South America

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Wed Dec 15, 2021 3:07 pm

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The US is at a Loss in Central America
December 14, 2021
By Stephen Sefton – Dec 11, 2021

In November 2008, while ambassador to Nicaragua, death-squad manager nonpareil John Negroponte’s long time torture and terror campaign sidekick, Robert Callahan, remarked to a reporter in Managua, “US foreign policy toward Latin America has not changed in 50 years and is unlikely to do so under President Obama”. Just months later, the June 2009 coup in Honduras against President Manuel Zelaya proved him to be right. In fact, the veteran US war crimes insider’s comment explained unwittingly why US and allied foreign policy lurches from one mass murdering catastrophe to another.

International context

Callahan and Negroponte, himself a veteran of the Phoenix Progam in Vietnam, were the enforcers in Honduras of the US war against Nicaragua in the 1980s. Back then, they facilitated death squads that disappeared over 180 left wing Honduran leaders of rural workers, student and labor organizations. To the end of his career, Callahan embodied the atrocious US foreign policy history whose continuity he affirmed back in 2008. Since then, only thirteen years have passed but the world continues changing at a vertiginous pace even more rapid than the notable acceleration of international instability following the disastrous Iraq war, in which Callahan also served, assisting yet another of Negroponte’s terror campaigns.

The North American ruling elite and their European and Pacific allies follow the same murderous, despotic unilateral policies they have always done. At home, they apply a woke, quasi-anti-racist, pseudo-feminist, false human rights gloss to pacify domestic liberal or social democrat qualms and progressive dissent. All the while they repress their impoverished lower classes with austerity, and, more recently, undeniably harmful, arbitrary public health restrictions. Overseas, Western elites continue to destroy or destabilize dozens of countries, falsely claiming to promote freedom and democracy, which even their own repression-drunk populations find ever harder to believe.


Central America

Recent events in Central America have underlined the malevolence, stupidity and incompetence of US foreign policy, especially in what US policy makers continue to view through their Monroe Doctrine blinkers as their exclusive sphere of influence. Last November 28th mass political resistance in Honduras made possible a coalition that has inflicted a truly humiliating electoral defeat on the US backed narco-terror regime fronted by President Juan Orlando Hernandez. Two weeks earlier, in Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government won re-election with massive support from voters for their poverty reduction policies, economic democratization and defense of basic rights to food security, health care and education.

Honduras now looks forward to a government promising to follow the successful socialist-inspired policies which, prior to the ruthless campaign of US destabilization and aggression in recent years, transformed life for the impoverished majorities of Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Among the measures president-elect Xiomara Castro has suggested she may take on assuming office is the rupture of relations with Taiwan, allowing Honduras to open full diplomatic relations with China. Over the last few days, following President Ortega’s re-election, Nicaragua has now recognized China’s territorial integrity. No one should be perplexed about why Nicaragua has opened up to China nor why Honduras may well do the same.

Reasons to recognize China

In 2008 prior to Honduras joining the ALBA regional bloc of countries, founded by Venezuela and Cuba, then Honduran President Manuel Zelaya visited then President George W. Bush in Washington asking for substantial development aid and investment. Bush told him there was nothing doing beyond the meagre assistance already on offer. So Honduras joined ALBA and began to get significant support facilitating Manuel Zelaya’s ambitious national development program. Unwilling to accept the regional implications of Zelaya’s advocacy of progressive poverty reduction policies, the US government and its European allies helped promote the coup and legitimize violent repression of protests and the subsequent elections, only making possible Zelaya’s return to Honduras after months of persecution and exile.

After that bitter experience and the experience of US and EU support for the electoral fraud of 2017, Xiomara Castro knows she can expect no useful economic aid or respectful political acceptance from either the US or its European Union allies. Nor is Venezuela in any condition to be able to help Honduras, after itself suffering a decade of North American and European economic aggression. So opening up Honduras to China is practically the only realistic option for Honduras to access the kinds and amounts of development support it needs to recover from over a decade of US inspired economic catastrophe that has left over 70% of Hondurans living in poverty.

The landslide electoral wins for Daniel Ortega and Xiomara Castro, along with the volatile unpredictability of President Bukele in El Salvador, have significantly complicated US policy options in the region. If Honduras does indeed open full diplomatic relations with China, only Belize and Guatemala of the eight Central American Integration System countries will still recognize Taiwan. Apart from purely commercial reasons for moving to recognize China, Nicaragua’s Sandinista government has effectively stymied current and looming overt and covert US economic coercion. The incoming government in Honduras could also likewise pre-empt potential US trade and economic aggression.

Nicaragua’s recognition of China also negates the US government’s boycott of loans from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank or support from the IMF, whose resources pale beside the massive financial power of China’s state-controlled banking system. The US authorities recently deepened already existing measures attacking Nicaragua’s economy with the punitive Renacer Act. Nicaragua has countered that economic aggression by placing itself to benefit from the substantial bilateral support it can now expect from China. The same would appply in the case of Honduras. But beyond those reasons Nicaragua may share with Honduras for resuming full diplomatic relations with China, other related factors certainly influenced Nicaragua’s decision.

Its new relations with China also complement Nicaragua’s already strong economic and trade relations with the Russian Federation, and other member countries of the Eurasian Economic Union like Belarus. The move also enhances its trade prospects with member countries of the Asia-Pacific countries Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, apart from already longstanding trade partners, South Korea and Japan. In that context, Nicaragua is of strategic importance to both the RCEP countries and more particularly to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, especially given the advanced stage of planning and preparation for the country’s proposed interoceanic canal carried out since 2013 by China’s HKND company.

Underlying all these economic and trade reasons for Nicaragua to resume full diplomatic relations with China after a break of over thirty years, is also Nicaragua’s global moral and diplomatic commitment to peaceful negotiations for the resolution of international conflicts, Ever since taking office in 2007, President Ortega has encouraged Taiwan to reach a negotiated settlement with the People’s Republic of China.

However, especially since her re-election last January, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen has pushed an implacable militarist agenda rejecting negotiation and dialogue in favor of provocative confrontation with China, cynically supported by the US goverrnment. Nicaragua could hardly have continued recognizing Taiwan in a context where Taiwan is counting on US military intervention in a potential war with China.

Consequences

For Honduras, any move to recognize the People’s Republic of China may possibly involve no more than the same low key disapproval on the part of the US that met the same policy decision by Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama. But given increasing US desperation at losing its accustomed control of Central America, more high profile intimidation is probably more likely, certainly as regards Nicaragua. Back in 2005, then US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick made clear that the Central American Free Trade Agreemen was as much a political as a trade measure, in large part aimed at corraling countries into even deeper trade dependence on the US.

So it would come as no surprise if the US formally threatened to withdaw from CAFTA unilaterally, as it has done from numerous other treaties, most notoriously perhaps the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action over Iran’s nuclear program. When it comes to sadistic, vindictive, gangster-style menaces nothing is off the table as far as the US authorities are concerned. Consequently, wayward Central American countries like El Salvador, Nicaragua and perhaps Honduras can well expect all kinds of threats covering issues like migration rules and quotas, development cooperation, or even the family remittances so vital to the survival of millions of families in Central America.

On the other hand, however, Mexico should welcome the new development options for the region opened up by China’s growing influence in Central America. Mexico is a decisively important country for the region and prioritizes social and economic Central American regional stability as an imperative. China’s win-win cooperation philosophy offers new options for development cooperation, investment, trade, technology transfer and financial support, far preferable to the current US model of heavily conditioned neocolonial cooperation. Apart from Central America, should Nicaragua and China indeed go ahead with the proposed interoceanic canal, that project would diversify regional trade and shipping options not only for Cuba and neighboring Caribbean island nations but for Venezuela too.

Both Xiomara Castro’s electoral win in Honduras and Nicaragua’s recognition of China threaten US control in the region. Faced with a Chinese-built interoceanic canal through Nicaragua, the US will probably intensify its current diplomatic and economic aggression and also progressively devise more direct provocations. For example, it may encourage its ally Colombia to escalate its navy’s continuing violations of Nicaragua’s maritime territory which ignore the 2012 judgment of the International Court of Justice. More generally, the entrenched US military and naval presence across Central America and the Caribbean is a constant, menacing reality. Even so, recent events in the region mark a new phase of notably more resilient and savvy popular resistance to the most recent episodes of over 150 years of Yankee intervention.


Featured image: Foto: Twitter – @PDChina / Comandante Daniel Ortega y el presidente del grupo HKND, Sr. Wang Jing en 2014, al obsequiarle el libro de Xi Jinping “La Gobernanza de China”.

(Tortilla Con Sal)

https://orinocotribune.com/the-us-is-at ... l-america/

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Honduras’ Left-Wing Breakthrough
December 14, 2021
By Francisco Dominguez – Dec 10, 2021

Since a US-backed coup toppled Mel Zelaya in 2009, Honduras has faced a clampdown on democracy and serious human rights abuses. But the election of socialist Xiomara Castro is a chance to break the cycle.

What appeared impossible has been achieved: the people of Honduras have broken the perpetuation, through electoral fraud and thuggish violence, of a brutal, illegal, illegitimate, and criminal regime.By means of sheer resistance, resilience, mobilisation, and organisation, they have managed to defeat Juan Orlando Hernandez’s narco-dictatorship at the ballot box. Xiomara Castro, presidential candidate of the left-wing Libre party (the Freedom and Refoundation Party, in its Spanish acronym), obtained a splendid 50+ percent—between 15 to 20 percent more votes than her closest rival candidate, Nasry Asfura, National Party candidate, in an election with historic high levels of participation (68 percent).
The extraordinary feat performed by the people of Honduras takes place under the dictatorial regime of Hernandez (aka JOH) in an election marred by what appears to be targeted assassinations of candidates and activists. Up to October 2021, 64 acts of electoral violence, including 11 attacks and 27 assassinations, had been perpetrated. And in the period preceding the election (11-23 November) another string of assassinations, mainly of candidates, took place.

None of the fatal victims were members of Hernandez’s National Party. The aim seems to have been to terrorise the opposition, and particularly their electorate, into believing that it was unsafe to turn out to vote—and that even if they did, they would again steal the election through fraud and violence, as they have done twice already, in 2013 and 2017.

Commentators correctly characterise this as the ‘Colombianisation’ of Honduran politics—that is, a ruling gang in power deploys security forces and paramilitary groups to assassinate opposition activists. In Honduras, the most despicable act was the murder of environmental activist, feminist, and indigenous leader Berta Caceres by armed intruders in her own house, after years of death threats.

She had been a leading figure in the grassroots struggle against electoral fraud and dictatorship, and had been calling for the urgent re-founding of the nation, a proposal that has been incorporated into the programme of mass social movements such as the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH). Since 2009, hundreds of activists have been assassinated at the hands of the police, the army, and paramilitaries.

The Colombianisation analogy does not stop at the assassination of opponents. Last June, the Washington Post explained the extent of infiltration by organised crime: ‘Military and police chiefs, politicians, businessmen, mayors and even three presidents have been linked to cocaine trafficking or accused of receiving funds from trafficking.’

US Judge Kevin Castel, who sentenced ‘Tony’ Hernandez, JOH’s brother, to life in prison after being found guilty of smuggling 185 tons of cocaine into the US, said: ‘Here, the [drug] trafficking was indeed state-sponsored’. In March 2021, at the trial against Geovanny Fuentes, a Honduran accused of drug trafficking, the prosecutor Jacob Gutwillig said that President JOH helped Fuentes with the trafficking of tons of cocaine.

Corruption permeates the whole Honduran establishment. National Party candidate Nasry Asfura has faced a pre-trial ‘for abuse of authority, use of false documents, embezzlement of public funds, fraud and money laundering’, and Yani Rosenthal, candidate of the once-ruling Liberal party, a congressman and a banker, was found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison in the US for ‘participating in financial transactions using illicit proceeds (drug money laundering).’

The parallels continue. Like Colombia, Honduras is a narco-state in which the US has a host of military bases. It was from Honduran territory that the Contra mercenaries waged a proxy war against Sandinista Nicaragua in the 1980s, and it was also from Honduras that the US-led military invasion of Guatemala was launched in 1954, bringing about the violent ousting of democratically elected left-wing nationalist president Jacobo Arbenz. Specialists aptly refer to the country as ‘USS Honduras’.

So cocaine trafficking and state terrorism, which operates as part of the drug business in cahoots with key state institutions, is ‘tolerated’ and probably supported by various US agencies ‘in exchange’ for a large US military presence—the US has Soto Cano and 12 more US military bases in Honduras—due to geopolitical calculations like regional combat against left-wing governments. This criminal system’s stability requires the elimination of political and social activists.

Thus many US institutions, from the White House all the way down the food chain, turn a blind eye to the colossal levels of corruption. In fact, SOUTHCOM has been actively building Honduras’ repressive military capabilities by funding and training special units like Batallion-316, which reportedly acts as a death squad, ‘guilty of kidnap, torture, and murder’. ‘Between 2010 and 2016, as US “aid” and training continued to flow, over 120 environmental activists were murdered by hitmen, gangs, police, and the military for opposing illegal logging and mining,’ one report explains.

The legacy left by right-wing governments since the violent ousting of Mel Zelaya in 2009 is abysmal. Honduras is one the most violent countries in the world (37 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, with 60 percent attributable to organised crime), with staggering levels of poverty (73.6 percent of households live below the poverty line, out of which 53.7 percent live in extreme poverty), high levels of unemployment (well over 12 percent), and even higher levels of underemployment (the informal sector of the economy, due to the effects of Covid-19, grew from 60 to 70 percent). Its external debt is over US$15 billion (57 percent of its GDP), and the nation suffers from high incidences of embezzlement and illegal appropriation of state resources by this criminal administration.

The rot is so pronounced that back in February this year, a group of Democrats in the US Senate introduced legislation intended to cut off economic aid and sales of ammunition to Honduran security forces. The proposal ‘lays bare the violence and abuses perpetrated since the 2009 military-backed coup, as a result of widespread collusion between government officials, state and private security forces, organised crime and business leaders.’ In Britain, Colin Burgon, the president of Labour Friends of Progressive Latin America, issued scathing criticism of the British government’s complicity for ‘having sold (when Boris Johnson was Foreign Minister no less) to the Honduran government spyware designed to eavesdrop on its citizens, months before the state rounded up thousands of people in a well-orchestrated surveillance operation.’

To top it all off, through the ZEDES (Special Zones of Development and Employment) initiative, whole chunks of the national territory are being given to private enterprise subjected to a ‘special regime’ that empowers investors to establish their own security bodies—including their own police force and penitentiary system—to investigate criminal offences and instigate legal prosecutions. This is taking neoliberalism to abhorrent levels, the dream of multinational capital: the selling-off of portions of the national territory to private enterprise. Stating that the Honduran oligarchy, led by JOH, is ‘selling the country down the river’ is not a figure of speech.

It is this monstrosity, constructed since the overthrow of President Mel Zelaya in 2009 on top of the existing oligarchic state, that the now victorious Libre party and incoming president Xiomara Castro need to overcome to start improving the lives of the people of Honduras. The array of extremely nasty internal and external forces that her government will be up against is frighteningly powerful, and they have demonstrated in abundance what they are prepared to do to defend their felonious interests.

President-elect Xiomara’s party Libre, is the largest in the 128-seat Congress, and with its coalition partner, Salvador, will have a very strong parliamentary presence, which will be central to any proposed referendum for a Constituent Assembly aimed at re-founding the nation. Libre has also won in the capital city Tegucigalpa, and in San Pedro Sula, the country’s second largest city. More importantly, unlike elections elsewhere (in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia), the National Party’s candidate, Asfura, has conceded defeat. Thus, Xiomara has a very strong mandate.

However, in a region dominated by US-led ‘regime change’ operations—the coup in Bolivia, the coup attempt in Nicaragua, the mercenary attack against Venezuela, plus a raft of violent street disorders in Cuba, vigorous destabilisation against recently elected President Castillo in Peru, and so on ad nausea—Honduras will need all the international solidarity we can provide, which we must do.

