It is already clear that the formula of drug trafficking/militarization/dispossession is the true strategy of the “new” Donroe Doctrine. Photo AP
January 3rd, 2026, marked a turning point with the kidnapping of the President of the Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, in a violent act by the President of the United States, Donald Trump. This culminated the previous stage of sanctions and significant pressure against the Venezuelan government, allowing the US to assume real power over the country, especially regarding control of oil, and to dictate the severing of relations with China, Russia, and even Cuba.
The interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, maintains a relationship with the magnate president with limited room for internal decision-making, especially regarding the economy. It has already been noted by numerous voices that in the imperialist incursion into that country, the issues of democracy, human rights, and, of course, respect for international law are outside the scope of Donald Trump’s neocolonial activism.
In his logic, Venezuela is proceeding with oil sales operations under his control and decision-making, favoring oil companies with close ties to him (especially some that helped finance his campaign), and distributing certain resources and placing them in accounts that are not subject to oversight.
In his regional expansionism, he maintains open threats to Cuba and Colombia, not excluding Mexico, of future military interventions by land to “extract” drug traffickers, where the great judge Trump never seems to find the evidence of the fight against drug trafficking and the widespread surrender of kingpins sufficient, to which he has already added another provocation by stating that the renewal of the USMCA is irrelevant to him.
With all of this in limbo, he launched his campaign to seize Greenland, facing opposition from Denmark and other European countries that support it, including the deployment of military detachments. In the context of the upcoming Davos Forum, he announced tariffs on Denmark’s allies, who threatened a strong and coordinated response. The Davos Forum was the venue where Trump recently announced that he would not use military force in Greenland, that there was a long-term agreement to recover it for the United States, and that he was suspending his tariff decision.
In that same setting, he announced the so-called peace council project for Gaza, which fragments the strip, inviting 59 nations that have already joined his initiative. However, only heads of state, high-ranking diplomats, and other officials from 19 countries, plus the United States, attended. The US would have to contribute a considerable sum of millions of dollars. The “peace” he offered is the construction of a real estate and tourism empire in the Gaza Strip, a project that has no basis or support within the United Nations. A “new Gaza” with a plan to transform the devastated Palestinian territory into a “luxury skyscraper complex” and “coastal tourism” within three years. There is talk of a new international order, even of imposing structures parallel to those created after World War II.
This very brief overview of Trump’s ongoing initiatives confirms the trivialization not only of international law as it pertains to states in their geopolitical realignments, but also as it pertains to peoples, especially indigenous peoples. Certainly, Indigenous peoples have been facing violence and dispossession since before January 3rd of this year. However, it is already being warned from within these communities that the formula of drug trafficking/militarization/dispossession is the true strategy of the “new” Donroe Doctrine: America for US capital. This was pointed out by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and the National Indigenous Congress in their call for the National and International Days of Action: Justice for Samir and Self-Determination for the Peoples.
In this call, it is emphasized that “war is everywhere, at different levels, but the cause is always the same: capital that dispossesses to turn death and destruction into profit. Various state powers are once again attempting to divide the planet, under the pretext of having the right of the strongest and respecting their own territories, where within them we will be pawns and disposable pieces, disappearable, dispossessed, destroyed, and rebuilt to serve capital.”
They speak of resistance against the interests of powers that want to dominate and undermine life as we know it, appropriating oil, lithium, gold, water, and all the natural resources that exist on Earth and that we, the people, have cared for and preserved for centuries. And they conclude: “We condemn the Yankee intervention against Venezuela and demand respect for the self-determination of peoples.”
Of course, in other countries, people are speaking out and taking action to strengthen their organization and resistance against the new world disorder.
Original article by Magdalena Gómez, La Jornada, January 27, 2026.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.