Texas Rep. Greg Casar Talks Progressive Dems Visit to Latin America, Con...

Obama Absurdly Labels Venezuela a Security Threat

Channeling Reagan, Obama continues US pressure on Latin American leftist governments

by Mark Weisbrot @MarkWeisbrot

Yesterday the White House took a new step toward the theater of the absurd by “declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela,” as President Barack Obama put it in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner.

It remains to be seen whether anyone in the White House press corps will have the courage to ask what in the world the nation’s chief executive could mean by that. Is Venezuela financing a coming terrorist attack on U.S. territory? Planning an invasion? Building a nuclear weapon?

A Win for the Cuban Revolution

Tom Hayden 

No one in the mainstream media will acknowledge it, but the normalization of American relations with Havana, symbolized by release of prisoners today, is a huge success for the Cuban Revolution.

The hostile US policy, euphemistically known as “regime change,” has been thwarted. The Cuban Communist Party is confidently in power. The Castros have navigated through all the challenges of the years. In Latin America and the United Nations, Cuba is accepted, and the United States is isolated.

It is quite legitimate for American progressives to criticize various flaws and failures of the Cuban Revolution. But the media and the right are overflowing with such commentary. Only the left can recall, narrate and applaud the long resistance of tiny Cuba to the northern Goliath.

For those actually supportive of participatory democracy in Cuba, as opposed to those who support regime change by secret programs, the way to greater openness on the island lies in a relaxation of the external threat.

U.S. Comes in from Cold War Cold - Recognizes Cuba

Latin America’s top officials appeared unanimous in their celebration Wednesday of a new chapter in United States-Cuba relations, which will witness the renewal of diplomatic ties and the easing of sanctions that have helped raze the Cuban economy.

Latin America has long lobbied the U.S. to lift its 55-year embargo against Cuba.

The changes will have a profound impact on Cuba — where isolation has fundamentally shaped the island’s economy, its politics and even its national identity.

[Ed. Note: The U.N. General Assembly voted against the embargo for the 22nd time in a row; while 188 countries voted to lift the embargo this time around, only two maintained that it should continue, the U.S. and Israel.]

Venezuela, Cuba’s strongest ally in the region, called the news a “moral” and “historic” victory. President Nicolás Maduro, whose own country is at risk of U.S. sanctions due to political repression, said the release of the three Cuban detainees marks “a victory for Fidel and the Cuban people.”

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto called Cuba a “brother country” that deserves “equal status and equal rights with all other countries of the hemisphere.” Peña Nieto said his government fully endorses normalized relations between the United States and Cuba, and will continue to take actions to support the island nation.

How the U.S. engineers coups in Latin America

How America Does Latin American Coups in the New Political Era

The days when U.S.-backed armed forces overthrew constitutional, democratically elected governments are long gone.

http://www.alternet.org/world/how-america-does-latin-american-coups-new-political-era/

Good article. The author  neglected the coup in Haiti.

Poverty in Latin America declines - CELAC

Latin America moves left and forward

by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Counterpunch

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/18/latin-america-moves-left-and-forward/

The Foro de Sao Paulo (FSP), a forum that brings
together most of the Latin American left, had its 18th
meeting in the Venezuelan city of Caracas on July 4-6.
In attendance were representatives of practically all
of the Foro’s member organizations, including El
Salvador’s FMLN, Nicaragua’s Sandinistas, Guatemala’s
URNG (all three of them former guerrilla groups), the
Cuban Communist Party, Ecuador’s Alianza PAIS,
Uruguay’s Frente Amplio, Bolivia’s Movement Toward
Socialism and the Puerto Rico Socialist Front, as well
as leftist and socialist political parties from
countries like Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Dominican
Republic, Haiti, Barbados and Argentina.

