Hugo Chávez, Soldier of the People Forever

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, President of Argentina

Argentine President Cristina Fernández visits Montaña Garrison

I awoke on a cloudy day and am leaving in the sun. I have just visited the Montaña Garrison. It is surrounded by working class neighborhoods. You can see Miraflores in the distance. The head of the guard told me that Hugo always looked this way from his office there. How could he not! This is where he planned the insurrection against Andrés Pérez. The 4th Republic, the tragic epilogue to the Punto Fijo agreement, when the Caracazo broke out – or as Hugo liked to say, the Venezolazo – the final crisis of neoliberal policies.

Repression and death to the people. Coincidences in our history are no accident. Hugo rose up against this from the Montaña Garrison. He failed, “for now,” as he announced upon surrendering.

They showed me a fully restored colonial era cannon. Every day at 4:25 pm the old cannon fires a salute to mark the time of his departure. 4:25? Eva died at 8:25. What capricious times! Don’t you think? When I returned to the broad, bright, outdoor patio, I could not avoid the infinite sadness. There were television cameras, reporters, commentators. Cilia, married to Nicolás, accompanied me. I politely asked all of them to withdraw. I wanted to be alone. Thank you, thank you very much. I hope you understand. I hope so.

The patio was left empty. I was accompanied only by the four hussars of Carbobo on duty, providing the permanent Honor Guard. From somewhere else, the sound of Hugo singing softly could be heard, as if it were floating. How he loved to sing! The sound of the water which surrounds his space could also be heard. But, for a moment, there was complete silence. Or at least, that is what I felt. I could only hear that some of the guards were crying with me. It is strange. Until today, I had not shed a single tear. Not on March 5, when I was informed. Not on March 6, when I attended the wake along with so many others. Florencia, on the other hand, cried so much, she had to leave, she couldn’t breathe. Me, nothing. It was as if I did not want to admit or accept it. I don’t know, some day, if I decide to, I’ll explain it to a psychologist.

I stayed there a while. I walked around the marble coffin, again and again. I see the carving of a phrase from one of Hugo’s speeches in which he mentions Alí Primera. Who is Alí Primera? A popular Venezuelan singer-songwriter, a member of the Communist Party, who died February 16, 1985. February 16, the day my son was born. Hugo departed the day my sister was born. Strange, when you get old, you start in with this business of dates.

The last gift Hugo gave me, was the complete collection of Alí Primera on CD.

His daughter, María brought it to me in Olivos, November 8, and she told me the story. As a young officer, her father would secretly listen to the songs, because they were prohibited in the military.

I read the speech excerpt and the date on which it was delivered. June 12, 2012. June 12, the date of Peron’s last speech. What is this with dates? I was in the Plaza de Mayo that day. 21 years old. The year, 1974. My mother! (She was there, too). So many things. So much history. Strange, the dates, the events. The visible connections. And the invisible ones, as well.

When I went down to see the portraits of Hugo in the galleries which surround the patio, Nicolás entered with those who were waiting outside and accompanied me around the area.

We entered a small, but precious, chapel. Two Virgins. One from the Valley and the other… Rosa Mística! The Virgin venerated in La Plata. I couldn’t believe it.

I told Nicolás that I was going to send an image of the Virgin of Luján to be placed in the chapel and I told them the story, of the Virgin, of course.

It was May, 1630. She was traveling on a wagon toward Brazil, carrying among other things, two boxes with contained images of Virgins. Attempting to cross the Luján River, in Buenos Aires, the wagon was stuck. They added more oxen, but no good. Finally, they removed of the boxes with the Virgins from the wagon, to no avail. They removed the second box and the wagon took off, with no difficulty at all. They loaded the box once more, and once again the wagon wouldn’t budge. The drivers were confounded and the Virgin stubborn. When they opened the box, the image of the dark skinned Virgin appeared. The wagon took off, but the Virgin stayed in Luján. She is now in the Basilica, where she is venerated as Argentina’s patron saint. They were fascinated by the story.

The restoration of the Basilica, was Nestor’s first act. I didn’t tell them that, but it’s true, too.

We continued touring the site. There are two halls with photographs which depict Hugo’s life. What most moved me was an immense mural. Hugo, from the back, walking in the rain, on October 4, his last and most glorious event, which was not, as some believe, the closure of his campaign. It was his last act of love. I understood that later, when I learned of his terrible, unbearable pain. Of his beyond-human sacrifice. My God!

I said to Nicolás, “This is the place. Don’t even think about taking him anywhere else, as magnificent as it might seem. This is where he began and this is where he must stay. In HIS place. In his garrison, in the humble neighborhood. Soldier of the people. Definitively and for ever.”

Evo Morales: United States is “Real Terrorist”

Capitalism: No Solution for Humanity

Granma Internacional

President Evo Morales of Bolivia condemned this Wednesday the inclusion of Cuba on the list of countries sponsoring terrorism drawn up by the United States.

