Latin America & the US: Haiti & Colonial Interventions; Tariff Reductions; Mexico Highlighted for Military Interventions; Statistics on Drug Death Preventions

Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio in conversation with journalist Julia Tilton from The Daily Yonder, the US's only national news organization for rural people and places.  

Transcript

Julia Tilton: 0:02

Hello everyone, and welcome back to this regular segment of Latin America Correspondent, where I, Julia Tilton of the Daily Yonder, chat with Jon about everything that's going on here in the US, where I'm based, and Latin America. Hi, Jon. How are you?

Jon Bonfiglio: 0:21

Hi, I'm good, Julia. How are you?

Julia Tilton: 0:23

I am doing well. I hear, and perhaps uh some of our listeners can hear as well, some background noises. Um you are joining us from Haiti. Tell us how that is.

Jon Bonfiglio: 0:34

Yep, um, I'm not sure. Well, there are definitely background noises. I think there's background noises in Haiti all the time. Um specifically, there are some builders, there's some traffic, but yes, it is it is a um a place that has ongoing life in evidence um everywhere. It's uh it's I think everybody out there understands that it's complex here. Um it's interesting because it's one of those places I think that that functions sort of, um, but almost no system here resembles a system that you would expect to find um elsewhere. They're definitely not sort of recognizable systems, they're parallel structures, and quite a lot don't function at all. An obvious one springs to mind is is waste, is refuse. Of course, there's no there's um essentially no functioning government here, which means that there are no real state-based structures in place, and an obvious, a real obvious visual as regards that is the fact that there's no waste collection, there's no sort of organization around that. So there is a um there's all of the waste basically sits in public spaces on street corners and has done for a long, long time now in in significant piles. Um and I think what's interesting is that people still clean their the space outside their houses, outside their little porches, outside their doors, but they just sort of sweep it up and then move it across to the pile of rolling waste that's uh sat at the end at the corner of the street. And then of course the rain comes, which it happens, which happens pretty regularly, and then everything washes down uh and moves it all again. And I've seen I mean we live in an age of waste. We undoubtedly internationally live in a disposable and disposal disposable age in which we see single-use plastics all over the place, and I've seen a lot of that in different countries over time, but I've never seen the um the uh what is an overwhelming level of plastic waste that there is here and that coexists with people on a day-to-day basis. So yeah, it is um it is complex to to say the least. What's your at um a distance because I I don't think you've you've been here, right? What's your sort of sense of how Haiti plays into a broader US, Latin America uh narrative?

Julia Tilton: 3:17

No, I have not been to Haiti, but something that sticks with me, a film that I watched when I was in school, Poverty Inc., um, about the nonprofit industrial complex. Um, this harkens back to the age of USAID, which um that complex has obviously changed dramatically over the last couple of months here in the US. Um, but the sort of relationship between Haiti as the aid receiver and, as I just said, the nonprofit industrial complex of sort of NGOs and um, you know, in quotation, do gooders um who send uh perhaps well-meaning aid to Haiti, but in doing so um disrupt uh you know growing uh economic development um and and industry in Haiti by essentially providing goods um from abroad for free when um Haitians could be developing those industries on their own and and growing the economy. Um Poverty Inc. was produced um probably a number of years ago now. I I'm unsure if if that dynamic still holds or if you're seeing that play out at all on the ground um now in 2025.

