas was undergoing its heaviest assault from US sanctions, Brownfield called for the US government to go even further, claiming that because Venezuelans “already suffer so much… that at this point maybe the best resolution would be to accelerate the collapse” of their country, while freely admitting that his preferred outcome would likely “produce a period of suffering of months or perhaps years.”

    The Wilson Center is far from alone in seeking to depose the authorities in Caracas. Another think tank, the Atlantic Council – which receives around $2 million annually from the US government and a similar amount from Pentagon contractors – has assembled a 24 member-strong Venezuela Working Group featuring a former State Department officials, a former member of the CITGO board, and multiple members of the so-called “interim Venezuelan government” which has been accused of stealing over $100 million in USAID funds.

    While the group ostensibly “informs policymakers in the United States, Europe, and Latin America on how to advance a long-term vision and action-oriented policies to foster democratic stability in Venezuela” and “promotes the restoration of democratic institutions in Venezuela,” in practice this means it’s fundamentally dedicated to ending the Maduro government.

    The Atlantic Council – a de facto influence peddling operation that functions as the unofficial think tank of NATO in Washington – aims for a similar result in Nicaragua. In an 2024 article titled, “Nicaragua is consolidating an authoritarian dynasty – Here’s how US economic pressure can counter it,” Atlantic Council researcher Brennan Rhodes called for “new punitive economic measures” on the Sandinista government which would heavily damage Nicaragua’s trade with the US, its main export market. The article betrayed no concern for the inevitable effects on hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans who rely on this trade, and whose earnings are likely a fraction of the average Atlantic Council employee.

    Among the oldest think tanks dedicated to US global dominance is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which boasts a 100-year “independent, nonpartisan” history of interfering in other countries. A review of its regularly-posted updates on Cuba shows the CFR well aware that the country’s economy, hammered by six decades of economic blockade by the US, had reached a new crisis point after Biden broke his promises to relieve intensified Trump-era sanctions. Yet in a 2021 CFR forum on how to bring down the Cuban government, US-based lawyer Jason Ian Poblete argued that the screw should be twisted still further: “We should bring all tools of state, every single one, to bear on this – not just sanctions.”

    Joining the Atlantic Council and the CFR in meddling in the affairs of the US’ southern neighbors is the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which claims it’s “dedicated to advancing practical ideas to address the world’s greatest challenges.” All three groups are listed on the Quincy Institute’s page showing the “Top 10 Think Tanks That Receive Funding from Pentagon Contractors.” Led by its Americas director, Ryan Berg, CSIS maintains active programs calling for sanctions in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. The group regularly holds events featuring US-backed opposition figures such as Venezuelan María Corina Machado and Nicaraguans Félix Maradiaga and Juan Sebastián Chamorro.

    Collectively, these groups dominate the US information sphere, saturating mainstream airwaves with complaints about the “authoritarian” socialist-leaning governments and demands for their ouster. On the off-chance that an official from one of the major think tanks is unavailable to comment, there are a number of smaller organizations ready to plug the gap.

    Enduring demand for deprivation

    One of the most vocal Beltway think tanks on Latin American affairs is the Inter-American Dialogue (“leadership for the Americas”), which works alongside CSIS and which is also heavily funded by arms contractors and the US government. Recently, as The Grayzone reported, CSIS’s Berg collaborated with the Dialogue’s Manuel Orozco – who moonlights as the Central America and the Caribbean chair of the US government’s Foreign Service Institute – to try to cut Nicaragua’s access to one of its only remaining sources of development loans.

    The Dialogue was assisted in this by two more think tanks. One is the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which bills itself as “one of the largest investigative journalism organizations in the world,” and which receives a full half of its budget from the US government. OCCRP works with similarly-funded Transparency International to engage in regime change operations by digging up dirt on foreign administrations targeted by Washington.

    Another group heavily involved in the sanctions industry is the Center for Global Development, whose name might seem ironic given that it provides a platform for those promoting deadly economic coercion. Its $25 million annual budget is funded mainly from sources such as the Gates Foundation, as well as several European governments. One of its directors, Dany Bahar, recently called for intensified sanctions against the Venezuelan government to stamp out the “temporary economic improvements” that the country is currently enjoying.

