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/

Alina Duarte
Mexico City

Evo Morales, former President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia and President of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba, was a special guest of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) during festivities marking the 212^th anniversary of Mexico’s independence. The other international guests included John and Gabriel Shipton, father and brother of journalist Julian Assange; family of the late farmworker and activist César Chávez; Aleida Guevara, daughter of Che Guevara; and former Uruguayan President “Pepe” Mujica.

On September 15 Morales witnessed President Andrés Manuel López Obrador calling out the cry for independence. In addition to the traditional “¡Viva México!” of the heroes of independence, AMLO yelled, “Death to corruption! Death to racism! Death to classism!”

The former President of Bolivia also stood on a balcony of the National Palace, where he received a standing ovation from the thousands of people attending the festivities. The next day, Morales was just a few yards away from the Mexican President when AMLO called for a five-year worldwide truce.

During his short visit, Evo Morales gave me a few minutes of his time to talk about Mexico, Latin America, lithium, and the present and future of our region.

After meeting with the Mayor of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, Morales met with me at his hotel. He was in a hurry since his flight back to Bolivia was departing in a couple of hours. He gave a rushed greeting, sat down, took a breath, and while he was getting settled, I thanked him for taking the time to answer my questions.

Not one minute into the interview he said that he is in Mexico because he was invited by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

-Let’s cover that first, Evo. You are here precisely by invitation of President López Obrador. You were one of the big-name special guests to attend the Independence Day festivities. You were present when he issued the Cry of Independence—actually two events—the “cry” the night of September 15^th, and the parade on September 16^th, when President López Obrador gave a speech before a military parade, calling for a worldwide truce. The night before he had also called out “Death to Racism! Death to Classism!” etc. What do you think of all that?

-Andrés, the President of Mexico, is Andrés. This president has long been very humanistic, in solidarity, committed to poor families and their social programs. I met this President at his inauguration, and he greeted me saying, “my indigenous brother,” or something like that. After the coup d’etat he saved my life, he helped me, he helped us to return to democracy, along with other presidents such as the president of Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba, President [Ernesto] Samper, [José Luis Rodríguez] Zapatero, even the President of Paraguay. And now I have been invited alongside my brother, Pepe Mujica. He invited me together with Julian Assange’s father and Che’s daughter, Aleida Guevara, and other guests. I am honored to participate and attend the Independence Day activities in Mexico.

On September 15th he surprised us by yelling “Death to racism! Death to Corruption! Death to Classism!” That is a strong message, but also a message of integration. I continue to think that some day we will have a plurinational Americas, of peoples for the people. Not America in the sense that the Americans say: “All of Latin America is the backyard of the United States.” What did we hear from the US Southern Command two or three weeks ago? They are concerned about Lithium. But what is more, they consider Latin America to be a neighborhood of the United States. It pains us to still hear these kinds of messages in the 21^st century. There are new leaders, such as my brother Andrés with his proposals. We heard an interesting message, a proposed [global] truce to avoid conflict, and above all, the financial crises that are leading the United States to use NATO to intervene militarily and surround Russia, provoking that armed conflict.

-And in that speech, Evo, President López Obrador said that he proposes a five-year worldwide truce “to address the major, serious economic and social problems that afflict and torment our peoples.” The proposal, which he says Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard will formally present to the UN, “seeks the immediate suspension of military actions and provocations as well as military and missile tests.” It would seek to form a committee to foster dialogue between Russia and Ukraine, for which he even said he would propose the inclusion of Pope Francis and Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, and on behalf of the UN, Secretary General Antonio Gutérrez.” What message does this send outside Mexico?

-First, it shows that our brother and President of Mexico is concerned about the situation with food and energy, that he is concerned with life and humanity. It is a good proposal deserving of our admiration. In fact, it surprised me and I think it surprised everyone, the idea of a truce with mediators from India, Pope Francis, the United Nations, and surely Mexico would also be with the initiative. We salute it and support it and hopefully the whole world will listen to it. I wish that NATO would stop attacking and encircling countries when they do not submit to the empire—that is the underlying issue. I heard that there was a big meeting today with China, India, I’m not sure whether it is with Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, and Russia. Hopefully it will go well and some light will be shed on how to attain peace, but with social justice.

-I think that these invitations President López Obrador is extending to you and other people are important. He might not have been able to do so four years ago when he came into office, but things have changed regionally. What is your assessment of the role that Mexico is playing in the region with all these issues you have put on the table, including at the global level?

-I feel that there is a democratic rebellion underway throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Two, three years ago there was the Lima Group to overthrow [Nicolás] Maduro. Where is the Lima Group today? Who made up the Lima Group? The former presidents of Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and particularly of Colombia.

-Now they are all gone…

-There is no more Lima Group. Look, after we founded UNASUR (Union of South American Nations) with [Hugo] Chávez, with Lula [da Silva], with [Rafael] Correa, and with [Néstor] Kirschner and other presidents (I very much regret that some parties have become submissive to the Empire), the Lima Group was able to, I would say temporarily, paralyze UNASUR. But together with [Hugo] Chávez and Fidel [Castro] we created CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States). But [Barak] Obama and other U.S. presidents responded to this integration proposal by organizing the Pacific Alliance to maintain the policies of the Washington Consensus or the FTAA.

Now I am wondering, where is the Pacific Alliance? These institutions or organizations that only serve to uphold U.S. policies have been defeated with this democratic rebellion.

-Such as the OAS [Organization of American States]…

-Of course, but in addition, imagine it! I am almost certain that our brother Lula will win (in Brazil) in next month’s election; plus Mexico—that is a great strategic alliance for all the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. It gives us great hope.

Fifty or 60 years ago, at least, we saw how Cuba was expelled from the OAS. Then countries were afraid of getting expelled from the OAS. Now it is a source of dignified pride to leave the OAS. We have a responsibility to relaunch CELAC in order to truly ensure integration—but not just of heads of state—of their peoples.

-Speaking of Latin America, I want to explore this further because some people call it the second cycle of progressive governments. Others talk about some unique characteristics. The truth is that there is a trend, not only in their discourse, but also in their actions, that are clearly anti-neoliberal and anti-imperialist. We see this with the victory of Gustavo Petro together with Francia Márquez in Colombia. It is important that figures like yourself pointed out that the two of them together made the victory possible, not just Petro. We also have elections in just a few days in Brazil and we see Lula da Silva with great chances of returning. How do you perceive today’s Latin America?

-First, all of the doctrines of empire have collapsed. Where is the Cold War? Where is the War on Terrorism? Why am I saying this? Now, parties of political movements, social movements with socialist tendencies and principles, with communist doctrines, are getting elected to the presidency. This did not exist before; it was only Cuba.

Terrorists… for the Empire, who are the terrorists? Social movements. I recall in 2002 U.S. Ambassador Manuel Rocha telling people “Don’t vote for Evo Morales; Evo Morales is an Andean Bin Laden and the coca growers are the Taliban.”  He said, “Don’t vote that way, if you vote for Evo, there will be no aid or investment.” What a lie! In 2005 government expenditure was US$1.6 billion. In the last years I was in office before the coup, we programmed more than US$8 billion in government expenditure.

So we “terrorists” are now presidents. [Gabriel] Boric was a student leader; Pedro Castillo who was a rural patrolman or “rondero” and a leader of the teachers’ union, is now president. It was hard, but we won. I feel that the U.S. doctrine is falling to pieces. Look, some of our brothers even took up arms for their liberation 200 years after the founding of their republics, and now they are presidents, such as Daniel Ortega and Gustavo Petro. And some of us organize in social movements and some even took up arms, which I don’t support so much, but the people make it right and time will tell. But what is the danger that I see? When the Empire is in decay it resorts to violence. I do not want to think this but it is what happened to Cristina Fernández a few weeks ago. When the Empire loses its hegemony, it resorts to weapons. For that reason, I think we need to take advantage of this moment to armor ourselves, so that right-wing governments submissive to imperialism never return.

-At another point in time, talking about U.S. interference in the region was viewed as conspiracy theory, a myth, although how they orchestrate destabilization and coups d’etat has been extensively documented. We saw the social uprising in Chile; in Brazil they were liberating Lula but at the same time they were cooking up a coup d’etat in Bolivia. It is now three years since that coup. What is your view of the recovery of democracy in Bolivia, and what are the specific challenges of a right-wing which, as we have seen, has not given up its attempts to destabilize a democratically elected government, in this case, the government of Luis Arce?

-I look at the consciousness of the people. The MAS-IPSP (Movement Toward Socialism-Political Instrument for Sovereignty of the Peoples) has a political, economic, and social agenda beyond the bicentennial. The MAS-IPSP is the largest movement in the history of Bolivia, and it is headed by the indigenous movement. We in the indigenous movement have inherited our history; we have inherited the struggle going back to colonial times. We were threatened with extermination and hated during the days of the Republic, even though we engaged in a political movement to liberate all of Bolivia. I remember perfectly well that in 2005 our platform was based on three points: politically, the re-founding of the nation through the Constitutional Assembly; economically, the nationalization of natural resources and also basic resources; and socially, the redistribution of wealth. We made a lot of history in a short period of time. But there, the underlying theme, sister journalist, is that in addition to being gringos against Indians, the coup was against two things. First, it was against our economic model. The Empire does not accept new economic models that are better than the economic model of neoliberalism as dictated by capitalism. So, it was against our economic model.

And what was the basis of our economic model? The nationalization of our natural resources, but it also started with their industrialization, above all, the industrialization of lithium. You as a journalist know how many messages and evidence there was that the United States caused a coup d’etat over lithium. England had financed the coup over lithium. Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla, acknowledged his interests in the Uyuni Salt Flats and there was a coup d’etat.

What is happening should unite all of us much more. It is not only over lithium, over petroleum, over gas, or over natural resources. This is the struggle of humanity. Who do the natural resources belong to? Private parties to loot them for their transnational corporations? Or to the peoples of the world to exploit them for our States, for our governments? Of course, we need to tap into our natural resources while caring for the environment.

-Talking about the United States, Evo, you point out that the coup against you was to get the lithium, something that has been demonstrated, and this is nothing new for the United States to come after the natural resources of Latin America. But the people of Mexico are much more interested in this now that the López Obrador administration has decided to create its own company to industrialize lithium. In early August we read the news that the Bolivian and Mexican governments were trying to establish a partnership, not to sell lithium as a raw material—which is what the major powers want—but a partnership, essentially, to industrialize lithium. What did all of this mean for your administration and particularly what role did it play in the coup d’etat?

-I am a witness to that. In 2010 I was invited to visit South Korea. The job of the president is to do good business for the people. We signed some big agreements and they invited me to look at a new lithium battery industrial plant, which was beautiful. I asked them how much it cost, and the answer was “US$300 million.” At that time, our reserves were growing and we had US$10, US$11 billion in international reserves. I thought, “I can guarantee the US$300 million.” I told the Koreans, “We can build a plant just like it in Bolivia and I can guarantee the investment.” They said, “No, no, no.” And I have many other such memories. That was when I realized that, unfortunately, the industrialized countries only like us if we guarantee raw materials for them.

So then what did I do with Alvaro [García Linera], the vice-president? We started with laboratories, with a pilot plant in the great lithium industry. We hired experts for the laboratories. By the time we did the pilot plant, the young people had already learned and we had a beautiful project. And we decided that foreigners could not be involved in the extraction. Regarding markets, there are agreements and there is no problem.

-(Evo leafs through various media reports around the time of the coup d’Etat against him in 2019 and reads off some of the headlines.)

–Where is that article? November 20, 2019, a few days after the coup d’Etat, “Coup in Bolivia Smells of Lithium,” first-hand report. “Trump Applauds Departure of Morales under Pressure from the Army.” Unfortunately, then the military commanders turned. “Why might the United States be behind the coup in Bolivia?” Senator Richard Black explains that it is over lithium. “U.S. Senator assures that the United States intervened over Lithium.” And that is why the owner of Tesla, the electric car company, said, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” This shows who financed the coup mongers in Bolivia. Last year it was reported, “United Kingdom supported the coup in Bolivia to access its ‘white gold,’” lithium. And they had invested, they had financed it; it was not just their verbal support. That is why in the days of coup the British ambassador was in continuous meetings with the opposition, with the coup plotters.

We have a gold mine here, “The price of lithium went up from US$4,450 per ton of lithium carbonate in 2012, to US$17,000 per ton in 2021,” last year. [Now,] in just a ten-year period it has reached US$78,000 per ton of lithium carbonate!

-In this regard, what message can you send to the government and people of Mexico, thinking that one of the paths chosen has been to nationalize lithium?

-I salute my brother President and the government of Mexico for saying that the lithium belongs to the Mexican people. I understand that it has now been nationalized. How beautiful it would be if Bolivia, Mexico, Argentina, and Chile were together on this. But in Chile it is totally in private hands; in Argentina, hopefully they can recover it. But in Bolivia and Mexico we should form a strategic partnership to industrialize our lithium.

And I remain convinced, sister journalist, that some countries of Latin America will become powerhouses in something, and we could become lithium powers, with tremendous prices. And they are going to continue to go up. Each of us and our governments have this task. I celebrate the fact that President “Lucho” Arce of Bolivia met with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico. The technical teams are at work. They were asking me what technical people we have. We must share work experiences. We have good technicians; we have learned a lot. We have to come together to launch our industrialization of lithium, but it must be led by our governments. A State controlled by the people, not the usual way of turning it over to transnational corporations; we do not agree with that. In our experience, the nationalization of our natural resources and of strategic companies, helped us change the image of Bolivia quite a bit.

-And, finally, Evo, I do not want to let you go without saying that I saw your arrival in Zacatecas, where you were given a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the University of Zacatecas. We can now call you “Dr. Evo.” Tell me about it.

-Last year they invited me to come and receive some recognition. This year, with this invitation from President Andrés Manuel, I decided to take advantage of my visit to go to Zacatecas. Thanks to the Autonomous University of Zacatecas I was able to meet with the social movements, the peasant Indigenous movement, teachers, some political parties, and also the governor of Zacatecas. The recognition that I received is for the social movements and the Indigenous movement in particular. Without them, I would never have become president, and I thank the university and several comrades for taking this initiative. We talked quite a bit and I visited a mining area. In addition, it is a very interesting colonial town and we have a good relationship. I hope I never lose those relationships of so much trust, to open them up to humble people. Thank you very much.

-Thank you so much for your time, Evo. We hope that you will come back for other occasions, and more often. Thank you for this dialogue.

 

Alina Duarte is a journalist and Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, COHA.

This interview was edited by COHA Director Patricio Zamorano.

Translation by Rita Jill Clark-Gollub, COHA Assistant Editor/Translator

[Main photo credit: Alina Duarte]

Danny Shaw
Río de Janeiro

(The author has changed certain names and details to protect individuals’ privacy.)

When you arrive in another country, there is nothing more precious than new friends who adopt you, protect you, and teach you about their language, music, culture, and traditions. For an open-minded traveler, ethnographer and anti-imperialist organizer, this new family is more valuable than any air-conditioned hotel,  amount of comfort or money.

When I moved to Brazil in May of 2003, Binho, Mateuszinho, Thiago and their family and neighborhood crew took me in and put me up in O Morro do Santo Cristo and O Complexo da Penha, the heart of Río de Janeiro’s favelas and drug war. They walked me through the complex landscape of Rio’s corrupt brutal police who shoot first and rarely ask questions later, their violent blitzes (Río slang for stop and frisks), and a maze of morros (ghettos spread across hills) divided between two major paramilitary drug gangs: O Comando Vermelho and O Terceiro Comando (The Red Command and The Third Command).

On the eve of what Steve Bannon is calling the “second most important election in the world,” the October 2nd showdown between Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro, I returned to Río nineteen years later.^[1] Full of saudades (memories or nostalgia), I surprised the old crew in hopes of getting us all back together.

Everyday Survival

What became of my three friends?

From the outset, it is important to steer the English-speaking reader away from the stereotype that Rio de Janeiro represents Brazil or that my organic contacts represent all of Rio. Only a tiny percentage of favela residents make a living in the drug trade while most families reject lumpen lifestyles and find ways to eke out an income in hostile economic terrain by any means necessary.

Binho went to prison in 2004 for an armed robbery of a bakery that left his three partners in crime dead in a shootout with the police in ​​Jacarepaguá. A police officer who responded to the scene said he didn’t pull the trigger because Binho’s face reminded him of his son. The crime of armed robbery, Article 157 of the penal code, afforded Binho four years in Bangu prison. The vibrant 22-year old sustained brain injuries and psychological trauma from beatings from rival gangs. He contracted AIDS and has not been able to access the necessary medications. His wife Ronenete died of AIDS complications four years ago. I sat by his bedside remembering old times, nostalgic of the once cocky, invincible bandido (thug) who mentored me on why in Rio, “você não pode vacilar” (you can’t get caught slipping.)

Mateuszinho was a low level hustler for the Comando Vermelho, Rio’s largest gang and drug trafficking entity. He was a quick-talking, street smart 24-year old who conversed his way out of every brush with death, laughing it off and embarking upon his next mission. For seven 12-hour shifts per week as a vapor (the highest look out at the top of the morro), he earned $60 (120 reais in 2003) per week. I remember him parading around with other teenagers and young men toting M-16s and other automatic weapons as they protected the open drug operations and patrolled a baile funk, a weekend block party attended by thousands of local residents. With the police in plain view, the CV soldiers fired their weapons into the air in an open show of force sometime after 2 A.M., yelling their signature slogan “É nós.” I tracked down Mateuszinho at the science museum (Museu do Amanhá) where he now works as head of security. He is now one of over 65 million  Brazilians, in an Evangelical church, the fastest growing religion in Brazil, second only to the Catholic Church with 105 million members.^[2]

Rene continues to coordinate Arte Transformadora which serves 476 youth from O Complexo da Penha, 13 favelas spread over 13 hills where landless families first eeked out an existence when slavery was officially “abolished” in 1888.^[3] Brazil was the last nation on earth to officially outlaw slavery. Deprived of forty acres and a mule or any type of support or reperations from the state, millions of newly “freed” slaves were left to fend for themselves in a caste society regimented by race and class. Favelas, named after a type of tree native to the Northeast, home to many slaves and migrant laborers who headed South, emerged as the name of these hilltop shantytowns. Rene matter-of-factly talked about identifying and delivering the bodies of youth soldiers of the Comando Vermelho to their families after they were shot down by the UPP (Police Pacifying Unit). Often, the police only allowed him or another community leader to cross police lines to retrieve the bodies. Rene still jokes with hustlers armed with walkie talkies and automatic weapons, children he held in his own arms only a decade before. Arte Transformadora seeks to plant seeds of hope and success in the minds of preteens and teens who may otherwise become cannon fodder for Rio’s drug war.

Visiting these close friends nearly two decades later gave me deeper insight into the two different directions this South American economic juggernaut might take on October 2nd.

The Showdown

156,454,011 Brazilians are eligible to vote next week for the president, 27 governors, 27 senators, 513 Congress people, 1,035 state representatives, and 24 district representatives. 28,274 candidates are squaring off for these positions, representing a vast array of parties, ranging from socialist to far-right.^[4]

Jair Bolsonaro is the incumbent president who won the 2018 presidential election over the Partido dos Trabalhadores’ (PT) Fernando Haddad, due largely to the lawfair and misinformation campaign that had been underway against the PT since it first won executive power in 2003. Bolsonaro has employed Trump-esque tactics, preemptively questioning the integrity of the voting machines. Netlab, a unit at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro,^[5] found that YouTube was favoring algorithms that promoted these Bolsonaro myths. Bolsonaro and his fellow senators have a history of denigrating and intimidating journalists.^[6] As the presidential campaigns began to heat up, this former Army Artillery Officer is actively trying to get the military further involved in politics^[7] and positioned to overturn the decisions of the Electoral Commission^[8] to verify the elections if he were to lose. Some analysts are contemplating whether his camp has the power to stage an October coup.^[9] More recently, however, Bolsonaro has tried to strike a more conciliatory tone saying “If it’s God’s will, I’ll continue (as president). If not, I’ll pass the (presidential) sash and retire.”^[10]

For the past two weeks Globo, CNN Brasil and the other mouthpieces of the economic and political establishment have published headlines stating that Datafolha polls give Lula 45% of the vote and Bolsonaro 33%.^[11] A student of Trumpian tactics, Bolsonaro has for the past four years positioned himself as the victim of “the liberal media” and “fake news.”^[12] A military insider and political “outsider,” Bolsonaro has more recently made a list ditch effort to implement populist economic measures to shore up more votes, approving a $7.7 billion dollar stimulus package, which increases cash handouts to struggling families by 50%. According to the same Brazilian study, 61 percent of voters view this eleventh hour move as politically motivated to  cut Lula’s lead in the polls.^[13]

Datafolha’s research lays out the demographics of Brazil’s divided vote:

50 percent of women are expected to vote for Lula and 27 percent for Bolsonaro. Young people, aged 16 to 24, are twice as likely to vote for Lula. The demographic least likely to vote for Bolsonaro is Black women. Afro-Brazilians in general, and families making less than twice the minimum wage (which is roughly 55 percent of the electorate), are less likely to vote for him. Bolsonaro is leading among white males; and among families making over five times the minimum wage, he polls at 47% to Lula’s 35%.^[14]

According to another Datafolha study, Lula maintains 53 percent of the Catholic vote versus Bolsonaro’s 30 percent.^[15] In the case of other religions — such as the Afro-Brazilian candomblé, the PT candidate is polling four times higher than his Liberal Party rival. Lula has a comfortable lead among self-defined atheists, with 60 percent expected to vote for him and 22 percent for the incumbent. Among Evangelical Christians, Bolsonaro’s main base, he is polling at 52 percent. Bolsonaro’s appeal to this sector comes from the fact that he “promotes conservative family values and opposes abortion and same-sex marriage.”^[16] The fact that 34 percent of the people in Bolsonaro’s key demographic now say they will vote for Lula is immensely significant. On September 9th, Lula met with members of the Evangelical Church of São Gonçalo on the outskirts of Río and in an emotional appeal laid out why he is the real candidate for those who believe in God and in justice.^[17]

The attempt to build a popular anti-fascist front with more right-leaning and center candidates led Lula to select former São Paulo governor Geraldo Alckman as his running mate. Professor Luis Mergulhāo elucidates why many on the left find Alckman objectionable.^[18] Regardless of these valid critiques, seven former Brazilian presidential candidates have come out in support of Lula. His ability to build the largest electoral alliance in the six times he has run for president shows that Lula is an astute political strategist.^[19]

There are other exciting historic races under way as well. Though beyond the scope of this article, it is worth highlighting one such race. Black City Councilwoman Carol Dartora is running under the slogan “Paraná is also ours.”^[20] Dartora managed to push through Affirmative Action legislation in the southern Curitiba city government even though 70% of the council men and women were right wing, representing the racist politics that have long dominated the region. She joined Lula at a massive campaign rally on September 18th showing that Brazil’s three Southern states, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, which are a majority European descendent, also have a strong PT base.^[21]

The Lula and Dilma PT Years: Social base and sister organizations

Brasilwire, a website that closely follows the twists and turns of Brazilian politics through an anti-imperialist lens, offers an overview of the anti-neo-liberal track record of the PT. Between 2003 and the Lawfare coup against President Dilma Rousseff in 2016, the PT helped lift 40 million Brazilians out of poverty,^[22] expanded university access for working class and Afro-Brazilian students, granted labor rights to Brazil’s long exploited domestic servants,^[23] and stimulated internal production and created a market for nationally manufactured goods.^[24] Lula speaks the language of the masses of Brazil, challenging the arrogance and invincibility of the other candidates who represent Brazil’s 0.1 percent. On Sunday, August 27th, in the first nationally televised presidential debate, he stood up to the other candidates who challenged his executive track record, saying “You may not have seen the changes we (the PT) carried out, but your gardeners, your drivers, your bodyguards, and your maids did.”^[25] Millions erupted into applause as their Lula spoke truth to power.

Lula’s social welfare programs did not always bring about structural change, but they did lift millions of Brazilians out of poverty. One of Lula’s stated goals, which he speaks about on the campaign trail, is to ensure every Brazilian is able to eat three meals a day. The PT democratized higher education. According to a World Bank study, in 2002, there were zero students from the poorest 20 percent of the population attending college and only 4 percent of college students came from the poorest 40 percent.^[26] Two-and-a-half terms of PT leadership changed this dramatically. By 2015, approximately 15 percent of higher education students were from the two poorest quintile of Brazilian society. For the first time, working-class and Black Brazilians could get that critical university education.

To further understand the PT’s defense of the poor, we must look at its base and its sister organizations and the work that they do on the frontlines of the class struggle. The true working class base of the PT is the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT).^[27] The largest union in South America and fifth largest in the world, the CUT has 7,847,077 dues-paying members and 23,981,044 associated union members.^[28] 48 CUT leaders, representing a vast array of trades from public workers to professors, are running in the current elections. Citing the 1988 Brazilian constitution, the CUT writes: “Article number 1 states all power emanates from the people who exercise it through elected representatives or directly in the terms of this constitution.”^[29] The Ibitinga, São Paulo-based teacher and CUT Secretary of Administration and Treasury, Ariovaldo de Camargo,^[30] lays out a class-based view of these elections: “Bosses pick bosses. Workers vote for workers. We have a wide array of workers before us to vote for.”^[31]

The Movement of Landless Workers, the MST, works closely with the PT and other leftist parties. Since the 1980’s, the MST has mobilized some 370,000 families to carry out 2,500 collective land occupations against latifundios (massive estates held by individuals or corporations).^[32] Despite constant threats and attacks from the Military Police, the largest social movement in the history of the hemisphere has liberated 7.5 million hectares of land and set in motion critical education programs, increased agricultural production, cooperatives, and quality health care.

