Those who are exploited are our compatriots all over the world; and the exploiters all over the world are our enemies… Our country is really the whole world, and all the revolutionaries of the world are our brothers.
– President Fidel Castro.¹

The revolutionary [is] the ideological motor force of the revolution…if he forgets his proletarian internationalism, the revolution which he leads will cease to be an inspiring force and he will sink into a comfortable lethargy, which imperialism, our irreconcilable enemy, will utilize well. Proletarian internationalism is a duty, but it is also a revolutionary necessity. So we educate our people.
– Che Guevara²

I think that the governments of Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua let down the entire Tamil population in the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, as well as “proletarian internationalism” and the “exploited”, by extending unconditional support to Sri Lanka’s racist government.

Cuba did so—along with the Bolivian and Nicaraguan governments and members of ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America)—on May 27, 2009 when signing a UN Human Rights Council (HRC) resolution praising the government of Sri Lanka for “the promotion and protection of human rights”, while only condemning for terrorism the Liberation Tigers for Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which fought the government in a civil war since 1983 until their defeat on May 19, 2009.

During the last year of war, the Sri Lankan government illegally and brutally interned nearly half-a-million Tamil civilians; 280,000 of these civilians were entrapped in several “welfare centers” upon the LTTE’s surrender. Half-a-year later, only a few thousand have been released. Their conditions are the opposite of “promotion and protection of human rights”. Hundreds have died and are dying for lack of food, water, basic health care.

Since advocating for and signing the unbalanced HRC resolution, I have found no text or evidence that these progressive-revolutionary-socialist governments of ALBA have criticized Sri Lanka for routinely practicing brutality and neglecting basic life necessities of these illegally interned people. The conduct of Sinhalese-led governments towards Tamils ever since Sri Lanka’s independence from Great Britain, in 1947-8, has always been one of mistreatment and inequality, even genocide.

While ALBA leader Venezuela is not a member of that council, President Hugo Chavez followed suit by applauding Sri Lanka’s victory.³ I hope that these revolutionary leaders will undo that damage by coming to the aid of the interned and all 2.5 million Tamil survivors of this horrible carnage and condemning Sri Lanka for its beastly and racist conduct. Tamils national rights must also be recognized, especially by governments representing other indigenous and once enslaved peoples.

In this first of a five-part series, I begin to lay the case that Sri Lanka’s governments practice genocide. I will also speculate about why the four ALBA countries involved in this matter could have decided to ignore this reality, why they disallowed an investigation into the assertion, and why they support such a cruel, chauvinistic regime. In the forthcoming parts, I will sketch the history of the Sinhalese and Tamils; outline the right and necessity for Tamil nationhood; delineate their struggles for equal rights; and show the geo-political power game being played out between the west and its’ sometimes antagonistic counterpart regimes in China and Iran; and conclude with the present state of affairs for Tamils.

Human Rights Council Resolution S-11/1: Assistance to Sri Lanka in the promotion and protection of human rights

Upon the end of the war, 17 countries on the 47-member Human Rights Council called for an extraordinary session about the Sri Lankan situation. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, spoke for an “independent and credible international investigation” into the reports of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law on both sides of the civil war.

“For its part, the Government reportedly used heavy artillery on the densely populated conflict zone, despite assurances that it would take precautions to protect civilians”… and the “reported shelling of a hospital clinic on several occasions”…”

“These people are in desperate need of food, water, medical help and other forms of basic assistance… there have already been outbreaks of contagious diseases.”

“The images of terrified and emaciated women, men and children fleeing the battle zone… must spur us into action.”

Pillay’s professional, compassionate and balanced proposal was not tabled or even discussed. Instead 17 members—mostly EU countries and Canada, but also Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico and Chile—proposed only that an investigation into these charges of human rights abuse be pursued by the Sri Lankan government itself, that is: the government investigating its brutality, hardly anything radical or effective. This, and the call for “rapid and unhindered access” for humanitarian aid from the UN and International Committee of the Red Cross, was the only significant difference from another resolution proposed by the majority, mostly Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) countries. Chile was the only NAM member to vote against the majority, which wanted no investigation at all. And the “rapid and unhindered access” for humanitarian aid was reduced to: “provide access as may be appropriate”, thereby giving Sri Lanka’s government the power to use food/water/medicine as a weapon against their enemy: the Tamil people and not the now defeated LTTE.

Sri Lanka was present at the HRC sessions as an observer. It had been a member from 2006 to 2008 when it lost reelection as one of the six Asian State members. Poignantly overlooked by most NAM members assembled a year later, it had been severely criticized by Tamils around the world and by internationally respected Nobel Peace Prize winners Desmond Tutu and Adolfo Perez Esquivel.

“The systematic abuses by Sri Lanka government forces are among the most serious imaginable. Torture and extrajudicial killings are widespread [as is] kidnappings of its own people,” said Tutu in May 2008 when opposing its seat on the Human Rights Council.

