Daniel Kovalik
Miami

On December 12 to 13, 2022, an evidentiary hearing in the case of The United States v. Alex Saab was heard before Judge Robert Scola in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.  The only issue in the hearing was the question of whether Mr. Saab is entitled to diplomatic immunity, a question which, if resolved in his favor, would lead to his release from custody.  I had the opportunity to be in the courtroom to witness this hearing, and it was both fascinating and revealing.

A diplomat in chains

Alex Saab, who is accused of money laundering and of no violent offense, was brought into the court literally in chains.  He was handcuffed and the handcuffs were themselves connected by chains to leg cuffs.  Saab wore a jumpsuit the color of brown mustard.  He looked remarkably healthy given his now two and half years of incarceration. His hair was long and tied up in a bun in the back.  Saab sat at the defense table with his lawyers from Baker Hostetler.  The two rows behind the defense table were kept empty by the court bailiffs, presumably to prevent any contact between Saab and any visitors in the courtroom – a move which again seemed unnecessary given that he is not even accused of being a violent offender.  Upon the request of his counsel, the judge did allow Saab to be released from his handcuffs so that he could take notes, write suggestions to his counsel, and otherwise assist in his own defense.

On the prosecution side, there were two attorneys and two agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), again seemingly strange given that Saab is not and has never been accused of any drug-related offenses.  The two bald and bulky DEA agents, both attired in dark suits, looked almost identical and resembled the mysterious twins in Breaking Bad who pursued their targets for violence with quiet precision and relentlessness.  For the past several years, the target of these DEA agents has been Alex Saab, his real “crime” being his success in getting around illegal U.S. sanctions to get food, medicine, fuel, and building materials to the people of Venezuela. And now, strangely, the DEA claims that Saab was actually an informant for the DEA – a claim that Saab denies, but which is intended to discredit Saab in the eyes of people in Venezuela and in the Western left.

The prosecution clashes with the reality of Saab’s diplomatic status

The argument of the defense team was simple.  Saab was a diplomat, specifically a Special Envoy, of Venezuela, when he was captured in Cabo Verde, a country off the coast of West Africa in which Saab’s plane stopped to refuel on the way to Iran.  Saab, the defense contends, was and is therefore entitled to diplomatic immunity.  And, this is so, the defense argues, because he met three critical criteria:  (1) he was on an official mission of the Venezuelan government to Iran where he was to negotiate a deal for food and medicine, just as he had done on at least two prior occasions; (2) Iran had accepted him as an envoy for said mission; and (3) he was on his way to fulfill this diplomatic mission at the time of his detention.

In reality, there should be little to no dispute about these key facts and therefore about Saab’s diplomatic status.  Therefore, the prosecution has set out to aggressively deny reality before the court, arguing that all of the evidence of Saab’s diplomatic mission and work were fabricated after the fact to get him off the hook.  For example, the prosecution claimed that diplomatic letters — originally sealed in diplomatic pouches and given to Saab before his flight to Iran – most notably from Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to Iran’s Supreme leader Ali Khameni and from Venezuelan Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez to Iran’s agricultural minister, were created after Saab was captured to try to prove he was a diplomat when he really was not.  Much to the prosecution’s chagrin, reality asserted itself in the hearing.

To prove the key elements of Saab’s diplomatic status, the defense put on Saab’s security guard, Juan Carlos Arrieche, as a witness.  Arrieche testified from Venezuela via Zoom and through an interpreter.  And, he testified to the fact that he accompanied Mr. Saab to a meeting with President Nicolás Maduro before his fateful flight to Iran through Cabo Verde; that Saab was given the diplomatic pouches described above; and that he witnessed Saab with these pouches just before he boarded his flight.  While this seemed like pretty solid evidence, this was not enough for the prosecution to relent on this issue.

Manipulation of evidence

The defense then called a young lawyer from Cabo Verde who flew in person to the hearing to testify.  In what would become the most dramatic testimony of the hearing, the young lawyer was meticulously questioned about how he came to meet Mr. Saab in prison in Cabo Verde and to come in possession of the property of Mr. Saab which was being held by Cabo Verde prison officials.  As he described, he went to meet Saab after he learned of his plight and learned that he was not, as per Cabo Verde prison policy, given the opportunity to designate someone to receive the property he had in his possession at the time he was seized.  He encouraged Saab to sign a letter designating himself as the person to receive this material, and Saab did so.  After a short while, the young lawyer was given two suitcases belonging to Saab along with a detailed list of the contents.  However, as he soon discovered, not all of the contents had been listed.  Thus, when he brought the suitcases home and opened them to see what was within, he discovered the diplomatic pouches, these pouches not being listed in the property description.

Curiously, the young lawyer found that all of the diplomatic pouches had been unsealed and opened, revealing the letters from President Maduro and Vice President Delcy Rodríguez within.   Therefore, not only did these diplomatic pouches exist, at least per the lawyer’s testimony, but the Cabo Verde officials were clearly aware of their existence and therefore of Saab’s diplomatic status.  And, it appears that U.S. authorities or their agents had also been made aware of this at the time.  Thus, the defense asked the young lawyer about markings at the top of the letters which showed a date (June 20, 2020) as well as a “jpg” designation, meaning that the letters had been scanned.  The lawyer testified that those markings were not on the letters that he had seen at the time.  However, copies in evidence, which were produced by the prosecution to the defense did have those markings, strongly suggesting the following – that while the prosecution is trying to claim that these documents were created after the fact, copies of them had actually been scanned and sent to U.S. officials way back in June of 2020.

To put a finer point on it, the U.S. also knew of Saab’s diplomatic status back then and it is the prosecution which is now lying about this to try to make its case against Saab.

The judge got exasperated with the prosecutors

After this dramatic presentation, the lead prosecution attorney then stood up to cross-examine the young lawyer from Cabo Verde.  However, the prosecution attorney started peppering the young lawyer with questions completely unrelated to his discovery of the relevant documents.  The defense therefore objected to the line of questioning on the basis that it went beyond the scope of direct and was otherwise irrelevant.  Judge Scola, who came across as a fair and no-nonsense judge, seemed to have had enough.  He looked at the prosecution attorney and asked him if he really intended to challenge the fact that the young attorney had discovered the diplomatic letters as he claimed.  The prosecution attorney, a bit taken aback, was forced to answer in the negative.  Judge Scola, exasperated, then asked the natural next question of why the prosecution was then continuing with his line of questioning.  With no good answer to this query, the prosecution attorney sat down, and court was adjourned for the day.

Given the above, Mr. Saab’s case for diplomatic immunity should be a slam dunk, especially since the precedent in the 11^th Circuit in which his case is being heard is very favorable on this issue.  However, my optimism is tempered by the fact that the U.S. government has been so relentless in its pursuit of Saab, and its treatment of Saab so unfair, that justice in this case seems quite elusive.  One can only hope that justice ultimately prevails.

Oral arguments based on the evidence submitted in the hearing described above are scheduled for December 20.  The Judge has promised to rule on the diplomatic immunity issue by the end of this year.

Daniel Kovalik is a Senior Research Fellow at COHA. He teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

[Main photo: Mobilization in Caracas, December 16, 2022, to Free Alex Saab. Credit: VTV]

William Camacaro, Caracas
Frederick Mills, Washington DC

“It is no longer possible, in the case of America,
to continue with the Monroe Doctrine
nor with the slogan ‘America for the Americans.’”
Andrés Manuel López Obrador

December 3, 2023 will mark the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine. It will also mark its obsolescence in the face of popular resistance and the Pink Tide of progressive governments in Latin America that have been elected over the past two and a half decades. The prevailing ideology of these left and left of center movements rejects the “Washington Consensus” and opts for a new consensus based on the decolonization of the political, economic, social and cultural spheres. This consensus is accompanied by encounters and conferences that advance liberatory traditions developed since the 1960’s as well as those deeply rooted in indigenous cultures. It is Washington’s failure to respect and adjust to this political and ideological process of transformation that precludes, at this time, a constructive and cooperative U.S. foreign policy towards the region.

Decoloniality and Multipolarity

One cannot comprehend decolonization from the totalizing point of view of U.S. exceptionalism^[1]. U.S. exceptionalism, the offspring of the African slave trade and the conquest of Amerindia, seeks unfettered access to the region’s natural resources and labor to serve its corporate and geopolitical interests. By contrast, decoloniality was born of five centuries of resistance to colonization. It is the critical perspective of those who have been oppressed by imperial domination and local oligarchies and seek to build a new world, one that rejects necropolitics and racial capitalism; one that advances human life in community and in harmony with the biosphere. This critical ethical attitude has been expressed over the past two years in declarations of regional associations that exclude the U.S. and Canada. All share the same ideal of regional integration based on respect for sovereign equality among nations and guided by ecological, democratic, and plurinational principles.

A necessary condition of integration based on these principles is the freedom to engage economically, politically, and culturally with a multipolar world; it is only in such a geopolitical context that the region can resist subjugation to any superpower and itself become a major player on the world political-economic stage. Such engagement is already a fait accompli. From across the political spectrum, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC, created in December 2011) has embraced a diversity of trading opportunities. For example, the China-CELAC forum^[2] was formed on July 17, 2014 as a vehicle for intergovernmental cooperation between the member states of CELAC and China.  The forum held its first ministerial meeting^[3] in Beijing in January 2015, which was followed by two more summits (2018,^[4] 2021^[5]), all of which produced economic, infrastructure, energy, and other agreements. Also significant with regard to trade, 20 countries^[6] in Latin America and the Caribbean have now signed on to the Belt and Road initiative. According to Geopolitical Intelligence Services, GIS:

“Chinese trade with Latin America grew from just $12 billion in 2000 to more than $430 billion in 2021, driven by demand for a range of commodities, from soybeans to copper, iron ore, petroleum and other raw materials. These imports, meanwhile, were tied to an increase in Chinese exports of value-added manufactured goods. As of 2022, China is the region’s second-largest trading partner and the biggest trading partner in nine countries (Cuba, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Peru, Bolivia and Venezuela).”^[7]

Moreover, the World Economic Forum predicts that “On the current trajectory, LAC-China trade is expected to exceed $700 billion by 2035, more than twice as much as in 2020.” ^[8]

Rather than acknowledge this trend towards trade diversification, Washington is waging hybrid warfare against Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, including the use of illegal unilateral coercive measures (“sanctions”), in a bid to limit the influence of Russia, Iran, and China and reimpose its hegemony in the region.

The Special Rapporteur^[9] of the United Nations on the Negative Impact of Unilateral Coercive Measures on the Enjoyment of Human Rights, Alena Douhan, has visited and documented the effect of the sanctions in Syria,^[10] Iran,^[11] and Venezuela,^[12] and on each occasion has indicated that the sanctions “violate international law” and “the principle of sovereign equality of States,” at the same time that they constitute “intervention in the internal affairs.”  As a November 2022 study by the Sanctions Kill Campaign documents, sanctions against Venezuela and other targeted countries have caused devastating hardship and thousands of deaths.^[13]

In order to prevent the import of vital goods to Venezuela, the U.S. went so far as jailing a Venezuelan diplomat, Alex Saab,^[14] who had managed to circumvent U.S. sanctions to import urgently needed fuel, food, and medicine.  In violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961),^[15] Washington has charged Saab with conspiracy to commit money laundering (other charges having been dropped). A hearing on Saab’s diplomatic immunity was scheduled for December 12, 2022 in Southern District Court. Saab threw a wrench into Washington’s “regime change” machinery, for which he has been paying a heavy price over more than two years.

“Regime change” operations against disobedient governments in Latin America and the Caribbean over the past decade by the U.S. and its right wing allies in the Organization of American States (OAS), has not reduced the influence of China, Iran, and Russia in the region. Just the opposite. For example, while Washington was stepping up its campaign against the government of Cuba, Cuban President Miguel Díaz Canal Bermúdez went to Algeria,^[16] Russia,^[17] China,^[18] and Turkey^[19] to reinforce mutual solidarity and hammer out new economic accords. Both Russia and China recognize the strategic importance of the Cuban Revolution, for its defeat would have a demoralizing impact on the cause of independence and galvanize oligarchic interests throughout the hemisphere. Moreover, in the context of the Pink Tide of progressive governments, and the disintegration of the Lima Group (a Washington backed right wing coalition) this troika of resistance (Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua) is not alone.

