Where the World's Views of America Come into Focus
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Where the World's Views of America Come into Focus
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By correspondent Stella Calloni
March 22, 2005
Buenos Aires: Just two days before the anniversary of the 1976 coup that brought to power the nation's bloodiest military dictatorship (March 24, 1976), the humanitarian group Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo [the Argentine Presidential Palace] staged protests against the visit of Donald Rumsfeld, the United States defense secretary. The group repudiated Rumsfeld as a representative of "global tyranny," and as someone who is responsible for crimes against humanity.
Protests against Rumsfeld's 12-hours visit continued all day, with groups at one point blocking bridge access to the city.
There were public exhibitions of photographs featuring the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the torture of citizens from those countries, the Guantanamo naval base, as well as other materials illustrating U.S. government support for dictatorships worldwide.
Rumsfeld met with the minister of defense, Jose Pampuro, after which he praised Argentine participation in the United Nations peace mission to Haiti. He said that bilateral ties "are based on common challenges," and suggested the possibility of joint military exercises, which Minister Pampuro described as "indispensable training."
The main issues they discussed were hemispheric security, the possibility of signing treaties proposed by Washington, the crisis in Bolivia, and the purchase of arms and military equipment by the Venezuelan government.
"Argentine troops have played an important role in the hemisphere, for which they can be proud," Rumsfeld said during a press conference before heading off to Brazil, surrounded by impressive security measures.
Brazil leads the U.N. peace mission to Haiti, with Argentina sending the second-largest contingent. The Haiti operation began during the government of [Argentine President] Carlos Menem - at a time when relations with the United States were so close, Washington treated Argentina like a NATO country, and Argentine ties to other countries in the region suffered, threatening South American trade relations.
Joint military exercises were suspended in 2003 when Argentina's Congress, under strong public pressure, refused to give immunity to the U.S. troops. It also rejected Washington's attempts to incorporate Latin American troops into Washington's interventionist policies.
Pampuro said that a "diverse number of options were analyzed to try to make joint exercises with the United States possible, while always respecting of laws of each country." Another subject under discussion was the use of three-dimensional radar technology to monitor Argentine airspace in order to fight drug trafficking, but that some here interpret as an invasion of sovereignty.
In his trip to Brazil, Rumfeld emphasized "good" relations his country has with Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay. When asked about the political turn to the left in the region, the most recent example being the victory of the new Socialist president of Uruguay, Tabare Vazquez, Rumsfeld said: "in life, nothing is forever," reported AFP.
Rumsfeld's visit to this country revived fears of U.S. government pressure to militarily occupy the border area shared by Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, to gain strategic control of the Guarani aquifer, where one of the world's largest supplies of fresh water exists beneath the subsoil.
Neither Argentina nor any other country in the region supports this type of military action, especially when ambiguous terms like "internal security" are used, terms associated with the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking. For 70 years, the entire region lived under dictatorships supported by the national security strategy of the United States, which meant the extermination of tens of thousands of people, all described as "terrorists."
The relatives of [Argentina's] disappeared [people missing since Argentina's 'Dirty War' from 1976-1981] believe that the United States and its allies in Iraq are repeating a bloody and global Operation Condor [the secret program of kidnapping and disposing of people that the Argentine government characterized as 'enemies of the state'], capturing, transferring, torturing or killing people, and assassinating political leaders. "We in Argentina fought for justice to eradicate these criminal methods."
The Argentine League for the Rights of the Man, the Coordinating Committee Against Repression and the Association of the Detained and Disappeared filed a civil suit in the Federal Court of [Justice] Claudius Bonadío against Rumsfeld and George W. Bush, charging them as "people in charge of torture, cruel and unusual punishment, and crimes committed by U.S. troops in the prisons of the Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq."
The Party Self-Determination and Freedom, headed by Luis Zamora, also repudiated Rumsfeld's presence "with a day of information on the war in Iraq, photographic exhibits, journalistic articles and artistic depictions," and asked Rumsfeld to halt his "military crimes against humanity."
The date Rumsfeld chose to arrive is one of great consequence, and Argentines seem to be in no mood to give in to Pentagon pressure for Argentina to ratify the Inter-American Convention against Terrorism, signed in Bridgetown, Barbados in 2002. Indeed, in 1998 the treaty was openly supported by Menem.
Across the country, preparations for demonstrations and marches on March 24 went ahead. In Parliament, center-left deputies failed to obtain the quorum necessary to debate a decree that benefited former leaders of the last military dictatorship. They call the decree "unconstitutional" and want to declare it "null and void." Indeed, Federal Judge Sergio Towers yesterday declared unconstitutional one of ten pardons issued between 1989 and 1990 by President Menem, who pardoned leaders of the military junta, offering hope to many relatives of the disappeared.