A year later, the HRC majority unfastidiously praised Sri Lanka for continuing “to uphold its human rights obligations and the norms of international human rights law”. The key promoter of the majority resolution was, to my dismay, Cuba—the homeland of my heart and where I had lived and worked for the government for eight years.

The Cuban ambassador to the Council, Juan Antonio Fernández Palacios—who also spoke on behalf of the NAM—praised Sri Lanka’s governments over the years, and “congratulates” it on “putting an end” to the armed conflict. A key sentence is: “Sri Lanka’s sovereign right to fight terrorism and separatism within its undisputed borders must be respected.” The words “separatism” and “undisputed borders” will be dealt with at length later. But no one familiar with the history of Sinhalese and Tamils for decades since independence and centuries before could have chosen to speak of “undisputed borders”. Tamils had a homeland, two kingdoms, for centuries before the Sinhalese came to the island and for centuries afterwards.

Cuba also acted as a special advocate for Sri Lanka as an “interlocutor”, in addition to Egypt, India and Pakistan. The resolution about Sri Lanka was actually its own draft, which Cuba tabled.⁴

Just before the vote, the Bolivian HRC ambassador, Ms. Angélica Navarro Llames, made it clear she was perturbed by the manner in which many of the 17 countries had presented their resolution and for insisting upon a special meeting just a week before the scheduled one. She objected to “neocolonialist attitudes”. The Bolivian then spoke of LTTE terrorism used against the people and the government and people, and defended its right to fight for its sovereignty.

Resolution S-11/1 adopted by the majority (29 members for, 12 against, 6 abstentions). Here are pertinent excerpts:

Reaffirming the respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, and its sovereign rights to protect its citizens and combat terrorism,

Condemning all attacks that the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) launched on the civilian population and its practice of using civilians as human shields…

Welcoming the conclusion of hostilities and the liberation by the Government of Sri Lanka of tens of thousands of its citizens that were kept by the LTTE against their will as hostages, as well as the efforts by the Government to ensure safety and security for all Sri Lankans and bringing permanent peace to the country…

Emphasizing that after the conclusion of hostilities, the priority in terms of human rights remains the provision of the necessary assistance to ensure relief and rehabilitation of persons affected by the conflict, including internally displaced persons, as well as the reconstruction of the country’s economy and infrastructure,

Encouraged by the provision of basic humanitarian assistance, in particular, safe drinking water, sanitation, food, and medical and health care services to the IDPs [Internally Displaced Persons] by the Government of Sri Lanka with the assistance of the United Nations agencies…

1. Commends the measures taken by the Government of Sri Lanka to address the urgent needs of the Internally Displaced Persons;

2. Welcomes the continued commitment of Sri Lanka to the promotion and protection of all human rights and encourages it to continue to uphold its human rights obligations and the norms of international human rights law;…

5. Acknowledges the commitment of the Government of Sri Lanka to provide access as may be appropriate to international humanitarian agencies in order to ensure humanitarian assistance to the population affected by the conflict, in particular IDPs…

In Favour: Angola, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Madagascar, Malaysia, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, Uruguay, Zambia;

Against: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland;

Abstaining: Argentina, Gabon, Japan, Mauritius, Republic of Korea, Ukraine.”⁴

I will show in upcoming articles how points 1, 2, and 5 cited here have never been the reality; Sri Lanka has not respected Tamils lives or their rights nor provided them their “urgent needs.”

Terrorism and Genocide

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was first dubbed a terrorist organization by India, in 1992. Ironically, it wasn’t until 1998 that Sri Lanka’s government so characterized them, and it did so only after the US did, in 1997. On May 30, 2006, the EU placed LTTE on its terrorist list and banned the organization. It made it a terrorist crime to economically or military aid LTTE, and it froze all LTTE bank and financial assets in Europe. The EU appeared to be even-handed by calling upon the Sri Lankan government to end its “culture of impunity” and to “curb violence” in its areas of control. At the time of LTTE’s defeat, 32 countries had defined them as terrorists.

Never having been in Sri Lanka or South Asia, it is difficult for me to know whether LTTE was a decidedly terrorist organization or not—that is, one which seeks to terrorize civilians. After reading many accounts of atrocities, such as killing hundreds of civilian Sinhalese in their homes, on buses and trains, I conclude that this once Marxist revolutionary organization resorted to terrorism.

At the same time, it must not be forgotten that any liberation movement the world’s greatest state terrorist, the United States of America does not agree with is “terrorist” and therefore illegitimate. Other terrorists, such as the government of the separatist state of Kosovo, are no longer considered terrorist although its drug-smuggling paramilitary organization had been so described, even by the US. Superpowers support or oppose autonomy-independence when it suits their interests. This is also the case with Ireland, the Basques in Spain, and the Palestinians.

Furthermore, the US systematically practices terrorism in its permanent war—invading or “intervening” militarily in 66 countries, a total of 159 times since World War Two.

