Return of the Coups
Weekend Edition July 13-15, 2012
From Honduras to Paraguay
Return of the Coups
by GABRIEL ROSSMAN
~snip~
The Impeachment
Lugo was impeached on grounds of “malfeasance” after 17 people were killed in a clash between police and landless squatters protesting land inequality. This legal formality, however, obscures the fact that Lugo’s ouster, long-desired by those who opposed his democratic reforms, was politically motivated.
A leaked 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable claimed that the “shared goal” of General Lino Oviedo and ex-President Nicanor Frutos, both Colorado party members, was “to change the current political equation, break the political deadlock in Congress, impeach Lugo and regain their own political relevance.” The cable, which was classified as “secret,” includes this prophetic sentence: “Oviedo’s dream scenario involves legally impeaching Lugo, even if on spurious grounds.”
South American governments from all across the political spectrum immediately condemned Lugo’s abrupt removal (he was given less than 24 hours notice and just two hours to defend himself). Mercosur suspended Paraguay and refused to recognize the new government. Venezuela unilaterally halted all fuel shipments to Asuncion. Brazil and Mexico withdrew their ambassadors, as did Colombia, whose president, Juan Manuel Santos, is a staunch conservative. Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner publicly called Lugo’s impeachment a “coup d’état.”
Regional Trend?
The removal of Lugo is particularly disturbing because it is the latest in a series of actions against progressive populist governments in Latin America. In a 2009 coup, democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who had raised the national minimum wage despite strong opposition from the business elite, was removed at gunpoint. In 2010, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa was tear-gassed, assaulted, and held captive by insurgent police officers in an attempted coup that ended in a shootout.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/13/return-of-the-coups/
= new reply since forum marked as read
...and, at the worst, seems suspiciously to serve U.S. interests by pointing away from U.S. meddling and pointing toward a mysterious, unaccountable decline in "the trend of democratization in the region."
Rossman mentions Honduras and Ecuador but fails to mention Venezuela, Bolivia and Haiti--as to other recent coups, coup attempts and U.S. support and/or involvement in them--and also fails to mention the 2010 meeting of the Miami mafia delegation in Congress and other fascists who openly advocated toppling leftist governments in Latin America (including U.S. invasion of); and also doesn't mention the non-stop U.S. lying propaganda against the left in LatAm, the evidence of "dirty tricks" and the "Colombiazation" of Mexico and Honduras by the corrupt, failed, murderous U.S. "war on drugs. She mentions the rightwing death squad activity in Honduras but fails to link it to U.S. militarization of Colombia--doesn't even mention Colombia in this context--nor does she mention the expansion of U.S. military bases in post-coup Honduras.
2002-Venezuela: The U.S. openly supported the rightwing coup d'etat attempt (until it failed) and met with and colluded with the coupsters.
2004-Haiti: The U.S. invaded, removed the elected president from the country and landed him in Africa. (This was followed, recently, by a U.S.-run 'election' in which that same president and his political party--which represents 75% of Haitians--was banned from the ballot.)
2006-Venezuela: Rightwing plot to overturn the Chavez election victory with a false poll devised by a Washington P.R. firm, a rightwing "uprising" and involvement of the military. (The plot failed.)
Early 2008-Ecuador: The U.S./Colombia drops 500 lb. U.S. "smart bombs" on a temporary FARC guerrilla camp on Ecuador's border, killing the FARC's peace negotiator (who was planning to release Ingrid Betancourt) and 24 other sleeping people, including an Ecuadoran and Mexican citizens, nearly starting a war between the U.S./Colombia and Ecuador/Venezuela, and followed this with a Rumsfeldian "dirty trick" of falsified computer evidence that the presidents of Ecuador and Venezuela "support terrorists."
Mid-2008-Paraguay: Leftist Fernando Lugo--the beloved "bishop of the poor"--is elected president, overturning 60 years of rightwing rule (including a heinous dictatorship). The prior regime was permitting U.S. military maneuvers on the ground in Paraguay. Lugo opposed this. Very important--see below, Ecuador.
