Plenary session of the Anti-Fascist Internationals World Festival held in Caracas, Venezuela, in January 2025. Photo: Communist Party of Cuba.
By James Patrick Jordan – Aug 15, 2025
Repression in South America and the US undermining the 2026 elections
The growth of fascism in the Americas is in no small part a product of extreme right-wing internationalism. Fascists understand the value of solidarity where the broad US Left often fails. In South America, the US is pursuing policies to directly violate national sovereignty and disrupt the juridical and electoral affairs of targeted countries.
Currently, Brazil is in the front line of conflict along with Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru in a struggle that is heating up in advance of major 2026 elections in South America (Brazil, Colombia, Peru) as well as the United States. These contests could, to varying degrees, be a repudiation or a consolidation of fascism in the hemisphere. Brazil is being targeted in groundbreaking ways by the US Empire and the regime of President Donald Trump. Trump’s actions are in solidarity with his close friend and ally, former President Jair Bolsonaro. However, Brazil, which has the largest economy in Latin America, is uniquely situated to resist. By standing up to the threats against it, Brazil is taking a bold step forward to open new bases of power in a multipolar world. If Brazil wins this struggle, we all win.
Closely related is the resistance to similar targeting in Colombia and Venezuela. And these have parallels with what we are seeing in US streets from Los Angeles to Washington DC. Threats against Colombia show a strong similarity to what is taking place in Brazil. The repression here in the US of People of Color, immigrants, LGBTQI persons, women, the Left, the unhoused, ad nauseum, brings home tactics of repression the Empire developed abroad, especially in Latin America. Undocumented immigrants as well as US citizens and legal residents are criminalized and arrested because they fit a profile. The export of these hostages to jails in other countries, such as the infamous CECOT prison in El Salvador, takes things to a new level and reveals a flagrant internationalism of repression that ignores even the supposed privileges of US residency and/or citizenship and the reach of US legal protection and jurisdiction. Behind all this we find a network of fascist leaders whose only allegiance is to each other, who define patriotism as personal loyalty to individual despots and their continued rule. Borders and laws and due process are for others, but not them.
Brazil on the frontlines
As Brazil’s courts attempt to hold accountable the extreme right under the leadership of former President Jair Bolsonaro, they are also challenging the direct interference of the White House, and in doing this, they expose the vulnerabilities of Trump’s New Order and thus encourage and bolster our own resistance in the US. It is in the interest of every American, from Barstow, Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, to defend Brazil because the administration of President Luis Inácio “Lula” da Silva is, in effect, defending all of us.
The 50% tariffs recently imposed by President Donald Trump against Brazil constitute direct interference in the nation’s sovereign judicial and electoral affairs. In Brazil’s case, we find an anti-fascist struggle taking place that is international in scope and that may just have the resources and the wherewithal to challenge the threats against it.
The tariffs imposed on Brazil are a response to Brazil’s internal investigations and court cases against former President Jair Bolsonaro and his associates for their involvement in a coup plot against the incoming administration. Bolsonaro is currently under house arrest because of violations of restraining orders put in place during the trial. Bolsonaro is a close friend and political ally to Trump. The US president has imposed the tariffs in retaliation for what he deems Bolsonaro’s unfair treatment. Bolsonaro is facing charges stemming from the January 8, 2023, coup attempt against the incoming presidency of Luis Inácio “Lula” da Silva, a year and two days following the events of January 6, 2021 in Washington DC, when Trump followers attempted to block the transfer of power to Joe Biden.
The US has also enacted sanctions against Alexandre de Moraes, a Centrist political figure who was appointed to Brazil’s Supreme Court by former President Michel Temer in 2017. It is of note that Temer ascended to the office following the lawfare coup against Center-Left President Dilma Rousseff. While Moraes is no Leftist, he has incurred the wrath of both the Brazilian and the US right wing.
Brazilian law protects freedom of speech but prohibits media from the propagation of racism and other forms of prejudice as well as violations of people’s privacy and stipulates that the freedom of one must not harm the freedoms of others. In April 2024, The Supreme Court opened a criminal inquiry against Elon Musk and X (formerly Twitter) alleging the diffusion of hate speech, obstruction of investigations, the encouragement of violence, and the prohibited exposure of sensitive and personal data. In August 2024, X was suspended nationally for failing to comply with court directives. It was reopened in October, after agreeing to pay a $5 million fine. In February 2025, Moraes and the court brought charges against Bolsonaro and his confederates related to the coup attempt. By the end of July, the US had added Moraes to their list of sanctioned individuals and Trump announced the imposition of 50% tariffs against Brazil.