The National Movement for Struggle for Housing, The MNLM, builds “solidarity in urban spaces, in a unique, organic relationship with the MST. Beyond land, we fight for housing lots, homes, sanitation and the other needs of marginalized populations.”^[33] This organization of “squatters” has appropriated homes for thousands of families and set up collectived educational centers and child care.

Victories by the PT, the Party for Socialism and Liberty (Psol), and the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) would keep space open for such redistribution and reparations to continue. A Bolsonaro victory would heighten the intensity of violence against society’s most vulnerable social actors and social movements.

Implications for Brazil’s foreign policy

The Bolsonaro administration has been a firm ally in Washington’s drive against left and left-leaning governments in Latin America, and has distanced Brazil from the cause of regional integration. In stark contrast, a third Lula administration would once again make Brazil a champion of regional independence and integration by playing an active role in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) which Brazil left in 2020, and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) which Brazil left in 2019. Lula would also be a strong advocate for Bolivia’s full membership in the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR). And just as Colombian President Gustavo Petro has made amends with the Chavista government of Venezuela, if elected, Lula would cease all hostilities and embrace a cooperative relationship with the Bolivarian Republic. Brazil would play a stronger role in BRICS and the building of a multipolar world. During his presidency, Lula served as an international peace maker trying to help negotiate a “nuclear deal” between the United States and Iran; if elected, he would likely resume efforts to advance world peace.^[34]

Lula’s foreign policy will represent the reintegration of Brazil into the Bolivarian family and further momentum for the progressive transformations underway across the continent from Cochabamba to Caracas to Mexico C/ity.^[35] Lula has spoken of building a unifying South American currency, the Sur. At a campaign rally, Lula remembered: “The US was very afraid when I discussed a new currency and Obama called me: ‘Are you trying to create a new currency, a new euro?’. I said, ‘No, I’m just trying to get rid of the US dollar. I’m just trying not to be dependent.’”^[36]

Despite such massive gains against an entrenched economic and political elite, segments of the U.S. “left” have been very critical of the PT.^[37] Though the PT has been subject to legitimate critique, Brazil Wire documented how Jacobin, a magazine affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, published 38 articles on Brazil from 2014-2017. All 38 presented a negative view of the PT. A far cry from the more radical policies of other Pink Tide presidents like Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro, most of the left in Brazil today is united behind electing Lula and other progressive candidates as the next step towards challenging Brazil’s status as a neo colony of the West. Up against such a formidable proto-fascist foe, how important is it for the U.S. left to stand with those most under attack?

Bolsonarismo: the Militarization of Brazilian Society

For a country that lived through a two-decade-long military dictatorship from 1964-1984, the specter of the return to a police state is real.  The newspaper A Nova Democracia  conducted a study of “The Super-Salaries of the Generals” that Bolsonaro has worked alongside, inherited, appointed, and promoted.^[38]  According to author Gabriel dos Santos, 215 Military Officers receive monthly salaries of R$32,153,77, 30 times more than the minimum wage in Brazil. Other generals such as Vice-president Hamilton Mourão, Augusto Heleno, and former Defense Minister and currentVice-presidential candidate, Walter Souza Braga Netto, have received phantom titles as 4-star marechais (marshalls) and earn a whopping 111.2 thousand reais per month, about 100 times what an everyday worker earns. Bragga gained notoriety when he coordinated the 2014 military occupation of Complexo da Maré, a series of  oppressed communities with a population of over 130,000 in the North Zone of the city of Río de Janeiro.^[39]

Many of these generals oversaw the 2003-2018 United Nations’ Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). 30,000 Brazilian soldiers, led by generals who today occupy high-ranking positions in Bolsonaro’s cabinet, occupied Haiti and contributed to massacres in Cite Soleil, Fort National, and Belè.^[40] These same generals returned to play a role in the occupation of Rochinha and other favelas to conduct “a War on Drugs” that reached its zenith with 1,814 official police killings in Rio in 2019.^[41]

Scholar Thiago Sardinha, a specialist on paramilitary groups across Brazil, highlights the training Brazilian military and paramilitary groups have received from both France and the United States.^[42] Used for U.S. interventions in Haiti and Central America, the Agency for International Development (AID) has a special department called The Office of Public Security.^[43] In Brazil this office  is in charge of training foreign police. Sardinha identifies the reign of terror of both the offical police in São Paulo, Goias and beyond, and the role of paramilitary, extra-official militias which control and collect taxes in many Rio communities.

Bolsonaro’s rhetoric has led the New York Times to lead with the following headline: The Question Menacing Brazil’s Elections: Coup or No Coup?^[44] The president’s camp recently met with Steve Bannon, who repeated the same unproven claims that “Bolsonaro will win unless it is stolen by, guess what, the machines.”^[45] Jason Miller, a Senior Trump Strategist, spoke at Brazil’s bicentennial independence day.^[46] Bolsonaro, amidst a sea of yellow and green Brazilian flags, turned “the independence day celebrations” in Copacabana, Brazilia, and throughout the country into campaign rallies. He is now under investigation for illegally combining these two events.

Bolsonarismo: Polarization and the Open Veins of Brazil

FAIR published a scathing critique of a new documentary BBC and PBS released two weeks before the election which present Bolsonaro as a heroic rags to riches story.^[47] While the liberal media has traditionally been at odds with the Trumps, Dutertes, and Bolsonaro, why would the Tories ofEngland and sectors of the U.S. ruling class, particularly business interests, so openly embrace such an odious, graceless figure like Bolsonaro?

From the perspective of foreign capital Bolsonaro represents unfettered access to the open veins of Brazil, the world’s tenth largest economy with a GDP of 1.8 trillion dollars.^[48] Bolsonaros’s party is called the Liberal Party and the Minister of Economy is Paulo Geudes, who was trained in a PhD program at the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman in the 1970s. Because Lula, Dilma, and the PT would not go along with the Washington consensus, they had to be removed from power and, in the case of Lula, imprisoned. Lula was cleared of all 26 of the bogus charges.^[49]

The showdown between a former union leader who lost a finger in a São Paulo factory and a career military man who emerged as the mouthpiece of Brazil’s economic and military elites speaks to the deep divisions in Brazilian society.

The Brazilian Senate approved a 1,100 page report evaluating Bolsonaro’s denial of the COVID-19 pandemic and his disastrous handling of it.^[50] Brazil has had the most deaths from COVID, 685,422 in total, after the United States.^[51] Despite his disastrous handling of the COVID-19 epidemic, Bolsonarismo has a strong social base. Even a robust win for the PT will not make this base go away overnight. Centuries of white supremacy and class rule have segregated Brazilian society along class, racial, and gender lines.

Black Brazilians continue to face an epidemic of police violence and systemic discrimination. Journalist Jean Wyllys, Brazil’s second openly gay member of parliament and first gay-rights activist congressman, and translator and activist Julie Wark, summarize the struggles of Black and indigenous Brazilians: “The human and physical destructiveness of capitalism, a system in which pretos (Blacks), whose slave labour was essential toits construction, are very far from the spheres of power, wealth, and decision-making. Rather, they are under the yoke and marginalized. In Brazil, Blacks account for 75.2 percent of the population in the lowest income group whereas 25.4 percent of the general population lives in poverty; A Black person earns only 56.1 cents for every dollar a white person earns; 32.9% of Black people live  below the poverty line ($5.50 per day); while 8.8 percent live in extreme poverty ($1.90 per day).”^[52]

Anti-racist organizers in the U.S. can relate to the situation in Brazil. Just in 2019, Bolsanoro’s first year of governance, 31 activists were murdered for defending their land.^[53] There were no convictions against any of the assassins. This is similar to what The Boston Globe calls “vehicle ramming” against Black Lives Matter protestors (The Globe has investigated 139 such hate crimes in the U.S. since the murder of George Floyd).

On September 8th, a Bolsominion, the slang name for Bolsonaro’s supporters, murdered a Lula supporter after a disagreement overpolitics.^[54] These incidents have become more and more common. On September 17th, a group called the “Communist Hunters” warned the PT’s Minas Gerais state lawmaker Andréia de Jesus: “We are going to shoot you in the back like a traitor, Marielle (Franco) awaits you. Viva Ustra.”^[55]

Recovery, Redemption, and Reparations: Which Way Forward?

I will forever be grateful to Binho, Mateuszinho, and Rene. My dozens of pages of quickly scribbled notes in my pocket notebooks speak to what they taught me. “As viagems formam a juventude,” (Travelling helps define our youth). My greatest tribute to them is helping fight for a world that does not confine our children from O Complexo do Alemão to the Bronx to a suffocating everyday rat-race battle for survival and a shred of dignity.

In his legendary essay, “Fifth Avenue, Uptown,” James Baldwin wrote “A ghetto can be improved in one way only: out of existence.”^[56] Capitalism and white supremacy and their inevitable bastard offspring – generational trauma, gangs, drugs, misogyny, prison, and a long list of social ills – guarantee more human suffering and humiliation. Brazil suffers from a crack epidemic and alcoholism that has shattered hundreds of thousands of families. Bolsonarismo deploys rhetoric that enables the most retrograde actors a free reign to enact more violence upon women, the LGBT community, Black Brazilians, and Indigenous communities. What we are witnessing in Brazil is late neocolonialism’s desperate attempts to divide society and scapegoat the most oppressed layers so that society’s overlords can save their own skin.

While Río de Janeiro is but one small piece of the fabric of a diverse society of 210 million people spread across the world’s most diverse lands in terms of fauna, flora, and animal species, these human stories are a microcosm of the lives and struggles of how many millions of working-class Brazilians?^[57]

Every victory for the Partido dos Trabalhadores, and other progressive parties like the PCdoB and the Psol at the local, state, and federal level–and chiefly, of course, for Lula at the presidential level–brings Brazil and this generation of fighters that much closer to realizing Baldwin’s dream.

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

Fred Mills, COHA’s Deputy Director, and Jill Clark-Gollub, COHA Assistant Editor/Translator, edited this essay.

---

Sources

^[1] ​​Estrategista de Trump, Steve Bannon ecoa Bolsonaro em mentiras sobre urnas eletrônicas”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_3WSn7jOfo

^[2] “Why Brazil’s Bolsonaro is courting evangelicals in the world’s biggest Catholic nation”,

https://www.wlrn.org/news/2022-08-25/why-brazils-bolsonaro-is-courting-evangelicals-in-the-worlds-biggest-catholic-nation

^[3] Artetransformadora”, https://www.instagram.com/artetransformadora/

^[4] “Eleição este ano terá mais de 28 mil candidatos; veja os números”, https://www12.senado.leg.br/noticias/materias/2022/08/16/eleicao-este-ano-tera-mais-de-28-mil-candidatos-veja-os-numeros

^[5] “YouTube Pushing Pro-Bolsonaro Content To Brazilians, Study Finds”, https://www.brasilwire.com/googles-youtube-platform-pushing-pro-bolsonaro-content-to-brazilians-finds-study/

^[6] TelesurEnglish https://twitter.com/telesurenglish/status/1570236758725480448?s=20&t=uq6NpfuhlvfFuhu1dyBo9g

^[7] “Eleições. Militares poderão colocar Justiça Eleitoral sob suspeita”, https://noticias.uol.com.br/colunas/walter-maierovitch/2022/09/15/eleicao-militares-poderao-colocar-justica-eleitoral-sob-suspeita.htm

^[8] “Brazil Military’s “Parallel Vote Count” Poses Great Risk To Democracy”, https://www.brasilwire.com/militarys-parallel-vote-count-poses-great-risk-to-democracy/

^[9] https://twitter.com/BrianMteleSUR/status/1570114278933274628?s=20&t=uq6NpfuhlvfFuhu1dyBo9g

^[10] “Brazil’s Bolsonaro says he will retire if he loses October vote”,

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220913-brazil-s-bolsonaro-says-he-will-retire-if-he-loses-october-vote

^[11] “Pesquisa Datafolha para presidente: Lula tem 45%; e Bolsonaro, 33%”, https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/politica/pesquisa-datafolha-para-presidente-lula-tem-45-e-bolsonaro-33/

^[12] “Mentiras sobre Bolsonaro mostram que ninguém está livre das fake news”, https://www.metropoles.com/brasil/mentiras-sobre-bolsonaro-mostram-que-ninguem-esta-livre-das-fake-news

^[13] “Voters see through Bolsonaro’s Economic Populism, Poll Says”, https://brazilian.report/liveblog/2022/08/04/voters-bolsonaro-economic-populism/

^[14] https://especiaisg1.globo/politica/eleicoes/2022/pesquisas-eleitorais/presidente/1-turno/

^[15] “Datafolha: Lula reage entre evangélicos, e vantagem de Bolsonaro recua sete pontos”, https://extra.globo.com/noticias/politica/datafolha-lula-reage-entre-evangelicos-vantagem-de-bolsonaro-recua-sete-pontos-25573698.html

^[16] “Why Brazil’s Bolsonaro is courting evangelicals in the world’s biggest Catholic nation”, https://www.wlrn.org/news/2022-08-25/why-brazils-bolsonaro-is-courting-evangelicals-in-the-worlds-biggest-catholic-nation

^[17] https://twitter.com/J_LIVRES/status/1568257757370802177?s=20&t=I8QIFmdMpf3WaZg4XQTdQg

^[18] https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ch7oWESJKm0/?igshid=ZjA0NjI3M2I=

^[19]https://twitter.com/telesurenglish/status/1571928719186444289?s=20&t=te58T16ttZSnTCZbl89POg

^[20] https://twitter.com/caroldartora13

^[21]https://twitter.com/caroldartora13/status/1571508059423350787?s=20&t=te58T16ttZSnTCZbl89POg

^[22] Cerca de 40 milhoes de pessoas ingressaram na classe aponta pesquisa”, https://oglobo.globo.com/economia/cerca-de-40-milhoes-de-pessoas-ingressaram-na-classe-aponta-pesquisa-da-fgv-2756988

^[23] “Dilma assina regulamentação dos direitos das domésticas, diz Planalto”, https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2015/06/dilma-assina-regulamentacao-dos-direitos-das-domesticas-diz-planalto.html

^[24] “Impactos da Redução do Imposto sobre Produtos Industrializados (IPI) de Automóveis”, https://www.ipea.gov.br/portal/images/stories/PDFs/2009_nt015_agosto_dimac.pdf

^[25] https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1564420901491261441?s=20&t=te58T16ttZSnTCZbl89POg

^[26] “The Persistence of Inequity in Brazilian Higher Education: Background Data and Student Performance”, https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-69691-7_4

^[27] https://www.cut.org.br/conteudo/breve-historico

^[28] https://www.cut.org.br/conteudo/breve-historico

^[29] “Para lutar por direitos sociais e trabalhistas, CUT lança 49 candidatos no país”, https://www.cut.org.br/noticias/para-lutar-por-direitos-sociais-e-trabalhistas-cut-lanca-48-candidatos-no-pais-54a2

^[30] https://www.cut.org.br/biografia/ariovaldo-de-camargo

^[31] “Para lutar por direitos sociais e trabalhistas, CUT lança 49 candidatos no país”, https://www.cut.org.br/noticias/para-lutar-por-direitos-sociais-e-trabalhistas-cut-lanca-48-candidatos-no-pais-54a2

^[32] “What is the MST?”, https://www.mstbrazil.org/content/what-mst

^[33] https://www.google.com/url?q=https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/48463/1/external_content.pdf&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1664051335228237&usg=AOvVaw2szPCvepnWjzRovz1S2jMu

^[34] “The Most Important Election in the Americas is in Brazil’, https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/01/the-most-important-election-in-the-americas-is-in-brazil/

^[35] https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1565127955033907200?s=20&t=te58T16ttZSnTCZbl89POg

^[36] https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1561056783191265280?s=20&t=te58T16ttZSnTCZbl89POg

^[37] “How The US Left Failed Brasil”, https://www.brasilwire.com/how-the-us-left-failed-brasil/

^[38] Dos Santos, Garbrel. December 2021.

^[39] “Braga Netto, o general que Bolsonaro escolheu como candidato a vice”, https://www.infomoney.com.br/perfil/walter-braga-netto/

^[40] “10 Reasons Why UN Occupation of Haiti Must End”, https://haitiliberte.com/10-reasons-why-un-occupation-of-haiti-must-end/

^[41] “Number of deaths caused by police intervention in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from 2003 to 2021”, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1007090/number-deaths-police-intervention-rio-brazil/

^[42] https://revistaopera.com.br/2021/05/07/imperialismo-e-grupos-armados-no-brasil/

^[43] https://revistaopera.com.br/2021/05/07/imperialismo-e-grupos-armados-no-brasil/

^[44] “The Question Menacing Brazil’s Elections: Coup or No Coup?”, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/world/americas/brazil-election-bolsonaro-coup.html

^[45] https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1561319122503213057?s=20&t=te58T16ttZSnTCZbl89POg

^[46] https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1567614197667864576?s=20&t=I8QIFmdMpf3WaZg4XQTdQg

^[47] “PBS and BBC Team Up to Misinform About Brazil’s Bolsonaro”, https://fair.org/home/pbs-and-bbc-team-up-to-misinform-about-brazils-bolsonaro/

^[48] “The World’s Largest Economies, 2022”, https://ceoworld.biz/2022/09/05/the-worlds-largest-economies-2022/

^[49] https://twitter.com/BrianMteleSUR/status/1559211263074385921?s=20&t=te58T16ttZSnTCZbl89POg

^[50] “The Toll of Bolsonaro’s Disastrous Covid-19 Response”, https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/10/27/toll-bolsonaros-disastrous-covid-19-response

^[51] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/countries-where-coronavirus-has-spread/

^[52] “Brazil, Amazon, World: Being Black”, https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/07/21/brazil-amazon-world-being-black/

^[53] “Zero convictions as impunity blocks justice for victims of Brazil’s rural violence”, https://news.mongabay.com/2021/02/zero-convictions-as-impunity-blocks-justice-for-victims-of-brazils-rural-violence/

^[54] “Apoiador de Bolsonaro mata defensor de Lula a facadas em MT após discussão”, https://www.cartacapital.com.br/politica/apoiador-de-bolsonaro-mata-defensor-de-lula-a-facadas-em-mt-apos-discussao/

^[55] https://twitter.com/BrianMteleSUR/status/1571140932136996864?s=20&t=uq6NpfuhlvfFuhu1dyBo9g

^[56] “Fifth Avenue, Uptown”, https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a3638/fifth-avenue-uptown/

^[57] “Brasil is not Rio”, https://www.brasilwire.com/brasil-is-not-rio/

John Perry
Masaya, Nicaragua

July 19^th is a day of celebration in Nicaragua: the anniversary of the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship. But the international media will have it penciled in their diaries for another reason: it’s yet another opportunity to pour scorn on Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. We’ll hear again about how the government “clamps down on dissent,”^[1] about its “political prisoners,”^[2] its recent “pantomime election,”^[3] its “damaging crackdown on civil society”^[4] and much more. All of these accusations have been answered but the media will continue to shut out any evidence that conflicts with the consensus narrative about Nicaragua, that its president, Daniel Ortega, has “crushed the Nicaraguan dream.”^[5]

Mainstream media tells its own story

Since the violent, U.S.-directed coup attempt in 2018, in which more than 200 people died, it has been very difficult to find objective analysis of the political situation in Nicaragua in mainstream media, much less any examination of the revolution’s achievements. In disregarding what is actually happening in the country, the media is ignoring and excluding the lived experience of ordinary Nicaraguans, as if their daily lives are irrelevant to any judgment about the direction the country is taking. Most notably, instead of recognizing that 75% of Nicaraguan voters supported the government in last November’s election, in which two-thirds of the electorate participated, the result is seen as “a turn toward an openly dictatorial model.”^[6] This judgment is backed by confected claims of electoral fraud from “secret poll watchers,”^[7] which ignore COHA’s strong evidence that no fraud took place.^[8]

Streets show the political reality

In the run-up to the anniversary of the revolution on July 19^th, Sandinista supporters have been filling the streets of every main city with celebratory marches. In Masaya, where I live, I took part in a procession with around 3,000 people and discovered afterwards that three other marches took place at the same time in different parts of Masaya, with even more people participating in each of those. People have much to celebrate: the city was one of those most damaged by the violent coup attempt in Nicaragua four years ago, but has since lived in peace.

During the attempted coup, for three months the city of Masaya was controlled by armed thugs (still regularly described in the media as “peaceful” protesters). Five police officers and several civilians were killed. The town hall, the main secondary school, the old tourist market and other government buildings were set on fire. Houses of Sandinista supporters were ransacked. Shops were looted and the economic life of one of Nicaragua’s most important commercial centers was suspended. My own doctor’s house went up in flames and a friend who was defending the municipal depot when it was ransacked was kidnapped, tortured and later had to have an arm amputated as a result.

So one strong motive for the marches is to reaffirm most people’s wishes that this should never happen again: 43 years ago a revolutionary war ended in the Sandinistas’ triumph over Somoza, but this was quickly followed by the U.S.-sponsored Contra attacks that cost thousands more lives. For anyone over 35, the violence in 2018 was a sickening reminder of these wars. Since then, not the least of the government’s achievements is that Nicaragua has returned to having the lowest homicide level in Central America,^[9] and people want it to stay that way.

Progress under Sandinistas is not recognized internationally

But this is far from the government’s only success since it returned to power in 2007. It inherited a country broken by 17 years of neoliberal governments by and for the rich (after the Sandinistas lost power in the 1990 election). Nothing worked during those years: there were daily power cuts, roads were in shocking disrepair, some 100,000s of children didn’t go to school and poverty was rampant. When the Sandinistas regained the presidency in 2007, and helped by the alliance with Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela and a boom in commodities prices, the government began a massive investment program. For the second poorest country in Latin America, the transformation was remarkable.

Take the practical issues that affect everyone. Power cuts stopped because the new government quickly built small new power stations and then encouraged massive investment in renewable energy. Electricity coverage now reaches over 99% of households, up from just 50% in 2016, with three-quarters now generated from renewables. Piped water reaches 93% of city dwellers compared with 65% in 2007. In 2007, Nicaragua had 2,044 km of paved roads, mostly in bad condition. Now it has 4,300 km, half of them built in the last 15 years, giving it the best roads in Central America.^[10]

Its remarkable advances in health care were evidenced by how Nicaragua handled the COVID-19 pandemic, with (according to the World Health Organization^[11]) a level of excess mortality far lower than that of many wealthier countries in Latin America, including neighboring Costa Rica. It now has one of the world’s highest levels of completed vaccinations against the virus (83%),^[12] exceeding levels in the U.S. and many European countries. There has been massive investment in the public health service: Nicaragua has built 23 new hospitals in the past 15 years and now has more hospital beds (1.8 per 1,000 population)^[13] than richer countries such as Mexico (1.5) and Colombia (1.7).^[14] The country has one of the highest regional levels of public health spending, relative to GDP (“PIB” in Spanish – see chart), and its service is completely free.

Nicaragua is 6th out of 17
Latin American countries in public health investment

Look at education. School attendance increased from 79% to 91% when charges imposed by previous governments were abolished; now pupils get help with uniforms and books and all receive free school lunches. Free education now extends into adulthood, so out of a population of 6.6 million, some 1.7 million are currently receiving public education in some form. Under neoliberal governments illiteracy rose to 22% of the population, and now it’s down to 4-6%.

Strides in gender parity: another victory

Nicaraguan women have been integral to the revolution. More than half of ministerial posts are held by women, an achievement for which Nicaragua is ranked seventh in the world in gender equality in 2022.^[15] Only two countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have a smaller gender pay gap than Nicaragua. More than a third of police officers are female and there are special women’s centers in 119 police stations. Maternal health has been significantly improved, with maternal mortality falling from 92.8 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2006, to 31.6 in 2021, a reduction of 66%.^[16] This is partly due to the 180 casas maternas where women stay close to a hospital or health center for the weeks before giving birth. The state also provides family planning free of charge in all health centers, including tubal ligations for women who do not wish to have more children. It is also true, of course, that abortion is illegal, but (unlike in other Latin American countries) no woman or doctor has ever been prosecuted under this law.

At the moment, people’s biggest concern is the state of the economy and the cost-of-living crisis. Nicaragua has advantages here, too: it is more than 80% self-sufficient in basic foodstuffs and prices have been controlled because the government is capping the cost of fuel (both for vehicles and for cooking). Nicaragua’s economy grew by more than 10% in 2021, returning to 2019, pre-pandemic economic levels, although growth was still not sufficient for the country to recover from the economic damage caused by the 2018 coup attempt. Government debt (forecast to be 46% of GDP in 2022) is lower than its neighbors, especially that of Costa Rica (70%), where poverty now extends to 30% of the population. However, Nicaragua and Costa Rica are economically interdependent, and the latter’s economic problems are a large part of the explanation for the growth in migration by Nicaraguans to the United States.^[17]

Daniel Ortega enjoys high approval ratings

These are only a few of the factors that underlie people’s support for Daniel Ortega’s government. And this support continues: according to polling by CID Gallup,^[18] in early January President Ortega was more popular than the then presidents of Honduras, Costa Rica or Guatemala. M&R Consultants, in a more recent poll,^[19] found that Ortega has a 70% approval rating and ranks second among Latin American presidents. This was obvious when huge numbers of Nicaraguans celebrated November’s election result and it is still obvious as they go out onto the streets during “victorious July”.

