cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/25692
This article by Obed Rosas originally appeared in the February 5, 2026 edition of Sin Embargo.
Mexico City, On February 20, 2025, the Chihuahua Health Department reported a case of measles in a 9-year-old boy from a Mennonite community in the municipality of Cuauhtémoc who had traveled to Seminole, Texas, a settlement where measles cases had already occurred with one known death at the time of the visit.
The boy’s school in Chihuahua was closed after more cases were detected. A month later, on March 20, the National Institute of Diagnosis and Reference (InDRE) confirmed that the virus isolated in the first patients belonged to the same lineage of measles previously identified in Seminole, Texas.
This is how Irma Leticia de Jesús Ruiz González, from the Chihuahua State Health Department, and Rubén Morales Marín, from the Autonomous University of Chihuahua, describe the reintroduction of measles in the state, in an article published last November in the American Journal of Field Epidemiology. The text warns that the outbreak occurred in “a highly susceptible population, such as the Mennonite community in Chihuahua, where there is low adherence to vaccination for religious or cultural reasons, in addition to close interconnection with other unvaccinated populations.”
Mennonites in Mexico
The outbreak occurred within an adverse regional context. In November 2015, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) declared that the Americas had once again lost their measles elimination status. The reintroduction of the virus led Mexico to face its largest outbreak since it interrupted endemic transmission in 1997. Chihuahua became the main epicenter of infections and deaths on the continent, with figures that even surpassed those of the entire United States.
This week, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) confirmed that Mexico leads the Americas in COVID-19 infections, with 6,428 cases and 24 deaths. Of that total, Chihuahua accounts for 4,495 cases and 21 deaths; followed by Jalisco, with 1,034 cases and one death; Chiapas, with 432 cases; Michoacán, with 261; and Guerrero, with 257.
Of the total infections, 275 were imported, 4,054 were related to importation, and 2,839 remain with the source of infection under study.
The report in the American Journal of Epidemiology highlights that 10 of the deaths occurred among Indigenous communities in Chihuahua, where 569 cases were recorded. Three deaths were recorded in the rest of the population, in addition to the death of a Wixárika child from Nayarit.
“The Rarámuri indigenous population of Chihuahua had a mortality rate 18 times higher than the rest of the population, and this excess was statistically significant,” the study notes. The age distribution shows especially high rates in children under six months and in infants aged six to 11 months, with levels 41.4 and 82.5 times higher, respectively, than those observed in people aged 50 and over. The second most affected group was the 20-39 age group.
In mid-January, another study conducted by researchers from the University of Guadalajara, with participation from the Tlajomulco de Zúñiga campus and the University Center of Los Altos, identified five key findings. The first: the outbreak was highly concentrated, with 73 percent of the cases in Chihuahua and 76.8 percent in just 45 municipalities.
The second finding was the existence of two independent introductions of the virus: one across the northern border and a separate importation into Oaxaca. Third, the analysis describes a three-stage transmission pattern: introduction through networks of temporary agricultural workers, amplification in under-vaccinated communities, and subsequent spread to marginalized Indigenous populations.
The fourth point highlights that vaccine effectiveness remained high, supporting the theory that the outbreak was due to an accumulation of susceptible individuals rather than vaccination failures. The fifth point identifies age, living conditions in indigenous communities, lack of vaccination, and residence in rural areas as independent risk factors.
The report also documents the concentration of the outbreak in closed communities with persistent immunity gaps, such as the Mennonites of Chihuahua, a pattern similar to that observed in the 2015 outbreak in Texas, which resulted in 762 cases and two deaths. Comparable episodes have been recorded in recent years in Orthodox Jewish communities in New York and Amish communities in Ohio, reinforcing the existence of “hotspots of susceptible individuals” capable of triggering large epidemics even in countries with seemingly high national coverage.
This resurgence is occurring within a complex regional context. In November 2025, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) warned that the Americas had once again lost their measles elimination status, just one year after regaining it. The combination of ongoing imports and inequalities in access to vaccination threatens to reestablish endemic transmission.
Although the study acknowledges limitations—such as self-reporting of vaccination status and the partial availability of genomic data—it is the most comprehensive epidemiological analysis conducted to date on a measles outbreak in Latin America. It integrates individual surveillance data, genetic information, and social determinants at the municipal level in all 32 states of the country.
The conclusion is stark: measles did not return due to vaccine ineffectiveness, but rather due to the accumulated neglect of entire communities. Without targeted campaigns, strengthened molecular surveillance, and specific strategies for mobile, Indigenous, and rural populations, Mexico will remain vulnerable to new outbreaks. This major setback in nearly three decades offers an uncomfortable lesson: measles elimination is not lost overnight; it erodes slowly.
A Child with Measles Arrived in Mexico from the US, & Then the Virus Was Everywhere
February 6, 2026February 6, 2026
This major setback in nearly three decades offers an uncomfortable lesson: measles elimination is not lost overnight; it erodes slowly.
Attack on Venezuela: Mexico’s Response
February 6, 2026February 6, 2026
An interview with Daniela González López of Observatorio de Derechos Humanos de Los Pueblos.
Sheinbaum: The Regime of Privileges Will Not Return
February 5, 2026February 6, 2026
The Mexican President spoke at the 109th anniversary of the 1917 Mexican Constitution, which was one of the most advanced social constitutions at its time, & inspired the Soviet constitution.
The post A Child with Measles Arrived in Mexico from the US, & Then the Virus Was Everywhere appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/25146
A powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Ecuador on April 16, 2016, shortly before 7 PM local time. I was working for teleSUR English in Quito at the time and was sent that same night as part of the crew to cover the aftermath on the coast, the area of Ecuador most affected by the disaster. Being based in the country meant we were among the first journalists to arrive. We witnessed the Ecuadorian state mobilize to respond, and offers of help from friendly countries poured in.
But it was the Cubans who were among the first to arrive.
While covering the earthquake, I interviewed Col. Lázaro Herrera Hernández of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, who told me a phrase that has become a political maxim of mine: “It is not about providing what is left over, but sharing what we have.”
Conceding to imperialism in the short term puts Mexico at risk over the long term. Trump’s vulgar form of imperialism is going to pick off each country one by one if we do not unite immediately
Cuba, the island country subjected to a brutal decades-long economic blockade, has consistently been among the first to extend its hand in solidarity to peoples of Latin America and the world and to share the little they have. Cuba occupies a special place in the hearts of millions of people across this region not only for their unconditional solidarity but also because of the example its people and their Revolution set for us. Cuba showed us that imperialism was not invincible, that we could stand tall and defeat Washington right here in our own hemisphere.
Latin America would not be the same today were it not for the Cuban people’s determination to defend their revolution and their decision to chart their own way. But today, Cuba is in the White House’s crosshairs.
This could very well be the most decisive moment ever for the Cuban Revolution. After the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, Delcy Rodríguez’ interim government has been forced, at the barrel of a gun, to suspend oil shipments to Cuba. This critical lifeline has been cut off virtually overnight, with the Financial Times reporting that as of late January, Cuba has just 15 to 20 days of oil left.
Meanwhile, Trump has signed an executive order declaring Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” that comes with hardened sanctions, which includes a tariff on countries that sell oil to the island. The US is exerting tremendous pressure on other countries to stop providing oil to Cuba in order to enforce this illegal and criminal blockade. Mexico’s PEMEX, which had over the last few years steadily been increasing its shipments to Cuba, has already suspended a planned shipment. President Claudia Sheinbaum nonetheless assures that humanitarian aid to Cuba will continue.
