Latin American Publications!

This article by Nancy Flores originally appeared in the March 28, 2026 edition of Revista Contralínea.

Editor’s note: “Pink Tide/La Marea Rosa” in Mexico refers to an ostensible civil movement funded and supported by figures from the neoliberal period and political parties who oppose the Fourth Transformation governments and frequently wear pink in their demonstrations; not to the reformist left governments of Latin America.

Following a technical analysis, the Tax Administration Service (SAT) revoked the authorization for 270 civil associations to receive tax-deductible donations and be exempt from income tax, citing violations of the Income Tax Law. The tax authority explained that, prior to this decision, the associations were given the opportunity to present their arguments, but “failed to comply with or rectify the legal requirements within the allotted time.”

Contrary to what has been circulating, the tax authority’s decision does not prohibit these organizations from receiving donations, but rather means that their donors will not be able to deduct them from their tax payments, and that the non-profits will be required to pay income tax. In other words, they will no longer be able to live off public funds.

Among the 270 civil associations, three stand out for their systematic opposition to the governments of the Fourth Transformation: the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, AC (IMCO); México Evalúa, the Center for Public Policy Analysis, AC; and Mexicanos Primero, Visión 2030, AC. Two of these were funded for several years by the United States government through USAID, which is prohibited by the Constitution (because foreign governments are barred from interfering in Mexican politics).

However, the SAT (Mexican Tax Administration Service) indicated that the revocation of the authorization was not politically motivated, but rather due to the fact that these civil associations violated the law by declaring that they conduct scientific or technological research, which they could not prove. In other words, they allegedly lied to qualify for a preferential tax regime, which could also constitute a crime.

Furthermore, Contralínea has revealed that IMCO, México Evalúa, and Mexicanos Primero are linked to the national and transnational oligarchy, the political right opposed to the 4T and promoters of expressions such as the pink tide; and the analyses and studies they generate border on neoliberal propaganda.

Claudio Xavier González Laporte

The IMCO Case

The information that IMCO provided to the SAT indicates that its governing body is made up of the businessmen Tomás Roberto González Sada –executive of the company Cydsa, SAB de CV–; Alejandro Ramírez Magaña –owner of Cinépolis and opponent of the fourth transformation–; Claudio Xavier González Laporte –president of Kimberly Clark and one of the staunchest adversaries of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador–; Valentín Diez Morodo –member of the boards of directors of Grupo Financiero Banamex; Kimberly Clark de México; DESC; Multivisión MVS Comunicaciones; Avantel; Grupo Ferroviario Mexicano; and Grupo Alfa, and adversary of the 4T–; and Luis Manuel Murillo Peñaloza –general director of Valores Mexicanos Casa de Bolsa, advisor of Operadora Valmex and of Grupo Peñoles.

Two other associate members of its governing body are: Juan Ernesto Pardinas Carpizo, former editorial director of the Reforma newspaper and former director of IMCO itself; Jaime José Serra Puche, a Salinas supporter —current president of Grupo Financiero BBVA México, former Secretary of Commerce and Industrial Development during the administration of Carlos Salinas de Gortari—and chief negotiator of NAFTA—and former Secretary of Finance and Public Credit during the first days of Ernesto Zedillo’s government—from December 1 to 29, 1994—a period in which he became primarily responsible for the collapse of the economy due to the so-called “December mistake,” which resulted in the greatest theft suffered by the people of Mexico: the Fobaproa-IPAB; and Eugenio Santiago Clariond Reyes, shareholder of Jidosha Internacional and former Mexican consul in Brazil during the administration of Felipe Calderón.

Additionally, in its 2025 Annual Report, the Institute includes in its Council: José Barraza, Emilio Carrillo, María Amparo Casar (president of Mexicans Against Corruption and partner of Claudio X González Guajardo, whom President Claudia Sheinbaum called “the toxic junior”), Lorenzo de Rosenzweig, Antonio del Valle Perochena, Gabriela Hernández, Armando Paredes, Antonio Purón, Daniel Servitje, Vicente Yañez and Jaime Zabludovsky.

And it adds as a “board member” the Business Coordinating Council, made up of Alejandro Malagón Barragán (Concamin), Juan José Sierra Álvarez (Coparmex), Antonio del Valle Perochena (Mexican Business Council), Daniel Servitje Montull (Mexican Business Council), Enrique Zambrano Benítez (Mexican Business Council), Jorge Esteve Recolons (National Agricultural Council), Emilio Romano Mussali (Mexican Banking Association), Diego Cosío Barto (Antad), Jorge Humberto Santos Reyna (Caintra), Pedro Pacheco (Amis), Guillermo Zamarripa Escamilla (Amafore), Sergio Contreras Pérez (Comce), Vicente Gutiérrez Camposeco (Canaco), Álvaro García Pimentel (Amib), Antonio Cosío Pando (CNET).

The Konrad Adenauer Foundation is sponsored by Germany’s Christian Democratic Union and named after the First Chancellor of West Germany, who was known for reincorporating Nazi veterans into the West German state.

Other relevant data from IMCO that illustrate how this think tank is linked to the Mexican and transnational oligarchy and right-wing groups are those related to its “2025 strategic alliances,” which the institute itself describes as those with which it developed projects. Some of these alliances were with the World Bank , the International Monetary Fund , and the World Economic Forum; the embassies of the United States in Mexico, the United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, and Switzerland; the private foreign banks BBVA and Banamex; the companies Mercedes-Benz Mobility Mexico, Starbucks Mexico, Casa de Bolsa Finamex, and TC Energy, and the Coppel Foundation; as well as with the Mexican Employers’ Confederation (COPARMEX) and the Mexican Business Council for Foreign Trade, Investment, and Technology (CEMET).

Other important alliances are with foreign organizations identified as right-wing, including the Konrad Adenauer Foundation; and with the Atlas Network, although it reported no joint funding or projects in 2025. Furthermore, throughout its history, IMCO has been funded by the Mexican Business Council, comprised of multinational corporations such as Femsa , Alfa, Lala, Mabe, MVS, Grupo Pisa, Vitro, Televisa , Grupo Carso, Chedraui, and Grupo México.

According to the most recent financial report submitted to the SAT (Mexican Tax Administration Service), in 2024 IMCO received tax-deductible donations totaling 33,897,949 pesos , and an additional 4,502,426 pesos in interest and investment returns. According to the data, its payroll of just 43 people cost 26,614,125 pesos; if everyone had received the same salary, they would have earned 618,933 pesos annually (51,577 pesos per month).

Furthermore, some of the money was used to produce studies such as: “ Energy reform must respect the spirit and letter of the USMCA ”; “Local Public Electoral Bodies and their role in democracy”; “Ten proposals on public finances”; and “Proposals for the energy we want 2024-2030.” These last studies were conducted in the context of that year’s presidential elections.

Claudio X. González Guajardo

México Evalúa Case Study

The next case is that of the civil association México Evalúa, whose governing body is chaired by Luis Rubio Freidberg (a member of the board of Coca-Cola FEMSA and investment funds such as Aberdeen India Fund, Inc. and The India Fund, Inc. ). The vice-chairman is businessman Fernando Senderos Mestre (owner of Grupo KUO—which includes brands such as Herdez, Del Fuerte, Kekén, Megamex Food, and Grupo Dynasol—and the real estate developer Dine, and a member of the boards of directors of companies such as Grupo Televisa, Industrias Peñoles, Grupo Nacional Provincial, Grupo Carso, and Kimberly Clark de México).

Furthermore, the governing body is composed of José Ramón Cossío Díaz (former Supreme Court Justice, opponent of the 4T movement , whom former President López Obrador identified in 2021 as the architect of the injunction against the Electricity Industry Law, in association with Claudio X. González Guajardo), Edna Camelia Jaime Treviño, Jaime Enrique Zabludowsky Kuper (a Salinas supporter who served as deputy chief negotiator for NAFTA and in 1994 was appointed Undersecretary of International Trade Negotiations), Federico Jesús Reyes Heroles González Garza, Martha Matilde Mejía Montes (CEO of Zimat Consultores), Eugenio Rafael Garza Herrera (Chairman of the Board of Directors of Xignux, a company linked to the energy sector), Luis Fernando Gerardo De La Calle Pardo (former independent board member of the CFE and member of the board of the company Cintra), and Ángel Emilio Carrillo Gamboa. (founding partner of the Carrillo Gamboa law firm, member of the Audit Committee of Kimberly Clark de México, Grupo México and Southern Copper, as well as being executive secretary of the Mexican Business Council and chairman of the Board of Directors of The Mexico Fund).

In addition to this clear link with one of the highest de facto powers at the global level (economic power), México Evalúa openly acknowledges that among its funders are the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Atlas Network, Open Society and The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, which connects it with international right-wing groups and transnational interests.

An example of this is the NED, linked to the US government and its clandestine networks. Officially defined as a private, non-profit US foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions worldwide, it actually carries out interventionist activities around the globe that were previously delegated to the CIA, under the guise of promoting democracy.

Historically, the NED has interfered in the internal affairs of various countries, exerted influence on elections, financed pro-American and pro-neoliberal propaganda, and donated resources to projects of non-governmental organizations, generally opposed to progressive democratic governments.

The book The Plots of Power in Latin America: Elites and Privileges points out that the National Endowment for Democracy and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are organizations funded by the United States government that “frequently intervene in the electoral and political processes of other countries. These two organizations have become a source of funding for MCCI [Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, founded by Claudio X and chaired by María Amparo Casar], México Evalúa, and ETHOS. Furthermore, this funding also connects several centers, as in the case of IMCO, which shares several board members with the board of México Evalúa.”

He adds that the NED was “created in 1983 to promote democracy and economic freedom around the world. It has funded organizations in 90 countries, including Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Russia, Ukraine, and many others. However, the impact of its interventions has been the subject of much controversy. Hale (2003) found no evidence that it contributed to democracy and economic freedom during the 1990s. According to Franklin (1985), the NED has channeled millions of dollars into anti-communist diplomacy, and Busic (2020) argues that its policies are anti-democratic, imperialist, and immoral, and that its resources are used in countries that align with US interests.”

Another patron of México Evalúa is the Open Society Foundation, owned by magnate George Soros, founder of the vulture fund Soros Fund Management, and investor in companies such as: Southwest Gas Holdings, Alphabet Inc (Google’s parent company), the pharmaceutical company Astra Zeneca, and the electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian Automotive, Inc.

According to the report From the Economy of Occupation to the Economy of Genocide, by UN rapporteur Francesca Alabanese, among the corporations that contribute to and benefit from the genocide in Gaza is Alphabet (which, in addition to controlling Google, manages Youtube).

Another sponsor of México Evalúa and projects like the media outlet Animal Político is The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, founded in 1966 by businessman William R. Hewlett—co-founder of the multinational Hewlett-Packard—his wife Flora, and their son Walter. Although it currently claims to have no connection to HP.

And Atlas Network, the largest think tank of the international right. According to the book The Right in Mexico: Analytical Debates and Case Studies (coordinated by researchers John M. Ackerman, Miguel Ángel Ramírez Zaragoza, Adrián Escamilla Trejo, and Israel Jurado Zapata), it “presents itself as an organization ‘that connects a global network of more than 475 free-market organizations in over 90 countries with the ideas and resources needed to advance the cause of ‘liberty.’ Atlas Network offers its members guidance, competitive grant and award opportunities, and occasions to celebrate high-impact successes. Atlas Network was founded by a disciple of Friedrich von Hayek and has been based in Washington since 1981 to defend neoliberal positions.’”

On November 5, 2025, President Sheinbaum revealed in her morning press conference that Atlas Network was behind a digital media campaign against her, as the social media accounts promoting a recall election march were linked to that think tank . She also noted that Atlas Network is connected to the international far right, whose objective is to manipulate society by promoting trends on social media.

“It is a far-right organization that operates not only in Mexico, but in many countries, particularly in Latin America, and it does so not through public debate related to ideological or political positions, but through the manipulation of images and the payment of large sums of money to all these so-called bots, robots, which are not actually numbers related to a person, but rather multiple accounts that—for money—are publishing what they agree upon in order to create trends and for manipulation.”

President Sheinbaum Pardo also recalled that this organization had already been exposed for promoting the hashtags #narcopresidenteAMLO and #narcocandidata. “Also, many of the accounts were linked to the narco-government during his time and everything related to the narco-president that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador experienced.” She explained that this is “a pattern of behavior that also originates abroad” and that this situation is connected to the social media protests following the assassination of the mayor of Uruapan, Michoacán, Carlos Manzo, and the call for a demonstration supposedly organized by Generation Z.

“It seems like out of nowhere a lot of people used social media to protest, and yes, there is some truth to that, but it turns out to be quite small; and what they do with this is, in addition to publishing and generating trends, to encourage others to believe these lies in order to be able to link themselves [to the movement],” said the President.

The Mexicanos Primero Case

The third civil association canceled by the SAT (Mexican Tax Administration Service) is Mexicanos Primero. According to its most recent tax report submitted to the SAT, corresponding to the 2024 fiscal year, its governing body is composed of three businessmen: Claudio Xavier González Guajardo, a Kimberly Clark shareholder who, in the context of the last presidential elections, led the so-called “pink wave” that propelled the right-wing candidate Xóchitl Gálvez to the presidency and became the “moral leader” of the PRIAN (PRI and PAN alliance); his brother Pablo Roberto González Guajardo, CEO of Kimberly Clark; and the owner of Cinépolis, Alejandro Ramírez Magaña.

In 2021, Contralínea revealed that Mexicanos Primero Visión 2030 accumulated assets of 276 million 887 thousand 318 pesos from 2010 to 2015, of which 205 million 843 thousand 478 pesos corresponded to donations, plus 13 million 361 thousand 499 pesos of bank interest generated in investment accounts –speculative–, which gives a total of 219 million 204 thousand 977 pesos, which is equivalent to 79 percent of the total assets of that civil association in just six years.

According to information contained in a 1,000-page file prepared during the government of Enrique Peña Nieto (2017) by intelligence, security and tax agencies, the amount of “cash donations” received by this “non-profit” civil association reached 53,427,956 pesos that same year, money that generated bank interest in investment accounts for 1,853,505 pesos, for a total of 55,281,461 pesos.

In 2015, the workforce of Mexicanos Primero Visión 2030 consisted of 34 employees hired under the salaried regime and another as assimilated; seven more people were as volunteers and did not receive any salary, according to the SAT portal of authorized donee associations.

In those years, the organization’s associates had million-dollar salaries at the expense of donations: in 2015, its president was Fernando Landeros Verdugo (currently linked to Teletón), who in that year alone received 4 million 230 thousand 969 pesos in salaries from that civil association, which is equivalent to 352 thousand 580.75 pesos monthly, all the product of donations that in 2015 reached 55 million 281 thousand 461 pesos.

The business continued to flow, as the report submitted to the SAT indicates that in 2024 it obtained income of 42 million 621 thousand 791 pesos from donations.

Other Revoked Civil Associations

The list of 270 civil associations whose authorization to receive tax-deductible donations and be exempt from income tax was revoked by the SAT (Mexican Tax Administration Service) also includes: the Camino a Casa Foundation – associated with PAN (National Action Party) member Rosi Orozco, and involved in cases of mistreatment and sexual abuse against child trafficking victims; the Social Journalists Network-Journalists on Foot; Acción Unida, AC, founded by PAN member Miguel Ángel Villegas; the Barra Mexicana Foundation, AC, created by the Mexican Bar Association; Moverse Vector, owned by Vector Casa de Bolsa, which is facing problems after the Treasury Department’s allegations of money laundering; and CEAAD, linked to the far-right Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

• 

  Analysis

  Anti-4T Civil Associations Allegedly Simulated Activities to Evade Taxes

  April 1, 2026April 1, 2026

  Mexico’s Tax Administration Service revoked the authorization of 270 civil associations to receive tax-deductible donations, including 3 organizations with ties to the Atlas Network, NED and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

• 

  News Briefs

  Network in Defense of Corn Warns of Risk to Mexico’s Native Seeds

  March 31, 2026March 31, 2026

  Communities spoke out against seed ownership systems and policies that promote land privatization and commodification, warning that these measures affect autonomy and community organization.

• 

  Mañanera

  People’s Mañanera March 31

  March 31, 2026

  President Sheinbaum’s daily press conference, with comments on public health investments, Gulf of Mexico oil spill, energy sovereignty, AIFA airport, forced disappearances, and Sonora River remediation.

The post Anti-4T Civil Associations Allegedly Simulated Activities to Evade Taxes appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.

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By Craig Murray  –  Mar 31, 2026

As I was leaving the University of the Communes in Tocuyito, after a joyful and uplifting visit, an earnest young professor came up to me and pulled me aside. Very quietly, he asked me what was going to happen. A number of the students were terrified there would be regime change and they, picked as young socialist leaders in the commune movement, would be imprisoned, tortured and executed.

It was a sharp reality check after a great day at this fledgling university. But it is very real. I had met sober and professional diplomats at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who knew exactly which part of the mountains they would flee to with assault rifles in the event of the right coming to power, and were resigned to a life of guerilla warfare, including partners and children. I have met nobody who doubts that a change of regime in Caracas would lead to immediate mass killings of leftists, and a lengthy civil war.

Craig Murray with students at an agricultural project of the Vittoria commune. Photo: Craig Murray.

Almost everything you are told in the West about Venezuela is untrue, and the biggest lie is that Machado, Guaidó and the groupings around them are in any sense democrats or liberal. They are not, and have direct family and political links to the murderous CIA-sponsored regimes of the pre-Chávez years. They also have many scores to settle – Machado’s family, to give just one example, dominated the electricity supply before it was nationalised.

A very large number of the “political prisoners” the West is so concerned about, were involved in efforts at military coup or violent insurrection, of which Guaidó’s comic opera attempt in 2019 was only the most publicised. After the disputed 2024 elections many of those imprisoned were actually brandishing weapons – I met the families of three young men who told me their sons were misled into taking to the streets with guns, and hoped they would get out in the current amnesty.

Sanctions caused great economic hardship which affected government popularity. But it is a huge error to conflate discontent at the Maduro government with support for Machado – there is almost no evidence of the latter, no matter how hard you look. That Machado does not have the internal support to run the country is one of the few things Trump has stated truthfully. The alternative to the socialist government is chaos.

