By Christina de la Torre, EL ESPECTADOR, September 8, 2026
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
Foreign direct investment is one thing, with economic safeguards and legal guarantees, the kind that leftist President of Brazil Lula brags about; something else, its antithesis, is the neo-colonial model re-incarnated by the United States that sacks Latin America’s natural resources and imposes military domination. The hijacking of one fifth of Venezuela’s crude, to which Venezuela acquiesced, ignoring its Congress, and an illegitimate President, mortgages that country: surrenders that wealth for a century, without any payment by Washington, which, furthermore, will be able to buy the production at cost.
For a century, the North has had the power to go into its “back door” with the complacency of the dictators that survive with a payoff from campaigns of panic against “communism”, against drug traffickers—which includes all freethinkers—against sexual diversity, against atheism, against “antifa” (antifascists); against very effective stalking horses that are glossing over the whole business. The fact that chavismo put a stop to servicing the empire is the exception that proves the rule. But at the first whiff of restlessness, Rodríguez will fall into disfavor. Meanwhile, the pillars of the model are firmly established: usurpation of Venezuelan riches and, in Colombia and Ecuador, military action on the soil of the fatherland, consistent with the Shield of the Americas. And the link that joins them, the offensive by our fledgling administration against the ELN, will serve Trump’s business in the neighboring country, because the armed group is lurking around those oil fields.
In a humiliating supplantation of our President, it was the U.S. Secretary of War (sic.) who announced the operations of both armies against narcoterrorism in Colombia’s territory. Although the presence or movement of foreign troops in this country depends on the Senate, the action is on the march. This week the Chief of the U.S. Southern Command, General Donovan, came to launch the military operation agreed upon with Colombia. There’s already a joint agenda. They will install radar in Tumaco to detect watercraft of supposed drug traffickers, and attack them. There have been 227 extrajudicial executions so far. But the maritime vigilance escalates the tripartite military action of the U.S., Colombia, and Ecuador and, with the arrival of Marco Rubio, perhaps Peru also. The Shield of the Americas is not an abbreviation painted on the wall.
Unromantic activities, but pushed with apocalyptic speeches by those chosen by God. Their propaganda, the old pastiche of the sword and the cross, assesses as communistic everything that doesn’t rhyme with Trump’s businesses. Steven Miller exclaims, “We are the storm. We will defeat the forces of Evil . . . communism is the enemy . . . The light will conquer the darkness (because) we are on God’s side.” On July 16, Marco Rubio proposed an international alliance “to defeat the resurgence of leftist terrorism (anarchists and antifascists included); we have to neutralize them . . .” And Trump made clear the meaning of “neutralize”: “If they harm the United States, we will kill them.”
The dramatic cession of Venezuela’s sovereignty responds to U.S. security strategy of 2025, the rebirth of the Monroe Doctrine: “America for the Americans.” For Clara López Obregon, the new world order is being contested in the Americas. “Without equal sovereignty among countries” she writes, “multilateralism is empty; without human rights or civilian control, security degenerates into repression; and runs the risk of turning into obedience (…) Security can’t be turned into a nice word for war. Confronting organized crime demands judicial, police, and financial cooperation, but always within the Rule of Law, civilian control, and respect for human rights.” Let’s say “never again” to the concept of the “banana republic”.