cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/33884

Last Updated on March 9, 2026 Elite networks in Guatemala are using social media platforms to orchestrate coordinated online smear campaigns against anti-corruption activists, environmental defenders and Indigenous leaders, Global Witness today reveals. A new report by the investigative organization details how popular social media platforms including X, Facebook and TikTok are being flooded with thousands of abusive, hateful, defamatory and misleading posts targeting activists and Indigenous leaders in the country.

Drawing on interviews with Mayan leaders – including some who are imprisoned or in exile – the report examines how these smear campaigns lay the groundwork for spurious criminal charges that threaten victims with decades in jail.

Repression

The investigation maps the powerful networks of political and economic interests behind many of the attacks, which campaigners say are helping silence dissent and undermine Guatemala’s fragile democracy.

Corrupt networks, particularly within Guatemala’s justice system, have spent years working to erode democratic institutions and repress legitimate opposition in the Central American country.

The report uncovers how these same forces are now mobilizing fake news sites and anonymous online accounts to spread disinformation that defames their political and ideological opponents and threatens them with criminal charges.

Campaigners say these online attacks are not isolated or spontaneous. Rather, they form part of a wider strategy to discredit dissent, intimidate communities, criminalize activists and protect entrenched power.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/33420

Lee en español aquí

The situation in Ecuador under Daniel Noboa’s government is one of authoritarianism advancing on several fronts simultaneously to consolidate neoliberalism and total submission to the US international agenda. These are not isolated measures, but rather a coordinated strategy that combines job insecurity, the dismantling of the welfare state, unrestricted access to mining, the continuation of oil exploitation without environmental considerations, the centralization of power through the financial suffocation of local governments, and the systematic criminalization of all forms of opposition and popular organization.

Security crisis and abandonment of the public sphere

Noboa lost all four questions in the November 2025 referendum: there will be no Constituent Assembly, no foreign military bases will be installed (at least officially, although in practice several secret agreements with the United States allow the presence of US security personnel on Ecuadorian soil) political parties will continue to receive public funds, and the number of assembly members will not be reduced. With the democratic facade fallen, the government is seeking to impose the agenda it lost at the polls by other means: reduction of public spending, legal reforms, decrees and ministerial agreements, but also militarization.

Since coming to power in 2023, Noboa has been cutting state spending. Two examples of the current effects: patients are dying in public hospitals where they cannot receive dialysis because these hospitals have only 30% of the supplies they need, and the budget for universities has been cut by USD 128 million, or 12.7%. Public health and education, which are essential for a minimally democratic society, are being systematically dismantled.

The year 2025 was the most violent since statistics have been kept:51 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants,six coastal cities among the 10 most dangerous in the world, and 183people killed in prisons, with a total of 500 since 2021. Ecuador, which was one of the safest countries in the region until 2017, is now one of themost dangerous not only in Latin America but in the world. The economic crisis that has been dragging on since the pandemic, the reduction in public spending, and collusion with drug trafficking explain these figures.

Job insecurity

On February 19, 2026, the Ministry of Labor issued a ministerial agreement establishing 12-hour workdays. This measure represents a historic setback in terms of workers’ rights and continues the series of measures to increase job insecurity determined in the agreements signed with the IMF, favoring the interests of capital over the well-being of workers.

Defunding of local governments

Decentralized autonomous governments (GAD), in some cases the only safeguard for public policies aimed at the population and not at capital, will be hit by a recently approved law that requires them to allocate a minimum of 70% of their budget to infrastructure. It sounds good, but it is a trap: it seeks to force them to stop investing in education, culture, and other social programs, and to lay off staff. The bill imposes central government control over the GADs, undermining their autonomy and contradicting the principle of decentralization. If they fail to comply, a penalty reduces their transfers to the constitutional minimum, which would paralyze their operations. There is also obvious cynicism in this area: the Association of Municipalities of Ecuador hasreported that the central government itself owes USD 543 million to the GADs, suffocating their finances.

Extractivism without environmental controls

Noboa also managed to pass, as an urgent economic measure, the Law on Strengthening Strategic Mining and Energy Sectors. Among its most dangerous provisions: the environmental license will be replaced by a simple “environmental authorization,” private military protection in mining projects will be legalized, prior consultation with indigenous peoples will be eliminated, and the fragmentation of mining concessions and mining in the Galapagos Islands, a supposedly protected nature reserve, will be allowed. Complemented by Executive Decree 273 of December 2025, this law paves the way for the reopening of the Mining Registry and the massive expansion of concessions without environmental regulation or respect for the rights of the affected populations. Noboa and his family have links to mining companies that have already received licenses or are in the process of obtaining them.

Criminalization of politics and popular organization

Judicial persecution is a systematic tool of the regime. In the 2023 referendum, citizens voted to stop oil exploitation in the Yasuní ITT, but the government has done nothing to comply with that mandate; the response to environmentalists’ demands has been repression and lawfare. The attacks against the Citizen Revolution (Correísmo) that began in 2018 continue unabated. On February 4, 2026, the homes of four leaders of the movement were raided for an alleged case of corruption. They attempted to revoke the mandate of the mayor of Quito, Pabel Muñoz, against whom they fabricated a false case of corruption, and imprisoned the mayor of Guayaquil, Aquiles Hervas, also of the Citizen Revolution, on the basis of another fabricated case.

The repression also affects the indigenous movement. Leonidas Iza, former president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and current president of Ecuarunari (an organization of indigenous peoples of the Sierra), faces multiple investigations and reports of covert police surveillance. Nayra Chalán, former vice president of Ecuarunari, and the Kitu Kara peopledenounced the deactivation of their bank accounts. During the 2025 National Strike, the accounts of 21 social organizations were frozen without a court order. Unfounded proceedings have been brought against them for financing terrorism and illicit enrichment, using a narrative of narco-terrorism similar to that of Trump, who, without any evidence, extrajudicially executed more than 80 people on boats in the Caribbean.

Corruption in the presidential entourage

While criminalizing the opposition, Noboa’s entourage is riddled with scandals. Six people are being prosecuted after 2.6 tons of cocaine were found in a container belonging to Blasti S.A., a company linked to the presidential circle. This case, one of several, highlights the strategy of a government that prosecutes social leaders and political opponents while coexisting with drug trafficking networks in its inner circle, as well as several other cases of corruption.

Submission to US imperialism

At the time of writing, the Noboa government has just expelled the Cuban ambassador and all Cuban diplomats from Ecuador, declaring them persona non grata and giving them 48 hours to leave the country. The reason? Nothing more than obedience to the orders of the Trump Administration and its illegal hybrid war against Cuba. At the same time, the US Southern Command said on X that Ecuadorian and US military forces “launched operations against designated terrorist organizations,” setting an example of cooperation for the region in the fight against narco-terrorism. This concept is the same label that Noboa uses against all social movements that oppose his policies.

The analogy with Trumpism is not rhetorical: like his US counterpart, Noboa governs for capital, seeking to destroy the public sector and reduce the state to its bare minimum, using militarization and political violence as instruments to achieve this, and submitting absolutely to US dictates. The difference is the context: in Ecuador, this model is applied to a society already battered by violence, poverty, precariousness, and a lack of basic services, which multiplies its capacity for harm. Stopping these attacks is a necessary condition for Ecuador’s survival as a democracy.

Pilar Troya Fernández is an Ecuadorian anthropologist with a master’s degree in gender studies, and a researcher at the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. She was an advisor to the National Secretariat of Planning, an advisor to the National Secretariat of Higher Education, Science, Technology, and Innovation, and Deputy Secretary General of Higher Education in Ecuador. She currently resides in Brazil.

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This article originally appeared in the March 9, 2026 edition of RT en Español.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum responded on Monday to her US counterpart, Donald Trump, who over the weekend announced the creation of a continental military coalition against drug cartels and asserted that Mexico has rejected his help in combating organized crime.

“It’s good that President Trump publicly says that when he has proposed that the United States Army enter Mexico, we have said no, because it is the truth, and we proudly continue to say no ” the President stated at a press conference.

“We collaborate and cooperate in intelligence and other security-related activities, but operations in Mexico are carried out by the Armed Forces, the Ministry of Security, the National Guard, state police forces, and prosecutors’ offices,” she added.

Sheinbaum added that one thing Trump can help Mexico with is stopping arms trafficking, since the State Department itself has acknowledged that 75% of the arsenal used by the cartels is American. “If the United States stops the flow of weapons, they won’t have these kinds of high-powered weapons anymore,” she noted.

On Saturday, Trump led the Shield of the Americas Summit in Miami , which was attended by 12 far-right leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean who joined an unprecedented interventionist strategy that has the alleged objective of fighting organized crime.

There, Trump asserted that Mexico is the “epicenter” of drug cartel violence. “The cartels run Mexico . We can’t allow it. Too close to us. Too close to you,” he declared, warning that he could send missiles directly to other countries in the region to eliminate the groups that produce and traffic illegal drugs.

He also spoke about Sheinbaum in a contradictory way, on the one hand praising her, but on the other he asserted that she does not want the U.S. to help Mexico fight drug traffickers.

“I like the president very much . She’s a very good person. She has a beautiful voice. A beautiful woman, with a beautiful voice,” he said. He then claimed that he had already asked her to allow him to “eradicate the cartels,” to which the president supposedly replied, “No, no, no, please, Mr. President.” In his account, Trump even tried to imitate Sheinbaum’s voice.

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Just over two months after US forces bombed and invaded Venezuela and abducted its alleged drug-trafficking president, the Pentagon on Tuesday announced the launch of a joint campaign with Ecuador to combat "narco-terrorists" in the South American nation.

US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) announced the operation, which, with the deployment of ground troops, opens a new front in the Trump administration's Operation Southern Spear targeting alleged drug traffickers. The campaign had previously consisted of dozens of airstrikes against boats that the US military claimed were transporting drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. More than 150 people have been killed in such bombings.

Right-wing Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa—a close ally of US President Donald Trump whose family shipping business is allegedly linked to cocaine trafficking—hailed the joint operation as "a new phase against narco-terrorism."

However, many Ecuadorian leftists denounced the operation.

"How can our armed forces allow so much?" asked former President Rafael Correa, who expelled the US military from Ecuador and famously said that he would let the US renew a lease on a controversial air base in Manta only if "they let us put a base in Miami."

Last year, Ecuadorian voters rejected a proposal by Noboa to reopen US military bases in the country that were shuttered by Correa's refusal to renew their leases.

