John Negroponte and Tupac Katari (1)
By Toni Solo
To accompany President Saddam Hussein's lynching the Bush regime announced that death-squad manager nonpareil John
Negroponte is to take over the post of deputy Secretary of State to hapless Condoleezza Rice left vacant by Robert
Zoellick in 2006. One has to admire Zoellick's timing. He jumped ship before the Bush regime completes its extraordinary
rendition of the United States' people to economic hard times at home and definitive military catastrophe in Iraq. In
2004 gangster-diplomat extraordinaire Negroponte took to Iraq the expertise in promoting mass disappearances, torture
and organized terror he perfected in Honduras in the early 1980s. As ambassador in Baghdad to the US occupation, he
helped oversee the implementation of the so-called "Salvador option" whose death squad fruits now bring Iraq's desperate
people a daily fare of unparalleled horror.
Saddam Hussein's judicial murder and Negroponte's appointment highlight yet once more the fundamental twin bases of
contemporary imperialism - sadism and hypocrisy. If one takes into account the death-by-sanctions of hundreds of
thousands of children and the hundreds of thousands of deaths resulting from the illegal invasion in 2003 and the
subsequent occupation, one can now confidently assign to the political elites of the United States, Europe and their
Pacific allies well over one million deaths in Iraq alone. Without any doubt, that puts the cream of the US, British and
Australian political elite in any league table of war criminals at least on a par with Saddam Hussein.
The US and its allies actively rigged his trial so as to avoid discussion of their own role as accomplices in his wars
and in his domestic repression. Then they handed him over to his enemies to be lynched. It was striking how few of the
character-assassinating obituarists took the trouble to imagine what Saddam Hussein looked like to the world's vast
non-imperialist majority. Many millions regard Hussein as having been a defender against injustice, a statesman neither
more nor less guilty than numerous others of the last hundred years or so who justified their crimes by reasons of
State. Saddam Hussein's apotheosis as martyr and its context mark the end of any tenuous claim the United States or
Europe ever had to moral superiority in the eyes of the rest of the world. Negroponte's appointment could hardly be more
emblematic of that reality.
Re-inventing non-alignment
As the Bush regime retrenches at the start of 2007 in a vain attempt to manage its catastrophe in south west Asia, a new
era of hope for humanity began in Managua, Nicaragua's capìtal. There on January 11th the Presidents of Nicaragua,
Bolivia and Venezuela, along with Fidel Castro's representative Vice President Machado Ventura, formally accepted
Nicaragua as a participant in the ALBA (Alternativa Bolivariana de las Americas) integral trade and cooperation
initiative. The day before, on January 10th Hugo Chavez was sworn in again as Venezuela's President following his latest
categorical electoral victory in December last year. On the same day Daniel Ortega also took the presidential oath,
signalling the resurrection of the Sandinista revolutionary humanitarian dream buried by United States government terror
sixteen years ago.
Ortega's swearing in was delayed by over an hour to give Hugo Chavez time to arrive from Caracas. As the ceremony got
under way, Chavez entered alongside Evo Morales, President of Bolivia and Rafael Correa, President-elect of Ecuador.
(Correa takes office on January 15th). A gaggle of Presidents occupìed the stage including all the other four Central
American Presidents, Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, Rene Preval of Haiti, Martin Torrijos of Panama, Leonel Fernandes of the
Dominican Republic, Chen Shui Ban of Taiwan and Felipe Calderon of Mexico. In all, representatives of over 65 countries
took part in the ceremony whose seating diplomatically reflected the underlying relationships. Nearest to where Ortega
received the oaths of allegiance to the constitution from his new government's functionaries, were Chavez, Morales and
Correa. Next to Correa sat Colombian narco-terror capo di capos Alvaro Uribe, apparently on speaking terms despite the
current dispute over Colombian glyphosate chemical warfare on the Ecuadoran border. A long way away sat another fascist,
Mexico's Felipe Calderon, perhaps reflecting the Mexican opposition's impolite nickname for him - Fecal - or perhaps the
odour of death, torture, rape and electoral fraud that characterize his regime.
In any case, the number and level of the delegations indicated the significance of the Sandinista Front for the
Liberation of Nicaragua's return to power for Central America and the Caribbean and for Latin America as a whole.