So Delcy Rodríguez has to maintain the Socialist Party in government, or see supporters butchered and the start of a civil war. At the same time she has to contend with the blatant colonialist assertion of control over Venezuela’s assets and finances by the USA, while placating the irascible and irrational Trump.

Let us get one thing straight. I have spoken personally to those closest to President Nicolás Maduro. I have spoken with Francisco Torrealba, who followed Maduro as President of the Transport Workers Union and also took over Maduro’s seat in the National Assembly. I have spoken to Maduro’s son, also Nicolás. None of these people believe for one second that Delcy Rodríguez was in any way implicated in the kidnap of Nicolás and Cilia Maduro.

Why does almost everybody in the West believe a narrative that nobody in Venezuela believes, and which I am quite certain is untrue?

That narrative has been force-fed to you. Trump undermined Delcy Rodríguez by open praise of her and assertion that she is his choice. The truth of course is different: as Maduro’s Vice-President, she naturally assumes the duties of President, as confirmed by the Venezuelan Supreme Court. A co-ordinated effort of briefings to journalists by the Trump administration, by the security services, and by Machado-aligned Venezuelans in Miami, gave to the media in a coordinated fashion a detailed story of negotiations between Delcy and her brother Jorge and the Americans, for a strategy of economic reform that included Maduro’s removal.

I have looked again through many articles that forward this narrative, and all of them very obviously come primarily from Washington sources, and it is a narrative that the United States has been very, very assiduous in feeding you.

It begs the question, if Delcy really is a Western puppet, why is the Western Establishment so keen to tell you that? In every other circumstance, like the Gulf monarchies or al-Jolani, they are always anxious to promote the myth that their puppets are not puppets.

My maxim, that if the government really wants you to know something, it probably means it isn’t true, holds in this case. Trump wants it known that Delcy Rodríguez is his puppet because it is part of his victory narrative, the fake story of Trump greatness. It is also intended to divide and weaken the socialist movement in Venezuela.

We have to look at the night of 3 January when Maduro was kidnapped. There is one key fact which again is simply not part of the Western narrative. It was Nicolás Maduro who instructed the military to stand down and not to fight, in the event of an attempt to take him. In fact he was aware that such an event was imminent, though he did not know the exact date.

Maduro’s primary concern was to avoid war between Venezuela and the United States, war which would devastate this peaceful country.

It is important to note that Maduro was consciously following the template of his mentor President Hugo Chávez in his kidnapping in a CIA-orchestrated coup in 2002. (That link is a wrenching reminder that there was once a Guardian and Observer not captured by the security services). Following armed opposition insurrection on 11 April 2002, in which 19 Chávez supporters were massacred and 150 injured, a military coup captured President Chávez and he was flown to the island of La Orchila in a CIA-chartered plane.

Opposition leader Pedro Carmona was sworn in as President by the military leaders and instantly recognised by the Bush regime in Washington. He announced the immediate repeal of all of Chávez’s reform measures. However the people and bulk of the armed forces rose against the plotters and after only 48 hours took back control. Chávez returned to power. This is the basis of the brilliant Irish documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (which, naturally, was never televised).

The key thing to understand is that – remarkably – Chávez did not execute any of the coup participants, not even those in the military. There were in fact few prosecutions, jail sentences were remarkably light and many – including “President” Carmona – were allowed to “escape” into exile. The longest jailings were for those who actually took part in the massacre of April 11. Chávez gave a December 2007 general amnesty.

The same astonishing tolerance was shown to Juan Guaidó, the Western puppet who attempted a farcical military coup on 30 April 2019. While his coup was a pathetic failure and his total number of military defectors was 50, he nevertheless caused the deaths of four people and wounding of 230.

Again the response of the socialist government was astonishingly lenient. Nobody was executed. Proper trials were held of those accused and jail sentences were remarkably light even for those convicted of treason. It is worth saying that the numbers tried and the sentences were notably lighter than those handed down for the Washington Capitol Hill “insurrection” of 2021.

A group of thirty who took refuge in Bolsonaro’s Brazilian Embassy were allowed peacefully to leave the country. Guaidó was never arrested and was tolerated to wander around the country for years claiming to be President, and travel freely in and out, until he was indicted by the Government of Colombia for entering that country illegally in 2023.

The socialists’ refusal to spill blood has never been mirrored on the right. The large majority of those “political prisoners” you constantly hear about were involved in these or a whole series of lesser-known armed attempts, or in the opposition’s very real links to narcotics trafficking and organised crime.

What is surprising to me is not the claimed authoritarianism of the socialist government but, on the contrary, its quite astonishing leniency with the opposition in the face of repeated CIA-sponsored, frequently armed attempts at overthrow.

One has only to envisage how a right-wing Latin American government would deal with repeated left-wing armed coup attempts, to appreciate just how extraordinary this restraint has been. Lack of violence or vengeance has always characterised the Bolivarian Revolution’s reaction to right-wing coup attempts. Though it is admirably principled, I am not even sure I think this extreme degree of tolerance is wise.

It is in the context of this longstanding socialist reluctance to use violence that you have to view Maduro’s decision to stand down the defence forces in the event of an American kidnap mission. This is a government which does not just use revolutionary slogans, it lives by them, and “peace” is a key one. Maduro almost certainly hoped that domestic solidarity would oblige his return quickly, as had happened with Chávez. It is unlikely it occurred to him that Trump would simply – and pointlessly – remove Maduro and leave his government in power.

Multiple sources have confirmed to me that the Venezuelan forces were ordered to stand down. I visited the hillside location at Fuerte Tiuna where young female Lieutenant Alejandra del Valle Oliveros Velásquez, age 23, refused the order to stand down and continued to stand guard with her gun at a vital hilltop communications facility. She died as it was struck by American missiles.

FANB Lieutenant Alejandra del Valle Oliveros Velásquez, killed in Tiuna Fort by US troops on January 3, 2026. Photo: social media.

This is also a point missing from the Western narrative of military events. Venezuela’s defensive posture is hopelessly outdated in the age of precision missile warfare. Its radar installations and anti-aircraft batteries are highly visible on open hilltop locations, not in hardened bunkers. Its troops are in open barracks, like the unnecessarily murdered Cuban guards.

Outrage at the entirely unprovoked American assault has restored a much-needed sense of national unity to Venezuela. In the bitter aftermath of the disputed July 2024 presidential election, many government supporters, including some in office, concede that the wave of arrests went too far. That overreach damaged the government’s moral authority at home and handed valuable propaganda ammunition to its critics abroad.

There was not sufficient discrimination between armed and unarmed protestors, and while many would argue that emergency measures were essential to prevent immediate anarchic violence, it is generally admitted that many incarcerations have gone on far too long.

Acknowledging this does not mean accepting the inflated figures and politicised methodology pushed by Western-funded NGOs such as Foro Penal and their international partners. Those counts routinely lump together genuine dissidents with armed plotters, participants in violent insurrection attempts, and outright criminals — many of whom were brandishing weapons or linked to coup networks.

The NGOs’ inflated numbers are not neutral human rights monitoring; they are part of a longstanding information warfare operation, generously funded by the very governments and foundations that have spent years supporting regime change efforts in Venezuela. Their selective outrage and consistent inflation of “political prisoner” tallies serve a clear political purpose: to delegitimise the Bolivarian process and justify external interference.

Broader perspective is essential. The arrests did not emerge from a vacuum. They followed years of sanctions-induced economic pain, repeated opposition attempts to subvert constitutional order through street violence, election disruption both physical and electronic, and what were forged or selectively manipulated election returns from the opposition. The response was heavy-handed, but it occurred against a backdrop of genuine security threats.

The narrative that the opposition won 70% of the votes in the 2024 election is simply absurd to anyone who knows Venezuela. In their final election rallies, Maduro had 1 million people on the streets of Caracas and the opposition had 50,000. Many of the alleged voting machine printouts bandied about by the Biden regime were very evident forgeries – with the same handwriting in different locations, and multiple examples of returning officers or party officials signing with an X in a country with almost 100% literacy.

The Opposition refused to present these printouts to the Supreme Court for verification. The truth is that the electronic electoral process (I am not a fan) was badly affected by external hacking, almost certainly by the USA. There was indeed popular discontent with the effects of economic sanctions, and many seasoned observers think the elections were close. It will never be possible to discover the real result. But Western claims of 70% opposition support are absolute nonsense.

In fact, I do not believe that either the government or the Supreme Court really knew the true result. I certainly do not. But it was US-orchestrated disruption that made it impossible.

Venezuela is a substantively free country. People have criticised the government to me openly and without fear, including on camera. There was an opposition demonstration in Caracas a few weeks ago. It was very lightly policed. Speakers could say what they wished – support for Donald Trump was a key theme – and nobody has been subsequently questioned. About 500 people turned out. I have seen three or four opposition posters around town. Nobody takes them down.

I have been filming all around Venezuela in total for six weeks, and have never been asked who I am by officials or police, or required to produce identity papers. I received a permit from the Ministry of Communications but nobody has ever looked at it. Nobody has ever suggested what I should say, or instructed me not to film something.

I have been to many different areas and provinces. Everywhere the shops are fully stocked and the bars and restaurants fully operational. People look well fed. I have not seen one drug addict, beggar or homeless person. I have seen five police or military checkpoints in six weeks – three at the Presidential residence, Police HQ, and National Assembly; one checking car tyres and lights; and one at the exit to a national park doing wildlife conservation enforcement.

I have been rather obsessively keeping check because Western journalists always put in police and military checkpoints in their imaginary descriptions of Venezuela, penned from thousands of miles away. The Machado opposition have made it a meme, putting out advice saying you are not obliged to show identity documents at police checkpoints. It would be very hard to find a checkpoint to show your documents to.

This is not a repressive government. The atmosphere of repression is entirely absent and that is because the mechanisms of repression are entirely absent. There is no heavy police presence. People are not scared of informers. I have seen very few guns carried by police, and zero guns carried by anybody else.

The narrative now dominating Western media — that any economic liberalisation or pragmatic opening under Delcy Rodríguez is a sudden capitulation forced by Trump’s pressure — is simply false. Nicolás Maduro himself initiated processes of economic liberalisation years earlier, as a direct survival response to the crushing weight of sanctions. These are Maduro’s policies. The recent legislation liberalising the hydrocarbons sector was entirely developed under, and approved by, Nicolás Maduro.

Dollarisation spread from below as ordinary people sought stability; the government gradually relaxed price controls, permitted greater private-sector involvement in imports and distribution, and developed workarounds for oil sales. These were pragmatic adaptations forced on the revolution long before Trump returned to the White House.

As I told the students at the University of the Communes, if late-stage capitalism were (as it claims) the natural order of society, rather than a series of entirely artificial institutions and arrangements designed to produce an extreme concentration of resources in the hands of an elite, enforced ultimately through the violence of the state, then the capitalist states would not need to crush states practising other systems, through crippling sanctions and isolation from exchange of resources and capital, and ultimately through military force.

Its own founding ideology states that capitalism will naturally prevail eventually in any society through its greater beneficence and more efficient distribution of resources. Yet the rulers of the capitalist states constantly seek to crush any state practising any alternative system. They do this for fear that their own population will see the possibility of a better path than working as effective slaves while the value produced by their labour concentrates entirely into the hands of the Epstein class.

We will never know how the Bolivarian Revolution would have developed were it not for the financial and trade sanctions that crippled it.

But this is the key fact. Venezuela was targeted because of the extraordinary successes of Chavismo, not because it was a failed state. Poverty was more than halved. Literacy increased to better rates than the United States. Free education and healthcare were instituted. Pension recipients were tripled. Utilities were nationalised. Massive amounts of social housing were provided. These were the achievements that precipitated sanctions.

The economic collapse of 2017 was not caused by failures of a socialist system. The collapse – and the subsequent mass wave of emigration – was caused entirely by the sanctions regime, and particularly the blocking of all payment systems and financial transactions.

There is an obvious point seldom discussed: sanctions — particularly the financial sanctions that block normal international payment transactions and banking channels — do not merely cause hardship.

Sanctions actively breed corruption.

When a sovereign government is prevented from conducting legitimate trade and finance through standard global systems, it is driven into the arms of those who specialise in sanctions-busting, informal transfer networks, and money laundering. These forced partnerships with elements outside the formal economy then infect the state apparatus itself, creating new avenues for graft and abuse.

It is a vicious, predictable cycle engineered by Washington policy.

Sanctions force states for very survival to do things classified as illegal, and draw their operatives into the ambit of actual criminals. Some of the criticisms of the Maduro government should be viewed through this prism; and of course there is not, and has never been, any state entirely free of corruption.

Maduro’s rule is not the failure that is routinely portrayed in the West. The economy has rebounded remarkably. Under Maduro, the government scored measurable successes in public security. Murder rates have dropped by over two thirds and the narco gangs are almost entirely off the streets.

Large-scale operations significantly curtailed narcotics production and trafficking routes through Venezuelan territory. Venezuela reported record drug seizures to the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs — nearly 66 tonnes in 2025 alone, the highest level in two decades. UN data states that Venezuela plays only a very marginal role in global cocaine flows, and almost none in production. On fentanyl it doesn’t feature at all.

Maduro has succeeded to an extraordinary degree in suppressing drugs on the streets of Venezuela and in stopping trafficking. That he is now in a US jail charged with “narco-terrorism” is truly a sign of how depraved the United States has become.

At the same time, the overall crime rate fell sharply. Cities that once ranked among the most dangerous in the world became noticeably safer for ordinary citizens. Even Venezuelans critical of the government on other grounds acknowledge this improvement in daily life and personal safety. Just two nights ago I was talking to a Venezuelan visiting home from Germany, who told me she used to be terrified to walk the streets of Caracas at night, but now felt perfectly safe.

It is important to understand what kind of socialism Venezuela actually practised under Chávez and Maduro.

The Bolivarian project was never the full state ownership of the means of production and distribution envisaged in classical Marxist texts. Venezuela has always been a mixed economy. Its distinctive feature — and its greatest strength — was the heavy reliance of the state on ownership of the full range of oil sector activity, upstream and downstream, to channel large public revenues into socialist-oriented goals: universal free education from cradle to university, a national health service that brought clinics and hospitals into every barrio, expanded social security, housing programmes such as the Gran Misión Vivienda, and subsidies that kept basic foodstuffs affordable for the poor.

The nationalisation of utilities — electricity, telecommunications, water — followed the same logic. In many respects it resembled the Western social-democratic model of the 1970s, when European governments used progressive taxation to fund the welfare state while leaving large parts of the economy in private hands. The massive scale of affordable decent quality public housing in Venezuela is truly a marvel to behold for a developing economy.

What made Bolivarianism different, and ultimately more radical, was the commune movement. Its philosophy is genuinely grassroots. The communes did not spring from decrees in Miraflores Palace; they grew from below, from the communal councils that ordinary people in poor neighbourhoods formed to solve their own problems — fixing roads, organising rubbish collection, building clinics.

Chávez gave these organic commune structures constitutional recognition and legal power, but the energy came from the communities themselves.

Decision-making in the communes is direct democracy in action: assemblies debate and vote on how to spend the funds allocated to them. The people decide their own priorities. I have always been a sceptic of people’s assemblies and direct democracy. Visiting Venezuela’s communes has converted me. The key factor is the quite astonishing prevalence of political education and social awareness among the ordinary members of the Venezuelan working class.

For a long time the communes remained largely a mechanism for redistributing oil revenue in a more democratic and transparent way. But it was still, in essence, social democracy with revolutionary rhetoric — spending the rents from oil on social goods.

The Commune and Popular Sovereignty in Times of Imperialist Siege

But the commune movement has not stood still. It has begun to push outward, asserting communal ownership over the means of production and distribution. Increasing numbers of communes now run their own small factories, agricultural cooperatives, bakeries, abattoirs, transport collectives and distribution networks. I have discussed with senior government figures how to use commune-owned enterprises as a spearhead in liberalised sectors of the economy, to socialise profit.

Communes are moving beyond simply receiving and spending state money and towards controlling the actual creation and allocation of wealth. This is the qualitative leap that marks Bolivarian socialism as something more than 1970s-style welfare statism.

Maduro instituted the University of the Communes in 2025. It is predicated on providing practical university-level teaching in the areas of particular value to the communes, ranging from public administration to electrical engineering and agriculture. Agricultural production is an area where many of Venezuela’s over 7,000 communes are engaged.

Agriculture collapsed in Venezuela long before Chávez. This is in common with many oil states.

My first overseas diplomatic post was an appointment to Nigeria in 1986, as Second Secretary (Agriculture and Water Resources), where my favourite statistic was that Nigeria went, in just 8 years, from being the world’s largest exporter of palm oil to being the world’s largest importer of palm oil. Oil-backed currencies frequently make agricultural exports uncompetitive and imported agricultural products cheaper than domestic.

This collapsed Venezuela’s cocoa, coffee, maize and other agricultural sectors decades before Chávez came to power.

The communes are reintroducing agricultural production from ground level up. I visited local commune Vittoria not far from the University. It has over 20 agricultural production units, and students were assisting in developing, for example, bamboo cattle pens to replace iron hurdles no longer imported due to Western sanctions.

Cattle pen at Vittoria commune. Photo: Craig Murray.

At the other end of the production process I visited the Metro HQ in Caracas on the day when all the Metro workers and pensioners are given monthly packages including cooking oil, pasta, flour, eggs and tinned meat and fruit, all of it now produced in Venezuela, and almost all are new products since the 2018 crisis.

Products of the monthly packages provided to Caracas Metro workers. Photo: Craig Murray.

What strikes every visitor is the extraordinary level of public awareness of socialist philosophy. In the communes, in the Bolivarian universities, in political education circles, ordinary people discuss with real knowledge the difference between social democracy and socialism, the role of the commune as the “cellular tissue” of the new society, and the necessity of moving from distribution to production.

Ideology is lived daily practice. I have heard teenagers and market sellers quote Chávez and Marx with ease, and with confidence their interlocutors will follow.

These are the fundamental elements of Bolivarian socialism that Delcy Rodríguez is now fighting to preserve and safeguard in the face of the Trump onslaught: the oil-funded social democratic state, the nationalised utilities, the direct-democracy structures of the communes, and the moves to spread the assertion of popular ownership over production.

Consider this: Venezuela has the most beautiful Caribbean beaches I have ever seen. They are as good as Mauritius or the Maldives. These are my own photos and the colours are not retouched.

Venezuelan beaches. Photo: Craig Murray.

