SHORTAGES: A driver refuels others wait in a long line behind to fill up at a petrol station in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, January 27
By pressuring Mexico to halt oil shipments, Washington is escalating its blockade of Cuba into a direct bid for economic collapse and regime change, argues SEVIM DAGDELEN
THE United States is forcing an oil boycott against Cuba through pressure on Mexico — a targeted blow aimed at bringing the island to its knees economically and forcing a regime change.
The decision by the Mexican government to no longer ship oil to Cuba threatens to initiate a countdown to the island’s economic collapse.
Following the US attack on Venezuela, Washington had already prevented oil from that country from being exported to Cuba.
Mexico stepped in temporarily and supplied over 40 per cent of Cuba’s oil imports.
The oil stop and the siege of Cuba
As a consequence of the Mexican oil stop, which occurred under pressure from US President Donald Trump, the US sanctions regime against Cuba is turning into a siege aimed at the complete sabotage of power generation, all production, and tourism.
At its core, however, the siege by the US is aimed at a regime change in Cuba within weeks. It is about breaking the country’s sovereignty.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Donald Trump holds a press conference after US forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and launched a ‘large-scale strike’ on the Latin American country | Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images)
The US has a long history of military intervention in Latin America, but never before has it been so brazen
As the days pass, shock subsides over the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, which was ordered by Donald Trump and carried out by the US military. That the victim is a dictator has helped to justify the illegal use of brute force.
There is a long history of US military intervention in Latin America. It’s been the expression of the most enduring principle that has governed relations in the American continent.
Everything Trump did in the first year of his second presidential term was old news: tariff wars, interventions in the internal affairs of other countries, threats, extortion and the revival of the old Monroe Doctrine.
What is new is the brazenness, the absence of even the slightest legal justification, or even the effort to frame actions within some interpretation of international law, however twisted it may be. There is no talk of democracy, freedom or human rights for millions of Venezuelans.
This is an unexplained and uncontested exercise of power. “What’s next, Mr President, Colombia?” journalists asked Trump like subjects asking their emperor. “It sounds good to me,” he replied. Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland… “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”
The threat is material – Maduro in handcuffs, the naval deployment in the Caribbean, the boats bombed for months – and at the same time diffuse. No one knows what the logic or the alleged motive for the next action will be.
The effect of Trump’s actions, already tested with the so-called “peace deal” for Palestine in the aftermath of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, is to sow confusion and division, and paralysis. The era of this new power has begun with little to oppose it, and with international laws useless like broken toys. And we are all warned.
Maduro was extracted from his bunker in eight minutes, which was enough time to kill 32 Cuban guards who were protecting him. The rest of the regime remains intact, now as the executive arm of Trump’s designs, which have articulated only one priority: oil.
When asked about elections, democracy or the release of some 800 political prisoners, Trump and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, reply that all this “is premature”. The nature of the events indicates the coup was orchestrated with a part of the regime whose head was Maduro.
Nothing remains of Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution, not even dignity. Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice-president and one of the most vocal figures in his administration, has been appointed interim president, with Trump’s acquiescence. She and her brother Jorge, the president of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, the minister of the interior, and Vladimir Padrino López, the head of the armed forces, have become administrators of a Trump protectorate – a new, perhaps provisional, status quo that sets Venezuela and all of Latin America sailing into uncharted waters.
The eternal misunderstanding
In a speech to the US Congress 202 years ago, US president James Monroe laid the foundations for his new country’s relationship with the other republics emerging across the American continent amid struggles against the European colonial powers.
That relationship would be one of US dominance and Latin American subordination, although the Monroe Doctrine was presented as a warning against new European colonial adventures in America.
“America for Americans” – Monroe’s phrase that coined the eternal misunderstanding – postulated that America, the continent, was for them, who called themselves “Americans”. In that single remark, the rest of the American peoples were left in an inferior category, confined to their nationalities or to a subordinate belonging to the same single continent (Latin Americans, South Americans, Central Americans or Caribbeans). Never simply Americans.