“We will find ways to maintain solidarity with the Cuban people without putting Mexico at risk,” said Sheinbaum.
The trouble is that conceding to imperialism in the short term puts Mexico at risk over the long term. Trump’s vulgar form of imperialism is going to pick off each country one by one if we do not unite immediately.
Amilcar Cabral & Fidel Castro, Tricontinental Conference, Havana, 1966
Our need for a regional response to US imperialism was the overwhelming message coming out of the Nuestra América Summit held in Bogota Colombia, organized by Progressive International. Kurt Hackbarth and I were there representing the Mexico Solidarity Project. The first thing that Carlos de Céspedes Piedra, the Cuban ambassador to Colombia, expressed to us upon learning we were from Mexico was his appreciation for Mexico’s consistent solidarity with Cuba.
We cannot let Cuba stand alone at this moment.
In his speech at the closing session of the Tricontinental Conference in Havana in 1966, Fidel Castro issued a warning that we would be wise to heed today:
The imperialists’ correlation of forces on this continent, the nearness of their home territory, the zeal with which they will try to defend their dominions in this part of the world require, on this continent more than anywhere else, a common strategy, a joint, simultaneous struggle.
José Luis Granados Ceja is a journalist and political analyst based in Mexico City. He currently covers Latin America for Drop Site News*. He is the co-founder of MSP’s Soberanía podcast and a presenter on the show* Sin Muros on Mexico’s Canal Once*. He focuses on political issues, social movements, elections and human rights. Follow him @GranadosCeja*
Morena’s Magdalena Rosales Says Mexican Oil for Cuba Represents Essential Humanitarian Support
February 4, 2026February 4, 2026
“We Mexicans stand in solidarity with the Cuban people, we stand in solidarity with all the peoples that the empire wants to crush.”
Morena Legislators Defend Gradual 40 Hour Workweek, Lack of Two Days Off
February 4, 2026February 4, 2026
Mexico’s 40 hour workweek will only come into effect in 2030, critics say the legislation opens the door to 12 hour workdays and reduced overtime pay.
Solidarity or Submission
February 4, 2026
The fight to save Cuba is the fight to save us all, writes José Luis Granados Ceja. We cannot let Cuba stand alone at this moment.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24916
This article by Enrique Méndez y Fernando Camacho originally appeared in the February 3, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.
Deputies from Morena and the Labor Party (PT) yesterday formed a Mexico-Cuba brotherhood group, in a decision that, explained legislator María Magdalena Rosales, was made because the coordinator of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Rubén Moreira, has refused to establish a friendship entity with that country.
“We have insisted on this a thousand times. The moment is complex for both nations” due to Donald Trump’s policies, the congresswoman declared at the meeting where 26 legislators joined the group.
The deputy coordinator of the parliamentary group, Dolores Padierna Luna, announced that tomorrow, Wednesday, they will hold a dialogue with the new Cuban ambassador to Mexico, Eugenio Martínez Enríquez.
At the meeting, deputies proposed both promoting the removal of Moreira as president of the friendship group, and carrying out parallel work, which includes – as suggested by José Narro – promoting citizen action in favor of humanitarian aid, as well as inviting the diplomat to a solidarity meeting with Cuba.
Padierna Luna explained that the sisterhood group is constituted as “a parliamentary space, which is not only a mechanism for legislative cooperation, but an ethical, historical and political affirmation of Mexico’s commitment to the principles that have guided our foreign policy.”
He recalled that the two countries share a deep relationship, which has withstood adverse circumstances, external pressures and changes in the international order, and that it is not explained only by geographical proximity or formal diplomatic ties, but, above all, “by a community of values and a shared history of dignity and resistance.”
Therefore, he noted that the sisterhood group “aims to strengthen dialogue and contribute to humanitarian cooperation in strategic areas.” He emphasized that “solidarity is not a rhetorical gesture, nor is it about giving what is left over, but about sharing what one has.”
The legislator indicated that, for humanitarian reasons, Mexico must continue and strengthen its actions of cooperation and friendship with Cuba.
“Access to energy is not a luxury: it is a basic condition to guarantee health services, education, water supply, food production and the functioning of daily life.”
“We do not condone unilateral actions by neo-imperialism that seek to punish sovereign countries and turn hunger, energy, and the suffering of people into weapons of pressure,” he elaborated.
Narro reported that a virtual meeting of students who studied medicine in Cuba with the Cuban ambassador is also being prepared, and Padierna proposed a visit to the island between April and May.
Mexico’s Proposed Workweek Law Promises Triple Overtime, but Fear Rules the Workplace
February 3, 2026
Dozens of consulted workers agree on a pattern: overtime is not negotiated, it is ordered and refusing it usually results in veiled threats, shift changes, pay cuts or disguised firings.
Morena and Workers Party Deputies Create Mexico-Cuba Sisterhood Group
February 3, 2026February 3, 2026
“Access to energy is not a luxury: it is a basic condition to guarantee health services, education, water supply, food production and the functioning of daily life.”
A Migrant by Any Other Name is a Migrant
February 3, 2026February 3, 2026
Diego Alfredo Torres Rosete lived in the US as an undocumented immigrant for 20 years. Now back in Mexico City, he’s a founder of Frente Amplio de Mexicanos en el Exterior.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24638
Cuba's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday said the country is open to expanding "bilateral cooperation" with the US, following President Donald Trump's comments that the White House is "going to make a deal with Cuba"—but diplomatic officials emphasized that they vehemently reject Trump's recent accusations that they harbor terrorists and pose an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to the US.
"Cuba categorically declares that it does not harbor, support, finance, or permit terrorist or extremist organizations," said the ministry.
The statement was released days after the White House issued an executive order to address what it called threats that Cuba poses to the US, threatening to impose new tariffs on countries that sell oil to Cuba.
Trump's invasion of Venezuela—which had been the top energy supplier to Cuba—and his push to take control of the South American country's oil has left Cuba's economy struggling with a virtual energy blockade and rolling blackouts. The US has also been pressuring Mexico to stop supplying energy to the island nation, prompting fears of a potential humanitarian crisis.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said last month that the US has the right to take over any country if doing so furthers its interests, and said the Trump administration should "secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere."
In the executive order last week, the president made sweeping accusations against Cuba, claiming that it provides support for countries including Russia and China—though the Trump administration has also sought improved relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping—and offering no evidence for the allegation that it also supports Hamas and Hezbollah.
The Cuban storytelling platform Belly of the Beast called the accusation "laughable, if it weren't so serious," and spoke to some of the hundreds of Palestinian medical students who are studying to be doctors at the Latin American School of Medicine and other institutions.
"The vast majority of Palestinians in Cuba are medical students," said Ihab Masri, who is studying there alongside students from about 100 other countries. "Trump is a person who says he stopped 10 or 12 wars... a person who not only justifies but also denies the genocide in Gaza that they commit and have committed. You can't trust someone like that."
In his attempt to block oil shipments to Cuba, Donald Trump now claims the country is a safe haven for Hamas and Hezbollah, without presenting any evidence. Cubans say it’s complete nonsense. The real story? Hundreds of Palestinian students training to be doctors in Havana. pic.twitter.com/3X24dhF6mN
— Belly of the Beast (@bellybeastcuba) February 1, 2026Trump's executive order also accused Cuba of spreading "its communist ideas, policies, and practices around the Western Hemisphere, threatening the foreign policy of the United States."