What is remarkable about this is that all the people you see are ordinary Venezuelans. There is not a foreign tourist in sight: no beachside bar, restaurant or hotel chaining off stretches and covering them in sunbeds. Instead you have happy Venezuelan families with coolboxes enjoying the day for free. That is because, Isla Margarita aside, the Bolivarian Revolution protects Venezuela’s hundreds of miles of white sand beach by National Parks.

Where Chavismo sees a great amenity for the people and an astonishing habitat to be preserved, the Kushner and Machado worldview sees billions of dollars of prime beachside real estate, ripe for condominiums and huge hotels. Do not for one moment believe that they do not have their eye on it as part of the Imperialist grab. They do not want Venezuelans frolicking with their families on those beaches. They want them reserved to American and Israeli tourists, with the only Venezuelans in white shirt and bow tie carrying trays of drinks.

It may seem a small digression, but it is I believe a potent, and poignant, symbol of the clash of worldview that is at the heart of the struggle in Venezuela.

What the opposition wish to do is dismantle this entire architecture. Machado is pledged to abolish communes, to privatise utilities, to return Venezuela to the pre-Chávez model in which oil wealth flowed upward to a tiny elite and foreign corporations, while the majority existed only to serve. Delcy’s task is to hold the line so that the communes, and the consciousness they have created, can continue to develop while the universal education, healthcare and social provision are retained.

But this is the reality Delcy Rodríguez now confronts: Trump imposed a physical naval blockade on Venezuelan oil exports. Tankers carrying Venezuelan oil to buyers not approved by the US were physically seized by the US Navy. The US thus, by military force, imposed control over Venezuelan crude sales.

Revenues were initially routed to a US-controlled account in Qatar, later shifted to US Treasury accounts. Disbursements to the Rodríguez government are discretionary and ad hoc — for example, only $300 million of the first $500 million was released, with US approval required for its spending. The mechanism operates under executive emergency powers in the USA but under no Venezuelan authority. This is not with Delcy Rodríguez’s agreement.

It is totally illegal in every possible way. The naval blockade, the seizure of tankers, the stealing of oil revenue. All of this is absolutely against international law. Precisely what “Emergency” is justifying Trump’s powers, even in US domestic law, I have no idea.

The United States has no treaty agreement with Venezuela or international mandate permitting it to seize Venezuela’s oil and sell it. It is simple theft.

By controlling the tankers, Washington seized control of Venezuela’s only significant source of foreign revenue and crippled the government of Delcy Rodríguez. Oil accounts for over 70% of Venezuelan government revenue.

Oil cargoes approved by the United States are now sold on the international market, but the proceeds are not paid to Caracas. They are, incredibly, paid to the United States Treasury. The Trump regime dispenses ad hoc payments back to the Venezuelan government — whatever portion it chooses, whenever it chooses — to allow basic state functions to continue. It is a system entirely governed by the whims of Donald Trump, controlling another sovereign state.

This is less structured than the formal occupation authority the United States imposed on Iraq after 2003, but the principle is identical. Iraq’s oil revenues have been treated this way for 25 years. A great many people are unaware that all of Iraq’s oil revenue is stolen into United States Treasury accounts: the legacy media never tell you.

It is the classical colonial model. It is exactly how the British East India Company ran the princely states of India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: the local ruler was allowed to remain in nominal office, but the taxes were collected by the British and the local ruler given back whatever they chose. Senior East India Company officials in post were actually titled “Collector”.

Western coverage calls it “safeguarding,” “protection,” or “leverage”; the reality is pure, physical piracy.

Yet Delcy Rodríguez is stuck. She has no military force capable of countering it. The Venezuelan navy cannot challenge the US fleet, while the USA’s giant bombers can reach Caracas with 2,000lb bombs direct from US airbases in Florida. Any open attempt at defiance would spark the US military regime change which would lead to massacre.

Rodríguez is therefore reduced to negotiating with the occupiers over how much of Venezuela’s own money she is allowed to spend on her own people. She is obliged to host a series of sickening visits from smirking Trump henchmen, openly humiliating and raping Venezuela. The claims that Rodríguez wants this, still more that she engineered this, are nuts.

I have seen criticism from the political left in the West, that Venezuela should have fought, should still fight, should join the anti-Imperial resistance. I have seen Venezuelans criticised as “sell-outs”.

Rather few of those making these criticisms have personally taken to the mountains with an AK47 to fight a superpower which has openly abandoned all pretence to follow the laws of war on protection of civilian life and infrastructure. It is certainly an option; but the death toll would be appalling and Venezuela would be condemned to many years of civil war and US military occupation.

It is a suicidal option, as Maduro himself recognised.

Delcy Rodríguez is struggling under an almost unbearable burden. A lifelong socialist whose own father was tortured to death by a CIA-run Venezuelan security service, she now finds herself effectively a prisoner of the United States. Venezuela is not Iran. It does not possess the military capacity, the strategic depth or the alliances to fight the United States. If Trump wakes up one morning and decides on full regime change — and he could — the result would be an immediate bloodbath and the total erasure of all the social gains of twenty-five years of Chavismo.

To prevent that catastrophe Rodríguez must placate Trump. She must speak the language of economic liberalisation that Washington wants to hear, even though the actual policy shifts amount to only the smallest rightward adjustment in an economy that remains overwhelmingly mixed. The fundamental social-democratic achievements — the education, the health missions, the housing programmes, the pensions and welfare, the privatised utilities — are being preserved.

Rodríguez’s strategy is therefore one of grim endurance: hunker down, preserve what can be preserved, and wait for a change of political wind in Washington. Sources very close to her repeatedly mention the November midterms in the USA as the next possible turning point.

The tragedy is that this woman must endure the portrayal abroad, spread from Washington, as a traitor to her class and her country. She cannot publicly kick too hard against Trump without risking the provocation of the psychopath to the very violence she is trying to avert. A friend who has known her for decades told me: “She is doing what she can to keep the peace in this time of war.”

There is very concrete evidence of Rodríguez’s loyalty to Maduro. Far from erasing Maduro or positioning herself as the new face of the revolution, Delcy Rodríguez has covered Venezuela in highly visible “Free Nicolás and Cilia” billboards and street art, while introducing no material that praises herself or attempts to construct her own cult of personality. This public symbolism is a powerful, real-life counter to narratives of disloyalty or betrayal.

Graffiti demanding freedom of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores from US imprisonment. Photo: Craig Murray.

One of my personal critiques of Chavismo is that it is too centred on cult of personality. It is a key fact that Rodríguez is doing the very opposite of trying to move that spotlight onto herself.

Most of Rodríguez’s critics, especially those in the Western media and commentariat, know almost nothing of Venezuela. Most of what the Western public think they know is the very opposite of the truth; the ability of Western media to maintain a false narrative is astonishingly evident on a visit here.

I have now spent a total of six weeks in the country over two trips, talking to students, diplomats, union leaders, commune activists and people inside the government – and a great many barmen. What I have seen and heard convinces me of one thing above all: Delcy Rodríguez is not a traitor. She is a socialist doing the only thing possible to her in this impossible situation — buying time for the Bolivarian Revolution to survive.

(craigmurray.org.uk)

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Global oil markets ended March with their steepest monthly increase on record, as the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran rattled energy markets and intensified fears over supply disruptions across one of the world’s most critical oil transit corridors.

Brent crude futures for May delivery rose 4.94% by the close of trading to $118.35 per barrel, while May futures for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) fell 1.46% to $101.38.

Despite the divergence in daily trading, both benchmarks recorded exceptional gains over the course of March. Brent climbed 63.3% during the month, while WTI advanced 51.3%, marking the sharpest monthly increases ever recorded in global oil markets. Reuters reported that oil benchmarks have risen by roughly 60% since the war began on February 28, with Brent on course for a historic monthly gain.

Oil shock
The surge comes as traders respond to a sharp tightening in supply expectations following Iran’s retaliatory measures in response to the assault, including restrictions on traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. That waterway carried around 20 million barrels per day in 2024, equivalent to about 20% of global petroleum liquids consumption, making any disruption there immediately consequential for world markets.

Broader market stress has deepened as shipping disruptions spread across the Gulf. A Reuters survey published Tuesday found that OPEC oil output fell by 7.3 million barrels per day in March to 21.57 million barrels per day, its lowest level since June 2020, as the war forced export cuts across Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The War on Iran Is Transforming the Global Economy: Economist Michael Hudson Explains How

Market strain
The shock has extended beyond physical supply. Rising oil costs are increasing pressure on major importing economies, particularly those dependent on dollar-denominated energy purchases, while investors have rushed into futures markets to lock in supplies and hedge against further escalation. Reuters also reported that analysts sharply raised their 2026 oil price forecasts in March, warning that if the Strait remains closed, Brent could climb as high as $190 a barrel.

Beyond the immediate rally, the scale of the move points to wider economic consequences. Higher energy prices are feeding inflation, lifting transport and production costs, and adding to recession concerns across global markets.

Analysts cited by Reuters said the current disruption has already become the worst oil supply shock in history, underscoring that the March price spike reflects systemic crisis conditions rather than ordinary market volatility.

(Al-Mayadeen English)

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This article originally appeared in the March 30, 2026 edition of Desinformémonos.

Mexico City. Indigenous and peasant communities grouped in the Network in Defense of Corn warned about the risks that native seeds face due to the advancement of technologies such as genetic editing, while reaffirming “that corn is the basis of life, culture and community organization in the country.”

In an assembly held in Huayacocotla, in the Huasteca region of Veracruz, they pointed out that corn is not only a food, but an element that articulates the defense of the territory, water and collective life, highlighting that “the milpa represents a relationship of mutual nurturing between the peoples and nature that sustains food sovereignty.”

They also stressed that the preservation of seeds depends on their planting, care, and exchange within communities, practices they consider fundamental in the face of external models that endanger biodiversity and traditional agricultural systems.

Photo: Gerardo Magallón

The Network in Defense of Corn rejected any form of genetic modification of seeds and denounced the contradiction of the State in prohibiting the cultivation of transgenic crops while allowing their importation, in addition to demanding the prohibition of genome editing.

In their statement, the communities also spoke out against seed ownership systems and policies that promote land privatization and the commodification of territories, warning that these measures affect autonomy and forms of community organization.

They also warned about the impact of agro-industrial technology packages, whose inputs pollute soil and water, damage health and weaken peasant production, in addition to causing the loss of biodiversity and traditional knowledge.

Finally, they called for the defense of native seeds and the strengthening of youth participation, insisting on the need to maintain food sovereignty and preserve community knowledge in the face of models they consider harmful to life and territories.

Photo: Gerardo Magallón

• 

  News Briefs

  Network in Defense of Corn Warns of Risk to Mexico’s Native Seeds

  March 31, 2026March 31, 2026

  Communities spoke out against seed ownership systems and policies that promote land privatization and commodification, warning that these measures affect autonomy and community organization.

• 

  Mañanera

  People’s Mañanera March 31

  March 31, 2026

  President Sheinbaum’s daily press conference, with comments on public health investments, Gulf of Mexico oil spill, energy sovereignty, AIFA airport, forced disappearances, and Sonora River remediation.

• 

  Analysis

  Tariffs Without Industry: The Trap of Mexican Trade Policy Towards China

  March 31, 2026March 31, 2026

  Without a policy aimed at increasing the productive investment rate to accompany the country’s reindustrialization process, trade barriers will be inefficient due to the rigidity of the productive structure.

The post Network in Defense of Corn Warns of Risk to Mexico’s Native Seeds appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.

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The commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has expressed solidarity and appreciation to the Islamic Resistance of Yemen, hailing its heroic role in confronting criminal America and the child-killing Israeli regime while defending Islamic values and the oppressed people of Gaza.

In the message, released on Monday, Brigadier General Esmail Qa’ani said that Yemen’s timely and strategic actions have once again strengthened the powerful Islamic Resistance Front across the West Asia region, and forced the US aircraft carrier Gerald Ford into humiliating retreat.

“By God’s grace, once again, another victory has emerged from the heroic Yemen in the continuation of the epic creation of the powerful Islamic Resistance Front in the region to confront the criminal America and the child-killing Zionist regime and to defend the nation and Islamic values,” the Quds Force commander stated.

General Qa’ani directly attributed the humiliating withdrawal of the heavily equipped US aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford to the deterrent power of Yemen’s resistance.

“Those who ask about the fate of the equipped aircraft carrier Gerald Ford of the United States, which for more than two weeks hesitantly circled the boundary between Yanbu and Jeddah and finally made an excuse to return with various stories, it must be said that the secret of this wandering and turning back should be searched in the sky-high mountains and the blessed land of Yemen,” he stated.

The senior IRGC commander extended heartfelt thanks to the wise leadership, brave commanders, and sincere warriors of the heroic Yemeni people, praising their strategic vision and unwavering commitment against all enemies of the Islamic world.

“I would like to thank the wise leadership, the brave commanders, and the sincere warriors of the heroic people of Yemen, and I appreciate their timely actions and pride in the beauty of the strategic thinking of the religious leaders of this luminous land against all the enemies of the Islamic world,” General Qa’ani said.

Iran Dismisses US Negotiation Claims: ‘We Negotiate With Enemies Through Strikes’

He highlighted that Yemen’s continued all-around support for the Islamic Ummah, particularly the oppressed people of Gaza, reflects a profound understanding of regional developments and paves the way for Yemen’s full liberation from the oppressive siege imposed by the enemies.

“This timely presence and your continued all-round support for the Islamic Ummah, especially the oppressed people of Gaza, demonstrates the depth of your correct recognition of the developments in the region and is a prelude to the complete liberation of heroic Yemen from the oppressive siege,” the message read.

Reaffirming Iran’s steadfast position, General Qa’ani concluded by underlining the Islamic Republic’s divine duty to stand firmly alongside all fronts of resistance.

“The Islamic Republic, in fulfilling its divine duty, will continue to stand firm and resist to achieve its great goals, including removing the shadow of war in the entire region, and will support and back its friends and fighters sincerely on all fronts of resistance,” he stated.

With God’s help and success, General Qa’ani underscores the unbreakable bond between Iran and the Yemeni Islamic Resistance, a partnership that continues to reshape the balance of power in favor of the Axis of Resistance and against US-Zionist aggression.

(PressTV)

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The ongoing drills involve naval forces of ten LATAM countries.

The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz arrived in Panamanian waters on Sunday to participate in the multinational exercise ‘South Seas 2026’, as part of cooperation between the United States and Panama on alleged security matters, according to officials from both countries.

The ship, which will remain in the region until April 2, is anchored in open waters approximately 45 minutes from the Amador cruise port, located at the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal. The USS Nimitz is accompanied by the destroyer USS Gridley, a member of its strike group.

“We are in Panama as guests and also as security partners. This visit is part of our cooperation to enhance security and prosperity throughout the Americas,” stated U.S. Rear Admiral Norman Cassi during an official ceremony at the Amador terminal.

Currently, the U.S. is the main user of the Panama Canal: approximately 70% of the cargo transiting the waterway originates in or is destined for U.S. territory.

The “Southern Seas 2026” exercise is the eleventh edition of these regional maneuvers since 2007.

According to U.S. Southern Command, the USS Nimitz strike group will conduct joint training exercises with the naval forces of ten countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Uruguay.

As part of their deployment, the ships will circumnavigate the American continent with scheduled port calls in Brazil, Chile, Panama, and Jamaica. Neither the USS Nimitz nor the destroyer USS Gridley will transit the Panama Canal during this mission.

Pentagon Reveals Attacks in Latin America Are Just the Beginning

Social organizations and grassroots movements in Panama have expressed their opposition to the presence of US warships in the country’s territorial waters, calling the deployment a violation of national sovereignty and part of an ongoing militarization process under the current administration.

Groups such as the National Front for the Defense of Economic and Social Rights (Frenadeso) rejected the arrival of the USS Nimitz and the USS Gridley, arguing that the operation reflects a broader pattern of foreign military presence in the country.

Despite public criticism, the Panamanian government has defended the maritime cooperation initiative. Official reports add that such exercises contribute to development through technical cooperation.

For social movements, however, these naval operations represent a show of force that reinforces the United States’ control over strategic locations in the region, with Panama as a logistical platform for its geopolitical interests.

(Telesur) by HGV and JF

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The Russian oil tanker Anatoly Kolodkin arrived in Cuba with a humanitarian cargo of 100,000 tons of crude oil, reports the Russian Ministry of Transport. The vessel is now waiting to unload at the port of Matanzas.

Experts have reported that Cuba requires 100,000 barrels of oil per day to meet its demand. Therefore, the arrival of the Russian vessel, while very important symbolically, technically only relieves about seven and a half days of the island’s consumption. The island produces approximately 30,000 to 40,000 barrels per day.

Additionally, it has been reported that small private businesses in Cuba have received special licenses from the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), allowing the arrival of approximately the equivalent of 30,000 barrels of diesel so far this year. This figure is likewise marginal compared to Cuban demand.

Russian crude: the first relief Cuba has received in monthsThe Russian tanker Anatoly Kolodkin has become the first vessel of this kind to assist Cuba in the past three months. It should be noted that the ship made the journey escorted by Russian military vessels only in the area of the English Channel, and throughout this time sailed under the Russian flag.

Cuba is being subjected to a harsh economic blockade by the United States, which has been aggravated by the cutoff of Venezuelan and Mexican crude supplies imposed by the White House.

As a result, lacking hydrocarbon imports since January 9, Cuba has been plunged into a severe energy crisis.

Now, the 100,000 tons of crude carried aboard the Anatoly Kolodkin, should alleviate the crisis that the Cuban people are experiencing.

**Is the US easing the embargo on Cuba?**On the previous day, a US official told The New York Times that the US Coast Guard would not block the passage of the Russian tanker despite the blockade imposed on Cuba by the Trump regime.

The US president himself downplayed the matter when journalists asked him about it aboard Air Force One on Sunday night.

“We don’t mind that someone receives a shipment, because they need it; they have to survive,” the president said, as quoted by the NYT. At the same time, Trump predicted that the arrival of the Russian tanker “is not going to have any impact” because “Cuba is finished.”

On January 29, Trump signed an executive order allowing the US to impose tariffs on imports from countries that supply oil to Cuba.

Washington’s actions have caused a severe fuel shortage in the Caribbean country. Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel condemned the energy blockade and considered it “reprehensible that a power of the magnitude of the United States would adopt such an aggressive and criminal policy toward a small nation.”

