Tag: Fascism

Fraud and fascism attend installation of US-aligned Colombian president / By W. T. Whitney Jr.

South Paris, Maine

President Abelardo de la Espriella took office on August 7, in the process all but completing Latin America’s turn to rightwing governments to political power. Political arrangements in Colombia now are in sync with the US government’s reassertion of power over the region with its National Security Strategy announced in November, 2025.

In second-round presidential voting on June 21, 49.67% of the voters favored De la Espriella, candidate for Colombia’s political rightwing. Iván Cepeda, competing for the progressive Historic Pact Party, secured 48.7% of the vote. The first round of voting for 13 candidates on May 31 had given 43.7% of the vote to De la Espriella and 40.9% to Cepeda.

Cepeda is a senator, prominent human rights advocate, and son of a Communist party leader murdered by paramilitaries. Outgoing President Gustavo Petro had founded and led the Historic Pact Party. His government was the only progressive government ever to serve in Colombia since independence from Spain.

The Petro government’s record on advancing social programs was mixed.  It failed to achieve Petro’s prime goal of “total peace.” Despite the 2016 peace agreement between Colombia’s government and the FARC leftist insurgents, armed insurgencies and criminal gangs, heirs to the former paramilitary plague, still ravage the countryside.

The current political background is of gigantic social and wealth inequalities, militarization, continuing narco-production and trafficking, and decades of massive killings and population displacements.

Rightwing forces had much at stake in the voting; For them, it was a watershed moment. Their intensity of purpose showed in the extraordinary measures taken to win the elections and keep another left-leaning government from taking power.

Fraudulent election

At a press conference on August 3, President Gustavo Petro charged that more than 120,000 handwritten electoral documents sent to national electoral officials from 1350 polling stations had been altered.  Each polling station creates and fills out one such form, the so-called E-14 form, as a record of votes cast at each polling table. Petro indicated, in making this claim, that he was relying on investigations carried out at the polling stations by 70,000 individuals with the assistance of 1000 computer experts.

The investigators allegedly discovered that individual votes had been changed at the polling stations, supposedly by partisans of De la Espriella officiating there.  They found that out of 350,000 E-14 forms that were examined and scanned, more than 122,000 of them had been “systematically reprocessed stripping them of their metadata and digital security seals—the hash locks.”  The E-14 forms then materialized under the label “page not scanned” and were “published with different information and also with inconsistent signatures.”

According to Petro, the investigators discovered altered voter rolls showing municipalities claiming more voters than residents.  These were located in Boyacá, Santander, Antioquia, and Cundinamarca departments and also in the “coffee growing axis”. These were precisely the regions that gave candidate De la Espriella his lead of 751,000 votes.  

A text from Petro said that, “For the first time, electoral fraud is achieved through the use of software and algorithms. The world takes the message that [electoral] choice can be manipulated through such software. According to TeleSur, “Petro affirmed that the logistics and financing of this fraud involved foreign resources and interests … [also] that the National Electoral Council lacks the technical tools to identify these anomalies in the software.”

The now former president suggested that the Israeli cyber-intelligence firm BlackCore had carried out the electronic manipulation. He had earlier accused that firm of having “deployed 500,000 bots—fake profiles—to manipulate the Colombian electorate.” Colombian election officials defended the transparency and security of their election processes. Electoral observers from the Organization of American States and the European Union did likewise.

A different kind of guy

The rightwing political parties opposing presidential aspirant Cepeda had one other extraordinary tool in their bag, specifically, their own presidential candidate.

De la Espriella is a citizen of the US, Colombia, and Italy. He lived in Miami for ten years, until 2026. There he gained great wealth, from two sources. As a lawyer, he defended accused Colombian paramilitaries politicians accused of corruption, and other criminals. As a wine and rum impresario, he prospered greatly and then crashed in 2026; he owes almost $1 million. The new president owns homes in Miami, Italy, and Colombia.

De la Espriella is a defender and friend, a childhood buddy, of the renowned and death-dealing former paramilitary chieftain Salvatore Mancuso. He and his family have personal and political ties with the brutal and lawless former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe (2002-2012), himself accused of ties with narcotraffickers and paramilitaries.  As a younger man, the now 48-year-old de la Espriella formed the Foundation for Peace Initiatives purposed for extolling and recruiting paramilitaries. As president he promises to set up 10 mega prisons as per Bukele of El Salvador

De La Espriella expands anyone’s image of a potential president. His business website proclaims that, “Defensor (Defender Rum) is art in the form of rum, created by Abelardo De La Espriella and Silvestre Dangond …This bottle of rum is a reminder that only those who dare to challenge history are the ones who write it. Are you ready?”

