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There's a lot of propaganda packed into this particular paragraph but I think we should especially note the word "is":
"Part of Clinton’s mission during a six-nation regional tour, which culminates today in a planned meeting in Guatemala with Lobo and four other Central American and Caribbean presidents, is to mend fences with nations that criticized the U.S. for capitulating to politicians who backed the removal of Zelaya, an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez."--Bloomburnt
How does the reporter know that this "is" Clinton's mission? This has become an all too frequent practice of the corpo-fascist press--asserting the truth of the P.R. statements they have been given by corporate/war profiteer politicians, CIA curriers, the Pentagon and other entities who have often lied to the public. But even if they are reporting on a saint, they should put such things in quotes with attribution. Who said it? Or, "according to the State Dept. handout," etc.
Bloomburnt is asserting that Clinton's mission is to "mend fences." That is a very questionable assertion, and it is also couched in an article that is riddled with black holes where information should be (context, background, history). For instance, given a number facts that a lot of people don't know--just from current events--Clinton's "mission" is more likely intent upon shoving U.S. military and economic power down Latin America's throat, once again, and where she can't choke a Latin American leader into submission, "dividing and conquering"--i.e., splitting up the economic/political unity that has been in development in Latin America for some time, and breaking the elbows of leaders of countries that are still more dependent on the U.S. to divide them from those who have worked to make their countries and their region more independent.
Example: Venezuela helped to form ALBA--a Central American/Caribbean trade group by which the smaller countries of that region can exert collective economic clout. One of the important things that happened as a result of the U.S.-backed coup in Honduras is that its neighbor, El Salvador, which just elected a leftist government, decided NOT to join ALBA. So the U.S. breaking of elbows has already begun. Also, the Honduran coupsters pulled Honduras out of ALBA, at the last minute, just before their martial law-installed government was inaugurated. They did not want to leave that payment to the U.S. to chance. (--so much for the legitimacy and independence of the new government!).
The U.S. has committed several very hostile, militaristic acts against Latin America recently: The sneaky U.S. support for the violent, rightwing military coup in Honduras, the new, secretly negotiated Colombia/U.S. military agreement (i.e., the "South Vietnamization" of Colombia), and the overly militaristic aid to earthquake-ravaged Haiti (using the earthquake as an excuse for occupying Haiti, one hundred miles off Cuba's coast). These acts build upon Bushwhack policy--for instance, the Bushwhack reconstitution of the U.S. 4th Fleet (mothballed since WW II) in the Caribbean, in summer 2008, in response to South America's formation of UNASUR--a prototype "common market" that does not include the U.S.--that same summer; the U.S./Colombia bombing/raid on Ecuador earlier that year; the Bushwhack funding/organizing a white separatist coup in Bolivia later that year; and of course the U.S.-supported 2002 rightwing military coup attempt to overthrow the elected Chavez government in Venezuela and numerous other efforts to destroy Venezuelan democracy and to stop the leftist tide that has swept South and Central America.
A list of the leftist governments in Latin America (the left has been leading the independence/integration movement):
Venezuela
Brazil
Argentina
Bolivia
Ecuador
Uruguay
Paraguay (!)
Chile (until the election last week, but the outgoing leftist has an 80% approval rating! --puzzling election)
Nicaragua
El Salvador
Guatemala
Honduras (until the U.S.-backed coup)
Cuba
and an almost in Mexico (the left came within 0.05% of winning the presidency in the last election).
That leaves, as U.S. "friends" in the region: the narco-thug client state of Colombia (many thousands of union leaders, human rights workers, community organizers, peasant farmer leaders, political leftists and others murdered by the U.S.-funded military or its death squads), the extremely corrupt and increasingly militaristic "free trade for the rich" government of Peru, the rightwing, pro-U.S. military government in Panama and not much else. Add Mexico by a hair, the new rightwing billionaire president of leftist Chile, and Honduras by means of a violent coup (about a hundred murdered or 'disappeared' leftists so far). Colombia, Peru and Mexico are getting multi-billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in military aid to be U.S. "friends" (--$7 billion to Colombia alone--a country with the second worst human rights record on earth).
