Reactionaries and US Military Backers Prevail in Latin America – for Now / By W. T. Whitney

_{^{The commander of U.S. Southern Command, Army Gen. Laura Richardson, and Argentine Armed Forces Joint Command Chief Lt. Gen. Juan Martín Paleo, arrive at the Argentine Ministry of Defense. During her visit April 25-27, Richardson met with leaders, including Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Richardson is a repeat visitor to Argentina since the election of right-wing President Milei. | Photo via U.S. Embassy Argentina}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

U.S. Southern Command Chief Laura Richardson was visiting Argentina for the third time. On April 4 in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego – the world’s southernmost city – she and U. S. Ambassador Marc Stanley were received by President Javier Milei, his chief-of-staff, his cabinet chief, the defense minister, the interior minister, a military band, and an honor guard – at midnight.

Richardson announced her government would build an “integrated naval base” in Ushuaia that, close to the Strait of Magellan, looks to Antarctica. Both are strategically important. She “warned about China’s intention to build a multi-purpose port in Rio Grande, [Tierra del Fuego’s capitol city].”

Richardson, the U.S. military’s top leader for the region, had previously noted its attractions. She explained to the House Armed Services Committee in 2022 that Latin American and Caribbean area “accounts for $740 billion in annual trade with the U.S.; contains 60% of the world’s lithium and 31% of the world’s fresh water; has the world’s largest oil reserves” She insisted later that, “This region matters. It has a lot to do with national security, and we have to step up our game.”

Testifying before a congressional committee on March 14, she remarked that, “The PRC (People’s Republic of China) is America’s pacing threat; countering their aggression and malign influence requires a whole-of-society approach.”

Information from an alleged leak from the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia suggests the U.S. government seeks to isolate non-aligned countries like Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela and collaborate with “three bastions of U.S. support,” namely Peru, Ecuador and Argentina.

Analyst Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein claims U.S. “policies [in the region] are in the hands of the Pentagon … with the State Department playing a secondary role…. The emphasis is on penetrating extreme rightwing governments.”

U.S. troops and military advisors collaborate with regional military forces to confront narco-trafficking and other transnational crimes. Stories of good works have propaganda use in gaining support for their presence and for partnership with governments pushing back against popular protests. The survey below shows that U.S. military activities in the region are far-reaching and that long-term objectives and short-term needs are served.

Moving parts

The stated mission of the U.S. military installation in Argentina’s Neuquén province is to respond to humanitarian crises. That a Chinese satellite launch and tracking facility is nearby is no coincidence. The area has immense oil deposits.

U.S. troops based in Misiones, near Argentina’s borders with Brazil and Uruguay, ostensibly deals with narco-trafficking and other cross-border crimes. The U.S. government recently provided credit for Argentina to buy 24 F-16 fighter planes from Denmark.

The largest U.S. bases in the region are the Guantanamo base in Cuba, with 6100 military and civilian personnel, and the one at Soto Cano in Honduras, with 500 U.S. troops and 500 civilian employees.TheU.S. Naval Medical Research Unit, active in several locations in Peru and overseen by the Southern Command, conducts “health science research” with Peruvian partners. It also serves to “build the capacity of special forces to survive in tropical forests.”

The U.S. Navy patrols South Atlantic waters and conducts joint training exercises with Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay. The U.S. Coast Guard confronts illegal – read Chinese – fishing off South America’s Pacific coast.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operates in 17 countries, fulltime in eight of them. It advises on river and estuary projects, notably on maintaining commercial flow from the Río de la Platabasin to the Atlantic.

Ecuador and Peru each agreed recently to accept U.S. troop deployments. Colombia (2009) enabled the U.S. Air Force to utilize seven of its bases. Brazil and the United States (2019) cooperate in launching rockets, spacecraft, and satellites at Brazil’s Alcántara space center. The U.S. military cooperates with Brazil and Chile in conducting defense-related research.

The Southern Command annually holds CENTAM exercises with participation by U.S. National Guard troops and those of several Central American nations. They prepare for humanitarian crises and natural disasters. The National Guards of 18 U.S. states carry out joint training exercises with the troops of 24 Latin American nations.

The United States supplies 94.9% of Argentina’s weapons, 93.4% of Colombia’s, 90.7% of México’s, and 82.7% of Brazil’s. Bolivia is the outlier, obtaining 66.2 % of its weapons from China.

The U.S. government authorized arms sales to Mexico in 2018 worth $1.3 million, to Argentina in 2022 worth $73 million, to Chile in 2020 worth $634 million, and to Brazil in 2022 worth $4 million.