The heroic struggle of the people of Honduras has again demonstrated that it can be done: neoliberalism and its brutal foreign and imperialist instigators can be defeated and a better world can be built. So, before Washington, their Honduran cronies, their European accomplices, and the world corporate media unleash any shenanigans, let’s say loud and clear: US hands off Honduras!



Featured image: Xiomara Castro celebrates during general elections on 28 November 2021 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. (Inti Ocon / Getty Images)

(Tribune Magazine)

https://orinocotribune.com/honduras-lef ... akthrough/

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Juan Pablo Guanipa on the Dissolution of Venezuela’s ‘Interim Government’
December 14, 2021

Former opposition deputy Juan Pablo Guanipa confirmed that the goal of the Venezuelan and international far right is to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from the position to which he was re-elected in 2018. Guanipa did not exclude the possibility of discussing changes in the so-called interim government.

Guanipa is one of the opposition political leaders who was in parliament between 2015 and 2020. He currently supports the non-recognition of the government of Venezuela and other institutions of the Venezuelan state.

Regarding the proposal of Julio Borges—who fled Venezuela after the failed coup and now suggests that the interim government should dissolve, Juan Pablo Guanipa affirmed that it is an “idea that must be discussed by Justice First and by all of Venezuela’s democratic alternative.” He added that he is a supporter of the fake interim government being submitted to process of “reshaping and reduction,” with fewer ambassadors in those countries in which the Venezuelan far-right is strongly backed.

One must remember that recently, at the General Assembly of the United Nations, a vote took place in which the majority recognized the legitimacy of the Bolivarian government of President Nicolás Maduro, while only 16 countries voted against it in order to support Guaidó.

What is in store for Guaidó?

As declared by Guanipa to a private Venezuelan media outlet, the countries in which the interim government is interested in maintaining its representatives are “the US, Colombia, Brasil, European countries, and the countries in the Organization of American States (OEA).”

Similarly, he commented that he still supports Juan Guaidó being at the front of the Venezuelan opposition and managing the resources and wealth which were stolen from the Venezuelan state.

However, when directly asked about the president of the interim government, Guanipa evaded commenting whether or not his support for Guaidó included recognizing him as the supposed president of the parallel government, which they are trying to sustain. For this reason, he affirmed that the concept of “unity” is not an end in itself and that neither is the interim government. With these remarks he evaded the question of what his comments on reshaping the far-right meant, which today is led by former deputy Juan Guaidó.

Featured image: Juan Pablo Guanipa. Photo: RedRadioVE

(RedRadioVE) by José Manuel Blanco Díaz

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

https://orinocotribune.com/juan-pablo-g ... overnment/

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The Defense of Humanity in the Global Crisis
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on DECEMBER 14, 2021
Daniel Martínez Cunill

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On January 26, 2022, it will be 127 years since José Martí formulated a concept that acquires greater relevance in these complex times of global crisis: “Homeland is Humanity, it is that portion of humanity that we see more closely, and in which we were born”. As sons and daughters of the Patria Grande, of the Latin America that saw us being born and is our sister, we subscribe to the meaning of his thought, at the same time that we recognize ourselves in the class commitment contained in his immortal verse: “With the poor of the earth. I want to cast my lot with the poor of the earth”.

United in this notion of humanity that gives us Our America, committed to the fate of the poor of the continent, we understand that the defense of humanity passes today to face, all and all united, the multifaceted crisis that strikes our peoples. Although in the immediate term the crisis was triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, in reality what came to light was a profound economic crisis and a crisis of democratic and civilizational values of the system, which had been accumulating for more than a decade.

The international panorama at this juncture is characterized by contradictory and conflicting signals, especially in our continent, where at the same time as we witness the emergence of progressive and leftist governments, we see setbacks in the social and political spaces previously conquered by the popular sectors and the resurgence of conservative currents, some of which do not conceal the retrograde nature of their thinking.

Faced with this disjunctive, faced with this contradiction, some currents of the left and progressivism suggest as a response to abandon the programmatic proposals with greater class content, that is, those that generate more dissent, and move to positions closer to the current conservative tendencies of the international system.

While we can respect this position and recognize the right of these currents to move towards the center, which progressively drifts to the right, our proposal is contrary to this strategy.

We think that the conservative tendencies must be confronted with strength and determination from the left, from a renewed, united and plural left, which finds in a solid policy of principles the strength to confront the fascist tendencies that hide in the false neo-liberal discourse, which defends a failed and anachronistic democracy.

The unavoidable complement to this left-wing position is the commitment to the specific demands of social movements and to join their mobilizations and protests. In this regard, the political parties of the left must leave behind the idea of leading the social movements. We must advance in a united way in sharing flags and lines of action, agreed upon in collective directions and with democratic decisions. We are challenged to overcome the historical tendency to think revolutionary change based more on the revolutionary party than on the class.

The common adversary, in this struggle in defense of humanity, is the North American empire that desperately seeks to recover its hegemonic position by modifying the tendencies of globalization and international rules, because the current ones not only do not serve it, but lead it progressively to a terminal crisis. That is why democracy is only valid for the empire when its results are favorable to it. Otherwise, it prefers coups d’état of all kinds, interventionist and destabilizing actions and extraterritorial economic sanctions.

It is for these same reasons that the hegemonic sectors of our countries are once again becoming national replicas of U.S. policy, accomplices to its violations of international law and instruments of its anti-democratic intervention. The imperial decadence, headed at this moment by Biden and the Democrats, is expressed with greater force in Latin America, converted into a zone of withdrawal of its geopolitical interests, and makes us foresee a worsening of its interference.

We believe that the most dissociative world tendencies will be expressed with intensity in Latin America. Contradictions will be exacerbated in our countries by the narrow margin of recovery of the neoliberal model within its normativity. In its imperious need for survival, neoliberalism, understood, more than as an economic proposal, as a project of domination, transcends its own legal boundaries, lies, transgresses rights, violates agreements and resorts to blackmail and the use of force in a re-edition of “the politics of the big stick”.

Although nowadays concepts such as “dialectic” are usually understood as obscene, the situation in our continent qualifies exactly as dialectic. On the one hand, there are all the attempts of the governments that want to overcome the pandemic crisis seeking that the cost be paid by the workers and the middle classes, and that predatory capitalism and its beneficiaries do not have to be affected in their interests. On the other hand, there are the broad sectors of the population that react with legitimate violence, pressured by the accelerated deterioration of their living conditions and the institutional incapacity to offer solutions.

In the electoral sphere this contradiction is expressed by high abstention rates and by the drift of depoliticized sectors towards frankly fascist positions. The growing generational refusal to participate in the traditional forms of political life and the search for other forms of militancy and/or influence in the life of society also deserve a more detailed analysis.

Youth sectors, of popular extraction or with a sense of class, instead of joining political parties, prefer to confront the media discourse of the right by resorting to the speed of digital technology to propose, reject or support specific demands. It is a kind of militancy that combines the intensive use of social networks with acts of street protest that are characterized more by a high degree of violence and rejection of the system than by an organization with a long-term vision.

Gramsci posits that the modern prince cannot be a person, or a personal hero, but a political party, a complex social organism in which the concretization of a recognized collective will is initiated, and whose history is not reduced to the history of restricted groups of intellectuals or the biography of a single personality.

In the current conditions of the class struggle, and because of the character it has taken on with the emergence of new social actors of change, the modern collective prince must be found both in political parties and in social movements, where it is the permanent feedback that provides the transforming and democratic character. In the long cycles of the historical process, the principles must be understood as provisional in their formulations, since they were designed for a stage of social relations that are modified over time. Ideological strength should not be confused with dogmatism. Ideological strength consists in being able to adapt the principles to the historical moment without betraying their essence.

The institutions and their leaders will have to answer for the institutional failures mentioned above. As far as the Latin American left is concerned, we must take responsibility for our inability to propose concrete policies, economic and social paradigms that give life to new models clearly alternative to those that fragment and destroy the social fabric because they refuse to disappear.

Latin American progressivism, for example, already gave what it could give and encountered its difficulties and failures precisely because the model it proposed had too many dependencies and similarities – political and economic – with the system it was supposed to modify, including its distancing from the social subjects that had brought it to government, who realized its limitations. Electoral defeats, such as those in Argentina, have their roots in this unresolved dilemma.

A brief analysis of the demands expressed in the streets of Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru, among other countries of the continent, clearly indicates that the new generations are demonstrating against the deterioration of the environment, in favor of peace, against the degradation of Justice and the disrespect for Human Rights. Their slogans are expressed in favor of the specific rights of women and for the most unrestricted freedom in sexual, reproductive and gender matters.

The intensification of exploitation and the violence of the system that accompanies it, announce new explosions of popular rebellion and the angry demand for a new concept of democracy, which must be deliberative, decentralized and truly representative. A democracy that is not functional to the capitalist system and that is capable of listening to the demands of the new social actors, the generational, gender, Afro-descendants and native peoples. A democracy in which society is capable of self-governance, regulation and self-regulation.

It is true that we are facing a crisis, which in the Gramscian sense is expressed because “the ruling class has lost consensus.” That is, it is no longer a leader, but only dominant: holder of a pure coercive force. Bolsonaro, Piñera and Bukele facilitate the explanation.

The organic crisis of a class or social group occurs to the extent that it has exhausted all the forms of life implicit in its social relations, but, thanks to political society and its forms of coercion, the dominant class artificially maintains its domination and prevents the new dominant group from replacing it: “the organic crisis consists in the fact that the old does not die and the new cannot yet be born”.

If we agree with this diagnosis, the tasks of the Latin American and Caribbean left would consist in making an effort so that the old ends up dying, instead of accepting its promises of well-intentioned reforms, which only give it oxygen in its agony. As an unavoidable complement is to promote the birth of the new, understanding that “the new” is socialism adapted to the current characteristics of our historical moment: a socialism that fights bureaucracy and centralist tendencies and that has drawn the appropriate lessons from the failures that preceded it.

Having assumed this strategic task as an imperative, we ask ourselves the question: is the current democracy, in force in its letter, in its mechanisms and in its spirit, a sufficient instrument to move towards a new democracy and a new society? From our point of view, the answer is negative, because we consider that the prevailing democracy is part of “the old that will never die”.

We are in the paradox of aspiring to a new model of society and a new system by resorting to an anachronistic electoral instrument whose weaknesses are exposed every time there are elections. And even supposing that democracy would open a process of transformation, which includes it, disputing and appropriating hegemony is not a unique process to be solved once and for all, but a process that must be constantly renewed during the struggle and after the popular sectors gain access to power.

This hegemony must be expressed in a historical, national and popular project, understanding the people as the sum of all the new contemporary social subjects. It must also generate a democracy that represents all citizens. The new power will retain its legitimacy if it is able to represent the national collective will and to preserve this attribute in the various stages of the exercise of the acquired power.

Elections within a crisis of democracy in Latin America

In view of the above, we believe that the elections in Chile, as well as those in Argentina, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Honduras and others should be analyzed in a regional context. At present, elections are interrelated, either due to neighborhood effects, previous identities between countries or due to US interference, which tries to standardize its interests under a common parameter.

Latin American democracies, built to sustain and justify a global capitalist economic model, feel the crisis of the system in their functioning and structures. For this reason, they are going through a deep crisis: their institutions are incapable of identifying and giving space to citizens’ demands. On the contrary, imbalances and inequities are worsening.

Governments and large corporations, faced with an economic context of low growth or stagnation, resort to violating their own rules, encapsulating democracy in controlled electoral processes and abandoning and/or sabotaging any form of citizen participation in the direction of their governments and the use of the wealth produced.

As we have already pointed out, the deformations of Latin American democracies explain the emergence of new subjects and emerging social political forces, disappointed by the democratic model, who seek to change it for participatory systems and to put a stop to the excesses of the legislative and judicial powers, especially when it comes to progressive governments.

Under the banners of democracy proclaimed by the US, between 2000 and 2010 there was a marked shift to a neoliberal economic model and matrix that solved the problems of the oligarchies and consolidated a model functional to the interests of capitalism. This model did not solve the structural problems of the continent and progressively plunged the Latin American and Caribbean working classes into overexploitation, poverty, unemployment and, logically, anger and despair.

In almost two years of pandemic, pre-existing economic-social and political-institutional problems have deepened. The persistence of structural problems (fueled by the bad economic-social situation and accelerated by the pandemic) and the strategies of the new emerging political actors who have broken or moved away from the traditional political-institutional consensus and loyalty to the system, are highlighting the weaknesses of Latin American democracies.

In the absence of consolidated social or partisan bases, caudillos seek support from other organizations and institutions. Among these supports, the Armed Forces stand out, which, due to their level of organization and wide presence, are not only being used for classic functions such as citizen security, but in countries such as Brazil and El Salvador they are fulfilling another more political role.

Latin America was going through and continues to go through a period of high levels of criticism of the way democracy exists and performs, justified by the disappointment of its malfunctioning in each country. At the same time, social networks play a role of loudspeaker and amplification of tension and polarization.

As a consequence of this situation and the crisis of political parties, citizens are looking for other alternatives to solve their demands (corruption, economic problems and citizen security). This is where we are called upon to make an evaluation of the recent electoral processes in the continent.

When voting is not choosing and winning is not winning

Our intention is not to analyze the results of the elections that close in 2021, nor to make comparisons between the figures of each exercise. We have already pointed out that we consider that they are taking place within the framework of a democracy in crisis and where the rules of the game are not respectful of the majority will. In addition, in each particular case, the parties and candidates themselves have made public their assessments.

Our purpose is to insist on the lack of representativeness of those elected, on the adulteration of the electoral results through the propaganda that accompanies the candidacies, on the foreign interference that disqualifies candidates, and on the capacity of the media to turn the elections into a marketing duel where the truth turns out to be a collateral aspect.

We would like to call attention to certain regularities that occur in the electoral processes and that constitute a warning call.

One of them is that behind the candidacies we find political conglomerates, alliances or coalitions that presume plurality, but that, in my opinion, more than plural are multiclassist, that is to say, that their distinctive seal is not given by the sum of organizations with similar political projects, but because behind a candidacy are grouped tendencies of diverse ideological nature, that join forces in function of creating artificial majorities.

Rather than having a common program, they have a common objective: to defeat the adversary by accumulating more votes than him, to prevent the continuity of a government project to which they are opposed and/or to attain power in order to later distribute it according to the votes and the material support that each of their components carried to achieve the triumph.

Worse still, the defeated oppositions in the electoral processes refuse to recognize that they lost and resort to destabilizing methods to oppose the victors. Bolivia for a long time and Peru recently, show this regularity, where the concept of opposition is replaced by that of conspiracy. It is impossible not to recognize behind this behavior a continental project originating in U.S. imperialism, which refuses to lose presence and control over the traditional hegemonic sectors.

This is why we consider that voting is not choosing. A part of the population with the right to vote does not exercise it, either because none of the candidates represent their interests, or because by abstaining they want to express their rejection of the system as a whole, or simply because they are not interested in participating, as citizens, in the political destiny of the country through the ballot box. Those who vote, except for a militant hard core, choose “a product” presented in a wrapping of promises and good intentions that soon disappear. The biblical miracle then occurs, but in reverse, and the wine ends up becoming water.

The “agenda adjustment” is also very worrying. It has become a discouraging practice that, shortly after having achieved an electoral victory, the winners modify their campaign proposals, backtracking on points of democratic and popular content. The cases of Pedro Castillo in Peru and Xiomara Castro in Honduras regarding the call for a Constituent Assembly are particularly important.

In both cases, they supported it during their campaign and, shortly after their electoral victory, they eliminated it from their project, giving little or no argumentation to justify the backward step. The issue is very sensitive since, within the narrow margin of the institutional framework of current democracies, using the democratic bonus granted by an electoral victory to advance towards a modern Constitution with popular content would undoubtedly represent a democratic advance. It is to use the existing spaces of the old democracy to create a new institutionality.

Thus, abandoning the banners of a demand of broad sectors of the citizenry and renouncing to provide an updated Constitution, is to want to move towards a new society by resorting to old instruments, which casts doubt on the possible results.