Late 2008-Bolivia: White separatists, funded/organized right out of the U.S. embassy, go on a rampage of murder and destruction to overthrow the leftist government of Evo Morales. (The plot failed, with significant unified action by South American leaders--led by the leftist leaders of Chile, Brazil and Argentina--to defeat it.)
2009-Honduras: Lots of evidence of involvement by the U.S. embassy, the U.S. military, the State Department, Washington P.R. firms and far right elements in the U.S. including junior Senator Jim DeMint (SC-Diebold), John "death squad" Negroponte, John McCain (telecommunications interests in Honduras) and others, in a far right plot to overthrow the elected president of Honduras (and smash his supporters--labor unions, the poor majority), by creating a false "constitutional crisis," shooting up his home, dragging him out of bed and putting him on a plane out of the country, which stopped at the U.S. military base in Honduras for re-fueling. (The plot succeeded, and the U.S. State Department then contrived a fraudulent election, under martial law, to empower the coupsters' choice of rightwing presidents. Very important: Zelaya had proposed converting the U.S. military base in Honduras to a badly needed international airport. The Pentagon is now--post-coup--busily expanding its U.S. military bases in Honduras.)
2010-Ecuador: The Ecuadoran police--long subject to infiltration efforts by the U.S. (using the "war on drugs" as the excuse)--were propagandized with false information about changes to their salaries and benefits, and rioted including an assault on leftist president Rafael Correa. (The plot failed. VERY notable: Correa had fulfilled a campaign promise to evict the U.S. military from its base in Manta, Ecuador, in 2009. The Manta base--from which the plane probably flew that dropped the 500 lb U.S. "smart bombs" on Ecuador's territory--was an extremely unpopular U.S. military installation. Its eviction caused headaches in the Pentagon, as to their establishment of "forward operating locations" in their so-called "Southern Command."
2012-Paraguay: Another fake "constitutional crisis" (prototype, Honduras), in the interest of Pentagon expansion (Honduras, Ecuador, Colombia) and, of course, the interests of the rich and the corporate. (Paraguay sits on the biggest aquifer in South America--its hydroelectric power is a major export. Big Brazilian corporations--opposed by Brazil's leftist president--were exploiting this resource with unfair contracts. Rich Paraguayan landowners control its other export--soy--and routinely poison their poor farm workers with pesticides. Lugo opposed--and, with Lula's help, changed--the unfair hydroelectric contracts--and the pesticide spraying, as well as the U.S. military presence in Paraguay.)
Meanwhile in Colombia (over the last decade to the present): A U.S. supported bloodbath against trade unionists and other advocates of the poor, big and expanding U.S. military presence, $7 BILLION in U.S. taxpayer dollars for "military aid," brutal displacement of 5 MILLION peasant farmers, amidst an utterly failed "war on drugs"--all prep for U.S. "free trade for the rich."
I particularly object to the following in Rossman's article, re the coup in Paraguay:
"So far, there is no indication that any outside powers played a role in the coup."
--
"Ironically, the state that has benefitted the most from Lugo’s ouster may be Venezuela. Venezuela was selected to replace Paraguay in Mercosur after Paraguay’s membership was suspended."
And her opening sally:
"It is the latest in a disconcerting series of attacks against progressive governments in South America that highlights the vulnerability of its nascent democratic institutions and calls into question the trend of democratization in the region."
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Every democracy has weaknesses. These are exploited by the U.S. government in the interest of the transglobal corporate monsters and war profiteers who rule over us, to topple governments that assert goals of social justice and independence, to prevent such governments--governments that truly represent their people--from gaining power, and to install puppet leaders.
Leon Panetta (close ties with Bush Senior) is better at this than the Bush Junta was--as evidenced by the record of recent coups and coup attempts in Latin America. In Latin America, the rich elites and their fascist leaders are ALWAYS plotting to gain more power to oppress and kill the poor and have, for over a half a century now, colluded with U.S. transglobal corporations and war profiteers, and their servants in our government, to do so. This has not changed. So, for a writer to incompletely detail this recent history, then to, in effect, exonerate the U.S. before the facts are fully known (the international investigation is just beginning), THEN, to sort of jokingly imply that Venezuela is the beneficiary of this coup in Paraguay, smells to high heaven.