The president acknowledged that Cuba faces serious problems with adequate oil to ensure electricity generation and basic activities due to the fact that no fuel has entered the country since December.

On Monday, March 30 Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov welcomed the arrival of the shipment of 100,000 tons of Russian oil to Cuba, equivalent to approximately 750,000 barrels, highlighting that for Moscow, it is a duty to assist Cuba amid its current crisis, caused by the US blockade.

Peskov told the press that his country cannot remain indifferent to the situation faced by the Cuban people, and therefore, Russia is committed to not turning its back and to continue providing the necessary assistance to the island.

“Russia believes it has a duty not to stand aside and to provide the necessary assistance to its Cuban friends, and we are pleased that this batch of petroleum products has arrived on the island,” the Russian official stated.

‘Cuba Is Not Alone’: Inspiring Days of Solidarity in Havana

(LaIguanaTV) with Orinoco Tribune content

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/CB/SL

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By Caitlin Johnstone – Mar 30, 2026

Whenever Israel is killing tons of civilians the western media always start churning out articles about “antisemitism” and Jewish feelings.

“Jews Begin to Wonder: Is Anywhere Safe?” blares a recent headline from The Wall Street Journal, subtitled “‘It feels like the 1930s again.’ Hostility against Jews surges in Western countries where they felt safe in recent decades.”

An article for The Atlantic titled “Canada’s Polite Pogrom” bizarrely tries to argue that “tolerance for zealotry” is somehow “purging Jews from public life.”

A Washington Examiner headline proclaims that “Jewish voters feel ‘politically homeless’ as antisemitism rises on both sides.”

A headline for The Telegraph asserts that “Many Jews are sensing frightening echoes of 1930s Germany in 2020s Britain.”

War Criminal Tony Blair writes an article for The Free Press titled “Why the West Fails to Stop Antisemitism”.

What about 92 million people in Iran, 5 million people in Lebanon, 2.7 million people in the West Bank, and 2 million people in Gaza? Is anywhere safe for them? https://t.co/ztMlGrpK4f

— Frances 'Cassandra' Coppola (@Frances_Coppola) March 27, 2026

Meanwhile, in real life, people are being mercilessly butchered in Iran, Lebanon and Palestine by Israel and its allies. The uglier it gets, the more aggressive the concern-trolling about “antisemitism” becomes.

The Jewish Chronicle has published an article by Maureen Lipman titled “Does the world have any idea of how tired the people of Israel are?”, subtitled “A dear friend told me that his grandchildren have needed to enter their safe room more than 200 times since the current battle began.”

“The BBC and reporters worldwide do not go into the shelters where children are trained to lie on the floor when the sirens go off,” writes Lipman. “Neither do they report on the closure of schools. Most Israeli kids have missed some school every day since Covid. Are the media even aware of the fear of the elderly in Israel?”

Absolutely incredible. She writes as though Israelis are the only people on earth whose country is being bombed. Only Zionists could drop bombs on neighboring populations every single day for years and then go “NOBODY IN THE WORLD CAN IMAGINE WHAT IT’S LIKE TO LIVE IN FEAR OF AIRSTRIKES!”

We do not care Maureen, not an ounce pic.twitter.com/cObeT8b37d

— keewa (@keewa) March 26, 2026

Western news reporters face so much pressure to pad Israel’s image and advance Israeli information interests that the Associated Press just ran an editorial titled “AP is calling Israel’s attack on Lebanon an invasion. What does that mean and why does it matter?” justifying its decision to call what is self-evidently and indisputably an invasion the thing that it is.

You never saw them do this with Ukraine. You never saw the media holding long internal deliberations about what to label it and then publishing editorials going “We’re going to call this a Russian invasion, we’re pretty sure that’s what this is called, please don’t be mad at us!” That’s how cowed they are by Israel’s supporters, and how much pressure they feel to toe the imperial line no matter what.

Israel Kills 3 Journalists in South Lebanon

At the same time in the Israeli press we’re seeing op-eds like The Jerusalem Post’s “Long-term deradicalization in Gaza faces major hurdles,” which argues explicitly for the total ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian territory.

The article’s author Martin Sherman dismisses claims that the people of Gaza can be “deradicalized” — as though the radicalization of Palestinians is the problem, and not the radical political ideology of the people who’ve been waging an extermination campaign upon them. Instead, Sherman argues, everyone must accept the “harsh reality” that only annexation and ethnic cleansing can lead to a lasting peace in the Gaza Strip.

To be clear, this is an opinion column in a major Israeli newspaper advocating ethnic cleansing. https://t.co/0Bd8SXzWMv

— Niall Stanage (@NiallStanage) March 29, 2026

“The only way Israel can ensure how the Gaza Strip will be governed, and who will govern it, is to govern it itself,” writes Sherman. “Moreover, the only way Israel can govern the Gaza Strip without becoming an external oppressor of ‘another people’ is to remove ‘the other people’ from the confines of the Gaza Strip itself.”

“This is not radical right-wing radicalism. It is merely sound and sober political science,” Sherman writes.

If it isn’t right-wing radicalism to advocate the mass purge of a colonized indigenous population from their homeland for being the wrong ethnicity, then right-wing radicalism does not exist. That’s pretty much as right-wing extremist as it gets.

And this is an entirely mainstream Israeli publication.

If anyone on earth needs to be deradicalized, it’s the Israelis and their supporters.

(Caitlin Johnstone)

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US universities across the region have begun taking precautionary measures including transitioning to online learning

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) issued a warning late on 28 March that US and Israeli-linked university campuses are now “legitimate targets,” following destructive attacks on higher education facilities across the Islamic Republic.

BREAKING | Public Relations of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) warns universities linked to Israel & the US in West Asia now 'legitimate targets'

“Warning to the criminal rulers of the United States: American-Zionist forces have repeatedly targeted Iranian…

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) March 28, 2026

“Warning to the criminal rulers of the United States: American-Zionist forces have repeatedly targeted Iranian universities with bombardment,” IRGC Public Relations said in a statement.

“The reckless rulers of the White House should know that from now on, all universities of the occupying regime and American universities in West Asia will be considered legitimate targets until two universities are struck in retaliation for the destruction of Iranian universities,” it added.

The statement went on to “advise all staff, professors, students of American universities in the region, and residents nearby, to stay at least one kilometer away from these universities to ensure their safety.”

IRGC Strikes Israeli Military Sites and US Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia

If the US government wants its universities in the region to be spared beyond the two retaliatory strikes, it must, by no later than 12:00 PM Tehran time on Monday, 30 March, issue an official statement condemning the bombing of universities. If it also wants its universities to remain unharmed afterward, it must restrain its allied forces from attacking universities and research centers; otherwise, the threat will remain valid and will be carried out.”

As a result of the warning, US universities, including the American University of Beirut (AUB), have begun taking precautions, including transitioning to remote learning.

Several universities inIran have been hit by US-Israeli airstrikes over the past few days, including Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) and Isfahan University of Technology.

Today was one of the most horrifying days of my life as an academic. Walking through Iran University of Science and Technology, a top-ranked public university in Iran, I was struck by the devastation. Only last month, this campus was alive with students, bustling between… pic.twitter.com/tYNFguX8QE

— Helyeh Doutaghi (@Helyeh_Doutaghi) March 28, 2026

The attacksresulted in massive destruction to the institutions.

This is a building in Iran university of science and technology (IUST) that was targeted today in Tehran. This university -one of the leading engineering universities of Iran- is where I got my BSc and MSc degree in engineering years ago.
This aggression is all about Iran… pic.twitter.com/qXPo9JmZna

— Sarbaz Roohulla Rezvi (@SarbazRezvi) March 28, 2026

“The American-Israeli aggression against Iran continues to reveal its true objective: to cripple our country’s scientific foundation and cultural heritage by systematically targeting universities, research centers, historical monuments, and prominent scientists,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said on Saturday.

At least 1,937 people have been killed by US-Israeli attacks on Iran since 28 February, according to the latest Iranian Health Ministry figures released last week.

Over 160 girls were killed in a US-Israeli attack on a girls’ school in Minab at the start of the war. Hundreds of other schools and cultural facilities have been destroyed or damaged since then.

(The Cradle)

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Caracas (OrinocoTribune.com)—Venezuela’s foreign affairs minister, Yván Gil, stated that the Organization of American States (OAS) lacks authority to comment on Venezuela’s internal affairs; furthermore, he reiterated that Venezuela is not a member of this organization. Minister Gil’s statements were issued in response to interventionist claims by the current head of OAS, Suriname diplomat Albert Ramdin.

Ramdin had written the following on social media: “Venezuelan authorities must ensure that the processes for appointing the attorney general and the ombudsman meet minimum standards of transparency, merit, and citizen participation… The appointment of authorities who offer credible guarantees of independence for all sectors of society can represent a fundamental step towards national reconciliation and a democratic transition.”

Gil said that it is “deeply dissonant that an official of that body would presume to comment on processes that correspond exclusively to the Venezuelan people and their constitutional order.”

This regional organization, long considered an appendage of the US Department of State, did not emit any protest after the criminal US strikes on Venezuela on January 3, which resulted in the murder of more than 100 Venezuelans and the illegal abduction and imprisonment of Constitutional President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Deputy Cilia Flores.

Minister Gil also noted that Ramdin’s statements were reminiscent of “the nefarious legacy of his predecessor Luis Almagro,” who was known for his aversion to the Venezuelan government and for supporting the Venezuelan far-right. Minister Gil reiterated that “Venezuela will continue its course of self-determination, an inalienable right of its people.”

In 2017, President Nicolás Maduro formally announced Venezuela’s withdrawal from the OAS. The legal process of Venezuela’s departure from the international organization—known by many as the US Ministry of Colonies—was finalized in 2019, based on the fact that the then-secretary general, Luis Almagro, interfered recurrently in Venezuela’s internal affairs.

The Venezuelan parliament reported last Friday that it received 21 new applications—18 for the position of ombudsperson and three for attorney general. Simultaneously, it announced the extension of the deadline for the selections, aiming at reaching unanimity in the Constitutional process despite the overwhelming Chavista majority in parliament.

Trump Boasts Disproportionate Use of Force During Assault on Venezuela, ‘Unprecedented Weapons’ Use

Among the new candidates is journalist Vladimir Villegas, brother of former Minister of Culture Ernesto Villegas, who had initially also registered for the same position but ultimately withdrew from the process following opposition criticism. Former opposition deputy Marialbert Barrios is also on the list of candidates for ombudsperson. In total, there are 78 applications for this position and 76 for attorney general.

Analysts claim that it is highly improbable that the popular United Socialist Party of Venezuela, which has dominated elections for the last 27 years, will allow the far-right Venezuelan opposition to have one of its sympathizers in the Attorney General’s Office; however, it is possible that it will allow it in the case of the Ombudsperson’s Office.

Special for Orinoco Tribune by staff

OT/JRE/SL

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By Ben Norton – Mar 29, 2026

The US-Israeli war on Iran is altering the geopolitical order, and could cause a global economic crisis. Economist Michael Hudson discusses the shock in the oil market and Tehran’s challenge to US dominance.

The US-Israeli war on Iran is transforming the geopolitical order, and could even unleash a global economic crisis. The conflict has caused the largest oil shock in history, disrupting global markets and driving up fuel and food prices.

To better understand the implications for the world, Geopolitical Economy Report editor Ben Norton interviewed economist Michael Hudson, who discussed how Iran is challenging US dollar dominance and undermining Washington’s control over the global oil market, which has been a key pillar of US foreign policy.

Video

Podcast

Transcript

(Intro)

BEN NORTON: The war that the United States and Israel launched against Iran is having a massive impact on the global economy.

Every country on Earth is being affected, because this US-Israeli war has caused the largest oil shock in history — larger than the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979.

The effects are especially pronounced in Asia, which gets the majority of its oil imports from the Persian Gulf.

The Philippines has declared a national emergency, and it is now rationing energy, because it does not have enough oil, due to this war.

Japan also imports much of its oil from the Middle East, or West Asia. And this is why Tokyo has carried out the largest ever release of oil from its reserves.

Moreover, the 32 member countries of the International Energy Agency, the IEA, unanimously agreed to release 400 million barrels of oil from their emergency reserves.

However, this is only a short term band-aid measure. It’s not a long-term solution.

This is why the global price of oil only went down a little bit in response to the news of countries releasing oil from their reserves. And since then, the oil price has continued rising, because as long as this US-Israeli war on Iran continues, there are going to be massive disruptions in the energy market.

Given that oil is the most important commodity on Earth — and it’s used in many other products, and it’s used in all aspects of society in order to transport food and other goods — world leaders are now warning this could cause a global recession.

The head of the International Energy Agency said it very clearly. He warned that the US Israeli war on Iran has been a “major, major threat” to the global economy.

This war is causing not just gasoline prices to go up, but also food prices to go up, because so many fertilizers and chemicals used in fertilizers come from the Persian Gulf region.

It is also likely going to lead to higher interest rates, which will lead to increases in mortgage rates, and other rates on loans that are taken by average people. So this is going to hurt the poorest people the most.

So to make sense of how this war is going to impact the global economy, today we will be speaking with the renowned economist Michael Hudson, who is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire.

Michael Hudson has been writing articles and doing interviews explaining how this war is going to reshape the world economically and geopolitically.

In particular, Michael has argued that this war has meant that “multipolar oil markets are now a reality”.

This is because Iran is directly challenging the global dominance of the US dollar, and in particular the petrodollar system — the fact that, for decades, the vast majority of oil in the global market was priced and sold in dollars. Iran is now challenging that

In response to this US-Israeli war of aggression, Tehran close down the Strait of Hormuz, which is the single most important oil transit chokepoint on Earth.

Every day, about 20% of the globally traded oil passes through this narrow strait — or at least 20% of global oil did pass through, before the US and Israel started this war.

Now Iran is telling countries that, if they want to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, they have to agree to sell oil not in US dollars, but rather in China’s currency, the yuan.

This is why some media outlets, such as the South China Morning Post, are now saying that this “Iran war could boost China’s ‘petroyuan’ and weaken US dollar dominance”.

Given the massive geopolitical and economic consequences of this war, I thought Michael Hudson would be the perfect guest.

So without further ado, we are going to play some highlights of what Michael said, and then we will go straight to the interview.

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(Highlights)

MICHAEL HUDSON: Iran has said this is a phase change: we are now forever going to control the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, and we are going to control the oil trade.

That means that, instead of the United States’ plans to use oil as a chokepoint on other countries to enforce their compliance with American foreign policy, it is now Iran that is in control of this chokepoint, and it can impose sanctions on the US and its allies, sanctions on Israel, sanctions on the Europeans, or any other allies of the United States.

So it has turned the tables on the whole US attempt to use oil as a means of control. Now what is at issue is Iran being able to achieve what the United States has based all of its foreign policy on: control of the international revenues from oil exports.

…

The American philosophy is, number one, you bomb civilians, you break all the rules of international law which are against that. You bomb civilians to demoralize them.

And if you concentrate, as Trump did, along with Israel, a few weeks ago, you bomb the schools, you bomb the hospitals. That’s American policy in foreign countries.

It’s most visible in the case of Israeli policy, in Gaza, and now the West Bank as well. And it is the same policy that the United States has followed in Iran.

Well, the idea was that this would demoralize the population, and the Iranian population would want to get rid of the ayatollahs and say, “We don’t want to be bombed anymore; we want to save the children; let’s make a deal and appoint a leader favorable to the United States so that it will stop bombing us”.

Well, this was nonsense from the beginning, but it was the guiding spirit of American foreign policy: bomb a country, and that will lead to a regime change, and a collapse.

…

This is a conflict, in Iran, to determine what will the shape of the international economy be? Is it going to restore American control of the oil trade and give it the chokepoint over the international economy that it is looking for? Or are we going to be independent of the United States?

That’s what this war is all about.

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(Interview)

BEN NORTON: Michael, it’s always a real pleasure; thanks for joining us today.

Now, you have been talking about some of these issues that the world is now discussing due to the war in Iran — especially dollar dominance and the petrodollar system — you have been writing about this for decades, going back to the 1970s.

And in fact, the US government has also been planning a potential war on Iran for decades. This is not something new.

Now, Donald Trump is the first president who is actually crazy enough to try it. But I remember going back to the George W. Bush administration, after the US invaded Iraq, there was a lot of discussion of a potential invasion of Iran.

So, Michael, explain to us how you see this war. What is the bigger picture here, and how will this impact the world?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, you mentioned that it’s for the last few years or decades; it has actually gone back half a century.

Already in the mid-1970s, when I was working for the Hudson Institute, on contracts with the Treasury, and the White House, and the Defense Department, I sat in on meetings, and they were discussing all along how ultimately the United States was going to have to take control of all of the Middle Eastern oil, and that entailed conquering Iran.

And in the mid-1970s, at one military meeting, for instance, Herman Kahn was explaining how probably Balochistan was the main opportunity to begin carving up Iran into subject ethnic constituencies. And Balochistan, in between Pakistan and Iran, was probably the best place to start a separatist movement. There were military plans.

My field, in the mid-1970s, was oil and the balance of payments. I had that position at Chase Manhattan Bank for many years. I actually was the only — I was so low on the totem pole, being a technician and in my mid-20s, that I was the only person who was allowed to see all of the operating details and statistics of the US oil companies, the major companies, so that I could make a calculation as to the role that oil played in the balance of payments, supporting the dollar.

This was right after the United States was forced off gold, in 1971, because of the Vietnam War.

So, the United States all along has realized that what you’re seeing today was going to be the endgame of consolidating, they hoped, American control over the Middle Eastern oil; and they wanted their because the central point, the strongest lever that American foreign policy has had for the last century, is control of the world’s oil trade.

Because it’s so immensely profitable for the American oil companies themselves — it has given the oil companies major control over US policy — and also the US economy’s potential control over other countries, by the ability to turn off the supply of oil to other countries, thereby stopping their electricity production, stopping their chemical production, their fertilizer production with natural gas.

The oil industry includes the gas industry, because they’re so closely interconnected. All of this has been thought out. And every year, the military has been upgrading the long-term plans for — well, if we really, have to use force to entail our control over the Near East, the Middle East; if, for any reason, the OPEC oil countries want to become independent of the United States, and begin investing their oil profits outside of the United States, instead of sending all of their oil earnings to the United States, to invest in Treasury bonds, corporate bonds, US bank deposits, and stock holdings; well, if any of them should want to exert their own sovereignty and go their own way, we’re going to have to take over; and no matter what, we’re going to have to take over Iran, because that is the most powerful, final locking point of US control.