And this: “Charming, irreverent, passionate, and a true connoisseur, Abelardo De La Espriella—founder of Dominio (domain) De La Espriella and the law firm De La Espriella Lawyers—is synonymous with success, integrity, and determination … [T]his Renaissance man—with a Caribbean heart and a Mediterranean spirit—is an entrepreneur, writer, singer, lawyer, and public figure who has shattered all the conventions of fame to become a true role model for millions of people.”

Going the extra mile

De La Espriella as president may well notch a feat extraordinary in itself.  The linkage between Colombia’s government and US imperialism is already exceedingly tight. But the new president’s personal disposition and record suggest he is well equipped for adding even more cement to US-Colombian relations.

He has a lot to build on. The US government for decades provided financial and material support for Colombia’s military operations against leftist insurgents ─ often under the pretense of fighting narcotraffickers.  The US military had recommended that the Colombian government rely on paramilitaries to control the countryside. Thereafter, the US would be providing indirect support for the paramilitaries, while turning a blind eye to their murdering and mayhem. US Plan Colombia ((2000-2015) represented the high point of perennial US financial support and material aid for Colombia’s military. The US military has maintained up to eight air bases in Colombia, deployed troops and contractors there, and trained Colombian troops. The US helped design and finance Colombia’s prison system.

De La Espriella took the stage in 2023 when, living in Miami, he became a US citizen. He donated to the Republican Party and was invited to Mar-a-Lago.

As a candidate, he promised to end diplomatic relations with US-targeted Cuba and Nicaragua, and restore relations with Israel. In early 2026, De la Espriella met privately in Washington with Secretary of State Rubio; he indicated ominously on social media that, “important things are discussed in secret.” The State Department honored his ascent to power on August 7 by, on that day, awarding Colombia $1 billion;  it goes toward “achievement of our shared objectives.”

He anticipates US (and Israeli) military forces joining Colombian counterparts in fighting crime and narco-trafficking. Colombia will be part of the US government-sponsored Shield of the Americas, a collection of rightwing Latin American and Caribbean governments cooperating with US plans for regional dominance.

De La Espriella’s investiture as president took place in Cali, not in the nation’s capital Bogota. He gave his inaugural address to soldiers assembled at a nearby army base, not to civilians. He thereby gave notice of his government’s “iron fist” and of Colombia as accomplice of aggressive US imperialism.

Colombian Communist Party organization secretary Jorge Gómez, interviewed by Party member Nelson Lombana Silva, summarizes:

· “[W]e …must understand that this is a new era … This has been the most important electoral result in all the history of the left.”

· “The inauguration is a new moment, one ushered in by fraud … but also fundamentally by something very special: the rise of a fascist far-right movement.”

· De la Espriella “will try to roll back social reforms—the gains the people have made in land ownership, health care, education, and the democratization of the state apparatus.”

· De la Espriella must “inform the country of the scope of the oath he took to become a U.S. citizen … [and] to disclose whether he is a member of any U.S. intelligence agency.”

· “We’re going to have to make significant progress toward the idea of a Broad Anti-Fascist Front that confronts authoritarianism, anti-human- rights forces, and anti-reform forces … And a second major strategy… is the concept of so-called Civil Disobedience.”

W.T. Whitney, Jr., is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician and lives in rural Maine.

Haiti has disturbed U.S. ruling class for two centuries; Springfield is latest flare-up / By W. T. Whitney Jr.

Haitian Revolution: Attack and take of the Crête-à-Pierrot (March 24, 1802). Original illustration by Auguste Raffet, engraving by Ernst Hébert. | Public Domain

Reposted from Peoples World

Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates expressed horror a couple of weeks ago on apparently learning from social media that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating dogs and cats, “eating people’s pets,” as Trump put it. The reports, as we all know now, were false, but their fallout was quite real. Bomb threats followed, schools and public buildings closed down, and longtime African-American residents felt threatened.

A bit of backstory: Springfield’s economy lost jobs and industries over the years. Some 15,000 Haitians arrived, eager to work. Industry expanded, but social service providers were stressed. Most of the Haitians in Springfield are there under Temporary Protected Status. That governmental designation enables migrants forced out of their counties by serious crises to enter the United States legally.

The bizarre twist of political behavior stems in part from the migrants being Haitian. Haitians and their nation have been problematic for the United States’ ruling class for more than two centuries.

The fact of migration itself does not account for the exaggerated hostility, though. Almost nothing of that order happens to the one-third of New York state residents and 40.9% of Miamians who are immigrants, or to the foreign-born residents of nine other urban areas in the United States who comprise from 21.1% to 39.1% of the several populations.

Stresses and frustrations associated with Springfield’s economic decline logically enough could have stimulated hostility toward migrants, if we look at what has happened historically in other communities. But economist Franklin J. James rejects the idea “that immigration hurts U.S. natives by reducing job opportunities …[and] that immigrants displace natives from jobs or reduce earnings of the average worker.”

