[News] From Latin America to the Arab World – What’s going on in Libya?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Posted on 
<http://machetera.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/from-latin-america-to-the-arab-world/>February 
26, 2011 by <http://machetera.wordpress.com/author/machetera/>machetera|

http://machetera.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/from-latin-america-to-the-arab-world/

 From Latin America to the Arab World – What’s going on in Libya?

Santiago Alba Rico and Alma Allende – 
<http://www.tlaxcala-int.org/article.asp?reference=3981>español

Translation: Machetera

We have the impression that a great worldwide 
liberation process may be aborted by the 
unappeasable ferocity of Gaddafi, U.S. 
interventionism, and a lack of foresight in Latin America.

We might describe the situation like this: in a 
part of the world linked once again to strong 
internal solidarities and from which only 
lethargy or fanaticism was expected, a wave of 
popular uprisings have arisen which have 
threatened to topple the allies of Western powers 
in the region, one after the other.  Independent 
of local differences, these uprisings have 
something in common that radically distinguishes 
them from the orange and rose colored 
“revolutions” promoted by capitalism in the 
former Soviet bloc: they demand democracy, 
certainly, but far from being fascinated by 
Europe and the United States, they are the 
holders of a long, entrenched, radical 
anti-imperialist tradition forged around 
Palestine and Iraq.  There’s not even a hint of 
socialism in the popular Arab uprisings, but 
neither is there one of Islamism, nor – most 
importantly – of Euro-centric seduction: it is 
simultaneously a matter of economic upheaval and 
democratic, nationalistic and anti-colonial 
revolution, something that, forty years after 
their defeat, suddenly opens an unexpected 
opportunity for the region’s socialist and pan-Arabist left.

Progressive Latin America, whose pioneering 
liberation processes constitute hope for 
world-wide anti-imperialism, ought to support the 
Arab world right now without reservation, moving 
beyond the strategy of the Western powers 
overtaken by events, as well as those that are 
providing an opportunity for Gaddafi’s return – 
perhaps militarily, but above all, 
propagandistically – as a champion of human 
rights and democracy.  That discourse is hardly 
credible in this part of the world, where Fidel 
and Chávez enjoy enormous popular credit, but if 
Latin America aligns itself, actively or 
passively, with the tyrant, the contagious 
popular advances that are already extending 
toward Europe, and have gone as far as Wisconsin, 
will not only see themselves irreparably halted 
but will also produce a new fracture in the 
anti-imperialist camp, so that the world’s ever 
vigilant timekeeper, the United States of America 
can seize advantage in order to recover lost 
ground.  Something like this may already be 
occurring as a result of a combination of 
ignorance as well as schematic and summary 
anti-imperialism.  The Arab people, who are 
returning to history’s stage, need the support of 
their Latin American brothers and sisters, but 
above all, it is the relationship between world 
powers that cannot allow for vacillation by Cuba 
and Venezuela without having Cuba and Venezuela 
also suffer the consequences, with Latin America 
and the hopes for transformation at a global level suffering along with them.

We might say that we know very little of what it 
happening in Libya and are suspicious about the 
condemnations coming from the Western media and 
institutional powers in recent days.  We might 
leave it at that.  The imperialists are more 
intelligent.  With many specific interests in the 
area, they have defended their dictators to the 
bitter end, but when they have understood that 
those dictators were unsustainable, they have let 
them fall and chosen another strategy: that of 
supporting controlled democratic processes, 
choosing and deploying post-modern minorities as 
a driving force for limited change, a new rainbow 
of democratic rhetoric, in the sure knowledge 
that memory is short and leftist reflections 
quite immediate.  Any kind of Western 
interference must be opposed, but we don’t 
believe, truly, that NATO is going to invade 
Libya; it seems to us that this threat, just 
barely pointed out, has the effect of entangling 
and blurring the anti-imperialist camp, even to 
the point of making us forget something that we 
ought to know: who Gaddafi is.  Forgetting this 
produces three terrible effects in the end: 
breaking the ties with the popular Arab 
movements, giving legitimacy to the accusations 
against Venezuela and Cuba, and granting new 
prestige to the very damaged imperialist 
discourse on democracy.  All without a doubt, a 
triumph for imperialist interests in the region.

