Last month, the Argentinian Memory Museum (ESMA) in Buenos Aires was nominated for inclusion in the list of World Heritage Sites, to be approved by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

ESMA, which stands on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, was formerly used by the Jorge Videla dictatorship which lasted from 1976 to 1981, as a torture and detention centre, and the place where opponents of the dictatorship were drugged, tied and prepared for the death flights. The practice of disappearing political opponents by throwing them off helicopters into the ocean, and which started during the Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, was adopted by Videla as the most efficient means of covering the tracks of the state’s extrajudicial killings. It is estimated that 30,000 people were disappeared during Videla’s rule.

It was through the documents released by the U.S. in 2017, that the death flights were established as having been used not only as a means of disappearance, but also murder, given that some victims were still alive when they were disposed of by the dictatorship. The U.S. was also a supplier of aircraft and helicopters for the Videla dictatorship, and had full knowledge of its methods of disappearance.

Out of 5,000 people detained at ESMA, only just over 100 survived. To mark the International Day of the Disappeared, the street where ESMA stands was renamed “SON 30000” to mark the number of victims killed and disappeared by the Videla dictatorship.

The National Security Archive’s (NSA) recently posted details of the U.S. declassification of Argentina related documents on its website, providing insight in the process taking place behind the scenes. Documents detailing the process show how the Clinton Administration initiated the declassification which eventually led to the release of 4,700 documents to the Argentinian government in 2002. The further U.S. declassification of documents related to the Argentinian dictatorship started with a formal request from the Argentinian government to the Obama Administration and which the Trump Administration subsequently upheld.

One declassified document which stipulates the conditions of how searches should be conducted, partially states, “Agency staff conducting searches should err on the side of inclusiveness and provide all documents pertaining to human rights abuses related to Argentina.” The same document also called upon agencies to reveal as much relevant information as possible but to refrain from declassifying information that jeopardises national security. Out of 918 records reviewed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 124 documents were released in full, 691 were redacted, and 103 documents remain classified.

Another document published by the NSA reveals the names of victims of the dictatorship, as well as U.S. officials, Argentinian generals and politicians, military and police units involved in the dictatorship atrocities. This document is of paramount importance as it contextualises and adds detail to the often-generalised information pertaining to the dictatorship era, and goes a long way in establishing both the identities of victims and aggressors – a crucial point in terms of Argentina’s collective memory.

What the U.S. perpetrated in Argentina is in some ways a continuation of what U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger instigated in Chile. In 1975, the year prior to which Videla took power in Argentina, Kissinger met with Chile’s Foreign Minister Patricio Carvajal. “I read the briefing paper for this meeting and it was nothing but Human Rights,” Kissinger mocked. “The State Department is made up of people who have a vocation for the ministry. Because there are not enough churches for them, they went into the Department of State.”

As Argentina continues to set the record straight over its dictatorship memory, the UNESCO nomination should prompt a reckoning of the damage international diplomacy has wreaked over countries that deviated from the imperialist agenda which also sustains the UN.

Last March, on the 45^th anniversary of Argentina’s descent into dictatorship, the National Security Archive posted a selection of declassified documents revealing the U.S. knowledge of the military coup in the country in 1976. A month before the government of Isabel Peron was toppled by the military, the U.S. had already informed the coup plotters that it would recognise the new government. Indications of a possible coup in Argentina had reached the U.S. as early as 1975.

A declassified CIA document from February 1976 describes the imminence of the coup, to the extent of mentioning military officers which would later become synonymous with torture, killings and disappearances of coup opponents. Notably, the coup plotters, among them General Jorge Rafael Videla, were already drawing up a list of individuals who would be subject to arrest in the immediate aftermath of the coup.

One concern for the U.S. was its standing in international diplomacy with regard to the Argentinian military dictatorship’s violence, which it pre-empted as a U.S. State Department briefing to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger shows. “An Argentine military government would be almost certain to engage in human rights violations such as to engender international criticism.”

After the experience of Chile and U.S. involvement in the coup which heralded dictator Augusto Pinochet’s rise to power, human rights violations became a key factor. Kissinger had brushed off the U.S. Congress’s concerns, declaring a policy that would turn a blind eye to the dictatorship’s atrocities. “I think we should understand our policy-that however unpleasant they act, this government is better for us than Allende was,” Kissinger had declared.

Months after expressing concern regarding the forthcoming human rights abuses as a result of the dictatorship in Argentina, the U.S. warned Pinochet about its dilemma in terms of justifying aid to a leadership which was becoming notorious for its violence and disappearances of opponents. “We have a practical problem to take into account, without bringing about pressures incompatible with your dignity, and at the same time which does not lead to U.S. laws which will undermine our relationship.”