Being Black may indeed invite hostility in a racist society, however. But the disconnect is sharp between the rarity of unbounded disparagement at high political levels and the large numbers of African-descended people who never experience the like from anybody. Opportunities abound. In 2019 Black people made up from 21.6% to 48.5% of the populations of 20 U.S. cities. That year nine Ohio cities, not including Springfield, claimed between 32.0% and 11.2% Black people. In 2024, 17.4% of Springfield residents are Black.

The scenario in Springfield may itself have been toxic: A large number of Black people from abroad arrived together on an economically depressed small city. But Somali migrants arrived in Lewiston, Maine under similar circumstances, and their reception was different.

They showed up in 2001, and a year later numbered 2,000 or so. In January 2003, an Illinois-based Nazi group staged a tiny anti-Black rally; 4,500 Mainers joined in a counter-demonstration.

As of 2019, according to writer Cynthia Anderson, “Lewiston … has one of the highest per capita Muslim populations in the United States, most of it Somali along with rising numbers of refugees and asylum-seekers from other African nations.” Of Lewiston’s 38,404 inhabitants, 10.9% presently are “Black or African American.” Blacks are 1.4% of Maine’s population.

Anderson reports that with the influx of migrants, Lewiston “has struggled financially, especially early on as the needs for social services and education intensified. Joblessness remains high among the older generation of refugees.”

Lewiston is Maine’s poorest city. For generations, massive factories along the Androscoggin River produced textiles and shoes, but they are gone. The city’s poverty rate is 18.1%; for Blacks it’s 51.5%. In 2016, 50% of Lewiston’s children under the age of five lived in poverty.

Citing school superintendent Bill Webster, an AP report indicates “immigrant children are doing better than native-born kids” in school, and are “going off to college to get degrees, as teachers, doctors, engineers.”

Analyst Anna Chase Hogeland concludes: “The Lewiston community’s reaction to the Somalis demonstrated both their hostility and reservations, as well as the great efforts of many to accommodate and welcome the refugees.” Voters in Lewiston are conservative; the majority of them backed Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

The circumstances under which the two cities received Black immigrants differed in two ways. A nationwide upsurge in racist rhetoric and anti-immigrant hostility worsened conditions for migrants in Springfield. Lewiston’s experience had played out earlier.

Additionally, immigrants arriving in Springfield qualified for special attention. The aforementioned political candidates could have exercised their anti-migrant belligerence in many cities. They chose Springfield, presumably because the migrants there, objects of their wrath, are Haitian. Why are Haitians vulnerable?

A mural painted on an alley wall this month in Springfield, Ohio. | Carolyn Kaster / AP

Black people in what is now Haiti boldly rebelled against enslavement on French-owned plantations. Remarkably, they expelled the French and in 1804 established the independent nation they called Haiti.

Ever since, the United States has spelled trouble for Haiti. Pre-eminent abolitionist Frederick Douglas pointed out in 1893 that, “Haiti is black and we [the United States] have not yet forgiven Haiti for being black.” Long after “Haiti had shaken off the fetters of bondage…we continued to refuse to acknowledge the fact and treated her as outside the sisterhood of nations.”

Scholar and activist W.E.B DuBois, biographer of abolitionist John Brown, explains that “there was hell in Hayti (sic) in the red waning of the eighteenth century, in the days when John Brown was born … [At that time] the shudder of Hayti was running through all the Americas, and from his earliest boyhood he saw and felt the price of repression—the fearful cost that the western world was paying for slavery.”

DuBois’s reference was to the U.S. slavocracy and its encouragement of collective fear among many white people that Black workers—bought, owned, and sold—might rise up in rebellion. They did look to the example of Haiti and did rebel—see Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts.

In the United States, from the Civil War on, the prospect of resistance and rebellion on the part of Black people has had government circles and segments of U.S. society on high alert.

That attitude, applied to Haiti, shows in:

  • S. instigation of multi-national military occupations intermittently since 2004.
  • Coups in 1991 and 2004 involving the CIA and/or U.S.-friendly paramilitaries.
  • Backing of the Duvalier family dictatorship between 1957 and 1986.
  • The brutal U.S. military occupation of Haiti between 1915 and 1934.
  • S. control of Haiti’s finances and government departments until 1947.
  • No diplomatic recognition of Haiti from its beginning nationhood in 1804 until 1862.
  • S. economic sanctions against Haiti for decades, until 1863.

Says activist lawyer Bill Quigley: “U.S.-based corporations have for years been teaming up with Haitian elite to run sweatshops teeming with tens of thousands of Haitians who earn less than $2 a day.”

Ultimately, it seems, threads of governmental callousness, societal disregard for basic human needs, and outright demagoguery coalesced to thrust Springfield and Haitian migrants into the national spotlight. Molelike, the anomalous and little-acknowledged presence of Haiti asserts itself in the unfolding of U.S. history.

As with all op-eds and news-analysis articles published by People’s World, this article reflects the views of its author.

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W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.