Latin America

===

What the Right Wing in Latin America Means by Democracy Is Violence

../.t was a curious exchange. Frustrated by the attacks on his party—the Movement for Socialism (MAS)—former president of Bolivia Evo Morales made an audio recording in which he called upon his supporters to form militias. Maximilian Heath of Reuters went to Argentina to speak with Morales about this leaked recording; Morales said, “In Bolivia, if the armed forces are shooting the people, killing the people, the people have the right to organize their security.”

Morales’ anxiousness is rooted in fact. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights—a body of the pro-U.S. Organization of American States—reported in December 2019 that there have been a series of massacres conducted by the armed forces of the current interim government in Bolivia. The use of the word “massacre” in this report is significant; these were not clashes or conflicts, but the targeted murder of civilians who supported MAS and Morales.

The interim president of Bolivia, Jeanine Áñez Chávez, has made inflammatory statements about the indigenous support base of MAS and Morales. She has frequently spoken of them with derision, even saying that she dreams of a Bolivia without “satanic indigenous rites” and that “the city is not for the Indians.” Áñez signed Supreme Decree no. 4078 that exempted the military from any criminal responsibility for its use of force; she wants to ban MAS, and her interior minister has filed a warrant for the arrest of Morales. This is a rapid and disturbing attack on the political fabric of Bolivia.

Apology

Morales’ statement about militias came merely as a way to say that he worried about the repression and violence occasioned by the interim government and the military, now immune from prosecution. U.S. President Donald Trump’s main envoy to Latin America—Mauricio Claver-Carone (who organized the bankrupting $57 billion loan to Argentina when he was the U.S. director at the International Monetary Fund)—went to Bolivia and attacked Morales. Morales, Claver-Carone said, is fomenting insurrection from Argentina. This is a bizarre statement.

Morales was re-elected in 2014. There was not a whiff of impropriety in that election. He had a mandate to remain in office until January 2020. Even if there was a problem in the 2019 election, he should have remained in office until this month. But he was removed by a U.S.-backed military coup. That coup is not the insurrection that worries Claver-Carone. What worries him is that Morales is concerned about his supporters who are being intimidated and killed. It was not the coup, but Morales’ statement of anguish that became the scandal. Morales then apologized for his statement.

Elections

Bolivia will face an election on May 3. The Movement for Socialism Party nominated Luis Arce Catacora, Bolivia’s former minister for the economy, as its presidential candidate, and David Choquehuanca, Bolivia’s former foreign minister, as its vice-presidential candidate. MAS has been deeply bruised. More than 100 government officials from the MAS party are either in detention or face criminal charges, while a handful are in the Mexican embassy in La Paz (they have been denied safe passage to the airport).

The anti-coup uprising in Chapare province led the interior minister Arturo Murillo to make a statement that he would perhaps disenfranchise the entire province if the rebellion continues (the rebels burned down a hotel that he owns). Supporters of MAS and its party workers are afraid to leave their homes, let alone campaign in the election. Morales’ statement came as a mirror of their own anxiousness.

No one imagines that there is going to be a “fair election.” The Trump administration has said it will send a USAID team to Bolivia to monitor the situation, and then to resume U.S. aid to the country; the U.S. will also monitor the elections. Between the U.S. monitors and Supreme Decree no. 4078, the conditions for a fair election simply do not apply.

And not many outside the region seem to have any problem with this attack against democracy.

‘Staggering Number’

On January 14, the UN’s human rights body released a brief statement on the killings of human rights activists in Colombia. The UN said that a “staggering number of human rights defenders” were killed last year in Colombia; by the UN’s count, between 107 and 120 activists were murdered. In 2018, 115 human rights defenders were killed, and in the first two weeks of January of this year, 10 human rights defenders have already been murdered. Most of them are from left-wing people’s organizations.

The UN numbers are conservative. For 2018, the Center for Research and Popular Education Peace Program, based in Colombia, documented 1,151 death threats, 648 assassinations, and 304 cases of physical injuries. But the UN’s trendline is correct. Of the murders last year, 98 percent took place in very poor rural areas. The killers, the UN suggests, are “criminal groups and armed groups linked to illicit economies in areas vacated by the FARC-EP.” In other words, right-wing paramilitary groups and their affiliated drug gangs have taken advantage of the peace treaty signed by the Left to terrorize the countryside.

In the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research dossier on Colombia (December 2019), the argument is made that the Colombian oligarchy does not want to move toward peace because this would shift the needle of Colombian politics toward the people’s movements and the Left. The continuation of the war—now as assassination and intimidation—favors the oligarchy. They prefer this violence to democratic politics.

These targeted murders and this targeted intimidation is only one part of the problem in Latin America. The other is that this region—with its outrageous social inequality—experiences violence at extreme levels. While Latin America is home to only 8 percent of the world’s population, 33 percent of all homicides occur in the region. This includes high violence against young men, and it includes the highest rates of femicide in the world. None of the right-wing governments are interested in addressing this fundamental problem for the hemisphere.

What the government of Iván Duque is doing in Colombia is what the interim government of Jeanine Áñez is doing in Bolivia—both are using extreme state violence against trade unionists and peasant organizers, against socialist leaders and indigenous leaders. This extreme violence undermines the possibility of democracy and allows the oligarchy to be re-elected in polling booths where the Left not dare enter.

Héroes del Ñancahuazú

In 2016, Evo Morales inaugurated the General Juan José Torres Anti-Imperialist Command School in the town of Warnes. General Juan José Torres was the socialist president of Bolivia in 1970-71. He was overthrown in a coup by the Bolivian general favored by the CIA, Hugo Bánzer. Bánzer had closely worked with the Nazi leader Klaus Barbie to set up the CIA-run Operation Condor to search out and kill any and every communist in the hemisphere. They killed Torres in 1976. The combination of the CIA, Nazis, and the oligarchies of the region is not something from the past: Brazil’s culture secretary—Roberto Alvim—recently plagiarized a speech from the Nazi Joseph Goebbels.

The interim government’s interim Defense Minister Luis Fernando López said that his government has renamed the Anti-Imperialist school. “We are not anti-anything,” he said, as if his government is not anti-Morales, anti-MAS, and anti-communist. The school has been renamed Héroes del Ñancahuazú.

In 1967, Che Guevara and his National Liberation Army of Bolivia operated near the Ñancahuazú River in Bolivia’s southeast. The government of General René Barrientos Ortuño, the CIA agent Félix Rodríguez, and the Nazi Klaus Barbie ran the operation to destroy Guevara’s campaign. They named their operation the Ñancahuazú Campaign. The Anti-Imperialist School in Bolivia now honors the men—led by a CIA agent and a Nazi—who killed Che Guevara. It sends a message to the Che Guevaras of today: We will get you. This is the democracy of the oligarchy in Latin America today.

This article was produced by :{Globetrotter}:, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

https://theconversation.com/unrest-in-latin-america-makes-authoritarianism-look-more-appealing-to-some-127774

no lnx grafs

Months of sustained, sometimes violent anti-government protest in South America may have increased popular support for authoritarianism.

That’s the startling finding of a still-unpublished study I conducted using data from the AmericasBarometer, a survey undertaken every two years in Latin American countries.

Although the massive demonstrations that have shaken Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and Paraguay since late 2018 have distinct origins and impacts – from transportation prices to election fraud – there are some commonalities.

All are an expression of deep frustration with the political status quo, and many demonstrators cite corruption, poverty and economic inequality as overlooked issues facing their nation.

Some South Americans, particularly young people and leftists, see these mass protest movements as positive. In Chile, 80% of people surveyed in October 2019 said they approved of demonstrators’ actions. In more conservative Colombia, 34% did.

But the protests have also been polarizing. For months, marches have disrupted people’s day-to-day activities and turned capital cities into conflict zones, creating some resentment – even fear that the social order is unraveling.

Support for authoritarian government

These feelings may be leading more South Americans to see autocratic governance as a necessity for maintaining law and order, my study of the AmericasBarometer’s survey data suggests.

The AmericasBarometer, which is part of the Latin American Public Opinion Project at Vanderbilt University, has documented a relationship between support for protests and autocratic tolerance for years.

In 2012, their surveys found that 30% of Latin Americans disapprove of “people conducting peaceful protests.” That group was 9% more likely than others to agree that the country needs “a strong leader who does not have to be elected by the vote of the people.”

In 2014, anti-protest respondents were 5% more likely to prefer an authoritarian government to a democratic one.

By late 2018 – after large protests erupted in several Latin American countries – this same group was 12% less supportive of democratic governance than those who view protests favorably.

Latin Americans who disapprove of protesting are also slightly more likely than others to say that it would be acceptable for a president to dissolve congress and govern without a legislature during difficult times. This is known as an “executive coup.”

In short, the AmericasBarometer surveys seems to indicate that protests increase tolerance for authoritarianism among Latin Americans.

Fertile ground for autocracy

Latin America has a complicated relationship with democracy.

Most countries in the region made heralded transitions away from military dictatorship in the 1980s. But public support for democracy in the region has been declining since 2010. Today less than half of Latin Americans think democracy is the best form of governance.

Given this political context, I put the preliminary survey findings that mass protests increase support for autocracy to the test. I chose two countries gripped by protests in 2019 – Chile and Ecuador – to study the relationship between demonstrations and democracy.

Specifically, my experiment investigated whether extreme civil disobedience – mass protests that disrupt the economy, prevent leaders from governing or shut down public services, for example – increases people’s preferences for autocracy.

I ran surveys online in Chile and Ecuador, recruiting respondents via Facebook by placing ads on users’ newsfeeds – a research method previously used to study political behavior. These participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups: a control group, in which respondents read entertainment news, and my test group, whose respondents read an article about protests threatening the country’s stability and citizens disobeying authorities.

After they finished reading the news, I asked respondents a series of questions measuring their support for autocracy. The results show that Chileans who read about civil disobedience were 10% more likely than the control group to prefer autocracy over democracy. Ecuadorians who read about social unrest were 2% more likely to support autocracy.

Taken together, after controlling for sex, income and education, I found that people in Chile and Ecuador were 7% more likely to favor autocratic government if they read about protests threatening the social order.

Protests and the fate of democracy

My findings offer insight into some possible unintended consequences of South America’s ongoing mass protests.

These demonstrations have given a voice to some citizens long excluded by the political system, and mass civil disobedience has won protesters some major concessions from government. In Chile, there are promises of a more equitable constitution. In Bolivia, President Evo Morales resigned during protests that followed allegations of election fraud.

But for Latin Americans unsettled by this political and social upheaval, authoritarianism is apparently starting to look more appealing.

As a result, South American demonstrations aimed at strengthening democracy may actually end up weakening it.

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tags:

Democracy

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Ecuador

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Protest movements

Chile protests

==

1119 morales 1st indig leader out in mil coup; same time as big protests in chile; Lula released b/c of general release of 1st x offenders. goes to meet union

===

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/lithium-mining-for-green-electric-cars-is-leaving-a-stain-on-the-planet/

no lnx

Lithium mining for ‘green’ electric cars is leaving a stain on the planet

Written by Nicole Karlis / Salon September 8, 2019

In 2018, the International Energy Agency (IEA) made a prediction that had the potential to disrupt the auto industry: by 2030, there would be nearly 125 million electric vehicles owned by people around the world, they said. That was a significant increase compared to the 3.1 million electric vehicles globally owned in 2017.

“The uptake of electric vehicles is still largely driven by the policy environment,” the IEA said in the report. “The 10 leading countries in electric vehicle adoption all have a range of policies in place to promote the uptake of electric cars.”

Cars and trucks account for nearly one-fifth of all carbon emissions in the United States, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Fossil-fuel vehicles emit an average of 24 pounds of carbon dioxide and other hazardous gases for every gallon of gas consumed. On the surface, emission-free electric cars might seem a significant improvement.

Yet other regions of the world will suffer as humanity transitions to electric cars. Specifically, mining for lithium — the essential element for batteries used in many electric cars, as well as other portable electronics — is wreaking havoc on the world’s deserts.

Lithium is found in the brine of salt flats. In order to obtain lithium, holes are drilled into the flats to pump the brine to the surface. This allows lithium carbonate to be extracted through a chemical process.

Last week, Bloomberg published a report detailing how the boom in lithium mining is irreversibly destroying the local environment of northernChile’s Atacama desert. Mining for lithium means means removing large amounts of water, which means depleting the water supply for locals. According to the report, the Tilopozo meadow in Chile used to be a shelter for shepherds traveling at night, yet has become barren due to lack of grass or water. That puts a severe strain on local farmers.“We’re fooling ourselves if we call this sustainable and green mining,” Cristina Dorador, a Chilean biologist, told Bloomberg. “The lithium fever should slow down because it’s directly damaging salt flats, the ecosystem and local communities.”

Cairn Energy Research Advisors estimates the lithium ion industry is expected to grow from 100 gigawatt hours (GWh) of annual production in 2017 to 800 GWhs in 2027—not only as a result of electric cars, but also because lithium is used in batteries to power various electrical and electronic goods, including mobile phones. Much of this will be mined from the South America’s Lithium Triangle, which spans across Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, an area that is said to hold more than half the world’s supply of the metal beneath its salt flats. Another major deposit comes from Australia.

“One of the biggest environmental problems caused by our endless hunger for the latest and smartest devices is a growing mineral crisis, particularly those needed to make our batteries,” Christina Valimaki an analyst at Elsevier, told UK’s Wired.

One of the side effects of lithium mining is water pollution: the process of mining can affect local water supplies, potentially poisoning communities. Yet chemical leakage is also a major concern when it comes to lithium mining. The lithium carbonate extraction process harms the soil, and can cause air pollution. There are also concerns around how to recycle it. Eco-nonprofit Friends of the Earth notes that lithium recycling is fraught, as the metal is “toxic, highly reactive and flammable.”

“It tends to be incinerated or ends up in landfill due to very low collection rates and flawed waste legislation,” Friends of the Earth states in their lithium factsheet. “Low collection rates, the low and volatile market price of lithium, and the high cost of recycling relative to primary production have contributed to the absence of lithium recycling.” The organization recommends further social and environmental impact assessments should be made.