Another element of reflection is that the recent electoral campaigns and their speeches express a distancing between the citizen contingents that proclaim their needs with street protests and the progressive and/or leftist candidacies. Several misunderstandings are contained therein.

On the one hand, the parties and organizations do not realize that the sectors mobilized in the street protests distrust them and the party system as a whole. On the other hand, when the parties propose that the demands be channeled through an electoral struggle, they make those mobilized feel that they are not represented and, rather, conclude that the parties are closing ranks and taking advantage of the system.

This sort of “disavowal” of the forms of street struggle and the imperative to support an electoral formula, explain in part situations such as the first round of the presidential elections in Chile, which surprised by a notorious difference in participation between the votes that led to the Constitutional Convention and the support for the candidacy of Gabriel Boric.

Just as progressive governments, beyond their good intentions and desires for change, distance themselves from their bases in the exercise of acquired power, there is also a mutual disaffection between the candidacies and the mobilized.

This leads us to some initial provisional conclusions:

*Transformative struggles in Latin America have to go beyond the search for electoral victories, for which it is necessary to transgress the existing democratic spaces, to walk at the pace that the popular majorities walk and to accompany their forms of struggle.
*To understand electoral battles as a tactical step and not as an end in itself.
*The future Latin American and Caribbean democracy will not emerge from the results of the ballot boxes. It will be the result of the left political parties meeting again in a common battle with the mobilized masses in the continent.

Political parties suffered a progressive crisis of representation, while losing contact with the citizenry. The disconnection between Latin American societies and the democratic system resulted in outbursts of social frustration: from the “let them all go” (Argentina, 2001), to the “outlaw” movement (Ecuador, 2005) and the “penguin rebellion” (Chile, 2011).

The negative economic context and the spiral of unmet social demands provoked in 2019 a wave of protests of regional scope and new episodes of social frustration, especially in the new middle classes, extremely vulnerable, which overwhelmed the weak democratic systems, with aging state apparatuses and fragmented party systems.

This leads to a moment we would call “asymmetric and obsolete democracies”: asymmetric because they respond to the needs of a minority sector of society, which seeks to maintain power at any cost and which distances itself from the majority of the population that produces wealth, but fails to question the hegemony; and obsolete, because they are democracies whose institutions and procedures were consolidated in a historical moment already surpassed and where their own progenitors, persuaded that they are no longer useful, only maintain them as a stultified electoral discourse, but in fact replace them with coercive mechanisms and authoritarian decisions.

Latin American democracies do not channel demands or find solutions to the growing social frustration. What they do is to develop demagogic and authoritarian political alternatives, with models far removed from, even contrary to, democratic values (respect for the adversary and acceptance of results).

The authoritarian drift is not the patrimony of any particular group in the political or ideological spectrum. The new caudillismos seek to demolish institutional structures, limiting the control capacity of other counterpowers, especially the judiciary and the legislature. Their strategy is expressed in various ways: strengthening of caudillista leaderships, attack on the media and growing contempt for institutions.

In addition to this, there are other mechanisms, increasingly active, such as control of information, especially on the Internet and social networks, to abort the protests of non-organized and non-aligned sectors.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/12/ ... al-crisis/
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Mon Dec 20, 2021 1:50 pm

World Leaders Celebrate Boric's Victory in Chile

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President-elect Gabriel Boric, Santiago, Chile, Dec. 19, 2021. | Photo: Twitter/ @ArsenalFlaf

Published 20 December 2021

"I salute the people of Salvador Allende and Victor Jara for their resounding victory over fascism. Great democratic day! Long live Chile!," Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro stressed.

On Sunday, over 15 million citizens were summoned to participate in the election of the President of Chile for the period 2022-2026. The Approve Dignity candidate Gabriel Boric obtained 56 percent of the votes in an electoral process that had one of the highest participation rates in the history of this South American country.

One of the first reactions to the victory of the leftist candidate was carried out by the Puebla Group, which highlighted that "his arrival in government confirms the progressive trend that the region is experiencing. It expresses the need for a new model of economic development that is more supportive and democratic. Boric's triumph also opens up new political spaces for progressive forces in the elections in Brazil and Colombia in 2022." Below are other reactions to Gabriel Boric's victory:

Argentina:

"We must assume the commitment to strengthen the bonds of brotherhood that unite our countries and to work together with the region to put an end to inequality in Latin America", President Alberto Fernandez.

"The people always come back and find the ways to do it. It can be a party, it can be a leader today and another tomorrow, but the people always come back. Congratulations President Gabriel Boric to you and the Chilean people," Vice President Cristina Fernandez tweeted.

Bolivia:

"We salute the electoral triumph of Gabriel Boric, which is the triumph of the Chilean people. Latin American democracy is strengthened through unity, respect and, above all, the will of our peoples. Congratulations to the elected President of Chile!," Luis Arce.

"The victory of brother Gabriel Boric is the victory of democracy, integration, brotherhood, and respect for our peoples," Vice President David Choquehuanca.

"We salute the democratic vocation of our brother Chilean people and we congratulate Gabriel Boric for his triumph," Former President Evo Morales.

Brazil:

"I congratulate comrade Gabriel Boric for his election as president of Chile. I am happy for another victory for a democratic, progressive candidate in our Latin America, for the construction of a better future for all," Former President Lula da Silva.

Colombia:

President Ivan Duque sent a message to Boric expressing "interest in continuing to work together to strengthen the historic and fraternal bilateral relationship that unites us. We are brother countries."

Cuba:

"Cordial congratulations to Gabriel Boric for his election of him as President of Chile in a historic popular victory. We ratify the will to expand bilateral relations and cooperation between both peoples and governments," President Miguel Diaz-Canel said.


Ecuador:

"Gabriel Boric, new president of Chile! Long live Chile! Long live the Great Homeland! Towards victory, always!" Former President Rafael Correa.

Europe:

"The European Union (EU) congratulates Gabriel Boric on his election as the future President of Chile. We hope to further strengthen our relations with the next Chilean government. We are partners and together we are stronger," said Josep Borrell, the EU High Representative fo Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

"Congratulations to Gabriel Boric, who was elected as the socialist president of Chile! A victory for hope and change. The united people will never be defeated!" Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Nicaragua:

"With respect and joy, we salute his historic triumph, achieved with the brave Chilean people, inspired by the ever-present legacy of the president of dignity, Salvador Allende, and of so many heroes and martyrs of that great people," President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo pointed out.

Mexico:

Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard stressed that the results of the elections should be seen as "great good news from Chile!"

Panama:

"I congratulate the President-elect of Chile Gabriel Boric and convey a fraternal greeting to the Chilean people. We hope to continue working together in the development of our nations and the strengthening of democracy in the region," President Nito Cortizo.

Peru:

"Congratulations on your triumph, my dear friend Gabriel Boric! The victory you have achieved is the victory of the Chilean people. It is a victory felt by the Latin American peoples who want to live with freedom, peace, justice, and dignity! Let's continue fighting for the unity of our nations," President Pedro Castillo.

Uruguay:

"I congratulate the elected president of Chile Gabriel Boric and wish him success for the good of the Chilean people," President Luis Lacalle Pou.

Venezuela:

"I congratulate the Approve Dignity coalition and Gabriel Boric, the newly elected president of Chile. I salute the people of Salvador Allende and Victor Jara for their resounding victory over fascism. Great democratic day! Long live Chile!," President Nicolas Maduro stressed.

"We salute the historic democratic day whose protagonist was the Chilean people. We congratulate President-elect Gabriel Boric and wish him many successes. He has our support to work for the integration of our America," said Sacha Llorenti, the secretary of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America - Peoples' Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP).

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Wor ... -0001.html

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Only One Chávez and Only One Salvador
December 18, 2021
By Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein – Dec 15, 2021

From Venezuela to Chile, from Caldera to Boric

The current situation in Chile seems to me more and more strikingly similar to that of the early 90’s in Venezuela. At that time, here—just as in Chile today—30 years of post-dictatorship were being experienced. Both countries—at the time—were presented as a “model of democracy to follow” and “example for the world” based on the “success” of the two-party representative democracy system in which the economy was put at the service of a minority of the population.

“It is not thirty pesos, it is thirty years” could have been the cry of the tens of thousands of demonstrators who participated in the Caracazo of February 27 and 28, 1989, a popular protest movement which was a massive expression of the rejection of the neoliberal measures implemented by President Carlos Andrés Pérez. In the world’s fifth largest oil producer and exporter, there was 51% poverty. The fate of Pérez (a stubbornly corrupt man, as was demonstrated a few years later) and that of the false democracy were sealed forever. Thousands of dead and hundreds who remain disappeared until today—were the government’s response to the popular mobilization.

But the two situations also have differences, one of them highly relevant. In Venezuela, faced with the massive clamor of the citizenry and the reprobation of the system in the face of the inactivity, passivity and complicity of the politicians, a group of patriotic military people, attentive to the situation, produced two uprisings during 1992 to show their support for the popular sentiment. The first one, carried out on February 4 under the leadership of Hugo Chávez Frías, an unknown lieutenant colonel of the Special Forces, raised the spirit of struggle and pointed out a different path, and this placed Chávez on the pedestal of future battles to come. As never before in the history of Venezuela, a leader assumed responsibility for a failure, but this time, the defeat “for now” of the movement gave a victory course to that day.

Chávez and his comrades were sent to prison. In the afternoon of the same day, in a special meeting of the Congress, former President Rafael Caldera emerged from the shadows and, with the opportunism of any despicable traditional politician, and using a vibrant speech in which he called to review the true causes of the uprising, he took over the protagonism of the movement that had shaken Venezuelan society to its foundations. Two years later, Caldera was elected president of Venezuela.

The similarity of the situations of Venezuela in the ’90s and present-day Chile is evident because in Chile, starting from October 18, 2019—as in Venezuela during the Caracazo—the country was shaken by a great popular movement of repudiation against the neoliberal system that continued the dictatorship. The massive October protest in Chile was an expression of the feelings of a people tired after 30 years of exclusion and impoverishment, particularly of the poorest sectors of the population. President Piñera’s response—just like that of Carlos Andrés Pérez 30 years ago—was a brutal repression with the aggravating factor of a new technique whereby police forces shot at the eyes to blind the demonstrators, thus exposing a novel attribute of representative democracy.

It is worth saying that the bullets succeeded in taking away the sight of the protesters whose eyes were wounded, but they could not take away their political vision, the fighting spirit and the pure soul of the majority, as demonstrated by Senator Fabiola Campillai, elected with the highest majority in Santiago, who lost her sight due to the murderous repression of Piñera and representative democracy.

When the protests were at their zenith and Piñera was staggering, when the people had decided to carry out their movement to the last consequences in the face of the “inactivity, passivity and complicity of the politicians,” appeared the Rafael Caldera of the 21st century, Gabriel Boric, like a phoenix to save his colleague Sebastián Piñera in the same way that the latter—in the safety of representative democracy—had run to London to express his support to Pinochet who had been detained for human rights violations during the dictatorship. Thus one “savior” saved another “savior.”

The pact of the political elites of November 15, 2019, largely paralyzed the Chilean protests, and Gabriel Boric emerged as the main protagonist of the salvation of the system so that two years later—just like Caldera—he could be elected president or at least, be a strong candidate to be president when I write these lines.

In 1994, Caldera was considered the “lesser evil” in the face of the neoliberal onslaught in Venezuela. A large number of forces came to support him, including the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) that supported him instead of the candidate who at that time represented the left. Thus, the “fluke” came to pass; the communists were in government for the first time since the beginning of representative democracy in 1958. A former guerrilla fighter, Teodoro Petkoff (like a Carlos Ominami), ultra-leftist turned neoliberal, became minister of Planning, privatizing everything that could be privatized, including the Venezuelan aviation company (VIASA), leaving all workers unemployed except one: Petkoff’s son.

Thus, the “fluke” left became neoliberal and promoter of privatization, to such an extent that the PCV was forced to leave the government after the “deception” of Caldera, who did the opposite of what had been agreed upon, in order to distance himself from the government of Carlos Andreés Pérez. On the contrary, Caldera’s administration was one of profound neoliberal continuity.

I did not vote for Caldera, I did not accept the “lesser evil,” and preferred to wait for a better situation at a time when Comandante Chávez and his comrades were still in prison. Chávez was released from prison in 1994 and went throughout Venezuela, explaining his project for the country. The Caracazo of 1989, which had continued well into 1992, had given birth to a new leader.

In the 1998 electoral campaign, Chávez called on the people of Venezuela to participate in building a different country through the approval of a new Constitution to be drafted by genuine representatives of the people and endorsed by them in a constituent referendum. The people believed in Chávez and elected him president with 56.5% of the votes. The people thus had regained their worth, Chávez rescued the people’s power and gave it all the significance it should have in a true democracy. Therefore, in Venezuela, democracy, besides being representative, is equally participative and enjoys the protagonism of the people by mandate of the Constitution, approved on December 15, 1999. Of course, the process is imperfect, it has many problems because it is a model under construction that is suffering the incessant siege, intervention and interference of the US and European imperial powers.

But in 1998 it was worth it not to have surrendered to the “lesser evil” of 1994. That same deception has cost Chile 32 years of dictatorial continuity to which another five years could be added, if the Constitutional Convention cannot put a stop to it, at least partially. The theory of “lesser evil” is what brought Biden to the presidency of the United States and we have all seen the results. I do not doubt that for the people of the United States the Democrats represent a different expectation from the Republicans. Similarly, I do not question that for the Chilean people, Boric offers a different option in comparison to Kast. But in terms of foreign policy, both promise the same thing: to continue to keep Chile as a privileged ally of the United States, particularly in its attempts to overthrow the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Both Boric and Kast —equally—characterize the governments of these countries as dictatorships.

The Chilean “lesser evil” for Venezuela has extended even to international organizations. Mrs. Bachelet, the superlative expression of that “lesser evil,” continues to be an expression of the imperial policy based on biased reports on Venezuela that relay the policies designed in Washington and with which she fully complies.

I am Chilean and Venezuelan. I sincerely respect all my friends in Chile who are going to vote for Boric; but I live in Venezuela, I cannot vote for someone who has assumed himself as an enemy of the country and who advocates the overthrow of its government. I have to think about the country, but above all about the future of my family and my son.

The concertacionista entourage of socialists, populists and Christian democrats that has recently become close to Boric to build its policy, foresees a new Petkoff leading the economy. They will marginalize the Communist Party of Chile until it is forced—if they are consistent with their history—to leave the government. It is only desirable that with Boric, the same thing does not happen to the communists as with González Videla during the 40’s of the last century, whom they helped elect and who, once in government, persecuted, relegated and repressed them

For the time being, it is also desirable that the Constitutional Convention, despite not being a constituent body, be capable of generating a new institutional framework that sweeps away the current one inherited from the dictatorship and that Chileans have a new option in which they are not forced to opt for the lesser evil. I have full confidence that through popular wisdom a new leadership will emerge that will bring a new president who will be a faithful representative of the people’s interests.

Until that moment arrives, in this 2021 in Chile, as in 1993 in Venezuela, I will not vote. I will hope that Chile will also have a luminous 1998 that will allow “opening the great avenues through which the free man will pass to build a better society” as President Salvador Allende, the only true Savior that Chile has had in its recent history, said.


Featured image: Gabriel Boric, the “leftist” candidate in the presidential election of Chile, whose foreign policy is entirely aligned with the US empire. File photo.

https://orinocotribune.com/only-one-cha ... -salvador/

Boric is about as 'left' as Bernie Sanders....never seen a socialists or socialists leaning country he likes....more 'lesser evilism', more misdirection.
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Wed Dec 22, 2021 3:13 pm

Relief for Boric’s Victory. Uncertainty Regarding the Social Democratization of His Discourse.
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on DECEMBER 20, 2021
Álvaro Verzi Rangel

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The reactionary right wing expected to add a step forward in Chile. The tandem of José Antonio Kast with the ultra-right-wing Brazilian President Bolsonaro would have meant a threatening pincer for the region. It failed. Almost 12 points of advantage put an end to one of the most polarized and uncertain processes since the return to democracy in 1989, on a hot day and with a notorious drop in public transportation that attempted to prevent citizens from going en masse to vote for their future, for the center-left Gabriel Boric.

