South America

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sun Jul 11, 2021 5:45 pm

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Presidential candidate Pedro Castillo waves to supporters celebrating partial election results that show him leading over Keiko Fujimori, at his campaign headquarters in Lima, Peru, Monday, June 7, 2021, the day after a runoff election.Martin Mejia/AP

There’s a dirty tricks campaign underway in Peru to deny the Left’s presidential victory
Posted Jul 09, 2021 by José Carlos Llerena Robles, Vijay Prashad

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Half an hour’s taxi ride from the House of Pizarro, the presidential palace in Lima, Peru, is a high-security prison at the Callao naval base. The prison was built to hold leaders of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), particularly Abimael Guzmán. Not far from Guzmán’s cell is that of Vladimiro Montesinos, intelligence chief under former President Alberto Fujimori, who is also now imprisoned. Montesinos was sentenced to a 20-year prison term in 2006 for embezzlement, influence peddling, and abuse of power. Now, audio files from phone calls made by Montesinos from his prison indicate an attempt to influence the results of Peru’s presidential election after Pedro Castillo, the candidate of the left-wing Perú Libre party, won the election.

By the evening of June 6, 2021, Peru’s National Jury of Elections should have declared Pedro Castillo the winner of the presidential election. But it did not. A month later, matters remain in stasis as Peru does not yet have an official winner of the election.

Castillo’s opponent, Fuerza Popular’s Keiko Fujimori—the daughter of the former dictator Alberto Fujimori—has hired a range of Lima’s top lawyers to obstruct any decision by the state’s electoral commission. In addition, her team has cast aspersions against the campaign of Castillo and Perú Libre, accusing them—without evidence—of being financed by disreputable groups, including drug cartels. The Peruvian media, largely controlled by the oligarchy, have gone along with Fujimori’s allegations; their apparent goal is to paint Castillo as an illegitimate winner and to set aside the verdict of the electorate.

Bribes
Meanwhile, hard evidence continues to emerge of the dirty tricks at the heart of Fujimori’s campaign to steal the election. Montesinos, the right-hand man of Fujimori’s father, made 17 phone calls from the prison between June 2 and June 24. Twelve of these calls resulted in a phone conversation; there was no answer to five of them. The Peruvian naval authority in charge of the prison said that Montesinos had applied to call his girlfriend. On June 26, Peru’s Defense Minister Nuria Esparch indicated that the navy will conduct an investigation.

Montesinos did not call his girlfriend. Instead, the old spymaster—and former CIA agent—called Pedro Rejas, a former commander in Peru’s army who is close to the Fujimori campaign. Montesinos tells Rejas in one call on June 10 to bribe the three members of the election commission $1 million each. “The only solution is to work through Guillermo in order to transfer the payment in favor of the three electoral jury members, who are supposed to be open to the bribe, and therefore guarantee the result.” The “Guillermo” in the conversation is Guillermo Sendón, who is on record affirming his relationship with one of the members of the electoral commission, Luis Arce Córdova. Sendón says that he helped Arce in his failed campaign to become president of the Supreme Court and met Arce several times in this period. Sendón’s last recorded visit to Arce was on June 22.

The audios are damning. In Peru, the case is known as Vladiaudios. This is a nod to a 20-year-old scandal called Vladivideos, when Montesinos was caught on tape bribing congressman Alberto Kouri to support Perú 2000, the party of Alberto Fujimori. In the months that followed, more videos came out: Montesinos offering millions of dollars to Channel 2, Channel 4, Channel 5, and Channel 9 if they prevented the opposition from coming on their television programs. The Vladiaudios are as damning as the Vladivideos, both showing Montesinos attempting to use bribery to secure the electoral victory of the Fujimoris.

Where will the money come from? Montesinos proposes that Rejas approach Dionisio Romero (the CEO of Credicorp) and Rafael López Aliaga. It seems he has thought about everything: what to do and how to do it. Sitting in jail, this old intelligence agent could not do it himself. He required an accomplice and phone calls that were recorded and leaked to the media.

Involve the CIA
In one of the calls, Montesinos tells Rejas to involve the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). “Look, what they have to do is to go to the U.S. Embassy and talk with the embassy intelligence officer. Bring all the fraud documentation… Go to the embassy and talk with the person in charge of intelligence at the embassy. That is in the Office of Regional Affairs.” The Office of Regional Affairs in Lima is the CIA station.

Montesinos gives precise instructions. Keiko Fujimori’s husband “can go [to the embassy], since he is an American citizen.” Her husband is Mark Villanella, whom she met at Columbia University in 2004. “Take the documents,” Montesinos advises.
Show them. Deliver them to the embassy and ask them to bring them to their chief in Washington… And in Washington, the chief can bring it to the notice of the president, and the White House spokesperson can issue a statement to prevent Cuba, Venezuela, or Nicaragua from imposing their will in Peru. With such a statement, they have great leverage.
Montesinos is not the only one in Fujimori’s circle with a history of trying to involve the United States in Peru’s elections. Her close adviser Fernando Rospigliosi has a long history of walking into the U.S. Embassy and asking for assistance in preventing the left from prevailing in elections. The current U.S. ambassador in Peru—only recently appointed—is Lisa Kenna, a former CIA agent.

Unconventional Warfare
Montesinos is an expert in unconventional warfare. The followers of Fujimori, he tells Rejas in one of the conversations, want to use a conventional approach, but “this will not work.”

“There is conventional warfare and unconventional warfare,” he says. “In unconventional warfare, you have to use special procedures… Conventional lawyers are not going to succeed because the procedure is irregular.” Arguments before the courts, in other words, are not sufficient; bribes are required.

Luis Arce, the man on the electoral commission, is now under investigation by Peru’s public prosecutor.

Meanwhile, the National Jury of Elections has still not closed the election in favor of the winner, Pedro Castillo. What we have instead is unconventional warfare with the U.S. Embassy as a player in the drama. Coups nowadays in Latin America do not need armies. Having good lawyers, bags of money, and a handful of thugs in and out of jail is all that is needed.

https://mronline.org/2021/07/09/theres- ... l-victory/
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Mon Jul 12, 2021 1:52 pm

Argentina Military Aid For Bolivia Coup Greater Than Initially Thought
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 11, 2021
Kawsachun News

Investigations carried out by Argentina’s Security Ministry have revealed that the military aid sent from Mauricio Macri’s government to the Añez regime was much larger than what had been published by Bolivia’s Foreign Ministry.

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On Thursday, Bolivia’s Foreign Minister Rogelio Mayta revealed that Argentina, under former President Mauricio Macri, had sent large shipments of military aid to Bolivia during the first days of the coup, to help the new regime to repress protests and consolidate their grip on power. The aid included 40,000 bullets as well as tear gas canisters and grenades.
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Jul 8, 2021
The neoliberal Macri government sent 40,000 bullets to the Añez dictatorship in the first days of the coup, just days before the massacres of Sacaba and Senkata were carried out.
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Argentina's Macri Sent Arms For Bolivia Coup Massacres - Kawsachun News
Bolivia’s Foreign Ministry has published documents that show how the government of Argentina, under President Mauricio Macri, supplied the bullets
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This is the letter from Bolivian Military General Jorge Gonzalo Terceros, thanking Macri's Ambassador for the lethal munitions delivered to the coup regime.
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10:20 PM · Jul 8, 2021 from Bolivia
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Argentina’s Security Ministry has investigated its own records and published a report to the media. The report, released today, shows that the National Agency for Controlled Materials (ANMAC) authorized, on November 11th (one day after the coup), the shipment of semi-automatic pistols, shotguns, automatic carbines, machine guns, rifles, bulletproof vests, ballistic helmets, and shields; night vision goggles and more than 8,000 munitions of different calibers.

The report also shows the presence of two agents from the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) of Argentina, during the coup. One in the city of La Paz, and one in the city of Santa Cruz. Investigations will be opened into the nature of the reports they were sending back to Buenos Aires.

The Minister at the time was Patricia Bullrich, Argentina’s principal opposition leader today.

In response, Evo Morales has warned that the Americas is living through an ‘Operation Condor 2’, in reference to US-backed operation in the 70s and 80s of cross border cooperation between coup regimes in order to repress social protest and kill known leftists.

“The delivery of military aid from the former Presidents of Ecuador, Moreno, and Macri from Argentina, the letter of gratitude from General Terceros, are all further evidence that a coup took place in Bolivia. That, along with the assassination in Haiti, by ex-Colombian military personnel, prove the execution of a second Plan Cóndor under the direction of the US.”

“We alert the social movements of Latin America about Operation Condor 2 and the need to strengthen the fight for peace with social justice and democracy, to preserve the sovereignty and independence of our states and the dignity of the people” said Evo Morales today via official channels.
Kawsachun News
@KawsachunNews
·
Jul 9
President Alberto Fernandez apologizes to Bolivia for Argentina’s role in arming the November 2019 military coup of Jeanine Añez

More: https://kawsachunnews.com/argentinas-ma ... -massacres
[youtube]http://twitter.com/i/status/1413612701058838528[/youtube]
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/07/ ... y-thought/
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Mon Jul 19, 2021 2:18 pm

Peru to Officially Declare Pedro Castillo as the New President

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Pedro Castillo (C) makes statements during a demonstration in Lima, Peru, Jun. 26, 2021. | Photo: EFE

Published 18 July 2021 (19 hours 59 minutes ago)

Electoral authorities concluded an electoral review in which the leftist candidate maintained a lead of 44,058 votes over his rival Keiko Fujimori.


The National Jury of Elections (JNE) is set to confirm leftist Pedro Castillo as Peru's new President after rejecting all the electoral complaints filed by right-wing Popular Force (FP) candidate Keiko Fujimori.


JNE advisor Alexandra Marallano explained that the official announcement might take place on Tuesday or Wednesday next week.

The decision comes after the JNE reported the conclusion of an electoral review in 60 Special Electoral Juries, where Castillo received 8,835,579 votes, a difference of 44,058 votes over Fujimori.

In the June 6 presidential runoff, Castillo took the lead but his official nomination was delayed due to vote challenges presented by the FP right-wing candidate.
©halecos Amarillosᴳᴸᴼᴮᴬᴸ 🍀ʷAͤNͣOͬNͤYˡMͤOᵍUͥSͦⁿ
@ChalecosAmarill
·
Jul 7

🎥🛑In #Peru indigenous supporters of teacher Pedro Castillo took to the streets of Lima & rallied around Congress to protests against the uncertainty over the results of the elections held a month ago, as NAZI Fujimori continues to challenge the vote.

[youtube]http://twitter.com/i/status/1412886501822763012[/youtube]
Castillo seeks to approve a new constitution to conduct a reform plan which comprehends improving public services and boosting the State's role in the economy.

Since the election runoff, he has held meetings with lawmakers, politicians from other parties, and his supporters to reaffirm his electoral promises.

"We will advance safely within the democratic channel to put an end to the historical discrimination suffered by our Andean, Amazonian, Afro-descendant peoples and our populations vulnerable to sexist, classist, and racist violence," Castillo tweeted.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Per ... -0002.html

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Boric wins primary in Chile by I approve Dignity coalition

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Election day in Chile began this Sunday with the gradual installation of voting tables in the 16 regions that make up the South American country. | Photo: The Counter
Published July 19, 2021 (6 hours 53 minutes ago)


"If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave," said Boric after an electoral victory in the primaries.

The Chilean deputy for the Broad Front, Gabriel Boric Font, on Sunday defeated the mayor of Recoleta and the leader of the Communist Party, Daniel Jadue Jadue, in the primary elections for Approve Dignity, becoming the official presidential candidate for the coalition.

According to the results of the Chilean Electoral Service (Servel), Boric Font obtained 60.37 percent of the votes, surpassing Jadue, who obtained 39.63 percentage points of the votes for the Approve Dignity group.

After the results, Boric emphasized the need to fight for a model that vindicates fundamental rights in the country, "if Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave," he reaffirmed to his followers.


While Daniel Jadue arrived at his campaign command in Santiago de Chile in the company of deputies Marisela Santibáñez and Lautaro Carmona.

"The fundamental task is elsewhere, so I ask that we get ready to continue working to win the presidency in November with Gabriel Boric," said Jadue in the campaign command.

It is necessary to remember that the Approve Dignity coalition emerged as a result of the massive student mobilizations that took place in 2006 and 2011.

For his part, for the right-wing coalition Chile Vamos, the standard bearer was Sebastián Sichel Ramírez, who won 49.04 percent of the votes, while Joaquin Lavin Infante was second with 31.38 percent.

According to updated figures from Servel, with 98.55 percent of the polls counted, 2,984,947 valid votes have been registered, 6,086 blank and 40,668 invalid votes, so that the total of votes reaches 3,073,816

Election day in Chile began this Sunday with the gradual installation of voting tables in the 16 regions that make up the South American country with a view to electing the candidates.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/chile-ga ... -0019.html

Google Translator

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Who is the Chilean presidential candidate Gabriel Boric?