On August 13 2025, the US State Department took further steps against Brazil announcing its intention to revoke the visas and add restrictions to Brazilian government officials for their support of Cuba’s Mais Médicos program, a program that had sent Cuban doctors to underserved regions of Brazil. Since the 1959 revolution, the Cuban government is estimated to have sent 150,000 to as many as 400,000 internationally to areas lacking in basic medical services. The State Department cynically denounces the program as “forced labor” with the claim that the “scheme enriches the corrupt Cuban regime and deprives the Cuban people of essential medical care.” The truth is that the Cuban health care system has provided healthcare to Cubans that was not available before the revolution and has been widely praised for its successes. In 1959 the Cuban life expectancy was 62.95 years. Today it is 79.49 years and the infant mortality rate decreased from 36.2 per 1,000 live births to a current rate of 6.9 per 1,000. What is desperately harming the Cuban health care system is not the Mais Médicos program, but the US sponsored blockade. For instance, during the Covid 19 quarantine, Cuba was one of the first nations to develop a vaccine, but its efforts were severely hampered because the blockade prevented Cuba’s access to syringes, which they were not able to produce domestically.
These tariffs imposed on Brazil have nothing to do with trade policy and are therefore a blatant and unprecedented violation of national sovereignty. The US intervention may have backfired, though. Even some from the Center-Right find their national pride offended, and Lula has suddenly bounced back from previously low approval ratings. Trump recently invited Lula to call him to discuss the sanctions, to which Lula responded, “I won’t call Trump. He doesn’t want to talk.” Rather, Lula reached out to his BRICS partners Narenda Modi in India and Xi Jinping in China. According to World Population Review, Brazil is number 10 in manufacturing output, India is number five, and at the top spot is China, which accounts for about 18% of global output, versus 9.5% for number two, the USA.
Lula explained further, that, “Brazil today is not as dependent on the United States as it once was. I won’t disregard the importance of our diplomatic relationship with the US. But from now on, they need to know that we have things to negotiate. We have size, we have a stance, we have economic and political interests to bring to the table.”
Lula has called for consultation over the tariffs with the World Trade Organization.
Similar threats against Colombia
The Trump administration and congressional leaders are threatening similar actions towards Colombia, where another Trump friend and ally, former president, death squad leader, and narcotrafficker Álvaro Uribe has been tried and sentenced to 12 years house arrest for fraud and witness tampering.
However, the situation is more precarious for this country, long regarded as the US top ally in the region, and which in so many ways can be rightly described as a military colony of the US Southern Command (SouthComm). Likewise, Trade with the United States is at 34% making the US Colombia’s largest international trade partner. Across South America, with the exceptions of Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana, and French Guiana, the largest trading partner is China. While Brazil may be in a position to defy US sanctions and interference, it is a much more difficult proposition for Colombia. However, even at its weakest, Colombia has a powerful popular movement that can turn millions into the streets when provoked. It will take such a popular fightback for Colombia to protect its sovereignty against the nefarious designs of its northern patron.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has denounced Uribe’s recent conviction, claiming that, “”Former Colombian President Uribe’s only crime has been to tirelessly fight and defend his homeland. The weaponization of Colombia’s judicial branch by radical judges has now set a worrisome precedent.” US Senator Bernie Moreno, Republican of Ohio, speaking recently about Colombia, “…suggested that U.S. sanctions, higher tariffs or other retaliatory action might be needed to steer it straight.” Moreno described the sentence against Uribe as an effort to “silence” a man he credited with saving Colombia from guerrilla violence.
Despite these glowing endorsements, the historical record paints a far different picture. Uribe is considered the “father of Colombian death squads” and was included in a US Defense Intelligence Agency list of the top 100 Colombian narcotraffickers. Uribe was president of Colombia during a period of widespread killings of union leaders and community organizers, during which forced displacement was at the highest rates in the world. He oversaw a repression that incarcerated between 7,000 and 10,000 political prisoners and prisoners of war.
