Pirate Wire Radio

Right-wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro outperformed polls to emerge as the winner of the first round of presidential elections in no small part because of his focus on security in Brazil.

Although his campaign has been short on details, he has promised a crackdown on armed groups in the country as well as the construction of “mega prisons”, and stricter sentences for violent crime. It’s a pattern that has emerged among right-wing candidates in general in Latin America in recent years.

But despite Flavio’s claims that the left has encouraged criminality, violent crime is down dramatically in Brazil. Moreover, Flavio’s past makes him an unlikely choice to really become a “law and order” head of state.

The candidate has been closely linked the country’s milicias, paramilitary-esque mafias, in Rio de Janeiro, and mafia structures with ties to corrupt politicians.

During his time as senator, Rio’s mafia even called him “our man in the senate.”

To explain that further, as well the context of organized crime in Brazil more broadly, we spoke with Brazilian historian Benjamin Fogel, who is the deputy director of the Alameda Institute, as well a journalist who covers Brazil regularly.

What do Brazil’s criminal structures look like in comparison to other countries in LATAM, and how Flavio it into that dynamic?

Tune in to this week’s episode of Pirate Wire Services to find out!

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In the United States, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE, is now the most well-funded law enforcement organization on the planet. Its yearly budget exceeds the military spending of roughly 180 nations. That’s out of a total of 195 globally.

And the agency, just one appendage of the US Department of Homeland Security, is a mere snapshot of the increasing power of the US police and surveillance state overall, which has grown increasingly both militarized and intrusive in recent years.

The United States is engaged in a massive anti-migration witch hunt, one which extends far beyond its own borders.

To speak to that, this week we are chatting with Nathan Goodman , a Senior Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and border researcher, who argues that when nation-states adopt border militarization, that has inherent contagion effects.

That is, rather than simply staying at the border, the militarization of border security tends to spread militarization elsewhere. This contagion occurs both within and outside a nation’s borders.

Nathan writes the Substack Guns, Guards, and Governance

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Colombia's new ultra-right wing President, Abelardo de la Espriella, has said he is going to put all of Colombia’s armed groups in body-bags, but he is already suffering considerable setbacks.

Both history and current dynamics suggest that there is no purely military solution to ongoing conflict in the country, and a hostile shut-down of an entire city, and indeed region this week illustrates exactly why.

Many of the groups being targeted have decades of experience resisting the same military operations that De la Espriella is employing, including under his predecesor, Gustavo Petro.

Find out more, as well as what is currently going on in a region where “iron hand” strategies may be fomenting conflict rather than making security gains, on this week’s episode of Pirate Wire Radio.

Thomas Garrison runs the Substack Armed Groups of Colombia.

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Paraguay often doesn’t get a lot of attention outside of South America, but that’s been changing in recent years — especially for members of the global “New Right.”

How did this idyllic country in the Southern Cone become a destination for anti-vaxers, trad caths, Brazilian nationalists and anti-migrant migrants from Europe and the United States?

In part, its due to Paraguay’s history, including a war that decimated 90% of the country’s male population, but its also due to Latin America’s longest dictatorship, and outright alliances with Nazis in the 20th century.

To put that story in context this week, we spoke with with Asunción-based journalist Laurence Blair about his decade reporting on Paraguay, and his independent media outlet The Paraguay Post.

We get to all that, and more. Check it out in this week’s episode of Pirate Wire Services!

You can follow Laurence Blair here on Substack, or on Instagram.

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The Malvinas! The Falklands! The Malvinas! The Falklands!

Argentinian President Javier Milei has been a tear lately over Argentinian ownership of the islands, which have been a source of controversy and contention for decades.

Meanwhile, US President Trump is hinting he may back Milei’s claims, and right-wing Israeli politicians have expressed unconditional support for his bid.

But does all the noise really mean there is any “there”, there?

We speak with longtime pirata and resident Argentina expert, Amy Booth, about the past, the present, and the likely future of the Malivas/Falkland islands.

And we get into the possibility of a penguin revolution upending everyone’s plans!

