As the Green Space Gap Grows, Parks Are Becoming a Global North Luxury

When green spaces are reduced to put profit and corporate and investor interests first, the consequences to people's health and the environment are stark.

By Tamara Pearson

April 15, 2026

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

A March 1 protest against the Cablebús in Puebla city. Photo by Tamara Pearson.

Sometimes, walking around the concrete jungle of Puebla city, in central Mexico, the only trees I see are the hardy, invasive ones growing out of the cracked walls of abandoned buildings. The government planted a few trees around the city center two years ago, but with no nearby rubbish bins, the young, skinny trees, completely surrounded by concrete, often become de facto rubbish traps. The contrast with many Global North cities, with nature strips next to most footpaths and huge central parks and botanical gardens, is stark.

Canberra is the top city globally for green space with 420m²/person, followed by Wellington, Ottawa, Helskinki, Oslo, and Stockholm. Sydney is 19th, with 220m²/person, and all of the top 20 cities are in the Global North. Puebla has just 2.4m²/person—1% of Sydney’s rate, and other Global South cities are not too much better off, with Mexico City at 6m² and Bogotá at 5m².

Even when measured as a percentage of total area, the top cities are all in the Global North; Moscow (54%), Singapore (47%), Sydney (46%), and Vienna (45.5%) and the bottom cities are in the Global South; Dubai (2%), Istanbul (2.2%), and Mumbai (2.5%). Within both Global North and South cities, there are further inequalities, with green areas typically concentrated in wealthier suburbs.

The WHO set a minimum of 9m²/person, with an ideal of 50m² per capita. There are serious environmental and health consequences for low green space levels, but despite that, the city and state Puebla governments are planning a massive transport project that would reduce the city’s green space even further. Shrouded in corporate interests and opacity, and prioritizing the needs of foreign and domestic tourists over locals, the project is typical of investor-led urban policies that only increase the global green space gap. 

Disposable parks

The Morena Puebla state government first announced the Cablebús transport project in December last year, with protests against it beginning in February. With a budget of 6.75 billion pesos (AU$555 million), the aerial cable car system would only cover 13 kilometers, and require 96 towers and 9 stations located in the few remaining parks, as well as in public spaces or squares. 

Almost a thousand mature trees would be chopped down, and the project bypasses lower income areas of the city where more people rely on public transport. Also, while a cable car system makes some sense in Mexico City, with its large swaths of informal and low-income housing on steep hillsides, Puebla is flat.

“Parks represent less than 1% of the city of Puebla. Ecological corridors are increasingly fragmented, and that threatens wildlife, like the Coopers hawk. The Cablebús is also an attack on our right to a healthy environment,” Antonio Ferrer tells me. He and fellow activist, Selene Agustín, are members of the Puebla-based Citizen’s Agenda for Trees and Green Areas.

In Puebla, the last few decades of urban planning beyond the historic center have been modeled on the US, often with US companies and contractors often directly involved. This means car-first urban planning and large department stores (mostly transnationals), in a region where the majority can’t afford cars. The public transport system is disorganized and neglected, and buses and shuttle van buses are over-crowded. it can take an hour just to travel 5 kilometers.

“We need more buses, a larger and better bike path network, better pedestrian infrastructure, more local and city parks,” says Agustín.  

Why green spaces matter

Green spaces are vital for cooling (suburbs with vegetation can be up to 14°C cooler), improving air quality, reducing noise, supporting biodiversity, and better water quality. For cities like Puebla, with low-quality infrastructure and drainage and short but intense rainy seasons, green spaces can be vital in preventing floods, by absorbing water and reducing surface runoff.

Spending at least two hours a week in nature is associated with good health, including a lower risk of chronic diseases and accelerated recovery from surgery, as well as reduced stress, anxiety, and fatigue, and better cognitive performance.

Green spaces are also important recreational and social spaces. The scarcity of parks can lead to fear and distrust of public areas and dependence on commercial spaces and consumerism for socializing. Those with little disposable income can feel locked out of socializing all together.

“It’s become so normalized. People are growing up without trees or green spaces nearby, and then have little sense of how to appreciate them or look after them. And in a city like this, grey, concrete, with crap public transport, owning a car becomes something to aspire to – even a necessity, to avoid the over-crowded busses and the blazing sun,” says Agustín.

“Living in Puebla, with so little green space, makes us feel stressed, irritable, and sometimes even hopeless,” says Ferrer. 

Urban green spaces decreasing worldwide 

Global South cities overall have just one third of the green space that Global North cities have, due to lower state income and budgets for street infrastructure, and high levels of exploitation by the Global North. 

While wealthier cities are treated primarily as places to live in, cities like Puebla are used by transnationals for car manufacturing (Audi and Volkswagen in Puebla’s case), textiles and other kinds of export industries supplying Global North markets. Unequal trade agreements, like NAFTA, signed between Mexico, the US, and Canada, forced millions of small farmers to migrate to the cities, where they settled in informal housing, with no planned parks.