Bringing the repression home to the US
The assaults against Brazil and Colombia carry overtones of racism and must not only be put in a broader international context but connected directly with what we are seeing unfold in the streets of the United States. The sanctions imposed on Brazil are justified on the basis of alleged human rights abuses against Bolsonaro and his allies who represent the wealthiest, most privileged, and Whitest sectors in the country. This echoes the absurd, ridiculous, and unfounded accusations by Trump of a genocide against White South Africans. To fail to see the subtext of especially anti-Black racism in all these cases is to be both blind and tone deaf. Brazil has the third largest national population of people of African descent (120 million) in the world (after Nigeria and Egypt), and the largest outside of Africa. Colombia’s official records account for a Black population of just over 10%, but many sources find this to be low and put the population as high as 30 to 40%. Anecdotally, I have spent years traveling in Colombia, in rural and urban areas, and the 10% figure seems to be extremely low.
While all this is happening internationally, we have seen the deployment of federal troops in Los Angeles to quell a nonexistent uprising and to target Black, Red, Brown, and immigrant populations en masse. This has been followed by the federal takeover of Washington, DC, including, again, the deployment of federal troops. The deployment is presented as a fight against rampant crime. But this is a lie. According to the FBI, DC’s violent crime rate has been the second lowest since 1966. Murder rates are down 34% since this same time last year.
Trump has also demanded that homeless people leave the nation’s capital pending forced removal, incarceration, and worse. This occupation of DC echoes other repressive tactics common in Colombia, including “urban cleansing” and forced displacement. International solidarity activists have long pleaded for popular action against these kinds of US supported, funded, advised, and armed acts of repression in other countries, repeating so often the warning that what we do abroad will be brought home. Were people listening? A few, but it seems not enough. If ever there is a lesson here, it is that the separation between international solidarity and domestic struggle is a false one.
The Trump administration has threatened military occupation of New York City, Baltimore, and Oakland. Brandon Scott, Mayor of Baltimore, noted that,
“I think it’s very notable that each and every one of the cities called out by the President has a Black mayor, and most of those cities are seeing historic lows in violent crime.”
Scott added that,
“The president could learn a lot from us. Instead of throwing things at us. What he’s doing is dog-whistling through this right-wing propaganda and, quite frankly, racist viewpoints that they have about these cities and trying to convince the American people that what they know is not true.”
Fascism favors the White and targets People of Color, whether they be national leaders in the Global South, or immigrants and the homeless who fit a racial profile in Los Angeles and Washington DC.
Trump’s Venezuela Drug War Gambit and the Militarization Playbook at Home
Democracy and 2026 elections threatened
The threats to Colombia and Brazil also represent international and domestic threats to democracy. In both Colombia and Brazil, as well as the US and Peru, major elections are planned for 2026. Each of these elections could consolidate fascism in the respective nations. Brazil, Colombia, and Peru will hold presidential elections—the first in Peru since the US-supported lawfare coup against President Pedro Castillo in December 2022.
In the United States, mid-term congressional elections could shift control of the House and Senate away from the Republicans. In the US, the decimation of voter rolls, and the disenfranchisement of people of color and working-class voters continues. In Texas, the governor is doing all that he can to gerrymander congressional districts to ensure that Trump does not lose the House. These direct manipulations of US electoral processes are not unlike the interference by the US in elections across Latin America.
The juridical interference is of particular note. The US under Trump deems itself authorized to interfere in Brazil and Colombia’s legal processes in order to discredit and disempower the elected governments and prepare the way for fascist victories. It does not recognize any limits to its legal jurisdiction, even by national boundaries—with notable exception. The US is quick to recognize the limits of its jurisdiction when it is convenient. Prisoners exported to El Salvador’s CECOT or to the Guantánamo concentration camp in occupied Cuba are sent there precisely so the US can then claim that they are outside the legal jurisdiction of constitutional law and US courts.
Meanwhile, the military occupation of Los Angeles and Washington, DC are obvious efforts to repress and intimidate these cities full of Black, Latino, and other POC voters. The repression we are seeing is employing tactics the US has developed abroad in programs to militarize police and to spread the US model of mass incarceration (Prison Imperialism).