    Not all of the shady organizations seeking to impoverish Latin Americans in the name of hegemony are based in the US, however. Britain’s Chatham House, which relies heavily on the UK and US governments as well as arms manufacturers for its £20 million annual budget, also calls for the “restoring of democracy” in Venezuela, and often gives platforms to opponents of the governments in Caracas and Managua. Though skeptical of the efficacy of sanctions on Venezuela, it nevertheless concluded in Jan. 2025 that “restoring oil and gas sanctions” would be “logical” as long as the bans were part of “a broader diplomatic, coordinated multinational policy with specifically defined objectives.” The few criticisms it’s produced of the US embargo on Cuba have centered largely on its failure to affect regime change.

    Only one longstanding Beltway think tank, the Brookings Institution, has been willing to platform a slightly more skeptical view of sanctions. A 2018 op-ed from a Venezuelan economist published by Brookings explicitly counseled that sanctions on Venezuela “must be precise in order to spare innocent Venezuelans.” The year prior, Brookings argued that Trump’s sanctions against Cuba were unlikely to “put much of a near-term dent in the Cuban economy… [nor] reduce the influence of the armed forces,” but would have “a disproportionately negative impact on Cuba’s emerging private sector and on non-military employment in linkage industries—not to mention restricting Americans’ right to travel.” Broadly speaking, however, Brookings largely adheres to the trans-Atlantic consensus which demands the overthrow of the countries that former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton once smeared as the “troika of tyranny.”

    Lobbyists by another name

    Think tanks operate in a privileged space, gaining credibility from their links with the academic world while ensuring that their policymaking is closely geared to imperial needs. In the US alone there are more than 2,200 such organizations, some 400 of which specialize in foreign affairs. In recent years, they’ve become ubiquitous, with one-third of witnesses to the House Foreign Affairs Committee coming from think tanks – 80% of whom are paid by what Responsible Statecraft labels defense contractor “dark money.”

    These organizations’ collective groupthink on sanctions – particularly on those targeting Venezuela – give the lie to the “independence” they all claim. Political scientist Glenn Diesen opens his recent book, The Think Tank Racket, by noting that these institutions’ “job is to manufacture consent for the goals of their paymasters.” He says that these “policymaking elites… confirm their own biases rather than conduct real debates.” Once their work is done, they “retire to expensive restaurants where they slap each other on the back.”

    In an unusually self-critical piece explaining “Why Everyone Hates Think Tanks,” the Wilson Center’s Matthew Rojansky and the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Jeremy Shapiro explain that these organizations have become lobbyists by another name, whose donors simply want “veteran sharpshooters to fire their policy bullets.” As far back as 2006, journalist Thomas Frank observed that think tanks have “grown into a powerful quasi-academy with seven-figure budgets and phalanxes of ‘senior fellows’ and ‘distinguished chairs’.”

    This business model is only one aspect of the “racket.” As Diesen points out, and as Colombia’s Iván Duque center proves, think tanks provide a revolving door where out-of-office or failed politicians and their advisers can continue to influence public policy – while collecting a fat paycheck, too.

    The post Meet the DC Think Tanks Impoverishing Masses of Latin Americans first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Project In Venezuela Wants To Build Food Sovereignty

    A project to guarantee Venezuela’s food sovereignty: This is how the Patria Grande del Sur program is being treated by the Venezuelan government and the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST, in Portuguese). The initiative was launched two weeks ago and will use 180,000 hectares for food production based on agroecology.

    Rosana Fernandes has been coordinating the MST brigade in Venezuela for two months. The movement has been active in the country for 20 years and is now the central organization leading the project in southern Venezuela. She says it intends to occupy the territory of Vergareña and expand the food production carried out by small families in the region.

    The post Project In Venezuela Wants To Build Food Sovereignty appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Judge Blocks Trump Admin From Ending Deportation Protections of Venezuelans

    An effort by the Trump administration to unilaterally strip the temporary protected status (TPS) of approximately 350,000 Venezuelan refugees living in the United States was blocked Monday night by a federal court judge who described the order by Secretary of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as being “motivated by unconstitutional animus.” In a 78-page ruling, U.S.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Report: Trump Admin Deported Venezuelan Men Just Because They Had Tattoos

    The Trump administration seemingly labeled hundreds of Venezuelan people in the U.S. as gang members simply because they had tattoos, defying court orders earlier this month in order to send them to a torture center in El Salvador. Mother Jones reports in an article published Wednesday that numerous families of deported Venezuelan men say that their loved ones were targeted by Immigration and…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • El Tren De Aragua: The Defunct Venezuelan Band

    Until the designation as a “transnational criminal organization” by the US in 2024, the course of the now-disbanded group was narrated by a network of US think tanks, media and funds that constructed a discourse against the Bolivarian Revolution. This construction currently serves to justify sanctions, carry out mass deportations and feed the false idea of a failed state in Venezuela.

