Following the cancellation of the ‘Summit of the Americas’ scheduled in late 2025 due to growing divides over US intervention in Venezuela, on 7 March Trump founded a new Latin America summit – the ‘Shield of the Americas’. Purportedly to fight ‘narco-terrorism’, the Shield of the Americas is nothing but a poorly masked initiative to increase control over the continent, attacking any nation that stands in the way of US hegemony.
Key players in this theatre of reaction include Milei of Argentina, Bukele of El Salvador, Paz of Bolivia, Miami-born Noboa of Ecuador, the then president-elect of Chile, Kast, and Caribbean nations led by Jamaica’s Holness and Trinidad and Tobago’s Persad-Bissessar. Deemed unfavourable to US imperialist ambitions, veterans in the struggle against cartel violence – Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia – were not invited.
‘Operation Total Extermination’
In a proclamation signed by Trump at the summit, alongside the ‘Doral Declaration’ – signed by 17 nations two days prior at the ‘Americas Counter Cartel Conference’ – military means are established as the ‘only’ strategy for combating ‘narco-terrorism’. Given Washington’s plan to train and mobilise partner forces to facilitate future operations, the US will not only exert control over the planning and execution of military operations in the Americas but also places those forces at the disposal of US imperialism.
The brazen extrajudicial killings of over 160 civilians aboard sea vessels since September 2025 are testimony to this new strategy. Caribbean leaders have responded with muted condemnation, while Trinbagonian Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar called for fishermen to be killed ‘violently’ and co-operated with the US military to intervene against Venezuela. On 3 March US forces attacked supposed ‘terrorists’ along the Colombia-Ecuador border jointly with the Ecuadorian military, launching the crassly named ‘Operation Total Extermination’.
CARICOM: leaders capitulate
The Shield of the Americas comes as the US ramps up pressure on socialist Cuba. The US has tightened the blockade, preventing any Venezuelan oil reaching Cuba, threatening Havana to ‘make a deal’ before it is ‘too late.’ January’s bombing of Caracas and the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Maduro serves as a brutal warning.
Seeking to further economically asphyxiate Cuba, the US is piling the pressure on Cuba’s overseas medical programmes, a key source of foreign income. The governments of Jamaica and Guyana followed Honduras in terminating contracts for Cuban medical brigades early. Working class and rural Jamaicans depend on Cuban doctors for healthcare. Havana condemned Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness for his lack of ‘concern about the health needs of the Caribbean brothers’ highlighting that ‘Over the last 30 years alone, more than 4,700 Cuban medical personnel have provided assistance on the island [Jamaica], treating more than 8.1 million patients, performing 74,302 surgeries, attending 7,170 births and saving more than 90,000 lives.’
Shamefully, Caribbean leaders have all but abandoned Cuba. At February’s CARICOM summit Trinidad and Tobago’s Persad-Bissessar used the opportunity to reaffirm her commitment to the US and declare opposition to the Cuban ‘dictatorship’. The summit agreed on a proposal to deliver aid to Cuba – yet it failed to determine any concrete strategy, so the aid was delayed by over a month.
Internationalism vs isolation
The Shield of the Americas is the US’s latest attempt to consolidate the Monroe Doctrine in Latin America and the Caribbean and challenge the influence of competitors such as China. In this quest, the US has fostered a new set of pliant right-wing leaders; willing accomplices in the imposition of devastating structural adjustment programmes that deepen debt and dependency. Public external debt in Latin America and the Caribbean now exceeds $1 trillion – averaging about 70% of GDP – driven by historic trade patterns rooted in plantation economies and exploitative IMF loans. Between 2021 and 2023, eight countries (including Mexico, Jamaica, Barbados, and Brazil) spent more on debt servicing than on healthcare.
In recent decades ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas), founded by Cuba and Venezuela in 2004, provided an alternative to this subservience. It is a political alliance promoting mutual aid, development and regional solidarity against imperialist domination and exploitation. By 2009 ALBA had expanded to ten countries, and Venezuela’s PetroCaribe supplied subsidised oil to the Caribbean – repayable in goods in kind – helping to reduce debt dependence. ALBA has been systematically attacked by US-backed coups, sanctions, and the electoral gains of right-wing governments who have withdrawn their membership.
Today, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and a handful of small Caribbean island nations remain; resisting against a tide of reaction and imperialist aggression. Joining them are regional networks of resistance such as ALBA Movimientos which coordinates over 400 grassroots organisations, movements, and community groups across 25 countries in the Americas. This resistance cannot be silenced – the people united will never be defeated!