At a meeting with Central American foreign ministers in June 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Blinken urged governments “to work to improve the lives of people in our countries in real, concrete ways.”^[20] Blinken deliberately ignores the ample proof that Daniel Ortega’s government is not only doing that but has been more successful in this respect than any other Central American government. Yet the more that the international media parrot Washington’s criticisms of Daniel Ortega, the more that people here will reaffirm their support for his government.

John Perry is a COHA Senior Research Fellow and  writer living in Masaya, Nicaragua.

[Main photo: Sandinista supporters in Masaya, July 2022. Credit: John Perry] 

---

Sources

[1] “Nicaragua Seizes Universities, Inching Toward Dictatorship,” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/world/americas/nicaragua-universities-ortega-dictatorship.html

[2] “Nicaragua’s Secretive Ruling Family Reaches Out Quietly to the U.S.,” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/05/world/americas/nicaragua-ruling-family-us.html

[3] “Statement by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. on Nicaragua’s Sham Elections,” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/11/07/statement-by-president-joseph-r-biden-jr-on-nicaraguas-sham-elections/

[4] “Nicaragua shuts down 50 non-profits in new crackdown,” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-61333797

[5] “Daniel Ortega and the Crushing of the Nicaraguan Dream,” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/04/opinion/daniel-ortega-nicaragua-election.html

[6] “Nicaragua Descends Into Autocratic Rule as Ortega Crushes Dissent,” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/07/world/americas/nicaragua-election-ortega.html

[7] “The secret-poll watchers of Nicaragua. How they monitored a questionable presidential election,” https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-11-10/how-hundreds-of-nicaraguans-secretly-monitored-the-presidential-election

[8] “If there was ‘fraud’ in Nicaragua’s elections, where is the proof?” https://www.coha.org/if-there-was-fraud-in-nicaraguas-elections-where-is-the-proof/

[9] See https://www.statista.com/statistics/947781/homicide-rates-latin-america-caribbean-country/

[10] “Nicaragua posee las mejores carreteras de Centroamérica,” https://revistamyt.com/nicaragua-posee-las-mejores-carreteras-de-centroamerica/

[11] See https://www.who.int/data/stories/global-excess-deaths-associated-with-covid-19-january-2020-december-2021

[12] See https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

[13] See the Nicaraguan government White paper, downloadable at https://www.el19digital.com/app/webroot/tinymce/source/2020/00-Mayo/25%20MAYO/AL%20PUEBLO%20DE%20NICARAGUA%20Y%20AL%20MUNDO-%20INFORME%20SOBRE%20EL%20COVID-19.pdf

[14] See https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/hospital-bed-density/

[15] The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report for 2022 (https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-gender-gap-report-2022/)

[16] “Nicaragua ha logrado disminuir la mortalidad materna,” https://radiolaprimerisima.com/noticias-generales/destacado/nicaragua-ha-logrado-disminuir-la-mortalidad-materna/v

[17] “The UN Refugee Agency is exaggerating the number of Nicaraguan refugees,” https://www.coha.org/the-un-refugee-agency-is-exaggerating-the-number-of-nicaraguan-refugees/

[18] See https://www.cidgallup.com/publicaciones.php

[19] See https://www.myrconsultores.com/mr_pop-panoptico-de-opinion-publica-1ra-edicion-correspondiente-al-primer-trimestre-2022/

[20] “Blinken urges Central America to defend democracy to alleviate migration,” https://ticotimes.net/2021/06/02/blinken-urges-central-america-to-defend-democracy-to-alleviate-migration

By Arturo López Levy
Oakland, California.

I don’t remember when I started listening to Silvio Rodríguez’ songs. It must have been during college prep, once I was grown up and wanted to be able to express things better so that the ones that I loved would be more receptive to what I had to say. Since then, I have followed Silvio as a friend that he never knew he had. Sometimes I agreed with him, sometimes I disagreed, but I always admired his art and the way he used his own voice without echoing others. In the United States, at my universities, Silvio helped open doors for me with other Latin Americans who knew his songs.

When I met him in person in Washington, DC, as the Cuban embassy re-opened in 2015 after the reinstatement of diplomatic relations, he honored me with an embrace and a finger to my chest, saying that he had read my writing. Today I had the opportunity to interview him and discuss his talent without false equivalencies (to remind us of Jorge Mañach), but also without feigned formalities. For some inexplicable reason, the refrain “guajirito soy” kept running through my head. Following are the questions posed by an admirer and the responses of an artist and follower of Martí who was kind enough to answer them.

Silvio, you have sung about love in its most sublime and all-encompassing forms—love of a woman, nature, the family, one’s mother, wife, children, your town, San Antonio de los Baños, our heroes, Martí, Agramonte, and Cuba, the homeland. You have sung of love for Latin America, an identity, and humanity “homeland is humanity.” How do you mix all of those loves? Is it just a matter of feeling, or—in the style of your blog Segunda cita—as an intellectual public figure who rationalizes his passions?

I once heard Alfredo Guevara say that nations of people, out of their need for an identity, start by taking an inventory of themselves: their geography, their flora and fauna, the physical and spiritual characteristics of their people, etc. Over the years I came to realize that even more happens to those of us with a vocation to sing, because we begin by describing what surrounds us—both objectively and subjectively. Both reactions are a self-recognition of what makes consciousness: a sort of totemic act that consists of naming things. We all know that the world exists, because we see it, we feel it. But some of us need to sing about it so that reality can take on a life of its own and perhaps become complete.

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Also, although like everyone else I was born with intellect, I have never seen myself as an intellectual. I have always had a sort of vocation to be a communicator. Segunda cita was an accident, one finding that led to others. Its highest form of expression was when it became a community, with all the complexities that involves. That, in a way, was its purpose, because during the first months I did not put any limits on it and there were all kinds of comments, some of them vulgar and offensive. That led me to moderate the blog, although internally I regretted some of the openness that was lost. Then I began to insist on  candor combined with respect for others. And little by little, that spirit impregnated the space. Obviously, I was the first one who had to learn. It may be that I’ve tried to rationalize some passion (that is human), although I also try to explain why.

What does it mean to love Cuba in the 21^st century, the supposed time of globalization and internationalization? How important is it for your children, grandchildren, and those who may follow to know that “In Tampa your grandfather spoke with Martí,” the Apostle of Cuban independence?

I have that privilege because my grandfather Félix’s father, Pancho Domínquez, was one of the Cuban cigar rollers who worked in the harvest in Tampa every year at the end of the 19^th century, a time when a million cigars were manufactured in that Floridian city every year.

My grandfather never told me why he was in Tampa; I learned many years later from Dr. Beatriz Marcheco and her DNA studies. My grandfather only told me that while he was at a warehouse in Tampa as a child, a gentleman had asked him why he was in the country, and he answered that his father worked in a certain cigar factory. The gentleman smiled and told him that this was a coincidence, because a few days later he was going to visit his dad’s workplace to speak to the workers.

My grandfather always ended the story by saying, “And that kind man was José Martí.”

It is true that the times, periods of history, can color our loves and perceptions of things. This is much more so today, given the quantity and quality of so much content. But in addition to the overwhelming variety that technology offers us, the fact is that no one can be born today and say that their grandfather met Martí in Tampa. Surely that is why I sang about it, slightly envious of my Grandpa Félix.

You once said that you did not see Cuba “as an altar or a cathedral that one goes to.” Does being Cuban imply some responsibility? Do we Cubans have some defect that you feel you share? What do you think of the position in Cuba establishing an equivalency between being a patriot and being a revolutionary?

I have never understood such sanctification. It may be because of my way of seeing what is essential, in addition to the blindness implied in the concept of “sacred,” something untouchable. Everything that is respected, even that which is venerated, is so for more or less profound reasons which certainly can be explained.

Obviously, there is diversity in being Cuban, and I imagine this is more or less the same for any nationality. The intensity, I believe, depends on each person’s background. There are lives and circumstances that obviously determine one’s supreme adherence to oneself, to oneself above all else. There are others who do not so much feel that way, or who relegate this to another plane because they see themselves as part of a collective whole, as if the common fate were real life. The latter is something like a honeybee with a hive mentality. As for myself, I feel good when I see myself as part of a whole—a people and their history. In this I find an explanation that partially helps to explain the great mystery of life. I believe that this greatly helped my family with its modest mark on our national history. It also helps that when I was ten years old I read Emilio Roig’s Introduction (published 1953) to “La Edad de Oro” by Martí called “Martí y los niños. Martí niño.” (Marti and the children. Marti, the child.)

Finally, I believe there can be patriotic sentiments that do not agree with aspects of the Revolution or the Cuban government. But I do not believe that those who ask for  blockades or interventions against their own country can be patriots.

Several academics have written that New Latin American song, of which Nueva Trova was an essential part, was an important source of an alternative culture—not only alternative to oligarchic power and right-wing military dictatorships, but also to a more traditional left. What did it mean for you to be part of that movement? What did you experience when singing in those countries after the openings at the end of the 1980s, as a result of pacts and political compromises?

Fortunately, from a very young age I liked to read history, literature, and scientific texts. Having participated in the Literacy Campaign** helped me understand that the country was expanding intellectually. This awareness helped me a few years later when I began to write songs. I prepared my first themes during my years of military service, without having debated anyone about such a job. That is why it was so gratifying when I left the army and began to discover young people who had done the same as I. Little by little, we created an esprit de corps, a sense of ourselves as a generation, which the press also began to perceive and to write about.

Casa de las Américas contributed greatly to our consolidation and the continuation of our generation of troubadours. Not only did it allow us a space in which to perform our songs, but we also furthered our knowledge of Latin America. For example, the first time I heard a Violeta Parra record was in Haydeé Santamaria’s house. Thanks to that connection, we were able to share with intellectuals such as Mario Benedetti, Roque Dalton, Julio Cortázar, and many others, without mentioning the privilege of listening to conversations with Lezama or José Zacaría Tallet, whom I even visited.

Later, Alfredo Guevara invited us to found the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora (Musical Experimentation Group) and work for the Cuban Cinematography Institute. By this time, Pino Solanas included my song “La Era Está Pariendo un Corazón” in his documentary “La Hora de los Hornos.” One day Isabel Parra visited me and we began to sing together. Daniel Viglieti arrived and recorded his record “Trópicos” with our group. We provided accompaniment for Soledad Bravo on the song “Santiago de Chile,” for a documentary by Juan Carlos Tabío. And at the Cuban Cinematography Institute we did a two-week-long identity concert which we called Cuba-Brazil.

In September of 1972 Noel Nicola, Pablo Milanés, and I were invited by Gladys Marín to the IV Congress of Young Communists of Chile. There we sang every night at the club belonging to the Parra family, along with the most well-known singers and bands, including, of course, Víctor Jara. That was a tremendous experience, not only professionally, but also in terms of commitment. The coup occurred one year later and we experienced a very tense moment in that revolution, which was painful in many ways because the left was criticizing Allende as much as the right. We were also tested personally, because more than once we were surprised by street demonstrations that were disbursed with clubs and tear gas.

In 1974 Noel and I were invited to 7 Días con el Pueblo, a new song festival put on by a trade union in the Dominican Republic. There we met Mercedes Sosa, whom we had seen in Havana, and we met Catalonian Francesc Pi de la Sierra and Spaniards Ana Belén and Víctor Manuel. The brothers and sisters who hosted us were Sonia Silvestre and Víctor Víctor, and we were fortunate to hear the very young Luís Díaz. Los Guaraguao of Venezuela were there. And the stadiums, that were always full, roared, “Joaquín Balaguer, a murderer in power!” while the police stood by powerlessly. When it all ended a colonel correctly told us we had 24 hours to leave the country.

Starting in 1975 we began to visit Mexico more than once a year. We participated in almost all the events organized by  Uruguayan exiles. The first to play was always Alfredo Zitarrosa, and the band Sanampay was always there, comprised primarily of exiled Argentinians and some former members of Herque Mapu (Hebe Rosell and Naldo Labrín). That is where we were when Tania Libertad arrived from Peru. We were friends of the extraordinary Amparo Ochoa, Oscar Chávez, Marcial Alejandro, and Gabino Palomares. And we saw people come to interpret the transcendence of Eugenia León and Guadalupe Pineda.

I never managed to meet Violeta Parra personally, but I was able to approach Yupanqui in Berlin in February of 1985 when we both played at the Festival of Political Song sponsored by Free German Youth in what was still the GDR. I saw him in a concert he gave at a theater along with my friend Ángel Parra, who accompanied him on some pieces because arthritis kept Yupanqui from moving his fingers. Later we saw each other a few times in Buenos Aires and on one of those occasions Eduardo Aute accompanied me. A few months before his death, Don Ata honored me by attending one of my concerts at the Gran Rex, which I of course dedicated to him.

It is quite true that we did all of that very pleased to be part of anti-imperialist Latin America, with a very strong cultural and historical identity. I still carry that satisfaction with me. I can say that it is one of the experiences I am most grateful to have had.

You were just in Mexico where, for several nights, you filled the National Auditorium singing “El Necio” (the Fool), once dedicated “to Fidel, now to Andrés Manuel [López Obrador].” What did Fidel Castro, and the opportunity to speak to him, mean for your personal story as a Cuban? How do you view the New Left in the hemisphere, often called the pink tide, for whom AMLO of Mexico is a central figure?

In the late 1950s, the people were very much against the dictatorship. Imagine, the revolution triumphed one month after I turned 12. We learned about Fidel from Radio Rebelde, which we listened to very softly some nights. Fidel was a great symbol. For some reason, I never saw him as a god; I always understood him to be a special man, but a man just the same.

The first time I was close to him was in 1961, when he came to send off those of us working in the Literacy Campaign who were leaving from Varadero to the far reaches of Cuba the next day. I was directly below the podium; little by little I made my way up. I recall my astonishment upon seeing that his beard was reddish brown and not black, as it looked in photographs. There I heard everything he told us about the importance of our mission and for the first time, I felt like part of something big, something more than just myself.

I exchanged a few words with him in 1984 when Pablo and I returned from our first trip to Argentina, which received a lot of coverage in the Argentine press and other places. Casa de las Américas gave us a reception upon our return, and all of a sudden, he showed up. He stayed for a long time, engaging in a fraternal exchange with everyone. At the end, they took a few photos and the next day we were on the front page of Granma.

I learned from my friend Julio Le Riverend that in 1968 Fidel had asked what happened to me at the so-called “little Congress” prior to a Congress on Education and Culture that was held that year. Alfredo Guevara later corroborated that Fidel had said that taking an artist’s job away was not right (I had been kicked out of a cultural agency), and that if there was some kind of problem, it should be discussed.

Later I had other opportunities to talk to him, particularly towards the end of the 1980s when I prepared a plan to build better recording studios in Cuba. One day I was surprised to receive an invitation to a lunch Fidel was giving for Rafael Alberti. In the middle of the lunch Fidel asked me if I could stay a bit afterwards, and I said yes. It was to ask me about the studios I said I wanted to have built. That was the beginning of all that was done afterwards.

“El necio,” to some degree, is a song about Fidel. He is a man who at times seems to act illogically, whose arm could not be twisted, whose moral clarity could confront any adversity. I say “to some degree” because El necio also includes a lot about my own journey and how I see certain things. And in what many people see as strength and determination, I describe as someone who simply accepts his destiny, the factors from within and without that converged to write one’s story. I believe that I express this quite clearly when I say,

I do not know what destiny is,
As I went along, I was what I was.
God over there, may be divine,
I will die as I lived.

One topic that is quite present in your blog Segunda cita is the economic, trade, and financial blockade that successive U.S. governments have maintained against the Cuban people. I admire your clear position that it is a fundamental cause of the problems in Cuba. This matters, because today the regime change strategy imposed from outside, which is upheld by some supposedly moderate sectors, is to minimize its relevance and advocate for alleged flexibility on issues of sovereignty. How important do you think AMLO is—who has a flexible relationship and even integration with the United States—to the issue of Latin American dignity when he demands total opposition to the blockade with no concessions?

There are many interpretations around the blockade and why Cuba has so many problems. There are the extremes: those who blame everything on the blockade, and then those who blame the Cuban government. But when those who maintain the blockade discover any measure the provides breathing room to Cuba, they say it is providing oxygen to the regime so they eliminate it. This leaves no doubt that they know Cuba would be better off without the blockade. It exposes the depth of malice in their intentions and the monstruous scope of their practice. Gabo [García Márquez] was right when he called the blockade against Cuba genocide.

I dedicated “El necio” to Andrés Manuel because he has dared to defend Cuba like few others. And because defending us is to defend the right of any nation to be as it wishes to be and to resolve its internal problems without interference or harassment from anyone. AMLO is a living example of the spirit of Juárez, who said that “respect for the rights of others is peace.” Bolívar, Martí can be found in him, as they were in Fidel.

And it would not surprise me if the ultra-left were to call Andrés Manuel pseudo left. The troubadours of my generation were called the same by extreme leftist Cubans when we defended the Revolution with rock rhythms, such as in “Cuba va.”

During the Obama years you gave memorable concerts all over the United States. I saw you live at the mythical Paramount Theatre in Oakland and later at Carnegie Hall in New York, that paragon of U.S culture, where you played to packed auditoriums. What was typical of your notable presence there were the Latinos and Cubans who sang along with your songs. What do you think of the proposition that the United States is now a Latin American country, too?

Pete Seeger attended the second concert we gave in Carnegie Hall. He had turned 90 a year earlier and I was not able to attend his tribute because my visa did not arrive on time. We had a very special exchange later on that night, which was the last time I saw him. He told me that he knew that Latin America and Cuba could not make progress because of the interventionist policy of his country’s government. He was very ashamed of this and visibly moved. I know that many other U.S. citizens feel this way, although one does not need to be so lucid to have feelings of equity and respect for one’s neighbor.

I do not doubt that the United States, to some degree, is also a Latin American country today. It is likely that some day this ingredient may come to have a positive influence on its policies. But it is obvious that many Latinx people that go there do so because there are not enough opportunities in our countries. That is why, the more opportunities we have at home, the less people need to migrate and the fewer tensions there are with the United States over migration. That was the approach Andrés Manuel had with Trump when he talked about building his border wall. I have more faith in that approach, at least for now, than any positive influence that may stem from having a large number of our people over there.

You were present during the ceremony when the Cuban Interest Section in Washington, DC turned into an embassy, where we met for the first time. What vision do you have about the role of patriotic emigration on the future of Cuba and its relationship with the United States? Would you give a concert in Miami some day?

I believe that the future of Cuba includes the responsibility to help of all those who love her. This happens in any family. Those who make a commitment, those who express solidarity, are those who respond to problems constructively. I am capable of respecting and working with those who do not think like me. I hope that this grows.

As for a concert in Miami, are there poor neighborhoods there? I would like to have a concert there, in a neighborhood

On at least one occasion, in 1986, Carlos Alberto Montaner tried to incite Pablo Milanés and you to change sides and place your artistic success at the service of the regime change strategy imposed from the outside. You answered, “No one pays us to defend what we believe in. Every day we do a rigorous but necessary examination of our own consciences, and if we disagree with something, just as when we agree, we sing and assume the task in Cuba and wherever necessary.” Has it been hard, this “need to live without a price,” at the same time that you conduct “a rigorous but necessary examination” of your conscience? Have you ever thought of alternatives?

Living in Cuba, materially speaking, can be tough for anyone, Arturo. Even for those who have enjoyed some success and have some money. If you live in Miami or Madrid, no one questions your good fortune.

Back in 1961 (when I was 14 years old) we began to experience shortages, particularly of medicines. We got momentary relief when members of Brigade 2506 [Cuban Exiles caught at the Bay of Pigs] were exchanged for supplies. But the material limitations the Cuban people have suffered, all kinds of inconveniences, shortages in daily life, would suffice to write a series a thousand times juicier than The Sopranos, or even the Bible; the crucified one would not be one man but a whole population.

As for the circulation of ideas, this has also been complicated. The ultra-defensive mentality brought on by so many acts of aggression and some formulaic interpretations of what a socialist society should be, creates conflict. There have been compulsive periods, times which mark the lives of many people and which bring us down.

The truth is that throughout time, in all countries and systems there have been good people and less good people. There are intelligent beings and non-intelligent ones everywhere. In all settings there are honest, altruistic people who are in solidarity with others; there are also mediocre, opportunistic and corrupt people. It never occurred to me to blame the Revolution for a bad time I may have experienced. Ever since I was young, I have realized that these are matters of human beings, circumstances. One day you get kicked, but the next day someone kisses you.

Starting with oneself, there is nothing perfect in this world, sometimes not even the ideas that seemed best at a previous time. Factors that raise questions always arise, sowing doubt, expanding our perspective. This occurs naturally, without outside intervention. But just imagine what is provoked by a project for the emancipation of a small country that is challenging the most powerful and vicious interests on the planet.

We were recently talking about such issues on Otra cita (https://otracitasc.blogspot.com), the blog that continues where mine, Segunda cita, left off. We came to the conclusion that thinking is very important, but what we do after we think is even more important.

In the US, without excluding Miami, there are Cuban emigrants who hold patriotic values. The right wing has tried to construct an identity that requires taking on their bitterness and hatred, but many, including those who were born there, feel a dual identity because they are from there but also from Cuba to multiple degrees. Being a North American does not invalidate their being Cuban, and vice-versa. I have cousins in Miami who left Cuba in the 1950s and 1960s who had to listen to your songs with their car windows closed during times of intolerance. Is that no longer necessary? How important is the cultural exchange between the United States and Cuba, as well as between Cubans in Cuba and those in the United States in terms of a rapprochement?

I do not have the slightest doubt, and I said this several times when there was distrust over Obama’s openness, that with this exchange Cuba’s interests would win out. What I am saying is that in the United States they have a distorted image of what Cuba is, even more distorted than what Cubans may think of the US. And I think that is why most of the US administrations do not allow their citizens to go to Cuba. They don’t like what might result from that exchange because the Americans could arrive and meet people who are fun, friendly, well-educated, and appealing. In addition to any economic benefits we might get from such an exchange, how could they continue to justify their policy of suffocating a population like that?

In “Llegué por San Antonio de los Baños” you sing of Martí’s vision that “homeland is humanity” that starts where we are born. One area in which we Cubans could cooperate despite our differences is by improving our towns and cities, countryside, rivers, dams, and beaches. For example, in China and Vietnam many emigres contribute a lot and even invest in and collaborate with their hometowns and the land of their ancestors. How important is what you call “the universal detail of my native region” to be “a little bit better and much less selfish?”

“… But the universal detail
of my native region
was a man
opening a trail on the clock.”

This means that everywhere we have something basic in common: we are born as human beings and the succession of generations gives us the opportunity to learn and improve.

I have lived my 75 years in Cuba and can affirm responsibly that here we are more than ready to share with any nation, of course including with the United States of America.

It is impossible to compare us with China or Vietnam. No bank in the world will give a loan to Cuba because the United States, thanks to its extraterritorial laws, would impose millions of dollars in fines. There are very few shipping companies that dare to send ships with supplies to Cuba, because the US would then prohibit those ships from entering its ports. China is a very wealthy country with many natural resources. Vietnam is smaller but also rich. It endured plunder, indignities, and wars, but it is not currently blockaded and trades freely with the world, even the United States. We Cubans have been denied that for over 60 years, and when we have been allowed to trade, we are forced to pay in cash with suitcases full of dollars.

We distribute our doctors and vaccines around the world. Thousands of professionals from the third world have been educated at our universities. For decades Cuba has been showing that it is a civilized country, that it works on the basis of peaceful coexistence—we promoted and hosted the Colombian peace talks. However, Cuba has been stigmatized by an imperial government with a long history of abuse in many places.

I am quite aware that we need to be a little bit better (and sometimes more than a little bit) in some ways. But it is up to us to fix our shortcomings and it is inadmissible that we be blackmailed for that, as if we were a stain. For this reason, out of basic decency, I will first of all close ranks with my people who have been subjected to systematic torture for six decades. Some US leaders are lacking not a little bit, but a large dose of humanity. I hope that our descendants over there will understand this and decide to act accordingly.

Arturo López-Levy is a Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA). He is a professor of international relations and politics at Holy Names University in Oakland, California, and author of “Raúl Castro and the New Cuba: A Close-up of Change.” Twitter, @turylevy.

This interview was translated from the original Spanish by Jill Clark-Gollub, COHA’s Assistant Editor/Translator.

By Patrick Synan
Boston

As the trial of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández proceeds,^[1] as Guatemalan Attorney General María Consuelo Porras begins her controversial second term,^[2] and as the state of exception in El Salvador enters its 3rd month^[3], progressive members of Congress and the Senate maintain concerns about police and military funding for governments in the Northern Triangle.