The Southern Command operates schools for the region’s military and police forces. The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation and the School of the Americas, its predecessor from 1946 on, account for almost 100,000 military graduates. The El Salvador-based International Law Enforcement Academy, “purposed to combat transnational crime,” trains police and other security personnel.

The Command in December 2023 undertook joint aerial training exercises with Guyana, where Exxon Mobil is preparing to extract offshore oil from huge deposits in Guyana’s Essequibo province. Venezuela claims ownership of that area. Venezuelan President Maduro recently accused the U.S. government of establishing secret bases there.

The story here is of installations and institutions, supply and support systems, and military interrelationships. The complexity of this U.S. undertaking signals fragility. The make-up of allied governments does likewise.

With friends like these

Raised in the United States and buoyed by his family’s great wealth, Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa is inexperienced. The country faces environmental catastrophe and widespread violence. Indigenous peoples are politically mobilized and security forces cruelly repressive.

Raiding the residence of unelected Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, police on March 29 found jewelry worth $502,700. Establishment politicians appointed her as president after they railroaded progressive President Pedro Castillo, her predecessor, to prison. Oligarchic rule and occasional dictatorships are customary in Peru, as is indigenous resistance.

Presidential rule in Argentina is bizarre. Eric Calcagno, distinguished sociologist, journalist, and diplomat, told an interviewer recently that President Milei is “asking to be part of NATO, which is the organization that occupied part of our territory, the Malvinas (Falkland Islands).” For Milei, “war is necessary.” The “regime … [is] “the figurehead of local and international monopolies [and] is taking Argentina to the point of no return.”

Argentina is “governed by a gentleman who decides things in consultation with a dead dog, or much worse, with General Richardson of the Southern Command.” (A news report attributes to Milei devices “allowing him to enter into the spirit of Conan and calm his anxiety.” Conan, a dog, is dead.)

Meanwhile, 800,000 students, workers, unionists, the unemployed, and popular assemblies marched in Buenos Aires on April 23. Joined by 200,000 Argentinians demonstrating elsewhere in the country, they were protesting governmental attacks on public universities.

With popular resistance continuing in Argentina and elsewhere in the region, the precariousness of U.S. military intervention will show. Investigator Jason Hickel points to “imperial arrangement on which Western capitalism has always relied (cheap labor, cheap resources, control over productive capacities, markets on tap).”

He refers to the “Western ruling classes” and the “violence they perpetrate, the instability, the constant wars against a long historical procession of peoples and movements in the global South.” And yet: “[a]fter political decolonization, a wide range of movements and states across the South … sought economic liberation and sovereign industrial development.”

These are national liberation struggles that presumably will continue. Resistance under that banner may someday overwhelm military intrusions like the ones surveyed here.

_{W.T. Whitney}_{is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.}

U.S. Drug War Arrives in Ecuador, with Baggage / By W. T. Whitney Jr.

_{^{Photo via People’s Dispatch}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

Joined by other U.S. officials, Laura Richardson, commander of the U.S. Army’s Southern Command, was in Ecuador January 22-25 to confer with government leaders there about U.S. military assistance. They included recently elected, and very wealthy, President Daniel Noboa. She mentioned to reporters an “investment portfolio…worth $93.4 million including not only military equipment … [but also] humanitarian assistance and disaster response, [and] professional military education.”

Prompting the visit was recently intensifying crime and turmoil manifesting as prison riots, escapes from prisons, and assassinations of political figures. A homicide rate of 5.8 per 100,000 persons in 2017 increased to 43 murders per 1000 Ecuadorians in 2023.

In the “grip of drug gangs,” Ecuador has been receiving cocaine and other illicit drugs produced and processed in countries such as Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil. From Guayaquil and Esmeraldas, ports in Ecuador, the goods move on to U.S. and European consumers. The cartels’ former routes, through Central America and the Caribbean, are less active.

Ecuador’s government recently decreed a state of “internal armed conflict.” Its Army now has charge of domestic security. From 2017 to 2023, governments under presidents Lenin Moreno and Guillermo Lasso arranged for privatizations, fiscal austerity, and a reduced package of state services. Resources are lacking to deal with powerful region-wide drug cartels now operating in the country. U.S. military intervention would fill the gap.

The U.S. so-called drug war, as waged in Latin America and the Caribbean, began during the Nixon administration. Notable examples are Plan Colombia from 1999 until 2015 and the Merida Initiative, applied to Mexico from 2007 until 2021. The U.S. media provocatively associates drug cartels with international terrorism. U.S. drug war spending has reached $1 trillion over four decades, says a report.

