The people of Latin America have long had to live under the shadow of U.S. imperialism—but seldom has it been so brazen and unapologetic about its true motives.
On January 3, the U.S. military illegally bombed and invaded Venezuela in order to remove its sitting head of state.
Hours later, Donald Trump bragged openly that the United States intended to “run” Venezuela for an indefinite period, primarily for the purpose of extracting its oil wealth. He pointedly snubbed the country’s democratic dissidents and civil society, indicating he was perfectly willing to work with the current authoritarian leadership of Venezuela so long as they allowed U.S. corporations to pump fossil fuels. If they did not, the Trump administration threatened them with another round of sanctions and military attacks.
Directly asserting “control” of another country, for the sole purpose of extracting their resources, is the very definition of imperialism. Trump’s actions evoke decades if not centuries of prior U.S. “gunboat diplomacy,” staged coups, and military operations throughout Latin America in the service of U.S. corporate interests. But the brazenness of his threats and rhetoric—without even a smokescreen of democratic legitimacy—is something we have not seen for decades.
Many U.S. citizens are shocked by the behavior we are witnessing from our own government; but our partners around the world are not so surprised. They have seen for years how the forces of fossil fuel extraction, militarism, colonialism, and patriarchy combine to extract wealth from their countries and suppress democracy. In contrast, they are building alternative, regenerative economic systems in which imperialism has no place.
As our partner Juan José Hurtado Paz y Paz of Asociación Pop No’j in Guatemala wrote on January 6:
Colonialism, in its various forms, is not merely a thing of the past but a persistent structure of domination. From the European invasion of the Americas to contemporary forms of political, economic, cultural, religious, and military intervention, the common thread has been the subordination of peoples to external interests. Far from promoting peace, democracy, or development, colonial and imperialist projects have systematically sought the extraction of resources, geopolitical control, and the imposition of economic and political models that serve the interests of the metropolises.
Juan José draws on insights from the history of Guatemala, including the U.S. intervention in 1954 that overthrew the country’s nascent democracy and set the stage for a series of strongmen and military governments to seize power—culminating in a genocide against the country’s Indigenous population in the 1980s that was carried out with U.S. support.
A similar tragic history has unfolded throughout Mesoamerica and the Caribbean. Time and again, U.S. support for dictators and military coups has destabilized governments and undermined human rights. In Haiti, our partners are still living with the effects of U.S. support for ousted strongmen and their refusal to support a Haitian-led solution to the security crisis that has engulfed the nation.
In Honduras, the U.S. government likewise continues to interfere brazenly in the country’s elections to tip the scales to their preferred candidate. Trump also recently pardoned the former Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, despite his role in running a corrupt narco-state in Honduras for years that trampled on the democratic rights of his people.
What we see across the region is repeating patterns of colonialism, extraction, and militarism. The U.S. power elite once again claims for itself the right to interfere in any country, any time it chooses, in order to inflict its will on the citizens without their consent.
In the wake of the attack on Venezuela, for instance, Trump bragged openly about “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere.” Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s top advisors, deployed openly fascistic rhetoric about the right of stronger nations to bully their neighbors. “We live in a world, in the real world […] that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he recently declared. “These are the iron laws of the world[.]”
Empires throughout history have used this justification to proclaim the inevitability of their rule. They hope that by portraying their own unlawful violence and brutality as an “iron law,” they can intimidate people and deter anyone from resisting or presenting an alternative vision of the future.
Yet, “the people refuse to die at the hands of the extractive corporate empire and the government that promotes and protects it,” as our partner Juan López of the Guapinol water defenders once put it. He gave his life to defend a regenerative vision for the region free of colonialism, extraction, and militarism. And that is a vision that will never die.
