A counter revolution is consolidating itself in the Americas—firing drones and missiles at farmers and fishermen, plotting internal destabilization campaigns against insubordinate governments, and manufacturing lies and fever dreams about some bullshit they’re calling narcoterrorism. This new-old tactic is a hybridization of the War on Terror and the War on Drugs, developed to justify warfare targeting civilians as the international drug trade ravages the poor and working class with the full backing of the global ruling class, their institutions, and their banks.
On March 7, 2026 in Doral, Florida, the public face of this consolidating counter-revolution took shape at the inaugural meeting of the Shield of the Americas, a coalition of right wing and fascist puppet governments from across Turtle Island, and its military wing the Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition (A3C) gathered and led singularly by the United States.
Representing the evil empire were decaying racist U.S. president Donald Trump, inherently absurd Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State and delusional gusano Narco Rubio, former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and Jamison Geer, a U.S. trade representative with a background in the Mormon church and extensive experience in colonial law he picked up during the extended U.S. military occupation of Iraq.
The puppets on display hailed from Argentina, represented by President Javier Milei, destroyer of the Argentinian economy. From Bolivia, President Rodrigo Paz who is currently facing mass grassroots mobilizations across the nation calling for him to get his neoliberal ass out of Evo’s chair. President-elect of Chile, Jose Antonio Kast, a better alternative for Trump than dem-soc Gabriel Boric. Drake-esque opportunistic clown and Palestinian comprador Nayib Bukele of El Salvador. The latest collaborator with U.S. war crimes, Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa. Beneficiary of US election interference and hero of the narco-trafficking elite, Honduran president Nasry Asfura. Another collaborator with war crimes and the extrajudicial murders of her own constituents, Trinidad’s prime minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar. Perennial opp from a perennially opp nation, Luis Abinader president of the Dominican Republic. Docile clown Irfaan Ali, current president of Guyana. Also present: Jose Raul Molino, president of Panama. Santiago Pena, president of Paraguay. Rodrigo Chaves Robles, minister of the presidency of Costa Rica.
Altogether this assembly, branding itself as some kind of self-styled Avengers of the hemisphere, had twelve nations represented—just 1/3 of the nations in Turtle Island. Notably excluded were virtually every progressive government in our region—including some of its largest economies—Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil, headed by presidents Claudia Sheinbaum, Gustavo Petro, and Lula da Silva respectively. Also missing were Cuba led by the organized Cuban people under the Communist Party of Cuba and their elected representative President Miguel Diaz Canel. Nicaragua, led by the Sandinista Liberation Front and president Daniel Ortega. Venezuela, led by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and acting president, Delcy Rodriguez Swan. These exclusions were pointed and deliberate—any leader who had expressed even nominal criticism of Trump, tried even the mildest resistance was excluded. The region’s steadfastly anti-imperialist, socialist and progressive governments were excluded. Basically anyone who wasn’t ideologically aligned with the extreme right wing was excluded. The Shield of Americas was clearly not about unity and safety for the nations of the Americas, it was about signaling to progressive forces that the violent repression of people’s movements is now taking on a continental scale.
The objective of this counter-revolution is to drive a wedge between the nations of Nuestra America, provide military and political support for deeply unpopular totalitarian right wing governments, and use this reactionary unity to isolate, attack, and overthrow the governments that do not submit. It represents the systematic deployment of the U.S. military in regional internal repression and it is a blueprint for restoring U.S.-backed military dictatorships in the style of Batista, Papa and Baby Doc, and Pinochet across the region. It also represents yet another doomed attempt to counter China.