The host country’s left pulled out all stops in
helping to organize the event. Countless youth
volunteers of the ruling party- president Hugo
Chavez’s PSUV- looked after every detail of logistics
and protocol, and the local communist party, the PCV,
was also out in force. There was also a substantial
number of observers and dignitaries from other parts
of the world, including Russia, China, Vietnam,
Saharaui, Lebanon, Palestine, France, Spain and
Greece. VIP’s included Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchú
from Guatemala, and writers Ignacio Ramonet and Atilio
Boron, who sat in places of honor near president
Chavez at the closing activity.

Brazil’s delegation, which included the ruling
Workers’ Party (PT) and the Communist Party (PcdoB,
now celebrating its 90 years), had a commanding
presence in Caracas. The PT was indeed the main
driving force behind the FSP’s founding, and the
meeting’s proceedings were presided over by the
extremely capable Brazilian political strategist
Valter Pomar, who is not only the Foro’s executive
secretary but also a member of the PT’s top
leadership.

Currently one of the world’s leading economies, Brazil
has a gross domestic product dozens of times the size
of any of its neighbors’. The country’s political and
economic shadow looms over all South America. The PT
has won the last three presidential elections- in the
first two of these the winning candidate was former
factory worker and labor organizer Luiz Inacio “Lula”
Da Silva, and the current president is the former
guerrilla and political prisoner Dilma Roussef. It
must be regarded as the most important political
institution of the Latin American left and one of the
single most important political parties in the
hemisphere. Lula fully intended to come to Caracas but
could not do so due to health problems. He did,
however, send a video greeting in which he expressed
support for president Chavez’s reelection bid.

Coup in Paraguay - it matters

What Will Washington Do About Fernando Lugo's Ouster in
Paraguay?

    This hasty, trumped-up impeachment of President
    Lugo amounts to a coup d'etat. The US must back
    democratic process

by Mark Weisbrot
Friday June 22, 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/22/washington-fernando-lugo-ouster-paraguay

Paraguay's president, former Catholic bishop Fernando
Lugo, greeting the crowd after his swearing-in ceremony
in Asunción, in 2008. Photograph: Ivan Alvarado/Reuters
A coup d'etat is taking place right now, Friday
afternoon, in Paraguay.

That is how it has been described by a number of
neighboring governments. And the Union of South American
Nations (UNASUR) is treating it as such, taking it very
seriously. All 12 foreign ministers (including those of
Brazil and Argentina, who are deeply concerned) flew to
Asunción Thursday night to meet with the government, as
well as the opposition in Paraguay's Congress.

The Congress of Paraguay is trying to oust the
president, Fernando Lugo, by means of an impeachment
proceeding for which he was given less than 24 hours to
prepare and only two hours to present a defense. It
appears that a decision to convict him has already been
written, and will be presented Friday evening (at 20.30
GMT). It would be impossible to call this due process
under any circumstances, but it is also a clear
violation of Article 17 of Paraguay's constitution,
which provides for the right to an adequate defense.

Latin America and U.S. policy

Letter to President Obama on U.S.-Latin America Policy

The Honorable Barack Obama
The President
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President,

We, the under signers, leaders of prominent national Latino and Latin American/Caribbean immigrant organizations in the U.S., are writing to you in light of your current trip to Brazil, Chile and El Salvador.

First of all, we want to commend your Administration for the initiative to bring attention back to Latin America and the Caribbean, a region of the world with which the United States of America has had a long, often troublesome, relationship. Your victory in 2008 stimulated hope among Latin American societies that long for normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations; an end to the so called "war on drugs"; a recalibration of U.S. trade and investment policies; and a firm commitment to nonintervention and respect for sovereignty in the region.

The choice of Brazil, Chile and El Salvador for your visit is poignant. The U.S. has a large moral debt to these countries: In each case past Administrations (early 1960'S through early 1990's) supported directly or indirectly the ascent and continuation in power of brutal dictatorships and later, in the case of Chile and El Salvador, U.S.-client states-regimes. The current Salvadoran and Chilean-origin populations in the U.S. are essentially creations of massive refugee-flows caused by gross and wide-spread human rights violation and political repression carried out by U.S.-supported regimes.

