Justifiable Paranoia
If there is one quality that Latin American leaders share it’s paranoia. Unfortunately, their paranoia is justified by historical fact. For more than a century the United States has influenced Latin American governments, supported its wealthy elite, and exploited it while the majority of its inhabitants have endured severe economic hardships and, in many cases, abuse by regimes supported by the United States. In truth, there is a laundry list of precedents regarding US political interference in Latin America that, in many cases, resulted in not only the diminishment of freedoms, but the support of regimes responsible for mass killings.
While justified by many as Cold War necessity, US actions in Latin America have always been more about ensuring the survival of economic exploitation and the small influential blocks that locally benefit from it that thus work to ensure that Washington’s influence remains steadfast. Those that support American backed regimes are largely, if not entirely, represented by the wealthy, who commonly receive support from US organizations such as USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy to fund anti-government operations. Such was the case when an attempt was made to oust Hugo Chavez, and then again when pressure was brought to bear to hold a referendum on his Presidency. After winning it, and realizing that the forces arrayed against him were receiving support from the United States, he succumbed to the sort of paranoia shared by many Latin American leaders and began systematically dismantling those apparatuses used by his detractors. He also took steps to cripple the stranglehold of foreign corporations, such as nationalizing large swaths of Venezuela’s oil industry. He was, of course, condemned for such actions by the North American media and the US government, who, as is always the case, denied any involvement in aiding those looking to remove him.
Moving to Bolivia, where protests against the government of Evo Morales have been occurring, producing numerous deaths (and it should be noted that they were committed by those protesting), we find another very possible example of US interference, though the United States has, again, denied it.
The protests are occurring in five of Bolivia’s eastern provinces, which also happen to be home to Latin America’s second largest natural gas reserves. Those protesting are opposed to Morales’s plan to share natural gas revenues with the country’s remaining four poorer provinces, as well as the redistribution of land to some of the nation’s indigenous majority who largely live in poverty. Added to that, the province of Santa Cruz, one of the resource richest of the five eastern provinces, held a vote in May of this year in which 80% of its population backed a resolution aimed at giving the province more control over its resources. That said; considerable voting abstention was reported and the vote itself was organized by wealthy landowners in the region.
Bolivia is the poorest country in South America, with the majority of its wealth belonging to a small minority of land owners, many of whom have ties to US corporations. To dismiss, out of hand, the Bolivian government’s assertion that it possesses information regarding possible US interference is a stretch. If anything, it reads like as play out of a very storied playbook.
Was Morales justified in expelling US Ambassador Philip Goldberg? That depends on what Morales’s government knows, and they’re sure as hell not going to tip their hand by gifting details and thus allowing the US to spin it by employing some of the world’s most powerful media outlets.
In solidarity with Morales, the paranoia engrained in other Latin American leaders has led to the expulsion of the US ambassador to Venezuela and a refusal by the government of Honduras to accept the credentials of the new ambassador to that country.
As for US culpability in Bolivia, one need only examine their involvement in the two attempts to remove Chavez from power to determine whether or not Morales is acting out of turn.
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September 12th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
If you really want to know what is going on in Latin America, here is one documentary link which will help you to understand this “Paranoia” issue. I work at home and watch documentaries online all day every day and I keep going further down the rabbit hole and it’s really depressing, much like reading Matt’s posts! Keep up the good work Matt! ;)
I was thinking that Obama might be a good change, but I have learned that any new US leader with the balls to stand up and fight the few men behind the curtain who really control the world will just end up like JFK! So I don’t expect any new changes in the US. Now Stephen Harper would like to make foreign ownership even easier as announced today to continue to sell out our resources just like Latin America to US and European corporations. I can’t wait for Canada to be a third world country just like those in Latin America, when we have no middle-class left. Pity, it would have felt nice to feel comfortable like my parents. :)
http://tvshack.net/documentaries/The_War_on_Democracy/
September 12th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
I think Evo tossed the ambassador because Hugo told him to.
What is interesting about this Bolivian crisis is that the “other side” is protesting. We’ll have to wait and see if Evo calls in the military to restore order like a few Presidents in the past did. One basic thing that everybody needs to understand is that when the term “wealthy land owners” is used in regards to most Eastern Bolivian cattle ranchers and farmers is that these are second and third generation land owners whose families started with nothing and cleared land and worked it hard to get to where they are today. Many of them see the indigenous people as threats because they want their land. They want the land that is already producing instead of the vast untouched land that would need to be developed.
Now being that I am American, that might sound like the meddling mind set but you must remember that I lived in Bolivia and I’m married to a Bolivian and we keep up to date on what’s going on. This is a very old fight between the east and the west but this is the first time that such a far left leaning government has been in power.