Yet does that mean that electric cars are equally destructive as fossil-fueled ones? Not necessarily. But the idea that electric cars, or anything with lithium batteries, is “green” might be a farce. And as demand rises, the hidden costs will become more apparent.

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https://www.amazon.com/Tango-War-Struggle-Hearts-America/dp/1250091233

The Tango War: The Struggle for the Hearts, Minds and Riches of Latin America During World War II Hardcover – September 18, 2018

by Mary Jo McConahay

https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-august-14-2019/

franco in sp also portugal fascist vs Mex Cardenas democrat (wanted to sell oil to loyalists)

mex sent soaring axtecs to PI mcarthur; chile and arg signed up at the very end to get seat.

smoking cobras brazilians ~ AH, badly equipped but broke thru gothic line, rec'd cold

nelson rock w/ disney (orson wells, aaron copeland) prop vs gebbels

20k bit rubber battleship, 1 ton in fighter (not ct oxy mask and life raft;

ussr germ had synth rubber

3 yr no macy balloons

graY DAVIS GPA OIL LUFTWAFFE KOCH DAD

See also: Operation Condor

During the Cold War, a series of left-leaning governments attained power via electoral polls in Latin America. These governments faced coups sponsored^{[15][16][17][18]} by the United States government as part of its geostrategic interest in the region. These included the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, 1964 Brazilian coup d'état, 1973 Chilean coup d'état and 1976 Argentine coup d'état, among others. All of these coups were followed by United States-backed and sponsored right-wing military dictatorships as part of the United States government's Operation Condor.^[16][17][18]

These authoritarian regimes committed several human rights violations including illegal detentions of political opponents, suspects of be one and/or their families, tortures, disappearances and child trafficking.^[19][20] As these regimes started to decline due to international pressure, internal outcry in the United States from the population due to the involvement in the atrocities forced Washington to relinquish its support for them. New democratic processes began during the late 1970s and up to the early 1990s.^[21]

With the exception of Costa Rica, essentially all Latin American countries had at least one experience with a United States-supported dictator:^[22] Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, the Somoza family in Nicaragua, Carlos Castillo Armas in Guatemala, Juan María Bordaberry in Uruguay, Jorge Rafael Videla in Argentina, Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay, François Duvalier in Haiti, Artur da Costa e Silva and his successor Emílio Garrastazu Médici in Brazil and Marcos Pérez Jiménez in Venezuela, which caused a strong anti-American sentiment in wide sectors of the population.^{[23][24][25][26]}

PLAN CONDOR ARGENTINA ET AL

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/secret-archives-reveal-a-dirty-war-how-the-us-backed-a-foreign-militarys-conflict-that-kill-30000/

Rut Diamint, Torcuato di Tella University

History books may never tell the full story of the dictatorship that terrorized Argentina from 1976 to 1984.

But newly declassified United States military and intelligence documents recently delivered toArgentina offer new details about the country’s brutal military junta.

The archival documents were the fourth and final batch of 43,000 declassified U.S. telegrams, military records, intelligence and confidential memos given to Argentina following an extraordinary 2016 agreement between Argentine President Mauricio Macri and former U.S. President Barack Obama.

“Argentines now have more information about a dark period of our history that will allow us to continue strengthening justice, seeking and finding the truth,” Macri said on Twitterafter receiving the 7,500-document report on April 12.

The archives narrate the human rights abuses committed by Argentina’s military government, often with the assistance of the United States. They include the forced disappearances of 30,000 people, international assassination squads that stalked their victims abroad and the kidnapping of hundreds of babies born in detention.

Bloody history of US intervention

The U.S. declassification effort began under persistent pressure from Argentine human rights groups founded to uncover the atrocities of the dictatorship – a period I have spent my academic career studying.

Argentine democracy was interrupted by military coups six times in the 20th century.

The declassified documents outline what happened after the last coup, staged in 1976 by Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla. It gave way to the cruelest, most repressive and violent eight years of Argentina’s history.

In August 2000 representatives from Argentina’s Center for Legal and Social Studies and the original Grandmothers and Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo – a human rights group that locates the lost children of the dictatorship, which has since splintered into several factions – met with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

That encounter led to the declassification of 4,700 State Department documents in 2002. Those documents included U.S. diplomatic cables, memoranda, reports and meeting notes related to the Argentine dictatorship, and revealed clear U.S. involvement in the junta’s “dirty war.”

Now, Argentina has the military and intelligence archives behind these operations, too.

The declassified documents show that U.S. intervention in Latin America went well beyond giving “a little encouragement” to Latin American military regimes, as Secretary of State Henry Kissinger put it in 1976.

Argentina was the operations center for Plan Condor, a U.S-organized alliance between the dictatorships of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, created in 1975 and operational until around 1980.

Fearing the spread of communism across the Americas, the Ford administration offered these rightist military regimes everything from counterinsurgency training and financial assistance to intelligence briefings.

With U.S. support, Argentina’s junta kidnapped leftists, dissidents, union leaders and anyone who looked remotely like a threat. They tortured detainees, and then threw them alive and conscious out of airplanes into the River Plate, near Buenos Aires, or dumped their bodies in mass graves.

Pregnant women were killed after giving birth, their babies adopted by the families of childless generals. Neighbors under police surveillance informed on other neighbors to appease the junta, then were abducted and tortured anyway.

The U.S. eventually grew uncomfortable with the activities of its Argentine allies.

In 1976 Robert C. Hill, U.S. ambassador to Argentina, reported to Washington that the number of people detained by the junta must “run into the thousands” and, with Kissinger’s knowledge, confronted the Argentine government about its human rights abuses.

“[Argentina’s] security forces are totally out of control,” Assistant Secretary of State Harry Shlaudeman told Kissinger in 1976.

The U.S. withdrew its support from Plan Condor after Jimmy Carter became president in January 1977. Carter, a Democrat, hoped to see democracy restored in Argentina.

That would take another six years.

A bloody history learned little by little

Argentines have learned the details of this sadistic regime little by little.

Even in the waning days of the dictatorship, human rights groups began filing freedom of information requests and writs of habeas corpus with the dictatorship, to little effect.

The law began to work in democracy’s favor again after Argentina’s first post-dictatorship leader, the late President Raúl Alfonsín, was elected in 1983. He created a truth commission that uncovered 340 secret detention centers across Argentina and identified 8,690 “disappeared” people.

Once some perpetrators and victims were known, the victims’ families could file suits to hold the people who oversaw torture centers criminally responsible for their loved ones’ disappearance.

Painstaking archival research, interviews, investigations, lawsuits and prosecutions have followed under every administration since, albeit with differing levels of priority.

Much of what is known about the fates of those abducted by the military regime was discovered in the basement of the Argentine Air Force in 2013, where “black lists” of identified leftists were archived.

The newly declassified U.S. archives offer little new information that might bring closure to thousands of Argentine families whose loved ones remain, officially, “disappeared.”

As of 2017, 2,979 people had been tried for their role in the dictatorship. The charges include crimes against humanity, arbitrary detention and kidnapping. Another 593 cases remained in process.

‘Never again’

The newly declassified U.S. telegrams and confidential communications may spur new prosecutions.

They include the names of government officials and informants complicit in Plan Condor, as well as details on the torture techniques used to extract information from detainees.

“The release of these documents stands as a uniquely valuable contribution to the cause of human rights, the cause of justice and the cause of our fundamental right-to-know,” said Carlos Osorio, a Latin America analyst at George Washington University’s National Security Archive.

In 2014, under President Cristina Fernández, Argentina began its own declassification program, alongside that of the United States. Among other disclosures, it published thousands of dictatorship-era archives, including 648 pages documenting the staffing and day-to-day operations of the military junta’s foreign ministry, including its relations with the United States.

Argentina’s commitment to uncovering every dark detail of the dictatorship derives from a national sentiment that its democracy depends on understanding the past.

“Nunca mas” – “never again” – has become the rallying cry of a population that insists that history should not repeat itself.

Rut Diamint, Political Science Profesor, Torcuato di Tella University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

===

https://www.alternet.org/democracy-risk-latin-america-and-far-right-moving-heres-how-it-went-wrong-left

Latin American democracy is in peril, a crisis driven by rising social polarisation and a growing intolerance of dissent. Institutional mistrust is also rising and risks deepening the disconnect between citizens and government.

According to the Latin American Economic Outlook 2018, three out of four Latin Americans have very low confidence in institutions and show little or no confidence in their national governments. Likewise, a recent survey published by Intal/Latinbarometro, found that people believe that the most reliable institution in Latin America is the church (65% confidence); followed by the armed forces (42% confidence) and police (35%). Political parties are viewed as the most disreputable institutions – with just 15% confidence.

Even more disturbingly, the same survey shows that the level of support for democracy (over any other form of government) has dropped eight points from 2010 down to a slim majority of just 53%.Meanwhile, the percentage of those indifferent to the type of political system they live under has grown over the same period from 16% to 25%. Tellingly, 80% think corruption is affecting the quality of democracy, a figure that has increased significantly since 2010.

It is hardly surprising, then, that a far-right former army captain with an undistinguished career in Brazil’s congress, Jair Bolsonaro, won the country’s October presidential elections by promising to restore military-style law and order.

This widespread shift to the right in Latin American politics, and in Western societies too, is not simply a partisan change – it is also evidence that democratic principles are themselves collapsing. Reconnecting the bond between citizens, public institutions and government is now critical if meaningful democracy is to serve as a means of making society fairer.

The rise of anti-politics

The UK’s 2016 Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump in the US the same year raised important questions about the incentives and drawbacks of neoliberal democracy – and the rise of a new form of anti-politics.

Both events highlighted widespread political disaffection with an insulated and arrogant ruling elite and its insensitive political leadership. This frustration was exacerbated by post-financial crisis austerity policies, which are cutting away at the welfare system and social contract that have hitherto guaranteed social stability.

This has led, in the UK, US and elsewhere, to a disturbing new focus on “national identity”. This “identity” often takes precedence over any responsibility towards “others”, whether they are legal immigrants who contribute economically and culturally, or those ill-fated, dispossessed, irregular immigrants and asylum seekers who are simply trying to survive. It is often nationalist, racist.

Where the left went wrong

In the early 2000s, much of Latin America, particularly Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay and Venezuela, aspired to create new “post-neoliberal” forms of government. They sought to retain elements of the previous export‐led growth model while introducing new mechanisms for social inclusion and welfare.

The extent to which post-neoliberalism delivered on these pledges is disputed. There were, however, some real achievements – particularly anti-poverty programmes that included tax incentives, conditional cash transfers, social pensions, and other forms of targeted spending and wealth redistribution. Real efforts were also made to create new opportunities for human rights and activism, and to advance ethnic equality, women’s rights and legalised same-sex relationships.

But these advances are now at stake. Overall, post-neoliberalism failed to articulate a convincing alternative to the neoliberal model of market democracy – and didn’t sufficiently shift away from dependence on natural resources and agrobusiness. Leftist, egalitarian policies were resisted by the elite – particularly landowners and those in agrobusiness and mineral export – who felt that their privileges were being threatened, especially as there was a global decline in commodity prices.

Nor was the left immune to economic mismanagement and corruption, which led to growing disenchantment with left-wing governments and the leaders behind them. Corruption, and the perception of it, erodes confidence in government and leaves behind it a political vacuum.

And so Latin America is moving sharply to the right under pro-business leaders who demonise the left and are reclaiming power, particularly in the strongest economies, such as Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Argentina.

The tragedy of Latin American democracy

Politically, perhaps, the greatest disappointment is not that social conflict and political disagreement continued and even expanded under the region’s leftist governments – that’s natural in democracy. The real shame is that a winner-takes-all dynamic took over, increasing social polarisation and snuffing out constructive dissent.

Bolsonaro doesn’t engage with his political opponents, he threatens to rid the country of left-wing “outlaws”. “Go overseas, or go to jail,” he warns. In one of the wold’s most unequal countries, where millions are discriminated against, he received massive support as a candidate who openly promotes discrimination.

The risk is that democracy is failing many, increasingly normalising the demonisation of the “other”. This “other” is now anyone who is perceived to be a drain on national resources, but can also include women, the poor, indigenous people, migrants, and “scroungers” on benefits. This right-wing backlash has not only led to a decline in social democratic representation, but also to the reemergence of discriminatory narratives that poison the political climate, bolster growing intolerance and undermine the social foundations of democracy.

Back in the 1980s, as Latin America redemocratised, political scientists such as Norbert Lechner and Adam Przeworski asked whether it is possible to reach a cross-party, inter-societal consensus on a programme of social and economic redistribution – or whether an entrenchment of socioeconomic and political privilege is the price that must be paid in Latin America for liberal democracy. Today, the latter seems increasingly to be the sorry answer.

Nevertheless, as citizens, we must find new ways to hold governments to account and lead social resistance to any attempt to reintroduce austerity or limit civic freedoms. Without productive dissent, democracy in the region may vanish altogether.

Pia Riggirozzi, Professor of Global Politics, University of Southampton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

===

https://www.ecowatch.com/environmental-activists-amnesty-international-2563882266.html

Environmental Leaders Under Threat in Paraguay and Peru, Amnesty Reports

Authorities in Paraguay and Peru are unjustly criminalizing activists who speak out to protect their environment and land, an Amnesty International report released Thursday revealed.

The report, A Recipe for Criminalization: Defenders of the Environment, Territory and Land in Peru and Paraguay, outlined the three "ingredients" both countries use to undermine the efforts of activists. First, they delegitimize activists through smear campaigns. Second, they apply laws and regulations that allow for forced evictions. And, third, they misuse the criminal justice system to prosecute activists for unfounded reasons.

"Those who bravely stand up to defend their land and the environment are frequently targeted because of their work. These attacks have a devastating impact on their physical, mental and emotional wellbeing, as well as that of their families and communities," Amnesty International Americas director Erika Guevara-Rosas said in a press release.

The report included examples of how these ingredients combine on the ground.

For example, Amnesty International highlighted the case of community activists working to protect their home in Peru's Cajamarca region from the gold and copper Conga mining project. On 26 April 2013, police arrested 16 protesters on trumped up charges of abduction and coercion. The state prosecutor sought 30-year prison sentences. But the evidence presented was secondhand and so spotty and contradictory that a court dismissed the case in 2017.