Indeed, given the fact that most of the foreign born population now residing in the U.S. happen to be people born in Latin America and the Caribbean, we believe that U.S.-Latin America relations should have a much higher level of priority than it has been given so far.

As you visit the three countries mentioned above, we would like to bring to your attention some of the most important changes in Latin America and the Caribbean, which in our opinion should be taken into account as your Administration considers new policy approaches towards Latin America and the Caribbean:

Latin America and China trade

Kevin Gallagher
guardian.co.uk
Monday 7 March 2011 16:38 GMT

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos sent shockwaves through Washington when he told the Financial Times that his nation is holding negotiations with China to build a multibillion dollar "dry canal" that would compete with the Panama Canal. After all, Santos said, China is "the new motor of the world economy".

This deal is charged with politics. Colombia is trying to get the US to pass a long-stalled trade deal. And let us not forget that the original canal was to be the result of an agreement between the US and Colombia. When the Colombians didn't like the deal the US had on offer and threatened to squelch it, Washington supported Panamanian separatist movements and got itself a new country to build a canal with.

But that's all water under the isthmus. Or so we thought.

Whether or not this deal goes through, it highlights the stark contrast between China's foreign economic ventures and those of the United States.

For 30 years, Washington has been shopping a trade-not-aid based economic diplomacy across Latin America and beyond. According to what is generally known as the "Washington consensus", the US has provided Latin America loans conditional on privatisation, deregulation and other forms of structural adjustment. More recently, what has been on offer are trade deals such as the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement: access to the US market in exchange for similar conditions.

The 30-year record of the Washington consensus was abysmal for Latin America, which grew less than 1% per year in per capita terms during the period, in contrast with 2.6% during the period 1960-81. East Asia, on the other hand, which is known for its state-managed globalisation (most recently epitomised by China), has grown 6.7% per annum in per capita terms since 1981, actually up from 3.5% in that same period.

The U.S. Empire strikes in Latin America

Latin America: The Empire Strikes Back

By Conn Hallinan

For the past decade, American policy vis-à-vis Latin
America has been relatively low-key, partly because of
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and partly because
the region has seen an unprecedented growth in economic
power and political independence. But, with Republicans
taking over the House of Representatives, that is about
to change, and, while the Southern Cone no longer
stands to attention when Washington snaps its fingers,
an aggressive and right wing Congress is capable of
causing considerable mischief.

Rep. Lleana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fl), a long-time hawk on
Cuba and leftist regimes in Venezuela and Bolivia, is
the new chair of the powerful House Committee on
Foreign Affairs, and the rightist Rep. Connie Mack (D-
Fl) heads up the House subcommittee on Western
Hemisphere affairs. Ros-Lethinen is already preparing
hearings aimed at Venezuela and Bolivia, and Mack will
try to put the former on the State Department's list of
countries sponsoring terrorism.

Ros-Lehtinen plans to target Venezuela's supposed ties
to Middle East terrorist groups and Iran's nuclear
weapons program, and to push for economic sanctions
against Venezuela's state-owned oil company and banks.
"It will be good for congressional subcommittees to
start talking about [President of Venezuela Hugo]
Chavez, about [President of Bolivia Evo] Morales, about
issues that have not been talked about," she told the
Miami Herald.

The new chairs of the House Intelligence Committee and
Judiciary Committee have also signaled they intend to
weigh in on establishing a more hawkish line on Latin
America.

Unfortunately, it is the Obama administration that
created an opening for the Republicans. While the White
House came in pledging to improve relations with Latin
America, Washington has ended up supporting a coup in
Honduras, strengthening the U.S. military's presence in
the region, and ignoring growing criticism of its
failed war on drugs.