It does not take too much analysis to see that what is taking place is an effort to extend the reach and iron grip of the new American fascism across the hemisphere, including a massive attempt to pull out all the stops to ensure fascist victories in 2026. Trump in the US, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, Dina Boluarte in Peru, Javier Milei in Argentina, all are united in their support for each other as they disenfranchise voters and secure victories for extreme right tickets.
Extending fascist threats through the fake and hypocritical Drug War
The $50 million bounty put on the head of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is also a form of juridical interference aimed at deposing a head of state through extra-legal and extra-electoral means. In this case, the interference is justified by invoking the War on Drugs. The Drug War is the biggest lie of all and is being used callously to extend the fascist grip across the Americas.
Trump followed up the imposition of the Brazil tariffs and the threats against Colombia with a directive authorizing the use of military force against drug cartels in other countries. There can be no doubt that the true motivation for this directive is to provide cover for possible attacks against Venezuela and other target nations. Trump doubled the previous $25 million bounty on Maduro and accused him of narcotrafficking, including alleging his involvement with Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum says the allegations are unfounded. The Trump administration also dug up old allegations that Maduro was working with the former FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) to export large quantities of cocaine to the US.
However, the reality is that Uribe, of whom Rubio and Moreno spoke so glowingly, and the AUC, which Uribe led, were far more involved in narcotrafficking than the former FARC. According to Oliver Villar and Drew Cottle in their book, Cocaine, Death Squads and the War on Terror:
“Despite the propaganda about the FARC as narco-terrorists, in 2001 Colombian intelligence estimated that FARC controlled less than 2.5 percent of Colombia’s cocaine exports, while the AUC controlled 40 percent, not counting the narco-bourgeoise as a whole…”
Pablo Hernan Sierra, alias “Alberto Guerrero”, is a former commander of the Cacique Pipinta bloc of the AUC. He told Venezuelan network TeleSur that Uribe, “…was our commander. He never fired a gun; but he led, he contributed, he was our man at the top.”
He added, “The massacres, the disappearances, the creation of an [AUC] group: he is responsible.” The Pipinta bloc provided funding and security for Uribe in his 2002 presidential campaign.
Given his and Rubio’s personal support for Uribe, it is easy to see that Trump’s directive for military invasions to fight narcotrafficking has nothing to do with that. His order is meant as a threat. Even mildly progressive governments are in danger if they anger the Orange Emperor of the North.
Threats to democracy are threats to the planet
There is also a significant ecological threat behind all these interrelated efforts. Brazil is hosting the COP 30 climate talks in Belém at the delta of the Amazon River in November. The US has been long trying to expand its military presence in the Amazon Basin, including holding various exercises to develop the capability for large scale rapid mobile base deployment in difficult terrain. Such positioning would not only open up another front threatening Venezuela, but a vantage point for coordinated actions across the region. Venezuela has countered with a call for a military presence in the region made up only of nations that are part of the Amazon Basin.
The global context
Finally, although the focus of this article has been on the rise of fascism and the resistance to it in the Americas and, particularly in South America and the United States, clearly all this takes place in a global context. We must not fail to mention Gaza and Palestine solidarity and its relevance to what is happening in Latin America. Lula, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, and Venezuela’s Maduro have all strongly denounced the genocide. Colombia and South Africa, the co-chairs of the Hague Group, convened an international Palestine solidarity conference in Bogotá in July. Petro has been particularly outspoken about Israel’s crimes. He also denounced the fake Drug War from day one, calling for its end at his inauguration. Both these positions put him directly at odds with US policies, and therefore in the Empire’s crosshairs.
Trump administration policies across the US and in Latin America and around the world have put not just these 2026 elections but democracy itself in its crosshairs. This is not a fight any of us can wage alone. We in the US must understand clearly that when Brazil as well as Colombia and Venezuela stand up to US sanctions and interference they are not only fighting for their own human rights and sovereignty and democracy, but for all of us. Whether at home in US cities occupied by Federal troops or in nations like Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela, we are locked into a fight to defend our own sovereignty and freedom.
Trump, Bolsonaro, Uribe, and Rubio, as well as Bukele, Milei, and Boluarte, are united to advance their agendas for absolute power and profit. If fascism is international, then so too must be the resistance.
JPJ/OT
James Patrick Jordan
James Patrick Jordan is National Co-Coordinator for the Alliance for Global Justice and is responsible for its Colombia, labor, and ecological solidarity programs.