In addition to worldwide challenges like gentrification, many Global South cities also navigate the legacies of colonialism and imperialism, with often large slums, favelas, or informal settlements, and higher rates of urban growth. Under pressure from transnationals and organizations like the IMF, cities like Puebla and Mexico City are constantly being privatized, and corporations take over public spaces, including parks, squares, and cultural buildings, and commercialize them. 

Since public parks are much less profitable uses of land compared to say, AI data centers, industry,  or residential towers, urban green space is declining globally. One study of 344 cities found an overall reduction of 63 million m² from 2023 to 2024. 

Imposing public works

The Morena state government is bending over backwards for big business, awarding a European company, Doppelmayr, the contract for the Cablebús, and announcing yet another industrial park for Puebla. Promoted by the national government as “Economic Development Hubs,” these industrial towns include public funding for business infrastructure, with water, electricity and other services provided, and incentives for transnational and domestic big business. 

Announced late last year, the hub in Puebla will be located in San José Chiapa, a lower-income area with a Nahua community and small farmers, and will include pharmaceutical and food companies and a Google AI laboratory. More than 100 companies will benefit from 275 hectares of state-owned land. The project will consume precious water—severely scarce in the region—and generate copious amounts of rubbish and contamination.

Doppelmayr already holds multiple cable car contracts across Mexico for cable cars, where state governments are paying it a total of 22 billion pesos (AU$1.8 billion) to build the systems, then more money for maintenance and operation. With contracts like these, companies often bribe officials to get the contracts, overestimate costs in order to receive bigger payouts, then cut corners in construction.

In Michoacán state, there were significant protests against Doppelmayr’s cable bus system last year, and Isidro Ramos Sandoval, the lawyer who filed a case to stop the project was then murdered in March that year. No one has yet been prosecuted.

Doppelmayr and local governments in both Puebla and in Mexico City have not conducted the legally required studies before project approval, including environmental impact studies, technical, financial, and mobility studies. In Puebla, the government said the studies that it has conducted are “reserved” for the next five years, meaning the public isn’t able to see them.

Agustín notes that Mexico has ratified the Escazú Agreement, a landmark 2018 treaty for Latin America and the Caribbean mandating public participation in environmental decision-making.

“The Cablebús project isn’t based on any real analysis of mobility needs in Puebla. Any such analysis should consider accessibility, short trips by carers, and sustainability. It also doesn’t have the necessary land-use permits. It is incompatible with various laws and regulations, but the mayor, José Chedraui, says he will change whatever he has to to ensure the project goes ahead,” says Ferrer.

Defending green spaces

Communities where Cablebús stations will be installed in parks have organized locally, and have marched together with academics, student groups, transport and environmental collectives, lawyers’ organizations, and other civil society groups.

“Apart from the marches, there have been information requests, lawsuits, declarations, forums, artistic actions and creative workshops, and social media campaigns, says Agustín, “The movement is growing.”

“But in response, the (Morena) state and city authorities have only insulted us, accusing us of being “bots” and members of the opposition, or of having political party interests,”  says Ferrer, “But we don’t—we’re just citizens fighting for our right to information, fighting for an appropriate use of public funds, wanting to live in a healthy environment, and for the few remaining green spaces to be protected.”Email

Tamara Pearson

Tamara Pearson is an Australian-Mexican journalist, editor, activist, and literary fiction author. Her latest novel is The Eyes of the Earth, and she writes the Global South newsletter, Excluded Headlines.

U.S.-Canada Trade Relations: Current Tensions And Future Outlook – Analysis

President Donald Trump meets with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Tuesday, May 6, 2025, in the Oval Office. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

March 31, 2026
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) 
By Kyla H. Kitamura

The United States and Canada have one of the largest bilateral trade relationships in the world, including highly integrated energy and automotive markets. Since 1989, U.S.-Canada trade has been governed by the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement, then by the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and now by the 2020 United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

Since 2025, U.S.-Canada trade tensions have increased following the imposition of U.S. tariffs on key Canadian exports. The two countries, along with Mexico, also are scheduled to engage in a review of USMCA in July 2026, which could lead to significant changes in the agreement. Congress implemented USMCA through legislation (P.L. 116-113) and may need to approve revisions. Congress may consider whether to exercise its prerogatives related to the U.S.-Canada economic relationship, including oversight of U.S. tariffs and the USMCA joint review process.

 
U.S.-Canada Trade Overview

According to U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) data, Canada was the second-largest U.S. goods and services trade partner in 2025. Services trade (e.g., financial services, tourism) is particularly robust, with the United States generally running a services trade surplus with Canada.

According to Statistics Canada data for 2025, Canada exported 73% of its goods to, and imported 46% of its goods from, the United States. Per BEA and Statistics Canada, as of 2024 (latest data available), the United States was the largest source of foreign direct investment (FDI) by stock in Canada ($459.6 billion), and Canada was the second-largest source of U.S. FDI ($732.9 billion). Canada is the largest supplier of U.S. energy imports—including crude oil, natural gas, and electricity. Canada’s share of U.S. crude oil imports by quantity increased from 41% (1.1 billion barrels) in 2015 to 64% (1.4 billion barrels) in 2025.