The Pink Tide

It is important not to isolate the period of the Pink Tide as an anomaly, for it has precursors beginning with the first indigenous uprisings and the Bolivarian resistance to Spanish rule. Today’s decolonial struggle is influenced by the spirit of Túpac Amaru, the Hatian revolution, the Sandinista revolution, the Zapatista uprising, and other challenges to conquest, colonization, and the ongoing attempt to recolonize the region.

There is no doubt, however, that the Pink Tide took a big step forward with the election of President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela (1998), Néstor Carlos Kirchner in Argentina (2003), and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil (2003). It was perhaps at the Fourth Summit of the Americas, held in November 2005, at Mar del Plata, that their combined bold leadership struck a significant blow to U.S. hegemony by rejecting then President George Bush’s proposal for a hemispheric agreement called the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).  This defeat of FTAA^[20] also signaled the determination of progressive movements to seek alternatives to the neoliberal imperatives of the U.S. and Canada.

Although the Pink Tide of progressive governance has suffered some electoral and extra-constitutional setbacks since the Fourth Summit, it has received renewed force with the election of the MORENA party candidate, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) in Mexico in 2018. AMLO ran on a platform that promised to launch the “fourth transformation” of Mexico by fighting corruption and implementing policies that put the poor first. He has since become a major critic of the Monroe Doctrine and the OAS.

The victory of the MORENA movement in Mexico was followed by the election of left and left-of-center presidents in Argentina (Alberto Fernández, October 2019), Bolivia (Luis Arce, October 2020), Peru (Pedro Castillo, July 2021), Chile (Gabriel Boric, December 2021) and Honduras (Xiomara Castro, December 2021). Less than a year later, for the first time in its history, Colombians elected a leftist president, Gustavo Petro, in June 2022. Petro wasted no time in re-establishing diplomatic relations with Venezuela and opening their common border. This South American nation, however, still remains host to nine U.S. military bases and remains a partner of NATO. This historic win was followed by a momentous comeback of the left in Brazil with the election of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in October 2022 after the extreme right wing rule of Jair Bolsonaro. This is big news, as Brazil is not only a major economic power in the hemisphere, but a member of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) association, which is now expected to increase commerce and integrate a growing number of member states.

Regional associations seize the moment

These electoral victories, all of which relied heavily on the support of the popular sectors, have been the subject of critical analysis at several recent meetings of regional associations. These meetings express the formation of a consensus on advancing regional sovereignty, protecting the environment, respecting indigenous peoples’ rights, and attaining social justice.

The spirit of independence and regional integration was given new impetus when AMLO assumed the pro tempore presidency of CELAC in 2020. The last CELAC Summit^[21] set the basic tone for this consensus when on July 24, 2021, AMLO evoked the legacy of Simón Bolívar in the context of the ongoing cause of regional independence; this focus opened a political space for criticizing the OAS and fortifying CELAC. The Summit was held at a time of widespread condemnation of the OAS’ role in provoking a coup in Bolivia.

The message of the CELAC summit had apparently not made much of an impression in Washington. The Ninth Summit of the Americas,^[22] hosted by the United States in Los Angeles, California (June 2022), excluded countries on Washington’s “regime change” list, revealing a profound disconnect between U.S. hemispheric policy and the reality on the ground in Latin America. This exclusivity inspired alternative, more inclusive summits: the People’s Summit in Los Angeles^[23]and the Workers’ Summit in Tijuana.^[24] These alternative summits exposed Washington’s failure to adjust to increasingly independent neighbors to the South. To avoid embarrassment however, Washington did not invite self-proclaimed president of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, though it now stands virtually alone in pretending to recognize this comic figure and his inconsequential, corrupt shadow government.

Five months after the divisive Summit of the Americas, there was a meeting of the Puebla Group which was founded in July 2019 to counter the right wing agenda of the Washington-backed Lima Group. It held its eighth meeting in the Colombian city of Santa Marta. On November 11th, the Group issued the Declaration of Santa Marta: The Region United for Change.^[25] It declared that “the region needs to incorporate and emphasize new themes for the regional agenda that in the past, for different reasons, did not have the visibility that today appears indisputable, such as . . . gender equality, the free movement of people, the ecological transition, the defense of the Amazon and of the rights of indigenous peoples, . . . and the necessity to include new social and economic actors in the regional processes of integration.”

Just a few days later, in a letter dated November 14,  a group of regional leaders called upon South America’s presidents^[26] to reconstitute the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR, created in 2008). The disintegration of UNASUR was a reflection of an offensive against the Bolivarian revolution, led by Washington and Bogota. When Colombia left the organization in 2018, with its right wing allies to follow, it then joined the Lima Group, whose only political goal within the OAS was the destruction of the Bolivarian cause. And in August 2018 after President of Ecuador Lenin Moreno confiscated the UNASUR headquarters in Quito, President Evo Morales reopened the UNASUR headquarters in Bolivia. Morales declared, “The South American Parliament [UNASUR] is the center of integration and the symbol of the liberation of Latin America. The integration of all of Latin America is a path without return.” At that moment, the only country allied with Venezuela in South America was Bolivia.

The letter calling for the reconstitution of UNASUR was followed by a statement by the São Paulo^[27] Forum, which met in Caracas November 18 – 19, 2022 and summed up one of the principal themes of the present juncture: “We are in a historic moment for resuming and deepening the transformations in the economic and geopolitical fields that have occurred since the beginning of the century, and for accelerating the transition to a democratic multipolar world, one based on new international relations of cooperation and solidarity.”

On  November 22 – 25, in Guatemala, representatives of indigenous peoples from 16 countries came together for the second meeting of the Sovereign Abya Yala movement.  The conference took place at a time of renewed political protagonism of indigenous peoples throughout the continent. For example, after the fascist coup in Bolivia in November 2019, it was the fierce resistance of indigenous peoples and the Movement toward Socialism IPSP that led to the successful recuperation of democracy one year later. The theme of the second meeting was “Peoples and communities in movement, advancing toward decoloniality in order to live well (“Buen vivir”).”  Its final declaration commits to the decolonization of these territories. To accomplish this, the meeting proposed pluri-nationality as a guiding political principle, “to construct new plurinational states, new laws, institutions, and life projects that make it possible for all beings sharing the cosmic community to live together in harmony.” The declaration also recognizes the need to form political organizations that can advance these goals, including in the electoral field.^[28]/

There is now a solid bloc of progressive governments in the region, presenting new opportunities to advance the causes of decolonization, integration, resource nationalism, popular sovereignty, and experiments in building a post-neoliberal order. But this juncture also poses new challenges. The U.S. recent partial lifting of sanctions against Venezuela in the oil sector and support for negotiations in Mexico between the Venezuelan government and opposition is a pragmatic response to the need to access Venezuelan crude and signals a shift in U.S. tactics to an electoral means to bring about “regime change”. This is reminiscent of the U.S. strategy in Nicaragua in the late 1980’s which led to the Sandinista electoral defeat of 1990. The U.S. is also acting with restraint because given the heightened geopolitical tensions over the war in Ukraine and the political climate in this hemisphere no other path is feasible.  Washington continues, however, to pursue illegal unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba in a ploy to keep the obsolete Monroe Doctrine alive. To meet this challenge to their existence, the targeted governments are circumventing U.S. sanctions, resisting “regime change” operations, resuming efforts at integration, deepening ties to Russia and China, and diversifying their trade partners. And while hard-liners in the U.S. Congress, stuck in a cold war mentality, are scouring the hills for communists, all of Amerindia is working to end the last vestiges of armed conflict and establish a region at peace.

William Camacaro is a Senior Analyst at COHA. Frederick Mills is Deputy Director of COHA

All translations from  Spanish to English by the authors are unofficial. COHA Assistant Editor/Translator Jill Clark-Gollub provided editorial assistance for this article.

[Main photo: Mapuche protest in Chile, using signs in their language, defending their right to cultural independence and land recovery. Credit photo: Pressenza International News Agency, https://www.pressenza.com/]

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Sources

^[1] Based on Donald E. Pease definition, “American exceptionalism has been taken to mean that America is either ‘distinctive’ (meaning merely different), or ‘unique’ (meaning anomalous), or ‘exemplary’ (meaning a model for other nations to follow), or ‘exempt’ from the laws of historical progress (meaning that it is an ‘exception’ to the laws and rules governing the development of other nations).” American Exceptionalism, https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199827251/obo-9780199827251-0176.xml

^[2] “Basic Information about CELAC-China Forum,” Department of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China. April 2016. Accessed Dec. 3, 2022: http://www.chinacelacforum.org/eng/ltjj_1/201612/P020210828094665781093.pdf

^[3] “Relevant Sub- Forums under China-CELAC Forum in 2015.” China-CELAC Forum, News. Feb. 17, 2016. Accessed Dec. 3, 2022: http://www.chinacelacforum.org/eng/ltdt_1/201602/t20160217_6550988.htm

^[4]  Second Ministerial Meeting of China – CELAC Forum. United Nations (ECLAC). Jan. 22, 2018. Accessed Dec. 3, 2022: https://www.cepal.org/en/speeches/second-ministerial-meeting-forum-china-celac

^[5] Declaration of the Third Ministers’ Meeting of the China-CELAC Forum. China-CELAC Forum, Important Documents. December 9, 202. Accessed Dec. 3, 2022: http://www.chinacelacforum.org/eng/zywj_3/202112/t20211209_10465115.htm

^[6] Countries of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Green finance and development center. Based on information as of March 2022. Accessed Dec. 3, 2022: https://greenfdc.org/countries-of-the-belt-and-road-initiative-bri/.

^[7] “China’s evolving economic footprint in Latin America,” by John Polga-Hecimovich. Geopolitical Intelligence Services. Economy. November 22, 2022. Access Dec. 3, 2022: https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/chinas-economic-power-grows-in-latin-america/

^[8] “China’s trade with Latin America is bound to keep growing. Here’s why that matters.” World Economic Forum. June 17, 2021. Accessed Dec. 3, 2022: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/china-trade-latin-america-caribbean/

^[9] Special Rapporteur on the Negative Impact of Unilateral Coercive Measures Says Guiding Principles Need to Be Drafted to Protect the Rights and Lives of People. United Nations, Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner. September 14, 2022. Accessed December 3, 2022: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/09/special-rapporteur-negative-impact-unilateral-coercive-measures-says-guiding

^[10] “Lift ‘suffocating’ unilateral sanctions against Syrians, urges UN human rights expert.” United Nations. UN News. November 10. 2022. Accessed Dec. 3, 2022.