We must lament the unacceptable methods the LTTE used against many people, and do so without ignoring the history of why and how it was born. Nor must we reject out-of-hand the basic rights and needs of the Tamil people. Their plight must not be abandoned, especially by governments and organizations grounded in anti-imperialism and equality amongst peoples.

Sri Lanka’s history since independence is one of conducting genocide against the Tamils. Genocide is defined by the UN, and Sri Lanka ratified its promise to adhere to it on October 12, 1950.The Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted December 9, 1948 and entered into force, January 12, 1951, states:

Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
   (a) Killing members of the group;
   (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
   (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
   (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
   (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.⁵

Destroying “in whole or in part” an ethnic group is certainly what Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese governments, as well as Buddhist monks, have been doing to the Tamils for six decades. Evidence will be forthcoming. There is so much evidence that even a former US deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan Administration filed a 12-count indictment against S.L. defense secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse and army commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka for “perpetrating genocide against Tamil civilians.”

The suit was filed by Bruce Fein, in February 2009, in the U.S. District Court, Central District of California.

The case can be filed in the US because G. Rajapakse is a naturalized citizen and Fonseka holds a resident green card. They are charged with responsibility for: “3,750 alleged extrajudicial killings, with 10,000 suffering bodily injury and more than 1.3 million displacements,” which, according to Fein, “far exceed displacements in Kosovo which led to genocide counts before the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.”

Fein noted that G. Rajapakse said in a BBC interview that, “if you are not fighting the Tamil Tigers you are a terrorist and we’ll kill you.” The attorney represents Tamils Against Genocide. He believes that G. Rajapakse will be “the best witness of the genocide.”

Why ALBA voted as it did: Some points of contention:

I ask the three ALBA governments, which voted for the above resolution, to take Sri Lanka’s government to account on the serious charge of genocide against the Tamil people. At the very least, ALBA should be able to see that hundreds of thousands of displaced persons are brutally treated, and that routine discrimination and abuse have been the Tamil’s plight at the hands of Sinhalese. This is a dichotomy to ALBA’s ideology of equal rights for all: in language, in religion, in the economy, in all aspects of life. In fact, the very new constitution of Bolivia recognizes itself as a pluri-nation in which all the languages and religions of all the peoples are recognized equally. The same is the case in Venezuela with its new constitution.

How can it be, then, that these peoples’ governments have fallen in the arms of such an oppressive, racist government? Possible reasons are:

1. Separatism! It is ironic and ideologically insupportable that anti-imperialist progressive and revolutionary leaders in Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia—mainly dark-skinned peoples, and many of them, especially in Bolivia, are Original Peoples long abused by many whites and creoles—side with the Sinhalese chauvinist elite in Sri Lanka. Perhaps they have not studied the sordid history of Sri Lanka. But more certainly is it that they do not support separatism or dual nationhood within one land mass. Cuba especially has, from its revolutionary start, argued for unity. What Cuba and the others fail to realize or acknowledge is that the Tamil people had tried for decades to achieve equal rights with the Sinhalese, many of whom assert adherence to Marxism, yet to no avail. Most Sinhalese do not wish to unify equally with the other ethnic group. Once peaceful means are exhausted, armed struggle is the only means to achieve liberation, as was the case with Cuba and other Latin American guerrilla movements.

In the case of Sri Lanka and separatism, ALBA governments could be prompted to side with it because of, in part, the role of China! The threat of separatism, which has been the desire of many Tibetan Buddhists, is an impelling factor for China’s position of one nation in its own region, and may be how it views the situation of Tamils in Sri Lanka. Here, China sides, ironically, with Buddhists against Hindus-Christians-Muslims.

Bolivia and Venezuela, too, are pressed by separatist demands but they come not from an ethnic group but from a rich class of Whites-Creoles, which has no historic ethnic Homeland.

2. Geo-politics! Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese-dominated governments have been supported militarily and economically by many States, some of which are sometimes antagonistic to one another. Some leftist governments and leftist organizations often operate on the notion that the enemy of my enemy is a friend. If that is the way some socialist-communist-revolutionaries view China and Iran, both totalitarian regimes, in regards to US-Europe-Canada-Australia-Japan imperialism when it comes to Sri Lanka they are mistaken. Surely there are economic and geo-political interests on the part of China and Iran in investing and trading with countries in development, including Sri Lanka but also Cuba and all in Latin America. Fortunately most Latin Americans and the majority of their governments have ceased jumping when a US president or general barks, and they are combining in regional alliances and seeking foreign investments and aid from non-traditional partners.

Since China and Iran began extending their interests into Sri Lanka and sided with its brutal treatment of Tamils, many leftists and progressive governments could think in the black-white geo-political manner. The US-EU states, for their own propaganda image, question Sri Lanka for possible abuses of human rights against Tamils. Ah, no one with experience or knowledge about the duplicity of the empire and its allies could side with them so one must back the other side.

