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

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^[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

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^[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/

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]

---

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 Dan Kovalik
Pittsburgh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Credit main photo: Fuser News]

By 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 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 Patricio Zamorano
From Washington DC

What happened in Chile this past weekend seems to be one of those historic events that cannot but follow its inexorable course. It is like an enormous, powerful tsunami wave whose size cannot be appreciated on the high seas, until it comes crashing into the coast, stunning everyone with its massive strength. This happens with processes of change from the left and the right, in times of democracy and times of dictatorship.

Could any human force have stopped the inexorable onslaught of that immoral showman Donald Trump on his path to the U.S. presidency? Who would have believed that someone so dysfunctional on so many levels could have governed the most powerful country on the planet for four years? He got more than 70 million U.S. votes, making him the Republican to win the most votes in history, legitimizing his political and pseudo-ideological platform, whether we like it or not. His rise to power was unstoppable.

Fidel had the same telluric force of history behind him when 12 disciples of José Martí, decimated by the disastrous landing of the Granma, carried out an impossible revolution from the Sierra Maestra in just three years. This feat has stirred the passions of revolutionaries and reactionaries alike for some 60 years now.

Some political processes are simply unstoppable.

What just happened on May 15 and 16, 2021 in Chile has the same air of the refounding of an entire nation. It means the end of traditional party politics and the establishment of collectives with diverse origins. These collectives are focused on contemporary issues such as the environment, gender equality, a focus on local issues against capital centralism (Santiago), and the demands of other sectors.

An historic constitutional assembly

First, the numbers. Intense  social unrest that raised demands in the streets was met by bloody repression by the security forces which deployed tear gas and rubber bullets, destroying the eyes of dozens of Chileans. The path was opened to something people had thought impossible within formal government institutions: 155 delegates have been elected to draft a new constitution for Chile. These are people from the political class, social movements, grass roots organizations, and many independents. Out of those 155, according to data from the Electoral Service of Chile (SERVEL), 77% identify with left-leaning values, are against Pinochet’s legacy, and reject the neoliberal model founded in the military repression of September 11, 1973.

The right-wing parties banding together in “Vamos Chile” needed 54 delegates to the constituent assembly to break the two-thirds majority and wield veto power. They only obtained 37 seats, which in practice means that they will only have limited power from the political margins.

These results are completely logical. The right-wing parties in Congress, in Sebastián Piñera’s Executive Branch, and in the media have spent all these years systematically blocking all efforts by the country’s majority to reform the healthcare system and make it more just; to reform the education system and make it more accessible to the entire population; and to reform the tax system to make it more equitable. The actual truth is that with an agenda so disconnected from the despair of the overwhelming majority of the Chilean people, the great leaders of the right and of Chilean capital cannot escape their own responsibility for the defeat that befell them last weekend.

The neoliberal ideology pretended to champion markets that would be free from state intervention. Yet as the Chilean experiment demonstrates, it took massive social control by the state with no check and balances (no Congress, no political parties, no social movements), and a harsh reign of terror, to enforce the structural adjustment packages that imposed austerity to facilitate the economic exploitation of human and natural resources. In fact, corporate interests have politically captured the state, putting its institutions at the service of capital, for all governments after Pinochet, both center-left and center-right ones. Furthermore, the promises of “accumulation of capital” for all Chileans that would be created by “trickle-down economics” was a complete failure, except for a minority of those with the highest incomes.

Today’s Chile is advocating with the language of “sexual diversity,” “gender parity,” “equal rights and opportunities,” “inclusion,” “tolerance,” and “social dignity.” Some of the most conservative right-wing Chileans appear disconnected, reactive, and very uncomfortable with this new reality that they have yet to comprehend.

Mayor of Santiago from the Communist Party

The historic gestures are impressive for a conservative country such as Chile. Along with representatives to the constituent assembly, mayors and city council members were also elected.

Santiago, the capital, will now be led by Iraci Hassler as mayor. She is an economist from the University of Chile and notably a member of the Communist Party. After a 50-year-long policy of extermination and torture imposed by the Pinochet dictatorship on the Communist Party of Chile (the party of Pablo Neruda, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature,  and the great singer-songwriter Víctor Jara), there is no doubt that this electoral victory is a hard symbolic blow to the most conservative, militaristic, and anti-communist sectors of the country. Social media has revealed their ideological anxiety: dozens of memes painting the electoral districts with the symbol of the CP (the hammer and sickle) and words in Russian. This is a reminder of the irrational politics that still run strong among this radical minority in a country undergoing a profound transformation.

There was also an explicit effort to inject gender and cultural parity into the election for the Constitutional Convention, ensuring that at least 45% of the seats went to women and reserving 17 seats for indigenous communities. This is vital to reflect the wishes of the Chilean people when 80% of them voted for a new constitution in the plebiscite of October 2020. The objective of this popular outpouring is to eliminate all anti-democratic provisions inherited from the 1980 militaristic constitution inspired by the Chicago Boys.

