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Will the US Ever Get Latin America?
For Washington's foreign policy elite, changes in Latin America are viewed through the narrow lens of a cold war mentality
Here in Washington, it is often only death and retirement that allows for the possibility of change – and yet the institutions remain immortal and often immutable. Nowhere is this more true than in the foreign policy establishment here.
In the last few weeks I have visited five countries and participated in numerous events surrounding a recently released documentary – like Guantanamera, South of the Border is also a road movie – which Oliver Stone directed and I wrote with Tariq Ali. Returning to Washington, the wide gulf that separates the US foreign policy elite from the vast majority of its neighbours to the south hits you as a form of culture shock.
For these people, the historic changes that have swept Latin America – and especially South America – over the last decade are viewed through the narrow lens of a cold war mentality that scores every change in terms of how it affects US power in the region.
Jorge Castañeda is a former foreign minister of Mexico who teaches at New York University and has become a leading spokesperson in the media for the Washington foreign policy establishment. In a recent article, he divides the continent into "Americas-1", meaning "those that are either neutral in the confrontation between the United States and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez (and Cuba), or openly opposed to the so-called "Bolivarian" governments of Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela"; and "Americas-2" – "the radical left."
For Castañeda, as for US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, it is particularly annoying that "as recently as 7 June, the Bolivarian countries were able to block Honduras's re-instatement into the OAS, despite the essentially free and fair elections that were held there last November."
But it was not just the "Bolivarian countries" that can't accept elections held under a dictatorship as "free and fair". Brazil, Argentina, and governments representing most of the hemisphere are in the same camp. In fact, when the Rio Group issued a statement in November of 2009 saying that the immediate restitution of Mel Zelaya was a necessary condition for elections to be recognised, even the Obama administration's rightwing allies – Colombia, Peru, and Panama – felt obliged to sign on.
The Honduran coup, carried out by US allies and US-trained military officers against the democratically elected President Mel Zelaya, was a watershed event in relations between Washington and Latin America. It was nearly one year ago, on 28 June, that the remaining hopes that the Obama administration would treat its neighbours to the south differently than the Bush team did, were destroyed. While the Clintons' close confidant and adviser Lanny Davis counselled and lobbied for the coup regime, the Obama administration did everything that it could to help the dictatorship survive and legitimise itself. This despite unanimous resolutions in the OAS and the United Nations calling for the "immediate and unconditional reinstatement" of President Zelaya, two words that the Obama administration would never utter, as it ignored for more than five months the murders, closing of independent media, and other massive human rights violations that made the "free and fair" elections last November in Honduras a sick joke. The European Union and Organisation of American States did not even send observers.
But with Washington still struggling to legitimise the Honduran government – despite the murder of dozens of political activists and nine journalists since the "elected" government took power – it is typical to portray this effort as a struggle against "enemy" governments rather than a fight with most of the region. What these people cannot recognise, or perhaps even understand, is that this is about independence and self-determination, as well as democracy.
Michele Bachelet of Chile and Lula da Silva of Brazil were as upset as the "Americas-2" governments when the Obama administration decided last August to expand its presence at seven military bases in Colombia. And it was Felipe Calderón, the rightwing president of Mexico, who hosted the February conference in Cancún that decided to create a new organisation for the Americas, which could eventually displace the OAS, without the United States and Canada. The role of the US and Canada in blocking the OAS from taking stronger measures against the dictatorship in Honduras undoubtedly played a role in motivating this move.
Of course, Washington has the power to make its cold war vision of the hemisphere at least half real, by singling out the more leftwing governments for special treatment. In Bolivia, the election of Evo Morales brought changes analogous to the end of apartheid in South Africa, with the country's indigenous majority gaining a voice in their government for the first time in 500 years. One would think the Obama administration would have enough common brains to get on the right side of that one. But no, they have carried over the trade sanctions that the Bush team had imposed on Bolivia under the so-called Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA), "de-certified" Bolivia as not co-operating in the "War on Drugs," and still refuse to disclose exactly whom they are funding in Bolivia – ie, which opposition groups – with money from the US State Department.
