Water and food. When I think of the hierarchy of human needs, these two come to mind. Traveling in Latin America since November has got me thinking about how transportation makes those two essentials possible. If you want to destroy a community, targeting its transportation is a good way to start.
Today, February 23, 2026, Mexican drug cartels are attacking the country’s transportation system to avenge the death of their leader. As one Michoacan resident told Al Jazeera: “They have co-opted the leaders who manage transport, and at any moment they can block the entrances and exits of a city … they can completely paralyse a city’s movement,.. All basic services are disrupted: going to hospitals, grocery shopping, ordering food. It becomes total chaos.”
When I was in Peru in January, I saw how bus extortions and assassinations of transport workers threatened the basic well-being of the entire country. People can’t eat if they can’t get to work. Farmers can’t get goods to markets without transportation.
In these last months, I have also seen how my own government creates transportation crises in Latin America.
- Throughout this fall and winter, the United States bombed boats in the Caribbean, killing more than 140 people and crippling the life-giving fishing and tourism industries
- On January 3, while we were in Colombia, the Trump administration bombed Caracas to steal Venezuelan oil.
- On January 29, the United States strangled Cuba by imposing deadly tariffs on oil imports to the petroleum-free island, which lost Venezuelan oil after the US takeover. No oil means a halt to the essential tourist industry, as planes from Europe and Canada can not refuel in Cuba. It means no garbage trucks bringing refuse away from residential areas. It means no trucks bringing food from farm to table.
It is devastating to see the destruction of Latin American transportation for revenge and profit. But the essential nature of transport means it can be a catalyst for social transformation.
In Colombia, I learned about how municipalities built metrocables as part of the metro transit system, linking communities in the highlands to urban centers. The process was as important as the infrastructure—a positive response to the demands of Columbia’s poorest urban residents. In Chile, where I am now, I read about how the price rise in subway tickets in 2019 that led to a mass revolt which catalyzed a deep, radical process of rewriting the Constitution, This achievement was not erased by the fact that the radical document was not promulgated; This revolutionary chapter in recent Chilean history can rekindle a movement when the right time comes.
Latin America has shown us again and again that when people organize and build mass coalitions, they manifest their power in the streets. We have seen that happen in the last few days in Argentina. On February 20, President Javier Milei imposed a new 12-hour day on Argentine workers. Unions called a general strike, filling the streets. Transportation workers in Peru have done likewise, multiple times, building coalitions with Gen Z and Indigenous communities. Their combined power just brought down one more corrupt President.
International solidarity is often manifested in taking to the highways, skies, and seas. Right now, across the world, a flotilla of boats is bringing material aid to Cuba.
Water and food are humans’ most essential needs, but in the global economy we live in, transportation makes those essentials possible. If the United States spent what we spend on armaments and war, providing access and funding for mass transit in the Americas, it would decrease the need for people to migrate, diminish the power of drug cartels, elevate the quality of life for all, and build sustainability for next generations in Nuestra Americas.
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In October 2023, my spouse and I sold our house in Minneapolis, MN. USA. Since then, we have been traveling the world. I write a blog about each place, with a historian’s eye and an internationalist lens, wondering how memory can liberate the present.