Obama Holds Up Latin America as a Model for the Middle East—If Only (Greg Grandin)

[EFerrari]

Obama Holds Up Latin America as a Model for the Middle East—If Only
Greg Grandin

In Latin America, Barack Obama went from one country, Brazil, led by a president tortured by a US-supported military regime to another, Chile, led by a president who, as the billionaire brother of one of the infamous “Chicago Boys,” did lucrative business with a US-enabled torturer, Augusto Pinochet. And so the first question he faced from a Chilean reporter was if the US was “willing to ask for forgiveness for what it did in those very difficult years in the ‘70s in Chile?”

Obama deflected: “I think it’s very important for all of us to know our history,” he said, and obviously the history of relations between the United States and Latin America have at times been extremely rocky and have at times been difficult. I think it’s important, though, for us, even as we understand our history and gain clarity about our history, that we’re not trapped by our history.... So, I can’t speak to all of the policies of the past. I can speak certainly to the policies of the present and the future.”

Obama then hedged when pressed if the US would release some 25,000 classified documents that could help victims of the massive human rights abuses committed under Pinochet. Last month, in anticipation of Obama’s trip to Chile, Carmen Frei, the daughter of Eduardo Frei Montalva, Chile’s president prior to Salvador Allende and believed poisoned by Pinochet in 1982, said that “precisely because there has been such a radical change in the politics of the United States that we believe in the human rights (policies) of President Obama, this is the moment—if he's coming to Chile he can receive the official requests and petitions.” And just before his arrival, Chile's entire center-left congressional cohort signed an open letter urging the US president to declassify the documents. Obama only committed to reviewing any request for information, adding that the US wants to cooperate “in principle.”

On this, Obama should take a cue from his Democratic predecessor, Bill Clinton, who did laudably declassify a massive amount of information to help the work of a United Nations truth commission—officially and aptly called the “Historical Clarification Commission"—charged investigating human rights violations during Guatemala’s long dirty war. The documentation was first released to the National Security Archive, a DC based non-governmental organization, where it was reviewed and analyzed by Kate Doyle, who along with her colleagues at the NSA, including Peter Kornbluh and Carlos Osorio, over the years has worked tirelessly at exposing the dark side of US actions in Latin America. After this initial cull, the documents were passed on to Guatemala. I had the good luck of working with the Commission on these documents and can say that the information obtained from them were indispensable in piecing together the architecture of terror, the mechanisms by which the Guatemalan state, with the active support of the US, was able to carry out widespread repression.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/159380/obama-holds-latin-america-model-middle-east%E2%80%94if-only

[Judi Lynn]

1. Such a good article. I'd like to post more from it:

~snip~
Obama then hedged when pressed if the United States would release some 25,000 classified documents that could help victims of the massive human rights abuses committed under Pinochet. Last month, in anticipation of Obama’s trip to Chile, Carmen Frei, the daughter of Eduardo Frei Montalva, Chile’s president prior to Salvador Allende and believed poisoned by Pinochet in 1982, said that “precisely because there has been such a radical change in the politics of the United States that we believe in the human rights of President Obama, this is the moment—if he's coming to Chile he can receive the official requests and petitions.” And just before his arrival, Chile's entire center-left congressional cohort signed an open letter urging the US president to declassify the documents. Obama only committed to reviewing any request for information, adding that Washington wants to cooperate, “in principle.”

On this, Obama should take a cue from his Democratic predecessor, Bill Clinton, who did laudably declassify a massive amount of information to help the work of a United Nations truth commission—officially and aptly called the “Historical Clarification Commission"—charged investigating human rights violations during Guatemala’s long dirty war. The documentation was first released to the National Security Archive, a DC-based non-governmental organization, where it was reviewed and analyzed by Kate Doyle, who along with her colleagues at the NSA, including Peter Kornbluh and Carlos Osorio, over the years has worked tirelessly at exposing the dark side of US actions in Latin America. After this initial cull, the documents were passed on to Guatemala. I had the good luck of working with the commission on these documents and can say that the information obtained from them were indispensable in piecing together the architecture of terror, the mechanisms by which the Guatemalan state, with the active support of the United States, was able to carry out widespread repression.

Obama gave his trip’s keynote speech in Chile, holding up Latin America’s move away from the feverish violence of the cold war and embrace of democracy as a model for the rest of the world, with pointed reference to the Middle East.