I had the privilege of watching South of the Border in a soccer stadium filled with more than 6,000 people in Cochabamba, Bolivia, a few weeks ago. At one point in the film Evo Morales tells the story of Tupak Katari, an indigenous leader who fought against the Spanish colonialists in the 18th century. Evo recalls Tupak Katari's last words, before he was drawn and quartered by the Spanish: "I die as one, but I will come back as millions."
Evo then looks into the camera and says: "Now we are millions."
Unlike in Washington, every person in that stadium knew exactly what he meant.
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33 Comments so far
Show All"Will the US Ever Get Latin America?" Lets expand that to: Will the US ever get anything?
Good thing you left, huh? Though Mexico's future isn't looking good going forward. The illegal lobby has overstepped themselves and made some huge mistakes.
It looks as if the whole agenda is going to be repudiated. Solis just gifted the republicans with world class sound bites for November. Who would have thought anyone could be that stupid?
With 700 military bases around the world. With their aircraft bombing Countries from Panama to Afghanistan , with new Military bases in Africa, the US Government is pursuing the policy that IT will GET everything and to hell with any "terrorist" that tries to stop them.
Dear Fennec; NO.
The U.S doesn't even get its own people. The people of " everywhere" are pawns glued to the board of the corporate chess game.
Foreign policy in this country, the U.S.A., is stuck in a power vacuum, with a mindset that certainly is NOT healthy for people anywhere. I keep hearing Hillary Clinton, et.al., talking about the U.S. as being the strongest and the most powerful country in the world, and "We're going to remain the strongest country in the world!" Of course, at our expense, literally.
Yesterday, I read that Israeli and U.S. troops are gathering in Azerbaijan, on the northern border of Iran, and that Iran has declared a state of war along their northern border. Who is reporting on this? Has anyone else read anything about this series of events, which, no doubt, has the potential to turn into an even bigger fiasco than Afghanistan and Iraq, etc.?
Today, I'm going to try to go see the Oliver Stone film, South of the Border. The documentary is showing at the Angelika in the Village.
If anyone hasn't seen the 2002 documentary, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, you can watch it at www.freedocumentaries.org. The film is about the U.S. backed ouster of Chavez in Venezuela in April of 2002, and his reinstatement as President of Venezuela. The link follows:
http://freedocumentaries.org/int.php?filmID=97
In addition, if anyone is interested, and hasn't already seen the documentary, Our Brand Is Crisis, 2005 -- the film is about the campaign of presidential candidate Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozado in Bolivia. James Carville, and other DLC members, were hired to run his campaign. The documentary is on the record, as to how the U.S. spreads democracy, and it is somewhat shocking, too! The U.S. foreign policy has its fingers everywhere. However, even with these experts in charge of the campaign, Evo Morales prevailed -- much to the chagrin of the U.S. authorities. But, U.S. foreign policy is inexorable, it continues without even a moment of hesitation. Very scary!
Yes, and Michele Bachelet has been replaced by a right-winger and the same could happen in Brasil in the October elections. The rightist candidate is tied in the polls with the candidate of Lula's Workers Party. You absolutely know the US has launched a major operation there.
I know! And, you know! What so many people don't realize, though, is that the Democrats are as mired in promoting the right-wing candidates in Latin American countries, and elsewhere, as well, as the Republicans are. I have talked to all of my friends about these issues -- connecting U.S. foreign policy to undemocratic actions, and they don't seem to get it, which is why I suggest that they watch documentaries, if documentaries happen to be available. It's in U.S. foreign policy that it really becomes glaringly clear that the Democrats and the Republicans serve the same master, so to speak.