Published July 18, 2021 (9 hours 53 minutes ago)

oric in his government program proposes a different model change to the neoliberalism that prevails in Chile.

After knowing the results of the presidential primary elections of the coalitions in Chile, the current deputy for Social Convergence, Gabriel Boric Font, officially became the presidential candidate for the group Approve Dignity.

ALSO READ:

Latin Americans express solidarity with the Cuban Revolution

In the electoral contest, Boric Font obtained 1,047,616 votes, which is equivalent to 60.39 percentage points, surpassing the current mayor of Recoleta, Daniel Jadue Jadue, who obtained 687,060 votes (39.61 percent).

Boric Font was born on February 11, 1986 in the city of Punta Arenas, located in the Chilean province of Magallanes in the Magallanes Region. From a very young age he ventured into political processes, at the age of 18 he was part of the team that re-founded the Federation of Secondary Students of Punta Arenas.


As a lawyer graduated from the University of Chile, the now presidential candidate for the Apruebo Dignidad coalition, was elected by popular majority in 2008 as counselor of the Federation of Students of the University of Chile (FECH), a year later he was president of the Center for Law students from the same university.

The current deputy also served as a university senator from the University of Chile in 2010 and 2011, becoming a benchmark not only in the academic sphere but also in national political dynamics.

The first experience as a deputy occurred for the 2014-2018 period, where he represented the Magallanes and Chilean Antarctic Region, being the only independent candidate who obtained a seat outside the binomial system. There he was part of the Special Investigative Commission on the conflict between shareholders of the Soquimich company.


As a result of his intense debates and complaints, the citizens of his area again gave him their support to represent them as a deputy for the 2018-2022 period, currently he is part of the Liberal, Common and Independent Mixed parliamentary team.

Likewise, Boric Font integrates the permanent commissions of Constitution, Legislation, Justice and Regulation; and Extreme Zones and Chilean Antarctica in the Chamber of Deputies.

His media leap originated after the massive mobilizations that took place in 2019, as Boric Font participated on November 15 of the same year in the signing of the so-called Agreement for Social Peace and the New Constitution, a process that gave way to the current constituent process .

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/chile-ga ... -0021.html

Google Translator

Not thrilled that this guy beat the communist for the nomination. He might be OK, or he might be another Lenin Moreno.
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Tue Jul 20, 2021 1:45 pm

Peru: Keiko Says She Will Recognize Results of Peru Elections

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Peruvian presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori | Photo: EFE

Published 19 July 2021 (12 hours 57 minutes ago)

"Today I announce that fulfilling my commitments assumed with all Peruvians... I am going to recognize the results, because it is what the law and the Constitution that I have sworn to defend," said Fujimori during a press conference.


Peruvian right-wing candidate Keiko Fujiyama announced this Monday that she will recognize the results of the presidential runoff that pitted her against leftist Pedro Castillo on June 6, which will be proclaimed in the next few hours by the National Jury of Elections (JNE).

"Today I announce that fulfilling my commitments assumed with all Peruvians... I am going to recognize the results, because it is what the law and the Constitution that I have sworn to defend," said Fujimori during a press conference.

The candidate stated that she will accept the official proclamation even though, in her opinion, it is "illegitimate" because they have "discovered something that is already unobjectionable: Peru Libre (Castillo's party) has stolen thousands of votes from us on election day".

Fujimori made this statement shortly after the JNE confirmed that this week it will proclaim and deliver credentials to the next president of Peru, who according to the official count will be Castillo after winning by a little more than 44,000 votes.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Per ... -0016.html

That Fujimori has got serious legal problems predating the election probably figures into her calculus. It is interesting that these right wing hooligans would ape the 'Trump style' of arrogant intransigence, which had been somewhat out of style until recently. On some level the dogs of the ruling class sense history closing in upon them and object.

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Chileans Choose Sichel and Boric as Presidential Candidates

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Sebastian Sichel (L) and Gabriel Boric (R). | Photo: Twitter/ @ElOrientalMon

Published 19 July 2021

Local political analysts hold their triumph evidences a generational change, as neither of the two pre-candidates were born at the time of the 1973 coup d'état.


On Sunday, the Chilean presidential primary elections produced results that opinion polls had not predicted. Citizens elected independent politician Sebastian Sichel as the candidate of the "Let's Go Chile" coalition of right-wing parties and former student leader Gabriel Boric as the candidate in the "Approve Dignity" coalition of left-wing organizations.

With 49 percent of the vote, Sichel defeated former Mayor Joaquin Lavin, Mario Desbordes (National Renovation party) and Ignacio Briones (Evopoli party). Sichel was Social Development Minister in 2018 and president of the State Bank until December 2020.

Politically, he gained experience in several organizations, among which is the Christian Democratic Party where he militated for over a decade. During the electoral campaign, Sichel positioned himself as a "center" candidate, concerned about the "punished" middle class and the discredit of traditional politics.

"The time has come to change history for the better, the history of the common people... Goodbye to the old politics that splits the world in two," he said.

Gabriel Boric won 60,3 percent of the votes and defeated Communist Party candidate Daniel Jadue, whom the mainstream media attacked harshly during the election campaign. Besides promoting feminist and environmentalist demands, Boric pledged to change the current economic and social model.


"Do not be afraid of the youth to change this country... If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its tomb", said this 35-year-old lawmaker who got over a million votes in the primary elections, a feat that happened the last time in 2013 when Chileans elected Michelle Bachelet as presidential candidate.

According to local political analysts, the triumph of Sichel and Boric evidences the existence of a generational change in Chilean politics, as neither of the two pre-candidates were born at the time of the 1973 coup d'état.

"It is also a great defeat for the right-wing parties that succumbed to an independent candidate," University of Talca professor Mauricio Morales said and recalled that the right has suffered defeats since the social outbreak of 2019, the last one being the election of constituents, in which it only achieved 37 of the 155 seats in the convention in charge of drafting the new Constitution.

"For the first time, the left elects a candidate with possibilities of electoral success without the support of the parties that have governed for almost three decades," said Lucia Dammert, professor at the University of Santiago de Chile.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Chi ... -0002.html
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Thu Jul 22, 2021 1:36 pm

PERSPECTIVES OF THE PRIMARIES IN CHILE AND THE LESSON OF PERU
21 Jul 2021 , 5:57 pm .

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The election of the standard-bearer of the left in Chile attracted attention due to the expectations that are being opened in the current Chilean moment (Photo: AFP / Getty Images)

This Sunday, July 18, the primary elections were held in Chile for the presidential elections in November. This election was very relevant due to its results and because it continues to centralize interest in the region, in step with the events that continue to take place in the South American country.

Primary elections in Chile are regulated in the public electoral system so that coalitions of parties choose candidates. In the case of this year, two coalitions were measured, while other parties, including the Socialist Party (PS), will go to dialogue with other organizations to define their standard bearer or could go alone to the November appointment.

ABOUT THE RESULTS

On the left, against all odds, the deputy of the Broad Front (FA) Gabriel Boric was elected with 60.2% of the votes as the candidate of the I Approve Dignity coalition for the November 21 elections.

Boric defeated Daniel Jadue, mayor of Recoleta and outstanding standard-bearer of the Communist Party (PC).

On the right, Sebastián Sichel was elected with 48.6% of the votes as the candidate of the ruling coalition Chile Vamos, defeating Joaquín Lavín. Sichel was also elected against the forecasts of pollsters.

The election had unexpected results, which is why there is a new episode in Latin American elections where pollsters are not assertively interpreting the electorate.

In global voting terms, with 56.57% of the valid votes cast, and when the Electoral Service (Servel) scrutiny reached 99.99% of the polling stations, the Approve Dignity pact was widely imposed as the most voted block during these primary elections, compared to 43.42% of the votes cast by the ruling party Chile Vamos.

The votes cast totaled 3,094,781, of which 1,750,889 (56.57%) gave preference to one of the candidates from the left-wing bloc.

The electoral roll in Chile is more than 14 million voters inside and outside the country. Although several parties, including the PS, were not measured in the primaries and although some primaries tend to have low turnout, it is a fact that this election joined the string of elections where high abstention wins.

Read the complexity of the political picture. Even with the great turbulence and the outbreak of 2019 until the Constituent election this year, neither the right nor the left manage to mobilize voters and abstention continues to win comfortably.

ABOUT THE WINNERS

The election of Boric and Sichel, for their respective coalitions, has common features. Both were second among the favorites and were also called "moderates" within their coalitions.

Sebastián Sichel was an official in the Piñera government, he is considered a man of the institutional right and with center language. Meanwhile, Gabriel Boric, a deputy for the still new Broad Front, is part of the center-left, comes from the student struggle and has social democratic features.

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Boric and Sichel were winners and both are considered "moderate" and "centrist" in their respective coalitions (Photo: El Mostrador)

In other words, it seems that caution, pragmatism, the choice of "non-radicals" or "politicians to trust" are the criteria that prevailed among the voters.

THE CHOICE FOR THE LEFT AND WITHIN

The election leaves much to be analyzed in the forces of the left that make up the I Approve Dignity coalition. In the impetus of the outbreak, the student struggle, the Mapuche struggle and the formation of the current Constituent Assembly, it was assumed that Daniel Jadue would be favored, for being the most outstanding on the left, with the polls in favor and for his political record in government functions as re-elected Mayor of the popular Commune of Recoleta.

But the result favored Gabriel Boric, leaving a bad taste among many Chilean and foreign progressives. The sensation to be analyzed among those affected by the I Approve Dignity coalition is that, already having a standard-bearer, there was no celebration in the so-called Plaza de la Dignidad. This detail reflects a state of mind to consider.

One of the uncertainties about the unexpected result lies in the possibility that sectors of the old concertation, specifically voters of the center in the PS and other formations, have voted for Boric to prevent Jadue from winning. This possibility is supported by the result that is confirmed by the comfortable and "unexpected" advantage of votes to the left compared to the right. But it remains inconclusive.

Daniel Jadue himself dismissed that possibility after the election, although without elaborating. He said that "it is not that the right wing has come out to vote in our primaries, they are our own weaknesses."

However, it is widely possible that voters, possibly from the PS, did vote for Boric, this can be deduced from the encounters he had with the standard-bearer of that party, Paula Narváez, shortly before the election, which served to reinforce his image as an open, pragmatic, moderate and convoking man, especially to historical voters who identify as the center.

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Gabriel Boric's campaign was diverse both in its image and in its campaign offer. Not suitable for extreme militant leftists. (Photo: CNN Chile)

Daniel Jadue's campaign had key weaknesses that lie from its own organic composition. Being characterized by pluralism, but within the left, Jadue's campaign became entrenched in levels and themes of discourse that penetrated deeply among a small political group.

That possibility and also that social democratic votes favored Boric were pointed out before the elections according to data on the digital spectrum.

Two days after the election, data was revealed from the pre-primary report of the multidisciplinary laboratory for listening to social networks, Social Listening Lab, SoL-UC . This analysis quantified and classified the data from user interactions on social networks, according to the content emanating from the Boric and Jadue campaigns.

The study sought, through a series of indicators (such as "Digital Impact" and "Diversity of Outreach"), to measure the ability of candidates to tune in with various communities of voters.

This report was right when it pointed out before the election: "the digital impact and the diversity of scope translate into mobilization of voters, so it is expected that the Pacto Approve Dignity will attract a significantly greater number of voters than the Pacto Chile Vamos," said report. Indeed it was.

Regarding Boric versus Jadue, the study indicates that the followers of the former "tend to have greater diversity both internally and in their external interaction, with respect to that of Jadue; However, the Jadue community shows a much greater internal integration."

In other words, Jadue's affections interacted a lot, but with each other, while Boric managed to convene, with other codes, beyond the stories and campaign offer of the left, managing to address and attract other sectors not identified with the left. .

According to the report, Boric's digital outreach community is more heterogeneous than Jadue's.

Jadue campaigned to win the support of the coalition by entrenching himself in the speech of the left more to the left, trying to persuade those who would already be convinced to support him, without managing to summon sectors beyond the hard wing of sympathies in Approve Dignity .

In reference to the territory, Jadue preferred to dispute with Boric the preferences on the left, mainly in the Metropolitan Axis of Santiago, instead of going for a captive and abstentionist electorate that clearly remains in Chile and that is in the breadth of the national territory.

Additionally, Jadue did not approach many codes of the common Chilean in the interior of the country and, therefore, he did not manage to convene them in this election. Indeed, it must be considered that no candidate, neither of the left nor of the right, has achieved such a thing.

The differences between the candidates played in Boric's favor, because from his meeting with Narváez he managed to impose the differentiating wedge that "it is not governed only with those who think the same as you", in response to the questions of the mayor of Recoleta, who attacked Boric on that occasion, pointing out that "they do not lose an opportunity to give a signal to the Concertación."