^[11] “Iran: Unilateral sanctions and overcompliance constitute serious threat to human rights and dignity – UN expert.” United Nations, Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner. May 19, 2022. Accessed Dec. 3, 2022: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/05/iran-unilateral-sanctions-and-overcompliance-constitute-serious-threat-human

^[12] “Preliminary findings of the visit to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela by the Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights.”  United Nations, Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner. February 12, 2021. Accessed December 3, 2022: https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2021/02/preliminary-findings-visit-bolivarian-republic-venezuela-special-rapporteur?LangID=E&NewsID=26747

^[13] “U.S. Sanctions: Deadly, Destructive and in Violation of International Law.” Report produced by Rick Sterling, John Philpot, and David Paul with support from other members of the SanctionsKill Campaign and many individuals from sanctioned countries. November 2022 (Updates of previous publications in September 2020 and May 2021). Accessed Dec. 5, 2022: https://sanctionskill.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/SanctionsImpactReport_v62c-3.pdf

^[14] “The U.S. flies Alex Saab out from Cabo Verde without court order or extradition treaty,” by Dan Kovalik. Council on Hemispheric Affairs. October 18, 2021. Accessed December 3, 2022: https://www.coha.org/the-u-s-flies-alex-saab-out-from-cabo-verde-without-court-order-or-extradition-treaty/

^[15] Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961. United National. Accessed December 3, 2022: https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_1_1961.pdf

^[16] “Díaz-Canel Arrives in Algiers, 1st Stop on Presidential Tour.” Telesur. November 16, 2022. Accessed December 3, 2022: https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Diaz-Canel-Arrives-in-Algiers-1st-Stop-on-Presidential-Tour-20221116-0021.html

^[17] “Díaz-Canel en la reunión con Putin: ‘El mundo tiene que despertar’.” RT. November 22, 2022. Accessed December 3, 2022: https://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/449000-putin-diaz-canel-reunen-moscu

^[18] “El Secretario General y Presidente Xi Jinping Sostiene una Conversación con el Primer Secretario del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba y Presidente de la República de Cuba Miguel Díaz-Canel.” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. November 25, 2022. Accessed December 3, 2022: https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/esp/zxxx/202211/t20221125_10981082.html

^[19] “Turkey, Cuba to bolster bilateral ties.” La Prensa Latina: Bilingual Media. November 23, 2022. Accessed December 3, 2022: https://www.laprensalatina.com/turkey-cuba-to-bolster-bilateral-ties/

^[20] “América Latina celebra 13 años de la derrota del ALCA”. Telesur. November 4, 2018. Accessed Dec. 3, 2022. https://www.telesurtv.net/news/derrota-alca-hugo-chavez-lula-da-silva-nestor-kirchner-20181104-0022.html

^[21] “Cumbre CELAC 2021: renovada apuesta por la integración latinoamericana”. Silvina Romano y Tamara Lajtman. Celag.org.  18 Septiembre, 2021. Accessed Dec. 3, 2022: https://www.celag.org/cumbre-celac-2021-renovada-apuesta-por-la-integracion-latinoamericana/

^[22] Summit of the Americas. US Department of State. Accessed Dec. 3, 2022: https://www.state.gov/summit-of-the-americas/

^[23] People’s Summit. June 8, 2021. Code Pink. Accessed Dec. 3, 2022: https://www.codepink.org/peoplessummit-6-8-2022

^[24] Worker’s Summit of the Americas. June 10 – 12. Accessed Dec. 3, 2022: https://workerssummit.com/

^[25] Declaración de Santa Marta: “La Región, Unida por El Cambio”, November 2022. Grupo de Puebla. Resumen Ejecutivo. November 11, 2022. Accessed Dec. 3, 2022: https://www.grupodepuebla.org/en/declaraciondesantamarta/

^[26] Alberto Fernández, Luis Arce, Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva, Guillermo Lasso, Gabriel Boric, Gustavo Petro, Irfaan Ali, Mario Abdo Benítealista

^[27] “Declaración del Foro de São Paulo”. Reunión ampliada del Grupo de Trabajo Caracas, 18 y 19 de noviembre de 2022. Accessed December 5, 2022: https://forodesaopaulo.org/sesiono-el-grupo-de-trabajo-del-foro-de-sp-en-caracas/

^[28] “Declaración del II Encuentro de Abya Yala Soberana”. Abya Yala Soberana. November 30, 2022. Accessed Dec. 4, 2022: https://abyayalasoberana.org/movilizacion/declaracion-del-ii-encuentro-de-abya-yala-soberana/

By Dan Kovalik
Pittsburgh

In his new memoir, Sacred Oath, former US Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, who served under President Donald Trump at the time of the arrest of Alex Saab in Cape Verde, effectively admits that the White House was quite aware of the fact that Saab was a diplomat at the time of his capture.

As Esper writes, “At Maduro’s direction, Saab was reportedly on special assignment to negotiate a deal with Iran for Venezuela to receive more fuel, food, and medical supplies. Saab was Maduro’s long standing point man when it came to crafting the economic deals and other transactions that were keeping the regime afloat.” Esper’s recognition that Alex Saab was “on special assignment” and negotiated economic deals for Venezuela is a tacit recognition of Saab’s diplomatic status.  Moreover, it is highly unlikely that Esper was unaware of documentation from both Iranian and Venezuelan authorities that verifies Saab’s special envoy status at the time of his apprehension in Cape Verde.

The inconvenient fact is that Saab was a Venezuelan diplomat, and had been for some time, when his plane was forced to land in Cape Verde, as opposed to in Senegal or Morocco which the US prevailed upon not to allow Saab’s plane to land and refuel, and he was arrested by Cape Verde authorities.  Saab was therefore entitled to diplomatic immunity as provided for by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961, and his arrest and continued detention to this day, in spite of this immunity, was and continues to be illegal under international law.  So painfully aware of the illegality of their actions, and the dangers this of course may pose for Washington’s own diplomats if they were treated in the same fashion, that, as Esper makes clear, “the officials at State, Justice and the NSC [National Security Council] who were working on this case” were filled with trepidation (though Esper himself had no such qualms).

Still, the Trump Administration pushed on with the arrest, prosecution and extradition of Saab to the US (also despite the fact that there was no extradition treaty between the US and Cape Verde)  because, Esper explains, “access to him could really help explain how Maduro and his regime worked. It was important to get custody of him. This could provide a real roadmap for the US government to unravel the Venezuelan government’s illicit plans and bring them to justice.”  In other words, just as Saab and his many defenders have argued from the start, the arrest, detention and extradition has been politically motivated.  Even more to the point, the treatment of Saab has been motivated by the desire of the US to understand Saab’s very diplomatic functions for Venezuela – that is, how he went about helping obtain food and medicine for Venezuela despite illegal US sanctions — again underscoring the illegality of this treatment under the Vienna Convention.

Lawyers working on Alex Saab’s case, including myself, have just filed information requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) with the White House, State Department, Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Treasury Department to provide further confirmation of what Esper admits and what Saab has claimed all along: that his treatment is illegal under the Vienna Convention, that the US government knew this from the start, and that it nonetheless pursued the arrest of Saab for wrongful purposes.  We are hopeful, and indeed confident, that the information obtained will lead to the release of Alex Saab after two years of illegal detention.

Meanwhile, Mark Esper explains in his book that his dismissal  from the Trump Administration was directly related to the tactical decisions Trump wanted to deploy to try to pursue Saab.  Thus, Esper, who agreed with the decision to detain and extradite Saab,  relates that he was fired by the Trump Administration over his disagreement with Trump’s tactical decision to send the USS Jacinto, a warship, to the coast of Cabo Verde to ensure Saab’s continued detention on the island nation until it was possible to extradite him (or, more accurately, kidnap him) to the United States.   Esper, on the other hand, believed that DEA or other police action would be a more appropriate method of accomplishing the same end.

Trump ultimately went ahead with this decision, sending the warship to Cabo Verde in November of 2020, and anchoring it at a cost of over $50,000 a day.

It must be noted that Saab’s arrest, detention, and extradition have already been ruled illegal by a number of international bodies, including The Economic Community of West African States Court of Justice and the United Nations Human Rights Committee which actually issued an injunction requiring Saab’s release back in June of 2021.

It is long past time that the US government abide by international law and release Alex Saab after two years of tortuous and illegal detention.

Dan Kovalik teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and is a COHA Senior Research Fellow

[Credit main photo: Fuser News]

By Danny Shaw
From NY

On October 25th, 1983, 7,300 U.S. troops, accompanied by U.S.-trained soldiers of CARICOM countries calling themselves “The Caribbean Peace Force,” invaded the tiny island of Grenada. This October marks the 38th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of the land of Julien Fedon, Jacqueline Creft, Maurice Bishop and the 110,000 people of Grenada. What lessons can we learn from the four-and-a half-year revolution? In a hemisphere on fire, with chronic social unrest and anti-imperialism on full display from the streets of Medellin to Mexico City, where does Grenada line up in the Global Class Struggle in the 21st century?

The Revo

On March 13th 1979, the leaders of the New Jewel Movement overthrew Eric Gairy, widely seen as being pro-imperialist, setting in motion one of the great revolutionary experiments in Caribbean history. Those who lived through the 1979 to 1983 Grenadian Revolution were forever transformed.

Grenadian Professor of Political Science Wendy Grenade from the University of West Indies charts some of the gains made during the short period: “Raising levels of social consciousness; building a national ethos that encouraged a sense of community; organising agrarian reform to benefit small farmers and farm workers; promoting literacy and adult education; fostering child and youth development; enacting legislation to promote gender justice; constructing low income housing and launching house repair programmes; improving physical infrastructure and in particular the construction of an international airport; providing an environment that encouraged popular democracy through Parish and Zonal Councils etc.”^[1] Slogans and billboards emblazoned the country’s landscape: “Never Too Old to Learn,” “Education is Production Too,” “Every Worker a Learner,” and “Women, Committed to Economic Construction.”^[2]

Angela Davis captured what “the revo” meant to the Black nation within the U.S.: “The experiences that I’ve had here in Grenada have confirmed in a very powerful way where we are headed, what the future of the entire planet ought to look like – this beautiful, powerful militant revolution.”^[3] The chief spokesperson of the revolution, Maurice Bishop, famously came to New York City in June 1983 inspiring a crowd of thousands of African-Americans and anti-imperialists as he detailed his people’s achievements.^[4]

Glen “Pharoah” Samuel was a middle-school pupil at the time and was part of a crowd of students who raced to save Maurice Bishop, Jacqueline Creft and other revolutionary leaders from execution at Fort George.^[5] Sitting down in a neighborhood bodega, he explained Grenada’s role in the global class struggle known as “The Cold War:”

“As a Black, English-speaking country very close to America, imagine America has a population of over 42 million Afro Black Americans; obviously they understand our swag because we are all Black people, African people. So Ronald Reagan feared the situation and we had just finished our international airport which was sponsored by Cuba and the Soviet Union.”

Internationalist educator Chris Searle’s book Grenada Morning: A Memoir of the “Revo” details the accomplishments of the revolution in overcoming a history of colonial and neocolonial servitude and degradation. Gerhard Dilger of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation studied the revolutionary contributions of poets and calypso singers from 1979 to 1983.^[6] Dr. Horace Campbell’s Rasta and Resistance highlights the participation of the Rastafari community, long oppressed under the Gairy dictatorship, in the Revolutionary People’s Government and Army.

All of Grenada was ablaze with the flames of revolutionary optimism, unity and growth.

The Invasion: An Attempt to Kill Hope

Alarmed at the existence of another workers’ state in Washington’s “backyard,” Ronald Reagan and the U.S. foreign policy establishment were hellbent on overthrowing the four-and-a-half-year revolution.

Internationalist scholar Carlos Martínez artfully captures the U.S. campaign of psychological warfare and saber rattling. In 1981, Reagan mobilized over 120,000 troops, 250 warships and 1,000 aircraft to Vieques, an island that is part of Puerto Rico, for a mock invasion.^[7] They code-named the operation “Amber and the Amberines” because Grenada’s official name is Grenada and the Grenadines, as it includes the two smaller islands of Carriacou and Petit Martinique. U.S. intelligence worked overtime to monitor the cracks in the revolutionary leadership and create divisions in order to exploit them, ultimately leading to the assasination of the revolution’s top leadership. Eighteen civilians were killed when the U.S. Navy bombed a hospital for patients with mental challenges. 24 Cuban construction workers were murdered.^[8]

It was David vs Goliath but David stood up to the invasion. Maurice Bishop sounded the battle cry: “This land is ours, every square inch of its soil is ours, every grain of sand is ours, every nutmeg pod is ours, every beautiful young Pioneer who walks on this land is ours. It is our responsibility and ours alone, to fight to defend our homeland.”^[9] The break in the top leadership of the New Jewel Movement and Reagan’s accusation that 600 American medical students were in danger, provided the humanitarian cover for the illegal assault on a people’s democracy.

The U.S. military project then helped prop up a pro-U.S. power structure that sought to dismantle the very memory of the revolution. Artist Suelin Low Chew Tung writes that “images of the revolution[ary] years were deliberately erased from the landscape … Three decades later, as far as local visual art records are concerned, it is as if the Grenada Revolution never happened.”^[10] It was apparent that this generation feels disconnected from Grenada’s definitive break with neo-colonialism. To many youth, it appeared this was ancient history. How many Grenadians born after 1983 fully comprehended that their small homeland inspired the world?

The Washington Examiner, owned by right-wing billionaire Philip Anschutz, captures how U.S. ruling circles viewed military action against Grenada as a strategic, easy victory after defeat in Vietnam and Iran. In an editorial on September 12, 2021, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute advocated for a Grenada-like invasion to shore up respect for America after the humiliating defeat of the U.S. in Afghanistan: “Where and under what circumstances might a future commander in chief send troops to draw a new red line for America’s enemies?”^[11] He ominously ends the article warning: “There will be a new Grenada; the question to ponder is where and when.”