Over the past ten years, Gaddafi has been a great 
friend to the European Union and the United 
States, and its dictator allies in the 
region.  We need only recall the inflammatory 
statements of support from the Libyan Caligula 
for the deposed Ben Alí, to whose militias he 
quite probably provided weapons and money in the 
days following January 14th.  It’s sufficient as 
well to recall Gaddafi’s docile collaboration 
with the U.S. in the framework of the so-called 
“war on terrorism.”  The political collaboration 
has been accompanied by close economic ties with 
the EU, including Spain: the sale of oil to 
Germany, Italy, France and the United States has 
paralleled the entry into Libya by the large 
Western oil companies (the Spanish Repsol, the 
British BP, the French Total, the Italian ENI and 
the Austrian OM), not to mention the juicy 
contracts for European and Spanish construction 
firms in Tripoli.  Moreover, France and the U.S. 
have continued providing the weapons that are now 
killing Libyans from the air, following imperial 
Italy’s example from 1911.  In 2008, the former 
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice made it 
quite clear: “Libya and the United States share 
permanent interests: cooperation in the fight 
against terrorism, trade, nuclear proliferation, 
Africa, human rights and democracy.”

When Gaddafi visited France in December of 2007, 
<http://rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=60593>Ayman 
El-Kayman summarized the situation in the 
following paragraph:  “Almost ten years ago, as 
far as the democratic West was concerned, Gaddafi 
was no long a reprehensible individual: in order 
to get off the U.S. terrorist list, he took 
responsibility for the bombing over Lockerbie; in 
order to normalize his relations with the United 
Kingdom, he turned over the names of all the 
Irish republicans who’d trained in Libya; for 
normalization with the United States, he turned 
over all the information he had about Libyans 
suspected of participating in jihad along with 
Bin Laden, and renounced his “weapons of mass 
destruction,” as well as calling on Syria to do 
the same; in order to normalize relations with 
the European Union, he became the guardian of 
concentration camps where thousands of Africans 
headed for Europe are held; in order to normalize 
his relations with his sinister neighbor Ben Alí, 
he turned over the opponents of the Tunisian 
regime who had been living as refugees in Libya.

As is apparent, Gaddafi is neither a 
revolutionary nor an ally, not even a tactical 
one, of the world’s revolutionaries.  In 2008 
Fidel and Chávez (along with Mercosur) rightly 
denounced what was known as the “shameful 
directive” from Europe that reinforced an already 
very severe persecution in Europe of defenseless 
immigrants who’d been stripped of everything.  Of 
all Gaddafi’s crimes, perhaps the most serious 
and least known is his complicity in the EU’s 
immigration policy, particularly that of Italy, 
as the executioner of African migrants.  Anyone 
seeking a wealth of information on the subject 
can read Il Mare di mezzo, by the courageous 
journalist Gabriele del Grande, or consult his 
website, 
<http://fortresseurope.blogspot.com/>Fortresseurope, 
where there is a collection of horrifying 
documents.  By 2006 Human Rights Watch and Afvic 
denounced the arbitrary arrests and tortures 
taking place in Libyan detention centers financed 
by Italy.  The Berlusconi-Gaddafi agreement of 
2003 can be read in its entirety at Gabriele del 
Grande’s site, and its consequences summarized 
succinctly and painfully in the cry of Farah 
Anam, the Somali fugitive from Libyan death 
camps: “I’d prefer to die at sea than return to 
Libya.”  Despite the denunciations of the real 
extermination practices taking place – or 
precisely because of them, proof of Gaddafi’s 
efficiency as Europe’s guardian – the European 
Commission signed a “cooperative agenda” in order 
to “direct migration flows” and “control 
borders,” valid until 2013 and accompanied by the 
delivery of 50 million Euros to Libya.