September 12th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
I don’t think it’s fair to say that “if there is one quality that Latin American leaders share it’s paranoia” just because Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua share the same interests (but clearly they are all under Chavez’s commands). It’s a shame Latin American countries give the impression that Chavez is leading them. What Chavez last said was obviously intended to distract people from what is coming the next days (which is the investigation of Chavez sending money to Argentina so that Cristina Kirchner would be elected as president there). If that became true, then you could add Argentina to those 4 countries.
September 13th, 2008 at 4:20 am
Just some more hypocrisy, is all.
Just in the same way it is fine to put anti-missile batteries in Poland (to ‘combat Iran’… pfft) but it would be absurd for anyone to put anti-US batteries in Cuba, Mexico or Canada. Recently a Russian fleet was sent to practice training exercises with Venezuela and warmly welcomed by Chavez. By all rights Russia and any other country has technically as much official right to act as unilaterally as the US has. It will be interesting to watch this situation play itself out. If many countries start acting on their own volition (and nobody else’s) and international law begins to degenerate (which it is), people may begin to value the importance of diplomatic due process. Not that that would particularly stop the US and others using puppet regimes, but it would help in preventing another freeze in international relations. It is not impossible that South America might rally around some South American union of some sort for political purposes and it is increasingly doubtful that the US will be able to maintain its edge diplomatically and economically, while so much of the world utterly despises us.
September 13th, 2008 at 5:00 am
Evo announced a State of Siege and has ordered troops into the provinces of Pando and Santa Cruz.
A military aircraft landed at the airport in Santa Cruz that, until the shooting started, was believed to be a U.N. plane bringing aid. According to CNN the plane was fired upon by people occupying the airport. This kind of thing has happened many times in Bolivia and something similar is what forced Gonzalez-Lozada from power after troops killed 80 people near La Paz. Evo needs to tread very lightly now.
FYI: Most of my wife’s family are in La Paz, but some are in Cochabamba.
September 13th, 2008 at 8:17 am
I would have to say that Chavez is a hero for bringing Latin countries out from being impoverished by the IMF and World Bank and the influence of the US and reclaiming their natural resources(oil and trees) back so that they can collect on the profits of their own resources.
Interesting fact from December 2006:
“Per capita gross domestic product in Latin America declined by 0.7 percent during the 1980s and grew by just 1.5 percent annually in the 1990s, according to the World Bank. Today, one in four Latin Americans lives on less than $2 a day. This grinding poverty and Washington’s failed promises have led Latin America’s poor to elect leftist leaders like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales in Bolivia, who have, for the first time, delivered genuine reforms.
But prior to Chavez, the region’s leftist leaders had difficulties doing much for the poor, largely because of debt burdens to Bretton Woods institutions like the IMF. These lending agencies forced leaders to implement austerity budgets which hurt the poor, such as value-added tax, salary reductions and social spending cuts. Any measures that would scare off foreign investment, like taxing the rich or private property, were prohibited.”
“In 1998, the first year of Chavez’s presidency, oil price was $11 a barrel. It now stands at $56 a barrel, and has reached as high as $78 this year. Such drastic increases drove Venezuela’s GDP up 10.2 percent in the last quarter alone.
“That’s why it’s a big deal that Chavez is in. Because of high oil prices he has been able to free himself of debt, although not 100 percent,” said Fred Rosen. Chavez has not just paid off most of his own country’s debt, but even bought more than $1 billion of Argentine debt last year, enabling that country to pay off its IMF loan entirely.”
Now that is a leader, and he is helping the other 3rd world countries around him escape the US grip as well.
September 13th, 2008 at 9:23 am
[quote comment="64930"]I think Evo tossed the ambassador because Hugo told him to.
What is interesting about this Bolivian crisis is that the “other side” is protesting. We’ll have to wait and see if Evo calls in the military to restore order like a few Presidents in the past did. One basic thing that everybody needs to understand is that when the term “wealthy land owners” is used in regards to most Eastern Bolivian cattle ranchers and farmers is that these are second and third generation land owners whose families started with nothing and cleared land and worked it hard to get to where they are today. Many of them see the indigenous people as threats because they want their land. They want the land that is already producing instead of the vast untouched land that would need to be developed.
Now being that I am American, that might sound like the meddling mind set but you must remember that I lived in Bolivia and I’m married to a Bolivian and we keep up to date on what’s going on. This is a very old fight between the east and the west but this is the first time that such a far left leaning government has been in power.[/quote]
When it comes to all things Bolivian, your input is always welcome Dan.
September 13th, 2008 at 9:24 am
[quote comment="64935"]I don’t think it’s fair to say that “if there is one quality that Latin American leaders share it’s paranoia” just because Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua share the same interests (but clearly they are all under Chavez’s commands). It’s a shame Latin American countries give the impression that Chavez is leading them. What Chavez last said was obviously intended to distract people from what is coming the next days (which is the investigation of Chavez sending money to Argentina so that Cristina Kirchner would be elected as president there). If that became true, then you could add Argentina to those 4 countries.[/quote]
This goes back to before Hugo Chavez was even born.