I remember taking part in a march and rally for women's rights, a march that took place concurrent with the 2004 Republican convention here in NYC. One of the speakers talked about Paraguay, whose legislature was just about to vote on, and pass, legislation in favor of giving women in Paraguay the right to control their own bodies. Then, in came the U.S., threatening to withhold money, etc., from the country if the legislation passed. Needless to say, the legislation did NOT pass. U.S. foreign policy is everywhere, and for the most part, does not serve the people -- anywhere.
I have read that since Michele Bachelet was so popular, the new president of Chile is having to be careful about what he does. I think her numbers were in the 80s at the time of the election.
"You absolutely know the US has launched a major operation there [Brazil]." -- race_to_the_bottom
No doubt about it! I agree with you.
We are in the 2nd age of Darkness. It began with Reagan and instead of warrior kings, lords, knights and such we now have corporations, wallstreet and the investor class. We out here are still considered serfs. Having lived in Latin America in Mexico, Brazil, and Costa Rica I can tell you that the US has for years been bulldozing itself around Latin America and for some reason still thinks it can do whatever it wants. The US has become really pathetic in its actions and the problem is it will now stop until it goes over the cliff. Good Luck to everyone here that have made comments and run like hell.
I still remember September 11, 1973, the CIA-backed coup in Chile. Long before the Reagan years. On that day, Democracy was extirpated, and thugs, along with the Chicago Boys took charge -- with the IMF, etc. Today, the fact that someone like a Michelle Bachelet could rise from the ashes of those years to be president of Chile is remarkable. Following the coup, her family was imprisoned, her father murdered, and she and her mother suffered torture. I doubt that we can even begin to imagine how horrific it was for the people of Latin America as the Chicago Boys felled government after government, with the help of right-wing military leaders, trained at The School of the Americas. YIKES! Then came Reagan to top it all off!
This is definitely a bi-partisan effort with Republicans and Democrats jointly supporting right-wingers throughout Latin America. This policy is demanded by multi-national corporations so they may be free to exploit the people and their land and resources, even if it means can destroy natural ecologies, plant and animal species, and indigenous cultures, and increase that rate of global climate change. While US schools and other local and state services face harmful cuts, our tax money goes to many agencies to finance their efforts to undermine democracy in Latin America. One agency, specifically devoted to this purpose is is the laughingly misnamed National Endowment for Democracy. Gee, I wonder why this sleazy agency is so invisible in the msm?
"Will the US Ever Get Latin America?" the author asks.
The answer is:
Not as long as the United States has an empire of military bases bullying the planet, considers itself the Greatest Country in the World, and does not see itself as one country among many that should all treat each other as equals before international laws.
"we are the indians, fighting terrorism since 1492." sitting bull, circa june 26, 1876, shortly after the death of general george armstrong custer, at little big horn, montana.
I am reading "JFK. The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy". It should be required reading for every American. The author, L. Fletcher Prouty, worked for the CIA and the Pentagon during the years that Vietnam was being set up by the CIA for their war games, and he and his boss worked closely with the Kennedy administration. President Kennedy was going to wind down the war by the end of 1965, and by doing this, he was sure that he would be reelected. Mr. Prouty is certain that Kennedy was assassinated by an elite cabal of obscenely wealthy individuals, using the CIA to do it. They hated all the Kennedys, and they were afraid that JFK was the start of a dynasty that would take their power to make billions on war away. He had also said during the campaign that he was going to "break the CIA into a thousand pieces", and they were not about to let that happen. And so he was killed and the US government was overthrown. It remains a hostage to this day.
We must find the courage to face the fact that this American society is dying. Actually, it has always carried the seed of its own destruction, being based on genocide and slavery. It has never been a true democracy, that lie was just a front and a sop to keep the American people pacified. We must allow this present world to destroy itself, and then we can build a new one on the ashes. In every ending is a new beginning.
Peace.
I sit here, aging, impatiently tapping my fingernails on the desk top.
How long is to going to take for historians around the world to figure out that, in 1960, Cardinal Spellman's refusal to endorse JFK for the Presidency was not political legerdemain but the posthumous will of his dear friend, Engenio Pacelli, who did NOT want a Kennedy male to be the first Catholic President of the United States?