And, as we have discussed before, in 2003, General Wesley Clark came right out and said, well, we’re going to conquer seven countries in five years, culminating with Iran.

So all of this has been completely open. This is not simply Donald Trump’s war. It’s a war which he decided at this time, because America has steadily been losing its position of economic strength, military strength, and arms supply, and missiles, and aircraft, and bombs, as a result of the war, first in Ukraine, and then supplying Israel.

So there will never be a less bad time to go to war than at the present. And of course, it is a bad time, but it’s not as bad as it’s going to be. And the military, the neocons behind the military and behind the Central Intelligence Agency, are not going to give up.

They say, “Well, what do we have to lose? If we don’t conquer the Middle Eastern oil now, then we’re going to be losing what has become the major lever of American foreign policy”.

Donald Trump believed that he could conquer Iran, within two to four weeks. He actually believe that.

And his hope was that, by that time he went on his scheduled trip to China, he could confront China, saying, “Well, we’ve just caused a regime change in Iran. We’ve appointed an Iranian client oligarch, client dictator to take over and become sort of Iran’s version of Boris Yeltsin, administering Iranian oil in the interests of the United States”.

“So, we now have the power to impose sanctions on you, China. We can cut off your oil. But, you know, we don’t want to do that. If you begin to export the raw materials, the gallium, the tungsten, and all the other things that we need for our military that you’ve put an export control on, then we will give you the oil”.

Trump had hoped to be able to present China with that victory. Well, obviously that’s gone. The military miscalculated, because they could not think of an alternative that would threaten this grand plan.

Remember all of the American military attacks, for the last 50 years, ever since Vietnam — all of the wars that the US had, from Vietnam to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela.

It has always been the United States and its allies, the coalition of the willing, against single countries. This is the first war that America has fought since World War Two where other countries that it’s fighting against are allied with each other.

It’s not just fighting against Iran now. It’s fighting against Iran, supported by Russia and China, because they all realize that this is a fight to the end, to decide: Is the United States going to be able to reassert its control over the world economy using monopolies? The oil monopoly, the information technology monopoly that it’s trying to do, the computer chip monopoly, the technology monopoly, also its ability to supply food to other countries, its exports and control of grain.

This is the last chance that it has. And there’s a feeling of desperation that has led the US planners to bet at all.

And that I think that it’s not going to work. All of the generals have told them that it’s not going to work. The generals who have been pessimistic have pretty much been forced out of the military, and the State Department, because, “If you’re pessimistic, well, why aren’t you on board? You know, why aren’t you on the team? Or are you Putin’s puppet? You know, you’ve just gotta have faith”.

America believed that it could not lose any war because its policy of bombing other countries was always going to work.

The American philosophy is, number one, you bomb civilians; you break all the rules of international law which are against that. You bomb civilians to demoralize them.

And if you concentrate, as Trump did along with Israel, a few weeks ago, you bomb the schools; you bomb the hospitals. That’s American policy in foreign countries.

It’s most visible in the case of Israeli policy, in Gaza, and now the West Bank as well. And it is the same policy that the United States has followed in Iran.

Well, the idea was that this would demoralize the population, and the Iranian population would want to get rid of the ayatollahs and say, “We don’t want to be bombed anymore; we want to save the children; let’s make a deal and appoint a leader favorable to the United States so that it will stop bombing us”.

Well, this was nonsense from the beginning, but it was the guiding spirit of American foreign policy: bomb a country, and that will lead to a regime change, and a collapse.

That was what America expected in Russia.

But Iran essentially has the same spirit that Patrick Henry had in America’s revolution against Britain in 1776. He said, “Give me liberty or give me death!”. And that’s exactly what Iran is saying.

For them, this is existential, because they know what the US plans are, since the United States has been so open about what its plans are.

Yes, they want a regime change; they want to break up Iran into parts; they want to take control of Iranian oil and use the oil export revenues to support the US dollar, and to support basically the US economy, and to give American foreign policy the option of turning off the oil to other countries, to say, “We can close down your industry, your chemical industry, all your industries that need electric power, oil, gas; we can do all that, if you take an independent policy, following your own sovereignty. And we in the United States reject the United Nations principle that every nation has its own sovereignty”.

This is the basic principle of Western civilization for the last half century, the basic principle of the United Nations Charter. All of that is being rejected by the United States.

And what it has done is galvanize other countries to recognize that, well, yes, this really is the final conflict.

This is a conflict, in Iran, to determine what will the shape of the international economy be? Is it going to restore American control of the oil trade, and give it the chokepoint over the international economy that it’s looking for? Or are we going to be independent of the United States?

That’s what this this war is all about.

Asymmetric Economic War: Iran Challenges US Dollar, Demanding Oil Be Sold in Chinese Yuan, as it Targets US Corporations

BEN NORTON: Well said, Michael. You raised so many important points there. It’s hard to know where to start.

I wanted to just make a brief comment about this idea that the US has been preparing for war in Iran for decades and, as you said, was waiting for the least worst moment.

I think this is absolutely right, because there also were two major developments in the past two years that led to this war in Iran.

One was the overthrow of the Syrian government — which goes back to 2011, the beginning of the regime-change war that ultimately succeeded at the end of 2024, which was a major step toward war in Iran.

And then also Israel killed the leadership of the Lebanese resistance, which basically, they thought at least, would remove Lebanon from the equation.

So by removing Lebanon and Syria — at least they thought they removed Lebanon — then the US and Israel could attack Iran, by isolating Tehran from its allies.

Now we have seen that there has still been some resistance in Lebanon. Although Israel has invaded Lebanon and is trying to colonize the south.

Anyway, I want to talk about more about this issue of the dollar system. I think this is so critical to understand this war.

You talked about how the US wants to use control of the global oil market in order to undergird the dollar.

You know, the petrodollar system really goes back to 1974, when the Richard Nixon administration, after delinking the dollar from gold, made an agreement with Saudi Arabia, which at that time was the leading oil producer in the world, to make sure that oil was traded exclusively in the dollar, which ensures global demand for the dollar.

It seems that Iran clearly understands the importance of this for US hegemony, the importance of the dollar system and the petrodollar, because Iran has targeted it directly.

Iran closed down the Strait of Hormuz and is demanding that countries that pass through trade oil in Chinese yuan.

Also, there have been reports that the Iranian military is targeting not only US military bases in the region, but also the offices of major US corporations, including US financial institutions and Big Tech companies, which have been building big AI data centers in places like the UAE.

So I think Iran understands how critical the economic element is to this war. Do you want to talk more about that?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Yes, the United States’ plans to militarily control the Middle East were based not on its own fighting, because the United States had been exhausted by the Vietnam War — remember, in the mid-1970s.

The US has had two client armies fighting in the Middle East.

First of all, Israel is a client army. Already in the early 1970s, a deal was made — and Herman Kahn at the Hudson Institute played a big role in this. A deal was made with Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, one of the leading pro-military senators in America, that he would agree to use Israel as America’s proxy army.

BEN NORTON: This was famously spelled out by Joe Biden, when he was a senator. Biden gave a speech in which he said “Israel is the best investment we make”.

JOE BIDEN: (In 1986) Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region. The United States would have to go out and invent an Israel.

(In 2022) I have often said, Mr. President, if this were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one.

(In 2023) I have long said, if Israel didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Yes, this was very open at that time.

Well, later, after 9/11, and after President Carter backed the [Mujahideen] in Afghanistan, as the alternative to secular rule in Afghanistan, you had Al-Qaeda emerge as a Wahhabi terrorist army.

And the Wahhabis are the second force that America has used.

You mentioned Syria. And of course Syria has the ISIS leadership there, the terrorists. And they’re busy murdering everyone who is not a Sunni. They’re killing the Alawites; they’re killing the Christians. They’re the head-choppers, basically.

So these are the two proxy armies of the United States [Israel and the Wahhabis].

Well, what has made all of this urgent right now? It was number one, you had the Wahhabis working, for the last 10 years, hand in hand with Israel. The one non-Sunni group that they have not attacked is Israel. They have been working hand in hand, together.

Well, what has forced the hand of the military in Israel is Israel’s attack on Gaza, and the fightback from Lebanon, the civil war of resistance that has spread throughout the Middle East; and the worldwide criticism of the [Gaza] genocide that you’ve seen from the United Nations and the International Criminal Court.

So all of this has forced the hands of [the US and Israel], saying, “Well, are we going to have a take over?”

Israel now is trying to take over Lebanon. I guess the Israelis are going to need somewhere to move, if Iran is successful in sort of destroying the economic foundations of the Israeli state.

This is the military setting for all of this, and it’s the financial setting.

I want to mention again the control of the petrodollars that you mentioned.

It wasn’t just pricing oil in dollars. Everybody, all countries, were pricing the exports of copper, everything in dollars, because that was still the main currency.

Almost seamlessly, instead of countries, keeping their international reserves in the form of gold, and US dollars that were as good as gold, even when the dollar wasn’t as good as gold anymore, they continued to trade in the US dollar.

Well, the issue was, where were these dollars going to be invested?

Under the rules of Kissinger — and all this was explained to me by the Treasury and the State Department, in 1974 and 1975 — the US military told Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries, “You can charge whatever you want for oil, but you have to use the surplus have to invest in the United States. We’re not going to let you buy control of any major American firms. You can’t buy American companies; only we can buy control of foreign economies. You’ll buy bonds. You can finance American industry and American companies. You can buy stocks in the companies. You can make money by just depositing your money in banks”.

These were the petrodollars. The petrodollars were the savings of OPEC countries invested in banks.

Well, this recycling of OPEC surpluses now is not as important as it was in the 1970s. In the 1970s, these petrodollars came into US banks. And what were they going to do with it? They lent it to Global South countries, to finance their trade deficits, their balance of payments deficits.

And this ended up in a collapse of the Latin American foreign dollar debts, and other debts. And later it led to the Asian crisis of 1998, which I think is going to be a paradigm model for what’s going to happen the rest of this year.

But now Saudi Arabia and the other countries have, for the last 10 or 20 years, they’ve used their export earnings to build up their own economies in sort of crazy ways, building huge luxury real estate in the desert, with huge desalinization plants to supply the water for all of this domestically.

But they still have enormous savings of bonds, stocks, and financial savings in the United States.

Now that the OPEC countries are blocked from having export earnings, they’ve announced, “Well, we’ve actually debt-leveraged our own economy. Rich as we are, our real estate projects and our investments are financed by debt, and we have to begin selling off our holdings of US securities, and gold, in order to keep our domestic budgets and the balance of payments in balance”.

So all of this now is leading to a sell-off of dollars. And this has reversed what was the whole petrodollar, the whole inflow of OPEC money, into the currency, of oil into dollars. Now, this is becoming a drain on dollars.

So that is another threat.

Iran has said, “This is a phase change. We are now forever going to control the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. That’s why it’s called the Persian Gulf, because it’s ours. And we are going to control the oil trade”.

And that means that, instead of the United States plans’ to use oil as a chokepoint on other countries to enforce their compliance with American foreign policy, it’s now Iran that is in control of this chokepoint, and it can impose sanctions on the US and its allies, sanctions on Israel, sanctions on the Europeans, or any other allies of the United States.

So it has turned the tables on the whole US attempt to use oil as a means of control.

Now what is at issue is Iran being able to achieve what the United States has based all of its foreign policy on, control of the international revenues from oil exports.

And the determination of who will be able to buy this oil, and natural gas, and helium — these three things — and also by controlling the Strait of Hormuz, it controls the inward shipping of food and other materials to the OPEC countries, so it has a chokepoint over OPEC countries, as well as over foreign oil users.

BEN NORTON: Yeah, Michael, I want to talk more about the energy element here.

The International Energy Agency referred to the energy crisis that we’re seeing now as the largest oil supply shock in world history.

It’s larger than the oil crisis that was caused by the 1973 OPEC embargo, which was also related to an Israeli war of aggression.

And then in 1979, with the Iranian revolution, there was another oil crisis.

But today we’re seeing the biggest oil crisis in history.

The price of crude has skyrocketed, and this is going to fuel inflation all around the world, because, of course, oil is a crucial input in many other products, and oil is needed to transport most goods, especially food.

Moreover, a lot of fertilizers and chemicals that go into fertilizers come from the Persian Gulf. So this could likely create a food crisis, which is especially going to hurt the Global South.

Of course oil-exporting countries could potentially benefit from higher revenue — although in the Gulf, a lot of the oil and gas infrastructure has been damaged by this war. So some of these Gulf regimes might not see some of the benefits from increased export revenue.

But the majority of Global South countries import oil, energy, and other commodities. And as the price of those commodities increases, it’s going to also be a significant drag on their economies.

It’s likely going to lead to current account deficits. And that means that, in the Global South, a lot of their currencies are going to start falling against the dollar, which will likely lead to capital outflows — you know, the so-called hot money, as foreign investors just sell all of their holdings in emerging markets.

So we could see currency crises, economic crises, energy crises, food crises.

This this war of choice, this war of aggression, that Trump and Netanyahu started, could cause a massive economic crisis that will especially hurt the Global South.

Do you see it the same way?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Yes, and all of this was anticipated.

First of all, if you want to see a paradigm, a model of what will happen, look at what happened to German industry after the United States and Europe imposed sanctions on buying Russian gas and oil.

German industry collapsed, and Europe and Germany are now suffering a depression. They’re in for a great depression.

What happened in Germany destroyed its economy, and led its chemical industry to close.

Oil is not only for energy. Oil is for chemistry, as you pointed out. It’s the glass-making industry, and fertilizer.

Well, fertilizer especially right now is important, because it’s made out of natural gas. And when Iran bombed Qatar, Qatar was the major exporter of liquefied natural gas.

This natural gas is what was providing fertilizer to in other countries, especially to America’s allies: Japan, Korea, the Philippines. They’re all in crisis.

And helium, along with the natural gas — the fact that helium now is not available to, let’s say, Taiwan, and its semiconductor industry, and electricity. The oil is not available to Taiwan.

How is Taiwan going to make the semiconductors that are supposed to be the key to America’s information technology control, to all of the computer chips and monopolies that it had hoped to have? So this is far reaching.

Also, we’re about to be, in the northern hemisphere, entering the planting season. And the planting season requires fertilizer.

Well, already the price of fertilizer, made out of gas largely, is rising in the United States. That’s putting a squeeze on farms. And the farmers in America, are claiming, what I’m sure farmers all over Europe and the Global South countries are experiencing, “We cannot make a profit, selling our crops at today’s prices, if we have to pay so much for fertilizer, and farm equipment that Trump has imposed tariffs on, that we lose money by producing crops”.

So what are they going to do?

This is causing an agricultural crisis. And obviously the countries that are going to be left out most of all are the countries that can least afford to pay the higher prices for fertilizer, gas, and oil. These are the Global South countries.

Because, in addition to having to pay for oil and gas, and its byproducts, they have to pay their foreign dollar debts, which are falling due. Something has to give.

There are going to be financial defaults. Other countries are going to say, “What are we going to do? Are we going to do what Europe has done, saying, well, there’s a budget crisis, our prices are going up for oil. We’ve got to subsidize the homeowners, so they can heat their apartments with gas or with oil. Our labor is already living on the brink, running up, increasing debt. We will lose the elections in Europe, just like in America, if consumers have to spend so much more money on oil, gas, heating their apartments, their electricity rates, if they default. So we’re going to have to cut back all other social spending, while we increase our military spending”.

So this is going to lead to a political crisis, of pro-war vs anti-war, pro-US vs anti-US feelings, all the way from Europe to the Global South countries, and the Asian countries that are America’s allies.

How can Korea and Japan pay the $350 billion that the Korean parliament has said it has just passed, saying, “We’re going to pay Donald Trump $350 billion for him to use, at his discretion, so that we will not lose the US export market for our products”.

And Japan has promised $650 billion. How can they possibly do this if they don’t have the gas and oil that they need to make the exports to the United States?

Somebody there must be thinking, “Well, if we don’t have oil and gas, we’re not going to have exports to the United States. So we don’t have to give the United States the $350 billion from Korea and $650 billion from Japan”.

All these deals that Trump has made will be unwinding.

BEN NORTON: Well, Michael, I think that’s a perfect note to end on. Thank you for joining me.

Unfortunately it looks like this war is going to continue, but I’m sure I’ll bring you back soon to talk more about the global implications of this conflict. Thanks a lot.

MICHAEL HUDSON: I look forward to it. Thanks for having me.

(Geopolitical Economy)

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From Orinoco Tribune via This RSS Feed.

Venezuela’s Minister for Tourism Daniella Cabello reported that hotel occupancy rates have already surpassed 90% in various areas of the country following the start of Holy Week.

According to projections presented by the official, this holiday is shaping up to be one of the most dynamic seasons of the year, directly boosting the economies of regions such as Nueva Esparta, Anzoátegui, and La Guaira.

Given the large number of vacationers, the Ministry of Tourism, through the National Tourism Institute, has launched a strategic training plan. This initiative is aimed at Tourism Service Providers (PSTs), who receive technical training to strengthen Venezuela’s standing as a safe, multi-destination country.

Cabello explained that coordinated efforts are underway to guarantee standards of excellence. “Our objective is for the catalog of destinations, which ranges from the coasts of Falcón to our religious routes, to be synonymous with quality and family enjoyment,” the minister emphasized.

She added that economic activation will include concerts and cultural activities in ten states, including Yaracuy, Lara, Portuguesa, Aragua, and Zulia.

This policy seeks to ensure that both domestic and international tourists receive top-level service at every point across Venezuela during the current Holy Week holiday.

Trump Tightens US Blockade on Cuba, Bans US Tourism (+Clarification)

(Últimas Noticias) by Olys Guárate

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/CB/SL

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From Orinoco Tribune via This RSS Feed.

Every day, President Claudia Sheinbaum gives a morning presidential press conference and Mexico Solidarity Media posts English language summaries, translated by Mexico Solidarity’s Pedro Gellert. Previous press conference summaries are available here.

Health as a Right: Results and Direct CareThe public health system is being strengthened through a universal pharmaceutical catalogue, modernized purchase system, and domestic production, with a focus on effective treatments. The measles prevention strategy is making progress, with 17.2 million vaccines administered and declining infection rates, providing coverage for children and unvaccinated adults.