Consequently, Boric positioned himself as a moderate convener and Jadue was heavily attacked and branded a radical. In an election with such a small turnout, it was evident that entrenchments would work against whoever assumed them and this was the case against Jadue.

GABRIEL BORIC FACING RIGHT

Daniel Jadue has immediately granted "unconditional" support to Boric, appealing that what is in dispute is the historic project and not his candidacy. However, this does not mean that all of Jadue's followers will support Boric. Understanding traditional atomizing reactions on the left, it is highly probable that some sectors do not support Boric energetically, as Boric has given them some reasons for it.

Boric has established positions of rupture with the revolutionary governments of Venezuela, Nicaragua and recently with Cuba in the framework of its current situation, Boric declared in a very adverse way against the island. In addition to other issues of Chilean politics, this gives him the distrust of certain groups on the left.

Your challenge will be in measuring with the right in November. It must be counted on the fact that Paula Narváez for the PJ could participate in the election, or that the PS dialogue with the Christian Democratic Party and propose Yasna Provoste, current President of the Senate.

Although Provoste and Narváez have little chance of winning today, any of them could settle the floor of the "center-left" that Boric aspires as an electoral base.

Al Boric will blend in with the social democracy, it will go against the right with a compromised flow of votes if the PS raises Narváez or Provoste with force, a question that is not impossible, understanding that both worked in the government of Michelle Bachelet, who continues to be a benchmark in that country.

Boric's candidacy still does not recognize an important captive political capital, not identified with either the traditional right or the hard left of Approve Dignidad. A sector that has disdain for the Mapuche struggle, the language of gender and other flags of progressivism, but that continues to be ordinary people, formed with aspirational logics based on neoliberalism and that feel defrauded.

It is a sector with common meanings and more founded aspirations in everyday life, which are practically invisible in campaign speeches. They are a point of attention.

Right now the Senate is promoting a reform to reinstate compulsory voting in Chile, a reform that if applied in November could change everything, since the political indicators are curdling on a very large abstention basis, as has been recurrent in Chile.

Hence, with or without this mandatory voting scenario, the Boric campaign will have the challenge of recomposing its campaign codes and electoral offer to go with great emphasis towards those captive sectors that will be indispensable.

THE PERUVIAN LESSON

To conclude, let's put another perspective on the matter. Why did Pedro Castillo in Peru manage to surprise and Jadue not, if both countries come from a long neoliberal period with their respective populations outraged and fed up with their elites?

As we have suggested, there is a Chile that has not been seen in the demonstrations since 2019 and that seems to have no representation on either the left or the right.

We are talking about a sector that Castillo has led to mobilize on the electoral plane, but on the political level he had already been leading a high-level union operator for a few years.

The fact that Chilean candidates only project a cosmopolitan vision does not allow a wide spectrum of the country to feel identified politically and frequently attend electoral appointments.

That same mass has been the one that led Castillo to be elected president of a traditional and historically conservative country. It could be said that the new Peruvian president has given a lesson in how politics should be understood and where a discourse has to be traced that can be assimilated by sectors of society that have been excluded for a long time from the political and electoral circuits.

It is a lesson that has emerged in South America for decades, where the impoverished majorities, in the city and in the countryside, have been protagonists of key moments in their recent history: Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Bolivia, and now Peru, are examples of it.

Although Jadue was free to dispute the spaces outside the cities, not taken by the political inertia of the Chilean establishment, he decided to run for Boric in Santiago and was defeated in a key primary for the cosmopolitan left of the southern country.

It is time to take note of this and other experiences in the region that shed light on how to interpret the political moment in Latin America and the Caribbean. Otherwise, those who claim to represent a legitimate change in their respective countries will continue to repeat the same formulas that serve only those who are interested in not changing anything.

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Chile: The Candidate of the ‘Left’ Gabriel Boric and his Constant Criticisms of Venezuela and Cuba
July 22, 2021
By Carlos Aznárez – Jul 19, 2021

Now that all the hegemonic media on the right, as well as a significant number from progressivism, are telling us who Gabriel Boric is—winner for the ”left” in the presidential primaries in Chile, defeating Daniel Jadue, it is worth taking into account some information that complement the profile of the person who will be the presidential candidate in the elections of November this year. All biographies of Boric show us a ”politician of the moderate left” ”respectful of human rights,” factotum of the ”peace agreement” with Piñera, etc, etc.

Hence, it is worth remembering that during the entire popular revolt that Chile has lived since October 2019, Boric could not approach any of the large demonstrations and even less the Plaza Dignidad because young people rejected him not only for having joined the bourgeois political caste that offered Piñera ”a way out” when the extreme-right neoliberal president was most besieged by the popular revolt, but also for having voted with the right wing in support of the fascist ”anti-barricade law” that the government brought in against the people who went out into the streets again and again to repudiate State repression.

For such political positions, Boric was denounced publicly by a group of young people in the center of Santiago, accusing him of having ”sold himself.”

However, there is more to the candidate’s resume. If there has been something constant about Boric in recent years, it is his attacks against the Bolivarian Revolution and the Cuban Revolution, including even this week, after the opposition demonstrations in Cuba. This needs to be mentioned because, beyond the fact that very few people voted in these primary elections, demonstrating the little credibility given to the political class, the results also finalized the candidates of the ”left” and the right. Boric won with a huge and unexpected margin over Daniel Jadue; hence, it will not be entirely wrong to assume, as some Chilean analysts have already pointed out, that his victory was more due to a strategic move by the right, that might have sent its activists and supporters to vote for Boric instead of Joaquín Lavín, the right-wing candidate who had been leading all the pre-election polls but lost, rather unexpectedly, to Sebastián Sichel in the primaries. Why would the right do that? Simply so that communist Jadue, a steadfast activist in solidarity with Cuba and Venezuela, and one of the champions of the Palestinian cause on the international level, does not become a candidate for the presidency of Chile.

In other words, when the deceptive platforms of Chilean social democracy want to sell us the idea that Boric is LEFT, let us not continue to get fooled by those lies. The leaders of the Chilean Socialist Party are also said to be ”left” who, to the greater shame of those who once aligned themselves with the martyr President Salvador Allende, have just condemned Cuba, joining the chorus of destabilizers against the Revolution, promoted by the United States. They, Boric and some others who use the label of ”left” are nothing more than mere collaborators of the empire. It is better to take this into account now so as not to regret later.

https://orinocotribune.com/chile-the-ca ... -and-cuba/

Tweets supporting post(in Spanish) at link.

Social Democrat sabotage again... How long?

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THE NEOLIBERAL MODEL IS CONSOLIDATED IN ECUADOR AT THE HANDS OF LASSO
20 Jul 2021 , 5:05 pm .

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Two months after the inauguration, Guillermo Lasso's surrender agenda continues (Photo: Reuters)

The new government of Ecuador has been showing signs of a reversal of the surrender policies that had been abolished with the arrival of the Citizen Revolution, and that survived the neoliberalization process of the Moreno administration.

That two months after the inauguration, Guillermo Lasso has rejoined the mechanisms for the resolution of disputes between investors and the State (ISDS) and that the ambassador of Ecuador in Washington sign the re-entry of the country to the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) of the World Bank is a sample of this.

The ISDS settlement mechanism had been previously denounced and ICSID Ecuador had withdrawn in 2009. However, the most striking thing about the return to the old model is the unconstitutional path that Lasso is taking to carry it out. It so happens that Ecuador's withdrawal from ICSID was part of a larger process that resulted in the termination of all of Ecuador's Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs).

LASSO'S SURRENDER AGENDA
Getting out of these frameworks took years, but Lasso wants to return to them through a stroke of the pen. An article by Guillaume Long and Andrés Arauz (the latter recent presidential candidate) published in the Institute for New Economic Thought last week maintains that "the Constitutional Court of Ecuador decided that Ecuador's reentry to ICSID did not require legislative ratification. Now, the government is promoting a reinterpretation of the Constitution that allows Ecuador to sign BITs. "

Contrary to the fast and unconstitutional way of the new president, the experts maintain that "Article 422 of the new Ecuadorian Constitution, approved by popular referendum in 2008, stipulates: 'The Ecuadorian State shall not enter into international treaties or instruments in which the Ecuadorian State cede its sovereign jurisdiction to international arbitration entities in contractual or commercial disputes between the State and natural or legal persons' ".

This is how the government of Rafael Correa in ten years put an end to a first batch of BITs in 2008 and a few months later he left ICSID, says the article by Ecuadorians entitled "The new Ecuadorian government aligns itself with powerful international lobbies to rejoin investment treaties prohibited by the Constitution ".

"In 2013, the Ecuadorian government commissioned a group of experts to audit its arbitration cases and all its BITs, including the legality of their ratification, and their repercussions in the country. The Commission for the Audit of Investment Protection Treaties (CAITISA), made up of academics, lawyers, public officials and civil society groups, concluded that many of Ecuador's BITs had not been properly ratified. It also found that the treaties did not attract foreign investment to Ecuador, "they say.

These audits confirmed that said treaties were unfavorable for Ecuador and highlighted the importance of the State to defend the interests of the nation. The report details that the hiring of lawyers with close ties to transnational corporations was usually a problem for investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms.

Contrary to the myth that the loss of sovereignty is a way to attract investment, the CAITISA report confirmed that foreign investment is directed to countries that experience constant economic growth; that they have strong institutions, including a strong judiciary; and that they are stable, even politically and socially.

UNFAVORABLE TREATIES FOR COUNTRIES

What is clear is that it was shown that Bilateral Investment Treaties create a shield of impunity for environmental damage and tax evasion by transnational companies. It is easy for these companies to evade responsibility in the event of disasters because they generally leave the country where they occur.

Everything points to the fact that the government of Guillermo Lasso is returning to these mechanisms that have wreaked havoc in Ecuador as a way of allying itself with the influence of US imperial politics, a logic from which Rafael Correa escaped "taking advantage of the growing world consensus on the negative effects of ISDS, which many countries subscribed to from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, during the height of deregulation and 'downside' approaches to attracting investment. Some of the largest emerging economies had led the way : South Africa ended its investment treaties in 2012; Indonesia in 2014; India in 2017. Among Latin American states, Brazil never ratified any treaty that included ISDS, and Bolivia ended its BITs in 2008. "

The clauses of the ISDS were revised because not even the countries of the European Union were exempt from sanctions by arbitration tribunals simply for upholding European law. This led the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, to write: "Nor will I accept that the jurisdiction of the courts of the EU Member States is limited by special regimes for investor disputes", Long and Arauz collect .

It was finally in May 2017 that after a new authorization from Parliament, and with previous decisions of the Constitutional Court, Ecuador ended its 16 remaining BITs, including those signed with the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, China. and the Netherlands.

It is worth noting that the turn to these policies did not begin with the current president, since Lenín Moreno from the beginning of his government did not share this criticism of the mechanisms that companies use to extort money from the States and thus avoid effective regulatory systems, either in the area of ​​taxes, environmental safeguards or labor rights.

Eager to return to the neoliberal policies of the 1990s, and under intense pressure from transnational corporations, the Moreno government asked the Constitutional Court to reinterpret Article 422, arguing that it only applied to trade disputes. This maneuver was notable for its audacity: Article 422, which mentions the generic term 'contract', is clearly intended to prohibit arbitration of investment disputes. The minutes of the Constituent Assembly that drafted the Constitution, and the multiple previous decisions of the Court Constitutionally, they also support the interpretation that article 422 refers to investments. For this reason, the court has received dozens of amicus curiae (third parties unrelated to a litigation) from reputed national and foreign academic experts,as well as civil society organizations, who ask him to reject the offer, "the article details.

Although the deadline for the interpretation of article 422 by the Constitutional Court has passed, the government of Guillermo Lasso is pressuring the court to allow a quick return to ISDS mechanisms.

They suggest that the process is flawed while the person in charge of the Court to analyze the reentry to ICSID, Teresa Nuques, has been the director of the arbitration center of the Guayaquil Chamber of Commerce and a vocal defender of the ISDS. There were magistrates who appealed to the Constitution, which requires the legislative approval of any treaty that implies the renunciation of national legal powers in favor of a supranational body, but they were outnumbered and on June 30 the court announced its decision that the Legislative approval of accession to ICSID was not mandatory.

The surprising thing - they refer - is that the moment of the reincorporation of Ecuador to ICSID occurs three weeks after this organization declared a ruling in favor of the French-British oil company Perenco in its arbitration case against Ecuador.

"The company received from Ecuador 412 million dollars (a fine of 372 million dollars, plus interest) for violating the clause of the France-Ecuador BIT on 'indirect expropriation'. In 2006, the Congress of Ecuador had unanimously approved a law that forced to distribute the income derived from the increases in the prices of raw materials. In 2007, the government further modified a rule to maximize income for the State. Most of the oil companies established in Ecuador accepted the new conditions, but not Perenco, which never paid the amount owed. When the tax authority claimed the amount owed by seizing an equivalent amount of oil, Perenco left the country, without paying for the damage that its operations caused to the environment ", details the Article.