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday emphasized that "Cuba does not host foreign military or intelligence bases and rejects the characterization that it is a threat to the security of the United States. Nor has it supported any hostile activity against that country, nor will it allow its territory to be used against another nation."
The US has maintained a trade embargo on Cuba for more than six decades and has had hostile relations with the country since the communist revolution gave rise to the late President Fidel Castro and overthrew authoritarian leader Fulgencio Batista, who was backed by the US.
US Rep. Jesús "Chuy" García (D-Ill.) warned that Trump's "latest economic assault against the island is designed to cause a humanitarian collapse, deepening our collective punishment of the Cuban people and forcing more migration."
"Cuba poses no threat to the United States, but that’s not the point. Trump is manufacturing an excuse for cruelty and regime change," added the congressman, while Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) denounced Trump's executive order as "pure cruelty" that could "kill countless innocent Cubans."
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said last week that Trump's threat against countries that continue to supply energy "reveals the fascist, criminal, and genocidal nature of a clique that has hijacked the interests of the American people for purely personal ends."
On Monday, the global organization Progressive International joined Cuban officials in denouncing Trump's executive order as a "cruel and criminal act of economic warfare that will bring nothing but starvation, deprivation, and despair to [Cuba's] people."
"With this new executive order, the logic of siege has reached its apotheosis: Sanction not only Cuba but every nation that dares show solidarity, effectively demanding that sovereign states choose between the interests of their own people and the dictates of an empire," said the Cabinet of Progressive International.
The group called on the international community to "coordinate diplomatic resistance, demand that governments refuse to enforce secondary tariffs, and amplify Cuban voices against this assault on international law, human dignity, and basic human rights."
"History will judge those who saw this moment and turned away. Cuba stood with oppressed peoples globally—from defeating apartheid in South Africa to sending doctors to the frontlines of epidemics—and now it is our time to act with audacity, moral courage, and collective force," said Progressive International."
"Stand with the Cuban people now," the group added. "Stand against this siege, this economic assault, this unfolding humanitarian disaster; join together in the provision of key supplies to the island, from medicine to food to fuel for its people; and stand for the right of all nations to self-determination and human dignity, or be complicit in its destruction."
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24637
This article by Rubicela Morelos Cruz originally appeared in the January 31, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.
Cuernavaca, Morelos. This Saturday the Mexican Anti-Imperialist Front for Venezuela and the freedom of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, and for the self-determination of peoples was formed, where the ambassador of Venezuela in Mexico, Stella Marina Lugo Betancourt de Montilla, was present.
The person in charge of asking for the vote for the approval of this Anti-Imperialist Front in Morelos was the social activist and husband of the governor Margarita González, Carmelo Enríquez, to the more than 500 members of different social, political, civil, teachers’ and peasant organizations who met this Saturday in the auditorium of the Mexican Union of Electricians (SME), located in the center of Cuernavaca.
Rosa María Hernández Trejo, the organizer of this Front, explained that state committees are being created in each state of the country, as happened today in this state, and that the national constitution of said Mexican Imperialist Front for Venezuela will be on February 14th in Mexico City.
Rosa María Hernández Trejo, the organizer of this Front, explained that state committees are being created in each state of the country. Photo: Rubicela Morelos
Meanwhile, the members of this Front called for a mobilization on February 3rd, a global protest to reject the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, on orders from US President Donald Trump, one month after the United States invaded Venezuela and deprived both Nicolás and Cilia of their freedom.
On February 7th, a national march for Venezuela will be held to demand the release of Maduro and Flores, and marches or rallies will take place in the capitals of each state. “A united front for Venezuela is also a united front for Mexico and for all of Latin America,” emphasized social activist Hernández Trejo.
Petróleo Mexicano para los Cubanos!
February 2, 2026February 2, 2026
Solidarity protestors gathered outside of the former location of the Embassy of the United States on Reforma in Mexico City on Sunday, demanding that Mexico send oil to Cuba and expressing their disavowal of Trump’s recent assault on the island and its people.
Mexican Anti-imperialist Front in Support of Venezuela Founded in Morelos
February 2, 2026February 2, 2026
On February 7th, a national march for Venezuela will be held to demand the release of Maduro and Flores, and marches or rallies will take place in the capitals of each state.
Rights Under Siege: Democratic Crisis & The Risk of a Global Exodus
February 2, 2026February 2, 2026
On the world stage, the reaction to Trump’s imperialist assault remains at the level of statements of rejection: condemnations that sound firm but are ultimately empty, incapable of halting the Trump machine.
The post Mexican Anti-imperialist Front in Support of Venezuela Founded in Morelos appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24465
This article by Ivan Evair Saldaña originally appeared in the February 1, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premir left wing daily newspaper. Photos by Jay Watts.
Mexico City. Dozens of protesters, convened by the Mexican Movement of Solidarity with Cuba, gathered this Sunday in front of the former United States embassy in Mexico, on Paseo de la Reforma, to condemn President Donald Trump’s decree imposing tariffs on countries that supply oil to the island and to demand that the government of Claudia Sheinbaum maintain crude oil shipments to Cuba.
“Mexican oil for the Cubans!” they chanted.
During the event, from a platform and microphone, a statement from the Movement was read denouncing the US president’s decision as a unilateral and extraterritorial measure that violates international law and prolongs the economic blockade in place for more than 60 years, which it described as a systematic policy of suffocation against the Cuban population.
“We denounce this decision as not an isolated incident, but rather the continuation of an economic war waged for over sixty years through the criminal blockade imposed against Cuba. This blockade has caused enormous economic damage, limited access to food, medicine, technology, and financing, and directly and daily affects the civilian population. Due to its systematic, prolonged, and deliberate nature, this policy can and must be called what it is: an act of genocide against the Cuban people,” they stated.
For its part, the Internationalist Group / LIVI criticized the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo for allegedly yielding to the will of the United States.
“In the recent negotiations, for example, regarding the free trade agreement between Mexico, Canada, and the United States, Claudia Sheinbaum has responded quite capitulatingly to Donald Trump’s policy of cutting off oil supplies. As we know, since Maduro’s oil extraction in Venezuela, Mexico became the number one supplier of oil to Cuba. However, now Pemex has also warned that it will cut off oil supplies,” said Sherezada Leyva, a member of the Group.
Furthermore, she accused the Morena government of maintaining a policy subordinate to the United States by allowing military exercises by the Southern Command in the Yucatan Peninsula, which —he said— are aimed towards Cuba, and of reinforcing a restrictive immigration policy in the north of the country through the National Guard.
At the event, the organizations and the José Martí Association of Cuban Residents in Mexico called for strengthening international solidarity, demanding an end to the blockade, and supporting the Cuban people, reiterating that “Cuba is not alone.”
Mexico City Protest Demands Mexico Continue Sending Oil to Cuba
February 1, 2026February 1, 2026
The rally condemned US President Trump’s executive order imposing tariffs on countries that supply oil to Cuba and decried the over 60 year old blockade against the island.
Who Will Defend Us?
February 1, 2026February 1, 2026
Public officials who are making strategic decisions for the future of our country today must not forget that in the last elections, 36 million citizens elected them to defend our institutions, to defend a sovereign Mexico, and to decisively prevent intervention. We don’t need lukewarm, confusing positions.