Longstanding networks of diplomatic and trade relations now need to be redefined. Taiwan's presence and the subsequent
signing of a memorandum of understanding between the two governments implicitly puts the question to the People's
Republic of China as to how it proposes to frame its future relations with Central America. The presence of delegations
from South Korea and Vietnam indicate the importance South East Asian nations attach to their relations with Latin
America and, too, the age-old strategic importance of Nicaragua's geographical location on the Central American isthmus
and its new significance as a trade and diplomatic bridge to Venezuela, Cuba and the Caribbean Basin. In an age of
ruthless efforts by the United States, Europe and their Pacific allies to sustain their imperial prerogatives, Nicaragua
seems fated to play a key international role once more.
Daniel Ortega's swearing-in took place in the Omar Torrijos Plaza of Non-Aligned Nations. That, deeply symbolic in
itself, signals Nicaragua's escape from under the US imperial thumb to active, autonomous sovereign diplomatic relations
worldwide, heralded by the presence of delegations not just from Asia but also from Iran, Algeria, Libya and the Sahrawi
Democratic Arab Republic. This contrasting global and regional range of visiting statesmen and delegations indicates the
paradoxical, sometimes blatantly conflictive bi-lateral relations Nicaragua must now seek to negotiate. Still, the
overwhelming emphasis on an alliance with Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia was clear. The US delegation led by Michael
Leavitt and Thomas Shannon controlled their undoubted exasperation at it all. The visit to Nicaragua on January 13th of
Iranian President Ahmadinejad for further trade and cooperation talks with the new FSLN government will only add to the
Bush regime's misery at their debacle in Nicaragua
ALBA - vindicating Bolivar, Marti, Sandino
Among the plethora of trade and diplomatic talks taking place behind the scenes through January 10th and 11th in
Managua, the main event was the signing of Nicaragua's participation in ALBA. The agreement covers such a wide range of
cooperation initiatives it is hard to know where to start, but the principal initiative is aimed at resolving
Nicaragua's energy crisis. Generating plants are already being immediately installed as a provisional measure to cover
60 megawatts of the capital Managua's electricity demand. Further short term support for Nicaragua's energy needs will
take the form of diesel bunker fuel at preferential prices while medium and long term plans for electricity generating
capacity are brought to fruition. The agreement plans total sales on preferential terms of 10 milllion barrels of fuel a
year to end Nicaragua's long-standing stop-go energy difficulties.
Other intiatives include the construction of a new refinery, a proposed gas pipeline to link up with the pipeline being
built from Venezuela through Colombia to Panama and an aluminium processing plant to produce finished aluminium goods
for sale in the Central America markets. Around the signing ceremony for the ALBA agreement, Venezuela's governmental
delegation of 75 members was negotiating a series of bilateral agreements with their Nicaraguan counterparts. Evo
Morales and Machado Ventura indicated that similar bilateral agreements within the ALBA framework will follow between
Nicaragua and Bolivia and Nicaragua and Cuba. At the signing ceremony incorporating Nicaragua into ALBA, Hugo Chavez
laid out the broad elements of Nicaragua-Venezuela cooperation as part of a clear anti-imperial strategy in Latin
America.
He declared, "What Tupac Katari said, we recalled last night ..."I die today, but one day I will return made into
millions"; Sandino returns, he is here, the General of Free Men; Bolívar returns; Martí returns; Tupac Katari returns;
again Morazán, Sucre, Miranda, Bartolina Sisa. The martyrs return. They return in ourselves. And now I think we can
hardly afford the luxury of a new historical defeat. No! This century must be the century of the peoples of our America,
the century of liberation, the century in which we break definitively with the chains of imperialism, it ought to be our
century. Bolívar who died in exile, thrown out and betrayed, grieving, weeping tears of blood, said it when he
understood he would not see his project of liberation realised and the integration of a kind of confederation of
republics in our Latin Caribbean nation. Bolivar said..."the great day of our America has yet to come." Two hundred
years have passed since that, let us indeed make sure this century becomes the day of our America! That now at last this
twenty first century be the day of our America!.........So let's choose then. Either imperialism dies or we die, let
everyone make their choice." (2)
With Rafael Correa likely to lead Ecuador into ALBA following his presidential inauguration on January 15th, the events
in Managua should probably be seen as preparing the ground for a concerted attempt to encourage a sea-change in the
policy of the Mercosur trading bloc. Mercosur, made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela, will hold
a policy summit later this month together with associate members like Bolivia and Chile. Mercosur's Secretariat have
already made clear they look forward to Bolivia's incorporation into the regional trading bloc. Since its inception,
Mercosur has failed to generate the kind of dynamism necessary to seriously challenge the corporate neo-liberal economic
structures imposed for over twenty years by the US and its allies and their proxies, the World Bank and the IMF.
