In this NACLA Report, the contributors explore what a peoples’ policy for the Americas might look like. By bringing together these perspectives, we hope to encourage a broader democratization of U.S. foreign policy, in which policymakers both take the opinions of non-U.S. citizens seriously and examine human rights abuses at home. Though we hope that the U.S. empire will soon reach its end, even a progressive administration will likely not be able to rapidly dismantle the imperium. With the United States set to maintain its hegemony, progressive U.S. policymakers require the input of those who truly understand Latin American and Caribbean politics, economics, culture, and society. Otherwise, people like Elliott Abrams—who in the 1980s abetted brutal massacres in Guatemala and El Salvador and who is now the U.S. special envoy to Venezuela—will continue to hold sway.
