Washington still plays Cold War games in Latin America (Venezuela/Cuba)

[Say_What]

Historical reminders from the Ruskies about what a short memory coup-plotter-Uncle Sam has.

<clips>

...Ereli"s words are quite interesting as said Cuba "has a long history of attempting to undermine elected governments in the region". According to unclassified US State Department documents, Washington plotted the coup that toppled the democratic, constitutional and legal government of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, and fueled Argentine military to oust the legally elected administration of Maria Estela Martinez de Peron in Argentina, less than three years later. Mr. Ereli should also look into those files.

Moreover, as early as in 1954, Washington sponsored a military coup in Guatemala. One year later supported the military after overthrowing Peron"s ruling in Argentina. All along the eighties supported all sort of bloody dictatorships in Central America, as invaded Panama in 1989. The death toll of the US intervention in Latin America should be in the region of 500.000 casualties, taking into account thousands of deaths in Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia in the seventies and Central America in the eighties.

However, lack of memory makes US hawks to say Cuba and Venezuela are working together to oppose pro-American, democratic governments in the region with money, political indoctrination and training. PRAVDA.Ru correspondent in Buenos Aires is in position to confirm that neither Venezuela nor Cuba are financing such activities neither in Argentina nor in Uruguay, as doubts something similar may happen in other South American nations.

In Caracas on Monday, Tarek William Saab, head of Venezuela's congressional foreign relations commission and a supporter of President Hugo Chavez, assailed an Associated Press story that recounted U.S. worries about Chavez's activities. Saab accused the U.S. government of "using slander and defamation to weaken a constitutional government like ours." "It's false and irresponsible and cowardly," Saab said.

http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/91/368/11708_washington.html

[Zuni]

1. of all these things

why is a left wing newspaper complaining about Peron's ouster? The guy was a pro-nazi thug.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

2. Now why would the US be upset with Chavez

In a country where the fourth largest worldwide production of oil goes to only a fraction of the public (a majority of whom are white) and 80% of the population are in poverty, Chavez speaks of redistributing the wealth to bring equality and education and food to the people. Of course the US is going to want to back the Oligarchy and claim that Chavez is a red nut who is in bed with every type of vermin immaginable. The fact is Chavez has the support of the people - period!

[goforit]

4. Yes this is one battle the WH has been loosing royally!!

So hoorah for the Latin American Countries.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

3. Everyone in the world should see

the film "the revolution will not be televised" I've never wept in a theater until I saw it.

http://www.chavezthefilm.com/

[Minstrel Boy]

5. I know what you mean.

It's brilliant, and tremendously satisfying to see a happy ending for once. But, as we know, it's not ended, so far as Bush and the oligarchs are concerned.

I like your name, ChavezSpeakstheTruth. Welcome!

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

9. Thanks

It's nice to be here!

[Say_What]

7. Many of us did see it--it was widely discussed along with the failed coup

Welcome to DU :hi:

Also must sees are

Plan Colombia:Cashing in on the Drug War Failure

Hidden in Plain Sight about the School of the Americaa

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

10. Thanks

This place is a dangerous distraction to my work time :-)

[Minstrel Boy]

6. It's not Cold War anymore, it's simple imperialism.

There's no Soviet bloc providing a big-power excuse for US meddling.

[Say_What]

8. DECLINE OF THE BANANA EMPIRE?

This was in the December issue of North American Congress on Latin America. It was spot on!

<clips>

We sure did, Mr. President. How could we have “misunderestimated” your regime’s ability to drive your country two Worlds back to the Third—not just a Third World country, but a full blown Banana Empire. As U.S. imperial reach is extended, the country is ruled by corporations through an unelected executive who continues to gut civil liberties in the name of national security with the complicity of a servile media and a one-party system disguised as two—not to mention economic and environmental degradation. Welcome to Third World politics kiddies!

Let’s begin with the rigged election of 2000. The son of a former President, “Bush the Lesser” (thank you, Arundhati Roy), had his brother Jeb swinging votes in Florida. The blatant politicking and nepotism of that sham was an electoral fiasco that probably even made Mexico’s PRI blush. When the Cuban government offers to send election monitors to Florida, something momentous has occurred.

With the worst still to come, Bush the Lesser assumed power and appointed a recycled cabinet that, for the purposes of this mental exercise, we’ll call a junta. I’ve always been amazed at the way some Latin American dictators—Bolivia’s Hugo Banzer Suárez or Guatemala’s Efraín Ríos Montt, among others—maintained political legitimacy after a well-documented reign of terror. Bush’s neocon cabal, including such Iran-Contra scandal veterans as John Negroponte and Elliott Abrams, seems to have done the same. Abrams helped support some of the most repressive regimes in Latin America and helped conceal their abuses, mostly in countries dominated by the U.S. fruit industry—the so-called Banana Republics. The irony of Abrams’ appointment and title was probably lost on Bush when the one-time Contra supporter was given the post of Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights and International Operations in 2001.