At 35 years of age, Gabriel Boric is the youngest president-elect (he will be 36 when he takes office on March 11) and the most voted in Chilean history, with an unprecedented 55% of electoral participation. It is also the first time that an incumbent congressman like himself becomes president.

In addition, the next president will accompany the process of the ratification plebiscite of the New Constitution, during the first semester of next year, a decade after the great student protests of 2011 where Boric, then leader of the University of Chile, was one of the most prominent leaders. Movements against an economic model that generated inequality, poverty and looting of the country, which culminated in the drafting of a new Constitution.

“How many of you marched in 2006, 2011, 2012? We are from a generation that emerges to public life demanding that education be a right and not a consumer good.”

He also spoke of putting an end to the particular pension system that makes private individuals invest with the money that the people obligatorily impose for retirement without participating in the profits. “We do not want them to continue doing business with our pensions”, he said to the thousands of Santiago residents who were celebrating the triumph.

If the result was surprising and unexpected, so was the high turnout, which was 55.4 percent of registered citizens, in contrast to 46.7 percent in the previous elections and 41.98 percent in 2013. It was also unprecedented that the candidate who came second in the first round won in the second round.

Boric’s election also meant the defeat of the conservative and authoritarian backlash, in a presidential outcome in continuity with the crisis detonated as of 2019, when the people -especially the new generations- took to the streets, demonstrating -as Aram Aharojian said- that the left, in Latin America, is in the streets.

At the end of his first speech as president-elect, Boric said:

“Today hope has won over fear. Chilean men and women have arrived with a government project, which can be synthesized in advancing with responsibility in the structural changes that Chile needs. Our government will be a government with its feet on the street”.

He also spoke about defending human rights, defending the new constitution and fighting against projects that destroy the environment:

“No to Dominga… We cannot look aside when the greed of a few destroys unique ecosystems”.

He acknowledged that “the times ahead will not be easy” and that he will have to face the consequences of the worst pandemic of the last century, but also of the social uprising. He pointed out that “never, for any reason should we have a president who declares war on his own people”, alluding to a phrase of the current president Sebastián Piñera, in the midst of the 2019 Santiago riots, assuring that “we were at war”. He then repeated the chant that emerged among the public:

“Justice, truth, no to impunity”.

Since the social unrest, the crisis was translated into a series of street and electoral events, in particular the plebiscite for a new Constitution, and the installation of the Constitutional Commission, last July, in charge of drafting the new constitutional text, which will put an end to that of Agousto Pinochet’s dictatorship.

For the second electoral round, Boric redefined his discourse, enhancing issues such as security, migrations and the look to the future, adding Izkia Siches, president of the Medical College as spokesperson, one of the most charismatic and beloved leaders during the pandemic.

He also managed to evade the provocations of the ultra-right, Kast’s cronies, who both in television debates and in social networks were lavish in fake news and rumors, including from photographic montages to accusing him of drug use (Boric in the middle of the debate presented an anti-drug test), a strategy that never before in Chile had reached that level of political professionalism, in the best Trumpian style.

For some analysts, what stood out was the contrast between two candidates who for the first time since 1993, the year of the reestablishment of formal democracy, are alien to the two large center-left and center-right blocs that alternated in the Presidency, as well as the fact that both Boric and Kast broke with the basic consensuses of the Chilean transition.

While Boric has expressed his support for abandoning the neoliberal model imposed since 1973 by the military dictatorship of Agousto Pinochet, Kast, who was politically formed in Pinochet’s surroundings, threatened to suppress rights and liberties hard won in decades of struggles and mobilizations.

It is inevitable, therefore, to feel a sense of relief at the defeat of a reactionary close to neo-fascist positions, who did not hesitate to condemn the right to abortion, the rights of native peoples and sexual minorities and expressed open hostility towards social gains in education, health and labor.

In contrast, in various Chilean cities there was a celebration of what many consider the triumph of the social movements that shook the country for a decade, starting with the student mobilizations, the Mapuche struggle and the widespread social rebellion that took place in 2019 and 2020.

However, the transformative prospects of the soon-to-be-initiated government should be observed with caution.

It should be borne in mind that the Legislative emanating from the November 21 election is fragmented into more than 20 parties and four coalitions with blurred ideological boundaries, and in which the formations supporting the newly elected president barely have a quarter of the seats, while the right-wing coalitions maintain between them a large majority.

Likewise, between the first and second rounds, Boric and Kast, in search of centrist votes, moderated their strongest positions and acquired several political compromises, which significantly reduces the possibilities of a break with the established order. All hope that the new Chilean president will join the progressive governments that have emerged in recent years and thus provide a new impetus in the region to the programs of social justice, sovereignty and regional integration.


All this is, to a large extent, a corollary of a deep social discontent, which led to the outbreak of protests initiated at the end of 2019 (with an important antecedent in the student mobilizations of 2011, from which emerged, among other current political leaders, Boric) and to a considerable increase in electoral participation in the ballot, which was the highest since voting ceased to be compulsory in 2012.

The reasons for the discontent are no mystery. Chile has endured since the 1973 coup a great inequality, rooted in the commoditization of basic goods and services such as education, health and the pension system, and fostered by constitutional rules that privilege private activity, determined and deepened serious shortages, punished especially the most vulnerable sectors of the population and caused a heavy indebtedness of households, frustrating the expectations of social mobility.

The right wing, as in all Latin America, tried to frighten citizens by saying that Chile could become “another Venezuela”, but few were frightened by this story. In his first speech, the president-elect promised a government open to popular participation to “sustain the process of changes”, which he summarized as a “broadening of democracy” to respond to “the demands for justice and dignity”.

He announced significant changes in the field of rights, including those of indigenous peoples; a care system that emancipates women from the overload in that field; and the end of private pension fund administrators, which will be replaced by a “public and autonomous non-profit system”.

With Boric, who is 35 years old and will take office on March 11, 2022, comes a center-left that knows that “the times ahead are not going to be easy”, but is committed to “advance with responsibility in structural changes, leaving no one behind”. DCFrom words to deeds… there will be time to analyze it.

The Chilean process has had, for more than half a century, characteristics that differentiate it within the region. This imposes caution when making predictions about what is to come, but there is no doubt that a new stage has begun, with deep social roots and an increase in democratic participation, which gives rise to new (or renewed) hopes.

The government has been achieved, it remains to consolidate governance

Gabriel Boric, the President-elect, has already managed to transcend the borders of his own political coalition but it is still not clear how he will face in the coming months and years the tensions with the parties of the Dignity Approval, composed by the Communist Party and the groupings of the Frente Amplio. Having already won the Government, the great task of ensuring governability lies ahead.

It remains to be seen if the social-democratization of the second round, led by the candidate himself to conquer votes from the center, and the basis of his electoral triumph, will find an echo within his own coalition. Some analysts have wondered if this movement towards the center, moderation and social democracy was a tactical movement, of an electoral nature, or if it arises from the candidate’s own convictions.


Some argue that what there is is an evolution and a maturation process for him and for those who led the student movement in 2011, such as Giorgio Jackson, Camila Vallejo and Karol Cariola, the so-called generation of change, which is precisely the one that will have to make the change.

But the student mobilizations opened the way to the stage of parliamentary elections, of assuming State functions, until the social outburst moved politics back to the streets. “Massive evasion, civil disobedience and Piñera’s resignation”, shouted the young leaders of the PC and the Frente Amplio until leading to the constituent process, then with one foot in the Convention and another foot in the street.

Chile presents a scenario of fiscal restriction and an overheated economy for 2022, with a candidate who has already committed to respect the 22% budget cut for next year, while the tax reform and pension projects are being processed in Parliament.

Ignacio Walker points out that “it is well known that elections are written in poetry and governments in prose, what we do not know is to what extent the social democratic drift of the President elect, which led him to victory in the second electoral round, will find an echo within his own coalition”.

Once the President is elected, the tests of governability begin. The first one will be constituted by the reception in the coalition of the document “A sustainable and equitable growth for the short and medium term”, of seven pages, and the “Economic Implementation Agreement”, of 18 pages, delivered by the Economic Advisory Committee of Gabriel Boric’s candidacy.

The president-elect has stressed that these documents reflect his own position as candidate, which does not mean that the Communist Party and the others of the Frente Amplio assume as theirs both documents on programmatic contents, gradualism and fiscal responsibility, since both documents enter into tension with the 229 pages of the “Programa de gobierno del Apruebo Dignidad” (Government Program of Dignity Approval).

José Manuel Rodríguez points out that “Boric, more an intelligent millennial than a militant of the left, imagines that the adequate way to reconcile progress with a dignified life is social democracy. I do not think he is unaware of the repeated failure of those who have sought that path. Nor is he unaware of the failure of socialism in those countries of the Soviet orbit.”

“What he seems to be unaware of is the weight of imperial capitalism. Ignorant of this, he cannot understand the importance of being anti-imperialist in the struggle for the sovereignty of the peoples. This alone can explain why he calls the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela ‘dictatorships’,” he says, alarmed.

As the then young people (in 1973) warned in the streets with their chants: Beware, one thing is the government and another the seizure of power.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/12/ ... discourse/

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A New Chile, Integrated in Latin America
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on DECEMBER 21, 2021
Marco Teruggi

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The expectation of Chileans is that not only things will change in their country, but also the integration with their neighbors and the continent. A progressive agenda abroad.

Santiago dawned calm, with blue skies after a long night. Gabriel Boric’s presidential victory, quickly acknowledged by his opponent José Antonio Kast, quelled any speculative scenario, in a continent where some presidential elections became areas of high tensions or destabilization, as happened, for example, in May this year in Peru. The candidate-elect gave a speech before an overflowing Alameda Avenue and then retired to wake up early and start working on what is to come, which is considerable.

The new government will take office internally in a scenario of a strong social mobilization of support, high expectations, parity in the Legislative power, a right wing that showed no inconvenience in rallying around a Pinochet candidate and that, it can be anticipated, will seek to defend the economic model maintained since the dictatorship of Agusto Pinochet. It will be a complex scenario, for which Boric announced in his victory speech that he will “move forward with small but firm steps”, within the framework of a “change of a historical cycle”.

The new president did not announce for the moment who could be the members of his new government, in the context of a campaign that was carried out by a political coalition between the Frente Amplio -his space- and the Communist Party, and where, at the same time, several moments of rapprochement with members of the former Concertación took place. Boric has a little less than three months to build the cabinet and take office in what will be a historic day in the country: a 36 year-old president, former student leader, parliamentarian, coming from a new political generation that entered the scene to challenge the status quo inherited from the dictatorship.

Latin America

The internal expectation, on the part of progressive sectors and an important part of the left, also has its correlate at the international level, particularly in Latin America. Boric’s victory closes a 2021 marked by the victories of Pedro Castillo in Peru and Xiomara Castro in Honduras. The new president of Chile thus adds a third center-left president in the continent this year, in the context of the recovery of progressive forces: the continental map today is very different from the one that Andrés Manuel López Obrador found when he assumed the presidency of Mexico in 2018, or Alberto Fernández in Argentina when he won in 2019 simultaneously with a coup d’état in Bolivia.

That growth of progressive governments in the continent began to have its correlate of regional integration initiative, for example, at the CELAC Summit held in Mexico last September. The perspective of a Boric government seen from this point of view may generate expectations of having support in the integrationist direction. The statement of Senator Juan Ignacio Latorre, part of Revolución Democrática within the Frente Amplio and in charge of the international area in Boric’s campaign command, already anticipated that: “we want to coordinate or help to coordinate, because it is not going to be something only of Gabriel, a greater coordination from the south of Latin America looking to the world, to Asia and to powers such as China and the United States, but with political autonomy”.

Latorre, also affirmed to be “very expectant of all the political movements that are going to happen in Latin America. Next year we hope that Lula will defeat the extreme right (in Brazil), with (Gustavo) Petro in Colombia and that there may be an articulation of several progressive governments”. The elections in both countries, the first in May, the second in October, will be decisive in terms of the importance of both countries, economically, geopolitically and diplomatically, particularly in the Brazilian case.

Boric, unlike Fernandez or Lopez Obrador, will take over the presidency of Chile at a time of strengthening of progressive forces in terms of government map, and weakness or disappearance of right-wing initiatives, such as the Lima Group, created in 2017 in a policy against the government of Nicolas Maduro, or Prosur, created in 2019 after, in a coordinated manner, the right-wing governments of South America have left Unasur.

Will Chile assume a leadership role in this continental scenario with the potential to advance in strengthening regional instruments? Or will it remain in the background? It will surely depend on the balance between its agenda of priorities, conceptions, commitments, internal strengths and weaknesses. The case of Peru, whose president took office at the end of July, showed that a scenario of internal fragility can simultaneously lead to a loss of initiative in foreign policy or to having to negotiate that policy in a more pronounced manner.

For the moment, Latorre affirmed that Boric’s first foreign tour “will probably be Argentina”, a country for which Boric’s victory means the arrival of a government of a similar political sign in its neighboring country with access to the Pacific Ocean. Finally, the victory of the new Chilean president is seen from the Latin American progressivism, not only as a greater possibility of regional construction, but also as a defeat of the extreme right political forces that, in recent times have had growth and initiative in several countries. Boric’s victory is thus the defeat of Kast, Jair Bolsonaro, Javier Milei, VOX, or Mario Vargas Llosa who has been supporting candidates systematically defeated at the polls.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/12/ ... n-america/

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Chile: Congress Approves Extending Militarization in the South

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Although Piñera justifies the measure by alluding to an alleged "alteration of public order", the concrete thing is that the state of exception prevents the original communities from mobilizing | Photo: Universidad de Chile

Published 21 December 2021

The Chilean Senate approved on Tuesday the extension of the state of emergency constitutional exception in the regions of La Araucanía and Biobío, in the south of the country, requested by President Sebastián Piñera as a result of the series of violent attacks registered recently in the area by unknown assailants.

"The Senate Chamber approved by 19 votes in favor, 15 against and one abstention, the extension of the state of constitutional exception in the regions of La Araucanía and Biobío", informed the upper chamber through a communiqué.

The request had already obtained approval from the Chamber of Deputies, which means that the measure will be extended for another 15 days, from December 26 to January 10.

On October 12, Piñera issued the first state of emergency decree in La Araucanía and Biobío to be able to deploy the Armed Forces in the area and control the wave of arson attacks and robberies that have been registered in both regions in recent years.

Since that date, the President has asked Congress four times to extend the militarization and legislators voted in favor each time.

On November 3, three weeks after the state of emergency began, Navy officers participated in a shootout against an armed group in an incident that ended with the death of a Mapuche community member in the commune of Cañete (south).

It is still being investigated whether the victim had any relation to the incident or whether his death was due to some recklessness on the part of the sailors.

Although Piñera justifies the measure by citing an alleged "disturbance of public order", the fact is that the state of emergency prevents native communities from gathering and calling for mobilizations in defense of their territory.

A report by the Diego Portales University recognizes the increase in violence in Araucanía, but points out that this has also been part of the rejection of the militarization in the area, which has been carried out despite the recommendations of international organizations.

The study specifies that militarization in the area increases repression and does not achieve agreements in favor of peace and stability in the Southern Macrozone.