There is no apparent explanation for reincorporation to a mechanism that threatens the sovereignty of a country. What is clear is that it is ruled in favor of a French billionaire family to the detriment of a country of about 20 million inhabitants. "Companies established in tax havens often resort to the corrupt practice of 'buying' investment treaties signed by other countries to enjoy the best of both worlds: protection and impunity," affirm the Ecuadorian authors.

Finally, the Ecuadorian government would pay the fine to Perenco , announced the Ministry of Communication of the South American country, although Ecuador could resort to several measures to avoid or delay this payment, especially in a context of economic crisis and pandemic, whose mortality rate per capita by covid-19 is one of the highest in the world. With all the resources to reverse the measure, Lasso has already made clear, upon rejoining ICSID, that his government has no intention of challenging the payment to the company.

DISMANTLING CONTINUES

It is evident that the new government of Ecuador follows the surrender line initiated by Lenín Moreno. But Lasso's pro-imperialist policy was already in sight from the beginning of his business ties and his political career.

*From a very young age he was linked to the Guayaquil stock market.
*His first company was Constructora Alfa y Omega, founded with his older brother Enrique Lasso in 1978, at the age of 23.
*This businessman from birth in 1994 was appointed executive president of Banco Guayaquil. That same year he passed through the national subsidiary of Coca-Cola.
*In 2017 a report revealed that Guillermo Lasso was associated with 49 offshore companies in tax havens and accumulated between 1999 and 2000 a wealth of 30 million dollars.
*In 1998 he began his political career when he was appointed as Governor of the Province of Guayas.
*During the presidency of Lucio Gutiérrez he was appointed itinerant ambassador.
*It rejects any type of regional integration that is not akin to the neoliberal corporate model.

With this brief review, the political decisions complacent with Washington's agenda are not surprising, nor that the pro-imperial agenda is above national interests.

In any case, Moreno handed over that of the dismantling of the Ecuadorian State to Lasso, who had already met with the former president in a curious call for dialogue where only right-wing political actors participated.

"Crony companies that want to participate in bargain-priced privatizations, for example, are eager to anchor the new trade and investment treaties with ISDS chapters. And the Lasso government is eager to sell as many state assets as possible. It is no coincidence that, a week after the Constitutional Court gave the green light to Ecuador's return to ICSID, Lasso issued an executive decree ordering the gradual privatization of the state oil industry and highlighting international arbitration as the cornerstone of its policy. " , Long and Arauz stand out.

For this reason, the pressure and lobbying to avoid parliamentary authorization and the despair of lobbyists for a return to the pro-ISDS agenda is evident.

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Tue Jul 27, 2021 2:06 pm

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Evo Morales Denounces New US – Led Operation Condor
July 25, 2021
By Nan McCurdy and Nora McCurdy – Jul 19, 2021

Plan follows precedent of 1970s state-sponsored assassination campaign targeting leftists.

Operation Condor was a U.S.-directed secret intelligence program in the 1970s and early ’80s in six South American U.S.-backed dictatorships—Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay—that resulted in the torture and “disappearance” of thousands of people.

The victims included dissidents and leftists, union and peasant leaders, priests and nuns, students and teachers, intellectuals and suspected guerrillas.

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Arret in Operation Condor in 1970s. [Source: bbc.com]

Bolivian President Evo Morales has recently suggested that the 2019 coup directed against him is part of a new U.S. Plan Condor—whose aim is to rollback the renewed left-wing ascendancy in South America.
In a speech in early July, Morales stated:

“The sending of war materials by the former presidents of Ecuador (Moreno), and Argentina (Macri), and the letter of thanks from General Terceros are further evidence that, together with the assassination of the President of Haiti, by former Colombian military personnel, show the execution of a second Condor Plan under U.S. direction.

We alert the Latin America social movements about #PlanCóndor2 and the need to strengthen the struggle for peace with social justice and democracy to preserve the sovereignty and independence of our States and the dignity of the people.

In the face of the Bolivian right wing and its U.S.-paid media that lie and do not show a single piece of evidence of the alleged fraud [2019 elections], more evidence continues to appear about those who participated in the 2019 coup d’état and the support given by anti-popular governments with war material and money.

We reaffirm that #PlanCóndor2 is under way and we must agree on measures so that the right-wing governments of Latin America do not continue to participate in coups d’état under the leadership of the United States, causing mourning and pain to our peoples.

We warn the people, militants, sympathizers, patriotic military and professionals committed to their country: We are in the sights of the U.S. because we recovered our natural resources, nationalized strategic companies and closed the military base in Chimoré. They do not forgive us.”


Cuba—On the New Condor Hit List

That the new Operation Condor represents an extension of the old one is evident in Washington’s continued subversion efforts directed against Cuba, a country that has defied U.S. imperial designs since the 1959 Cuban revolution.

As CAM reported, on June 23 of this year 184 countries of the United Nations General Assembly voted in favor of an end to the U.S. embargo on Cuba. It was the 29th consecutive year where virtually all countries, except the U.S. and Israel, made this demand.

In recent years, the Cuban media have denounced the millions of dollars of U.S. funding, through organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), to create and fund opposition media and the organization of youth.

The NED programs are an adjunct of the new Condor operation, whose goal is regime change of left-wing governments.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez on July 11 rejected the smear campaigns of the U.S. media hegemony in the midst of the Covid pandemic with the intensification of the illegal economic, financial and commercial blockade imposed by the United States.

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Miguel Díaz-Canel [Source: france24.com]

“In a subtle, cowardly and opportunistic manner, those who have maintained the blockade and those who have been used as mercenaries and lackeys of the empire, appear with humanitarian doctrines to strengthen the criterion that the Cuban government is not capable of dealing with this situation; if they are worried about the people of Cuba, they need to end the blockade,” said the Cuban president.
The U.S. is intensifying the blockade hoping to cause an internal implosion. “They want to suffocate us and try to put an end to the Revolution … I am giving this information to ratify that the streets belong to the Revolution; that the party and the Government have all the disposition to debate and help,” said President Díaz-Canel.


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In response to a recent anti-government demonstrators, thousands attended a pro-government rally in Havana, including President Miguel Diaz-Canel and former President Raul Castro. (July 17, 2021) [Source: reuters.com]

The President called on the base of the Revolution to go into the streets to face the provocations of manipulators who promote protests and support illegal sanctions against their own country; “we know that there are revolutionary masses facing small anti-revolutionary groups, we are not going to let any mercenary of the U.S. empire provoke destabilization,” he added.

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Protesters in Miami supporting anti-government demonstrators in Cuba. [Source: rollingstone.com]

The head of state emphasized that the provocations of small groups intend to create a scenario so that the U.S. can justify an invasion. “In the second half of 2019 we explained to our people that we were going through a difficult juncture, from the signs that the U.S. was giving against Cuba,” he recalled.
“The financial, economic, commercial and energy persecution increased, they [Washington] want to provoke internal social problems in Cuba in order to call for humanitarian missions that translate into military invasions and interference,” denounced President Díaz-Canel. The president recalled that Cuba was included in the infamous list as sponsors of terrorism, “a unilateral list; they believe they are emperors of the world,” he added.

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General Enrique Morales Bermúdez (1975-1980) participated in the original Operation Condor. [Source: nsarchive2.gwu.edu]


Peru—from Old Condor to New: Viva Fujimori!

According to historian J. Patrice McSherry, Peru was one of the target countries for the original Operation Condor. In June 1980, Peruvian President General Enrique Morales Bermudez (1975-1980) collaborated with Argentine security forces in hunting down Argentine leftists in Peru who were tortured and “disappeared.”
The U.S. later provided security assistance to help Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) destroy the left-wing Sendero Luminoso guerrilla movement.

USA: PRESIDENTS FUJIMORI /MAHUAD/CLINTON PRESS CONFERENCE | AP Archive

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Bill Clinton and Alberto Fujimori in the White House. [Source: aparchive.com]

Fast forward two decades, and Washington appears to be pulling out all the stops under the new Condor to try to orchestrate a coup designed to empower Alberto’s daughter, Keiko—who like her father, would advance policies that favor Peru’s wealthy classes and transnational corporations.

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Keiko Fujimori addresses supporters. [Source: bostonglobe.com]

As CAM reported, in the June 6 elections, Pedro Castillo, a teacher and candidate of the Free Peru Party, won the elections in the second round. But Fujimori—who is facing a long jail sentence on corruption charges—refused to concede. With 100% of the votes counted Castillo won 50.127% of the vote (8.84 million votes), beating Fujimori of the Fuerza Popular Party, who received 49.873% (8.79 million votes).

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Leftist Pedro Castillo celebrates election victory in June 2021. [Source: nbcnews.com]

The U.S. and the Peruvian oligarchy as well as Fujimori and her army of lawyers are using the model of an electoral coup to try to keep Castillo from the presidency. He is calling for a constituent assembly and appears to favor far-reaching reforms that would improve the lives of the impoverished majority and diminish the power of the country’s elites as well as corporations.

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Pro-Fujimori protesters invoke fear of communism in a replay of the Cold War. [Source: Aljazeera.com]

Just six weeks before the election the U.S. sent a new ambassador to Peru, Lisa Kenna. Kenna was an adviser to former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a nine-year veteran at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and a U.S. State Department official in Iraq.
What dirty tricks she may be trying to help pull remains uncertain, but if Morales is correct about the new Condor, she is definitely someone who is supporting it.

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Lisa Kenna [Source: pe.usembassy.gov]

Haiti: An Assassination by Proxy
On June 30, just a week before the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, William J. Burns, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, arrived in Colombia to participate in a “sensitive” security mission.

The Colombian ambassador in Washington, Francisco Santos, reported on the CIA director’s trip to Colombia, but said he did not want to give further details about Director Burns’s visit to Bogota: “I prefer not to tell you, it is a delicate mission, an important intelligence mission that we were able to coordinate,”responded Santos when questioned about the mission.

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CIA Director William J. Burns was in Colombia a week before the assassination of Haitian President Jovenal Moïse. [Source: resumenlatinamericano.org]

The U.S. has seven military bases in Colombia and a history of support for the narcotics-dealing paramilitary forces that are the political base of right-wing President Iván Duque and his sinister narco-terror implicated mentor, former president Álvaro Uribe.
So, it makes sense that Colombians may well have been part of the commando group that killed President Moïse. There has been a lot of disinformation given about the assassination to try to confuse people, but it is not difficult to surmise which country is most likely behind the killing.

Moïse to be sure was no progressive. He was groomed by the corrupt former president Michel Martelly, a close ally of the Clintons, and received only 11 percent of the vote in 2016.

In a March interview, former U.S. ambassador to Haiti Pamela White talked about a plan to “put aside” President Moïse, leaving power in the hands of an interim Prime Minister. All this to avoid democratic elections which the population have been calling for since early 2020.

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Pamela White [Source: haitianinternet.com]

How do you “put aside” a president? The U.S. government has a long record of assassinating presidents and leaders or supporting coups to overthrow elected governments, as it did in 2004 to remove President Jean-Bertrand Aristide who had wide support among Haiti’s poor.

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Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a victim of U.S. subversion. [Source: haiti.fandom.com]

In 2020 when Moïse should have stepped down and when the most popular party, Fanmi Lavalas, was calling for elections, the U.S. backed him staying in power.
Polls show that the progressive party Lavalas is very popular and, if the U.S. were to allow fair elections, they would very likely win. Whoever murdered President Moïse and for whatever immediate reason, the principal medium-term result is continued chaos for Haiti’s people, including possibly another military intervention, putting a stable political settlement further out of reach than ever.

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Colombian suspects in death of Haiti’s President Jovenal Moïse—a victim of the new Operation Condor. [Source: Today.in-24.com]

The above photo shows the men the Haitian Police accuse of being “specialized commandos” who allegedly executed the president. The photo shows the weapons these men were caught with. There are no heavy weapons, only old weapons and only enough for about half of these men. They were found with only two walkie talkies and not a single bullet proof vest.
There is nothing about this group to indicate any kind of “specialized commandos” and very unlikely that such a ragtag group could have gotten past the President’s ten body-guards without resistance.

There has been no presentation of what was found on security cameras—neither from the President’s home nor from any neighboring homes. And now the police are saying that a progressive Haitian doctorwho lives in the U.S. and has had pretensions of running for president in the past was the mastermind. This scenario being pushed by the Haitian Police wreaks of a cover-up—as had occurred with many of the assassinations in the original Operation Condor.

Nicaragua–1980s Redux?

In Nicaragua, U.S. policies under the new Condor show great continuity from the era of the 1980s Contra War.

