Trump: A Year of Horror, Laughter, and Resistance
Also in this edition: Mexico’s biocultural wealth. Seventy thousand farmworkers demand decent jobs. Electoral reform: demands of Mexicans abroad.
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Trump Triggers Unprecedented Popular Resistance
President Donald Trump once described himself as a “stable genius,” but one year into his second term neither Americans nor Mexicans —and much less people in other countries— know how to deal with such an unstable White House. Despite the confusion he sows, deliberately or unconsciously, one of the president’s clearest achievements has been provoking an unprecedented wave of opposition and resistance across the United States, along with a growing chorus of voices worldwide pushing back against U.S. hegemony.
Even so, it has been a never-ending year, and the prospect of three more years is exhausting. Will there be another election in the United States? is now a common question in everyday political conversations, one fueled by the president himself. Trump recently remarked that “when you think of it, we shouldn’t have an election” in November 2026. The next day, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president was “joking.” Not everyone is laughing.
Immigration raids, attacks on free speech, and repression of critics and opponents —including the killing of a white civilian protester— have generated more protests than during Trump’s entire first term. In Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, Charlotte, and New Orleans, among other cities, whistles —symbols of resistance— are heard daily to warn of raids by federal agents. According to estimates from Harvard University, more than 10,700 protests were recorded in 2025. New ecumenical coalitions are emerging, with people of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist and other faiths fueling the resistance. It now goes beyond angry shouts and acts of defense and solidarity, translating into political change in the electoral arena.
To the question of what limits his power on the world stage, Trump responded: “My own morality… I don’t need international law.” There is ample evidence to support that claim. In the first year of his second term in the White House, the commander in chief has carried out —unilaterally or jointly with others— 822 bombing operations using planes or drones, kidnapped a head of state, and killed more than 100 unnamed people on boats, among other violations of domestic and international law.
A constant target for the magnate since the start of his second term has been Mexico, and scarcely a week goes by without the White House at least indirectly threatening unilateral military action on Mexican territory. The United States pressures Mexico to have its troops or the CIA attack drug traffickers there, read a January headline in La Jornada. Sheinbaum has always responded “No” to such proposals, stating that they violate national sovereignty.
“The United States is undergoing a major strategic shift,” explained Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón, Mexico’s secretary of economy, in an interview with La Jornada. “This transition that has begun means a new trade and geopolitical order. Trade because it is based on an economic nationalism we haven’t seen in a very long time.” For the secretary, Trump’s threats are part of his negotiating strategy: “He’s used to a negotiating style where you’re under stress.”
Understanding that dynamic is one thing; how to respond is another. Almost daily, Mexico’s president is forced to reply to some statement by her U.S. counterpart. She has earned strong support both nationally and internationally for her agility and management of this relationship, but, of course, some wonder whether Mexico will join Canada, Greenland, and Venezuela on the map of what Trump desires.
But Mexico is not alone. In a conversation with Sheinbaum, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declared, “We condemn the attacks against Venezuelan sovereignty and reject any vision that could imply the outdated division of the world into spheres of influence.” More than 230 politicians, theorists, and activists from 50 countries are calling for an international antifascist and anti-imperialist conference in Porto Alegre, Brazil, at the end of March.
The Quote:
I have no throne nor queen, nor anyone who understands me, but I’m still the king… A stone in the road showed me that my destiny was to roll and roll… And a mule driver also told me it’s not about getting there first, but knowing how to get there.
—José Alfredo Jiménez
In Case You Missed It
◻️ Mexico’s biocultural wealth. La Jornada del Campo offers a series of reports on heroic efforts by guardians of biodiversity in Guerrero. One axis is corn, the staple of Mesoamerica, domesticated 10,000 years ago, a cultural and economic symbol that evolved thanks to Indigenous peoples and farmers, and became an essential continental food to this day. The supplement also explores the national impact of the milpa, which reflects ancestral knowledge and cultural diversity, and efforts to protect this wisdom. For a perspective on the hemispheric moment, see the editorial by the supplement’s director, Armando Bartra.
◻️ Seventy thousand farmworkers demand fair pay and decent work. Agricultural laborers arrive before dawn at ranches in southern Baja California, and begin harvesting crops without benefits or social security under an illegal scheme, explain spokespeople for the Alliance of Organizations for Social Justice. Therefore, the decade-long struggle for basic rights in San Quintín continues.
◻️ The King lives on. Music, love, and the ranchera genre have immortalized José Alfredo Jiménez. Proof lies in the hundreds of people who gathered to celebrate the centennial of his birth. “They say that to understand Mexico you have to go through certain rites. One of them is listening to José Alfredo,” says Javier Aranda Luna.
◻️ Mexicans make up 20 percent of Latin America’s ultra-rich. Of the region’s 109 millionaires, 22 are from Mexico and together hold $219 billion in wealth, reported Oxfam in its new report. But in Mexico, unlike other countries, the list is static: the names change, not the surnames. Mexico’s tax system is among the “worst” in the region, as there is no wealth tax or inheritance tax.
◻️ Electoral reform: demands of Mexicans abroad. The Collective of Federations and Mexican Migrant Organizations urged all political actors “to center in the national debate the need to facilitate voting from abroad, as well as to move toward real mechanisms of political representation, including seats in the lower and upper houses.”
◻️ All aboard! Political cartoons at full steam! Trains move forward, stop, rust, and start again. In the work of cartoonist Antonio Helguera, a contributor to La Jornada, they were never just machines: they were a way of thinking about the country, of reading its promises, failures, and conflicts. Helguera’s creative universe and sharp critical eye return to Los Pinos Cultural Complex with the exhibition ¡Pasajeros al tren! ¡Caricatura política a todo vapor!
◻️ Popular Graphics and the 1968 student movement. Artist Adolfo Mexiac, “one of the fundamental printmakers of Mexico in the second half of the 20th century,” was a “key figure in two spheres that seem not to touch: the Popular Graphics Workshop (TGP) and the 1968 student movement,” recounts cartoonist Rafael Barajas, El Fisgón.
