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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">The Military Occupation of Latin America and the Caribbean</h1>
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<p>By Luis Britto Garcia on January 22, 2025</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_29213" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-29213" src="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1-24-alba.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1" alt="" width="300" height="200" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-29213" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><font size="1">Laura Richardson and the US Southern Command</font></p></div>
<p><em>The battles of Latin America and the Caribbean for independence
and sovereignty were bloody. According to the estimation of the
Liberator Simón Bolívar, they cost more than a third of the population.</em><span id="gmail-more-29212"></span></p>
<p>During the 19th century, the unjust oligarchic order inherited from
colonial times led to numerous civil wars. But apart from the
independence struggles, there have been few international conflicts in
our region, most of them initiated by financial interests foreign to our
America. To demonstrate their peaceful vocation, the governments of
Latin America and the Caribbean signed the “Treaty of Tlatelolco” in
Mexico on February 14, 1967, which prohibits the development,
stockpiling or use of nuclear weapons in the region and restricts atomic
energy to peaceful uses. In fact, the agreement reserves the use of
such devices to the only hemispheric power that possesses them in the
hemisphere, the United States.</p>
<p>In the same vein, on January 29, 2014, the leaders of the 33
countries of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States
(CELAC) signed in Havana the “Proclamation of Latin America and the
Caribbean as a Zone of Peace”, in which they affirm “our commitment to
consolidate a zone of peace in Latin America and the Caribbean, in which
differences between nations are resolved peacefully, through dialogue
and negotiation or other forms of solution, and in full accordance with
international law”. It was ratified by Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina,
Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica,
Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada,
Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama,
Paraguay, Peru, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the
Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay and Venezuela.</p>
<p>In contrast with this constant, firm and explicit vocation for the
peace of the Latin American and Caribbean peoples, since 1817 the United
States has perpetrated more than fifty armed interventions in Our
America, some followed by vast plundering, such as the one that in 1848
snatched from Mexico more than half of its territory, the one that in
1899 interfered in the Independence of Cuba and annexed Puerto Rico, the
one that in 1904 appropriated the area of the Panama Canal. By virtue
of this, two centuries after the battle of Ayacucho, we find a good part
of Our America partly militarily occupied again by troops foreign to
the region.</p>
<p>Only that these militias have not fought battles to install their
enclaves in what were once independent territories: in most cases they
occupied them with the consent of stateless governments.<br>
The United States, which has some 6,000 military bases in its territory
and some 800 in the rest of the world, currently has some 76 military
bases in the territory of Our America: almost double the number of
countries in the region.</p>
<p>To mention all these enclaves would be too extensive.</p>
<p>The new neoliberal government will surely authorize other enclaves in
an expeditious manner. Chile supports one near Valparaíso. In Colombia,
9 US military bases seriously interfere in internal affairs: in fact,
each Colombian airport is a bastion that houses, supplies and repairs
northern military aircraft. In Cuba, the Guantanamo enclave remains,
despite the staunch opposition of the people and authorities. The
government of Rafael Correa freed Ecuador from the Manta Base: the
neoliberal Noboa ceded for the same use the Galapagos Islands, with
mortal damage to the ecology of the archipelago, and admitted an
invasion of US troops under the pretext of fighting the criminal
underworld. Haiti has been repeatedly and prolongedly occupied by
northern soldiers, with disastrous results. In Honduras, 3 military
bases participated in the coup against Mel Zelaya. In Panama, 12 bases
prolong the military occupation, despite the Torrijos-Carter agreements
that recognize Panamanian sovereignty over the Canal. Paraguay supports
two, which threaten the Guarani Aquifer and the Lithium Triangle. In
Peru 8 enclaves support the repression of the dictator Dina Boluarte. In