The absence of representation at the highest level from Brazil, South America's most powerful country, at Daniel
Ortega's inauguration poses yet more questions about the Brazilian government's commitment to radically
socially-oriented policies. While the sharp exchanges and tension between Brazil and Bolivia over Bolivia's recuperation
of gas resources managed by the largely foreign-owned Brazilian Petrobras company seem to have been left behind, it
seems clear that the Brazilian government and its President Ignacio da Silva - Lula - leaned heavily on the Bolivian
government to get their way. A sign of that was last year's resignation of Bolivia's outstanding hydrocarbons minister
Andres Solis Rada, a fervent advocate of complete nationalization of Bolivia's gas resources. With various other
tensions unresolved within Mercosur, what Chavez and Morales seem to be doing with their high profile visit to Managua
is to set out before this month's summit more clearly than ever the kind of policies they would like Mercosur to follow.
To every action, a reaction
Since Condoleezza Rica has shown herself incompetent and mediocre beyond any doubt in dealing with Latin America, a
likely effect of John Negroponte's appointment will be attempts to strengthen hard line US policies in the region.
Neither Colin Powell's covert action backed diplomacy - as in the coups in Haiti and Venezuela - nor Robert Zoellick's
policies of diplomacy based on trade coercion have been able to maintain US dominance in Latin America. It is a solid
hypothesis that Hugo Chavez would have been murdered when he was kidnapped during the 2002 coup had John Negroponte been
running the State Department at that time. Although, when he takes up his new post, Negroponte's principal brief will be
Iraq, he has already made clear to the Senate Intelligence Committee this year that he believes Venezuela and Bolivia
are a danger to democracy in Latin America. He described Hugo Chavez as "one of the most strident anti-United States
leaders in the world" without explaining how he squares that canard with the Venezuelan government's unprecedented
support for low income families in the US with winter fuel oil.
So far reaction from United States representatives to Nicaragua's incorporation into ALBA has been relaxed. Michael
Leavitt told Nuevo Diario he was "optimistic that there are ways in which we can work together to improve the Nicaraguan
people's circumstances." But he is clearly not referring to paying up the US$17 billion indemnity imposed by the
International Court of Justice on the US government in 1986 for its terrorist war against Nicaragua through the 1980s.
Despite the low key tone set by the US delegation, Daniel Ortega will have been more than ready to take note of Hugo
Chavez when the Venezuelan President observed of the diplomatic friendliness of the US delegates "Yesterday I remembered
when I was watching the delegates of the United States here, greeting, congratulating......behind , without doubt, the
dagger, watch out for the dagger, Daniel!" (2)
Latin America now presents multi-faceted challenges to the imperial domination of the United States and its European and
Pacific allies. The fundamental challenge is precisely the regional combination of determined leaders to break
traditional patterns of trade and aid coercion backed up by covert action and outright military intervention. That is
why John Negroponte identifies Venezuela and Bolivia as threats. In truth, they are a very serious threat to the Bush
regime's continuation of the misery, death and destruction 500 years of colonialism, under its many guises, have
inflicted on the peoples of the Americas. While the US and its allies massacre civilians in Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan and
now Somalia, Cuba and Venezuela are treating hundreds of thousands of patients in need of medical care from all over
Latin America and the Caribbean absolutely free. Tens of thousands of students from all over the world study free in
Cuba's universities.
Stock US imperialist responses to the regional bloc composed of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and, shortly
Ecuador, will include the usual components from the imperialist tool kit. There will be trade and aid blackmail for
vulnerable countries like Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. The IMF, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development
Bank will be marshalled to hustle offending economies into line. Military intimidation will be repeated, like last
year's massive naval exercises just off the Venezuelan coast. US government funding for domestic opposition groups,
conventional politicians as well as NGOs, will be deployed extensively to try and replicate the destabilising electoral
manoevres so successful in the Ukraine and elsewhere. Damaging conflicts will be encouraged by cultivating both regional
divisions like those already existing in Mercosur and the Community of Andean Nations and also internal conflicts like
the oligarchy-driven moves for autonomy in Bolivia's eastern departments and in Zulia in Venezuela. All of this will be
distorted through the empire's corporate media outlets as a tussle between "successful free markets" and "failed
socialism" or between "democracy" and "tyranny".
But the Bush regime and its allies are up against fundamental economic realities fatal to their imperialist programme.
Venezuela and Cuba are delivering solid social and economic benefits to millions of people across Latin America and the
Caribbean based on solidarity, complementarity and cooperation. The US government and its allies, by contrast, offer
perversely unjust asymmetric trade deals, debt and aid rigged with extortionate conditionalities, along with discredited
moral tales about human rights and corruption. Venezuela and Cuba offer genuine cooperation. The US and its allies offer
coercion. John Negroponte will fail just as Powell, Armitage, Rice and Zoellick failed before him. With US government
influence in decline, before too long its diplomats will be crying "Do what we want, or else..." only to the wind. The
millions of Tupac Katari have better things to do. Every brick they lay, every child they feed and vaccinate, every tree
they plant, every student they graduate, builds a Latin America they are unlikely ever to let sinister imperialist
enforcers like John Negroponte steal away from them again.
The nitty-gritty
The distraction of "pink tide" nonsense propagated by corporate mainstream media is irrelevant. The underlying reality
is that the trade and cooperation model promoted by Venezuela and Cuba not only meets people's basic needs but has
dramatically improved commercial and economic options for countries throughout Latin America. The United States and
allied imperialist model cannot compete with that. So the imperial corporate machinery is hard at work discrediting
Venezuela and Cuba and their allies, first Bolivia, soon Nicaragua and Ecuador. Simultaneously, they are working to
create conflict so as to arrest the development of that competing model. As part of that process, John Negroponte's
appointment heralds a much more ruthless phase of US activity in the region.
US government friends in the military and security forces throughout Latin America will be encouraged to intervene more
in their countries politics. The recent kidnappings in Argentina of witnesses in trials of human rights abusers from the
time of the "dirty war" is a symptom of that. While Mexico's illegitimate Felipe Calderon regime may currently be making
friendly noises to Venezuela and Cuba, domestically its policies will deepen the disastrous effects of the North
American Free Trade Agreement and work brutally to crush legitimate opposition. Likewise, Colombia's current
narco-terror governmental crisis is unlikely to prevent a worsening of the country's civil war or the continuing
increase in inequality between rich and poor. The United States government will back those policies and continue to use
local proxies elsewhere to provoke instability which it can exploit for its own ends and the benefit of the plutocrat
corporate elite it represents.
Through the Cold War successive US governments and their allies used anti-Communism as the pretext for their crimes
against Latin America's peoples. Then with the end of the Cold War and the confection of corporate globalization they
claimed "there is no alternative". Now with corporate globalization discredited, they are faced with resourceful,
determined opponents who have created an alternative with which corporate capitalism cannot compete. The crucial
question for US and allied relations with Latin America over the next five years is in two parts. Firstly, can the US
and its European and Pacific allies prevent the ALBA socio-economic model from accumulating enough domestic support in
Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Bolivia to secure the re-election of Chavez, Correa, Ortega and Morales or their
political successors in five or six years time? And secondly, in the meantime, can they prevent other countries from
signing up to that model?
While Central America looked to be an impregnable fiefdom of the US empire just a couple of years ago, now its energy
vulnerability has cracked it open. Even private business representatives in Nicaragua welcome Venezuela's cooperation
because the neoliberal corporate globalization model has nothing to offer them to solve their energy problems. But if
Venezuela solves their energy problems the accompanying consequence is that it will solve the poor majority's poverty
problems too. There is not a right-wing politician in sight to square that political dilemma. No US government, and
certainly not the pathetic Bush regime crew, has the creativity or talent to resolve in their favour that contradiction
between the underlying economics and the resultant politics - unless they resort to brute force. John Negroponte's
appointment to the State Department is a signal that savage covert action and other forms of armed intervention are very
much on the agenda.
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Notes:
1. Tupac Katari was executed by the Spanish in Bolivia in 1781 for his role in leading rebellions by the countries
indigenous peoples.
2. Translated from transcript of speech distrbuted by the FSLN communications office.
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toni solo is an activist based in Central America - contact via www.tonisolo.net