In 2018, with careful direction and millions of dollars from U.S. agencies and foundations, a coup was attempted against Nicaragua’s government—headed by the original Sandinista revolutionary leader, Daniel Ortega, who had won the 2016 elections with over 72% of the vote.[1]

The failed coup attempt left more than 260 people dead, including 24 police.

Along with executions, hundreds of Sandinista supporters and government workers were kidnapped and tortured. With destruction of government and private buildings, vehicles and equipment, loss of 130,000 jobs and business closures, Finance Minister Ivan Acosta calculates the cost to the economy of more than a billion dollars—more than the combined losses caused by the Covid pandemic and the two devastating hurricanes of November 2020.

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Sandinista revolutionary leader Daniel Ortega leads celebration of defeat of U.S.-backed coup attempt in 2018. [Source: janatweekly.org]

A new destabilization plan called RAIN, Responsive Action in Nicaragua, managed and financed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), was leaked from the U.S. embassy in July 2020. Many more millions have been given by the U.S. to its agents and proxy organizations in Nicaragua to carry out RAIN’s operational program which openly calls for an unconstitutional “transition” and for promoting “transition-related activities.”

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Report advocating regime change. [Source: coha.org]

These activities violate Nicaragua’s Constitution, the country’s 2007 criminal code, national security legislation and money laundering laws in compliance with international standards, as well as the law relating to non-profit organizations.
The current U.S. administration under Joe Biden has maintained President Trump’s designation of Nicaragua as an “extraordinary and unusual threat to the U.S. national security and foreign policy.” This means that Nicaraguans accepting money from the U.S. government and participating in U.S. programs to promote a “democratic transition” are actively collaborating with a hostile foreign power.

Since June of this year more than 20 Nicaraguans involved in these unlawful and potentially treasonous activities have come under investigation.

The offenses they are accused of committing involve not only possible treason for organizing, financing and participating in a coup d’état, requesting foreign economic and even military aggression, and promoting coercive measures against the government and individual citizens.

Additionally, some are under investigation for money laundering, financial fraud relating to abuse of non-profits, and the law on registration and financial reporting as foreign agents, similar to the U.S. FARA legislation. Moreover, among the detained are people who, by engaging in this broad range of law breaking, violated the terms of the Amnesty Law from which they benefited in 2019.

Venezuela—Trying to Destroy the Lifeblood of the Bolivarian Revolution

Nicaragua had been designated by the Trump administration as part of a “troika of tyranny” along with Cuba and Venezuela.

Venezuela’s socialist president Nicolás Maduro, on July 12 at a dialogue with National Assembly lawmakers, denounced two assassination attempts against his life in just the preceding two weeks. Maduro stated: “They had prepared an attack against me on June 24 in the bicentennial of Carabobo this year. Another attack with drones, we dispelled it, we knocked it down, we neutralized it. First time I say it, because the investigation is still ongoing until we get to the person behind everything.

They had prepared [yet another] a desperate attack against me on July 5 in the middle of the parade …” referring to the July 5th Independence Day civic-military parade.

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Image of drone that was involved in assassination attempt against Maduro. [Source: venezuelaanalysis.com]

All of these attacks—and other assassination attempts directed against Maduro—fit under the rubric of the new Operation Condor disclosed by Morales.
Venezuela is a key target because it is led by a socialist government that since the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez has been committed to Pan-American solidarity and the integration of Latin American economies so that they can develop independently and rid themselves of Yankee exploitation.

In May 2020, a large group of U.S.-funded terrorists, including two U.S. citizens, after training in Colombia, entered Venezuela by boat, hoping to kidnap or assassinate President Maduro. Their presence was quickly reported by local fishing workers and the group was intercepted by the Venezuelan authorities.

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Nicolás Maduro holding the U.S. passports of captured former Green Berets. [Source: wikipedia.org]

U.S. Southern Command has long openly proposed plans and advocated measures to facilitate the overthrow of Venezuela’s elected government.
Recently, President Maduro denounced the U.S. Southern Command and the Central Intelligence Agency for designing plans to attack Venezuela from Colombian territory. Maduro accused the CIA of planning to assassinate him. He alerted the Venezuelan people and urged them to be prepared “to respond forcefully to any destabilization plan in perfect civil-military union.”

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Maduro’s statement comes in relation to the arrival in Colombia of the commander of the Southern Command, Admiral Craig Faller, and the director of the CIA, William Burns, whose visit, as the Colombian ambassador to the U.S. explained, was a “delicate mission,” taking place right before criminal attacks in Haiti and Venezuela.

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Commander of the Southern Command, Admiral Craig Faller, right, on visit to Colombia in December 2018. [Source: southcom.mil]

President Maduro noted, “We have received Information … they are behind plans to continue threatening and attacking peace and democracy, the institutions and the leadership of our country.”

The Venezuelan government’s warnings about the continuing conspiracies, violence and preparation of mercenary groups in Colombia to attack Venezuela were borne out recently by attacks in Venezuela’s capital. Various criminal gangs staged attacks in different parts of Caracas including one on an important police center.

The attacks were clearly coordinated to create a climate of fear and uncertainty during a visit by a European Union delegation to assess the possibility of EU observers monitoring the important elections scheduled for later this year.

The Venezuelan security forces took action to control the areas under attack and dismantled the criminal gangs responsible.

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Venezuelan motorcycle gangs known as “collectivos” that protect President Maduro from outside terrorist attacks and support the Bolivarian revolution. [Source: thechicagotribune.com
]
Their actions in turn signify a key difference from the 1970s—notably that Latin American countries are stronger and better able to defend themselves from U.S.-backed subversion and terrorism.

Conclusion

Evo Morales among others has made clear that the U.S. elites and their regional allies are desperate to impose a new Plan Condor in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Historically, the U.S. has always sought to suppress regional emancipation in the form of progressive movements and governments. But in a global context, they now also fear the growth of the region’s economic links with Asia, especially China.

Despite their enormous political influence, economic power and military presence, the U.S. and its allies face a losing battle, just as Spain did 200 years ago.

One model of U.S. and allied control is the kind of anti-democratic intervention developed in Haiti and Honduras by the U.S., Canada and Western Europe. This model ensures a neutered, corrupt central government and neocolonial rule via international agencies and Western NGOs.

But the collapse of Haiti and Honduras into neocolonial subjugation is still mostly an exception in the region. Apart from Haiti, the other Caribbean nations have proven to be very resilient against U.S. pressure, consistently blocking moves against Venezuela by the U.S. and Canada in the Organization of American States (OAS), for example.

Also Nicaragua’s decisive 2012 legal victory regaining over 90,000 square kilometers of Caribbean maritime territory, usurped by Colombia for decades, has meant that Nicaragua has joined Cuba and like-minded progressive Caribbean island nations in regional bodies, reinforcing the presence of revolutionary influence in those forums.

In practice, that means promotion of development policies focused on people rather than on corporate profits.

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Panorama of Managua. Nicaragua’s economy ranks second best in Central America under Ortega’s stewardship, despite the damage from the 2018 coup attempt. [Source: qcostarica.com]

From Mexico and the Caribbean to Chile and Argentina, despite the aggressive offensive against Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, it is the right-wing allies of the U.S. that are in crisis, precisely because the mean, bitter, sterile Western vision of capitalist development condemns people to misery and despair.
So, it is no surprise that widespread popular protests have arisen with varying levels of intensity in Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay and Brazil. Guillermo Lasso’s right-wing government in Ecuador will soon face the inevitable consequences of implementing repressive neoliberal economic measures.

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Protests in Bogota, Colombia, against unpopular right-wing government backed by the U.S. [Source: ft.com]

While the U.S. and its allies managed to destabilize Argentina thanks to its elites looting the country under Mauricio Macri and taking on debilitating foreign debt, the country’s foreign policy remains an important force for progressive regional integration against U.S. wishes. The same is true of Mexico.
Despite economic, diplomatic and military power, the intense, well-coordinated U.S. and allied efforts to destabilize Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua and the region generally are failing. China’s influence is growing as that of the U.S. declines.

Haiti and Honduras may for now have become tragic showcases of what the U.S. and its allies want to impose on Latin America and the Caribbean but Bolivia’s heroic people showed that even a successful right-wing coup can be reversed.

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Luis Arce, candidate for Morales’s Movement Towards Socialism Party (MAS), celebrates election victory in October. Arce’s success may reflect the rising left-wing tide in Latin America and the beginning of the end of the era of U.S. and Western imperial dominance dating back to the Spanish conquest. [Source: theintercept.com]

The current U.S.-led Plan Condor may not be the Monroe Doctrine’s swan song in Latin America. But the writing is on the wall for anyone who cares to see.

Image
Rembrandt’s “Belshazzar’s Feast.” Belshazzar was a Babylonian King who looted the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. One of his victims wrote on the wall predicting his downfall; a prophecy that came true. [Source: wikipedia.com]




Nora McCurdy is Nicaraguan, she is an independent investigator, she can be reached at noramccurdy@gmail.com.

Featured image: Evo Morales speaks in Cochabamba in 2017. [Source: telesurenglish.net]

(CovertAction Magazine)


https://orinocotribune.com/evo-morales- ... on-condor/
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Fri Jul 30, 2021 2:12 pm

In Nobody’s Backyard: Rejecting Geo-Political and Historical Fatalism
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 29, 2021
Gerald A. Perreira

Image
Guyana Defense Force soldiers in training exercise with US army personnel, Tradewinds, June, 2021

Except for the hum of US helicopters flying overhead, there was a deafening silence throughout the Caribbean region, during the recent Operation Tradewinds, Progressive and Pan-African forces did not utter a word, as soldiers from Guyana, Brazil, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago participated in this region-wide military exercise with army personnel from the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Canada, France and the Netherlands.

We were told that Operation Tradewinds was “a US Southern Command sponsored combined joint exercise conducted with partner nations to enhance the collective ability of defense forces and constabularies to counter transnational criminal organizations, conduct humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief operations.”

The catch-phrases “transnational criminal organizations”, “humanitarian assistance” and even “disaster relief operations” are worn-out euphemisms for the neo-colonial presence of the US Empire and its European allies in Guyana and throughout the region. Military exercises and CIA manuals are a vital part of the game plan to ensure the continued strength and influence of the hegemon.

Their lackeys in the region follow suit, utilizing tactics of disinformation. Often, when people from poor and marginalized communities in the Caribbean and the Americas resist neo-colonialism and its persistent, debilitating poverty and oppression, they are labelled “criminals”, and legitimate grassroots movements are described as “criminal gangs”. This then acts as an excuse for State repression, extra-judicial killings, imprisonments and political assassination. In Colombia and Brazil, activists, and in particular, African and Indigenous activists, are targeted for elimination. According to Africa Globe, an African-Brazilian is killed by the police every 23 minutes. Operation Tradewinds was a tacit reminder that if things get out of hand in the ‘colonies’, the Empire is there to back up their local ‘governors’, who pose as presidents and prime ministers.


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The poverty and suffering throughout the region is largely due to the persistent imperialist plunder and exploitation of our abundant natural and human resources, as well as the imposition of political and economic systems that maintain dependency and dysfunction, while widening the gap between rich and poor. Countries in the region that have dared to break these chains, such as Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia, suffer the Empire’s full wrath. Speaking for Guyana in 2021, the most apt description would be a neo-plantation, where the colonial structures, institutions and systems remain firmly in place, and where the president, prime minister and other government officials are no more than governors, viceroys and overseers for the Empire, as in colonial times. That is why Caribbean liberation theologian, Kortright Davis, could have proclaimed, “emancipation still comin”.

Geo-Political and Historical Fatalism

It’s hard to fathom the seeming acceptance, across the political spectrum, of this provocative military exercise, coordinated by the world’s major imperialist powers. The very same powers that worked together as a well-oiled machine in the destruction of the Libyan revolution. Provocative, because the exercise was so obviously staged in an attempt to intimidate Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and any other nation in the Caribbean or the Americas that dares to dream of sovereignty and the right to self-determination.

To remain silent, is to acquiesce. A dangerous acceptance of the absurd notion of historical and geo-political fatalism is in the air. The acronym T.I.N.A (There Is No Alternative) was concocted so it could be transplanted into our thinking and sure enough it is manifesting itself. Even amongst Pan-Africanists across the region I am sensing a kind of “this is the reality we have to deal with”. Really? With this self- defeating approach, they are actually legitimizing and ‘Pan-Africanizing’ neo-colonialism and in so doing, forfeiting our inalienable right to authentic independence and self-determination.

Joe Biden has now tightened the noose around Cuba’s neck. It’s no surprise that the planned distribution of Cuba’s vaccines, Soberana, Abdala and Mambisa, to the Caribbean, Central and South America and Africa, sent the Empire’s machinery into overdrive, accelerating its attempts to create chaos in Cuba. As far as the imperialists were concerned, this phenomenal achievement by a small, truly sovereign and socialist nation had to be disrupted and discredited.