The Blackout: Liquidating Memory

On August 26th 2021, this writer sat down with Dr. Terence Marryshow, Captain of the People’s Revolutionary Army responsible for the personal security of Maurice Bishop and NJM leadership, former political leader of the Maurice Bishop Patriotic Movement (MBPM) and grandson of T.A. Marryshow, the father of the West Indian Federation. He elaborated on Pan-Caribbeanism in Grenada today.^[12] “Caribbean leaders today are not pursuing this goal as vigorously as they ought to in the interests of the people of the Caribbean. The problem is many of them are not willing to give up that lofty position that they hold. During the period of the revolution there was certainly a great effort with the People’s Revolutionary Government led by Maurice Bishop to forge that kind of Caribbean integration. But with his demise there is no real voice out there [in Grenada] championing that cause. Today leaders are hardly concerned with that. Yes we do have CARICOM which in the final analysis is really a talk shop because nothing like concrete decisions and progress for the people  comes out of it.”

In an extensive interview, the Cuban-trained physician stated that “concerning teaching on the revolution in the schools there is a  complete blackout. There is a concerted effort not to speak about it except for groups like The Maurice Bishop and October 19th Martyrs Foundation, the Grenadian Cuba Friendship Society and the Maurice Bishop Patriotic Movement. But there is no space on the [mainstream school] curriculum today for teaching anything about that revolutionary period.”

A soldier of the People’s Revolutionary Army, nicknamed Salt, who chose to remain anonymous and only wanted his nickname published, remembered what it meant to stand up to the hegemon of the north. He remembered the Center for Popular Education, his own exposure to critical Marxist texts and the day the call came from his superior officers to prepare to defend the country. Speaking on censorship today, Salt explained: “The educators are not documenting anything and are not teaching our young people about the progress the revolution made.”

To add insult to injury, the invaders and new rulers of Grenada disappeared the bodies of the key New Jewel Movement leaders. Local community leaders showed me where the invaders and their underlings disappeared Maurice’s Bishop’s body.^[13] Bishop’s mother Alimenta captured the horror of not knowing where her son’s body was.^[14] Having already lived through her husband’s murder at the hands of Eric Gairy and the same U.S.-backed state machinery, she stated that, “I could go to the grave and say this is the spot where my husband is buried, but I can’t say that for my son.” This was what Grenadians remember as the triple assassination of their revolution.

Which Way Forward?

In 2019, the Venezuela government published a bilingual tribute to Maurice Bishop and the October martyrs in the Correo del Alba. Unpublished testimonies of dozens of cadres and combatants of the revolutionary process express how it brought Grenada closer to Africa and all oppressed nations, and set Grenada on a path to defiant participation in CELAC, ALBA, and PetroCaribe.^[15] Today Grenada is charting a path of friendly relations both with imperialism and the blockaded Bolivarian nations attempting to emerge from centuries of colonialism and decades of U.S. hybrid war. What is clear is that the Grenadian Revolution was an example for the world that the colonized can stand up, organize and win.

Danny Shaw is Senior Research Fellow at COHA and an academic at City University of New York.

Editor’s Note: The writer recently visited Grenada and the preceding is his analysis. A previous version of this article was published in Toward Freedom.

---

Sources

^[1] Invent the Future. “The Legacy of the Grenadian Revolution Lives On.” March 13, 2014.

The Legacy of the Grenadian Revolution Lives On

^[2] ESPIONART. ”The Billboard Art of Revolutionary Grenada.” October 30, 2018. https://espionart.com/2018/10/30/the-billboard-art-of-revolutionary-grenada/

^[3] Black Perspectives. “The House on Coco Road”: A New Film on Family, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Grenada.” May 2, 2017.

https://www.aaihs.org/the-house-on-coco-road-a-new-film-on-family-race-and-u-s-intervention-in-grenada/

^[4] YouTube. Maurice Bishop Speaks. March 7th, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7MtydR-fiI&t=1586s

^[5] August 24th, 2021. https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1430142177997475854?s=20

^[6] Gerhard Dilger. Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut. August 14, 2019. “WE DOIN WE OWN TING!” REVOLUTION AND LITERATURE IN GRENADA.” https://publications.iai.spk-berlin.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/Document_derivate_00002178/BIA_046_217_244.pdf;jsessionid=085580D208A5C7146C9B1FF715BC9470

^[7] Invent the Future. “The Legacy of the Grenadian Revolution Lives On.” March 13, 2014.

The Legacy of the Grenadian Revolution Lives On

^[8] NPR. ”Grenada’s Nobody’s Backyard.”January 29, 2021. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1021236625

^[9] Maurice Bishop. MAURICE BISHOP SPEAKS. The Grenada Revolution and Its Overthrow, 1979–83. Pathfinder Press.

^[10] Suelin Low Chew Tung. Social and Economic Studies. “Painting the Grenada Revolution.” September-December 2013. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24384484

^[11] Michael Rubin. Washington Examiner. “After the humiliation of Afghanistan, where and when will we see a new Grenada?” September 12, 2021

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/after-the-humiliation-of-afghanistan-where-and-when-will-we-see-a-new-grenada

^[12] Interview with the author. August 30, 2021. https://www.instagram.com/tv/CTOJoC2onSM/?utm_medium=copy_link

^[13] Interview with the author. August 22, 2021. https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1429589886349238273?s=21

^[14] Now Grenada. “Alimenta Bishop Is To Be Honoured By Government”

August 27, 2013. https://www.nowgrenada.com/2013/08/alimenta-bishop-is-to-be-honoured-by-government/

^[15] Correo del Alba. May 29, 2020. https://twitter.com/correodelalba/status/1266405415459393538?s=20

By Dan Kovalik
From Pittsburg, PA

On October 16, Colombian businessman and Venezuelan Special Envoy Alex Saab was in practical terms kidnapped for the second time, first by Cabo Verde under pressure from Washington, and now by the U.S., in flagrant violation of international law.

For nearly a year and a half, Saab had been imprisoned on the island nation of Cabo Verde, 400 miles off the northwestern coast of Africa in the Atlantic. As a Bloomberg article explains, “Saab was detained June 12 [2020] when the private plane he was traveling on from Venezuela to Iran made a fuel stop on the Cape Verdean island of Sal.”^[1]  What Bloomberg does not mention is that Saab’s plane was forced to land in Cabo Verde because two other nearby nations in mainland Africa, apparently under pressure from the US, refused to let him land.^[2]

There is no extradition treaty and there was no Interpol order

The capture of Saab was made without any proper legal basis. While Washington prevailed upon Cabo Verde to seize Saab based upon the pretext that the U.S. wanted to extradite him for alleged crimes, the United States has no extradition treaty with Cabo Verde.^[3] Moreover, while Cabo Verde authorities claimed that Saab was detained pursuant to a valid Interpol notice, a regional court in Nigeria found that the detention took place before the Interpol notice was issued, raising huge concerns about the legal validity of Saab’s detention and imprisonment.^[4]

The U.N. also demanded the extradition to be suspended

Indeed, this regional court, The Economic Community of West African States Court of Justice (ECOWAS), explicitly “ruled that Saab should be freed because he was detained before the Red Notice was issued.”^[5]  As Reuters explains, “decisions by that court are final and binding under a 1991 protocol.”

And then, on June 8, 2021, the United Nations Human Rights Committee issued a decision for preliminary measures demanding that the extradition of Saab be suspended and that Saab, who is suffering from cancer, be given the necessary medical attention which he has been denied in Cabo Verde.^[6]

On September 28, 2021, the African Bar Association issued a statement demanding “the immediate and unconditional release of Ambassador Alex Saab, respect for the ECOWAS Court and the Rule of Law in Africa by Cape Verde and all Governments and Institutions in Africa as the African Bar Association will continue to demand for the respect of treaty obligations and the independence of Judiciary in Africa.”^[7]

In spite of the foregoing and the overwhelming opposition to Saab’s extradition amongst the citizenry of Cabo Verde, the Constitutional Court of Cabo Verde approved the extradition of Saab to the U.S. in September of this year.^[8]  To put it simply, Saab was kidnapped in Cabo Verde nearly a year and a half ago, and there he was detained, until his “extradition” to the U.S. on October 16th, despite the lack of any valid extradition treaty and any valid arrest warrant at the time of capture.

While the allegations against him are hotly disputed, what is not in doubt is that Washington is behind his persecution. And it is also clear that the U.S. is interested in Saab, not because of any alleged crimes but because he may hold the key to Venezuela’s ability to circumnavigate Washington’s deadly illegal unilateral sanctions. First and foremost, the allegations against Saab involve alleged embezzlement from food and housing programs in Venezuela. Given that the U.S. is sanctioning Venezuela in an attempt, inter alia, to undermine the ability of Venezuela to maintain such programs, it is patently obvious that Washington has no real, bona fide concerns about someone allegedly taking kickbacks from such programs. And moreover, under established U.S. judicial doctrines of comity and forum non conveniens, it is Venezuela which, in the first instance, has the right to try to prosecute such crimes committed within its own domestic jurisdiction.

Sanctions against Iran: U.S. real reasons to harass Ambassador Saab

Bloomberg explains that Alex Saab was on his way to Iran to negotiate the exchange of Venezuelan gold for much needed gasoline supplies.^[9]  Due to U.S. sanctions, the oil-rich nation of Venezuela is unable to obtain the necessary chemicals and supplies to refine its oil into gasoline which is needed to generate electricity and to transport goods throughout the country.  In addition to gasoline, Saab was also attempting to negotiate the purchase of food, medicines and other critical supplies which have also been made scarce in Venezuela due to U.S. sanctions.^[10]

As explained by Alena Douma, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the unilateral use of coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights:

The hardening of sanctions faced by the country since 2015 undermines . . . the state’s capacity to maintain infrastructure and implement social projects. Today, Venezuela faces a lack of necessary machinery, spare parts, electricity, water, fuel, gas, food and medicine. Venezuelan assets frozen in United States, United Kingdom and Portuguese banks amount to US $6 bln. The purchase of goods and payments by public companies are reportedly blocked or frozen. . .

It has been reported that electricity lines are able to work at less than 20 per cent of their capacity today. . . .

An estimated 90% of households are connected to the national water distribution system. Numerous households, however, report frequent cuts because of electricity outages affecting water pumps and the maintenance of infrastructure, and because of the shortage of qualified maintenance staff. ^[11]

It appears that Alex Saab’s very adeptness in helping Venezuela to get around these sanctions – sanctions which Alena Douma notes are illegal under international law — is the real reason for Washington’s interest in having him detained and extradited.^[12]

As the New York Times explains, while the U.S. has brought vague “money-laundering” charges against Saab, “hard-liners at the Justice and State Departments, including Elliot Abrams, the State Department’s special envoy for Iran and Venezuela,” want to ensure Saab’s continued detention in Cabo Verde lest they “lose an opportunity to punish Mr. [Nicolás] Maduro.”  As the Times continues, the “months long detention of Mr. Saab has stripped Mr. Maduro of an important ally and a major financial fixer at a time when fewer countries are willing or able to come to Venezuela’s aid.  If Mr. Saab cooperates with American officials, he could help untangle Mr. Maduro’s economic web of support and assist the authorities in bringing charges against other allies of the Venezuelan government.”^[13]

And how did the U.S. ensure Cabo Verde’s compliance in all this?  It has used a carrot and a stick approach. The carrot is significant: U.S. economic development assistance to the island nation. In September of 2020, the U.S. embassy in Cabo Verde announced “the U.S. government would invest $1.5 million in Cabo Verde to support the country’s efforts to mitigate the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.”^[14] And in June, 2021, the embassy announced a plan to build a new U.S. embassy adjacent to the government palace:

This year, July 4 will mark a new chapter in Cabo Verde-U.S. history as representatives of both countries dedicate 4.5-hectares of land adjacent to the Government Palace in Praia as the site for a new U.S. embassy.  This exciting, long-anticipated project represents a more than $400 million investment by the U.S. government in the bilateral relationship, with fully $100 million of that total going directly into Cabo Verde’s economy, benefitting local businesses and contractors and creating scores of construction jobs.^[15]

The stick is the deployment of old-fashioned “gun-boat diplomacy” — a term coined by President Teddy Roosevelt.  Thus, as the New York Times explains, the U.S. has anchored the Navy Cruiser San Jacinto off the coast of Cabo Verde to make sure that Saab did not escape somehow.  While U.S. officials claimed that they were doing this in response to “threats” by Venezuela to take all measures to protect Saab’s human rights, the presence of the gun ship appeared calculated as much to ensure no second thoughts by the government of  Cabo Verde as it was to prevent some rescue attempt by Venezuela or its ally Iran. ^[16]

Saab’s extradition case is currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit which is to decide whether the U.S. has proper cause to extradite Mr. Saab under U.S. and international law. Quite tellingly, the U.S. prosecution has twice postponed the initial hearing in which it was to present evidence and arguments in favor of extradition. And, it has asked for a third postponement.^[17]

The U.S. extracted Saab from Cabo Verde without court sanction

And, so, U.S. authorities, on October 16th, instead of waiting for the 11^th Circuit to decide the merits of the case – a case which they will surely lose — have kidnapped Saab a second time, flying him out of Cabo Verde to the U.S. without court sanction.  It is no coincidence that this kidnapping took place, moreover, the day before Presidential elections in Cabo Verde which brought to power a new leader opposed to Washington’s mistreatment of Saab.