Drug supplies have reached record levels, in the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) with 371.2 million doses and up to 97.6% coverage, in the Institute for Social Security and Services for State Workers (ISSSTE) with 97% national coverage, and in the IMSS-Bienestar program with 162 million doses distributed throughout the country. With dignified care teams, the 079 hotline, and digital platforms, patient follow-up is guaranteed.

Science, Not Speculation, in the Gulf of MexicoIn relation to last week’s oil spill, it was reported that so far there are no reports of leaks at facilities, strengthening the hypothesis that the source is natural oil seeps, a phenomenon that is present in the area. Meanwhile, cleanup efforts, scientific analysis, and inter-institutional investigations continue to responsibly clarify the source of the spill without concealing the facts.

Energy Sovereignty: The Public Sector FirstThe 4T energy reform is recovering the country’s energy sovereignty after decades of liberalization, initiated by then president Salinas de Gortari and deepened in 2013. The new policy is that electric power generation prioritizes the public sector and that the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and Pemex are companies belonging to the people, not monopolies.

The CFE must generate at least 54% of the energy (target of 63%); in oil, Pemex has the priority, and contracts without unfair terms are permitted.

Infrastructure That Works: Accountability, Results, and a Vision for the FutureThe Felipe Angeles International Airport (AIFA) is consolidating its position. It boasts over 18 million passengers, with a record high of 25,189 in a single day, and more than one million tons of cargo transported, 97% of which is international. The most frequented destinations confirm its growth as a strategic hub.

A Strong State for Truth and IdentificationReforms to the General Population Law and the General Law on Enforced Disappearances/Abductions strengthen forensic records, national data sharing, and coordination among prosecutors’ offices, so that unidentified individuals can be identified more quickly. The goal is to build a State with greater capacity to search, identify, and provide answers in such cases.

Justice for the Sonora River: Comprehensive Remediation and HealthThe Remediation Plan calls for an investment of over 2.22 billion pesos (US$120 million) with participation from Grupo México and the federal, state, and local governments. It includes a hospital in Ures, epidemiological monitoring, a toxicology laboratory, access to drinking water, and environmental renewal. It involves not just medical care, but comprehensive remediation for the damage caused.

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  Mañanera

  People’s Mañanera March 31

  March 31, 2026

  President Sheinbaum’s daily press conference, with comments on public health investments, Gulf of Mexico oil spill, energy sovereignty, AIFA airport, forced disappearances, and Sonora River remediation.

• 

  Analysis

  Tariffs Without Industry: The Trap of Mexican Trade Policy Towards China

  March 31, 2026March 31, 2026

  Without a policy aimed at increasing the productive investment rate to accompany the country’s reindustrialization process, trade barriers will be inefficient due to the rigidity of the productive structure.

• 

  Labor | News Briefs

  Second Suspect in Attack on Striking Tornel Workers Prosecuted

  March 31, 2026

  What began as a workers’ protest escalated into an armed attack against those protecting the movement, with four workers shot.

The post People’s Mañanera March 31 appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.

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From Mexico Solidarity Media via This RSS Feed.

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, stated that her country is working to resume oil shipments to Cuba amid the tightening of the illegal blockade imposed by the United States on the Caribbean island nation. The statement was made during President Sheinbaum’s regular press conference at the National Palace in response to a question about the arrival of a Russian tanker carrying crude oil to the island.

Sheinbaum noted that Mexico has been sending material aid to Cuba and will continue to do so. “Humanitarian aid is one thing, and another is the commercial agreements we have with Cuba, and that also has to do with the shipment of oil,” the president specified.

She added that these commercial agreements have been maintained “for decades; this is not new” and that in both areas—humanitarian and commercial—joint work with the Cuban government continues.

The head of the executive branch emphasized that Mexico has every right to send fuel, whether for humanitarian or commercial reasons, but reiterated that she does not wish to be punished by the United States, since “at one point there were tariffs [from Washington] if shipments were made.”

Sheinbaum explained that “later, the tariffs were reduced, and we always seek [to send] humanitarian aid. In that context, we will make the decision, and it will always be reported whether oil is sent to Cuba or not.”

On the other hand, the president referred to the existence of private companies in Cuba that are seeking private actors for fuel supply, not necessarily through government-to-government agreements.

“There are private parties that have approached us, for example, to be able to buy fuel from Pemex (Petróleos Mexicanos) and then deliver it themselves to private entities in Cuba,” she elaborated. “That is one of the requests that private actors have made to Pemex. There are several companies, not just one.”

Sheinbaum reaffirmed the defense of the Cuban people’s self-determination and the historic bilateral relationship between Mexico and Cuba: “No one should intervene, and if there is any issue related to that, there are multilateral organizations. There should not be intervention of one country over another country. And the Mexico-Cuba relationship is historic. It is not new, it is historic, and we will continue supporting the Cuban people.”

Within the framework of solidarity actions, the president reported that in a personal capacity, she made a donation of 20,000 pesos (around $1,104) to a fundraising initiative published in the newspaper La Jornada, backed by former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to collect resources and purchase items for the island. This initiative adds to the shipment of various goods by the Mexican government.

The situation surrounding the US blockade on Cuba and alternative energy supply options continues to be monitored in the region, while Mexico maintains its stance of cooperation based on respect for sovereignty and the framework of international law.

Mexico Cuba Solidarity 2026: Díaz-Canel Expresses Gratitude for Support in the Face of the Blockade

(Telesur)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/CB/SL

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From Orinoco Tribune via This RSS Feed.

This editorial by Juan Salazar Vázquez originally appeared in the March 30, 2026 issue of La Jornada de Oriente, the Puebla edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper. The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those ofMexico Solidarity Mediaor theMexico Solidarity Project*.*

China’s reaction to Mexico’s new tariffs revealed a problem deeper than a simple trade dispute. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce accused Mexico of imposing barriers to trade and investment and warned that it reserves the right to retaliate. Beyond the diplomatic controversy, the episode raises a fundamental question: can Mexico maintain an effective tariff policy without its own industrial strategy?

The answer, so far, appears to be negative. The Mexican government has defended these measures as an attempt to level the playing field and protect domestic production. However, in practice, Mexican trade policy is not operating with a uniform approach. If the argument is to correct asymmetries and respond to practices that harm domestic industry, then it is clear that this logic is not applied with the same rigor to all trading partners. This reveals one of the main weaknesses of the current strategy: rather than responding to a national vision of development, it seems to selectively adjust to the pressures of the North American geopolitical environment.

For more than two decades, the trade relationship between Mexico and China has assumed a strategic role, but we must recognize its asymmetrical nature. The development models implemented by both countries have been completely different. While Mexico shifted to neoliberalism, implementing an export-led growth strategy, China combined its international integration with an active industrial policy, protection of key sectors, productive financing, and the development of technological capabilities. For this reason, it consolidated its position as Mexico’s second-largest trading partner, and its share of total Mexican trade has grown significantly since 2002.

Our country is trying to reposition itself as a reliable production platform for North America, but it is doing so without resolving a fundamental contradiction: it wants to reduce its dependence on Chinese imports without having yet built a sufficiently robust industrial base to replace them.

Trade between the two countries exhibits an uneven pattern: China exports manufactured goods, machinery, and high-tech products to Mexico, while Mexico exports primarily minerals, copper, lead, and some vehicles to China. This reflects a less favorable trade position for Mexico; in fact, its trade deficit with China has grown considerably.

Added to this is a crucial element: the relationship with China cannot be understood apart from the United States. Mexico does not trade with China in a vacuum; it does so within a regional structure dominated by the USMCA and the growing rivalry between Washington and Beijing. In this context, our country is trying to reposition itself as a reliable production platform for North America, but it is doing so without resolving a fundamental contradiction: it wants to reduce its dependence on Chinese imports without having yet built a sufficiently robust industrial base to replace them.

Therefore, tariffs can end up producing the opposite effect to what they promise. When there is no domestic supply capable of competitively replacing imported goods, the cost of the tariff doesn’t disappear: it is passed on. It is passed on to production chains, inputs, manufacturing costs, and ultimately, to the prices paid by businesses and consumers. Instead of triggering reindustrialization, the measure can become a mere revenue-generating mechanism or a penalty that makes domestic production more expensive.

In terms of investment, Chinese FDI in Mexico has increased since 2010, especially in manufacturing and auto parts; however, this investment has not fundamentally changed the pattern of trade integration, but rather largely replicates it. This is due to the limited capacity for support, guidance, and integration with Mexican industrial development. Nevertheless, China remains interested in increasing its FDI flows to our country. Mexico faces the challenge of better leveraging Chinese investment and strengthening its industrial capacity to overcome a structurally unequal trade relationship.

Currently, trade policy, within the framework of the USMCA, has aligned with the interests of our main trading partner, raising tariffs on Chinese goods. While the measure aims to reduce imports and promote import substitution, thereby increasing revenue, the underlying policy has thus far proven entirely ineffective, shifting the impact of the tariffs onto production costs and final prices.

The lesson is clear: without a policy aimed at increasing the productive investment rate to accompany the country’s reindustrialization process, trade barriers will be inefficient due to the rigidity of the productive structure.

• 

  Analysis

  Tariffs Without Industry: The Trap of Mexican Trade Policy Towards China

  March 31, 2026March 31, 2026

  Without a policy aimed at increasing the productive investment rate to accompany the country’s reindustrialization process, trade barriers will be inefficient due to the rigidity of the productive structure.

• 

  Labor | News Briefs

  Second Suspect in Attack on Striking Tornel Workers Prosecuted

  March 31, 2026

  What began as a workers’ protest escalated into an armed attack against those protecting the movement, with four workers shot.

• 

  Labor | News Briefs

  Nine Out of Ten Agricultural Workers in San Quintín, Baja California Don’t Have Social Security

  March 31, 2026March 31, 2026

  “The separation between landowners, agricultural companies, and transnational corporations, combined with the multiple levels of labor intermediation, creates an extremely complicated context for workers.”

The post Tariffs Without Industry: The Trap of Mexican Trade Policy Towards China appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.

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From Mexico Solidarity Media via This RSS Feed.

This article by Gerardo Carmona originally appeared in the March 30, 2026 issue of La Jornada Estado de México, the Mexico state edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

A judge formally charged Jesús “N”, accused of his alleged involvement in the armed attack against striking workers of the Llantera Tornel company, who were standing guard outside the Tultitlán plant on March 18.

According to the investigation by the Attorney General’s Office of the State of Mexico (FGJEM), there were approximately 50 people in the vicinity of the plant that day, including workers maintaining the strike vigil. A group of approximately 40 individuals arrived at the scene in several vehicles. Among them, according to the investigation, were Jesús “N” and Alejandro “N”.

Attackers Demanded Strike be Called Off

Initially, the aggression consisted of insults and stone-throwing, but it later escalated. According to the report, the aggressors demanded that the workers end their strike and leave the area, but when they received no response, several of the attackers pulled out firearms and shot at the strikers, injuring four workers.

Municipal police officers who responded to the scene arrested Jesús “N” and Alejandro “N”, who were then brought before a judge and taken to a state prison. There, the judge ordered criminal proceedings to be initiated against Jesús “N” for attempted aggravated homicide.

As a precautionary measure, he was ordered to be held in pretrial detention, and a two-month period was set for the completion of the supplementary investigation. Alejandro “N”, an alleged accomplice in the same events, had already been formally charged, so both face accusations stemming from the attack against the Tornel workers.

The case has once again brought the conflict at the tire factory into the spotlight, where the strike has ceased to be merely a dispute between the company and the union, becoming instead a matter of security and criminal justice. What began as a workers’ protest escalated into an armed attack against those protecting the movement.

Although the prosecution attributes participation in these events to Jesús “N”, his responsibility will have to be resolved in the following stages of the judicial process.

• 

  Analysis

  Tariffs Without Industry: The Trap of Mexican Trade Policy Towards China

  March 31, 2026March 31, 2026

  Without a policy aimed at increasing the productive investment rate to accompany the country’s reindustrialization process, trade barriers will be inefficient due to the rigidity of the productive structure.

• 

  Labor | News Briefs

  Second Suspect in Attack on Striking Tornel Workers Prosecuted

  March 31, 2026

  What began as a workers’ protest escalated into an armed attack against those protecting the movement, with four workers shot.

• 

  Labor | News Briefs

  Nine Out of Ten Agricultural Workers in San Quintín, Baja California Don’t Have Social Security

  March 31, 2026March 31, 2026

  “The separation between landowners, agricultural companies, and transnational corporations, combined with the multiple levels of labor intermediation, creates an extremely complicated context for workers.”

The post Second Suspect in Attack on Striking Tornel Workers Prosecuted appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.

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From Mexico Solidarity Media via This RSS Feed.

This article by Mireya Cuéllar originally appeared in the March 31, 2026 issue of La Jornada Baja California, the Baja California edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

San Quintín, Baja California. How many workers are registered with the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) in San Quintín? The state Secretary of Labour, Alejandro Arregui Ibarra, hesitates. Before revealing the number, he offers an explanation: “Most agricultural workers are seasonal, meaning they are hired according to the product’s cycle and seasonality… this causes registrations and cancellations at the IMSS. The latest figure we have is that there are almost 5,000 registered workers, but the berry season is just beginning.”

According to the latest agricultural census conducted by INEGI in 2022, there were 47,197 farmworkers in San Quintín, of whom 28,841 were men and 18,356 were women. Based on this figure, there are at least 42,000 people living without any form of social security in one of the most technologically advanced agricultural areas in the country, a pioneer in protected agriculture (greenhouses and shade netting), where all irrigation is by drip system.

Raquel started harvesting cucumbers at age 8 on the Los Pinos ranch. “Since I couldn’t carry the bucket, because I couldn’t handle it, I made little piles (of the vegetables) on the ground. My dad would collect them and put them in his bucket. The same with the tomatoes. We children helped,” she recalls, adding that the situation began to change after 2015, when thousands of farmworkers blocked the Transpeninsular Highway and stopped the strawberry and tomato harvest.

“Things have improved,” she points out, “because from the age of 10—imagine, I was in fifth grade!—I was part of a group of kids who waited for the truck on Saturdays and Sundays to go weed or pick scallions, broccoli… and then, when I was 14 or 15, I went to pick strawberries. I could earn a thousand pesos a day picking them because I picked them so fast. And I even stopped studying for a year. When the inspectors came, they would warn my boss a day in advance; we were always on alert and would run and hide in the woods.”

At 36, she has worked in several agricultural fields. Her last job was with BerryMex, where she was so productive that the company helped her obtain an H2A visa so she could work at a U.S. facility. There, she selected strawberry roots during September, October, and November (a cycle she completed several years in a row). Once grown, the seedlings are brought from Nevada or California to be planted in San Quintín, in fields that operate under contract with the multinational corporation.

Guadalupe García Darío, originally from Oaxaca and a resident of the area for about 30 years, recounts that she lives without basic services in the San Francisco neighborhood and is experiencing problems with her land due to irregularities in its sale. Photo: Edgar Lima

“We are being selected to work in the US”

“They select us. One of the requirements is having a passport and no problem traveling to the United States. They take us there; we complete the initial application process. If we qualify, they take us to the consulate (in Tijuana), pay for our work visa… it costs 3,200 pesos. They don’t charge us for housing there, so we can save money. We sleep in barracks. And you have to return immediately if you want to come back the following year.”

There is no option other than “going out and paying”

The contracts at the large companies in San Quintín are for five or six months, she explains, “and they don’t always renew them, sometimes not until the following harvest year,” so there’s no other option but to work “going out and paying” for part of the year. “It’s a system that allows us to go to different ranches: to pick peas, cucumbers, whatever’s available, and since nobody asks for papers, we can start working as soon as we arrive from Oaxaca, Chiapas, or Guerrero. It also helps young couples who aren’t yet 18 and don’t have papers… even Haitians were here for a while,” she says without a hint of annoyance.

The technological development achieved by large companies allows for year-round crops, which led to the settlement of farm laborers in San Quintín, forming a community that identifies as “Oaxacalifornians,” a term that initially had a derogatory connotation, but is now reclaimed by some sectors.

In the 2020 census, 41.3 percent of those living here reported being born in Oaxaca. Raquel’s parents are from Tlaxiaco and arrived when they were 15 and 16 years old, with a six-month-old baby—her older brother—going straight to the agricultural fields.

In the 1970s and 80s, migration consisted mainly of men traveling without their families. Many of these day laborers alternated between harvesting in San Quintín, from June to September, and agricultural work in Sinaloa, which began in October and ended in late April. Later, in addition to tomatoes, spring and winter crops such as strawberries and green onions began to be grown, extending production throughout the year.

Thus, the migration pattern was transformed from temporary and individual to permanent and family-based, as noted in the study Agricultural Growth and Working Conditions in the San Quintín Valley, by the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS).

SAN QUINTIN, BAJA CALIFORNIA, MEXICO – 22JANUARY26 – Farmworkers and other residents of the Zapata colonia in the San Quintin Valley blockade the Transpeninsular Highway to protest corruption in the new government of the San Quintin municipality.

Day labourers with the highest minimum wage

The minimum wage today is 440 pesos—up from 130 pesos in 2015—the highest in the country. Businesses and public institutions are combating sexual harassment against women in the fields, children are rarely seen in the countryside, and most families no longer live in the shacks on the ranches, although their homes in the settlements are very precarious.

The United States sometimes includes labor issues in the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement) negotiations. This has changed the situation for farmworkers, as the study describes over more than 150 pages.

They do not accumulate weeks of contributions to the IMSS.

However, this study, published in 2022 – one of the most up-to-date and with a large amount of data, because it obtained permission from the owners of the fields to survey the day laborers at their workplace – found that on average the day laborers accumulate only three years of contributions to the IMSS, not only because the contracts are temporary, but because, as the workers themselves expressed, they are registered for a few days and then deregistered, so that they do not accumulate weeks.

The study concludes that, although the working conditions of day laborers have changed, “this transformation has not occurred in a homogeneous way.

While some workers have formal contracts and all legally mandated benefits, it is possible to identify those who work for daily wages with different employers and without any recognized employment relationship,” which is “a consequence of the very development of the export-oriented agribusiness in the region.” However, it leaves large companies untouched.

In this regard, the study Agricultural Day Laborers and Transnational Corporations in the San Quintín Valley, by Anna Mary Garrapa, published by the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, offers another angle on this export-centered development scheme.