In Paraguay, the Tekoha Sauce community of the Avá Guaraní People was evicted from their ancestral lands by a court order following a dispute with local businessman German Hultz. The community was forced onto a nature reserve where they struggle to survive because hunting and fishing is not allowed. During the court proceedings leading up to the eviction, their opponents stigmatized the indigenous community by referring to them as a "gang of criminals."

The report recommended that the governments of the two countries "must recognize as legitimate the work of human rights defenders working on issues related to land, territory and the environment." It also concluded that both governments should incorporate a gender- and ethnic-specific perspective to protect activists into legislation, stop abusing the justice system to prosecute environmental defenders, investigate and put a stop to all instances where the justice system is being used to harass protesters, and further investigate and prosecute anyone who is carrying out attacks on activists and land defenders.

To reach their conclusions, the Amnesty International team took two trips to Peru and one to Paraguay, and spoke with representatives of 10 human rights groups in Peru and 14 in Paraguay.

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https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/11/lee_fang_on_how_a_little

A new investigation published by The Intercept exposes how a libertarian think tank called the Atlas Network is remaking Latin American politics with the help of powerful conservative institutions and funders in the United States, some of whom you may recognize, such as the Koch brothers. The Intercept reports the Atlas Network is behind dozens of prominent groups that have supported right-wing forces in the anti-government movement in Venezuela, as well as those who ousted Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. We are joined by The Intercept’s Lee Fong, who covers the intersection of money and politics. His new piece is tilted, Sphere of Influence: How American Libertarians Are Remaking Latin American Politics.

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FOR ALEJANDRO CHAFUEN, the gathering this spring at the Brick Hotel in Buenos Aires was as much a homecoming as it was a victory lap. Chafuen, a lanky Argentine-American, had spent his adult life working to undermine left-wing social movements and governments in South and Central America, and boost a business-friendly version of libertarianism instead.

It was a lonely battle for decades, but not lately. Chafuen was among friends at the 2017 Latin America Liberty Forum. The international meeting of libertarian activists was sponsored by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, a leadership-training nonprofit now known simply as theAtlas Network, which Chafuen has led since 1991. At the Brick Hotel, Chafuen was reveling in recent victories; his years of work were starting to pay off, thanks to political and economic circumstances — but also because of the network of activists Chafuen has been working for so long to cultivate.

Over the past 10 years, leftist governments have used “money to buy votes, to redistribute,” said Chafuen, seated comfortably in the lobby. But the recent drop in commodity prices, coupled with corruption scandals, has given an opportunity for Atlas Network groups to spring into action. “When there is an opening, you have a crisis, and there is some demand for change, you have people who are trained to push for certain policies,” Chafuen noted, paraphrasing the late Milton Friedman. “And in our case, we tend to favor to private solutions to public problems.”

Chafuen pointed to numerous Atlas-affiliated leaders now in the spotlight: ministers in the new conservative government in Argentina, senators in Bolivia, and the leaders of the Free Brazil Movement that took down Dilma Rousseff’s presidency, where Chafuen’s network sprang to life before his very eyes.

“In Brazil, I have been in the street demonstrations, and I’m like, ‘Hey, this guy I met when he was 17, 18 — he is up there on the bus leading this. This is crazy!’” Chafuen said, excitedly. Those in Atlas’s orbit were no less excited to run into Chafuen in Buenos Aires. Activists from various countries stopped Chafuen intermittently to sing his praises as he walked through the hotel. For many, Chafuen, from his perch at Atlas, has served as a mentor, fiscal sponsor, and guiding beacon for a new political paradigm in their country.

Ousted Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya, left, looks down inside a car on his way to the airport where he will board a flight to Nicaragua on the outskirts of San Jose, Sunday, June 28, 2009. Soldiers seized Honduras' national palace and sent the President Zelaya into exile in Costa Rica on Sunday, hours before a disputed constitutional referendum. Zelaya, an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, said he was victim of a coup. Honduras' Congress sworn in Sunday congressional leader Roberto Micheletti as the country's new President. (AP Photo/Kent Gilbert)

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, left, looks down inside a car on the outskirts of San Jose on his way to the airport to board a flight to Nicaragua, June 28, 2009. Photo: Kent Gilbert/AP

A RIGHTWARD SHIFT is afoot in Latin American politics. Triumphant socialist governments had once swept the region for much of the 21st century – from Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to land reform populist Manuel Zelaya in Honduras– championing new programs for the poor, nationalizing businesses, and challenging U.S. dominance in hemispheric affairs.

In recent years, however, leftist leaders have fallen one after another, sometimes in spectacular fashion. Zelaya was led from the presidential palace in his pajamas in a military coup; in Argentina, a real-estate baron swept to the presidency and Kirchner was indicted for corruption; and in Brazil, the ruling Workers’ Party, facing a growing corruption scandal and a mass protest movement, was swept out of office via impeachment over charges of budget chicanery.

This shift might appear as part of a larger regional rebalancing, merely economic circumstances taking hold. And yet the Atlas Network seems ever-present, a common thread nudging political developments along.

The story of the Atlas Network and its profound impact on ideology and political power has never been fully told. But business filings and records from three continents, along with interviews with libertarian leaders across the hemisphere, reveal the scope of its influential history. The libertarian network, which has reshaped political power in country after country, has also operated as a quiet extension of U.S. foreign policy, with Atlas-associated think tanks receiving quiet funding from the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy, a critical arm of American soft power.

Though recent investigations have shed light on the role of powerful conservative billionaires, such as the Koch brothers, in developing a business-friendly version of libertarian thought, the Atlas Network, which receives funding from Koch foundations, has recreated methods honed in the Western world for developing countries.

The network is expansive, currently boasting loose partnerships with 450 think tanks around the world. Atlas says it dispensed over $5 million to its partners in 2016 alone.

Over the years, Atlas and its affiliated charitable foundations have provided hundreds of grants to conservative and free-market think tanks in Latin America, including the libertarian network that supported the Free Brazil Movement and organizations behind a libertarian push in Argentina, including Fundación Pensar, the Atlas think tank that merged with the political party formed by Mauricio Macri, a businessman who now leads the country. The leaders of the Free Brazil Movement and the founder of Fundación Eléutera in Honduras, an influential post-coup neoliberal think tank, have received financial support from Atlas, and are among the next generation of political operatives that have gone through Atlas’s training seminars.

The Atlas Network spans dozens of other think tanks across the region, including prominent groups supporting right-wing forces behind the unfolding anti-government movement in Venezuela and the campaign of Sebastián Piñera, the right-of-center candidate leading the polls for this year’s presidential election in Chile.

FILE - In this Dec. 2, 2015 file photo, people demonstrate against the government as they take part in protest in favor of impeaching Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff, in front of the National Congress, in Brasilia, Brazil. The country has seen a vicious circle of ballooning crises over the past year. Major scandals, some of which are connected to Rousseff, have combined with tanking commodity prices to deliver blows to the powerhouse economy, including credit-rating downgrades, a sharp currency devaluation and 10-percent annual inflation. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)

People demonstrate in favor of impeaching Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff in front of the National Congress in Brasilia, Brazil, Dec. 2, 2015. Photo: Eraldo Peres/AP

NOWHERE HAS THE Atlas method been better encapsulated than in anewly formed network of Brazilian free-market think tanks. Recently formed institutes worked together to foment anger at socialist policies, with some cultivating academic centers, while others work to train activists and maintain a constant war in the Brazilian media against leftist ideas.

The effort to focus anger solely at the left paid dividends last year for the Brazilian right. The millennial activists of the Free Brazil Movement, many of them trained in political organizing in the U.S., led a mass movement to channel public anger over a vast corruption scandal against Dilma, the left-of-center president popularly known by her first name. The scandal, nicknamed Operação Lava Jato, or Operation Car Wash, is a still-unfolding tale of bribery involving leading politicians from all of Brazil’s major political parties, including the right-wing and center-right parties. But the social media-savvy Free Brazil Movement, known by its Portuguese initials, MBL, managed to direct the bulk of outrage squarely at Dilma, demanding her ousting and an end to the welfare-centric policies of her Workers’ Party.

The uprising, which has drawn comparisons to the tea party movement, especially considering the quiet support from local industrial conglomerates and a new conspiracy-minded network of far-right media voices, ended 13 years of rule by the Workers’ Party by removing Dilma from office through impeachment in 2016.

The landscape that MBL sprang from is a new development in Brazil. There were perhaps three active libertarian think tanks 10 years ago, said Helio Beltrão, a former hedge fund executive who now leads Instituto Mises, a nonprofit named after the libertarian philosopher, Ludwig von Mises. Now, he said, with the support of Atlas, there are close to 30 such institutes active in Brazil, all working collaboratively, along with groups, such as Students for Liberty and MBL.

“It’s like a soccer team. Defense is the academia. The forward guys are the politicians. We’ve scored a few goals,” he said, referring to Dilma’s impeachment. The midfield, he said, are the “cultural guys” that shape public opinion.

Beltrão explained that the think tank network is hoping to privatize the national post office in Brazil, calling it “low-hanging fruit” that could lead to a larger wave of free-market reforms. Many of the conservative parties in Brazil embraced libertarian campaigners when they showed they could mobilize hundreds of thousands of people to protest against Dilma, but haven’t yet adopted the fundamentals of supply-side theory.

Fernando Schüler, an academic and columnist associated with Instituto Millenium, another Atlas think tank in Brazil, made the case another way.

“Brazil has 17,000 unions paid by public money, one day of salary per year goes to unions, completely controlled by the left,” said Schüler. The only way to reverse the socialist trend has been to out-maneuver them. “With technology, people could by themselves participate, organize at low cost — WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, using networks, a kind of public manifestation,” he continued, explaining the way libertarian organizers mobilized a protest movement against left-leaning politicians.

Organizers against Dilma had created a daily barrage of YouTube videos mocking the Worker’s Party government, along with an interactive scoreboard to encourage citizens to lobby their legislators to support impeachment.

Schüler noted that the Free Brazil Movement and his own think tank receive financial support from local industrial trade groups, but the movement had succeeded in part because it is not identified with the incumbent political parties, most of which the general public views with suspicion. He argued that the only way to radically reshape society and reverse popular sentiment in support of the welfare state was to wage a permanent cultural war to confront left intellectuals and the media.

ONE OF THE founders of Schüler’s Instituto Millenium think tank, Brazilian blogger Rodrigo Constantino, has polarized Brazilian politics with hyperpartisan rhetoric.Constantino, who has been called the “Breitbart of Brazil” for his conspiratorial views and acidic right-wing commentary, chairs yet another Atlas think tank, Instituto Liberal. He sees the Brazilian left’s every move as a veiled attempt at subverting democracy, from the use of the color red in the country’s World Cup logo to the Bolsa Família cash assistance program to poor families.

Constantino is credited with popularizing a narrative that Worker’s Party supporters are limousine liberals, wealthy hypocrites that flock to socialism to claim the moral high ground while snubbing the working classes they claim to represent.

The Breitbartization of public discourse is but one of the many ways the Atlas network has subtly influenced political debate.

“It’s a very paternalistic state. It’s crazy. It’s a lot of state control, and that’s the long-term challenge,” said Schüler, adding that despite recent victories, libertarians had a long way to go in Brazil. He hoped to copy the model of Margaret Thatcher, who relied on a network of libertarian think tanks to push unpopular reforms. “This pension system is absurd. I would privatize all education,” Schüler, rattling off a litany of changes he would make to society, from defunding labor unions to repealing the law that makes voting compulsory.

Yet the only way to make all that possible, he added, would be to build a network of politically active nonprofits all waging separate battles to push the same libertarian goals. The existing model — the constellation of right-wing think tanks in Washington, D.C., supported by powerful endowments — is the only path forward for Brazil, Schüler said.

Atlas, for its part, is busy doing just that. It gives grants for new think tanks, provides courses on political management and public relations, sponsors networking events around the world, and, in recent years, has devoted special resources to prodding libertarians to influence public opinion through social media and online videos.

An annual competition encourages Atlas’s network to produce viral YouTube videos promoting laissez-faire ideas and ridiculing proponents of the welfare state. James O’Keefe, the provocateur famous for needling Democrats with his undercover videos, has appeared before Atlas to explain his methods. Producers from a Wisconsin group that worked to create online videos to discredit teacher protests against Gov. Scott Walker’s law busting public sector unions have also provided instructions for Atlas’s training sessions.

Crowd members burn a puppet of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez at Plaza Altamira in protest against the government. Photo: Lonely Planet Images/Getty Images

AMONG ITS OTHER exploits of late, Atlas has played a role in a Latin American nation roiled by the region’s most acute political and humanitarian crisis: Venezuela.Records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by author and activist Eva Golinger, as well as State Department cables disclosed by whistleblower Chelsea Manning, reveal U.S. policymakers’ sophisticated effort to use Atlas think tanks in a long-running campaign to destabilize the reign of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez.

As early as 1998, Cedice Libertad, Atlas’s flagship think tank in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, received regular financial support from the Center for International Private Enterprise. In one grant letter, NED funds marked for Cedice are listed to help advocate “a change in government.” The director of Cedice was among the signatories of the controversy “Carmona Decree” supporting the short-lived military coup against Chávez in 2002.

A 2006 cable laid out a strategy from U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield for funding politically active nonprofits in Venezuela: “1) Strengthening democratic institutions, 2) penetrating Chávez’s political base, 3) dividing Chavismo, 4) protecting vital U.S. business, and 5) isolating Chávez internationally.”

In Venezula’s current crisis, Cedice has promoted the recent spate of protests against President Nicholás Maduro, Chávez’s embattled successor. Cedice is closely affiliated with opposition figure María Corina Machado, one of the leaders of the massive anti-government street demonstrations in recent months. Machado has publicly recognized Atlas for its work. In a videotape message delivered to the group in 2014, she said, “Thank you to the Atlas Network, to all freedom fighters.”

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has recognized Atlas for its work: “Thank you to the Atlas Network, to all freedom fighters,” she said in 2014.