In the same declassified document from the Chile archives of 1976, Pinochet expresses his concern over Orlando Letelier, a diplomat and ambassador to the U.S. during the era of Salvador Allende and an influential figure among members of the U.S. Congress, stating that Letelier is disseminating false information about Chile. Letelier was murdered by car bomb in Washington that same year, by a CIA and National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) agent Michael Townley.

However, the Argentinian coup plotters deepened their dialogue with the U.S. over how human rights violations would be committed. Aware of perceptions regarding Pinochet’s record, military officials approached the U.S. seeking ways to minimise the attention which Pinochet was garnering in Chile, while at the same time making it clear to U.S. officials to “some executions would probably be necessary.”

Assuming a non-involvement position was also deemed crucial by the U.S. To mellow any possible fallout, the coup plotters were especially keen to point out that the military coup would not follow in the steps of Pinochet. One declassified cable document detailing U.S. concern over involvement spells out how the U.S. Ambassador to Argentina Robert Hill planned to depart the country prior to the coup, rather than cancel plans to see how the events pan out. “The fact that I would be out of the country when the blow actually falls would be, I believe, a fact in our favor indicating non- involvement of Embassy and USG.” The main aim was to conceal evidence that the U.S. had prior knowledge of the forthcoming coup in Argentina.

While the released documents portray the U.S. as having knowledge of the coup as opposed to intervening overtly or covertly, the aftermath shows U.S. involvement was considerable. The Chile experience, including the murder of a diplomat on U.S. soil, were clearly not deterrents for U.S. policy in Latin America, as it extended further support for Videla’s rule. The Videla dictatorship would eventually kill and disappear over 30,000 Argentinians in seven years, aided by the U.S. which provided the aircraft necessary for the death flights in the extermination operation known as Plan Condor.

Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia: Whenever the peoples of Latin America have had real freedom to vote, over the past 20 years they far more often than not vote Social Democratic by landslides.

Argentina, one of the two demographic and economic giants of South America, has elected left-of-center, Peronist governments four out of five times in the past 16 years. Current President Alfredo Fernandez has been a model of responsible social policies at home while incurring the outrage of the Trump administration in Washington for defending the Social Democratic leaders of Bolivia, Ecuador and most of all President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.

In Mexico, popular President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, routinely “accused” of being leftist” and “populist” has courageously defied Wall Street and outspokenly described neo-liberalism as “a disaster” and “a calamity” for his country.

Giant Brazil with more than 200 million people the demographic heavyweight of Latin America, returned two successive twice-elected Social Democratic popular presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff in four elections in a row from 2003 to 2014.

Rousseff was toppled by an impeachment process in 2016 and replaced by the allegedly corrupt and certainly utterly incompetent and widely despised Michel Termer until 2019, when repressive and even more inept current hard-right wing ruler Jair Bolsonaro took over. He has proved a monument to disastrous ineptitude ever since.

The same pattern continues in small nations as well as huge ones. Ecuador with 18 million people twice elected popular President Rafael Correa in 2007 and 2013. He emphasized a dramatic increase in spending on education and health. Now after years of right wing reaction under the ironically named Lenin Moreni, Correa’s chosen successor , former economics minister Andres Arauz looks set to decisively defeat hard-line right wing banker Guillermo Lasso who only won a derisory 19.74 percent in the first round of voting. However, that assumes Ecuador will not be subjected to the kind of dirty tricks and US-backed military coups that plagued Brazil and Bolivia.

Last year, Bolivia threw off the sinister shackles of military repression that reemerged under the interim presidency of attractive figurehead interim President Jeanine Anez in 2019 after popular twice-elected President Evo Morales, leader of the Movement for Sociaism (MAS) was toppled. Now Morales has been belatedly succeeded by his former economics minister Luis Arce who took office in November 2020.

Also, democratically elected President Nicolas Maduro continues to survive in Venezuela despite an enormous bipartisan-backed US effort to topple him. It started under Barack Obama, expanded under Donald Trump and continues unabated under current President Joe Biden.

Several points never, ever made in the laughable US Main stream media (MSM) need to be pointed out here.

First, none of these current and recent Social Democratic governments in any of these countries either tried to invade or otherwise destabilize or topple any of their neighbors.

Second, none of the Social Democratic, repeatedly reelected leaders who were destabilized and eventually toppled by US-backed military coups in Brazil or Bolivia ever supported any terrorist groups operating anywhere in the hemisphere. President Fernandez has been exemplary at prosecuting and exposing both former extreme right-wing human rights violators and death squad supporters in his own country in the dark 1970s and early 1980s and extreme leftist groups operating in later decades too.

The real crime of these far from extreme reformist leaders of course was that they continued to defy the United States government, Wall Street financial interests and the International Monetary Fund and put the needs of their own peoples first.

