[News] Dirty Business, Dirty Wars: US-Latin American Relations

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Dirty Business, Dirty Wars: U.S.-Latin American Relations in the 21st Century
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1687/1/

Written by Cyril Mychalejko
Tuesday, 27 January 2009

Source: 
<http://www.wpunj.edu/%7Enewpol/issue46/cont46.htm>New 
Politics Winter 2009, Vol. XXII

Much is being made across the political spectrum 
in the United States about Washington's waning 
influence in Latin America. The region has seen 
an emergence of left and center-left presidents 
voted into office, many as a result of budding 
social movements growing democracy from the 
grassroots. Some pundits and analysts are 
suggesting that this phenomenon is occurring 
because of the Bush Administration's perceived 
neglect of the region. Rather, what is happening 
is blowback from Washington's continued meddling 
in the economic and political affairs of an area 
arrogantly referred to as the United States’ 
"backyard." Latin America's growing unity in 
rejecting the Washington Consensus remains 
fragile in the face of U.S. opposition. 
Washington has been quietly using the war on 
drugs, the war on terrorism, and a neo-cold war 
ideology to institutionalize a militarism in the 
region that risks returning us to the not so far off days of "dirty wars."

Breaking the Chains

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's election in 
1998 sparked the beginning of the leftward 
electoral paradigm shift in the hemisphere. After 
he orchestrated a failed coup attempt in 1992, he 
was elected six years later based on a campaign 
that promised to lift up the impoverished 
nation's poor majority through economic policies 
that ran counter to the free market 
fundamentalism and crony capitalism pursued by 
the country's oligarchs, with the aid of 
Washington and international financial 
institutions such as the World Bank and the 
International Monetary Fund (IMF). Chavez also 
began to challenge the idea of U.S. hegemony in 
the region by advocating a united Latin America 
based on the ideas of one of his intellectual 
mentors, Simón Bolívar, the 19th century 
revolutionary instrumental in defeating Spain's 
control of the region. Chavez, who also claims to 
be influenced by the teachings of Karl Marx and 
Jesus Christ, has championed what he calls a 
"Socialism of the 21st Century." A fierce and 
outspoken critic of neoliberalism, Chavez has 
said "I am convinced that a path to a new, better 
and possible world is socialism, not capitalism," 
words that have been scarce in the region's 
capitals with the exception of Cuba.

Since Chavez's ascent to power, we have seen 
presidents elected in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, 
Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Uruguay 
which translates into a majority of countries in 
the region advocating center-left and left-wing 
political programs (while Mexico and Peru missed 
joining this new Latin American consensus by 
narrow, if not fraudulent, election outcomes).

While it is true that, despite these 
developments, socialism is a long way off from 
taking hold in the region, the rejection of 
Washington's Free Trade Area of the Americas 
(FTAA) back in 2003, long before the left had 
firmly taken hold in the hemisphere, marked the 
beginning of an outright challenge to free market 
orthodoxy, U.S. hegemony, and corporate power. 
Since then we have seen multinational 
corporations booted out of countries and 
defiantly confronted by social movements, U.S. 
ambassadors expelled from three nation’s 
capitals, free trade agreements protested, 
illegitimate foreign debts challenged, and U.S. 
drug policies rejected. In addition, alternative 
political and economic institutions and policies 
have been advocated and created.

Venezuela’s Chavez developed the Bolivarian 
Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), an 
antithesis to the FTAA that advocates a trade 
regime based on economic, social, and political 
integration guided by the principals of 
solidarity and cooperation. Even Honduras, long 
seen as a U.S. satellite state dating back to the 
days it assisted Washington in overthrowing 
Guatemala’s government in 1954, has joined ALBA, 
showing that the creeping tide of Bolivarianism 
is extending to the still fragile Central 
America. Meanwhile, Brazil's Lula de Silva, 
viewed by Washington and the U.S. corporate media 
as part of the "acceptable" or "responsible" 
left, declared in 2007 that "Developing nations 
must create their own mechanisms of finance 
instead of suffering under those of the IMF and 
the World Bank, which are institutions of rich 
nations . . . it is time to wake up." And the 
region has woken up as the "Bank of the South" 
was formed to make development loans without the 
draconian economic prescriptions of 
Washington-controlled financial institutions, 
which in the past have forced countries to cut 
social spending, deregulate industries, and open 
markets to foreign capital ­ policies that have 
exacerbated poverty and inequality in the past 
and as a result compounded dependence on foreign capital and Washington.

