The struggle against imperialism and war is a central priority of the World March of Women. On the one hand, women are deeply affected by wars across the world: through displacement, the destruction of infrastructure, homes, and territories, and the rebuilding of households and communities through immense amounts of care work that sustain life. On the other hand, imperialism instrumentalizes women’s oppression, drawing on liberal feminism to justify wars and interventions.
A recent example was the attack on Iran, justified by the claim that imperialist war would bring democracy and freedom to women. What actually took place was an attack on the sovereignty of a people. The imperialist offensive has nothing to do with women’s freedom; on the contrary, the sovereignty of peoples is a foundation for the autonomy of all women, not just the few elite women.
We are witnessing an escalation of U.S. imperialism that is partly related to the erosion of its economic hegemony in the face of the rise of other Global South economies, particularly China. Faced with this decline, the empire seeks to reassert its dominance through force, war, and militarism. This is one of the few areas in which the United States still maintains a much broader hegemony than any other country in the world.
Latin America occupies a central place in the current U.S. national security strategy, nicknamed the “Donroe Doctrine.” The name refers to the Monroe Doctrine, which asserted the need to control Latin America in order to secure U.S. imperial power. Once again, this is a central pillar of Donald Trump’s national security policy: preventing Latin America from establishing economic and political relations with China, which is identified as the United States’ main competitor.
Energy as a weapon of war
This U.S. strategy became a concrete practice at the beginning of the year, with the aggression against Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, followed by the tightening of the blockade against Cuba. In both cases, the issue of energy is central to understanding U.S. actions: in Venezuela, the objective is control over oil; in Cuba, preventing other countries from trading energy with the island turns energy poverty into a weapon of war.
The centrality of energy in the dynamics of war and militarization in Latin America was not so evident when social movements in the region first began organizing around a just energy transition. This is an important shift in the political context and helps explain the place of energy in current transformations across the region and the world.
Since the beginning of the year, Cuba has experienced frequent blackouts. The lack of energy is a very concrete and real problem caused by the blockade. At this moment, one of the most practical ways to confront it is through solar panels, a technology that allows for faster electricity generation—almost immediately after installation—since it does not require extensive infrastructure.
The challenge for popular movements is to expand material solidarity beyond rhetoric. As part of ALBA Movimientos’ campaign, resources are being raised to send solar panels to Cuba, linking the energy issue to concrete solidarity with the Cuban people. It is also an experience that can teach us about the possibilities of self-managed energy generation in contexts as difficult as this one.
The energy transition of transnational corporations
Another dimension of this dispute is what transnational corporations call the “energy transition.” The same companies that promise decarbonization continue exploiting fossil fuels as never before and are now expanding into the renewable energy sector, extending it into family farming and peasant territories.
There is no transition from one energy source to another, but rather an expansion. The total amount of energy produced worldwide continues to grow, primarily to sustain agribusiness, mining, and Big Tech corporations, with their data processing centers that consume enormous quantities of energy and water. Capital is structurally becoming ever more energy-intensive. There can be no effective transition while the logic of unlimited growth and capitalist accumulation remains the driving force behind energy policy.
This is why saying “energy for life” is not the same as defending the current renewable energy model as it is being implemented in our territories.
“Renewable energy, yes — but not this way” has been the slogan carried for years by women from Brazil’s semi-arid Northeast. From Borborema in Paraíba to the Agreste region of Pernambuco, from the coast of Rio Grande do Norte to Piauí, women farmers, fishers, shellfish gatherers, and quilombola women have denounced the arrival of wind farms, which has brought cracks in homes and cisterns, constant noise, illness, the death of animals, restrictions on access to land and fishing grounds, harassment, and sexual violence. The Northeast concentrates more than 85 percent of Brazil’s wind power generation capacity. What is called “clean energy” reaches these territories as yet another form of territorial appropriation and labor precarization.
These women criticize the model of production, social reproduction, and consumption that shapes this form of energy generation, rather than renewable energy itself. As long as renewable energy is produced within a framework of land concentration, corporate control, privatization of the commons, and labor exploitation, that energy will not serve the people. The accumulated experience of women from the countryside, waters, and forests forms the material basis of our proposal for energy sovereignty.
Energy for what? And for whom?
This context challenges us to place energy for the sustainability of life more centrally within our feminist agenda. The questions we have been asking for a long time—energy for what? And for whom?—are now more relevant than ever for understanding the changes required in the energy model. Our countries need energy sovereignty as a fundamental component of popular sovereignty.
This is clearly related to the electoral contests taking place in the region in 2026, particularly in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. We know that, historically, when the right wing is in government, energy is privatized, labor becomes more precarious, and energy poverty becomes part of everyday life for the working class.
Critical minerals: the new siege on our lands
Bolivia offers a particularly revealing example at this moment. The “lithium triangle”—Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina—contains a decisive share of the world’s reserves of this mineral, and the United States has openly advanced its dispute over these resources, including through the 2026 Critical Minerals Ministerial Meeting and the so-called Americas Shield Initiative. It is no coincidence that the current government of Rodrigo Paz, which immediately re-established closer ties with Washington, enjoys explicit support from the White House amid the political and economic crisis shaking the country.
The so-called rare earth elements encompass minerals that are crucial to the new technological era, in which digital data processing occupies a central role. These minerals are essential for producing the high-density magnets used in electric vehicles, mobile phones, computers, and servers, as well as in wind power generation systems. Brazil possesses the world’s second-largest reserves of rare earth elements.
There is a continuity linking Venezuelan oil, Andean lithium, and Brazil’s rare earths: in all cases, what is at stake is who decides, controls, and benefits from the commons of our region. Defending mineral sovereignty is also part of the feminist agenda for energy sovereignty and popular sovereignty, and it cannot be negotiated as a “trade-off” for the Global North’s energy transition.
Energy, food, and technological sovereignty
Energy, food, and technological sovereignty are interconnected within our feminist agenda. For several years, the World March of Women in Brazil has been developing these three dimensions through the lens of the sustainability of life, the recognition of women’s labor, and grassroots feminism.
Technological sovereignty has become increasingly present in our agenda, especially because of the growing centrality of digitalization and artificial intelligence in the economic dynamics of our countries. Through U.S.-based Big Tech companies, the empire maintains economic dominance in the field of technological development. Our countries remain subordinated and dependent within this dynamic. The pace of this process is staggering, with assistants such as Gemini being automatically integrated into all Google services and similar models being imposed across the platforms we use every day.
It is a model hungry for data, energy, water, and minerals. It organizes our lives without us having made any decision about it.
We need to develop our own perspectives and proposals on this issue in alliance with popular movements. In Brazil, we have been building processes of popular education, technological development, and infrastructure as part of a political agenda for popular digital sovereignty. IARAA—Artificial Intelligence for Agrarian Reform and Agroecology—is one concrete collective experience. It also points to a broader path: as movements, we want to create technological alternatives that consume less energy, less water, and extract less data.
To achieve this, we must affirm that scientific and technological development must be guided by the state, supported by strong public investment, and not delegated to Big Tech corporations. Peoples and states must be subjects of technological development, rather than mere users of AI packages and ready-made models trained in the Global North on data extracted and processed from the Global South.
SOF—Sempreviva Feminist Organization (SOF Sempreviva Organização Feminista) is part of the feminist movement in Brazil and serves on the secretariat of the World March of Women in the country. This text was collectively produced with the support of the European Union.
