Features

Human-elephant conflict and housing needs of villagers

Agbo is back home at Mahakanadarawa leading his harem (Source: YouTube).

Published

1 month ago

2025/12/12

Thilina Walpola

During the recent Ditwah cyclone, elephants were seen floating in treeless floodplains that were once their forest habitats. On a good-weather day in 2017, near Kokilai, the Navy found a pair of elephants riding waves after a beach outing two kilometers offshore in the high seas. Divers guided them ashore after a 12-hour struggle. Trains barrel through elephant herds regularly, decapitating half a dozen in one tank. A herd of elephants over 100 parades across a highway serenading motorists stuck in a kilometer-long traffic jam. Recently, adding insult to injury, a lone elephant was sitting deep inside a latrine pit behind a small house, and was dug out by a caterpillar tractor. A speeding bus ran over and killed a baby elephant, and police shot dead the mother who stood crying over her baby’s body. The tusker named Sinharaja was still a baby when the Army pulled it out from an agri-well some years ago in Nuwarakalaviya. He is now royalty tasked with carrying the sacred tooth relic at the Dalada Maligawa. These extraordinary events, rubrics of a national drama, show that fates, ours and elephants, are inexorably linked.

Over 7,000 elephants and countless villagers in Sri Lanka are torn apart daily by myriads of unpleasant encounters. Our elephant population is multiplying alongside us, making these encounters even more remarkable. As the government owns all elephants and writes laws for them, it also owns the product of these encounters. Since it has law books for the villagers, too, it cannot disregard the mess its protégé, this patrician in the wild, leaves on the villagers’ doorstep. Only the government can find a lasting solution to blunt the prickly edges of this national emergency, but not without contributions from the villagers.

George Orwell wrote in Animal Farm, “Some animals are more equal than others.” But the sentimentally charged public opinion about our cultural icon cannot outweigh the burden it placed on villagers living on the edges of elephant habitats.

As will be explained later, I propose a Gam Udawa-type house for each newly married couple who choose to remain within their village’s boundaries. If anyone edits this out as impractical, please come down from the ivory towers and visit a village bordering an elephant corridor to see for yourself the internecine damage elephants and villagers cause to each other.

There is no rich body of literature on the kinetics of village housing. But the volume of villagers’ experience is a safe guide to navigate it. I saw, over the span of three decades, how a major elephant corridor, one or two kilometers wide, adjoining my village above Mahakanadarawa reservoir, got swallowed up as villagers built (and still do) homes there. Thus, one way to stop this is to contain the village where it is now. Halting home-building activities in elephants’ homes is a futuristic idea that the government has not tried. This experience also suggests that a study of the environmental impact of new village housing is in order.

Little parts that drive conflict

The government does not hear or see the little parts that drive the human-elephant conflict in the village. The only elephant problem it has is an 8 am to 5 pm thing, caged and tied to concrete stumps with steel chains at a compound in Dehiwala, minutes from Colombo’s urban universe. Together with Dehiwala, provincial compounds like Pinnawala, and a few national parks hold less than 1% of the Sri Lankan elephants, leaving the rest to roam around and harass villagers. Officials who have the power and know-how to resolve this tragedy do not feel it in real time. They do not live anywhere near where elephants live.

Indeed, it is a stretch one may suggest the government can find new space for the elephants like grandiose, unwieldy ideas like port-city-style landfills along the coast. However, we can work with existing landmasses more studiously using other methods. Driving elephants to the current Managed Elephant Ranges (MER) is not one of them. MER seems to lack sufficient food, as evidenced by the emaciated elephants we see in these ranges. An elephant is a big animal and needs a bigger lunch setup.

HOW WE GOT HERE

Until the mid-20th century, abundance of forest accommodated all villages and some more elephants; there was no reason to think villagers were taking elephants’ feeding ground any more than governments had any plans to reduce friction before it reached an unmanageable level. Elephants’ feeding grounds occupied forest area about two kilometers wide in higher ground between two tank cascade systems, each independently sharing water from parallel watersheds.