Evo Morales in Coyoacan

An analysis of Latin America and U.S. hegemony.

The U.S. in Latin America

The US Game In Latin America
US interference in the politics of Haiti and
Honduras is only the latest example of its
long-term manipulations in Latin America
Mark Weisbrot
The Guardian
29 January 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jan/29/us-latin-america-haiti-honduras

When I write about US foreign policy in places such as
Haiti or Honduras, I often get responses from people who
find it difficult to believe that the US government
would care enough about these countries to try and
control or topple their governments. These are small,
poor countries with little in the way of resources or
markets. Why should Washington policymakers care who
runs them?

Unfortunately they do care. A lot. They care enough
about Haiti to have overthrown the elected president
Jean-Bertrand Aristide not once, but twice. The first
time, in 1991, it was done covertly. We only found out
after the fact that the people who led the coup were
paid by the US Central Intelligence Agency. And then
Emmanuel Constant, the leader of the most notorious
death squad there - which killed thousands of Aristide's
supporters after the coup - told CBS News that he, too,
was funded by the CIA.

In 2004, the US involvement in the coup was much more
open. Washington led a cut-off of almost all
international aid for four years, making the
government's collapse inevitable. As the New York Times
reported, while the US state department was telling
Aristide that he had to reach an agreement with the
political opposition (funded with millions of US
taxpayers' dollars), the International Republican
Institute was telling the opposition not to settle.

In Honduras last summer and autumn, the US government
did everything it could to prevent the rest of the
hemisphere from mounting an effective political
opposition to the coup government in Honduras. For
example, they blocked the Organisation of American
States from taking the position that it would not
recognise elections that took place under the
dictatorship. At the same time, the Obama administration
publicly pretended that it was against the coup.

This was only partly successful, from a public relations
point of view. Most of the US public thinks that the
Obama administration was against the Honduran coup,
although by November of last year there were numerous
press reports and even editorial criticisms that Obama
had caved to Republican pressure and not done enough.
But this was a misreading of what actually happened: the
Republican pressure in support of the Honduran coup
changed the administration's public relations strategy,
but not its political strategy. Those who followed
events closely from the beginning could see that the
political strategy was to blunt and delay any efforts to
restore the elected president, while pretending that a
return to democracy was actually the goal.

Among those who understood this were the governments of
Latin America, including such heavyweights as Brazil.
This is important because it shows that the State
Department was willing to pay a significant political
cost in order to help the right in Honduras. It
convinced the vast majority of Latin American
governments that it was no different from the Bush
administration in its goals for the hemisphere, which is
not a pleasant outcome from a diplomatic point of view.

Why do they care so much about who runs these poor
countries? As any good chess player knows, pawns matter.
The loss of a couple of pawns at the beginning of the
game can often make a difference between a win or a
loss. They are looking at these countries mostly in
straight power terms. Governments that are in agreement
with maximising US power in the world, they like. Those
who have other goals - not necessarily antagonistic to
the United States - they don't like.

Not surprisingly, the Obama administration's closest
allies in the hemisphere are rightwing governments such
as those of Colombia or Panama, even though Obama
himself is not a rightwing politician. This highlights
the continuity of the politics of control. The victory
of the right in Chile, the first time that it has won an
election in half a century, was a significant victory
for the US government. If Lula de Silva's Workers' party
were to lose the presidential election in Brazil this
autumn, that would be another win for the state
department. While US officials under both Bush and Obama
have maintained a friendly posture toward Brazil, it is
obvious that they deeply resent the changes in Brazilian
foreign policy that have allied it with other social
democratic governments in the hemisphere, and its
independent foreign policy stances with regard to the
Middle East, Iran, and elsewhere.