“In true Californian style, the region shifted to intensive production of high-value crops, and thanks to technological innovations, increased yields per hectare and balanced production were achieved almost year-round. Tomatoes, the leading crop in the valley, were reduced, while varieties expanded, particularly onions, cucumbers, and finally strawberries.”

In particular, with the Driscoll’s/BerryMex model (where one acts as the exporter and the other as the producer), he explains, “the farmer receives exclusively proprietary varieties, which he has to destroy once the production quantity required by the marketing company is met… the relationship of the local company associated with them is very close and is characterized by a strong financial dependence and deep control of the entire production process…”

The valley is an extension of California

The valley is “geographically and economically much more integrated with the United States than with Mexico.” Its border location aligns with the thriving U.S. consumer markets and its primary export orientation. Berry production “represents the most emblematic phenomenon of how the valley currently constitutes a productive extension of California.”

But “despite the huge profits made in the US market for fresh berries… wage conditions and access to social protection for employees, especially temporary ones, have not substantially improved after the massive work stoppage in March 2015.”

“The separation between landowners, agricultural companies, and transnational corporations, combined with the multiple levels of labor intermediation, creates an extremely complicated context for workers, who in many cases are unable to identify the economic actors ultimately responsible for the exploitation they experience in the fields,” Garrapa concludes.

• 

  Analysis

  Tariffs Without Industry: The Trap of Mexican Trade Policy Towards China

  March 31, 2026March 31, 2026

  Without a policy aimed at increasing the productive investment rate to accompany the country’s reindustrialization process, trade barriers will be inefficient due to the rigidity of the productive structure.

• 

  Labor | News Briefs

  Second Suspect in Attack on Striking Tornel Workers Prosecuted

  March 31, 2026

  What began as a workers’ protest escalated into an armed attack against those protecting the movement, with four workers shot.

• 

  Labor | News Briefs

  Nine Out of Ten Agricultural Workers in San Quintín, Baja California Don’t Have Social Security

  March 31, 2026March 31, 2026

  “The separation between landowners, agricultural companies, and transnational corporations, combined with the multiple levels of labor intermediation, creates an extremely complicated context for workers.”

The post Nine Out of Ten Agricultural Workers in San Quintín, Baja California Don’t Have Social Security appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.

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From Mexico Solidarity Media via This RSS Feed.

This article by Cristóbal Martínez Riojas originally appeared in the March 30, 2026 edition of El Economista.

The enrollment of domestic workers in the IMSS (Mexican Social Security Institute) has not taken off nearly three years after the law forced employers to register them for social security regardless of the number of days they work.

This March 30th was International Domestic Workers’ Day, and in Mexico, incorporation into social security is stagnant and even registers a slight decline.

Last February there were 59,017 domestic workers with social security , 296 fewer registrations than in May 2023 when 59,313 affiliations were reported —the date on which the obligation came into effect—, according to data from the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS).

In percentage terms it represents a decrease of 0.49%, but in everyday life it is the lack of access to health and housing for this sector of the employed population in Mexico.

Social Security for Domestic Work is Now Mandatory

On May 16, 2023, the Mexican Congress unanimously approved an amendment to the Social Security Law that made IMSS (Mexican Social Security Institute) affiliation mandatory for domestic workers. Previously, in 2019, a pilot program for their affiliation was in operation following a Supreme Court ruling.

Membership provides access to the insurance offered by the IMSS under its mandatory regime: medical coverage, hospital and pharmaceutical care, disability and life insurance in case of possible incapacity resulting from illness or work risk, coverage for accidents on the way to work, access to social benefits, retirement insurance, unemployment in old age and old age, among others.

However, despite being a right, it is still far from being fully realized by this employed population. In Mexico, there are approximately 2.3 million people employed in paid domestic work, representing 3.8% of the total workforce, according to the National Survey of Occupation and Employment (ENOE).

IMSS Affiliation of Domestic Workers

According to INEGI, 69.5% of people employed in domestic work do not receive any employment benefits.

“I do think it’s a great step forward that sectors of the population that were previously invisible are being included. Domestic work is undervalued by most people. They think it’s very easy. It’s a job like any other that deserves recognition because you also go and give a part of your life. I hope it reaches more people so they can have this right to health, which is universal and mandatory,” shares Rosario, a domestic worker affiliated with the IMSS (Mexican Social Security Institute) who asked that her last name be omitted.

“I think it is more about dissemination, both in the media and by employers; that is, they have to inform their workers because many people have no idea.”

Rosario has been enrolled in the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) since 2014, before the pilot enrollment program and before it became mandatory. She recounts that her employer registered her with the IMSS that year because she needed surgery. However, at that time she could only access voluntary enrollment and had to wait three years to receive tertiary care, which includes surgeries.

Given this background, the IMSS only migrated Rosario’s file to the mandatory program and her employer makes her contributions annually.

Paid domestic work is mostly done by women, as nine out of ten people dedicated to these activities are women, according to data from INEGI.

According to data from INEGI, 97% of all domestic workers work without a written contract, 2.5% had one, and 0.4% said they did not know.

“They are unaware that it is already a law”

Rosario says that the two people she knows who do paid domestic work are not affiliated with the IMSS (Mexican Social Security Institute). “They don’t have social security . There’s still a lot of ignorance about the fact that it’s already the law,” Rosario says.

From her perspective, it is necessary to give greater publicity to this membership program and emphasize that it is a change in the law that grants them this right.

r3

When is International Domestic Workers’ Day commemorated?

From her experience, Rosario believes that this program is a success, with aspects to improve, but that it gives visibility to domestic workers and grants them rights like other workers.

“I have received good care, it has been slow, but I have received it,” she adds.

Her affiliation with the IMSS has allowed her to have specialized medical care and medications for a chronic disease that was diagnosed at the Institute.

In 1988, March 30th was established as International Domestic Workers’ Day with the aim of advocating for the rights of this population, promoting their work in dignified conditions and recognizing their contribution to the global economy.

• 

  Labor | News Briefs

  Domestic Work: Social Security Earned, Compliance Pending

  March 31, 2026March 31, 2026

  In Mexico, approximately 2.3 million people are engaged in domestic work, but incorporation into social security is stagnant and even has registered a slight decline since 2023.

• 

  Analysis

  A Change of Course Urgently Needed for Plan México

  March 31, 2026March 31, 2026

  The announcements of new investments that never materialize must end now, and with them, the change or evolution of Plan México.

• 

  Mañanera

  People’s Mañanera March 30

  March 30, 2026March 30, 2026

  President Sheinbaum’s daily press conference, with comments on investments in Fine Arts & Anthropology & History institutions, Cuba, lawsuit by Mexicans who died in ICE custody, and fuel price controls.

The post Domestic Work: Social Security Earned, Compliance Pending appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.

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This column by Miguel Ángel Velázquez originally appeared in the March 31, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper. The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those ofMexico Solidarity Mediaor theMexico Solidarity Project*.*

It seems that finally, those in government have realized that for the ambitions of private businesses, a photo op trumps investment, and they never miss events where the important thing is to be in front of the cameras but never with a checkbook in hand.

It is obvious to almost everyone that Plan México, however well designed it may be, suffers from failed leadership that very few respect and almost no one follows, which hinders, or worse, makes impossible the flow of national investments, which is already beginning to be felt in every area of ​​the country and has injected a greater dose of uncertainty to those who do want to invest in Mexico.

But it is now impossible to hide the need to correct the course of the plan that has already broken all records for photographs, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the zero, or almost, investments that have meant that, economically, things are not as good as they should be.

It must be said, Ms. Altagracia, at the head of Plan México, simply doesn’t fit in. She has loyal and powerful friends, as well as her critics, which makes it urgent that this leadership—if we can even call it that—change hands and do more than just schedule the next photo op.

For now, it seems the plan is for there to be no plan. They talk about big investments, but where’s the money, where’s the work? It seems the plan is to show off suits and smiles for the photo op, and then, be completely forgotten. We’ve been at this for almost two years now, during which the checkbooks have languished from boredom.

A few days ago, at the initiative of the general director of the National Institute for Adult Education, Armando Contreras, an important group of businessmen met in a club in this city to launch a project in which the private sector and the government, represented at the event by the Attorney General, Ernestina Godoy, will address economic growth and security.

The project makes sense if, as we said, fewer photos can be taken and more investments made from a security project that offers lower levels of danger for companies and their members.

It is now urgent to take into consideration that, as it stands, Plan México is useless to everyone because there is no investment, and this means fewer jobs, which leads to more candidates joining organized crime groups.

And the issue of national investment is, as we said, yet another concern on President Sheinbaum’s agenda, as if she didn’t have enough on her plate. The announcements of new investments that never materialize must end now, and with them, the change or evolution of Plan México, which, from whatever perspective you look at it, has failed. Let’s hope for a happy ending, not an endless, agonizing death. Beware.

• 

  Labor | News Briefs

  Domestic Work: Social Security Earned, Compliance Pending

  March 31, 2026March 31, 2026

  In Mexico, approximately 2.3 million people are engaged in domestic work, but incorporation into social security is stagnant and even has registered a slight decline since 2023.

• 

  Analysis

  A Change of Course Urgently Needed for Plan México

  March 31, 2026March 31, 2026

  The announcements of new investments that never materialize must end now, and with them, the change or evolution of Plan México.

• 

  Mañanera

  People’s Mañanera March 30

  March 30, 2026March 30, 2026

  President Sheinbaum’s daily press conference, with comments on investments in Fine Arts & Anthropology & History institutions, Cuba, lawsuit by Mexicans who died in ICE custody, and fuel price controls.

The post A Change of Course Urgently Needed for Plan México appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.

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By Carmen Navas, Maisa Bascuas and Pilar Troya – Mar 27, 2026

To break a nation, imperialism understands it must break the will of those who sustain the social fabric. In hybrid warfare, the woman is not a passive victim but a combatant cadre who reorganizes the collective will in every commune and every territory.

This March 8th, a day in which the world honors the working woman, we pay tribute to the anti-imperialist women of our continent. With their body-territories, their intellect, and their example, they are writing the most dignified pages of the contemporary history of Nuestra América.

We are moving through a stage marked by Trump’s aggression—a deepening of hybrid warfare—and a neocolonial war deployed through financial impunity and voracious extractivism. The advance of the far-right in the region is no coincidence; it seeks to impose a model of plunder where the weight of debt strangles the peoples’ sovereignty. In the face of resistance to direct invasion and the silent war of Unilateral Coercive Measures (UCMs) against Cuba and Venezuela, popular feminism emerges not only as a protest but as the backbone of survival and dignity.

Women at the Monument for the Heroines of Resistance and Independence, Caracas. 2025 (Prensa MinMujer).

1. The 3 Lessons of Trump’s Aggression and the Neocolonial War in Latin America

The recent history of Nuestra América, marked by the shadow of the Monroe Doctrine and its update under the “Trump Corollary”—which persists as State logic in Washington—leaves us with three fundamental lessons regarding the nature of the current war against sovereignty.

1. The Woman’s Body as the First Territory of Defense
The attack of this past January 3rd against Venezuela was not just a military incursion; it was an affront to the dignity of a people that has decided to be free. On that day, 12 women gave their lives in combat. Nine of them were soldiers, members of the Presidential Honor Guard.

Imperialism understands that to break a nation, it must break the will of those who sustain the social fabric. In hybrid warfare, the woman is not a passive victim but a combatant cadre who reorganizes the collective will in every commune and every territory.

This lesson is intertwined with the “sowing” of Berta Cáceres in Honduras. A decade ago, the extractivist elite believed that by assassinating Berta, they would extinguish the voice of the Lenca people. They did not understand that her body, like those of the Venezuelan female militia (a component of the Bolivarian National Armed Force) and communards, represents resistance against dams and transnational capital.

The illegal detention of social activist Cilia Flores is yet another attempt to kidnap this symbol of dignity and political resistance. Illegally detained in the United States, Cilia Flores is a renowned social and political activist. She was the lawyer for the officers who rose up during the military insurrections of 1992, including Commander Hugo Chávez. On this day, women of the world call for her release and return to Venezuela.

2. The Resistance Economy is Feminine
In Cuba, the “silent war” of UCMs has taken the form of an unprecedented energy siege. By preventing the arrival of fuel, Washington seeks to transform daily life into a hell of scarcity. However, on the island, resistance has the face of a woman. It is they who, through popular organization and community bonds, invent daily solutions to sustain life in the face of the blockade.

This resistance economy does not seek profit, but rather the reproduction of life. While the international financial system uses debt to discipline nations, Cuban and Venezuelan women oppose it with an economy of collective care. In Venezuela, 80% of the leaders in communes and communal councils are women. They decide, plan, and execute the projects that keep the social structure afloat under the blockade. The lesson is clear: socialism in Nuestra América survives because women have transformed the private sphere into a space for political management and economic resistance against imperialist aggression.

3. Solidarity and Peace as People’s Diplomacy
The recent action by Claudia Sheinbaum’s government in Mexico, sending ships with 1,200 tons of aid to Cuba, breaks the logic of financial submission. “Sorority” is not just an interpersonal concept, but an international political category.

We also see this in the mobilization of popular organizations that, defying external pressures, coordinate the delivery of aid and mutual support between besieged nations. March 21st, saw the arrival of the Nuestra América Convoy, organized by various movements and popular organizations. This grassroots solidarity is what allows Cuba to resist and Venezuela to deepen its communal model.

When Mexico defies Washington’s pressure to give aid to the island, and when women organize themselves into feminist brigades like the “Cilia Flores Internationalist Brigade for Peace,” they are practicing a form of feminism that prioritizes the lives of families and communities above the dictates of transnational capital. Solidarity is the tenderness—and the strategy—of the people.

Gabriela Barraza (Argentina), Viviremos y venceremos [We Will Live and We Will Overcome], 2021. Available at thetricontinenal.org.

2. The 3 Tasks Popular Feminisms Call Us to Undertake

1. Institutionalize the Communal Management of People’s Power
In Venezuela, nearly 80% of leadership roles in communal councils are held by women. They are the street spokeswomen, the ones who plan projects and execute the sovereign budget. Faced with the advance of the far-right, the response is greater people’s power. The urgent task is to strengthen the National Popular Consultation and the commune model. It is there where popular feminism manages resources and responds to the imperialist offensive.

We must ensure that the territory’s resources are managed by those who inhabit and defend them, blocking the path for the impunity of militias (in Brazil, parapolice and paramilitary armed groups) and illegal power structures like those that tried to silence Marielle Franco in Brazil.

http://87.106.166.27/the-commune-and-popular-sovereignty-in-times-of-imperialist-siege/

2. Dismantle the Impunity of Neocolonial Extractivism
We cannot move toward the future without closing the wounds of impunity. The stories of Berta Cáceres in Honduras and Marielle Franco in Brazil are beacons, but also reminders of the ferocity of capital.

• Justice for Berta: Ten years after her assassination, the task is to dismantle the extractivist model that murders those who defend the commons. Punishment for the intellectual authors of Berta’s murder is an outstanding debt for the entire region in the fight against transnationals.
• Justice for Marielle: The recent conviction of the Brazão brothers in Brazil is a victory against paramilitary militias and parastatal power. The task is to eradicate the structures of political violence that damage the social fabric and attempt to silence Black women, faveladas, and dissidents who occupy spaces of power.

Berta and Marielle taught us that defending indigenous, peasant, and Afro-descendant territories and defending life in the cities is the same struggle. Their names are beacons that feed and sustain our daily resistance against patriarchy, colonialism, racism, and capitalism.

3. Push for Popular Agrarian Reform and Food Sovereignty
As our peasant sisters of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) teach us, an urgent task for grassroots feminism is the defense of the land. Popular agrarian reform is the right of women to decide over production and seeds in the face of extractivist agribusiness. For women, land is the space for the reproduction of culture and life. Without food sovereignty, national sovereignty is incomplete. We must strengthen the ties between peasant women and urban workers to guarantee that food is a right and not a commodity of debt.

3. Message from Berta Cáceres

For the women of Nuestra América, the struggle is for life itself. Berta Cáceres, guardian of the rivers and the dignity of the peoples, left us a mandate that shakes the conscience of the entire continent:

Awaken, humanity! There is no more time. Our consciences will be shaken by the fact that we are contemplating self-destruction based on capitalism, racism, and patriarchy. In our worldviews, we are beings born of the earth, water, and corn. Of the rivers, we are ancestral custodians… Let us give our lives, if necessary, for the defense of humanity and the planet!

This cry from Berta is our compass. Faced with neocolonial aggression, our response is unity, the guardianship of our land, and unbreakable rebellion.

Long live the women who fight! Long live a free and sovereign Nuestra América! We shall overcome!

Carmen Navas is a Venezuelan political scientist, researcher at the Nuestra América Desk at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Maisa Bascuas is an Argentine political scientist, professor and researcher at the University of Buenos Aires, and Co-Coordinator of the Department of Feminisms of the Global South at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
Pilar Troya is an Ecuadorian researcher and feminist activist. She has worked on public policies for equality and the women’s movement, and serves as Co-Coordinator of the Department of Feminisms of the Global South at Tricontinental Institute for Social Research.

(tricontinental)

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From Orinoco Tribune via This RSS Feed.

Caracas (OrinocoTribune.com)—During the fourth week of March 2026, Venezuela received two additional groups of citizens under the Return to the Homeland (Vuelta a la Patria) program. These latest arrivals at the Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía, La Guaira state, reinforce the Venezuelan state’s commitment to providing a dignified and sovereign alternative to the mass deportations orchestrated by the US regime.

The repatriation process is governed by the 2025 agreement between Caracas and Washington, serving as a vital channel for nationals fleeing the systemic failures, labor exploitation, and racist persecution that characterize the US immigration system.

On Wednesday, Deputy Mervin Maldonado, the newly appointed head of the Return to the Homeland program, was present to personally receive the migrants repatriated on the final flight of the week. On Tuesday, the National Assembly authorized Maldonado’s appointment to this executive position, replacing Camilla Fabri.

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A post shared by Mervin Maldonado (@mervinmaldonado)

Detailed flight data and statistics
Last week, a total of 302 Venezuelans were repatriated on two separate flights. With these arrivals, the program has processed 29 flights since the beginning of 2026, bringing the year’s total to 4,809 repatriated citizens.

