Chaos below Equator
Key Markets report for Friday, 29 May 2026
While all eyes have been focused on the Middle East and Ukraine, the empire has been on a rampage in South America. In January, Donald Trump successfully kidnapped Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro, but the Donroe doctrine is looking to subjugate other nations too, including Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru. This all triggered a reaction among the local populations who are yet to learn their lesson about the “dignity of labour.” Them natural resources won’t just extract themselves and board ships bound for more civilized regions.
The Bolivians might be the most uppity among them. On 22 December last year, a general national strike was led by miners and the Bolivian Workers’ Central (COB), protesting the removal of fuel subsidies and other “structural reforms.” Then, about a month ago a new round of protest strated over land reform disputes. By 12 May, miners and mining unions joined the protests, setting up road barricades and demanding a resignation of the pro-Empire, neoliberal president Rodrigo Paz. This led to violent clashes on 14 May in La Paz.
Rodrigo Paz vs. Evo Morales
A series of documents recently leaked out indicating that President Paz has been colluding with with President Trump to subject Bolivia’s former president Evo Morales to the same treatment as his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro. The big idea was to kidnap Morales, who is a charismatic leader of Bolivia’s indigenous and labor movements, so his mere presence in his own country is an irritant to the empire.
To protect Morales, ordinary Bolivians have surrounded his home to guard him against any kidnapping attempts. Hundreds of people hold vigils around his house day and night, without interruption. The reason why Morales is not their president is, again, down to lawfare, just as we’ve seen in Romania, France, and many other nations. He was banned from running, leaving only three alternative candidates, all three of whom were pro-Empire, neoliberal candidates. Paz won, but became very unpopular after only six months in office.
You can’t develop, you must be a colony
The reason is that the Paz government has been overturning many of Morales government’s reforms. Evo Morales was elected in 2005 and remained in power for 14 years until he was taken out in a U.S.-orchestrated coup in 2019. When he took over in Bolivia, her GDP was only $9 billion. By 2019, it rose to $42 billion. According to Morales himself, the coup was orchestrated specifically to halt Bolivia’s progress and dismantle her new system of governance.
According to the vision of Morales’ movement (EvoPueblo), by 2030, Bolivia would have 41 lithium processing plants in operation. The coup brought all those operations to a halt, with the intention to turn over the nation’s lithium resources to Western multinational corporations. Rather than supporting the country’s development, the government of Rodrigo Paz is reversing it and returning the country to the original plan: colonial subjugation and poverty.
One of the ways Morales improved Bolivia’s economy was by renegotiating its resource export contracts, because it retained only 18% of all revenues generated from exports, with 82% going to Western corporations. For example, Bolivia was only receiving $1 per million BTUs (British Thermal Units) for its natural gas exports. Morales was easily able to obtain $8/mBTU from Brazillian importers and $10/mBTU from Argentina, illustrating just how grossly the country was being looted by by its colonial owners, but also what irritates them about leaders like Evo Morales.
As a result of similar reforms, Morales brought the nation’s GDP growth to 12% per year and lifted 38% of its population out of desperate poverty. He also created favorable conditions for smallhold farmers to prosper, but these reforms are now being reversed under Rodrigo Paz, creating administrative restrictions and imposing new taxes on smallhold farmers while aleviating tax burdens on large agricultural concerns. This is the typical imperial policy of squeezing small farmers to vacate the land, enabling large land owners to consolidate ownership over most of the country’s agricultural lands.
Hondurasgate
Bolivia is not the only nation under imperial assault. Earlier this year, the Hondurasgate scandal errupted, revealing politicians and military officers attempting to turn Honduran military against the people while U.S. and Israeli corporations sought to plunder the country’s wealth and assets. Honduras former President (2014-2022) Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado (JOH) was caught leaving a voice message to Tomás Zambrano on 18 March 2026. Zambrano is another politician and lawyer: ,
“In Honduras, we need force, we need logistics, we need blood. If you want to keep the people under control, you have to oppress them, squeeze them, and counter violence by generating violence. Whatever President Trump says, goes.”
The reason JOH is as eager to serve Trump as he appears to be is related to his high-profile drug trafficking conviction in the U.S. Trump subsequently pardoned him, probably with some strings attached. Evo Morales attributes all the turmoil afflicting Latin America today, in his own words, to a “genocidal triumvirate:” Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and Argentina’s President Javier Milei, who dispatched two Hercules transport planes loaded with riot gear to help pacify the insubordinate Bolivians farmers and miners.
The continuity of neocolonial policies
It would be mistaken to attribute these events to Donald Trump and his “Donroe” doctrine. More likely, they are simply the continuation of long standing policies seeking to subjugate and colonize Latin American (and African, and Asian…) countries. The attempts to remove and destroy Evo Morales politically date back decades, and more aggressive action was started under Joe Biden’s administration.
In December 2021, a meeting was convened at the U.S. embassy, which led to the arrest, in January 2022 of Colonel Maximiliano Dávila Pérez, national director of Bolivia’s Special Force to Fight Drug Trafficking (FELCN) in Evo Morales’ government. His arrest was part of the investigation of Morales, trying to find something, anything to implicate him in the drug trade and put him away, but apparently there was nothing to find. Dávila Pérez, who was meanwhile flown to the U.S. was offered a deal: testify against Morales and you’ll walk free. But Dávila Pérez declined cooperation and the empire apparently lost patience: Morales would have to be Maduro’d.
It’s not (just) Trump
There have already been two attempts to kidnap or kill Evo Morales. The first attempt was made on 27 October 2024 (before Trump even won the election). It involved three helicopters with military personnel and police officers. Morales and his entourage survived in spite of being subjected to gunfire. His driver was wounded and their vehicle riddled with bullets. The new government in Bolivia made no attempt to arrest anybody and there have been no investigations. What leaked out, however, was that one of the three helicopters (belonging to the Bolivian air force) was piloted by a Colombian national, later identified as a CIA agent.
More about this story is available in Grayzone interview with Evo Morales by their repoerter Oscar Leon:
The empire is panicked
The developments in Latin America, Ukraine, Middle East and Africa seem to suggest that the Empire is in a fit of panicked rampage seeking to take control of every region of the world it can, while it can. Since the large prizes like Ukraine and Iran seem to be slipping away, those like Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Burkina Faso or Greenland with their resources may be that much more important.
Another significant aspect of this is that while Trump’s Presidency brought much of all this out into the open, the same policies were carried out before his time in office, suggesting that those who formulate the empire’s plans aren’t up for democratic elections, nor are those plans subject to the democratic will of the people. At the same time, they have their work cut out for them since they have to reckon with the democratic unwillingness of target populations to oppose them. These conflicts will be with us for many years to come with a very significant impact on the way our world evolves.
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Today’s trading signals
With yesterday’s closing prices we have the following change for the Key Markets portfolio:
