Home > Diogenes and His Lamp: George W. Bush’s Latin American Odyssey
Diogenes and His Lamp: George W. Bush’s Latin American Odyssey
by Open-Publishing - Wednesday 28 March 20071 comment
Governments USA South/Latin America
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column;mso-element-left:right;mso-element-top:middle;mso-height-rule:exactly'>Bush
listens to questions from the press under a portrait of Simón Bolívar at the
presidential palace in
(Photo: Mandel Ngan / AFP-Getty Images)
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, besides being
Homer’s second epic poem—retelling the wanderings and adventures of the cunning
king of Ithaca, Odysseus, a leader of the Greeks, after the fall of Troy—the
word" odyssey" has taken on the generic meaning of "an extended
adventurous wandering," and it is in this sense that this essay seeks to
examine President George W. Bush’s tour of Latin America that took place from
March 8 through March 14, and encompassed stops in Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia,
Guatemala, and Mexico.
The mainstream media played up the event as an attempt by the president of
the United States to improve relations with a region that his administration
had neglected following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and despite
promises early on in his administration that he intended to be an amigo
to Latin Americans, a better neighbor, and which, no doubt, played well with
his conservative Hispanic supporters in the United States, to which he owed his
win in 2000.
The mainstream media in the United States, and, for that matter, much of
Europe, as well, portrayed Bush’s Latin American trip as an attempt by his
administration to counter the sinister President Hugo Chávez’s growing aegis in
the region—his meddling in the affairs of the countries of the region,
his dalliance with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his cavorting
with Cuba’s (now ailing) Fidel Castro. (I’m just going by what I heard on NPR
(National Public Radio), what I read by the New York Times,
the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Der Spiegel,
etc.) That is how, as if by a tacit entente, the mainstream media traditionally
report on these matters. The
States
the rest of the world’s countries just orbit around it, much as the planets
revolved around the earth not too long ago.
Absent an examination of what came before, what is going on at present, and
what may reasonably follow, the mainstream press always favors the
immediate—the now. News happens, vacuum packed and hermetically
sealed—like bricks of coffee at the supermarket, or medicine vials. And in
Juliet Schorr’s overworked
States
time for reflection. Many are just too harried to tarry with trifles such as contextualization
any longer than a sound bite, history any deeper than a high-school
textbook, or information anymore useful than to give one the instant
and ego-boosting gratification that one is informed—however niggardly.
Upon closer inspection, the clichés and commonplaces make
themselves readily apparent, and a disturbing, other reality emerges that, in
the words of Mark Twain, "taffy is being distributed."
Contextual Factors
Here is how other media in
and around the world reported Bush’s Latin American wanderings and adventures.
Like Bill O’Reilly likes to say on Fox, "You decide."
While the mainstream media in the United States and Europe were reporting
that Chávez had planned his own tour of the region to counter Bush’s tour, it
turns out that, in fact, according to <a
href="http://www.aporrea.org/venezuelaexterior/a31742.html"
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">Ivana Cardinale reporting for
Venezuela’s left-wing Internet portal Aporrea.org, Venezuela’s state television
broadcast, and you could actually see spectators at the Ferro Carril Oeste
Football Club stadium holding aloft banners that read "Act for the Union
of Latin America" and "Welcome to President Chávez," even though
you wouldn’t know that, that’s what it was if you relied on the rest of
Venezuela’s television stations, all privately owned, and inimical to Chávez.
All the other channels referred to it as "marches in repudiation of
President Bush’s visit." They may have turned into that, but they weren’t
from their inception. In other words, to borrow a phrase from mathematics, in
this case the order of the factors does alter the product—that is, the
perception of what has actually happened and what caused it to happen.
The View From <st1:place
w:st="on">Buenos Aires
March 8, two days before Bush had gone to Uruguay to try to negotiate the
framework for a bilateral free trade agreement with President Tabaré Vázquez,
and Chávez was in Argentina addressing the mass rally in Buenos Aires, it was
International Women’s Day—a day that brings out thousands, especially the
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, the heroic mothers of the disappeared,
who in defiance of the military, and later governments all too eager to pardon
human rights abusers would parade in mournful silence in front of the Casa
Rosada presidential palace, carrying aloft poster-sized photos of their loved
ones.