AT THE ATLAS Network’s Latin American Liberty Forum in Buenos Aires, young leaders buzzed back and forth, sharing ideas on how to defeat socialism at every level, from pitched battles on college campuses to mobilizing an entire country to embrace impeachment.

Think tank “entrepreneurs” from Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras competed in a format along the lines of “Shark Tank,” an America reality show where start-up businesses pitch to a panel of wealthy, ruthless investors. Instead of seeking investments from a panel of venture capitalists, however, the think tank leaders pitched policy marketing ideas for a contest that awarded $5,000. In another session, strategies were debated for attracting industry support to back economic reforms. In another room, political operatives debated arguments “lovers of liberty” can use to respond to the global rise of populism to “redirect the sense of injustice many feel” toward free-market goals.

One young leader from CADAL, a think tank in Buenos Aires, presented on an idea to rank each Argentine province using what he called an “economic liberty index,” which would use the level of taxation and regulation as the main criteria to generate buzz for free-market reforms. The idea is consciously modeled on similar strategies from the U.S., including the Heritage Foundation’s “Index of Economic Freedom,” which measures countries based on criteria that includes tax policies and regulatory barriers to business formation.

Think tanks are traditionally associated with independent institutes formed to develop unconventional solutions. But the Atlas model focuses less on developing genuinely new policy proposals, and more on establishing political organizations that carry the credibility of academic institutions, making them an effective organ for winning hearts and minds.

Free-market ideas — such as slashing taxes on the wealthy; whittling down the public sector and placing it under the control of private operators; and liberalized trade rules and restrictions on labor unions — have always struggled with a perception problem. Proponents of this vision have found that voters tend to view such ideas as a vehicle for serving society’s upper crust. Rebranding economic libertarianism as a public interest ideology has required elaborate strategies for mass persuasion.

But the Atlas model now spreading rapidly through Latin America is based on a method perfected by decades of struggle in the U.S. and the U.K., as libertarians worked to stem the tide of the surging post-war welfare state.

Map of Atlas group locations in South America. Map of Atlas group locations in South America. Map: The Intercept

ANTONY FISHER, A BRITISH entrepreneur and the founder of the Atlas Network, pioneered the sale of libertarian economics to the broader public. The tack was simple: Fisher made it his mission to, in the words of an associate, “litter the world with free-market think tanks.”

The basis for Fisher’s ideals came from Friedrich Hayek, a forbearer of modern thought on limited government. In 1946, after reading the Reader’s Digest version of Hayek’s seminal book, “The Road to Serfdom,” Fisher sought a meeting with the Austrian economist in London. As recounted by his close colleague John Blundell, Fisher suggested Hayek enter politics. But Hayek demurred, replying that a bottom-up focus on shifting the public discourse could better shape society.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., another free-market ideologue, Leonard Read, was entertaining similar notions after leading the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Los Angeles branch into bruising battles with organized labor. To counter the growth of the welfare state, a more elaborate response would be necessary to share popular debates around the direction of society, without the visible link to corporate interests.

Fisher was propelled forward by a fateful visit to Read’s newly formed nonprofit, the Foundation for Economic Education, in New York, which was founded to help sponsor and promote the ideas of free-market intellectuals. There, libertarian economist F.A. Harper, at the time working at FEE, advised Fisher on methods for creating his own nonprofit in the U.K.

During the trip, Fisher also traveled with Harper to Cornell University to observe the latest animal industry breakthrough of battery cages, marveling at the sight of 15,000 chickens housed in a single building. Fisher was inspired to bring the innovation home with him. His factory, Buxted Chickens, grew rapidly and made Fisher a substantial fortune in the process. Some of those profits went into the other goal fostered during his New York trip: In 1955, Fisher founded the Institute of Economic Affairs.

IEA helped popularize the once-obscure set of economists loosely affiliated with Hayek’s ideas. The institute was a place to showcase opposition to British society’s growing welfare state, connecting journalists to free-market academics and disseminating critiques on a regular basis through opinion columns, radio interviews, and conferences.

Businesses provided the bulk of funding to IEA, as leading British industrial and banking giants — from Barclays to BP — pitched in with annual contributions. According to “Making Thatcher’s Britain,” by historians Ben Jackson and Robert Saunders, one shipping magnate remarked that, since universities were providing ammunition for the unions, the IEA was an important source of bullets for business.

As the economic slowdown and rising inflation of the 1970s shook the foundations of British society, Tory politicians gravitated more and more to the IEA to provide an alternative vision — and IEA obliged with accessible issue briefs and talking points politicians could use to bring free-market concepts to the public. The Atlas Network proudly proclaims that the IEA “laid the intellectual groundwork for what later became the Thatcher Revolution of the 1980s.” IEA staff provided speechwriting for Margaret Thatcher; supplemented her campaign with policy papers on topics as varied as labor unions and price controls; and provided a response to her critics in the mass media. In a letter to Fisher after her 1979 victory, Thatcher wrote that the IEA created “the climate of opinion which made our victory possible.”

“There’s no doubt there’s been enormous progress in Britain, the Institute of Economic Affairs, which Antony Fisher set up, made an enormous difference,” Milton Friedman once said. “It made possible Margaret Thatcher. It made possible not her election as prime minister but the policies that she was able to follow. And the same thing in this country, the developing thought along these lines made possible Ronald Reagan and the policies he was able to follow.”

IEA had come full circle. Hayek set up an invitation-only group of free-market economists called the Mont Pelerin Society. One of its members, Ed Feulner, helped found the conservative Washington think tank the Heritage Foundation, drawing on IEA’s work for inspiration. Another Mont Pelerin member, Ed Crane, founded the Cato Institute, the most prominent libertarian think tank in the U.S.

Austrian-British economist and political philosopher Friedrich Hayek (1899 - 1992) with a class of students at the London School of Economics, 1948. (Photo by Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images) Austrian-British economist and political philosopher Friedrich Hayek with a class of students at the London School of Economics, 1948. Photo: Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images

IN 1981, FISHER, who had settled in San Francisco, set out to develop the Atlas Economic Research Foundation at the urging of Hayek.Fisher had used his success with IEA to court corporate donors to help establish a string of smaller, sometimes regional think tanks in New York, Canada, California, and Texas, among other places. With Atlas, though, the scale for Fisher’s free-market think tank project would now be global: a nonprofit dedicated to continuing his work of establishing libertarian beachheads in every country of the world. “The more institutes established throughout the world,” Fisher declared, “the more opportunity to tackle diverse problems begging for resolution.”

Fisher began to fundraise, pitching corporate donors with the help of letters from Hayek, Thatcher, and Friedman, including an urgent call for donors to help reproduce the success of IEA through Atlas. Hayek wrote that the IEA model “ought to be used to create similar institutes all over the world.” He added, “It would be money well spent if large sums could be made available for such a concerted effort.”

The proposal was sent to a list of high-level executives and soon, money began pouring in from corporate coffers and Republican mega-donors, including Richard Mellon Scaife. Companies, such as Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, and Shell, all gave to Atlas. But their influence would need to remain cloaked for the project to work, Fisher contended. “To influence public opinion, it is necessary to avoid any suggestion of vested interest or intent to indoctrinate,” Fisher noted in a proposal outlining the purpose of Atlas. Fisher added that IEA’s success hinged on the perception that it was academic and impartial.

Atlas grew rapidly. By 1985, the network featured 27 institutions in 17 countries, including nonprofits in Italy, Mexico, Australia, and Peru.

And the timing could not have been better: Atlas’s international expansion came just as the Reagan administration was doubling down on an aggressive foreign policy, hoping to beat back leftist governments abroad.

While in public, Atlas declared that it received no government funding (Fisher belittled foreign aid as just another “bribe” used to distort market forces), records show the network quietly worked to channel government money to its growing list of international partners.

In one 1982 letter from the International Communication Agency, a small federal agency devoted to promote U.S. interests overseas, a bureaucrat at the Office of Private Sector Programs wrote to Fisher, in response to an inquiry about acquiring federal grants. The bureaucrat said he was barred from giving “directly to foreign organizations,” but could cosponsor “conferences or exchanges with organizations” hosted by groups like Atlas. He encouraged Fisher to send over a proposal. The letter, sent one year after Atlas’s founding, was the first indication that the network would become a covert partner to U.S. foreign policy interests.

Memos and other records from Fisher show that, by 1986, Atlas had helped schedule meetings with business executives to direct U.S. funds to its network of think tanks. In one instance, an official from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the principal foreign aid arm of the federal government, recommended that the head of Coca-Cola’s subsidiary in Panama work with Atlas to set up an IEA-style affiliate think tank there. Atlas’ partners also drew funding from the coffers of the National Endowment for Democracy, a government-charted nonprofit, founded in 1983, that is funded largely by the State Department and USAID to build U.S.-friendly political institutions in the developing world.

Alejandro Chafuen, of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, back right, shakes hands with Rafael Alonzo, of Venezuela's Freedom Center for Economic Studies, CEDICE, left, as Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa applauds during the opening of the "Freedom and Democracy" international forum in Caracas, Thursday, May 28, 2009.(AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

Alejandro Chafuen, of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, back right, shakes hands with Rafael Alonzo, of Venezuela’s Freedom Center for Economic Studies, CEDICE, left, as Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa applauds during the opening of the “Freedom and Democracy” international forum in Caracas, May 28, 2009. Photo: Ariana Cubillos/AP

WITH CORPORATE AND U.S. government funding pouring in, Atlas took another fortuitous turn in 1985 with the arrival of Alejandro Chafuen. Linda Whetstone, Fisher’s daughter, remembered in a tribute that, in 1985, a young Chafuen, then living in Oakland, showed up to Atlas’s San Francisco office “and was willing to work for nothing.”

The Buenos Aires-born Chafuen hailed from what he described as “an anti-Peronist family.” They were wealthy and, though raised in an era of incredible turmoil in Argentina, Chafuen lived a life of relative privilege. He spent his teenage years playing tennis, dreaming of becoming a professional athlete.

Chafuen credits his youthful ideological path to his appetite for devouring libertarian texts, from Ayn Rand to booklets published by FEE, the Leonard Read group that had originally inspired Fisher. After studying at Grove City College, a deeply conservative Christian liberal arts school in Pennsylvania, where he served as the president of the student libertarian club, Chafuen returned to his home country. The military had stepped in, claiming a threat from communist revolutionaries. Thousands of students and activists would be tortured and killed in the crackdown on left-wing dissent following the coup d’etat.

Chafuen remembers the time in a mostly positive light, later writing that the military had acted out of necessity to prevent a communist “takeover of the country.” While pursuing a teaching career, Chafuen encountered “totalitarians of every style” within academic life. After the military coup, he wrote that he noticed that his professors became “gentler,” despite their differences with him.

In other Latin American countries, too, libertarianism was finding a receptive audience among military governments. In Chile, after the military swept out the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, Mont Pelerin Society economists quickly flocked to the country, setting the stage for widespread libertarian reforms, including the privatization of industry and the country’s pension system. Throughout the region, under the watch of right-wing military leaders that had seized power, libertarian economic policies began to take root.

For his part, Chafuen’s ideological zeal was on display as early as 1979, when he published an essay for FEE titled “War Without End.” He described the horrors of leftist terror, “like the Charles Manson family, or in regimental strength, like the guerilla troops in the Middle East, Africa, and South America.” There was a need, he wrote, for the “forces of individual freedom and private property” to fight back.

His enthusiasm garnered attention. In 1980, at age 26, Chafuen was invited to become the youngest member of the Mont Pelerin Society. He traveled to Stanford, an opportunity that put him in direct contact with Read, Hayek, and other leading libertarians. Within five years, Chafuen had married an American and was living in Oakland. He began reaching out to Mont Pelerin members in the Bay Area, including Fisher.

Throughout the region, under the watch of right-wing military leaders that had seized power, libertarian economic policies began to take root.

According to Atlas’s board meeting notes, Fisher told his colleagues he had made a $500 ex gratia Christmas payment that year to Chafuen, and hoped to hire the young economist full-time to develop Atlas think tanks in Latin America. The following year, Chafuen organized the first Atlas summit of Latin American think tanks in Jamaica.

CHAFUEN UNDERSTOOD THE Atlas model well and worked diligently to expand the network, helping to launch think tanks in Africa and Europe, though focusing his efforts in Latin America. Describing how to attract donors, Chafuen once noted in a lecture that donors cannot appear to pay for public surveys because the polls would lose credibility. “Pfizer Inc. would not sponsor surveys on health issues nor would Exxon pay for surveys on environmental issues,” Chafuen noted. Libertarian think tanks, such as the ones in Atlas’s network, however, could not only present the same survey with more credibility, but do so in a way that garnered coverage in the local media.

“Journalists are very much attracted by whatever is new and easy to report,” Chafuen said. The press is less interested in quoting libertarian philosophers, he contended, but when a think tank produced a survey people would listen. “And donors also see this,” he added.

In 1991, three years after Fisher died, Chafuen took the helm of Atlas and would have the opportunity to speak to donors with authority about Atlas’s work. He quickly began to rack up corporate sponsors to push company-specific goals through the network. Philip Morris contributed regular grants to Atlas, including a $50,000 contribution to the group in 1994, which was disclosed years later through litigation. Records show that the tobacco giant viewed Atlas as an ally for working on international litigation issues.

Journalists in Chile, however, found out that Atlas-backed think tanks had worked to quietly lobby against smoking regulations without disclosing their funding from tobacco companies, a strategy similar think tanks repeated across the globe.

Corporate giants, such as ExxonMobil and MasterCard, were among Atlas’s donors. But the group also attracted leading figures in libertarianism, such as the foundations associated with investor John Templeton and the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, which lavished Atlas and its affiliates with regular contributions.

Chafuen’s fundraising prowess extended to the growing number of wealthy conservative foundations that were beginning to flourish. He was a founding member of Donors Trust, a secretive donor-advised fund that has doled out over $400 million to libertarian nonprofits, including members of the Atlas Network. He also serves as a trustee to the Chase Foundation of Virginia, which was founded by a Mont Pelerin Society member and similarly sends cash to Atlas think tanks.