Former National Assembly president and Imbabura Province Gov. Gabriela Rivadeneira noted in a television interview that Ecuador has "the only constitution in the world that prohibits foreign military presence" within its borders.

“As the US militarization advances, organized crime and drug trafficking advance further; this country was safer without foreign bases," she contended.

The announcement of the joint campaign also prompted criticism around the world.

"As Trump deploys US troops in Ecuador, there's a real danger that he'll authorize them to summarily shoot rather than capture drug suspects as legally required," former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said on social media. "In short, to commit more criminal murders."

US climate campaigner Elise Joshi said on X that "Ecuador's corrupt billionaire president Noboa just gave Trump permission to carry out a military operation in the country as he guts public services, Indigenous rights, and free speech."

"Noboa sold out Ecuador to Trump's war against the [Latin American] people," Joshi added. "Shameful."

My sense is that some in the administration have been itching to put US military boots on the ground somewhere for an operation against “narco-terrorists” and then publicly brag about it and Ecuador was more amenable than say Mexico.
— Brian Finucane (@bcfinucane.bsky.social) March 3, 2026 at 7:11 PM

Others questioned the US explanation for the intervention.

"Why is Trump attacking Ecuador?" the leftist magazine In These Times wrote on its X page. "Same reason he’s in Iran + Venezuela: oil 'secured' by force, sold as fighting a 'dictatorship' and/or 'drugs.' Ecuador’s Indigenous organizers forced a pullback in drilling in 2019. Now they face the US military."

Once one of Latin America's most peaceful countries, Ecuador in recent years has become what many observers call a "cocaine superhighway" via which the majority of drugs produced in neighboring Colombia and Peru are shipped to the United States and other international markets. The booming drug trade has sparked a fierce turf war between traffickers that has plunged areas of Ecuador, especially in the coastal province of Guayas, into violence and terror.

The Trump and Noboa administrations have forged closer ties since the US leader's return to office last year, much to the chagrin of many Ecuadorian leftists—who point to the long history of US military invasions and other interventions throughout Latin America, including a CIA-backed coup in Ecuador in 1963.

The Ecuador operation comes amid the US-Israeli war on Iran, which has killed more than 1,000 people, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society. Iran is the 10th country bombed on orders from US President Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed "president of peace," who has also attacked Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/31943

This article by Erick Manuel Pastén Rozo originally appeared in the February 21, 2026 edition of La Silla Rota.

2026 began with a bang, with a show of force by the United States unseen since the second half of the 20th century. The violent invasion of Venezuela, accompanied by the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, was followed by threats of invasion against Mexico, Colombia, and Greenland. Added to this was the intensification of the economic (now oil-related) blockade against Cuba. While this start to the year arrived with a bang, let’s remember that last year Trump had already threatened to negatively impact the Honduran economy if the country’s electorate did not vote for his chosen candidate, Nasry Asfura. Or how the former host of “The Apprentice” imposed 50% tariffs on Brazil due to the decision to convict the former coup-plotting president, and Trump’s personal friend, Jair Bolsonaro.

This intensification of US interventionist policies in Latin America is nothing new and stems from what has been called the “Monroe Doctrine.” It is an apparent divine mandate that grants the United States the right to manipulate our policies and economy as it sees fit. What is new, however, is the lack of a coordinated response from the continental left-wing opposition to the onslaught of this new imperialism . The 1970s and 80s, with their broad anti-imperialist mobilizations —organized, coordinated, and led in most cases by socialists and communists —served, at the very least, as a pressure group against the subservient and collaborationist policies of regional governments.

The end of the Cold War and the subsequent dismantling of international solidarity and collaboration networks has left the continent, even in an era so interconnected thanks to social media, isolated in its own struggles.

But what motivated these people, most (though not exclusively) of them young students, workers, and peasants, to try to change the situation on the continent? The answer has already been mentioned: their activism in socialist organizations . It is worth remembering that one of the basic principles of this ideology was what is called “Proletarian Internationalism.” This concept, the foundation of Marxist thought, states that since capitalism is a global system, the working classes must act together, as individual national struggles are actually part of a single, larger struggle.

Socialists, from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, understood that there was little they could actually do to change the material conditions of their countries. It wasn’t until after the formation and consolidation of the Soviet Union that the first global support and solidarity networks began to be created, such as International Red Aid. This organization was formed by the Communist International and its objectives were the material and political support of communist prisons around the world. The preeminence of organizations affiliated with or directly connected to the Soviet government declined once the second half of the 20th century began. However, in their place, new organizations appeared, built from the ground up by the socialist militants themselves in different countries.

Whether in support of the liberation of the Palestinian people, the reconstruction of the governing structure in the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, or an unwavering stance of solidarity with the socialist bloc, communists worldwide —and in our case, in Mexico in particular—took a position on the international stage. It must be said, however, that this support was not without controversy or contradiction. Ultimately, it was a somewhat blind support, guided by a sense of moral and political empathy.

But returning to the topic, of all these cases, perhaps the one that mattered most to them was that of Latin America. Whether in support of refugees and exiles from Central America and the Southern Cone, through the Guatemalan Committee of Patriotic Unity, the Mexican Committee of Solidarity with the Argentine People, or the Permanent Committee of Solidarity with Latin America (COPESAL). Marches, rallies, and the distribution of propaganda, the holding of conferences and the screening of documentaries, as well as the frequent meetings of continental socialist and communist youth , were commonplace, promoted not as an ambiguous and isolated solidarity project, but as part of a complex internationalist political network.

One of the defining events of Proletarian Internationalism in the first half of the 1980s was the unique support that socialists gave to the Salvadoran Revolution and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front. Mexican socialists and communists saw in their Central American neighbor’s struggle an ideological and strategic beacon to follow. In this sense, the Salvadoran Revolution—or Salvadoran Civil War, depending on who you ask—mobilized the Mexican revolutionary left of the 1980s much as the Cuban Revolution had done decades earlier. Large contingents filled the streets of the country for a little over five years; important events such as the International Meeting of Solidarity with the Salvadoran Revolution took place. The global revolution was just around the corner, but that corner was getting farther and farther away.

The end of the Cold War and the subsequent dismantling of international solidarity and collaboration networks has left the continent, even in an era so interconnected thanks to social media, isolated in its own struggles. While more than three decades have passed since the Soviet Union dissolved, no new regional solidarity organizations have emerged to replace those formed throughout the 20th century. Moreover, in this era where far-right positions are being revived and reinterpreted by several national leaders on the continent, the outlook is rather bleak. However, what we do have in abundance, ultimately, are examples from the recent past of people whose conviction to fight for a better world was more than enough to build contacts, alliances, and relationships with their comrades in other parts of the world. What we cannot lose are our dreams. In the words of singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat: “Without utopia, life would be a rehearsal for death.”

Fidel Castro & Che Guevara in prison in Mexico City, 1956

Erick Manuel Pastén Rozo holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Sonora and a Master’s degree in Social Sciences from the Colegio de Sonora. He is a doctoral candidate in Modern and Contemporary History at the Instituto Mora. His main lines of research are the sociability and memory of semi-clandestine left-wing political organizations in Mexico during the 20th century. He has taught various courses, including the Workshop on the History of Guerrilla Warfare in Mexico and the Northwest of the country.

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Following the US armed attack against Venezuela on January 3 – in which more than 100 people were killed, and President Nicolás Maduro was taken prisoner (and later transferred to New York) – Venezuela’s oil sales to Cuba were suspended. The Caribbean island has been under an economic and commercial blockade imposed by the US for more than 60 years.

But the Trump administration went further. In an attempt to strangle Cuba even more, Washington warned that any country that sent oil to Cuba would be punished with a 10% increase in tariffs on products from that country entering the United States, which deterred countries such as Mexico that had also been sending oil to Cuba.

Faced with this reality, Cuba has found itself in serious economic straits. Venezuela had been the island’s main supplier of hydrocarbons for 25 years, so Washington’s tacit control of Venezuelan oil has caused difficulties that have particularly affected the civilian population. Tourism, one of Cuba’s main sources of income, has declined significantly due to the shortage of fuel, including that required to refuel planes arriving on the island.

Likewise, Cuba’s energy system, which is highly dependent on oil for its operation, has resulted in extraordinary blackouts throughout the country. This jeopardizes not only the production and distribution of basic goods, but also the very functioning of basic services in hospitals and schools.

Solidarity with the Cuban people

Many leaders from various countries have harshly criticized the measure, considering it a violation of the human rights of Cubans and a threat to their lives and dignity. This was expressed by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who asked the United States to reconsider its decision in favor of the Cuban people. In addition, the Mexican government sent tons of food, personal hygiene products, and other basic subsistence items to Cuba following the intensification of the economic and commercial blockade measures imposed on Havana.

Movements in Latin America have also sought to address the fuel crisis by putting pressure on their governments. Oil workers in Brazil have helped launch the “Oil for Cuba” initiative to call on Brazil to immediately send fuel to the Caribbean island and break the de facto energy blockade imposed by the United States. 

The Single Federation of Oil Workers of Brazil (FUP), which sent a letter to the state-owned oil company Petrobras, stating: “Given the recent tightening of trade and energy restrictions that have directly impacted supplies to [Cuba], creating humanitarian risks and compromising essential services, we believe that institutional dialogue is essential to discuss viable alternatives, regulatory and operational aspects, as well as possible avenues for cooperation that can be built on the principles of solidarity, sovereignty, and social responsibility.”

United States announces partial sale of oil to Cuba

For its part, Washington has just announced that it will authorize the sale of oil to Cuba under conditions controlled by the United States. According to the Treasury Department, the United States will allow oil to enter Cuba as long as the fuel is handled on the island by private citizens and companies, thus attempting to wrest control of not only its energy security from the state, but also to strengthen the private sector.

In addition, Washington clarified: “To be authorized, exports must be for the use of the Cuban private sector and for private economic sector activities, including humanitarian needs.” The agreement stipulates that oil and gas sent to Cuba must necessarily leave from the United States, even if its origin was Venezuela or another country.

This does not mean that Washington is ruling out the possibility of increasing tariffs on countries that sell oil to Cuba, but rather that the United States now seeks to ensure absolute control over fuel imports to the island, which could be seen as an attempt by the Trump administration to control Cuba’s energy future.

A few weeks ago, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel announced that Cuba has always been willing to engage in dialogue under conditions of equality and without threats. For now, it remains to be seen whether Cuba will accept this proposal from the United States.