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sun Dec 26, 2021 1:25 pm

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Pablo Sepúlveda Allende, a doctor, a coordinator of the Network of Intellectuals in Defense of Humanity (REDH), and grandson of former President Salvador Allende Gossens, responded to now president-elect Gabriel Boric over his position on Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Photo: The Clinic


Salvador Allende’s Grandson Responds to Boric: The Human Rights Double Standard and ‘Chic’ Leftism
Originally published: Orinoco Tribune by El Ciudadano (December 22, 2021 ) | - Posted Dec 24, 2021

Editorial note: Orinoco Tribune does not publish articles that are over two weeks old, but sometimes we make exceptions. The following note was originally published almost three years ago; however, with the victory of Gabriel Boric in the Chilean presidential race on Sunday, we consider it important to take another look at it. In the midst of the joyous celebrations in Chile for Boric’s win against pinochetista Kast, and perhaps as a response of memory to some who are exaggerating too much about the president-elect to compare him with Salvador Allende, with Pablo Neruda or with other icons of the international left, a text by doctor Pablo Sepúlveda Allende, grandson of Chile’s former President Salvador Allende who was overthrown and assassinated in 1973, has been circulating on social media as well as on some online publications. Said text was an “open letter” in response to statements made by the Frente Amplio deputy—now president-elect—Gabriel Boric, who has repeatedly called on the Chilean left to “condemn the human rights situation” in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, all of them Latin American countries with socialist projects. It is worth rereading it, in order to have all the information at hand and not just those which are being amplified by the logical enthusiasm generated by Kast’s defeat.

Doctor Sepúlveda Allende’s open letter to Boric is translated and reproduced below:

Deputy, I dare to respond to you because I see the danger that it represents for important leaders like you, young referents of the “new left” that has emerged in the Frente Amplio, to make simplistic, absurd and misinformed comparisons on issues as delicate as that of human rights.

It is very biased and rude that you equate—without the slightest argument—the supposed “weakening of the basic democratic conditions in Venezuela,” the “permanent restriction of freedoms in Cuba” and “the repression of the Ortega government in Nicaragua” with the proven atrocities of the military dictatorship in Chile, the evident criminal interventionism of the United States around the world, and the State of Israel’s terrorism against the people of Palestine.

The fact that you write such nonsense does not “make you a pseudo CIA agent,” but it does denote a significant irresponsibility and political immaturity that can transform you into a useful idiot for the right-wing, or worse, make you end up being that “left” that the right craves: a dumb, ambiguous left, a harmless left which, due to opportunism, prefers to appear as “politically correct,” a lukewarm left that does not want to have problems with anyone.

Such a left is confusing, because it does not dare to point out and courageously confront the true enemies of the peoples. Hence the danger of issuing politically immature opinions.

Have you ever wondered why Venezuela is being so vilified and attacked in the media? Why is it on the news every day in practically all the countries of the Western world where the mainstream media dominate? Why is it outnumbered and attacked from all sides? Why do these big newscasts keep quiet about the continuous massacres in Colombia and Mexico? Why do those who tear their hair out worrying about a Venezuelan deputy who confessed to participating in an assassination attempt not have the courage to demand that Israel stop the genocide of the Palestinian people?

A world upside down. That is the world of politics without heart and without courage.

Margarita Labarca Goddard [Chilean human rights lawyer] has already argued clearly and forcefully why you are mistaken in your judgments towards Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. I will only add that Venezuela has a much healthier and more transparent democracy than the one in Chile, if you wish I can point out my arguments to you and we can have a debate, if you are interested.

It is also easy to argue why the “permanent restriction of liberties in Cuba” is a fallacy. Not to mention that the word “freedom” is so misused that by now its true meaning is ambiguous, and a sensible definition requires even a philosophical debate. Or tell me, what is freedom?

I name these two countries because I know them quite well. I lived in Cuba for nine years and in Venezuela I have been living for another nine. I do not know Nicaragua first-hand, but I invite you to ask yourself what would have been the reaction of a right-wing government to the actions of hired and heavily armed criminal gangs who took over whole sectors of the most important cities in the country. Additionally, said mercenary gangs were organized to commit abominable acts such as kidnapping, torture, maiming, rape and even burning dozens of human beings alive, for the mere fact of being sympathizers of a cause—in this case, Sandinistas. The persecution reached the point where entire families were murdered in their own homes.

Even with the resources, the legal framework, and the strength to take immediate forceful action against such fascist destabilization, the legitimately elected government of Nicaragua exercised restraint. Do you think that if a right-wing government had been in power, they would have had such a conciliatory position and would have called for dialogue to resolve the conflict?

History gives us answers.

I understand that you may have been confused by the powerful “media” that took upon itself the charge of victimizing the perpetrators, just like they did a year ago in Venezuela during the time of the so-called guarimbas.

Therefore, Gabriel, objectively speaking and through a serious argumentation—and not opinions formed and shaped by a media that repeats misrepresentations and lies on a daily basis—there is no such thing as a double standard by which we defend Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

These countries do not have disappeared or tortured people; they do not imprison those who think differently, but yes, they imprison criminals, be these deputies, politicians or so-called students. Rather, it seems to me that you are the one with the “double standards,” issuing comfortable judgments of morality formed through manipulation and ignorance,

When it comes to the media, democracy and freedoms, we could compare Chile with these countries. I assure you that, unfortunately, Chile would not fare very well, and even less so, if we include human, economic and social rights, since in Chile these seem to be nothing more than merchandise.

“A person reaches his highest level of ignorance when he repudiates something of which he knows nothing.”

Regards!

(El Ciudadano)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Wed Jan 05, 2022 2:35 pm

2021 Latin America and the Caribbean in Review: The Pink Tide Rises Again
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 1, 2022
Roger D. Harris

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Photo: Bill Hackwell

US policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean continued in a seamless transition from Trump to Biden, but the terrain over which it operated shifted left. The balance between the US drive to dominate its “backyard” and its counterpart, the Bolivarian cause of regional independence and integration, continued to tip portside in 2021 with major popular electoral victories in Chile, Honduras, and Peru. These follow the previous year’s reversal of the coup in Bolivia.

Central has been the struggle of the ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America) countries – particularly Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua – against the asphyxiating US blockade and other regime-change measures. Presidential candidate Biden pledged to review Trump’s policy of US sanctions against a third of humanity. The presumptive intention of the review was to ameliorate the human suffering caused by these unilateral coercive measures, considered illegal under international law. Following the review, Biden has instead tightened the screws, more effectively weaponizing the COVID crisis.

Andean Nations

The unrelenting US regime-change campaign against Venezuela has had a corrosive effect on Venezuela’s attempt to build socialism. With the economy de facto dollarized, among those hardest hit are government workers, the informal sector, and those without access to dollar remittances from abroad.

Nonetheless, Venezuela’s resistance to the continued US “maximum pressure” hybrid warfare is a triumph in itself. Recent economic indicators have shown an upturn with significant growth in national food and oil production and an end to hyperinflation. Further, the government has built 3.7 million housing units, distributed food to 7 million through the CLAP program, and adroitly handled the COVID pandemic.

When Trump recognized Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela in 2019, the then 35-year-old US security asset had never run for a nationwide office and was unknown to over 80% of the Venezuelans. Back then some 50 of the US’s closest allies recognized Guaidó; now barely a dozen does so. Contrary to campaign trail inuendoes that Biden would enter into dialogue with the democratically elected president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, Biden has continued the embarrassing Guaidó charade.

The November 21 municipal and regional elections were a double triumph for Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution: the ruling Socialist Party (PSUV) won significantly while the extreme right opposition (including Guaidó’s party) was compelled to participate, implicitly recognizing the Maduro government.

Venezuelan special envoy Alex Saab was extradited – really kidnapped – to the US on October 16 on the vague and difficult to disprove charge of “conspiracy” to money launder. Swiss authorities, after an exhaustive 3-year investigation, had found no evidence of money laundering. Saab’s real “crime” was trying to bring humanitarian aid to Venezuela via legal international trade but circumventing the illegal US blockade. This egregious example of US extra-territorial judicial overreach is being contested by Saab’s legal defense because, as a diplomat, he has absolute immunity from arrest under the Vienna Convention. His case has become a major cause in Venezuela and internationally.

Meanwhile, Colombia, chief regional US client state, the biggest recipient of US military aid in the hemisphere, and the largest world source of cocaine, is a staging point for paramilitary attacks on Venezuela. President Iván Duque continues to disregard the 2016 peace agreement with the guerrilla FARC as Colombia endures a pandemic of rightwing violence especially against human rights defenders and former guerillas.

On April 28, Duque’s proposed neoliberal tax bill precipitated a national strike mobilizing a broad coalition of unions, members of indigenous and Afro-descendent communities, social activists, and campesinos. They carried out sustained actions across the country for nearly two months, followed by a renewed national strike wave, starting on August 26. The approaching 2022 presidential election could portend a sea change for the popular movement where leftist Senator Gustavo Petro is leading in the polls.

In Ecuador, Andrés Arauz won the first-round presidential election on February 7 with a 13-point lead over Guillermo Lasso, but short of the 40% or more needed to avoid the April 13 runoff, which he lost. A victim of a massive disinformation campaign, Arauz was a successor of former President Rafael Correa’s leftist Citizen Revolution, which still holds the largest bloc in the National Assembly. The “NGO left,” funded by the US and its European allies, contributed to the electoral reversal. Elements of the indigenous Pachakutik party have allied with the new president, a wealthy banker, to implement a neo-liberal agenda.

In Peru, Pedro Castillo, a rural school teacher and a Marxist, won the presidency in a June 6 runoff against hard-right Keiko Fujimori, daughter of now imprisoned and former president Alberto Fujimori. Castillo won by the slimmest of margins and now faces rightwing lawfare and the possibility of a coup. Just a few weeks into his presidency, he was forced to replace his leftist foreign Minister, Hector Béjar, with someone more favorable to the rightwing opposition and the military.

In Bolivia, a US-backed coup deposed leftist President Evo Morales in 2019 and temporarily installed a rightist. Evo’s Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party successor, Luis Arce, took back the presidency last year in a landslide election. With the rightwing still threatening, a massive weeklong March for the Homeland of Bolivian workers, campesinos, and indigenous rallied in support of the government in late November.

Southern Cone

Brazil has the world’s eighth largest economy world and the largest in Latin America. Rightwing President Jair Bolsonaro has been dismantling social welfare measures, rewarding multinational corporations, and presiding over wholesale illegal mining and deforestation, while the popular sectors protest. Former left leaning President Lula da Silva is strongly favored to win in the October 2, 2022 elections. He was also favored to win in the 2018 presidential election against Bolsonaro but was imprisoned on trumped up charges, preventing him from running.

In Chile, Gabriel Boric won the second round of the Chilean presidential election by a landslide on December 19 against far-right José Antonio Kast, the son of a German Nazi Party member. The 35-year-old Boric was a leader in the huge protests in 2019 and 2020 against corrupt President Sebastian Piñera, who is the richest person in the country. The slogan of the protests was: “If Chile was the birthplace of neoliberalism, then it will also be its graveyard!”

Although the victory is a repudiation of the Pinochet legacy, Boric has also been somewhat critical of Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba. Boric’s libertarian socialist Frente Amplio party rode to victory with major support from the Chilean Communist Party along with center-left forces. Earlier in the year, in a plebiscite to forge a united popular campaign, Communist Daniel Jadue lost to Boric. A Constituent Assembly, where the left won the majority of the delegates in a May election, is currently rewriting the Pinochet-era constitution.

In Argentina, the center-right Together for Change coalition decisively swept the November 13 midterm elections, rebuking the Peronists who have been unable to effectively address high unemployment and inflation. In 2019, the center-left Peronist Alberto Fernández succeeded rightwing President Mauricio Macri, whose record breaking $50.1 billion IMF loan saddled the people with austerity measures. Prospects are now dim for restructuring of the debt or suspending payments with an opposition majority more intent on discrediting Fernández than addressing the issues.

Caribbean

Candidate Biden had signaled a return to the Obama-Biden easing of restrictions on Cuba. But once in office, Biden intensified the US hybrid war against Cuba. Discontent with critically deteriorating economic conditions erupted in popular demonstrations on July 11, fanned by the US-funded opposition. A repeat effort at a regime-change demonstrations, largely orchestrated by Washington, fizzled on November 15. Biden continues the same illegal policy of regime change against Cuba as that of the previous twelve US presidents: covert and overt destabilization, blockade, and occupation of Guantánamo.

Despite an economy severely impacted by the pandemic and the tightening of US blockade, Cuba has produced three COVID vaccines with two more in development. More than 90% percent of Cubans are vaccinated, surpassing the US.

In Haiti, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit on August 14. Another upheaval has been the nearly continuous popular revolt against US-installed presidents. President Jovenal Moïse, who had ruled by decree after cancelling elections, was assassinated on July 7 in an apparent intra-ruling class squabble. Claude Joseph was installed as interim president for a few days and then replaced by Ariel Henry, with elections still postponed.

Biden deported thousands of emigres back to Haiti. This represented “a disappointing step backward from the Biden administration’s earlier commitments to fully break from the harmful deportation policies of both the Trump and Obama presidencies,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Central America and Mexico

In El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele, formerly associated with the left FMLN party, continued his regression to the right. In response, the Popular Resistance Bloc and other civil society groups staged large protests on September 15 and October 17.

In Honduras, Xiomara Castro, wife of the former President Zelaya, was swept into the presidency by a landslide popular vote on November 28. The slogan of the now triumphant resistance front was: “They fear us because we have no fear.”

In the twelve years since the US-backed coup overthrew the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya, the country had devolved into a state where the former president, Juan Orlando Hernández, was an unindicted drug smuggler, the intellectual authors who ordered the assassination of indigenous environmental leader Berta Cáceres ran free, Afro-descendent people and women were murdered with impunity, gang violence was widespread, and state protection from the pandemic was grossly deficient.

In neighboring Nicaragua, the US called the November 7 presidential election an undemocratic fraud nearly a year in advance as part of a larger regime-change campaign against left-leaning governments. The US claimed that “pre-candidates” were barred from running. However, these individuals had been arrested for illegal activities and were not credible candidates.

In fact, the US has never supported democracy in Nicaragua. US Marines occupied Nicaragua from 1912 to 1934, only leaving after installing the autocratic Somoza dynasty to do their bidding. When the Sandinistas ousted the dictatorship in 1979, the US launched the Contra War. After fomenting an unsuccessful coup in 2018, the US NICA Act then imposed sanctions. This was followed in 2020 by the RAIN plan, a multi-faceted coup strategy.

Disregarding Washington’s call to boycott, a respectable 65% of the Nicaraguan electorate went to the polls and 76% of the voters re-elected Sandinista President Daniel Ortega. The Sandinista’s landslide victory was a testament to their success in serving Nicaragua’s poor and a repudiation of the 2018 coup attempt. Immediately after the election, the US RENACER Act imposed new illegal sanctions.

In Mexico, the June 6 midterm elections pitted the ruling MORENA coalition against the traditional parties (PAN, PRI, PRD), chambers of commerce, and the US embassy. NGOs funded by USAID and NED supported the opposition, whose talking points were echoed by the Economist and the Nation. While MORENA retained is majority in Congress and two-thirds of the governors in the midterms, they suffered setbacks in Mexico City, their traditional stronghold.

Mexico is a critically important state as the second largest economy in Latin America, the eleventh in the world, and the US’s top trade partner. After decades of rightwing rule, left-of-center Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and his new MORENA party have been in office for three years. Early on, AMOL earned the enmity of the US, when he proclaimed: “The global economic crisis has revealed the failure of the neoliberal model…The State should assume responsibility to lead development without foreign interference” (meaning the US).

AMLO has predictably experienced pushback from traditional elites in Mexico and from the US, particularly in his attempts to reverse the privatization of the energy sector. The Zapatistas and some leftists oppose AMLO and his national development projects, especially the Mayan train. They accuse the government of supporting violence against indigenous communities in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

Prospects for the New Year

Independence from the hegemon to the north, regional integration, and international cooperative relations are on the agenda for the new year.

China is now the second largest investor in Latin America and the Caribbean, which “reduce[s] US dominance” according to the US Congressional Research Service. Economic cooperation with China and to a lesser extent with Russia and Iran have been a lifeline for countries like Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua under regime-change siege by the US. In late December, Nicaragua broke relations with Taiwan and normalized them with the People’s Republic of China. The new government in Honduras has indicated they may soon follow suit. China intends to invest over $250 billion in the region, providing an alternative to dependence on Yankee capital for national development “south of the border.” If the inter-ocean canal project with Chinese backing in Nicaragua were resuscitated, it would be a geopolitical game-changer.