But China is no longer socialist, rather its economy is mainly based on government-sponsored private enterprise with exploitation of labor in the extreme: no union protection, long work hours, low wages, child labor, no say on the job or national and international policies. The working class no longer even has access to full education and health care without paying on a capitalist basis. In fact, workers in most capitalist countries in Europe have better access to health care than workers do in China. Millionaire capitalists now sit on leadership bodies of the so-called Communist Party, and make important decisions over the heads of workers and the population. China is interested mainly in accumulating capital in the grand old raw capitalist style, and it owns more of the US economy (8%) than any other government or economic entity. China’s economy is intricately interdependent upon the US’s capitalism and its imperialist wars.

Iran is run by fundamentalist religious fanaticism. Its economy is basically a capitalist one. Its working class, just as the working class in China, is not a decision-maker. Iran is also a warring partner with US imperialism in its illegal war against Iraq, whose troops are a key factor in the violence against millions of Iraqis. Iran supports their co-religious Muslims in the Quisling government under US domination.

Is it possible that the developing countries, which back Sri Lanka against the Tamil population, do so out of economic reasons? China and Iran provide needed investments and technology and thus one must not criticize. Is that possible, and if so is it ethical, is it consistent with our humanitarian principles and socialist ideology? Cannot one be a trading partner without cowing politically?

Another issue is secularism. The ALBA countries and all truly socialist oriented governments are not and cannot be theocracies! How can secular nation states and organizations consider the Sri Lanka state “democratic socialist” when it declares a religion, and only one, as THE national and official religion? Secularism is the only common ground by which all can be united.

Conclusion

I concur with progressive Tamils in the Tamil Nadu state of India, who have for decades supported Cuba and the new ALBA formation. The Latin American Friendship Association there has held many solidarity activities for these countries, and published scores of books by Latin American authors, including Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Upon learning of the HRC resolution, they were appalled. The author of the excerpted letter below is Amarantha Visalakshi. For 25 years, she has translated books about Latin America into Tamil and written some herself.

We here in Tamil Nadu celebrated the 80th birthday of Comrade Fidel by releasing eight books on Cuba’s achievements in various fields… and are in the midst of our preparation for the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution and evaluation of the consolidation of Latin American countries in ALBA…

We are struck dumb and rendered disheartened and disillusioned by this act [the HRC resolution] by those countries of Latin America on which we have pinned our hopes for the future—Socialism of the 21st century.

Why do these countries wish for wiping out the Tamils from the Sri Lankan soil where they rightfully belong? What are the sources of information for these Latin American countries to decide against the Tamils and in favour of the racist Sri Lankan government in the UN Human Rights Council?… more than any other time we feel the absence of Che Guevara, the true internationalist, who laid down his life for the oppressed people of the world.

I also concur with Australia’s largest left-wing organization, the Democratic Socialist Perspective and Socialist Alliance, which publishes greenleft.org.au.

We need “to undertake work to help convince the revolutionary governments of Latin America, including Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, to cease support for the Sri Lankan government, and to recognize the national rights of the Tamil people. There is a long-run danger if revolutionary governments, for whatever reason, fail to support genuine movements for national self-determination in Third World countries, and endorse repressive regimes on the basis of a bogus ‘anti-imperialism…’”

1. Fidel told writer-photographer Lee Lockwood: Castro’s Cuba, Cuba’s Fidel, Macmillan, N.Y. 1967.
2. Socialism and man, Marcha, Uruguay, March 12, 1965.
3. “Hugo Chavez praises President Rajapaksa’s leadership in defeating LTTE”, Sri Lanka Daily News, September 4, 2009. In this piece, published by a pro-government newspaper, there is not one quotation by Hugo Chavez, who spoke with Rajapakse when they were in Libya. The piece paraphrases what the anonymous writer asserts Chavez having said; an example: Chavez apparently said that the defeat of LTTE terrorism “is a glowing example to other countries beset with the same problem,” words of the writer. Chavez allegedly praised Rajapakse for his leadership.
4. 1, 2, 3.
5. Source. Although the US signed the 1948 convention, it did not accede to it until November 1988. As of 2008, 140 nation states have acceded.

And in Latin America the bitter riddle still rings true: Why are there no coups in Washington DC? Because it doesn’t have a U.S. embassy! Last week, for instance a friend in Caracas said during an on-line chat that he was convinced Obama himself had given the command to the Generals to overthrow Zelaya. We countered that our Chief Executive may be playing a more wily and sinister strategy than that.

Certainly the past 50-plus years of U.S.-Latin American relations make that statement seem naïve. The Bush Administration’s fingerprints on the Venezuelan coup of 2002 and its involvement in the Haitian coup of 2004 through the IRI (International Republican Institute) would provide enough circumstantial evidence to bring an indictment of the U.S. before any international court of law – if it hadn’t likely already paid off the judges, that is.

