Read part one of this interview.

Donald Trump’s second administration opened like a flash of lightning. It’s shaking the American political establishment by making the use of USAID funds transparent, reversing the Biden administration’s open border policy, and appointing a cabinet that promises to make America healthy again and focus the defense machinery on lethality and dismantling discriminatory ideas such as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

The steps have been so many and at such speed, that a disorientation is perceptible among the major media outlets. They have not managed to find a common focus to gun for.

But beyond internal politics, with the United States being the global power, what prospects are there for the American continent from the change in the White House?

From Miami, political scientist Julio M. Shiling has dedicated himself for years to monitoring the issue. Lecturer, author of 14 books, and media commentator, he runs the websites Patria de Martí and The Cuban American Voice. He has a Master’s degree in Political Science from Florida International University and is a member of The American Political Science Association, the PEN Club of Cuban Writers and the Academy of Cuban History, both in exile.

Here is part two of my interview with Julio.

A key player in South America, due to its strategic and historical relationship with the United States, is Colombia. However, now under a leftist government, we have seen tensions. How do you foresee the conduct of relations between the two states?

First, we have to understand that since the 1990s continental socialism has been reformed and perfected by a subversive move by Havana. With the fall of Soviet communism, it went on to establish the dictatorial model of the Sao Paulo Forum. The particular case of Gustavo Petro, now president of Colombia; he was instrumental in obeying and complying with Castro’s instructions to abandon the armed struggle and to incorporate himself into the methodology adopted at the Sao Paulo Forum: entering public life, trying to win elections and, once successful, perpetuating themselves in power by denaturing the democratic system.

This has been the path that most leftists have tried. In some places they have not achieved the level of perfection that they have achieved in Venezuela, Nicaragua, or Bolivia. The dictatorial model of the Sao Paulo Forum urges, for example, co-opting the armed forces and producing key constitutional changes to remain in power.

That did not happen in Ecuador, for example, which is why Correa left; that did not happen in Brazil (largely because Bolsonaro was part of the intelligence of the Armed Forces and understood perfectly well this project that Fidel Castro engendered), and in Colombia Petro is having difficulty reaching that place that continental socialism yearns for, for the simple reason that the Armed Forces in Colombia are resisting, and the institutions are strengthened.

Petro’s initial reaction, of wanting to confront Trump by saying that he would not accept the deportation of people who had committed crimes in the United States, did not last long. The Colombian opposition immediately insisted that Petro was going to ruin a long and very important relationship with Washington.

During the Trump administration, alliances will largely be strengthened; continental socialism is already receiving instructions from Havana, and in this we can include Mexico as well.

The relationship with Petro will not be strengthened, and perhaps we will see a rapprochement between the Trump administration and the opposition. On the other hand, I do not believe that Colombia will fall into the dictatorial model of the Sao Paulo Forum.

The case of Argentina is completely different. President Javier Milei himself considers the United States a friend and ally in his intention to rebuild the national economy.

Javier Milei understands well the nature of the enemy and has a moral and ideological commitment to the cause of freedom. This differentiates him from many Latin American democratic politicians, who have shown attachment in a symbolic sense, with public pronouncements, but without going beyond that. The praxis has been very lukewarm.

On the other hand, we see Milei in places like the Davos Forum, where the representatives of globalism — which is Fabian-type socialism and is the great threat to the Western democratic world — were criticized to their faces for the campaign of subversion and the great damage that these currents of thought were doing to freedom and the free world.

Precisely, Donald Trump has many things in common with Milei, even in his style. And we can also add the figure of Elon Musk, who has an affinity with the Argentine president.

In other words, Milei is going to receive extraordinary solidarity from the United States under this administration to, precisely, confront continental socialism and establish a healthy model and one of freedom for Latin America.

Doctor Carlos Sánchez Barzaín has called, among others, Bolivia one of the paradictatorial governments in the region. How has the Palacio Quemado reacted to Trump’s inauguration?

Perhaps Bolivia’s great failure was when it squandered the exercise of the right to rebellion a couple of years ago. It was time to really lead Bolivia towards full democracy with freedom, imprisoning Evo Morales and outlawing his party, the Movement for Socialism — which more than a political party seems like a war machine, an instrument of subversion that should not be allowed to participate in elections.

Taking into account the elements that Bolivia, under socialism, offers to drug trafficking (from production to distribution), it is reason enough for Washington to not look favorably on what is happening there. Bolivia cannot be separated from the equation of threats for the United States, because the drugs that are entering the country represent a risk to national security.

And although we are dealing with all these countries separately, the reality is that they form a common front, in which Cuba is its headquarters, playing today the role that the Soviet Union played before the 1990s. The difference is that the Soviet Union commanded and financed the operations, but in the case of Cuba, it commands and orders, but lives at the expense of Venezuelan oil, drug trafficking, the neo-slavery of the labor of its own citizens, and the remittances of the Cubans it is exporting.