In April, 11 Representatives signed a letter to House Appropriations State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee Chair Barbara Lee requesting an end to funds promised under the Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI).^[4] This follows a bill introduced in the Senate calling for a 5-year suspension of U.S. aid to Honduras. Presently, neither motion has enough support to move forward.^[5]

CARSI failed to improve security

The reasons for such proposals merit consideration. The primary concern listed in each document is the fragility of human rights in the region, but the letter to the State and Foreign Operations subcommittee also explicitly addresses costs. CARSI is expensive and counterproductive, it argues. Literature from human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch (HRW)^[6] and The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights supports these claims.^[7]

According to John Lindsay-Poland, who has researched the sale of U.S. arms in Latin America for decades, “evidence is strong that CARSI failed to improve security for people in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, as evidenced by the massive numbers of people who fled during the period of CARSI, at great risk, and that instead CARSI strengthened corrupt anti-democratic governments in those countries. Most of the funds did not go to military and police forces, but benefited economic elites there. Whether CARSI caused the worsening situation or not, it’s at the least been a waste of funds.”^[8]

Meanwhile, those who find value in CARSI’s continuation argue that its problems are more nuanced. Charles Call, non-resident Senior Fellow at Brookings, calls it “cherry picking to pull out CARSI (…) separate from the overall engagement with Central America.” According to Call, a more holistic review of U.S. policy in the region reveals “an approach that is highly technical and ignores the political dimension.”^[9]

CARSI began as the Central American component of the Mérida Initiative in the last year of the Bush administration, but it was rebranded shortly after Obama took office.^[10] According to the State Department one-pager, its objectives were to:

• Create safe streets for the citizens of the region;
• Disrupt the movement of criminals and contraband to, within, and between the nations of Central America;
• Support the development of strong, capable, and accountable Central American governments;
• Re-establish effective state presence, services and security in communities at risk; and
• Foster enhanced levels of coordination and cooperation between the nations of the region, other international partners, and donors to combat regional security threats.^[11]

The multi-million-dollar aid package remains in effect, despite over a decade of deteriorating human rights conditions, ongoing border insecurity and the consolidation of criminal infrastructure in much of the region.

Real accountability, non-existent

In Honduras, while the new presidency of Xiomara Castro is a positive development, the state bureaucracy remains occupied by countless Hernández loyalists^.[12] In Guatemala, President Giamattei has reappointed Attorney General Consuelo Porras after her first term produced the arrest or exile of nearly every anti-corruption or anti-impunity investigator working at the national level, most notably special prosecutor Juan Francisco Sandoval^.[13] In El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele has embarked on a project of dismantling democratic institutions like the Supreme Court^[14] and strengthening the state’s security apparatus, most recently through the state of exception, which enables law enforcement to jail arbitrarily.^[15] Each of the three countries receives millions in U.S. military and police aid each year through CARSI, but no serious accountability measures exist to ensure this money is used to accurately identify, capture, and fairly prosecute the perpetrators of serious crimes.

The U.S. federal government has been conspicuously critical of each country in the past year. Vicepresident Kamala Harris voiced her disapproval when Bukele fired Supreme Court judges and the country’s chief prosecutor.^[16] Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced the government’s designation of Consuelo Porras as a “corrupt and undemocratic actor” earlier this month.^[17] Meanwhile, the Department of Justice’s indictment of former President Juan Orlando Hernández alleges he “corrupted the legitimate institutions of Honduras, including parts of the Honduran National Police, military, and National Congress.”^[18] Nonetheless, despite U.S. concern, designations, or outright criminal charges, the State Department’s police and military funding for regimes in the Northern Triangle has risen steadily.

Honduras

The case of U.S. funding for the Honduran military and police is particularly curious. CARSI coincided with the country’s 12-year descent into lawlessness. The State Department, meanwhile, never made a move to turn off the faucet.

The total disintegration of the rule of law in Honduras began abruptly on June 28, 2009 when then-president Manuel Zelaya was removed from office in a military coup. Zelaya’s increasingly progressive policies were not favored by the landed elite and corporate interests operating in the region. In the year leading up to his ouster, he had unilaterally ordered a 60% increase in the minimum wage and issued a public opinion survey on whether to form a Constituent Assembly^.[19] His removal ushered in 12 years of illegitimate rule by the conservative National Party, whose leaders famously declared Honduras was “open for business”^[20] shortly after coming to power.

The degree to which the U.S. State Department was complicit in the coup is debatable. By referring to the ouster as only a coup and not a military coup, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton performed a delicate legal maneuver to avoid placing the United States in a predicament where by law Congress was obligated to withhold military funding.^[21] Authors like Alexandra Gale at COHA have remarked on the United States’ “selective indignation” towards dictatorships in Latin America, arguing that “Washington has endorsed (…) a range of military dictatorships in Panama, Honduras, and Guatemala, when they were seen as strategic geopolitical allies.”^[22] By not condemning the Honduran coup, the U.S. continued to sponsor a regime that deliberately engaged in human rights abuses for the sake of international business.

In the 1996 HRW World Report, Honduras received substantial praise for “establishing accountability for gross human rights violations that occurred in the 1980s.”^[23] Also in the Honduras section of the report are seven paragraphs dedicated to U.S. policy. This subsection opens by reiterating that Honduras “has taken important and courageous steps to account for the horrific history of Battalion 3-16,” the CIA-trained unit of the Honduran army responsible for a litany of high-profile political assassinations. It then admonishes the U.S., which “has still to do the same.”

This is the last time Honduras appears in a World Report until 2010, a year after the military ouster of Manuel Zelaya, the country’s last democratically elected president at the time, and over a year after CARSI was instated. The nature of the abuses described in subsequent reports progressively worsens; furthermore, each new edition devotes increased text to address prior violations that had not previously been revealed. One particularly enlightening case takes place in the Bajo Aguán valley, in eastern Honduras. According to the 2012 Report:

“More than 30 people were killed between January and August 2011 in the Bajo Aguán valley, a fertile palm oil-producing zone in northern Honduras. A long-simmering land conflict erupted in May when peasants occupied land being cultivated by large privately owned agricultural enterprises. Many victims were members of peasant associations who were allegedly gunned down by security guards working for the enterprises. In addition, four security guards were shot and killed in August 2011, when individuals armed with assault rifles and other arms reportedly tried to take over a ranch. In the absence of criminal investigation, the circumstances of each incident remained unclear. By September no one had been charged for the killings in the Bajo Aguán region.”^[24]

The 2013 Report on the Bajo Aguán is virtually a repeat of 2012, only the victim tally was doubled.^[25] In the 2014 Report, the 2012 number was tripled.^[26] By 2015, after less than a year of the Hernández administration, the case of the Bajo Aguán was replaced by a general section about population displacement, which owes largely to a concern that doesn’t appear in prior World Report analyses of Honduras: gang violence.^[27]

A survey of HRW Reports on Honduras reveals two key points: one, that CARSI funding was practically simultaneous with the breakdown of security in Honduras, which law enforcement was either unsuccessful in preventing or actively promoting; two, the emergence of rampant gang violence in Honduras was a post-CARSI phenomenon, which contradicts the State Department’s allegations that such funding was necessary to stop it.

Honduras drew unprecedented attention from other watchdog organizations as well. Prior to the coup, Honduras had not featured on the Inter-American Commission on Human RIghts’ annual reports for nearly a quarter of a century, its last appearance pertaining to an individual case of citizenship dispute and a case of two missing persons.^[28] By contrast, the IACHR covered post-coup Honduras for 5 consecutive years and returned to include it in its 2016 and 2021 reports. Furthermore, the IACHR published 4 observation reports on Honduras in 2009, 2010, 2015 and 2019.

Predictably, each of the reports addresses the illegitimacy of the coup regime and the escalation of violence in the Bajo Aguán. However, certain sections of these texts go on to address the systemic changes that took place to consolidate the National Party’s control in spite of widespread popular resentment. A 2015 observation report expressed concern over the weakened legitimacy of the police and the increasing presence of military forces throughout the country:

“The national police have lost the trust of citizens due to a lack of effective response, allegations of corruption, and links to organized crime. For this reason, the State has focused its efforts on legal and institutional reforms through which the Armed Forces have been gaining participation in functions that do not necessarily correspond to their nature, related, for example, to regular citizen security tasks. Various actors interviewed during the visit referred to the existence of a growing process of militarization to address insecurity, and therefore a greater presence of the military in the areas of greatest conflict, as well as an “open fight against organized crime,” without a clear process to strengthen the national police. Within this framework, the Military Police was created, as well as a group of judges and prosecutors of national jurisdiction whose objective is to accompany the Military Police to ensure that their actions are framed by law. These judges and prosecutors do not have sufficient guarantees of independence and impartiality to hear known human rights violations by members of said Police. Based on its analysis, the IACHR has identified a series of concerns, among others, that military forces carry out activities that do not imply the defense of the country but rather enforce the law, issues that should correspond to the police.”^[29]

The expansion of military power and purview in Honduras is one of the ways in which the National Party has maintained its political influence in spite of the leftward agenda of the newly elected Castro administration. It is also a source of concern when it comes to the current government’s stability. Allison Lira, director of the Honduras program for the Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective, says, “there continues to be a very serious risk of another coup in Honduras…the military structure is still very much aligned with the interests that led to the [2009] coup in the first place.”^[30] Essential to the Honduran military structure, of course, is the economic support it receives from the United States through programs like CARSI.

Guatemala

Guatemala, typically the largest recipient of CARSI funds,^[31] has appeared yearly on the World Report since the 1990’s. Prior to 2010, reports generally portrayed a society engaged in a hard struggle to heal after decades of civil war. However, a continuing feature of this struggle was the state’s inability to hold the military accountable for crimes against civilians. Reports from 2006 to 2009 open with virtually the same five paragraphs:

“A dozen years after the end of Guatemala’s brutal civil war, impunity remains the norm when it comes to human rights violations. Ongoing violence and intimidation threaten to reverse the little progress that has been made toward promoting accountability. Guatemala’s weak and corrupt law enforcement institutions have proved incapable of containing the powerful organized crime groups that, among other things, are believed to be responsible for attacks on human rights defenders, judges, prosecutors, and others.

Guatemala continues to suffer the effects of an internal armed conflict that ended in 1996. A United Nations-sponsored truth commission estimated that as many as 200,000 people were killed during the 36-year war, and attributed the vast majority of the killings to government forces.

Guatemalans seeking accountability for these abuses face daunting obstacles. Prosecutors and investigators receive grossly inadequate training and resources. The courts routinely fail to resolve judicial appeals and motions in a timely manner, allowing defense attorneys to engage in dilatory legal maneuvering. The army and other state institutions resist cooperating fully with investigations into abuses committed by current or former members. And the police regularly fail to provide adequate protection to judges, prosecutors, and witnesses involved in politically sensitive cases.

Of the 626 massacres documented by the truth commission, only three cases have been successfully prosecuted in the Guatemalan courts. The third conviction came in May 2008, when five former members of a paramilitary “civil patrol” were convicted for the murders of 26 of the 177 civilians massacred in Rio Negro in 1982.

The July 2005 discovery of approximately 80 million documents of the disbanded National Police, including files on Guatemalans who were murdered and “disappeared” during the armed conflict, could play a key role in the prosecution of those who committed human rights abuses during the conflict. By October 2008 …the country’s Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office had processed seven million of those documents, primarily related to cases presently under active investigation. The office plans to open the first part of the archive in 2009.”^[32]

Each of these documents identifies a perpetually weak judicial system and frightened civil societies fumbling in the shadow of an untouchable military and police force. Furthermore, the nearly identical text over four years suggests that no immediate improvements were likely without international pressure. But it isn’t obvious how channeling funds to an army that “resist[s] cooperating” and police who “routinely fail to provide adequate protection” would solve these issues. Subsequent reports do not tell a tale of success.

Far from being a repeat of the previous four years, the 2010 World Report shows an even further decline in the state of human rights in Guatemala. The summary of the section reads:

“Guatemala’s weak and corrupt law enforcement institutions have proved incapable of containing the powerful organized crime groups and criminal gangs that contribute to Guatemala having one the highest violent crime rates in the Americas. Illegal armed groups, which appear to have evolved in part from counterinsurgency forces operating during the civil war that ended in 1996, are believed to be responsible for targeted attacks on civil society actors and justice officials. More than a decade after the end of the conflict, impunity remains the norm when it comes to human rights violations. The ongoing violence and intimidation threaten to reverse the little progress that has been made toward promoting accountability.”^[33]

Rather than aiding military and law enforcement officials in addressing violence and organized crime, CARSI coincided with the strengthening of “illegal armed groups” with ties to military forces. The 2011 Report describes military efforts to address gang violence resulting in “social cleansing.” In other words, the detention and/or disappearance of union organizers and social activists,^[34] The 2012 Report describes similar activity.^[35]

According to the 2013 Report, “President Otto Pérez Molina (…) increasingly used the Guatemalan military in public security operations, despite the serious human rights violations it committed during the country’s civil war.”^[36] This tendency was identified again in 2014^.[37] In 2015, HRW found that a force of 20,000 armed service members was active in a country whose territory measures 42,000 square miles.^[38]

In a 2015 observation report, the IACHR echoes HRW’s concerns about the state’s overreliance on the military to address domestic security challenges; in response it recommends a “return to the police reform agenda, specifically the plan named ‘The Police We Want.’”^[39] This is a particularly intriguing recommendation because “The Police We Want” is published by USAID, the organization through which CARSI funds are channeled. However, further IACHR reporting offers no indication that its recommendation was followed.

The USAID plan was supposed to operate from 2012 to 2020, but in 2014 a new framework for police reform emerged. The Integral Police Model for Community Security (MOPSIC) prioritized community-oriented policing (COP). According to Arturo Matute of the University of the Valley of Guatemala, it was popular among some of the largest foreign aid organizations operating in Guatemala.

“The donor community has backed preventive strategies in the police through the years, including the development of MOPSIC. The U.S. has provided the largest amounts of financial support through the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).”^[40]

Despite the promising nature of the framework, however, the rollout of MOPSIC has been weak. Matute observes that presently, “police agents are scarcely trained in it.”^[41]

Despite the inefficacy of police reform, there were some advances in the justice system between 2013 and 2019. The World Reports during this timeframe applaud a series of high-level convictions. In 2013, former president Efrain Ríos Montt was found guilty of crimes against humanity and genocide. In 2015, Otto Pérez Molina was implicated in a tax fraud scandal and resigned. The major force behind this discovery was the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a UN-led investigative team operating in Guatemala since 2006 with a mandate to examine high level corruption cases. The 2016 World Report acknowledged this significant step forward along with restrictions on U.S. aid to Guatemala under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014 (this provision had a limited effect on CARSI funds).^[42] For a few short years, accountability appeared on the horizon.

The IACHR also expressed some cautious optimism in its 2015 report, writing: “ The IACHR notes changes in favor of a society committed with human rights, promoted by the work of public officials compromised with justice and human rights defenders as well as social leaders. The support of international human rights agencies, as well as the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG, for its acronym in Spanish), has been critical to those efforts.”^[43]

The momentum dissipated, however, in 2018 when Jimmy Morales “flanked by military and police officers, announced that he would not renew CICIG’s mandate when it expire[d] (…) in September 2019. The following week, he announced that he had prohibited CICIG Commissioner Iván Velásquez—who was on a work trip abroad—from re-entering the country.”^[44] This was the beginning of a political purge that only advanced in both speed and intensity during the Giamattei administration under the Attorney Generalship of Consuelo Porras.

The current state of Guatemala is quite grim. Far from witnessing a reduction in crime and gang violence since CARSI was first enacted (despite the package’s stated purpose of addressing these problems), the country now faces a regime dedicated to erasing the branches of state that could make any positive difference. Like Secretary Blinken, the most recent HRW World Report condemns the dissolution of anti-corruption institutions by Consuelo Porras and Giamattei. Neither the White House nor Human Rights Watch, however, mentions the uninterrupted flow of military funding.^[45]

El Salvador

Until recently, El Salvador has hardly featured in the yearly reports from HRW and the IACHR. The reasons for this gap are unclear. However, reports from 2019 onward illustrate a disappointing decline in the state of human rights, largely perpetrated by the state, despite ongoing funding from the United States.

The 2019 HRW World Report reads a lot like the reports from Guatemala and Honduras with respect to the deployment of the military in domestic affairs. It also addresses the discrepancies that abound in the state’s system of reporting deaths at the hands of security forces.

Since taking office in 2014, President Salvador Sánchez Cerén has expanded the military’s role in public security operations, despite a 1992 peace accord stipulation that it not be involved in policing. Killings of alleged gang members by security forces in supposed “armed confrontations” increased from 142 in 2013 to 591 in 2016.^[46]

The placement of the phrase “armed confrontations” in quotes presumably refers to a reporting phenomenon in El Salvador, where practically any death at the hands of police was identified as the result of a confrontation, even when the victims were not in any position to defend themselves. El Faro editor Oscar Martínez details some of these curious blunders in his most recent book, Los muertos y el periodista, saying that “any ‘confrontation’ where no police were injured or they didn’t give access to the crime scene was a massacre.”^[47] In three years, the number of Salvadorans killed in operations of this kind more than quadrupled.

At the same time, U.S. bilateral aid to El Salvador appears to have escalated in kind. In 1996, HRW identified a decline in U.S. assistance, with $27 million being spent between the years 1992 and 1995 on the nascent peace process, whereas the 2019 Report estimated $42 million was delivered in the prior fiscal year alone^[48]. Much of this funding was withheld in 2019, according to the Government Accountability Office, which states that CARSI was cut by over 176 million dollars to penalize El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras for the migrant crisis. GAO documentation, however, only identifies staffing cuts for non-State/non-INL projects. As far as program cuts, the percentage of funding withheld from social programs is nearly twice that withheld from State/INL programs.^[49] The 2021 World Report subtly addresses this discrepancy when it notes that “the U.S. appropriated over $72 million in bilateral aid to El Salvador, particularly to reduce extreme violence and strengthen state institutions [italics added]” in the previous fiscal year, up from $62 million the year before.^[50]

Despite steadily increasing security aid, the 2020 World Report once again identifies a rise in “confrontation” killings, stating that: “Salvadoran police and soldiers killed 1,626 people from 2010 through 2017. Authorities claimed that more than 90 percent of the victims were gang members and that nearly all were killed in ‘confrontations.’”^[51] The IACHR published similar findings in its 2021 report, claiming:

“Civil society organizations have stated that, within the last five years, at least 2,173 armed clashes have been recorded, which have led to the death of 1,930 people. Out of these casualties, 96.8 percent were citizens who were identified as gang members according to the official sources. By the end of 2019, the number of recorded conflicts since 2014 rose to 2,514, in which 2,025 people died, out of whom 1,957 were civilians and 68 were police or military officers. In addition to the high number of civilians killed when compared to the number of state agents who were murdered over the same period of time, according to an analysis carried out by the University Observatory for Human Rights of the Central American University, the fatality rate in these clashes was alarming and “clearly indicative of the excessive use of lethal force. Thus (…) the number of dead people (193) was allegedly higher than the number of injured people (76) among those identified as ‘criminals or gang members.’”^[52]

The 2021 World Report notes significant declines in homicides, but simultaneously remarks on egregious attacks on democratic processes and institutions. The introduction describes how then newly elected president Nayib Bukele “entered the Legislative Assembly with armed soldiers in an apparent effort to intimidate legislators into approving a loan for security forces.”^[53] The 2022 World Report details the nature of Bukele’s assault on the judicial sector, explaining that he “removed and replaced all five judges of the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber, as well as the attorney general (…) appointed five new judges to the Supreme Court, in violation of the process established in the constitution (…) [and] passed two laws dismissing all judges and prosecutors over 60 years of age or with 30 or more years of service.”^[54]

Bukele is not the military or the police, but his repeated and drastic power grabs consolidate his control over how these forces are deployed. His influence thus far over law enforcement is ethically dubious. El Faro, one of the most established Salvadoran press agencies, has linked the lowered homicide rate in 2020 to negotiations between government leaders and gang leaders who received protections, privileges, and in some cases even freedom.^[55] The 2023 Report is likely to address the state of exception and the unprecedented rise in homicides that directly preceded it.

Rooting Out Corruption

“It’s not at all true that an increase in human rights violations is due to CARSI,” says Professor Call. The problem, in his view, is corruption and the slowness of U.S.-led efforts to recognize and penalize it; the aid itself, however, is a gesture of goodwill, without which peace in the region would be far more challenging to secure. As for the Senate bill to suspend aid to Honduras, Call says, “it’s stupid, period,” adding that the newly-elected Castro government is “moving in the right direction.”^[56]

Call’s perspective is emblematic of the more moderate view that is likely to prevail in Congress when the budget for FY23 is passed: the dedication of funds to governments in the Northern Triangle is an otiose debate topic for most U.S. policymakers; among moderates, the more appropriate question is how to root out bad actors, whose actions dilute the efficacy of programs funded by plans like CARSI.

A number of arguably effective measures exist, such as indictments and extradition, the Engel list, support and expansion of DEA-vetted units, community violence prevention (CVP) programs, and more frequent and thorough reviews of the kinds of military and police training programs the U.S. pays for in Central America. The extent to which such measures can be fully executed is limited by certain key factors. “It’s just unfortunate,” Call states, “the attorney general in all three countries is not someone who’s committed to fighting corruption (…) and is quite committed to impunity in Guatemala and El Salvador.”^[57] So far, the Engel list has not weakened commitments of this kind.

According to former U.S. ambassador to Guatemala, Stephen Macfarland, however, it’s still too soon to draw any conclusions about the efficacy of U.S. policy in Central America. In an interview in February with CNN en español, he explained:

“The warning signs [in Guatemala] have gone basically unheard by politicians and shamefully the economic elite. If one thinks of what has happened in Honduras with Juan Orlando Hernández, all that is an investigation that did not begin with (…) the president, but rather with other drug traffickers (…) during three consecutive governments in the United States, that investigation went on. So Guatemalans need to ask themselves: how different are they from Honduras? I would say, in many respects, Guatemala is worse.”^[58]

Macfarland implies that impunity has a lifespan, and like former president Hernández of Honduras, Guatemalan president Giamattei and his administration will one day face justice themselves. Bukele, as well. It’s a matter of time and patience. For the Senators and Congresspeople calling to suspend CARSI funding, however, time and patience have run out.

---

Sources

^[1] “Juan Orlando Hernández: Honduran ex-leader pleads not guilty”, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-61393266.amp

^[2] “Guatemalan prosecutor labeled corrupt by U.S. gets tapped for new term”, https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/guatemalan-prosecutor-labeled-corrupt-by-us-gets-tapped-new-term-2022-05-17/

^[3] “El Salvador extends state of emergency amid gang crackdown”, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/26/el-salvador-extends-state-of-emergency-amid-gang-crackdown

^[4] “Letter to Chairwoman Lee”, https://cispes.org/sites/default/files/quill_-_letter_l3588_-_suspend_security_assistance_to_northern_triangle_in_fy23_-_version_1_-_04-26-2022_11-14_am.pdf

^[5] “S.388 – Honduras Human Rights and Anti-Corruption Act of 2021”, https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/388

^[6] This article examines World Reports from the 1990’s up to the present day and finds an overall decline in the state of human rights in the Northern Triangle. An archive of HRW World Reports is accessible at https://www.hrw.org/previous-world-reports

^[7] This article also considers the less frequently published yet far deeper analyses of the human rights situations in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala issued by the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights; it finds police and military repression are consolidated practices in each state and inevitably result in the denial of basic freedoms, including the right to life.

^[8] Correspondence with the author

^[9] Interview with the author.

^[10] “MÉRIDA INITIATIVE The United States Has Provided Counternarcotics and Anticrime Support but Needs Better Performance Measures”, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-10-837.pdf

^[11] “The Central American Regional Security Initiative: A Shared Partnership”, https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/183768.pdf

^[12] “How Honduras’s Congress Split in Two”, https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/02/01/honduras-congress-split-crisis-xiomara-castro-inauguration-corruption-libre-national-party/

^[13] “Guatemala’s Former Top Anti-Graft Prosecutor Decries Arrest Warrant”, https://insightcrime.org/news/guatemalas-former-top-anti-graft-prosecutor-decries-arrest-warrant/

^[14] “US concerned over removal of top Salvadoran judges”, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-56970026.amp

^[15] “El Salvador Declares State of Exception in Response to Wave of Murders”, https://www.coha.org/el-salvador-declares-state-of-exception-in-response-to-wave-of-murders/

^[16] “Kamala Harris Rejects Actions of the President of El Salvador”, https://www.telesurenglish.net/amp/news/US-Rejects-Democracy-Violations-In-El-Salvador-20210503-0003.html

^[17] “Designation of Attorney General Maria Consuelo Porras Argueta de Porres for Involvement in Significant Corruption and Consideration of Additional Designations”, https://www.state.gov/designation-of-attorney-general-maria-consuelo-porras-argueta-de-porres-for-involvement-in-significant-corruption-and-consideration-of-additional-designations/

^[18] “United States of America v. Juan Orlando Hernández”, https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1496096/download

^[19] Cunha Filho CM, Coelho AL, Pérez Flores FI. A right-to-left policy switch? An analysis of the Honduran case under Manuel Zelaya. International Political Science Review. 2013;34(5): 526.