Alex Saab is now sitting in a federal prison in Miami. This is a flagrant violation of both international and U.S. domestic law. In addition, this has already had huge international repercussions, with the government of Venezuela suspending scheduled talks with the opposition in response.

The actions of the U.S. and Cabo Verde against Alex Saab have dealt a serious blow to international law and the security of diplomats worldwide. It sets the dangerous precedent that an individual, and especially a foreign diplomat, can be captured and detained without warrant and then “extradited” to the US without a valid extradition treaty and without an U.S. court authorization. This type of action undermines the rule of law, and indeed establishes “the rule of the jungle” wherein powerful countries like the US can simply ignore rights of individuals to due process and to freedom from arbitrary detention to bully developing countries such as Venezuela.

Dan Kovalik teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and he is one of COHA’s Senior Research Fellows

COHA Senior Analyst William Camacaro provided research and editorial assistance for this article.

---

Sources

^[1] “Maduro Financier Faces Extradition to U.S. After New Ruling.” Bloomberg. Mar 17, 2021. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/maduro-financier-faces-extradition-to-u-s-after-new-ruling-1.1578420 Accessed October 17, 2021.file:///C:UsersOwnerDocuments3953-2021-c-adocx.pdf

^[2] “Deal Maker for Venezuela’s Maduro Can Be Extradited to U.S., Court Rules.” Wall Street Journal. Jan 25, 2021. https://www.wsj.com/articles/dealmaker-for-venezuelas-maduro-can-be-extradited-to-u-s-court-rules-11609861512 Accessed October 17, 2021.

^[3] “U.S.-Indicted Dealmaker For Venezuela’s Maduro Detained On Way To Iran.” June 14, 2020. https://www.rferl.org/a/maduro-venezuela-money-laundering-iran-/30669592.html Accessed October 17, 2021.

^[4] “Maduro Financier Faces Extradition to U.S. After New Ruling.” Bloomberg. Mar 17, 2021. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/maduro-financier-faces-extradition-to-u-s-after-new-ruling-1.1578420 Accessed October 17, 2021.

^[5] Ibid.

^[6] “UN Committee Rules on Detention of Venezuelan Diplomat Saab.” June 8, 2021.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/UN-Committee-Ruled-on-Detention-of-Venezuelan-Diplomat-Saab-20210608-0015.html Accessed October 17, 2021

^[7] “African Bar Association Statement on Venezuelan Diplomat Alex Saab.” Oct 22, 2021.

https://orinocotribune.com/african-bar-association-statement-on-venezuelan-diplomat-alex-saab/ Accessed October 17, 2021.

^[8] “Cape Verde Poll Shows Alex Saab Extradition Case will Harm Government in October Elections.” AllAfrica Info Wire. Sep. 20, 2021. https://allafrica.com/stories/202109201156.html Accessed October 17, 2021.

^[9] “Maduro Financier Faces Extradition to U.S. After New Ruling.” Bloomberg. Mar 17, 2021. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/maduro-financier-faces-extradition-to-u-s-after-new-ruling-1.1578420 Accessed October 17, 2021.

^[10] Griffith, B. “Extradition of Alex Saab: US takes effort to starve Venezuelans to new lows.” People’s Dispatch. July 7, 2021. https://peoplesdispatch.org/2021/07/07/extradition-of-alex-saab-us-takes-effort-to-starve-venezuelans-to-new-lows/ Accessed October 17, 2021.

^[11] Preliminary findings of the visit to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela by the Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights. Feb. 12, 2021. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=26747&LangID=E Accessed October 17, 2021.

^[12] Ibid.

^[13] Schmitt, E., and Turkewitz, J. New York Times. “Navy Warship’s Secret Mission Off West Africa Aims to Help Punish Venezuela.” Dec 22, 2020.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/22/us/politics/navy-cape-verde-venezuela.html Accessed October 17, 2021.

^[14] “The United States Provides Over $1.5 million to Help Cabo Verde Respond to COVID-19.” Press Release – September 3, 2020. US Embassy, Cabo Verde. https://cv.usembassy.gov/the-united-states-provides-over-1-5-million-to-help-cabo-verde-respond-to-covid-19/ Accessed October 17, 2021.

^[15] “Article by U.S. Ambassador to Cabo Verde, Jeff Daigle – Land Dedication.” June 30, 2021. US Embassy, Cabo Verde. https://cv.usembassy.gov/article-by-u-s-ambassador-to-cabo-verde-jeff-daigle-land-dedication/ Accessed October 17, 2021.

^[16] Schmitt, E. and Turkewitz, J. “Navy Warship’s Secret Mission Off West Africa Aims to Help Punish Venezuela.” New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/22/us/politics/navy-cape-verde-venezuela.html Accessed October 17, 2021.

^[17] “Defense of Alex Saab Rejects Request for New Extension by US.” Oct 6, 2021.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Defense-of-Alex-Saab-Rejects-Request-for-New-Extension-by-US-20211006-0023.html Accessed October 17, 2021.

By David Vine
From Washington DC

Amid renewed fear mongering about an “invasion” at the U.S.-Mexico border, this week’s 175^th anniversary of the 1846–1848 war the U.S. government instigated with Mexico is a reminder that throughout U.S. history, invasions have gone almost exclusively from north to south, not vice versa. A near-continuous series of invasions—military, political, and economic—moving from north to south has helped produce the poverty, violence, and insecurity driving people to migrate from south to north. The current humanitarian crisis at the border, with record numbers of unaccompanied minors desperately fleeing violence, insecurity and poverty, reveals the consequences of an interventionist policy that’s even older than the U.S.-Mexico war.

To be honest, interventionist is an all-too-common euphemism for imperialist invasions. The first invasion came in 1806 when U.S. military forces entered Mexican territory (then still controlled by Spain) and established a military base in today’s Colorado. In total, including the 1846–1848 war that resulted in the U.S. government seizing nearly half of Mexico, the U.S. military has invaded Mexico at least ten times.^[1] Across Latin America, U.S. forces have invaded southern neighbors more than 70 times, leaving occupying armies for months, years, and in some cases decades.^[2]

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Today the U.S. State Department acknowledges that U.S. troops instigated the war with Mexico.^[3] In early 1846 President James Polk deployed forces into disputed territory along the Rio Grande River. “We have not one particle of right to be here,” U.S. Colonel Ethan Allen Hitchcock wrote from near the river. “It looks as if the government sent a small force on purpose to bring on a war, so as to have a pretext for taking California and as much of this country as it chooses.”^[4] After fighting ensued, Polk used what he knew to be false claims that Mexico had “invaded our territory and shed American blood on American soil” to win a Congressional declaration of war.^[5]

Once the war started, many U.S. soldiers questioned the invasion of a neighbor posing no threat to the United States. Angry volunteer troops from Virginia, Mississippi, and North Carolina mutinied. Thousands of soldiers deserted. Several hundred Irish-American soldiers switched sides to fight for Catholic Mexico in the San Patricio Battalion. Casualty rates were unusually high for U.S. forces. They were higher still for Mexicans, including civilians subjected to U.S. bombardment and wartime atrocities. Commanding generals inflicted “extravagant violence” against Mexicans, following the pattern of scorched earth-style warfare employed against Native American civilians.^[6] “Murder, robbery, & rape on mothers and daughters, in the presence of the tied-up males of the families, have been common all along the Rio Grande,” reported U.S. General Winifred Scott in 1847.^[7] A young soldier at the time, future general and president Ulysses Grant said, “I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico.”^[8]

When U.S. and Mexican officials signed a treaty to end the war in 1848, the U.S. government took almost half of Mexico’s pre-war territory. This included around 525,000 square miles that today are the U.S. states of Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California, and parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. President James Polk had wanted even more territory: he had plans to invade the Yucatán Peninsula (and also hoped to buy Cuba from Spain).^[9] Some expansionist Democrats in Polk’s party pushed for annexing all of Mexico. They were among a group of southerners who dreamed of expanding the United States’ growing North American empire into the Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico based around enslaved labor and new slave-holding territories. Some led “filibustering” campaigns— private military invasions—in the 1850s into Mexico and Central America, although all failed.^[10]

From Mexico to Nicaragua to Panama and Beyond

The most infamous of the filibusters was William Walker. Walker led a private army, mostly composed of southerners, in an 1853 invasion of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. He declared himself president of what he called the Republic of Sonora. After Mexicans forced him to retreat to California, Walker led at least six separate campaigns into Nicaragua between 1855 and 1860. For a brief period, he declared himself president of Nicaragua, earned recognition from U.S. President Franklin Pierce, declared English the national language, legalized slavery, invaded Costa Rica, and announced his intention to take over all of Central America. Twice, the U.S. Navy captured him and returned him to the United States; in 1859, the administration of President James Buchanan ordered him released. Walker soon landed in Honduras during another attempt to take over Nicaragua. This time, Hondurans captured Walker, tried and executed him with a firing squad.^[11]

While U.S. government officials generally opposed private invasions like Walker’s, the U.S. military invaded parts of Latin America and the Caribbean throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. U.S. forces invaded Nicaragua in 1853, 1854, 1867, 1894, 1896, 1898, and 1899; Panama in 1856, 1860, 1865, 1873, 1885, and 1895; and Haiti in 1891 (with another invasion threatened in 1888).^[12] In 1903, U.S. officials and Navy warships helped Panamanian secessionists declare independence from Colombia to help advance plans to build a canal across the new country. Panama soon became a U.S. “colony in all but name.”^[13] The Panama Canal Zone was a U.S. colony, full stop, until its return in 1999. Between 1856 and the 1989 U.S. war in Panama, the U.S. military would invade Panama a total of 24 times.^[14] U.S. military bases in the Panama Canal Zone served as launch pads for yet more invasions elsewhere in Latin America.

New U.S. Colonies in Cuba and Puerto Rico

During the U.S. war with Spain of 1898, U.S. troops conquered Cuba and Puerto Rico, as well as the Philippines. U.S. officials turned Puerto Rico into a colony while officially granting Cuba its independence. In practice Cuba became a quasi-colony. To a greater extent than even the Panama Canal Zone, Guantánamo Bay became a U.S. colony, camouflaged by a U.S.-imposed “lease” that has no end date and that can only be terminated with the agreement of both governments. This arrangement amounts to an eviction-proof lease.

In 1901 U.S. officials also inserted an amendment into the new Cuban constitution allowing U.S. troops to invade at will. They soon did. An “Army of Cuban Pacification” occupied the island for almost three years in 1906-1909. U.S. forces occupied the country again in 1912 and for five years in 1917-1922.