Delegates have an opportunity to remove capitalist equations from areas such as health, education, and pensions, returning those key aspects of Chilean life to the category of fundamental social rights. Broadly speaking, delegates can now establish a more just constitutional framework in order to better distribute wealth and income among the whole population and neutralize the country’s tremendous inequality—one of the worst on the planet.

The numbers reflect a seismic shift

In electoral terms, it is a scenario of major change. Valparaíso, the second largest city in the country, was kept by independent leftist Mayor Jorge Sharpo. Viña del Mar, another major urban center near Valparaíso, was carried by Macarena Ripamonti, a member of the new leftist collective Frente Amplio. Frente Amplio is not one of the traditional parties, and has wrested from the right wing a city that normally votes conservative. And in Concepción, independent leftist Camilo Rifo came in second place, leaving the right wing in third.

In Santiago, the right lost large municipalities, including Maipú, Ñuñoa, Estación Central, and San Bernardo, to name a few.

In sum, the entire region around greater Santiago, home to one third of the population (about 6 out of 19 million people), according to SERVEL reports as of today, gave the center-left 27 mayoral offices, while the right only won 14 (of course, including many of the wealthy neighborhoods of eastern Santiago). Add to that total 11 independents.

What’s next

The next steps include the launching of the new Constitutional Convention between June and July of this year. It will have nine to 12 months to draft the new Charter. Approximately 60 days after this task is completed, a new and final plebiscite will be held to approve or reject the new constitution. That is, 2022 should usher in a new constitution for Chile.

Beyond the numbers and electoral engineering, what happened last weekend lends immense legitimacy to what the people have been demanding in the streets, from the grass roots of society. It has left no doubt of the need for the country’s business and financial sectors to take a hard look at the imperious need to support a process of reconstruction, which at the end of the day, their own representative at La Moneda, Sebastián Piñera, was unable to do. Six points of negative growth in 2020, amplified by the pandemic, the social explosion, and chronic inequality in the country have left no room for ideological protectionism among Conservatives.

Either they join the process of change, trying to influence it as much as they can with the seats they have won at the polls, or they remain alienated from millions of families’ longing for recovery—expectations that cannot be held back. The other path is the strategy of failure that they have been implementing throughout Chile’s history: launch a plan to boycott the country’s political and social development, using their de facto power to keep hindering the reforms the country needs. The obstructionist path would hurt their own pocket books, keep the streets in flames, and betray the essential value of “homeland” that supposedly is their most cherished value.

For Chile’s right wing, the popular vote has made it brutally clear: it is time to get on the right side of history.

Patricio Zamorano is a political science academic, journalist and Director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, COHA

[Credit photo: Pressenza Agency]

With congressman Guillermo Bermejo, member of Pedro Castillo’s Presidential Campaign

Join the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) to analyze the decisive presidential election taking place this June 6 in Perú.

COHA Director Patricio Zamorano, COHA Senior Research Fellow Alina Duarte and COHA Senior Analyst William Camacaro will interview Guillermo Bermejo about the presidential election in Perú, a country in permanent political crisis, which has gone through three presidents in 2020. The second round of the presidential election on June 6 will pit progressive candidate Pedro Castillo against conservative leader Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former president, Alberto Fujimori, who was convicted of crimes related to human rights abuses. With such radically different views of good governance at stake, the outcome of this election will  have a decisive impact on the future of the Andean nation.

Guillermo Bermejo was recently elected to serve in Congress representing the “Perú Free” party. He is a political analyst,  expert on geopolitics and drug trafficking, and also advisor to Peruvian farmer communities. 

This conference will be conducted in both English and Spanish

Thursday May 20, 2021
8pm EST |  5pm PST
Zoom and Facebook Live
ZOOM Registration: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_BfKoOIMhSMauQt0KIyuOsA

With congressman Guillermo Bermejo, member of Pedro Castillo’s Presidential Campaign

Join the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) to analyze the decisive presidential election taking place this June 6 in Perú.

COHA Director Patricio Zamorano, COHA Senior Research Fellow Alina Duarte and COHA Senior Analyst William Camacaro will interview Guillermo Bermejo about the presidential election in Perú, a country in permanent political crisis, which has gone through three presidents in 2020. The second round of the presidential election on June 6 will pit progressive candidate Pedro Castillo against conservative leader Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former president, Alberto Fujimori, who was convicted of crimes related to human rights abuses. With such radically different views of good governance at stake, the outcome of this election will  have a decisive impact on the future of the Andean nation.

Guillermo Bermejo was recently elected to serve in Congress representing the “Perú Free” party. He is a political analyst,  expert on geopolitics and drug trafficking, and also advisor to Peruvian farmers’ communities. 

This conference will be conducted in both English and Spanish

Thursday May 20, 2021
8pm EST |  5pm PST
Zoom and Facebook Live
ZOOM Registration: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_BfKoOIMhSMauQt0KIyuOsA