US imperialists, be they Democrats or Republicans, displaying the fact that their wickedness knows no bounds, have actually hindered Cuba’s access to syringes and other supplies to assist in the manufacture and distribution of life-saving vaccines in the middle of a global pandemic. Cuba’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, rightfully described this as an “act of genocide” and said that “like the virus, the blockade asphyxiates and kills.”

Worldwide, Youth are Rejecting Capitalism

If anything has laid bare capitalism’s contradictions, it is COVID 19. Capitalism’s failure is on show as never before. Youth around the world are rising up in large numbers with the word ‘socialism’ on their lips. And most worrying to the ruling classes and the imperialists, is that the youth movements in their own countries are among the largest. According to recent polls, a majority of youth in the US are rejecting capitalism. More than half of those polled view socialism positively. These young people in advanced capitalist countries such as the US, the UK and France are struggling to make ends meet. Unemployment figures are soaring, social and economic inequality is growing at an unprecedented rate, and even those who have employment are forced to have a side hustle or two. The inarguable connection between racism and capitalism is highlighted everywhere they turn. In the early 60s, when Malcolm X said, “you can’t have capitalism without racism” he had to argue that point in order illustrate it, in 2021, the nexus between capitalism and racism has surely become self-evident.

Increasingly, youth in the West are no longer blaming themselves for their situation, as neo-liberals and conservatives have encouraged them to do, but are instead turning their disdain towards the economic and political system which they see as being rigged against them. They are laying bare the injustice perpetrated by the ideology of White supremacy, which allows Africans in the US to be shot in their homes, neighbourhoods, malls, playgrounds and streets by agencies of the State. Chanting “Black Lives Matter” and “No pride in genocide”, Black and White youth in the citadels of capitalism are tearing down, burning and smashing symbols, icons and images of this system.

The blatant way in which Bernie Sanders was sidelined and rigged out of the US presidential race, despite overwhelming support, contributed to the huge wave of disillusionment. It was a bitter pill for the thousands of young people who were actively involved in his campaign. After witnessing this electoral charade, the numbers of disenchanted youth soared, causing many to turn their back on any remnant of belief they still had in the US political system and bogus liberal democracy. In increasing numbers, US citizens are simply no longer able to close their eyes to the fact that the US is a plutocracy, not a democracy.

When detractors claim that socialism does not work, I ask them for just one example of a place anywhere on earth where neo-liberal capitalism is working. I’m still waiting for a case in point! In fact, if socialism is such a failure, why do the imperial powers spend millions trying to derail it – surely it should fail of its own accord?

Truth be told, it is White supremacy that came into the world as capitalism that is failing, and it is the US Empire and its European allies that are in crisis – directionless and floundering. Despite their bravado and victorious rhetoric, the question is not if this Empire will fall, but rather when? Forced to withdraw their troops from both Afghanistan and Iraq, having failed to achieve their objectives, they are mired in humiliation and defeat. Old Joe is a fool, as are Boris and Macron. Of course, no Empire goes down without a fight. As the Empire falls into the hell of its own making, for the vast majority, life on this earth will get even harsher than it already is. In its dying throes, we can expect the Empire to become even more vicious. All progressive and revolutionary oriented governments and movements understand that the Empire’s fight back will intensify in this historical period.

The Empire Fights Back to No Avail

It is in this context that the Empire’s most recent assault on Cuba took place. As the crisis of capitalism intensifies, the imperial powers are more determined than ever that no alternatives to neo-liberal capitalism can be left standing.

Imperialism’s policy has always been to nip socialist and revolutionary oriented governments in the bud, by ensuring that they are never given a breathing space. However, despite economic sanctions, covert and overt acts of sabotage, campaigns of disinformation, funding and support of insignificant counter-revolutionary entities and fake NGOs to the tune of millions of US dollars, CIA orchestrated coups, political assassinations and contra-wars, it has not been easy, to say the least, to nip the revolutions of the Caribbean and the Americas in the bud.

Although concerted efforts have been made and millions of US dollars spent, Biden will be the 12th US president who has tried to bring Cuba to its knees. After the waging of a brutal and unrelenting CIA sponsored contra-war against the Sandinista government for more than a decade, today support for President Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua is stronger than ever. In Venezuela, under enormous pressure, as the Empire continues to unleash the full extent of its destabilization arsenal on this nation-state, the Bolivarian revolution has survived, In Bolivia, following the US-backed electoral/constitutional coup that forced President Evo Morales from office, the Movement Towards Socialism party that he led, is back in power. In Haiti, Colombia, Brazil, Peru and across the region, the resistance continues.

“Look for Me in the Whirlwind…”

What the imperialists fail to understand is that the Caribbean and the Americas have an extraordinary legacy of resistance that has unleashed an historical revolutionary continuum that they can never defeat. Revolutionary leader, Maurice Bishop asked: “When will imperialism learn? He went on to explain that, “they can kill our bodies but they can never kill the spirit of a people fighting for their liberation…”

In 1987, addressing revolutionaries from the Caribbean and the Americas gathered at the World Mathaba in Libya, Muammar Qaddafi alluded to this impressive and defiant legacy, stating, “I have the feeling that the new world will begin in your region. It is there that the new outlines that will shape the world – outlines that correspond to our aspirations – shall be etched out.”

There can be no doubt that the spirit of Tupac Amaru, Agüeybaná II, Hatuey, Cuauhtémoc, Cahuide, Guaicaipuro, Lautaro, Dessalines, L’Ouverture, Boukman, Bolivar, Marti, Sandino. Bussa, Kofi, Atta, Bogle, Nanny, Makandal, Garvey, Guevara, Castro, Allende, Bishop and so many others rage on. Marcus Garvey told us to look for him “in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, for, with God’s grace, I shall come and bring with me countless millions of Black slaves who have died in America and the West Indies and the millions in Africa to aid you in the fight for Liberty, Freedom and Life.” It brings to mind the ancient phrase: “They tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds”.

Exhausted Playbook

The most recent attempt to destabilize Cuba simply illustrates just how exhausted the imperialist playbook is – floods of hashtags, bots, automated trolls, doctored photographs and videos, large cash payments to insignificant counter-revolutionary groups etc. The oppressed masses throughout the Caribbean and the Americas know exactly what is going on. In 2021, there is no nation on earth not facing huge challenges, let alone a nation that has withstood more than 60 years of harsh and comprehensive economic sanctions. Cuba’s survival under such harsh and intolerable conditions, is proof of the resolve and resilience of the Cuban people and the revolution they gave birth to. No matter how high the price they are forced to pay, they refuse to surrender their God-given right to true independence, dignity and self-determination. There can be no doubt that the Cubans have come too far to turn back, and will resolve their own issues and challenges on their own terms.

Declaration of War

On July 22nd, when Biden intensified the embargo by introducing new sanctions targeting individual Cuban officials and entities, he declared war. Sasha Tirador, a well-known Miami based counter-revolutionary, exclaimed, “This is huge!”

Another high profile and outspoken Miami based counter-revolutionary, Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat and Miami mayor, Francis Suarez, called for US airstrikes on the island-nation.

Contributing to the war-room like discourse, in an interview with MSNBC, Marc Rubio commented that “at the end of the day, the key…is to go after the loyalty and the confidence of those in the security apparatus in Cuba.”

The Biden administration is doing everything it can to provide internet access to the Cuban people to “circumvents the regime’s censorship efforts”. This is rich, coming from a US administration that is tagging what it considers to be ‘inappropriate messages’ on facebook for referral to facebook management. The US State has, in effect, become an extension of facebook in its attempts to censor.

In a clear directive to US partners in the region, Biden, referring to Cuba, Venezuela and others, said that “advancing human dignity and freedom is a top priority” for his Administration, and the US would work closely with its “partners throughout the region” to achieve these goals. And there they were, US military helicopters flying overhead in in Guyana, not far from the Venezuelan border, as part of Operation Tradewinds.

Never tiring of hypocrisy, Biden of course is speaking as president of a country with the largest incarcerated prison population on earth, including many political prisoners, where censorship and State-sponsored disinformation has become the order of the day, where the entire population, and in particular dissidents, are targeted for Orwellian type surveillance, and where demonstrations are put down with brutal militaristic force. Nowhere on earth is the ‘fascistization’ of the State more evident than in the US of A.

#UnBlockCuba

We must intensify our fight back. Words, resolutions and statements of solidarity are important but not enough. Revolutionary and progressive forces across the Caribbean and the Americas must mobilize and organize a mass movement around just one single demand that we can all agree on: An immediate end to the United States illegal embargo on Cuba. (#UnBlockCuba)

We must call on our progressive and revolutionary brothers and sisters worldwide to take up this campaign with such thunder that the Empire comes under pressure to relent. Only then can we demonstrate that there is indeed an alternative, and that we are determined to defend that alternative.

Revolutionary Pan-Africanist and socialist, Kwame Ture said, “When Africa called, Cuba answered”. He was of course not only referring to the medical brigades and other humanitarian assistance, but also to Cuba’s unprecedented military assistance in the fight against the South African Apartheid regime, and the decisive battle at Cuito Cuanavale. Now, when after 6 decades of illegal sanctions that have crippled Cuba economically, and are fomenting unrest among Cuba’s youth, as they were designed to do, Cuba is calling. Let us answer with a resounding and sustained campaign of resistance until the illegal embargo is lifted. In doing so, we will send a definitive message to the US rogue regime, that in the words of Grenadian freedom fighter, Maurice Bishop, “we are in nobody’s backyard”.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/07/ ... -fatalism/
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Mon Aug 02, 2021 1:21 pm

Image

Peru: Violent Right Wing Protesters Besiege President Castillo’s Residence – Coup d’Etat in the Making
August 2, 2021

Security has been reinforced at the residence of the Peruvian President Pedro Castillo, after a group of violent protesters attempted to reach the house on Saturday, July 31. In addition, there are already the early signs of a growing political siege against the new president who assumed charge only days ago on July 28.

The Peruvian Chief of Police, General César Cervantes, informed that the president’s safety is guaranteed, after a group of approximately 300 right-wing protesters reached up to a block from the president’s official residence.

The security restrictions, which already prevented entry at the ends of the street, were extended to a wider perimeter in the face of possible new attacks by groups of radical followers of the three-time defeated former presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori.

Meanwhile, the opposition effectively ended the traditional three-month ‘honeymoon’ that is granted to a new president, to allow him to settle into power and adopt his first decisions and resolutions. Instead of three months, only three days after Castillo took oath, the opposition is already discussing, as well as the country’s hegemonic media, of vacating him (ousting him).

The reason being invoked is the appointment of Guido Bellido as prime minister. The appointment of Bellido, a congressman of the ruling Peru Libre party, is being questioned by Castillo’s opponents because the parliamentarian is under investigation for allegedly being a “terrorism apologists,” as he had once commented that those who were members of armed groups in the past were not terrorists but Peruvians who had made a mistake.

Bellido assured that he “categorically rejects all forms of violence and terrorism in all its extremes” and added that “together we will overcome racism, classism, machismo and homophobia,” referring to controversial comments about Peruvian armed groups that he made years ago on social media.

Despite this, the challengers insisted that he should be removed from the government for being close to the General Secretary of Peru Libre, Vladimir Cerrón, who faces charges of alleged corruption and, according to the opposition, has extremist positions and should not have contact with the Executive.

Congresswoman Adriana Tudela, from one of the neoliberal groups that constitute the majority in the parliament, criticized the composition of the president’s ministerial cabinet, which consists mostly of young people and provincial leaders associated with social movements.

Adriana Tudela was born in Madrid and is the daughter of Francisco Tudela, who served as foreign affairs minister during the controversial government of Alberto Fujimori, father of Keiko Fujimori. Tudela is a member of the Peruvian right wing elite and comes from a family of politicians and career diplomats, being the granddaughter of Ambassador Felipe Tudela y Barreda and great-granddaughter of diplomats Francisco Tudela y Varela and Casper van Breugel Douglas.

The parliamentarian said that the presidential vacancy is a “possibility” and proposed “devising an intelligent strategy to win this battle against communism” and join the centrist groups Morado and Somos Peru “to recover our democracy.”

The neoliberal and far-right forces do not add up to the two-thirds of the votes necessary to apply the vacancy “due to moral incapacity,” a requirement for impeachment of a president, but they would have that majority if the could get on their side the two groups mentioned.

Political analyst and graphic humorist Carlos Tovar commented in this regard that “the coup leader Adriana Tudela wants to stretch the moral incapacity scope towards ‘I don’t like your cabinet, so you’re morally incapable.'”

On the other hand, the parliamentary caucus of Peru Libre, the largest single block in the Legislature, met President Castillo on Sunday, and ehile leaving the meeting informed that they will seek dialogue with the other parties in the parliament.

The projected talks will seek consensus so that the full legislature gives its confidence to the ministerial cabinet and the president will do the same.

