A Chill Wind From the North: the US Returns to Latin America

[polly7]

By Vijay Prashad
Source: The Hindu
April 15, 2016

Old familiar dangers lurk in the corners of Latin America. More than a decade of hope — enshrined in the experiments in Venezuela — now seems extinguished. The “pink tide” of electoral victories from Venezuela to Bolivia and upwards to Nicaragua appears to have receded. The Old Right has rejected the stentorian tones of the military for the mellifluous language of anti-corruption. Venezuela’s Bolivarians — the current face of its Left — lost the parliamentary elections, while Bolivia’s Evo Morales failed to amend the constitution to give him a fourth presidential term. Argentina’s electorate rejected the Peronist Left in favour of the Banker’s Right, while Brazil’s government of Dilma Rousseff suffers from the outright hostility of the media conglomerates and the conservative establishment.

Bleakness does not define the continent. In Peru, Verónika Mendoza of the Broad Front did credibly in the first round of the presidential contest, while in Colombia the Revolutionary Armed Forces prepare to sign a peace agreement and bring their politics to the ballot box. Institutions set up during the high point of the “pink tide”, such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (a regional trade platform), teleSUR (a regional media network), as well as various energy alliances (such as Petrocaribe and Petrosur), remain alive and reasonably well. New political currents and these institutional alignments suggest that the “pink tide” is not going to be easy to dismiss. It has established itself in the imagination of the people of Latin America and through the institutions set up over a decade ago.

Iraq distracts America

When Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Mr. Morales of Bolivia set in motion the Bolivarian alliance in 2004, the United States had its eyes on Iraq. The Global War on Terror, which now falsely included Iraq as a battlefield, absorbed the administration of President George W. Bush. An attempted coup against Chavez’s government in 2002 had failed as a result of the popular outpouring of support for the Venezuelan government. Latin America’s Left took advantage of this opening — as well as high commodity prices and demand from China — to build an alternative platform, which they called Bolivarianism. Named after Simón Bolívar, the liberator of Latin America from Spanish rule, Bolivarianism produced institutions for regional development. Trade within the region denominated in local currencies allowed the regional states to produce a new ethos.

The U.S., which sees Latin America as its backyard, continued to seek opportunities to undermine Bolivarianism. In 2006, U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield developed a strategy for “dividing chavismo” (the followers of Chavez) and “isolating Chavez internationally”. Plots and schemes appear in the U.S. State Department cables, with the ambassadors offering their own plans to destabilise governments loyal to the Bolivarian process. Nothing much came of it in the Bush years. South America’s economy enjoyed China’s voracious appetite for high-priced commodities whose profits allowed the countries to build up social welfare schemes to improve the livelihood of their populations.

Obama goes South:

Old elites of Latin America maintained their authority throughout the period of the Leftist ascendancy. They are closely linked to the military and to U.S. embassies. U.S. State Department cables — released by WikiLeaks — provide a window into the intrigue inside the embassies. In Bolivia, a U.S. diplomat met with opposition strategist Javier Flores and opposition leader Branko Marinkovic, both of whom talked about blowing up gas lines and engineering violence to destabilise the government of Mr. Morales. To help the Right-wing opposition in Nicaragua, the U.S. embassy hoped to encourage “funds to flow in the right direction”. These conspiracies built up the confidence of the elites and their associates. They waited to strike.

Full article: https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/a-chill-wind-from-the-north-the-us-returns-to-latin-america/

[warrprayer]

1. Now that the new Pope

has shifted the Catholic church away from the right wing leaning teachings of Ratzinger and JP2, the Assembly of God in South America is filling that void, probably with some help from black money from the C.I.A., just as they funneled money to Catholic anti left canidates all the way back in the days of Kennedy.

"Campaigning from the pulpit is forbidden by Brazilian election law, but outside the church doors preachers are prominently taking sides in the media.

Arguably the most outspoken in Brazil is Malafaia, the multimillionaire head of the Assembly of God, who has declared himself “public enemy No 1 of the gay movement in Brazil”. Although formerly a backer of Workers party (PT) president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Malafaia says he will support anyone who can topple the ruling party.

“It is very important they lose this election. They want total control of the government, the media, they’re showing with their ideology, communist ideology, they want Brazil to turn into Venezuela. They have to lose this election,” Malafaia said.

Several other evangelical churches are also backing Silva. The Fountain of Life apostolic church, which claims 2 million followers, supported Rousseff in the last election, but says it has been disappointed by the president so now backs Silva.

“I am supporting Marina because she’s truly a Christian, she is in line with our beliefs,” the head of the church, Apóstolo César, said"

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/01/brazil-evangelicals-politics-presidential-election

[Judi Lynn]

8. So glad you posted this information.This is something which will NOT be revealed by corporate "news"

organizations in our country, not ever. They serve the same master.

We've heard of joint CIA and "religious" connections all over the world. It is vital to know everything possible about them.

Thank you.

What spy agency would Jesus have worked with?

[warrprayer]

10. found the answer

http://shanemacgowan.com/wp-content/themes/shane_theme/scripts/timthumb.php?src=&w=323&h=323&a=r&q=75

[Judi Lynn]

12. Yes! That's the idea. Ya-hooooo.

[warrprayer]

2. from Mother Jones...