Another wellspring of money came from the American government. Initially, the National Endowment for Democracy encountered difficulty setting up U.S.-friendly political nonprofits. Gerardo Bongiovanni, the president of Fundación Libertad, an Atlas think tank in Rosario, Argentina, noted during a lecture with Chafuen that the early seed money from NED’s grant partner, the Center for International Private Enterprise, totaled $1 million between 1985 and 1987. The think tanks that received those initial grants quickly folded, Bongiovanni said, citing lack of management training.

Atlas, however, managed to turn U.S. taxpayer money coming through the NED and Center for International Private Enterprise into an important source of funding for its growing network. The funding vehicles provided money to help boost Atlas think tanks in Eastern Europe, following the fall of the Soviet Union, and, later, to promote U.S. interests in the Middle East. Among the recipients of the Center for International Private Enterprise’s cash is Cedice Libertad, the group thanked by Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado.

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 09: White House Deputy Assistant To The President Sebastian Gorka participates in a television interview outside the White House West Wing June 9, 2017 in Washington, DC. A former national security editor for Breitbart, Gorka has hard-line stands on Islam and terrorism and past involvement in right-wing Hungarian politics. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Sebastian Gorka, White House deputy assistant to the president, participates in a television interview outside the West Wing on June 9, 2017, in Washington, D.C. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

AT THE BRICK HOTEL in Buenos Aires, Chafuen reflected on the last three decades. Fisher “would be overall pleased, and he would not believe how much our network grew,” Chafuen said, noting that perhaps the Atlas founder would not have expected the level of direct political engagement the group is involved in.

Chafuen lit up when U.S. President DonaldTrump came up, offering praise for the president’s appointees. And why not? The Trump administration is littered with alumni of Atlas-related groups and friends of the network.Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s Islamophobic counterterrorism adviser, once led an Atlas-backed think tank in Hungary. Vice President Mike Pence has attended an Atlas event and spoken highly of the group. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Chafuen were close through their leadership roles at the Acton Institute, a Michigan think tank that develops religious arguments in favor of libertarian policies — which now maintains an affiliate in Brazil, the Centro Interdisciplinar de Ética e Economia Personalista.

Perhaps Chafuen’s most prized figure in the administration, however, is Judy Shelton, an economist and senior fellow at the Atlas Network. After Trump’s victory, Shelton was made the chair of the NED. She previously served as an adviser to the Trump campaign and transition effort. Chafuen beamed when he talked about it. “There you have the Atlas people being the chair of the National Endowment for Democracy,” he said.

Before ending the interview, Chafuen intimated that there was more to come: more think tanks, more efforts to overturn leftist governments, and more Atlas devotees and alumni elevated to the highest levels of government the world over. “The work is ongoing,” he said.

Later, Chafuen appeared at the gala for the Latin America Liberty Forum. Along with a panel of Atlas experts, he discussed the need to ramp up libertarian opposition movements in Ecuador and Venezuela.

Listen to reporter Lee Fang discuss his investigation of the Atlas Network on our podcast Intercepted:

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http://www.alternet.org/environment/environmental-and-land-activist-killings-hit-all-time-high

Last year was the deadliest on record for environmental activists, according to new figures released by the UK NGO Global Witness.

The organization’s latest report documents a “crisis” spreading globally as the number of countries in which killings were recorded countries shot up from 16 to 24. 60% of deaths occurred in Latin America, which means that the region remains the most dangerous one in the world in which to oppose environmental degradation.

Yet again, Brazil, which has witnessed particularly bloody land conflicts in recent months, ranks first with 49 murders. Nicaragua has the highest rate of killings per capita: 11. And in Colombia, figures hit an all-time high: 37.

“This report tells a very grim story. The battle to protect the planet is rapidly intensifying and the cost can be counted in human lives”, says Ben Leather, a campaigner at Global Witness.

In Asia, resistance to big mining projects in such countries as India and the Philippines has been met with state-sanctioned repression and violence. India has witnessed a three-fold increase in killings and thePhilippines,where 28 activists were killed last year, stands out as the most lethal country in the region.

Logging and agriculture, including extensive cattle ranching, are two other main drivers of conflict, the report says.

Peace is dangerous for Colombia

Last year, as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) gave up control of swathes of rural territory as part of a historic peace process, deforestation and environmental degradation increased.

Deforestation rose 44 percent in 2016, encompassing an area of 690 square miles, as criminal groups moved into areas vacated by the FARC and engaged in illegal logging and mining, according to figures released by the Colombian government’s Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (IDEAM). The Amazonian regions of Putumayo, Caquetá, Meta and Guaviare, in the south, were the worst affected.

“They [the FARC] weren’t environmentalists, but they did regulate activity, and—since they had the guns—people complied”, activist Susana Muhamad recently told *The Guardian*.Under their watch, they limited deforestation by civilians to 2 hectares per year, so as to maintain forest cover which helped their protection from government forces.

Along with rising deforestation, killings of those defending land and the environment have also increased. “The peace process in Colombia has paradoxically fueled more violence against those who defend their land and the environment against destructive industries”, says Billy Kyte, leader of Global Witness’ land and environmental defenders campaign.

Kyte explains that communities returning to reclaim lands lost during the armed conflict are now facing paramilitary groups, large landowners and criminal gangs eager to profit from Colombia’s rich natural resources.

It is the Colombian government’s responsibility to promote the rule of law in rural Colombia and make areas safe for communities, Kyte adds, before promoting environmentally degrading development projects.

Earlier this year, at least one expert questioned Global Witness’ methodology in a special report profiling the situation in Honduras. He argued that it conflated killings of environmentalists and victims of agrarian conflict.

Methodology questioned

“Global Witness’ report doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny,” José Herrero, vice-president of the conservation foundation FUCSA, arguing that the “confusion” of the categories of victims in the report inflated the figures.

Kyte, who was intimidated and threatened with arrest for promoting the report in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, defends Global Witness’ data collection methods: “We compile data on land and environmental defenders – people who defend land or environmental rights. Our definition and criteria for inclusion is and always has been very clear – we don’t just record killings on environmentalists,” he says.

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http://www.alternet.org/environment/latin-american-environmentalists-are-endangered-species

Why Latin American Environmentalists Are an Endangered Species

Murders over land disputes have been on the rise worldwide, but the problem is especially severe in Latin America.

http://www.alternet.org/activism/noam-chomsky-propaganda-system-corporate-media-uses-dominate-society

latin america

http://www.alternet.org/books/murder-theft-exploitation-how-american-neoliberal-economics-and-imperialism-conquered-latin

chomsky

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http://www.readperiodicals.com/201507/3659706701.html

kpfa intrview cs song ~ grain noon 7/13/15

Social Justice

Author: Williams, Ginger; Disney, Jennifer

Date published: July 1, 2015

Language: English

PMID: 19223

ISSN: 10431578

CODEN: SOJUEX

Journal code: ISOJ

THE UNITED STATES HAS LONG FLEXED ITS MUSCLES IN LATIN AMERICAN AFFAIRS and exerted its power over the Western Hemisphere. The end of the Cold War failed to ease tensions in US-Latin American relations. The expansion of state-sanctioned terrorism in the Americas until the arrest of Augusto Pinochet in 1998 rested on the privileges of impunity for Latin American security forces and their brethren in the United States. Impunity reinforced US hegemony by enabling Latin American militaries (and those who trained them) to get away with torture, murder, and the disappearance of thousands of people during the many dirty wars that ensued during the last half of the twentieth century. According to Leslie Gill (2004,237), "the impunity-backed state terror that fractured countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, and Argentina while they were ruled by harsh regimes set the stage for the consolidation of neoliberal economic models under civilian governments." John Bellamy Foster (2007,2-3) further articulates the connection between militarism and neoliberalism in Latin America, and identifies the role the United States played in the process: "It was in the US-sponsored dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America (Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay) that neoliberalism, i.e., the promotion of a new naked capitalism in response to world economic slowdown-requiring the elimination of all state protections for the population and all limits on the movement of capital-was first imposed." The return to "democracy" in the 1980s and 1990s did not alleviate the fears, as repressive entities largely remained intact (in Chile, for example). The arrest of Augusto Pinochet tilted the balance as former repressive leaders started to face the courts after 1998, and the poor began to blame the new "democratic" leaders for selling the state to transnational capital. The trial and conviction of José Efrain Rios Montt in Guatemala in 2013 demonstrates that 15 years later, it is possible to convict a former head of state of crimes against humanity.1

Since 1998, 17 left-leaning presidents have been elected in Latin America.2 In different ways, they helped to orchestrate a movement against the Washington Consensus and loosen the grip of the United States on the region.3 When some of these new presidents entered office, they challenged the power relations in the hemisphere, promising to overhaul the government and the economy and to reassert the place of government above that of transnational corporations. In response, in 2002, President George W. Bush announced that "the future of this hemisphere depends on the strength of three commitments-democracy, security, and free-market development." Democracy proved to be a problem for the Bush administration with the elections of Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, who challenged the power of the Washington Consensus in the region. Populist-style democracy was something that policymakers in Washington thought had died with Juan Perón and Getulio Vargas in the 1950s; moreover, these populist-style democratic leaders have fervently worked to reassert the power of the state over transnational capital, which US policymakers have interpreted as a threat to stability in the region. Because of the perceived instability in Latin America, the United States has reasserted one of its strongest Cold War policies-US military presence and training in the hemisphere-to deal with the perceived rising threats.

How do we explain US militarism in the region in the wake of the overwhelming rejection of the Washington Consensus since 1998? How do US policymakers justify policies at home that Latin American nations and inter-American organizations deem obsolete? Why is the United States intent on executing a War on Drugs in Latin America that has not curtailed the entry of drugs into the United States, but has cost the United States over seven billion dollars in military aid to Colombia alone since 1996?4 The answers to these questions are revealed by examining the nature of the relationship between militarism and neoliberalism in Latin America.

Militarism and Neoliberalism in Latin America

The current integration of the world economy into a neocolonial system of capitalist production, consumption, and reproduction requires access to and control of resources including labor so that transnational corporations can maximize profits. Corporations need the assurance of political stability and protection of their investments. As part of the nation-state apparatus, the military is on hand whenever necessary to intimidate and repress popular resistance to exploitative working conditions, to structural adjustment programs, or the privatization of resources in aid of profit accumulation. (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 2000,3)

At the end of the Cold War, US policy in Latin America turned to "shaping the strategic environment to prevent conflict and promote stability" (McSherry 2000, 34). But by the end of the twentieth century, U S leadership became synonymous with global market capitalism, and the US government forced Latin American nations to jump on board the neoliberal economic train or face reprisals. In their special issue of Social Justice on "Neoliberalism, Militarism, and Armed Conflict," Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey (2000, 1) assert that neoliberalism and militarism are inextricably linked. "In critiquing and challenging neoliberal economic integration," they argue, "it is essential to take account of militarism as an intrinsic element. Conversely, in analyzing militarism, war, and armed conflict, it is also necessary to consider global economic forces and institutions."

Although much recent scholarship on Latin America focuses on the widespread political shift to the Left, our article examines military and political movements that subvert democracy in the region.5 We explore the rise of militarism in Latin America in response to the backlash against the imposition of neoliberal economic policies. One of the strongest elements of US Cold War policy in Latin America, US military presence and training, grew stronger in the new millennium. US expenditures on the military and military training in Latin America now exceed Cold War levels. The wars on drugs and terrorism have been used to justify increased militarization in the region, when the primary motive has been to repress resistance to neoliberalism. This study concentrates on Colombia, Mexico, and Honduras. Militarism and neoliberalism in Latin America have three operational dimensions: ( 1 ) neoliberal globalization has led to increasing poverty and inequality in the region; (2) neoliberalism requires increased military expenditures to repress resistance and/ or impose neoliberal structural adjustment policies that perpetuate the interests of dominant-class elites in particular and capital accumulation in general; (3) US military training of Latin American armed forces increases military and paramilitary violence, reinforces US hegemony, buttresses the imposition of neoliberal policies, and subverts democracy in the region.

This article describes the impact of neoliberal globalization in Latin America. After discussing the nature of US militarism after the Cold War, we detail the connection between a consistent, increasing presence of the US military and the imposition of neoliberalism in the region. Then we explain how the United States has resurrected old forms of neocolonial strategies (such as gunboat diplomacy and the training and financing of military coups) and subverted democracy through military and paramilitary violence. By exploiting existing domestic conflicts in Columbia, Mexico, and Honduras, the United States has justified increased military involvement in these countries to counter growing regional resistance to the Washington Consensus. Mexico has witnessed ongoing militarization since the Zapatista rebellion in 1994. Honduras experienced a military coup that overthrew a left-leaning, democratically elected president. Columbia is in its 50th year of civil war. Thus, these three countries provide the best case studies for examining militarism and neoliberalism in the region.

Neoliberal Globalization in Latin America: Human (Under-)Development, Poverty, and Inequality

The fact that the term "globalization" did not become part of our lexicon until the late eighties/early nineties, was not because it wasn't already pervasive-international trade, production, and finance had already been growing much faster than domestic economies by the mid-sixties-but because its later combination with neoliberalism accelerated those international trends and the process seemed to take on a life of its own. (Panitch and Gindin 2003,19)

Neoliberal globalization has dominated the Latin American region throughout the 1990s and into the twenty-first century. Richard Peet (2003, 3-4) distinguishes between the humanitarian potential within globalization and the reality of existing neoliberal globalization, which is based on neoliberal ideas, policies, and institutions. Laura MacDonald and Anne Ruckert (2009, 3) define neoliberalism as a set of economic policies associated with the Washington Consensus and its corresponding "ten neoliberal commandments." Senior Institute for International Economics (HE) official John Williamson enumerated those reforms for Latin America at the conclusion of a 1989 HE conference attended by participants from international financial institutions, US government agencies, and the Federal Reserve Board. The prescriptions include fiscal discipline, public expenditures in fields with high economic returns, tax reform, financial liberalization, unified and competitive exchange rates, trade liberalization, removal of barriers to foreign direct investment, privatization,deregulation, and secure property rights (Hristov 2005,91; Macdonald and Ruckert 2009,3). Panitch and Gindin (2003,24) define neoliberalism as "state-led economic restructuring oriented to removing, through the expansion and deepening of markets, democratically imposed barriers to accumulation (earlier concessions on the part of capital that once reflected capitalism's munificence now resurfaced as problems that demanded reversal)." For MacDonald and Ruckert (2009, 4), neoliberalism represents "a new form of social rule under which elite class power and the profitability of capital have been successfully restored."

