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Year 2025 in Review for Latin America and the Caribbean: The Reactionary Backwash
2025 saw progressive governments in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) delegitimized and displaced. Right-wing forces have seized on drug-related crises to attack the so-called Pink Tide governments, driving a reactionary backwash and putting new, neoliberal administrations in power. The irony is that the rise in drug use and crime is driven by neoliberalism’s failure…
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It’s not only about Venezuela: Trump intends a wider domino effect
It’s increasingly obvious that the US military threats against Venezuela have a wider agenda. Their game plan is regime change, but not only in Venezuela. This is the objective – on a longer timescale in some cases – across several of the countries in the Caribbean Basin, aiming to cleanse the region of governments deemed…
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Whether Biden or Trump, US’s Latin American Policy Will Still Be Contemptible
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…
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What’s Left in Latin American and the Caribbean: Year 2024 in Review
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…
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Nicaraguan migrants at the U.S. border – are they being “pushed” or “pulled”?
Why are more Nicaraguans heading north to the United States looking for jobs? Until July 2020, numbers were tiny. But in the last 1½ years numbers have increased sharply. Suddenly this has become a story, and government detractors argue, with little evidence, that people are fleeing political repression. “They’d rather die than return to Nicaragua,”…
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Are Nicaraguan Migrants Escaping ‘Repression’-or Economic Downturn?
“Record numbers” of migrants are coming into the United States from Nicaragua, according to Newsweek, which blames the increase on “arbitrary arrests and human rights abuses” by the Nicaraguan government. Former Sandinista leader Sergio Ramírez, writing for El Salvador’s El Faro, claims that “repression” by President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government is causing a “dramatic growth”…
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Rhys Evans obituary
Rhys Evans, who died on August 29 aged 80 of motor neurone disease, was a genuine polymath. Formally a schoolteacher, he was also an adult education tutor, youth worker, linguist, musician, internationalist, hillwalker, cyclist and gifted writer of poems and stories (which he only shared with very few). He was fluent in German and Spanish,…