Then came September 11, sadly an event that is now used to justify the Wars du Jour. As in the Latin American dirty wars of recent decades, national security is now used to rally the population behind illegal and inhumane detentions of citizens and non-citizens alike. As far as we know, today’s “detainees” could be suffering the same torture endured by the desaparecidos of the South.

http://www.nacla.org/art_display.php?art=2288

[Judi Lynn]

16. "polls rarely reflect reality in the so-called Third World."

Isn't that the truth?

Very good article. I am glad to have learned the name: Banzer. I looked it up, and see he fits the model perfectly.

WHY HAVE WE NEVER BEEN TOLD ABOUT THESE PEOPLE IN OUR OWN MEDIA? Good lord, they have been operating right in our own hemisphere. Of course, they have been complete villains, and heavily supported by our own villains!

From the very first article I grabbed in google:

(snip) Hugo Banzer
Former president and dictator of Bolivia who headed a brutal military regime

Phil Gunson
Guardian

Monday May 6, 2002


(snip) Banzer was born in Concepcion, in Bolivia's eastern province of Santa Cruz, the grandson of German immigrants and the son of an officer. Banzer was a star pupil at military academy.

In 1952, the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) ousted a military junta and embarked on a reform programme. Banzer, meanwhile, was training at the Pentagon's School of the Americas in Panama and the Armoured Cavalry School at Fort Hood, Texas. By his mid-30s he was colonel of the 4th Cavalry Regiment, with a speciality in logistics - and the Pentagon's Order of Military Merit.

In 1964, the army overthrew the MNR and General Rene Barrientos took power. Banzer was education and culture minister from 1964-1966. After a spell as military attache in Washington, DC, he became director of Bolivia's army college.

By 1971 coups and counter-coups brought leftist General Juan Jose Torres to power, alarming the right, several neighbouring governments and the United States. With their backing, Banzer overthrew Torres (later murdered, allegedly on Banzer's orders) and installed the longest lasting regime the nation had seen in more than a century. Initially, he governed via the "Nationalist Popular Front" between the increasingly rightwing MNR and the fascist Bolivian Socialist Falange. But in 1974 he ousted civilian parties and formed a notoriously brutal military regime - although the scale of killing was small in comparison with what was taking place in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.

Banzer's regime is accused of 100 "disappearances", 39 murders and more than 400 deaths. Universities were closed for a year, and foreign priests and nuns sympathetic to "liberation theology" deported. In 1974, at least 80-100 peasants protesting at price rises were killed.

He denied all knowledge of it, but there is abundant evidence that Banzer's Bolivia was involved in Operation Condor, through which South American dictatorships eliminated each others' exiled opponents. In his dictatorship's first year, Banzer received twice as much military assistance from the US as in the previous dozen years put together. (snip)

(snip) And there was pressure from new US President Jimmy Carter for a return to democracy. In 1978 Banzer called elections. Fraud in favour of his chosen candidate led to a fresh cycle of coups and Banzer was exiled briefly to Argentina. In 1980, just as a civilian government was about to indict him for corruption and human rights violations, his luck improved. Backed by fascists, cocaine smugglers and the Argentine military, General Luis Garcia Meza came to power, and Banzer came home. The key men behind Garcia Meza were the Nazi "butcher of Lyons" Klaus Altmann (Barbie), and Bolivia's cocaine king, Roberto Suarez. In power, Banzer had protected Barbie against French extradition requests and the country's cocaine exports had grown steadily. Several of Banzer's allies and relatives were linked to the trade.
(snip/...)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4407884,00.html


A nice hug from fellow right-wing killer dictator, Augusto Pinochet

[IndianaGreen]

15. Support the troops!

There you are in Caracas, enjoying a visit with some friends, when American bombs begin to drop on the city, and US troops soon follow burning down entire neighborhoods (as they did in Panama).

Support the troops! Be a good German!

Or be a Konrad Adenauer!

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

11. Unfortunately

it seems that history shows that the American people are less likely to care about what's happening in Central and South America then anywhere but maybe Africa. The average cubicle jockey I work with doesn't know that a huge chunk of our oil comes from Venezuela, or anything about what's happening there. They know even less about our horrid records in Nicaragua or Guatemala, etc. Hell, you can't get them to pay attention to what's really happening in Iraq!

[Say_What]

12. Wait'll they find out about Colombia. But they'll say "oh, that was

years ago and the US doesn't do that anymore".

Meanwhile, what happened in Central America is now happening in Colombia and we get zilch for news about it. :argh:

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

13. For a guy who's a newbie

you folks really know how to make a guy feel like a posting addict. In this short repartee I've had a better conversation with you folks than with 99% of the people I get a chance to ear-bend with in the "real world". Thanks. I hope we can generate some momentum. Peace and energy!

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

14. If they even get that far

The lesson I've learned from the first days that my father spoke of the Sandinista to my young ears, I've known - no one in mainstream America will ever comment about these things. They speak to the undermining fact that the mainstream American has an amoral view about anything that has anything to do with the plight of any native peoples from arctic Canada to Patagonian Argentina. The brown people of this hemisphere are doomed unless REAL RESISTANCE SURFACES. Sorry. I get riled up. I'm just new to this forum and fed up with the rhetoric. Years and years fed up.......................where are Sitting Bull and our true leaders?