Check it out on this week’s episode of Pirate Wire Radio

As media is increasingly bought up by billionaires and huge corporations, and the world veers towards authoritarianism, please consider taking out a paid subscription to support independent media. PWS will never fear criticizing power

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This week at Pirate Wire Radio, we speak with David Lingelbach and Valentina Rodríguez Guerra, from the Center of the Study of Oligarchs, about Oligarchy in the Americas. From the Char Clan, which helped put new Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella ahead in recent elections, to the history of Oligarchs and Oligarchies more broadly across the region.

They are consolidating power across the hemisphere in terms of wealth, politics, and perhaps most influentially — defining the very parameters through which we view the world itself.

Lingelbach and Rodríguez are the authors of a new book on the subject, titled “Games Without Thrones,” which examines how oligarchs behave, and how they’re accumulating power in the modern world.

We talk about all of that, and more, especially in the context of Colombia, where oligarchs have always held considerable power.

Tune in!

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We speak with Latin America studies fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, and longtime reporter, Will Freeman, about new revelations by the Washington Post and the New York Times that alleges the US is directly involved in a drone strike that killed 8 Ecuadorian fishermen.

Will conducted a deep-dive on the subject for the New Yorker in June. We talk about what this new reporting means for a country which is facing accusations of grave human rights violations as well as democratic backsliding as right-wing President Daniel Noboa consolidates power even as his “iron fist” strategies fail to stem rising criminality and violence.

What is really behind the surge? And what are the long-term goals of Noboa’s political project?

We discuss all that and more this week at Pirate Wire Radio.

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Abelardo de la Espriella was sworn in this week and took power in Colombia. In many ways, his victory represents the end of Uribismo, the right-wing ideology named after and led by Alvaro Uribe.

Despite their tepid support in the runoff, traditional power structures are turning away from de la Espriella, even if the electorate is not.

He forged a new coalition of evangelicals, traditional Catholics, business interests, and even made inroads into some poorer areas of the country which have leaned left in recent years.

Is this part of the “New Left”, popularized by leaders like Trump and Bolsonarro? We think there is room for comparison. But it also comes from Colombia’s adaptation of the culture wars, and online ultra-right spaces where extremist gender ideology and misogyny have forced their way into mainstream conversation.

“The Tigre” took all of that, threw in some ultra-nationalism, some AI videos, and rhetoric about security to storm the halls of power.

This week we spoke with longtime contributor Adriaan Alselma about exactly how it happened.

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Colombia holds elections Sunday May 31. Ultra-right-wing candidate Abelardo de la Espriella has a history of supporting paramilitary forces as well as legal intimidation of journalists who do not give him flattering coverage.

Adriaan Anselma, executive editor of Colombia Reports, believes that the emerging front-runner for the right doesn’t want to only apply “iron fist” tactics against crime, he wants to crack down on dissent as well.

The veteran reporter says that the emerging populist, who is an open admirer of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, represents a return to “criminalizing opposition in the name of security concerns.”

He isn’t alone. Many journalists in the country have criticized the candidate as a would-be strongman who represents a return to some of the darkest days of Colombian politics, when right-wing death squads eradicated entire leftist parties, even assassinating the father of current leftist front runner Ivan Cepeda.

Meanwhile, after a contentious campaign of infighting, right-wing political machinery has finally consolidated behind Abelardo: including some of the most corrupt clans in the country.

Although he claims that Cepeda will make Colombia “the next Venezuela,” it isde la Espriella’s platform that threatens democratic rule.

You can hear more in this week’s episode of Pirate Wire Radio.

With the US about to enter a mining sector in Venezuela dominated by criminal armed groups, and in the heart of the Amazon Rain Forest, many experts are focused on profits.

But mining in Latin America has long been fraught with problems, from ecological disaster to the empowerment of non-state actors. Some communities, long ignored by the states in which they live, say the benefits of foreign investment by international conglomerates outweigh the negative consequences.

But even in the best of cases, the lions share of mining profits leave the country along with the companies running operations, and inflict a sharp environment cost.

This week we spoke with Peter Wood, a gold mining researcher in Colombia, about the details of how it all works, new markets in Venezuela, and the criminal armed groups profiting from informal mining and gold laundering across the continent.

As media is increasingly bought up by billionaires and huge corporations, and the world veers towards authoritarianism, please consider taking out a paid subscription to support independent media. PWS will never fear criticizing power.

You can also donate a one-time gift via “Buy Me a Coffee”. It only takes a few moments, and you can do so here.

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Hasta pronto, piratas!