People’s Mañanera January 30
January 30, 2026
President Sheinbaum’s daily press conference, with comments on reducing violence in Baja California, not sending oil to Cuba, migration, Grupo Salinas tax debt, economic development, and Interoceanic train derailment.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24407
This editorial by Antonio Gershenson originally appeared in the February 1, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.
Very well, so we are insisting that we must protect our sovereignty. It is unacceptable that, at this point, given the grievances and outbursts of the irresponsible president of the United States, we should stand idly by and decide whether to fully defend or only partially defend our energy sovereignty.
Here we are, and we will not back down. This is not a pamphlet; it is a slogan, but it is also the truth. This man—or rather, this abject president—has trampled, chewed up, and spat out pieces of sovereignty, not only of Mexico but also of our sister nations in Latin America.
Let’s not allow it to continue. How are we going to stop it? We need to devise several plans, one of which is to remain steadfast in defending our natural resources.
Apparently, he is no longer interested in Venezuela’s oil; the issue of his incongruous and aggressive activity against all countries is about power and the fact of saying “I’m in charge here”.
Perhaps President Trump knows his days are numbered, and that’s why he’s tightening the screws, that military clamp that can strangle anyone, even the most prepared, not only from a military point of view, but also economically and politically speaking.
This man—or rather, this abject president—has trampled, chewed up, and spat out pieces of sovereignty, not only of Mexico but also of our sister nations in Latin America.
So, let’s review what we’re doing within the 4T government. How should we behave? We are supposedly following the principles of “don’t steal, don’t lie, and don’t betray the people.” In this sense, Mexican institutions have the responsibility to defend Mexicans and their energy sovereignty and, where appropriate, to denounce attacks against the movement for transformation, or against the democracy we are rebuilding.
If this defense by the Mexican government is not happening in reality, if behind national institutions such as the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Energy, the Federal Electricity Commission, and Petróleos Mexicanos, those enclaves of capitalism, neoliberalism, and the whole host of corrupt individuals who have ruined our country’s economy are still hidden, then let’s ask ourselves, what is happening?
We therefore have the right to know and review the decisions being designed and implemented in offices like Marcelo Ebrard’s, or any other. Let’s remember that government agencies are not entirely free of neoliberal practices and ideology, despite the arrival of the Fourth Transformation (4T). Many decision-makers will continue to bury their heads in the sand, throwing stones and hiding their hands, contrary to the principles of dignity, justice, and Mexican humanism championed by this government.
In this regard, it is imperative to review who holds the strategic decision-making power for the defense of our resources and our country as a whole. There can be no pretense or irresponsible, ignorant, or politically and socially insensitive attitudes, as we have discussed on other occasions in this opinion column.
The public officials who are making strategic decisions for the future of our country today must not forget that in the last elections, 36 million citizens elected them to defend our institutions, to defend a sovereign Mexico, and to decisively prevent intervention. We don’t need lukewarm, confusing positions that fail to provide clarity about what is really happening to our country in the international arena, but we also don’t want unnecessary unilateral grandstanding.
We need certainty regarding the positions and definitions that will be adopted in the upcoming USMCA negotiations, among other future agreements, which must align with the commitments that President Claudia Sheinbaum’s current administration has made to millions of Mexicans. And if the treaty ultimately disappears, it won’t be a tragedy; it would be the beginning of true economic independence, which is what we desperately need.
For Trump we appear irrelevant, but in truth, without Mexico’s support, the United States will have problems.
We insist that we need economic certainty, political certainty, and social stability. Without these components, we cannot speak of a just, productive, and developed society, because we will always be on the defensive against neoliberals.
Who Will Defend Us?
February 1, 2026February 1, 2026
This editorial by Antonio Gershenson originally appeared in the February 1, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper. Very well, so we are insisting that we must protect our sovereignty. It is unacceptable that, at this point, given the grievances and outbursts of the irresponsible president of the United States, we…
People’s Mañanera January 30
January 30, 2026
President Sheinbaum’s daily press conference, with comments on reducing violence in Baja California, not sending oil to Cuba, migration, Grupo Salinas tax debt, economic development, and Interoceanic train derailment.
Debt on the Installment Plan: Salinas Pliego Pays $10B MXN; $22B in Installments
January 30, 2026
The ultra-right winger and tax evader fumes, but begins to pay his debt piece-by-piece, but with less punitive measures than his Grupo Elektra receives.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24011
In late August 2025, residents of Arroyo and Guayanilla in Puerto Rico’s southern coast woke up to the sound of military helicopters overhead and the sight of warship silhouettes on the horizon. On August 31 (after the military buildup had already began) Puerto Rico’s Ports Authority and National Guard quietly signed an agreement with the US Navy enabling expanded use of the former Roosevelt Roads base in Ceiba, the former Ramey Air Force Base in Aguadilla, and the Muñiz Air National Guard Base in Carolina; Puerto Ricans did not learn about the agreement until after the ink was dry.
The US Navy announced the deployment as part of training exercises for Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) “regional readiness”. The reality was preparation for the siege against Venezuela and Washington’s renewed drive for hemispheric dominance under the so-called “Donroe Doctrine”. Since then, the buildup has only intensified. Across multiple points on the island (Ceiba, Aguadilla/Rafael Hernández Airport, and Ponce/Mercedita Airport) there has been a growing presence of war-fighting platforms and logistics: Marine F-35B stealth fighters, armed MQ-9 Reaper drones, MV-22B Ospreys, Navy EA-18G Growlers, and LCAC hovercraft.
Meanwhile, the broader Caribbean has been flooded with war machinery. By early November, more than a dozen warships, a nuclear submarine, F-35 stealth fighters, and 10,000 troops were already in the region; by late November, the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group entered Caribbean waters. This is the largest US military buildup in the Caribbean since the October Crisis of 1962 (known in the West as the Cuban Missile Crisis).
The stated rationale has been “counter-narcotics” and “counter-narco-terrorism”. But the nakedly imperialist campaign has been marked by lethal force on a scale that has triggered legal alarm even inside Washington: since early September, US forces have carried out more than 30 strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 110 people. The escalation has also included a widening interdiction campaign against Venezuelan oil exports: US forces have seized multiple tankers and detained crew members in undisclosed locations, while enforcing a de facto “blockade” of sanctioned vessels.
Then came the January 3, 2026 attack, when US forces struck military and civilian installations in and around Caracas and abducted President Nicolás Maduro Moros and his wife, First Combatant Cilia Flores. The bombing left at least 100 people dead, including 32 Cuban nationals who were part of Maduro’s security detail, as well as civilians. The raid relied on aircraft like the EA-18G Growlers (electronic-attack jets designed to jam enemy radar and communications) to suppress Venezuela’s air defenses. The illegal and brutal operation was met with widespread condemnation from heads-of-state around the world and has since sparked mass protests from Latin America to Asia and Africa, and even across hundreds of US cities.
Puerto Rico has been central to the offensive against Venezuela and the application of the Donroe Doctrine in the region since the buildup began, and Puerto Ricans have had no say in the matter. In just a few months, the island’s territory and infrastructure were folded into a regional war machine that moved from “readiness” drills to lethal strikes, tanker seizures, and a bombing raid on a sovereign capital. These events have laid bare Puerto Rico’s colonial status once more. Faced with the use of their home as a platform from which to attack a sister people, Puerto Ricans are reminded that no matter what our passports say, the US government regards us as it does so much of the Global South: our land is nothing but a theater of war and our bodies expendable material in wars against our brothers and sisters.
