Nobody is complaining anymore about Latin America and the Caribbean being neglected by the hegemon to the north. The Trump administration is contending with it on multiple fronts: prioritizing “massive deportations,” halting the “flood of drugs,” combatting “threats to US security,” and stopping other countries from “ripping us off” in trade. The over 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine is alive and on steroids.
On the 7th anniversary of the 2018 coup attempt in Nicaragua, a must-read account of what unfolded
Seven years ago, Nicaragua was subject to a violent attempted coup that lasted from April through July, 2018. In a four-article series published in Monthly Review in 2023, Dan Kovalik and FoLA's John Perry shed much-needed light on how the coup attempt unfolded. The first article looks at how it was planned and how it started. The second article discusses the “national dialogue” which began in May 2018 but which failed to end the violence. The third article shoes how, as the violence increased, support for the coup began to wane. The final article explains how the coup attempt was halted, discuss its aftermath and consider what it means for the future of Nicaragua’s revolution.
Meet the DC think tanks impoverishing masses of Latin Americans
In another recent contribution to The Grayzone, FoLA's John Perry sheds light on the think tanks behind the devastating sanctions (“unilateral coercive measures”) against Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, "a form of hybrid warfare that harms or even kills the target populations": "These top Washington think tanks are lobbying lawmakers for sadistic sanctions on some of the hemisphere’s poorest countries while raking in millions from corporations and arms makers."
Is USAID a “Criminal Organization?”—In Nicaragua, the Evidence Suggests It Is
U.S. President Donald Trump has just closed down USAID after Elon Musk branded it “a criminal organization,” adding “it’s time for it to die.” Is there any truth to Musk’s allegation? One “beneficiary” of USAID is Nicaragua, a country with one of the lowest incomes per head in Latin America. Between 2014 and 2021, USAID spent US$315,009,297 on projects there. Uninformed observers might suppose that this money helped poor communities, but they would be wrong. Most of it was spent trying to undermine Nicaragua’s government and, in the process, gave lucrative contracts to U.S. consultancies and to some of Nicaragua’s richest families.
Friends of Latin America 