The US actually intervened in Brazilian politics as
recently as 2005, organising a conference to promote a
legal change that would make it more difficult for
legislators to switch parties. This would have
strengthened the opposition to Lula's Workers' party
(PT) government, since the PT has party discipline but
many opposition politicians do not. This intervention by
the US government was only discovered last year through
a Freedom of Information Act request filed in
Washington. There are many other interventions taking
place throughout the hemisphere that we do not know
about. The United States has been heavily involved in
Chilean politics since the 1960s, long before they
organised the overthrow of Chilean democracy in 1973.

In October 1970, President Richard Nixon was cursing in
the Oval Office about the Social Democratic president of
Chile, Salvador Allende. "That son of a bitch!" said
Richard Nixon on 15 October. "That son of a bitch
Allende - we're going to smash him." A few weeks later
he explained why:

The main concern in Chile is that [Allende] can
consolidate himself, and the picture projected to the
world will be his success ... If we let the potential
leaders in South America think they can move like Chile
and have it both ways, we will be in trouble.

That is another reason that pawns matter, and Nixon's
nightmare did in fact come true a quarter-century later,
as one country after another elected independent left
governments that Washington did not want. The United
States ended up "losing" most of the region. But they
are trying to get it back, one country at a time. The
smaller, poorer countries that are closer to the United
States are the most at risk. Honduras and Haiti will
have democratic elections some day, but only when
Washington's influence over their politics is further
reduced.

_____________________________________________

The Obama Admin. and Latin America

Muscling Latin America

By Greg Grandin
The Nation
February 8, 2010
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100208/grandin

In September Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa,
delivered on an electoral promise and refused to renew
Washington's decade-old, rent-free lease on an air base
outside the Pacific coast town of Manta, which for the
past ten years has served as the Pentagon's main South
American outpost. The eviction was a serious effort to
fulfill the call of Ecuador's new Constitution to
promote "universal disarmament" and oppose the
"imposition" of military bases of "some states in the
territory of others." It was also one of the most
important victories for the global demilitarization
movement, loosely organized around the International
Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases,
since protests forced the US Navy to withdraw from
Vieques, Puerto Rico, in 2003. Correa, though, couldn't
resist an easy joke. "We'll renew the lease," he
quipped, "if the US lets us set up a base in Miami."
Funny. Then Washington answered with a show of force:
take away one, we'll grab seven. In late October the
United States and Colombia signed an agreement granting
the Pentagon use of seven military bases, along with an
unlimited number of as yet unspecified "facilities and
locations." They add to Washington's already
considerable military presence in Colombia, as well as
in Central America and the Caribbean.

Several lefts in Latin America

The problems with neoliberalism encouraged the turn to

the left among voters in Latin American countries, and

the record of populist and pragmatist leftwingers alike

has been impressive. Poverty and inequality have fallen

in nearly all left-led countries, according to a recent

UN report, with Venezuela narrowing the gap most, by

increasing the wealth of the poorest by 36 per cent.

Chile and Brazil's GDP has grown by 5 per cent annually

over the last couple of years, Argentina's by 7 per

cent; even desperately poor Bolivia has seen more than

4 per cent growth under Morales. Critics attribute

Venezuela's pace-setting 8 per cent yearly increase to

high oil prices, which makes one wonder why petroleum-

exporting countries such as Saudi Arabia and Mexico

grew at only 3 per cent. The answer is that Chávez's

massive spending on public works, education,

healthcare, housing, co-operatives and small businesses

has worked as a scattershot stimulus package. Much of

this expenditure may be wasteful, chaotic or corrupt,

but the country's unemployment rate has fallen from

nearly 20 per cent in 2004 to 9 per cent, the fastest

drop in Latin America. As Keynes himself pointed out,

the waste involved in public works projects is

infinitely less of a vice than the waste of intractable

unemployment. `Two pyramids', he said, are `twice as

good as one'.