According to the Institute of Contemporary China and the World, the Shield of the Americas “has the core goal of systematically curbing the influence of non-regional countries in Latin America. It attempts to use the window period of Latin American politics’ rightward shift to reshape the geo-economic and security order in the Western Hemisphere.” Or in other words, the U.S. is unable to compete economically with development promised by projects like China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and so instead is using its last remaining flex—military hegemony, a commitment to being violently racist, and a stable of willing opps—to push China out instead. With Shield of the Americas and its puppets, the U.S. empire is looking to regain control of resources and land, guarantee a market for inferior U.S. products like oil, gas, and tech, and use those market opportunities to gain U.S. control of key strategic assets like rare earth minerals and data infrastructure. And as to why the opps are willing—while the Trump administration has slashed foreign assistance across the region and the world, Daddy’s wallet is wide open for the nations, like El Salvador, Ecuador, and Argentina, that are willing to line up obediently behind its imperialist policies.
You don’t have to read tea leaves or listen to Trump’s meandering inaugural speech at the summit to see it. You just have to pay attention to the development of U.S. military operations in the Americas, who is helping, and who is being targeted.
Operation Southern Spear is a U.S. military campaign launched by the Trump administration in late summer 2025. In mid-August, among escalating U.S. attacks on Venezuela, the U.S. began deploying military forces throughout the Caribbean, ostensibly a bid to slow the flow of drugs into the United States. A few weeks later in September the U.S. military began conducting drone strikes on fishing boats. They haven’t stopped since. Almost 200 people have been killed in 58 U.S. airstrikes so far. Not one person has been charged with a crime. No evidence has ever been produced confirming the claim that these boats held drug traffickers, not that such evidence would make the situation acceptable. A handful of survivors of these strikes have been horribly maimed and burned, hospitalized, and ultimately released to their home countries, a tacit admission by U.S. officials that they do not have a basis to charge them with a crime, despite having fired missiles at them.
It’s important to note that these crimes against humanity and the planet itself would not have been possible without the political and material support of puppet governments in the region, first and foremost Trindad’s but also the Dominican Republic’s. Trinidadian Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar allowed the U.S. military extensive use of Trinidad’s territory and waters and also provided loud, blood thirsty praise for drone strikes against her own citizens. The DR Navy waded in to help “recover the drugs” in the aftermath of one such strike, providing narrative cover for U.S. attacks against civilians charged with no crime.
In November 2025, the Trump Administration declared an organization quite literally made up by the CIA to try to internally destabilize Venezuela, the so-called Cartel de los Soles, a foreign terrorist organization. At the same time, the U.S. military began escalating its build up of forces in the Caribbean, roping an unwilling Puerto Rico into becoming its base of operations. The Puerto Rican independence movement struggled for 60 years to close the U.S. military base in Vieques only to see it re-opened and forcibly occupied by that same military in fall 2025. Soon afterwards, the long closed Roosevelt Roads Naval Station was reactivated as well and a fleet of F-35s were stationed at the civilian Jose Aponte de la Torre Airport in Ceiba. Against the will of the Puerto Rican people, the archipelago emerged as the logistical backbone of a massive U.S. military occupation of the Caribbean.
By the end of November 2025, 14% of all U.S. naval assets within the U.S. military’s Southern Command and over 15,000 troops had been moved to the region. In December of 2025, when Venezuela’s government was declared a foreign terrorist organization and airstrikes on Venezuelan territory started, it became clear why. Just a month later the U.S. disabled the power grid and air defenses in Caracas, conducted air strikes in urban areas to terrify and disorient the population, and then parachuted in, mass murdered 100 people (including 32 brave Cubans) in 45 minutes, broke 69 year-old Cilia Flores’ arm, and kidnapped her and democratically elected Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro for charges that, I have to stress again, were entirely made up. This atrocity the U.S. military dubbed Operation Absolute Resolve—a so-called decapitation strike carried out against a disarmed and defenseless population under cover of darkness. The USA’s preferred strategy.
Just four days before the Shield of the Americas summit, on March 3, 2026, the U.S. and Ecuadorian militaries bombed the homes of peasants and small farmers in Sucumbios, a small village on the border of Ecuador and another Trump admin target—Colombia. Agricultural workers who survived the airstrikes, in addition to losing everything they owned, were subject to arrest, interrogation, and torture during which they were pressured by Ecuadorian military forces to admit to crimes they did not commit before ultimately being released without charges. The government of Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa claimed that the airstrikes were an attack against armed groups smuggling drugs, a part of Operation Total Extermination carried out in partnership with the U.S. government. The civilian bombing tactics of Operation Southern Spear had now made their way to land.