However, if we assume that the Obama administration is following all previous recent administrations’ policy of genocide, brute force, terror, authoritarian rule and other forms of inhumane repression, we ignore the evidence that we are in a new, more complex and indeed more dangerous moment for the Bolivarian project of Latin American unity. To understand our moment we need to look back three-fourths of a century, to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his “Good Neighbor” policy.

FDR came to power in a time remarkably like our own. The Republicans had just tanked the economy and voters looked to a liberal to ease the pain. North Americans of that moment had disinterestedly observed as the U.S. military spent the first third of the century invading and occupying Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Haiti, Cuba, Panama and the Dominican Republic. After years of battling “insurgents” (or “bandits” as they were often then called), Washington was forced to consider a new course under the new liberal administration.

“In the early 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt promised that henceforth the United States would be a ‘good neighbor,’ that it would recognize the absolute sovereignty of individual nations, renounce its right to engage in unilateral interventions and make concessions to economic nationalists,” Greg Grandin writes in Empire’s Workshop. Grandin goes on to describe what to an anti-imperialist could be called a chilling result: “Rather than weaken U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere, this newfound moderation in fact institutionalized Washington’s authority, drawing Latin American republics tighter into its political, economic and cultural orbit through a series of multilateral treaties and regional organizations.”

From one Roosevelt to the next a dramatic change in U.S. foreign policy occurred: The first one (Teddy) used the “Big Stick,” but Franklin traded it for “a goose’s quill” knowing more “great is the hand that holds dominion over/ man by a scribbled name.” FDR’s “Good Neighbor” policy toward Latin America was a frank recognition that dozens of military interventions in the region, in addition to being costly for a country slipping into a depression, had been entirely ineffective.

Roosevelt picked up the idea for the “Good Neighbor” policy from his Republican predecessor and was backed in his efforts by none other than Nelson Rockefeller, who argued that “if the United States is to maintain its security and its political and economic hemispheric position it must take economic measures at once to secure economic prosperity in Central and South America and to establish this prosperity in the frame of hemisphere economic cooperation and dependence.” (Grandin) In other words, opening markets and making trade agreements with Latin America was crucial for the salvation of capitalism in recession and for the maintenance of “dependence.”

Under the “Good Neighbor” policy, Latin America supplied raw materials for the emerging industrial empire to the north which “not only set the U.S. on the road to economic recovery but fortified a block of corporations that provided key support for the New Deal reforms and served as the engine of America’s remarkable postwar boom,” Grandin wrote.

Latin America, on the other hand, was drawn more deeply into a colonial dependence on the United States for the health of its own economies in a relation wherein it provided raw materials but was deprived of the means of development. Most political thinkers, especially in Latin America, saw the “Good Neighbor” policy as “a new strategy of domination” in which “the principal form of imperialist domination on the continent would have, starting at the moment his policy was declared, an essentially economic character.”¹

Nicaragua put the “Good Neighbor” policy to its first test. A bad economy, international pressure against a brutal occupation, and fierce resistance from the patriotic forces led by A.C. Sandino had forced the U.S. to withdraw its occupation forces. But the departure of the U.S. Marines opened the door for Anastacio Somoza, head of the U.S.-trained Nicaraguan National Guard. On February 20, 1934 Somoza had Sandino murdered and quickly took control of the country.

As is now the case in Honduras, the U.S. role in the murder of Sandino and the coup that instituted the Somoza dictatorship was unclear. Although then-U.S. ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane had lunch with Somoza a few hours before the murder, the Nicaraguan was certainly ruthless and power-hungry enough to have organized the killing and the coup on his own. At the very least, however, the “Good Neighbor” acquiesced and FDR’s reported comment on Somoza said it all: “He’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”

Fast forward to another Democratic president who comes to power in the U.S. to save the Empire from a burst economic bubble, and decides to revamp relations with Latin America. Obama calls his updated “Good Neighbor” policy “A New Partnership for the Americas.” He previewed it while campaigning in Miami’s Cuban-American community last year.

Playing to that audience, Obama lashed out at “demagogues like Hugo Chavez” who, he said, “have stepped into this vacuum” of the Bush “distraction” from Latin America as a result of the Iraq war. Obama went on to flay Chavez for “his predictable yet perilous mix of anti-American rhetoric, authoritarian government, and checkbook diplomacy that…offers the same false promise as the tried and failed ideologies of the past.” The future U.S. president ended with the recognition that “the United States is so alienated from the rest of the Americas that this stale vision has gone unchallenged, and has even made inroads from Bolivia to Nicaragua.”

To repair this alienation, Obama offered programs pegged to FDR’s “Four Freedoms.” He suggested that together the U.S. and its southern neighbors could work towards freedom from fear, as partners in fighting drug trafficking, gangs and terrorism; towards freedom from want, as they addressed poverty, hunger and global warming, and towards political freedom and democracy.