Third, it is quite simply impossible to find anywhere in the English language mainstream media in the United States any acknowledgement whatsoever of this enormous, continent -wide political tide that over the past 15 years at least has swept from the Rio Grande land border between the United States and Mexico all the way down to remote Patagonia in the extreme south of Argentina.

At best, financial outlets like “The Economist” and the “Financial Times” in London or “Forbes” and the “Wall Street Journal” in New York will brush off these continuing political dynamics as temporary inconveniences reflecting the alleged illiteracy and stupidity of the majority populations, especially indigenous Native Americans. The British Broadcasting Corporation in London and Public Broadcasting System in Washington of course know better than to question their masters.

Exactly the same arguments of course are used in the United States to sneer at, marginalize and humiliate the so-called “Deplorables” – the mainstream working class white, black and Hispanic populations of the American heartland who have been devastated by the policies of open borders, unregulated global free trade and withdrawal of government aid and support for them.

The pattern of politics and the tide of history across all the vast lands of Latin America in the 21st century are unmistakable: The peoples of the hemisphere seek and treasure democratic freedoms, open and fair elections and peaceful domestic economic and social policies.

And what nation and forces are interfering in the domestic affairs, electoral processes and democratic freedoms of all these nations? It is not Russia or China.

But how long can these tides of history demanding democracy and socially responsible policies be held back? And what happens when they finally break through?

During his electoral campaign, incoming U.S. President Joe Biden said his administration will “commit to being the most transparent in history, and will declassify documents from past decades related to U.S. policy in Latin America.” In his statement, Biden made reference to the Obama administration, during which he was vice-president. In March 2016, during a visit to Argentina, former President Barack Obama had pledged to declassify documents pertaining to U.S. involvement in propping up dictatorships and human rights abuses. The release of such documents detailing previously concealed details of U.S. involvement in Argentina, notably the death flights, continued until April 2019, when the final batch of declassified documents was released by the Trump administration.

It is estimated that 30,000 Argentinians were murdered and disappeared during the dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla. Declassified documents pertaining to Operation Condor clearly show that the U.S. was informed of the systematic process of disappearing Argentinians opposed to the dictatorship and it also provided the helicopters used for the death flights. “A human rights source contact in the medical profession whose reporting has been reliable in the past informed the embassy in late June that terrorists and subversives selected for elimination were now being administered injections of ‘ketalar’.” The substance administered was used to induce rapid loss of consciousness in the victim, facilitating the dictatorship’s practice of disappearing their opponents by throwing the bodies off helicopters into the ocean. Since the declassification of these documents, it has become known that contrary to what was previously believed, the death flights were not only used to disappear detainees who had already been murdered by the state – some victims were only sedated after torture. The death flights, therefore, were both used as a form of murder and disappearance of dictatorship opponents.

The U.S. might have altered its previous methods of intervention in the region, although U.S. President Donald Trump overtly attempted to bring back the era of U.S.-backed coups. However, it is likely that under Biden, the far right-wing leaders in the region such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, will find a less accommodating stance, if only for the U.S. to maintain its purported democratic stance. On the other hand, centre-left and right-wing governments that have benefited from previous dictatorship legacies, or which are less outspoken about their preference for dictatorships, may prove to be a better alliance for the U.S.

Latin America doesn’t need U.S. solutions to its politics. The U.S. approach is still built upon the earlier foundations, merely altered in an attempt to dissociate from its past interference. However, the School of the Americas, now known as WHINSEC, still offers training for the region’s militaries. In Chile, the special forces who murdered the Mapuche activist Camilo Catrillanca on his own land were jointly trained by the U.S. and Colombia. The U.S. still maintains its embargo on Cuba, which was announced in 1960 and extended to all trade with the island since 1962. Guantanamo is still occupied by the U.S. military, which it has used as a military base and detention centre in its extended “War on Terror”. These are just a few examples which indicate the U.S. grasp and intrusion in the region.

Transparency should not be limited to an official apology from the U.S. Latin America has not yet come to terms with its recent history. The fight for justice spearheaded by civilians and obstructed by governments and law courts indicates that there is a heavy reliance upon earlier legacies for control and surveillance. Apologising for past violations is just a formality that holds no political or criminal accountability. Declassified documents should not be construed as an apology, and neither governments nor the people should adhere to this intentional discrepancy that seeks to obliterate the difference between rights and diplomatic niceties.

He was a working-class hero in the positive sense. Born dirt-poor in a barrio outside Buenos Aires, Maradona rose to become a soccer legend whose skill on the ball awed the world. Commentators remarked that the ball seemed to be “sewn to his feet” such was his balletic dexterity.