Ecuador’s situation has special features. Analyst Pablo Dávalos sees “convergence among political power, organized crime, and narcotrafficking to allow [Ecuador’s] use of the dollar as its national currency to enable money laundering.” Organized crime “controls vast areas” and Ecuadorians “refusing to pay extorsions are being systematically eliminated.”

Eloy Osvaldo Proaño of the Latin American Center of Strategic Analysis points out that the “neoliberal recipe reduces institutional presence, which weakens control of borders and facilitates penetration of criminal gangs.” What President Noboa has proposed “is part of a regional plan of paramilitaries occupying wide areas to instill terror, tear apart the social fabric and subdue populations.”

The “22 organizations declared [by Noboa] to be ‘terrorist groups’ … have a capacity of maneuver and omnipresence enabling them to control territories and prisons, even to penetrate the institutions [of the state].”

Ecuador recently became the leading recipient of U.S. military assistance in Latin America and the Caribbean area. More is on the way. Ecuador’s defense minister indicated the U.S. government will be “investing” $3.1 billion in military assistance over seven years.

Planning has been elaborate:

· The FBI in 2017 assisted the “lawfare” campaign of President Guillermo Lasso against President Rafael Correa, his progressive predecessor.

· The U.S. Congress on December 15, 2022, approved the United States-Ecuador Partnership Act of 2022.

· A memorandum of understanding was signed in Washington in July 2023. It covers U.S. efforts to strengthen Ecuador’s military capacities and combat the drug trade.

· A binational agreement was signed on August 16, 2023 for cooperation in building the capacity of Ecuador’s military, police, and judiciary.

· President Lasso in Washington on September 28, 2023 signed agreements allowing U.S. troops and naval personnel to deploy in Ecuador.

· Ecuador’s foreign minister signed a status of forces agreement with the U.S. ambassador on October 6, 2023 relating to privileges, immunities, and guarantees for U.S. armed forces personnel.

· Ecuador’s Constitutional Court on January 11, 2024 ratified the U.S.- Ecuador security agreement.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro in September, 2022 recalled an earlier conversation with General Richardson about “the failure of [U.S.] anti-drug policies.” He mentioned to her that, “It’s our obligation … to say that and also to propose alternatives that don’t allow a million more Latin Americans to die.”

Petro has company. Many progressives in the United States and elsewhere also regard the U.S. drug war as a failure. Facts are on their side:

· Narcotrafficking has increased despite drug war.

· Moneys spent on drug war is money not spent on preventative programs and poverty reduction.

· U.S.-assisted militarization of targeted countries undermines democratic renewal.

· Drug war means profits to weapons suppliers, narco-traffickers, and money-laundering banks and businesses.

· The United States, the great consumer of illicit drugs, bears responsibility for not reducing consumption.

This consensus resonated at the Latin American and Caribbean Conference on Drugs – for Life, Peace, and Development that took place September 7-9, 2023 in Cali, Colombia. President Petro and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had called for the gathering. Attending were officials of 19 regional nations and representatives both of observer countries and international social organizations.

The object was “to rethink drug policies in response to the failure of the punitive strategy imposed by the United States.” The most impactful recommendations emerging were these:

· Change basic assumptions by recognizing the failure of the U.S. war on drugs.

· Contain the drug problem internally by dealing with structural causes of poverty, inequalities, lack of opportunities, and violence.

· Block drug trafficking through “principles of justice and through development.” Fight poverty by giving people opportunities, youth especially.

· Explore legal modes of drug consumption.

· Reduce demand through “universal prevention” and attending to mental health problems.

Why does the U.S. government fight narcotrafficking in Ecuador? Its agenda is full already. Its prohibitions on narcotics use at home are less than effective.

Here’s a hint. Indigenous peoples organized by Ecuador’s Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE) carried out week-long national strike in June 2022. At issue were labor rights, rescuing the environment, poor families’ unmet needs, and support for small farmers. A people’s political resistance movement evidently exists there.

Leonidas Iza, the CONAIE leader, now speaks out in regard to General Richardson’s visit. He told an interviewer that, “We struggle for the Ecuadorian people” and that, “We are ceding not only military sovereignty, sovereignty over our country but even more: we are submitting to their desire to control our resources.”

All is revealed. What’s happening is nationwide political resistance striking at U.S. economic and political interests abroad. The U.S. government characteristically takes protective action in such circumstances.

Drug war serves as a cover for putting U.S. troops and U.S. proxies on the ground for preventative purposes. In Colombia, under Plan Colombia, the U.S. military joined up with Colombia’s Army to confront leftist insurgencies. A U.S. military presence would have been handy in Peru and Bolivia to ward off indigenous mobilizations led, respectively, by former presidents Pedro Castillo and Evo Morales.

_{W.T. Whitney Jr.}_{is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.}