Foro de Sao Paulo: Latin American Left meets

La crisis financiera y el golpe en Honduras, temas centrales en el Foro de Sao Paulo
Entre los invitados están Andrés Manuel López Obrador y Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano
Alma E. Muñoz

Los partidos de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) y del Trabajo (PT) organizan la edición número 15 del Foro de Sao Paulo, cita que aglutina a decenas de partidos políticos latinoamericanos y caribeños, en busca de fortalecer la presencia de las fuerzas de izquierda en la región, como opción para superar la actual crisis financiera mundial.

Saúl Escobar, secretario de Asuntos Internacionales del Comité Ejecutivo Nacional del sol azteca, explicó que del 20 al 23 del presente mes, en la ciudad de México, representantes de algunos de esos partidos políticos impulsarán la lucha en las naciones donde no son gobierno, así como convertir el foro en un instrumento más eficaz para la discusión de los problemas que aquejan a la región, particularmente la pobreza.

En el documento base para la discusión se abunda que la actual situación económica es consecuencia del fracaso de las políticas económicas neoliberales, cuya imposición dio origen al Foro de Sao Paulo, en 1990.

Crisis alimentaria, financiera y de escasez de combustible

Se advierte, con base en estimaciones del Banco Mundial, sobre la combinación de una triple crisis: alimentaria, financiera y de escasez de combustible, que echó por tierra el objetivo de reducir a la mitad la pobreza en el mundo, el mayor objetivo de desarrollo fijado hasta ahora por la comunidad internacional, como parte de las denominadas Metas del Milenio de la ONU. El organismo estimó que en el presente año la cantidad de personas pobres podría aumentar en más de la mitad en las naciones en desarrollo. Calculó que entre 55 millones y 90 millones más caerán en niveles de miseria.

Escobar explicó que los integrantes del Foro de Sao Paulo se plantean básicamente tres tareas: defender a los gobiernos de izquierda y ganar más posiciones de poder para radicalizar las medidas para enfrentar la crisis y que no sufra la población más pobre; impulsar la lucha en los países donde no somos gobierno, particularmente en Perú, Colombia y México, así como convertir al foro en un instrumento más eficaz de lucha, abordando los principales problemas de la izquierda en América Latina.

Buscan además organizar el foro en Estados Unidos con los migrantes latinoamericanos, crear una especie de observatorio de gobiernos progresistas y de izquierda, y también un organismo que elabore encuestas electorales, envíe observadores a los comicios y apoyo para la comunicación de las campañas que desarrolla la izquierda en América Latina.

Los integrantes del foro están convencidos de que los gobiernos progresistas tienen aún condiciones para encabezar el cambio y no verse arrasados por la crisis. (En cambio) los gobiernos de derecha, como el de México, tendrán mucho más dificultades para enfrentar la crisis y lo harán desde una perspectiva conservadora.

El Foro de Sao Paulo reafirmará, además, su compromiso de continuar apoyando la lucha del pueblo hondureño, exigiendo, entre otras cosas, la liberación de los presos políticos, el fin del toque de queda en el país centroamericano y el cese de toda persecución política, tanto contra los ciudadanos que ejercen su derecho a la protesta como contra los medios de comunicación independientes que han sido clausurados y/o intervenidos.

A los trabajos, que se celebrarán en un hotel capitalino, están invitados, pero no han confirmado su asistencia, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano y el jefe de gobierno capitalino, Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon.

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Obama’s Continuance of Bush Policies in Latin America is a Serious Mistake

Obama’s Continuance of Bush Policies in Latin America is a Serious Mistake

Share Mark Weisbrot
New York Times Online, August 11, 2009 International Herald Tribune, August 11, 2009

There were great hopes in Latin America when President Obama was elected. U.S. standing in the region had reached a low point under George W. Bush, and all of the hemisphere’s left-leaning governments expressed optimism that Obama would go in a different direction.

These hopes have been dashed. President Obama has continued the Bush policies and in some cases has done worse.