Neoliberalism has had a devastating effect on inequality, poverty, and unemployment in Latin America. In 1996, "the superiors of all 18 Latin American provinces of the Society of Jesus issued an urgent letter on neoliberalism... addressed to all those in the Americas participating in the Jesuit enterprise and 'those who make common cause with our people, especially the poorest'" (Gent 2008a).6 The Jesuit leaders noted that, at the time, "180 million people (43.5 percent) in Latin America (and the Caribbean) lived in poverty, and 80 million (19 percent) lived in extreme poverty" (Latin American Provincials of the Society of Jesus 1997,48). The "lost decade" of economic growth of the 1980s saw the number of Latin Americans living in poverty increase from 41 percent in 1980 to 48 percent in 1990 (Foster 2007, 3). Between 1990 and 2000, joblessness rose 10 percent in Latin America (ibid.). In the 1980s and 1990s, there was high and persistent income inequality:

The most striking fact is the resilience of high inequality, through many different policy regimes over the past few decades. The 1970s saw some tendency for mild reductions in inequality, and the 1980s a more marked tendency for increased inequality in the context of macroeconomic, difficulties. The 1990s has seen a more mixed picture: more countries experienced increases than declines in inequality, but there is no overall pattern. (Walton 2004,171)

The "Economic Snapshot of Latin America" in the Latinobarómetro 2010 Report estimates that "in 2009, the region's poverty rate rose to 33.1 percent, up from 33 percent in 2008, and, in the case of extreme poverty, to 13.7 percent, up from 12.9 percent." However, the report also notes that in 2002, 44 percent of people in Latin America were living in poverty, with 19.4 percent experiencing extreme poverty. According to the IMF, by 2010 poverty in Latin America had declined to 31.4 percent, its lowest level in 20 years (Barcena 2012, 1). IMF figures also reveal that the rate of extreme poverty fell to 12.3 percent between 1990 and 2010 (ibid.). Despite these achievements, 177 million people remain in poverty, including 70 million in extreme poverty (ibid.). The IMF attributes the drop in poverty to strong economic growth, higher wage earnings, a decline in fertility rates, and better social programs (ibid.). Yet it does not acknowledge that many of these changes came about during the tenure of democratically elected leaders on the Left, who revitalized the state's role in alleviating poverty and unemployment and implementing social programs for the poor. "There can be no doubt," states the Latinobarómetro 2010 Report, that the most important problem in Latin America is inequality, which, "measured as the Gini coefficient, is greater than in any other region of the world."

US Militarism in Latin America since the End of the Cold War

One of the strongest elements of US Cold War policy in Latin America was retained and grew stronger in the new millennium: US military presence and training in the region. After the Cold War ended, US military expenditures in Latin America increased. After declining in 2001, US military aid, training, and arms sales to the region increased each year from the beginning of the war on terror through 2010 (Emerson 2010, 41).7 US military and police aid to Latin America increased steadily, reaching a height of $1.6 billion in 2010.8

Beginning in 2005, five Latin American countries were among the top 20 global recipients of US military assistance (Emerson 2010,41). In 2010, Colombia and Haiti were among the top 10 global recipients of US economic and military assistance (USAID, US Overseas Loans and Grants, Greenbook, 2012).

According to Tovrov (2012), "the United States allocates more than $50 billion a year to send abroad in the form of military and economic aid. Among the top 10 nations, military assistance is generally the largest percentage of the total amount sent." In 2012, the top 10 recipients of US aid were Afghanistan, Israel, Pakistan, Egypt, Haiti, Iraq, Jordan, Mexico, Kenya, and Nigeria (ibid.).

There are other measures of US militarism in Latin America in the post-Cold War period and after the initiation of the War on Terror. Between 2001 and 2005, 85,820 Latin American soldiers were trained in the United States. In contrast, 61,000 soldiers were trained at the infamous School of the Americas/Westem Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (SOA/WHINSEC) between 1946 and 2000 (Emerson 2010,41). Moreover, the Fourth Fleet, which was established in 1943 and disbanded in 1950, was reactivated on July 1,2008, by the US Department of Defense to "operate in the Caribbean, and Central and South America" (Cruz 2008). US Navy spokespersons insist that the fleet's reactivation was "administrative in nature only" (Espinoza 2008), but Admiral Gary Roughead stated that it "will send a strong signal to all Navies operating in the region" (Ross 2008). Government officials in Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia consider the "US decision to reactivate the Fourth Fleet a matter of concern" (Espinoza 2008). According to John Ross, an American journalist and author who lived and worked in Mexico for decades, "the resurrection and imminent dispatch of the United States Fourth Fleet to patrol the coasts of Latin America invokes the bad old days of Monroe Doctrine impositions and gunboat diplomacy for many citizens of those southern latitudes" (ibid.).

In the early twenty-first century, electoral victories of the Left have multiplied and emergent social movements increasingly challenge neoliberalism in Latin America. For the first time in US-Latin American relations since World War II, more US troops and military facilities were located in the region than aid agencies (Chomsky 2006,4). Military tensions are higher now than during the Cold War. Its grip on the region weakening, the US government also lacks the credibility to reassert it.

Emerson (2010, 38) argues that the War on Terror replaced the Cold War as "the guiding paradigm for US policy toward Latin America during the George W. Bush administration." For Emerson (ibid., 43), continuity exists in foreign policy logic between the post-September 11 Pentagon strategy of "effective sovereignty" (in which US national security is threatened by "ungovemed spaces" within Latin American countries) and the Cold War conception of "internal enemies." "In contrast to assumptions that the disconnect was a product of US neglect," Emerson notes, "a growing militarization of US policy became evident, a policy that viewed the Western Hemisphere as complementary to the 'War on Terror.'" Jasmin Hristov (2005,106) argues along similar lines that after September 11, the National Security Doctrine focused on the use of low-intensity warfare "under the cover of the War on Drugs or War on Terror" aimed at the "internal enemy." She contends that the internal enemy includes social movements and organizations, as well as "entire sectors of society that have been excluded and marginalized by the current economic model, who are potential sources of challenge with their demands for social justice" (ibid.).

Over the last decade, the Pentagon and US Southern Command (Southcom) have become more responsible than the State Department for policy in Latin America. This undoubtedly explains the shift to a security focus (Emerson 2010,41). Southcom 's Command Strategy 2018 announced its intention "to expand its scope by acting as the regional coordinating body for both military and non-military operations" (ibid.). Using data from Just the Facts (at justf.org), Emerson correlates this policymaking shift toward the Pentagon with increased military spending in the region (ibid.). Southcom's change in terminology from "narcotraffickers" to "narcoterrorists" enabled a "doubling of military training in Colombia, with funds originally designed for countemarcotics programs diverted to support counterinsurgency missions" (ibid., 43). According to Delacour, Plan Colombia "exemplifies this exercise of hegemony and the masking of counterinsurgency measures as a countemarcotics policy" (in Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 2000,6).

Continuously resorting to military solutions to address social and political problems has exacerbated conflict and sidetracked development in the region. Increased military presence and assistance, as well as counterinsurgency training, in Colombia, Mexico, and Honduras in the name of the wars on drugs and terror reinforce US hegemony, buttress the imposition of neoliberal policies, and subvert democracy in the region.

Militarism and Neoliberalism in Colombia

In Colombia, increases in military training and aid have been justified via the War on Drugs. The country is the prototypical case in Latin America of rising US military expenditures in efforts to repress resistance, from Afro-Colombians to unionized workers to the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). US military training of Colombian armed forces has increased military and paramilitary violence, reinforced US hegemony, and subverted democracy.

Colombia's 50-year conflict is extremely complicated, with the situation defying comprehension. Four armed groups, some of which cooperate, are fed by the drug trade. They operate in a nation deeply divided by geography, economic status, ethnicity, and ideology. Unfortunately, the United States-now a key actor in the conflict-is pursuing a dangerously simplistic strategy, one that is doomed to failure. Instead of recognizing the complexity of Colombia's crisis and addressing its many root causes, Washington's approach is dominated by the priorities of the wars on drugs and terror. The Andres Pastrana administration conceived Plan Colombia in 1999. In 2000, the Clinton administration agreed to fund the program, which sought to eradicate drug output and to strengthen democracy in Colombia, at a cost of $1.3 billion (Delacour 2000,63).The United States has poured over seven billion dollars into Colombian military and police aid grants since 1996 (justf.org). Since the late 1980s, the United States has aided the Colombian government in combating the drug trade. Then, Washington's mandate was to avoid involvement in Colombia's long-standing civil war. As counterdrug operations became increasingly dangerous, and guerilla attacks on Colombian security forces grew more successful in the mid-1990s, US efforts to engage Colombian security forces in counterdrug policies conflicted with congressional efforts to condition such assistance on human rights criteria. In August 2000, however, "Clinton waived five of the six human rights conditions, making a mockery of the administration's pronounced concerns for human rights" (Delacour 2000,63).

As of 2006, approximately 82 percent of US aid to Colombia went to its military police, largely to aid drug interdiction, arrest drug traffickers, and ensure the safety of the massive herbicide fumigation operation in coca- and poppy-producing areas (Witness for Peace 2006). In 2002, before the war in Iraq erupted, Colombia was the third-largest recipient of US security assistance, behind Israel and Egypt (Isaacson 2003a, 16). Between 1997 and 2002, US aid to Colombia's military increased six times, equaling $1.5 million per day in 2002 (ibid.). In mid-2002, the Bush administration asked Congress for more worldwide anti-terror funding, which became law on August 2, 2002. The bill provided for an expanded campaign against narcotics trafficking and against the FARC, the National Liberation Army, and the paramilitaries, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). This broadened mission laid the foundation for a dramatically increased US military commitment. With the attention of the US public focused on Iraq and the Middle East, the Bush administration helped Colombia's military protect a vulnerable Colombian oil pipeline. In 2002, US troops were sent to Colombia to protect the Cano Limon pipeline, where Occidental Petroleum and Colombia's Ecopetrol produced $5 billion a year in oil (Tate 2004,73).9 With 170 attacks on the pipeline in 2001, the Colombian government petitioned the US government for military aid specifically to protect the pipeline (Leech 2002,3). In 2003, the Bush administration projected $104 million in expenditures to help Colombia's army protect the Cano Limon-Covenas pipeline, of which US oil company Occidental Petroleum owns 44 percent (Isaacson 2003b). In Colombia, the military has historically protected the few at the expense of the majority.

The appeal of military aid has grown in the wake of recent international crises. US supporters of military aid to Colombia believe a stronger security force is the best way to protect territory and people. As is the case with other Latin American nations, however, the historical role of Colombia's military has not involved protecting people. While the US and Colombian governments were busy fighting the FARC and other "insurgents" and waging the War on Drugs, Colombia's local governments and its civil society (churches and business associations; labor, human rights, and peace activists; student, campesino, and women's groups; and AfroColombian and indigenous organizations) were busy working peacefully for change. Many in these groups were identified as "insurgents," especially union activists, and were killed or displaced. Over the last 20 years, 4,000 trade unionists have been murdered in Colombia (American Center for International Labor Solidarity 2006, 2). Each year, more union activists are killed in Colombia than in the rest of the world combined (ibid.). On June 30, 2005, "the Colombian Commission of Jurists reported that paramilitaries had killed at least 2,548 civilians since the 2002 cease-fire declaration" (ibid., 7). In an interview cited in the labor center's report, Carlos Castaño, former head of the AUC paramilitary umbrella group, said: "We kill trade unionists because they interfere with people working" (ibid., 12). Of the trade unionists victimized, teachers have been especially targeted (Otis 2012, 5).

Removal of Afro-Colombians from their oil-rich lands is another use of militarism to reinforce neoliberalism. In 1996, paramilitaries forced Marino Córdoba, an AfroColombian from the Riosucio municipality of Colombia and former director of the Association of Displaced Afro-Colombians, out of his home for working for the legal recognition of land for Afro-Colombians (Córdoba 2003). Now in the United States, he continues to raise awareness of the plight of displaced Colombians. According to the Human Rights and Displacement Consultancy, over 2.7 million Colombians have been displaced, and Córdoba estimates that Afro-Colombians account for 90 percent of that figure (ibid.).

Hristov's Blood and Capital: The Paramilitarization of Columbia cites hundreds of examples of what she calls SC A-sponsored terrorism10 against peasants, indigenous groups, and human rights workers of all kinds:

The SC A, which can also be described as the machinery of terror, runs through a system of mutually reinforcing mechanisms that can be grouped into three broad categories: legal, military, and ideological.... Here, the penetration of civil society by the SCA, especially during the last fifteen years, has not been sporadic but rather organized, systematic, and intense. (Hristov 2009a, 26-27; 25)

Perhaps the most damning evidence of the relationship between the state and the paramilitaries in Colombia comes from Captain Gilberto Cárdenas, former director of the Judicial Police Investigative and Intelligence Unit (Sección de Investigaciones Judiciales e Inteligencia de la Policía), in a statement made to authorities of the Colombian state and the United Nations:

The paramilitaries were created by the Colombian government itself to do the dirty work, in other words, in order to kill all individuals who, according to the state and police, are guerrillas. But in order to do that, they [the government] had to create illegal groups so that no one would suspect the government of Colombia and its military forces.... Members of the army and the police even patrol side by side with the paramilitaries. (Quoted in Hristov 2009a, 58)

Colombia's civil war continues. A tenuous peace process began in 2002, when newly elected President Álvaro Uribe approved a law enabling official negotiations with any illegal armed group. By July 2004, the government and the largest paramilitary organization in Colombia, the AUC, reached an agreement known as the Acuerdo de Santa Fe de Ralito, which provided for the demobilization of about 50 paramilitary blocs spread over 28 of Colombia's 32 departments (Hristov 2009b, 12). According to Uribe, "this was the beginning of a process toward peace and the restoration of human rights" (ibid.). The Colombian people had good reason to wish for the dismantling of the paramilitaries. Paramilitaries have committed about 80 percent of all human rights violations against the civilian population of Colombia, which has the regions' worst human rights record, and one of the world's largest populations of internal refugees (Amnesty International 2010a). By 2004, the paramilitaries had gained the upper hand in the fight against the guerrillas, and Uribe gave the "green light to Plan Patriota, the second phase of Plan Colombia" (Brito 2009,36).