Breaking up the new trade associations is likely No. 1 on Clinton's agenda--because they provide the basis on which Latin American countries can act collectively to defend themselves from U.S. interference and to create collective economic/political strength. ALBA was not yet strong enough to stop the Honduran coup. But UNASUR was critically important in stopping the U.S.-funded/organized white separatist coup in Bolivia in 2008. And now all of Latin America is involved in a new unity movement, based on the Rio Group (all Latin American dispute resolution group)--i.e., creation of a new all-Latin American regional institution to rival the OAS and specifically to exclude the U.S. as a member. This must be stopped, if the U.S. corporate rulers and war profiteers are to continue dominating, exploiting and bullying Latin America countries and peoples.
So, contrary to what the State Dept. and Bloomberg assert--that Clinton's mission is to "mend fences"--the evidence overwhelmingly points the other way, that she is intent upon driving further wedges between Latin American countries, with threats, bribes and other dirty means, riding upon the big Pentagon buildup in the region as her main clout. If you don't bend over for the U.S., either the U.S.-funded rightwing groups in your country will overthrow you, or, if that doesn't work, the Pentagon has SEVEN new military bases in Colombia, with U.S. fighter and spy planes, U.S. navy ships and crews (at the ports), U.S. military use of ALL civilian airports and other infrastructure, and (if this number can be believed) 1,600 U.S. soldiers and U.S. 'contractors' (hauntingly described as "just a few military advisers"), all with total diplomatic immunity, no matter what they do in Colombia--with the purpose (according to a USAF doc uncovered by Eva Golinger) of "full spectrum" military capabilities throughout Latin America, to deal with drugs, "terrorists," and "anti-U.S. governments." This military buildup includes three bases on Venezuela's border and one on the tip of the Guajira peninsula overlooking the Gulf of Venezuela (where Venezuela's main oil facilities/shipping are located). AND USAF bases on the Dutch islands off Venezuela's oil coast. AND beefed up U.S. military presence in Panama. AND the U.S. 4th Fleet in the Caribbean.
Clinton has little to offer Latin America from the bankrupt U.S., except more poverty, exploitation, bullying and worse. That is what you see if you peer into the black holes where information should be, in articles like this, combined with understanding disinformation phrases like: "...an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez" ("...to mend fences with nations that criticized the U.S. for capitulating to politicians who backed the removal of Zelaya, an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez"). Zelaya, a moderate leftist reformer, was also an ally of Brazil's Lula da Silva (who provided the Brazilian embassy in Honduras to Zelaya as a base of operations when Zelaya returned to his country), and an ally of many others in South America and in the Central America/Caribbean trade group ALBA. Why mention Chavez in this way?
Answer: One of the Honduran coup generals stated the following (quoted in a report on the coup by the Zelaya government-in-exile): that, by their coup, they were "preventing communism from Venezuela reaching the United States." "Communism," in this context means: universal free medical care, free education through college, decent wages and benefits, low unemployment, empowerment of the poor majority, government siding with the poor majority (ahem, democracy), honest, transparent elections, use of a country's resources to benefit the people who live there, and government leaders taking the attitude toward the rich and the powerful that FDR took, when he said, "Organize money hates me--and I welcome their hatred!"
Clinton is in Latin America to prevent these "communist" ideas from "reaching the United States" from the leftist democracy movement that was sparked by the Venezuelan peoples' peaceful defeat of the U.S.-supported coup in 2002, that has swept South America and that is creeping up through Central America--up through Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala--to our very border. Universal free medical care with no insurance corps having a damn thing to say about it! Pouring resources into helping people instead of larding war profiteers! Ordinary people having a say in their government! "Communism"!
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