During his speech to the UN General Assembly, Morales said that this unilateral Washington measure serves as an excuse to maintain the blockade of the Cuba, rejected by the overwhelming majority of nations.

“The real terrorist is the United States,” he said. “It is not possible that the blockade should continue existing in the 21st century,” DPA reported.

At the same time, he conveyed greetings to the Cuban leader Fidel Castro and asked for justice to be done in the case of the “five Cuban brothers unjustly detained in the United States.”

“Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has noted that the world must be changed, but how are we going to change the world if we do not change the United Nations, responsible for many interventions,” the Bolivian leader emphasized.

“Now I feel that we are losing our fear. There is no need to fear the empire or capitalism. Capitalism is no solution for humanity,” he observed.

Morales began his speech by asking Chile to return Bolivia’s sea exit. “We are not living in a time of internal or external colonialism,” he noted.

“Malvinas for Argentina and the sea for Bolivia,” affirmed the President with the aim of “definitively solving this conflict which is damaging the American continent.”

President Morales also referred to the legalization of the coca leaf, an issue which Bolivia has consistently defended at the UN.

Honduras: Lobo Regime Complicit in Killing of Workers

Joaquin Rivery Tur

CAMPESINOS from Bajo Aguán, northern Honduras, have been met with blows by police under the Porfirio Lobo regime and, on top of that, are being portrayed as criminals, while their leaders have been prevented by the courts from taking part in any protest demonstrations.

These maneuvers are intended to avoid social mobilization against the abuses of a state which only responds to the landowning oligarchy.

The desinfomémonos website recently revealed that 350 campesinos from Bajo Aguán were violently repressed in Tegucigalpa for demanding an urgent Supreme Court to the agrarian conflict in the region, as well as an end to the repression and impunity of the law and order forces.

Sirel Vitalino Álvarez, spokesperson for the Aguán Unified Campesino Movement, one of those banned from taking part in demonstrations, stated, “We cannot stop reclaiming justice or abandon the struggle for our rights. We have now experienced in the flesh the manipulation of those who control the country. We have seen the power that they have and their plans to destroy us. However, they are not going to stop us and we are going to continue demanding justice.”

According to published information, from September 2008 through now, 53 people close to or belonging to the Bajo Aguán campesino organizations, plus a journalist and his partner, have been killed in the context of the agrarian conflict in the region. Another campesino disappeared on May 15, 2011 and has not been found.

This is just one example of a number of violations of human rights which have exposed the economic interests of the ruling forces in Honduras, engaged in an overt campaign to demobilize, de-legitimize and criminalize the campesino movement in Bajo Aguán and the social, indigenous and Garífuna movements in the region.

Ollantay Itzamná’s exposé on the Alainet.org website of the recent massacre of five campesino brothers in the north of Honduras (date unspecified) prompted national and international attention. Their gunned down and scattered corpses were seen throughout the world, demonstrating the lies and barbarity of Honduras under the present regime.

Itzamná emphasized that the most grotesque response was that of Miguel Facussé, a landowner involved in the killings and one of the supporters of the June 2009 coup, who said, “Why do they approach my property knowing that my men are armed?” The government immediately alerted the population to the alleged presence of guerrilla campesinos, trained outside of the country, and the National Congress approved the Anti-Terrorist Act criminalizing the social movements. In this way, the central problem of the country was reduced to a secondary plane.

This issue of land is the principal focus of conflict with the campesino movements, given that they are facing not only police repression but private armies, such as Facussé’s.

Close to 80% of Honduran territory is forested. Of the total cultivable land, 1% of landowners hold one third, while 375,000 small farmers have no land to cultivate. Moreover, nearly 75% of national agricultural products are grown by small farmers, Itzamná reports. The large agricultural businesses produce to export, without noticeable benefit to the country.

The government is more interested in associating itself with national and international private capital. While campesinos are dying of hunger for lack of land, it is preparing to create “private cities,” with their own sovereignty, like a country within a country, given that they will control their own capital and even foreign financial relations. They will also have their own police and thus significant impunity.

The Argentine daily La Nación reported that, in order to achieve this, the Lobo administration has signed a memorandum of understanding with private investors as a framework for the creation of the first of these cities, in an as yet undefined place. These private preserves will not even have to deal with taxes, as they are not obliged to transfer resources to the Honduran government. For Oscar Cruz, former attorney for the Defense of the Constitution, “part of national territory and the population within it is being ceded, without placing any limit on numbers or extension.

For the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH), the project masks the intention of handing over “100 square kilometers of national territory to international financial capital,” and allowing all kinds of illegalities such as money laundering.

The project is based on the “charter city” idea of U.S. economist Paul Romer. What a coincidence that he should be American! Romer has already stated in an Internet blog, Freakonomics, that the path to follow has been marked out and it is expected that the first steps will begin this October.

