[News] Secret Invasion: US Troops Steal into Paraguay

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 11:49:25 -0500 (EST)
From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com


Political Affairs - Dec 29, 2005
http://politicalaffairs.net/article/view/2479/1/140/

Secret Invasion: US Troops Steal into Paraguay

By W.T. Whitney Jr

The Bush administration has sent troops into Paraguay. They are there
ostensibly for humanitarian and counterterrorism purposes. The action
coincides with growing left unity in South America, military buildup in the
region and burgeoning independent trade relationships.

In a speech on July 26 in Havana, Fidel Castro took note of the incursion
and called upon North American activists to oppose it. In that vein, an
inquiry is in order as to why the US government has inserted Paraguay into
its strategic plan for South America. In addition, we should look at factors
that favor Bush administration schemes for the region and others that work
against US plans.

In December 2004, the Bush administration canceled $330 million in economic
and military aid to 10 South American countries. They were being penalized
for turning down a US request for granting its soldiers immunity from
prosecution for crimes they commit within the countries' borders.

On May 5, however, the government of Paraguay took the bait. It signed an
agreement authorizing an 18-month stay, automatically extended, for US
soldiers and civilian employees. The previous limit had been set at six
months. On May 26, in a secret session, Paraguay's Congress passed
legislation protecting US soldiers from prosecution for criminal activity,
both within Paraguay and by the International Criminal Court.

Reportedly, 400 or 500 US troops -- estimates vary -- arrived in Paraguay on
July 1, with planes, weapons, equipment and ammunition. They are billeted at
a base near Mariscal Estigarribia, a small city located 200 kilometers from
the Bolivian border in the arid, sparsely populated Chaco area of Paraguay.
That facility, built by US contractors in the waning years of the Stroessner
dictatorship (1954-1989), offers a runway long enough to accommodate large
military transport planes and bombers. It provides barrack space for 16,000
troops.

Journalist and human rights activist Alfredo Boccia Paz, stated in Asuncion
that immunity from prosecution for US soldiers, extension of their stay, and
joint military exercises all provide the groundwork for the eventual
installation of a US base in Paraguay. He quoted Argentine Nobel Peace
laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel: "Once the United States arrives, it takes it
a long time to leave. And that really frightens me."

The US embassy in Paraguay declared that the United States has "absolutely
no intention of establishing a military base anywhere in Paraguay" and "has
no intention to station soldiers for a lengthy period in Paraguay." The
government of Paraguay seconded that notion. Brazil, however, responded. In
late July, its army undertook military maneuvers along that country's border
with Paraguay. Paratroopers staged a mock occupation of the Furnas
electrical substation, located on the Brazilian border with Paraguay.

Paraguay's vice president, Luis Castiglioni, met with Vice President Dick
Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and former Assistant Secretary of State
for Latin American Affairs Roger Noriega last July in Washington. Observers
suggested that this welcoming committee was unusually high-powered for a
visiting vice president of a small South American nation. According to
Rumsfeld, experts would soon be going to Paraguay to develop a "planning
seminar on systems for national security." The secretary visited Paraguay in
August. The FBI announced that it would be opening an office in Paraguay in
2006.

The official US version of the Paraguay initiative is that for the next 18
months, in addition to joint military exercises, 13 US military teams would
be working on humanitarian aide projects, provide counterterrorism and
police training and ameliorate the effects of poverty. It turns out that US
military personnel have been providing medical care for poor peasants in a
northern province since 2002. Boccia Paz commented: "These missions are
always disguised as humanitarian aid." What Paraguay does not and cannot
control is the total number of agents that enter the country."

There is of course no shortage of US bases in Latin America. They are
located in Guantánamo, Cuba; Fort Buchanan and Roosevelt Roads, Puerto
Rico; Soto Cano, Honduras; and Comalapa, El Salvador. New US air bases are
situated in Reina Beatriz, Aruba; Hato Rey, Curacao; and Manta in Ecuador.
The latter was officially described as a weather station on a dusty road,
until it came out that a full-fledged air base had materialized on the site
at a cost of $80 million. Washington also operates a network of 17
land-based radar stations (three in Peru, four in Colombia, plus 10 mobile
radar stations in secret locations.) All of these installations come are
under the control of the US Southern Command, based in Miami.