The anti-Venezuela “Lima Group,” a US-Canada initiative, is now moribund with defections of key countries. Likewise, the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS) is an increasingly discredited tool of US imperialism as evidenced by its complicity in the Bolivian coup. Cuba and Venezuela are not members of the OAS, and Nicaragua recently announced its withdrawal.

The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) includes all the hemisphere except the US and Canada. CELAC is being revived as an independent regional alternative by Mexican President López Obrador and others.

2022 promises continued left advances with favorable prospects for the Colombian and Brazilian presidential elections in May and October respectively. Overall, the pink tide is again rising with some 14 countries on the left side of the ledger and the revolt against neoliberalism intensifying from Haiti to Paraguay.

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 08, 2022 3:35 pm

21st Century US Coups and Attempted Coups in Latin America
By Stansfield Smith on January 6, 2022

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During the 21st century, the US, working with corporate elites, traditional oligarchies, military, and corporate media, has continually attempted coups against Latin American governments which place the needs of their people over US corporate interests. US organized coups in Latin American countries is hardly a 20th century phenomenon.

However, this century the US rulers have turned to a new coup strategy, relying on soft coups, a significant change from the notoriously brutal military hard coups in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and other countries in the 1970s. One central US concern in these new coups has been to maintain a legal and democratic facade as much as possible.

The US superpower recognizes successful soft coups depend on mobilizing popular forces in anti-government marches and protests. Gene Sharp style color revolutions are heavily funded by US and European NGOs, such as USAID, NED, National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute, Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation, and others. They make use of organizations professing “human rights” (such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International), local dissident organizations, and increasingly, liberal-left media (even Democracy Now) to prepare the groundwork.

US regime change operations have found three mechanisms this century that have been tremendously successful. First, economic warfare on a country, through sanctions and outright blockades, creates rising discontent against the targeted government. Second, increasing use of corporate media and social media to spread disinformation (often around “human rights,” “democracy,” “freedom,” or “corruption”) to foment mass movements against leaders that prioritize their nation’s development over US financial interests. This heavily relies on CIA social media operations to blanket a country with disinformation. Third, lawfare, using the appearance of democratic legality to bring down those defending their country’s national sovereignty. Related to lawfare are the electoral coups in countries such as Haiti, Honduras, and Brazil, where the US engineers or helps to engineer a coup by stealing the election.

Many of the attempted coups failed because the people mobilized to defend their governments, and because of crucial and timely solidarity declarations in defense of these governments by the Latin American bodies of the OAS, UNASUR, and the Rio Group. Today, the Rio Group no longer exists, UNASUR is much weakened, and the OAS is now fully under US control.

US Backed Coups and Attempted Coups

2001 Haiti. Haitian paramilitaries based in the Dominican Republic launched an attack on the National Palace, seat of the government of President Aristide. The attack failed, but until 2004, similar to the 1980s Nicaraguan contras, these paramilitaries launched numerous raids into Haiti, and played a key role leading to the 2004 coup perpetrated directly by US troops.

2002 Venezuela. The US government partially funded and backed the short-lived April 11-14 coup against Hugo Chavez.

2002-3 Venezuela. Management of the state oil company PDVSA organized an “oil strike,” actually a lockout of the oil workers, to drive Hugo Chavez out of power. This again failed in early 2003.

2003 Cuba. In the lead up to the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq, John Bolton claimed Cuba was a state sponsor of terrorism, producing biological weapons for terrorist purposes, just as Saddam’s Iraq was falsely claimed to have weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). During this period, the US increased its anti-Cuba propaganda directed at the country and increased funding to “pro-democracy” groups in Cuba, while anti-Cuban right-wing groups escalated their activities. The US paid “dissident” groups to organize protests and disruptions, including hijacking seven boats and airplanes to reach the US where they were never prosecuted. The goal was to create the appearance of disorder in Cuba, which, combined with its alleged biological WMDs, demanded an international intervention to restore order. Cuba squashed this movement in spring 2003.

2004 Haiti. In an early 20th century style US coup, US troops invaded Haiti, kidnapped President Jean Bertrande Aristide and exiled him to the Central African Republic.

2008 Bolivia. The Media Luna attempted coup involved right-wing leaders and some indigenous groups from Bolivia’s lowlands financed by the US. They sought to separate the richer Media Luna region from the rest of the country. In the process, they killed 20 supporters of President Evo Morales. Juan Ramon Quintana of the Bolivian government reported that between 2007-2015, the NED gave $10 million in funding to some 40 institutions including economic and social centers, foundations and NGOs. US embassy cables showed it sought to turn social and indigenous movements against the Evo Morales government.

2009 Honduras. Honduran military forces, under orders from the US, seized President Manuel Zelaya, brought him to the US military base at Palmerola, then exiled him to Costa Rica. This began an era of brutal neoliberal narco-trafficking regimes that ended in 2021 with the landslide election of Xiomara Castro, Zelaya’s wife.

2010 Ecuador. In September a failed coup against President Rafael Correa by military and police units backed by the indigenous organizations CONAIE and Pachakutik. The US had infiltrated the police and armed forces, while the NED and USAID funded these indigenous organizations.

2011 Haiti. Following the Haiti earthquake in 2010 that killed 200,000, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton imposed Michel Martelly as president after threatening to cut off US aid to Haiti. Clinton flew to Haiti to demand that Martelly be named one of the two runoff candidates, although Martelly was not recognized by the Electoral Council as one of the qualifiers. Despite a voter boycott, with fewer than 20% of the electorate voting, Martelly was announced the winner of the “runoff.” One reason why most Haitians boycotted was that the most popular political party in the country, Fanmi Lavalas, the party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was excluded from the ballot. The Haiti elections were funded by USAID, Canada, the OAS, the European Union and other foreign bodies.

2012 Paraguay. President Fernando Lugo was scapegoated for a land occupation confrontation between campesinos and the police, which led to 17 deaths. President Lugo was removed from office without a chance to defend himself in a lawfare coup.

2013 Venezuela. After the April election that Nicolas Maduro narrowly won, Henrique Capriles, the US-supported loser, claimed the election was stolen and called his supporters out into the streets in violent protests. Due to the strength of the UNASUR countries at the time, the US could not convince other countries to also reject Maduro’s victory.

2014 Venezuela. “La Salida”(The Exit), led by Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado, resulted in 43 deaths, and aimed to drive President Maduro from power. Again, the US could not get other Latin American governments to denounce Maduro, either in UNASUR or in the OAS.

2015 Ecuador. Between 2012-2015, $30 million from NED went to political parties, trade unions, dissident movements, and media. In 2013 alone, USAID and NED spent $24 million in Ecuador. This paid off in 2015 when CONAIE, which thanked USAID for its funding, called for an indigenous-led uprising. They began with marches in early August and concluded in Quito for an uprising and general strike on August 10. The attempted coup failed.

2015 Haiti. A new electoral coup for the presidency was funded by the US to the tune of $30 million. Both the US and the OAS refused Haitians’ demands to invalidate the election. The police attacked Supporters of opposition parties were shot with live and rubber bullets, killing many. President Michel Martelly’s chosen successor Jovenel Moise became president.

2015 Guatemala. The US engineered a coup against right-wing President Otto Perez Molina because he was not sufficiently subservient.

2015 Argentina. Argentine prosecutor Alber Nisman was evidently murdered days after he made bogus criminal charges against President Cristina Fernandez, claiming she was involved in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center. This was used to create a scandal, unseat her, and bring neoliberals back to power. Neoliberal forces and media used the case to disrupt the Kirchner coalition from winning another presidential election.

2015-2019 El Salvador. El Salvador’s right-wing opposition backed by the US sought to destabilize the government of President Salvador Sánchez Cerén of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). The conservative mass media launched a smear campaign against the administration, in concert with a surge in gang-driven homicides that the police chief said was part of a campaign to drive up body counts and remove the FMLN government. Sanchez Cerén and other former officials who were members of the FMLN later became targets of lawfare, “a strategy used in recent years by conservative groups in power to try to demobilize the organization and resistance of the peoples against neoliberalism and other forms of domination.”

2016 Brazil. US-backed right-wing movements launched a campaign against President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party for “corruption.” Aided by the corporate media, they organized a series of protests in Brazil’s largest cities throughout 2015. In March 2016, a massive political demonstration brought together more than 500,000 people in support of impeaching President Rousseff. She was finally impeached by Congress and removed from office in a successful lawfare coup.

2017 Venezuela. Violent protests (guarimbas), led by Leopoldo Lopez, sought to oust President Maduro, with 126 fatalities. The guarimbas ended after the elections for the National Constituent Assembly.

2017 Honduras. The US supported an electoral coup by President Juan Orlando Hernández involving widespread electoral fraud and government killing of dozens in protests. The US quickly recognized him as president and pressured other countries to do so also, even though the OAS itself had called for a new election.

2018 Nicaragua. US-backed violent protests, supported by anti-FSLN media and social media disinformation campaigns, sought to remove President Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas from power. After two months, public sentiment turned strongly against the violent protests and they disintegrated.

2018 Brazil. Former President Lula de Silva was the leading candidate to win the presidential election, but was imprisoned due to a lawfare operation of the US and Brazil’s right-wing, using bogus corruption charges. Bolsonario won the election, aided by a large-scale fake news operation which sent out hundreds of millions of WhatsApp messages to Brazilian voters.

2019 Venezuela. In January, Juan Guaido declared himself president of Venezuela after US Vice President Pence assured him of US recognition. On April 30, the Guaido-Leopoldo Lopez’ planned uprising outside an air force base flopped. Later, a mercenary attack from Colombia failed to seize President Maduro in the presidential palace.

2019 Bolivia. The US engineered a coup against Evo Morales, in part by using a social media campaign to make the false claim he stole the election. The OAS played a key role in legitimizing the coup. The disastrous coup government of Jeanine Anez lasted for just over one year.

2021 Cuba. The US orchestrated and funded protests against the Cuban government in July and November. The US sought to build a new generation of counter-revolutionary leadership by creating new “independent” press and social media platforms. These failed more miserably than the 2003 protests.

2021 Bolivia. In October, the right-wing tried to organize a coup and general strike, demanding the release of former President Anez who was now imprisoned. The attempt was only successful in Santa Cruz, the center of the Media Luna. Later, mass organizations led a rally, encompassing 1.5 million, to the capital to defend the MAS government.

2021 Peru. The right-wing oligarchy used lawfare unsuccessfully to unseat new President Castillo, a leader who emerged from the popular indigenous movement, seeking to remove him for being “permanently morally incapable.” However, a new lawfare case has been brought against President Castillo concerning “corruption.”

2021 Nicaragua. The US planned to repeat the 2018 Nicaragua protests, combined with a concocted campaign that the Daniel Ortega government had imprisoned US-financed opposition “pre-candidates” before the presidential election. This coup attempt failed but the US and OAS refused to recognize the election results.

In 2022 we can expect the US to continue “regime change” operations against Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, and now Chile with the election of progressive President Boric.

This list of 27 US-backed coups and attempted coups in the first 21 years of this century may be incomplete. For instance, not included are the lawfare frame-ups directed by Ecuador’s former President Lenin Moreno, a US puppet, against former Vice President Jorge Glas, who is now imprisoned, nor against former President Rafael Correa, now in exile.

This listing of US coups and attempted coups is also misleading. As throughout the 20th century, the US daily, not periodically, interferes in what it considers its colonies to both impose neocolonial regimes and maintain those regimes which open their markets to the US without conditions and align themselves with US foreign policy.

Under the facade of “democracy promotion” Washington works to advance the exact opposite goal: foment coups against democratic and popular governments. Governments and leaders that stand up for their people and their national rights are the very targets of “democracy promotion” coups.

Present day US reliance on soft coup operations involves funding not only NGOs and right-wing groups in the targeted countries for training in Gene Sharp style “democracy promotion” programs. Many liberal and liberal-left alternative media and NGOs in the US now receive corporate funding, which pushes their political outlook in a more pro-imperialist direction. This is well-illustrated in the soft coup attempts against Evo’s Bolivia and Rafael Correa’s Ecuador. These NGOs and alternative media give a false humanitarian face to imperialist intervention.

Moreover, these regime change operations are now openly being used at home against the US people. This is seen in the confusion and political divisions in the US population, manufactured by the 2016 Hillary Clinton Russiagate disinformation campaign against Trump and the Trump 2020 stolen election disinformation campaign against the Democrats. For those of us opposed to US interventionism, we are called upon to expose these new sophisticated methods of soft coup interference, to demand the national sovereignty of other nations be respected, and to bring together the US people against this manipulation by the corporate rulers.

Stansfield Smith, Chicago ALBA Solidarity, is a long time Latin America solidarity activist, and presently puts out the AFGJ Venezuela Weekly. He is also the Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.

Source: Dissident Voice

https://www.resumen-english.org/2022/01 ... n-america/
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 13, 2022 3:04 pm

CHILEAN COMMUNIST LEADER ON THE NEW COALITION GOVERNMENT IN CHILE (ENG.;ESP.)
Posted by MLToday | Jan 10, 2022 | Other Featured Posts | 0

Chilean Communist Leader on the New Coalition Government in Chile (Eng.;Esp.)

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Santiago de Chile

December 20, 2021 El Siglo

“We are not going to play a hegemonic role in Boric’s government.” -Guillermo Teillier

“We are the largest party of the organizations that joined together in Apruebo Dignidad (I Approve Dignity), very well, but the only thing that makes us see is that we have a great responsibility”, emphasized the president of the Communist Party, Guillermo Teillier. On the role of the communists in the future cabinet of Gabriel Boric, he said that it is the decision of the president-elect “if we are in the political committee or not.” He maintained that “we agree with what Boric said that his government will be with both feet in the street, closely related to the social movement.” He was interviewed by Hugo Guzman, a journalist with El Siglo.

To what do you attribute Gabriel Boric’s triumph, especially with a margin of 10 points over José Antonio Kast?

There are several elements. First, that it was possible to call upon sectors that were from other political forces to vote for Boric, the bases of many parties that are not part of Apruebo Dignidad voted for Boric. Something very important is that young people who had voted for the Apruebo but did not vote in the first round and folded in the second round stating that we had to defend democracy, a new Constitution and that we had to move forward in response to the social demands raised since October 2019, in the popular revolt. The recovery of lost ground in places like Antofagasta, which makes it clear that the vote of (Franco) Parisi went to Boric, not Kast, and the vote in the Metropolitan Region which was quite large and spectacular.

There were very good votes in popular communes, for example Lo Espejo, where Boric had 72%, others like Pedro Aguirre Cerda with high votes, El Bosque, Puente Alto, and the Valparaíso Region did its part with high votes for Boric. He recovered ground in several communities where Kast had won in the first round. It was also influenced by the fact that Gabriel Boric pointed out very well the key parts of the program he is going to carry out. Another factor is that there was a lot of displacement in the territories, in the social networks, and in the election campaign the project was very well presented. It should be noted that the command has been reconfigured in the second round, that it has been expanded, there were figures that played a very important role, from all parties, independents, there was a strengthening of all the work that an electoral campaign of this nature requires.



It has to do with the fact that, in addition, Kast made a complete mistake with his abusive, repetitive anti-communism, and he made a mistake especially in that his mission was to hit communism, without realizing that this is not a program of the communists, but of a collective, of several parties, of many professionals, which was made with the people. That was a factor in Kast’s defeat. People realized that this campaign is part of a formula that these sectors have to justify their policies and outrages.



But they do not want to leave it aside. Because now they talk that the Communist Party is a burden for Boric’s government, that it will be rigid, that it is extremist. They repeat the campaign.



Anticommunism was defeated by the Chilean people. The people of Chile won. We are participants in that triumph, but it is the people who defended democracy and the constituent process.



Now, the communists, we have said it and it must be clear, we are not going to play a hegemonic role in Boric’s government. We are the largest party in the coalition, Apruebo Dignidad, very well, but that only makes us see is that we have a great responsibility. The people gave us a responsibility, gave us more votes, more parliamentarians, allowed us to break the exclusion in the Senate, to have more regional councilors, but that does not mean that we will be the hegemonic force. We want to act on equal terms with other forces. If we participate in the (ministerial) cabinet, we want to do it the same as everyone else, we do not want to have privileges, but neither do we want to be at a disadvantage. That is to say, we have the same rights and we want to have the same opportunities.