^[20] “Honduras is Open for Business”, https://www.coha.org/honduras-is-open-for-business/

^[21] “González: Hillary Clinton’s policy was a Latin American crime story”, https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/gonzalez-clinton-policy-latin-american-crime-story-article-1.2598456

^[22] “The State Department’s Selective Indignation to Undemocratic Elections in Latin America”, https://www.coha.org/the-state-departments-inconsistent-and-ineffective-response-to-the-undemocratic-proliferating-through-latin-america/

^[23] “Human RIghts Watch World Report 1996”,  https://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/WR96/Americas-08.htm#P719_175896

^[24] “Human Rights Watch World Report 2012”, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2012

^[25] “Human Rights Watch World Report 2013”, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2013

^[26] “Human Rights Watch World Report 2014”, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014

^[27] “Human Rights Watch World Report 2015”, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015

^[28] “Informe Anual de la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos 1984-1985”, http://www.cidh.oas.org/annualrep/84.85sp/Indice.htm

^[29] “Situación de derechos humanos en Honduras”, ​​https://www.oas.org/es/cidh/informes/pdfs/Honduras-es-2015.pdf

^[30] Mendez Gutierrez, Maria José, “Delegation Report Back: Lessons from Central American Resistance & Diasporic Solidarity,” Youtube video, 5:11, posted by “closethesoa,” May 24, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiImEOIRJr8

^[31] “CARSI IN GUATEMALA: Progress, Failure, and Uncertainty”, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/CARSI%20in%20Guatemala.pdf

^[32] “Human Rights Watch World Report 2009”, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2009

^[33] “Human Rights Watch World Report 2009”, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2010

^[34] “Human Rights Watch World Report 2011”, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2011

^[35] “Human Rights Watch World Report 2012”, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2012

^[36] “Human Rights Watch World Report 2013”, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2013

^[37] “Human Rights Watch World Report 2014”, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014

^[38] “Human Rights Watch World Report 2015”, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015

^[39] “Situación de derechos humanos en Guatemala: diversidad desigualdad y exclusión”, https://www.oas.org/es/cidh/informes/pdfs/Guatemala2016.pdf

^[40] Matute, Arturo 2020. “Possibilities of Advancing Police Reform in Guatemala through Community -Oriented Policing,” Journal of Human Security, Librello publishing house, vol. 16(2), pages 97-110.

^[41] Matute, Arturo 2020. “Possibilities of Advancing Police Reform in Guatemala through Community -Oriented Policing,” Journal of Human Security, Librello publishing house, vol. 16(2), pages 97-110.

^[42] “Human Rights Watch World Report 2016”, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2016; “ Central America Regional Security Initiative: Background and Policy Issues for Congress”, https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/R41731.pdf

^[43] “Informe Anual 2015”, https://www.oas.org/es/cidh/docs/anual/2015/doc-es/InformeAnual2015-Cap4-Guatemala-ES.pdf

^[44] “Human Rights Watch World Report 2019”, https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/world_report_download/hrw_world_report_2019.pdf

^[45] “Human Rights Watch World Report 2022”, https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2022/01/World%20Report%202022%20web%20pdf_0.pdf

^[46] “Human Rights Watch World Report 2019”, https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/world_report_download/hrw_world_report_2019.pdf

^[47] Martinez, Los Muertos y el Periodista (Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 2021) 30.

^[48] “Human Rights Watch World Report 1996”, https://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/WR96/Americas-05.htm#P451_111820; “Human Rights Watch World Report 2019”, https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/world_report_download/hrw_world_report_2019.pdf

^[49] “NORTHERN TRIANGLE OF CENTRAL AMERICA: The 2019 Suspension and Reprogramming of U.S. Funding Adversely Affected Assistance Projects”, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-21-104366.pdf

^[50] “Human Rights Watch World Report 2021”, https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2021/01/2021_hrw_world_report.pdf

^[51] “Human Rights Watch World Report 2020”, https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/world_report_download/hrw_world_report_2020_0.pdf

^[52] “The Human Rights Situation in El Salvador 2021”, https://www.oas.org/en/iachr/reports/pdfs/2021_ElSalvador-EN.pdf

^[53] “Human Rights Watch World Report 2021”, https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2021/01/2021_hrw_world_report.pdf

^[54] “Human Rights Watch World Report 2022”, https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2022/01/World%20Report%202022%20web%20pdf_0.pdf

^[55] “Audios de Carlos Marroquin revelan que masacre de marzo ocurrió por ruptura entree Gobierno y MS”,  https://elfaro.net/es/202205/el_salvador/26175/Audios-de-Carlos-Marroqu%C3%ADn-revelan-que-masacre-de-marzo-ocurri%C3%B3-por-ruptura-entre-Gobierno-y-MS.htm

^[56] Interview with the author

^[57] Interview with the author

^[58] “La gente tiene hambre saber tras la investigación ‘Guatemala Testigo Protegido’”, https://www.audacy.com/cnnespanol/podcasts/conclusiones-23356/la-gente-tiene-hambre-de-saber-tras-la-investigacion-guatemala-testigo-protegido-segun-periodista-de-el-faro-1258204965

By John Perry
Managua, Nicaragua

Two years ago, COHA reported on the manufactured “refugee” crisis around Nicaraguans living in Costa Rica.^[1] Now the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is saying that “102,000 people fled Nicaragua and sought asylum in Costa Rica” in 2021. As this article shows, this statement is inaccurate, adding further to the myth that Nicaragua is suffering a refugee crisis.

On June 20, a group called “SOSNicaragua” which is based in Costa Rica, held a conference to mark World Refugee Day. Called “Breaking down walls, building hope,” it was addressed by the head of the Costa Rican government’s Refugee Unit, Esther Núñez.^[2] She confirmed that, since 2018, Costa Rica had received 175,055 applications for asylum, the majority from Nicaragua. However, the rest of her message must have been less welcome to the participants. Her unit had limited capacity to deal with these cases, she said, but in any case “a large proportion” of the people who apply for refugee status in Costa Rica do so “because they need to regulate their migratory status, but they do not really qualify for asylum” [my emphasis].

A closer look at asylum claims of Nicaraguans in Costa Rica

Núñez was repeating a point made by the then president of Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado, when numbers of asylum claims first began to grow, after the violent, US-backed coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018. He declared that more than 80% of recent asylum requests came from people who had been living in Costa Rica without documents before Nicaragua’s crisis.^[3] In the four years since this statement, Costa Rica has made a decision on just 7,803 asylum claims from Nicaraguans and has rejected 60% of them.^[4] Even getting an initial appointment to make a claim means a wait of two to three years, according to a Costa Rican NGO that assists refugees.^[5]

Yet the UN behaves as if all the asylum claims are not only justified but are made by people who have recently crossed the border, driven by political persecution in Nicaragua. On June 16, the UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, warned that “sociopolitical, economic and human rights crises” in Nicaragua are forcing thousands to leave their homes, in a wave of migration that is growing in “unprecedented numbers.”^[6] Bachelet said that over the last eight months “the number of Nicaraguan refugees and asylum seekers in Costa Rica has doubled, reaching a total of 150,000 new applicants since 2018.″ She made no reference to the Costa Rican government’s assertions that most of these claims come from Nicaraguans already living there before 2018. Nor did she explain that claims have only “doubled” because significant numbers of them have reached the formal stages after sometimes waiting for years to be processed.

Costa Rica and Nicaragua are economically interdependent

As Jeff Abbott points out in The Progressive, “Nicaraguans have been migrating to Costa Rica for decades. The two countries are historically and geographically tied together, with seasonal migration filling important jobs within the Costa Rican economy.”^[7] He quotes the coordinator of Costa Rica’s  Nicaraguan Links Association, describing the “economic interdependence between the two countries.” In fact, around 385,000 Nicaraguans are officially residents in Costa Rica, with perhaps another 200,000 there without official documents, totaling about 10% of the population. In a typical year, there are more than 900,000 official cross-border movements by Nicaraguans, with similar numbers leaving as there are entering the country: principally, migrant workers traveling back and forth, according to Costa Rica’s seasonal job opportunities (see table). Thousands more make unofficial crossings to avoid paying the border fees.

However, official cross-border movements fell by two-thirds in 2020, during the pandemic. Costa Rica was desperate to keep its Nicaraguan workers, with the then vice-president urging Nicaraguans to stay.^[8] But the country was hit hard by COVID-19, which badly affected its tourist trade: The Economist reported that government debt reached one of the highest levels in Latin America and, in return for loans to bail out the government, the IMF insisted on spending cuts.^[9] Poverty now affects nearly one-third of Costa Rican households.^[10] In 2021, over 5,000 more Nicaraguans left Costa Rica than entered it. Although traffic has increased in the first months of 2022, it is still less than half of pre-pandemic levels. Lack of job opportunities in Costa Rica, for Nicaraguans who have historically worked there, is one of the factors leading to more migration north to the United States.

Of course, Nicaragua was also affected by the pandemic, as well as the additional damage caused in November 2020 by two devastating hurricanes. Its economy grew by 10% in 2021, which returned it to pre-pandemic levels, but growth was still not sufficient for the country to recover from the harsh economic effects of the 2018 coup attempt. It is therefore not surprising that, while far fewer Nicaraguans are traveling to Costa Rica to work, a proportion of those already there are looking to regularize their immigration status by seeking asylum, as Esther Núñez pointed out.

Migrants are instead heading to the United States

The temporary breakdown of the historic economic ties between the two countries has almost certainly given extra impetus to Nicaraguan migration northwards, to the United States. Some 163,000 Nicaraguans have been encountered after crossing the U.S. border since January 2020, while before then numbers amounted to a few hundred each month. While (again) this increase is blamed (by the BBC, for example)^[11] on the “atmosphere of terror” in Nicaragua, the reality is more mundane.

As Tom Ricker points out, writing for the Quixote Center,^[12] while political instability may be a factor, it is certainly no more of a factor than it is for the larger migration flows from the “northern triangle” countries (Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala). Post-COVID economic problems are also as great, perhaps greater, in the northern triangle. But there are factors unique to Nicaragua: reduced job opportunities in Costa Rica, the growing effect of U.S. sanctions, and the relatively more favorable treatment which Nicaraguans have received after crossing the U.S. border. Indeed, the BBC quotes the case of a Nicaraguan who declared himself to the U.S. border patrol, was detained for a few weeks and then released to await a court hearing on his case. Many new arrivals get travel permits to join relatives elsewhere in the U.S., and the government pays for bus and air transport. The perception that well-paying U.S. jobs are readily available to Nicaraguans has been created by advertising in social media and the activities of the “coyotes” who facilitate the journey north.

The UN Refugee Agency gets it wrong – again

However, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) appears to be blind to economic factors driving migration, and ever keener to claim that Nicaraguans are escaping political repression. In its recently issued report on Global Trends 2021,^[13] it picks out Nicaragua on a world map showing forced displacement, and a chart shows Nicaragua ranked #2 in the world for asylum applications last year, below Afghanistan but ahead of Syria (see chart).

Of the 111,600 claims attributed to Nicaraguans in 2021, almost all (102,000) are made in Costa Rica. However, the official Costa Rican figure for claims registered by Nicaraguans in 2021 is only slightly more than half of this, at 52,894. How does UNHCR arrive at the higher figure? Key to understanding the statistics is awareness of the extreme slowness with which Costa Rica deals with asylum applications. By the end of 2021, it had dealt with fewer than 7% of the 116,970 applications from Nicaraguans received over the previous four years. In addition to these formal claims, there are around 50,000 more applications at various stages before registration, many of them lodged before 2021. In correspondence with the UNHCR statistics office, they revealed that “In agreement with the Government of Costa Rica,” they added this backlog of what might be called “pre-applications” to the official tally of registered claims, to produce a total of 102,000. But the Global Trends report, far from making this clear, treats this number as relating to new claims in 2021 alone, and concludes that 102,000 Nicaraguans “fled” their country last year (see picture). The caption maintains:“In 2021 some 102,000 people fled Nicaragua and sought asylum in Costa Rica.”

Disinformation, used by opposition media

Why the UNHCR wants to portray Nicaraguans as being as much at risk as people fleeing Afghanistan and Syria is a question only they can answer. It is a convenient ploy for the Costa Rican government, since it receives UN financial assistance to respond to the plight of Nicaraguans.^[14] However, it also gives added momentum to the media message that Nicaraguans are fleeing persecution. Because the increase in Nicaraguan migration northwards is a focus of media attention, exaggerating the flows southwards to Costa Rica adds to the impression of a country in crisis. This adds fuel to the flames for Nicaragua’s opposition media, of course. For example, Confidencial, a web outlet much cited by international media, gives ever more exaggerated versions of the migration figures. It claimed in June that some 400,000 Nicaraguans had left the country since the beginning of 2020. Yet even adding together the encounters over that period at U.S. borders (163,000), with the accumulation of asylum applications in Costa Rica over the same period (93,000), only produces a total of 256,000. And as we have seen, this does not compare like-with-like.

The empirical evidence indicates  that migration to Costa Rica has almost certainly fallen sharply, while there has been a matching increase in migration to the United States. Economic motives are likely to be predominant, although there are political factors too. However, it is far from an “exodus” and it is ridiculous to create a headline (as the BBC does) suggesting that most people would “rather die” than stay in Nicaragua. Unfortunately, and irresponsibly, the UN Refugee Agency is adding to the scare stories, rather than sticking to the facts.

John Perry, Senior Research Fellow at COHA, is a writer living in Masaya, Nicaragua.

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Sources

[1] “Nicaraguans in Costa Rica: A Manufactured “Refugee” Crisis,” https://www.coha.org/nicaraguans-in-costa-rica-a-manufactured-refugee-crisis/

[2] “Costa Rica ha recibido casi 200.000 solicitudes de refugio en última década,” https://www.swissinfo.ch/spa/d%C3%ADa-refugiados-costa-rica_costa-rica-ha-recibido-casi-200.000-solicitudes-de-refugio-en-%C3%BAltima-d%C3%A9cada/47689826

[3] “Presidente de Costa Rica defiende atención a migración nicaragüense por crisis,” https://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/nacionales/472337-costa-rica-atencion-migracion-nicaraguense-crisis/

[4] Detailed figures quoted are taken from statistical section of the Costa Rica Migration Department website (https://www.migracion.go.cr/Paginas/Centro%20de%20Documentaci%C3%B3n/Estad%C3%ADsticas.aspx), and are correct to April or May 2022, or to December 2021, according to the latest available data.

[5] “More than 20,000 Nicaraguans request asylum in Costa Rica in the first quarter of 2022,” https://www.confidencial.digital/english/more-than-20000-nicaraguans-request-asylum-in-costa-rica-in-the-first-quarter-of-2022/amp/

[6] “UN rights chief warns of ‘unprecedented’ exodus from Nicaragua,” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/16/un-rights-chief-warns-of-unprecedented-exodus-from-nicaragua

[7] “The Other Americans: Is Costa Rica Becoming Another Brick in the U.S. Border Wall?” https://progressive.org/latest/costa-rica-brick-in-us-border-wall-abbott-220420/

[8] “Gobierno pide a residentes nicaragüenses no abandonar el país en los próximos días,” https://semanariouniversidad.com/pais/gobierno-pide-a-residentes-nicaraguenses-no-abandonar-el-pais-en-los-proximos-dias/

[9] “Costa Rica is struggling to maintain its welfare state,” https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2021/04/15/costa-rica-is-struggling-to-maintain-its-welfare-state

[10] “Tres de cada 10 familias se encuentran en situación de pobreza,” https://www.nodal.am/2022/06/costa-rica-tres-de-cada-10-familias-se-encuentran-en-situacion-de-pobreza/

[11] “US immigration: ‘They’d rather die than return to Nicaragua’,” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61735603

[12] “Migration from Nicaragua is up since October 2021,” https://www.quixote.org/migration-from-nicaragua-is-up-since-october-2021/

[13] https://www.unhcr.org/publications/brochures/62a9d1494/global-trends-report-2021.html

[14] “Costa Rica ha recibido casi 200.000 solicitudes de refugio en última década,” https://www.swissinfo.ch/spa/d%C3%ADa-refugiados-costa-rica_costa-rica-ha-recibido-casi-200.000-solicitudes-de-refugio-en-%C3%BAltima-d%C3%A9cada/47689826

By Danny Shaw
New York

On August 7th a new left of center government will take power in Colombia. Many questions remain to be answered but one thing is clear: this historic election marks a break with a long Colombian history of State violence and monolithic conservatism.

On June 19, Gustavo Petro beat his rival, the businessman Rodolfo Hernández, by a margin of 50.44% to 47.03%, after 100% of the country’s polling stations reported their results.^[1] Both his opponent and current president Iván Duque recognized the results, congratulating Petro.^[2]

Despite an information war and decades of violence against the left, over 11 million Colombians successfully mobilized and voted for the historic change.^[3] La Unión Patriótica (UP) was one leftist political party that suffered from this political genocide. Over 5,000 UP leaders were assassinated, including Bernardo Jaramillo, the UP presidential candidate in 1990, along with 21 lawmakers, 70 local councilors and 11 mayors. It is this reality of state and paramilitary violence that has long earned Colombia the infamous designation as the most dangerous place on earth for union leaders and journalists. Human Rights Watch and the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz) have documented the hundreds of assassinations and dozens of massacres that occur in Colombia every year.

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A Unified Continental Uprising?

Petro is the seventh former leftist guerilla fighter to become president in a Latin American nation, joining Daniel Ortega from Nicaragua,  Dilma Rousseff from Brazil, José Mujica from Uruguay, Salvador Sánchez Cerén from El Salvador, and Fidel and Raúl Castro, from Cuba. However, unlike the others from the list, Petro doesn’t belong to the Bolivarian momentum sweeping across the continent. This outcome of former guerrilla leaders, including Petro, serving their countries as presidents, as well as the recent elections of progressive presidents in Bolivia, Honduras, Mexico, and Argentina, shows clearly the weakness of the neoliberal model that is, so far, incapable of solving the poverty, corruption, hierarchies of domination, and chronic inequality that affects most of the Latin American continent. By electing Petro, the Colombian people are sending a strong message of frustration with a failed model that has brought organized crime, social disparities, chronic violence, a 40% poverty rate and militarization of the public sphere to the lives of millions of citizens.

Leaders of the Continent Congratulate Petro and Márquez

Upon hearing the results of the election, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador summarized the long history of violence against the popular sectors of Colombia and concluded: “Today’s triumph can be the end of this tragedy and the horizon for this fraternal and dignified people.”^[4] Former president of Brazil, Luis Lula Ignacio da Silva, declared the importance of this victory for South American and third world integration.^[5] Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, congratulated Petro stating that “new times can now be envisioned.”^[6]  COHA Senior Fellow, Alina Duarte, who has been on the ground in Cali covering the elections, wrote “It is impossible not to feel emotion with the victory of the Colombian people. So many years of war, dispossession and death. Today, a Black woman from Cauca, who was a domestic worker, single mother and defender of the land stands strong against oligarchy. What a beautiful day!”^[7]

In her acceptance speech Francia Márquez pronounced: “After 214 years we achieved a government of the people, a popular government, of those who have calloused hands, the people who have to walk everywhere, the nobodies of Colombia. We are going to seek reconciliation for this country. We are for dignity and social justice.”^[8]

Petro’s speech followed.^[9] With the crowd chanting “libertad,” the president elect called for amnesty for political prisoners, enviromental justice and an end to impunity for State actors responsible for the murder of activists. He continued affirming: “It is time to dialogue with the U.S. government to find other ways of understanding one another…without excluding anybody in the Americas.” He concluded by promising to build “a global example of a government of life, of peace, of social justice and environmental justice.”

Which Way Forward?

The transition in Colombia, long a U.S. ally in the region, raises major questions about which we can only speculate right now.

How will the new people’s government orient towards the nine U.S. military bases in Colombia?^[10]  And how will the new administration, committed to overcoming corruption, confront the reality that Colombia still is the major planetary producer of cocaine, and the main source of the illegal drug in the U.S.?

There are also profound political and economic issues that will be decided in the coming days. Like Gabriel Boric in Chile, Pedro Castillo in Peru and Xiomara Castro in Honduras, Petro and Márquez will now have to balance a left or left of center ideology with the reality of a strong, embedded oligarchy that will fiercely resist all but certain anemic social-democratic reforms.^[11]

The new administration will also have to define itself in relation to the Bolivarian cause of regional integration, multipolarity, and sovereignty. Boric has gone out of his way to condemn the Bolivarian camp, and on the largest global stage, at the exclusionary Summit of the Americas. López Obrador and Argentine president Alberto Fernández have been outspoken about building more links with Venezuela and denouncing U.S. unilateral sanctions. Petro seems to be leaning more in the direction of continental unity and a moderate approach to the current wave of progressive administrations, not declaring the U.S. as an enemy but instead trying to change the focus of the relationship to other more innocuous arenas like the environment. Washington seeks to retain its strong influence on Colombia, considering the warm words of congratulations expressed by its Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. Petro’s plan is to limit the oil projects in the country and move to more sustainable resources. However, this will be a main concern for U.S. energy interests, for sure. And it is to be seen how Petro will face the pressure to accommodate the multimillion dollar U.S. private and public security apparatus, including agencies like the DEA, that operate throughout Colombian territory.

Afro-Colombians and Indigenous Peoples are Now Visible

At the same time, the movement to which Márquez is accountable voted for Petro because of his commitment to the environment and the historic struggles of Afro-descendant and Indigenous peoples.^[12] There is no doubt that Márquez inspired thousands of Colombians from all oppressed sectors of the country, as well as  new young voters, women, and intellectuals who felt moved by this former “housekeeper.” She is the first Black and the first woman ever elected as vice president. But now, the question of the expectations created arises. If the grassroots sees too many compromises with the oligarchy will there be a revolt from within?

Petro and the Troika of Resistance

How will Petro relate to Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia? During the campaign, he distanced himself from the Bolivarian camp because in Colombia the vast majority of people have been taught by a  constant barrage of state propaganda that Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba are “failed states” and “dictatorships.” In the immediate aftermath of the election, there is great interest in Washington as well as Caracas on Petro’s posture towards Venezuela. In a recent interview, Petro artfully stopped short of all out support for the movement for a definitive second Latin American emancipation^[13] but recognized Maduro as President, anticipating enhanced economic links and “civilized bridges” with Venezuela.^[14]

On the other hand, it is likely that the U.S. establishment and State Department have not pushed back on the outcome of the election precisely because of compromises made by the Petro-Márquez campaign. COHA Senior Analyst, William Camacaro, cautions that “the worst that can occur is to see a coalition of supposedly leftist governments–Chile, Peru and Colombia–joining Washington’s narrative against the Bolivarian revolution.”

Ending Impunity

Another major question was raised during the acceptance speeches. Just in the first six months of 2022, 86 social leaders have been murdered by State and paramilitary forces.^[15] Last Sunday June 19, shoulder to shoulder with the president and vice-president elect, one of the mothers of the missing students and protestors asked if there will finally be justice for their sons and daughters who have been disappeared.^[16] Petro’s ability to put an end to these murders and hold perpetrators accountable will be a major test of his leadership.

The Petro–Márquez victory was clearly a cause for celebration in the streets of Colombia and in the diaspora.^[17] But when the fireworks and parties are over the class tensions in Colombia will still abound. The June 19th victory is a moment pregnant with hope for the most vulnerable sectors who have long fought the political and economic domination of the oligarchs and their foreign backers.  But given the long history of oligarchic rule and political capture of significant parts of the State apparatus by organized crime this is also a historical moment wrought with challenges.^[18]

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

Frederick Mills, COHA’s Deputy Director, and Patricio Zamorano, COHA’s Director, collaborated as co-editors of this essay.

[Credit Main Photo: Alina Duarte, from Colombia]

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Sources

^[1] Resultados elecciones Colombia 2022, https://elpais.com/america-colombia/elecciones-presidenciales/2022-06-20/resultados-elecciones-colombia-2022-siga-la-segunda-vuelta-en-vivo.htm; “Former guerrilla wins Colombia’s presidential election, first leftist leader in nation’s history” By Antonio Maria Delgado and Daniela Castro”, https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/colombia/article262685862.html and “Elecciones en Colombia: Gustavo Petro hace historia con su triunfo presidencial”, https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/06/19/espanol/elecciones-colombia-resultados

^[2] https://twitter.com/ivanduque/status/1538649171091234816?s=21&t=Di9BjraLgugUYoghqk_HJQ

^[3] “Elecciones en Colombia: Gustavo Petro hace historia con su triunfo presidencial”, https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/06/19/espanol/elecciones-colombia-resultados

^[4] https://twitter.com/lopezobrador_/status/1538655041203994624

^[5] https://twitter.com/LulaOficial/status/1538659107846213632?s=20&t=yWQojGEvBOAEC9rxKHGOBg

^[6] “Maduro felicita a Gustavo Petro: ‘Nuevos tiempos se avizoran”, https://www.eltiempo.com/mundo/venezuela/gustavo-petro-nicolas-maduro-felicita-al-nuevo-presidente-de-colombia-681464

^[7] https://twitter.com/AlinaDuarte_/status/1538682412963610624?s=20&t=qZub5_HndLrJj2jhYMpHQw

^[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae-tusiZCs8

^[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae-tusiZCs8

^[10] “Colombia: Bases militares de Estados Unidos: neocolonialismo e impunidad”, https://soaw.org/colombia-bases-militares-de-estados-unidos-neocolonialismo-e-impunidad

^[11] https://twitter.com/OVargas52/status/1538780873079656448?s=20&t=DZ7boATDa66VeFLRfaXbYw

^[12] https://twitter.com/AlinaDuarte_/status/1538900416330715136?s=20&t=CAiPapdc2MvpzTRz3hLPlw

^[13] The second emancipation refers to the struggle of emancipation from the domination of Latin America by the United States and overcoming the multiple hierarchies of domination that have been imposed over five centuries by colonization, dependency, and most recently the neoliberal regime. This process of liberation involves constructing forms of democracy with popular participation as well as representative governments that prioritize human life in harmony with the biosphere and are held accountable to constituents.The first emancipation refers to independence from Spain and Portugal.