    In July 2024, when the US Treasury Department included Tren de Aragua on its list of transnational criminal organizations, it equated it with cartels such as Sinaloa or Jalisco Nueva Generación, which have a presence in more than 100 countries and have more than 45,000 members, associates and facilitators.

    The post El Tren De Aragua: The Defunct Venezuelan Band appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Law Firm Demands Release Of 238 Venezuelans Detained In El Salvador

    The prominent Grupo Ortega law firm filed a habeas corpus petition on Tuesday before El Salvador’s Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ). The legal action seeks the immediate release of 238 Venezuelan migrants currently detained at the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).

    In an official statement, the firm argued that these detentions may violate fundamental rights, including personal liberty, due process, and protection against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. They emphasized that these rights are protected under both El Salvador’s Constitution and international treaties ratified by the country.

    The post Law Firm Demands Release Of 238 Venezuelans Detained In El Salvador appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Trump’s Revival of the Alien Enemies Act Is at the Heart of the New McCarthyism

    On March 15, as U.S. President Donald Trump signed a proclamation — in secret — reactivating the Alien Enemies Act as a way to to speed up his mass deportation agenda, 70 activists from around the U.S. and Mexico gathered in Ajo, Arizona, in the heart of the Sonoran Desert. We were convened for the weekend by Witness at the Border, a grassroots group that I co-founded…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Venezuela: Migrant Repatriation Flights From The US To Resume

    Venezuelan migrant repatriation flights from the United States will restart on Sunday, March 23, as part of the Venezuelan government’s Return to the Homeland Program, aimed at addressing the challenges of forced migration since 2018. The announcement was made on Saturday, March 22, by Jorge Rodríguez, president of the Venezuelan National Assembly and head of the government delegation for the National Political Dialogues.

    Rodríguez stated that the resumption of the repatriation flights comes about through coordination with US authorities.

    The post Venezuela: Migrant Repatriation Flights From The US To Resume appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Trump’s Policy toward Latin America

    During his first term, President Donald Trump exerted a “maximum pressure” campaign against perceived U.S. adversaries in Latin America and elsewhere. Among other hardline policies, he levelled crippling sanctions against Venezuela—leading, ironically, to a mass exodus of Venezuelans to the United States—and reversed former President Barack Obama’s rapprochement with Cuba. But just how committed is Trump to fighting communism in Latin America at this particular moment—in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua? Today, it’s anyone’s guess.

    Trump’s recent threats against Panama, Canada, and Greenland, on top of his clash with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, take the spotlight off the “real enemies,” as usually defined by Washington. In that sense, Trump’s foreign policy actions in the first two months of his second administration are a far cry from his first, when regime change was the unmistakable goal.

    In sharp contrast to the rhetoric of his first administration, in his March 4 address to the Joint Session of Congress Trump made no reference to Nicolás Maduro, Miguel Díaz-Canel, or Daniel Ortega. It’s even unclear whether Trump will pursue the use of international sanctions, which he ratcheted up against Venezuela and Cuba in his first government. So far, Trump has indicated that his use of “tariffs as punishment” may be preferable to international sanctions, which, as one insider stated, the president “worries are causing countries to move away from the U.S. dollar.”

    Unlike Trump’s policies on immigration, trans rights, and taxation, his Latin American policy is plagued by vacillations and uncertainties, a sign of his deepening reliance on a transactional approach to foreign policy. The anti-communist hardliners in and outside of the Republican party are not pleased.

    The Venezuelan Pendulum

    Take Venezuela as an example. The Venezuelan opposition led by María Corina Machado had all the reason to be upbeat when Trump won in November and then chose Latin America hawk Marco Rubio as Secretary of State.

    “Sadly, Venezuela is governed by a narco-trafficking organization,” Rubio declared at his confirmation hearing, in which his appointment was unanimously ratified. He then said that “the Biden administration got played” when it negotiated with Maduro in late- 2022 and issued a license to Chevron, which is “providing billions of dollars into the regimes’ coffers.” With regard to Cuba, Rubio issued an ominous warning: “The moment of truth is arriving, Cuba is literally collapsing.”