In that sense, what would you say about the CP, should it be in the political committee of La Moneda [Chilean Presidential Palace]?



That is a decision of the president-elect. He has said that before January 25 he will have the cabinet formed. He will have to see each one; he will have to decide. Boric said that it will be in conversation with the parties–without the parties imposing their will on the president elect, if he is going to make a gesture of conversation, it will be the moment to make our proposals. We have not talked about what we want in the cabinet. What we are interested in is to be able to participate in the places where we can best contribute to the fulfillment of the program and the demands of the citizens. So this question can only be answered by the president-elect, whether we are in the political committee or not, or in which government positions.



Let’s see if we have the opportunity to raise it.



In the post-dictatorial era, this is the second time that the Communist Party is in a coalition that wins the presidential election. What meaning and projection does it have for the CP?



We have been constant in promoting profound reforms, in the struggle for democracy, in leaving behind the Constitution of the dictatorship, in promoting the rights of the workers and the people. That is why we entered Michelle Bachelet’s government, I think we are recognized for that, for those objectives, some reforms came to an end, others did not. Before the Bachelet government we did not have more experience, because those who were in the government of (Salvador) Allende were no longer here or did not have the conditions to integrate, we were in a situation of less capacity than now in terms of cadres, of experience, we had less strength, fewer parliamentarians, fewer votes. Now the panorama has changed. The experience of Michelle Bachelet’s government, with all its successes and mistakes, was very useful to us, and that gives us today a greater capacity to contribute more in this Boric government.



Now, we always consider this as part of a process where many factors are combined, many phenomena that come together in time, there were the student struggles, the long labor struggles, the electoral processes, the social outburst, and each time more progress is made in the improvement of democracy, of participation. Let us hope that this Government means more progress, in several directions, we sincerely hope so. The measures proposed as the main ones, we hope that they will be fulfilled in this short period of time, which is four years.



Precisely in terms of participation, how does the CP see the way in which the social movement should express itself in those four years?



We are quite in agreement with what Gabriel Boric said in his speech on the night of the triumph, that his government will be with both feet in the street, that is to say, very much related to the social movement, talking to the social movement. We absolutely agree with that and with having the contribution and support of the social world. That is vital.



Today it is impossible to talk about the old Concertación. The Christian Democracy seems to be in opposition to Boric; the Socialist Party wants to collaborate, how do you see the possibility of integration of these parties in the future Government?



Look, the president-elect summoned the presidents of political parties of Apruebo Dignidad and the other parties that contributed to Boric’s triumph and Kast’s defeat.



Did you talk on Sunday afternoon?



Yes, on Sunday afternoon. Gabriel Boric thanked the parties of Apruebo Dignidad, all the other parties, for their contribution to his triumph, and was very clear in affirming that he was going to seek the contribution, the opinion and the collaboration of all those who wanted to work to fulfill the program and the proposed measures. Being clear, he said, that the domicile of this Government is Apruebo Dignidad. Nevertheless, from there, it can be sought to broaden that support base or accumulation of forces to carry out changes.

He did not speak of integrating other parties to the coalition, he said he was willing to work with the parties institutionally. He said that “I am a party militant, I respect the parties, I want them to develop”, and within that he also proposed to work with independents. So I think it is still not clear from the president-elect how he will name the cabinet.



In Apruebo Dignidad, before the campaign, during the campaign and maybe during the government, there were and there will be differences between the parties. How will they be managed?



By managing them… Because they will arise. We have no other possibility.



Look, in a system like this, the President of the Republic will always have preponderance. Undoubtedly, there will be different opinions, without that meaning an attack on the Government. All parties will have to be careful, and a permanent dialogue will be necessary. I believe that we will be so busy in fulfilling the program and the work of the Government and in the Parliament, that there will not be so many differences, which, in addition, are normal.



It is going to take a lot of skill and conversation at the parliamentary level.



Without a doubt. Because there is a tie in the Senate, although we have a fairly comfortable majority in the Chamber of Deputies, we could reach three fifths, but there are constitutional reforms that may not be possible if we do not have two thirds. There are simple laws, such as the tax reform, which is very important, and there are possibilities of passing it if it is well discussed. There we would need the support of the social organizations, of the unions, of all those who want to carry out the changes.



There is talk of reaching agreements, of building bridges. But the ghost of the “policy of consensus” implemented during the transition, which included the right wing, comes to the surface.



It depends on what the consensus is for. Because if it is to do things “as much as possible”, I don’t think so. But if there is consensus to carry out a reform, without having to do it “in the kitchen”, it will be fine. The word consensus is not bad in itself. It is in relation to what consensus is given, I can have a consensus in the Communist Party, and it is not bad, consensus is to move forward. But if it is to stop changes, that is not positive. It is not consensus with the right wing, where things were more or less equal.



Are you going to be attentive, alert to what the right-wing forces and the ultra-right segments may do during Boric’s government?


It is noted that there are already fissures in the right wing. For example, I see that there are several people who do not want Kast to be part of Chile Vamos, that he does not have the leadership in the right wing, there are people like senator (Manuel José) Ossandón who said he is willing to participate in pre-legislative processes to give the possibility of approving some bills of the future government. There is a possibility that in the face of some laws, the vote of a less extremist right wing could be counted on. I believe that this sector of the extreme right, from the initial statements of people like Rojo Edwards, will continue with its anticommunism, will try to continue using anticommunism in the worst way. Nevertheless, this nefarious anticommunism will be defeated and the hope and expectations of the people will prevail.


-Translation by Kay Tillow

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 20, 2022 2:16 pm

Sovereignty or dependence: Six reasons to not pay the IMF

When the payment of debt seems to be the only way forward, voices within the ruling party argue why, at the very least, debt should be suspended and denounced in international organizations

January 20, 2022 by Emmanuel Alvarez, Franco García Dellavalle

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To have a future without dependence, Argentina must not repay IMF loans

1. Debt and US ambitions in Latin America

The disbursement of USD 55 billion to Argentina in the Macrista era represents the largest loan in the history of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF continues to be an instrument of imperialist domination aimed at subjugating the sovereignty and economic independence of the countries of the “third world” and Latin America in particular.

Macri was a strategic ally to the IMF in support of the coup d’état in Bolivia, the persecution of former Argentinian president Cristina Fernández and former Brazilian president Lula Da Silva, and the isolation of Venezuela in the shameful legitimization of Juan Guaidó. The United States forced the IMF to violate its own bylaws to control Argentina’s actions regarding the US geopolitical conflict with China. Our country is important in the region because Argentina has the potential to deepen trade, financial and technological agreements with the Asian superpower. The debt problem is not a technical-administrative problem, but a deeply political one.

2. IMF “debt” is a fraudulent and illegal scam

IMF “debt” is bad credit that the IMF gave to the government of Argentina during the Macri era, against the IMF’s own statutes, and against international law.

The right-wing argues that the loan was the consequence of the financial imbalances inherited from the last government of Cristina Fernández, despite the fact that, in the words of former Minister of Economy Nicolás Dujovne himself, Macri’s administration inherited a country with no debt and almost no external financial commitments.

The trickery takes place when the country that receives the credit puts it towards capital flight, instead of investing it in the sustainable reconversion of its economic infrastructure or the construction of hospitals, schools, or other social spending. No importance was paid to “stabilizing the macroeconomy” and putting accounts in order.

Furthermore, the $55 billion loan violated the IMF’s own Articles of Agreement. Article VI states that a member nation “may not use the general resources of the Fund to meet a large or sustained outflow of capital” and that that the IMF “may request a member exercise controls to prevent such use of general resources”. The same article states: “If, after receiving such a request, a member fails to exercise appropriate controls, the Fund may declare the member ineligible to use general resources”.

Despite the evidence of capital flight, the IMF continued to lend money to Argentina. Meanwhile, the dollars that entered the country went to private debt creditors, to companies that paid dividends abroad or to short-term investors that entered and left the country speculating with the exchange rate, bleeding the dollar reserves.

In fact, the Central Bank of Argentina prepared a report that was approved in 2020 by the Bicameral Commission for debt monitoring (currently on pause), which details how the borrowed dollars were squandered in capital flight, along with the names of the individuals and companies involved. This list is public and exposes the real beneficiaries of the public debt.

The UN and the International Court of Human Rights must denounce this fraud and the violation of the IMF’s own statutes.

3. The IMF means dependence

One of the most frequently heard arguments is that we must urgently reach an agreement with the IMF and present a multi-year economic plan for the “growth” of Argentina. This is the argument of the Minister of Economy, Martin Guzman, and President Alberto Fernandez. This is a fantasy, firstly, because the debt is unaffordable now, and will remain so in 3 or 4 years’ time.

Any agreement that moves the expiration dates of the loan forward will add to the debt payment commitments with private creditors in 2024 and 2025, when estimated amounts of between $12 and 16 billion USD per year will expire, amounts that are impossible to pay.

This “delicate balance” of the Argentine economy will be strictly supervised and controlled by the “missions” to be sent by the IMF, where it is foreseen to put a ceiling on economic growth after the rebound in 2021.

What awaits us? As happened in Greece, since we are unable to pay the debt, we will go from negotiation to negotiation with increasingly tougher demands. The same thing that has happened in Argentina’s 22 previous agreements with the IMF. Every single one of these agreements failed as a macroeconomic stabilization tool.

4. Suspending debt payment is an opportunity for sovereignty

A campaign of fear and terror is currently under way, led by the right, and accompanied by an important sector of spokespersons for the government, who maintain that if Argentina defaults on the loan, hell awaits us. The objective of this campaign is to convince us that there is no alternative but to agree to the IMF’s terms and pay. But what is not mentioned is that the path of recognizing and paying the debt leads us to an even more complicated situation.

It is said that there is no history of non-payment, despite the fact that in 2001 there was a cessation of payments, proclaimed by the National Congress, that allowed the weight of the debt to be relieved in the following years, freeing the economy of Argentina. In fact, thirty nations defaulted on their payments to the IMF in the last 50 years (and none were declared in default by the IMF or expelled from the organization).

5. Agreeing with the IMF electorally harms Frente de Todos

The electoral defeat of 2021 showed us the consequences of society exhausted after four years of Macrismo and two years of a pandemic. The economy was one of the triggering factors that resulted in a vote against the current government.

It is impossible to live with inflation of more than 50%, poverty over 40%, economic growth without redistribution, and a whole range of unsatisfied demands such as access to housing, work, education and healthcare.

2021 showed how elections can be lost after the withdrawal of the Emergency Family Income (IFE), the release of tariffs, the lack of control of food prices, and the deterioration of real wages. It is not enough to show that this current government is not as bad as Macri’s. The people need a perspective towards progress.

The current national government is not effectively communicating how the opposition is responsible for the drama in which we are immersed. Despite this, the opposition will use all weapons to weaken and hit an already weak government.

6. Those who deceived the people must be held accountable

The opposition, which is responsible for the debt, has called for complete unanimous agreement of all political sectors with regard to a possible agreement reached by Frente de Todos. This call for unanimity completely casts a shadow over the scam which was the IMF agreement, wherein no actor in the system questions the debt, the fraud, or the political force that allowed it. Arturo Jauretche put in plainly: “If the gringo who buys us is bad, the Creole who sells us is worse”.

Our political forces, at least those who make up Frente de Todos from people’s movements, cannot tolerate the fraud.

We cannot be part of an agreement that allows the illicit enrichment of a social sector through a scam which the Argentine people as a whole must now pay for.

————————————–

The payment of debt to the IMF should not be negotiated. There is no future, short or long term, bound by a vile agreement designed for dependency. The people of Chubut showed us the spirit of those who refuse to live on their knees, twenty years after 2001. In Chile, after more than thirty years of Pinochet and conservative status quo, the people were victorious against all liberal hopes.

Our America is not yet defeated or surrendered, a rebellious thread has been revived and a new wave of governments has been ushered in by peoples’ struggles, a wave that resists neoliberal restoration and the emerging fascist reaction.

The popular movements must rise to the occasion and be the rearguard of all those who resist looting, surrender and outrage.

Emmanuel Alvarez and Franco García Dellavalle are militants of the People’s Movement of Our America – Frente Patria Grande.

This piece first appeared in Spanish on ARG Medios.


https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/01/20/ ... y-the-imf/
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 21, 2022 3:03 pm

THE DECEPTION OF PROGRESSIVISM
Sergio Rodriguez Gelfenstein

20 Jan 2022 , 11:11 am .

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The assassination of socialism at the hands of progressivism (Photo: Hasel-Paris Álvarez)

As in the 1970s and 1980s, when Latin America and the Caribbean struggled to shake off the national security dictatorships made in Washington, the popular movement in the region debates the political and ideological orientation that the combats against neoliberalism and imperialism will have. It must be said that this is much more than a theoretical debate.

Although now the situation is different, taking into account the dialectical development of events, once again the revolutionary forces are faced with the search for reformist solutions to the crisis. This thought is grouped under the ideas of doing politics "as far as possible" or the satisfaction of having brought the "lesser evil" to power.

One and the other hide the inability of the most advanced political sectors of society to rise above the difficulties that lead to building a popular and revolutionary alternative. No one will be able to say that this occurs because of the abandonment of the peoples in their struggle for democracy, peace and equality. It is very easy to blame the people when in reality it has been some political elites that have paralyzed the processes. What has happened in recent years in the region is even visible, when leftist organizations, once they have obtained the government, have prioritized alliances with the bourgeoisie and the right, displacing the popular sectors to a marginal role as "object" of government measures,

In the case of the coup against Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, this situation was more than evident. After the president distanced herself from the popular movement, no one came out to defend the PT, her government or herself when she was ousted.

A fundamental element that marks the difference between the last century and this one is that those struggles took place within the framework of the cold war and the bipolar world in which the ideological pattern was the one that ordered politics and therefore international relations. Today, a large number of social movements have emerged that fight for sectoral demands, suggesting that the need for a radical transformation of the social structure that oppresses and excludes the majority is no longer relevant.

At the international level, the policy of principles - typical of the cold war - that emanated from an ideological orientation of the governments, gave way to the national interest (which in some cases has become a need for survival) to define the international action of some countries.

Thus, in the transition from dictatorships to representative democracy systems of a neoliberal nature, in most of which the doctrine of national security continues to be present to a great extent -if not in its entirety- as an instrument of domination and control of power by of the elites, the reformist sectors emerged victorious, beginning processes of persecution of unions, free press, social organizations and political parties, under the assumption of the need to defend the negotiated, accepted and established status that has been called "State of right", only that it works only for a sector of the citizenry.

To a great extent, this was made possible by the taming of once popular, left-wing and revolutionary leaders who succumbed to the charms of European social democracy and Christian democracy, which turned them into its battering rams for the destruction of everything that smacked of revolution and socialism. In the second half of the 1980s, Washington discovered with pleasure the work that these European parties had done and welcomed the possibility of leaving the already discredited dictatorships to make way for Gatopardian options that would keep its interests intact. To that extent, he gave his approval to the transitions and even fervently supported them, placating the possibility of popular solutions to the crisis of democracy that had covered almost the entire region.

It is worth saying that in the midst of this complicated and difficult situation, Cuba stood its ground, defending its revolutionary process and achieving -I say this without any rhetoric- being a beacon that radiated light for those who were fighting throughout the region, including to the domesticated converts in Europe who shamelessly took advantage of the solidarity of the Caribbean island.

The implementation of neoliberal governments exacerbated the conflicts in society every time that capitalism was not capable of solving the most basic needs of citizens. The "caracazo" of 1989 in Venezuela and the Zapatista uprising of 1994 in Mexico - two countries that were not under pressure from the military boot in government - were a clear expression that neoliberalism could not only be associated with the direct domination of the armed forces in power but to the entire legal and political framework that capitalist society entails.