^[14] “Gustavo Petro ganó: ¿Restablecerá relaciones con el Gobierno de  Maduro en Venezuela?”, https://www.wradio.com.co/2022/06/17/si-gana-gustavo-petro-restableceria-relaciones-con-el-gobierno-maduro-en-venezuela/

^[15] “Asciende a 86 cifra de líderes colombianos asesinados en 2022”, https://www.telesurtv.net/news/colombia-aumento-lideres-asesinados-colombia-20220610-0023.html

^[16] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae-tusiZCs8

^[17] https://twitter.com/danielalozanocu/status/1538718452348862464?s=20&t=DZ7boATDa66VeFLRfaXbYw

^[18] https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1538690747179929600

By Ben Gutman
From Washington D.C.

In a bold and consequential decision with rippling geopolitical implications, Nicaragua recognized the “One-China Principle” and resumed diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for the first time since the beginning of the neoliberal period in 1990.^[1] This was announced December 9, 2021 shortly after a meeting of the China-CELAC Forum in which CELAC’s 32 Latin American member states^[2] agreed to adopt a China-CELAC Joint Action Plan for Cooperation. The strengthening of Chinese ties with Western Hemisphere partners in a forum without US presence comes as a red flag for US hegemony and control over its own “backyard,” which, since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, has been firmly fenced off from other “external” global actors seeking influence in the region. However, unlike the last two centuries of US imperialism, China offers an approach that respects the rule of law and national sovereignty.

Last January 16, the replacement of Taiwanese investment with the sustainable socio-economic development model of the PRC’s “Belt and Road Initiative” in Nicaragua is particularly threatening to regional US economic domination. In 2014, Nicaragua partnered with a Chinese firm to initiate construction of a second shipping lane connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in addition to the current US-dominated Panama Canal.^[3] The anti-Sandinista opposition party Unamos (formerly known as the Sandinista Renovation Movement or MRS), whose leaders frequently met and provided information to the US embassy, helped organize  an NED-engineered pseudo-movement in opposition to the project, which eventually came to a halt during the political violence of 2018.^[4] The potential relaunch of the Nicaraguan canal project could prove to be a pivotal point in the US’s New Cold War and flailing bid to remain the world’s lone superpower.

Nicaragua leaves the OAS, the de facto diplomatic branch of the US in the Americas

On November 19, following the re-election of President Daniel Ortega, the Nicaraguan government announced its withdrawal from the US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS), joining Venezuela and Cuba in what former Bolivian president Evo Morales called “an act of dignity.”^[5] In an official letter to OAS Secretary-General Luis Almagro, Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister Denis Moncada repeated previous condemnation of the OAS as an “instrument of interference and intervention” with the “mission to facilitate hegemony of the United States with its interventionism against the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.”^[6]

As reported by John Perry for COHA, the OAS produced a 16-page report within 48 hours of the alleged “illegitimate elections” that contained no evidence of fraud on election day. In lockstep with the White House’s perverse and ridiculous claim of support for the “inalienable right to democratic self-determination of the Nicaraguan people,” Almagro’s coup-fomenting false narrative of fraud came straight out of the US/OAS playbook used during their facilitation of the 2019 coup d’état against Morales’ MAS party in Bolivia.^[7] Constructed by the US as an anti-socialist alliance of right-wing regimes at the onset of the First Cold War, the OAS and its delegitimization of the 2021 Nicaraguan election reflects continuity of its role as “Ministry of Colonies” of the United States, as it was referred to by Fidel Castro.^[8]

Nicaragua’s withdrawal from the OAS and its reestablishment of relations with the PRC are bold decisions that flex Nicaraguan sovereignty and communicate to developing countries that a path of resistance against Western coercion leads to independence, inclusive development, and promising new opportunities. The Sandinista Front’s defeat of a three-year long US regime change operation, which culminated in the inauguration of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega on January 10, 2022, has translated the sacrifices made by the Nicaraguan people into a concrete plan to further the egalitarian principles of the Sandinista Revolution.

Against a militarized and neoliberal model for Central America

With support from the fastest growing economy in the world with a population of 1.4 billion, in addition to an array of other governments and solidarity movements, Nicaragua has earned the ability to lead a more aggressive charge against Washington’s proposed militarized security and neoliberal development model for Central America.^[9] Such a model which aims to enrich corporations through private investment and austerity to the detriment of the poor and working-class remains the antithesis to the Chinese and Sandinista revolutions. During his inauguration speech, President Ortega elucidated this key point, stating that the “Chinese revolution and the Sandinista revolution [have] the same north, the same path, the same destiny, which is to end poverty.”

As the process of poverty alleviation runs contrary to the exploitative goals of Western imperialists, the US and EU levied coordinated unilateral coercive measures against Nicaraguan officials on the day of President Ortega’s inauguration.^[10] However, the strategy of relentless hybrid warfare used to isolate and punish “enemy states” like Nicaragua has lost some of its impact. “The unipolar world is over. It’s a multipolar world,” said Black Alliance for Peace’s Margaret Kimberley at the inauguration. The Nicaraguan people’s defeat of US regime change attempts over the last three years is a remarkable accomplishment that helped the paradigm shift towards a multi-polar world. However, it is important to recognize the inevitable sacrifices that come with resistance, to dissect imperial destabilization strategies, and to reflect on the manufactured policies that have brought us to where we are today.

Revisiting the 2018 Attempted Coup, and the US media supported narrative

In Nicaragua-based journalist Ben Norton’s investigation titled “How USAID Created Nicaragua’s Anti-Sandinista Media Apparatus, Now under Money Laundering Investigation,” Norton presents documented evidence that the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation received more than $7 million of the $10 million funneled to Nicaraguan opposition media from the US’s soft-power arm the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) between 2014 and 2021.^[11] The majority of this funding was distributed amongst some 25 publications including Chamorro Foundation-owned outlets that are widely quoted by the international press and elite US think tanks like the Open Society Foundation, which characterized El Nuevo Diario, Confidencial, and La Prensa (all Chamorro owned) as “the most important online news providers” in Nicaragua.^[12] As reported by Norton, the foreign funding and cultivation of these opposition and media groups led to arrests under Nicaragua’s law 1055, which was then framed by the corporate media as an authoritarian crackdown against opposition leaders.

Many international corporate media outlets like the BBC framed “Nicaragua’s worsening crisis” in 2018 as “unexpected” and a result of grassroots movements peacefully protesting against a corrupt dictatorship.^[13] This false narrative was exposed by John Perry in a report for The Grayzone titled “A Response to Misinformation on Nicaragua: It Was a Coup, Not a ‘Massacre.’” First, Perry points out that even anti-Ortega mainstream academics had admitted that US institutions like the USAID and NED were “laying the groundwork for insurrection,” debunking the narrative that the protests were organic and fortuitous.^[14] Second, Perry makes it clear that in an attempt to facilitate the established “peaceful protester” narrative by white-washing violence perpetrated by coup-supporters, academics and corporate media engaged in the systematic omission of inconvenient facts including the murder of 22 police officers and the torture of Sandinista civilians. The Nicaragua-based anti-imperialist collective Tortilla con Sal published independent researcher Enrique Hendrix’s in-depth analysis of this bad-faith framing as well as additional evidence backing claims of torture used against Sandinistas.

Much like corporate media and billionaire-funded foundations, a Nicaraguan human rights industry intricately connected and funded by US and European governments pushed propaganda, including the decontextualization of deaths and faulty death count figures, to provide cover for US regime change goals masquerading as unprovoked government repression.^[15] In the article “The Rise and Fall of Nicaragua’s ‘Human Rights’ organizations” published in the Alliance for Global Justice’s NicaNotes, John Perry relays how three vocally anti-Sandinista human rights groups wielded disproportionate influence over the narratives presented in international bodies such as Amnesty International and the UN Commission for Human Rights (UNCHR). For example, included in the UNCHR’s 2018 report on Nicaragua were detailed references to the Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights (ANPDH), which was created by the Reagan administration to whitewash Contra atrocities and received $88,000 from the NED and $348,000 from other US sources in 2018.

In June of 2019, to the dismay of many Sandinistas whose family members were murdered during the coup attempt, the Nicaraguan government passed an Amnesty Law pardoning and expunging the records of those involved in violent and treasonous acts as part of a national dialogue with the opposition.^[16] This clemency came even after the opposition refused to ask the United States to end illegal unilateral coercive measures packaged as the 2018 NICA Act (passed in the US House of Representatives with zero opposition by a 435-0 margin), which opposition activists themselves had requested in 2015.^[17] During coverage of the peace and reconciliation process and in a continuation of the 2018 information warfare campaign, corporate media outlets like Reuters took a rather one-sided approach highlighting the law’s “protection to police and others who took part in a violent clampdown on anti-government protesters,” but failed to mention the violent acts committed against the police by these so-called anti-government protesters.^[18]

US Hybrid Warfare Revisited during the 2021 Nicaraguan Presidential Election

In the months prior to the November 7 election, the US government and its affiliated ecosystem of obedient corporate media, social media, and hawkish think tanks took aim at Nicaragua in an effort to further isolate the nation with the ultimate goal of regime change to a more business-friendly neoliberal leadership.

A USAID regime change document leaked to independent Nicaraguan journalist William Grigsby in July 2020 and analyzed in John Perry’s “The US Contracts Out its Regime Change Operation in Nicaragua” provides useful insight into US destabilization plans. This RAIN or Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua document provides Terms of Reference for a contract to hire a company to oversee the “transition to democracy” in Nicaragua. The word “transition,” an obvious euphemism for regime change, is used more than 60 times throughout the document to describe different post-election scenarios. In the case of a “delayed transition” or Sandinista victory, the hired company would provide “research and planning for USAID and for civil society leadership with discrete technical assistance.” In other words, the company would continue USAID’s work subverting Nicaragua’s democratic process by funding, training, and directing opposition groups and media hostile to the FSLN.

However, despite clear evidence that the US was engaged in a multidimensional destabilization campaign before, during, and after the 2018 coup attempt, even progressive publications like NACLA failed to accurately report on events in Nicaragua. In the article “How Can Some Progressives Get Basic Information About Nicaragua So Wrong?” John Perry and Rick Stirling dismantle a popular State Department narrative promoted by NACLA that the November 7 election was rigged because seven potential candidates were prevented from running for president, by laying out the real crimes of which they are accused and the dubiousness of their candidacies. While the corporate media pushed this narrative ad nauseum regarding Nicaragua, it was almost completely absent prior to the 2021 Ecuadorian presidential election during which neoliberal president Lenin Moreno jailed, exiled, and banned Correístas from running in elections.^[19]

In addition to news media propaganda, a bizarre censorship campaign launched by social media monopoly Facebook in the days leading up to the November 7 election silenced around 1,300 Nicaragua-based accounts run by pro-Sandinista media outlets, journalists, and activists on Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram, as reported by The Grayzone’s Ben Norton.^[20] Facebook justified this action by claiming that the censored accounts were part of a “troll farm run by the government of Nicaragua and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) party.”^[21] In John Perry’s COHA article titled “Facebook Does the US Government’s Censorship Work in Nicaraguan Elections”, Perry points out that “many commentators suffered double censorship: blocked because they were falsely accused of being bots, then prevented from proving that the accusations were false when they posted videos of themselves as real people.” Facebook and other tech giants like Google and Microsoft have an extensive history of collaboration with the U.S. security state, often enjoying lucrative U.S. Defense Department contracts, and are known to have a revolving door with the public sector.^[22] Norton shows this connection by exposing Facebook’s Head of Security Policy Nathaniel Gleicher as the former director for cybersecurity policy at the White House National Security Council who had also worked at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Despite intense and ongoing hybrid warfare targeting the integrity of Nicaragua’s 2021 presidential election, 65% of the eligible 4.4 million Nicaraguans voted and 75% of those voters chose to re-elect Comandante Daniel Ortega of the Sandinista Front. While the Nicaraguan government did prevent the OAS from sending observers given its role in the 2019 Bolivian coup, there were 165 election observers and 67 journalists from 27 countries present on November 7.^[23] Members of delegations from the U.S. and Canada, including COHA’s Jill Clark-Gollub, who observed the elections held a press conference during which they characterized the election process as “efficient, transparent, with widespread turnout and participation of opposition parties.”^[24] In the COHA report “Despite US led Dirty Campaign, Nicaraguans Came Out in Force in Support of the FSLN”, Clark-Gollub expressed her disbelief that corporate media and the Biden administration had declared the vote a fraud with as few as 20% of the electorate turned out to vote. “This flies in the face of my own experience,” Clark-Gollub said.^[25] However, despite US and NATO rejection of the election results, 153 sovereign nations around the world supported Nicaraguan democracy by recognizing the election results at the United Nations.^[26]

Conclusion: A Brighter Future for Inclusive Economic Development in Nicaragua?

After more than a century of US aggression, including three decades of global hegemonic control, Obama’s “pivot” to Asia in 2016 marked a paradigm shift and the start of a New Cold War against China. The People’s Republic of China’s unparalleled economic growth and eagerness to use its deep coffers to jumpstart economic development projects in the “third world” is a direct threat to neoliberal capitalist hegemony, as China offers developing nations an alternative to the predatory debt traps sprung by western lending institutions like the World Bank and IMF.

Mere weeks after Nicaragua’s resumption of diplomatic relations with the PRC, Chinese government representative Yu Bo extended an invitation to Nicaragua to join its Belt and Road Initiative during the newly established Chinese embassy’s flag-raising ceremony in Managua. Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister Denis Moncada responded to the invitation with approval stating, “we are sure that we will continue working together, strengthening each day the fraternal ties of friendship, cooperation, investment, [and] expanding communication channels with the Belt and Road…”.

This bilateral economic partnership brings a potential scaffolding with which the “pueblo presidente” can “start with a clean slate” and get back on the road to the progress being made prior to April 2018. In the words of Comandante Ortega, this means “building peace to combat poverty…so that there can be roads and paths…so families can feel confident; their children can feel confident in their work; [and so] they feel confident in having a dignified life.” Nicaraguans can also feel confident that economic development in partnership with the Chinese will not come with the relinquishment of national sovereignty through coerced neoliberal structural adjustment programs or debt trap gangsterism.

If the Sandinista government chooses to reject future development proposals put forth by China through Belt and Road, they can expect good faith negotiation without the threat of violent hybrid warfare favored by the U.S. and NATO. In a 2019 interview,  Jamaican-British rapper Akala explains this key difference in the context of Jamaican participation in the Belt and Road Initiative: “there are several projects that the Chinese have proposed in Jamaica that the Jamaican people said ‘no’ to [so] the Jamaican government had to say ‘no’… what was the Chinese response? Was it to send the CIA in? Was it to overthrow the Jamaican democracy? Was it to cut off aid to Jamaica? No. They said ok, we proposed a business deal and you said no. Here’s another one.”

Ben Gutman is an independent writer, researcher, and organizer pursuing an MA in Global Communication from The George Washington University. He is currently working on his capstone research and digital media project on the outsourcing of US border militarization to Guatemala in collaboration with the Guatemala Solidarity Project and the Promoters of Migrant Liberation.    

Jill-Clark Gollub, COHA’s Asistant Editor, and Patricio Zamorano, COHA’s Director, contributed as editors of this essay

[Main photo: video-screenshot from Kawsachun News]

---

Sources

[1] Escalante, Camila. “China and Nicaragua to Collab on New Multipolar World.” Kawsachun News, 10 Dec. 2021, kawsachunnews.com/china-and-nicaragua-to-collab-on-new-multipolar-world.

[2] Officially formalized in 2011 as an alternative to the OAS, CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) is a cooperative venture among developing nations.

[3] Voltaire Network. “Nicaragua Could Bring Canal Project Back to Life.” Voltaire Network, 12 Dec. 2021, www.voltairenet.org/article215032.html.

[4] Norton, B. (2021, November 18). From Nicaraguan revolutionaries to US embassy informants: How Washington recruited ex-sandinistas like Dora María Téllez and her mrs party. The Grayzone. Retrieved January 15, 2022, from https://thegrayzone.com/2021/11/05/nicaragua-us-informant-dora-maria-tellez-mrs/

[5] JF, teleSUR/. “Withdrawal of Nicaragua from OAS Is an Act of Dignity: Morales.” News | teleSUR English. teleSUR, November 22, 2021. https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Withdrawal-Of-Nicaragua-From-OAS-Is-An-Act-Of-Dignity-Morales-20211122-0002.html.

[6] Norton, Benjamin. “Nicaragua Leaves US-Controlled, Coup-Plotting OAS: ‘We Are Not a Colony.’” Medium, 19 Nov. 2021, benjaminnorton.medium.com/nicaragua-leaves-us-controlled-coup-plotting-oas-we-are-not-a-colony-2ffe83c319ae.

[7] Curiel, John, and Jack Williams. “Bolivia Dismissed Its October Elections as Fraudulent. Our Research Found No Reason to Suspect Fraud.” Washington Post, 27 Feb. 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/26/bolivia-dismissed-its-october-elections-fraudulent-our-research-found-no-reason-suspect-fraud.

[8] Staff, Reuters. “Castro Says Cuba Doesn’t Want to Rejoin ‘Vile’ OAS.” U.S., 15 Apr. 2009, www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-castro-oas-sb-idUKTRE53E07K20090415.

[9] Chomsky, A. (2021, March 30). Will Biden’s central american plan slow migration (or speed it up)? TomDispatch.com. Retrieved January 15, 2022, from https://tomdispatch.com/will-bidens-central-american-plan-slow-migration-or-speed-it-up/

[10] Al Jazeera. (2022, January 10). US slaps new sanctions on Nicaragua on Ortega’s Inauguration Day. Elections News | Al Jazeera. Retrieved January 16, 2022, from https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/1/10/us-slaps-new-sanctions-on-nicaragua-on-ortegas-inauguration-day

[11] Norton, Ben. “How USAID Created Nicaragua’s Anti-Sandinista Media Apparatus, Now under Money Laundering Investigation.” The Grayzone, 26 June 2021, thegrayzone.com/2021/06/01/cia-usaid-nicaragua-right-wing-media.

[12] Perry, John. “NPR Should Ask Where Nicaraguan Non-Profits’ Money Comes From.” CounterPunch.Org, 23 May 2021, www.counterpunch.org/2021/05/24/npr-should-ask-where-nicaraguan-non-profits-money-comes-from.

[13] BBC News. “Downward Spiral: Nicaragua’s Worsening Crisis.” BBC News, 16 July 2018, www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44398673.

[14] Waddell, Benjamin. “Laying the Groundwork for Insurrection: A Closer Look at the U.S. Role in Nicaragua’s Social Unrest.” Global Americans, 10 July 2020, theglobalamericans.org/2018/05/laying-groundwork-insurrection-closer-look-u-s-role-nicaraguas-social-unrest.

[15] Perry, John. “NicaNotes: The Rise and Fall of Nicaragua’s ‘Human Rights’ Organizations.” Alliance for Global Justice, 21 Aug. 2019, afgj.org/nicanotes-the-rise-and-fall-of-nicaraguas-human-rights-organizations.

[16] teleSUR/ov-MV. “Nicaragua Approves Amnesty Law To Bring Peace.” News | TeleSUR English, 9 June 2019, www.telesurenglish.net/news/Nicaragua-Approves-Amnesty-Law-To-Bring-Peace-20190609-0001.html.

[17] Nicanotes: The revolution won’t be stopped: Nicaragua advances despite US unconventional warfare. Alliance for Global Justice. (2020, July 22). Retrieved January 16, 2022, from https://afgj.org/nicanotes-the-revolution-wont-be-stopped-nicaragua-advances-despite-us-unconventional-warfare

[18] Lopez, Ismael. “Nicaraguan Congress Approves Ortega-Backed Amnesty Law.” U.S., 9 June 2019, www.reuters.com/article/us-nicaragua-amnesty-idUSKCN1TA00U.

[19] Emersberger, J. (2021, February 16). Ignoring repression and dirty tricks in coverage of Ecuador’s election. FAIR. Retrieved January 19, 2022, from https://fair.org/home/ignoring-repression-and-dirty-tricks-in-coverage-of-ecuadors-election/

[20] Norton, Ben. “Meet the Nicaraguans Facebook Falsely Branded Bots and Censored Days before Elections.” The Grayzone, 2 Nov. 2021, thegrayzone.com/2021/11/02/facebook-twitter-purge-sandinista-nicaragua.

[21] Company, Facebook. “October 2021 Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report.” Meta, 5 Nov. 2021, about.fb.com/news/2021/11/october-2021-coordinated-inauthentic-behavior-report.

[22] Levine, Yasha. Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet. Icon Books Ltd, 2019.

[23] Norton, Ben. “Debunking Myths about Nicaragua’s 2021 Elections, under Attack by USA/EU/OAS.” The Grayzone, 12 Nov. 2021, thegrayzone.com/2021/11/11/nicaragua-2021-elections.

[24] Escalante, Camilla. “North Americans Debunk US & OAS Claims on Nicaragua Election.” Kawsachun News, 10 Nov. 2021, kawsachunnews.com/north-americans-debunk-us-oas-claims-on-nicaragua-election.

[25] Clark-Gollub, Rita Jill. “Despite US Led Dirty Campaign, Nicaraguans Came Out in Force in Support of the FSLN.” Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 12 Nov. 2021, www.coha.org/despite-us-led-dirty-campaign-nicaraguans-came-out-in-force-in-support-of-the-fsln.

[26] Kohn, Richard. “NicaNotes: Nicaragua’s Election Was Free and Fair.” Alliance for Global Justice, 2 Dec. 2021, afgj.org/nicanotes-12-02-2021.

By Joe Emersberger

Both Ecuador and Nicaragua elected a president and national assembly this year.  Ecuador’s elections took place in February, with the second round of its presidential election in April. Nicaragua’s took place on November 7. Just by scanning headlines in Western media, as most readers do, it’s easy to tell which was a U.S. ally and which was an official enemy.

(By “enemy,” I mean a government that poses no threat to the U.S.,  but still gets hit with  crippling sanctions, or worse, that it endures as best it can.)

A search of the Nexis news database for the word “crackdown” in articles about Ecuador and Nicaragua in newspapers in the U.S.,  Canada, and the UK for a five-month period before the election in each country reveals a significant contrast between reporting on Nicaragua and Ecuador. In the case of Ecuador, not a single headline alleged any kind of  crackdown on opposition to the government. In the case of Nicaragua, 55 headlines alleged an unjustifiable crackdown. Some examples:

• “Nicaragua’s Democracy Hangs by Thread as Crackdown Deepens” (New York Times, 6/6/21)
• “Human Rights Groups Have Eyes on Growing Crackdown; UN, Other Organizations Fear Upcoming Elections Won’t Be Fair and Free” (Toronto Star, 6/27/21)
• “Nicaragua Arrests Seventh Presidential Contender in November 7 vote” (Independent, 7/24/21)
• “We Are in This Nightmare’: Nicaragua Continues Its Brazen Crackdown” (Guardian, 8/12/21)
• “‘Everyone Is on the List’: Fear Grips Nicaragua as It Veers to Dictatorship” (New York Times, 9/5/21)
• “Nicaraguan Business Leaders Arrested in Ortega’s Pre-Election Crackdown” (Guardian, 10/22/21)
• “An Election in Nicaragua That Could Further Dim Democracy; Daniel Ortega Runs for His Fourth Consecutive Term as President of Nicaragua Virtually Uncontested, Having Imprisoned All His Political Rivals” (Christian Science Monitor, 11/4/21)

There was actually a crackdown in Nicaragua, but it was a defensible crackdown on persons receiving (and laundering) money from the U.S.,  a foreign power that has victimized Nicaragua for over a century. If one disregards that history, it’s easy, especially from afar, to take a libertarian position that the crackdown was unjustified. That was clearly the western media’s approach.

A U.S. crackdown since 1912

Remarkably, Daniel Ortega is the only president Nicaragua has had since 1912 who has not owed his position to murderous U.S. support. From 1912 until 1933, U.S. occupation troops ran the country directly, and structured the Nicaraguan military to ensure that brutal pro-US dictatorships (primarily of the Somoza family) would govern for decades afterwards.

Ortega first became president in 1979, after his Sandinista political movement overthrew the US-backed Somoza dictatorship in an armed revolution. Ortega was elected in 1984 (the first free and fair elections Nicaragua ever had–Extra!, 10-11/87), despite the country having to contend with US-backed terrorists known as the Contras, and with ruinous sanctions the U.S. imposed on the country throughout the 1980s (FAIR.org, 8/23/18).

By 1990, the Contra war had claimed 30,000 lives and, combined with U.S. sanctions, left the economy devastated. U.S. allies, backed by seditious media outlets in Nicaragua like La Prensa, secured Ortega’s defeat at the polls that year. The real winner was U.S. President George H.W. Bush. Allegations that Putin’s Russia influenced the 2016 election in the United States by hacking the DNC’s emails are a joke compared to what the U.S. undeniably achieved in 1990 in Nicaragua: The U.S. used terrorism and economic blackmail against an entire country to achieve an “electoral” victory in 1990.

In its coverage of the 2021 election, Reuters (11/5/21) referred to the 1990 triumph of U.S. aggression in Nicaragua by saying that Ortega’s “defeat left a deep mark on the leftist leader. Battling 16 years to regain the presidency, his opponents say he is now determined to retain power at any cost.” The article’s headline was “Ortega and Murillo, the Presidential Couple With an Iron Grip on Nicaragua.” (Rosario Murillo, Ortega’s spouse, is also his vice president.)

Ironically, the article actually mentioned some facts that expose the iron grip the U.S. has usually had on Nicaragua for over a century–referring to Somoza, for example, as “the last dictator of a US-backed family dynasty established in the 1930s.” But the article did not link that history to the grave threat the U.S. poses to Nicaragua today. That’s something it could easily have done by quoting independent critics of U.S. foreign policy who would have made that connection.