U.S. Tariffs on Canadian Imports

In 2025, President Trump imposed tariffs on Canadian goods under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA, 50 U.S.C. §§1701 et seq.) and Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (19 U.S.C. §1862). In February 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court held that IEEPA does not give the President authority to impose tariffs. Subsequently, the Administration ended the IEEPA tariff actions and imposed a 10%, 150-day “temporary import surcharge” on most U.S. imports, including from Canada, under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974.

Under USMCA, Canadian goods that are certified as having met product-specific rules can enter the United States largely duty-free; such goods also are largely, but not wholly, exempt from U.S. tariff actions (see Table 1). In 2025, the United States imposed duties on about 13% of U.S. imports from Canada (worth about $50.5 billion total). Most Canadian goods entered duty-free, likely because goods were certified as USMCA-compliant.

Table 1. U.S. Presidential Tariffs on Canada

Authority Canadian Goods Affected (Tariff Rates) Exemption for USMCA-compliant goods
Sec. 122 Most goods (10%) Yes
Sec. 232 Steel, aluminum, and copper (50%) No
Sec. 232 Passenger vehicles and auto parts (25%); trucks (25%), buses (10%), and related parts (25%) Yes (full exemption for parts, partial for vehicles)
Sec. 232 Timber and lumber (10%), certain wooden products (25%), certain semiconductors (25%) No
Source: CRS, compiled from U.S. government documents, as of March 30, 2026.

In March 2025, President Trump imposed 25% tariffs on most Canadian imports (10% on energy and potash) under IEEPA, citing a national emergency at the border with Canada related to illicit fentanyl. President Trump later increased tariffs on Canadian goods to 35%. USMCA-compliant goods were exempt. These tariffs were ended following the February 2026 Supreme Court ruling.

USMCA-compliant goods are exempt from the Section 122 10% global tariffs, as are energy products and fertilizers. President Trump stated, invoking IEEPA, that he would continue to suspend duty-free treatment for all goods shipments valued at less than $800, including from Canada (19 U.S.C. §1321(a)(2)(C), referred to as de minimis). This action is facing legal challenges.


In March 2026, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) launched an investigation into 60 partners, including Canada, regarding their “failure to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor” under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. §§2411–2420); depending on the outcome, this could lead to tariffs on Canadian goods.

Sectoral Tariffs. In 2025, President Trump eliminated nearly all exemptions, including for Canada, from Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs (currently 50%). President Trump has also imposed tariffs on key Canadian sectors, including certain copper products, certain lumber and timber products, and vehicles and auto parts.

Canadian Retaliation. Canada initially responded to U.S. IEEPA tariffs with 25% tariffs on C$30 billion (about $21.8 billion) worth of U.S. imports. Separately, Canadian provinces and territories announced retaliatory measures related to the sale of U.S. alcohol and government procurement. In response to U.S. sectoral tariffs, the Canadian government imposed 25% tariffs on C$29.8 billion (about $21.7 billion) worth of U.S. imports and on non-USMCA-compliant vehicles from the United States, and the non-Canadian, non-Mexican content of vehicles traded under USMCA. Canada has challenged the Section 232 tariffs at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

In April 2025, Canada exempted certain sectors and companies from its retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods. From September 2025, Canada terminated the retaliatory tariffs it imposed in response to IEEPA and some retaliatory tariffs it imposed in response to U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs. Canadian tariffs remain on U.S. vehicles and C$15.6 billion ($11.3 billion) worth of U.S. steel and aluminum imports. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced policies to support the Canadian steel and lumber industries, including prioritizing the use of Canadian materials in government contracts (“Buy Canadian”).

Other Selected Trade Issues

Digital Services Tax Act. In June 2024, the Canadian government enacted a 3% digital services tax (DST) on certain revenue of large digital services providers, retroactive to January 2022. Canada was to begin collecting the DST in June 2025, but the Canadian government announced it would not collect the tax and would take steps to rescind the legislation after President Trump stated that he would terminate trade talks with Canada over the DST. The Canadian government included a repeal of the DST in budget legislation enacted in March 2026.

Online Streaming Act. The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) requires television and radio companies operating in Canada to fund and broadcast a certain percentage of Canadian content. Canada’s Online Streaming Act enables CRTC to regulate entities that broadcast through social media or online streaming services (e.g., Meta, Netflix, YouTube). In June 2024, CRTC announced that it would require online streaming services with annual revenues of C$25 million ($18 million) or more to contribute toward or directly fund Canadian content. The first substantive payment was due in August 2025. Some Members of Congress have proposed legislation directing USTR to investigate whether the act is unfair to U.S. firms (H.R. 8025). Congress may examine the act’s potential impacts on U.S. companies and whether it violates Canada’s commitments under USMCA. USMCA permits Canada to adopt or maintain measures related to a “cultural industry” that would be otherwise inconsistent under the agreement. The other Parties are allowed to take “a measure of equivalent commercial effect” in response.