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Images of burning buses, blocked highways, plumes of smoke, and people fleeing in terror from airports and markets in Mexico were plastered across the front pages of the world’s largest newspapers and news sites on Monday. Mexican states such as Michoacán, Guanajuato, Nayarit, Colima, Zacatecas, Tamaulipas, Guerrero, Aguascalientes, and Oaxaca reported disruptions, road blockades, and violent actions. The scenes followed the federal operation that culminated in the killing of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).

In response to this violence, much of the international press reproduced the false narrative of Mexico as an ungovernable territory dominated by all-powerful cartels. But this narrative obscures the fact that the security policy of Claudia Sheinbaum’s government toward the cartels is part of an imperialist hemispheric architecture promoted by Washington under the banner of the “war on drugs.”

The War on Drugs as a Tool of Regional Domination

Since 2006, Mexico has formally adopted an internal war strategy aligned with U.S. guidelines. The so-called “Kingpin” strategy — focused on capturing or eliminating leaders of criminal organizations — was designed in coordination with U.S. agencies and implemented by the PRI, PAN, and — despite its nationalist rhetoric — Morena governments.

Far from strengthening Mexican sovereignty, this strategy only consolidated mechanisms of interference: intelligence sharing, operational presence of U.S. agencies such as the DEA, diplomatic conditions, and increasing security integration under trade frameworks such as the USMCA.

The result has not been the defeat of drug trafficking, but its violent reconfiguration. The fragmentation of organizations has led to bloodier disputes for territorial control. Meanwhile, international financial capital — including banks operating between Mexico and the United States — continues to absorb and launder billions of dollars from illicit economies.

The “war on drugs” thus functions as a device for social control and regional discipline, justifying military expansion, surveillance, and political subordination in the name of security.

But this dynamic cannot be separated from the new extractive cycle that is beginning to take shape in Mexico and Latin America. In recent months, strategic agreements on critical minerals — lithium, copper, and rare earth elements — have been announced and negotiated within the framework of the geopolitical dispute between the United States and China. Mexico appears as a key piece in the North American supply chain, especially under the USMCA and Washington’s new industrial policies.

In several regions of the country, the expansion of mining, energy, and infrastructure projects coexists with the presence of organized crime groups that control territories, extort money, manage precarious labor, or even participate directly in legal and illegal extractive economies. The relationship between mining, land dispossession, and criminal structures has been documented in states such as Michoacán, Guerrero, and Zacatecas.

Thus, the militarization of the “war on drugs” is part of a broader attempt to build and guarantee the stability of logistical corridors, megaprojects, and strategic mining areas for transnational capital. The cycle of violence and the extractive cycle are not separate phenomena: they are part of the same territorially dependent reconfiguration.

Permanent Militarization and the Working Class

For the Mexican working class, the militarization of the U.S.-backed “war on drugs” has meant the normalization of checkpoints, permanent patrols, and a constant expansion of the power of the Armed Forces in civilian tasks. At the same time, they are forced to live alongside shootouts and patrols by cartel cells vying for control of the territory and fighting against state forces. In the states and areas where the Mexican National Guard is deployed, a regime of “exceptionality” is established in which democratic rights are subordinated to military logic.

In Mexico there have been more than 300,000 homicides and tens of thousands of missing persons reported since the start of the war on drugs in 2007. The victims overwhelmingly come from among the working class and poor, while the business and financial structures that sustain the cartels remain untouched, as do the pro-business politicians associated with organized crime groups.

The roadblocks and fires following the operation are not proof of an “absent state,” as liberal analysts have repeatedly claimed. They are evidence of the consequences of a profound militarization (demanded and imposed by imperialism) that has devastated entire regions, combining illegal economies, extreme job insecurity, and military violence.

Against the Imperial Narrative: an Internationalist Perspective

Reducing the situation to a struggle between the state and the cartels obscures the fact that Mexico’s security policy is inseparable from its structural dependence on imperialism. Economic integration under the USMCA and security cooperation are part of the same mechanism that subordinates Mexican domestic policy to Washington’s strategic interests.

From a socialist and internationalist perspective, the solution lies neither in further militarization nor in increased imperial oversight. Experience demonstrates that the “war on drugs,” while failing to substantially address the drug trade, has served as a means to promote militarization against the peoples of Latin America, strengthening repressive apparatuses and weakening democratic rights.

In response, it is necessary to build an alternative independent of the parties of the bosses, based on the organization of the working class, international coordination, and the struggle against imperialism and financial capital that sustains both the legal and illegal economy.

Only an emancipatory perspective, which questions structural dependency and aims for a socialist transformation of the region, can confront the economic and political roots of this permanent militarizing offensive.

Originally published in Spanish on February 23 on La Izquierda Diario, Mexico.

Translated and adapted for Left Voice.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/30749

The kidnapping of a sitting head of state marks a grave escalation in US-Venezuela relations. By seizing Venezuela’s constitutional president, Washington signaled both its disregard for international law and its confidence that it would face little immediate consequence.

The response within the US political establishment to the attack on Venezuela has been striking. Without the slightest cognitive dissonance over President Maduro’s violent abduction, Democrats call for “restoring democracy” – but not for returning Venezuela’s lawful president.

So why didn’t the imperialists simply assassinate him? From their perspective, it would have been cleaner and more cost-efficient. It would have been the DOGE thing to do: launch a drone in one of those celebrated “surgical” strikes.

Targeted killings are as much a part of US policy now as there were in the past. From Obama’s drone strikes on US citizens in 2011 to Trump’s killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, lethal force has been used when deemed expedient. And only last June, the second Trump administration and its Zionist partner in crime droned eleven Iranian nuclear scientists.

The US posted a $50-million bounty on Maduro, yet they took him very much alive along with his wife, First Combatant (the Venezuelan equivalent of the First Lady) Cilia Flores.

The reason Maduro’s life was spared tells us volumes about the resilience of the Bolivarian Revolution, the strength of Maduro even in captivity, and the inability of the empire to subjugate Venezuela.

Killing Nicolás Maduro Moros appears to have been a step too far, even for Washington’s hawks. Perhaps he was also seen as more valuable to the empire as a hostage than as a martyr.

But the images of a handcuffed Maduro flashing a victory sign – and declaring in a New York courtroom, “I was captured… I am the president of my country” – were not those of a defeated leader.

Rather than collapsing, the Bolivarian Revolution survived the decapitation. With a seamless continuation of leadership under acting President Delcy Rodríguez, even some figures in the opposition have rallied around the national leadership, heeding the nationalist call of a populace mobilized in the streets in support of their president.

This has pushed the US to negotiate rather than outright conquer, notwithstanding that the playing field remains decisively tilted in Washington’s favor. Regardless, Venezuelan authorities have demanded and received the US’s respect. Indeed, after declaring Venezuela an illegitimate narco-state, Trump has flipped, recognized the Chavista government, and invited its acting executive to Washington.

NBC News gave Delcy Rodríguez a respectful interview. After affirming state ownership of Venezuela’s mineral resources and Maduro as the lawful president, she pointed out that the so-called political prisoners in Venezuelan prisons were there because they had committed acts of criminal violence.

Before a national US television audience she explained that free and fair elections require being “free of sanctions and…not undermined by international bullying and harassment by the international press” (emphasis added).

Notably, the interviewer cited US Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s admission made during his high-level visit to Venezuela. The US official brushed aside demands for short-term elections, instead arguing that they could be held by the end of 2027. In contrast, Rodríguez stressed that Venezuela’s electoral calendar is set by the country’s Constitution.

As for opposition politician María Corina Machado, the darling of the US press corps, Rodríguez told the interviewer that Machado would have to answer for her various treasonous activities if she came back to Venezuela.

Contrary to the corporate press’s media myth, fostered at a reception in Manhattan, that Machado is insanely popular and poised to lead “A Trillion-Dollar Opportunity: The Global Upside of a Democratic Venezuela,” the US government apparently understood the reality on the ground. “She doesn’t have the support within, or the respect within, the country,” was the honest evaluation, not of some Chavista partisan, but of President Trump himself.

Yader Lanuza documents how the US provided millions to manufacture an effective astroturf opposition to the Chavistas. It is far from the first time that Washington has squandered money in this way – we only have to look back at its failed efforts to promote the “presidency” of Juan Guaidó. Its latest efforts have again had no decisive result, leaving Machado in limbo and pragmatic engagement with the Chavista leadership as the only practical option.

Any doubts that there is daylight between captured President Maduro and acting President Rodríguez can be dispelled by listening to the now incarcerated Maduro’s New Year’s Day interview with international leftist intellectual Ignacio Ramonet.

Maduro said it was time to “start talking seriously” with the US – especially regarding oil investment – marking a continuation of his prior conditional openness to diplomatic engagement. He reiterated that Venezuela was ready to discuss agreements on combating drug trafficking and to consider US oil investment, allowing companies like Chevron to operate.

That was just two days before the abduction. Subsequently, Delcy Rodríguez met with the US energy secretary and the head of the Southern Command to discuss oil investments and combating drug trafficking, respectively.

Venezuelan analysts have framed the current moment as one of constrained choice. “What is at stake is the survival of the state and the republic, which if lost, would render the discussion of any other topic banal,” according to Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein. The former government official, who was close to Hugo Chávez, supports Delcy Rodríguez’s discussions with Washington – acknowledging that she has “a missile to her head.”

“The search for a negotiation in the case of the January 3 kidnapping is not understood, therefore, as a surrender, but as an act of political maturity in a context of unprecedented blackmail,” according to Italian journalist and former Red Brigades militant Geraldina Colotti.

The Amnesty Law, a longstanding Chavista initiative, is being debated in the National Assembly to maintain social peace, according to the president of the assembly and brother of the acting president, Jorge Rodríguez, in an interview with the US-based NewsMax outlet.

As Jorge Rodríguez commented, foregoing oil revenues by keeping oil in the ground does not benefit the people’s well-being and development. In that context, the Hydrocarbon Law has been reformed to attract vital foreign investment.

The Venezuelan outlet Mision Verdad elaborates: “The 2026 reform ratifies and, in some aspects, deepens essential elements of the previous legislation…[I]t creates the legal basis for a complete strategic adaptation of the Venezuelan hydrocarbon industry, considering elements of the present context.”

As Karl Marx presciently observed about the present context, people “make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances.” The present US-Venezuelan détente is making history. So far – in Hugo Chávez’s words, por ahora – it does not resemble the humanitarian catastrophes imposed by the empire on Haiti, Libya, Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan.