Other US presidents followed Monroe’s lead. More than five decades after his doctrine came Rutherford Hayes’s corollary of 1880, on the need for the US to have exclusive control in Central America and the Caribbean, and therefore of any interoceanic canal, followed by Theodore Roosevelt’s corollary of 1904, which postulated the freedom of the US to intervene by force in any country on the continent if it considered that its interests were affected.
Just a few weeks ago, on the anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, Trump published his own corollary, which contains nothing new, though the foreign power to keep away now is no longer Europe but China. The novelty lies in what began in Venezuela.
The question of democracy
In December, the UN reported that Venezuela’s human rights situation was continuing to deteriorate. In 2021, the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor opened a formal investigation into crimes against humanity, such as torture, disappearances and executions at the hands of the state.
Like Delcy Rodríguez now, Maduro became interim president in 2013 after the death of leader Hugo Chávez. Shortly afterwards, he won the elections by a narrow margin and, from 2015 onwards, took an openly authoritarian turn when he refused to recognise the result of parliamentary elections that left him without a majority in the National Assembly.
Opponents of the regime tried different approaches to overthrow it. To name just a few: peaceful demonstrations, violent actions, calls for a military uprising, attempts to get neighbouring governments to blockade the country, support for economic sanctions by the US and the European Union, complaints to international organisations, boycotts of elections they considered rigged, negotiations with the regime mediated by third countries, and massive participation in elections. None of this moved the needle.
Despite the opposition’s victory in the 2024 presidential elections, Maduro was once again proclaimed president, through fraud.
Then Trump reappeared, with a military deployment unseen in decades, indiscriminate bombing of ships in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and persecution and stigmatisation of Venezuelan migrants as terrible criminals and mentally ill people ravaging US cities.
The main opposition leader, María Corina Machado, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, clung to this strategy like a lifeline in the storm. She argued that the military siege, the accusations of narco-terrorism against Maduro and his circle, and the imminent military action by Washington would bring down the regime and open the door to a transition. Shortly after Maduro’s kidnapping, Machado proclaimed: “Today we are prepared to assert our mandate and take power.”
Trump’s response could not have been colder. He removed her from the scene, claiming she lacked the necessary “respect” and “support” for the moment.
In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Machado tried again to court Trump and said she wanted to give him her Nobel Peace Prize, which the US president has long coveted and considers himself deserving of. Days later, Trump indicated to Fox News that he might meet with her in Washington, saying: “I understand she’s coming in next week sometime, and I look forward to saying hello to her.” The Norwegian Nobel Institute was forced to clarify that its peace prizes cannot be transferred to third parties.
There were celebrations by Venezuelans in exile in cities across the western hemisphere when Maduro’s overthrow was announced, but not within Venezuela. Maduro no longer governs there, but the same regime does, under Trump’s shadow.
Thousands mobilized across Italy to stand in solidarity with Venezuela and oppose US imperialism.
Thousands of people mobilized in 30 Italian cities on Saturday, January 10, to express solidarity with Venezuela and demand the immediate release of President Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores. “While in Caracas and across Venezuela, following the bombings and the kidnapping of Maduro by the [US] administration, the Bolivarian people have been taking to the streets for days in defense of national sovereignty and the Chavista revolutionary process, internationalist support for Venezuela’s struggle against US imperialist terrorism is also being voiced in Italy,” the youth association Cambiare Rotta stated.
The demonstrations were launched by grassroots trade unions, youth organizations, student collectives, and left political formations. Together, they denounced US aggression against Venezuela and imperialist threats targeting other territories, including Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, and Greenland. “The United States is once again showing its warmongering, imperialist, and violent face – the same one we have seen in the genocide in Palestine and which has recently struck Venezuela, bombing neighborhoods, killing civilians, and taking the lives of 32 Cuban heroes who were in Caracas defending the people and the revolution,” Potere al Popolo Rome wrote.