Islands in the sea of forest

Villages in the North Central, Northwestern, Eastern, and eastern half of the Southern Province remained as islands in this sea of forest. Collective personality embedded in the village was that residents could hunt, harvest timber, and make small chena plots in these forests. The concatenation of many such forest buffers formed elephant highways that were major feeding grounds. Everyone lived happily until the government’s neglect in addressing the population explosion of elephants and our own created the present predicament like a Class 4 wound.

A village community is a swarm, usually numbering around 100 individuals. Increasing membership in a swarm trigger some to move out to new locations. In a colony of bees, for example, an alternate queen bee will lead a part of the overpopulated colony out to set up a new community. Similarly, in the village, where two or three couples marry each year, and if the space for housing sites is limited, as is the case in old villages, a couple might emigrate to another village or town. The one or two with what biologists call the ‘group mind’ stay in the village, becoming the seeds that begin to spawn more warms, amplifying the elephant-human problem.

The new couple is looking to build a house closer to their larger family. But as space for potential housing is gone, the next option is to move beyond the traditional village boundary, where the one- to two-kilometer elephant feeding grounds begin. On these grounds, this family finds not only a spot for a house but also timber that had been the property of elephants and other wildlife since before the village’s genesis. In a nutshell, this is how elephants began to lose their land.

Land grab

With this land grab, though isolated, friction over space ensued, leading to physical confrontation with elephants. The government’s inaction in mediating this problem is telling.

As years go by, this progression has led to the appearance of dozens of new home gardens, each slowly taking up at least a hectare of virgin forest. In a few decades, hundreds of such hectares will have been devoured by these progenitors entering the village marriage fraternity.

Meanwhile, the explosion of the rural population seems to influence the mechanics of elephants’ behavioral evolution. Back then, elephants were shy. I remember a herd disappearing into the woods in seconds after seeing a moving firebrand tipped with glowing embers. Aiming a flashlight made the herd disappear into the woods like blowing smoke into a beehive. In contrast, now a wild elephant caparisoned with a dry crust of mud bath walks casually on a road, duly giving right of way to motorists, and stops by a lonely roadside tea kiosk. He waits patiently, not for tea, but until the kiosk owner offers him a bunch of ripe bananas!

Today, elephants are so common and share our space more often, villagers assign lovely names to identify tuskers. In our childhood, we rarely saw a tusker because he owned a large swath forest, so his contact with us was minimal. Hence, the name tag was the least he needed.

HOUSING IN CITY AND VILLAGE

Whether people live in a crowded city with sprawling multistory housing compounds or in a village with two dozen homes under an irrigation tank, their universal human need is housing. In the city, with limited horizontal expansion, the housing idea must become improvisational. Thus, it grows vertically because it’s the only direction the cramped city can build. Having no such problem, after the old gammedda ran out of space, villagers moved horizontally to new tracts of forest beyond the village borders. Missing in the discussions on the loaded thesis of elephant-human conflict is this premise – the housing need of newly married villagers, the overarching subtext of this problem, not seen by anyone outside of the village. This married couple clear a track of forest, marking the beginning of the gradual encroachment of the village into an existing elephant range.

When it comes to housing, villagers in elephant-roaming areas are left to fend for themselves. Overcrowding in villages had not received the government’s attention because it never put a premium on housing in a village.

Both parties are victims here. Any steps to help them have become untenable due to poor management (of the problem) and the uncontrolled population upsurge of the parties. This drama is what the successive governments have missed seeing. Although the government and private sector have been generous with housing issues in the city, not extending the same kindness to villagers is why they are in this loveless embrace with elephants.

Meanwhile, beginning in the mid-20th century, the city has adapted to meet its residents’ housing needs. The scale ranged from clusters of one-room homes like UC Quarters in Urban Council jurisdictions, to modest multi-unit housing compounds, ‘flats,’ like the eponymous ones at Narahenpita, Maligawatta in Colombo. Over the past couple of decades, towering megastructures catering to the new affluent residents have further diversified the city’s housing options.