But make no mistake: the ultimate goal of the empire remains regime change. And there is no clearer insight into the empire’s core barbarity than Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich conference with his praising of the capture of a “narcoterrorist dictator” and his invocation of Columbus as the inspiration “to build a new Western century.”

Washington’s kidnapping of Maduro was intended to demonstrate the empire’s dominance. But it also exposed its limits: the durability of the Bolivarian Revolution and the reality that even great powers must sometimes negotiate with governments they detest. The outcome remains uncertain.

With minor edits by Venezuelanalysis.

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

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Caracas, February 20, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Trump administration is forcing all royalty, tax, and dividend payments from Venezuelan oil production be paid into accounts managed by Washington.

The mandate reinforces the White House’s control over Venezuelan crude export revenues in the wake of the January 3 military strikes and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, as well as a naval blockade imposed in December.

The US Treasury Department updated its FAQ section on February 18 to clarify conditions on recently issued sanctions waivers allowing expanded participation in Venezuela’s oil sector to Western corporations.

Under the licenses, only “routine payments of local taxes, permits, and fees” to Venezuelan authorities are permitted.

“Other payments, including royalties, fixed per-barrel production levies, or federal taxes to blocked persons, such as the Venezuelan government or (state oil company) PDVSA, must be made into the Foreign Government Deposit Fund,” the text read.

The acting Rodríguez administration has yet to comment on the new restrictions.

Since January, Washington has imposed control over Venezuelan crude exports, with proceeds deposited in a US-administered account in Qatar. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced recently that funds will now be deposited directly in a US Treasury account. Senior administration officials have stated that the arrangement gives the White House “leverage” to condition Venezuelan government policies, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that Caracas must submit a “budget request” to access its own oil revenues.

At least US $500 million, out of an initial deal estimated at $2 billion, have been returned to Venezuela and offered by banks in foreign exchange auctions. Venezuelan authorities have also reported the import of medicines and medical equipment from US manufacturers using “unblocked funds.”

On Thursday, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued General License 50A allowing select firms to conduct transactions and operations related to hydrocarbon projects with PDVSA or any other Venezuelan public entity. The document mirrors General License 50 issued on February 13 but added French firm Maurel & Prom to a list including BP, Chevron, Eni, Repsol, and Shell.

Maurel & Prom’s main project in the Caribbean nation is a minority stake in the Petroregional del Lago joint venture, which currently produces 21,000 barrels per day (bpd). The company’s executives recently held a meeting with Acting President Delcy Rodríguez as part of Caracas’ efforts to secure foreign investment.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has issued several licenses to boost US and European involvement in the Venezuelan energy sector, with imports of diluents, inputs and technology now allowed. General License 49, issued on February 13, demands that companies apply for a special license before striking production and investment deals with Venezuela.

The US Treasury issued sanctions waivers while maintaining existing coercive measures against the Venezuelan oil industry in place, including financial sanctions against PDVSA. The licenses likewise block any transactions with companies from Cuba, China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia.

The selective flexibilization of sanctions followed the Venezuelan National Assembly’s approval of a pro-business overhaul of the country’s Hydrocarbon Law. The reform grants private corporations expanded control over operations and sales, while opening the possibility for disputes to be taken to external arbitration.

The reformed law also allows the Venezuelan executive to arbitrarily reduce royalties and a new “integrated tax,” capped at 30 and 15 percent, respectively. The executive is likewise entitled to grant reductions to the 50 percent income tax set for the oil industry if deemed necessary for projects to be “internationally competitive.”

According to US-set conditions and the reformed law, minority partners such as Repsol are authorized to sell crude from Venezuelan joint ventures before depositing the owed royalty and tax amounts, as well as dividends belonging to PDVSA, to US Treasury-designated accounts.

The initial crude sales as part of the Trump-imposed arrangement were conducted via commodity traders Vitol and Trafigura, which lifted cargoes at Venezuelan ports before re-selling them to final customers. However, according to Reuters, US-based refiners including Phillips66 and CITGO are looking to secure crude directly from Venezuela to maximize profits.

CITGO, a subsidiary of PDVSA, is close to being taken over by vulture fund Elliott Management following a court-mandated auction to satisfy creditor claims against the South American country. The company has been managed by boards appointed by the US-backed Venezuelan opposition since 2019.

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By Rosa Miriam Elizalde – Feb 13, 2026

Option Zero was the revolutionary government’s contingency plan for the moment of total blockade from abroad—and therefore—the complete loss of oil in the country.

On July 26, 2010, in the small theater of the José Martí Memorial in Havana, a convalescent Fidel Castro, dressed in olive green and recovering from several surgeries, walked down the aisle greeting those in the nearby seats. He said conspiratorially to the woman sitting next to me: “There’s Rosa Miriam… Do you know that one day she asked me if we were going to survive the Special Period?”

He had just recalled an afternoon in 1990, 20 years earlier, when, as a newly graduated journalist, I was assigned to report on a routine event at the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), which Fidel suddenly attended. For more than four hours, he explained what Cubans would experience after the disappearance of the USSR, a historic moment that was called the Special Period because, as the commander-in-chief said at the time, “no one knows what kind of practical problems may arise.”

Cuba lost a third of its gross domestic product between 1991 and 1994, and the U.S. blockade was opportunistically tightened, first by Republican George H.W. Bush (senior) and then by Democrat Bill Clinton. Among all the hardships we endured, perhaps the hardest was the epidemic of optic and peripheral neuropathy linked to a sharp drop in caloric and nutrient intake: from almost 4,000 calories a day, to just over 1,000. Real, daily hunger left physical and psychological scars on millions of Cubans that still linger today.

But at the CIGB, on that afternoon in 1990, it was the first time that the Cuban leader described in great detail the harsh economic restrictions that were coming, and there was talk in Cuba of Option Zero. Fidel, who always spoke the truth, was so graphic—communal pots, bicycles and carts as the only means of transportation, blackouts, food rationing more than usual—that we were all in shock. And when he finished speaking and approached the journalists, a passionate question came from my heart: “Do you really think we will survive?”

He explained again that Option Zero was the revolutionary government’s contingency plan for the moment of total blockade from abroad and, therefore, the complete loss of oil in the country. A strategy was designed for that scenario, and every link in society was organized to maintain a minimum of economic activity, as well as vital education and health centers, with provisions for an even worse situation: that of military aggression. The people would even be trained to survive without water and electricity for many days.

I remember the patience with which Fidel explained that this plan was not a propaganda slogan, but a defensive planning tool. It psychologically prepared the country for an extreme scenario, sent a signal that the state was organizing itself even for the worst outcome, and expressed an explicit willingness not to capitulate, even under extreme material conditions.

President Díaz-Canel Assesses Preparations for Cuba’s Defense

At a recent press conference, President Miguel Díaz-Canel stated that the national survival protocols conceived during the hardest years of the Special Period not only exist, but have been revised, modernized, and are ready to be activated if necessary.

In the 1990s, Cuba faced a sudden collapse without a “manual,” while today it faces a severe crisis with more experience, more tools to withstand shortages, and some technological and sectoral capabilities—including some domestic crude oil—that allow it to resist with greater resilience, although the weak point remains the same core: energy, foreign currency, and imports.

Added to this is the fact that Trump’s sanctions and threats have united the country. When explicit threats become so visible in their daily effects, they leave less room for the idea that “it’s all just a story” and begin to operate like any other pedagogy of violence.

Harassment and pain awaken the survival instinct, generate more solidarity, strengthen social tolerance for extreme measures, and affirm the common sense that a dispute like this is not only domestic, but geopolitical and coercive. Seeing Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and Miami congressmen celebrate the damage they are doing, while shouting “zero oil, zero remittances, zero food and medicine shipments,” has outraged even the stones in Cuba.

But they do not calculate the powers of history. After I asked Fidel the question in Biotechnology, he spent almost two more hours explaining to me why Cubans would emerge from the Special Period and the Zero Option. He closed with a phrase that answered that question from the heart: “We will survive by resisting, resisting, and resisting. As we have done before.”

Twenty years later, at the José Martí Memorial Theater, Fidel finished his speech and walked back down the aisle he had entered. When he passed by my seat, he paused for a moment: “Did you see, my daughter, that we were able to resist?”

(Resumen Latinoamericano – English)

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/29093

This article by Luis Hernández Navarro originally appeared in the February 17, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

Simultaneously farce and tragedy, the feud between Marx Arriaga and Mario Delgado reveals the consequences of using public education as a fiefdom to repay political favors. Despite their attempts to cloak themselves in the defense of the New Mexican School (NEM) and free textbooks, what’s at stake in this farcical spectacle is a matter of self-interest.

Both the Secretary of Public Education (SEP) and the head of the institution’s General Directorate of Educational Materials are disgraceful. Even if they cloak themselves in the noble mission of educating children, Delgado’s offer of the Costa Rican ambassadorship to Arriaga (an updated version of Álvaro Obregón’s infamous 50,000-peso bribes to his detractors) in exchange for his job at the SEP demonstrates the pedagogical depth of this clash.

The current Secretary of Education has consistently betrayed the teaching profession. As a senator for the PRD party in late 2012 and early 2013, he placed himself at the beck and call of Claudio X. González to approve Peña Nieto’s education reform. According to the businessman, on December 12, 2012, the Senator called him jubilantly to tell him that the new legislation had been approved with his vote in favor.

On September 13, 2018, already a Morena party deputy, Delgado announced: “The education reform will be overturned, not a single comma will remain.” A lie. The approved education legislation not only preserved the commas, but entire paragraphs of the old text and, above all, its neoliberal core.

And now, working from Vasconcelos’s office, he has dedicated himself to forging close alliances with business groups like Lego and Femsa, opening the door to private interests in terms of approaches and content. He wants to implement STEM education within the New Mexican Education Model (NEM), a flawed and unoriginal pedagogical fad used to attract funding and to promote initiatives and educational materials worthy of the Pleistocene era. Incidentally, he promotes a teacher training program that is utterly devoid of critical thinking.

Engaged in this approach, Delgado promoted the development of “supplementary” workbooks by the SEP (Ministry of Public Education) in collaboration with international organizations. Furthermore, he spearheaded the creation of a coalition called Alianza México (Mexico Alliance), which, as Mauro Jarquín has explained, is essentially a classic model of philanthrocapitalism in education, and has a presence in several states. In addition, local authorities, particularly in northern states, tend not to distribute books or collections published by Marx’s office.