"Since World War II, the CIA has:

subsidized a Catholic lay organization that served as the political slugging arm of the pope and the Vatican throughout the Cold War;
penetrated the American section of one of the wealthiest and most powerful Vatican orders;
passed money to a large number of priests and bishops -- some of whom became witting agents in CIA covert operations;
employed undercover operatives to lobby members of the Curia (the Vatican government) and spy on liberal churchmen on the pope's staff who challenged the political assumptions of the United States;
prepared intelligence briefings that accurately pre-dicted the rise of liberation theology; and
collaborated with right-wing Catholic groups to coun-ter the actions of progressive clerics in Latin America."

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1983/07/their-will-be-done

[polly7]

3. Thanks so much for all of this, warrprayer. Very good reading. nt.

[warrprayer]

4. If you want to know what our real foreign policy is...

I suggest this book.
Based on the memoirs in the vault of James Jesus Angleton, the Father of true paranoia.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-History-Joseph-Trento/dp/B002GJU3O6

[polly7]

5. That looks like an excellent book, and thank you again. I'm going to

look into that. Depressing stuff though - how many people have been harmed so badly with these operations, it kind of boggles the mind.

[warrprayer]

6. James Jesus Angleton

literally drank himself to death.




"A visit to his second-floor office was said to be unforgettable. You would find the cadaverous spy master sitting behind a mountain of documents in his darkened office, the blinds tightly drawn, chain-smoking Virginia Slims, hunched over a file, his pallor ghostly, hinting in a low whisper of enormous, frightful conspiracies of which only he had an inkling.

Insomniac, private and eventually alcoholic, often estranged from his wife and children, he was also brilliant, a scholar of poetic sensibility, a friend of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Graced with a gentle temperament and charm, he was a man who inspired fierce loyalty and devotion among his staff and friends. During wartime he achieved renown for his work in counterintelligence in the Office of Strategic Services (the predecessor of the C.I.A.) in London and then Italy, and shortly after his return he was named the first head of the counterintelligence staff for the newborn C.I.A."

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/30/books/the-life-and-strange-career-of-a-mole-hunter.html?pagewanted=all

[MisterP]

7. Honduras allowed this wave as much as any natural or sabotaged economic or political

shifts: the Latin American right wing has been continentwide since the Condor and Charly operations, and while there's plenty of national xenophobia and local factors at play, Clinton and Obama's greenlighting of Zelaya's ouster strengthened the antidemocratic RW to unprecedented proportions: now it had much more resources to build its "constituency" with: one Chamber of Commerce had stepped from "shadow government" to "government" and faxed the others the go-ahead, producing attempts in Ecuador and Colombia and successes in Paraguay, Argentina, Venezuela, and now Brazil

of course if there's one thing the rising forces hate more than the left it's the other groups fighting the left: they haven't properly governed for decades, experienced only in flying off with the country's money, buying branches of the police, getting kidnapped by RW paramilitaries that blame Moscow, blaming Moscow, and machine-gunning each other's lawyers: they only unite against presidents expanding the franchise beyond the political class's turno or when everyone rebels at once and they panickedly hope the army shoots the commoners rather than the elites when they call on them

[warrprayer]

11. Bravo

excellent post, glad I made it back here to see the light of truth.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Polly7, what a tremendous article. The guy is a true journalist in a world of imposters.

I hadn't heard one syllable about this, from his article, until seeing your thread:

Dangerous violence against leaders at the local level became commonplace. In Venezuela, in one week of last month, three leaders were shot in cold blood — Mayor Marco Tulio Carrillo of La Ceiba, Deputy César Vera of Tachira Legislative Council and Fritz St. Louis of the Great Patriotic Pole party. Next door, in Brazil, a week later, two activists of the Rural Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) — Leomar Bhorbak and Vilmar Bordim — were killed in an ambush, while the president of the Mogeiro branch of the Workers’ Party, Ivanildo Francisco Da Silva, was killed in his home. These are names that join those on a long roster of Left-wing local activists who are being killed in sequence. Intimidation of activists is the goal.

No wonder, then, that veteran Leftist leader and National Senator Lucía Topolansky of Uruguay’s Broad Front warns of “a destablising operation” underway in Latin America. “Our countries have lived through very dark years of dictatorship, followed by the neo-liberal wave which also hurt people a lot,” she says. Senator Topolansky notes, “Now that democratic processes are beginning to consolidate, a destabilising wave appears.” Left leaders and activists from Mexico to Chile share this sentiment. They feel the chill wind from the North conjoined with the ambitions of their old elites.

We are unfortunately missing a DU'er who worked for decades for an international wire service in Latin America, who has died. He knew a lot about Lucia Topolansky, whom he mentioned the moment her husband was elected in Uruguay. We hadn't even heard of her, yet.

He could have steered us toward the light in some important areas during these strange times.

Your article is a needed truth injection. All of these leftist leaders murdered in two countries within a two-week period. That should NOT be ignored, yet our own media completely blocked that news.

Thank you for saving us from our ignorance on this important matter.