Automotive. USMCA tightened content requirements for duty-free automotive trade in North America. Mexico and Canada challenged the U.S. interpretation of the requirement—the United States argued for a stricter approach to calculating North American content, while Mexico and Canada advanced a more flexible interpretation of the content requirements. In 2022, a USMCA panel decided in favor of Mexico and Canada but did not determine how the issue was to be resolved. The parties have not reached a resolution.

Critical Minerals Canada is a top U.S. source of key critical minerals. The Defense Production Act (50 U.S.C. §§4501 et seq.) grants Canadian firms eligibility to receive U.S. federal funding, including for critical minerals projects in Canada. At President Trump’s direction USTR sought public comments on a potential plurilateral agreement on critical minerals trade. Canadian officials have expressed a preference for discussing critical minerals as part of overall USMCA talks rather than in a separate sectoral agreement.

Dairy and Supply Management. Canada supports its dairy, poultry, and egg sectors by limiting production, setting prices, and restricting imports (“supply management”). Under USMCA, Canada committed to provide greater access for U.S. dairy exports through 14 U.S.-specific tariff-rate quotas (TRQs), which allow specified quantities to be imported into Canada at preferential duty rates. USTR has challenged Canada’s dairy TRQs twice under USMCA with mixed results. President Trump has criticized Canada’s dairy market policies and suggested imposing tariffs on Canadian dairy products. In June 2025, Canada enacted legislation preventing the government from increasing TRQs or reducing over-quota tariffs for dairy, poultry, or eggs in future negotiations.

Softwood Lumber. The United States and Canada have had a decades-long dispute over trade in softwood lumber—primarily used in residential construction. The last agreement governing U.S.-Canada softwood lumber trade expired in October 2015. Since the agreement’s expiration, the United States has imposed antidumping (AD) and countervailing duties (CVD) on imports of Canadian softwood lumber. Canada has challenged the duties through NAFTA, USMCA, the WTO, and the U.S. Court of International Trade. AD/CVDs apply on top of Section 232 tariffs on timber and lumber imports.

Issues for Congress

Congress has a constitutional role in U.S. trade policy and may consider whether to bolster or curb presidential authorities related to tariffs and trade talks. For example, the Senate-passed S.J.Res. 37 and S.J.Res. 77 and the House- passed H.J.Res. 72 would terminate the national emergency underlying the previously-imposed IEEPA tariffs on Canada. Members seeking greater oversight may direct the Administration and/or agencies such as the U.S. International Trade Commission to assess the economic impacts of U.S. tariffs and Canadian retaliatory measures. Members of Congress could consider whether and how to engage with the USMCA joint review, including seeking changes or preserving existing provisions. Congress also could codify specific U.S. tariff rates on Canada. Such action could prompt consideration about consistency with U.S. trade obligations under USMCA.

About the author: Kyla H. Kitamura, Analyst in International Trade and Finance

Source: This article was published by the Congressional Research Service (CRS)

CRS

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) works exclusively for the United States Congress, providing policy and legal analysis to committees and Members of both the House and Senate, regardless of party affiliation. As a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress, CRS has been a valued and respected resource on Capitol Hill for nearly a century.

US-Backed Repression in Latin America Paved the Way for ICE

The struggle for immigration justice has become increasingly inseparable from the global fight against authoritarianism.

Washington has helped revive state terror in Central America, while fostering an epidemic of forced disappearances.

By Jonathan Ng , 

Truthout

March 16, 2026

Donald Trump holds a document that he signed while surrounded by heads of state and government officials from 12 countries in the Americas as he hosts the the "Shield of the Americas Summit“ at the Trump National Doral Golf Club on March 7, 2026, in Doral, Florida.Roberto Schmidt / Getty Images

Josué Aguilar Valle, a Honduran national, recalls the “terrible” conditions at the migrant jails where U.S. immigration authorities imprisoned him last year. In La Salle County, Texas, Aguilar shared a frigid cell with 50 men, sleeping on the concrete floor. “I thought I was going to experience hypothermia,” he explained.

Aguilar’s wife struggled to locate him, as authorities repeatedly shuffled him between facilities in Florida and Texas. Aguilar became a statistic lost inside an impenetrable bureaucracy. “Every time I tried to visit him, they moved him,” his wife recounted. “It’s like they’re trying to wear families down.” Last May, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported Aguilar to Honduras, separating him from his U.S. family.

His experience is not unique. Human rights experts claim that President Donald Trump’s administration has restructured the immigration system to “disappear” people, undermining due process and expediting deportations by abducting civilians, hiding detainees, and deleting their data. Those searching for the vanishing victims of ICE arrests have compared the institution’s clandestine practices to “trafficking people.”

The recent wave of disappearances follows a long and traumatic historical arc. Since the 1970s, the U.S. government and its Latin American allies have frequently disappeared civilians to eliminate dissent and members of marginalized communities, while pursuing law enforcement initiatives that make immigrants vulnerable to human trafficking and state violence. In many ways, Trump’s deportation drive reflects this deeper past, as the legacy of imperialism abroad returns home — threatening both immigrant families and the remnants of U.S. democracy.


