Chicago Latinos see danger, strategy in Trump's threats toward Latin American countries
In the wake of the U.S. military invention in Venezuela on Saturday, President Donald Trump trained his gaze on other countries where he felt the U.S. should take action.
Trump notably took aim at Cuba, Mexico and Colombia as possible future targets.
He said Colombia is being “run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.” He said "we’re going to have to do something" about Mexico, noting drug cartels were "very strong" there. Trump said Cuba is "ready to fall." Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested Cuba could face U.S. military intervention.
Chicagoans with roots in those Latin American countries are now working out what to take away from the president's saber rattling. Some say that military action could prove disastrous for the U.S. and could have unintended effects, while others see Trump taking on corrupt leaders.
"I don't see the U.S. going into Mexico or Cuba at this point. He's putting pressure on these governments," said Albert Coll, a professor of law and U.S. foreign relations at DePaul University who was born and raised in Cuba.
Coll doesn't take Trump's threats at face value, and said that the president is often hyperbolic. He's not alone — after Trump threatened Mexico, the country's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, dismissed the remarks, saying it was his way of talking.
But some Mexican nationals in Chicago are worried about Trump's threats to intervene in their home country, said Manuel Castro, a coordinator at the Coalicion de Migrantes Mexicanos Chicago.
"We are worried that this can create an excuse for the U.S. military to tackle another country," he said.
Castro said the type of intervention seen in Venezuela would not solve the problems the Trump administration is aiming to fix. In fact, Trump may find that intervention in Mexico has an unintended effect on his administration's push against illegal immigration, Castro said.
"Mexico is doing fairly well" economically, he said, and some Mexican nationals are considering moving back there. "If the US invades Mexico ... it will be catastrophic," he said. "There will be more people emigrating to the U.S."
Others went further.
"This could be a global catastrophe," said Claudia Medina, a U.S.-born Colombian citizen who lives in the Chicago area. She said she takes Trump's threats seriously. Most of her family still lives in Colombia.
Though she appreciates the president is taking interest in Latin America, she says Trump is doing it the wrong way.
"This is not the way — through bombing," she said.
Further military intervention in Latin America could be like "Iraq 2.0," said Isabel Martinez Mulcahy, who fled as a political refugee to the U.S. from Colombia as a teenager.
For years, the current Elmwood Park resident treated U.S. soldiers as a creative art therapist.
She said many U.S. service members she has treated have ties to Latin America, whether they are immigrants themselves, or have spouses from those counties. Sending them to, for instance, Colombia, would be devastating, she said.
"When they get on land where their grandmother came from, it won't be good for anyone," she said.
Coll doesn't see the Iraq War parallel.
"This is not Iraq," he said. "There was corruption [in Venezuela], but there were political parties. ... This is a different kind of country."
Ultimately, Coll said he supports the U.S. arresting Maduro, who was responsible for the millions of Venezualans who left the country, many of whom ended up in the U.S.
For Alfonso Seiva, president of the Coalicion de Migrantes Mexicanos Chicago, an alternative to invasions and shows of force would be to invest more money into Latin American countries.
"Fixing these things with the army is not possible," Seiva said. "We need to give money to Latin America to fix the infrastructure in these countries — to make sure we provide for these people. Violence won't fix these problems. It's not the way to make Latin America great."