Integration: Strategic Objective of the Peoples of Our America

René Tamayo

At the close of the 18th Sao Paulo Forum, a member of the Secretariat of Central Committee of Communist Party of Cuba, Jose Ramon Balaguer Cabrera, called for strengthening the unity of the progressive and leftist forces in the region, and the solidarity and support for the Bolivarian Revolution and President Hugo Chavez

CARACAS – The main strategic objective of the peoples of our America must be working for integration, said the member of the Secretariat of Central Committee of Communist Party of Cuba, Jose Ramon Balaguer Cabrera, during the closing session of the 18th Sao Paulo Forum, which was held here this week.

The Head of the International Relations Department of the Party, called for support for all revolutionary and progressive political processes in Latin America, whose progress he had described at the beginning of his speech, “as clear and encouraging.”

These successes, he said, are an expression of the capitalist economic crisis and the current geopolitical changes, as well as new political ideas and practices of the Left in the region.

The international political map shows an impressive force of revolutionary movements, he said in a speech applauded at length, as a demonstration, among the more than 600 representatives of participating parties and social movements, of the solidarity and inspiration Cuba is to the world.

Consolidating the achievements

The Cuban party leader also made an analysis of the challenges currently facing Latin America and the Caribbean, since despite progress, they have not yet been able to overcome the major structural inequalities and distortions that more than five hundred years of colonialism and neocolonialism have left,.

He stressed that despite the good macroeconomic performance over the last decade, there are still serious problems in the region, which may increase due to the crisis in the U.S., Europe and Japan, and the slowing down of some Asian economies is already beginning impact on the area, leading to increased unemployment and growing poverty.

Together with the international economic and financial problems, Balaguer said that the governments of the Left also face the task of the undermining of U.S. imperialism and local laws.

He warned that the U.S. will not desist from working to guarantee the economic, political and social hegemony in the region.

He noted that the efforts of the power groups in the northern country to “reverse the revolutionary processes, to strengthen their interests in the region, involve promoting the rise of a new Right, to contain the ascendancy of the countries of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples Americas (ALBA), and defeat the progressive and revolutionary experiences in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba.

He recalled the failed coup attempts in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, and coups perpetrated in Honduras first and now in Paraguay.

The U.S. has always had an imperialist vocation

Balaguer reiterated that the Communist Party of Cuba reaffirms that the events that occurred in Paraguay were meant to halt the process of progressive change and genuine Latin American and Caribbean integration.

This coup- he explained- joins the long list of attacks against our people, behind which is always the U.S.
“The ambiguous and undercover way with which the United States conducts its political and military offensive against Latin America does not contradict their imperialist vocation,” he said.

The Cuban leader said that the military bases in Colombia and Panama, the revival of the Fourth Fleet, supporting coups, high military budget, reaffirmed that Washington is rearticulating a hegemonic strategy for Latin America as part of their world dominance offensive.

The choice of the Americas, said the member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, remains imperial hegemony and re-colonization or true independence and social change.

Together with the Revolutions

Highlighting the thrust of the left in the region, Balaguer gave the example that “the strategy of isolating Cuba is on the wane; it is a failure, even in scenarios such as the OAS and the so-called Summit of the Americas “.

However, he noted that these days “will demonstrate as never before that organizations like the OAS do not represent the interests of our peoples”, so he added in another part of his speech, “in the coming years the progressive and revolutionary processes, united, will have to face great challenges.”

The Head of the International Relations Department said that currently an international imperialist alliance is being organized against Venezuela and the countries of ALBA.
Imperialism -he said- knows that Venezuela under Chavez’s leadership, is an incalculable spiritual and material reserve for the changes and the integration of Latin American peoples as well as an extraordinary banner of the international political and ideological struggles against imperialism and for of socialism.

“We must be alert,” he added, “to the subversive plans against the Bolivarian Revolution and to the pressures to undermine popular support for the countries of ALBA, which are the primary objective of U.S.”

Balaguer said that solidarity with the Venezuelan process must be vital, for which he called for international progressive and revolutionary coordination for the defense of the Bolivarian Revolution and its President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias.

Bolivian Reactionaries Manipulate Police, Once Again

Bolivian Reactionaries Play Old Card

Pedro de la Haz

ON January 27, 2006, barely a few hours before Evo Morales assumed the leadership of Bolivia for the first time, the presidential minister of the inaugural cabinet issued an order to dismantle a spy station located on one of the mezzanine floors of the Quemado Palace.

Given his training and background, the minister, Juan Ramón Quintana, a former student at the notorious School of the Americas and a sociologist specializing in military intelligence, knew that the station run by the CIA and involving certain police commands, had operated there with total impunity for years.

In an interview Quintana gave to Luis Báez and myself in June 2008, he stated that prior to Evo’s inauguration, “the strongest, most effective and successful link that the U.S. government had in Bolivia was with certain police structures; the Americans perceived this force as one of its social bases.”

In a conversation around the same time, Alfredo Rada, then Minister of the Interior, stated, “Many Bolivian police agents are patriots, have assumed a nationalist doctrine and have worked enthusiastically on tasks such as the nationalization of hydrocarbons, the telecommunications enterprise and the Vinto foundry in Oruro department.”