Ortega’s electoral record

Ortega regained the presidency in the 2006 elections, one of many left-leaning Latin American presidents (like Rafael Correa in Ecuador) who won elections in this century, after a disastrous neoliberal era under right-wing governments. By 2017, impressive economic gains by the Ortega  government made it the most popular in the Americas among 18 surveyed by Latinobarómetro, a Chile-based pollster funded by Western governments, including the US. The 67% approval rate for the Nicaraguan government in that poll was actually higher than the 47% of eligible voters who handed Ortega his 2016 re-election electoral victory (72% of the vote on a 66% turnout).

By December 2020, Latinobarómetro found Ortega’s government  enjoyed 42% approval (in a report that repeatedly called Nicaragua a “dictatorship”)–still above average in the region, despite the US-backed coup attempt in 2018, subsequent U.S. sanctions and threats, as well as the pandemic. That points to a substantial hardcore base of support for Ortega–and poll numbers (again, from a hostile pollster funded by hostile governments) that are not out of line with the 46% of the eligible vote Ortega won on November 7 (in an election with 65% turnout).  It’s worth stressing that Ortega is the historic leader of the movement that overthrew the Somoza family, a fact that by itself makes the existence of a hardcore Sandinista base easy to credit.

In mid-October, less than a month before the 2021 election, Nicaragua’s right-wing media hyped a poll by CID Gallup claiming that Ortega’s support had dropped to 19%, but the same poll suggested turnout in the election (in which there was allegedly no opposition) would be between 51% and 68%. It claimed 51% were very likely to vote and another 17% somewhat likely. In the wake of Ortega’s win, that contradictory finding in the CID Gallup poll (evidence that it was badly skewed in favor of anti-Sandinistas) was ignored to allege massive abstention of about 80%.

As usual, pollsters, independent election observers and independent journalists on the ground who refuted Western media claims about the election were simply ignored, in some cases suspended from social media, and in one instance subjected to vulgar abuse by a prominent U.S. pundit.

Coup attempt of 2018

In 2018, Ortega’s unpopular US-backed opponents clearly applied the lesson of 1990: Violence and sabotage backed by a superpower and its propagandists may eventually produce an “electoral” victory. Violent protests aimed at driving Ortega from office were launched in 2018 from mid-April until late July.

La Prensa–an anti-Sandinista paper that has been funded by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, which ex-Contra spokesperson Edgar Chammoro described as a CIA “propaganda asset” (Extra!, 10–11/87)–predictably supported the 2018 coup attempt, claiming in June of that year that 70% of Nicaragua’s roads were blocked by protesters. Imagine how violent and well-armed U.S. protesters would need to be to block a large majority of the country’s roads for months. In 2011, 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters were immediately arrested for blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge for a few hours. In fact, careful assessments of the 2018 coup attempt in Nicaragua, that relied heavily on anti-Sandinista sources,  showed that the opposition was responsible for about as many deaths as the government and its supporters.

The coup attempt was defeated, but it gave the U.S. a “human rights” pretext to vilify and sanction Nicaragua’s government. Independent journalist John Perry, a Nicaraguan resident, recently noted in FAIR.org (11/3/21) that hundreds of people involved in the coup attempt actually benefited from an amnesty law passed in 2019. But Washington demands total impunity–no jail time and full political rights–for all the criminals it supports. Ben Norton explained the consequences of pressure the U.S.,  OAS and prominent human rights NGOs applied for the release of alleged poltical prisoners: “Droves of criminals with lengthy rap sheets have been freed, and one has already murdered a pregnant 22-year-old woman”.

In other cases, charges against Ortega’s opponents stemmed from  the “passage of a ‘foreign agents’ law designed to track foreign funding of organizations operating in the country,” as the Associated Press (9/2/21) put it. AP neglected to clarify that the law is aimed at disrupting the free flow of U.S. government funds to political groups that indisputably tried to overthrow Ortega in 2018 (COHA, 6/8/21). The wire service obscured these key facts by using vague language and by presenting facts as mere allegations made by Ortega, who “has claimed that organizations receiving funding from abroad were part of a broader conspiracy to remove him from office in 2018.”

Further highlighting that Ortega’s opponents and its U.S. sponsors feel entitled to overthrow the government, the “foreign agents” law indirectly led to charges against children of Violeta Chamorro, the ex-president who in 1990 scored an“electoral” victory over Ortega that was a product of US-backed terrorism.  The Chamorro Foundation received millions in USAID funding until it shut itself down in protest at the “foriegn agents” law. Ortega’s government then charged its director Cristiana María Chamorro Barríos with money laundering based on the allegation that she did not properly account for where all that money went.

No opposition in DC

On November 3, as Ortega and the Sandinistas were days away from an electoral victory, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to intensify sanctions on Nicaragua’s government. Reuters (11/3/21) reported that the “House of Representatives passed the bill 387–35 with strong bipartisan support, following a similar vote by the Senate this week.”  At the same time, U.S.-based social media corporations cracked down on pro-Sandinista accounts. In other words, U.S. state and private power united in attacking Nicaragua’s government while hypocritically alleging that Ortega had no real opposition.

Perry noted that among the participants on November 7 were “two opposition parties that formed governments between 1990 and 2007, and still have significant support.” But the larger point is that Ortega’s most dangerous opposition resides in Washington, and it has always tormented Nicaragua with complete impunity.

A popular government defending itself against a violent US-backed opposition was depicted by Western media as instigating an unprovoked crackdown on defenders of democracy–ignoring the US’s grim record of successfully crushing Nicaraguan democracy since 1912.

Betrayal in Ecuador

That’s not the treatment the media dished out to the former president of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, during elections this year.

The crackdown in Ecuador that merited no accusatory headlines was driven by a stunning betrayal of Ecuadorian voters in 2017. That year, then-Vice President Lenín Moreno ran as a staunch loyalist to left wing incumbent President Rafael Correa, who held office from 2007 to 2017. But after defeating right-wing banker Guillermo Lasso at the polls, Moreno proceeded to implement Lasso’s political platform for the next four years.

Western media outlets were delighted with Moreno’s cynicism (FAIR.org, 2/4/18, Counterpunch.org, 2/9/18). Voters were not so delighted, however, and by 2020 his approval rating fell to 9%, according to Latinobarómetro.

To pull off his betrayal of the political movement that got him elected, Moreno jailed, exiled and banned Correa loyalists from running in elections throughout his years in office (CounterPunch.org, 12/21/18, 10/15/19, 12/3/19; FAIR.org, 2/16/21). Moreno’s pretext was that Correa (whom he had always praised extravagantly) was actually corrupt, and had left the country heavily indebted. The lie about Ecuador’s debt was especially easy to refute, but Western media happily spread it anyway (FAIR.org 10/23/19).

Moreno’s harassment of WikiLeaks‘ Julian Assange (whom Correa had protected for years after he sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London) also failed to damage Moreno’s credibility with Western media (FAIR.org, 11/3/18). Moreno eventually handed Assange over to UK police (FAIR.org, 4/12/19), thereby helping the U.S. crack down on press freedom around the world.

Banned for ‘psychic influence’

This year, Lasso ran against Andrés Arauz, a pragmatic leftist who tried to register Correa as his running mate. Lasso’s win in the fairly close runoff election owed an enormous debt to the persecution of Correa loyalists that Moreno had perpetrated for years (MRonline.org, 5/6/21).

Shortly before the election, Correa was banned from running for vice president, thanks to a farcical judgment (sped through judicial appeals in record time, despite the pandemic, to beat the electoral calendar) that found him guilty of “psychic influence” over officials who had taken bribes. Correa was therefore not just banned from running: He’d also be jailed if he returned to Ecuador.

Absurd rulings like this were possible because Moreno trampled all over judicial independence while in office. In 2018, a body that Moreno handpicked fired and appointed replacements to the Judicial Council and the entire Constitutional Court. (Counterpunch, 10/12/2018) The same handpicked body (the CPCCS-T in its Spanish acronym) also appointed a new attorney general and a new electoral council. [1]

Correa’s former vice president (Jorge Glas) has been jailed since 2017 on similarly trumped-up grounds.  Prominent Correa allies like Ricardo Patiño and Gabriela Rivadeneira remain in exile. Electoral authorities even banned the use of Correa’s image in campaign ads by his loyalists.

Several months before the election, a Moreno cabinet secretary openly bragged about the crackdown in a TV interview (FAIR.org 2/16/21), saying that it was a “big risk being a Correaist candidate, because the justice system will have its eyes on those who have not yet fled or been convicted.”

A key to Moreno’s crackdown was that Ecuador’s state media and big private TV were united in vilifying Correa and his loyalists. Weeks before the runoff election in April, Moreno’s attorney general appeared before the media with her Colombian counterpart to bolster absurd accusations that Arauz had been funded by the Colombian rebel group ELN.  Ten days later, the U.S. State Department singled out Ecuador’s attorney general as one of its “anti corruption champions.” (Incidentally, Arauz has just come under investigation again in retaliation for explaining exactly how Pandora Papers revelations prove that Lasso’s entire 2021 campaign was illegal.)

As Moreno’s term ended, the New York Times (2/7/21) portrayed this cynical authoritarian as a “highly unpopular” but sincere reformer–a man who merely punished corruption, and who genuinely worried that “leaders with too tight a grip on power are unhealthy for democracies.”

Correa and his political movement had become dominant in Ecuador for a decade by winning elections and implementing successful policies that broke with neoliberalism.  A ten year break from neoliberalism was a threat to democracy that warranted a crackdown in the eyes of the New York Times, not over a century (and counting) of a lethal U.S. assault on Nicaragua’s sovereignty.

Concealing Western hypocrisy is essential to helping the world’s most powerful state behave like a global dictator, and Western media reliably provide that assistance.

Research assistance: Jasmine Watson

[Main photo credit: by Becca Mohally Renk, from JHC-CDCA]

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NOTE

[1] The National Assembly had 20 days to choose seven standing and seven alternates from a shortlist of 21 names Moreno gave them. Any posts left vacant by the National Assembly would be automatically filled from Moreno’s list taking into account in the order in which Moreno listed them;ee “Lenín Moreno presentó los 21 nombres de las ternas para el Cpccs transitorio,” El Comercio, February 19, 2018

By Patricio Zamorano
Washington DC

Brian Nichols, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, visited Honduras the week before the presidential elections. His stated purpose was to “encourage the peaceful, transparent conduct of free and fair national elections.” He did not meet with the de facto President, Juan Orlando Hernández.

The gesture was clear and illuminating on two levels.

First, it showed that the U.S. government had already accepted the irrefutable truth that the center-left coalition led by Xiomara Castro would earn the votes of the Honduran people (as we go to publication, she was in the lead with 53.6%).^[1] Honduras’ 5.1 million voters would also elect three vice-presidents, 298 mayors, 128 deputies to the national legislature, and 20 to the Central American Parliament.

Second, Nichols’ gesture of not meeting with the de facto president once again made clear that Honduras’ future continues to be overwhelmingly determined by the United States. The U.S. maintains its largest military base in Latin America^[2] at Palmerola and supported the narco-government of Juan Orlando Hernández for eight long years, with a clear electoral fraud in the middle of it.

The sanctions on Honduras that never happened

Supporting a third electoral fraud in Honduras would have been a political indecency that even the Northern superpower couldn’t stomach this time, as it did in 2017.^[3] In 2014 there were serious accusations of fraud to which the international community turned a deaf ear. And in 2017, even the Organization of American States (OAS) certified there was fraud when it publicly stated that it could not declare Hernández to be the winner and called for new elections.^[4] But the pressure for “hemispheric democracy” stopped there; the OAS never suspended Honduras from its Permanent Council in Washington, kept its country office in Tegucigalpa open, and basically gave the de facto Hernández government completely normal treatment. There were never any U.S. sanctions against Hernandez’ narco state. If that is not a scandalous double standard, what is?

In the meantime, the U.S. courts did not follow the Trump and Biden script. An investigation by New York prosecutors into drug trafficking by the de facto president’s brother, Tony Hernández,^[5] has placed Juan Orlando Hernández himself on the record as protecting drug traffickers, paying bribes, and engaging in organized crime.^[6]

Military presence of the United States in a narco-state

The levels of violence, crime, and corruption in Honduras have reached historic levels, causing the massive migration of thousands of desperate families to the United States’ southern border (Honduras has the third highest homicide rate in the Americas per 100,000 population^[7]). All of this is occurring under the watchful gaze of the U.S. military in Honduras, including troops and intelligence personnel who, for some reason, are almost comically ineffective against the organized crime that uses Honduras as a trans-shipment point for illegal drugs coming out of Colombia—another U.S. ally.

How is it that Juan Orlando Hernández’ family and dozens of drug cartels can operate so comfortably in the country while under the sophisticated technological surveillance of the U.S. government on Honduran soil? The United States, the biggest consumer of illegal drugs on the planet, is feeding the criminal network that has been rocking Honduras and all of Central America. This crisis also directly impacts Mexico, which has had to deal with major migration pressures at its own borders. Policies from the new Xiomara Castro administration will have influence in this area.

Political and economic feudalism kills thousands

Honduras’ history is one of political feudalism that continues to keep the country trapped among old political forces that have not been able to complete the urgent task of re-founding the country with a new social contract. Each day that the country remains in chaos, dozens of Hondurans lose their lives, are kidnapped, wounded, or forced to flee their country.

The United States and the OAS are directly responsible for the debacle of the past 12 years. The 2009 coup d’etat that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya exposed the fragility of  Honduras’ political institutions. One of the justifications of the coup was that the Zelaya administration was discussing the possibility of reforming the Constitution to democratize it, including opening the possibility of re-electing the president. Just a few years later, the constitutional branch of the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hernández to allow that exact thing to happen; it issued a de facto authorization, without amending the Constitution, so that Juan Orlando Hernández could be re-elected even though Article 239 of the Constitution forbids it.^[8] This time there was no coup or complaint from the U.S.

In 2021 the U.S. and OAS seem to be washing their hands of this scandalous past, eliminating from the equation an undesirable de facto president who is no longer capable of serving the northern country’s geopolitical strategy when his party’s candidate, Nasry Asfura, from Partido Nacional (National Party) only garnered 34% of the vote.

A new stage of uncertainty

The isolation to which the U.S. subjected Juan Orlando Hernández these past few months simply reflected how unpopular the de facto president had become.

The big question is how the U.S. will behave toward the new president, Xiomara Castro. She is the wife of deposed president Manuel Zelaya, a large landholder who underwent a major ideological shift while in office, establishing close relations with the Bolivarian countries and becoming an ally of Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela during the deceased president’s halcyon years.

The alliance that got Xiomara Castro elected includes center-left forces that will face the arduous task of building a government and counteracting the penetration of drug traffickers and organized crime. The alliance includes the Partido Libertad y Refundación (LIBRE, whose coordinator is former President Zelaya), and the “Savior of Honduras” party, chaired by the presidential candidate from whom the election was stolen in 2017, Salvador (Savior) Nasralla. The coalition also includes the Partido Innovación y Unidad-Social Demócrata (PINU-SD), the Alianza Liberal Opositora, and others.

First urgent task: re-found the country politically and socially

But the most important task is to resume the process that was truncated by the 2009 military coup d’etat. The Honduran constitution is profoundly anti-democratic. It still contains articles that Hondurans say are “set in stone”—institutional areas that cannot be reformed (except through dubious acts such as when the Supreme Court allowed Hernández to stand for re-election).

The biggest challenge for Honduras is the new social contract between the State and the citizens, to “democratize access to democracy.” The retrograde, feudal elite that continues to run the country must give real space to allow the 50% of the population languishing in poverty to have representation.^[9] Groups in social movements over issues of gender, peasant and indigenous rights, trade unions, and cultural associations must be able to win seats in Congress, in the political parties, and be part of the presidential cabinet.

The international community could play a vital role in encouraging the democratization that Honduran voters are clearly demanding by giving the new Xiomara Castro administration room, support, and financial aid to make the necessary changes without suffering the economic and political attacks from the U.S. that some leftist governments in Latin America face. It can also put pressure on the entrenched local elites. The Honduran people have suffered enough, as witnessed by the humanitarian tragedy on the U.S. southern border. It is ethically incumbent on all parties that purport to believe in democracy to respect the wishes of the majority of Hondurans to take their country back from the drug lords and organized crime, and build their own form of democracy free from outside interference.

Patricio Zamorano is an international analyst and Director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA)

Jill Clark-Gollub contributed as co-editor.

Translation by Jill Clark-Gollub

[Main photo: President-elect of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, shows her ink-stained finger during the presidential election on November 28. Photo credit: Alina Duarte, COHA Senior Research Fellow, from Honduras]

---

Sources

^[1] “Elecciones Nacionales de Honduras,” https://resultadosgenerales2021.cne.hn/#resultados/PRE/HN

^[2] “Max Blumenthal drops by the largest US military base in Latin America,” https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/20/max-blumenthal-palmerola-air-base-honduras/

^[3] “US recognizes re-election of Honduras president despite fraud allegations,” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/22/us-recognizes-re-election-of-honduras-president-despite-calls-for-a-new-vote

^[4] “Statement by the OAS General Secretariat on the Elections in Honduras,” https://www.oas.org/en/media_center/press_release.asp?sCodigo=E-092/17

^[5] “US court sentences Honduran president’s brother to life in drug case,” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/30/honduras-president-brother-sentenced-life-drug-trial

^[6] “Is the President of Honduras a Narco-Trafficker?,” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/15/is-the-president-of-honduras-a-narco-trafficker

^[7] “Homicide rates in selected Latin American and Caribbean countries in 2020,” https://www.statista.com/statistics/947781/homicide-rates-latin-america-caribbean-country/

^[8] “Hernandez receives green light to run for reelection as Honduras president,” https://www.efe.com/efe/english/world/hernandez-receives-green-light-to-run-for-reelection-as-honduras-president/50000262-3125310

^[9] “Honduras Poverty Rate 1989-2021,” https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/HND/honduras/poverty-rate

By William  Camacaro and Frederick Mills
From Caracas, Venezuela

On Sunday, November 21, Venezuela held mega-elections in which more than 70,000 candidates from across the political spectrum ran for 3,083 state, city and local offices, marking a resounding victory for this nation’s sovereignty and democratic institutions in the face of Washington’s illegal economic war and the ravages of the pandemic. As this article goes to press, according to the data presented in the first bulletin of the National Electoral Commission (CNE) the governorships of 18 states have been won by the Chavista coalition of the Great Patriotic Pole (GPP); three states, Zulia, Cojedes and Nueva Esparta, went to representatives of the opposition, and two states are too close to call, Apure and Barinas. These two states, in addition to Zulia, are located along Venezuela’s frontier with Colombia, a zone vulnerable to the penetration of Colombian paramilitaries and organized crime.

The participation rate in yesterday’s elections was 41.80% (8,151,793) of 21,159,846. This represents an increase of 11% over the last regional elections held in 2017 which garnered 30.47% participation. It also represents the second lowest participation rate for regional elections in 21 years.

According to Venezuelan journalist Eugenio G. Martínez, divisions among the opposition diluted the votes of opposition candidates in several states, possibly impacting the outcome in close elections in Barinas, Lara, Mérida, Monagas and Táchira.

The participation rate and close races in several states are a wake up call to Chavismo of the need to fortify their base; for the opposition it portends an opportunity, should they manage to forge unity in future electoral campaigns.

It appears that the U.S. has taken a back seat to these historic elections. While the State Department has been busy cultivating an already defunct and notoriously corrupt shadow government without political relevance outside the beltway, more than 300 observers from 55 countries and major electoral observer commissions including the Carter Center and the European Union (EU) were welcomed to Caracas to observe the electoral process. In a preliminary response to a query about the elections on Sunday, chief of the  EU mission Isabel Santos said, everything was proceeding “calmly”.

The case of Alex Saab

An important backdrop to the elections is the U.S. kidnapping of Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab on October 16, charging him with conspiracy to commit money laundering. This Colombian businessman became a target of Washington’s ire because he had the audacity to use his extensive international business contacts to circumvent illegal U.S. sanctions to import food, fuel and medicines to Venezuela, all at great personal risk, in order to save lives. The kidnapping of the diplomat was a blatant violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961). It signals Washington’s commitment to continue imposing crippling sanctions. And it dealt a temporary setback to the Norway brokered talks between the government of President Nicolás Maduro  and the opposition taking place in Mexico. Another door to negotiation remains open, however, as major opposition candidates voiced support for the electoral process as the appropriate path for settling political differences, signaling the feasibility of their coexistence with Chavismo.

The opposition and the U.S. sanctions

Moreover, most of the opposition participated in these elections and several prominent candidates used their new found disdain for sanctions as a selling point for their campaigns, and for good reason: the use of such coercive measures by a foreign power as political leverage is immensely unpopular with the majority of Venezuelans. Supporting U.S. sanctions today, for a Venezuelan politician, is tantamount to political suicide.

For example, the Secretary General of Democratic Action Party, Bernabe Gutiérrez, asked people to vote, tweeting: “The era of guarimbas (violent demonstrations) is over.  The time has come to say goodbye to coups, sanctions, and calls for invasion. We Venezuelans have to settle our own problems.”

Domestic terrorism

Of course, there was the ever present threat of a terrorist attack by those extremists who see coexistence between Chavismo and the opposition as the ultimate threat to their hardline agenda to bury all vestiges of the Bolivarian revolution. Thanks to the government’s regional and municipal security plan, however, an arms cache was reportedly intercepted and election day activities took place in an atmosphere of peace.

These elections constitute an important victory for the Venezuelan people because despite the U.S. imposed sanctions, the pandemic, and attempts by Washington to politically isolate this Caribbean nation, the Electoral National Council (Consejo Nacional Electoral, CNE) managed to pull off regional elections with the participation of a plurality of parties in an atmosphere of peace.

William Camacaro is a Senior Analyst at COHA. Frederick Mills is Deputy Director of COHA and electoral observer during this past election

Translations into English are by the authors.

[Main photo credit: Camila Escalante]

By John Perry
From Masaya, Nicaragua

Official results from Nicaragua’s elections on November 7 showed Daniel Ortega re-elected as president with 75% of the vote. On the same day, President Joe Biden dismissed the ballot as a “pantomime election”^[1] and within 48 hours the Organization of American States (OAS) had produced a 16-page report setting out its criticisms.^[2] It demanded the annulment of the elections and the holding of new ones, disregarding international and OAS rules that require respect for the sovereignty of nations. Yet it contained no evidence of problems on election day itself that would substantiate its objections. Nevertheless, local and international media were quick to endorse the accusations that widespread fraud had taken place.

This article tries to identify the basis of these accusations, examines the evidence offered to support them and shows why, in practice, the massive fraud being alleged was very unlikely to have happened.

The electoral process – in brief

Before addressing the allegations, let’s look briefly at the process. Nicaragua has developed an electoral system which is probably one of the most secure and tamper-proof in Latin America, with multiple checks on the identity of voters and the validity of ballots.^[3] There were 13,459 polling stations covering up to 400 voters each, in an operation involving about 245,000 volunteers and officials across the country.

Jill Clark-Gollub has described at COHA how this worked on the day.^[4] Briefly, each voter must:

1. Go to vote in person (there are no postal or proxy votes).
2. Have a valid identity card that carries their photo and signature.
3. Be entered on the electoral register for the polling station, where their name is ticked off (in most cases this is computerized).
4. Have their ID checked against a print-out which has a small version of their photo and their signature: they sign on top of this to certify that they are going to use their vote.
5. Be given a ballot paper, which is stamped and initialed by an official before being handed over (see photo).
6. Make their vote in secret and put the paper in a ballot box.
7. Retrieve their ID card, and have their right thumb marked with indelible ink to show they have voted.

Each polling station has representatives of the political parties (in the U.S. they would be called party poll watchers). The poll watchers are there from the time the polling station opens until it closes – they watch everything – and at the end of the day they also sign the record of the polling. The numbers of votes, in total and for each party, are counted when polling closes and the results certified by the party representatives. The ballot boxes are then taken to a central counting center, accompanied by police or army officers, with each box tagged to ensure that it cannot be tampered with or replaced. The count at the center must match the count in the polling station, and this is again monitored by the poll watchers. Counting starts as the boxes are received and continues non-stop until every vote has been dealt with.

Despite these precautions, the international media and the opposition groups who were not represented on the ballot have not hesitated to condemn the process. For example, William Robinson, writing for NACLA, claims there was “a total absence of safeguards against fraud.”^[5] The different critics make one or more of these accusations:

1. That opponents who would have entered the election were prevented from running, and their participation would have secured Ortega’s defeat.
2. That the size of the registered electorate was manipulated in the government’s favor.
3. That polls showed that the government was deeply unpopular, therefore the election result must have been a fake.
4. That the high proportion of spoiled ballots was a concerted “protest vote.”
5. That, after the opposition called on its supporters to abstain, most people did so.
6. That the government “added” one million votes in its favor.

Here we show the plentiful evidence to contest these allegations.

1. Potential election winners were excluded

“After methodically choking off competition and dissent, Mr. Ortega has all but ensured his victory in presidential elections on Sunday, representing a turn toward an openly dictatorial model that could set an example for other leaders across Latin America.” (New York Times, November 7)^[6]

Most of the international media ignored who was on the ballot and focused instead on the arrests of opposition figures earlier this year, which allegedly removed all effective opposition. The reasons for the arrests have been dealt with by Yader Lanuza and Peter Bolton,^[7] but briefly they were for violations of laws relating to improper use of money sent to non-profit organizations, receiving money from a foreign power intended to undermine the Nicaraguan state and influence its elections, and seeking international sanctions against Nicaragua.