With Donroe Doctrine, Trump Threatens to Export His Brand of Authoritarianism
International solidarity, not liberal imperialism, is the only way to stop Trump’s global class war. By Ashley Smith , Truthout January 24, 2026

Disappearing Dissent

The term “disappearance” entered the global political lexicon after President Richard Nixon’s administration helped Chilean military leaders seize power in 1973, toppling a popular and democratic socialist government. Nixon offered Gen. Augusto Pinochet unflinching support as the archconservative officer executed thousands of leftists and imprisoned tens of thousands more. Reluctant to offend the budding dictatorship, the United States embassy in Santiago even denied protection to Americans seeking refuge from gunfire in the streets. Its indifference allowed Chilean soldiers to disappear two U.S. citizens, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, without pushback.

The legacy of imperialism abroad returns home — threatening both immigrant families and the remnants of U.S. democracy.

In Chile in Their Hearts, John Dinges demonstrates that the State Department treated their deaths as “an obstacle to be removed,” while refusing to recognize that Pinochet’s regime killed them. Horman and Teruggi became two of the more than 1,400 victims that the junta disappeared. For years afterward, U.S. law enforcement and intelligence assistance helped Chile and neighboring dictatorships undertake Operation Condor, a campaign of state terror that disappeared hundreds of leftists, often shuffling their corpses across borders to thwart investigators.

Following the Nicaraguan Revolution in 1979, forced disappearances skyrocketed in Central America, where President Ronald Reagan financed counterinsurgency operations against leftist movements. El Salvador became the third-largest recipient of U.S. aid; at the time, its leading politician, Roberto D’Aubuisson, announced the names of future death squad victims on television.

The courageous human rights defender Marianella García Villas routinely visited the Salvadoran countryside to photograph the corpses dumped by state forces. “All the women were raped before being murdered,” she emphasized. To stifle her investigations, the U.S.-trained Atlácatl Battalion abducted García Villas in 1983, before executing her the same way. Meanwhile, the Reagan administration harassed and spied on the sanctuary movement, which religious leaders established in the United States to protect Central American refugees. By fostering a climate of intimidation, Washington helped Salvadoran death squads sow terror as far as California.

More than anywhere, Reagan’s support for repression proved to be stomach-churning in Guatemala. Even before his election, two campaign supporters reportedly visited the country to assure officials that “Reagan recognizes … a good deal of dirty work has to be done.” His administration supplied munitions and foreign aid, while the military waged a genocidal offensive against the left and Indigenous population.

Their military instructors and equipment helped President Efraín Ríos Montt undertake a scorched-earth campaign that destroyed more than 400 Indigenous communities. In November 1982, the U.S. embassy relayed reports that state forces slaughtered hundreds of civilians in La Estancia. Survivors described victims “ripped open with machetes,” men arrested to “never [be] seen again,” and grenades shredding women and children.

Shortly afterward, Reagan visited Central America to express his support for Ríos Montt. He called the dictator “a man of great personal integrity” and slammed critics for giving him a “bum rap.” The next day, Guatemalan soldiers entered Dos Erres, before commencing a three-day orgy of violence that killed at least 162 people. In 2013, judges concluded that Ríos Montt was guilty of genocide since he intended to “cause the physical destruction of the [Indigenous] Ixil group,” in order to deprive guerrillas of support.

Beyond fomenting forced disappearances, Washington’s militarized drug policy fostered staggering levels of corruption.

In 1996, the counterinsurgency in Guatemala ended after disappearing 45,000 people and claiming 200,000 lives, and President Bill Clinton passed a landmark immigration act that further militarized the border and made it harder for Guatemalan refugees to secure asylum. The conflict was a harrowing illustration of U.S. Cold War strategy. For decades, Washington backed repressive regimes to protect global capitalism and its hemispheric dominance. From Chile to Central America, extrajudicial detentions and executions became commonplace, as U.S. allies literally disappeared dissent.

Death Lands

During the Cold War, U.S. and Latin American elites abducted dissidents to eliminate opposition to unfettered capitalism. But since then, they have disappeared migrants who have been displaced by the very system they created.

The “dirty wars” in Central America left fractured societies, while stimulating undocumented immigration to the United States. Over the 1990s and 2000s, U.S.-sponsored reforms spiked poverty levels in Central America and Mexico by shrinking the public sector, eliminating social services, and boosting import competition.

Most notably, the State Department collaborated with business-friendly governments, while spearheading the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Despite promises to the contrary, NAFTA flooded Mexico with cheap grain and undercut small producers. Scholars such as Salvador Maldonado Aranda demonstrate that impoverished peasants immigrated or turned to drug trafficking to survive.

In 2006, President Felipe Calderón assumed power in Mexico, while facing credible accusations of electoral fraud. To boost his legitimacy, Calderón declared war against the Zetas and other drug cartels. The United States then unfurled the Mérida Initiative, which awarded Mexico nearly $3 billion in security aid. Over the following decade, U.S. officials provided advanced aircraft, surveillance technology, police equipment, and extensive law enforcement cooperation.