Marx Arriaga suffers from severe personality disorders. He is a civil servant who fancies himself a teachers’ union leader; a state employee with preacher aspirations; a philologist who dreams of refounding an ethereal and ambiguous liberating pedagogy; a colonel without troops, but with a salary, who fantasizes about taking heaven by storm; a street fighter whom stylists knock out; an unelected apostle of Obradorism; a missionary who proclaims the new world in a strident and vociferous manner.

His time in the education sector has been fraught with controversy. Since his appearance at a morning press conference on April 26, 2023, announcing a new educational model, the scandals surrounding him have been relentless. The combination of his penchant for championing fervent causes with the kind of rhetoric worthy of a lay evangelist, and his inability to ground his pedagogical pronouncements in simple examples, has earned him widespread criticism from academics, teachers, and journalists.

His curriculum reform is a hodgepodge of good intentions and few concrete steps. He’s had indigestion from decolonial theory. He’s indulging in empty rhetoric that has fueled the right wing’s fear of communism. His verbosity ultimately drives away any possibility of sympathizing with what he claims to defend.

Until his latest scandal, he was a powerful figure. He held that position during President López Obrador’s six-year term, when all his erratic behavior was tolerated. He also held it throughout the first year of Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration. He traveled the country as if he were accountable to no one. He said whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, without any repercussions.

Things started to heat up when, at the end of December last year, he called for the formation of “Committees for the Defense of the New Mexican School and its Free Textbooks.”

Beyond his role as a civil servant, Marx has his own political capital comprised of teachers, some of whom are followers of critical pedagogy. They are concentrated in Chihuahua, Baja California, Michoacán, Querétaro, Guerrero, the State of Mexico, Guanajuato, Puebla, Coahuila, and Mexico City.

The Freirean Bonfires he organized and the Insurgent Bonfires he convened (a kind of study circle) would become the embryos of his committees. He held 300 Freirean Bonfires in which just over 3,000 teachers participated. At the beginning of this year, some 1,500 teachers were registered for the Insurgent Bonfires project, which was scheduled to hold 200 bonfires. The number of attendees could reach approximately 3,000 education workers.

The poet Nadia López García was appointed as Arriaga’s replacement. In 2018, President Enrique Peña Nieto presented her with the National Youth Award. The wounds of Ayotzinapa were still raw. In her acceptance speech, the current head of educational materials told the president: “Rest assured that today you have planted, in this generation, the seed for all our dreams to grow in Mexico.”

Unfortunately, the dispute at the SEP is not a fight between good and bad for the defense of public education, but a brawl between rival power groups for control and the collection of political rents from a pedagogical project that has not yet been born.

• 

  Analysis

  A Circus at Mexico’s Education Secretariat

  February 17, 2026February 17, 2026

  The dispute is not a fight for the defense of public education, but a brawl between rival power groups for control and the collection of political rents from a pedagogical project that has not yet been born.

• 

  Analysis

  A Bigger Plan

  February 17, 2026

  López Obrador’s fear of Mexico’s abrupt return to the right still applies today. The Brazilian case is instructive.

• 

  Analysis

  Mexico Needs a Macroeconomic Policy for Growth, not the Finance Sector

  February 17, 2026

  While the Mexican government attempts to curry favour to receive preferential treatment in USMCA negotiations, it ignores the fact that the Trump administration violates all established international norms and makes decisions only based on US interests.

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The president of the Colombian Communist Party (PCC), Jaime Caicedo, expressed his solidarity with the people of Cuba and also demanded respect for the rights of those who defend its Revolution.

He also called for an end to the repression and violence against activists who defend Cuba in the United States, whom the US administration demonizes, and for respect for the integrity and rights of Latin American migrants persecuted by the current government.

The political secretary of the Communist Party of Colombia (PCC) in Bogota, Carlos Garcia, stated that the party expresses “its solidarity and support for the heroic struggles of the Cuban people, who are resisting the onslaught and direct threat of U.S. imperialism and the continuation and intensification of the criminal economic, financial, and commercial blockade.”

“Today we demand respect for the autonomy, independence, and principle of sovereignty of peoples, as well as recognition of the heroic struggles of those who resist and fight for their dignity,” he exclaimed in a message obtained by Prensa Latina.

Recently, writer and former Colombian Minister of Culture, Arts, and Knowledge Juan David Correa asserted that Cubans are suffering because of a “totalitarian, authoritarian, and inhumane policy on the part of the United States government.”

Currently, the Colombian Movement of Solidarity with Cuba is promoting a donation drive, collecting non-perishable food, medicine, medical supplies, and electrical goods as a sign of support for the Caribbean nation.

Several statements of support were also signed by dozens of organizations in Colombia, including the Minga Association for Alternative Social Promotion, the Somos Defensores Program, the Jose Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective, the Corporation for Support of Popular Communities, and the Lazos de Dignidad Foundation, among others.

jdt/rc/ifs

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The Guatemalan government announced the termination of the medical collaboration agreement with Cuba under which Cuban health professionals worked in remote and impoverished areas of the country since 1998.

On Tuesday, February 10, the Guatemalan Ministry of Health announced that the 412 Cuban medical collaborators currently working in the country, of whom 333 are specialist doctors, will be replaced “gradually” by “national human resources.”

The decision, justified by a “technical analysis” to “strengthen the national healthcare system,” comes amid US pressures on Cuba and the rise of right-wing governments in Latin America that are aligned with this policy.

US persecution against a symbol of solidarity
Cuba’s international medical collaboration, with over six decades of history and a presence in 56 countries, follows the principles of solidarity and South-South cooperation.

However, this mission has been a specific target of a US campaign to suffocate and discredit it, which has intensified since Donald Trump’s first administration.

The US narrative, which accuses these programs of “modern slavery” and “human trafficking,” is aimed at undermining one of the main sources of foreign exchange for Cuba, as well as depriving vulnerable populations of medical care.

The Cuban international medical mission began in 1960 with the dispatch of a first brigade to Chile, devastated by an earthquake. It was forged in the following decades as a pillar of Cuba’s foreign policy.

International Activists Announce Flotilla Mission for Cuba Solidarity

The mission was later strengthened by large programs, such as the Barrio Adentro Mission in Venezuela or the Mais Médicos program in Brazil. It gained recognition by responding to global health crises, from the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone to sending doctors to the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy.

The continued US economic and political aggression against Cuba has entered a new and brutal phase of energy asphyxiation, with the recent executive order threatening sanctions on third countries for supplying fuel to Cuba. This escalation is a brutal act of aggression aimed at provoking hunger and despair among the population, as openly declared by the Trump administration. However, Cuba, its political leadership guided by the ideals of Fidel Castro, the revolutionary continuity with President Miguel Díaz-Canel, and its people, has had the resilience to defend the nation’s right to self-determination and sovereignty.

(Resumen Latinoamericano)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/SC/SF

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This article by Arturo Sánchez originally appeared in the February 15, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

The Cuban ambassador to Mexico, Eugenio Martínez Enríquez, expressed his emotion yesterday for the Mexican solidarity with the island and thanked the citizens for their response to the campaign to collect medicines and food organized by the Militant Solidarity Collective Va por Cuba and the José Martí Association of Cubans Residing in Mexico.

“I am deeply moved by the response to the call to help the Cuban people, who do not deserve the injustice and cruelty that the United States inflicts upon Cuba. Thank you is all I can say, for the generosity and humanity of the Mexican and patriotic Cuban people,” the diplomat declared.

“I am deeply moved by the response to the call to help the Cuban people, who do not deserve the injustice and cruelty that the United States inflicts upon Cuba. Thank you is all I can say, for the generosity and humanity of the Mexican and patriotic Cuban people,” the diplomat declared.

From early morning, the flow of people was constant. Young people, families, retirees, workers, office workers, and teachers arrived with bags, boxes, and packages to join the slogan that Cuba is not alone.

The collection center – located almost at the corner of Corregidora and Plaza de la Constitución – will remain open until February 22, from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and accepts non-perishable food items, as well as essential medical supplies.

Francisco Rosas López, from the organizing group, described the response as “formidable.” He noted that although they had expected good participation, the volume of donations exceeded their initial projections. As he spoke, vans provided by the city government departed for a storage warehouse loaded with boxes and sacks.

Rosas emphasized that this is a “people-to-people” campaign that will later be supplemented by shipments from the federal government. She added that similar collection centers are being prepared in Puebla, Celaya, and other locations throughout the country, with the goal of expanding the solidarity network in the coming weeks.

Among the donors, anger toward Washington’s policies was a constant theme. Retirees María Paz Arroyo and Patricia Galicia arrived together with 60 kilos of rice, 60 kilos of beans, 20 packages of milk, and two boxes of sardines. “It bothers me that Trump is doing such awful things. We are Latin American countries, and we have to help each other,” said Arroyo.

Galicia, for its part, emphasized that its support is also a form of gratitude towards the Cuban doctors who have worked in remote communities in Mexico.

Additionally, graduate students from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) will open an extra collection center to support the island. Donations will be accepted on February 17 and 18 at the Graduate Studies Unit in University City, and on February 19 and 20 at Las Islas in University City, from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Without fanfare, but with consistency, the day in the capital’s Zócalo showed an uninterrupted flow of support and a shared conviction: that Cuba, insisted the organizers and donors, is not alone.

• 

  News Briefs

  Cuban Ambassador Expresses Gratitude for Mexican Solidarity

  February 15, 2026February 15, 2026

  The Mexico City collection center – located almost at the corner of Corregidora and Plaza de la Constitución – will remain open until February 22.

• 

  Analysis | Interviews

  A Mexican Conspiracy Against the US?

  February 15, 2026February 15, 2026

  An interview with Morena’s Secretary for Mexicans Living Abroad, Alejandro Robles, on Peter Schweizer’s dangerous and deluded new conspiracy theory.

• 

  News Briefs

  Clicks

  February 15, 2026February 15, 2026

  Our weekly roundup of stories in the English and Spanish language press on Mexico and Mexican politics. Kurt Hackbarth, Trump Is Using Mexico’s Oil to Put the Squeeze on Cuba Jacobin. The alternative, however, is to let Cuba starve: the process of Gaza-ification brought into this hemisphere. If this were to succeed, and Mexico were…

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Caracas, February 15, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – US President Donald Trump is considering a visit to Venezuela, though he did not specify when the trip might take place or what agenda it would entail.

“I’m going to make a visit to Venezuela,” Trump told reporters outside the White House on Friday.

The US President addressed the press ahead of a trip to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to meet soldiers who participated in the January 3 military attacks against Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores.

Questioned by a journalist, Trump stated that Washington recognizes the Venezuelan government led by Acting President Delcy Rodríguez as the country’s legitimate authority.

