US Undermines Latin American Integration

The U.S. government’s belligerent provocation is growing. Recent events in Venezuela constitute an insolent and unacceptable interference from Barack Obama’s government. And that’s not counting the previous defeats in the 15 years of the Bolivarian revolution, the last two presidential elections, the re-election of Hugo Chavez, the constitutional ratification of Nicolas Maduro, and the elections for governorships and municipalities conducted last December, which demonstrate the clear strengthening of the Bolivarian bloc.

These results were confirmed and guaranteed by the most prestigious international observation missions, which the majority support for a government that emerged from a participatory democracy made precisely clear when barely two and half months ago, it took an almost 12 percent lead in the adverse circumstances of economic war and sabotage of production and public services. The victory of the Bolivarians, despite this awful, destructive policy, was indeed a true plebiscite, just as the MUD (Mesa de la Unidad Democrática) [party] and lawbreakers, namely Henrique Capriles and Leopoldo Lopez, demanded.

The stakes for a widening democracy in the social, economic and political order channeled by the Bolivarian revolution do not interest Washington, nor do the Latin American oligarchies. Hence, in all instances, the lost referendums are now about undermining the internal and external order in order to stop and destroy a process that no longer belongs only to Venezuela, but to the entire continent, dissolutely called the “backyard” of the United States. The fascist agitation, the leading model for overthrowing legitimate governments that are disagreeable toward the White House, will continue as a new destabilizing policy (slow blows); let us not forget that Venezuela is a rich country that has one of the largest oil reserves in the world and, since the beginning of the Bolivarian revolution established on nationalism and sovereignty, has earned the hostility of the corrupt dominant sectors in Latin America and of U.S. imperialism.

In the external order, apart from the ill-tempered attacks from the monopolized press against the Venezuelan government since April 2011, with the creation of the Pacific Alliance, attempts to halt the advance of social, economic, political and cultural integration of Latin America have not stopped. Following the unsuccessful U.S. hegemony proposed by George W. Bush in the FTAA [Free Trade Area of the Americas], the new geopolitical schema changed and has been established by autonomous bodies such as ECLAC, UNASUR, Mercosur, ALBA and PetroCaribe.* By itself, Latin American unity has been shaped through the awakening of public awareness, known as the Pacific Alliance — a last ditch effort that the right-wing presidents of the continent are submitting to their imperial plans in order to bring back the Washington Consensus. It is no coincidence that in less than three years, the Pacific Alliance has had eight presidential summits for its members: Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru; and in addition, that these four governments are the main leaders of the all-encompassing privatization and the absolute liberalization of the market, globalization and neoliberalism. And to top that off, three of them are of the most closely linked to corruption, violence and drug trafficking.

For these reasons, in the last meeting of the Forum of São Paulo 2013, this alliance, as a counterweight to its own integrationist progress, was defined as a spade, a tool that undermines, having “an opportunistic, anti-leftist interventionist approach to attacking the sovereign nations of South America.” The recent summit in Cartagena de Indias from Feb. 8 through10 recently confirmed this. The meeting with Presidents Piñera, Santos, Peña Nieto and Humala could not counter the huge success of the Second Summit of ECLAC in Havana, Cuba, despite the hype of the great international monopolized press and the American interest in showing that they still have influence on a continent that has slowly stopped accepting interference in its internal affairs. And, the so-called Pacific Alliance means nothing without U.S. presence and its military bases spread across the countries. These are the same ones who came forward to sign the free trade agreement for the benefit of the rich private entrepreneurs, not the people. Actually, the commercial trade within the Pacific Alliance is paltry, barely reaching 5 percent of its exports, while the United States and industrialized countries exceed 90 percent.

The U.S. insists on a difficult relationship with Latin America by dismissing its people’s right to self-determination and to its political, economic and social sovereignty. For this reason, the U.S. government seeks to destabilize the region, mainly Venezuela, using the so-called Pacific Alliance to torpedo the unity achieved in ECLAC and the block of progressive governments; but it doesn’t take into consideration that all these economies together — Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile — are beyond the possibility of industrialization, being merely exporters of natural resources, and therefore are 100 percent dependent on the international market prices controlled by the economic powers; besides, they are also importers of manufactured goods, machinery and high-tech equipment.

In fact, the Pacific Alliance is a block of entrepreneurs eager for easy pickings, a coalition of stock exchanges and stock markets, a union of speculators gathering wealth, a block of anti-national and corrupt governments that, instead of seeking to construct solidarity and complimentary integration, strengthening its own economies, is determined to return to the tenets of the free market and tariff liberalization. It is an alliance out of the participatory political context of Latin America and the Caribbean, precisely when the political landscape is beginning to change not only in South [America], but also in Central America with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the popular resistance in Honduras, the conversion of the Frente Farabundo Martí in El Salvador in the first political force and the moderate-leftists’ electoral victory in Costa Rica. In this context of change, Venezuela is a huge thorn in the side of the U.S., who has built an escalating, worldwide media coup that accuses Maduro’s government, without any backing, of violating human rights. In reality, it is the governments of the Latin American oligarchies that murder, with impunity, the humble people claiming the right to life and livelihood of their families, just as it happened 25 years ago with the so-called “Caracazo” of former President Carlos Andres Perez on Feb. 27, 1989, when more than 400 people were killed with guns fired by the repressive forces. Where was this same reactionary press asking for the president’s head?

Carlos Angulo Rivas is a Peruvian poet and writer.

*Editor’s note: UNASUR is the Union of South American Nations, ALBA is the Spanish acronym for the Bolivarian Alliance.