Yet the history of security assistance in Mexico was already checkered. The founders of the Zetas were former Mexican soldiers who received U.S. instruction at Fort Bragg. “They were given map reading courses, communications, standard special forces training, [and] light to heavy weapons,” Lt. Col. Craig Deare recalled. Even the Zetas’ name was a grotesque nod to their origins, a reference to the radio code used by soldiers targeting drug traffickers.

Washington has helped revive state terror in Central America, while fostering an epidemic of forced disappearances.

Rather than enhancing security, U.S.-Mexican cooperation spawned an uncontrollable war, while encouraging cartels to acquire military-grade firepower and diversify into human trafficking. During Calderón’s presidency, the homicide rate rose nearly 200 percent to more than 121,000 victims. And “narcofosas” (mass graves) proliferated across the countryside, as an epidemic of forced disappearances swept Mexico. Perversely, U.S. authorities across the border exploited the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 to incarcerate and expel undocumented immigrants fleeing the chaos.

Throughout the Mérida Initiative, Washington ramped up security assistance, despite knowledge that Mexican authorities helped cartels abduct civilians. In May 2010, Consul General Bruce Williamson in Monterrey concluded that violence “made travel chancy on roads” heading north. Months later, the Zetas reportedly intercepted and massacred 72 migrants in San Fernando. Forced disappearances multiplied. “Immigrants from Central America,” the U.S. embassy relayed in 2011, “accused the immigration agents of pulling them off buses and handing them over to drug gangs in the state of Tamaulipas.”

That very year, the Zetas massacred another 193 migrants there. In the aftermath, Mexican authorities confided to U.S. consular staff that they were splitting up the bodies to “make the total number less obvious.”

Beyond fomenting forced disappearances, Washington’s militarized drug policy fostered staggering levels of corruption. Over six years, Mexican authorities arrested thousands of veterans for drug-related charges, and soldiers became popular cartel recruits. Secretary of Public Security Genaro García Luna himself received bribes from drug lords, while directing Calderón’s counternarcotics crusade. Nonetheless, the U.S. officials overseeing Mérida considered him “our go-to guy” and “the most efficient partner we had.”

Ultimately, the drug crackdown discredited the government, ravaged communities, and instigated an arms race among narcotics traffickers. And as cartels kidnapped civilians to raise war funds, the country became a no-man’s land for Central and South American migrants heading north. According to the migrant rights group Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano, 72,000 to 120,000 disappeared in Mexico between 2006 and 2016. Political scientist Pilar Calveiro concludes that the conflict created “territories of death.” U.S. leaders helped turn Mexico into a sunwashed abyss, where entire migrant convoys — the victims of Washington’s dirty wars and reforms — disappeared without a trace.

The Permanent Exception

To a disturbing degree, the exodus of migrants from Central America is itself a symptom of U.S. policies. For over a decade, support for right-wing forces in Honduras, El Salvador, and elsewhere has spurred immigration, while paving the way for forced disappearances across the region.

In 2009, U.S.-trained officers abducted President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, then flew him out of the country from a U.S. military base. Afterward, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recognized the new right-wing government, while helping organize sham elections to lend it legitimacy.

The MAGA movement is imposing its own state of exception to freeze immigration and stifle dissent, as masked ICE agents come to resemble the very agents of oppression that immigrants first fled.

The historian Greg Grandin concludes that the coup inaugurated “a permanent counterinsurgency on behalf of transnational capital” that only Clinton’s cooperation made possible. Over the following years, security forces murdered the environmentalist Berta Cáceres, and disappeared activists resisting the authoritarian slide. Notably, a foreign mining corporation, Entre Mares, hired a former death squad member to oversee security — superimposing the legacy of the Cold War onto the post-coup repression.

Across the border, U.S. officials also tightened relations with President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador after he assumed power in 2019. Before heading the embassy, Ambassador Ronald Johnson was a U.S. military adviser to El Salvador who led combat operations during the dirty war. In office, he protected Bukele from a probe into his negotiations with gang leaders, while the president desperately sought to reduce homicide rates. Afterward, another diplomat discovered that in August 2020, “Bukele requested Johnson remove” a U.S. contractor investigating his pact with local kingpins, and “that was what happened.”

Indeed, Republican politicians became major allies of the conservative upstart, as he branded himself “the coolest dictator in the world.” In 2020, Bukele deployed soldiers to occupy Congress in order to ramrod a security bill through. Elsewhere, U.S. foreign assistance enabled death squad activity. Armed with U.S. equipment, police moonlighted as hitmen for hire, killing at least 279 victims between January 2019 and September 2021.

In 2022, Bukele declared a “state of exception,” clamping down on both violent crime and political dissent. The law enforcement spree has generated another wave of forced disappearances: Repeatedly, masked police in unmarked vehicles have arrested civilians for alleged gang activity. By April 2024, the government had apprehended 79,211 people: imprisoning more than 1 percent of the Salvadoran population.

The human rights organization Cristosal reviewed 1,178 detentions. It found that authorities did not provide evidence in a single case demonstrating that the defendant committed a crime. Instead, Cristosal discovered a pattern of “arbitrary detentions and systematic human rights violations.”