“We are dealing with them, and they have done a great job,” he stated. The White House refused comment on whether the recognition was the administration’s official stance.

In 2019, the first Trump administration recognized the self-proclaimed “interim government” headed by Juan Guaidó as the country’s legitimate authority, prompting the Maduro government to sever diplomatic ties. The US later transferred its recognition to the defunct opposition-controlled National Assembly whose term expired in January 2021.

Since the January 3 attacks, Caracas and Washington have fast-tracked a diplomatic rapprochement, with US Chargé d’Affaires Laura Dogu arriving in the Caribbean nation in early February. An official recognition of the Rodríguez acting government could pave the way for the restructuring of Venezuela’s sizable foreign debt.

In his Friday press remarks, Trump further described relations with Venezuelan leaders as being “as good as one could hope for,” and added that “the relationship with Venezuela today is a 10.”

Trump additionally highlighted progress in Venezuela’s oil sector.

“Oil is flowing, and other nations are paying a lot of money for it, and we are handling it. We are refining it,” he said. Since January, the White House has imposed control of Venezuelan oil exports, with proceeds deposited in bank accounts in Qatar before being partly rerouted to Caracas under US-set conditions.

Earlier last week, Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez emphasized in an NBC interview that Maduro remains the country’s legitimate president. She also disclosed that she has spoken twice with Trump and has had “more frequent” contact with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and expressed “gratitude” for the “respectful and courteous” nature of the talks.

Venezuela’s acting president went on to announce that she has likewise been invited to visit the US. “We are considering going once we establish cooperation and can move forward with everything,” she said.

The invitation reportedly arose during a recent visit to Caracas by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who was hosted by Rodríguez at Miraflores Palace on Wednesday.

Wright and Rodríguez later toured the Petroindependencia crude upgrader, a mixed venture between Venezuela’s state-owned PDVSA and Chevron, in the Orinoco Oil Belt.

The Trump administration official announced that Chevron would invest US $100 million to modernize operational facilities, with the goal of “doubling [Petroindependencia’s] productive capacity within 12 to 18 months and quintupling it within five years.” Petroindependencia has a current output of 40,000 barrels per day (bpd).

US issues new oil licenses

Following Wright’s Venezuela visit, the US Treasury Department issued two general licenses, 49 and 50, aimed at boosting conditions for Western multinational corporations to operate in Venezuela’s energy sector.

The first license allows for the negotiation and signing of future investment contracts, contingent upon the potential issuance of a specific license. The second waiver authorizes Chevron, BP, Eni, Shell, and Repsol to conduct transactions and operations related to hydrocarbon projects with PDVSA or any other Venezuelan public entity.

Repsol (Spain) and Eni (Italy), like Chevron, participate in oil and gas joint ventures in the South American country, whereas the UK-headquartered Shell and BP are set to lead offshore natural gas projects alongside Trinidad and Tobago’s National Gas Company (NGC) in Venezuelan waters.

However, GL50 requires that any contracts fall under US jurisdiction and mandates that all payments to “blocked” entities—as sanctions against PDVSA and Venezuela’s banking system remain in place—be made to accounts designated by the US Treasury.

It also explicitly prohibits transactions involving any person or entity linked to Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, or China, as well as vessels sanctioned by Washington.

The Trump administration has loosened restrictions against the Venezuelan energy sector, including allowing the import of US diluents, inputs and technology, following a recent pro-business overhaul of the country’s Hydrocarbon Law. The reform granted expanded benefits for private corporations, including reduced fiscal responsibilities and expanded control over operations and sales.

Upon leaving Caracas, Energy Secretary Wright claimed that “structural reforms” would continue in Venezuela, with changes to “labor laws, the court system and the banking system.”

Edited and with additional reporting by Ricardo Vaz from Caracas.

The post Trump Announces Venezuela Visit as US Treasury Grants Licenses to Western Energy Giants appeared first on Venezuelanalysis.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/28178

This Wednesday marked the first round in the battle against Argentina’s regressive labor bill as the legislation moves toward the Chamber of Deputies. While media outlets attempted to demonize the protests to obscure growing social opposition, a renewed militancy emerged, signaling a new stage in the fight against the law.

The day’s struggle took shape between two poles: on one side, the unpopular policies of the government and its economic backers; on the other, the perceived betrayal of the bureaucracy of the CGT — Argentina’s largest labor union federation —and the complicity of Peronism. Despite these obstacles, sectors were determined to resist push the movement forward. The Left has seen its role strengthened in this process, and the central challenge now lies in forcing an active national strike when the bill is debated in the lower house — a key step toward a broader popular mobilization and a general strike.

The Media Campaign vs. Social Reality

Even before the day had ended, major media outlets — alongside Senator (and former Security Minister) Patricia Bullrich — launched a fierce campaign to demonize the movement. Their goal was to hide the obvious: deepening social anger toward an economic plan that is pushing large sectors of the working class into increasingly precarious conditions, and a renewed willingness among workers and youth to fight back.

The government — which in just over two years has implemented “chainsaw” austerity, repressed social protest, passed laws concentrating economic power, and subordinated the country to the IMF — attempted to cast itself as a victim. Meanwhile, it continues to advance a reform that attacks the right to organize, facilitates layoffs, eliminates overtime, fragments vacation time, and extends the workday while reducing employer contributions to the national pension fund.

By evening, the government’s narrative began to unravel. After the initial crackdowns, thousands returned to the area around Congress, joined by workers arriving after work. They were met with indiscriminate repression, including tear gas, rubber bullets, and mass arrests.

While the government managed to pass the bill in the Senate, it failed its central objective: projecting an image of governability and calm to financial markets. The government and media operation have been widely questioned, revealing deep tensions. Rising inflation, combined with austerity, declining consumption, and job losses undermined official claims of stability. The streets were anything but peaceful. From social media, PTS (Socialist Workers’ Party) Deputy Myriam Bregman argued that brutal reforms inevitably generate resistance, and that the violence lies not in protest, but in imposing austerity through state repression.

The mobilizations expressed a rejection not only of the labor reform but of the government itself. Thousands took to the streets despite the CGT leadership, which has spent months negotiating with the government without calling for a national strike. Their limited call for mobilization — offered without a strike and granting “freedom of action” to individual unions — aimed to contain social pressure. Nevertheless, many workers and youth mobilized independently, even after working hours and amid the ongoing repression.

The protests were nationwide. In Córdoba, repression occurred under Peronist governor Martín Llaryora, while in the Senate, the reform advanced thanks to the quorum provided by the UCR, the PRO, and sectors of Peronism — the same actors who enabled previous measures like the “Omnibus Law.” These senators, maintaining privileges far removed from the daily reality of millions, reflect a political regime increasingly disconnected from the population.

A government marked by crisis and sustained by imperialist finance capital, alongside a fragmented and often complicit opposition, has led to the emergence of new combative sectors.

The Path Forward Is Working-Class and Youth Organization

What occurred on Wednesday was merely the first round of a broader confrontation. Even if the labor reform is ultimately approved, it will face fierce resistance wherever the state attempts to implement layoffs or precarity, as seen in ongoing conflicts at Lustramax and Garrahan Hospital.

In this context, the working class and youth can rely only on their own strength. The immediate challenge is to deepen organization in workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods, pushing from below for an active national strike. The PTS and the Left Front place themselves in this perspective, participating in ongoing struggles and building on months of solidarity with retirees, healthcare workers, disability collectives, and other sectors in this conflict.

The labor struggle was not resolved on Wednesday; rather, a new stage has begun. The nascent networks built in recent months will shape the next phase of mobilization as the debate moves to the Chamber of Deputies and social resistance continues to grow.

Originally published in Spanish on February 14 in La Izquierda Diario.

The post Argentina: Anger and Class-Struggle Confront Milei’s Reactionary Labor Reform Law appeared first on Left Voice.

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URGENT: SEND SOLAR GENERATORS & PANELS TO CUBAN HOSPITALS!

Trump’s fuel blockade is starving Cuba of power, crippling hospitals and schools, and attempting to induce a famine.

We are rushing solar generators and panels to our neighbors 90 miles away so that hospitals can keep their doors open and their lights on. Your donation helps ensure patients receive the essential care they need.

This crisis does not have to exist. It was created by the Trump Administration and should be reversed immediately.

Until these cruel policies end, as neighbors, we must act and send aid.

Help us stop the Trump Administration from creating famine in Cuba.

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wow I didn't know that drug cartels, similar to ISIS, are just deniable US proxies used for regional destabilization - you're telling me that for the first time

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/26500

The government of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced the shipment of 814 tons of milk, meat, beans, rice, and other foodstuffs to Cuba on Sunday, February 8. The move came days after Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel presented a series of emergency measures being adopted by his government to mitigate the impact of the severe fuel shortage facing the island.

Cuba is currently facing a serious crisis, provoked by recent maneuvers from the US government which, emboldened by its massive military build up in the Caribbean and its recent bombing of Caracas, has sought to further tighten the blockade on the island, hoping to finally force the overthrow of the government. On January 29, Trump announced an executive order under which any country that trades hydrocarbons with Havana will see a 10% increase in tariffs on its products exported to the United States. The executive order was said to have targeted Cuba’s main energy suppliers: Venezuela, Mexico, and Russia. 

Venezuela was already effectively forced to halt oil shipments to Cuba due to the naval blockade imposed by the US against Venezuela, which already resulted in the illegal seizure of a Cuba-bound Venezuelan oil tanker.

Russia, a country which, due to heavy sanctions, is the most decoupled from the US economy, has declared that it will continue supplying fuel to Cuba. The government has said that “the situation in Cuba is truly critical” and top government spokesperson Dimitry Peskov, said “We are in close contact with our Cuban friends through diplomatic and other channels.”

Mexico, for its part, announced that it was engaged in negotiations with the US over oil shipments. President Claudia Sheinbaum has openly declared her rejection of the Trump measure: “You can’t suffocate people like that. It is very unfair.”

She also promised that Mexico would continue to help Cuba in any way possible: “We will continue to support Cuba and take all necessary diplomatic action to resume oil shipments.” In recent days, after learning of the Trump administration’s “threat”. Mexico, one of the few countries that sent oil to Cuba, said it would consult with Washington to determine the extent of possible retaliation.

According to Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, not a single drop of oil has entered the island in 2026, posing a serious threat to a country that depends heavily on fuel for its power grid and to keep transportation, health, education, and other key systems functioning. Government officials and political analysts have claimed that the recent measure seeks to annihilate the Cuban people.