Rejecting the portrayal of Venezuela as an authoritarian state – a narrative promoted by the US and enthusiastically endorsed by much of the European political establishment, including Giorgia Meloni’s government – demonstrators voiced support for Venezuelan sovereignty and for the socialist project pursued since the leadership of Hugo Chávez. “It is clear that imperialism fears the possibility that people might rebel and demand something different from the barbarism they want to impose on us,” said Marta Collot of Potere al Popolo on Saturday. She added that the struggle of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, and of all those who stand in solidarity with it, is ultimately a struggle for a world centered on the interests of the working class rather than on the profits of oligarchies promoting policies of war and armament.
While participants recognized the latest US attacks and threats as a dangerous escalation of imperialist aggression, many stressed that this trajectory began well before the recent assault on Venezuela. “In reality, the qualitative shift happened some time ago, when the entire West, including the European Union, allowed Israel to carry out the systematic annihilation of the Palestinian people without obstruction,” warned the grassroots trade union Unione Sindacale di Base (USB). “Unfortunately, Europe is not defending us from this imperialist assault on humanity as a whole, quite the opposite,” the union added. “EU leaders are increasingly focused on convincing us of the need to rearm, fully subordinated to Trump’s arrogance and unwilling to accept any solution in Ukraine that, if implemented, would undermine their plans to revive the military industry, which now seems to be their only answer to a crisis of credibility and the ongoing deindustrialization of our continent.”
In contrast to what protesters outlined as European governments’ complicity in US-led aggression worldwide, the people in the streets affirmed their support for the Venezuelan people and the political vision they are pursuing. “We express our full solidarity with and support for the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, recognizing that the Chavista and Bolivarian revolutionary process represents a viable and necessary alternative to Western barbarism,” Potere al Popolo Rome concluded.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Donald Trump holds a press conference after US forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and launched a ‘large-scale strike’ on the Latin American country | Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images)
As the days pass, shock subsides over the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, which was ordered by Donald Trump and carried out by the US military. That the victim is a dictator has helped to justify the illegal use of brute force.
There is a long history of US military intervention in Latin America. It’s been the expression of the most enduring principle that has governed relations in the American continent.
Everything Trump did in the first year of his second presidential term was old news: tariff wars, interventions in the internal affairs of other countries, threats, extortion and the revival of the old Monroe Doctrine.
What is new is the brazenness, the absence of even the slightest legal justification, or even the effort to frame actions within some interpretation of international law, however twisted it may be. There is no talk of democracy, freedom or human rights for millions of Venezuelans.
This is an unexplained and uncontested exercise of power. “What’s next, Mr President, Colombia?” journalists asked Trump like subjects asking their emperor. “It sounds good to me,” he replied. Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland… “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”
The threat is material – Maduro in handcuffs, the naval deployment in the Caribbean, the boats bombed for months – and at the same time diffuse. No one knows what the logic or the alleged motive for the next action will be.
The effect of Trump’s actions, already tested with the so-called “peace deal” for Palestine in the aftermath of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, is to sow confusion and division, and paralysis. The era of this new power has begun with little to oppose it, and with international laws useless like broken toys. And we are all warned.
Maduro was extracted from his bunker in eight minutes, which was enough time to kill 32 Cuban guards who were protecting him. The rest of the regime remains intact, now as the executive arm of Trump’s designs, which have articulated only one priority: oil.
When asked about elections, democracy or the release of some 800 political prisoners, Trump and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, reply that all this “is premature”. The nature of the events indicates the coup was orchestrated with a part of the regime whose head was Maduro.
Nothing remains of Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution, not even dignity. Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice-president and one of the most vocal figures in his administration, has been appointed interim president, with Trump’s acquiescence. She and her brother Jorge, the president of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, the minister of the interior, and Vladimir Padrino López, the head of the armed forces, have become administrators of a Trump protectorate – a new, perhaps provisional, status quo that sets Venezuela and all of Latin America sailing into uncharted waters.
The eternal misunderstanding
In a speech to the US Congress 202 years ago, US president James Monroe laid the foundations for his new country’s relationship with the other republics emerging across the American continent amid struggles against the European colonial powers.