In terms of security cooperation, both Brazil and 
Venezuela have led efforts to create a South 
American Defense Council, a NATO-style regional 
body that would coordinate defense policies, deal 
with internal conflicts and presumably diminish 
Washington's influence in its "backyard." While 
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said 
back in March that Washington "had no problem 
with it" and looked "forward to coordination with 
it," Bloomberg News reported that Brazilian 
Defense Minister Nelson Jobim told Rice and 
National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley that the 
United States should "watch from the outside and 
keep its distance," and that "this is a South 
American council and we have no obligation to ask 
for a license from the United States to do it." 
In a similar challenge to U.S. military presence 
and influence, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa 
decided to force the United States. to close its 
military base in the port city of Manta. And then 
there is China’s and Russia's growing economic 
and political ties to the region ­ something that 
would not only be unheard of in the past, but not tolerated.

Developments such as these led the Council on 
Foreign Relations to declare in May that the "era 
of the United States as the dominant influence in 
Latin America is over." Frank Bajak, writing for 
the Associated Press on Oct. 11, echoed this 
observation when he wrote, "U.S. clout in what it 
once considered its backyard has sunk to perhaps 
the lowest point in decades" and that "it's 
unlikely to be able to leverage economic 
influence in Latin America anytime soon." 
Meanwhile, The Washington Post took a more 
indignant and belligerent position in an Oct. 6 
editorial when it questioned whether Washington 
should "continue to subsidize governments that 
treat it as an enemy" while "a significant part 
of Latin America continues to march away from the 
'Washington consensus' of democracy and 
free-market capitalism that has governed the region for a generation."

A Laboratory for Counterinsurgency

While conventional thinking has led many to 
believe that Latin America's independence from 
the United States may be an irreversible paradigm 
shift, behind the scenes Washington has put into 
place policies that could unleash a reign of 
terror not seen since the 1980's. Colombia has 
served as laboratory for this new 
counterinsurgency program that can be interpreted 
as a continuance of U.S. supported state 
terrorism and a re-emergence of the national security state in Latin America.

The U.S. government has sent more than $5 billion 
in mostly military and counter-narcotics 
assistance to Colombia since 2000 to fund "Plan 
Colombia," a counter drug program said to be 
designed to fight cocaine production and 
narco-trafficking, as well as the Revolutionary 
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in turn further 
intensifying the country's long-standing civil 
war. But as the International Consortium of 
Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) reported in 2001 
in a study sponsored by the Center for Responsive 
Politics, "The protection of U.S. oil and trade 
interests is also a key factor in the plan, and 
historic links to drug-trafficking right-wing 
guerrillas by U.S. allies belie an exclusive 
commitment to extirpating drug trafficking."

The ICIJ investigation also found that "Major 
U.S. oil companies have lobbied Congress 
intensely to promote additional military aid to 
Colombia, in order to secure their investments in 
that country and create a better climate for 
future exploration of Colombia's vast potential 
reserves." In addition, corporations with 
interests in the region were reported to have 
spent almost $100 million lobbying Congress to 
affect U.S. Latin America policy.

