One year into his mandate as president of the United States, without any timidity, we can say that Donald Trump has exercised his power over Latin America. Biden and his crazy anti-Christian policies, the flood of funding for abortionists and LGBT people and the ‘green light’ for any Russian-Iranian-Chinese influence, are now a dark memory. Through a mix of threats, political confrontation, military pressure and unilateral foreign policy decisions (primarily tariff policy), with the contribution of the failures of the left in government in many countries, many conservative parties and leaders and friends of the USA have returned to power, so much so that now only the “red flies” of Nicaragua, Brazil, Mexico and Cuba remain, while Venezuela and Colombia are already on the road to Damascus.
Trump aims to ‘dominate the Western Hemisphere’ and makes no mystery of it, through the so-called “Donroe Doctrine”, inspired by the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, to slow down the advance of adversaries such as China, Russia and Iran in Latin America. The new United States National Security Strategy states that hemispheric supremacy is a permanent strategic priority, thereby committing the United States to deny non-hemispheric actors (China, Russia, Iran, India etc.) the possibility of deploying forces or controlling resources deemed strategically vital. Any influence in the countries of rival powers, in the countries of Central and South America, is framed as a security threat, regardless of the consent of the host state or its legality.
Trump’s strategy on Latin America in this second termalso saw the elimination of foreign aid provided through the US Agency for International Development (USAid). Argentina, after Milei’s victory in 2023, previously governed by the Fernandez, socialists and populists, with Trump in power benefited from the 20 billion dollar financial bailout to strengthen national reserves and repay foreign debt. An aid that contributed to the victory of Javier Milei’s party in the parliamentary elections oflast October. In the same 2023, the election of President Daniel Noboa, in Ecuador, had already consolidated not only the economic agreements, but also the military ones between the two countries, especially in the fight against drug trafficking, but with Trump the country acquired the status of “safe third country” for the transfers of migrants from the USA.
In recent years, Paraguay has maintained a conservative government with the election in 2023 of Santiago Peña from Partito Coloradoin El Salvador the super conservative has once again won the elections Nayib Bukele; in Panama, a strategic country for maritime communications and Chinese interests in the entire South American hemisphere, José Raúl Mulino, an ultra-conservative and ally of Washington, has been president since 2024, while in Bolivia the word was written to the end of the twenty-year follies of social-communist populism with the election of the Christian Democrat and conservative Rodrigo Paz Pereira in 2025. With the election, in recent weeks, of President Antonio Kast, in Chile, after a disastrous mandate of his communist predecessor Boric, the historically solid bond with Trump is re-established, given the commonality of Christian values, ideals and strategies between the tenants of Santiago de Chile and Washington. Honduras, governed until recent months by an explicitly communist government, where the elections were won by the nationalist and conservative candidate Nasry Asfura supported by Trump, also benefited from the new US doctrine. The alliance was sealed in recent days with a encounter in Washington. The election of the Christian and conservative Laura Fernández Delgado in Costa Rica in recent days reaffirms the alliance with Trump’s US, a partnership of values and economic interests.
The operation in Venezuela, Maduro’s arrest and new relations with the new president Delcy Rodriguez, copiously described his LaBussolawith the sending after decades of a new representative of Washington in Caracas and the amnesty for all political prisoners in the country, confirm the full effectiveness of coercive instruments that lead to changes in unwelcome regimes. Precisely the events of recent weeks, followed by the threats towards the President of Colombia Gustavo Petro, described as a drug trafficker, together with the attacks and the de facto naval blockade instituted by the USA against Cuba, have led the Colombian president to go in Washington on February 3 and Cuban leader Diaz Canel to implore the opening of a dialogue with the USA.
Several files remain open in the Oval Office: the elections in the authoritarian Brazil of Lula da Silva, the Mexican social-communist government of Claudia Sheinbaum and the malignant tumor of Nicaragua, led by the two tyrants Ortega and Murillo. Serious headaches are also represented by the commercial and economic contracts signed by many previous governments with China and the spread of Venezuelan narco gangs in many countries in the region. All knots that only Trump will be able to untie for the good of the Latin American people.
date: 2026-02-11 23:25:00
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