Colombia's relationship with SOA/WHINSEC further confirms that US military training increases violence and human rights violations and subverts democracy in the region. Over 10,000 Colombian soldiers have trained at the school, with Latin American military officers supposedly learning how to operate professionally within a democratic society. However, Colombia's human rights atrocities have continued to rise as more Colombian soldiers are trained at the US military school. In 2004, over one-third of the soldiers who attended WHINSEC were from Colombia, while Colombia's human rights abuses continued to escalate (WHINSEC 2004a). For the past decade, Colombia has had the worst human rights record in the hemisphere. Nonetheless, the day after President Uribe was reelected in June 2006, the US State Department certified that Colombia was meeting human rights conditions for US military assistance (McFarland Sánchez-Moreno 2006).

When General Bantz Craddock, the head of US SOUTHCOM, addressed graduates of the SOA/WHINSEC's Command and General Staff Course in the summer of 2004, he warned soldiers that "today's complex challenges include transnational terrorism, narcoterror, and radical movements" (Board of Visitors Meeting, WHINSEC 2004a). Most Latin American security experts say that, aside from Colombia, the terrorist threat is overstated and terrorists who threaten US citizens on US soil are "scarcer still" (Isaacson 2005). In March 2006, CIA Director Porter Goss testified before the House Armed Services Committee that the United States should pay greater attention to threats "in our own backyard" (ibid.). He noted that "presidential elections will be held in eight South and Central American countries in 2006" and warned that "destabilization or a backslide away from democratic principles would not be helpful to our interests and would probably be threatening to our security in the long run" (Priest and Pincus 2005). Thus, Colombia, an exceptional stronghold of right-wing conservatism in the region, is the country in which the United States remains the most deeply entrenched militarily.

More bothersome to the United States than Colombia's human rights record is the decade-long challenge to the Washington Consensus posed by Latin America's anti-neoliberal forces. The Colombian government intensified the conflict in March 2008 when its military crossed the southern border into Ecuador and bombed a FARC encampment, killing 25 (Walcott 2008,11). This violation of territorial boundaries set off a diplomatic standoff with Ecuador that continued until November 2010. Despite the easing of tensions and averting of war, this event highlights the growing polarization in South America. The United States heightened its military presence in Colombia, and on October30,2009, US and Colombian officials signed an agreement that gave US armed forces access to seven Colombian military bases for the next decade (Grandin 2010, 1). Within the hemisphere, this deal was hotly debated, since the repercussions transcended the dynamics of US-Colombian relations. In July 2009, the US Air Force made its last flight from its base in Manta, Ecuador. Growing Ecuadoran dissatisfaction with the base and it effects upon the country prompted its closure. In 2006, President Rafael Correa's campaign promised to close the base when its lease expired in 2009. The leasing of seven new bases in Colombia offset the base closure in Ecuador, and the US foothold in South America became firmer. According to Grandin, "the Obama decision to go forward with the bases accelerates a dangerous trend in US hemispheric policy" (ibid.).

A decrease in US military aid to Colombia between 2009 and 2013 had been projected, but the Obama administration continued to justify aid by claiming that enhanced hemispheric security was needed. In 2009, Presidents Obama and Uribe signed the US-Colombia Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA), giving the United States access to the seven bases noted above. On April 15,2012, Presidents Obama and Santos signed the US-Colombia Action Plan on Regional Security as a "response to increasing insecurity generated by transnational organized crime" (US State Department 2012). If there is greater insecurity in Colombia, does this indicate that Plan Colombia has failed, or is the plan being extended via further militarization of the region? Plan Colombia's original conception was as a military strategy to combat the FARC and eradicate coca production intended for the US market. The plan did diminish FARC forces. Yet coca production is still going strong in Colombia, and even greater quantities are being produced in other Andean countries, such as Bolivia and Peru (Crandall 2008).11

Although Plan Colombia failed to eliminate the drug trade or the FARC, US policymakers adopted it as a model for policy in Afghanistan and Iraq (Hylton 2010). In a 2009 op-ed piece that connects the two counterinsurgencies, Rozoff (2012) argues: "CBS News quoted an unnamed Pentagon official stating, 'The more Afghanistan can look like Colombia, the better.'The equation is now being reversed." As Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Martin Dempsey reported, "we're getting ready to send some brigade commanders who have been in Iraq and Afghanistan down here to partner with their Joint Task Force commanders in a leader developmental function. The challenges they face are not unlike the challenges we've faced in Iraq and Afghanistan" (ibid.). In April 2012, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta visited Colombia as part of a three-nation tour to coordinate the American role in the "final solution to cut the FARC in half by 2014" (ibid.). Colombia thus remains the focus of US hemispheric military aid in the region, and the model for counterinsurgency doctrine throughout the world (Hylton 2010).

Militarism and Neoliberalism in Mexico

While the Obama administration intends to reinforce diplomatic relations in response to the open militarization carried out by the George W. Bush government (2001 -2009), this diplomatic agenda is still linked to security and military power. In this sense, despite the change in discourse, the practice remains the same.... As the Colombian case has shown and as is becoming evident in the Mexican one, this leads to authoritarian systems with increasing military and paramilitary power, human rights violations, and increased US interference under the guise of help, cooperation, or the defense of its interests and investments in the region. (Delgado-Ramos and Romano 2011)

Perhaps no state in Latin America reflects the relationship between neoliberalism and militarism better than Mexico. Neoliberalism there has created growing poverty and resistance, and the state has increasingly resorted to militarism in response. Mexico is now one of the top 10 global recipients of US aid. US military training of the Mexican armed forces intensified with the Zapatista rebellion in 1994. It coincides with increasing military and paramilitary violence and human rights abuses, buttressing the imposition of neoliberal policies and subverting democracy in Mexico.

Since the early 1980s, a "neoliberal revolution" has been underway in Mexico, with well-documented effects: "severe cuts in social spending, the gutting of protective legislation, heightened foreign investment and privatization, growing income inequality, and the expansion of crime and violence. Neoliberalism is an attempt to realign and strengthen capitalist imperialism using the tools of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund" (Ochoa 2001,148). On January 1,1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, a group of armed guerrillas calling themselves the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) rose up and occupied government buildings in the town of San Cristóbal de Las Casas in the state of Chiapas. The Zapatistas called upon Mexican workers, the poor, and the labor movement to rise up against neoliberal economies and the violence of poverty, providing a blueprint for a broader Latin American movement, while sending a foreboding message to the power structures in Mexico City and Washington, DC: "This is our response to the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, because this represents a death sentence for all of the indigenous ethnicities in Mexico" (Bums and Charlip 2007,292).

In the Center for Economic and Policy Research's assessment of NAFTA after 20 years, Mexico is 18th in a list of 20 Latin American countries when ranked by real growth of GDP per capita, the most basic economic measure of living standards (Weisbrot et al. 2014). Mexican national statistics show that its poverty rate of 52.3 percent in 2012 is almost identical to the 1994 rate (ibid.). As such, 14.3 million more Mexicans were living below the poverty line in 2012 than in 1994 (ibid.). N AFTA's impact on agricultural employment was severe, causing increased poverty and eliminating many small farmers. This was due especially to policies such as the dumping of US com at 30 percent below the cost of production: "From 1991-2007, there were 4.9 million Mexican family farmers displaced, while seasonal labor in agro-export industries increased by about 3 million. This meant a net loss of 1.9 million jobs" (ibid.).

Although the Zapatistas never threatened to take state power, the Mexican government immediately sent troops and heavily militarized the state of Chiapas. On behalf of Mexico's indigenous and non-indigenous poor, the Zapatistas demanded land, work, housing, nutrition, health, education, liberty, democracy, peace, justice, and dignity. Instead of upholding the February 16,1996, San Andrés Accords between the Zapatistas and the Mexican government, the state responded with military and paramilitary violence. Violence in Chiapas peaked in 1997 as the paramilitaries (with close ties to the Mexican army) committed horrific atrocities, the most famous being the massacre of Actael, in which a pacifist community of 45, mostly women and children, was brutally executed while praying in their local church.12 Since 1994, the state of Chiapas has withstood low-intensity warfare in a global counterinsurgency strategy supported by the United States.

The state of Oaxaca has figured prominently in Mexico's neoliberal resistance and militarized repression. On May 1, 2006, members of Local 22 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE) delivered a list of economic demands to the state government. It included the creation of education infrastructure, new teaching positions, more teaching materials, support for scholarships and school breakfasts, and improved salaries for teachers (González and Baeza 2007, 30). After no response was forthcoming, hundreds of teachers initiated an encampment in Oaxaca, blocked access to Oaxaca's airport, held mega-marches of about 80,000 people, and created the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca, APPO), a coalition of "365 social, political, human rights, non-governmental, environmental, gender, student and union organizations, the indigenous communities, and thousands of independent Oaxacans" (ibid.). APPO's Constituent Assembly, including over 1,000 delegates, adopted the goals of anticapitalism, anti-imperialism, direct democracy, independence from the state, and gender and ethnic equality (ibid., 33).

Between May 2006 and April 2007, thousands of teachers, workers, and citizens of Oaxaca "rebelled against the corrupt and oppressive government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz despite assassinations, disappearances, beastly abuse, and imprisonment.... In retaliation for the events of 2006, federal police repressed hundreds of protestors and arrested dozens of people. They broke into homes without warrants, and raped women" (ibid., 26). On October 27, 2006, teacher Emilio Alonso Fabián and US journalist William Bradley Roland (Brad Will) were assassinated; APPO reported 16 wounded, one disappeared, and three kidnapped teachers (ibid., 32). On October 28, the secretary of government conceded all 17 points on the list of the teachers' demands, and the day after, the federal and state governments initiated even more repression, resulting in three dead, eight wounded, and 50 detained (ibid.). Upon visiting Oaxaca, an International Civil Commission of Observation of Human Rights concluded that "the events that occurred in Oaxaca form part of a juridical, police, and military strategy, acting on a psychosocial and community level, whose goal is to control and intimidate the population in areas where community-based or non-partisan social movements are unfolding" (ibid., 34).

In late November 2006, the administration of President Vicente Fox "sent hundreds of military-trained Federal Preventative Police [Policía Federal Preventiva, PFP] to lay siege on the city" (Magaña 2010, 83). Fox augmented the repressive forces of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz with the power of the national government, unleashing an overwhelming display of state power and repression on Oaxaca's resistance movements:

The brute force used by the PFP was too much for the nonviolent APPO to overcome, no matter how flexible and adaptable. In one week at least 192 people were taken prisoner by the PFP, many of them shipped to a maximum-security prison in the Northern state of Nayarit.... One of the women I interviewed told me about a friend who was among those arrested and shipped to Nayarit. While in police custody, she was tortured and humiliated. She received electric shocks to the nipples and vagina, was photographed naked by police, and was hung from a helicopter where she was told to scream like she did in the marches. (Ibid.)

Between June 14 and December 10, 2006, the violence in Oaxaca resulted in "26 murders, 450 arrests, countless injuries, and almost 30 people 'disappeared.' According to the International Civil Commission for Human Rights Observation's most recent report, the number of politically motivated murders in Oaxaca between the summer of 2006 and April 2008 was 62" (ibid.).13

US military expenditures for the War on Drugs contribute to the violence in Mexico. With the crackdown on drug cartels in Colombia, "the United States has supported Mexico's crackdown on drug cartels with both money and personnel," including $1.6 billion between 2007 and 2010 (Tovrov 2012). In 2008, the Bush administration began to implement a multiyear, $ 1.4 billion foreign aid plan known as the Mérida Initiative, "with the stated purpose of enhancing Mexico's ability to reduce crime, with overwhelming emphasis on the drug trade. This aid package complements other forms of US security aid to its southern neighbor, including millions of dollars in annual military aid from the Department of Defense" (Brewer 2009,9). Most Mérida Initiative funds support military aid:

The detailed spending plan prepared by the US State Department in September 2008 outlines the proposed uses of Mérida funding, including the purchase of airplanes and helicopters for the Mexican military for surveillance, countemarcotics, and counterterrorism operations; the purchase of scanners and armored vehicles; the establishment of law enforcement databases; training for specialized police units combating organized crime; and anticorruption activities in the federal police. (Ibid.)

In 2008, Mexico received nearly $13 million in aid from the Department of Defense (ibid., 13). Critics of the initiative and human rights activists call attention to abuses committed by military forces in Mexico. They particularly fault the deployment of "forces trained for war to perform the work of civilian police" (ibid., 10). Delgado-Ramos and Romano (2011,99) also connect human rights abuses, US military aid, and the drug war in Mexico: "According to Mexico's National Human Rights Commission, complaints against soldiers have increased 500 percent; in 2009 alone, some 1,800 complaints were registered, most of them from the states in which most of the antidrug army contingents are stationed (Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Sinaloa, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Michoacán)."14 Militarization of the Mexican state has increased military and paramilitary violence and human rights abuses against indigenous communities, women, teachers, students, laborrights activists, and other marginalized communities in the name of the War on Drugs and neoliberalism, subverting democracy in Mexico.

Military Coup in Honduras

Honduras represents one of the most egregious examples of militarism in Latin America. Since the end of the Cold War, it is the only Latin American country in which a military coup successfully deposed a democratically elected leader. The 2009 coup demonstrates the extent to which Latin American elites, with the backing of US military training and aid, will use force to support neoliberalism and subvert democracy. Adult Hondurans remember the brutality of the Honduran government during the 1980s, when the military assassinated and tortured suspected opponents. Honduras's infamous paramilitary Battalion 316 was found responsible for the kidnapping, torture, disappearance, and murder of hundreds of people (Center for Justice and Accountability 2009).

