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February 2, 2025
By John Perry and Roger D. Harris
With Donald Trump as the new US president, pundits are speculating about how US policy towards Latin America might change.
In this article, we look at some of the speculation, then address three specific instances of how the US’s policy priorities may be viewed from a progressive, Latin American perspective. This leads us to a wider argument: that the way these issues are dealt with is symptomatic of Washington’s paramount objective of sustaining the US’s hegemonic position. In this overriding preoccupation, its policy towards Latin America is only one element, of course, but always of significance because the US hegemon still treats the region as its “backyard.”
Continue reading “Whether Biden or Trump, US’s Latin American Policy Will Still Be Contemptible”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, US intervention, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil, panama
January 23, 2025
The US government was aware of a campaign to remove a top development banker from power to stop anti-poverty loans to Nicaragua, where Washington sought regime change. In an exclusive interview with The Grayzone, Dante Mossi, who headed the Central American Bank for Economic Integration from 2018 to 2023, denounced a plot by “Costa Rica and Guatemala, with the knowledge of the US… to oust me.”
Continue reading “Development banker says US knew of plot to oust him over Nicaragua loans”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, US intervention, NGOs
January 5, 2025
In the words of the United Nations, “human rights” range from “the most fundamental—the right to life—to those that make life worth living, such as the rights to food, education, work, health, and liberty.” These rights are supposed to be “inherent to us all.” But this lofty ambition has become distorted, not only by the UN itself but by the whole of what Alfred de Zayas calls the “Human Rights Industry.”
Continue reading “How the Human Rights Industry Manufactures Consent for “Regime Change””
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, US intervention, Nicaragua crisis, human rights |
December 26, 2024
This document was submitted in response to an investigation of Nicaragua launched by the US Trade Representative, in late 2024, clearly aimed at disrupting trade with Nicaragua and possibly at excluding it from the trade treaty, CAFTA.
Continue reading “USTR Section 301 Investigation on Nicaragua – Response by the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, US intervention
December 26, 2024
By Roger D. Harris and John Perry
The progressive regional current, the “Pink Tide,” could be better called “troubled waters” in 2024. The tide had already slackened by 2023 compared to its rise in 2022, when it was buoyed by big wins in Colombia and Brazil. Then, progressive alternatives had sailed into power replacing failed neoliberal policies. Since, they have had to govern under circumstances that they inherited but were not their own making.
Continue reading “What’s Left in Latin American and the Caribbean: Year 2024 in Review”
Category: Latin America | Tags: US intervention, Argentina, Venezuela, Ecuador, El Salvador, chile, Brazil, panama, hond, Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Costa Rica, Nicaragua
November 25, 2024
In the dying days of his administration, President Biden must have needed a reminder by his officials on November 22. He had to decide whether Nicaragua still poses an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”. Presumably he agreed that it does, because he renewed its status as a “national security threat” for a further year, repeating the designation that first began under the last Trump presidency.
Continue reading “Biden declares another “national emergency” because of the threat posed by tiny Nicaragua”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, US intervention, Nicaragua crisis, sanctions
November 3, 2024
Mijal Gur-Aryeh, Israel’s ambassador in Costa Rica [Source: laprensani.com]
Governments in Latin America have been at the forefront of opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and several of those which have done so suddenly face new threats, even including attempted coups. Adrienne Pine, a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, said during
a recent webinar hosted by the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition that “Anybody who stands with Palestine is going to be attacked in Latin America by the US and by Zionists.”
Recent events appear to show the truth of her remarks.
Continue reading “Latin American Governments Pay a Price for Challenging Israel’s Genocidal War”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, palestine, US intervention
September 21, 2024
Claims that Nicaragua is “weaponizing” immigration by allowing free passage of migrants towards the U.S. border have been appearing regularly in the media over the last twelve months. The claim was made on NPR in January, in the Associated Press last October, in El Pais last November and by the BBC this July, to cite just a few. In May, the Biden administration accused the Nicaraguan government (the “Ortega-Murillo regime”) of “repressing people and preying on migrants,” imposing new sanctions on those it believed responsible. Is there any basis to these claims?
Continue reading “Is it Nicaragua that is “weaponizing” immigration? – or is it Washington?”
Category: Migration, Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, Costa Rica, US intervention, migration
June 29, 2024
[Source: georgiatoday.ge]
Politicians in the small Caucasian state of Georgia have been
sanctioned by Washington for “undermining democracy” and depriving Georgian people of “fundamental freedoms”, simply because its parliament has passed a law to control foreign influence over Georgian politics. Politicians in another small country, Nicaragua, were subjected to U.S. sanctions doing the same. Although the two countries are very different, there are striking similarities in the ways that Washington and its allies have striven to undermine their sovereignty.
Continue reading “The US has imposed sanctions on Georgia and Nicaragua for instituting laws that copy U.S. legislation and were designed to ward off coups”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, US intervention, Georgia, NGOs
June 25, 2024
Alfred de Zayas and John Perry examine the ways that human rights can be manipulated for geopolitical ends and used to justify illegal coercive measures like sanctions. Watch here.
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua crisis, human rights, NGOs
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on