In Operation Southern Spear, Operation Absolute Resolve, and Operation Total Extermination we see the consolidating counter-revolution in action—the military and political unity of fascist governments across the Americas weaponized to target the nations and peoples who dare to resist, covered in a sheen of law and order and defense of the homeland for legitimacy. What was announced to the world at the Shield of the Americas summit was not a new invention but rather the public relations arm of something that was already in motion, already killing communists, fisherman, farmers, and land defenders in the name of the Donroe Doctrine— the reinvigorated US campaign to violently dominate the majority of the Western hemisphere’s population for capital.
It’s important to understand that this is just the beginning—they were never going to stop at Venezuela. A month into 2026, the Trump administration announced a fuel oil blockade on Cuba and in the weeks since economic attacks, military threats, and an increasingly coordinated gusano hasbara campaign have been deployed with escalating frequency. Last week Justice Department sources indicated that a criminal indictment on 94 year-old hero of the Cuban Revolution Raul Castro is imminent. The legal pretext is being set, the narrative of existential threat has been established, and it’s clear that the U.S. empire is thinking about going for Cuba next, even as they can’t stop taking Ls in Iran and China.
So what is to be done?
First: defend Cuba. The immediate priority of progressive forces in Turtle Island at this moment needs to be the defense of Cuba and the anti-imperialist and socialist governments in our region and across the world. An international #NoWarOnCuba campaign is being organized with comrades from across the planet. We must build a frontline of resistance against imperialist aggression and prevent the model of terrorism used in Venezuela from being applied to Cuba.
Second: fight for Puerto Rico. The examples of Operation Southern Spear and Operation Absolute Resolve illustrate the necessity of political and material support for the national liberation struggle of Puerto Rico—because until that nation is under the rightful control of its people, the U.S. empire will continue to use it as an unwilling aircraft carrier for the counter-revolution. Follow and support formations like the Diaspora Pa’lante Collective, Juventud Unida por la Independencia, and the Young Lords as the struggle to unite and organize the Puerto Rican people to liberate their homeland.
Third: expose and oppose the Shield of the Americas. We must expose the Shield of the Americas and the lies of the War on Terror and the War on Drugs. We need to study our history, practice political education, and learn about antecedents to these crimes like Operation Condor—and how they were defeated. We need to recognize that the same counterrevolutionary logic that armed Pinochet now arms Netanyahu and both have found common cause in the Shield of the Americas. We must support efforts to document and publicize civilian casualties of these crimes and refuse to let them character assassinate members of our class—poor fishermen, farmers, and working people trying to live and survive just like us. And most importantly we must become active, engaged, and disciplined members of organizations and parties working for social justice and build unity and coalition between them.
If the reactionaries, fascists, and Zionists in the Western Hemisphere and around the world are building unity to defeat us, we must build stronger international unity across borders to build the movement that will defeat them first. We must connect struggles across languages, across regions, across oceans—from Turtle Island, to the Confederation of the Alliance of Sahel States, to Palestine and wage organized, collective, disciplined resistance to imperialism and annihilation.
U.S. out of Everywhere.
Forward ever, backwards never.
[Onyesonwu Chatoyer is an African woman marooned in the United States, organizing to defeat capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and patriarchy. She is an editor with Hood Communist, a co-chair of the National Network on Cuba, and an organizer with the Venceremos Brigade. Courtesy: Hood Communist, a US-based, transnational collective of African revolutionary nationalists that publishes journalism and political analysis in support of Pan-Africanism, African liberation and socialism. It is edited collectively; its editors include Erica Caines, Onyesonwu Chatoyer and D. Musa Springer.]
