U.S. interference mars Latin American elections

by Jim Hodgson

As I write, Colombians and Peruvians await confirmation of a victor after presidential election day results proved too close to call.

Like mid-term elections in Argentina last October and the Honduras election in November, Colombia’s vote was marred by overt U.S. interference. 

On June 21, Colombians had to choose between a progressive human rights defender, Iván Cepeda, and a far-right political new-comer, Abelardo de la Espriella. Cepeda would continue current President Gustavo Petro’s commitment to achieving peace with several armed groups that have so far resisted joining a prolonged peace process.

As Colombians headed for the polls, I received an email from Dayana Mosquera, Colombia consultant at Global Exchange: 

In recent days, foreign figures have openly inserted themselves into Colombia’s campaign. 

It began in Washington. President Trump posted his “Complete and Total Endorsement” on Truth Social, and de la Espriella answered on X, casting the two countries as “sister nations” bound to defend Western civilization. A chorus followed. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whom de la Espriella met privately this year, said Washington would be “very forceful in guaranteeing” a free and fair vote. U.S. Representative María Elvira Salazar urged Colombians to rally behind him.

It did not stop there. Beyond Washington, de la Espriella has secured the unconditional support of other leaders including Presidents Daniel Noboa of Ecuador, José Antonio Kast of Chile and Argentina’s Javier Milei, who interpreted the result as a rejection of the “failed socialist model” and said the forces of freedom across the region were watching and lending their support. From Madrid, Vox leader Santiago Abascal said Colombians could recover the “sovereignty taken from them.” 

Each framed it the same way: as a defense of Colombia’s freedom and even its sovereignty. 

That is the contradiction at the heart of this election. Sovereignty and freedom are not gifts foreign politicians can hand a country by meddling in its vote. They are the very things such interference denies. Nor is this happening in isolation. 

Since Trump reshaped American politics, a familiar style has spread: elections become contests to be won by any means, opponents are cast as enemies, and institutions are treated as obstacles. That style is no longer staying home. It is carried across borders by a networked right, by officials willing to amplify it, and by compliant allies in the region eager to satisfy Washington for their own gain. This weekend, Colombia is where the line is drawn.

Next target for the far-right will be Brazil, where presidential elections are set for October.

Crime and the far-right backlash

In Peru, voters have waited since June 7 for a final result. Keiko Fujimori – daughter of a former dictator – faced Roberto Sánchez who served as foreign minister under former president Pedro Castillo, elected in 2021 but forced from office in December 2022. 

Like Castillo, Sánchez wears a traditional hat popular in rural parts of Peru. He says his hat serves as “the expression of all hats and of the diversity” of Peru. His economic proposals differ from the “market-friendly,” neo-liberal policies applied in recent decades by most Peruvian leaders. He has said he would renegotiate contracts with mining companies, saying that the state should collect more taxes. He has also said that rural communities should own a share of the mines operating in their territory and that he opposes open-pit operations.

Fujimori ran on a law-and-order platform, promising to deploy the military in prisons and on borders. In Peru, where extortion has increased fivefold in the past five years, the approach won votes, as it did in February in Costa Rica in February. Shaken by higher levels of drug-related killings, Costa Ricans chose conservative Laura Fernández for her tough-on-crime platform. 

To an extent, these right-wing politicians draw inspiration (and slogans) from El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, another Trump ally. His heavy-handed security strategies have seen tens of thousands of young men imprisoned without due process, and have targeted environmental protectors (the Santa Marta 5) and human rights defenders like Ruth López Alfaro.

Proposals from the centre and left for community violence prevention programs, better police training, and prison and judicial reforms, show results over years. But the right uses crime as an emotional rallying cry. Their short-term security strategies promise to make people feel safe soon. They come with a high price to human rights and democracy, but to people who live with real fear on a daily basis, those values seem abstract. 