Puerto Rico 12 bases maintain by force the humiliating condition of
Free Associated Country. In addition to those mentioned above, there are
US bases in Aruba, Curacao, Costa Rica and El Salvador. To which are
added a secret and indefinite number of “quasi-bases” that cooperate in
tasks of espionage, communication, quartermaster and in general
interference in local affairs.</p>
<p>The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European armed
wing of the United States, also sows its enclaves in the region. This
military alliance maintains bases in the Falklands, Belize, Guadeloupe
and Martinique. Argentina has been a “Principal Extra-NATO Ally” since
1997, Brazil since 2019, and Colombia has been a “NATO Global Partner”
since 2022. European troops guard the Overseas Department of Guyana.</p>
<p>By brute force or the consent of stateless governments, Latin America
and the Caribbean has become in practice a militarily occupied region.</p>
<p>Should the neo-liberal opposition come to power in Venezuela, its
first act would be to allow the installation of a dozen foreign military
bases to guarantee the Empire the plundering of our wealth.</p>
<p>When there are two roosters in a barnyard, one is playing the role of the hen.</p>
<p>The simultaneous presence of foreign and national armed forces in the
same territory implies a conflict, a capitulation, or that the latter
will serve as cannon fodder for the interests of the former.</p>
<p>The extreme gravity of the military occupation of Our America can be
understood if it is taken into account that the invading countries also
claim for their bases and soldiers abroad the condition of
extraterritoriality and impunity. That is to say: 1) the occupied nation
cannot inspect what happens in foreign military installations located
in its territory, and 2) the troops of the occupying army are formally
endowed with diplomatic immunity, so that their crimes, atrocities and
crimes against humanity cannot be judged according to the Constitution
and local laws.</p>
<p>Just as foreign capitalists in Special Economic Zones are not subject
to tax or labor laws or national courts, foreign occupiers are immune
from the laws and courts of the country they occupy.</p>
<p>To maintain such outrages, U.S. military doctrine is periodically
readjusted, as was the case with “President William Clinton’s War Plan,”
launched at the First Summit of the Americas in Miami in 1994.</p>
<p>This plan presents three strategic objectives on three related fronts
to be achieved before the year 2006: 1) the economic reconquest,
through the FTAA, 2) the political reconquest, 3) the military
reconquest and 4) the appropriation of the Amazon, added later.</p>
<p>The “military reconquest” of Latin America and the Caribbean is being
prepared by armed hemispheric intervention organizations created by
William Clinton in 1995: the Conference of Defense Ministers of the
Americas, which adopted the doctrine of the OAS Democratic Charter in
2002 at its fifth meeting in Santiago, Chile, and the Hemispheric Center
for Defense Studies.</p>
<p>When examining the possibilities of “military reconquest” it must be
taken into account that the United States has 1,328,800 soldiers in
active service. According to data from the International Institute for
Strategic Studies, in 2001 Latin America and the Caribbean had 1,251,000
troops: it is possible that today it will equal the number of US
troops.</p>
<p>It would be extremely costly, complicated and demanding for the power
of the North to maintain a total occupation force of its own nationals
throughout the whole of Our America. To train and maintain it, they
would have to recruit and equip a force at least equivalent to that of
the sum of their local armies, which would mean doubling their current
contingent, would be incalculably expensive and would force them to
weaken their other strategic world fronts.</p>
<p>The total military occupation of Our America by the United States is
therefore impossible. It has been our disunity and our lack of
solidarity, if not our collaboration, that allowed the northern power to
impose its will through consecutive interventions focused on republics
that had no choice but to face diplomatically and strategically alone
the disproportionate power of the northern colossus.</p>
<p>Therefore, the ideal for the United States would be for its hegemony
over Latin America and the Caribbean to be maintained by troops from its
own nations, paid for as far as possible by the occupied peoples
themselves.</p>
<p>Thus, in 1963, the Americans supported the overthrow of the
democratically elected government of Juan Bosch in the Dominican
Republic, and to prevent Colonel Caamaño Deñó from replacing him in
command, the marines were supported in 1965 by contingents sent by the
Latin American dictatorships of the time in Brazil, Nicaragua, Honduras
and Paraguay.</p>
<p>An OAS resolution legitimized the blockade against Cuba. U.S.