Elsewhere in Latin America, the U.S. military occupied the Dominican Republic in 1903-1904 and 1914, and for nine years in 1915-1924. Neighboring Haiti suffered new occupations in 1914 and for nearly 20 years in 1915-1934. In Central America, Honduras experienced eight invasions and occupations in 1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1920, 1924, and 1925. The U.S. military occupied Nicaragua for two years in 1909-1910 and for around three decades in 1912-1933. U.S. troops invaded Guatemala in 1920. Naval vessels threatened the use of force in the waters of Costa Rica and Panama in 1921 and El Salvador in 1932.^[15] U.S. warships entered Latin American ports some 6,000 times between the mid-nineteenth century and 1930, in classic “gunboat diplomacy” style—in other words, political-economic bullying through displays of military force.^[16]

Covert Invasions

President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor” policy of the 1930s brought a brief pause in the invasions and occupations. After World War II, however, new, increasingly covert U.S. invasions largely replaced the overt wars and occupations. These invasions included CIA-backed coups in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Chile; weapons, training, and logistics support for right-wing forces in Central America’s horrific civil wars of the 1980s; Plan Colombia-style military deployments amid the “war on drugs”; and a growing number of U.S. military bases in the region. U.S. support for recent coups and coup attempts in Honduras, Bolivia, and Venezuela illustrates the persistence of such strategies.

U.S. military and CIA invasions into Latin America always have been matched by U.S. economic and corporate invasions, as Mexico demonstrates. Following the end of the war that began in April 1846, Mexico became as much of an economic dependency of the United States as it had been to its Spanish colonizer: mines were controlled by U.S. firms; railroads were designed to ship the wealth of the mines from south to north; the oil industry was dominated by Rockefeller, Mellon, and other oil giants; the peso was pegged to the dollar; Mexico was deeply indebted to U.S. banks.^[17] While Mexico has more power now relative to its northern neighbor than it did in the early twentieth century, the pattern of northern dominance largely has persisted.

Much of Central America and some other parts of Latin America have remained far more dominated by the United States than Mexico. There’s a reason that Honduras was the model for writer O. Henry when he coined the term “banana republic”: Honduras was under the near-complete control of U.S. banana companies and their political and military muscle, the U.S. government. Perhaps distracted by the clothing brand, many forget the original meaning of the term “banana republic”: a weak, impoverished, marginally independent country facing overwhelming foreign economic and political domination. In other words, a de facto colony—which is what Honduras and some other Latin American countries became in the twentieth century; in some cases they remain so today.

The U.S. government and U.S. corporations are not solely responsible for the violence, poverty, and insecurity that are at the root of today’s migration from Latin America to the United States. Other government and corporate actors within and beyond the region also bear responsibility. They include corrupt national leaders, European governments, and European, Canadian, and Asian corporations that have shaped Latin America through history.

One hundred and seventy five years after a U.S. president instigated a war with Mexico that resulted in the seizure of California and other lands that have been major sources of U.S. wealth, the current U.S. president and others in the United States should acknowledge the disproportionate role that U.S. leaders have played in invading and plundering to the south as well as the role these invasions and plunder have played in spurring mass migration northward.

Beyond recognizing U.S. culpability, President Biden has a historic opportunity to repair some of the damage our country has caused and stop causing more harm. This means abandoning the immoral and largely ineffective strategy of President Trump and his two presidential predecessors to outsource immigration control to the military and police forces of southern neighbors.^[18] It means admitting tens of thousands of Latin American asylum seekers per year as a start of paying off a long-owed “imperial debt.”^[19] If Biden is serious about addressing the “root causes” of migration, he and Vice President Kamala Harris must go beyond  pitifully small increases in humanitarian aid to Central America^[20] to end more than 200 years of military, political, and economic invasions that are at the root of those root causes.

David Vine is Professor of political anthropology at American University in Washington, DC. This article is adapted from Professor Vine’s new book The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State (University of California Press). David Vine is also the author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia (Princeton University Press, 2009) and Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World (Metropolitan/Henry Holt, 2015). See davidvine.net and basenation.us for more information.

Patricio Zamorano, Director of COHA, and Fred Mills, Deputy Director, collaborated as editors.

[Credit Main Photo: Flickr, common license, https://www.flickr.com/photos/west_point/48397922177/in/photostream/]

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Sources

[1] “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2020,” https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf.

[2]  “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2020,” https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf; The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State,

https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520300873/the-united-states-of-war.

[3] “Milestones: 1830-1860,” http://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/TexasAnnexation.

[4] Fifty Years in Camp and Field: Diary of Major-General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, U.S.A., https://www.google.com/books/edition/Fifty_Years_in_Camp_and_Field/VhJ-4yKyrhoC?hl=en.

[5] A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/529359/a-nation-without-borders-by-steven-hahn/.

[6] “The Occupation of Mexico: May 1846-July 1848,” https://history.army.mil/html/books/073/73-3/index.html.

[7] “The April Invasion of Veracruz,” https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/opinion/krauze-the-april-invasion-of-veracruz.html.

[8] A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1946 U.S. Invasion of Mexico, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/200246/a-wicked-war-by-amy-s-greenberg/.

[9] What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, https://www.google.com/books/edition/What_Hath_God_Wrought/TTzRCwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0.

[10] E.g., Building the Continental Empire: American Expansion from the Revolution to the Civil War, https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781566631365/Building-the-Continental-Empire-American-Expansion-from-the-Revolution-to-the-Civil-War; “From Old Empire to New,” https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/4453.htm.

[11] William Walker’s Wars: How One Man’s Private American Army Tried to Conquer Mexico, Nicaragua, and Honduras, https://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/william-walker-s-wars-products-9781613737293.php; Empire in Retreat: The Past, Present, and Future of the United States, https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300210002/empire-retreat; “William Walker: King of the 19th Century Filibusters,” https://www.historynet.com/william-walker-king-of-the-19th-century-filibusters.htm.

[12] Building the Continental Empire: American Expansion from the Revolution to the Civil War, https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781566631365/Building-the-Continental-Empire-American-Expansion-from-the-Revolution-to-the-Civil-War; Historical Atlas of Central America, https://www.oupress.com/books/9780699/historical-atlas-of-central-america.

[13] America’s Overseas Garrisons: The Leasehold Empire, https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198296874.001.0001/acprof-9780198296874.

[14] Historical Atlas of Central America, https://www.oupress.com/books/9780699/historical-atlas-of-central-america; Emperors in the Jungle: The Hidden History of the U.S. in Panama, https://www.dukeupress.edu/emperors-in-the-jungle.

[15] Emperors in the Jungle: The Hidden History of the U.S. in Panama, https://www.dukeupress.edu/emperors-in-the-jungle; Historical Atlas of Central America, https://www.oupress.com/books/9780699/historical-atlas-of-central-america; The Martinez Era: Salvadoran-American Relations, 1931-1944, https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/3002/.

[16] Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism, https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780805083231.

[17] “From Old Empire to New,” https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/4453.htm.

[18] “Biden’s Plan for Central America Is a Smokescreen,” https://www.thenation.com/article/world/biden-central-america-immigration/.

[19] “Migrations as Reparations,” https://nacla.org/blog/2016/05/24/migration-reparations.

[20] “The Biden Plan to Build Security and Prosperity in Partnership with the People of Central America,” https://joebiden.com/centralamerica/.

By Jimmy Centeno
From Los Angeles, California

La Marea/Corriente (Wave/Current 2020) is filmmaker Miguel Novelo’s counter narrative to the American dream.  One of the main emphases in the 14 minute short documentary presented by CiNEOLA (a platform for Latin American stories) touches on the most overlooked dream, “The Mexican Dream.”^[1] In this case Jorge’s dream. A youth whose desire is to not leave Mexico like so many others who, facing dire economic and social conditions, emigrate in order to survive. The documentary begins with the ocean’s soft lullaby of gentle waves.

The film carries a youthful layer of optimism with a subtle dialectic framework between the Mexican filmmaker who immigrated to the United States and his conational who decides to pursue the Mexican Dream. The main protagonist, Jorge, affirms his place of dwelling in the world distant from the major metropolises of Mexico and the global North.

Novelo pans across Seybaplaya, Campeche (Mexico), a town of fishermen in the most circular time frame. It is a sequence that runs, walks and moves at the pace of a non-urban town, unlike other films where time is squeezed, rushed, sliced, flattened and linear. It is a moment with a movement. Unlike most urban cities with chaotic dissonance of noises stacked on top of each other with no rhythm, La Marea’s soundtrack evokes the common living elements of nature: thunder, rain and lighting, which sing differently to a town that grasps the notes of flashes, drips, and singing roosters with a distinct tempo of organic rhythms and meaning. Seybaplaya’s surrounding nature “is not a landscape, it is, memory.” It is Jorge’s and his town’s biography.^[2]

The documentary has the quality reminiscent of the advice that renowned Revolutionary Cuban filmmaker Humberto Solas, founder of the first Cine Pobre Film Festival in 2003, shares with filmmakers. He says, “film life, go film the children, the beach, the sea” and he points to a nearby street fair with mechanical rides lit up beneath the tropical night skies of Gibara, Cuba. “There, film that!”^[3] In this same film festival the best documentary was awarded to an Iranian filmmaker who for Solas spoke of war without ever showing it.

La Marea falls under the same spell/spirit expressed by Humberto Solas. Its visual presentation takes the viewer through the unspoiled happiness from/through the shadow of an encroaching (terrorizing) adverse effect of the the fanatic politics of neoliberalism on all life. The word neoliberalism is too often tossed around without revealing its concept or its meaning. Philosopher Rafael Bautista best describes it as an attempt to canonize capitalism in which all life is susceptible to become a commodity for sale in today’s globalized world. La Marea is the unseen crossroad made visible.^[4]

Its visual presentation takes the viewer through the unspoiled happiness from/through the shadow of an encroaching (terrorizing) adverse effect of the the fanatic politics of neoliberalism on all life.

Novelo’s short documentary poses a question between life and nature understood by a capitalist society and what makes it challenging  to those who seek alternative that no longer objectify life. Bautista elaborates, “capitalism (modernity’s baby) removes the sensorial perception which constructs, shapes and forms individual life with solidarity and community consciousness.” The interpretation of nature as an object of exploitation, translates, for scholar Juan José Baustista Segales, into a subject-object relation. The way in which we treat nature as an object of  exploitation and domination the same relation will carry over between human interaction. Neoliberalism becomes “the principles and the parameters by which new semantics grounded on market values are forged” ^[5]  into today’s politics and culture. And, it is modernity that maintains the judiciary and rationality that feeds the social relations required for the maintenance and function of capitalism.^[6]  The irony of social programs (federal to non profits) set to alleviating poverty by a state fathered by capitalism are the same ones which systematically produce poverty.

Jorge’s wish is to become an animal caretaker rather than continue the family tradition of fishermen and divers. His friends ask Jorge why he is not following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. Jorge, a musician who plays the guitar, seems to have chosen to spend his youth in activities that do not carry the weight of a corporatist’s spirit by extending/nurturing his caring sensibility to creatures dear to him and not be at the mercy of the market as an objectified/alienated laborer. One step towards the north away from his non urban town with ways of being not quite diluted is one step less for Jorge’s preservation of his particular being. As minute as it might be it is one less human empowering the control and domination of the U.S dollar over all aspects of  Mexico’s economy, as well as its cultural and political identity.

The innocence of both the film and the director is expressed in many scenes, in particular during the circus performance with no animals,  just clowns and tricks. Rain works its way through the seams of a weathered canvas only to be met with laughter and surprise. The audience responds by improvising. They move around the bleachers in search of a clear spot to continue enjoying the performance.

Improvisation as a quality of resilience enhances the film. This same resilient approach is what makes La Marea authentic and distinguishes it from exuberant cinematic formulas. The author’s technique of using extended slow scenes of a community in coexistence with its environment gives hints of Andrei Tarkovsky’s slow poetic and textured film language, but with a slight difference. La Marea has ontological sprinkles of working within the realm of what is precisely there (Dasein), the un-staged. Novelo is merged with the content of his film. This content is an extension of his experience with that of Jorge’s. In other words he does not sever his philosophy and politics from his art. However, La Marea could do without the interactive digital component, which is a remnant of Novelo’s experimental stage. The story by itself is strong enough to stand on its own two feet. The digital interactive aspect of the film works more as a close-up; it magnifies rather than bringing nearness. Nearness is built on narrative. It supplies proximity of one subjectivity to another. Digital interaction does facilitate communication but does not transfer any sense of lived experience in community. Its transmission is colonial. It is soundless!