However, he noted, “We cannot close our eyes to the reality of a police force which, during the last 20 years at least, had a strong presence of operators from the U.S. embassy who interfered heavily in the internal life of the police, and not just in the special combat force combating drug trafficking. The U.S. embassy has given economic support of close to $30 million, not only to anti-drugs operatives, but also in the form of bonuses to police personnel, and has interfered in the handling of disciplinary matters.”

I have brought up these authorized comments as references to be borne in mind in relation to the current situation in Bolivia, where a wage demand by members of the police force, incited by spurious interests, could have led to a more serious conflict, in a scenario where intentions to frustrate the process of changes led by Evo Morales and the Movement Toward Socialism are constantly latent.

Given the escalation of events around Murillo Plaza, during a meeting with mineworkers on June 24, Evo himself stated,

“Without any doubt, these people who privatized (state enterprises in the past) are using some of their brothers in the police to prepare a coup d’état, to have the minister of government killed and to confront the armed forces with Molotov cocktails. I want to say that we have intercepted their messages; it is our obligation to detect what is being plotted and how they are communicating. This right wing is infiltrating, using certain police agents (…) we are calling on our brothers in the police to take up their responsibilities to the people, to provide security, because the police have been created to provide security and not insecurity.”

Two days later, Vice President Alvaro García Linera affirmed,

“Lamentably, taking advantage of a legitimate economic demand to which the government is responding, negative forces are beginning to manipulate the mobilization. We have seen on television hooded ex-candidates of political parties, who have been removed from the police force, entering the police unit, raising arms and distributing weapons.”

These negative forces have long-term links with U.S. intelligence services and diplomatic corps, and the backing of the latter has been apparent in every destabilizing conflict suffered by the Bolivian process of change.

Hence another coordinated plot comes as no surprise, particularly in a period of assaults on Latin American governments with a vocation for social transformations.

For now, the danger would appear to have been averted. Interior Minister Carlos Romero assured on June 27 that police services are gradually returning to normal throughout the country. He stated that the current authorities are not responsible for the outbreak of conflict. “It has befallen us to inherit an accumulation of tension, malaise, conflicts and requirements to which we have responded by making an exceptional effort.”

USAID’s Days Numbered in Ecuador

Prensa Latina

The Ecuadorian government is considering the implications of finally expelling the US Agency for International Development (USAID), local media confirmed today.

On-line versions of El Telegrafo and El Ciudadano newspapers said that a meeting was held recently between the Foreign Ministry and the Technical Department for International Cooperation (SETECI) to discuss the repercussions of an eventual decision on the matter.

According to the sources, if the idea is realized, President Rafael Correa could make it official this week.

According to reports, of an additional $10.2 million USD sent to this nation by USAID in 2010, only four million are to be allocated to alleged social programs.

El Telegrafo says that the end of USAID interference in Ecuador would mean the end of the Framework Agreement and of the strategy for the country, which has not been renewed so far.

In the past few weeks, El Telegrafo revealed that USAID is funding two projects in Ecuador worth $4.3 million USD, allegedly to “strengthen democracy.”

With these resources, it warns, they seek to lead a joint campaign using the country´s Civil Society Organizations (OSC) during this electoral year, against Decree 982, which regulates the activities of non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

This intention would be realized through the agreement “Strengthening Civil Society in Ecuador” or “Active Citizenship,” implemented by the Faro and Fundamedios Group, NGOs opposed to the government, along with other similar bodies, said the daily.

Since May, 2010, President Rafael Correa has been revealing the existence of a considerable number of NGOs in the country, mainly uncontrolled and failing to pay taxes, which are funded for illegal political activities, even for allegedly training leaders.

USAID reaffirmed recently its readiness to fund subversive groups that seek to destabilize the countries within the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), a pro-integration mechanism created in 2004.

Deputy Chief of USAID for Latin America and the Caribbean, Mark Feierstein, confirmed that Washington is prioritizing support for opposition forces “fighting for human rights and democracy” in those nations.

Puerto Rico: Empire’s Grip and a Glimmer of Hope

Nik Nikandrov

The U.S. Administration explains that the hyperactivity of the FBI and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community in Puerto Rico is a part of the response to the threat posed by terrorist groups, drug cartels, and agents of hostile regimes. The U.S. hit list, it must be noted, includes as legitimate targets the radical separatists who, in fact, are ordinary Puerto Ricans trying to press for the independence of their country. The U.S. started to maintain a grip on Puerto Rico since the 1898 war with Spain. As a result, the former colonialism gave way to a new form of control: as of today, the U.S. government papers describe Puerto Rico as an associate free state and, whatever it may mean, an organized unincorporated territory. The FBI, the CIA, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, DEA, etc. enjoy full freedom of maneuver in the country which, due to its strategic location, conveniently serves as a launch pad for covert operations against its Latin American peers, especially Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela, and the rest of the populist camp. In Puerto Rico, the U.S. agencies spy on the embassies and trade missions of Washington’s potential foes, while Puerto Ricans routinely complain about phone tapping and pervasive surveillance.