The US rationale for converting Paraguay into a military satellite is worth
exploring. For one thing, Washington is responding in catch-up fashion to
mounting popular resistance in the region to US bullying. In neighboring
Bolivia, for example, two US-friendly presidents have been chased from
office in the past two years. And mass opposition to the US-backed candidate
in last December's national election was no exception to the trend.

There's more. Paraguay's neighbor, Uruguay, put a social democrat into the
presidency in 2004, and last February President Kirchner of Argentina
violated world financial orthodoxy when his government negotiated a 60
percent cut in Argentina's $82 billion debt obligations. Both Argentina and
Brazil have quietly rejected the FTAA. Paraguay has joined them in the South
American Common Market (Mercosur), which shelters its members from US and
International Monetary Fund dictates. For Paraguay to defect would serve US
ends.

Washington took major exception to declarations emanating from a gathering
March 29, 2005 of Brazilian, Colombian, Venezuelan and Spanish heads of
state at Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela. They had discussed the use of raw
materials and regional trade patterns to combat poverty and secure peace in
South America. A few weeks later Washington was miffed when its candidate
for the secretary generalship of the Organization of American States was
rejected. And right under the US nose, Latin American nations are coming
together to form Telesur and Petrosur, continent-wide television and energy
corporations, and developing banking services that serve people's needs.

Natural resources may also figure into the US motivations for expanding its
military presence in South America. One branch of the main opening for a
huge Bolivian natural gas field apparently crosses the international border
and is accessible in Paraguay at the Independencia I site, not far from
Mariscal Estigarribia. If US troops occupied the base there, they would be
in striking distance of the Bolivian provinces of Santa Cruz and Tarija,
where US natural gas corporations are active. Bolivia will soon be voting on
autonomy for the provinces. A "yes" vote is expected to result in
privatization. In the event of civil unrest following that outcome, the
corporations could call for military protection.

The military base overlies the Guarani aquifer, one of the world's largest
underground fresh water reserves. Already water wars have riled Bolivian
politics. Oligarchic interests in both the United States and South America
have great longings to advance the process of turning water into a
commodity.

The Bush administration has an additional interest in Paraguay through its
war on terrorism. The so-called triple border, where Brazil, Argentina, and
Paraguay meet along both sides of the Parana River, is the storied locus for
smuggling, money laundering, commerce in child prostitutes, counterfeit
operations, and fixing of illegal border crossings. Some 20,000 Middle
Eastern, Muslim expatriates, most of them Lebanese in origin, live in Ciudad
del Este on the Paraguayan side of the river and Foz do Iguacu in Brazil.
The cities supposedly are centers for Islamic extremism and sources of
funding for terrorist groups. Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah operatives
reportedly have passed through the area, and training camps, sleeper cells,
and passport factories are said to be located there. After September 11, 40
FBI agents joined Paraguayan colleagues to investigate some of these
networks. Dozens of suspects were arrested. US military authorities
advertise their operatives moving into Paraguay as experts in
counterterrorism.

US meddling in South America has great potential to add to existing tensions
in the region as it adds its might to ongoing South American military
expansion. According to Uruguayan Raúl Zibechi, an expert on the
continent's military landscape, South America is experiencing unprecedented
military growth. Nations there have reacted to the excesses of US Plan
Colombia and to new military modalities, particularly the privatization of
military forces on display in Columbia. They are also attempting to emulate
Brazil's new posture of strategic military autonomy. And, as is their habit,
ruling circles in many countries, following Washington's lead, respond to
social unrest through military expansion.

In December 2004, Venezuela agreed to buy 110,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 33
helicopters and 50 fighter-bombers from Russia. Spain supplied Venezuela
with naval aeronautical material, 10 transport planes, and four coast-guard
cutters. Venezuela will be buying 50 training and combat jets from Brazil.
Venezuela earlier this year activated a two million-member reserve component
of its national military force.