La Marea is a critique of the exceptional hegemonic dream which projects itself above all other aspirations; the American dream, brings in view a phantasmagoria or a house of mirrors that does not allow looking beyond the distorted reflections caused by the mirrors and its soteriological content. What does this entail for people around the world impacted by such a claim to all other manifestations of hope? Jorge’s narrative takes the form of a dream at risk in a hyper fetishized digital era. Novelo moves La Marea’s storyline away from a post nostalgic scenario of defeat and regret by making us realize  that happiness does exist in the Global South. Unexamined perception that happiness only exists in rich Global North countries (The Disneys of the world) is an extension of imperial propagandas.

The trek made to the Global North, in this case to the U.S., is often met with hostility from all sides. Some  label immigrants  as intruders and aliens, while others tag immigrants as an extension of the colonial settlers. Such definitions come from those who have no clue, fail or care not to understand the core/periphery relations between empires and Global South nations as satellites; providers of labor, resources, and fiscal space for investments and speculation. A recent article by Arian Arahonian brings to our attention empirical evidence about the abysmal disparities in North/South core-periphery relations. Arahonian’s article also points out that there are “economists that work for the rich to become richer and economists that work for the poor to be less poor.”^[7]

The film carries a sensibility that is in contrast with  today’s hyper-violent neoliberal culture. It is a prayer of action through cinema for the Mexican Dream as an existential possibility for a new horizon which departs from and affirms life. It is a film that keeps the liberatory project from instantly being erased. By mapping  potential liberating ways not dominated by a saturated culture of anxiety, likes, shares, information vs. knowledge, La Marea allows us a moment of  reflection.  Hence, neoliberalism as a modern civilizing program is one that is set to evaporate small towns like Seybaplaya. Or be converted by the planning of mega projects by both conservative and progressive governments into resorts for those who can afford such exclusive luxury in the name of progress.^[8] In Saving Beauty philosopher Byung Chul Han writes as his last sentence in his book “The saving of beauty is the saving of that which commits us.”^[9]

The film carries a sensibility that is in contrast with  today’s hyper-violent neoliberal culture. It is a prayer of action through cinema for the Mexican Dream as an existential possibility for a new horizon which departs from and affirms life

La Marea, in its simplest form works as a life affirming commitment that carries its own shape and form in creating cinema with a layer of resistance by “saving of the other.” This means we, as spectators should not be a mere reflection of circumstances complying with a rationale that destroys lives and eco-narratives like those shown in La Marea. La Marea intends to demonstrate all that is in-between cause and effect. It is an existential visual moment/glimpse before and at risk to completely dissipate into the burning furnace of progress. In The Swarm: Digital Prospects Byung Chul Han affirms, “All those who participate in the capitalist system belong to It.”^[10]
Can towns like Seybaplaya survive in a world of finite resources? What are the effects of the geopolitical strategies formulated in the Global North that shape the politics and social/community relations in the Global South?  What are the consequences of industrial fishing on traditional and local ways of subsistence for small towns?^[11]  What is the impact of bourgeoise science and its economic philosophy on life?  Philosopher Rafael Bautista states: “Los límites están hablando (the limits are speaking)!”

La Marea’s narrative is a utopia that belongs to all those who retain a spirit of youth and the will of life aimed at change and becoming today what we all want to collectively be tomorrow regardless of age. It is an attempt to rescue the liberating content in utopia. For utopia is more than a slogan of yes we can. It is mythic energy encapsulated within horizons of hope in human memory. When fertilized and ingested, it can bring us closer to seeing an un-fractured reality beyond the double pane mirrors. It clears out any deterministic conscious and unconscious values that perpetuate visions unable to integrate concepts that enrich the human experience.  A dialectic engagement between utopia and the historical moment for the desirable, necessary and the possible is crucial for the gathering of a new language that allows memory to reach beyond inventing and instead learn how to construct and read reality. Perhaps this can be a liberating moment from what Chul Han describes as “perpetrator and victim at the same time.” Utopian theory must depart from the political lived reality. The closer theory is to the current political reality, the better equipped we are to understand our role in the world in community that is: el ser humano es el ser supremo para el ser humano in coexistence with nature.^[12] For there is no moment in human history without the company of utopias.

Jimmy Centeno is a founding member of Philosophies of Liberation Encuentros (PLE) in The United States and a regional coordinator  for Association of Philosophy and Liberation, AFYL (USA). He is an independent art curator, writer, welder, and artist.

This review is dedicated to professors and compañeros Rafael Bautista and Juan José Bautista Segales. 

In memory of filmmaker Fernando Solanas (1936 -2020), who did cinema not on behalf of an expression or for communication, but a cinema of action for liberation.

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Sources

[1] CiNEOLA was founded by producer Daniel Díaz (www.cineo.la)

[2] Quotes from Rafael Bautista.

[3] Interview with Humberto Solas by the writer.

[4] It is a stateless state acting as a manager on behalf of private interest vs. the public good. It is no coincidence today to be told “you must market yourself.” For the Andean/Indigenous/Latin American philosopher, “It is the quantifying of reality. The modern world yanks away the sacred content in life and produces irrationality.” The godlike/religious status inherent to neoliberalism’s economic doctrine is the “consumption of indifference and the naturalization of such indifference.” In other words we “consume domination” and exploitation. Bautista further adds that capital removes the means of subsistence under communal relations by converting the community into ‘modern‘ individuals competing against one another to get  an individual return at any cost. It is essential for the reproduction of the  system to shape individuals to have the same expectations, perspectives and perceptions.

[5] Quote from Juan José Bautista Senegal.

[6] Rafael Baustista is a philosopher, writer, poet and activist. He teaches de-colonial workshops in Bolivia.

[7] “Annus horribilis, ¿el que pasó o el que se nos viene?”, https://rebelion.org/annus-horribilis-el-que-paso-o-el-que-se-nos-viene/

[8] “El Corredor Interoceánico del Istmo de Tehuantepec: desarrollo capitalista y depredación del medio ambiente”, https://rebelion.org/el-corredor-interoceanico-del-istmo-de-tehuantepec-desarrollo-capitalista-y-depredacion-del-medio-ambiente/

[9] Byung Chul Han, ‘Saving Beauty’, transl. Daniel Steuer (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018) p.81.

[10] Byung Chul Han, ‘In The Swarm; The Digital Prospect’, transl. Erik Butler (MIT Press, Cambridge, 2017) p.13.

[11] “La cara oculta de la acuicultura, sobreexplotación de los océanos y maltrato a los peces”, https://rebelion.org/la-cara-oculta-de-la-acuicultura-sobreexplotacion-de-los-oceanos-y-maltrato-a-los-peces/

[12] The human being is the Supreme Being for the human being, is a conversation between philosophers Franz Hinkelammert and Juan Jose Bautista. The phrase according to the conversation originates with Karl Marx. Hinkelammert expands the supreme Being to configure the excluded, marginalized, the poor and discarded by capitalism as a priority for all of humanity. This priority extends to include the co-existing with nature as a subject and no longer as an object.

By Patricio Zamorano
From Washington, DC

“That is not who we are,” insists the U.S. political class after the grave events of January 6 when a mob of Trump supporters brutally invaded the Capitol here in Washington, DC, leading to the loss of five lives. An entire nation, if not the whole world, has been traumatized, unable to believe that these images came from a developed country in North America.

The key questions are simple, “Why” and “How?” The answer is visible in the raw emotions on  the demonstrators’ faces, strategically veiled in the concept of “American Exceptionalism” that has done so much damage throughout the history of the country’s democracy. The rest of the world is also astounded to see the U.S. trip up in its strategic economic, political, and ideological trajectory. But the dozens of countries that have historically been subjected to sanctions (most of them unilateral and therefore illegal under international law) had already seen through the veil.

Institutional control over the people

The destructive intent in the mostly white faces of Trump supporters has been part of U.S. society since the country was founded. The phrase “that is not who we are” fails to acknowledge how someone as unbalanced as Trump was so easily able to assume the most powerful position on earth.

I propose and will analyze how this is because the United States has a sort of co-opted democracy, with a deep-seated history of plans to filter, redirect, frame, and control the cultural, popular, political, and electoral expressions of its citizens. All the intricacies of government institutions help explain this framework. This is why Trump was able to quickly make vast inroads towards controlling the base of the Republican Party, and obtain more than 70 million votes on November 3—more than any previous Republican candidate. A history of citizens’ inadequate democratic access to power and hatred for government are partially responsible for unleashing the events of January 6. Trump successfully manipulated these sentiments and used them for his own personal benefit.

Congress is able to overturn the Electoral College vote

It all starts with the Electoral College. The general public is not aware that in addition to the fact that the system does not allow voters to select their president directly, Electoral College votes determined by the popular vote in each state can be nullified, changed, or excluded by Congress.

What the Senate was doing on January 6, certifying the votes submitted by each state in the Union, in modern times had become no more than an act of protocol. However, Trump was exerting maximum pressure to exploit the legal framework underlying those proceedings: the ability to thwart the will of the people by overturning the results in the states he had lost, as had been done in a few occasions in the country’s history.

But there is more. The Electoral College rules indicate that if Congress rejects the votes submitted by some states and no candidate reaches the required 270 votes, CONGRESS DECIDES WHO BECOMES PRESIDENT AND VICE-PRESIDENT. Excuse the all caps, but I want to clarify the academic (and dramatic) reasons that U.S. democracy is simply a system of tutelage over the popular vote.

In addition, the “electors” elected by each state are not legally bound to cast their Electoral College vote for the candidate that won the popular vote in their state. Technically, they are allowed to change that vote. In modern times this has not happened because of a de facto sense of “honor” to respect the will of the people, and some state laws have tried to ensure that the vote submitted to Congress faithfully reflects the popular vote. But the law is clearly designed to not necessarily respect the votes of average citizens.

The mere fact that the Electoral College has awarded the presidency to people who did not win the popular vote is in itself an aberration from democracy that the American people passively accept. We know that Trump received 3 million votes fewer than Hillary Clinton. Al Gore received more votes than George Bush. And yet, the Republican was the one who gained power in these cases.

One of the positive aspects often mentioned about the Electoral College is that it allows small states to remain relevant. The idea behind this is that candidates must pay attention to those small states, visit them, and campaign in them. But the math of modern elections negates that reasoning. The system is so closed and controlled that elections are now decided by a small number of swing states that have become kingmakers, such that elections are not decided on the basis of 150 million votes, but rather a few thousand. This comes down to the micro level of counties: Trump actually won in 2016 because he was able to win some key counties in those swing states. In other words, he won by a factor of tens of thousands of votes, not millions.

Voting had been a privilege of class, race and gender

But the main reason the Electoral College exists is because the colonists who founded the nation and drafted the Constitution did not believe in the people’s capacity to correctly choose their own destiny. The young republics in post-independence Latin America suffered from the same phenomenon. All the countries of the Americas took at least 150 years to let the “uneducated masses,” as they called them, vote in free elections. Winning the right to vote was a long process laden with abuse, which used arbitrary means to limit suffrage based on educational, financial, social status, race, and gender requirements. Women’s right to vote was shamefully only granted little over a half century ago! Similar to the situation of African Americans.

U.S. democracy negates the existence of other parties. The entire system in the U.S. is designed to limit people’s choices to finite limits. The Supreme Court is a branch of government that dominates the lives of over 300 million souls with its lifetime appointments of justices that are not elected by anyone, except a handful of senators and the President. 

The U.S. electoral system uses the full force and money of the judicial system to keep independent political parties from being an option to staff Congress, not to say the White House. For example, the Democratic Party spends millions of dollars on each election to keep the Green Party off the ballot. The Republican Party has buried the Tea Party and the Libertarians to keep them out of the running, except to rally behind the GOP candidate.

Donald Trump and much of what he represents is an anomaly for the Republican Party, given its political and religious values. The only reason he ran for the party’s nomination was to have a shot at the presidency; he had previously been a Democrat and supported Bill Clinton. Similarly, Bernie Sanders is an anomaly within the Democratic Party, with his socialist values that do not fit with the centrist line of Obama’s party. But Sanders, like Trump, had no other option. In any other country these candidates would have founded their own party, created strategic alliances with a variety of forces, and been competitive. According to all the data, it is quite possible that either Trump or Sanders alone could have garnered a significant percentage of the vote. Through alliances in a multi-party system, the US could have a truly democratic alternation of power, instead of the two-party Democrat/Republican dictatorship.