Jon Bonfiglio: 4:38

Yeah, undoubtedly. Um I think it's really complex, isn't it? Because of course, you know, Haiti needs international assistance, it needs root and branch um economic support, but of course that has to be Haitian-led. But then then you know, who who are the groups, who are the Haitian-led groups that would take this forward? Because you've not seen elections here in in 10 years. So, what sort of structures do you support in that regard? I think it's really interesting what you're saying about poverty inc. The um the the classic example in my brain with that was the 2010 earthquake, which obviously killed um hundreds of thousands. Uh, and of course, then what happens is um international organizations which are also achieve funding through um through disaster support. And they they need to some extent, those organizations need disasters in order to be able to survive because that's where most of their funding sort of comes from, is that emergency funding. But at the time, of course, Haiti was flooded with doctors and medical professionals. But what that meant was that suddenly um the medical professionals that existed in in Haiti, the doctors and the nurses, suddenly there was no market for them because there were all these overseas professionals that were performing functions for free. And that's understandable and it's laudable, but it also the secondary effect of that is that it rips the heart out of a out of a global system. Um, and then the other thing I draw attention to is, and again, you know, it's assistance is needed, but it's how assistance reaches these places and how it's um, I guess, a kind of joined up thinking about how this all takes place, because ultimately the statistic is that as you correctly refer, I regard aid as being something of a military industrial, it's huge, it's a military-industrial equivalent complex, but of anything of a dollar that um that is given ultimately something in the region of five cents. So five percent ends up actually uh reaching a program or work on the ground, and the rest of it goes into the infrastructural costs that an organization has in in in terms of delivering that. And and you can see that on the on the ground here. You can see that habitat for humanity is here, you can see that the UN are here, but they're all in in particular kinds of vehicles, staying in particular kind of kinds of places, which also you know, not to be a down on that, because uh it's it's a difficult context, and these people need to work as well. But of course, that's where sadly a lot of the funding goes to. And then the other thing I think I draw attention to is that there's often this question, which I've had a lot recently, about how did Haiti get to this point? What's happened? Is it just the earthquake? Was it the killing of Jovenel Moïse in 2021? Was it more historic and so on? And and I think it is worth emphasizing and drawing attention to the sort of the historic punishment that Haiti has received since it achieved uh freedom from slavery and independence uh in the first half of the in the early years of the of the 19th century. Uh, and an obvious example was uh between 1915 and 1934 when US President Woodrow Wilson sent Marines to occupy Haiti after the assassination of another president at the time, and he sent Marines to ostensibly to, and I quote, restore order and maintain political and economic stability. But actually, what he was sending them for was to control Haitian finances. By 1922, the US had completely had complete control of the Haitian economy, including the Treasury, and forced Haiti to re-repay American loans. Uh, so that's kind of been the the the the history, the ongoing repeat history of um of sort of the life and times of uh of Haiti. There's a uh an interesting bit of writing by Langston Hughes. In 1915, the American Marines came to Haiti to collect American loans. Haiti was a land of people without shoes, black people whose feet walked the dusty roads to market in the early morning, or trod softly on the bare floors of hotels serving foreign guests, barefooted ones tending the rice and cane fields under the hot sun, climbing mountain slopes, picking coffee beans, wading through surf to fishing boats in the blue sea. All of the work that kept Haiti alive paid the interest on American loans and enriched foreign traders. And it was done by people without shoes.

Julia Tilton: 9:00

Did you want to talk about the um US invasion and and theft of Haitian gold?

Jon Bonfiglio: 9:07

Yeah, so part of the uh the the national bank vaults at the time of um of the American invasion during that 19-year period was a brazen theft of Haitian bullion from the from the national bank. Uh ostensibly, it did make me think that um recently that um uh at least one thing is that uh Haiti's not getting not been in difficulty because of the the tariffs uh that uh the Trump has Donald Trump has imposed upon uh much of the rest of the world. But actually, then it came to my attention that the country's textile sector uh is is struggling. It's already lost nearly 40,000 jobs due to the security crisis, which represents nearly nine-tenths of formal employment and is particularly vulnerable to uh uh to these tariffs. Uh, but I know there's been some movement on tariffs recently, Julia. Can you just talk us through what's been happening in the last week with tariff reductions from the US on coffee, bananas, and and so on?