Puerto Rico’s long struggle against militarization
Today’s militarization of Puerto Rico is a return to a violent history that many Puerto Ricans fought to leave behind. Puerto Rico is an archipelago, and two of its inhabited eastern islands (Vieques and Culebra) sit out in the same waters Washington has long treated as a live-fire corridor. Vieques (population 8,249 in the 2020 census) lies about seven miles east of the main island; its name comes from the Taíno bieque, meaning “small island”. Culebra (population 1,792) lies about seventeen miles east of the main island and roughly nine miles from Vieques; its name (meaning “snake”) echoes the way the island chain curls across the sea. Together, these islands are home to immensely biodiverse ecosystems, including dry-forests, mangroves, bioluminescent lagoons, coral-fringed cays, and white sands where leatherback, hawksbill, and green sea turtles nest. Vieques is one of nine protected National Wildlife Refuges located in the Caribbean and is home to at least four endangered plant species and ten endangered animal species.
From the malecón in Esperanza in the south of Vieques, the fisherman José Silva told Puerto Rico’s Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (Center for Investigative Journalism, CPI) in November 2025 that the renewed roar of military aircraft felt like “returning to the monster of bombs” (a return to an era when the island lived under the permanent thunder of live munitions exercises). CPI reports that the revived military presence in the former Roosevelt Roads base in Ceiba (about 14 nautical miles from Vieques) has reopened old wounds that never had the chance to heal. Yamilette Meléndez, who works near the ferry dock in Esperanza, described how the sound pulled her straight back into childhood: hiding under the bed as jets passed overhead and bombs and artillery shook the walls. “All the trauma came back,” she said.
Vieques and Culebra under the gun
In 1901, the US Navy evicted residents from San Ildefonso, Culebra’s main town, to build the Culebra Naval Reservation training base. For decades, it used the island and its cays for aerial bombing, artillery fire, amphibious training, and submarine-warfare maneuvers. By 1950 it had seized 1,700 acres, while much of the civilian population had been driven out, going from 4,000 (1900) to 580. In the mid-1950s the Navy pushed for total eviction. That move was resisted by the Puerto Rican government, arguing that Commonwealth status required a popular vote to abolish the municipality. The Navy tried again in 1970 to forcibly remove the entire population; that same year, Culebra had endured directed missile fire for 228 days and live munitions fire for more than 100 days, leaving behind a cratered landscape, unexploded ordnance, and toxic waste.
People of Culebra confront the Navy. Photo: Screenshot of “Culebra 135-40.”
Resistance escalated into a broad, organized campaign. That year, residents demonstrated on the beaches; after a court reaffirmed the Navy’s right to use Culebra, they marched to a command post and issued an ultimatum promising direct action. The Puerto Rican Senate passed a resolution urging President Nixon to reconsider the Navy’s presence, drawing national attention and spurring congressional hearings and investigations. Protests spread to the naval base in San Juan: in June 1970, twenty Culebrans formed a human chain to block ship-to-shore missile fire, followed by a three-day encampment organized by the Puerto Rican Independence Party (Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño, PIP) that drew more than 600 people, with PIP leader Rubén Berríos Martínez pledging “pacific militancy”. In early 1971, the PIP (alongside the Rescue Culebra Committee (RCC), the Clergy Committee to Rescue Culebra, and a Quaker Action Group) built a chapel on Flamenco Beach inside the bombing range (after a church had been demolished by the military), forcing the Navy to halt exercises. The chapel was later torn down, and Berríos and thirteen others were sent to federal prison for trespassing, triggering a wider wave of solidarity: a student uprising at the University of Puerto Rico, daily vigils at the jail, demonstrations in Washington, DC, and replica chapels erected outside the Pentagon. Even after the Culebra Agreement (January 1971) promised an end to bombing after 1975, Defense officials signaled they would continue to use the base, prompting renewed protests that united actors across the political spectrum (the PIP, the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Puertorriqueño, PSP, and even Culebra Mayor Ramón Feliciano) until Nixon ordered the Navy out by 1975.
On Vieques, the Department of the Navy acquired the western and eastern ends of the island between 1941 and 1950, seizing roughly 22,000 acres (about two-thirds of the island). The western parcel (about 8,000 acres) served chiefly as a munitions depot; the eastern parcel (about 14,000 acres) became the core training complex, including an 11,000-acre area for ground exercises and a roughly 900-acre area used for live-ordnance strikes. For decades, Vieques was treated as a combined-arms laboratory: ship-to-shore gunfire, air-to-ground bombing, amphibious landings, small-arms and artillery fire, and sea-land-air exercises. Until April 1999, the range was used about 180 days a year, including roughly 120 days of live-fire exercises; federal health investigators later reported that between 1983 and 1998 exercises used an average of 1,862 tons of ordnance annually, containing about 353 tons of high explosives.
Resistance also built over decades before erupting into a mass movement. Organized protests in Vieques were already serious enough by the late 1970s to trigger congressional scrutiny, including a House panel review of Navy training on the island. But the decisive rupture came on April 19, 1999, when a Marine Corps jet dropped two 500-pound bombs that killed David Sanes Rodríguez, a civilian security guard, and injured others – a tragedy that galvanized Puerto Rican opposition and made the range politically untenable. Activists began arriving by boat and setting up sit-in camps inside the bombing zone, drawing national figures and members of Congress into the struggle. Washington’s response mixed concession and force: on January 31, 2000 Clinton announced a plan that promised a Vieques referendum and temporarily limited training to nonexplosive ordinance for no more than 90 days per year, while on May 4, 2000, a deployment of over 300 federal agents violently removed 216 demonstrators from the range so exercises could resume. The confrontation continued through lawsuits, civil disobedience, and political pressure from San Juan. Even as federal policy tried to manage the crisis, the movement kept its demand clear: immediate demilitarization. The Navy closed the Vieques range on April 30, 2003 and transferred the land to the Department of the Interior.
The costs of militarization
By the time the Navy was kicked out, both Vieques and Culebra had absorbed a volume of fire power that left a trail of devastation Washington is still cleaning up. That devastation is etched into the soil, lingers in the water, and continues to wreak havoc in the bodies of the islands’ residents.
In a 2021 report, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted that the Department of Defense expects cleanup efforts on Vieques and Culebra to continue through fiscal year 2032, with combined past and planned costs totaling nearly 800 million USD. On Vieques, the GAO stresses that “substantial work remains” at sites known or suspected to contain unexploded ordnance and other munitions-related hazards.
The scale is staggering: the GAO reports that as of March 2020 removal actions at Vieques land sites had already produced over 8 million items of material potentially presenting an explosive hazard, including about 109,000 munitions items – tens of thousands of bombs and projectiles among them. Offshore, the cleanup will take even longer. The GAO describes a single underwater site of roughly 11,500 acres, covering areas known or suspected to have been impacted by munitions, including nearshore zones adjacent to public beaches.
The scale of environmental devastation is only matched by that borne by the people. According to Puerto Rico Central Cancer Registry data (2000–2021), a review of municipal cancer mortality found that Vieques and Culebra had the highest age-adjusted cancer death rates in Puerto Rico: 127 deaths per 100,000 in Vieques (an average of 17 cancer deaths per year) and 132 per 100,000 in Culebra (an average of 3 per year). For context, Puerto Rico’s overall age-adjusted cancer death rate in more recent years has been roughly ~101 per 100,000. That comparison isn’t perfectly one-to-one (the time windows differ, and small island populations can make year-to-year rates volatile), but the evidence is still hard to ignore: Vieques and Culebra sit roughly a quarter to a third above the main islandwide rate. This is how the empire treats its colonial subjects: land reduced to a laboratory for war technology, decades of dangerous, incomplete remediation, and generations poisoned and butchered.
