David Adler on the Pink Tide & Financial Colonialism

David Adler, co-general director of the Progressive International, joins me to unpack the complex history of corporate colonialism in Latin America.

The United States has a long history of intervention into the affairs of Latin American countries. After the recent abduction of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, Trump openly invoked the Monroe Doctrine, or as he calls it “the Donroe Doctrine”, to signal further hostility to other nations in the region.

In this episode we focus on the strange case of Prospera — a libertarian city-state that promises to create a free market utopia. Beginning in 2017, Prospera Inc purchased land within the sovereign territory of Honduras. At the time, Honduras was under the narco-dictatorship of Juan Orlando Hernandez. (In a stroke of poetic injustice, JOH was convicted of drug trafficking in 2024 and pardoned by Donald Trump in 2025.)

After the dictatorship, the Honduran congress overturned this unconstitutional decision with a unanimous vote across all parties. In retaliation, Prospera Inc is now suing the state of Honduras for a staggering 10.8 billion dollars, nearly 100x their investment and roughly 2/3rds of the annual state budget. Unsurprisingly, Prospera Inc is funded by Pronomos Capital whose investors include familiar characters such as Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen and Balaji Srinivasan.