Former Colombian President Ernesto Samper shared this opinion in a post: “SOS for Cuba. The genocide of the Cuban people is being prepared by suffocating their vital conditions for survival. A United Nations humanitarian mission could lead a deployment of humanitarian ships loaded with the fuel that the island needs today, like the oxygen we breathe every day to stay alive.”

Mexican solidarity with Cuba

For his part, the Cuban president said, regarding the Mexican shipment that departed in two ships from the port of Veracruz: “Thank you, Mexico. For your solidarity, affection, and always warm embrace of Cuba.”

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez wrote on X: “We thank the Government of Mexico, under the leadership of President Claudia Sheinbaum, for sending more than 800 tons of aid to Cuba, amid the intensification of the blockade following the recent Executive Order by the US government. While some try to suffocate our population, sister nations extend their hand in solidarity.”

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/26322

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel spoke to the press on Thursday, February 5, about the situation facing the island in the wake of the latest measures imposed by Washington.

Following the seizure of Venezuelan tankers bound for Cuba by the United States Military, the Trump administration increased pressure on the island, which has been under an economic and commercial blockade for more than 60 years, by threatening to increase tariffs on any country that sells fuel to Cuba.

The US military campaign against Venezuela, including a naval blockade on oil and the kidnapping of the president and the first lady, cut off one of Cuba’s only alternatives for obtaining oil. 

In his address, the president reported that no fuel has entered Cuba since December. 

The loss of fuel supply severely complicates the electricity supply on which schools, transportation, and vital health infrastructure depend. In view of this, several analysts have called Trump’s latest measure against the Cuban people “genocidal”.

“Cuba is not a threat to the United States”

Díaz-Canel said he is aware of the difficulties and painful hardships that the Cuban people are going through following a decision that Washington justifies based on an alleged threat that Cuba poses to its national security, something that has been widely questioned by various analysts and politicians around the world.

On this subject, a deeply moved Díaz-Canel said during his appearance: “Cuba is not a terrorist country, nor is it a threat to the security of the United States. Cuba has never carried out, nor proposed, nor organized any aggressive action that puts at risk the territorial integrity, the security, or the stability of the government of the United States.”

He added: “We do not protect terrorists, and there are no military forces in Cuba from other nations or from other groups. In Cuba, there is indeed a military base – an illegal military base – and it is an illegal United States military base on Cuban soil, in the province of Guantánamo, against the will of the Cuban people.” 

Cuba proposes dialogue “between equals”

In response, he affirmed that Cuba has always been and remains willing to engage in dialogue with Washington, although he clarified that “dialogue under pressure is not dialogue.” In this regard, he said that Cuba advocates civilized relations between neighbors, but rejects blackmail, threats, and impositions by some countries on others as a method of negotiation. He thus demanded respect for Cuban sovereignty.

Díaz-Canel said that his government is willing to meet with officials from the Trump administration to discuss the situation between the two countries: “Cuba is open to dialogue on any issue that needs to be debated or discussed, as long as there is no pressure or preconditions, in a situation of equality and respect for our sovereignty, independence, and self-determination.”

The theory of collapse

According to Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, between March 2024 and February 2025 alone, the damage caused by the economic blockade of Cuba amounts to 7.556 billion USD, which represents a 49% increase compared to the previous period, showing that the blockade causes greater damage over time.

For his part, the Cuban president recalled that the US strategy of applying pressure until the country collapses is not new, and that despite all the difficulties Cuba has had to endure, it is not a failed state, as claimed by the White House: “The theory of collapse and the insistence on it is related to a whole set of constructs that the US government has tried to use to characterize the Cuban situation. This theory of collapse is associated with one of the currents in which the US government is determined to overthrow the Cuban revolution.”

Currently, he said, Cuba is enduring not only a series of mechanisms that seek to suffocate the Caribbean country, combined with the constant threat of military aggression, but also a media campaign that combines slander, hatred, and psychological warfare to justify various US attacks.

Read more: For the Cuban people, surrender is not an option

However, the Cuban president also pointed out that, despite the new conditions following the attack on Venezuela on January 3, there are several signs of international solidarity with his government: “Cuba is not alone, and we know that there are countries and companies willing to continue working with the largest of the Antilles.”

The revolutionary government’s decisions: savings and defense

Faced with this difficult situation, Díaz-Canel outlined the decisions his government has taken to tackle this new onslaught: “We have had to make a series of assessments in the Political Bureau, the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers, and the National Defense Council, and we have just had a meeting in the Council of Ministers to update the plan to be implemented based on government directives to address an acute fuel shortage.”

Cuba has implemented fuel rationing to ensure the functioning of essential and basic activities for the Cuban population, although he acknowledged that the difficulty has been enormous, considering that no oil shipments have arrived in Cuba throughout 2026. This will mean a reduction in public transportation and an increase in blackouts on the island, which have already broken records.

In response, the Cuban president raised the possibility of increasing other types of energy sources, such as renewable energies, although this process will take time. Therefore, he said, the government must now demonstrate enormous creativity to overcome this new barrier that the United States, the most powerful country on earth, is unilaterally imposing on a country of just 10 million inhabitants.

In addition, Díaz-Canel stated that following the attack on Venezuela, in which more than 30 Cuban combatants on security missions in the South American country were killed, Cuba has prepared itself to face possible US military aggression: “One of the priorities we established was to deploy a defense preparedness plan.”

According to Díaz-Canel, in the event of military aggression, Fidel Castro’s old military principle of “war by the entire people” will be used against external aggressors. This, however, does not mean that the country is entering a “state of war”, but rather that it is preparing for the moment when that step must be taken, the president said.

In this regard, Foreign Minister Rodríguez said on Telegram: “The US seeks to impose its will on the rights of sovereign states and has been using force and aggression against Cuba for 67 years. On its side is enormous military power and the size of its economy, plus vast experience in aggression and crimes. On our side is reason, international law, and the patriotic spirit of a people.”

He added: “We Cubans are not willing to sell our country or give in to threats and blackmail, nor are we willing to renounce the inalienable prerogative with which we build our own destiny, in peace with the rest of the world. We will defend Cuba. Those who know us know that this is a firm, categorical, and proven commitment.”

The post Cuban government responds to US-manufactured fuel shortage: “We will defend Cuba” appeared first on Peoples Dispatch.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/26209

A couple of years after President Hugo Chávez came to power, Venezuela had approximately 30,000 practicing physicians. Even so, it was not possible to effectively deliver healthcare services to all of the country’s poor and marginalized people. There was an acute shortage of regular healthcare, especially in impoverished urban slums and rural regions.

It was in this context that a new kind of cooperation between Venezuela and Cuba began. In exchange for supplying Venezuelan oil to Cuba, arrangements were made to bring Cuban doctors and healthcare expertise to Venezuela. At the same time, initiatives were taken to send Venezuelan students to Cuba to study medicine and healthcare. Alongside this, an alternative medical education structure was created outside Venezuela’s conventional medical education system, called the “University Without Walls.” Its main objective was to ensure that new medical students could receive their education without becoming detached from their own communities and social environments.

The successes of Misión Barrio Adentro

Based on this initiative, the Barrio Adentro (“Inside the Neighborhood”) program was launched. In the first phase, around 10,000 Cuban doctors came to Venezuela; later, this number increased to about 14,000. Along with them, 15,000–20,000 other health workers – such as dentists, nurses, and technicians – were recruited. As a result, nearly 7,000 new primary healthcare centers and about 5,000 diagnostic centers were established across the country.

In the next phase, Venezuelan students traveled to Cuba for medical training. After completing their training as doctors, they returned to their own country and began working in various healthcare facilities throughout Venezuela. At the same time, many of them also became involved in teaching medicine at colleges and universities in Venezuela. Most of these new doctors were appointed to areas close to their own places of residence, so that healthcare services would be more easily accessible to local communities. The entire cost of this public health program was borne through the exchange of Venezuela’s oil resources.

Ordinarily, international oil trade and exchange are conducted on the basis of commercial profit traded against the US dollar. But Venezuela and Cuba demonstrated that social development and public health could also be important areas of exchange in return for oil. Instead of sending troops to weaker countries to seize oil and resources, Venezuela and Cuba set an international example of how social development can be achieved through mutual cooperation using oil as a medium of exchange, departing from the usual norm.

Read more: Venezuela and Iran: oil and survival

At the beginning of 2003, Misión Barrio Adentro began as a small program in the Libertador district of Caracas. Its aim was to provide free primary healthcare to poor communities who had previously been neglected or had no regular access to health services. At that time, many Venezuelan doctors were unable, for various reasons, to work in poor urban slums and rural areas. For this reason, the mayor of the Libertador district took the initiative to bring doctors from Cuba to staff newly established local clinics.

Later, in 2010, a devastating earthquake struck Haiti. The way Venezuelan doctors provided medical services there also set an important example. Brazil’s Ministry of Health recognized this medical work and innovative public health system and joined in cooperation with them in Haiti. This program gained considerable international recognition and was reported in The Lancet.

Cuba’s revolutionary medicine as inspiration for Venezuelan healthcare

Today, there is an ideological difference between how the United States views oil and how Venezuela views it. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez signed an agreement with Cuba under which petroleum was supplied to Cuba at discounted rates in exchange for doctors and other health professionals. These doctors generally worked in Venezuela on rotating two-year terms. By 2004, Barrio Adentro had become a nationwide network of 13,000 doctors, along with nurses, dentists, and other healthcare workers.

However, in the long run, it was not feasible to rely solely on doctors from Cuba. Therefore, soon after the project began, initiatives were taken to integrate Venezuela’s own doctors into the system. Residency programs were introduced for newly graduated doctors, and many medical students were sent to Havana’s Latin American School of Medicine. At the same time, a six-year integrated community medicine program – Medicina Integral Comunitaria (MIC) – was established. Operating outside the traditional university framework, this program trained thousands of new doctors with a focus on primary healthcare.

A unique feature of the MIC program is that students do not have to leave their villages or slum areas. Even students from the poorest neighborhoods of Venezuelan cities can pursue medical education while remaining in their own communities. This is not a short-term course; rather, it is a comprehensive program designed to create a new kind of doctor who is a part of a community healthcare system. The experience of Cuba’s healthcare system has had a significant impact on the development of public health in Venezuela.