But in fact, the ballot included five candidates challenging Daniel Ortega for the presidency (see photo). The NYT said, wrongly, that all “are little-known members of parties aligned with his Sandinista government”). However, these are historic parties – two of them (the PLC and PLI) had formed governments in the years 1990-2006, and in the case of the PLC in particular enjoy strong traditional support. The Sandinista front itself won as part of an alliance of nine legal parties.

Regardless of the arguments about the validity of the arrests, there is no plausible scenario where, if one of those arrested had been eligible to stand, they would have amassed sufficient votes to win. Not only was this unlikely because of the math (see below), but also because not a single one of those arrested had then been chosen as a candidate, the newer opposition parties that might have chosen them were unable to agree on how to stand or who to choose, and none had any program other than vague calls to re-establish “democracy” and “release political prisoners.”

Nevertheless, according to a CID-Gallup poll in October,^[8] the most popular opposition figure, Juan Sebastián Chamorro, had 63% popular support. Let us take a look at a possible scenario, assuming he had been allowed to stand for one of the newer parties:

• Suppose that, as a consequence of his participation, electoral turnout had increased, reaching its highest in recent elections (73.9% in 2011). This would have produced a total of 3,309,000 valid votes, an increase of around 400,000.
• Assume for the moment that the Ortega vote remained the same, and that Chamorro had gained all the non-Ortega votes, including all those won by the other opposition parties:

Chamorro’s total vote would have been about 1,200,000.

• However, it would still have fallen short of Ortega’s by more than 800,000 votes.
• So to have won, Chamorro would have needed to persuade over a fifth of Ortega voters (almost 440,000) to swap sides, despite the deep hostility towards the Chamorros shown by most Sandinistas.

In practice, of course, it was highly unlikely that Chamorro would have stood as the sole opposition candidate, not only because he had rivals from the “traditional” opposition parties such as the PLC, but also because even as the election approached the newer opposition was divided into different groups backing different potential candidates. A divided opposition would have had an even smaller chance of winning.

2. The size of the registered electorate was manipulated

“In order to put Ortega’s electoral victory cards on the table, the CSE [Electoral Council] proceeded to increase the registration of the number of people eligible to vote.” (Confidencial)

“…experts estimated that this year’s roll should be at least 5.5 million.” (La Prensa)

The second accusation is that the electoral register of 4,478,334 potential voters was manipulated in the government’s favor, although critics can’t agree on whether the register was inflated or deliberately shrunk.

Opposition website Confidencial argued that the growth since 2016 of around 600,000 in the total numbers eligible to vote was implausible, and it was also implausible that 97% of those eligible were actually registered.^[9] However, when opposition newspaper La Prensa assessed the size of the registered electorate, their complaint was that it was too small.^[10] According to their analysis, the register should have had approximately 5.5 million voters, so the government was presumably intent on cutting out voters in areas where it has low support.

Either accusation is easily answered. The natural growth in the tranche of the population aged over 16 (those eligible to vote) accounts for about half the increase in the size of the register.^[11] Both Confidencial and La Prensa deliberately ignore the huge improvement in the registry of citizenship since 2016, so that almost all the adult population now have identity cards, needed for many everyday transactions, and which automatically enter the holder on the electoral register. Rather than being implausible that 97% of citizens are registered, as Confidencial claimed, it is an intended outcome of the modernized system, which aims for 100% registration. This means that the register has gained in accuracy as the campaign to extend ID cards to the whole population nears its goal.

3. The government is deeply unpopular, contradicting the election result

“A recent poll showed that 78 percent of Nicaraguans see the possible re-election of Mr. Ortega as illegitimate and that just 9 percent support the governing party.” (New York Times, November 7)^[12]

The official election results give the ruling Sandinista Front 71.67% of the votes, if spoiled ballots are included (75.87% if they are excluded). This is similar to the 72.44% vote share obtained in the 2016 election. The second party, the PLC, gained 14% of the vote, similar to its 15% share in 2016.

Opinion polls cited by the international media and the opposition purport to tell an entirely different story. According to a poll by Costa Rican firm CID Gallup (not part of the internationally known Gallup organization), in September-October only 19% of adults would have voted for Ortega had the election been held then, while 65% would support an opposition candidate. In a slightly later CID Gallup survey, paid for by Confidencial, 76% of adults questioned said that Ortega’s re-election would be “illegitimate;” his party’s level of support had by then fallen to only 9% (i.e. about 400,000 potential votes).

The CID Gallup poll’s findings on levels of support for different political parties are rather baffling. While some 68% of those questioned said they were likely to vote, the vast majority (77%) claimed to favor no particular party. Levels of support for individual parties were therefore tiny: the Sandinista Front was judged to have most support, but favored by only 8% of voters, while others had even smaller followings. Those questioned had the option of choosing one of the supposedly popular parties that were prevented from running, but these also received miniscule support: 5% for the CxL (Ciudadanos por la Libertad) and just 2% for the UNAB (Unidad Azul y Blanco). Had these parties been allowed to take part in the election, their candidates might have been one of the supposedly popular figures arrested beforehand, such as Juan Sebastián Chamorro.

None of the international media who cite the CID Gallup poll question the credibility and consistency of these findings. Nor do they ever mention the more regular and more extensive opinion polls conducted by Nicaragua-based M&R Consultores, which gave a much different picture (see chart). Their results show Daniel Ortega with a 70% share of the vote, a percentage which had increased steadily as the polls approached. M&R claims its surveys are more rigorous, covering more of the country, with 4,282 face-to-face interviews while CID Gallup relies on cell phone calls for its 1,200 responses.

Adding to the implausibility of the CID Gallup poll findings is the fact that some 2.1 million Nicaraguans, slightly under half the adult population, are card-carrying members (militantes) of the Sandinista Front, following a membership drive over the last two years. That less than a quarter of these would vote for the party of which they are members seems, at best, highly unlikely. CID Gallup’s findings would also of course imply that no one who was not a party member would support the government, which is also highly unlikely. Nevertheless, even on election day, opposition leaders such as Kitty Monterrey (herself prevented from standing) hubristically claimed that more than 90% of voters would cast their ballot against Ortega.^[13]

4. Invalid votes “won”

“Null votes confirm Daniel Ortega’s re-election farce” (headline in El Faro)

Because the CID Gallup poll appeared to show a high proportion of voters having no party allegiance, there have been a couple of attempts to argue that a protest vote, ie. people spoiling their ballots, “won” the election. There is some very limited truth in this, in that the proportion of ballots spoiled was notably higher than usual, at about 5%, rather than a more typical 1-2%, and these additional spoiled ballots may have represented a “protest vote.”

The El Salvadoran website El Faro, which regularly gives a platform to Nicaragua’s opposition, tried to show “the strength of the invalid votes.” After claiming that abstentions reflected a “third force,” El Faro published a graphic (below) showing how spoiled ballots “outvoted” the opposition parties.^[14]

However, a proper comparison between the percentage of invalid votes and those gained by the different parties puts this in perspective (see pie chart). As can be seen, the partial graphic displayed by El Faro gives the votos nulos far more importance than they merit: yes, there were more spoilt ballots than votes for some of the minor parties, but the proportion was well below that gained by the PLC and, of course, by the FSLN. The 161,687 spoiled votes hardly show the electoral “farce,” depicted by El Faro. They were presumably hoping that their readers, glancing at the story and the graphic, would get the impression that the protest vote had “won.” Inadvertently, El Faro’s story also undermines the accusation (see below) that abstentions “won.” If it were really true that only 850,000 people voted, as the abstention camp claims, the 161,687 spoiled votes would have formed an improbably high proportion (19%) of the total.

Another approach to exaggerating the importance of votos nulos was pursued by La Prensa.^[15] On each ballot paper there were four voting options so, according to La Prensa, the protest vote was four times the actual total of invalid votes, therefore reaching 666,866, rather than 161,687. This suggests a degree of desperation on La Prensa’s part in its search for ways to discredit the election.

5. Abstentions “won”

“Once polls opened early on Sunday morning, some polling stations had lines as Nicaraguans turned out to cast their ballots. But as the day progressed, many of the stations were largely empty. The streets of the capital, Managua, were also quiet, with little to show that a significant election was underway.” (New York Times, November 7)^[16]

Official results show 66% of registered voters took part in the election, a level within the range (61-74%) of the previous three elections. It is also a level of participation similar to the last elections in the U.S. and the U.K. (which were both higher than normal) and in the middle of the range of participation in other countries’ recent elections.^[17]

The international media largely ignore this and cite the opposition website Urnas Abiertas (“Open ballot boxes”) which claims that 81.5% of voters abstained (see graphic).^[18] In other words, while officially 2,921,430 voted (including spoiled ballots), Urnas Abiertas say the real figure was more like 850,000.

Urnas Abiertas do not, however, provide any evidence of it other than their claimed survey of attendance at a sample of polling stations, which is only briefly described in a few lines of their four-page report.^[19] It offers no technical details of their work or examples of polling stations which they surveyed. Described as “independent” by right-wing newspaper La Prensa,^[20] Ben Norton shows how Urnas Abiertas is an obscure organization with few followers and is operated by known opposition supporters.^[21]

Various opposition media, such as 100% Noticias, published pictures of “empty streets” or empty polling stations” on November 7, presumably as evidence that the opposition’s campaign to boycott the elections had been successful.^[22] In typical fashion, international media picked up the story and, of course, opposition supporters were busy phoning their contacts in the U.S. and elsewhere to give the story credence.

The local media had conveniently forgotten a story they covered earlier in the year. In July, the electoral authorities published a provisional electoral register, and invited voters to verify their entries and check they were allocated to the correct polling station. This exercise was massively supported, by 2.82 million voters out of a possible 4.34 million then registered (the registered total has since increased by about 130,000 as entries were updated).^[23] The opposition media, intent on showing supposed anomalies in this process, inadvertently also showed the scale of the response it received from the public, with videos of queues of people waiting to verify their vote.^[24] The likelihood is that, having turned up at the polling station to check their right to vote, people turned up again on November 7 to use it, and the similarity in numbers who did both confirms that this was the case.

The photos of “empty streets” and “empty polling stations” were in any case highly misleading: it is easy to take such shots, especially on a Sunday when businesses and schools are closed, and especially at the hottest time of day. Furthermore, a simple calculation of the likely attendance at each polling station, open for 11 hours with (on average) 333 potential voters and 216 who actually voted, shows that roughly 20 people an hour would have passed through each one. Given that each person needs only a few minutes to vote, it is obvious why queues occurred only when groups of voters arrived simultaneously.

6. The Sandinistas added at least one million votes

“To the amount of votes reported in favor of Ortega, the CSE [Electoral Council] fraud added about one million extra votes.” (Confidencial)

Critics argue that massive abstentions mean that fake votes were created, but they can’t agree how many. Confidencial suggests that it was 1,069,225, while the implication of the “survey” by Urnas Abiertas is that false votes totaled 2,032,067. Confidencial helpfully produced a table (see above) comparing the official (CSE) result with its own and those from Urnas Abiertas, adding for comparison the official results from previous elections.^[25] (As with many of the other opposition graphics, one suspects that spurious accuracy is given to their data to make them appear more authentic.)

An attempt was made to substantiate the fraud accusation when a false image of a “manipulated” electoral scrutiny form was circulated by the opposition ahead of the election, suggesting that exaggerated vote totals were being prepared in readiness for November 7.^[26] It proved to be a copy of a sample document circulated openly in its briefing materials by the Electoral Council.

In practice, the obstacles to the organization of this scale of fraud can be seen from the brief description already given of how votes were verified on polling day. Clearly, creating 1 to 2 million false votes would require a large proportion of the 13,459 polling stations and 245,000 officials to be engaged in the process. This is because the fraud would have to start at the points where votes were cast, because if the false votes had been created centrally the discrepancy with local voting tallies would be blatantly obvious.

Is it really feasible that every polling station (or most of them) created up to 200 false votes from entries on their register using blank ballot forms, stamped as authorized by officials, at the risk that real people with those votes would turn up and find they had already “voted”? Or, if it was done after polls closed, would there have been no complaint from poll watchers from rival parties, and would none of the 245,000 people involved have leaked the truth about what really happened, in a country as chismoso (gossipy) as Nicaragua? The whole notion is absurd.

As I write this, it is one week since the election took place. I have been unable to find any evidence of actual fraud (as opposed to speculation about fraud) in any of the main media which support the main opposition groups.

The real response to the accusations

While this article has exposed the implausibility of the various accusations, the real response to them was the scenes on the streets on election day and during the celebrations when the results were announced officially on November 8. While some of the media portrayed empty streets and deserted polling stations, there were hundreds of photos (see below, from Bilwí) which showed the opposite.

Many international representatives who acted as election “accompaniers” confirm that the polls were well attended and that people talked freely and often enthusiastically about the process, even those opposed to the government (see reports by, for example, Roger Harris, Rick Sterling and Margaret Kimberley).^[27]

Living in Masaya, which had been a stronghold of opposition support in the violence of 2018, I was amazed by the response to the president’s speech after the result was announced: tens of thousands of people poured onto the streets on Monday November 8, especially in poorer barrios, waving Sandinista flags and even holding up portraits of Daniel Ortega. While clearly a minority opposed his re-election, it was equally clear that the majority supported it.

John Perry is a writer living in Masaya, Nicaragua.

[Main Photo: People waiting in line to vote. Credit photo: El 19 Digital)

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Sources

[1] “Statement by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. on Nicaragua’s Sham Elections,” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/11/07/statement-by-president-joseph-r-biden-jr-on-nicaraguas-sham-elections/

[2] See https://twitter.com/OAS_official/status/1458059374077911051?s=20

[3] Nan McCurdy provides a detailed description here: http://www.tortillaconsal.com/tortilla/node/13116

[4] “Despite US led Dirty Campaign, Nicaraguans Came Out in Force in Support of the FSLN,” https://www.coha.org/despite-us-led-dirty-campaign-nicaraguans-came-out-in-force-in-support-of-the-fsln/

[5] “Nicaragua: Chronicle of an Election Foretold,” https://nacla.org/news/2021/11/08/nicaragua-election-ortega

[6] “Nicaragua Descends Into Autocratic Rule as Ortega Crushes Dissent,” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/07/world/americas/nicaragua-election-ortega.html

[7] “United States Once Again Attacking Government of Nicaragua,” https://afgj.org/nicanotes-09-23-2021; “Here’s what the corporate-owned media won’t tell you about the arrests in Nicaragua,” https://www.thecanary.co/global/2021/06/18/heres-what-the-corporate-owned-media-wont-tell-you-about-the-arrests-in-nicaragua/

[8] “CID-Gallup: Candidato opositor barrería a Ortega el 7 de noviembre: 65% vs. 19%,” https://www.confidencial.com.ni/politica/cid-gallup-candidato-opositor-barreria-a-ortega-el-7-de-noviembre-65-vs-19/

[9] “Chronicle of a massive and premeditated electoral fraud on November 7,” https://www.confidencial.com.ni/english/chronicle-of-a-massive-and-premeditated-electoral-fraud-on-november-7/

[10] “CSE publica Padrón Electoral definitivo que usará en la votación del 7 de noviembre,” https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2021/09/26/politica/2885887-cse-publica-padron-electoral-definitivo-que-usara-en-la-votacion-del-7-de-noviembre

[11] Data on the age-ranges of the Nicaraguan population can be found at https://datosmacro.expansion.com/demografia/estructura-poblacion/nicaragua

[12] “Nicaragua Descends Into Autocratic Rule as Ortega Crushes Dissent,” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/07/world/americas/nicaragua-election-ortega.html

[13] “Más del 90% va a votar en contra de Ortega en las elecciones en Nicaragua, asegura opositora,” https://www.vozdeamerica.com/a/mas-del-90-de-la-poblaci%C3%B3n-esta-en-contra-de-ortega-kitty-monterrey/6303518.html

[14] “Los votos nulos confirman la farsa en la reelección de Daniel Ortega,” https://elfaro.net/es/202111/centroamerica/25834/Los-votos-nulos-confirman-la-farsa-en-la-reelecci%C3%B3n-de-Daniel-Ortega.htm

[15] “El voto nulo y el abstencionismo, los dos grandes ganadores en las votaciones,” https://nicaraguainvestiga.com/politica/65446-no-voto-abstencionismo-grandes-ganadores-votaciones/

[16] “Nicaragua Descends Into Autocratic Rule as Ortega Crushes Dissent,” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/07/world/americas/nicaragua-election-ortega.html

[17] “In past elections, U.S. trailed most developed countries in voter turnout,” https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/03/in-past-elections-u-s-trailed-most-developed-countries-in-voter-turnout/

[18] “Urnas Abiertas estima 81.5% de abstención en votaciones,” https://www.confidencial.com.ni/politica/votacion-plagada-de-violencia-politica-irregularidades-y-coaccion-del-voto-denuncia-urnas-abiertas/

[19] Downloadable at https://urnasabiertas.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ENG-Nicaragua-2021_Election-Day.pdf

[20] “¿Qué hay detrás del 75 por ciento que se recetó Ortega como resultado electoral?,” https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2021/11/13/politica/2909124-que-hay-detras-del-75-por-ciento-que-se-receto-ortega-como-resultado-electoral

[21] “Debunking Myths About Nicaragua’s 2021 Election,” https://thegrayzone.com/2021/11/11/nicaragua-2021-elections/

[22] “Calles vacías en Managua, ante inicio de proceso de votaciones electorales,” https://100noticias.com.ni/galerias/18537/

[23] “Casi tres millones se verificaron para votar en Nicaragua, según Electoral,” https://www.swissinfo.ch/spa/nicaragua-elecciones_casi-tres-millones-se-verificaron-para-votar-en-nicaragua–seg%C3%BAn-electoral/46818586

[24] “Padrón con personas fallecidas, asedio y control del FSLN marcan verificación ciudadana en Nicaragua,” https://www.expedientepublico.org/padron-con-personas-fallecidas-asedio-y-control-del-fsln-marcan-verificacion-ciudadana-en-nicaragua/

[25] “Crónica de un fraude electoral masivo (y premeditado) el 7 de noviembre,” https://www.confidencial.com.ni/opinion/cronica-de-un-fraude-electoral-masivo-y-premeditado-el-7-de-noviembre/

[26] “La foto que muestra una acta de escrutinio electoral de Jalapa, Nueva Segovia, es falsa,” https://www.despacho505.com/la-foto-que-muestra-una-acta-de-escrutinio-electoral-de-jalapa-nueva-segovia-es-falsa/

[27] See respectively: https://popularresistance.org/nicaragua-celebrates-democracy-election-day-report/; https://www.laprogressive.com/election-day-in-nicaragua/; https://www.blackagendareport.com/us-threatens-regime-change-nicaragua

By Rita Jill Clark-Gollub
Managua, Nicaragua

Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council declared President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) winners in an election that drew 65% of the eligible 4.4 million voters. Although Washington and its allies in the region denounced the election as a fraud preceded by repression of the opposition, there was significant participation of the electorate; moreover, despite claims that Ortega ran virtually unopposed, his ticket was contested by several long-standing opposition parties. Winning 75% of the vote, the FSLN demonstrated solid strength despite the U.S. government and mainstream media campaign to delegitimize this election.

Rita Jill Clark-Gollub shares her report from the ground in Nicaragua:

On Sunday, November 7, 2021, millions of Nicaraguan voters showed up at the polls to cast their votes in an orderly, calm election process. I was one of over 165 international accompaniers and at least 40 independent international  journalists who collectively observed the vote at about 60 voting centers in 10 of Nicaragua’s 15 departments as well as its two autonomous regions.

Gender equity

Two pieces of background information provide helpful context. First, the Nicaraguan constitution creates an independent, non-partisan fourth branch of government to run elections, the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE). Second, the electoral law was updated this year to bring computer technology into the system, and to bring gender equity to the staff running the elections, thus completing implementation of the gender parity law passed in 2014. This means that all aspects of the CSE must be staffed with an equal number of men and women, and half of all poll workers, including poll watchers designated by the various political parties, must be women.

My observations were in the country’s second largest city, León. My first stop was a voting center at a school in the indigenous neighborhood of Subtiava, where 5,000 people are registered to vote.

Day of the election

Voters had shown up before the doors opened at 7:00 AM, and by 7:40, 500 people had already voted. A voter’s experience started by checking-in with staff manning four laptops. There had been a massive update and confirmation of the voter rolls earlier this year that informed people of their polling places. Voters were able to verify this information on paper and online, which minimized any issues at check-in. On election day, the entire voter roll for the individual voting centers was posted outside. This not only confirmed to people their voting place, but also allowed neighbors to identify names that should not be on the rolls, such as people who had died or moved away. Because of these updates and use of electronic tools, the check-in process was more efficient than people remembered in the past. Some of my fellow accompaniers even timed voters’ experiences and found the whole process usually took less than nine minutes.

After a voter checked in, he or she went to one of 13 classrooms to cast their vote. These are called Juntas Receptoras de Votos (Vote Intake Boards–JRV). Each one is designated to serve between 380-400 voters. Again, the voter roll for that JRV is posted outside the door. When voters came in, they gave their name to the three CSE workers who then checked them off on a paper printout of the roll. Then the CSE checked to find the voter on the pages with printouts of government-issued photo identification cards, and had the voter sign under their picture. After that they were given a copy of the ballot and directed to the three voting booths to mark the ballot. As you can see from this photo of the ballot, it is rather straightforward in showing the various parties running for President and Vice-President, National Assembly, and Central American Parliament. Voters then  placed their folded ballots into the ballot boxes. After that, one of the three CSE members proceeded to mark the voters’ thumbs with indelible ink so that they could not vote twice.

Also present in the room were poll watchers (each party on the ballot is allowed to have a poll watcher present in each JRV for the entire election day) and elections police. The latter primarily provide alcohol to disinfect hands (a common practice in Nicaragua during the pandemic) and assist people with mobility issues to move within the classroom, as well as keeping disorderly people (such as drunks), from disrupting the process. I did not witness any such disruptions, nor did I hear of them (no liquor can be sold on election day). An interesting thing about the Nicaraguan voting process is that the vote tally takes place with paper ballots in the same room in which the votes are cast, and in the presence of the poll watchers. The number of ballots counted, plus the unused ballots, must match the number of ballots given to that room at the beginning of the day. A paper copy of the vote count is submitted to the central CSE, and it is also communicated electronically, but it is the paper trail that prevails in this case. Other international accompaniers who have witnessed elections in several countries said that this provides the most secure elections integrity possible.

“Nicaraguans want peace”

I saw this process repeated numerous times in the four voting centers I visited. I also asked people if they would like to answer a question, and virtually everyone I approached was eager to speak.  I asked: What is the significance of what is happening in Nicaragua today? The answer was surprisingly unanimous among the dozens of people I spoke to: They said, “Nicaraguans want peace.” They also overwhelmingly said that they want to determine their future for themselves and want respect for their sovereignty without interference from the outside.

Plenty presence of the opposition

I found it particularly interesting to speak to the poll watchers from opposition parties that were present in the voting rooms. It bears noting that five traditional opposition parties, some of which have held the presidency in the 21^st century,  ran candidates for president, despite the reports we hear from the U.S. about Daniel Ortega eliminating his opponents. I asked them what they thought about participating in this election as part of the opposition. They generally indicated that it had been a smooth and respectful experience. One gentleman from the Independent Liberal Party (PLI) said, “We want to see what the people think. If a majority of people come out to vote—60 or 70 percent—then the election results will tell us what the people want. But if fewer than half of the electorate turns out to vote, that will mean that people felt they did not have a real choice in this election.”

I imagine the PLI will continue to participate in Nicaragua’s democratic process, despite the fact that the U.S. government is calling for sanctions on participating opposition parties, because of the high turnout. The landslide electoral victory indicates a clear mandate to stay on the path the country has been following since Daniel Ortega came back into office in 2007. If I needed further confirmation that this reflected the will of the people, I got it on the way back to my hotel late Sunday night from seeing people dancing in the streets and setting off fireworks in Managua.

Young voters

Another thing that was very palpable about the Nicaraguan elections experience was the massive involvement of young people. Not only were voters as young as 16 years old (the Nicaraguan voting age) turning out in large numbers, they were also working as poll watchers and accompanying entire families during what they called “a civic festival of democracy.”

As in most countries, the youth are big users of social media. But in Nicaragua about a week before the vote, over a thousand of these young people had their social media accounts shut down, causing them to collectively lose hundreds of thousands of followers. The Silicon Valley platforms said they were stopping a Nicaraguan government troll farm. I spoke with several people who were incensed by this because they personally knew real people who were accused of being bots, or were shut down themselves. A young Sandinista named Xochitl shared with me the screenshots of her FloryCantoX account that had 28,228 followers before Twitter shut it down, telling her that she violated their rules on using spam. This also happened to some of the international visitors to Nicaragua. And I have just heard from Dr. Richard Kohn, who was in Nicaragua observing the elections in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region, that all of his photos and videos uploaded to Twitter on election day were removed.

The lies about the process

I am astounded at reports in the mainstream media and from the Biden administration declaring the vote a fraud, and that as few as 20% of the electorate turned out to vote. This flies in the face of my own experience. If I keep talking about it, will I, too, be accused of being a bot? And what does this information warfare mean for democracy in the United States and the American people’s right to know what is happening in other countries?

The Nicaraguan people know their lived reality. We need to continue helping to disseminate their truth.

[Credit main photo: Rita Jill Clark-Gollub/COHA]