Violence has been part of the recipe for change

Once again, the phrase “that is not who we are” in response to the brutal violence exhibited on January 6 is also divorced from U.S. reality. All popular movements demanding far-reaching change have gone through a trial by fire. And the country’s two movements for true social revolution were shaped by savage violence. The first was for the abolition of slavery and it cost 600,000 U.S. lives through a cruel and vicious civil war. It was so brutal that the pro-slavery Confederate flag continues to be a source of pride and pain for millions of Southerners, some of whom led the siege of Congress this January.

The second movement for social revolution was the civil rights struggle of the mid-20th century, viciously repressed in streets throughout the country, particularly the South. Many of its leaders and some politicians who supported them were assassinated, including Martin Luther King, whom we celebrate this week, along with Malcolm X, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Louis Allen, Willie Brewster, Benjamin Brown, Johnnie Mae Chappel, James Chaney, Addie Mae Collins, and more than 100 others, many of whom are unknown to younger generations. It is a massacre that has been obliterated from modern memory.

State-perpetrated violence under Lincoln’s presidency during the Civil War so profoundly traumatized Southerners that stubbornly defended the aberration that was slavery, that this left them with a permanent, visceral, and irrational hatred for what the government symbolizes. Its legacy is today’s armed civilian militias, a cult of firearms, and an almost religious devotion to the Second Amendment.

Many of the January 6th insurrectionists were educated people

The most radical segment of white culture (and other races, too) in the U.S. revolves around the role of government as an enemy that oppresses Americans in their private lives. The anti-imperialist outlook the world’s peoples have gained after suffering military actions or covert U.S. intelligence operations, is translated ideologically by white supremacist militias into distrust of the “deep state.” In this sense, what we witnessed on January 6 was not the actions of an uneducated, vicious mob. While much of Trump’s base is made up of rural people with lower levels of education, higher rates of poverty, and more precarious employment, as the surveys indicate, the mob that attacked Congress included state legislators, college professors and academics, corporate managers, attorneys, police officers, high- and low-ranking members of the military, firefighters, physicians, and nurses. And although Trump was impeached on very clear grounds of inciting insurrection against a branch of government, 197 Republican members of Congress voted against it, and 82% of Republicans do not believe Trump is responsible for the attack on the Capitol. Very revealing statistics indeed.

Government is the enemy, even if it provides social assistance

It is clear as day. Claims of “that is not who we are” have no grounding in the actual social psychology of the country. The distrust and disdain a large number of people hold for their government is so profound that these impoverished and conservative white people would rather reject the free medical care the government offers than accept what they view as a “socialist” threat. Let’s examine this point: the repudiation of socialism is not necessarily against the social welfare model (for better or worse, the US has some socialist infrastructure, although it does not call it that). What people on the Right fear is social control; they perceive threats from a government that will impose its decisions on their lifestyle, values, and private space just like it did in the 19th century during the Civil War.

This sentiment is so strong that they would rather die of preventable diseases than accept free health care from the government. They would rather give free reign to the gun worshippers than limit firearm sales after the massacre of twenty innocent children at Sandy Hook Elementary. After that tragedy, not a single significant piece of gun control legislation was passed because all efforts were rabidly rebuffed by the gun lobby.

Trump is a megaphone

The “accident” of Trump’s election simply gave voice from the White House, perhaps for the first time, to a large number of conservatives who had been harboring a mixture of contained rage and fear of two hundred years of political and institutional oppression. The Republican Party is not a comfortable home for the extreme values that have come to be called “Trumpism.” Its leaders in Congress and the Republican National Committee defend the current institutional framework, formal structures of power, and law and order. For this reason, dozens of Republican officials have received death threats by those who invaded Congress. Based on the polls and the still strong support enjoyed by Trump, maybe hundreds of thousands agree with the insurrectionists from their own homes far from the seat of power in Washington, DC.

Violence is the public manifestation of the country’s profound need for democratic reform. Progressive groups agree on the need for reform, but push for a democratic opening primarily through legal efforts to break the authoritarian siege, and try to mobilize people in the streets to build power out of civil society (unions, professional guilds, the media, grassroots movements, and activism). But operating at that level leaves people trapped by the system; they will always be left out of electoral politics and the power to effect real change through Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court.

A multiparty system and direct election of the president. What’s not to like?

This nation that imposes its hegemony on the rest of the planet in the name of democracy, is at its ideological core a repressor of political pluralism that refuses to allow the people to elect their presidents directly. This is a country that cannot agree to depose a head of state who has openly committed insurrection (and other far more serious crimes) due to technicalities imposed by the Constitution to thwart any change to this model of tutelage democracy. Meanwhile there is a Supreme Court of justices made omnipotent by their life terms who cannot be changed without overwhelming majorities. The legal and electoral system attacks any new parties that try to bring the country’s diverse voices into the game.

Donald Trump’s unhinged show of the past four delirious years has, ironically, pulled back a few inches the veil that was protecting a system with profoundly undemocratic roots. The political class would do well to make an example of Trumpism by trying to quickly bury it. The risk is that the need to reform institutions, that would return part of the political capital and the right to real access to formal power to the American people, would also be neutralized for decades. That would constitute a political and social crime against future generations.

Patricio Zamorano is a political scientist and academic living in Washington DC. He is Co-Director of COHA. Twitter: @Zamoranoinfo

By Frederick B. Mills, Alina Duarte, Patricio Zamorano
From Washington DC

On Monday January 4 a British court denied a U.S. request to extradite world renowned journalist and Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, to face charges in the U.S. under the Espionage Act. Shortly after this breaking news, President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), urged the U.K. to consider the possibility of freeing Assange and announced that Mexico “offers political asylum” to the activist.

This bold announcement by López Obrador draws a stark contrast to the revocation of asylum by the President of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, who turned Assange over to British authorities in April 2019 after the journalist had spent seven years inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London. To provide political cover for this controversial act, part of the mainstream press deployed character assassination, painting an image of an erratic Assange, ungrateful for Ecuadorian hospitality. Numerous human rights and civil liberty organizations, however, denounced the decision of the Moreno administration to violate Assange’s diplomatic protection and allow the police to penetrate the Embassy building and arrest the journalist. The sudden reversal of Ecuador’s provision of asylum and protection was consistent, however, with Moreno’s dramatic pivot to the right after he was elected on a leftist platform. It was viewed by his critics as an act of subordination of Ecuador’s foreign policy to the imperatives of Washington.

The struggle to free Assange is far from over. Since Judge Vanessa Baraitser employed the humanitarian argument that extradition to the U.S. could lead Assange to attempt suicide, instead of using the substantive arguments advanced by Assange’s legal team, the door remains wide open to a United States appeal which could drag out litigation for months or even years. Assange’s lawyers argued that he was acting as a journalist when he published leaked documents about U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that these disclosures are protected by the First Amendment.

The international campaign to free Assange anticipates a continuing legal fight. Many of Assange’s supporters are petitioning President Donald Trump to pardon him, and failing that, will urge the incoming Biden administration not to pursue an appeal of the U.K.’s denial of extradition.

A history of protection of the persecuted

The Mexican gesture came as a surprise to many observers, but it was not out of character, as Mexico has a proud tradition of granting or offering asylum or protection to the persecuted including Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, José Martí, Leon Trotsky, Pablo Neruda, León Felipe, Héctor José Campora, Mohammad Reza Palhevi (the Shah of Iran), Rigoberta Menchú, Enrique Dussel, and most recently former president of Bolivia Evo Morales.

By offering asylum to Evo Morales after an Organization of American States (OAS) backed coup in November 2019, López Obrador placed Mexico on the side of popular sovereignty in the Americas against the Lima Group’s complicity with the drive to bring about regime change in Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba, in addition to Bolivia.  And by offering Assange asylum López Obrador adds political clout to the growing international outrage at the detention and psychological torture of Assange. AMLO has also put Mexico on the world stage and has conferred legitimacy on the actions of Assange and Wikileaks, that revealed to the world numerous illegal activities perpetrated by the U.S., including war crimes, clandestine operations and meddling in the internal political affairs of dozens of countries, foes and allies alike. Offering asylum to Assange shows respect, from the heart of the Americas, for human rights, international law, sovereign equality of nations, political independence, and multilateralism.

AMLO and his political project, also named in Wikileaks

Although López Obrador formalized his offer of political asylum at the beginning of 2021, he had already expressed his sympathy and support for the journalist as early as January 2020: “I wish that he be forgiven and released. I do not know if he has recognized that he acted against the rules and against a political system, but at the time these cables showed how the world system works in its authoritarian nature, they are like state secrets that were known thanks to this investigation and to the release of these cables. Hopefully he will receive the consideration he deserves and be freed and tortured no more.”^[1]

The Mexican president also revealed how the cables released by Wikileaks covered the work of his political movement. “Here are cables that were released when we were in the opposition that spoke of our struggle and I can prove that they are true.” He added that “what is expressed here, reflects the reality at that time, of illegal relationships, of illegal actions, illegitimate violations of sovereignty, contrary to democracy, to freedoms.” That is why, López Obrador pointed out, “I express my solidarity, my wish that he be forgiven” because “if he offers an apology and he is released, it will be a very just cause in favor of the human rights of the world. It is an act of humility from the authority that has to decide on the freedom of this researcher.”^[2]

Safety of journalists still a challenge in Mexico

The announcement made by López Obrador regarding journalist Julian Assange unleashed a series of reactions regarding freedom of expression and contradictory policies of the current Mexican administration.

On one hand the president has indicated that  his administration backs freedom of the press: “out of conviction, we never, ever, would limit freedom of expression. None of the freedoms.” He also said that “it fills me with pride that freedom of expression is guaranteed. This hadn’t happened in a long time. The media, the press, were either sold or rented to the regime. This is new, something to celebrate.”^[3]

However, the opposition, human rights advocates and concerned journalists  highlight that there is still a pending debt with reporters in Mexico, because during the first two years of AMLO as president, 17 journalists have been assassinated according to the organization Article 19^[4]. The Mexican government recognizes even a higher number:  the Ministry of the Interior has announced that 38 communicators have been murdered from December 2018 to December 2020^[5]. This indicates that there are high levels of impunity in this type of crime, since currently only two cases have resulted in convictions, 23 cases remain under investigation, and 13 are in litigation. It should be noted that the violence against journalists didn’t begin with AMLO’s administration. During the term of Enrique Peña Nieto, 47 journalists were assassinated, while under Felipe Calderón, 48, making Mexico one of the most dangerous countries to practice journalism.^[6]

Mexico’s offer of asylum to Julian Assange bolsters the cause of Latin American independence by countering the subordination of the OAS, and in particular the Lima Group, to U.S. foriegn policy and exposing the underside of Washington’s interference in the internal affairs of other nations. It also promotes the values of humanitarian protection against political persecution from Latin America to the planetary stage.  It  advances the case of those advocating more transparency and the right to information from their governments at a time when there is mass surveillance of citizens. López Obrador recognizes that democracy can only flourish when governments are accountable to an informed citizenry. He has done us all a service.

All translations into English from Spanish language sources are by the authors.

Editorial support by Jill Clark-Gollub

Credit Main-Photo: Creative Common Licenses

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Sources

^[1] “Mexico’s president hopes Julian Assange is ‘forgiven and released’,” https://www.sbs.com.au/news/mexico-s-president-hopes-julian-assange-is-forgiven-and-released

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] “AMLO analiza a la prensa: el 66% de las columnas son contra el proyecto de la 4T, dice”, https://www.animalpolitico.com/2020/09/amlo-analiza-prensa-columnistas-contra-proyecto-4t/

^[4] “Periodistas asesinados en México, en relación con su labor informativa”, https://articulo19.org/periodistasasesinados/

^[5] “38 periodistas asesinados en México en el actual gobierno: Alejandro Encinas”, https://snrp.org.mx/noticias_nacionales/38-periodistas-asesinados-en-mexico-en-el-actual-gobierno-alejandro-encinas

^[6] “Sexenio de Calderón, el más letal para periodistas”, https://www.contralinea.com.mx/archivo-revista/2019/10/14/sexenio-de-calderon-el-mas-letal-para-periodistas/