The military overthrow of democratically elected President Mel Zelaya of Honduras on June 28 has become a clear example of Obama’s failure in the hemisphere. There were signs that something was amiss in Washington from the beginning, when the first statement from the White House failed to even criticize, much less condemn, the coup. It was the only such statement from a government to take a neutral position. The General Assembly of the United Nations and the Organization of American States voted unanimously for “the immediate and unconditional return” of President Zelaya.

Conflicting statements from the White House and State Department emerged over the ensuing days, but last Friday the State Department made clear its “neutrality” as between the dictatorship and the democratically elected president of Honduras. In a letter to Senator Richard Lugar, the State Department said that “our policy and strategy for engagement is not based on supporting any particular politician or individual,” and appeared to blame President Zelaya for the coup: “President Zelaya's insistence on undertaking provocative actions contributed to the polarization of Honduran society and led to a confrontation that unleashed the events that led to his removal.”

This letter was all over the Honduran media, which is controlled by the coup government and its supporters, and it once again strengthened them politically. Congressional Republicans who have supported the coup immediately claimed victory.

On Monday President Obama repeated his prior statement that Zelaya should return. But by then nobody was fooled.

Obama has said that he “can’t push a button and suddenly reinstate Mr. Zelaya.” But he hasn’t pushed the buttons that he has at his disposal, such as freezing the U.S. assets of the coup government leaders and their supporters, or canceling their visas. (The State Department cancelled five diplomatic visas of members of the coup government, but they can still enter the United States with a normal visa – this gesture had no effect.)

With Clinton associates such as Lanny Davis and Bennett Ratcliff running strategy for the coup government, the Pentagon looking out for its military base in Honduras, and the Republicans ideologically tied to the coup leaders, it should be no surprise that Washington is more worried about protecting its friends in the dictatorship than about such principles as democracy or the rule of law.

But it doesn’t make Obama’s policy any more justifiable or less disgraceful. And Washington has remained tellingly silent about atrocities and human rights abuses committed by the dictatorship: the killing of at least ten opposition activists, the detention and intimidation of journalists, the closure of independent TV and radio stations, and other repression condemned by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and human rights organizations worldwide.

In addition to its failure in Honduras, the Obama administration drew public statements of concern last week from such leaders as President Lula da Silva of Brazil and Michelle Bachelet of Chile – along with other presidents – with its decision to increase the U.S. military presence at seven bases in Colombia. Washington apparently did not consult with South American governments – other than Colombia -- beforehand. The pretext for the expansion is, as usual, the “war on drugs.” But the legislation in Congress that would fund this expansion allows for a much broader role; no wonder South America is suspicious. Obama has also not reversed the Bush administration’s decision to reactivate U.S. Navy’s Fourth Fleet in the Caribbean, for the first time since 1950 – a decision that raised concerns in Brazil and other countries

President Obama has also continued the Bush administration’s trade sanctions against Bolivia, which are seen throughout the region as an affront to Bolivia’s national sovereignty. And despite Obama’s world-famous handshake with President Chávez, the State Department has maintained about the same level of hostilities toward Venezuela – mostly in the form of public denunciations – as President Bush did in his last year or two.

Obama’s policies have drawn mostly only mild rebuke because he is still enjoying somewhat of a honeymoon, and he is not Bush. And the media mostly gives him a free pass. But he is doing serious damage to U.S.-Latin American relations, and to the prospects for democracy and social progress in the region.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000), and has written numerous research papers on economic policy. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.

U.S. Strategy in Latin America was wrong

The Obama administration admits its approach must change, as Latin American countries unite against the US

Mark Weisbrot
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 6 May 2009 19.00 BST

Three years ago I wrote an article arguing that the political changes sweeping across Latin America were epoch-making and probably irreversible, and that they would fundamentally alter the relationship between the region and the United States. Some of the most important economic causes of the region's shift to the left – including the unprecedented long-term growth failure since 1980 – were unrecognised then and remain mostly unacknowledged to this day.