Yet despite the human and environmental costs of US militarism, the framework that enables this exploitation and devastation of land and people is institutional, built into the colonial relationship itself. Below we trace the evolution of how the colonization of Puerto Rico came to be legitimized under constitutional seal.
Constitutional colonialism
Puerto Rico’s role as a military garrison is the outcome of a legal regime built to treat the island as a colony for extraction and war. That structure was assembled in layers. First by conquest and military occupation, then by congressional statute, and finally by Supreme Court doctrine. Together, they created a system in which Puerto Rico could be strategically indispensable to the United States while remaining politically subordinate to it. Washington could thus requisition Puerto Rican land, airspace, and ports for military purposes without the binding consent of its people.
The Treaty of Paris
When Spain lost the Spanish-American War, the 1898 Treaty of Paris ceded Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines to the US. Puerto Ricans were not consulted; they were handed over from one imperial master to another. That “cession” ratified Puerto Rico’s colonial status and opened the period of US military government on the island.
The Foraker Act
The 1900 Foraker Act ended the initial period of direct US military rule (1898–1900), but it did not end colonial domination. It created a civilian government structured around federal authority: the governor and key officials were appointed by the US president, and the island’s political life was placed under an “insular” regime – meaning a system of territorial administration in which Puerto Rico was governed as US property under Congress’s plenary power, rather than as a polity with sovereign authority. In practice, “civil government” meant the colony was bureaucratized: the island acquired local institutions, but the decisive levers of power remained in Washington. Military rule gave way to administrative rule (leaving the colonial status unchanged).
The Insular Cases
The Insular Cases, beginning with Downes v. Bidwell (1901), are where the Supreme Court manufactured the constitutional justification for colonialism under the bland sounding category of ‘unincorporated territory’. They did it in openly racist language. In Downes, the Court warned that newly seized possessions might be “inhabited by alien races”, supposedly incapable of self-government “according to Anglo-Saxon principles”. In De Lima v. Bidwell (1901), dissenting justices even floated the specter of the “nationalization of savage tribes” to argue for a flexible imperial Constitution. The core logic is brutal in its simplicity: Puerto Rico could belong to the US, while the full Constitution did not necessarily “follow the flag”. Put plainly, the Court held that when the United States takes a territory, constitutional protections do not automatically apply in full to the colonies’ inhabitants. This doctrine created a juridical loophole that lets Washington rule through a separate constitutional track. Congress can legislate for Puerto Rico in ways it could not for a state, and residents can be governed without the same democratic levers (full voting representation) or the same automatic application of constitutional rules. This is constitutional colonialism: an entire population under a managed state of exception that is written into US law.
The Jones-Shafroth Act
The 1917 Jones–Shafroth Act imposed US citizenship by statute (not by constitutional right), while keeping Puerto Rico’s political subordination intact. Statutory citizenship meant Puerto Ricans were made US citizens but not incorporated into the Union as full constitutional equals. Under the act, Puerto Rico had no voting representation in Congress and its citizens could not vote for the president (a fact that remains true more than a hundred years later). The timing is crucial. In 1917 the US entered World War I, and the law’s passage is closely tied to the draft context. Through forced citizenship, a colonial population could be coerced into becoming cannon fodder in a war they did not choose, without being granted full democratic power over the state that conscripts it.
Put together, these measures formed the legal infrastructure of a security colony whereby Puerto Rico is inside the US strategic perimeter but outside full democratic inclusion. That is what makes today’s remilitarization not only institutionally possible but domestically lawful inside an imperial constitutional order. Bases can be reopened through agreements signed without thepeople’s consent; airspace can be restricted for military operations; ports and runways can be folded into the infrastructure of a regional war against a sister republic – and Puerto Ricans need not be consulted. What’s more, they have no binding democratic mechanism to stop it.
From constitutional to technocratic colonialism
Created under the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), signed into law by Barack Obama in June 2016, the Fiscal Control Board (“la Junta”) was imposed on Puerto Ricans but presented as a neutral fix: a panel of “experts” tasked with restoring “fiscal responsibility” and reopening access to capital markets. In reality, PROMESA (which, to add technocratic insult to colonial injury, translates to “promise”) – installed a federal receivership with sweeping powers over a colonized territory. The Board can certify fiscal plans and budgets, police local legislation, and drive a court-supervised bankruptcy process – authority the US Supreme Court itself has described in plain terms as the power to “supervise and modify” Puerto Rico’s laws and budget. The result is technocratic colonial rule. Elected officials can posture, plead, and negotiate, but the binding decisions are made by an unelected body whose mandate is defined in Washington, not San Juan.
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CPI’s reporting shows what the rest of the Global South knows intimately well about what “experts” prescribe: an austerity program that targets social reproduction (health, education, wages) while insulating the colonial debt regime and expanding the space for privatization. Early fiscal plans approved by the Board included cuts in health, wage freezes, “non-essential” service reductions, and mass public school closures, alongside deep reductions to the University of Puerto Rico’s public subsidy. This logic has continued unabated. CPI has documented continuing waves of school closures pushed through without meaningful community participation, and the steady degradation of public capacity that makes “public-private” takeover look inevitable. And the Board’s ecosystem of advisors makes the plunder explicit. Consulting firm McKinsey (one of the Board’s key consultants) billed tens of millions while also holding Puerto Rico bonds through a subsidiary, collapsing the distance between “reform” and creditor interest. When journalists and communities demand transparency, the colonial character hardens further: CPI’s legal fight over access to Board records reached the Supreme Court, where the Court held that the unelected Board has “sovereign” immunity (colonial domination dressed up in the grammar of independence). Even now, CPI reports that the Board has failed to publish financial disclosure records required under PROMESA. And the link between PROMESA, the Board, and militarism is clear to many Puerto Ricans. As Jocelyn Rogelio of the pro-independence organization Jornada se Acabaron las Promesas (No More Promises Collective) put it, “The reality is that the Fiscal Control Board has become a facilitating instrument for the neoliberal and imperial policies of the US government. … [it] helps make Puerto Rico’s remilitarization look acceptable and backed by the state”. In other words, the same regime that enforces austerity also normalizes the war footprint.
The historical imperative of national liberation
Twice colonialized, Puerto Rico has not been free for over five hundred years. It has been an imperial outpost and a site of foreign extraction. This is precisely what Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution refused in Venezuela. Chávez rejected the premise that Latin America is a US domain to be administered under the Monroe Doctrine and opened up to the whims of the market, but a region with the right to chart its own political destiny as one people – as Nuestra América (Our America). He insisted on the need to break with dependency and subordination toward sovereignty, dignity, and development.