Meanwhile, another right-wing strong man, Daniel Noboa, holds power in Ecuador, neighbour to Peru and Colombia. A week ago, he declared a new 60-day state of emergency across ten provinces and several additional municipalities on Tuesday, suspending constitutional rights and authorizing security forces to conduct searches of private homes without a judicial warrant when organized crime is suspected. His decree came shortly after a meeting at the Pentagon with U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to discuss joint military operations.

Trump officials, including his ambassadors, insist on such joint operations, often with the threat of acting unilaterally if governments do not comply – and the example of U.S.-government-sponsored killings of more than 200 people in aerial attacks on small boats in international waters that are alleged (without evidence) to be carrying illegal drugs.

As a result, the centre-left government of Guatemala declared a state of emergency to crack down on gang violence this year and welcomed Trump’s “help” targeting drug traffickers.

In Mexico, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was found to be working hand-in-hand with the conservative government of the northern border state of Chihuahua – without the knowledge of the federal government – after two agents were killed in a car crash. As that scandal exploded in Mexico, the U.S. government launched indictments against the governor and other officials of Sinaloa state, and sought their extradition. 

In an editorial, La Jornada newspaper described these events as “heavily charged acts of political interference, compounded, to top it off, with an implicit threat.” 

We say “no” to the U.S. war on Cuba. Why won’t Canada?

by Jim Hodgson

Today, Canadian churches, labour unions, development agencies and solidarity groups are calling on our government to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Cuba – cornerstone rights of all states guaranteed in the United Nations Charter. 

The statement (reproduced below) appears as an ad in the Hill Times, a newspaper in Ottawa whose audience is made up of politicians, public servants and those of us who try to influence them. Look at them: 28 organizations, representing millions of Canadians.

For more than three years, I have worked as a volunteer among a loose network of civil society groups to press the government of Canada for action. We began with a letter April 17, 2023, sent to the ministers of foreign affairs and international development. 

We followed up with other letters and statements, and I wrote or co-wrote several opinion pieces: Hill Times in 2023, Canadian Dimension in 2024 and at rabble.ca a few weeks ago. Sometimes, I wrote these together with John Kirk, retired from teaching at Dalhousie University but still, like me, pressing our government for the sake of our many friends and co-workers in Cuba – and in favour of a different way to live together on our planet.

Several times, our inter-agency group called on Canadians to send letters to our politicians. (We’re still doing so, here.) Some of us met with members of Parliament and with staff at Global Affairs Canada and at the Embassy in Havana.

Earlier this year, we were joined by an ad hoc group of trade unionists who used a series of labour conventions and other gatherings to lift the campaign to a whole new level, with hundreds of postcards sent to the prime minister.

The government’s response, to put it mildly, has been feeble. A few million dollars here and there for humanitarian relief delivered through UN bodies or Canadian NGOs, but no calls to end the vicious U.S. sanctions, no shiploads of supplies (like those sent by Mexico, Colombia and other countries, and no fuel. Not even support for a humanitarian corridor so that fuel can be supplied to those agencies that are providing aid. No protest to the United States over its extraterritorial measures that harm Canadians who have worked alongside Cuban state enterprises in mining and tourism.

This afternoon, Canada’s parliamentary Subcommittee on International Human Rights (SDIR) is holding a Briefing on Human Rights in the Caribbean Region with a focus on Cuba. But, like the Feb. 26 Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development hearing before it, the witness list is tilted in favour of right-wing exile groups, raising concerns about the balance of views brought forward to the committee. This time, fortunately, the Canadian Network on Cuba is being allowed to share a more progressive perspective.

It’s pretty clear now that the Carney government will not speak up for Cuba so long as its talks to renew Canada’s free trade deal with the United States and Mexico continue.

At risk here is not just Cuba’s sovereignty, but Canada’s too. What many of us warned about in the free trade debates of 1998 and 1993 was the loss of Canada’s sovereignty. The long U.S. history of invasions, coups, electoral interference and sanctions has been made more acute in this second Trump administration. 

The Canadian government must be bold and defend Cuban sovereignty, international law and the lives of Cubans.

