Photographic exhibition: ‘’Stay in Mexico? Migrations on the Southern Border.” Photo: Isabel Mateos
The world is experiencing an unprecedented period that could be summed up in two words: a civilizational crisis. This crisis brings together environmental, economic, social, and political dimensions, expressed in military confrontations and trade wars, poverty, and hunger. The United Nations system and the group of institutions created in the Bretton Woods agreements have also become part of this crisis, as well as the World Trade Organization (WTO), which has been overtaken by the prominence of the United States, which has systematically violated the rules of international trade.
We are walking a dangerous path for humanity. Palestinians are being killed with military and financial aid from the United States, with the complacency of its allies. No one listens to the daily reports of United Nations agencies, nor to the faint voice of the International Criminal Court. A proxy war in Ukraine is also being supported, both directly and through NATO.
The United States government plans to modernize its nuclear weapons, with an estimated cost of “946 billion dollars. This spending includes developing and manufacturing a new intercontinental missile, submarines with atomic missiles, and new nuclear bomb factories.”As if the more than 12,000 nuclear warheads currently stockpiled in a few countries weren’t enough to wipe out life on the planet. Ninety percent of this inventory is concentrated in the United States and Russia.
Trump’s warmongering spirit proposes increasing the Department of Defense budget by 13 percent for fiscal year 2026 with the purpose of “strengthening national security and sovereignty, deterring Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific, and revitalizing our defense industrial base.”
Far from attempting to mitigate the crisis of civilization, the United States is adding new elements, restricting support and assistance in the areas of food and health. It is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on climate change, which it considers the “New Green Scam.” At the same time, it will make its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) effective as of January 2026 and contradictorily lays off staff and eliminates the budget of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), putting humanitarian programs in Africa and Latin America at high risk. Instead, it maintains the multimillion-dollar support for Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people, as well as the war in Ukraine and attacks on Yemen, while straining international relations, indiscriminately applying tariffs, identifying China as enemy number one, and everything that the advance of the BRICS bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) represents.
From the first day Donald Trump assumed the presidency of the United States, he began a cascade of “Executive Actions” as a strategy to “Make America Great Again” (MAGA). Trump’s vision is the dismantling of what his predecessor, who was characterized by his globalist tendencies, did. In the race to regain lost hegemony, the president began by sending messages to the entire world, imposing taxes on exports to his country. He began with his close partners, Mexico. and Canada.
With Mexico, Trump has used two pretexts to impose tariffs on imports: immigration and fentanyl trafficking. Mexico responded quickly to the former, sending 10,000 National Guard troops to the US border to contain migrants. Regarding the latter, it reacted with seizures: “From October 2024 to April 6th, 2025, more than 140 tons of drugs were seized, including nearly a ton and a half and more than two million fentanyl pills.”
With Canada, he exerted political pressure, threatening to annex the territory to make it the 51st state of the American Union. The political atmosphere created for the imposition of tariffs led to the resignation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Trump’s harassment was very evident, even after Trudeau’s resignation was hastened. During the Canadian electoral process, Trump expressed on his Truth Social network: “Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to reduce your taxes on the United States.” “We will increase our military power by half.” He added, “Zero tariffs or taxes if Canada becomes the 51st US state.”
With a discourse of hate and bloodshed, Trump embarks on a crusade against migrants, while changing asylum rules, and thereby achieving a dramatic drop in apprehensions at the southern border of the United States. The Customs and Border Protection office recorded 96,037 apprehensions in December of last year, and in April of this year, it was only 12,035, which represents a drop of approximately 87.5 percent.
This reduction is the result of unprecedented, tight militarized control of its southern border. US media report an extraordinary increase in troops along the US-Mexico border: “About 2,500 active-duty troops were on the border at the end of the Biden administration. Now there are around 8,600.” They report that “the military has also dispatched U-2 spy planes, surveillance drones, helicopters, and even two Navy warships to monitor the borders and coasts 24 hours a day.” According to the Pentagon, the troop deployment has so far cost an estimated $525 million. In addition to the bloated defense budget, an additional $500 million is being requested for border security next fiscal year, to purchase technology, maintain 22,000 Border Patrol agents, and expand the force to 26,383 agents. This is a move to fulfill his campaign promises to close the border to illegal immigration and expedite mass deportations. The United States House of Representatives included, within the framework of the so-called “one, big, beautiful bill,” a five percent tax on remittance transfers. The Mexican government has rejected this claim, arguing that it would represent double taxation since migrants already pay taxes in that country. This ignominious measure reflects the misery of White House policy, which reflects the burden of racism and contempt for migrants who contribute to the accumulation of capital in the United States.
The measure was rejected in a first vote, but if approved, it would be a brutal blow to the Mexican economy, but especially to thousands of poor families, whose fundamental livelihood is remittances. The five percent tax on family remittances, calculated based on what arrived in Mexico in 2024, would represent a payment of $3.2372 billion, which would translate into super-exploitation of migrant workers.
On the domestic front, President Trump declared a fight against what he calls “Woke ideology” from the first day of his mandate. This will be reflected in the elimination of funding for what the president calls “the harmful progressive and Marxist agenda,” which includes “radical diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs” and “other radical and harmful ideologies” that promote “intersectionality,” “racial equity,” and LGBTQIA+ programming for preschool children.” Trump has gone further by trying to impose himself, via budget threats, on Harvard and Columbia universities, with the aim of controlling and demanding “the closure of all DEI-related programs and the eradication of antisemitism on campuses.”
We walk on a razor’s edge, people suffer the consequences of wars that make no sense except for the military-industrial apparatus that amasses great fortunes and seizes power.
Original article by ODEMCA, Chiapas Paralelo, May 22, 2025.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.