President Néstor Kirchner was the first to hear them.
Early on in his administration, he set out to undo the damage of the
previous administrations’ pardon laws—first by appointing new judges to
Argentina’s Supreme Court, firing those who had promulgated the pardon laws,
then by repealing the laws and prosecuting those who had committed crimes
against humanity under Argentina’s ruthless military dictatorship—a process
that is ongoing, represents the maturation of Argentine democracy, and gets
attention conspicuous for its absence in the papers of record in the United
States and much of Europe.
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">Roger Burbach, director of
the Center for the Study of the Americas based in Berkeley, California, reported
in the Illinois-based Internet portal Venezuelanalysis.com that even though
Kirchner did not take part in the events of the March 8 in Buenos Aires,
Chávez’s trip to Argentina had come on the heels of a series of commercial and
economic accords that Kirchner had just signed with Chávez when Kirchner
visited Caracas earlier this year. Foremost among them was the founding of the
Bank of the South, which is seen as an alternative to American-dominated
institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank or the International
Monetary Fund. Here again, the order of the factors does alter the
product: Chávez’s trip to
seen in this light, is a logical consequence of the signing of the accords
between the two countries, and Kirchner’s prior visit to
w:st="on">Caracas
Nowhere in the mainstream media had it been mentioned that Chávez was in <st1:country-region
w:st="on">
the invitation of both Kirchner and the leader of the Mothers of the Plaza de
Mayo, Hebe de Bonafini.
According to Aporrea.org, Kirchner was very <a
href="http://www.aporrea.org/venezuelaexterior/n91661.html"
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">grateful to <st1:country-region
w:st="on">
having helped that country weather its economic meltdown in 2001, as well as
for their countries’ current mutual support.
"We, during the most difficult moments that Argentina underwent,
[remember] that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela was present and is ever
present collaborating and aiding, not just a president—a president is a moment
in time, history that passes—[but also] a country that is permanent, definitely
helping [us] to consolidate an Argentina that possesses absolute
potential," Kirchner said.
"For us it is a profound honor that our friend, the president of <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Venezuela, and our businessmen invest and
transfer technology and help bring about a plural economy in <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Venezuela, as the distinct agreements we enter
into with
helping to make viable the economic and structural process <st1:country-region
w:st="on">
undergoing," Kirchner concluded.
Argentine public debt bonds worth billions of dollars in 2005, steeply reducing
class=GramE>theI.M.F., which helped
w:st="on">Argentina
schedule. In January 2006, Kirchner announced the liquidation of all the
remaining $9.81 billion debt to theI.M.F., along with
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s similar decision. This move was
seen as a means to end the I.M.F.’s control over
and
economies.
"Shortly afterward," according to the
Aires
Hinde Pomeraniec, "the I.M.F. closed its offices at the Central Bank, laid
off its personnel and now keeps a skeleton crew at another building in <st1:City
w:st="on">
[Quoted from an e-mail to the author of this analysis, in response to the
question whether it was true the I.M.F. no longer had a branch in <st1:City
w:st="on">
Again, and it bears repeating, none of this was evident from coverage at
NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and so on. No.
What came first was Chávez trying to pre-empt Bush’s Latin American tour—not
anything that happened between Argentina and Venezuela dating back, to be
economical, to no farther than 2006.
Nowhere in the mainstream press in the United States or Europe is any
mention ever made of the burgeoning South American Common Market—<a
href="http://www.mercosur.int/msweb/principal/contenido.asp"
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">MERCOSUR—comprised of
founding members Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, plus
Venezuela, whose official incorporation into the group as a full member last
year gave it even more standing in Latin America as a rival trade block to the
United States’ so-far thwarted Free Trade Area of the Americas.
The omission is telling because what with the rise of popularly-elected,
progressive governments bent on making a dent on the region’s grinding poverty,
illiteracy, mortality, woeful human rights situation, disease, violence, and a
host of other formidable scourges, it will only get bigger—with Bolivia, for
instance, set to join next year, Nicaragua, under the recently-elected Daniel
Ortega, Ecuador, with its newly-elected, progressive leader Rafael Correa, and
… even Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
That was why Castro, before his illness, had traveled last year to Córdoba
at the 30th Summit of MERCOSUR, where Venezuela was welcomed into the group,
where Cuba and MERCOSUR signed bilateral trade accords, and where Chávez and
Castro were greeted like rock stars by thousands of Argentineans.
The signing of a bilateral free trade agreement between Uruguay and the
United States—which, incidentally, has not happened yet, despite Bush’s
visit—must not be seen as a successful wedge driven between MERCOSUR’s weaker
members and its more robust ones, such as Brazil, Venezuela, and Argentina; nor
should the signing of an ethanol agreement between the United States and Brazil
lead anyone to believe a new Washington-Brasília axis is being born.
Brazil
Some days before his trip, Spain’s centrist LatinReporters.com Internet news
portal,
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">reported, "Tom Shannon,
assistant secretary for western hemisphere affairs, and Brazil’s ambassador to
the White House, Antonio Patriota, the week before, had announced the creation
of an International Forum on Biofuels including the United States, Brazil,
China, India, South Africa, and the European Union. At first, the forum would
be a place to exchange information and experiences. It will pour over the
creation of international standards for the utilization of biofuels as a
partial oil substitute."
"The planetary scope of this initiative," continues the dispatch
from LatinReporters.com, "bars its being viewed as explicitly
geared to the detriment of President Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, the world’s 5th
largest exporter of crude and an important purveyor of crude to the U.S.—even
though that would probably be one of its byproducts."
At a joint press conference the morning after Chávez’s arrival in <st1:City
w:st="on">Buenos Aires on Thursday, reported in <st1:country-region
w:st="on">
leftist daily <a
href="http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-81529-2007-03-10.html"
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">Página 12 , the
Venezuelan president was asked what he thought of Bush’s Latin American tour.
"Nothing [about it] is innocent. It’s a plot. They are trying to prevent
the birth of a reinvigorated South American Common Market [MERCOSUR],"
Chávez commented.
Asked about the possibility of a biofuels agreement between the United
States and Brazil, Chávez replied, "To sow so much corn, sugar cane, and
soy, not for the consumption of animals and humans, but to sustain the American
way of life [sic] would be madness!" he warned. "Bush said that by
2017 they’re going to produce the amount of ethanol required to replace nearly
20 percent of the consumption of gasoline. That sounds like it’s something very
positive. It even sounds environmentalist—green, non-polluting fuels. But let’s
take another look: In order to produce a million barrels of ethanol, 20 million
hectares [50 million acres] of corn have to be sown. We’d be sowing a lot of
corn, a lot of sugar cane, and a lot of soy, but not to feed animals or humans,
but vehicles to maintain the American way of life [sic]. This planet cannot
withstand that."
Elsewhere, commentators pointed out that it would represent a loss of food
sovereignty for the poorer countries, as these monocultures would scale back
local food production and divert it toward exports.
About Bush’s remarks on Latin America’s grinding poverty, Chávez shot back,
"Bush is only now realizing there is poverty in
America
w:st="on">
offers up a great plan: $75 million and ship to serve 80,000 patients and carry
out 1,500 medical operations. Bush speaks of 75 million as though it were a
gigantic figure when just between Havana and Caracas, and in little more than a
year and a half, we have carried out already 400,000 medical operations through
<a
href="http://www.olagi.org.ve/default.asp?caso=11&idrev=21&idsec=216&idart=638"
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">Misión Milagros [a program
comprised of 30,000 Cuban health-sector workers in 71 countries, which has
restored or improved the sight of 450,000 people in Latin America and the
Caribbean, through free surgery]. And between
and
we issued the Bond of the South and secured $1.5 billion for development
projects. We should figure out what percentage of the $500 billion the <st1:country-region
w:st="on">
weapons, in invading countries, or maintaining 20 or 25 nuclear aircraft
carriers around the world is represented by those $75 million [a telling 0.015
percent, or one and a half one hundredth of a percent]."