Yet according to the journal Military Power Review Venezuela comes in at
sixth place among South American nations in terms of military strength.
Brazil is far in the lead; Peru places second; Argentina, third; followed by
Chile and Colombia.

Increased military power, operating in tandem with nationalist stirrings,
may inhibit US military meddling. Brazil, for example, with its own
strategic defense plan and brisk economic growth, is an unlikely US acolyte.
The nation is the 10th largest industrial power in the world and has become
the world's fifth-largest arms exporter. Brazilian industry builds warships,
several types of fighter jets, and is constructing a nuclear submarine. And
to facilitate its expanded trade with China, Brazil is paying 70 percent of
the $1 billion cost of a 1,500 mile long highway that extends from Peruvian
ports to Santos on Brazil's Atlantic coast.

Brazil recently sent military planners to Vietnam to learn about guerrilla
war. The head of Brazil's Amazon military command, General Claudio Barbosa,
has predicted that Brazil may in the future face wars similar to the war
that convulsed Vietnam and the one transpiring in Iraq now. The priority
would be guerrilla warfare, "an option the army will not hesitate to adopt
facing a confrontation with another country or group of countries with
greater economic and military power." What nation could the general be
thinking of?

Brazil opposes Plan Colombia. The nationalist orientation of its industrial
leaders persuaded them to put off joining FTAA. Brazil has no US bases on
its soil, nor does Brazil engage in joint military exercises with the United
States. Military cooperation between Brazil and Argentina apparently is
flourishing, and in February, Brazil signed strategic accords with
Venezuela. The Brazilian example of independent pursuit of national
interests has emboldened other South American nations.

The single-minded pursuit of national interests, however, may work against
popular struggle and Latin American unity. Analysts agree that Brazil and
Argentina's preoccupation with internal interests has created a power vacuum
that encouraged Washington to court Paraguay successfully. Relations between
the two nations have long been plagued by trade clashes.

Ideally, Brazil might have utilized its economic power to further Latin
American unity and ward off predatory US behavior. Instead it operates
according to free market rules and, unlike Venezuela, looks for salvation
through from the US-led world market economy, distancing itself from Latin
America's agenda. Worse, jostling for market advantage creates divisions
that lay the region open to tactics of divide and rule.

The Herculean labors of unified democratic struggle elsewhere in Latin
America point to strategies through which Bush scheming and US military
probing in the region might be resisted. The example of the FARC-EP, in its
survival and apparent growth, has meaning for revolutionaries far beyond
Colombia's borders. The organization now maintains a presence in nearly 100
percent of the municipalities in Colombia, and, according to Monthly Review,
"with the exception of Cuba, [the FARC-EP] has become the largest and most
powerful revolutionary force -- politically and militarily -- within the
Western Hemisphere."

Chávez forces in Venezuela, under the aegis of the Bolivarian Alternative
for the Americas (ALBA), have fused the twin causes of Latin American unity
and social justice. Mass protests in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, even Chile keep
empire minders in Washington on edge. The point here is that growing
solidarity on the part of US activists with struggles throughout Latin
America may act as a brake on US meddling in Paraguay.

Opposition likely will materialize within Paraguay itself. In recent years
peasants there have mounted protests against privatization, economic
restrictions imposed by the International Monetary Fund, unfair land holding
patterns, and antiterrorism legislation.

There is no lack of awareness. Orlando Castillo of the human rights group
Servicio Páz y Justicia recalls that, "US soldiers taught torture and other
forms of human rights violations in courses at the School of the Americas."
He warns that "the United States has strong aspirations to convert Paraguay
into a second Panama for its troops and is not far removed from reaching its
objective of controlling the Southern Cone."

While attending the 2nd Jubilee South World Assembly in Havana, Sixto
Pereira of the Paraguayan Initiative for People's Integration told
Cuban-based Prensa Latina:

"We demand the abolition of regulations that harbor and give impunity to
Pentagon troops. It is a demand in favor of Paraguay and Latin American
integration."

Pereira indicated that mobilization against the presence of US troops is
gaining momentum in Paraguay.

The Freedom Archives
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