Let’s hope he is right, for Latin America over the last decade has been a source of inspiration—not for the kind of anemic democracy the necons believe we can impose on recalcitrant states with a barrage of cruise missiles. The ongoing vitality of democracy in Latin America exists despite, not because, of US policy. It is not just rooted in constitutional proceduralism, in electoral rotations and checks on government power but in mobilized protest for a better world. And it is driven by an abiding faith in social democracy, a belief that for a society to be democratic it also has to be just—both in terms of welfare and enforcement of human rights. It is the heroic activists on the ground, from peasants in Honduras to the MST in Brazil and the Mapuches in southern Chile, who refuse to sit still as international corporations seek to turn the continent into a giant warehouse of primary material, water, gas, oil, soy, what have you, to serve the unsustainable needs of a globalized economy. It is the real human-rights activists, people like Berta Oliva, the besieged director of the Honduran Committee of the Families of the Detained and Disappeared, who refuse to keep quiet as they are lectured about letting bygones be bygones—that make the region democratic.

Thanks, EFerrari. Very, very good Grandin writing.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Great statement by Grandin! Such utter hypocrisy from our own government, as usual!

To repeat (and emphasize some points)...

-----

The ongoing vitality of democracy in Latin America exists despite, not because, of US policy. It is not just rooted in constitutional proceduralism, in electoral rotations and checks on government power but (it is rooted) in mobilized protest for a better world. And it is driven by an abiding faith in social democracy, a belief that for a society to be democratic it also has to be just—both in terms of welfare and enforcement of human rights. It is the heroic activists on the ground, from peasants in Honduras to the MST in Brazil and the Mapuches in southern Chile, who refuse to sit still as international corporations seek to turn the continent into a giant warehouse of primary material, water, gas, oil, soy, what have you, to serve the unsustainable needs of a globalized economy. It is the real human-rights activists, people like Berta Oliva, the besieged director of the Honduran Committee of the Families of the Detained and Disappeared, who refuse to keep quiet as they are lectured about letting bygones be bygones—that make the region democratic.

-------

It is the million Venezuelans who poured out of their hovels and surrounded Miraflores Palace in Caracas in 2002, to demand restoration of constitutional government and return of their kidnapped president--the PIONEERS of democracy in Latin America in this era. It is the thousands of coca leaf farmers led by Evo Morales, who resisted DEA fascism and U.S. toxic "war on drugs" pesticide spraying, and the thousands of water rights activists in Cochabomba who drove Bechtel corp. out of Bolivia. It is the awesome grass roots political activists in these and other Latin American countries--and also the awesome work of international groups like the Carter Center in setting up honest, transparent election systems--something we don't have here. It is the poor--the urban poor, the campesinos, the Indigenous--and those who have kept faith with the poor--students, teachers, artists, doctors, priests, nuns, soldiers, small business people and others--the great majority working to elect good governments in so many places--Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala.

Countries that have not successfully resisted U.S. interference have done poorly on the related issues of democracy and poverty alleviation. Colombia, recipient of $7 BILLION in U.S. military aid, is the worst mess of all--with rampant official military and related paramilitary murder of trade unionists, teachers, community activists, human rights workers and peasant farmers, and displacement of peasant farmers (5 million) the worst in the world. Needless to say, Colombia's rich/poor discrepancy is one of the worst in Latin America. (Venezuela was just designated THE best, according to the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean--i.e., the more a country distances itself from the U.S., the better life becomes for most people.) Hard to choose between Honduras and Mexico, for next worst U.S. influence. They are both on their way to becoming Colombia--blood-drenched, fascist-run, U.S. client states, where the trillion-plus dollar cocaine revenue stream never stops flowing to U.S. banksters, the Bush Cartel, the CIA, local oligarchies and other beneficiaries of the U.S. "war on drugs" and its goal of consolidation of the drug trade in fewer hands--ripe ground for U.S./multinational corporate exploitation and the war profiteering.

U.S. policy is sickening, and it is only by keeping the people of the U.S. ignorant of it and by depriving us of representation anywhere in government, with the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines (the corporate coup d'etat), that it can go on like this, serving the war machine and the uber-rich.

[EFerrari]

3. If Hillary Clinton really was concerned about the human rights of women

she would have met with Berta Oliva. That's it.

It's so saddening to see this opportunity circle the drain. So sad.