The elephants are wanderers and have all the land to move around. But villagers are no longer the itinerant bands they once were in their distant past. Due to their proclivity to acquire acreage from freely growing forests, they become fixed targets for elephants. But don’t accuse the villagers of being xenophobic towards elephants. We see they never show schadenfreude – enjoying an elephant’s misfortune, while it struggles to climb out from an agri-well or a canal. Instead, standing on the edge, they speak kind, encouraging words to the traumatized animal. Some even throw banana stumps at him to eat.

FAILED HOUSING PROJECTS (WIYAPARA) IN THE 1980S

Often, the government itself is the culprit of expanding the village into elephant corridors by introducing new housing projects. Such housing schemes were called wiyapara gewal (project homes). It turned out to be a failed government idea.

Near my village, in the 1980s, the government marked off housing plots along a cart road that ran through a 2-kilometer elephant corridor which began from the end of our tank bund. This stretch separated us from a series of neighbouring villages in the upper reaches of the Mahakanadarawa reservoir, built in 1959. Until then, elephants freely moved between Padaviya, Nachchaduwa, and Kalawewa tanks, using forest corridors between tank cascade systems, including the above, rarely entering villages.

After Mahakanadarawa gobbled up an extensive virgin forest area, elephants circumventing it on the way to Kalawewa stumbled upon a surprise: a society of homes was sitting on the above forest corridor that had always belonged to them. Villagers cut down the verdant forest and started home gardens in their place under the aegis of the aforesaid wiyapara project. It bridged the neighboring village into one extended community. One family even fenced off the kamatha-sised water hole that elephants enjoyed on the rocky outcrop called Wannamgala and enclosed it in the new garden lot with the sign “balla hapai” (dog will bite)!

The Member of Parliament for the area was behind this project, with a piecemeal aid package worth about Rs. 25000 to each land recipient. With that kind of economic magic wand, a half dozen villagers yielded, and now this row of houses bisects what was an elephant highway, sending elephants’ equanimity to coexist with human settlers downhill. Historical blunders like this tell us to reconstruct untested housing concepts to fit the present.

FEW PROPOSALS

Discouraging villagers from spilling beyond village boundaries to build new homes must be a priority in any plan designed to address elephant management issues. It is a way to stop the slow oxidation of elephant corridors where newlyweds continue to stake out claims for home sites.

It is unfair to deny villagers the opportunity to own a piece of their own home garden. On its part, the government can help by creating employment or home-garden opportunities by introducing them to garden crop methods and small-scale industries, which will provide them with a meaningful livelihood and a reason to stay within the village’s borders.

The government must also devise the same plan it uses to address overcrowding in city swarms, by building small irrigation colony-type houses within the village situated for newlyweds in villages on the borders of elephant habitats. New families will appreciate this idea that their government is giving them a hand with a small house within the village limits.

My proposal may sound like a fictive reverie. But math speaks for itself. Consider this: conceivably, if we can prevent that one newlywed couple from carving out its space in a forest tract used by elephants, after a few decades, we would have saved dozens of hectares for elephants by preventing couples from moving there to build new dwellings.

I ask the government not to think of the pink elephant – the cost – in considering this project. If it cannot build the house for free, recover a partial cost from new owners in easy installments based on their verified income.

There are many private and public tracts within a village that remain fallow or undeveloped. The government can offer to purchase these to build new homes. What happened to Alfred House Gardens in Colombo – 3 over a century ago gives us ideas on how to apply the summary of that history to a village where, generally, real estate behaves similarly.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the owners of Alfred House Gardens partitioned the opulent estate, endowing it to the city for a greater purpose. My premise here is that a villager with his own Alfred House estate in the village, parts of which remain fallow, may wish to place a corner of it on the market for ready cash. Suppose the government offers an enticing price. In that case, I have no doubt the owner might consider it. Haven’t we seen this in newly partitioned large coconut plantations elsewhere?