Eight years later, Colombia has evolved into a 
full-fledged paramilitary state. President Álvaro 
Uribe, Washington's staunchest ally in the 
region, his extended family, and many of his 
political supporters in the government and 
military are under investigation for ties to 
paramilitaries and right-wing death squads. As 
far as U.S. corporate collusion goes, Chiquita 
Brands International Inc. was forced to pay the 
U.S. Justice Department a $25 million settlement 
in 2007 for giving over $1 million to the 
right-wing terrorist organization United 
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). Even more 
damaging is the fact that Secretary of Homeland 
Security Michael Chertoff, at the time assistant 
attorney general, knew about the company's 
relationship with AUC and did nothing to stop it. 
Alabama-based coal company Drummond Co., Inc. and 
Coca-Cola have also been accused of hiring 
right-wing death squads to intimidate, murder or 
disappear trade unionists. This is what the ICIJ 
meant when they wrote about securing investments 
and creating a “better climate” for business.

According to the U.S. Labor Education on the 
Americas Project, Colombia accounts for more than 
60 percent of trade unionists killed worldwide. 
There have also been at least 17 murders of trade 
unionists just this year, which, according to a 
report released in April 2008, accounts for an 89 
percent increase in murders over the same time 
period from 2007. Meanwhile, the Washington Post 
reported in August that the collateral damage 
from Colombia's civil war has resulted in more 
disappearances than occurred in El Salvador and 
Chile, while Colombia's attorney general believes 
there could be as many as 10,000 more bodies 
scattered across the country ­ meaning totals 
would surpass those from Argentina and Peru.

Despite what should be considered as a total 
failure from a policy and, more importantly, 
human rights standpoint, this same Colombian 
model has been promoted by Washington to other 
nations in the region, and ­ remarkably ­ has 
been embraced by these countries. In 2005, 
Guatemalan officials called for their own "Plan 
Guatemala," while Oscar Berger, president at the 
time, asked for a permanent DEA station in the 
country and for U.S. military personnel to 
conduct anti-narcotics operations. In addition, 
he was a proponent of a regional rapid deployment 
force, initially conceived to fight gangs, but 
later adjusted to include counter-narcotics and 
counter-terrorism in order to attract U.S. 
support. It should be noted that the AFL-CIO, 
along with six Guatemalan unions, filed a 
complaint, allowed through labor provisions of 
the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), 
on April 23, 2008, charging the Guatemalan 
government with not upholding its labor laws and 
for failing to investigate and prosecute crimes 
against union members ­ which include rape and 
murder. This speaks to the idea of securing a 
“business-friendly” climate like in Colombia, 
which many in Washington want to reward with a 
free trade agreement. Guatemala's government is 
currently led by President Alvaro Colom, a 
politician who represents the country's ruling 
oligarchs. Pre-election violence during his 
campaign claimed the lives of over 50 candidates 
(or their family members) and political 
activists, in a country Amnesty International 
reports is infested with "clandestine groups" 
comprised of members of "the business sector, 
private security companies, common criminals, 
gang members and possibly ex and current members 
of the armed forces" responsible for targeting human rights activists.

This regional militaristic strategy finally 
materialized into policy on June 30 when 
President Bush signed into law the Meridia 
Initiative, or "Plan Mexico," which according to 
Laura Carlsen of the Americas Program "could 
allocate up to $1.6 billion to Mexico, Central 
American, and Caribbean countries for security 
aid to design and carry out counter-narcotics, 
counter-terrorism, and border security measures."

Just one day later, investigative journalist 
Kristen Bricker reported that a video had 
surfaced showing a U.S.-based private security 
company teaching torture techniques to Mexican 
police. This led Amnesty International to call 
for an investigation on July 3 to determine why 
techniques such as "holding a detainee down in a 
pit full of excrement and rats and forcing water 
up the nostrils of the detainee in order to 
secure information" were being taught. Later in 
July the Inter Press Service published a story 
about a 53-page report on Human Rights and 
Conflicts in Central America 2007-2008 that 
suggested "Central America is backsliding badly 
on human rights issues, and social unrest could 
flare up into civil wars like those experienced 
in the last decades of the 20th century."

