POLITICS-U.S.: Latin American Expansion
Cloaked in Shadow of Iraq
By Jeremy Bigwood
WASHINGTON, Apr 18, 2003 (IPS) -
While much of the world's attention has been focused on Iraq, Afghanistan
and Israel-Palestine, Washington has quietly boosted its military presence
in Colombia, supposedly to search for contractors kidnapped by leftist
insurgents, but as part of a strategy to tighten control of the country, and
the region, say many observers.
Published figures show that U.S. military
overt and covert operations have clearly been expanding in the Andean
Region. In Colombia alone, the number of U.S. military personnel, which was
limited by the U.S. Congress through the Andean Regional Initiative at 300,
is already closer to 400. That does not include "civilian contractors"
engaged in both covert and overt operations.
Washington's plan is to "economically and
militarily wipe out the social and indigenous movements in order to obtain
their resources and territories'', says Bolivian Congressman Evo Morales,
echoing a view popular in the region. ''The undercurrent of these plans is
the same programme as has been going on for the last 500 years - the
eradication of our indigenous cultures," he told IPS.
"The 'Andean Regional Initiative', which
replaced 'Plan Colombia', 'New Horizons', 'Three Plus One', the 'Cabañas', 'Unitas'
and Águila military exercises are all components of this plan,'' added
Morales. ''Viewed as a whole, these elements make up a new and expanded
version of the old counterinsurgent 'Plan Condor' of the 1970s", the
covertly U.S.-led alliance of the armies of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay,
Brazil and Paraguay, which killed off hundreds of leaders and members of the
progressive left, ensuring that it would not come to power in the region and
threaten U.S. dominance.
The U.S. military says the legal precedent
for its presence throughout Latin America is the Monroe Doctrine, an edict
dictated by a U.S. president in 1823, which was never voted on by Congress,
much less by those affected - Latin Americans.
While originally formulated to keep
other nations out, the Doctrine basically says that the US can intervene
anywhere it wants in the Americas.
"Its not unrealistic. In some ways the
Monroe doctrine could be interpreted to justify Yankee imperialism
throughout the region," says Steve Lucas, spokesman for the U.S. military
presence in the region, known as the United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM).
A quick look at the map appearing on
USSOUTHCOM's website would appear to confirm that view. What most of us call
South and Central America - from the southern Mexican border southward - on
the military map becomes the new land or "area of responsibility" (AOR)
known as "USSOUTHCOM" (with the exception of the Falkland and South Georgia
Islands, which are still listed as British-controlled).
The military's 'New Horizon' programme "is
now being exercised all over the AOR (Area of Responsibility) - Central
America, parts of the Caribbean, and South America," says Lucas from his
Miami office. Involving primarily U.S. reservists and the Air Force, it
focuses on "civic action" - "the building of roads, schools, drilling wells
and all of these other kinds of stuff to improve the infrastructure", he
adds.
But Morales has a different take. "Recently
in Bolivia, under the cover of U.S. 'Civic Action' programmes, a group of
North American military officers came into our country - not doing social
work, but intelligence studies."
According to long-time independent
researcher and Latin America expert GeorgeAnn
Potter, "Nobody in Latin America and the Caribbean thinks that U.S. military
civic action programs are anything but intervention."
"With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989,
the U.S. lost the pretext of ''communism'' for its intervention in Latin
America and the Carribean - other than Cuba - and it quickly assumed the
''war on drugs'' as an excuse for military
presence. And after 9/11,
the pretext for intervention became the ''war on terrorism".
In fact, the State Department's
''three-plus-one'' programme was set up to monitor "suspected activities of
Hezbollah and Hamas financiers in the Tri-border area (Paraguay, Brazil, and
Argentina)", according to Ambassador Cofer Black, the department's
coordinator for counterterrorism.
According to the US State Department, "Three Plus One" is a
"counterterrorism cooperation mechanism " set up to analyze and combat any
terrorist - related threats in the Triborder region.
Lucas opined that "As far as I know there
are no US Army activities in the Tri-border area. At least nothing overt.
Nothing in the terms of our exercises as such."
But for Morales, it is ''merely another
invented pretext for U.S. intervention and control. I don't believe that
there is a terrorist threat there. The ''war on drugs'' is the main pretext
for U.S. intervention in the Americas, and there are no illicit crops that
far south, so the U.S. government has to invent novel threats to intervene
there. The ''war on terrorism'' is just a pretext, nothing more … to
construct more bases like those in the Bolivian Trópico."
More bases have been going up throughout
the region, from the "forward operating locations" (FOLs) in El Salvador,
Ecuador and the Carribean islands of Aruba and Curacao, to many more smaller
centres for radar surveillance and "narcotics control".
Other activities include overt U.S.
military training exercises with Latin American armies: 'Cabañas' for the
armies of the region - under U.S. command and control; ''Unitas' for the
navies and 'Águila' for the air forces.
Why the training? Says Lucas, "If we can
train and equip other people to act in what we consider to be U.S. national
interests, then that, of course, is our job. And we have been successful in
training other people to do that so far, particularly in the last few
decades in Latin America."
While opposing the concept, Morales
generally agrees with Lucas' assessment, adding the exercises are "part of
Bush's electoral promises to take control of Latin America through the
training and control of the Latin American armed forces by the U.S. armed
forces - expanding the Andean Regional Initiative - which essentially means
U.S. bases throughout Latin America."
In the shadow of international conflict,
the instruments of U.S. control of Latin America are now expanding and
fine-tuning themselves. But the U.S justifications for this expansion are
not being accepted by people there. If these opposing trends and perceptions
continue, it is only a matter of time before the expansion seriously clashes
with the stakeholders of the region.
"Nobody who I know in Latin America looks
favourably on U.S. military bases in the region," says Potter.
(END/IPS/NA/IP/JB/ML/03)
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