In these conditions, Hugo Chávez emerged as an expression of the people and of military sectors tired of being used for repression and the maintenance of the order of the elites. The electoral victory of 1998 was the trigger that exploded a feeling and a desire for transformation that history made coincide in the leadership of leaders who, as Cristina Kirchner said, "are more like their peoples" in various countries.

The evident successes in social matters that, to a greater or lesser extent, these governments obtained and that together allowed the region to move towards integration processes that ensured its presence and protagonism in the world of the 21st century, aroused -once again- the concern of the White House that by mobilizing the regional oligarchies, the mercenary institutions that were not removed, the large transnational media of solitary confinement and the subordinate minds of the right, temporarily managed to stop the process that began in the last years of the last century. This time it was not necessary to resort to the armed forces, it was enough to put the media to work, to "justice"

But the neoliberal influence that returned to power at the hands of Macri, Áñez, Bolsonaro, Lenin Moreno, Piñera and other characters of similar ilk have not been solid, since they are based on the endorsement and support of the United States in the international arena and in the support given by the management of the media to construct false truths on the one hand, in addition to the weight of the military and police who act as gendarmes, on the other. Insofar as the learning of the peoples, their awareness and their superior (although still insufficient) organizational capacity, the return to the moment of flow has been much shorter than the time between Allende's fall in combat in 1973 and Chávez's electoral victory in 1998.

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(Photo: File)

In recent years, an expression of this has been the electoral victory of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, the return of the Peronists to government in Argentina and of the MAS in Bolivia, the victories of progressive candidates in Peru, Honduras and Saint Lucia, the defeat of neofascism in Chile, at the same time that Barbados broke away from the post-colonial subordination of Great Britain, transforming itself into a republic and appointing Sandra Mason as its first president. In the same logic, it could be added that Lula in Brazil and Petro in Colombia, progressive opposition candidates, lead the polls ahead of the elections that will be held this year in both countries.

It is worth saying - and I want to reiterate it - that all this has been possible because of the resistance to the imperial domination of the peoples of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. If these countries had fallen, the imperial avalanche would have mercilessly passed over Latin America and the Caribbean. This reminds me of José Martí when on May 18, 1895, on the eve of the combat that led to his death, in a letter to Manuel Mercado he said: "Every day I am already in danger of giving my life for my country, and for My duty -since I understand it and I have the strength with which to do it- to prevent in time, with the independence of Cuba, the United States from expanding throughout the Antilles and falling, with even more force, on our lands in America". More than 125 years later, the situation is the same, although now Cuba is not alone.

But behold, the right and especially the United States have also learned, they also do the math and they also move their cards. Thus, they are working to divide the left and separate it in order to facilitate their task, which on a strategic level is aimed at preventing Latin America and the Caribbean from configuring a world power bloc.

To this extent, a new danger lies in wait for the peoples of the region. As in the last century, the mediatization of the struggle of the peoples is sought so that their successes do not exceed the cosmetic changes that allow the elites to continue to hold power, while certain sectors clothed in a leftist discourse can continue doing politics " as far as possible".

This follows from the article written by Andrés Oppenheimer, spokesman for the extreme right in the United States, published in Miami's Nuevo Herald on December 25 and in which under the title: " Will Gabriel Boric lead a new Latin American left?". The author cites Heraldo Muñoz, ineffable chancellor of the government of Michelle Bachelet - whom the author places close to Boric - who would have affirmed that Boric "has referred to the Venezuelan regime as a dictatorship and has been critical of electoral fraud of Nicaragua", adding that: "He has quite solid convictions in terms of democracy and human rights". Ready, the United States and the Chilean right have certified the role that the new president of that country will have to play, not only in terms of internal, beyond, in the international.

The article further states: "Boric will have to show independence from the Communist Party. His critics have painted him as a callow young man who will be controlled by the Communist Party. Boric would lose many of his more moderate voters if he turns out to be a pushover from a party of the jurassic left".

The discourse that aims to create a "new left" away from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela has been gaining strength, even in "progressive" sectors of the region. From authors with a "socialist" orientation such as the Chilean Roberto Pizarro to intellectuals such as the Brazilian Emir Sader, of whom there can be no doubt regarding his intellectual integrity, they have written articles in which they rush to visualize a Latin American left detached from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

The irruption of "progressivism" as an idea of ​​liberation, although not new, has gained strength in recent times. The Progressive International supported by the sectors of "left-wing imperialism" in the United States that aspire to return their country to the path of "democracy" and social justice, in order to make the empire more efficient in its intention to subjugate to the world, has assumed the baton of this current.

We must not forget that the idea of ​​progress emerged from the possibility that is given to the transformation of society gradually. In reality, progress must lead to the total liberation of the human being from the forces that oppress him. As long as this is not proposed, it is a hollow and misleading concept. The Progressive International has had its counterpart in Latin America and the Caribbean in the "Puebla Group", in which, although prominent and honorable political leaders of the region participate, it raises doubts because it is led by a Chilean mercenary with a very dubious reputation who has made of "progressivism" a business and who also has close friendships with high-ranking leaders of Chavismo such as former President Mauricio Macri. Suspiciously, in neither of the two instances do Cubans participate,

Once again, the ideological dispute is raised regarding the path that Latin America and the Caribbean will have to travel. We settle for the "lesser evil" or we are capable of building a political and social force that produces the profound changes that society needs. Instead of being content with what can be done "as far as possible", one must work to transform the impossible into reality. As I said in a previous article quoting a friend, the "lesser evil" must be opposed to the "greater good".

That means that our effort must be aimed at playing on our field, not on the one that the enemy imposes on us. At a time when many do not want to take a position and politics is intended to define between center-right, center-left or center, it is the responsibility of the most advanced sectors of society to build the new combat scenario as has happened in the streets of Chile and Colombia. .

The liberating future of the peoples is not in progressivism. It is and will continue to be in the revolution. I understand that on the path to victory, tactical alliances must be made to join forces, but they will only have that character if they are assumed from hegemony and power. Any alliance built from weakness or subordination leads to subordinating popular interests to others, from sectors or minority groups.

It is to be hoped that those who assume these mediating positions understand the difference between the concepts of strategy and tactics and apply them correctly without forgetting that making mistakes in their application leads to painful errors of unforeseen dimensions for the popular movement.

https://misionverdad.com/opinion/el-eng ... rogresismo
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 24, 2022 2:25 pm

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Chile’s President-Elect Boric Reiterates His Contempt for Besieged Nicaragua and Venezuela
January 23, 2022

Caracas, January 22, 2022 (OrinocoTribune.com)—Gabriel Boric, president-elect of Chile, considers that the leftist governments headed by President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua “have failed.” According to him, the main indication of the Venezuelan government’s failure is “the six million Venezuelans in diaspora;” however, he failed to mention that many in the Venezuelan “diaspora” in South America were encouraged to migrate—with false promises—by right-wing presidents in the region, including the outgoing President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, and others were forced to leave their country due to the economic crisis caused by the illegal sanctions imposed by the US and European countries.

Boric reiterated his contempt for Venezuela and Nicaragua in an interview with BBC Mundo published this Friday, January 21, in which he was asked if he identified with any of the “leftist rulers” of the region. He responded that he understood that the question “was closely related to Venezuela and Nicaragua.” In the case of Nicaragua, he vaguely commented that he could not “find anything [of worth] there.”

In contrast, he stressed that it gave him “a lot of hope” to be able to work “side by side with Luis Arce in Bolivia; with Lula if he wins the election in Brazil; the hope of Gustavo Petro if it comes to fruition in Colombia,” because this would make it possible to build “a tremendously interesting axis.”

Correa responds

Former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, questioned Boric’s position, reminding him of the economic blockade that the United States maintains against Venezuela, preventing Venezuela from selling oil, the country’s main export product, along with other criminal measures with the help of the European Union and Canada.

“How many Chileans would be in the diaspora if Chile was prevented from selling copper?” he questioned. According to the former president of Ecuador, what Boric said about Venezuela, without taking into account the US-led suffocation of the Venezuelan economy, “is like finding a drowned man chained and claiming that he died because he did not know how to swim.”

Controversial appointments

This Friday Boric also announced his cabinet in a move that many analysts associate with the US Democratic Party style of identity politics, as the fact that 14 out of the 24 new ministers to take office next March will be women has been highlighted, without much attention to the appointment of hardcore pro-market / neoliberal figures in key economy-related ministries.

Moreover, the appointment of Antonia Urrejola as minister for foreign affairs has raised eyebrows among many. Renowned US journalist Benjamin Norton reacted, “Chile’s new government is looking to be more of the same: Millennial socdem President-elect Gabriel Boric selected as his foreign minister a neoliberal imperialist who worked for the US-controlled OAS and supported the right-wing coup attempt in Nicaragua.”

Urrejola had worked tirelessly, as the head of the Interamerican Court of Human Rights (CIDH), with Luis Almagro’s Organization of American States (OAS), in backing the failed “color revolution” launched in 2018 against President Daniel Ortega and the Nicaraguan people. It is also worth remembering that she had been the head of the team of former Secretary General of the OAS, José Miguel Insulza, during whose tenure (2005-2015) the Honduran government headed by Manuel Zelaya was overthrown by the US in 2009, and the year before, there was a failed coup attempt against Evo Morales in Bolivia. In both cases the OAS did nothing to stop the coups, and Urrejola never uttered a word against them. Similarly, she has never taken a stand against the grave human rights violations committed by the government of Iván Duque in Colombia and that of Piñera in her own country; yet she has constantly criticized the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, branding it a “regime.”

Another not very promising appointment—although expected—was that of the “communist star” Camila Vallejo, who too has made very non-Marxist comments about Chavismo and the Bolivian Revolution in Venezuela. Vallejo was appointed the secretary general of the cabinet, equivalent to government spokeperson.


Her most recent statements against Venezuela were posted in a tweet from September 2020. She wrote: “I said it before and I reaffirm it: the UN reports on Venezuela have been lapidary. Human rights violations are intolerable and cannot go unpunished in Venezuela or Chile. I hope that Venezuelans can decide their future without US military intervention.” She made this statement in reference to a very controversial human rights report presented by an US/OAS organized committee with clear political motivations. A few days later, the Communist Party of Chile made statements in support of Chavismo and distanced itself from Vallejo’s comments.


Featured image: President-elect of Chile, Gabriel Boric with a Machiavellian expression. Photo: Télam

Special for Orinoco Tribune by Jesús Rodríguez Espinoza

OT/JRE/SC

https://orinocotribune.com/chiles-presi ... venezuela/

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Chilean Communist Party Takes a Stand on “Independent” UN Human Rights Report About Venezuela – Distances Itself from Camila Vallejo
September 21, 2020

Last Thursday the Chilean famous communist Camila Vallejo posted a tweet criticizing Venezuela’s human rights record and taking for granted a very controversial and questionable report prepared by a so called “independent” UN fact finding mission. This position garnered her sever criticism among Chavistas all over Latin America and many assumed it was also the Chilean Communists Party position.

This Sunday — in a statement — the Chilean communist party made public its position about the report itself and many experts consider it was a way to distance itself from the opinion launched by Camila Vallejo on twitter: “I said it before and I insist on it: The UN reports on Venezuela are solid. Human rights violations are intolerable and cannot go unpunished in Venezuela or Chile. I hope that Venezuelans decide on their future without US military intervention.”

“Camila Vallejo seems to take as truth a very questionable report co-edited by her very own fellow Chilean Francisco Cox that worked as lawyer for questionable Chilean politicians and is an open admirer of dictator Augusto Pinochet. We of course can blame Vallejo for not checking the facts, the report itself and consulting with reliable Venezuelan sources that for sure will tell her (unless they are extremely right wing) that in Venezuela there is a high level of respect for human rights,” a political analyst said to Orinoco Tribune.

“But besides Vallejo’s responsibility, one has also to blame the lack of a proper international communication strategy from the Venezuelan government and also from some so-called communists or leftists outside and inside Venezuela, who sometimes use the right wing human rights narrative to attack Maduro’s government or to make denunciations that sometimes do not correspond with the truth.” he added. “In Venezuela as in many other countries, bad things happens in terms of human rights but the difference in Venezuela is that most of the time those responsible are put in front of the justice system, and high ranking government officials constantly discourage the use of force, even in war-like conditions that this country has suffered many times.”

Bellow some of the most relevant parts of the Chilean Communist Party statement:

*“…Without pretending to answer for the Venezuelan state, we state that we trust the efforts that the government of that country is currently deploying and will continue to develop, with the support of the international community, to overcome the crisis it is experiencing. Therefore, we are encouraged by the recent renewal of the cooperation pact between the government of Venezuela and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR), after a year of their first meeting, in which it was agreed to triple the number of officials operating in the country and working towards the opening of an office in Venezuela, all the result of a process of constructive cooperation between the parties. It is the path that seeks social peace, which has borne fruit in the dialogue between the government and the democratic, non-coup opposition that is already one year old and advances to parliamentary elections.”

Coincidentally, the “Report” on the human rights situation in Venezuela was publicized along with the tour that Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State of the United States, made to Colombia, Brazil and Guyana, with the manifest intention of supporting the coup sectors in Venezuela, which, led by Guaidó, insist on foreign intervention, in the face of their defeat in the country. This is what use and abuse of this “Report” is pointing at.

*This accusation against Venezuela, as recognized in the “Report”, is the result of work developed from outside the country, a text drawn up based on versions obtained remotely, in which there has been no real exchange with the authorities of that State, that is, lacking factual evidence, not an overview of the situations that have been experienced, so its references to acts at odds with human rights lacks rigor.

*The “Report” contextualizes the situation, noting that Venezuela continues to suffer from hyperinflation and a severe shortage of food and medicine, but does not say a word about the blockade and foreign interference led by the United States and Colombia, which is the main cause of this situation. Nor does it mention the massive return of Venezuelans to their country in recent times, of which Chileans are direct witnesses. Likewise, the report states that a part of the opposition has adopted many forms, among which it mentions 19 coup attempts and attempts against the life of the President, which only demonstrates the complex situation of coup and conspiratorial violence directed from abroad, from which the Venezuelan state has had to defend itself.

*Regarding the exhortation that Venezuela immediately initiate effective investigations, the “Report” omits the real situation communicated (beforehand) to the United Nations, that under the management of the judicial authorities of that country there are currently 517 officials already accused of torture or cruel treatment, inhuman or degrading, occurred between 2017 to March 2020, of which 167 are deprived of liberty. At the same time, 731 officials have been accused of the crime of homicide or violation of the right to life, of which 436 are in prison.

*It is clear that, it is also an advance, the result of the dialogue with the opposition and the commitments before the High Commissioner, when 110 detainees opposed to the government were pardoned, several of them facing charges of terrorism and sedition, colluded in attempted coups or foreign intervention.
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*But this process (the parliamentary elections) is in jeopardy, and the final recommendation of the “Report” could serve this purpose, which, contrary to its own assertion, that the “reasonable grounds to believe” standard does not provide to prove criminal liability, suggests initiating legal action against representatives of the Venezuelan State according to the pertinent internal legislation of each country. This may be an excuse for those, like President Trump, Duque, Alamagro and others, who seek to subdue Venezuela through the use of force and impede the electoral process, the result of the agreement for democratic coexistence.

*The Communist Party of Chile, postulates the defense and respect of human rights and the political solution of controversies, including Venezuela. For this reason, it rejects, denounces and alerts about the escalation of communication, diplomacy and pressure towards third countries, articulated by the US administration, of which the Chilean government is part, in order to destabilize, discredit and intervene in this electoral process and create conditions for a new crisis with destabilizing purposes.

*At the same time, it rejects the double discourse of those in Chile who try to present themselves as human rights defenders and say nothing about the repression known to all, in our own country, resulting in deaths and serious disabling injuries, against popular demonstrations, or those who acted as accomplices and cover-ups for the crimes committed by the dictatorship and who intend to take advantage of the “Report” to raise their flagging campaign for the rejection of a New Constitution, through a hateful communication campaign of lies.

Featured image: File photo.

https://orinocotribune.com/chilean-comm ... a-vallejo/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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