Nevertheless, Washington continues to push for 
the re-militarization of the region, as evidenced 
by a $2.6 million aid package given to El 
Salvador in October to "fight gangs." 
Coincidentally, this was announced just months 
after the Inter Press Service reported in a June 
16 article that U.S. Deputy Secretary of State 
John Negroponte "expressed concern over supposed 
ties between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of 
Colombia (FARC) guerrillas and the Farabundo 
Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN)," while 
also announcing that "the Bush administration is 
on the alert to Iran's presence in Central America."

Playing the Terror Card

In order to up the ante as a means of promoting 
this militaristic vision for the Americas and to 
vilify strategic "enemies" such as Venezuela's 
Hugo Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Washington 
has added the "War on Terror" into the equation 
by spreading unfounded allegations about Islamic 
terrorist infiltration into the region.

Journalists Ben Dangl and April Howard of Upside 
Down World, reporting for EXTRA! in Oct. 2007, 
wrote "In the Cold War, Washington and the media 
used the word 'communism' to rally public opinion 
against political opponents. Now, in the post– 
September 11 world, there is a new verbal weapon 
­ 'terrorism.'" This puts into context 
Washington's evidence-lacking assertions that the 
Tri-Border Area, where Brazil, Paraguay and 
Argentina meet, is a hub for Islamic Terrorist 
groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, claims the 
mainstream media have obsequiously parroted, yet 
Dangl and Howard helped disprove. Dangl and 
Howard, reporting from Ciudad del Este, a city 
located in the center of this alleged "hotbed" of 
terrorsim, talked with Paraguayan officials, as 
well as local residents, all of whom denied there 
was any presence of foreign terrorist groups. 
They pointed out that the governments of Brazil 
and Argentina have also denied the claims. But 
the terrorist assertions haven't stopped there.

Norman A. Bailey, a former U.S. spy chief for 
Cuba and Venezuela, testified before the House 
Committee on Foreign Affairs on July 17 that 
"financial support has been provided [by drug 
traffickers] to insurgent groups in certain 
countries, most notoriously to the FARC in 
Colombia, as well as to ETA, the Basque 
separatist organization, and most importantly to 
Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, through their 
extensive network in Venezuela and elsewhere in Latin America."

The State Department's David M. Luna, Director 
for Anticrime Programs, Bureau of International 
Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, gave a 
statement on Oct. 8 claiming that international 
terrorist organizations will collaborate with 
regional criminal networks to smuggle WMD's 
across the U.S.'s border with Mexico.

"Fighting transnational crime must go hand in 
hand with fighting terrorists, if we want to 
ensure that we 'surface them,’" stated Luna. He 
also went on to regurgitate the empty claims of the Tri-Border Islamic threat.

That same day the Associated Press reported that 
U.S. officials were concerned with alliances 
being formed by terrorist groups such as Al-Qaida 
and Hezbollah and Latin American drug cartels.

"The presence of these people in the region 
leaves open the possibility that they will 
attempt to attack the United States," said 
Charles Allen, a veteran CIA analyst. "The 
threats in this hemisphere are real. We cannot ignore them."

And on Oct. 21 the Los Angeles Times reported 
that U.S. and Colombian officials allegedly 
dismantled a drug and money laundering ring used to finance Hezbollah.

This post-Sept. 11 fear-mongering, being carried 
out for years now, has served as a pretext for 
Washington to deploy Special Operations troops in 
embassies across the globe, including Latin 
America, "to gather intelligence on 
terrorists...for potential missions to disrupt, capture or kill them."

The New York Times, which broke the story on 
March 8, 2006, reported that this initiative, led 
by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, was 
an attempt to broaden the U.S. military's role in 
intelligence gathering. The soldiers, referred to 
as "Military Liaison Elements," were initially 
deployed without the knowledge of local 
ambassadors. This changed after an armed robber 
in Paraguay was killed after attempting to rob a 
group of soldiers covertly deployed to the 
country. Senior embassy officials were 
"embarrassed" by the episode as the soldiers were 
operating out of a hotel, rather than the embassy.

