The North AmericanHumanitarian Aid Farce

United States policy versus social, environmental and political movements that are struggling against the sacking of our resources

The genocidal dictatorship that took power March 24, 1976, was the final stage in the conservative restoration strategy promoted by the United States and inspired by Henry Kissinger. The intention of this strategy was to restore U.S. hegemony in Latin America. During that decade’s early years, the legendary triumph of Ho Chi Minh over the world’s most powerful military force meant the Western power block’s loss of Southeast Asia. The resulting “hypothesis of defeat” translated into a retreat from the African continent and toward North America’s own backyard. During those times, the governments of Velasco Alvarado in Peru, Omar Torrijos in Panama, Juan José Torres in Bolivia and Salvador Allende in Chile were conjoined with the struggles of the Uruguayan people and with the obvious weakness of Argentina’s military dictatorship, which had been implanted since 1966, amidst popular and armed mobilizations. Together, these mobilizations strengthened the lengthy resistance of workers who were demanding the return of Gen. Peron. Since 1971, military coups in Bolivia, Uruguay, Peru, Chile and Argentina — as a part of Operation Condor — were devised to impose supremacy through state terrorism and the utilization of aberrant and inhumane methods of repression.

As of late, the U.S. has suffered new defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan, while the desire to attack Iran has been limited by Russia’s and China’s signed agreement wherein both powers declared their willingness to thwart such an attack, even at the risk of war. In turn, China’s dominance over the nations of sub-Saharan Africa has been consolidated in recent years, thanks to the projects agreed upon in November 2006 between President Hu Jintao and 48 African leaders who gathered in Beijing to create Special Economic Zones, such as industrial development areas for mineral extraction and other key resources. The plan provides for an initial investment of $60 billion and the construction of railways, roads and waterways in order to link the countries with one another as well as with the rest of the world. In this way, they have managed to neutralize the International Monetary Fund in the region and, in more than one case, Chinese capital has displaced or purchased the Western companies based there.

A quick glance at a map will show that, due to the U.S. failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, the “hypothesis of defeat” has only left Latin America as an operational area, given China’s advances and the change of the current balance of world power. Considering the circumstances, the declarations made by journalist Stella Calloni and Chaqueño attorney Marcelino Leiva take on a particular seriousness. Their comments were based on the allegations made by Rokando Nuñez of the Nelson Mandela Center, which pertained to the installation of the U.S. Southern Command Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief base at the La Resistencia Airport in Chacon, Argentina, a base which is run in conjunction with the Fourth Fleet and the U.S. Embassy, under the responsibility of that country’s military attaché, Col. Edwin Passmore. This project was approved in 2006 by Anibal Fernández, in his capacity as Interior Minister for Néstor Kirchner, as part of a program to strengthen the Provincial Emergency System, which included a bid by Forbes Energy to invest $100 million in the production of bio-ethanol made from genetically modified sugarcane to be cultivated on 50,000 nearby hectares.

Col. Edwin Passmore leaves a lot to be desired as well, considering his colleague’s and his respective backgrounds. Think nothing of the human rights of the indigenous tribes inhabiting the territories destined to be cultivated and the ensuing devastation of their native forests. Marcelino Leiva’s report informs us that the current commander of the Fourth Fleet, Kurt Tidd, served from 2004-05 as Commander Task Force 55 for terror operations in the Iraq War. He later occupied a senior position with the U.S. National Security Council, acting as Director for Strategy and Defense Issues, Directorate of Combating Terrorism. Meanwhile, Passmore carried out humanitarian duties in Afghanistan and Iraq and, beginning in 2005, he served as a military attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Venezuela, until his eventual expulsion on espionage charges in 2008. Reassigned, in 2009, to the U.S. Embassy in our country — along with other officers who had been expelled from Bolivia and Ecuador — he dedicated himself to visiting and donating medical equipment to the Hospital de Niños in San Justo and to a child care center run by Mothers Against Paco, accompanied in both instances by the ever generous U.S. ambassador. He took an active part in the Globalmaster III airplane incident at Ezeiza Airport in February 2011: A contingent of U.S. marines, with orders to train members of the Federal Police, refused to allow their aircraft to be searched by customs on the grounds that it contained “sensitive cargo.”

And so it is in these hands that the La Resistencia Airport now rests: They enjoy a strategic zone for the control of the Triple Frontier and the Guaraní Aquifer, connecting with the Mariscal Estigarribia base in Paraguay and situated near the border of Bolivia, with its oil and gas reserves. In addition to this, they have the capacity of covering the Southern Amazon in Brazil, guarded to the north by the Plan Columbia bases and to the west by the Manta base, which was previously in Ecuador and has now re-located Peru. The rapid passage of the Terrorism Act 26734 in December of 2011, together with Argentina’s National Police Intelligence Project X, whose prior border patrol mission was relegated to internal urban enforcement, indicate a shift from national defense to a new Internal Security Doctrine and denote the existence of an “internal enemy” and the consequent criminalization of social protest. The marked increase in funds destined for the Argentine Security Ministry for the 2012 National Defense Budget also points in the same direction. Apart from the humanitarian aspect, another known objective for the U.S. base is the fight against drug trafficking. An ironic proof of this is the increase in poppy crops and heroin distribution earmarked for the Western European market which has multiplied during the North American occupation of Afghanistan. History shows that declining empires tend to rely on military force to maintain their peripheral territories. The cases of Spain in America or of France in Indochina and Algeria are a few examples. Today the U.S. is facing an accelerated decline and the date of March 24 should alert us to the threats that loom over Argentina and Latin America, as Leiva has pointed out.

With this backdrop in mind, as long as social, environmental and political movements oppose the sacking of our natural resources through strip-mining, soy crop contamination and the devastation of our mountains, rivers and aquifers, there will be no cooperation with the Argentine people — only espionage and affronts to our national security and to the country’s population.