"They have the world militarily occupied. Or what do those 75 million
represent out of the millions we have paid in foreign debt servicing for the
last 20 years. The debt doesn’t decrease, but remains there. <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Argentina and
w:st="on">Venezuela
ourselves from that debt to the I.M.F.. We’ll soon not
need it; we could even make them a loan (laughter). Now the Fund is in
crisis, they’re laying-off people … They should apply to themselves their own
shock treatment," he concluded, alluding to the austerity measures the
I.M.F. imposed on the countries of the region in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
When reporters sought his opinion on other statements made by President
Bush, Chávez had this to say: "Bush said we must complete the revolution
Washington and Bolívar started. Did you notice how manipulative he is? He
compares [George]
to [Simón] Bolívar.
was born poor and died rich. Bolívar was born rich and died poor. <st1:State
w:st="on">
of an independence process in support of a
slave-owning elite. When he died, he had property and slaves. Bolívar, in
contrast, freed the thousands of slaves he inherited and enlisted them in the
fight for independence under the banner of liberty, equality, and fraternity
[slogan of the French Revolution].
is the symbol of capitalism [he is on the American dollar]. Bolívar is
a precursor of socialism. Bush didn’t say that because it occurred to him. He
doesn’t speak for himself, but has advisors that tell him what to say. That he
said we must finish the revolutions
and Bolívar started is suspect, and that he should say this now, when we have
just detained a group of persons suspected of planning yet another political
assassination in
That is most suspect." [Chávez was alluding to
the recently foiled plot to assassinate him.]
Chávez would later attend the March 9 rally at
w:st="on">Buenos Aires
Football Club stadium, where he spoke for two hours and rebutted Bush’s
statements point by point, applauded by a crowd of 30,000.
He said Bush was a political corpse that no longer even smelled of sulfur,
as he’d said at the United Nations last September, but now smelled like the
bodies of the slain American soldiers in
soldiers who, he reminded spectators, if wounded, languish unattended in
military hospitals in the
States
Chávez said it was not necessary at all for Kirchner and himself to attempt
to sabotage Bush’s visit, since that little gentleman of the north does so well
himself. He repeated what he had said at the press conference the day before,
"What, just now Bush has figured out there’s poverty in
America
w:st="on">
The climax was when he asked the crowd in toward which direction was the
River Plate that lies between Argentina and Uruguay, where Bush was being
received by Vázquez, and bellowed "<a
href="http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/12/1425228"
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">Gringo, go home!,"
followed by the crowd who repeated him.
As reported in Buenos Aires’ Clarín on <a
href="http://www.clarin.com/diario/2007/03/09/elmundo/i-02215.htm"
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">March 9, "The day before
[Bush’s arrival], Brazil’s President Lula was staking out his territory,
strongly attacking United States and European protectionism in a speech some
few hours before Bush’s arrival."
"During that speech, President Lula qualified as ’fatal’ the effects
brought about by U.S. protectionist policies, and called on the advanced
nations, among them those comprising the European Union as well, to put an end
to agricultural subsidies."
"Lula underlined that ’if there are no agreements to give the planet’s
poor countries a chance at development, we will not very easily be able to do
battle against poverty, and still less terrorism.’"
Tumultuous protests rocked São Paulo, Brazil’s main artery, Paulista Avenue,
two days before Bush’s arrival, where a crowd of an estimated 40,000
protesters, representatives of Brazil’s powerful union, the United Workers’
Central, the governing Workers’ Party, the Landless Movement, the Communist
Party of Brazil, trade unionists, workers, retired people, housewives, the
handicapped, public school students, and others inundated the downtown,
carrying enormous dolls representing "Bushitler," posters with
swastikas, photos of Bush with a Hitler moustache, and burning an American flag
with skulls for the stars and oil company logos forming the stripes, among
other objects, chanting "Yankee, go home," "Genocidal
maniac," "Assassin," "Butcher of Iraqis," "You
are not welcome," and "Get out, world’s No. 1 terrorist!" among
other chants. The protesters gathered around three in the afternoon on March 8
at
and moved toward the
a mile away. The Paulistanos (inhabitants of the city of
w:st="on">São Paulo
Palestinian flags, Communist Party of Brazil flags, the 8th of October
Revolutionary Movement flags, and Landless Movement flags, among others.
According to Leonardo Wexell Severo, writing in the Internet portal of the <a
href="http://www.cut.org.br/" onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">United
Workers’ Central, police shock troops tried to tarnish the event’s shine by
firing rubber bullets and tear gas bombs into the crowd that included the disabled
and the elderly. There were reports of dozens of people hurt, even though the
crowd was able to keep the police at bay.
At the end of the event at the
Paulo
of the Arts, after the marchers had stopped the military police, Denise Motta
Dau, secretary of the United Workers’ Central, said, "Our voices will be
heard even louder than the police’s bombs or Bush’s canons." She denounced
the American government’s policies that represent "a step back in the
women’s struggle, whether within the U.S. itself, where it has reduced funding
for social programs and promotes the dismantling of the sexual and reproductive
rights of women, or in Africa, where it has curtailed assistance to those
engaged in the fight against AIDS." She continued, reminding the crowd,
"This International Women’s Day, we are celebrating the triumphs we’ve
achieved in Brazil, such as Maria da Penha’s Law that fights violence against
women."
According to Nalu Farias, a participant in the World Women’s March,
"Our struggle is against war and militarization, uniting and mobilizing
the entire planet to defeat neoliberalism, the hypocrisy of the criminalization
of abortion and its capitalist, male chauvinist, and racist views."
Lúcia Stumpf of the National Students’ Union thought that the demonstrations
in
"delivering a resounding NO to Bush’s belligerent policies that trade
blood for oil in
and violates the sovereignty of their people."
"Let him know, in no uncertain terms, that he is not welcome in <st1:country-region
w:st="on">
he’s the world’s No. 1 terrorist, the enemy of mankind," she said.
The next day, there was another huge protest by the Monument to the
Bandeirantes (Standard Bearers)—the Brazilian pioneers of the 18th century that
explored the country’s interior, and enlarged Brazil to the size it is today—in
Ibirapuera Park.
Roger Burbach also wrote that in the days that led up to Bush’s Latin
American tour,
announced it would not sign a bilateral free trade agreement with <st1:State
w:st="on">
the process of being negotiated.
w:st="on">
set up a special commission that would see the implementation of 15 bilateral
economic accords, especially in the areas of energy, agriculture, education,
and health.
Burbach also pointed out, "A special initiative aimed at alleviating
hunger will receive $54 million and $21 million will go to education and
building schools. Investments are also being planned to modernize <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Nicaragua’s electric plants, and to refurbish <st1:country-region
w:st="on">
main international airport, Puerto Cabezas."
A Cautious Uruguay
According to a
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">report on March 10 in
Vermelho.org, Internet news portal of the Communist Party of Brazil—and indeed,
Brazil does have a communist party with some representatives in that country’s
legislature—"last month, Uruguay and the U.S. launched a cornerstone trade
and investment accord, a first step in a possible [italics mine]
bilateral free trade accord."
"The possibility [of the signing of a bilateral free trade accord
between Uruguay and the United States]," the dispatch in Vermelho.org
continues, "gives rise to different opinions within the Uruguayan
government and sparks the ire of other members of MERCOSUR, such as Brazil and
Argentina. MERCOSUR forbids the signing of bilateral [trade] accords with
countries outside of that trading bloc." Translation: <st1:country-region
w:st="on">
enticed by the meager incentives and proffers the cornerstone trade and
investment agreement out of politeness.
Professor Pedro Brieger is a sociologist with the International Relations
Institute at the National University of La Plata in
w:st="on">Buenos Aires
journalist and the editor of the
Aires
page.
They both host Argentine public television’s very lively and informative
Saturday roundup of international news—<a
href="http://www.canal7.com.ar/canal7/modulos/ficha_programas/ficha.php?id=67"
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">Visión 7 Internacional—on
broadcast over
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">Telesur and reaches millions
throughout
During its March 10
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">broadcast, they reminded
viewers that Uruguay’s Vázquez has never shied away from proclaiming he is an
anti-imperialist—neither recently, on the occasion of Bush’s visit, nor as far
back as 10 years ago, on the occasion of former President George H. W. Bush
visit to Uruguay, when he was mayor of Montevideo, and before he himself was
elected president.