The government will then build a small house here and bestow it on the newly married couple. This is one couple that will not pose a threat to elephants’ right of way. If we can push this simple idea to fruition, in a decade or two, encroachment into elephants’ roaming lanes can be reduced considerably around this village. A fitting paradoxical allegory for this is an African proverb that says: “The way to eat an elephant is to take one bite at a time.”

Furthermore, the government may amend the President’s Fund or create an Elephant Fund to provide small housing loans specifically to newlywed couples in such villages. It must suspend the irrational, sneaky and flagrant absurdity of tax-exempted vehicle imports, now allowed to certain privileged government officials. Tax this exclusive club and use the money for this program. Each new car landing on Sri Lankan soil will pollute the environment and be one more headache for elephants feeding at Minneriya tank.

To identify which villages are likely to encroach on elephant corridors, the wildlife department must survey and designate their boundaries. This step is every bit as essential as declaring stretches of forest as elephant corridors. Also, an accelerated tree-planting program to rehabilitate deforested areas on the edges of elephant corridors must be a government priority.

The government must not reward large farming interests and the solar power industries by allowing them to take up elephant habitats. A papaya plantation has alternatives that an elephant family does not.

Finally, failure to resolve this problem will itch our nation’s conscience and shame us deeper. The few patches of forest we can keep uncleared are the ones that tell us just how many more hectares of them refuse to be cleared.

Lokubanda Tillakaratne chronicled life in a village in Gammadde Ninnadaya, and a defunct traditional judicial system practiced in Nuwarakalaviya villages in Rata Sabhawa (Sarasavi Books).

By Lokubanda Tillakaratne ✍️

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Features

Counting cats, naming giants: Inside the unofficial science redefining Sri Lanka’s Leopards and Tuskers

Published

21 hours ago

2026/01/12

Thilina Walpola

For decades, Sri Lanka’s leopard numbers have been debated, estimated, and contested, often based on assumptions few outside academic circles ever questioned.

One of the most fundamental was that a leopard’s spots never change. That belief, long accepted as scientific fact, began to unravel not in a laboratory or lecture hall, but through thousands of photographs taken patiently in the wilds of Yala. At the centre of that quiet disruption stands Milinda Wattegedara.

Sri Lanka’s wilderness has always inspired photographers. Far fewer, however, have transformed photography into a data-driven challenge to established conservation science. Wattegedara—an MBA graduate by training and a wildlife researcher by pursuit—has done precisely that, building one of the most comprehensive independent identification databases of leopards and tuskers in the country.

“I consider myself privileged to have been born and raised in Sri Lanka,” Wattegedara says. “This island is extraordinary in its biodiversity. But admiration alone doesn’t protect wildlife. Accuracy does.”

Raised in Kandy, and educated at Kingswood College, where he captained cricket teams, up to the First XI, Wattegedara’s early years were shaped by discipline and long hours of practice—traits that would later define his approach to field research.

Though his formal education culminated in a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Cardiff Metropolitan University, his professional life gradually shifted toward Sri Lanka’s forests, grasslands, and coastal fringes.

From childhood, two species held his attention: the Sri Lankan leopard and the Asian elephant tusker. Both are icons. Both are elusive. And both, he argues, have been inadequately understood.

His response was methodical. Using high-resolution photography, Wattegedara began documenting individual animals, focusing on repeat sightings, behavioural traits, territorial ranges, and physical markers.

This effort formalised into two platforms—Yala Leopard Diary and Wild Tuskers of Sri Lanka—which function today as tightly moderated research communities rather than casual social media pages.

“My goal was never popularity,” he explains. “It was reliability. Every identification had to stand scrutiny.”

The results are difficult to dismiss. Through collaborative verification and long-term monitoring, his teams have identified over 200 individual leopards across Yala and Kumana National Parks and 280 tuskers across Sri Lanka.

Each animal—whether Jessica YF52 patrolling Mahaseelawa beach or Mahasen T037, the longest tusker bearer recorded in the wild—is catalogued with photographic evidence and movement history.

It was within this growing body of data that a critical inconsistency emerged.

“As injuries accumulated over time, we noticed subtle but consistent changes in rosette and spot patterns,” Wattegedara says. “This directly contradicted the assumption that these markings remain unchanged for life.”