Puerto Rico is the country were U.S. curators meet with representatives of the Venezuelan opposition. Puerto Rican «friends of Chavez» got a glimpse of one of such encounters in La Concha hotel in January, 2009. It was organized by U.S. diplomatic envoy to Venezuela John Caulfield whose records of jobs in conflict zones leaves little doubt that the gentleman must be on the CIA payroll.

Monitoring the atmosphere across the Puerto Rican society along with the allegedly extremist groups, and spotting the epicenters of brewing discontent are, for the most part, the tasks handled by the FBI. The FBI operatives started working in Puerto Rico in 1935. At the time, they screened the country for Comintern agents and the nationalist group led by Albizu Campos – for radicals, while also helping the regime suppress popular protests. The 1937 Ponce massacre which occurred when the police fired on a completely peaceful march, killing 20 and wounding over 100, is remembered in Puerto Rico as the bloodiest episode in the country’s history.

The FBI archive portraying the U.S. offensives against resistance groups and Puerto Rico in 1930-1970 – a total of over 120,000 pages – was partially published by the Puerto Rican studies Center of Hunter College of the City University of New York. The materials gave scholars an unprecedented insight into the FBI activities. An instruction penned by Edgar Hoover urged the U.S. Government agents to cultivate sources of information about leaders and activists of Puerto Rican resistance groups and about their lifestyles and habits, obviously as a form of preparation for preemptive strikes. Anyhow, resistance to the Empire’s colonial dictate never dried up in Puerto Rico as hundreds of people sacrificed their lives to make it a free country. In 1950s, Puerto Rican patriots launched raids against the governor’s residence in San Juan, Harry Truman’s residence in Washington, and the U.S. House of Representatives. The FBI struck back, arrested leaders of Puerto Rican nationalists and leftist groups, sent its local partners to hunt down their relatives, and organized attacks against the «extremists’» headquarters.

Puerto Ricans managed to bounce considerable concessions out of the U.S.: at the moment, they have self-governance, some kind of constitution, and – in a fairly diluted form – the representative, executive, and judicial authorities. Still, the supreme authority in Puerto Rico is exercised by the U.S. Congress, meaning that «the associate state» is being run from Washington. Public protests forced the U.S. to formally close 13 military bases in Puerto Rico and to stop using the Vieques Island military facilities, though the truth is that the infrastructures are properly maintained and would take virtually no time to revitalize.

The declassification of the above materials prompted debates over the current state of the U.S. intelligence community’s operations against the Puerto Rican proponents of independence. The inescapable conclusion seems to be that nothing in the sphere changed since the Cold War, the epoch when practically any steps could be justified by simply citing the Soviet peril. The detention of Puerto Rican Nationalist Party president Francisco Torres at an airport in Panama, with the police agents saying at the moment of the arrest that they acted on instructions from the FBI representative in the country, highlighted the proportions of the problem. Torres was allowed to continue with his trip when the blunt demonstration of the FBI might was over. Another detention followed upon his return to Puerto Rico. This time, he was frisked and his credit cards and photos of relatives were copied, though no official warrant of any kind was shown. Quite a few leftist and nationalist activists report similar humiliations, but their right-wing opponents should have no illusions – information about them is also being carefully collected for future use.

In Washington, the hopes of the Puerto Rican nationally oriented forces for a reunion with other Latin American nations are seen as a risk to the U.S. interests in the region. There is no shortage of forecasts that an independent Puerto Rico would drift towards Cuba and Venezuela, the two populist camp champions persistently voicing calls to erase the current colonial status of the country. Moreover, the no longer short-leashed Puerto Rico might actually join ALBA, considering that several Caribbean island countries – Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – are already there. In December, 2011, a cohort of Puerto Rican parties – El Partido Nacionalista, El Frente Socialista, El Movimiento Independentista Nacional Hostosiano – asked CELAC for assistance in the region’s efforts to shake off the residues of colonialism and called for stronger backing Puerto Rico in its more than a century-long struggled against the Empire. The U.S. was described in the corresponding joint statement as a colonial power responsible for the present-day situation. On the other hand, Puerto Ricans are fully aware that they and nobody else can bring about serious change.

Expressions of public support for Puerto Rico’s aspirations are a permanent background of the political live throughout Latin America. The XI ALBA forum which convened last February passed a declaration on the independence of Puerto Rico. The document was read by H. Chavez who stressed that Puerto Ricans are a unique Latin American and Caribbean nation with its own history, whose sovereignty was stolen by the U.S. with the help of the colonial system a century ago. The Venezuelan leader said the Puerto Rican push for independence must be upheld by the entire Latin America with all of its collective bodies, the CELAC in the first place. The declaration also carried the demand that the U.S. release all political prisoners jailed over their struggle for the independence of Puerto Rico.