What is being done to Puerto Rico is not an anomaly, it is a model. Trump’s Donroe Doctrine is a blunt signal that Washington sees hemispheric dominance not as a relic of the past, but as a project it never abandoned. Venezuela has been targeted for the same reason Cuba has endured a brutal sixty-year blockade: because it refuses domination. Any country in Nuestra América that wavers, any government that treats sovereignty as negotiable, will meet the same machinery: blockade, sanctions, invasion, militarization, legal exceptionalism, and technocratic control that clears the ground for plunder. Puerto Rico’s independence is therefore not a romantic slogan – it is a historical imperative. Until Puerto Ricans control their territory and institutions as a sovereign people, in Washington’s eyes the island will remain nothing more than an aircraft carrier. Independence is the only way to end the colonial veto, to stop the island from being used against sister nations, and to finally secure Puerto Ricans’ right to decide their future. But independence will not be handed down by the colonizer, nor by a local bourgeoisie content to lick the crumbs off the Yankee looters’ table while handing over what remains of our country. It will only be won through struggle. From Port-au-Prince to Havana to Caracas, the fight for freedom is etched into the Caribbean’s history. Empire is not destiny. Now, as Washington lashes out in hyper-imperialist throes of decline, the time is ripe for a free Puerto Rico.
Eduardo Rodríguez is a Puerto Rican writer, editor, and translator. He is an editor at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
The post Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and weaponized colonialism appeared first on Peoples Dispatch.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23872
The same day after a 40 minute phone call between himself and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, US President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order declaring a national emergency “and establishing a process to impose tariffs on goods from countries that sell or otherwise provide oil to Cuba, protecting U.S. national security and foreign policy from the Cuban regime’s malign actions and policies.”
- The Order imposes a new tariff system that allows the United States to impose additional tariffs on imports from any country that directly or indirectly provides oil to Cuba.
- The Order authorizes the Secretary of State and Secretary of Commerce to take all necessary actions, including issuing rules and guidance, to implement the tariff system and related measures.
- The President may modify the Order if Cuba or affected countries take significant steps to address the threat or align with U.S. national security and foreign policy objectives.
This week, a Bloomberg report said that a scheduled PEMEX shipment of oil to Cuba from Mexico was cancelled, leading to multiple questions for Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum during her morning press conferences. President Sheinbaum specified that there were two paths for oil to arrive in Cuba from Mexico: via PEMEX, and as humanitarian aid, and said that humanitarian aid to Cuba, which could include oil, was not cancelled but would not specify when the next shipment would be sent. A reporter asked, “Will the shipment of oil as humanitarian aid continue?,” and the President responded, “We have to determine that based on the request.”
Mexicans pay homage on the 173rd Anniversary of the birth of José Martí in Guadalupe, Zacatecas.
The peoples of Mexico and Cuba share a long revolutionary bond, from the post-revolutionary period in Mexico when Cuban communist and revolutionary Julio Antonio Mella was assassinated in Mexico City by Cuban dictator Gerardo Machado; to the Granma expedition of 1956, which departed from Veracruz for Cuba with Fidel Castro, Raúl Castro, Che Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos, and 78 others onboard; including President Sheinbaum’s own grandfather and uncle, Chone and Solomon Sheinbaum, who were members of the Communist Party of Cuba in the 1920s, before being deported to Mexico; and to the many solidarity events which have taken place this week across Mexico, in honour of José Martí’s birthday.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23874
Venezuelan scholars and a US watchdog group were among those expressing concern on Thursday after Venezuela's government caved to pressure from President Donald Trump and signed a bill opening up the South American country's nationalized oil industry to privatization.
After US forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores—who have both pleaded not guilty to federal narco-terrorism charges—the Trump administration installed the deposed leader's former deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, as acting president.
On Thursday, Venezuela's National Assembly—which is led by the acting president's brother, Jorge Rodríguez—approved and Delcy Rodríguez signed legislation that "promises to give private companies control over the production and sale of oil and allow for independent arbitration of disputes," according to the Associated Press.
As AP reported:
Rodríguez's government expects the changes to serve as assurances for major US oil companies that have so far hesitated about returning to the volatile country. Some of those companies lost investments when the ruling party enacted the existing law two decades ago to favor Venezuela's state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA.
The revised law would modify extraction taxes, setting a royalty cap rate of 30% and allowing the executive branch to set percentages for every project based on capital investment needs, competitiveness, and other factors.
It also removes the mandate for disputes to be settled only in Venezuelan courts, which are controlled by the ruling party. Foreign investors have long viewed the involvement of independent courts as crucial to guard against future expropriation.
Malfred Gerig, a sociologist from Central University of Venezuela, said on social media that the Rodríguez siblings' United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) "has just approved the most anti-nationalist and damaging oil law since, at least, 1943. The absolute surrender of the state as an oil producer and a sudden conversion of the property rights of the Venezuelan nation into private rights of foreign companies."
Victor Lovera, an economics professor at Andres Bello Catholic University in Caracas, said that "it must be really fucking tough for the Rodríguez siblings to end up as the empire's lapdogs and open up the oil sector, taking us back to the 1970s, before the nationalization of oil. All just to cling to power for a few more months."
Trump—who returned to office a year ago with help from Big Oil's campaign cash—has made clear that his aggressive policy toward Venezuela is focused on the country's petroleum reserves, which critics have blasted as a clear effort to further enrich his donors and himself.
"Trump is deploying drone and gunboat diplomacy to coerce Venezuela into serving up its oil resources to Big Oil," said Robert Weissman, co-president of the US watchdog group Public Citizen, in a Thursday statement.
"Imperfectly, Venezuela has for most of the last century sought to manage its oil and gas reserves to advance its national interest, rather than that of outside investors," he noted. "Brutal sanctions and the threat of still more military action from the Trump regime are now forcing Venezuela to turn from that history and make its oil available to Big Oil at discount rates and to agree that investor disputes should be resolved at corporate-friendly international tribunals."
"This is imperial policy to benefit Big Oil, not Americans—and certainly not Venezuelans," Weissman stressed. "Even still, US oil companies are likely to be reluctant to invest heavily in Venezuela without US government guarantees—a likely next step in Trump’s oil imperialism, unless Congress moves proactively to block it."
Both chambers of the US Congress are narrowly controlled by Trump's Republican Party, and they have so far failed to pass war powers resolutions aimed at stopping more military action in Venezuela and the administration's bombings of boats allegedly smuggling drugs in international waters—all of which some American lawmakers and other experts have argued are illegal.
When Trump's secretary of state and acting national security adviser, Marco Rubio, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—on which he previously served—on Wednesday, he insisted that the president wasn’t planning for any more military action in Venezuela, but would take it, potentially without congressional authorization, in "self-defense."
Rubio also laid out how the United States intends to continue controlling Venezuelan oil and related profits, telling senators that Venezuela's government will submit periodic budgets, and as long as they comply with preset restrictions, the Trump administration will release funds from a US Treasury blocked account.
After the legislation passed Thursday, the Trump administration began easing sanctions on Venezuela's oil industry, with the Treasury issuing a general license authorizing certain activities involving Venezuelan-origin oil.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23731
This article originally appeared in the January 29, 2026 edition of Sin Embargo.
Mexico City. The Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs ( SRE ) categorically denied on Wednesday that its consular network in the United States (US) had sought to influence the internal political processes of that country, after President Donald Trump promoted on his social media a new book that warns of an alleged “ invisible coup ” against the US.
In a statement, the Foreign Ministry declared that what has been disseminated in some media outlets are unfounded falsehoods, since the work of Mexico’s consular network in the United States is based on the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and on the respect, commitment and reciprocity established by the 1943 Consular Convention between Mexico and the United States.
“The activities and programs of Mexican consulates are carried out in close coordination with local, state, and federal authorities, always with full respect for U.S. laws and the principle of non-intervention in internal affairs. Therefore, any claim to the contrary is unfounded and untrue,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) wrote, also citing President Claudia Sheinbaum’s foreign policy, based on the principle of non-intervention and full respect for the sovereignty, institutions, and legal processes of each country.
