Latin America
It’s been a while since I knuckled down on a piece of research and writing, but I was asked by Neotropica – and English language online journal from Costa Rica – to write something on coups d’etat. It will be done this month, ojala!, but it’s forced me to look in greater detail at the region.
I chose the Honduran coup of last year, because it’s the most recent, but also because the US press has totally (an intentionally) ignored the mountain of evidence that the US State Department was up to its neck in this one.
As usual with my own process, this has led me into about 100 different sidelines in the research, a couple of major starts and stops each day, and a dozen or so different outlines. Trying to tame information is never easy, eh? This has refamiliarized me, however, with the main thrusts of US foreign policy in the region and how the balance of forces has shaped up in the “US backyard.” Today, I’m linking Mark Weisbrot’s article on the Venezuela-Colombia dustup, which I’m sure is a bit of US agitation against Venezuela, even as the US had deployed a naval flotilla here in Costa Rica to menace the Nicaraguans… who are moving forward with some partnerships with Venezuela.
Venezuela, of course, reversed a US-sponsored coup in 2002, and has accelerated its oil diplomacy in the region to expand an FTAA-alternative trade agreement called ALBA. Honduran President Zelaya’s decision to join ALBA had a great deal to do with the decision by the US and the Honduran oligarchy to have him removed. Since Venezuela itself has proven too hard a target, the US pursuing a “weakest lamb in the flock” approach, with Honduras first, and – I suspect – Nicaragua next. Venezuela has effectively broken the decades-long US embargo against Cuba – which is the worst sin of all for many Cold War, Reagan-era veterans, like John Negroponte, Otto Reich, Elliot Abrams, Robert Carmona-Borjas, Adolfo Franco, Hugo Llorens, Roger Noriega, and many many more. John McCain’s IRI is in there, too. All these guys are back in play, with fingerprints all over Honduras.
Negroponte, btw, is on Sec State Clinton’s payroll as an advisor, and has been so since before the Honduras coup.
Lots of complexities, like for example, Brazil’s reluctance to move away from neoliberal policies has much to do with the fact that Brazil owns a substantial chunk of US sovereign debt, obliging it to protect the dollar.
The loss of a US military base in Ecuador has been a big setback for the US, and Colombia is effectively a US aircraft carrier. Its latest accusations about Venezuela harboring terrorists is a campaign made-in-the-USA. For whatever reason, the Obama-Clinton foreign policy team is as much a one-trick pony as his financial team, and so the covert ops game is is back in force in Latin America.
If this succeeds as a thread, I hope we can minimize left-sectarian arguments about whether Hugo Chavez is a true enough revolutionary. You can go somewhere else for these kinds of tedious and arcane discussions.
Far more interested in hard information and new developments in the ALBA War, as I’ve come to think of it. Facts welcome.
Here’s MW’s article:
In March I wrote about the Obama administration’s contribution to the election campaign under way in Venezuela, where voters will choose a new national assembly in September. I predicted that certain things would happen before September, among them some new “discoveries” that Venezuela supports terrorism. Venezuela has had 13 elections or referenda since Hugo Chávez was first elected in 1998, and in the run-up to most of them, Washington has usually done something to influence the political and media climate.
Stan:
FULL
31 July 2010, 9:24 amStan:
*[Note: This letter has been made public given that The Washington Post
rarely publishes our responses *]
Public Letter to The Washington Post Editorial Board
One more time, the Post’s editorial page dogmatically editorializes against the Venezuelan government, asserting that a collection of Google maps and a bunch of outdated pictures taken out of context – presented by the Álvaro Uribe’s government in a media show — are the most recent “proof” about Venezuela’s support for “terrorist” groups.
Of course, according to the Post, this was all pretty clear since a laptop allegedly recovered by Colombian authorities in 2008 during an illegal raid into Ecuadorean territory had all kinds of “amazing” documentation about the FARC’s international connections. The Post doesn’t mention that the laptop miraculously survived a bombing that killed 26 people and destroyed most of the camp; neither does it mention that even an Interpol analysis of the laptop concluded that because of the handling of the evidence by the Colombian government for days before it was turned over, the documents on it could not be used in any judicial proceedings.