Manifestations broadcasting solidarity with Puerto Rico reached such proportions in Latin America that U.S. President B. Obama paid a visit to San Juan on June 14, 2011 as a countermeasure. Notably, this was the first time a U.S. leader traveled to Puerto Rico over the past 50 years. On the surface, the tour was styled as a part of Obama’s fund-raising campaign, but the agenda centered around Washington’s support for the annexionists dreaming to see Puerto Rico incorporated into the U.S. was thinly veiled. The Puerto Rican governor Luis Fortuno, a neoliberal elected to the post from the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico, is open about his eagerness to convert the country into 51st U.S. State.

Washington is obviously unprepared to greenlight the plan, the rationale being that appreciable benefits can be ripped given the status quo. At the moment, investments in Puerto Rico yield decent returns, while integrating it as a state would take giant financial infusions with the aim of driving the local socioeconomic standards up to the average U.S. level.

Loud protests accompanied Obama’s stay in Puerto Rica. Altogether, they combined into a kind of a street referendum in which Puerto Ricans made it absolutely clear which avenue towards self-determination – independence or merger into the U.S. – attracts them. The Puerto Rican media, in the meantime, are selling the unraveling crisis as a pretext to convince the audiences that Washington’s help is the only cure and an independent Puerto Rico would in no time sink to the level of Haiti.

Governor Fortuno is simply denying his own country a future. These days, rampant unemployment leaves masses of young people with no option but to join criminal groups and become involved with the drug business. Currently, around 10,000 students have no money to pay tuition fees and are about to drop out of universities. Many of the educated young who see no prospects for employment become political activists. It should also be taken into account that quite a few young Puerto Ricans had served in the U.S. Army. It is common for the young to feel that only independence can open up to them a tolerable range of opportunities, and, by all means, H. Chavez tops the popularity ratings among the population group.

The April, 2012 appointment of Hector Pesquera to the post of Puerto Rican police chief promises a tide of political repression in the country. Fortuno made the decision after consultations of Washington, and Pesquera is known to have been an FBI special agent in Miami who was in touch with Cuban immigrant groups, was involved in the assassination of Los Macheteros popular army commander Filliberto Orjeda Rios and in the plot to kill Danilo Andersen, the Venezuelan persecutor that investigated the April, 2002 coup attempt. Pesquera was instrumental in the arrest of five Cuban spies sent to the U.S. to identify terrorists en route to Cuba. The Puerto Rican patriots suspect that Pesquera’s career jump is a prologue to a new round of repressions against pro-independence movements and suggest immediately forming a maximally inclusive popular front for self-defense.

No matter what, Puerto Ricans are natural optimists. Roberto Torres Collazo wrote in the wake of Obama’s visits to Puerto Rico that the tour was a minor event to the majority of the country’s population: «80% of Puerto Ricans speak Spanish only and most of them prefer their own music and food to the U.S. pop-culture and McDonald’s. From birth, we are spontaneous, simple, and fun people, like most of our Latin American peers. Our customs and traditions place us much closer to the Latin and Central America than to North America».

Obama’s Latin American Policy: What’s Changed? Who’s Changed?

Dalia González Delgado

When the presidents of Latin American countries first heard about Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008, they thought that perhaps U.S. policy toward the region might change.

In 2009, just months after taking office, Obama tried to promote this hope at the 5th Summit of the Americas in Trinidad & Tobago. He approached Chávez there, extended his hand and made unprecedented statements. He asserted that the time had come to develop a relationship as equals, admitting that the U.S. may have at times, erroneously, attempted to impose its will on the region. He spoke of taking relations between the U.S. and Cuba in a “new direction.”

Now we know that was all theater. Only the speech changed, differing from that of his predecessor, the less intelligent George W. Bush, but expressing the same rhetoric.

The United States supported the coup in Honduras, continues to finance subversion in Venezuela and the blockade of Cuba remains intact. Examples abound.

U.S. policy towards Latin America remains unchanged: to try and destroy or derail all political integration efforts developing on the continent, beyond its control.

This policy is, however, becoming increasingly difficult to implement and the Summit of the Americas was a case in point.

In Cartagena, for the first time, Latin America spoke loud and clear. Obama was shamed. And not by the sexual scandal created by his Secret Service agents, which the media has exacerbated, thus obscuring the true significance of the Summit.

After the meeting, influential U.S. media outlets acknowledged that the country found itself on the defensive with respect to Cuba at the Summit.

Commenting on the fact that the Summit ended without agreement on a joint declaration, The Washington Post wrote,

“The ambiguous conclusion underscored the fact that Obama, while pledging a new relationship with the United States’ leery southern neighbors, has had little success in bridging significant policy differences that have divided the region for decades.”

Some analysts offered the opinion that the U.S. has neglected its ‘back yard’ while focusing on the Middle East.

However, Carlos Oliva Campos, a faculty member at the University of Havana, commented to Granma,

“The fact that the region is not a priority for a given administration does not mean that the region has lost its critical importance within the heart of U.S. foreign policy. Practically, throughout our entire history, we have served as a laboratory for policies and a proving ground for strategies.”