After taking office, Obama announced major relaxations of the bans on travel and remittances to Cuba. At the April 2009 Summit of the Americas, he carried on the appeal to regional unity. He talked of the U.S. intention to foster “engagement based on mutual respect and common interests and shared values.” He shook hands with Chavez, and Venezuela and the U.S. agreed to restore their ambassadors.

As in so many arenas, though, Obama’s message on Latin America gets clouded by mixed signals. The veteran plotters of the 1980s contra wars–John Negroponte, Otto Reich, Roger Noriega and their ilk–have no place in his administration. But Obama’s ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, held the Andean desk at the National Security Council during the failed 2002 coup against Chavez, and Jeffrey Davidow, the president’s advisor for the Summit of the Americas, served as ambassador to Chile during the coup against Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973.

Though the administration recently announced it would not ask Congress to approve the Free Trade Agreement with Panama until it developed a “new framework,” the president very publicly withdrew his opposition to the trade pact with Colombia during the Summit of the Americas.

In Latin America, Obama faces much more complex and rapidly evolving regional political and economic alliances than did his immediate predecessors. The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) took its first stand in defense of Bolivia last September; the Organization of American States has spoken with one voice for Zelaya; MERCOSUR and ALBA are weaving economic ties.

These new political realities also provide an opportunity for the U.S. to regain a measure of control over the region. By contrast with conservatives and neo-cons(ervatives), liberal and neo-liberal imperialists prefer trade treaties to “armed treaties,” that is, military force. While Bush preferred leveling Iraq with bombs, Bill Clinton managed to level Mexico with NAFTA. Franklin Roosevelt, with his fast-track authority, negotiated trade treaties with fifteen Latin American countries between 1934 and 1942. Obama could use trade deals to widen the divisions emerging in the region–perhaps fortifying “the U.S. free-trade partnerships and links to Brazil and Chile, knowingly sacrificing a sphere of influence in the hope of establishing ring-fences around the most radical governments,” as Ivan Briscoe suggested in the Foro Europa-America Latina.

Fissures and new poles of power are emerging in opposition to what Professor Napoleon Saltos of the Central University of Quito calls the “Bolivarian Coordinate.” This ideological-political-economic axis is only one possibility. Saltos also points out the possibility of the emergence of a “sub-imperialist” Brazil in competition with the neoliberal U.S.-European imperial axis.

Regional divisions and tensions surfaced dramatically during the September 2008 disturbances in Bolivia. On one hand, the fledgling UNASUR’s resolution of the conflict between the regions loyal to President Evo Morales and those of the Media Luna demonstrated South America’s new independence.

But while the world’s attention was focused on Bolivia’s crisis, another struggle was taking place behind the scenes at the UNASUR meeting in Santiago, Chile. Just days before that gathering, Hugo Chavez verbally attacked Bolivian Defense Minister Luis Trigo, accusing him of not doing enough to defend President Morales. Chavez went on to say that “if something happens to Evo… I won’t just sit here with my arms crossed.”

Many Bolivians took umbrage at this statement and viewed it as inappropriate meddling in their country’s internal affairs. As one friend in Bolivia said privately over a cup of coffee, “I guess Chavez doesn’t remember what happened to the last ‘gaucho’ (cowboy) who tried to save Bolivia,” comparing Chavez to Che.

At the UNASUR meeting, Chavez agitated for sharp statements against U.S. interference in Bolivia, while the “pragmatic” group led by Brazil and Chile preferred to address only Bolivia’s immediate, internal issue. The meeting was held in private, but Chilean Foreign Minister Alejandro Foxley told Bolivia’s daily La Razon that “he feared a failure of the extraordinary summit of the Union of South American Nations due to the demands of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to condemn the United States in the final declaration.”² “There are different perspectives… I want to say that we don’t share his position and we believe that the problems of the region have to be solved in the region. I don’t like making others responsible,” Foxley said.

It was no secret who came out on top at the end of the summit: The “pragmatists” won, with Lula da Silva clearly in charge as the representative of the economic powerhouse of the region. This wasn’t the first time Chavez, a brilliant strategist, sabotaged his own efforts with his lack of diplomacy. He left the summit having not only lost a bid to make a statement against U.S. imperialism, but also having alienated many Bolivians by his harsh criticism of their officials.

While the countries of Latin America continue to welcome Venezuela’s generous aid and subsidized energy, in a context of reduced tension where an ignorant, unpopular, proto-fascist North American president turns his throne over to a charismatic, intelligent leader of African descent, Chavez’s attempts to maintain the polarization between empire and its unofficial colonies so as to push the agenda of Latin American unity forward is in danger of losing steam.

None of this could possibly be lost on Obama. He must know that the U.S. has galvanized opposition in Latin America every time it has undertaken the sort of violent undermining of local autonomy now being carried out in Honduras. He has everything to lose and nothing to gain from this coup in Honduras, especially when he can manage to keep any upstart junior president in line by manipulating trade treaties and cutting deals guaranteed to maintain Latin America in subservience, in short, to divide and conquer.