Julia Tilton: 10:05

Yes, and and certainly Latin America comes into play here. Um we may have discussed this before, but the tariffs date back to Donald Trump's um self-proclaimed Liberation Day in April, where he announced tariffs on virtually every country. Um, last Friday, uh, this was November 14th, Trump made an announcement that he was going to roll back tariffs on over 200 food products, which, as you mentioned, John, includes everyday staples like coffee, bananas, orange juice, also beef. Um, and we we can get into that here in a moment, in response to concerns over the rising price of groceries here in the US. Um, and remember that Trump ran his presidential election campaign last year in 2024, um, on, among other things, on lowering everyday costs on uh things like groceries. So this turnabout came uh after a slew of framework trade deals that were announced also last week on November 13th between the US and Latin American countries, including Argentina, Ecuador, Guatemala, and El Salvador. We've talked before about Argentine beef, of course, um, but beyond rolling back tariffs on beef, the framework deals are also being justified because certain food items like bananas and cocoa and acci berries are not grown on an industrial scale here in the United States. Um, so that's sort of the fruit. Then there's coffee. Last Friday's announcement eliminated import tariffs on coffee beans from almost all producing countries, which were hit with a 10% reciprocal tariff on that liberation day that I mentioned in April. But interestingly, the global coffee power, Brazil, still faces a 40% tariff. And to me, this gets into what feels like coffee politics. So the 40% tariff goes back to this summer when in July Trump added the 40% tariff to the 10% already in place. So for a period of months here, Brazil has been hit with a 50% tariff on exports like coffee. Um, and when Trump added the 40% tariff, he justified it by citing the trial of Jair Bolsonaro, um, of course, his former ally in Brazil, who has since been sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison for an attempted coup. At the time, Trump called the ordeal a witch hunt, one of his favorite phrases there. Um, and so that brings us to here and now in November, when Trump last week announces that he's rolling back the 10% tariff, um, but has made no mention thus far of Brazil's 40% tariff and what the future of that looks like. Um, it's already having an impact here in the US, which is the largest coffee market in the world. The US used to rely on Brazil for up to 30% of its coffee imports. Um, and analysts in the coffee industry are saying that this duty will drive the US to seek beans from elsewhere, whether producing countries in Asia or other countries in Latin America. Um, after the announcements last week, uh, Brazil is saying that it's still seeking to negotiate a deal of its own to get out from this still 40% tariff. Um, but as of right now, November 20th, nothing official has been announced yet. So perhaps that's something we continue to watch.

Jon Bonfiglio: 13:32

Yeah, it seems it's pretty clear that the sort of reduction of tariffs is also being um it's uh a channel that's being advanced, in particular for aligned uh nations. It's a which I guess we sort of knew from the beginning a little bit, it's a kind of a political tool that's that's being enacted. Um, but yeah, it's it is a reminder, being here in in Haiti, of course, that um these economies for Latin American countries are these markets are really, really important. And when suddenly there is a removal of one of these markets, it's not just a sort of a notional economic exercise that there really are uh not just individuals but whole societies and groups of people that are dependent on these systems and they don't have a safety net. So it disappears, and then any kind of economic wherewithal that they had then falls to the ground, and that also ends up necessarily destabilizing significant tracts of of these of these locations, of these spaces, which is in the future also going to exacerbate potential uh migration. I mean, again, here in in Haiti it's really clear that uh the little the the few economies that are robust are very much in the minority. Um and those those number of others that that exist are highly volatile, and that a lot of people do have their eye on some kind of potential future uh future elsewhere. Um what else have we got on the list uh for this uh week, Julia? Um I'm guessing you read, heard, saw about the fact that potentially Mexico is next on the US military target list. Has that made the news in the USA to any great extent?

Julia Tilton: 15:26

Yeah, so I mean, obviously, we've been following on this podcast um US military targets in Latin America, um, which seem to be sort of emanating from the Caribbean. Um, but this week Mexico um has sort of made it into headlines. I'm curious if you can break that down for us, John, because uh frankly, much of the coverage here in the US is still focused on on Venezuela. I um I sent you some headlines about uh Venezuela and and the CIA, and so it seems the media attention is still focused on that. Um, but of course, Mexico it has now entered the picture.