Its findings are chilling. Police have invaded schools to arrest teenagers for their social media posts. They have sexually harassed mothers in front of their children, then hauled them off to prison. And they have raped 13-year-old girls while threatening to incarcerate them if they resist. In one case, they even imprisoned a police employee who had rejected the sexual advances of her boss. After receiving an anonymous tip, officers arrested the woman by dragging her naked from a workplace shower. Nonetheless, Trump has praised Bukele for his “fantastic job” tackling crime and reinforced law enforcement cooperation.

In short, Washington has helped revive state terror in Central America, while fostering an epidemic of forced disappearances. Working with U.S. security agencies, local powerbrokers now attack obstacles to political control and capital accumulation. Bodies dumped by roadsides and packed prisons have become symbols of a permanent state of exception: a new order imposed with U.S. arms and complicity.

The Deep Freeze


The political turmoil and forced disappearances in Central America offer the crucial context for Trump’s deportation drive. U.S. security policies have long exacerbated a refugee crisis in the region. But now, the MAGA movement is imposing its own state of exception to freeze immigration and stifle dissent, as masked ICE agents come to resemble the very agents of oppression that immigrants first fled.

Upon taking office again, Trump cut an agreement with Salvadoran authorities. He scuttled a Department of Justice investigation in order to conceal information about Bukele’s gang negotiations. In return, Salvadoran officials agreed to warehouse more than 250 Venezuelan deportees in the CECOT mega-prison.


The ACLU now registers “enforced disappearances” across the United States as federal authorities undertake dragnet operations.

Human Rights Watch concludes that their transfers constitute “enforced disappearances.” ICE shipped them to El Salvador, while agents “repeatedly refused to provide information” on their whereabouts to family members, even erasing their files from the agency’s database. Prison authorities at CECOT smashed teeth, broke a nose, blasted detainees with rubber bullets, and sexually assaulted victims with batons. CECOT’s director informed the Venezuelans that they would leave in a body bag. Last July, they finally returned to Venezuela in a prisoner exchange.

The state of exception has become the norm for regional governments, including the Trump administration. Under political pressure, Honduran and Guatemalan officials have also declared national emergencies to reduce violent crime, and Costa Rica is building a mega-prison based on CECOT. And while trampling civil liberties, the Trump administration has allocated over $170 billion to immigration enforcement, tripled ICE’s annual budget, and kickstarted a wave of prison construction. Its deportation drive allows officials to turn immigration officers into shock troops of the MAGA movement, while appealing to their political base and intimidating dissent.

The ACLU now registers “enforced disappearances” across the United States as federal authorities undertake dragnet operations. Last October, masked ICE agents detained about 400 people at an Idaho racetrack, while shouting racial slurs and manhandling civilians. They kept adults and children zip-tied for hours, depriving them of access to food, water, and restrooms — and forcing them to urinate in full view of others.

More broadly, the ACLU calls prisons such as “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida a black hole where officials “disappear” detainees by frequently failing to record their information or inform their families of their location, turning hundreds of prisoners into lost statistics. At the Everglades site, guards have kept civilians shackled in zoo cages under the pounding sun. Officers at the nearby Krome facility have also tortured numerous victims, at one point crushing the hand of a detainee in front of human rights monitors.

This March, the inauguration of the Shield of the Americas, a multinational coalition targeting drug trafficking and immigration, dramatized the hemispheric scope of Trump’s repressive agenda. The popular Latin American news show “Macondo” dubbed it the summit of “bootlickers,” since most attendees from the region — including Bukele — are unconditional supporters of the MAGA program. Addressing the conference, Trump expressed contempt for the “damn language” of his Spanish-speaking allies while defending the latest war on drugs. Days afterward, jurists concluded that the governments of his closest regional partners, Bukele and President Daniel Noboa of Ecuador, have forcibly disappeared civilians — including children.


As Trump exploits fears about migrants to dissolve constitutional safeguards, the struggle for immigration justice becomes increasingly inseparable from the global fight against authoritarianism.

Ultimately, the current immigration crackdown obscures a long history of U.S. imperialism, while displaying the authoritarian ambitions of Trump and his hemispheric allies. Since the 1970s, the United States has promoted security measures that have disappeared thousands of civilians in order to maintain imperial supremacy, curtail crime, and undercut progressive movements. In turn, these militarized law enforcement policies have propelled waves of immigration, effectively creating a population vulnerable to human trafficking and state violence.

Rather than address these issues, ICE imprisons or deports those affected by them — literally displacing policy contradictions across borders. In the process, federal authorities not only threaten to disappear immigrants but what remains of U.S. democracy. Thus, the legacy of imperialism abroad has returned home to haunt the United States. Masked agents in unmarked vehicles now snatch civilians off the streets, just like Washington’s repressive allies in Latin America. As Trump exploits fears about migrants to dissolve constitutional safeguards, the struggle for immigration justice becomes increasingly inseparable from the global fight against authoritarianism.