Had the Post tried a more honest analysis about the issues at stake between Colombia and Venezuela, it would start by considering that both countries share a 1,400 mile-long border that is very difficult to patrol. Or that Colombia has been suffering a 60-year-long civil war that has become a multilayered conflict, impossible to resolve only through military means.
The reality is that the Venezuelan authorities have done everything in their power to prevent the insurgents, paramilitaries and Colombian criminals from using our territory and that Uribe’s accusations in the past have been proven false. At the same time we have welcomed with open arms over four million Colombians that now call Venezuela home.
In fact, President Hugo Chávez has actively worked for peace in Colombia, as demonstrated by his efforts under Uribe’s government to promote the guerrillas’ unilateral release of hostages and his repeated calls for the guerrillas to lay down their arms. However, according to the logic of the Post, even President Barack Obama must be protecting arms and drug traffickers that cross the border between México and the U.S. And he also might be an ally of the criminals that storm El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. This logic is absurd.
Maybe what really annoys the Post is that President Chávez has actively
called for a political solution to the Colombian conflict and that the
latest rapprochement between Colombia and Venezuela slightly opened the door to the possibility of reaching peace. This would not be surprising as the Post also stridently editorialized in favor of the Iraq war (and the falsified intelligence that justified it), collaborating, as Congressman David Obey of Wisconsin once denounced it, to drive of almost two thirds of Congress to vote in favor of that ill-advised war.
President Chávez and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) are
actively working for peace and integration in the region and we hope we can turn the page once the new president elect is inaugurated. Let’s hope the Post editorial page doesn’t manage to poison this process.
*Bernardo Álvarez Herrera
Ambassador
Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the United States of America
1 August 2010, 7:52 amMichael Anderson:
Can’t wait to read it….it’s been my own thoughts that every time I hear about the “rampant corruption and crime” in Venezuela, this is a U.S.-manufactured “truth” (sic). And, the U.S. is actively working to foment said crime and corruption to force Mr. Chavez to take measures against it that can and will be described as “totalitarian”, for the benefit of more gullible readers here—and not just the foaming-at-the-mouth Tea-Party-gun-nut-immigration-xenophobia crew.
This, unfortunately, is a page from the standard playbook of power, so well used by forces of authority and Empire during the course of history, but particularly notable in our time of planet-wide exterminism.
1 August 2010, 11:19 amkim sky:
super, super excited that you’ll be writing AGAIN. Hip, hip, hooray.
i like Eva Golinger work!
http://www.chavezcode.com/2010/07/chavez-us-and-colombia-plan-to-attack.html
chavez revering to secret documents forwarded to him.
quote 1: “In the United States, the execution phase is accelerating, together with a contention force, as they call it, towards Costa Rica with the pretext of fighting drug trafficking”.
quote 2: ASSASSINATION AND OVERTHROW “There is an agreement between Colombia and the US with two objectives: one is Mauricio and the other is the overthrow of the government”, revealed the document. President Chavez explained that “Mauricio” is a pseudynom used in these communications. “The military operation is going to happen”, warned the text, “and those from the north will do it, but not directly in Caracas”. “They will hunt ‘Mauricio’ down outside Caracas, this is very important, I repeat, this is very important”.
anyway. could be interesting to see this in terms of the here are now!
thanx for beginning your career again, so to speak! good luck!
1 August 2010, 11:58 amVJP:
Thanks, Stan; will be following this.
2 August 2010, 10:24 amVivian
1st Lt L Diablo:
“In fact, if Christ himself stood in my way, I, like Nietzsche, would not hesitate to squish him like a worm”
“Many will call me an adventurer – and that I am, only one of a different sort: one of those who risks his skin to prove his platitudes.”
“It’s a sad thing not to have friends, but it is even sadder not to have enemies.
- Che
I throw in with him vs. this pusillanimous xtian left nonsense.
STAN REPLIES: You are such a man.
2 August 2010, 11:54 pmMarcilla Elizabeth Smith:
Stan et al
This, along with some other things going on, got me thinking about “de-recruiting” programs. Any thoughts on who is having successes with this? I’ve heard about the one near Fort Hood. Orlando is a different beast with many weapons et al contractors, but no base.
11 August 2010, 11:46 am