diplomacy obtained from a group of small Caribbean islands the request
for the invasion of Grenada in 1983; troops from the British Colony of
Jamaica participated in that invasion. At present the head of the
Jamaican state is the British monarch: the troops of that island are
therefore under British command. Repeated destabilization and invasion
attempts against Venezuela have been made by neighboring countries since
2002.</p>
<p>It is possible that, taking advantage of its progressive military
occupation of Our America, the United States is trying to revitalize the
Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR) of 1947, a sort
of complement to the Monroe Doctrine and predecessor of NATO, which
provided for the joint use of forces of the countries of the Americas
against any aggression.</p>
<p>This Treaty was signed by Argentina, Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,
Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras,
Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and
Tobago, Venezuela, United States and Uruguay. It has been invoked a
score of times without much effect, but died a natural death when, in
1982, in order to claim its dominion over the Malvinas, Great Britain
militarily attacked Argentina, and neither the United States nor the
other countries of the pact lifted a finger to defend the latter. Since
then, it was clear that the instrument would only be applied in favor of
the interests of the United States, avoiding any conflict with the
European countries subject to NATO. In fact, it was never used against
the colonial enclaves maintained in America by England, France and
Holland: Jamaica, Belize, the British, French and Dutch Guianas. For
such reasons, Mexico abandoned it in 2002; Venezuela, Nicaragua and
Bolivia in 2012.</p>
<p>However, the proliferation of Atlantic Alliance military bases makes a
revitalization of TIAR foreseeable. The expansionist and aggressive
policy announced by Donald Trump before his second presidency also
points to it: strict border closures, massive expulsion of 11 million
immigrants, annexation of Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal Zone,
customs duties of 60% against Chinese products and against countries
whose ports, airports or other means of transport facilitate the
transport of such goods.</p>
<p>These are measures that would be difficult to impose peacefully.</p>
<p>Declining empires tend to replace their national armies with
mercenary militias recruited from among the colonized peoples
themselves. The Rome of the decline nourished its legions with
mercenaries from the conquered provinces; the British sustained their
domination over India with sepoys; the Atlantic Alliance maintains its
domination over Europe with militias from the peoples subdued by the
North Atlantic Organization.</p>
<p>Venezuela today has in its neighborhood countries infested with US or
NATO military bases: Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Aruba, Curacao,
Guadeloupe, Martinique. In the South, the “Main Extra-NATO Ally” Brazil
ignores our elections and therefore our government. On its eastern
border, the Cooperative Republic of Guyana surrenders resources from the
Reclamation Zone, allows continuous intimidating military exercises by
the United States and other countries and receives massive contingents
of armaments. It is to be feared that a false flag attack will serve as a
pretext to assault our riches to the hydrocarbon-hungry powers.</p>
<p>Against this massive occupation, comparable to that of an area
invaded by the enemy after a crushing military defeat, we suggest the
following measures:</p>
<ol><li>To promote a culture of sovereignty, imparting through all levels of
education and the media a culture of sovereignty, defining and
clarifying the concept, and clarifying that sovereignty disappears when
foreign powers are attributed the power to modify our laws, execute
them, decide on controversies related to internal public order or occupy
the territory with foreign militias installed in enclaves where local
laws do not apply.</li><li>To constitute, using organizations such as Alba, Unasur and Celac, a
military alliance of Latin America and the Caribbean that excludes the
participation and above all the interference of the United States, the
Southern Command, NATO and other forces and unions foreign to Our
America … .</li><li>To advance in the democratization of our armies, opening access to
all ranks of the military career to all social classes; maintaining in
form support bodies such as the Reserve and the Militia, and imparting
in all branches of education the basic elements of armed defense,
without this necessarily implying conscription for service.</li><li>To initiate a diplomatic, juridical, cultural and communicational
offensive that demands the withdrawal of the foreign bases that
currently occupy our America.</li><li>Modernize and train our Armed Forces in order to effectively repel,
together with the people, any invasion, interference, interference or
attempt of annexation or colonization in Our America.</li><li>Complement these measures with pacts, alliances and agreements in
defense of our sovereignty with countries and organizations of the
multipolar world.</li></ol>
<p>Latin America and the Caribbean urgently need a new Ayacucho. Nothing
embitters the days as much as knowing that they no longer pass for
friends. Isaías was and continues to be in our memories, a cordial man, a
loving father, a humorist and at times a poet in classic rhyming
verses, a splendid ambassador, a prosecutor in difficult times when
being one could cost his life and perhaps he saved us all. His
courageous televised speech on April 12 contributed greatly to the
reestablishment of democracy. More than a man of law, he was and is, as
St. Paul would say, a Law in himself.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="https://portalalba.org/temas/geopolitica/la-ocupacion-militar-de-america-latina-y-el-caribe-ii/">ALBA Portal</a>, translation Internationalist 360</p>
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