Watch: 60 years of Cuban medical solidarity

The roots of this Cuban medical philosophy lie in the post-revolutionary outlook of the island. In a speech in 1960, Che Guevara spoke about the role of medicine in the new Cuba, saying: “Our task today is to direct the creative capacity of all medical professionals toward social medicine.” Within a year and a half of the revolution, he began thinking about “revolutionary medicine” and the possibility of creating a new type of doctor. He linked the mission of medicine to the construction of a just society.

A cooperation that brings international solidarity and respect

In his book “Revolutionary doctors: how Venezuela and Cuba are changing the world’s conception of health care,” Dr. Steve Brouwer shows how Cuba’s healthcare and medical education systems evolved in a unique way after the revolution, and how medicine also played an important role in Cuba’s relations with the outside world. Brouwer himself lived for a year in rural Venezuela and observed that in areas where healthcare services had not existed just a few years earlier, new doctors, students, and health workers were now actively working.

Clearly, the actions and mutual cooperation of Cuba and Venezuela were producing striking results. Yet the United States remained determined to disrupt both Cuba and Venezuela, imposing strict economic and travel sanctions. Not only that, it began devising and funding various plans to weaken the two revolutionary governments. In 2006, the US created the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, aiming directly to undermine Cuba’s humanitarian medical missions. Special plans were designed to draw Cuban doctors, nurses, and technicians away from their overseas assignments.

Read more: How Venezuela poses an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US agenda

However, the US did not succeed in diminishing the international solidarity and respect that Cuba and Venezuela were earning worldwide through their exchange-based cooperation. Nor was it able to halt the expansion of humanitarian medical assistance and international medical education programs.

In 2007, at the graduation ceremony of the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, a young graduate said: “Today we are an army in white coats, who will bring health and dignity to our people.” In the words of Dr. Steve Brouwer, when emergency services and humanitarian cooperation take precedence over diplomatic or military coercion by powerful countries, true moral victory is achieved.

Venezuela and Cuba have presented a concrete example of those alternative values in opposition to capitalist and imperialist powers.

People’s Health Dispatch is a fortnightly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch*. For more articles and subscription to People’s Health Dispatch, click* here.

The post Venezuela and Cuba: a socialist alliance for Health for All appeared first on Peoples Dispatch.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/25975

The halls of power in Washington are echoing with a familiar, predatory chorus. Once again, the White House, various think-tank experts, and US politicians are predicting the “imminent collapse” of Cuba. This is a tune the world has heard for over sixty years, usually sung at its highest volume whenever the United States decides to tighten the economic noose around the island’s neck. However, in 2026, the rhetoric has shifted from sanctions to an overt campaign of total strangulation. Under a new executive order signed in late January, the second Trump administration has escalated the decades-long blockade into a proactive fuel blockade.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel laid bare the intended consequences in a press conference on February 5, 2026: “Not allowing a single drop of fuel to enter our country will affect transportation, food production, tourism, children’s education, and the healthcare system.” The objective is clear: to induce systemic failure, sow popular discontent, and create conditions for political destabilization. The White House rhetoric confirms this intent. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s statement on the same day, that “the Cuban government is on its last leg and its country is about to collapse,” is not an analysis but public signaling, a psychological operation meant to reinforce the narrative of inevitable doom and pressure Cuban leadership into unilateral concessions.

This policy is not merely a “sanction” in the traditional sense; it is a calculated attempt to suffocate a nation by blocking every drop of fuel from reaching its shores. The administration has authorized aggressive tariffs and sanctions on any foreign country or company that dares to trade oil with the island, effectively treating Cuban territorial waters as a zone of exclusion. Since December, multiple oil tankers headed to Cuba have been seized by US naval forces in the Caribbean or forced to return to their ports of origin under threat of asset forfeiture. In direct response to this intensifying siege, Cuba has announced sweeping fuel rationing measures designed to protect essential services. The plan prioritizes fuel for healthcare, water, food production, education, public transportation, and defense, while strictly limiting sales to private drivers. To secure vital foreign currency, the tourism sector and key export industries, such as cigar production, will continue operating. Schools will maintain full in-person primary education, with hybrid systems implemented for higher levels. The leadership of the Cuban Revolution has affirmed that Cuba “will not collapse.”

To the planners in the White House, Cuba is a 67-year-old problem to be solved with starvation and darkness. But to the Cuban people, the current crisis is a continuation of a long-standing refusal to trade their sovereignty for Washington’s demands of submission.

The ghost of the “Special Period”

To understand why the Cuban people have not descended into the chaos Washington predicted, one must look to the historical precedent of the “Special Period in Time of Peace.” Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba experienced an economic shock that would have toppled almost any other modern state. Overnight, the island lost 85% of its international trade and nearly all of its subsidized fuel imports. The resulting statistics were staggering: the Gross Domestic Product plummeted by 35%, and the daily caloric intake of the average citizen dropped from over 3,000 calories to roughly 1,800. During this era, the lights went out across the island for more than 16 hours a day, and the bicycle became the primary mode of transportation as the public transit system collapsed.

At the same time, Washington escalated its assault through the Torricelli Act (1992) and the Helms-Burton Law (1996), each tightening the noose around Cuba’s economy. However, instead of fracturing under the weight of this tightened blockade, Cubans developed “Option Zero”, a survival plan designed to keep hospitals running and children fed without any fuel, and the Cuban social fabric tightened. The government prioritized the distribution of remaining resources to the most vulnerable, ensuring that infant mortality rates remained lower than those in many parts of the United States despite the scarcity. This period proved that when a population is politically conscious of the external forces causing their suffering, they become extraordinarily resilient. The “Special Period” was not just a time of hunger; it was a period of forced innovation that gave rise to the world’s first national experiment in organic urban farming and mass-scale energy conservation.

The return of the energy crisis

The crisis of 2026 is, in many ways, a sequel to the 1990s, but with higher stakes and more advanced technological targets. The roots of the current energy shortage can be traced back to the first Trump administration’s decision in 2019 to target Cuban oil imports as a means of punishing the island for its solidarity with Venezuela. By designating Cuba as a “State Sponsor of Terrorism” and activating Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, the US successfully scared off international shipping lines and insurance companies. This was followed by a focused campaign against the PDVSA (Venezuela’s state oil company) and the shipping firms involved in the trade agreement between countries in the region known as ALBA-TCP.

By 2025, the impact on Cuba’s energy grid was catastrophic. The island’s thermal power plants, most of which were built with aging Soviet technology, were never designed to burn the heavy, sulfur-rich crude that Cuba produces domestically without constant maintenance and expensive imported additives. The lack of foreign exchange, caused by the tightening of the blockade, meant that spare parts were non-existent. By the time the 2026 fuel blockade began, the national grid was already operating at 25% below its required capacity. President Miguel Díaz-Canel has been transparent with the public, noting that without fuel, everything from the morning school bus to the refrigeration systems for the nation’s advanced biotech medicines is under constant threat, a reality that has now precipitated the stringent new rationing regime.

The threat of intervention: from Caracas to Havana

The current US stance toward Cuba cannot be viewed in isolation from its recent military interventions in the Middle East and Latin America. The “regime change” efforts in Cuba are being modeled after the maximum pressure campaigns used against Iran and the military incursions seen in Venezuela on January 3, 2026. The threat of a US military attack is no longer a rhetorical flourish used by Havana to drum up nationalism; it is a documented strategic option discussed in Washington.

The logic behind such an intervention is twofold. First, there is the ideological drive to eliminate the “contagion” of a country that questions the Monroe Doctrine and US domination in the region. Cuba’s existence serves as a reminder that sovereignty is possible even in the shadow of a superpower. Second, and more pragmatically, the US is motivated by a thirst for strategic minerals. Cuba sits on some of the world’s largest reserves of nickel and cobalt, essential components of lithium-ion batteries that power the global transition to electric vehicles and advanced weaponry. In a world where the US is scrambling to compete with China for control of the mineral and energy supply chain, a sovereign Cuba that controls its own mines is seen as an obstacle to American hegemony. If the US can force a collapse, these minerals would no longer belong to the Cuban people; they would be auctioned off to US corporations as it was before 1959.

The new resistance: extraordinary efforts in renewable energy

However, the Cuban response to this renewed strangulation is not a white flag of surrender. Recognizing that fossil fuel dependence is a vulnerability the US will always exploit, Cuba has, in recent years, launched an extraordinary national effort to transform its energy matrix. Building on this momentum, the country completed 49 new solar parks in 2025 alone. This massive undertaking added approximately 1,000 megawatts of power to the national grid, marking a 7% increase in total grid capacity and accounting for a remarkable 38% of the nation’s energy generation. By the end of March 2026, with support from China, the island is on track to add over 150 MW of renewable power to its grid through the rapid deployment of solar parks.

The strategy is clear: if the empire can shut off the oil, Cuba will harvest the sun. “The way the US energy blockade has been implemented reinforces our commitment to the renewable energy strategy,” President Miguel Díaz-Canel declared. The government has committed to a plan to generate 24% of the country’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030, with a long-term goal of achieving total energy independence. This involves not just large-scale solar farms, but the decentralization of the grid through the installation of thousands of small-scale solar panels on homes and state buildings. This “energy sovereignty” movement is the 21st-century equivalent of the 1990s urban gardens. It is a way of overcoming the US blockade by removing the very commodity, oil, that Washington uses as a leash.

The narrative of Cuba’s “imminent collapse” has been written a thousand times by people who do not understand the depth of the island’s historical memory. The 2026 fuel blockade is a brutal crime against a civilian population, designed to create the very chaos that the US media then reports on as “proof” of government failure. It is the arsonist blaming the house for being flammable. The newly imposed fuel rationing is not a sign of surrender, but a tactical maneuver of national defense, a structured effort to outlast the assault while safeguarding the pillars of Cuban society that precisely make it an alternative to the US model.

Yet, Cuba’s message to the world remains consistent. They are willing to talk and trade, but not to be owned or become a neo-colony of the United States. The story of Cuba is not one of a failed state, but of a people who have decided that the most potent fuel for their future isn’t oil, it’s the will to remain independent. As the sun rises over the new solar arrays in the Cuban countryside, it serves as a silent, glowing testament to a nation that refuses to disappear.

Manolo De Los Santos is Executive Director of The People’s Forum and a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. His writing appears regularly in Monthly Review, Peoples Dispatch, CounterPunch, La Jornada, and other progressive media. He coedited, most recently, Viviremos: Venezuela vs. Hybrid War (LeftWord, 2020), Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro (LeftWord, 2021), and Our Own Path to Socialism: Selected Speeches of Hugo Chávez (LeftWord, 2023).

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