Ecuador, immersed in presidential elections, is debating between a continuation of the government and a return to Correaism. Would a government of this second current model a hostile foreign policy towards the United States? Would it ally itself with the governments of Xiomara Castro in Honduras or Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico?

Ecuador is one of the successful cases that managed to escape Castro’s neo-colonialism, simply because the armed forces were not only not co-opted, but Rafael Correa was directly warned that if he continued on his liberticidal course they would exercise the right to rebel and remove him from power. Correa had no choice but to be much more pragmatic in his model of governance.

Without a doubt, we see how the subversive socialist movement in Latin America, I repeat, led from Cuba, does not rest and may accept a defeat, but they see defeat simply as a requirement to wait a while and return to the offensive again.

Ecuador has just had an election. It will go to a second round again, and we see the great problem of these elements that move and continue their activism to return to power.

That is why the United States is seeking to establish alliances with countries like Argentina and with democratic movements in the region to offer an alternative. It is very encouraging to see that the first region visited by the United States, represented by Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, was Latin America. This is very important, it shows us that there is an approach that gives much more priority to Latin America than perhaps at other times, especially now with such a diverse political panorama.

We have, for example, in El Salvador a government that, despite the imperfections it might have, is much more ideologically in line with the defense of freedom and the desire to combat criminal currents that respond to globalist and socialist interests.

In Mexico, with the Morena party — engendered by Castro’s intelligence — the panorama is bleak. Now, Claudia Sheinbaum, a convinced Marxist, is at the head of the country. Castro medical brigades are working in Mexico in institutions like the armed forces (because they have to be co-opted). The role of the autonomous militias of the Mexican drug cartels has similarities to groups like Hezbollah in the Middle East.

But when Trump declares the drug cartels a terrorist organization, it is not a symbolism, but rather he gives the license to act anywhere (including Mexican territory) to the United States military, sovereignly, in defense of national security.

90% of drugs enter the country through the southern border of the United States. Death by overdose is the leading cause of death for American men between 18 and 49 years of age. So, I repeat, it is a national security problem.

The relationship with Trump, besides Sheinbaum giving the impression that there is tacit support (because she committed to sending 10,000 Mexican soldiers to the border) does not mean that Washington does not understand the anti-freedom nature of the Morena government. It does not seem to me that the United States is believing the farce that these governments that still operate democratically do so because they love freedom, but because they have not managed to establish the dictatorial models that they have as a paradigm (like the Cuban one).

Is the alliance of 21st century socialism in South America over?

Of course not. It is simply taking on other nuances, but everything continues on the same course of trying to come to power.

There has been a mutation and the methodology has definitely changed from coming to power through democratic means and then naturalizing the system and staying in power. All the measures we are seeing from the United States are defunding many groups that were promoting throughout Latin America currents such as gender ideology, critical queer theory, and other subversive tools to promote cultural socialism. And these groups are being hit where it hurts.

It is incredible that in Latin America all of this has been financed by previous administrations in the United States, which in no way promotes the interests of freedom, democracy, or American values. Nobody believes it, much less American taxpayers.

So this reflects an awakening, an awakening in Americans, thanks to the MAGA movement. It is a movement that is confronting the globalist precepts of the European Union, that is confronting Islamic terrorism, Chinese totalitarianism, and the Russian post-Soviet model known as Putinism.

It is very healthy and we are seeing demonstrations, in different ways, even in the United States itself, dismantling the administrative state and reversing the advances of cultural Marxism in American institutions.

Lula (Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva), one of the main promoters of this neo-Marxist movement, seems to have opted for a low-profile foreign policy in terms of his criticism of Trump. Why?

Why are we seeing this? It’s very simple. Fidel Castro’s interest when he created the dictatorial model of the Sao Paulo Forum was to give it an appearance of a certain moderation.

That is, when they realized that it was going to be very difficult to co-opt the Brazilian armed forces, they have used Brazil as a mediator. We saw it both with Lula, and under the other previous leftist government, that of Dilma Rousseff.

But this role of mediator is to benefit Castro-communism in all its recommendations, so this does not happen by chance.

Internally, look at the persecution against former President Bolsonaro and the censorship campaigns that have been carried out in Brazil under Lula and to a lesser degree, but with the same intention under Rousseff. They follow a script that is mirrored in the United States, when the Democratic machinery used censorship against Trump and carried out censorship campaigns almost exactly like what we are seeing in Brazil.

This is not a coincidence, it is the script born of thinkers from the Frankfurt School, from Herbert Marcuse, in what is called repressive tolerance — that is, an effect that called for not tolerating any position that could contradict communism, and if civil rights had to be suspended from people, well, they were suspended. Basically, it was an argument for censorship, but under the pretext that a space of freedom is being promoted by repression. And we have disguised this under the names of “hate language,” “hate crime,” “disinformation.”

All of these are mantras that the radical Left uses to censor. If this has happened and has worked this way in Brazil, under Lula, we could ask ourselves why there is a certain modesty regarding criticism of Trump. It is just a strategic move, requested by Havana to advance greater interests.