Batista Montini was an adoring acolyte to Pius XII for 25 years. When are historians around the world going to wake up to the likelihood that subtraction of JFK from the White House was a desperate act to save Mother Church by Paul VI - - who had private access to capos of either the Underworld or CIA?
Prouty is either clueless or putting out disinformation for some reason. My opinion and I'm sticking to it. Trylon
Have you read the Jim Douglass book, JFK & The Unspeakable? The evidence Mr. Douglass presents is impossible to discount. I'll look for the book you mention.
Following is a link to a talk Mr. Douglass gave on the book -- if anyone is interested:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srstQVfVNEM
To Get Latin America read about its history: "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent", by Eduardo Galeano. About $16 new on Amazon.
The US is not interested in "getting" Latin America. It is interested in making it safe for the large corporations. This has been true ever since the Monroe Doctrine was established.
Our country is now making Colombia a major military outpost for "getting" such countries as Bolivia and Venezuela among others in order to reassert megacapitalist control of the region. My only hope is that Latin America will unite in Bolivarian unity and act as a counterbalance to this plan.
In 2006 I spent 3 weeks in Venezuela, talking to people on park benches and other public places. Most people I encountered were willing and eager to engage, talking about everything and anything, extending a friendliness so glaringly unlike the uptight defensive/offensive stance you'll find in similar US settings. They were quite open politically, either about their love and support of Chavez, their disdain/hatred of him or their wait-and-see, so-far-it's-pretty-good attitudes. At the time, at least 80% of the media was pro-oligarchy and anti-Chavez, but still people could feel and celebrate the positive effects and their inclusion in the Bolivarian Revolution.
Upon my return to Miami, the change in the political/attitudinal "air" was thick and dense - so many people were rude, gruff, very unhappy and self-absorbed (sadly, its an inverted sense of power, being angry/"victimized" all the time). I don't like to generalize like this but, it was palpable, and I hear the same from many who travel overseas.
A complicit US media will report less and less on the true workings of a US foreign policy run by weapons manufacturers, be it in Latin America, the build-up to the coming conflict in Iran, the failures of slaughters in Iraq and Afghanistan, the failures to realistically investigate the unspeakable crimes of 1963 and 2001, etc. Get it right? Not a chance!
And we certainly aren't being given the full scope of what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico - that's a game changer if ever there was one. Rude awakenings coming our way!
If we go back to 1934 when the American Liberty League,--[-simimiar to the tea party,]-in which many wealthy republicans, including Prescott Bush and some duPonts, were planning a coup to oust FDR, overthrow the government, and implement hitlerian policy,but failed. Than do research on how Prescott became a senator, helped form the CIA, that his son became head of, and also Robert Gates, -and how much Prescott came to hate John Kennedy because some of the CIA were killed in the Bay of Pigs invasion to assassinate Castro, and then JFK was killed. How later Prescott's grandson almost implemented the hitler doctrine. Read the book,--- Family of Secrets,--and the Bush Dynesty--, and it seems like they wish to control the world. Obama is just another patsy like the Taliban that Bush SR. supplied with weapons and money for his aganda, as well as Saddam, Noriaga to name a few. --I do wonder if anyone knows about the secret society of Bilderburg that wishes to control the population?
I read Kevin Philips' book, The Bush Dynasty. It was quite revealing!
I also read Russ Baker's excellent book "Family of Secrets". It's a must read if you want to understand who is truly pulling the strings of this government. As far as I'm concerned, The Bush family is a global crime syndicate that should be tried and prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
Harper was Bush's little poodle (Blair was his big poodle) but now he is being an even worse syncophant for Obama. What in the world business does Canada have in preventing a military coup from being stopped? How dare that right wing clown oppose the people of Latin America when they try to correct an ongoing and chronic disease in their national and international governance? How dare his American master do the same?