The hosts of Visión 7 Internacional also pointed out divergences
within Uruguay’s governing Frente Amplio or Broad Front party that would halt
any consideration on the president’s part of signing a bilateral trade accord
with the United States, such as the problem of the berries (Washington refuses
to lift tariffs on their export to the United States from Uruguay), and voluble
opposition of members of the Broad Front like senator and current minister of
social development in the government of President Vázquez, Marina Arismendi,
and also the secretary general since 1998 of the Communist Party of Uruguay,
one of the parties comprising the ruling Broad Front, who, on the heels of
Bush’s visit publicly called him "an execrable assassin."
Pedro Brieger also wondered aloud why an editorial in the New York Times,
while correctly pointing out that Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress had come
about as a response by the United States to the triumph of the Cuban Revolution
in 1959, would nevertheless claim that the years of the Alliance for Progress
were some of the best in the United States’ relations with Latin America, when in
fact the Alliance for Progress in the 1960’s and 1970’s was behind a great
many military putsches in Latin America, and when, in a historical paradox, the
president of the United States is visiting a Uruguay where precisely <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupamaros"
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">Tupamaro guerrillas had
kidnapped and executed a functionary of the Alliance for Progress in 1970, Dan
Mitrione, who had, among other things, taught the military in Uruguay and
Brazil in perfecting themselves in the arts of torture.
"There’s a very well-known film by [Greek director] Costa-Gavras, State
of Siege, [loosely based on Mitrione’s kidnapping]. So it’s very strange
the view from the New York Times or President Bush himself with
respect to their country’s own history of relations
with
There was much opposition to Bush’s visit to
w:st="on">Uruguay
México’s left-wing daily La Jornada, and Argentina’s daily Clarín,
among others, it is estimated that more than 25,000 people took to the streets
of Montevideo, chanting "Bush go home," "Public enemy No.
1," "No to imperialism!" and sporting T-shirts emblazoned with
"Bushitler." Protesters also sent a message to Vázquez not to sign
any trade agreement with the
States
for throwing rocks at the police and breaking store windows along 18th of July
Avenue, downtown
main drag.
Near Colonia, 200 kilometers from
more than 200 militants from radical unions and the far left participated in a
march, but were halted by the police scarcely 5 kilometers from Vázquez’s
Anchorena retreat, where Bush was received on Saturday, March 10, by his host.
Colombia
The Guardian of
Hilton reported on <a
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2028970,00.html"
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">March 8 that on the eve of
Bush’s visit to Latin America, Bush’s best friend in the region, <st1:country-region
w:st="on">
President Álvaro Uribe, was becoming his biggest embarrassment.
"Uribe," Hilton wrote, "is mired in corruption, violence, and
drugs—the source of 90 percent of the cocaine in the
w:st="on">U.S.
government receive death threats and drug barons and death squad leaders win
amnesty."
Colombia is also the largest recipient of American military aid—ostensibly
for help in the war on drug trafficking, but in reality to support the drug
traffickers who are the right-wing, paramilitary death squads, against the
insurgent leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
"The paramilitary forces," Hilton reported, "were formed in
the 1980’s to fight the leftist guerrillas. They soon became as notorious for
massacres … [and narcotics trafficking]; they robbed
w:st="on">Colombia
acres of land, creating 3 million internally displaced victims. Since their
rise in Antioquia, the province where Uribe was governor, the paramilitary have
been suspected of collaboration with state security forces. The president
denies that they enjoyed political protection and claims amnesty is open to
all."
"But now," continued Hilton, "stimulated by the determination
of
Supreme Court to investigate the country’s dark underbelly, evidence of
collaboration between paramilitary death squads and the Administrative Security
Department (D.A.S.), the president’s intelligence service, has seen key members
of Uribe’s political apparatus resign, disgraced, or placed under arrest. An
emboldened Colombian press is now demanding to know what the president
knew."
"Uribe’s troubles," the report in the Guardian
elaborated, "began last year when a computer was seized from a
paramilitary leader known as ’Jorge 40.’ On it were the names of politicians
who apparently collaborated with Jorge 40 to intimidate voters, seize land, and
kidnap or kill trade unionists and political rivals. Jorge 40 is the nom de
guerre of Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, leader of the Northern Bloc of the United
Self-Defense forces of Colombia (A.U.C.), a paramilitary umbrella group set up
in 1997 and categorized by the
as a terrorist organization. Tovar controlled drug trafficking in the eastern
half of
w:st="on">Caribbean coast. Since then, eight pro-Uribe congressmen
have been arrested and the foreign minister has been forced to resign."