That relationship would be one of US dominance and Latin American subordination, although the Monroe Doctrine was presented as a warning against new European colonial adventures in America.
“America for Americans” – Monroe’s phrase that coined the eternal misunderstanding – postulated that America, the continent, was for them, who called themselves “Americans”. In that single remark, the rest of the American peoples were left in an inferior category, confined to their nationalities or to a subordinate belonging to the same single continent (Latin Americans, South Americans, Central Americans or Caribbeans). Never simply Americans.
Other US presidents followed Monroe’s lead. More than five decades after his doctrine came Rutherford Hayes’s corollary of 1880, on the need for the US to have exclusive control in Central America and the Caribbean, and therefore of any interoceanic canal, followed by Theodore Roosevelt’s corollary of 1904, which postulated the freedom of the US to intervene by force in any country on the continent if it considered that its interests were affected.
Just a few weeks ago, on the anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, Trump published his own corollary, which contains nothing new, though the foreign power to keep away now is no longer Europe but China. The novelty lies in what began in Venezuela.
The question of democracy
In December, the UN reported that Venezuela’s human rights situation was continuing to deteriorate. In 2021, the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor opened a formal investigation into crimes against humanity, such as torture, disappearances and executions at the hands of the state.
Like Delcy Rodríguez now, Maduro became interim president in 2013 after the death of leader Hugo Chávez. Shortly afterwards, he won the elections by a narrow margin and, from 2015 onwards, took an openly authoritarian turn when he refused to recognise the result of parliamentary elections that left him without a majority in the National Assembly.
Opponents of the regime tried different approaches to overthrow it. To name just a few: peaceful demonstrations, violent actions, calls for a military uprising, attempts to get neighbouring governments to blockade the country, support for economic sanctions by the US and the European Union, complaints to international organisations, boycotts of elections they considered rigged, negotiations with the regime mediated by third countries, and massive participation in elections. None of this moved the needle.
Despite the opposition’s victory in the 2024 presidential elections, Maduro was once again proclaimed president, through fraud.
Then Trump reappeared, with a military deployment unseen in decades, indiscriminate bombing of ships in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and persecution and stigmatisation of Venezuelan migrants as terrible criminals and mentally ill people ravaging US cities.
The main opposition leader, María Corina Machado, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, clung to this strategy like a lifeline in the storm. She argued that the military siege, the accusations of narco-terrorism against Maduro and his circle, and the imminent military action by Washington would bring down the regime and open the door to a transition. Shortly after Maduro’s kidnapping, Machado proclaimed: “Today we are prepared to assert our mandate and take power.”
Trump’s response could not have been colder. He removed her from the scene, claiming she lacked the necessary “respect” and “support” for the moment.
In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Machado tried again to court Trump and said she wanted to give him her Nobel Peace Prize, which the US president has long coveted and considers himself deserving of. Days later, Trump indicated to Fox News that he might meet with her in Washington, saying: “I understand she’s coming in next week sometime, and I look forward to saying hello to her.” The Norwegian Nobel Institute was forced to clarify that its peace prizes cannot be transferred to third parties.
There were celebrations by Venezuelans in exile in cities across the western hemisphere when Maduro’s overthrow was announced, but not within Venezuela. Maduro no longer governs there, but the same regime does, under Trump’s shadow.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Demonstrators hold signs during an anti-Trump protest at Plaza de Bolivar on January 7, 2026 in Bogotá, Colombia. (Photo by Andres Rot/Getty Images)
Thousands of people across the country expressed support for their president, Gustavo Petro, who spoke to President Donald Trump ahead of the rallies and struck a diplomatic but defiant tone.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro struck a relatively diplomatic tone Wednesday at a rally in Bogotá, where he spoke about the Trump administration’s threats to launch military strikes against his country—but thousands of people who gathered in the Colombian capital and across the country were happy to say exactly what they thought of US President Donald Trump’s recent attack on neighboring Venezuela and his saber-rattling across Latin America.