When combined with the 23,067 citizens who returned under the current agreement in 2025, the program continues to function as a critical humanitarian bridge against imperialist hostility. The specific data for last week’s flights are as follows:

• Flight 126: Arrived on Monday, March 23, from Miami, Florida, with 131 repatriated citizens. The group included six minors, 10 women, and 115 men. The flight was operated by an airline without commercial identification.
• Flight 127: Arrived Wednesday, March 25, from Phoenix, Arizona, carrying 171 individuals. The group consisted of seven minors, 35 women, and 129 men. The flight was operated by the US-based Eastern Airlines.

Sovereign defense against imperialist-driven displacement since 2018
The Return to the Homeland program has remained a pillar of the Bolivarian Revolution’s social policy since its establishment in 2018. Over the past eight years, this state-led initiative has provided a shield for over one million citizens seeking to escape the xenophobia and carceral detention prevalent in the US and its regional subordinates.

The current migration patterns are not a coincidence but a direct result of the illegal US blockade and the multifaceted hybrid war designed to destabilize Venezuela. While the US regime initially incentivized migration to promote a “failed state” narrative, it has since pivoted to the aggressive criminalization of the very diaspora it helped produce.

Venezuelan Diplomats Set to Arrive In Washington This Week; New Head of Return to the Homeland Program

In response to this aggression, the Venezuelan government implements a comprehensive social care protocol for every returning citizen. This includes immediate medical screening, psychological support, and socioeconomic integration measures to ensure migrants can contribute to the country’s productive life. This sovereign shield remains an essential defense, reaffirming the right of all Venezuelans to build their futures in their own land, free from the shadow of imperialist intervention.

Special for Orinoco Tribune by staff

OT/JRE/SF

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From his recording studio in the Playa municipality in Habana, Cuba, surrounded by pianos, consoles, and the vestiges of a career dedicated to socially conscious song, Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez analyzed the complex scenario Cuba is experiencing under the current United States siege.

The author of Ojalá and Pequeña serenata diurna was emphatic in a dialogue with the Mexican new outlet La Jornada when defining the willingness of Cubans to protect their independence: “A large part of our people would be willing to defend our sovereignty with weapons, if necessary.”

For Rodríguez, defending the island is not an abstract concept but a reality that has shaped his own life. The singer-songwriter recalled how his musical career began during his military service and his internationalist missions.

In response to recent threats from the US regime to “take over Cuba,” Rodríguez reaffirmed his ties to Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), an institution he considers his training ground.

“Imperial aggression might seem like one of our natural conditions,” he noted, explaining that the people’s response to the siege is not a momentary outburst, but the result of an “intense and sometimes contradictory life” that has forged the national character.

A history of distrust toward the ‘turbulent North’
When asked whether the civilian population would defend the island in the event of an invasion, the troubadour appealed to historical memory to justify Cuban distrust of Washington.

He mentioned events ranging from 19th-century attempts to purchase the island to the imposition of the Platt Amendment. “There is a long history of reasons for Cubans to distrust ‘the turbulent and brutal North,’ as our apostle, José Martí, described it,” he stated.

According to Rodríguez, the strength to resist the blockade and external pressures comes directly from the “forging of the nation” and a deep sense of belonging and patriotism.

Resistance, criticism, and evolution
Despite his firm defense of sovereignty, Rodríguez does not shy away from self-criticism. He defines himself as a man of “questions rather than answers” and advocates for human improvement far removed from fanaticism.

He acknowledges that the energy and economic blockade seeks to stifle the hope of young people by attempting to convince them that “there is no future in their country.”

“I have always seen Cuba resist,” he stated, while supporting the need for internal reforms and an “evolution” that benefits the people—as long as these transformations do not jeopardize the status of a sovereign nation, which he considers “fundamental.”

Nuestra América Convoy Ships Arrive in Cuba After Days Without Communication (+US Extrajudicial Killings)

The role of culture in the ‘Shield’ era
In contrast to regional initiatives such as the so-called “Shield of the Americas,” which Rodríguez describes as a sign of “imperial desperation” and a return to neocolonialism, the musician defends the role of education and culture as tools for freedom.

For Rodríguez, the battle for history is still ongoing: “If Cuba falls, history will be reinvented by its enemies.”

(Telesur)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/JRE/

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This article by Nancy Escutia originally appeared in the March 30, 2026 edition of El Economista.

The title of Human Resources could disappear in companies, as an initiative to reform the Federal Labour Law (LFT) and prohibit terms such as HR or Human Capital in departments of private organizations has been presented in the Senate of the Republic.

The proposal promoted by Senator Alejandro González Yáñez, from the Workers Party (PT) caucus, seeks to add a final paragraph to Article 3 of the LFT to prohibit the naming, implementation or use of expressions such as Human Resources, Human Capital or any other analogous one.

According to the legislator, these terms objectify people and reduce them to a commodity or productive asset; therefore, he proposes that these titles be eliminated and replaced with designations that recognize the dignity, rights, and human character of working people.

“By presenting labour management as a technical or administrative matter, tensions inherent in the relationship between capital and labour are rendered invisible. Decisions that profoundly affect people’s lives, such as layoffs, restructurings, or changes in working conditions, are presented as simple resource management processes.”

He mentions that “language is never neutral” and that in the workplace, concepts should not dehumanize or subordinate people’s dignity. “This change responds to a basic principle: working to live, not living to work , understanding work as a means to happiness, personal and collective fulfillment,” he stated.

Senator Alejandro González Yáñez emphasizes in the bill that prohibiting the use of terms such as Human Resources and Human Capital does not deny the importance of these areas in organizations; however, he reiterates that this encourages viewing people as “resources”, similar to the use of words such as “capital”, “technology” and “raw materials”.

“We are witnessing how language reflects a logic in which the primary value of people lies in their ability to generate profit.” He adds that work is not only an economic activity, but also a source of identity, community, and personal fulfillment that includes individuals with aspirations, emotions, values, and rights.

The explanatory statement of the initiative indicates that when people are seen as resources, it is understood that they are elements that can be used, managed, optimized and in some cases even replaced, which dehumanizes them.

Why is the Concept of Human Resources Used?

The term HR emerged in the 1920s to refer to all personnel management processes at work, according to the research Evolution of the concept of Human Resources, from the point of view of psychology and administration, published in the journal Suma de Negocios of Konrad Lorenz University.

The study indicated that these areas were necessary within the strategic vision of companies, since the results in terms of performance, objectives and goals depended on them, in line with the increase in the quality of work and the balance and attention to the needs of the workers.

In this way, the Human Resources areas took over recruitment activities, including recruitment, onboarding, training, career development, compensation, performance evaluation, and labour-management relations, as well as research on culture, climate, turnover, job satisfaction, and resistance to change. They also promoted the design and implementation of procedures and job descriptions.

However, the initiative in the Senate states that Human Resources has now focused on policies that seek to maximize labour efficiency without paying attention to the overall well-being of people, as well as on the evaluation of their performance and productivity, which has increased work pressure and depersonalization.

“By presenting labour management as a technical or administrative matter, tensions inherent in the relationship between capital and labour are rendered invisible. Decisions that profoundly affect people’s lives, such as layoffs, restructurings, or changes in working conditions, are presented as simple resource management processes,” the proposal states.

New Titles to Replace Human Resources

With the prohibition of the use of HR in companies, the proposed reform to the Federal Labour Law proposes the use of expressions such as “people management”, “employee experience” or “labour relations”, terms that have already begun to be used in some organizations.

In this regard, Human Resources developer Sara Climent Blasco shares that changing the name of HR areas reflects “a more modern and people-centered vision,” therefore, she suggests some alternatives to consider: “People and culture,” “People operations,” “People experience,” “Talent management,” or “Culture and talent.”

Pointing out that words are not neutral, Alejandro González Yáñez adds that promoting language within the Federal Labour Law (LFT) that recognizes the dignity and complexity of the human experience will help in building fairer and more respectful work cultures.

• 

  Mañanera

  People’s Mañanera March 30

  March 30, 2026March 30, 2026

  President Sheinbaum’s daily press conference, with comments on investments in Fine Arts & Anthropology & History institutions, Cuba, lawsuit by Mexicans who died in ICE custody, and fuel price controls.

• 

  Analysis

  Mexico’s Mobile Consulates in the US

  March 30, 2026March 30, 2026

  Such consulates perform an extremely important task, especially when the policies of the US administration under Donald Trump are becoming increasingly aggressive.

• 

  Analysis

  A Law to Protect the Dignity & Life of Women

  March 30, 2026

  Mexico’s General Law to Prevent, Investigate, Sanction and Repair the Damage for the Crime of Femicide seeks to strengthen the capacity of the State to protect, act promptly, investigate, as well as guarantee truth, justice and reparation for victims.

The post Workers Party Senator Proposes Ban on Terms Human Resources and Human Capital in Businesses appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.

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By Luis Fuenmayor Toro  –  Mar 27, 2026

*“There are no right or left; that is a classification of the past,” I heard many years ago—and have since heard repeated many times—by well-prepared individuals with deep arguments. “That was the French Revolution, but with the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was over,” I heard in the 1990s, just over 30 years ago, making it a recent development in historical terms. To put it in perspective, the Earth is 4.54 billion years old and Homo sapiens sapiens is roughly 300,000 years old. However, today, everyone across the globe still speaks of the left, the right, and all their nuances. It seems these concepts have not remained buried as the wise men of that era predicted.

*I also witnessed Francis Fukuyama’s so-called “End of History.” Regardless of the fact that life and practice proved it entirely false, it maintained a following, usually within the conservative political and ideological fields. Right-wing and far-right figures, witnessing the victory of US capitalism over “real socialism,” mistook the conclusion of one battle for the end of the entire war.

*A similar phenomenon occurs with the concepts of imperialism and anti-imperialism. For some, these terms are totally “outdated” and “backward,” raised only by failed politicians—the Chavistas, in our case—who supposedly fail to understand that these concepts have “disappeared.” One wonders if they were buried by the same people who attempted to bury the left and the right. In January, was it not US imperialism that invaded and bombed us, destroyed our facilities, murdered Venezuelans, kidnapped the president and Cilia Flores, and today appropriates our wealth simply because it can? For some, it was a nameless “I-don’t-know-what” from the North that invaded us—the same entity that bombs Iran, Yemen, and Africa, threatens Cuba, and seeks to appropriate Greenland and Canada. Yet, they claim it does not exist.

*It is one thing to say that Venezuela is in the Western Hemisphere, on the very continent of the United States, and that it has not had to face them irresponsibly, as did the governments of Chávez and Maduro, instead of favoring trade relations and of all kinds with them, for geographical and geopolitical issues and the interests also of Venezuela, and another thing is to accept as good the total submission to the US “I-don’t-know-what.” They are not our protectors, nor the defenders of our freedom, nor of our democracy. They act according to their selfish interests.

*Today, our relations with the United States are based on the reality of those who have been defeated in a military confrontation. By defeating Venezuela, the US military also dealt a blow to our civic-military-police unity, the militias, the collectives, and the PSUV. This is not a matter for debate; it is visible before our eyes. The government leadership remaining in command chose the diplomatic route to face this situation, aiming to avoid further destruction and greater suffering for the Venezuelan nation. With the exceptions of Colombia and Brazil, we stood alone. No one—not even those who promised a “Vietnam in Latin America”—is currently at war. By the way, I remind you that the brave people of Vietnam shared borders with China and Russia, while our borders are quite different.

*The path chosen in the current environment is one of diplomatic resistance based on agreements and talks. However, these are not negotiations among equals. We were forced to negotiate, and the terms are dictated by them: our supposed “new ally,” “best friend,” and, for some, our “protector.” We need only look at Puerto Rico to see how a nation fares under the condition of a US protectorate.

Venezuela’s Presidential Couple Appear in New York Court; Judge Questions Legitimacy of Legal Fee Freeze

*This resistance necessitates national unity—something the “Mariacorinista” extremists reject because they are entirely aligned with the gringo “I-don-not-know-what.” This is not surprising, as we knew they would behave this way. Nor is it surprising to see deputies in the National Assembly who claim to have broken with the Maria Corina extremism but continue to avoid unity to serve their own narrow group interests.

*The terrible thing is that inside the PSUV and the deputies of the official sector in the National Assembly, there are extremists who act as if on January 3 they had not been bombed and defeated us. They ignore what happened and make it more difficult to travel the tortuous road that the nation led by Delcy Rodríguez follows. Do they have another route in mind? Well, tell it, to see if it is possible or only the continuity of the failures that led us where we are. We must leave aside desires, pretensions, and itching. We have always called for wisdom. Today, we call to wisdom those within Chavismo who disagree with the policy of accompanying the nation in the search for the rescue of lost sovereignty.

(Costa del Sol FM)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/JRE/

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This article by Mireya Cuéllar originally appeared in the March 30, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

San Quintín, Baja California. Unpaved streets, no streetlights or public transportation; houses without electricity, water, or drainage, with septic tanks or latrines… dirt “parks,” without trees, without swings. It’s the arid poverty of the desert. The landscape bears no relation to the fact that agricultural workers live here with the highest wages in the country, simply because the border minimum wage is 420 pesos.

Nor does it have it with the mechanization of its large agricultural fields, with the shade mesh structures, the drip irrigation systems fed by 90 desalination plants, the succulent berries that are harvested, the more than 10 billion pesos annually that the production that is raised here is worth.

It doesn’t even resemble the rest of the Baja California landscape. Poverty in the state, according to the latest census, affects 13.4 percent of the population; in San Quintín, it reaches 34.9 percent, almost three times higher.

In the state, 10 percent of the population (on average) does not have access to nutritious food; in San Quintín, the indicator rises to 20 percent; 19 percent of the streets in the state do not even have a surface covering; here it is 89 percent… and so on.

San Quintín is bordered to the north by the municipality of Ensenada and to the south by Mulegé, Baja California Sur. Its residents are settled along the 90 kilometers that run from Camalú to El Rosario, on either side of the Transpeninsular Highway. Narrow and with only two lanes, it is the only road. There are no paved streets, bypasses, ring roads, or overpasses here. When it rains, the water floods the eastern part of town, overflowing the highway and eventually reaching the bay.

“What I can say is that there isn’t a single neighborhood with all the services: drainage, drinking water, electricity, street lighting, paving,” says the mayor, Miriam Cano.

10.9% of Inhabitants Cannot Read

The federal government conducted a survey in 30,000 homes to design the Justice Plan for San Quintín. It found that 10.9 percent of residents are illiterate, 12.1 percent are illiterate, 16.5 percent cannot use a cell phone or a computer, and 73.8 percent are unfamiliar with basic computer skills. In fact, many poverty indicators for the municipality are similar to, and even higher than, those of many other municipalities in Chiapas.

Only 20 percent of the population—counted for the development of the Justice Plan—has daily access to water; 40.6 percent, every two or three days; 36 percent, once a week; and 4.7 percent, every 15 days. Each month, the Ensenada State Public Services Commission, on which they still depend, publishes the water rationing schedule for the following 30 days on its website.

That’s for those who have water, because many neighborhoods don’t lack the infrastructure to receive it, because there isn’t any water there either. What little there is is hoarded by the well owners, who sell it to those who don’t have any. Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced during her last visit that a desalination plant will be built to provide water to those who don’t have it. To build it, the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) is replacing the wiring on the towers that reach the southern part of the state; the current wiring can’t handle the increased load.

The power grid doesn’t have the capacity to carry more energy, neither for the population nor for a desalination plant. The energy supply is only sufficient to operate the desalination plants on the farms, which are necessary to sustain production.

In San Quintín, everything seems to be yet to be done. Established as a municipality in 2020, they elected their first mayor, Miriam Cano, last year. Previously, it was part of the municipality of Ensenada, with the municipal seat nearly 200 kilometers away. Also needed are doctors, medicine, the offices of the Tax Administration Service (SAT), and federal, state, and municipal agencies.

One of the things included in the Justice Plan is an “integrated center,” where there will be—in theory—offices of (federal) agencies so that people don’t have to go to Ensenada for a birth certificate or to register with the Tax Administration Service (SAT). Many Indigenous farmworkers don’t register with the SAT—essential for contributing to the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS)—because they would lose more than a day of work and have to spend money on transportation to avoid the three-and-a-half-hour (sometimes four, due to traffic) bus ride between San Quintín and Ensenada.

The lack of infrastructure is not the responsibility of the owners of the agricultural fields, says Alberto Leree, founder of the Baja California Agricultural Council, which represents large producers. He recalled that in 2015, when farmworkers abandoned the fields and mobilized demanding better living conditions, the then Undersecretary of the Interior (under Enrique Peña Nieto) Luis Miranda told Governor Francisco “Kiko” Vega—at a meeting where the businessman was also present—that the conflict could be resolved with 4 billion pesos, with the federal government contributing half and the state the other half.

“Kiko Vega didn’t accept,” he said, adding that he didn’t have the money, he recalled. The movement was forged in the neighborhoods—not in the workplaces—where families spent more than 130 pesos (a day’s wage at the time) to buy water and fill a drum that lasted them less than a week. Initially, it was the lack of water that organized them. Later, they rebelled not only against their living conditions but also against their working conditions.

Photo: Édgar Lima/La Jornada Baja California

“The PAN party opposed its becoming a district.”

“There’s a racist element in the way the National Action Party (PAN) treated San Quintín,” says a local politician. He recalled that the PAN systematically refused to grant it municipal status, and when someone pressed one of the governors—the PAN governed from 1989 to 2019—his response was: “Why would we want a mayor from Oaxaca?” in Baja California.

Miriam Cano, the councilwoman nominated by Morena, says that a few months ago a federal official gave her a dirty look when she warned him.

“But today the main problem for day labourers is that it’s useless to earn 8,000 pesos a week breaking their backs if they get home and there’s no electricity, no water, no drainage, no streets, no streetlights, and nothing but aspirin at the Social Security clinic… they spend a lot on healthcare, on using their cell phones; on transportation, 50 pesos per child to get to school; a drum of salt water… up to 1,800 pesos for a water truck: of course their money disappears. The price of water is outrageous.”

Here, people are raising their university-aged children by candlelight. “You only have to look at the high school students’ hands—she taught them—. They pick squash, green beans, peas, strawberries… they come from the countryside and have achieved an education, but their neighborhoods still lack water, electricity… also due to a lack of legal certainty regarding land ownership, because someone sold them a plot of communal land cheaply, without proper documentation.”

“The ranches have solved their water problems with wells and desalination plants. Imagine the anger the farmworkers feel when they see there is water for the crops, but not for their homes, to wash dishes, bathe or cook.”

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