    Events in Syria added to the euphoria on the right. Just days before Trump’s inauguration, Machado told the Financial Times, “Don’t you think [the generals supporting Maduro] look in the mirror and see the generals which Assad left behind?”

    But then came the friendly encounter between Trump’s envoy for special missions Richard Grenell and Maduro in Caracas in late January, when Maduro agreed to turn over six U.S. prisoners in Venezuela and facilitate the return of Venezuelan immigrants from the United States. Days later, the Biden-approved license with Chevron for exploiting Venezuelan oil, constituting a quarter of the nation’s total oil production, was allowed to roll over. At the same time, Grenell declared that Trump “does not want to make changes to the [Maduro] regime.”

    To complicate matters further, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would cancel Biden’s extension of Temporary Protected Status for over 300,000 Venezuelan immigrants, on grounds that “there are notable improvements in several areas such as the economy, public health, and crime that allow for these nationals to be safely returned to their home country.”

    These developments did not sit well with the Miami hawks and the Venezuelan opposition. Notorious Miami Herald journalist Andres Oppenheimer put it forcefully: “The handshake of Grenell and Maduro fell like a bucket of cold water on many sectors of the Venezuelan opposition… and was like a legitimation of the Maduro government.” Oppenheimer went on to point out that although the Trump government denied it had cut a deal with Maduro, “many suspicions have been raised and will not dissipate until Trump clarifies the matter.”

    After Grenell’s trip to Venezuela, the issue of the renewal of Chevron’s license took surprising twists and turns. In a video conversation on February 26, Donald Trump Jr. told María Corina Machado that just an hour before, his father had tweeted that Chevron’s license would be discontinued. Following a burst of laughter, a delighted Machado directed remarks at Trump Sr.: “Look, Mr. President, Venezuela is the biggest opportunity in this continent, for you, for the American people, and for all the people in our continent.” Machado appeared to be attempting to replicate the deal between Zelensky and Trump involving Ukraine’s mineral resources.

    But simultaneously, Mauricio Claver-Carone, the State’s Department’s Special Envoy for Latin America, told Oppenheimer that the license granted Chevron was “permanent” and automatically renewed every six months. Then, just one week later, Trump reversed his position again. Axios reported that the latest decision was due to pressure from three Florida GOP House members who threatened to withhold votes for Trump’s budget deal. Trump allegedly acknowledged this privately, telling insiders: “They’re going crazy and I need their votes.”

    Trumpism’s Internal Strains

    Trump’s threats against world leaders come straight out of his 1987 book The Art of the Deal. For some loyalists, the strategy is working like magic. Trump’s approach can be summarized as “attack and negotiate.” “My style of deal-making is quite simple,” he states in the book. “I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing… to get what I’m after.”

    This is precisely what happened when Trump announced plans to “reclaim” the Panama Canal, prompting a Hong Kong-based firm to reveal plans to sell the operation of two Panamanian ports to a consortium that includes BlackRock. Not surprisingly, Trump took credit for the deal.

    A similar scenario played out in the case of Colombia, in which President Gustavo Petro yielded on U.S. deportation flights to avert trade retaliations. For the same reasons, Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum began sending 10,000 troops to the northern border to combat irregular crossings and then, on March 6, asked Trump by phone: “’How can we continue to collaborate if the U.S. is doing something that hurts the Mexican people?” In response, Trump temporarily suspended the implementation of 25 percent tariffs on Mexican goods.

    In The Art of the Deal, Trump boasts about this strategy of bluffing, such as when he told the New Jersey Licensing Commission that he was “more than willing to walk away from Atlantic City if the regulatory process proved to be too difficult or too time-consuming.” Similarly, Trump has repeatedly stated that the United States does not need Venezuelan oil. In fact, global oil volatility and the possibility that other nations will gain access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves are matters of great concern to Washington.

    The “Art of the Deal” approach to foreign policy exemplifies Trump’s pragmatic tendency. The Maduro government and some on the left welcome the pragmatism because it leaves open the possibility of concessions by Venezuela in return for the lifting of sanctions. Venezuelan government spokespeople, at least publicly, give Trump the benefit of the doubt by attributing his annulment of Chevron’s license and other adverse decisions to pressure from Miami’s far right. The Wall Street Journal reported that several U.S. businesspeople who traveled to Caracas and “met with Maduro and his inner circle say the Venezuelans were convinced that Trump would… engage with Maduro much like he had with the leaders of North Korea and Russia.”