At the time, Washington's stated strategy was to isolate Venezuela from its neighbours. This was before the election of additional left governments in Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Paraguay and El Salvador. I argued that this strategy was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what was happening in the region, and that it would only succeed in isolating the United States from its southern neighbours.

All this has come to pass, but more interestingly, for the first time we have an acknowledgement of this failure from the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. At a press conference last Friday, she said in response to a question about Venezuela:

When we look around the world, actually, we see a number of countries and leaders – Chávez is one of them but not the only one – who, over the last eight years, has become more and more negative and oppositional to the United States. ... The prior administration tried to isolate them, tried to support opposition to them, tried to ... turn them into international pariahs. It didn't work.

This is a remarkable confession, and it didn't get a fraction of the attention it deserved. Clinton did not name the countries, but in Latin America, Bolivia would have to be included as a country where Washington has incurred resentment by supporting opposition movements against President Evo Morales. And of course there is the 47-year failure of the embargo against Cuba:

"We're facing an almost united front against the United States regarding Cuba. Every country, even those with whom we are closest, is just saying you've got to change."

She didn't mention that they are also saying that Washington must change its policy toward Venezuela. President Lula da Silva of Brazil, who has consistently defended Hugo Chávez, has told Barack Obama as much and reportedly counselled him at the Summit of the Americas not to listen to his advisers – most of whom have appeared to seek continued hostility toward Venezuela and possibly Bolivia.

It is remarkable that pressure for a reality-based view of the world has had to come from the south, and says a lot about the state of civil society in the US. How is it that nobody from our leading foreign policy institutions could have figured this out years ago? On Cuba, there has been dissent – partly because there are powerful business interests that want access to the island, and partly because 47 years of failure is a long time even for slow learners.

But on Venezuela, the primary focus of US foreign policy in the hemisphere for the past seven years, there has been an overwhelming consensus of fantasy and hype. Chávez is the only democratically elected leader in the world, facing a media that is still overwhelmingly controlled by his political opposition, to be successfully maligned as a "dictator". And a threat to the US – what exactly has he done to the US, anyway, other than provide a $100m annual subsidy to poor people here for heating oil?

The sad reality is that while the US has at least some civil society organisations that can present an independent view to the public on domestic issues, on foreign policy issues we are much more like Russia. The vast majority of expert opinion on foreign policy that is allowed access to major media in the US consists of government officials, former government officials or people who or are otherwise influenced by the government. This is one reason why it was so easy to invade Iraq and so difficult to get out of there or out of Afghanistan – in spite of the American public's long-standing lack of enthusiasm for sending combat troops overseas.

Hillary Clinton also took note that Russia, Iran and China are gaining economic and political influence in Latin America, and recognised that we are operating in "a multi-polar world." This is also obvious – China has recently invested billions in Venezuela, Brazil, Cuba and Ecuador, and agreed to a $10bn currency swap arrangement with Argentina. This week China also passed the US as the number one recipient of Brazilian exports. But Clinton's recognition of a "multi-polar world" is unusual and probably unprecedented for a US secretary of state.

The signals from Washington remain mixed. The state department last week took another gratuitous swipe at Venezuela, listing the country as a "terrorist safe haven", among other unsubstantiated allegations. (A few days later, Venezuela deported five Colombian guerillas to their home country). Obama's top economic adviser Larry Summers recently made a point of saying that Argentina would not qualify for the IMF's flexible credit line, from which Mexico had just received a $47bn commitment.

Washington is the IMF's principal overseer. Mexico and Brazil also each have access to a $30bn currency swap arrangement with the US Federal Reserve. These are large commitments, and a reminder that Washington is still using its clout in a time of crisis to play political favourites, rather than contributing to regional balance of payments support.

But Clinton's unprecedented reality-based remarks are an indication that she and Obama may have taken home some important lessons from their conversations with other presidents at the Summit of the Americas on 22 April. Such new thinking would be long overdue.