On March 7 and 8, President Donald Trump convened a meeting of heads of state and government—admirers or subordinates, depending on one's ideological vantage point—to formally establish the so-called "Shield of the Americas."

Cuban President Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel aptly characterized the gathering as a "small reactionary and neocolonial summit," citing both the ideological pedigree of most attendees and the nostalgic neocolonial undercurrent pervading the conclave, as well as the limited real weight of the countries represented. Notably, the participants account for only 30 percent of the population of Our America and just 25 percent of the total GDP of the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking region.

The summit can also be characterized as "small" in terms of its unattainable objectives: combating drug trafficking and expelling China from the Americas, in line with what has been dubbed the "Donroe Doctrine"—ambitions that are easily stated but impossible to achieve under the current U.S. mandate. By any measure, the meeting was most likely an initiative conceived by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has devoted considerable effort to managing President Trump's so-called "pacifist" projects around the globe, while his own attention remains narrowly fixed on Latin America—and, more pointedly, on his personal agenda against Cuba.

The summit was attended by the heads of state or government of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile (represented at the time by incoming President José Antonio Kast), Paraguay, Ecuador, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, and the United States. The gathering was held at Doral, a private club owned—needless to say—by President Trump himself, in what amounts to an undeniable conflict of interest: certain expenses were assumed by the host government, as is customary, while the proceeds accrued to the leader of that same government.

There is little doubt that a reactionary political affiliation was an unspoken prerequisite for attendance at Doral. Accordingly, the gathering featured conservative and right-wing heads of government, with particular prominence given to those who currently hold the banner of the Latin American far right. Secretary Rubio, who in all likelihood curated the guest list, made no effort to include countries where coordination against drug trafficking would be operationally relevant—Colombia and Mexico being the most obvious examples. Those nations are governed by progressive administrations and were simply not invited.

What follows is perhaps the most contradictory element of the entire affair. With few exceptions—which invariably serve to confirm the rule—several of the invited leaders are personally implicated in, or preside over governments with documented ties to, narcotics trafficking, or face alarmingly high levels of drug-related violence and homicides.

Perhaps the most egregious case is that of Daniel Noboa, who nominally leads Ecuador. The involvement of his family—including his father, the wealthiest man in the country—in cocaine trafficking to Europe has been widely reported, as have allegations of money laundering and offshore corporate structures revealed in the Pandora Papers scandal. The dynamic at play here appears directly proportional: the deeper the entanglement with narco interests, the more explicit and submissive the alignment with Washington.

A similar assessment applies to the government seated in Asunción. The reports associating Paraguayan President Santiago Peña with money laundering—likely linked to drug proceeds—illicit enrichment, and narco infiltration of state institutions are well known. Behind him stands the ruling Colorado Party, led by Horacio Cortes and linked to organized crime, as well as ruling-party Senator Erico Galeano, who was imprisoned for his role in a narco network known as "Operation A ultranza Py."

Honduras, too, inevitably enters the picture. Much could be said—from the fact that its current leader owes his position to brazen interference by Trump in the country's elections, to the ties that he and other members of the government and Congress maintain with former President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in New York courts for dispatching no fewer than 400 metric tons of cocaine to the United States. This is not slander; it was the Americans themselves who demonstrated that, during the tenure of what is now the ruling party, Honduras served as a hub for that extraordinary operation.

Argentina, too, warrants attention. The country was never historically a stronghold of narco-trafficking—yet since the arrival of Javier Milei, a marked increase in drug activity has been recorded, particularly along the Paraná River corridor, which borders Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, especially in the province of Rosario. His is a government marred by corruption—including a cryptocurrency scandal involving LIBRA—led by a president who performs the role of the eccentric and who considers himself more Trumpist than Trump himself.

Another participating country, less frequently discussed in international circles, is Trinidad and Tobago, which holds a grim record for violent crime, organized criminal activity, and gang networks tied to drug trafficking toward the United States. This island nation rivals Ecuador with a homicide rate of approximately 40 per 100,000 inhabitants, followed at some distance by Costa Rica, at 16.