But in a follow-up by the Washington Post on 
April 22, "the Pentagon gained the leeway to 
inform ­ rather than gain the approval of ­ the 
U.S. ambassador before conducting military 
operations in a foreign country" when deploying 
these "elite Special Operations Troops." This 
development has remained largely under the radar, 
with the exception of analysis by Just the Facts, 
a joint project of the Center for International 
Policy, the Latin American Working Group 
Education Fund, and the Washington Office on Latin America.

A New Cold War?

In Oct. 2006 President Bush signed a waiver that 
authorized the U.S. military to resume certain 
types of training to a number of militaries in 
the region which had been suspended as a result 
of a bill intended to punish countries not 
signing bilateral agreements that would grant 
immunity to U.S. citizens from prosecution before 
the International Criminal Court.

Bush was forced to act as a result of Venezuela's 
growing influence in the region, as well as the 
"red" threat that China's growing business in the region presented.

"The Chinese are standing by and I can't think of 
anything that is worse than having those people 
go over there and get indoctrinated by them. And 
I think maybe we should address that because 
that's a very serious thing," said Sen. James 
Inhofe (R-OK), at a March 14, 2008, hearing of 
the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), at the same 
hearing, said this was "a serious threat" and 
called for ending the restrictions on U.S. 
military training programs imposed on Latin 
American nations for refusing to sign the 
bilateral immunity agreements. Of course, Latin 
American nations should not be subject to 
sanctions for quite properly rejecting the 
immunity agreements; but neither should there be 
training programs for their repressive 
militaries, to teach these militaries repressive practices.

The Associated Press reported in Oct. that 
“China's trade with Latin America jumped from $10 
billion in 2000 to $102.6 billion last year. 
[And] In May, a state-owned Chinese company 
agreed to buy a Peruvian copper mine for $2.1 billion.”

These developments should further perpetuate the 
“Red Scare” making its way through the Senate. 
Then there is Russia’s military sales and 
cooperation with Venezuela. U.S. News and World 
Report’s Alastair Gee wrote a fear-mongering 
article on Oct. 14, 2008, in which he stated, 
"This is not the first time Russians have sought 
close links with Latin America. In 1962, the 
stationing of Soviet missiles in Cuba nearly 
precipitated nuclear war with the United States. 
The Soviets also funded regional communist 
parties and invited students from the region to study in Soviet universities."

But more importantly, it is the region’s “march 
away from the 'Washington consensus' of democracy 
and free-market capitalism” that has drummed up a 
cold war mentality in Washington. With 
democratically elected presidents in the region 
openly embracing socialism and socialist-style 
policies, economic programs in various countries 
that include nationalizing industries and 
“redistributing the wealth”, and social movements 
ideologically and physically confronting free 
market capitalism, it should come as no surprise 
that anti-globalization movements have found 
themselves classified as a national security 
threat to the United States. A declassified April 
2006 National Intelligence Estimate entitled 
"Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the 
United States," states, "Anti-U.S. and 
anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise and 
fueling other radical ideologies. This could 
prompt some leftist, nationalist, or separatist 
groups to adopt terrorist methods to attack US interests."

Moving Forward

Developments in Latin America are reason for hope 
and optimism that “a new, better and possible 
world” could be on the horizon. But these very 
same reasons are cause for concern.

With Washington’s imperial stretch on the 
decline, both militarily and economically, both 
history and current conditions suggest it will 
try to reassert itself in Latin America ­ just as it did after Vietnam.

But because of the deeply embedded and 
institutionalized nature of Washington’s imperial 
machine, it doesn’t matter much which party 
controls the White House and Congress. To fight 
these developments, we need to continue to grow 
grassroots media projects and support independent 
journalists, build long-term solidarity with 
Latin American social movements and build social 
movements in the United States, fight free trade 
and do our part to shed light upon the structural 
violence threatening Latin America’s promising 
future ­ which is directly tied to ours.
Cyril Mychalejko is an editor at www.UpsideDownWorld.org.




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