Forrest Hylton

On 10 August, three days after the inauguration of President Abelardo de la Espriella, Colombia experienced a magnitude 7.4 earthquake, the country’s worst since 1979. With the epicentre in San José del Palmar, the western cities of Cali, Pereira and Manizales were directly affected, along with the entire Chocó department, where the lack of a census, the collapse of communications and the absence of transport infrastructure have stymied relief efforts.

Wearing a football jersey and waving the national flag, Abelardo de la Espriella trotted out the quasi-fascist trinity from the days of Operation Condor, ‘Dios, patria y familia’, promising to end gay marriage and abortion, introduce megaprisons on the Bukele model, cut government spending by 40 per cent by eliminating ministries and privatising state enterprises, and slash whatever taxes and regulations remain on trade, production and commerce to attract US capital. Trump would ‘co-pilot’ his government, he said. Bernie Moreno, the Republican senator for Ohio, said Colombia will be at the centre of the Shield of the Americas.

During popular insurrections like the one underway in Bolivia, which is calling for President Rodrigo Paz’s resignation after just six months in office, the experience of time and space changes, acquiring an extraordinary charge from day to day, even hour to hour. Indigenous campesino insurgents have long characterised such moments as belonging to ‘another time’.

Unfortunately for Mexicans, Mexico has moved to the top of the US foreign policy agenda. After Trump kidnapped the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, he threatened Mexico with ground operations against ‘cartels’ that the DOJ designated terrorist organisations.

The inaugural Shield of the Americas Summit was held at one of Donald Trump’s golf resorts in Florida on 7 March. The US president told the dozen allied heads of state gathered at Trump National Doral Miami that he didn’t have time to learn ‘your damn language’. He scolded them for the reach of organised crime in their countries, as if US drug policies had nothing to do with it. Trump said he’d be happy to use missiles to target traffickers should his partners request it, and that Cuba was ‘at the end of the line’. Pete Hegseth announced that he only spoke ‘American’.