“Although the Middle East, Asia, and Russia under Putin, are priorities, Obama’s policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean is essentially a continuation,” he said.

“The Summit of the Americas was very important because the region is no longer the same. Now there is another relationship of forces, very interesting, because it’s the ‘left’, not just socialists, which is complicating the U.S. response. What’s more, the U.S. is no longer the only defining external factor for markets or trade in the region.”

Can we be optimistic and rest assured that the U.S. has lost influence in Latin America? Joseph Tulchin, Professor at Harvard University’s Center for Latin American Studies, responded to the question via e-mail,

“The question is not whether the U.S. is losing influence. It’s that some countries in Latin America have assumed a leading role in the world and do not want to continue the historic relationship of weakness and vulnerability in the face of U.S. hegemony.”

“We should not think that the inter-American system is finished,” Carlos Oliva commented, “but the negotiating positions are no longer the same. Cuba is part of the new Latin American and Caribbean system and this can no longer be ignored.”

Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington D.C. said,

“Latin America is now more independent of the United States than Europe is, and its independence is growing. There are structural reasons for these changes, among them the failure of neoliberalism. Perhaps most important, the people of the region have voted for left governments because they can: in the past… the United States did not allow such choices to be made peacefully.

It is clear that the Obama administration has not changed U.S. policy toward Latin America. However, the political situation south of the Río Bravo is now different, with more unity, and the White House will have to accept this and adapt.”

Fernandez, Morales Storm Out of Americas Summit

MercoPress

Argentine President Cristina Fernández left the 6th Summit of the Americas held in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, before the official closing meeting allegedly in protest against a lack of regional support for Argentina’s claims in the Falklands/Malvinas dispute with the UK.

The president attended the official closing photo session of the summit with the other heads of state still present at the meeting to then rapidly abandon the facilities and head to the international airport.

According to Colombian media network Radio Caracol, “The Argentine president declined to participate in the final private meeting of the presidents and went directly to the airport of Cartagena.”

Colombian journalists assured that Fernández de Kirchner’s behaviour comes in response to the lack of consensus on support to Argentina’s sovereignty claim over the Falklands/Malvinas and other South Atlantic Islands, a topic not included in the summit’s final report.

The summit had already been marred by a lack of consensus on the Cuban issue with Latin America countries opposing the decades-old US embargo policy on Cuba.

Several countries put pressure on Barack Obama to end the ban, as the US president continued to be plagued by a US secret service scandal involving prostitutes.

The Colombian media reported that the collapse of the summit was no surprise since there was complete disagreement about signing a final statement but the nail in the coffin came when Cristina Kirchner stormed out of the summit followed by Bolivia’s Evo Morales.

“Cristina Fernandez was furious, we are told, because of the lack of full, complete support for Argentina’s claim of Falkland Islands sovereignty” according to news agencies.

“We understand she was very, very angry that other leaders didn’t even mention the dispute over the Islands with the UK,” and furthermore she was overheard saying, “This is pointless. Why did I even come here?’”

“All countries in Latin America and the Caribbean support Cuba and Argentina, yet two countries (US and Canada) refuse to discuss it” Bolivia’s president Morales said referring to widespread support for Argentina’s claims to sovereignty over the Falkland Islands. Morales said: ”How is it possible that Cuba is not present in the Summit of the Americas? What sort of integration are we talking about if we are excluding Cuba?“

Although there were widespread hopes for a rapprochement with Cuba under Obama when he took office, Washington has done little beyond ease some travel restrictions, saying democratic changes must come on the island before any further steps can be taken.

Obama has not spoken of Cuba in Colombia, though he did complain that Cold War-era issues, some dating from before his birth, were hindering perspectives on regional integration.

“Sometimes I feel as if in some of these discussions, or at least the press reports, we’re caught in a time warp, going back to the 1950s and gunboat diplomacy and Yankees and the Cold War, and this and that and the other,” the 50-year-old Obama said. “That’s not the world we live in today.”

Malvinas: Inseparable Part of Argentine Territory

Laura Bécquer Paseiro

ON April 2, 1982, Argentina and the United Kingdom fought a war for sovereignty of the Malvinas Islands, which resulted in the death of 649 Argentine soldiers, 255 British troops and three civilians from the islands.

This dispute dates back to January 2, 1833, when Captain John James Onslow of the British Navy communicated to the Argentine authorities on the islands that he was taking possession of them and asked them to leave the area.

The few Argentines who lived in these territories were forced to leave by the British expedition, which used violence to take control of the archipelago and established a small outpost there, thus confirming the colonial nature of the conflict.

The islands, steadfastly claimed by the Argentine government, are perceived as an inseparable part of its territory illegally occupied by an invading power. In this context, they are part of the province of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and the South Atlantic Islands, where they are located together with South Georgia, South Sandwich and the South Orkney Islands. The dispute includes the surrounding maritime areas.