The summit appeared to function as a formalization of imperial leverage over those "partners" Washington views with contempt, regarding them as weak or outright cowardly. At minimum, the Doral event represented a genuine repudiation—if not an outright betrayal—of the spirit, the agreements, and the very existence of CELAC, and of the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace. Trump himself made this plain with characteristic candor: "We have come to affirm a new military coalition."

The meeting also effectively served as an escalation of imperial instinct across the continent, rendering the Summit of the Americas mechanism defunct. As for the OAS, not even Trump and Rubio bother to argue it serves any purpose. After all, the American president has already invented a new United Nations in the form of his "Board of Peace." Remarkable.

The aforementioned contempt was on display from the very outset of Trump's inaugural remarks. What resonated most in the major international media coverage of the mini-summit was not what was agreed upon or imposed, but rather Trump's comment that he would never speak the "stupid" language of at least 85 percent of those present—who responded with polite smiles, perhaps believing it was a joke rather than what it plainly was: unadulterated disdain. Not satisfied, Trump reiterated days later his supremacist view that Latinos carry defective DNA.

The effects of the summit were immediate. On that front, another highly significant factor emerges—one that was not even discussed at Doral: the imperial interest in privileged, and potentially exclusive, access to natural resources held by the participating countries, particularly the so-called rare-earth minerals abundant in Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. Those nations wasted little time rushing to sign or ratify cooperation agreements with U.S. entities for the extraction of those resources.

In any case, no summit was needed to lay bare the true motivations of the hosts. It is worth recalling the candid remarks of General Laura J. Richardson, former head of the U.S. Southern Command, who was removed from her post in 2025—reportedly for being a woman. General Richardson once stated, with notable bluntness, that U.S. interest in the region under her command lay in its abundance of natural resources, including fresh water, and that Washington claimed the "right" to control them.

In terms of broader consequences, before a fortnight had passed since the summit, several countries moved swiftly to sign or ratify military agreements—among them renewed or newly negotiated SOFAs (Status of Forces Agreements), bilateral accords that grant privileges and immunities to U.S. troops stationed in, or passing through, the signatory nations.

This extends the inexplicable privilege of U.S. Marines to operate with impunity in these countries, above and beyond local laws and almost certainly in contradiction of the ideals of the founding fathers and independence heroes of those same republics. The list of atrocities committed by members of U.S. forces is long and boundless—but no matter; the leader in power has no alternatives and must comply or face political extinction.

The Shield of the Americas has already drawn comparisons to the sinister Operation Condor—a criminal CIA-backed enterprise implemented in the 1980s, through which several military dictatorships exchanged intelligence and coordinated action against political opponents. In those days, the enemy was the terrorist or the communist; today, the enemy is the drug trafficker, or more precisely, the "narco-terrorist"—a designation Secretary Rubio made a point of clarifying publicly, the better to widen the list of potential targets.

Another consequence worth noting is the unmistakable alignment with foreign policy positions that are frankly reprehensible—most notably, the reactions of several participating governments condemning Iran for defending itself by whatever means available against the aggression of the United States and Israel. Milei, true to his theatrical instincts, bellowed that he considered himself the most Zionist president in the Americas.

From the summit, it can also be said that one of the objectives enshrined in the Donroe Doctrine—the exclusion of China—does not appear to have gained traction. Nor was there any evident mechanism for coordinating the isolation of Cuba, despite conspicuous efforts to that end from Secretary Rubio's office in his campaign against Cuban medical missions, which have been expelled from several countries to the detriment of millions of their citizens.

But the Doral mini-summit was quickly overtaken by events—specifically, the catastrophic trajectory, for both the United States and Israel, of the escalating confrontation with Iran. At the time of the conclave, Trump was boasting of swiftly achieving a decisive victory over the Persians; it has since become apparent that this may rank among the most colossal of his many and varied falsehoods.

And since nothing happens without consequence, an instructive Iranian victory should also contribute to the unraveling of the absurdity that is the Shield of the Americas. A pointed question hangs in the air—hardly a philosophical one: if the U.S. Navy could not prevail against the Iranians, what exactly can it accomplish in a region with a proud and distinguished history of independence struggles? In any event, the final word belongs to these peoples, whose governments traveled to the south of Florida to pay homage to power.

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Díaz / CubaSí Translation Staff