In this context, the defeated candidate Keiko Fujimori launched a belligerent audio message in which she repeated her threat of not accepting the legitimacy of the new president, citing anti-communist arguments. Fujimori is awaiting judicial rulings on corruption charges and many analysts are of the opinion that she is seeking additional time to delay court decision on her case.

She affirmed that “regardless of our political differences, we must begin to act with the sole purpose of saving our democracy and rescuing the country from a radical and totalitarian government,” and added that “there is no negotiation with terrorism.”



Featured image: President Pedro Castillo and his newly appointed chief of staff Guido Bellido during the symbolic second inauguration event at the Pampa de Quinoa, Ayacucho. Photo: EFE.

(Últimas Noticias) with Orinoco Tribune content

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

https://orinocotribune.com/peru-violent ... he-making/

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Peru: PM Bellido Calls on to Dialogue to All Political Sectors

Published 1 August 2021

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Headquarters of the Congress of the Republic, Lima, Peru, July 26, 2021. | Photo: Twitter/ @noticias_tvperu

Bellido reminded the development of the country and the solution to the problems of Peruvians is over any political discrepancies.

On Sunday, Peru's Prime Minister Guido Bellido announced he will hold a round of dialogues with all interested parties in the Congress.

The rounds of dialogue started already with the Congressmen of his Peru Libre party, and the next one will be with the members of Acción Popular in the morning hours of Aug. 3.

Bellido said that also Admiral Montoya accepted his proposal for dialogue, but the date has yet to be defined.

The PM called on the sectors that had not answered his proposal and reminded them that the development of the country and the solution to the problems of Peruvians is over any political discrepancies.


The new Council of Ministers will begin its work on Aug. 4 and will hold sessions every Wednesday. In this first meeting, they will agree on the date of presentation to the Congress, which must give the vote of confidence to the newly appointed cabinet.

Bellido also stated the second work meeting will take place in Piura with the participation of the local mayors to discuss the main problems of the region, especially those related to the last July 30 earthquake.

Recently, President Pedro Castillo visited the area on the occasion of the earthquake of magnitude 6.1 on the Richter scale, which has left at least 41 injured and economic damages.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Per ... -0005.html
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Tue Aug 03, 2021 1:08 pm

South America’s Right-Wing And The US “United Behind Bolivian Coup”

By Nathalia Urban

According to the spokesman of the Bolivian government Jorge Richter, Brazil and Chile may have been involved in clashes between protesters and security forces that took place in the country following the resignation of Evo Morales in 2019. Richter said that possible international collaboration will now be investigated, without giving further details.

Richter’s announcement came after the Bolivian government denounced the participation of the former president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, in the 2019 coup d’état against Bolivia’s re-elected President Evo Morales. Foreign Minister Rogelio Mayta revealed documents proving the shipment of ammunition by Macri, as well as his Ecuadorian counterpart Lenín Moreno, which were used by police forces in Bolivia to repress popular protests against the de facto government of Jeanine Áñez.

The president of the Bolivian Chamber of Deputies, Freddy Mamani, announced a proposal to create a commission of inquiry to investigate not only the accusations against Macri but also the possibility that other governments may have collaborated with the coup plotters.

Mamani did not hide which governments will be investigated: Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Sebastián Piñera in Chile. Openly hostile to Evo Morales and his party the MAS (Movement toward Socialism), both countries have maintained an animosity toward the current progressive government of Luis Arce. In contrast, both supported the administration of Jeanine Áñez, the “interim” president who was installed by the Armed Forces after the 2019 coup.

The relationship between Bolsonaro and the Bolivian far right have been documented by Brasil Wire in the past, and the links between Brazilian fascists and their Bolivian counterparts are very clear. Brazil was one of the first countries to recognize Jeanine Áñez as president.

Luís Fernando Camacho, political leader of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, has also expressed a deep admiration for Bolsonaro’s government. In May of 2019, Camacho released a video on social media in which he said he had asked the former Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo for help in consulting the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on the possibility of preventing Morales’ attempt to win a fourth term. Contact between Camacho’s and Bolsonaro’s allies began much earlier. At the end of 2018, many Latin American leaders and businessmen travelled to the Brazilian city of Foz do Iguaçu to participate in a conservative summit organized by Deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro, the president of the Chamber’s Committee on Foreign Affairs and National Defence .

Regional conspiracy

The current Argentine president, Alberto Fernandez, who was himself sworn in a month after the coup, has apologized to the Bolivian people on behalf of his predecessor for sending the weapons. Argentine investigations show indications that then-President Mauricio Macri sent arms and ammunition to repress supporters of Evo Morales. The Public Ministry of Argentina opened a formal investigation to find out the extent of the crimes committed by the former president. Among the authorities to be investigated for the charge of international interference and arms shipments besides Macri himself and two former ministers: Patricia Bullrich, from Security, and Oscar Aguad, from Defence.

According the Argentinian newspaper El Orsai the CIA station in La Paz instructed the Chief of Argentine Intelligence Agency (AFI, by its abbreviation in Spanish) in Bolivia, José Sanchez, to support the gathering of information on Evo Morales and his administrations; and all Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan officials residing in Bolivia, including diplomats. In order to comply with the above José Sánchez not only used his agents in the country, but also requested the support of representatives in Brasil, Colombia and Perú.



Documents from the Argentine embassy in La Paz show details of a meeting in July 2019 where Deputy Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere of the United States Kevin Michael O’Reilly warned that Evo would likely win the presidential election, and asked for OAS, the EU, Brazil, Argentina and Peru to question the transparency and legitimacy of the elections. One of the most interesting passages of the document says that the Bolivian political scene is dependent on what happens in Venezuela, adding to growing evidence of a wider plan to destabilise the regional left. Evo Morales’ trips abroad were also analyzed, and Mr O’Reilly pointed out that there was concern about the growing rapprochement between Morales and the Russian government.

Recently, Morales warned about the implementation of the new Operation Condor in Latin America. Uurging social movements to fight for peace, democracy, and sovereignty, Morales rejected U.S.-backed coups that “cause pain to Latin American peoples”.

Morales’ fears solidified further after CIA director William J Burns visited Brazil and Colombia.

When asked about the visit, Bolsonaro said:

“I’m not going to say that this was dealt with him, but we analyzed how things are going in South America. We can’t stand to talk about Venezuela anymore, but look at Argentina. Where is Chile going? What happened in Bolivia? The Evo Morales gang returned. And even more: the president who was there in the interim term is in prison, accused of undemocratic acts. Are you feeling any resemblance to Brazil?”.

https://www.brasilwire.com/south-americ ... vian-coup/

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United Republic Of Soybeans: GMO And Neocolonialism In The Southern Cone
AGRARIAN REFORM COUNCIL OF THE AMERICAS DEMOCRACY ENVIRONMENT LATIN AMERICA SOVEREIGNTY UNITED STATES
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The ‘soybeanisation’ of the Paraguayan economy has had a devastating impact on the country’s ecology, rural populations and democratic process, but it has been lucrative for foreign corporations and the domestic oligarchy.

By Owen Schalk. Originally published at Alborada.

In 2003, the agrichemical behemoth Syngenta published a controversial advertisement in Argentinian newspapers. It showed a map of South America with a large portion of the Southern Cone – Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil – highlighted in green and labelled the ‘United Republic of Soybeans.’ The ad was criticised as an expression of neocolonial avarice directed at one of the region’s most profitable exports. Echoes of the 20th century’s ‘banana republics,’ maldeveloped export economies governed by brutal puppets of US corporations, were obvious: either Syngenta did not notice the historical correlation or, more likely, deliberately stoked the legacies of foreign meddling in the region.

The implications of the ad were obvious: for multinational agribusiness, the people of Latin America do not matter, nor do fair labour practices or the sanctity of democratically-elected governments. These companies only see profit, and they are more than willing to reorganise the region at will to enrich themselves. Agribusiness concerns such as Syngenta, Monsanto, and Bayer have insinuated themselves with governments throughout the region, which have then facilitated the dispossession of rural campesinos – expelling them from their homes, deforesting their lands, murdering them if they become too rebellious – so that the land can be purchased by their corporate friends.

In the words of Joel E. Correia, ‘soy is a central node in networks of social, political-economic, scientific and ecological relations literally rooted in, reshaping and reterritorializing many states in South America..’ Some scholars refer to this violent neocolonial process as the sojización, or ‘soybeanisation,’ of the Southern Cone.

Soybean production is central to the political and economic functioning of the Paraguayan state. In fact, sojización recently played a decisive role in the country’s national politics. As noted above, an integral part of soybeanisation is the eviction of rural farmers so that their land can be purchased by multinational agribusiness corporations. In 2012, an eviction of this kind led to a massacre, a national scandal and a legal coup against the leftwing president Fernando Lugo.

On 15 June 2012, 300 police officers descended on the town of Curuguaty to evict 70 landless farmers from their property. This land had been belonged to the state before military dictator Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled for a 35-year period known as the stronato (1954-1989), transferred ownership to a friend. The confrontation, whose exact details remain muddled, led to the deaths of 11 campesinos and six policemen. Rightwing forces in Congress used the killings as a pretext to impeach President Lugo, who, as a former bishop, a student of liberation theology and the first progressive head of state in the country’s history, was seen as dangerously sympathetic to the plight of the farmers.

The fall of Lugo, who was a thorn in the side of agribusiness, was immediately followed by a scramble to appease these powerful forces. The next president, Federico Franco of the centrist Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA), quickly implemented neoliberal reforms that allowed multinationals to produce 19 genetically-modified crops in Paraguay, whereas only one (a Monsanto soybean) had been approved prior to the Curuguaty massacre.
Lugo’s impeachment was the second successful counterattack against the anti-neoliberal ‘Pink Tide’ governments that had come to power across Latin America in the 2000s. The first was the military coup of 2009 that deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, but, significantly, Paraguay’s ‘legal coup’ model would be reproduced in Brazil to remove President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and pave the way for Jair Bolsonaro’s accession to the presidency two years later. From a regional perspective, it would not be hyperbolic to say that the temporary collapse of leftist governance across Latin America was in part presaged by the political economy of Paraguayan soy.
Soybean production has not always been central to political and economic life in Paraguay. Rather, the sojización has been gradually tightening its hold over the country since the time of Stroessner. Scholars generally agree that there have been two principal waves of soybeanisation in Paraguay, the first driven by the pre-neoliberal Agrarian Statues of the stronato and the second by the introduction of genetically-modified soy variants into the country. Correia, however, introduces a third stage. He posits that ‘the violent rejection of post-neoliberal politics espoused by former President Fernando Lugo marked the beginning of a third wave of sojización defined by state-led violence and new neoliberalizations of nature,’ i.e. new methods for privatising, exploiting and profiting from the processes of soybean growth and cultivation in Paraguay.

The First Wave: Authoritarian Land Reform

The Paraguayan economy is extremely dependent on agricultural exports. According to the International Trade Administration, it is the world’s largest exporter of organic sugar, the second-largest exporter of stevia and the nine-largest exporter of beef. As of 2021, it is also the fourth-largest exporter of soybeans. Overall, the soy industry accounts for approximately 35 per cent of the country’s export revenues.

Paraguay also has one of the most unequal land distributions of any country in the world. Government figures show that 2.6 per cent of landowners possess 85 per cent of arable land, the foundation of the export-oriented agricultural economy. This exclusive sect of landowners includes the traditional oligarchy, Stroessner cronies and their descendants and multinational agribusiness. In total, only 6.3 per cent of land holdings are used to produce agricultural products for domestic consumption – the rest is exported for the massively disproportionate benefit of the landowners.

Multinationals were not always such an overrepresented group. In order to attract their investment, the land first needed to be developed by campesinos and then put on the global market through the passing of privatisation laws. Stroessner’s first Agrarian Statute of 1963 played an important role in this process: it granted land titles to individuals within Paraguay who wanted to establish farmsteads in the country’s underdeveloped interior. The amendment of 1967 was also crucial because it gave foreigners the ability to purchase land within 150 miles of the border. This led Argentinian and Brazilian elites to buy up large chunks of the fertile Paraguayan borderlands for use in agricultural production.

Brazilians who emigrated to Paraguay (known as brasiguayos) became an especially powerful class during the stronato, in part due to their innovations in soybean cultivation. They introduced efficient mechanised processes to Paraguayan soy farming that would redefine the industry in the coming decades but their labour practices were also portentous. The brasiguayoswere not keen to employ local Paraguayans. Instead of training these rural farmers, they usually kicked them off the land and brought in Portuguese-speaking Brazilians who were more familiar with the new technologies. The dispossessed Paraguayans had a choice: either seek agricultural opportunities in the interior or head to the urban slums and find new employment for poverty wages.