Jon Bonfiglio: 16:03

Yes. Um, well, it's been interesting. I mean, there's been this sort of potential threat of of action on cartels since the beginning of the Trump administration. Uh Marco Rubio a few days ago insisted that there was no unilateral action that would take place without the agreement of the of um of the Mexican authorities of Claudia Sheinbaum, the Mexican president Donald uh Trump, and a couple of days later just sort of shrugged his shoulder and said, Whatever happened, any strikes that took place in in Mexico was okay with with him. Sheinbaum for her part said that this is uh this won't take place under any circumstances. She said we coordinate, collaborate, but we're a sovereign nation. Um it's it'll be interesting to see how the uh rhetoric uh advances, and of course, as you say, Venezuela is still very much in the eye of the of the storm, but at some point that's gonna pass, and I imagine that um that the focus is gonna shift elsewhere to some extent. I think it is also dependent on what takes place with between Trump and Maduro and this potential off-ramp or off-ramps that are being offered to him uh at the moment. And of course, the I guess the fundamental question, which hasn't even been answered in Venezuela, let alone in here in Mexico, is what would military action look like? Because it's not as though um, as has been said many times, it's not as though it's clear, it's not as though there's a front line uh beyond which the cartels exist and in front of which they they sort of don't. So that's uh again that's open to to debate. The um there's also this ongoing, which we've heard about now many, many times, this whole every time that a boat is taken down in the Southern Caribbean, there is the rhetoric that 25,000 lives are saved by each boat strike. And I know you've been looking into those uh numbers. I think we we know which way is which way this discussion is headed, Julia, but is there any truth whatsoever to those numbers?

Julia Tilton: 17:58

Yeah, so I mean, no, there is not. I I I did look into these numbers um just to recap here. Um repeatedly, both Trump and the White House have made this claim that each strike that the US makes on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean saves 25,000 American lives. That's ostensibly connected to the opioid and overdose crisis here in the US. Um, Trump has brought this up multiple times. He most recently cited this figure on Monday, November 17th. Um, the Associated Press dug into this and published a very well-done fact check, which I'm gonna source from here. Um, basically, experts in public health say the number makes no sense. The AP writes, quote, the numbers to support Trump's claim don't add up and sometimes don't exist. People in the US who die from drug overdoses each year are far fewer than the amount Trump suggests have been saved by the boat strikes his administration has carried out since September, end quote. So the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that's the CDC, they collect data on drug overdoses here. And according to the most recent numbers, there were about 97,000 drug overdoses between July 1st, 2024 and June 30th, 2025, so a 12-month period. Um, since September, the United States has attacked 21 boats and counting in the Caribbean. So if we do some quick math, 21 times 25,000 equals 525,000, or over half a million Americans saved in a three-month period, um, which is wildly higher than the total number of deaths in the recent 12-month period that I just cited. Um, I was really struck by this half a million number. So I actually did some digging of my own. I looked on the CDC's overdose prevention data dashboard, which has easily navigable data going back to 2020. Between 2020 and 2024, there were 286,522 overdose deaths in the United States. And obviously, I think it's important to note here a part of this data set includes the COVID pandemic when numbers were down. Um, numbers of overdose deaths have increased between a low of just under 50,000 in 2020 and a high of just over 75,000 in 2023, and then they've dipped again in 2024. And I think it's important to go through these numbers because I don't want to negate that drug overdose is a serious issue here in the United States. It touches many families personally. It's something that um certainly has garnered attention from the Trump administration and before that the Biden, the Biden administration. Um, and so it it's no coincidence that as a byproduct of drug overdoses and the opioid epidemic being a serious issue here in the United States, we have verifiable data collected by the CDC, and the 25,000 number just doesn't have any roots anywhere. It's very unclear from both the reporting that I've read and the digging that I've done myself where this 25,000 figure even comes from. I mean, clearly the 286,000 deaths over the last five years, over the last five years, I'm gonna repeat that, is significantly less than the half a million that Trump is claiming would have happened over the last three months if not for boat strikes in the Caribbean. So it's just nonsense.