Yes, it’s obvious that the U.S. hopes to the coup can neutralize Zelaya. Of course Hillary will mince words and use linguistic tricks to avoid the use of the word “coup” to exploit the situation to the max. It’s also clear that Obama will continue to defend the Empire: A tiger that has withdrawn its claws remains a tiger. But if anti-imperialists continue in the simplistic, black-and-white Manichean thinking of the last 50 years, we’ll miss the specific dangers–and opportunities–of the moment.

Here we recall the words of Bertolt Brecht: “There are many ways to kill. You can stick a knife in a person’s belly, take away her bread, not heal him from a disease, stick her in a bad apartment, work him to death, drive her to suicide, send him off to war, etc. Only a few of these things are forbidden in our country.”

By far, the murder by stabbing–or military coup–attracts more attention. That’s why the brazen golpe in Honduras has raised so much speculation about who was holding the knife. The treaty that will ensure that a nation like Honduras starves or remains on its knees tends to attract far less attention.

While it’s crucial that the coup plotters be brought to justice (even if that includes U.S. citizens) and that Manuel Zelaya return to his rightful place as president of Honduras, activists need to pay even closer attention to the silent murder by economic strangulation and/or free trade agreements. We need to ensure, for instance, that Clinton not be allowed to “cut a deal” to have Zelaya returned under “conditions” (as her husband did with Aristide in 1994). We need to lobby for fair trade agreements and not free trade agreements. We need, finally, to support movements in Latin America working toward unity against empire. Zelaya’s return to Honduras, without conditions, will be only one step in our struggle.

1. “Historia de Nicaragua,” 2002, UNAN, Nicaragua).
2. La Razon, Sept. 17, 2008

The march followed last week’s decision by the Supreme Electoral Council to cancel the legal status of two opposition parties, the centre-right Movimiento Renovador Sandinista (MRS) and the Conservative Party. The electoral body, a power independent of the executive, the judiciary and the legislature under Nicaragua’s political constitution,judged that both those parties had failed to comply with the relevant electoral legislation. The MRS had been given almost 15 months to comply with its legal obligations, but did not do so.

Article 173 of Nicaragua’s political constitution authorises the Supreme Electoral Council to cancel or suspend the legal status of political parties that fail to comply with relevant electoral law. The electoral authority found that, with duly constituted departmental authorities in only 10 of the country’s 16 departments and two autonomous regions, the MRS left itself in non-compliance with Nicaragua’s electoral law and the party’s own statutes.

Nicaraguan opposition — dependent on foreign support

The opposition and its supporters accused the electoral body of acting under orders of the leaders of the two main political parties in Nicaragua, the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional and the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista. Among the opposition’s supporters are the representatives of foreign development cooperation programmes in Nicaragua, the US government and foreign intellectuals. The day after the electoral tribunal’s decision was made, the foreign development cooperation programme representatives published a pronouncement in the country’s two main daily newspapers questioning the electoral authority’s ruling.

The pronouncement alleged that the ruling was open to question because it was based on an electoral law they thought left too much to the discretion of the CSE magistrates. The statement argued that this called into question the development of democratic governance in Nicaragua. This, it noted, suggested lack of compliance by the Nicaraguan government with the terms of relevant development cooperation agreements.

The pronouncement ended with an avowal that the development cooperation community would monitor developments closely. The blatantly presumptuous neocolonial sub-text could hardly be clearer: “do what we want, or else…” The list of countries supporting that pronouncement consists almost entirely of US and allied countries and also multilateral bodies, like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, controlled by the US and its allies.

The electoral tribunal’s decision and the donor countries’ pronouncement came after a high-profile 11-day hunger strike by the opposition leader Dora María Tellez. The opposition won international publicity for Tellez’ protest when a group of leading international intellectuals including Eduardo Galeano, Noam Chomsky and Mario Benedetti published a letter supporting her call for a national dialogue. They may or may not have been aware that Dora Maria Tellez’s idea of dialogue is to demand, in the most insulting possible terms, that Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s President, resign.

NGOs — part of opposition electoral maneuvres

This latest episode in the Nicaraguan opposition’s efforts to destabilise the FSLN coalition government re-runs similar US and allied-country funded conspiracies to overthrow democratically elected governments leading to the coups d’état in Venezuela in 2002 and Haiti in 2004. NGOs and the managerial class that lives by them are invariably important players in such coups. They mushroomed in Nicaragua after the Sandinista revolutionary government lost the watershed 1990 presidential election. Almost all are heavily dependent on funding from US and allied country governmental and non-governmental institutions and agencies.

With those resources Nicaraguan NGOs are able to play a political role in Nicaragua because they constitute in large part the electoral base for the centre-right MRS party, which won barely 7% of the vote in the 2006 presidential election. Because their political support is located overwhelmingly in Managua and other urban centres on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast, the MRS has difficulty complying with the electoral law. They voted for that law when the measure was passed in 1995 but have subsequently found it hard to consolidate the national structures that electoral law requires.