On June 28, 2009, democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a coup and whisked away to Costa Rica by the golpista government of Roberto Micheletti, which maintained power through force and unleashed a wave of human rights violations in Honduras for more than 125 days without agreeing to negotiate or cede power to the elected president. One week after the coup, the military fired 160 rounds of live ammunition into a nonviolent crowd, killing a teenager (Goodman 2011). By mid-August, the coup regime had carried out nine politically motivated murders, countless military attacks on peaceful protesters, and ordered the arrest of over 1,300 people (Beachy 2009). Direct links exist between the 2009 military coup and the military government of the 1980s. The golpista government's special security advisor was Billy Joya, a former member of Battalion 316, who was trained in counterinsurgency techniques at the School of the Americas. General Luis Javier Prince Suazo, the head of the Honduran Air Force and SO A graduate, arranged to have Zelaya flown into exile in Costa Rica (Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice 2009). Similar to the 1980s, the military detained hundreds, and protesters and teachers, peasant farmers, students, and journalists disappeared. The elite Honduran police force, COBRA, harassed Hondurans in urban and rural areas. To shut down the press and restrict freedom of expression, major television and radio stations were militarized as part of the coup (Amnesty International 2010b, 4).

On June 28, the Obama administration decried the coup and called for the restoration of democracy in Honduras, but US policymakers responded sluggishly and ambivalently throughout the summer and fall of 2009, reflecting ingrained patterns of US-Honduran relations, especially longstanding ties with the military. US policymakers had begun to distrust President Manuel Zelaya, who inched toward the Left after his election in 2005. Before the coup, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a neoliberal US government aid agency, pumped nearly $17 million in foreign aid to Honduras between April 1 and July 31, 2009 (Conroy 2010). Created by Congress in 2004 with strong bipartisan support, the MCC was to "provide some of the world's poorest countries with large-scale grants to fund country-led solutions for reducing poverty through sustainable economic growth."15 The MCC claims to be committed to helping poor countries reduce poverty, but it only helps "those countries committed to good governance, economic freedom, and investments in their citizens," that is, those with a strict neoliberal free-trade development model. Zelaya had "fallen out of favor with the Honduran business class" in part because he joined the Chavez-led Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), a move ratified by the Honduran Congress in October 2008 (ibid.). The 2009 Honduran coup demonstrates that Latin American leaders who reject the Washington Consensus and neoliberalism and lack the support of their militaries and economic elites can face reprisals in the form of militarism, often backed by the United States:

Just a month before his overthrow, Zelay a-in response to an investigation that charged Goldcorp, another Vancouver-based company, with contaminating Honduras 's Siria Valley-introduced a law that would have required community approval before new mining concessions were granted; it also banned open-pit mines and the use of cyanide and mercury. That legislation died with his ouster. Zelaya also tried to break the dependent relationship whereby the region exports oil to US refineries only to buy back gasoline and diesel at monopolistic prices ; he joined Petrocaribe-the alliance that provides cheap Venezuelan oil to member countries-and signed a competitive contract with Conoco Phillips. This move earned him the ire of Exxon and Chevron, which dominate Central America's fuel market. (Grandin 2010)

In Europe, Latin America, and the United States, human rights organizations called for the United States to cut diplomatic relations and economic aid to Honduras to comply with international laws governing military coups (Section 7008 of the US Foreign Operations Law) (Dangle 2009a). After the June 28 announcement that a coup had occurred, however, the US government "withheld determination" until mid-August. It refused to demand Zelaya's return, because, according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, "we're working with others on behalf of our ultimate objectives" (Dangle 2009b). US policymakers were ambivalent about returning Zelaya to power. The US ambassador to Honduras, Ambassador Hugo Llorens, previously served as President George W. Bush's National Security Advisor on issues pertaining to Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. His resume includes the 2002 Venezuelan coup attempt against Hugo Chávez. As human rights atrocities mounted, international pressure against the Honduran coup gained legitimacy. By August, US officials again admitted that a coup had taken place, but it was too late to save Manuel Zelaya's presidency.

The November 2009 election "was marked by violence and fraud, was boycotted by the EU, the UN, the Carter Center, the OAS, and half of the Honduran voters" (Fasquelle 2011,20). Porfirio Lobo won the election, which has been described as the "progeny of the military coup that deposed President Zelaya on June 28, 2009" (Frank 2012, 11). After the election, heads of state throughout the region refused to recognize Lobo's presidency; the United States "hailed him for restoring democracy and restoring reconciliation" (ibid.). President Obama even invited him to the White House. Upon his inauguration in January 2010, President Lobo declared the crisis over and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton echoed those remarks as ex-President Manuel Zelaya was "allowed" to leave the Brazilian embassy. Since Lobo's inauguration,repression in Honduras has increased. Honduras has the highest homicide rate in the hemisphere, and protesters and human rights advocates have experienced illegal detentions, executions by death squads, intimidation, and torture. In Honduras, a man, woman, or child is killed every 74 minutes (ibid., 14).

Despite the repression, activists in Honduras and throughout the hemisphere have protested the "illegitimate" government of the Lobo administration. On May 28, 2011, through a deal brokered by Colombian President Manuel Santos and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, Manuel Zelaya was allowed to return to Honduras almost two years after he was deposed. This marked the largest demonstration in Honduran history, with an estimated 11 percent of the Honduran population attending (Frank 2011). Upon Zelaya's return, the United States called for the reinstatement of Honduras to the OAS, which took place in June 2011. Only Ecuador dissented due to persistent human rights violations. Some voices in the United States have spoken out against the undemocratic and violent government in Honduras. Ninety-four members of the House of Representatives signed a letter dated March 9,2012, which called for the suspension of police and military aid to Honduras. On March 5, 2012, seven senators signed a letter expressing concerns over the "increasing human rights violations in Honduras" (Frank 2012, 14). Although the US State Department admits that human rights violations exist in Honduras, the US government sees working with the Honduran military as a solution. On March 6,2012, Vice President Biden flew to Honduras and promised to increase military and police funds to $107 million under the Central American Regional Security Initiative. President Obama's proposed budget for 2013 more than doubled police and military funds for Honduras (ibid.). Given the increases in US military funding and the extensive political and social violence, Honduras has become the Colombia of 10 years ago.

Honduras remains strategically important for the US military in the region, serving as the regional hub for US military operations in Central America. Human rights organizations in Honduras such as COFEDAH (Comité de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos en Honduras-Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras) agree that the drug war is "a pretext for a greater military occupation" (ibid., 17). Human rights workers in Honduras and defenders of human rights in the United Nations and throughout the world have called on Honduras to guarantee basic human rights. This is difficult since the United States props up the government, the police, and the military, which are heavily involved in human rights violations, the drug trade, and criminal activity. Delgado-Ramos and Romano (2011, 101) summarize the role of US hegemony in the context of the Honduran coup:

The US Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies... organized a workshop to advise Honduran police and army forces, as well as Congress members and government officials, on the planning of national security strategies.... The seriousness of US interference in internal affairs through this type of "advising" is compounded by the fact that the Honduran government receiving these internal security "suggestions" is the product of a technical coup d'état against a constitutional president.

US military training of the Honduran armed forces has unequivocally increased military violence, reinforced neoliberalism, and subverted democracy in the region.

SOA/WHINSEC: Architect of Violence and Repression

The US Army School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC) is the model for US military training and counterinsurgency in Latin America. SOA/WHINSEC was established in 1946 in Panama as a Cold War mechanism for keeping order and stability in the region and serving as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. In 1984, in compliance with the Panama Canal Treaty, the school was moved to Ft. Benning, Georgia. For over 60 years, the school, under several names, has taught courses to Latin American military officers on counterinsurgency methods, counter-narcotics, command and general staff, human rights training, and democratic consolidation (WHINSEC 2004b).

The US military and policymakers view the school as a way to secure democracy in Latin America and to help professionalize their militaries. Yet it gained notoriety in the hemisphere as a "School of Assassins" and boasts among its graduates men who have committed some of the most horrific atrocities in Latin America.16 In December 2000, the SO A Watch movement, which sought to close the school while investigating past and current atrocities and their links to its graduates, won enough support from Congress and the American public to motivate the US Army to close the Army School of the Americas. Only three weeks later, in January 2001, the army reopened the school in the same building, with the same instructors, under a new name-The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. As the SOA Watch movement would attest, "New Name, Same Shame."

Katherine McCoy's (2005) article on the school 's torture and human rights record directly challenged the US government's argument that US military training leads to the professionalization of Latin American militaries and the democratization of Latin America. She analyzed the course records of nearly 12,000 SOA graduates from six countries (Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, and Panama), between 1960 and 2000, and tracked their human rights records during the 40-year period to determine the impact of SOA training. The more courses an SOA graduate took, McCoy concluded, the more likely the graduate was to commit human rights abuses. Moreover, if the graduate took two or more courses, they were more than three times as likely to commit human rights abuses than soldiers who took one course (ibid., 57). Students who took three courses had a higher rate of abuse and committed abuses sooner after graduation (ibid.). McCoy concluded that "repeated SOA training was associated with increased human rights violations in times of war and peace, under democratic presidents and dictatorial regimes, and both during and after the cold war" (ibid., 61).

The recent coups in Haiti in 1991 and 2004, the Venezuelan coup attempt of 2002, and the Honduran coup of 2009, which was led by an SOA graduate, exemplify the continuation of violence in the region. A legacy of the Cold War, SOAAVHINSEC remains the bulwark of US military training, and thus violence, in the hemisphere. Though not the only US military training school for the region, it is the premiere one and a shining example. Newly elected Latin American leaders are beginning to withdraw troops from the school because of its reputation. Leaders in the United States must likewise cease this perpetuation of violence (funded by US taxpayers) in Latin America.

Conclusion: Moving beyond Militarism

Colombia and Honduras are the most violent and heavily militarized nations in Latin America. Mexico is not far behind. Military solutions have not worked in these countries, and innocent civilians continue to die. Poverty and inequality caused by neoliberalism lead the marginalized communities most affected by neoliberal policies to resist. US military expenditures in Latin America and ongoing military training of its armed forces by entities such as SOAAVHINSEC repress that resistance, increase military and paramilitary violence, reinforce US hegemony, and subvert democracy in the region. In this context, are peace and change possible?

Guatemala is the first Latin American country to place a former president on trial for genocide. President Jose Efraín Rios Montt, a former SOA graduate, whose 14-month rule between 1982 and 1983 resulted in the killing or disappearance of 70,000 people and the displacement of hundreds of thousands, was charged in 2011 with genocide and crimes against humanity and placed under house arrest while awaiting trial (Wirtz 2012). On May 10, 2013, in Guatemala City, a threejudge trial court convicted Rios Montt of crimes against humanity and genocide of more than 1,700 indigenous Ixil Mayans (Castillo 2013). After a six-week trial and testimony of over 90 witnesses, dozens of forensic and other experts, and the presentation of documentary and other evidence, Rios Montt was sentenced to 80 years in prison. Prosecutors presented

a month of chilling testimony from survivors of Army massacres carried out 30 years ago during one of the bloodiest periods of Guatemala's long civil war. Experts in the trial described how the Army had marched into remote hamlets in the Maya Ixil region in search of leftist guerrillas during General Rios Montt's 17-month rule in 1982 and 1983. Soldiers killed all those who could not flee, burning down houses, killing livestock and destroying crops. (Malkin 2013)

The trial court issued a 718-page judgment laying the foundation for the 80-year sentence (Open Society Foundations 2013). Three days later, the Constitutional Court overturned the conviction due to a "procedural irregularity," and now lawyers on both sides believe that the case must be retried in front of new judges (Malkin 2013). Nevertheless, the Open Society Justice Initiative states the importance of this case in addressing military violence in Latin America: "The trial marks the first time a former head of state has been tried for genocide in a domestic court. It is an important milestone in holding political and military leaders accountable for international crimes" (ibid.). The arrest of Augusto Pinochet in 1998 and the conviction of Efraín Rios Montt in 2013 prove that world leaders must concern themselves with what happens when they leave office, as well as how they treat their citizens while in office.

The United States needs a new foreign policy in Latin America based on democracy, development, and the preservation of human rights, not one that defends neoliberal economic policies with arms. Latin American nations will demand no less. Perhaps Rigoberta Menchú, the Guatemalan activist and politician, put it best in 2001 in a letter she penned to President George W. Bush, when she responded to his statement that "all nations in all regions of the world must now make a decision: You are with us or you are with the terrorists" (Menchú 2001). She retorted: "Before you give the cry for war, I would like to invite you to think about a different type of world leadership, one which must convince rather than conquer, in which the human species can show that in the last 1,000 years we have overcome the idea of an eye for an eye."

NOTES see soa

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4/15

Big tobacco is suing Uruguay for their anti-smoking laws. If they win, it will threaten public health laws everywhere and prove one corporation can trump the public good, even when its product kills! But if we launch a giant call and Avaaz hires a world class legal team to carry our voices into the courtroom, the judges won’t be able to turn a blind eye.

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Shopping for cigarettes in Uruguay isn't a pleasant experience. Photos of decaying teeth, premature babies and gruesome hospital scenes wrap around every pack. In fact, the country requires manufacturers to cover at least 80 percent of the packaging with medical warnings and graphic images.

igarette giant Philip Morris Internationalsees this requirement as a violation of a treaty law. So it's suing the country of Uruguay for $25 million.

The lawsuit is based on a 1991 trade agreement between Uruguay and Switzerland, where the company is located. The cigarette manufacturer says Uruguay is violating its promise to respect intellectual property rights.

Studies have found that such gruesome packaging reduces smoking, particularly in pregnant women.

To better understand this case before it goes in front of the World Bank this month, NPR's David Greene spoke with Alexandra Hall, a reporter based in Uruguay's capital city, Montevideo.

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Dana Frank one of top academic experts on Honduras, and has written on women in banana labor unions(includes pesticides). audio interview on wave of child immigrants from Latin America 6/25/14.

coup 5 years ago; judiciary neutralized, cops 70% corrupt, we increase military aid; militarized drug ; gangs infiltrate all levels of gov't; neo-liberal pvtization

http ://www.ic.ucsc.edu/college8core/c8wiki/inde x.php/Latin_America

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http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Public_Relations/ToxicSludge.html