Jon Bonfiglio: 21:28

Yeah, and as you as you'd say, and look, the the the opioid crisis, the drugs issue in the USA undoubtedly is a serious, widespread, overwhelming issue. I mean, there's um you can see that in uh across many, many cities, but the kind of the irony there is that the rhetoric and the sort of the attack on these processes that's being undertaken, if they were uh being undertaken seriously, wouldn't be targeting Venezuela for a start. Like they're not a serious um indication or attempt to address the situation in any in any way, shape, or form. It's a question I often ask myself, and I don't know the answer to this, is um is it all fully Machiavellian? Like are these processes deliberately just doing um sort of strategizing in parallel, or is the administration so deeply misinformed and advised by entirely the wrong people that they just don't know what it is that they're doing? I don't know if you have a perspective on which side of the or which side of the fence you fall on in in that um because it's definitely one or the other.

Julia Tilton: 22:39

Yeah, I agree that it's it's one of the other. My sense is that at the helm of the administration, Trump doesn't necessarily have a plan. I I it's it struck me when we were talking about Mexico and sort of Mexico now being the center of attention uh vis-a-vis the US foreign policy in Latin America, is that in many ways this wreath is a distraction tactic, right? Like there are a lot of hurdles that the Trump administration is facing here at home in the United States. Uh the news cycle this week has been dominated by the release of Jeffrey Epstein files and the congressional vote on the matter, um, in addition to rising costs of living, rising costs of energy, rising costs of groceries. And so, in some ways, to me, this reads as a distraction tactic and sort of the Trump administration filling in the logic as they go with, as we've just talked about, these erroneous figures.

Jon Bonfiglio: 23:37

Um this is not related to the USA and Latin America, but I'm gonna ask you the question anyway, because I'm also uncertain as to what's being planned here. But the the sort of the signing, the instruction to um to Congress to sign over the release of the Epstein files, um, what is the strategy there? There must be something else up his sleeve because he's not just gonna allow those those to be fully released.

Julia Tilton: 24:02

Yeah, I am wondering that myself. To me, and the coverage that I've read on this just sort of ongoing uh scandal with with the Jeffrey Epstein files, is that prior to the congressional vote, it it almost seemed as though the Trump administration was banking on other high-profile names, Bill Clinton, former president uh being one of them, um being in the Epstein files to sort of, again, divert the attention away from Trump that, you know, I wasn't the only high-profile individual involved in these scandals. Um, you know, here, look at look at all of these names. But I think it was an underestimation by the Trump administration and perhaps Trump himself, that actually people are really curious what Trump had to do with Epstein. And the Washington Post um has a great data visualization on just sort of the volume of names and sort of where and how they're mentioned over the course of the 50,000 documents that have been released so far. Um, and it's pretty staggering to look at that visualization and see that, you know, Trump encompasses basically the entire data visualization compared to other high-profile names. Um, and so it just seems like a miscalculation from the Trump administration that they're not going to be able to distract them, you know, their way out of this one.

Jon Bonfiglio: 25:21

Yeah, I think the only way I can read it is that there's going to be some kind of other impediment which is going to be manufactured up at some point, whether it's to do with legal sensibility or something uh like that. Because otherwise it'd be a I mean, I know that there's no choice because that those voices aren't going away, even within his own sort of MAGA movement. Um, but uh yeah, let's uh wait to see. Sorry for that uh that slight distraction away from of course the I mean I I to some extent it is relevant because you know the the what uh what happens to him and how he advances is going to have uh uh an impact on on the region. I mean, if we uh we've seen historically that when a president wants to distract away from something taking place domestically, that affects foreign policy. Um so who knows what will take place with Venezuela over the course of the next the next few weeks and whether that will have an impact uh there. Juliet, for the moment, as ever, uh thank you so much and uh look forward to speaking to you again in a week or so.

Julia Tilton: 26:23

Yes, stay strong. Talk soon.

Jon Bonfiglio: 26:26

All right, take care.