Various analysts have put forward the theory of the existence of a British Intelligence operation in the 1982 war. Argentine workers were sent to Georgia and raised their national flag there. This provided the pretext needed for British indignation at the mobilization of its warships to the area. If Argentina had remained impassive to the provocation, it would have supposed an implicit renunciation of its sovereign rights over the Malvinas. The trap worked, as described by Bruno Tondini in the text Malvinas Islands: Their History, War and Economy, and Juridical Aspects and Their Link with Humanitarian Law.

For the British strategy it was essential for Buenos Aires to play the role of aggressor. “The British objective was to seek the possibility of a military reaction with all the resources of the Royal Navy, as planned since 1976 and, ignoring the UN, act in its own defense and construct its ‘Falkland Fortress.’ Such a fortress would totally liquidate our assertion of sovereignty,” Tondini states.

In her memoirs, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher highlighted the importance of the British victory as a personal triumph of her government. It contributed to her remaining in power for two further terms at a moment when conflicts were damaging the fabric of British society. It is a fact that the Iron Lady rejected any possibility of a negotiated solution.

In this context, in one of his Reflections, Fidel described the “criminal dispossession signified by stripping Argentina of a little piece of its territory in the extreme south of the continent. There, the British deployed their decadent military apparatus to murder rookie Argentine recruits wearing summer clothing in the middle of winter. The United States, and its ally Augusto Pinochet, shamelessly supported them.”

It is totally correct that the U.S. shamelessly supported the United Kingdom during the war. Its objective: to shore up the latter’s dominion in an area which is part of the NATO integrated defense system and American military plans in the South Atlantic.

Declassified documents from the U.S. Department of State and the CIA reveal details of White House participation during the Malvinas War. In Página/12, journalist Martín Granovsky notes a letter from President Ronald Reagan to his Secretary of State Alexander Haig. Reagan says, “after reading your report on your talks in London, the difficulty involved in achieving a compromise which will allow Maggie (Thatcher) to continue and at the same time pass the test of ‘equity” with our Latin American neighbors is clear. In those conditions there is not much margin for maneuver in the British position and one cannot be optimistic.”

Reagan proposed that Haig should insist on a multinational presence and obtain from Leopoldo Galtieri (who de facto occupied the Argentine presidency from 1981 to 1982, during the so-called Proceso de Reorganización Nacional dictatorship), a commitment to withdraw his forces in return for what was being asked of the United Kingdom in terms of a minimum distance for its nuclear submarines.

Washington’s backing of Britain ratified the farcical and inoperable nature of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, the Rio Pact of 1947. Its Article 3.1 establishes that an armed attack by any state on an American state will be considered as an attack on all American states. The Rio Pact has been invoked at least 20 times, but only in accordance with U.S. interests, whether to judge Cuba or to justify its so-called war on terror.

COMMON CAUSE

Thirty years after that military escalation, Buenos Aires is still demanding its rights over the South Atlantic archipelago, while confronting a London all the more intransigent and arrogant.

Dispatching Prince William to the islands and the presence of the powerful HMS Dauntless destroyer in the waters of the South Atlantic, are not in accordance with the Argentine policy of negotiating and resolving the conflict through dialogue. Obviously, London rejects this line and has opted to ignore the recommendations of the UN Decolonization Committee and the General Assembly Resolution 2065, which urges both sides to seek a peaceful solution to the dispute.

Argentina described these recent actions as a provocation “to show the British military presence in an area of peace where there is no armed conflict.”

In response, The UK government merely upped the tone by further militarizing the South Atlantic in violation of regional agreements for the area’s denuclearization. Prime Minister David Cameron proclaimed, as did Thatcher in her time, the right to use nuclear submarines to kill.

Argentine political analyst Atilio Borón considers that, for a long time, “the country was trapped in the paralyzing consequences of the ignominious defeat inflicted 30 years ago – the result of the genocidal dictatorship’s incompetence, bravado and demagogy – and the dead end of a diplomatic strategy which, despite perseverance, bore no fruit because the misnamed ‘world order’ is in real terms a cruel and unjust disorder in which the law of the strongest rules almost without exception.”

However, valuable support for the cause in the Latin American region demonstrates that Argentina is not alone in its legitimate demand. The peoples south of the Rio Bravo have made common cause with this battle waged for 179 years in rejection of British colonialism. The UK government seems unaware of the fact that the world is changing, and the contempt of the hemisphere and the majority of peoples toward the oppressor is steadily growing, as Fidel affirms.

Regional bodies such as CELAC, MERCOSUR, UNASUR and ALBA have expressed valiant, strong positions. Their statements share a call for the renewal of negotiations and the confirmation that this southern archipelago occupied by Britain is an inseparable part of Argentine national territory.

Although the solution to this prolonged controversy has not yet taken form, the firmness with which the Argentine government and people have maintained their just demand is admirable. History remains indebted to this sister nation.

Also see:
Argentina’s President Fights Modern Day Colonialism