That observation, later corroborated through structured analysis, had serious implications. If leopards were being identified using a limited set of spot references, population estimates risked duplication and inflation.

The findings led to the development of the Multipoint Leopard Identification Method, now internationally published, which uses multiple reference points rather than fixed pattern assumptions. “This wasn’t about academic debate,” Wattegedara notes. “It was about ensuring we weren’t miscounting an endangered species.”

The implications extend beyond Sri Lanka. Overestimated populations can lead to reduced protection, misplaced policy decisions, and weakened conservation urgency.

Yet much of this work has occurred outside formal state institutions.

“There’s a misconception that meaningful research only comes from official channels,” Wattegedara says. “But conservation gaps don’t wait for bureaucracy.”

That philosophy informed his role as co-founder of the Yala Leopard Centre, the world’s first facility dedicated solely to leopard education and identification. The Centre serves as a bridge between researchers, wildlife enthusiasts, and the general public, offering access to verified knowledge rather than speculation.

In a further step toward transparency, Artificial Intelligence has been introduced for automatic leopard identification, freely accessible via the Centre and the Yala Leopard Diary website. “Technology allows consistency,” he explains. “And consistency is everything in long-term studies.”

His work with tuskers mirrors the same precision. From Minneriya to Galgamuwa, Udawalawe to Kala Wewa, Wattegedara has documented generations of bull elephants—Arjuna T008, Kawanthissa T075, Aravinda T112—not merely as photographic subjects, but as individuals with lineage, temperament, and territory.

This depth of observation has also earned him recognition in wildlife photography, including top honours from the Photographic Society of Sri Lanka and accolades from Sanctuary Asia’s Call of the Wild. Still, he is quick to downplay awards.

“Photographs are only valuable if they contribute to understanding,” he says.

Today, Wattegedara’s co-authored identification guides on Yala leopards and Kala Wewa tuskers are increasingly referenced by researchers and field naturalists alike. His work challenges a long-standing divide between citizen science and formal research.

“Wildlife doesn’t care who publishes first,” he reflects. “It only responds to how accurately we observe it.”

In an era when Sri Lanka’s protected areas face mounting pressure—from tourism, infrastructure, and climate stress—the question of who counts wildlife, and how, has never been more urgent.

By insisting on precision, patience, and proof, Milinda Wattegedara has quietly reframed that conversation—one leopard, one tusker, and one verified photograph at a time.

By Ifham Nizam ✍️

Features

AI in Schools: Preparing the Nation for the Next Technological Leap

Published

21 hours ago

2026/01/12

Thilina Walpola

This summary document is based on an exemplary webinar conducted by the Bandaranaike Academy for Leadership & Public Policy ((https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqZGjlaMC08). I participated in the session, which featured multiple speakers with exceptional knowledge and experience who discussed various aspects of incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into the education system and other sectors.

There was strong consensus that this issue must be addressed early, before the nation becomes vulnerable to external actors seeking to exploit AI for their own advantage. Given her educational background, the Education Minister—and the Prime Minister—are likely to be fully aware of this need. This article is intended to support ongoing efforts in educational reform, including the introduction of AI education in schools for those institutions willing to adopt it.

Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept. Today, it processes vast amounts of global data and makes calculated decisions, often to the benefit of its creators. However, most users remain unaware of the information AI gathers or the extent of its influence on decision-making. Experts warn that without informed and responsible use, nations risk becoming increasingly vulnerable to external forces that may exploit AI.

The Need for Immediate Action

AI is evolving rapidly, leaving traditional educational models struggling to keep pace. By the time new curricula are finalised, they risk becoming outdated, leaving both students and teachers behind. Experts advocate immediate government-led initiatives, including pilot AI education programs in willing schools and nationwide teacher training.

“AI is already with us,” experts note. “We must ensure our nation is on this ‘AI bus’—unlike past technological revolutions, such as IT, microchips, and nanotechnology, which we were slow to embrace.”