Europe’s relationship with Gaddafi has been a 
submissive one.  Berlusconi, Sarkozy, Zapatero 
and Blair received him with open arms in 2007 and 
Zapatero himself visited him in Tripoli in 
2010.  Even the Spanish king, Juan Carlos, was 
dispatched to Tripoli in January of 2009 in order 
to promote Spanish business.  On the other hand, 
the EU didn’t hesitate to humiliate itself and 
make a public apology on March 27th, 2010, 
through the Spanish foreign minister at the time, 
Miguel Ángel Moratinos, for having prohibited 188 
Libyan citizens entry into Europe due to the 
conflict between Switzerland and Libya over the 
arrest of one of Gaddafi’s sons in Geneva where 
he was accused of assaulting his maids.  More 
than that: the EU didn’t issue the slightest 
protest when Gaddafi imposed economic, trade and 
human reprisals against Switzerland, nor when he 
effectively called for a holy war against that 
country and made a public statement about his 
wish that it be wiped from the map.

And so now when Gaddafi’s imperialist friends – 
who’ve seen how the Arab world revolted without 
their intervention – condemn the Libyan 
dictatorship and talk about democracy, we 
vacillate.  We apply the universal template of 
the anti-imperialist struggle, with its 
conspiracy theories and its paradoxical distrust 
of the people, and ask for time so that the 
clouds of dust thrown up by the bombs dropped 
from the air might clear – to be sure that there 
are no CIA cadavers underneath.  That is, when we 
don’t offer direct support, as the Nicaraguan 
government did, to a criminal with whom the 
slightest contact can only stain forever anyone 
who claims to be leftist or progressive.  It’s 
not NATO who’s bombing the Libyans, but 
Gaddafi.  “Gun against gun” is how the 
revolutionary song goes; “Missiles against 
civilians” is something that we cannot accept and 
that, without even asking ourselves, we ought to 
condemn with all our might and indignation.  But 
let’s ask ourselves the questions as 
well.  Because if we ask ourselves, the answers 
that we have – few as they might be – provide 
further proof of which side the revolutionaries 
of the world should be on right now.  With any 
luck, Gaddafi will fall – better today than 
tomorrow – and Latin America will understand that 
what is happening right now in the Arab world has 
to do, not with the Machiavellian plans of the EU 
and the U.S. (which without a doubt are 
maneuvering in the shadows), but with the open 
processes of Our America, that America which 
belongs to everyone, that of ALBA and dignity, 
since the beginning of the 1990s, following in the wake of the Cuba of 1958.

The opportunity is great and possibly the last 
for a definitive reverse in the balance of forces 
and for isolating the imperialist powers within a 
new global framework.  We ought not to fall into 
such a simple trap.  We ought not to 
underestimate the Arabs.  No, they aren’t 
socialists, but in the last two months, in an 
unexpected way, they have stripped away the 
hypocrisy from the EU and the United States, have 
expressed their desire for authentic democracy, 
far removed from any colonial tutelage, and have 
opened a space for the left to thwart 
capitalism’s attempts to recover lost 
ground.  It’s the Latin America of ALBA, of Che, 
and Playa Girón, whose prestige in this area 
remained intact until yesterday, that must 
support the process before the world’s timekeeper 
manages to turn the hands back and to its 
favor.  The capitalist countries have 
“interests,” the socialist ones only 
“limits.”  Many of these “interests” were with 
Gaddafi, but none of these “limits” have anything 
to do with him.  He is a criminal and moreover, a 
hindrance.  Please, revolutionary comrades of 
Latin America, the revolutionary comrades of the 
Arab world are asking that you not support him.

Machetera is a member of 
<http://www.tlaxcala.es/>Tlaxcala, the network of 
translators for linguistic diversity. This 
translation may be reprinted as long as the 
content remains unaltered, and the source, author, and translator are cited.



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