“The activities and programs of Mexican consulates are carried out in close coordination with local, state, and federal authorities, always with full respect for U.S. laws and the principle of non-intervention in internal affairs. Therefore, any claim to the contrary is unfounded and untrue,” the Foreign Ministry added, reaffirming that, according to the principles of the Mexican government, “Mexican consular offices do not promote or participate, directly or indirectly, in demonstrations, protests, or any type of political mobilization within the United States.”
Book Warns of “Coup” Against US
On Wednesday, Donald Trump promoted on his social media the book The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon, by Peter Schweizer, whose publication accuses the Mexican government of organizing an “invisible coup” against the US by “using mass migration as a political weapon to influence elections and undermine national security.”
“Mexico has 53 consulates in the United States, while the United Kingdom and China have six and seven, respectively. As I argue in the book, consular officials are busy supporting political activities (in the U.S.), trying to influence the presidential elections,” Schweizer stated on CBS News’ Takeout interview program with Major Garrett. “I think it’s inappropriate for the Mexican government and its diplomats to be involved in this type of political activity within the United States.”
In the book, the author points out that former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) visited US cities in February 2017 to call on Mexican migrants to oppose the anti-immigrant policies promoted by Trump, while in the case of Claudia Sheinbaum, Schweizer said that the President played the song The Migrant Anthem during a press conference.
“And although my birth certificate says American, I am pure Mexican […] We changed places but not flags/I have the green, white and red in my veins,” the song says, according to Schweizer, who even accused Morena Senator Gerardo Fernández Noroña of openly speaking of “reconquering” the United States by referring in the Congress of the Union to California, Texas and New Mexico, among other areas, as “occupied territories.”
Mexican Government Rejects Accusations of Interference in US through Consulates
January 29, 2026
On Wednesday, Trump promoted a book that accuses Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration of organizing an “invisible coup” against the United States.
People’s Mañanera January 28
January 28, 2026
President Sheinbaum’s daily press conference, with comments on Interoceanic train derailment, electoral reform, SMEs credit, and increased exports.
Mexico’s Green Party Has Served Neoliberals, Salinas Pliego & the 4T. Its Franchise Model is in Danger.
January 28, 2026January 28, 2026
Since the party’s inception, it’s placed its electoral profitability at the service of the winning party in power, becoming a key to passing or blocking reforms.
The post Mexican Government Rejects Accusations of Interference in US through Consulates appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23223
Relatives of two Trinidadian men killed during the Trump administration's internationally condemned bombing spree against boats allegedly transporting drugs in the Caribbean Sea filed a wrongful death lawsuit Tuesday against the United States.
Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo, 41, were killed in one of the at least 36 strikes the Trump administration has launched against civilian boats in the southern Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean since last September. According to the lawsuit and the Trump administration's own figures, at least 125 people have been killed in such strikes, which are part of the broader US military aggression targeting Venezuela.
The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts by lawyers from the ACLU, the ACLU of Massachusetts, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall Law School on behalf of Joseph's mother Lenora Burnley and Samaroo's sister Sallycar Korasingh. The complaint alleges that the US violated the Death on the High Seas Act, which allows relatives to sue for wrongful deaths at sea, and the Alien Tort Statute, which empowers foreign citizens to seek legal redress in US federal courts.
According to the lawsuit:
On October 14, 2025, the United States government authorized and launched a missile strike against a boat carrying six people traveling from Venezuela to Trinidad. The strike killed all six, including Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo, two Trinidadian nationals who had been fishing in waters off the Venezuelan coast and working on farms in Venezuela, and who were returning to their homes in Las Cuevas, in nearby Trinidad and Tobago.
The October 14 attack was part of an unprecedented and manifestly unlawful US military campaign of lethal strikes against small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean... The United States has not conducted these strikes pursuant to any congressional authorization. Instead, the government has acted unilaterally. And Trump administration officials, including President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have publicized videos of the boat strikes, boasting about and celebrating their own role in killing defenseless people.
"These premeditated and intentional killings lack any plausible legal justification," the lawsuit asserts. "Thus, they were simply murders, ordered by individuals at the highest levels of government and obeyed by military officers in the chain of command."
Burnley said in a statement announcing the lawsuit: "Chad was a loving and caring son who was always there for me, for his wife and children, and for our whole family. I miss him terribly. We all do."
“We know this lawsuit won’t bring Chad back to us, but we’re trusting God to carry us through this, and we hope that speaking out will help get us some truth and closure," she added.
Korasingh said, “Rishi used to call our family almost every day, and then one day he disappeared, and we never heard from him again."
“Rishi was a hardworking man who paid his debt to society and was just trying to get back on his feet again and to make a decent living in Venezuela to help provide for his family," she added, referring to her brother's imprisonment for taking part in the 2009 murder of a street vendor. "If the US government believed Rishi had done anything wrong, it should have arrested, charged, and detained him, not murdered him. They must be held accountable.”
Trump officials have offered very little concrete evidence to support their claims that the targeted vessels were smuggling drugs. Critics allege that's why attorneys at the US Department of Defense reportedly inquired about whether two survivors of an October bombing in the Caribbean could be sent to the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) maximum security prison in El Salvador, which has been described by rights groups as a "legal black hole."
The survivors were ultimately returned to their home countries of Colombia and Ecuador. Some observers said their repatriation showed the Trump administration knew that trying the survivors in US courts would compel officials to explain their dubious legal justification for the attacks, which many experts say are illegal.
Trump officials also considered sending boat strike survivors to the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but that would allow their lawyers to sue for habeas corpus—a right granted by the US Supreme Court in its 2008 Boumediene v. Bush decision during the era of extrajudicial imprisonment and torture of terrorism suspects, as well as innocent men and boys, at the facility. The Trump administration has even revived the term “unlawful enemy combatant”—which was used by the Bush administration to categorize people caught up in the War on Terror in a way that skirts the law—to classify boat strike survivors.
The Trinidadian and Tobagonian government has also been criticized for hosting joint military exercises with the United States in the Caribbean Sea amid Trump's boat-bombing campaign.
ACLU senior counsel Brett Max Kaufman said Tuesday that “the Trump administration’s boat strikes are the heinous acts of people who claim they can abuse their power with impunity around the world."
“In seeking justice for the senseless killing of their loved ones, our clients are bravely demanding accountability for their devastating losses and standing up against the administration’s assault on the rule of law," he added.
CCR legal director Baher Azmy argued that “these are lawless killings in cold blood; killings for sport and killings for theater, which is why we need a court of law to proclaim what is true and constrain what is lawless."
"This is a critical step in ensuring accountability, while the individuals responsible may ultimately be answerable criminally for murder and war crimes," Azmy added.
Hafetz said that "using military force to kill Chad and Rishi violates the most elementary principles of international law."
“People may not simply be gunned down by the government," he stressed, "and the Trump administration’s claims to the contrary risk making America a pariah state.”
Jessie Rossman, legal director at the ACLU of Massachusetts, contended that Trump's "lethal boat strikes violate our collective understanding of right and wrong."
“Rishi and Chad wanted only to get home safely to their loved ones; the unconscionable attack on their boat prevented them from doing so," Rossman added. "It is imperative that we hold this administration accountable, both for their families and for the rule of law itself.”
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