In Colombia
According to Hilton’s report in the Guardian, "The most
dangerous scandal for Uribe comes from the arrest of Jorge Noguera, his former
campaign manager and, from 2002 to 2005, head of the Administrative Security
Department. Former colleagues have told investigators of Noguera’s close
collaboration with Jorge 40—which included lending him Uribe’s personal armored
vehicle—and with other paramilitary leaders. The accusations include an
assassination plot against
President Chávez, the murder of political opponents, electoral fraud, and
doctoring police and judicial records to erase paramilitary cases. Noguera
worked directly with Uribe and when the investigations began, the president
appointed him consul to
The supreme court has forced his return."
Writing for México’s left of center La Jornada on <a
href="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/03/13/index.php?section=opinion&article=029a1mun"
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">March 13, Pedro Miguel
described Bush’s welcome in Bogotá: "It was a pretty ceremony, with a red
carpet at the foot of Air Force One’s ramp and a wall of guards on both sides
donning ceremonial uniforms and armed with antique rifles. But the rifles were
ornamental, and before Bush’s arrival, every one of the members of the honor
guard were minutely scanned with metal detectors and manually frisked by
members of the U.S. Secret Service. That is the actual degree of the White
House’s trust in the
Uribe’s servility."
In Guatemala
Following the Bush’s visit to the Iximché archeological site—ancient capital
of the Mayan Cakchiquele Indians and headquarters of Pedro de Alvarado during
the Spanish conquest in 1524—indigenous priests carried out a religious
ceremony replete with votive candles and incense to cleanse the area of evil
spirits and so that their ancestors may rest in peace.
"That somebody like him, with his persecution of our brother immigrant
workers, with the wars he has unleashed, should walk on our sacred lands is an
affront to the Mayan people and their culture," said Juan Tiney, director
of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious
leaders last Thursday.
Chávez had already gone beyond merely ascribing evil exhalations to Bush at
the United Nations last September, speaking to the General Assembly the day
after Bush had addressed it. "The devil was here! The devil was here
before this very podium," Chávez remarked, while crossing himself—to the
general laughter of those assembled—and underlined, " It still reeks of
sulfur!"
Insurgent México
As was reported in
Milenio magazine on <a
href="http://www.milenio.com/index.php/2007/03/10/48831/"
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">March 10, President Felipe
Calderón said
to play a leadership role that fosters stability in
America
order to stave off Chávez’s increasing influence.
He told reporters, "I’m not interested in playing a role with President
Bush in this matter."
"
natural leadership role in Latin America that my government will embrace, is
embracing and reclaiming that role, independent of what may or may not be the <st1:country-region
w:st="on">U.S.’s foreign policy toward
America
Calderón, in the same interview granted to the Associated Press aboard the
presidential plane overflying
and which was carried in Milenio on March 10, commented, "[The
United States] has a lot to do if it wants regain a presence and respect in the
region."
Aida Marina of
Alternativa party, commenting in the <a
href="http://www.proceso.com.mx/noticia.html?sec=0&nta=48890"
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">March 13 online edition of Proceso
said Bush had "arrived without clear ideas, a plan, in an unprecedentedly
vulnerable state following his electoral defeat," and added, "Instead
of being received by Felipe Calderón, he should have been welcomed by Vicente
Fox, so he’d feel more at home with another retiree."
Another
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">commentator, this time from
the
that Bush’s lonely odyssey through
in search of a friendly face reminded him of Diogenes and his <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_of_Sinope"
onkeypress="doLink(this.href); return false;">lantern.
At any rate, Bush’s Latin American whirlwind tour does not seem to have
succeeded at dimming, much less blocking, Chávez’s, MERCOSUR’s or, for
that matter, Latin America’s sun.
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Forum posts
31 March 2007, 06:08
Who can compare this dumb fuck G. W. Bush with a human being. G. W. is a disgrace for any country around the world and for the human race.