Miguel Afonso Caetano"Venezuela’s sweeping new mining law, passed on April 9, is the latest in a series of domestic “reforms” purportedly directed at rebuilding the country’s energy and mining sectors. This follows years of debilitating US sanctions and disinvestment, which have seen the mining centers of the Amazonas, Bolívar, and Delta Amacuro states abandoned to governance by “criminal syndicates.” But buried deep within the text of this law is a historic concession that will redefine Venezuela’s relationship with transnational energy and mining capital for the foreseeable future, a mandate that Caracas must submit to investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS)–style arbitration.
By agreeing to resolve business lawsuits in extraterritorial courts, the Venezuelan legislature under President Delcy Rodriguez has agreed to surrender a key pillar of their authority. Under an ISDS-style system, transnational energy and mining corporations would be granted the extraordinary power to sue the Venezuelan state for enacting policies like environmental protections or minimum wage increases, which could be perceived as threatening “expected future profits.” These are dual procedural and policy tools, promoted largely by development banks and the United States government, designed to disincentivize socialist state formation in favor of “de-risking” state formation.
The inclusion of this arbitration clause is an enormous defeat for the broader Bolivarian resource nationalist project."
https://jacobin.com/2026/05/trump-latin-america-resource-nationalism-lawfare
The Donroe Doctrine: Making LatAm an Investor’s Paradise
The Trump administration is forcing Latin American governments into arbitration courts that grant multinationals the extraordinary power to sue states that nationalize resources or even just raise the minimum wage, if perceived to threaten investor profits.
General Strike Now
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The Tico Times
Peter Link 🍉🇨🇺🇵🇸🐧