“He’s a maniac,” 67-year-old José Silva told the Guardian at a march in the border city of Cúcuta. “The US Congress needs to do something to get him out of the presidency… He’s a thug.”
“Trump is the devil,” another marcher, Janet Chacón, told the outlet.
And demonstrators held English-language signs proclaiming, “Yankees Go Home!” as well as banners reading, “Fuera los yanquis!” or “Out with the Yanks!”
Colombians were rallying after Petro called for a mass mobilization days after Trump ordered a military attack in Venezuela, including a bombing and the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Maduro and Flores have pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism charges in a court in New York City, while Trump and other White House officials have made clear in recent days that their objective in Venezuela is not to stop drug trafficking—a crime in which the country is not significantly involved—but to take control of its oil reserves.
Colombians marched together with Venezuelans in Cúcuta, with one man telling Reuters, “If they kidnap your president, they kidnap the entire homeland.”
Protesters gathered at the Simon Bolivar Bridge in Cucuta, Colombia, to demonstrate against US President Donald Trump, responding to a call by Colombian President Gustavo Petro under the slogan 'Colombia is free and sovereign' pic.twitter.com/y5FIMweCbN
Soon after invading Venezuela, Trump and other officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubiosuggested they could soon attack other Latin Amercian countries and try to overthrow their leaders.
Officials in Cuba’s socialist government, said Rubio, are “in a lot of trouble,” while Trump said the US is “going to have to do something” about drug cartels operating in Mexico.
Regarding Colombia, Trump cited no evidence as he accused the left-wing Petro of “making cocaine and selling it to the United States” and said an invasion of the country “sounds good to me.” Petro has not been linked to the drug trade in Colombia.
Petro has vehemently condemned Trump’s escalation in Latin America in recent months and has accused the president of murder in the Caribbean, where the US has bombed dozens of boats and killed more than 100 people since September, accusing them of drug trafficking without releasing any evidence.
After the Venezuela attack and the threats toward other countries in the region, Petro warned that Trump had awakened a “jaguar,” referring to the opposition of the public in Colombia and across Latin American regarding US imperialism.
After calling on Colombians to take to the streets, Petro spoke to Trump on the phone at the US president’s request and accepted an invitation to the White House. Trump said it was “a great honor” to speak with the Colombian leader.
Petro told protesters in Bogotá that the speech he had planned to give had been “quite harsh.”
“For 34 years, peace has been my priority,” he said. “And I know that peace is found through dialogue. That is why I accept President Trump’s proposal to talk.”
“If there is no dialogue, there is war. The history of Colombia has taught us that,” the president added.
But he also made clear to thousands of supporters, many of whom carried placards with pictures of Petro, that “what happened in Venezuela was, in my opinion, illegal.”
“We cannot lower our guard,” he said. “Words need to be followed by deeds.”
In Cúcuta, a teacher named Marta Jiménez denounced a number of European leaders who have refused to clearly condemn Trump’s invasion of Venezuela’s neighbor, even as legal scholars have said it was a clear violation of the United Nations Charter.
“They are leaving him to fly, free as a bird over every single country, to do whatever he likes,” she said, expressing concern that Trump’s next target “might be Nicaragua, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru—any of them.”
En Colombia, la sociedad salió masivamente en 12 ciudades, para rechazar la injerencia y las amenazas del presidente de EEUU. Se trató de una jornada con mensajes en favor de la unidad de los pueblos de Nuestra América y El Caribe. @teleSURtv@TobarteleSUR@petrogustavopic.twitter.com/0RD4QvjHsu
Protests were also held this week in countries including Argentina and Brazil, with demonstrators expressing solidarity with the rest of Latin America in light of Trump’s threats and attacks.
“The message from the people of Latin America is: ‘Donald Trump, get your hands off Latin America,’” Brazilian Congressman Reimont Otoni said at a rally outside the US consulate in Rio de Janeiro. “Latin America isn’t the [United States’] backyard.”
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
SHORTAGES: A driver refuels others wait in a long line behind to fill up at a petrol station in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, January 27
