Yearly Archives: 2025

THANKS TO TRUMPBy Cliff WelchSão Paulo, 25 July 2025Thanks to Trump President Lula’s favorability numbers went up. Thanks to Trump the criminal prosecution of former president Jair Messias Bolsonaro surged on. Thanks to Trump U.S. prices for coffee, sugar, oranges and orange juice, beef, honey and travel are set to increase in August. Thanks to Trump Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, facing a backlash due to his alliance with Trump, abandoned his seat in congress, slightly weakening his father’s support in the Brazilian parliament. Thanks to Trump and his decision to use tariffs to try to force the government of Brazil to undermine its own justice system by undermining its case against Bolsonaro, almost everything Trump did not want to happen, has happened. As many may recall, on January 8, 2023, several thousand angry Bolsonaro supporters stormed Brazil’s most iconic government symbols and structures in the nation’s capital, Brasília, in a display of outrage over Lula’s inauguration a week earlier. Inspired by the January 6, 2021 insurrection in support of Trump, the copycat action attacked not only parliament, but also the presidential palace and supreme court. It was meant to provoke a military intervention. While some officers were prepared to intervene, [...]

 Author: Clover Hu (Yutong Hu)Clover Hu is a student at New York University studying literature, psychology, economics, and justice in Latin America and post-authoritarian societies.:::Abstract: This article examines how the Honduran government, following the 2009 coup, utilized the country’s qualification for the 2010 FIFA World Cup as a strategic emotional diversion to suppress political dissent. Through visual analysis of media coverage, theoretical frameworks on deindividuation and emotional governance, and comparative reference to historical models such as “bread and circuses,” the article argues that football was transformed into a state-sponsored spectacle of national unity that effectively muted public outrage. This performance of collective euphoria silenced marginalized voices—particularly Black and Afro-descendant communities—and created an illusion of democratic cohesion. Drawing from thinkers such as Fanon and Seneca, the article frames this phenomenon as a modern iteration of affective authoritarianism. It concludes that the apparent triumph on the football field masked deeper political fractures and social exclusions, and calls for a reexamination of how state rituals manipulate emotion to manage post-crisis legitimacy.Keywords: Emotional governance; Honduras; Football and nationalism; Political diversion; Marginalization and silencePerformative Victory: How Post-Coup Honduras Used Football to Manufacture a “Silent Mass”In June 2009, the democratically elected president of Honduras, José [...]

First posted by NACLA: Report on the AmericasApril 2025 Steve Ellner During his first term, President Donald Trump exerted a “maximum pressure” campaign against perceived U.S. adversaries in Latin America and elsewhere. Among other hardline policies, he levelled crippling sanctions against Venezuela—leading, ironically, to a mass exodus of Venezuelans to the United States—and reversed former President Barack Obama’s rapprochement with Cuba. But just how committed is Trump to fighting communism in Latin America at this particular moment—in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua? Today, it’s anyone’s guess. Trump’s recent threats against Panama, Canada, and Greenland, on top of his clash with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, take the spotlight off the “real enemies,” as usually defined by Washington. In that sense, Trump’s foreign policy actions in the first two months of his second administration are a far cry from his first, when regime change was the unmistakable goal. In sharp contrast to the rhetoric of his first administration, in his March 4 address to the Joint Session of Congress Trump made no reference to Nicolás Maduro, Miguel Díaz-Canel, or Daniel Ortega. It’s even unclear whether Trump will pursue the use of international sanctions, which he ratcheted up against Venezuela and Cuba in [...]