    But this optimism overlooks the contrasting currents within Trumpism. Although the convergences are currently greater than the differences, priorities within the MAGA movement sometimes clash. On the one hand, right-wing populism spotlights the issue of immigration, anti-“wokism,” and opposition to foreign aid, all designed to appeal beyond the Republican Party’s traditional upper and upper-middle class base of support. On the other hand, the conventional far right calls for nothing short of regime change and destabilization actions against Venezuela and Cuba. While progressives have sharply different views on Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, the far-right hawks currently define all three governments as “leftist” and, in the recent words of Rubio, “enemies of humanity.”

    Maduro’s agreement to collaborate on the repatriation of immigrants in return for the renewal of the Chevron license exemplifies the conflicting priorities within Trumpism. For the anti-left far right, the alleged deal was a “betrayal” of principles by Washington, while for the right-wing populists it was a victory for Trump, especially given the enormity of Venezuela’s immigrant population.

    Another example of clashing priorities upheld by the two currents is the Trump administration’s decision to cut foreign aid programs to a bare minimum. In his recent address to Congress, Trump denounced an $8 million allotment to an LGBTQ+ program in an African nation “nobody has heard of,” and other alleged woke programs. Even Florida’s hawk senator Rick Scott has questioned the effectiveness of foreign aid, saying: “Let’s see: the Castro regime still controls Cuba, Venezuela just stole another election, Ortega is getting stronger in Nicaragua.” Scott’s statement reflects Trump’s transactional thinking regarding the Venezuelan opposition: too many dollars for regime-change attempts that turned out to be fiascos.

    In contrast, hawk champion Oppenheimer published an opinion piece in the Miami Herald titled “Trump’s Foreign Aid Cuts are a Boon for Dictators in China, Venezuela and Cuba.”

    The issue of U.S. aid has also produced infighting from an unexpected source: within the Venezuelan right-wing opposition. Miami-based investigative journalist Patricia Poleo, a long-time opponent of Hugo Chávez and Maduro, has accused Juan Guaidó and his interim government of pocketing millions, if not billions, granted them by the U.S. government. Poleo, now a U.S. citizen, claims that the FBI is investigating Guaidó for mishandling the money.

    The influence of the anti-leftist component of Trumpism can’t be overstated. Trump has become the leading inspiration of what has been called the new “Reactionary International,” which is committed to combatting the Left around the world. Furthermore, the hawks who have expressed interest in toppling the Maduro government (which the populist current is not at all opposed to either)—including Rubio, Elon Musk, Claver-Carone, and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz—populate Trump’s circle of advisors.

    It is not surprising that during the honeymoon phase of Trump’s presidency, a populist wish list would receive considerable attention. But the annexation of the Panama Canal, Canada, and Greenland is unrealizable, as is the conversion of Gaza into a Riviera of the Middle East. His tariff scheme is not far behind. Furthermore, while his use of intimidation has helped him gain concessions, the effectiveness of this bargaining tactic is limited—threats lose power when endlessly repeated. Finally, Trump’s unfulfilled promises to lower food prices and achieve other economic feats will inevitably add to the disillusionment of his supporters.

    Trump loathes losing and, in the face of declining popularity, he is likely to turn to more realistic goals that can count on bipartisan support in addition to endorsement from the commercial media. In this scenario, the three governments in the hemisphere perceived to be U.S. adversaries are likely targets. Short of U.S. boots on the ground—which would not garner popular support—military or non-military action cannot be discarded against Venezuela, Cuba, or Nicaragua, or, perhaps, Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.

    The post Trump’s Policy toward Latin America first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Venezuela Demands Immediate Repatriation Of Migrants Detained In El Salvador

    Thousands of Venezuelans rallied in Caracas on Tuesday, March 18, to protest the deportation of Venezuelan migrants from the United States to a high security prison in El Salvador. Family members of the deported migrants addressed Venezuelan officials and fellow citizens to demand the immediate return of their loved ones, with many insisting that their relatives are not criminals or members of the infamous Tren de Aragua as Donald Trump claims.

    The mobilization occurred days after the deportation of over 200 migrants to El Salvador in one of the most controversial acts by the administration of Donald Trump during his two months in office.

    The post Venezuela Demands Immediate Repatriation Of Migrants Detained In El Salvador appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.