Carlos Cruz Mosquera is a PhD candidate and teaching associate at Queen Mary University of London.
Donald Trump’s freezing of US foreign aid has set off alarms across the foreign policy establishment — largely because aid has been such an effective means of furthering US and European geopolitical interests, especially in Latin America.
The recent ruling against the Chiquita fruit company for its ties to a terrorist death squad is a victory for workers and peasants in a country where violent repression has long been the norm.
Colombian elites are determined not to let leftist president Gustavo Petro serve out his full term. As top judicial officials target him and his cabinet, drug cartels and their links to the far right remain uninvestigated.
The Colombian right has done everything in its power to undermine Gustavo Petro. That hasn’t stopped the nation’s first leftist president from achieving ambitious reforms for Colombia’s poor and working class.
Last week’s election in Colombia saw the best result for the Left in decades and confirmed Gustavo Petro as favorite to become the country’s first socialist president. It’s a major shift in a country that has long been dominated by US-backed right-wing leaders.
With Cold War divisions once again rising to the fore, the US is returning to its old ways in Latin America: trying to exert influence in its “backyard” to enlist the region in the ongoing project of US global domination.