Training Teachers and Students

Equipping teachers to introduce AI, at least at the secondary school level, is a crucial first step. AI can enhance creativity, summarise materials, generate lesson plans, provide personalised learning experiences, and even support administrative tasks. Our neighbouring country, India, has already begun this process.

Current data show that student use of AI far exceeds that of instructors—a gap that must be addressed to prevent misuse and educational malpractice. Specialists recommend piloting AI courses as electives, gathering feedback, and continuously refining the curriculum to prepare students for an AI-driven future.

Benefits of AI in Education

AI in schools offers numerous advantages:

· Fosters critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills

· Enhances digital literacy and ethical awareness

· Bridges the digital divide by promoting equitable AI literacy

· Supports interdisciplinary learning in medicine, climate science, and linguistics

· Provides personalised feedback and learning experiences

· Assists students with disabilities through adaptive technologies like text-to-speech and visual recognition

AI can also automate administrative tasks, freeing teachers to focus on student engagement and social-emotional development—a key factor in academic success.

Risks and Challenges

Despite its potential, AI presents challenges:

· Data privacy concerns and misuse of personal information

· Over-reliance on technology, reducing teacher-student interactions

· Algorithmic biases affecting educational outcomes

· Increased opportunities for academic dishonesty if assessments rely on rote memorisation

Experts emphasise understanding these risks to ensure the responsible and ethical use of AI.

Global and Local Perspectives

In India, the Central Board of Secondary Education plans to introduce AI and computational thinking from Grades 3 to 12 by 2026. Sri Lanka faces a similar challenge. Many university students and academics already rely on AI, highlighting the urgent need for a structured yet rapidly evolving national curriculum that incorporates AI responsibly.

The Way Forward

Experts urge swift action:

· Launch pilot programs in select schools immediately.

· Provide teacher training and seed funding to participating educational institutions.

· Engage universities to develop short AI and innovation training programs.

“Waiting for others to lead risks leaving us behind,” experts warn. “It’s time to embrace AI thoughtfully, responsibly, and inclusively—ensuring the whole nation benefits from its opportunities.”

As AI reshapes our world, introducing it in schools is not merely an educational initiative—it is a national imperative.

BY Chula Goonasekera ✍️
on behalf of LEADS forum admin@srilankaleads.com

Features

The Paradox of Trump Power: Contested Authoritarian at Home, Uncontested Bully Abroad

Published

2 days ago

2026/01/11

Thilina Walpola

Protests and a vigil have been held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the shooting of Renee Nicole Good occurred on Wednesday (photo courtesy BBC)

The Trump paradox is easily explained at one level. The US President unleashes American superpower and tariff power abroad with impunity and without contestation. But he cannot exercise unconstitutional executive power including tariff power without checks and challenges within America. No American President after World War II has exercised his authority overseas so brazenly and without any congressional referral as Donald Trump is getting accustomed to doing now. And no American President in history has benefited from a pliant Congress and an equally pliant Supreme Court as has Donald Trump in his second term as president.

Yet he is not having his way in his own country the way he is bullying around the world. People are out on the streets protesting against the wannabe king. This week’s killing of 37 year old Renee Good by immigration agents in Minneapolis has brought the City to its edge five years after the police killing of George Floyd. The lower courts are checking the president relentlessly in spite of the Supreme Court, if not in defiance of it. There are cracks in the Trump’s MAGA world, disillusioned by his neglect of the economy and his costly distractions overseas. His ratings are slowly but surely falling. And in an electoral harbinger, New York has elected as its new mayor, Zoran Mamdani – a wholesale antithesis of Donald Trump you can ever find.

Outside America it is a different picture. The world is too divided and too cautious to stand up to Trump as he recklessly dismantles the very world order that his predecessors have been assiduously imposing on the world for nearly a hundred years. A few recent events dramatically illustrate the Trump paradox – his constraints at home and his freewheeling abroad.

