Coordinadora de comunidades de oriente (Coordinator of Eastern Communities, El Salvador)
Latin America, June 2026. Almost half of this year has already passed.
For our peoples, this year is already a negative historical milestone. While the media broadcasts sporting events, a dark reality is imposing itself on Latin America, with the advance of imperialism and the imposition of fascist and authoritarian governments.
The year 2026 was inaugurated with the military aggression against Venezuela, the kidnapping of its President, and the continuous blackmail against the Bolivarian Government; it closes for June with the fraudulent elections in Peru and Colombia, in which the direct intervention of the US, the manipulation of digital vote-counting programs, and vote-buying—principally abroad—are actions that are completely and with the utmost cynicism ignored, and on the contrary, backed by the massive media and corporate conglomerates.
In a more dangerous manner, the lethal arms of the political and social extermination apparatus are extending into our territories, new coordinations of security agencies with the extermination structures of the ultra-right and drug trafficking are being established, and remote assassination by the USA military is added, utilizing advanced technological means to determine and eliminate targets, whether in international waters or within the national territories of countries in the region. The slogan of the fight against drug trafficking is utilized as a pretext to destabilize, persecute, and disappear the opposition and the resistance of the peoples and their representatives.
The situation surpasses all limits of international law with the blockade and the threat of armed intervention against the heroic Cuban revolution.
The resistance and struggle of the peoples are present; Cuba, Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia are developing a tenacious resistance at this moment, to which the solidarity and resistance of the rest of our Latin American peoples and the world must be urgently added.
It is necessary to clearly understand the onslaught of imperialism, deeply study its own current contradictions, and trace our main lines of action. As many intellectual comrades point out, we are facing the decline of imperialism, but this assessment is not sufficient.
Starting from the more global context, we have witnessed a new defeat of imperialism in the geopolitical war, a military defeat within a comparatively brief period against Iran—a nation that imperialism totally undervalued a few months, or even days, ago. The effect of the military disaster is not yet fully appreciated, but it already has great resonances, especially among the power groups of the Zionist lobby and the sectors seeking to evade the impact of a major debacle. The latter recognize the strategic disadvantage in US public opinion, which mostly manifests its position of “No to war,” and the electoral impact that will result in the rejection of warmongering positions in the upcoming November elections.
Even so, the irrationality of neo-conservative, pro-Israel sectors is leading to the blatant and cynical manipulation of internal electoral processes; what was previously considered a natural resource utilized in intervening in electoral processes in Latin America is now executed with total impunity in the USA, increasingly delegitimizing its supposed democracy.
Imperialism, with its Zionist vanguard, continues to commit the greatest atrocities against humanity in its desperate struggle to maintain its dominance and hegemony—the genocide of entire peoples, the absolute disrespect for life, especially against boys and girls, are sheltered under a permanent campaign to distort reality, accommodating it to their own version and interests. However, they increasingly face greater consciousness and militancy against their murderous nature, not only from the assaulted peoples but also increasingly from their own society, especially its youth. This is forcing the same pro-war sectors to censure the few independent information spaces, and they announce this with total cynicism; the censorship so habitual against oppressed peoples is now lived day by day by US society and is becoming increasingly a scenario of struggle in defense of their constitutional right to freedom of information.
In the economic order, during the last month, we have observed how both the Government and the financial authorities of the USA have decided to cast off from one of the pillars of the FED, unleashing the containment of inflation, which means that the impact of the continuous crisis will fall with greater intensity upon the labor sectors and the middle class. Thus, replicating in the economy a phenomenon that has developed in the terrain of security: the powerful build shelters designed to survive even nuclear attacks, and do not worry at all about the fate of the majority of the population.
The three previous aspects are a very limited list of the quantity of weaknesses and contradictions that imperialism faces, but they are sufficient in this brief reflection to understand the nature and capacity of the intervention in our America.
It has been correctly pointed out by many comrades that the economic crisis and the military defeat of imperialism have led them to retract within the continent, expressed in their National Security Strategy of 2024, as well as in a more blatant manner in the words of the former head of the Southern Command, Laura Richardson, when she expressed that the resources of Latin America belonged to the United States.
Thus we arrive at the constitution of the hemispheric alliance of the Shield of the Americas (Escudo de las Américas), an alliance constituted by the countries whose governments are the most lackey—ultra-right governments of an authoritarian or fascist character, whose commitment declared aloud by them is the surrender of the resources and strategic infrastructure of the region, and of the control of security policy to the USA. It is clear that for the United States, the exploitation of the natural and mineral wealth of the region is vital, and that it does not count on sufficient economic resources to set this project in motion in the short term; increasingly it finds itself before a hemorrhage of the economic resources of the petro-dollar system fleeing toward alternative systems, and it is spurred by the social pressure of its own society. All this allows us to augur that for Latin American countries, only a greater spoliation awaits, and from their governments, an increasingly brutal repression. But experience also points out that “the greater the repression, the greater the struggle.” It is urgent then that each political and social actor positioning themselves on the side of the pueblo establishes their own strategy and prepares the conditions to fulfill what they consider their duty.
The Platform must constitute itself as a base for this discussion and the development of this task.
In the middle of this brief reflection, a strong earthquake occurred in the territory of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela; I express my solidarity with the people in these harsh hours of tragedy.