Faced with that difficulty and its very limited electoral support, the MRS, by default or by design, set itself up for elimination as a legal political party. Its leaders and the party’s right wing allies, principally Eduardo Montealegre, generally regarded as the leader of Nicaragua’s traditional oligarchy, seem to have carefully planned events around that predictable outcome. They have used their resource-rich NGO base to mobilise high profile protest. It chimes well with the motif of dictatorship and democratic crisis the US and allied country interventionist scenario demands.

In fact the electoral authority’s ruling may help the MRS party achieve two things. It makes it much easier for them to justify electoral alliances with the right because they can claim they have to do so in order to be able to participate in elections. It also means they can focus their resources on the electoral areas in Managua and the urban centres of Nicaragua’s Pacific coast where they have most support. This will help Nicaragua’ s right wing and centre-right consolidate their electoral campaign more effectively.

Democracy — look who’s talking

While the local European representatives talk human rights to Nicaragua, their European Union governments are accomplices both to the genocidal collective punishment applied by Israel to Palestinians in the Gaza strip and to systematic racist abuses and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. Wherever one looks in the world, from Equatorial Guinea to Morocco to Uzbekistan, one will find that the same European countries currently threatening Nicaragua, support the most cruel and vicious tyrannies. Canada did the same in Haiti during that country’s long agony under the illegitimate Latortue regime.

These are the people warning Nicaragua’s FSLN-led coalition government to respect the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, The Inter-American Democratic Charter of the Organization of American States and the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Together with that contemptible hypocrisy, if one turns to the practice of democracy and transparency in Europe itself, the picture looks much worse than it does in Nicaragua.

European countries colluded in CIA torture flights and then obstructed investigation by the European Parliament into that appalling betrayal of public trust. One should remember episodes like the comprehensive ELF corruption scandal and the Taiwan frigates affair in France, the British Aerospace-Saudi Arabia scandal, the mass resignation of the European Commission in 1999, the corruption scandal around Helmut Kohl in Germany. In Italy, one has to recall the Parmalat scandal and the systematic corruption associated with Bettino Craxi’s regime, never mind Silvio Berlusconi.

The endemic corruption in Ireland embodied by the governments of Charles Haughey has been rife too in other small European countries like Greece or Portugal. Many scandals like those mentioned were found out. But the culture of corruption recurs time and agai, surviving along with all the scandals that never see the light of day. And yet, these are the countries trying to wag their finger convincingly at Nicaragua about good governance.

As for the EU’s bogus espousal of democracy, all the EU countries except Ireland have denied their peoples a say on the corporate friendly Lisbon Treaty because these countries’ ruling elites know their peoples would very likely reject the treaty if they had the chance. That is what happened in Ireland, the only country whose constitution forced the ruling elite to put the Lisbon Treaty to a democratic vote. The European Union’s executive, the European Commission, is appointed, not elected. So it is absolutely clear that the development cooperation representatives of these countries in Nicaragua operate by longstanding neocolonial double standards.

Nicaraguan government stresses sovereignty

By contrast, the Nicaraguan government’s response has been fine, dignified and clear. The Vice-Minister of the office of External Cooperation said of the donor representatives: “they have not accepted that there are substantial changes, a fundamental transformation in the way we relate to each other, and here there are two keywords: sovereignty and dignity… if they argue there is to be no cooperation because we don’t do a particular thing, we have no other option but to say ‘well, if you want to go off with it, then off you go,’ that is dignity’s final argument, that is the final point.”¹

Nicaragua’s FSLN-led coalition government is ultimately in a stronger position to resist foreign intervention than was, for example, Haiti’s President Jean Bertrand Aristide. But the strength of the Nicaraguan government’s position depends overwhelmingly on support from Venezuela. It is hard to see how Nicaragua could defend itself against consistent US and allied country blackmail and incessant destabilisation were it not a bona fide member of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, the ALBA bloc of countries comprised currently of Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Neither the US government nor its European allies look kindly on the socialist inspired, solidarity based, trade and development cooperation model being developed by the ALBA countries. They support the Nicaraguan opposition’s destabilisation campaign just as they support similar opposition campaigns in Venezuela and Bolivia. All these campaigns are part of US and allied government efforts to roll back attempts by Latin American countries to move towards progressive sovereign integration outside the capitalist scheme of corporate globalization.

As Orlando Nuñez, the director of Nicaragua’s landmark Zero Hunger program has said, the destabilization campaign in Nicaragua is the latest stage of an ongoing low-intensity war to re-establish the neocolonial debt-plus-aid model imposed for so long in Nicaragua and the rest of Latin America by the United States and its allies. They want to prevent Nicaragua’s progressive government implementing its programme successfully so as to ensure it loses electoral support. The next decisive battleground will be the municipal elections in November this year.

1. Jaentschke ratifica principos de política exterior sandinista