The author would like to thank Sarah Priscilla Lee of the Learning Sciences program at Northwestern University for reviewing this article.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Jonathan Ng

Jonathan Ng is a postdoctoral fellow at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College.

Remembering Susan George, a Shining Light of “Alter-Globalization”

By Manuel Perez-Rocha

February 26, 2026

Source: Institute for Policy Studies

The late Susan George was a pillar in unraveling the obscure mechanisms of economic domination through so-called “free trade.”

Susan George passed away in Paris on February 14 at the age of 91. Born in the U.S. and naturalized as a French citizen, Susan was one of the most important figures in denouncing capitalism over the last 50 years. She stood out for her elegance and refined voice. 

But above all, she was known for her dedication to just causes and her authority in explaining the structures of inequality. Throughout her career, she wrote 17 groundbreaking books that have been translated into several languages, such as The Debt Trap, The Lugano Report, A Fate Worse than Debt, and We the Peoples of Europe, to name a few.

All of her work is of utmost importance to Latin America. She criticizes the Bretton Woods System and the Washington Consensus. She was a central figure at every forum she attended, such as the World Social Forums and European Social forums. She is credited with coining the phrase “another world is possible” and published a book with that title, but adding the condition “if” as a call to action. The phrase has been associated with the Zapatista slogan “one world where many worlds fit,” and both are seen as a direct confrontation to Margaret Thatcher’s “there is no alternative.”

She was honorary president of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam and ATTAC France, and a key founder of both organizations. As TNI states in its obituary, “Susan always defended an objective, honest look at the magnitude of the progressive task. As formidable as it might look, Susan believed that the system has cracks, and ‘we just have to get out there with our pickaxes and work along the fault lines.’”

TNI quotes Susan:

“Either we achieve together a new level of human emancipation, and do so in a way that preserves the earth, or we shall leave behind us the worst future for our children that capitalism and nature can deal them. No one knows in which direction the balance will tip, nor does anyone know which actions, which writings, which alliances may achieve the critical mass that leads us one way or another, backwards or forwards. I am acutely conscious of the precariousness of our moment, and my much-loved grandchildren give me added resolve to address it.” 

As the French chapter of ATTAC, the global organization against foreign debt and other injustices, remembered Susan as “an inspiring figure of anti-globalization and the weaver of a vast network. Politicized by her opposition to the Vietnam War and France’s welcome to American draft dodgers, her internationalist spirit never wavered. During those years of war and repression, she worked to bring an American think tank, the Institute for Policy Studies, to Europe, where it became the TNI, Transnational Institute, based in Amsterdam.”

John Cavanagh, who headed IPS in Washington for more than 20 years, says of Susan, “we have lost a true treasure of a colleague, ally, and leader.” He credits her book How the Other Half Dies for helping to “change the world’s view of poverty and development.” Susan “had a gift for translating complex realities into beautiful prose,” John said. 

I was fortunate enough to meet Susan in Paris in 1998, in a humble café in a working-class neighborhood near the Gare de L’Est. I was on a tour of several European cities in search of partnerships for our work ahead of the negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement between Mexico and the European Union (MXEUFTA). 

Our goal at the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade was to influence the outcome of the negotiations to achieve an agreement that was different from NAFTA — one based on human rights, in contrast to the liberalization of trade and the privileging of foreign investment. 

I gave her a copy of our first report, “Citizens of Mexico before the European Union,” which was based on a forum with dozens of organizations and experts at the Convento del Carmen in Mexico City (I would also like to highlight the participation of the recently deceased Maestro John Saxe-Fernández). She seemed amazed, as she was at the center of the campaign against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), which sought to impose a global investment protection treaty — one designed and commanded by the OECD, the so-called club of rich countries, into which former Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari had enrolled us. 

The MAI largely failed due to France’s rejection — and Susan’s leadership in mobilizing thousands of workers and organizations. An investment chapter could not be included in the MXEUFTA because in 2000 the issue was still not within the EU’s competence but that of its member countries separately. 

But since the 2007 Lisbon Treaty, the EU has gained this power — and now the governments of both Mexico and the EU are seeking to impose an investment chapter that includes, for example, the possibility of suing countries in supranational courts (through ISDS). 

Susan warned in a publication by IPS, TNI, the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation, and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy that “when companies talk about ‘barriers’ to trade, we call those same measures ‘safeguards’ for people’s health, well-being, and the environment. Companies want absolutely no restrictions on access to natural resources, as several arbitration cases have made clear. All they have to do is set foot in a country and we have to say goodbye to the natural resources of poor countries, including basic necessities such as land, water, and forests.” 

Susan George was never against the European integration project, but she was against its agreements with third countries that she said “are not about trade, but about power: they are not about tariffs, but about corporate control of regulations… they are negotiated in secret… and are almost impossible to reverse,” she warned. That is the truth about the “modernization” of the MXEUFTA that is about to be signed any day soon. 

Susan George was a pillar in unraveling the obscure mechanisms of capitalist domination through so-called “free trade” and in the global struggle for justice and democracy. 

This commentary was first published in Spanish by La Jornada.