Stroessner’s Agrarian Statutes inaugurated the sojización in two important ways: they encouraged campesinos to colonise arable land in the underdeveloped interior (many of whom have been evicted in the ensuing decades) and they led to extensive land privatisation by foreign soybean concerns which did not have the interests of rural Paraguayans at heart.

The Second Wave: GMOs and the ‘Green Desert’ of Soy

On 3 February 1989, Alfredo Stroessner was ousted in a coup led by his former ally and confidant, General Andrés Rodríguez. Rodríguez, however, was no reformer: he was a well-entrenched member of the military elite and an oligarch in his own right. He oversaw a transition to democracy, but in effect Paraguay is still a one-party state in which the Colorado Party retains an iron grip on the institutions of power (with the exception of the anomalous period of 2008-2013).

During the democratic period, the soybeanisation of the economy has intensified in accordance with the neoliberal model. Campesino agriculture has suffered unabating attacks from domestic and foreign agribusiness since the early years of the Stroessner dictatorship, but this process reached a new level of severity during the 1990s, or the ‘second wave’ of the sojización.

Colonialism relies on the destruction of vibrant local economies and their replacement by technocratic and effectively dictatorial regimes of profit maximisation which have no connection to the land they are exploiting. In the case of modern agribusiness, this dynamic can be easily found in the monocrop soybean model that has been forced upon the Paraguayan people. For example, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs has found that:

Every year, about 9,000 rural families are evicted due to soy production on large spreads of land, and the numbers of (100,000 and growing) landless families in Paraguay have been forced to migrate to urban slums by violence or chicanery by soy farmers who force these families to sell their land at a minuscule cost. [Furthermore] Evan Abramson, who did a piece on Paraguay for the NACLA, found that 85% of the soy produced in the country is genetically modified and should be considered to be unsuitable for human consumption.

Correia notes that ‘GM soy cultivation was the biggest driver of environmental change [in Paraguay] between the late 1990s and 2010,’ and that the interior has been devastated to the degree that some refer to the once flourishing inner Atlantic Forest region as a ‘green desert’ of soy production. Deforestation has destroyed millions of hectares of woodland, particularly in the border region with Brazil, to make room for soybean fields, while the pesticides sprayed onto these crops have led to respiratory diseases among local populations.

‘Campesinos,’ writes Correia, ‘are being replaced by plants – GM soybeans to be precise. Plants, not people, are now widely viewed as a pillar of national economic growth.’ This is where the first wave of soybeanisation led. Investment by foreign companies in the borderland regions has annihilated previously plenteous forest and the development of interior farmland by the campesinos laid the groundwork for the confiscation of this land by a state that is more eager to serve foreign agribusiness than its own rural farmers.

There was, however, a brief glimmer of hope with the election of the ‘bishop of the poor’, Fernando Lugo, in 2008. Instead of agrarian reform, however, his truncated presidency inaugurated the ‘third wave’ of the sojización, in which the deregulation of the soy industry has reached new heights and state violence is used to defend this model with a blatancy comparable to the ‘state of siege’ days of Alfredo Stroessner.

The Third Wave: New Neoliberalisations of Nature

Lugo’s agrarian populism and his position as a political outsider struck a chord with the imperilled campesino population. However, the inexorable stronato state prevented his every attempt at reform. His struggle to impose a five-per-cent tax on soy exports was suppressed, and when he signed an executive order to limit the use of pesticides, powerful farming corporations organised protests until he backed down.

The swift politicisation of the Curuguaty massacre by the rightwing establishment, coupled with numerous discrepancies in the official investigation and the murder of a key peasant witness shortly before testifying, have led many progressives to believe that the incident may have been manufactured in order to remove the would-be reformist from the presidency. Whether or not this is true, there is no arguing that the judiciary blamed the peasants for the incident and has persecuted them at the expense of an open inquiry into the actions of the police. There is also no denying that the coup was integral to returning the Colorado Party to power under President Horacio Cartes, who continued his predecessor Franco’s program of accelerated agricultural neoliberalisation.

The violence at Curuguaty and the almost instantaneous coup against Lugo brought Paraguay into the ‘third wave’ of the sojización. This is a period defined by an increase in visible state violence against landless farmers in combination with an even more severe subjugation of traditional agriculture to the harmful efficiencies of GMOs.

Since the passing of Franco’s Decree 9699/2012, the amount of genetically-modified soy grown in Paraguay has increased to 95 per cent of all soybean production. In the years since the return of the Colorado Party, former president Cartes and current president Mario Abdo Benítez have rejected calls to raise taxes on soy exports, and although Lugo remains a national political figure, the debate seems dead in the water. The economic base of the stronato is holding as firm as ever. In fact, President Benitez is himself a big fan of Stroessner’s accomplishments. Not only that – his father literally served as Stroessner’s personal secretary for 25 years.

Recent mobilisations against the Colorado regime indicate that the Paraguayan public has grown largely dissatisfied with the status quo. This may lead to the election of another Lugo-esque figure in the future, or perhaps even Lugo himself, but one thing is clear: unless a nationwide anti-neoliberal movement emerges as happened in Chile, the soybeanisation of the Paraguayan economy which has been so devastating to the country’s ecology and rural populations will never be reformed, let alone dismantled.


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2003 Syngenta advertisement declaring a “United Republic of Soybeans” spanning Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil

https://www.brasilwire.com/united-repub ... hern-cone/

Imperialism is not necessarily about soldiers, bombers, drones, but it is always about money.
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Wed Aug 04, 2021 2:42 pm

Peru,: A Country Where the Peasant Presence is Uncomfortable
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 3, 2021
Ollantay Itzamná

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Pedro Castillo Terrones. President of Peru

The political and cultural system of the gamonal creole state is facing a historical possibility of being transformed by a peasant government, both symbolically and materially, to respond to the multicultural reality of the country.

In 1821, the territorial jurisdiction of the former Viceroyalty of Lima was converted into a Peruvian Republic to materially and symbolically benefit the Creoles and subsequent oligarchies of the country. This republican state functioned as an appendix to the haciendas of the gamonales.

At present, this political and cultural system of the creole gamonal State is facing a historical possibility of being transformed by a peasant government, both symbolically and materially, to respond to the multicultural reality of the country.

Who should govern Peru?

Peru was created and governed so that “limeños blancos” would rule and the cholos and peasants would obey. And it is precisely this constitutive and organizing principle of the Creole republican system of the country that is being challenged with the mere presence of the Peasant Pedro Castillo as President in the Bicentennial of Peru.

During the 2021 electoral campaign, the middle class (traditional and emerging), and the great majority of provincials accumulated in Lima (looking for the “Lima dream”), kept looking at the hat of the then presidential candidate Pedro Castillo, but never paid enough attention to his proposals for change. That is why the current discomfort and annoyance when Castillo begins to implement what he promised.

The truth is that this peasant with a white hat, who comes from the “clandestine nation”, with the aroma of Andean sweat and with “subaltern” aesthetics, is now the President of Peru. A country where several countries coexist without knowing or meeting each other.

What offends the Peruvian Creole bosses the most?

If the consummation of the election/triumph of the Andean peasant was already an offense to the oligarchy and the limeñada, the protocol acts of the transfer of power (with the marked presence of figures such as Evo Morales), the presidential speech of the peasant, and the conformation of the Cabinet of Ministers, offended the Peruvian bosses to a great extent.

But, according to the reactions, those offended were not only the mothball-smelling bosses, but also the limeñidad acriollada, and the provincial alimeñados, when they saw that the Cabinet of Ministers would be presided over by none other than another Andean peasant: Guido Bellido (Congressman). The former feel that the State is in danger, while the latter, who believe they are “born to perform public functions”, feel that their captive labor market is disappearing.

Both the bosses of Peru, as well as the self-conscious limeños and provincials, until last July 30, assumed that Pedro Castillo would be a peasant President who could be domesticated to the hegemonic economic and cultural interests. “Let him be President, but we will continue to appoint the ministers and officials,” they said, but it was not so. The insubordinate peasant was also insubordinate with the conformation of his ministerial Cabinet. And these symbolic changes are beginning to worry them greatly.

In the end, it is the fear of losing cultural and material privileges “naturalized” in the Creole Republic, founded on a lacerating racism that constitutes their false superior identity of Creoles and acriollados over the great social and cultural majorities of the peoples of Peru.

They are afraid that the ruler in the white hat will govern well and defeat them morally and intellectually from within the same exclusionary State that the bosses designed. But, the worst fear is the process of the Popular and Plurinational Constituent Assembly that President Castillo has already announced. They are afraid of a Peru of all nationalities!

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/08/ ... mfortable/

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RUNASUR: For a Plurinational America
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 3, 2021
Kawsachun News

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Evo Morales sets out the guiding principles of RUNASUR, a nascent alliance that will be launched for the plurinational integration of indigenous peoples, afro-descendant peoples, worker’s unions, territorial organizations, and social movements in the region. RUNASUR, created by movements, aims to resolve the historical debt that the people are owed in the face of economic, social, cultural crises.

The principles are as follows:

For a Plurinational America

Sisters, brothers, peoples of Abya Yala:

We are experiencing multiple crises in the world, it is time for unity, to build and to forge our Plurinational America and our identity with dignity. For this reason, from the South of the continent, we propose these principles that guide our path, our Qhapaq Ñan.

Defend the self-determination of the people. Plurinational America fights against all forms of domination, against interference and racism, to consolidate the self-determination and identity of the peoples. The process of reconstruction and re-founding of the state is our proposal, where the priority is not capital or excessive consumption, but human beings and nature, where the government belongs to the people and for the people, a state without discrimination or classes.
Strengthen democracy, human rights and collective rights. Plurinational America is the expression of plurality and recognizes all democracies that respond to the will and sovereign exercise of the people. We promote full respect for the individual rights of men and women who inhabit our vast territory, as well as the collective rights of indigenous peoples and afro-descendant peoples. We promote the dialogue between peoples, under the common principles that allow us to build an alliance to articulate joint processes that enhance our voices. We must make freedom of expression an act of emancipation so that the truths of the people can be expressed.
Strengthen the integration between peoples. Plurinational America is the expression of the indigenous movements, the different social and worker sectors, with political-ideological clarity, principles and values ​​that have been our instruments of resistance and struggle since the colonial period. The integration of our peoples is unity and solidarity as a bloc of struggle, defense and vindication of our historical rights. Our purpose is to strengthen integration of organizations to consolidate our unity as a movement that promotes the liberation of peoples in Latin America, the Caribbean, and in the world.
Reaffirm our plurinationality, pluriculturalism and plurilingualism. Plurinational America is unity in diversity, it is the meeting of millenarian and contemporary identities. We are diverse peoples; the knowledge, ancestral wisdom and identity of our peoples are our wealth. Plurinational America recognizes ourselves as equal human beings, with the same rights and obligations.
Consolidate the anti-Imperialist struggle. Plurinational America is the response of the peoples and social movements, against all forms of interventionism and interference. We reject the actions of imperialism and capitalism that impose economic sanctions, that impose coups, that promote fascism and racism that threaten the sovereignty of the people. Plurinational America defends natural resources, the redistribution of wealth and solidarity between peoples. We reject capitalism and consumerism as a failed system that causes inequality, death and destruction.
Build peace through justice. Plurinational America promotes the right of peoples to peace, as well as cooperation and solidarity between states and regions of the world. We reject military interventions that use the pretext of seeking peace. Peace is built with more democracy and more development, with basic services, with education, health, housing, where wealth is redistributed in favor of equality.
Promote ‘Buen Vivir’: Living Well. Plurinational America proposes the recovery of Sumaq Qamaña, Sumaq Kawsay, Ivi Marey as a form of coexistence, well-being and development, as opposed to living better as the few. Living Well seeks to achieve harmony between peoples and with Mother Earth, where we all exercise our rights and fulfill our obligations.
Strengthen the defense of Mother Earth and her rights. Plurinational America promotes the rights of Mother Earth. Indigenous peoples always live in harmony with nature. The human being without nature cannot live, nature without human beings may perhaps live better.
Recover our millenarian principles of life, accelerate decolonization and depatriarchalization. Plurinational America is the expression of the peoples that recovers, revalues ​​and promotes the millenarian knowledge of our peoples, fights against all impositions inherited from the colonial era, promoting the processes of decolonization at the continental and intercontinental level, to guarantee our liberation. Plurinational America fights for de-patriarchalization to build fairer and more equitable societies, where women’s rights are fully recognized, greater equality between women and men also means greater development for our peoples.
Develop a plural and social economic model. Plurinational America, promotes the fair distribution of wealth among peoples. Individual and collective property are part of the historical constructions of our societies, therefore, we must recognize and respect them. The ultimate goal of the economy should not be the accumulation of capital but the well-being and Living Well of the human being and Mother Earth.

For our identity, for our dignity, for the unity of our people,
¡ JALLALLA AMERICA PLURINACIONAL!

EVO MORALES AYMA
President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia 2006-2019

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/08/ ... l-america/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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