Restive America

Two days before Christmas, the US Supreme Court delivered a rare rebuke to the Trump Administration. After a host of rulings that favoured Trump by putting on hold, without full hearing, lower court strictures against the Administration, the Supreme Court by a 6-3 majority decided to leave in place a Federal Court ruling that barred Trump from deploying National Guard troops in Chicago. Trump quietly raised the white flag and before Christmas withdrew the federal troops he had controversially deployed in Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles – all large cities run by Democrats.

But three days after the New Year, Trump airlifted the might of the US Army to encircle Venezuela’s capital Caracas and spirit away the country’s President Nicolás Maduro, and his wife Celia Flores, all the way to New York to stand trial in an American Court. What is not permissible in any American City was carried out with absolute impunity in a foreign capital. It turns out the Administration has no plan for Venezuela after taking out Maduro, other than Trump’s cavalier assertion, “We’re going to run it, essentially.” Essentially, the Trump Administration has let Maduro’s regime without Maduro to run the country but with the US in total control of Venezuela’s oil.

Next on the brazen list is Greenland, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio who manipulated Maduro’s ouster is off to Copenhagen for discussions with the Danish government over the future of Greenland, a semi-autonomous part of Denmark. Military option is not off the table if a simple real estate purchase or a treaty arrangement were to prove infeasible or too complicated. That is the American position as it is now customarily announced from the White House podium by the Administration’s Press Secretary Karolyn Leavitt, a 28 year old Catholic woman from New Hampshire, who reportedly conducts a team prayer for divine help before appearing at the lectern to lecture.

After the Supreme Court ruling and the Venezuela adventure, the third US development relevant to my argument is the shooting and killing of a 37 year old white American woman by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Minneapolis, at 9:30 in the morning, Wednesday, January 7^th. Immediately, the Administration went into pre-emptive attack mode calling the victim a “deranged leftist” and a “domestic terrorist,” and asserting that the ICE officer was acting in self-defense. That line and the description are contrary to what many people know of the victim, as well as what people saw and captured on their phones and cameras.

The victim, Renee Nicole Good, was a mother of three and a prize-winning poet who self-described herself a “poet, writer, wife and mom.” A newcomer to Minneapolis from Colorado, she was active in the community and was a designated “legal observer of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities,” to monitor interactions between ICE agents and civilian protesters that have become the norm in large immigrant cities in America. Renee Good was at the scene in her vehicle to observe ICE operations and community protesters.

In video postings that last a matter of nine seconds, two ICE officers are seen approaching Good’s vehicle and one of them trying to open her door; a bystander is heard screaming “No” as Good is seen trying to drive away; and a third ICE officer is seen standing in front of her moving vehicle, firing twice in the direction of the driver, moving to a side and firing a third time from the side. Good’s car is seen going out of control, careening and coming to a stop on a snowbank. Yet America is being bombarded with two irreconcilable narratives – one manufactured by Trump’s Administration and the other by those at the scene and everyone opposed to the regime.

It adds to the explosiveness of the situation that Good was shot and killed not far from where George Folyd was killed, also in Minneapolis, on 25^th May, 2020, choked under the knee of a heartless policeman. And within 48 hours of Good’s killing, two Americans were shot and injured by two federal immigration agents, in Portland, Oregon, on the Westcoast. Trump’s attack on immigrants and the highhanded methods used by ICE agents have become the biggest flashpoint in the political opposition to the Trump presidency. People are organizing protests in places where ICE agents are apprehending immigrants because those who are being aggressively and violently apprehended have long been neighbours, colleagues, small business owners and students in their communities.

Deportation of illegal immigrants is not something that began under Trump. It has been going on in large numbers under all recent presidents including Obama and Biden. But it has never been so cruel and vicious as it is now under Trump. He has turned it into a television spectacle and hired large number of new ICE agents who are politically prejudiced and deployed them without proper training. They raid private homes and public buildings, including schools, looking for immigrants. When faced with protesters they get into clashes rather than deescalating the situation as professional police are trained to do. There is also the fear that the Administration may want to escalate confrontations with protesters to create a pretext for declaring martial law and disrupt the midterm congressional elections in November this year.