Please write (again) to the prime minister and to your member of parliament. If you are in a country other than Canada, please write to or call your representatives to ask for their solidarity with the people of Cuba.

Hey Canada! Just say NO to U.S. threats against Cuba

by Jim Hodgson

“The U.S. government is going crazy with its shameful war on Cuba,” writes Medea Benjamin of CodePink. “Every week, there’s a new sanction, a new restriction, a new way to punish the Cuban people.” She goes on to describe measures directed against U.S. travellers and solidarity groups. 

Here, I want to focus on the measures that are forcing foreign investors to abandon holdings in hotels, mines and other joint ventures – and forcing cancellations by still more airlines and abandonment of Cuba by the credit card duopoly of Visa and Mastercard. All of these actions hurt the Cuban people, directly or indirectly.

Unilateral sanctions applied by the United States are reaching new levels of cruelty in Cuba. The latest wave is rooted in the U.S. International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law that allows a president to regulate international trade after declaring a national emergency in response to some extraordinary threat. It’s the law Trump used to apply his tariffs in early 2025, a move the U.S. Supreme Court struck down in February. Now he’s using the same law to punish Cuba. Milton Feng outlines Trump’s use of IEEPA to back his newest sanctions on Cuba in an essay here.

On May 1, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order, effective June 5, that freezes U.S. assets of foreign companies and people that conduct business with the Cuban government.

A week later, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced more details: the U.S. would impose additional sanctions on Cuban state-owned businesses that manage joint operations with foreign companies across tourism, retail, mining and distribution. The move had an immediate impact on Canadian investment in Cuba, notably nickel-miner Sherritt’s surrender to Gillon Capital LLC, the family office linked to Ray Washburne, a former adviser and appointee of Trump himself. 

Montreal-based Royalton Hotels (which includes Blue Diamond, above) and Spanish hotel companies Melia and Iberostar ended their management and licensing operations in Cuba. Air Canada, WestJet and Air Transat have indefinitely suspended flights and vacation packages in Cuba. They had previously planned to resume service to Cuba this fall.

Many of the U.S. measures were aimed at partnerships with GAESA, a company linked to Cuba’s military. On June 2, the Cuban government defended GAESA, saying its joint ventures had funded housing, schools, clinics, and infrastructure.

The Spanish foreign minister said the moves against the hotel companies would aggravate the “humanitarian hardship” faced by the Cuban people in the wake of other U.S. sanctions and the fuel blockade underway since early this year. Church leaders from Canada and other parts of the world saw first-hand the impact of the U.S. blockade on ordinary people when they visited earlier this year.

But Canada has said nothing. 

Like the European Union, Canada has law to protect its companies from the kind of extraterritorial reach demonstrated by Trump’s executive order. Amendments in the 1990s to its Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act (FEMA) explicitly prohibit Canadian corporations from complying with US extraterritorial measures that affect trade and commerce with Cuba. 

Nick Gottlieb’s op-ed comment in The Hill Times, Ottawa.

“If the Canadian government refuses to invoke FEMA at the precise moment it was designed for, then the legislation becomes little more than symbolic theatre,” wrote Dalhousie University’s Isaac Sainey in a Facebook post May 20. “Worse still, Canada effectively concedes that Washington possesses the right to determine Canadian economic policy and punish Canadian firms at will. This is not sovereignty. It is subordination.”

But CUSMA. Under Mark Carney’s leadership (not that he has said so yet), it seems Canada will not support Cuba as long as its free trade relationship with the United States is facing re-negotiation. In 2019, when Justin Trudeau was prime minister and Chrystia Freeland his foreign minister, Canada strongly defended the interests of Canadians doing business in Cuba.

When Trump threatened Canada last year, most of us joined with Carney in saying “#ElbowsUp.” That defiance needs to extend in solidarity with people in Cuba and in other parts of this hemisphere threatened by resurgent U.S. imperialism.

Please write (again) to the prime minister and to your member of parliament. If you are in a country other than Canada, please write to or call your representatives to ask for their solidarity with the people of Cuba.