But the momentum that Trump was enjoying when he began his second term and started imposing his executive authority, has all but vanished and all within just one year in office. By the time this piece appears in print, the Supreme Court ruling on Trump’s tariffs (expected on Friday) may be out, and if as expected the ruling goes against Trump that will be a massive body blow to the Administration. Trump will of course use a negative court ruling as the reason for all the economic woes under his presidency, but by then even more Americans would have become tired of his perpetually recycled lies and boasts.

An Obliging World

To get back to my starting argument, it is in this increasingly hostile domestic backdrop that Trump has started looking abroad to assert his power without facing any resistance. And the world is obliging. The western leaders in Europe, Canada and Australia are like the three wise monkeys who will see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil – of anything that Trump does or fails to do. Their biggest fear is about the Trump tariffs – that if they say anything critical of Trump he will magnify the tariffs against their exports to the US. That is an understandable concern and it would be interesting to see if anything will change if the US Supreme Court were to rule against Trump and reject his tariff powers.

Outside the West, and with the exception of China, there is no other country that can stand up to Trump’s bullying and erratic wielding of power. They are also not in a position to oppose Trump and face increased tariffs on their exports to the US. Putin is in his own space and appears to be assured that Trump will not hurt him for whatever reason – and there are many of them, real and speculative. The case of the Latin American countries is different as they are part of the Western Hemisphere, where Trump believes he is monarch of all he surveys.

After more than a hundred years of despising America, many communities, not just regimes, in the region seem to be warming up to Trump. The timing of Trump’s sequestering of Venezuela is coinciding with a rising right wing wave and regime change in the region. An October opinion poll showed 53% of Latin American respondents reacting positively to a then potential US intervention in Venezuela while only 18% of US respondents were in favour of intervention. While there were condemnations by Latin American left leaders, seven Latin American countries with right wing governments gave full throated support to Trump’s ouster of Maduro.

The reasons are not difficult to see. The spread of crime induced by the commerce of cocaine has become the number one concern for most Latin Americans. The socio-religious backdrop to this is the evangelisation of Christianity at the expense of the traditional Catholic Church throughout Latin America. And taking a leaf from Trump, Latin Americans have also embraced the bogey of immigration, mainly influenced by the influx of Venezuelans fleeing in large numbers to escape the horrors of the Maduro regime.

But the current changes in Latin America are not necessarily indicative of a durable ideological shift. The traditional left’s base in the subcontinent is still robust and the recent regime changes are perhaps more due to incumbency fatigue than shifts in political orientations. The left has been in power for the greater part of this century and has not been able to provide answers to the real questions that preoccupied the people – economic affordability, crime and cocaine. It has not been electorally smart for the left to ignore the basic questions of the people and focus on grand projects for the intelligentsia. Exhibit #1 is the grand constitutional project in Chile under outgoing President Gabriel Borich, but it is not the only one. More romantic than realistic, Boric’s project titillated liberal constitutionalists the world over, but was roundly rejected by Chileans.

More importantly, and sooner than later, Trump’s intervention in Venezuela and his intended takeover of the country’s oil business will produce lasting backlashes, once the initial right wing euphoria starts subsiding. Apart from the bully force of Trump’s personality, the mastermind behind the intervention in Venezuela and policy approach towards Latin America in general, is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the former Cuban American Senator from Florida and the principal leader of the group of Cuban neocons in the US. His ultimate objective is said to be achieving regime change in Cuba – apparently a psychological settling of scores on behalf Cuban Americans who have been dead set against Castro’s Cuba after the overthrow of their beloved Batista.

Mr. Rubio is American born and his parents had left Cuba years before Fidel Castro displaced Fulgencio Batista, but the family stories he apparently grew up hearing in Florida have been a large part of his self-acknowledged political makeup. Even so, Secretary Rubio could never have foreseen a situation such as an externally uncontested Trump presidency in which he would be able to play an exceptionally influential role in shaping American policy for Latin America. But as the old Burns’ poem rhymes, “The best-laid plans of men and mice often go awry.”

by Rajan Philips ✍️