Maradona played in four World Cup tournaments but it was the 1986 games in Mexico where he shone like a god at the age of 25. As team captain and striking midfielder wearing the number 10 shirt, Maradona was the catalyst for Argentina winning that tournament. In a series of matches of breathtaking performances, he took the side to victory in the final against West Germany.

But it was the earlier quarter-final match against England which immortalized the kid from the barrio. Memories of the 1981-82 Falklands War were still raw when the Argentines were defeated by Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. Maradona exacted sweet revenge, routing the England side like second-raters and outshining them with sheer Latino brilliance. Yes, he did infamously cheat with his first goal, flicking the ball past the England keeper in a feint for a header. The goal stood, however, because the referee didn’t see the foul, despite protests from the England team. Then four minutes later, the Argentine dynamo demolished his critics with a second goal that many believe to be the best-ever in football history. He took the ball from deep in his own half and dribbled past at least five England defenders over a 70-meter run, shimmying past the goalkeeper and whipping the ball into an empty net. With characteristic cheek, Maradona later said the first goal was due to the “hand of God”. Few would object.

At only 1.65m (5ft 5in) in height, and despite his magical weaving skills, Maradona incurred debilitating injuries from repeated rough tackles. This was before the modern-day practice of protective refereeing. Those injuries led to a dependence on painkiller drugs which Maradona also enhanced with excesses of alcohol and cocaine. He was a footballing deity after all and was living on top of a pedestal. After his 1986 World Cup success he went on to achieve stunning victories for Italian club Napoli. In was during this period, it is said the legend got involved with narcotics and other inner demons.

But the beautiful thing about him was he never forgot his roots in grinding poverty. As one of eight children he grew up in slums with no running water or electricity. In his later life, despite his fame, he always identified with the world’s poor and oppressed. It was the reason why the poor south of Italy Napoli supporters adored him for his brotherly appreciation and, of course, for taking them to victory against the rich clubs in the north.

Maradona once said: “I hate everything that comes from the United States. I hate it with all my strength.”

He revered his Argentinian compatriot and the revolutionary leader Che Guevara. He also befriended Fidel Castro and proudly called the Cuban leader as his “second father”. He lived in Cuba for extended periods and received crucial medical treatment to alleviate his ailments.

Maradona championed other socialist causes too. He was an outspoken supporter of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. He denounced American wars in the Middle East and would say that in his heart “he was Palestinian”.

He consciously used his worldwide football fame to highlight the cause for justice against the crimes of the Yankee empire. One supposes that his heroic struggle on the field was a reflection of his own conviction about the wider struggle for human liberation from oppression. His passion and inspiration was an extension of the fight for justice.

Maradona fought the good fight with the heart of a lion. But that brave heart gave out this week. He had suffered from health complications over many years and the battles eventually took their toll. Argentina has announced three days of national mourning and around the world this week there will be a minute’s silence before all games.

Football fans of all stripes place the Argentinian maestro first among equals in the sporting stars: Johan Cruyff, Pelé, Garrincha, George Best among others. Modern-day luminaries Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo offered their heartfelt condolences and respect for their hero.

If football is the reputed universal “game of the people” then Diego Maradona is the sport’s fitting icon. He was a man of, and for, the people. To those hypocrites who piously admonish that politics should be kept out of sports (while using every opportunity to score political points against opponents when convenient) Maradona was fearless in keeping politics in the game through his courageous solidarity with victims of oppression. He never flinched from using his exquisite skills for the cause of justice and peace. That’s why above all the other sporting stars, he is loved by so many billions around the world.

The initiative was led by Chile and Costa Rica, laying the foundations for a human rights treaty at a regional level. In September 2018 under President Sebastian Pinera, Chile withdrew from the agreement, just three months after a Global Witness report noted that Latin America held the highest percentage of murdered environmental activists – a staggering 60 per cent.

Argentina recently voted to ratify the Escazu Agreement, joining Antigua and Barbuda, Ecuador, Bolivia, Panama, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Nicaragua, Guyana and Uruguay. The treaty needs one more country to become signatory, in order to be enforced in the region. While the window of opportunity for signing regionally has closed, countries can still ratify the agreement through the UN.

Chile, which helped to draft the treaty under former president Michelle Bachelet, has once again refused to sign the agreement, with Pinera calling it “inconvenient” due to the possibility of the country facing international legal action for environmental crimes and conflicts. Several environmental activists have been found dead in Chile following Pinera’s withdrawal from the agreement, raising suspicion that the individuals were targeted by state and multinational interests.

Argentina’s ratification is important for the region. The Italian fashion brand, Benetton, owns 2.2 million acres of land which is considered ancestral territory by the indigenous Mapuche people. The purchase took place in 1991, when the Argentinian government’s adoption of neoliberalism prompted privatisation of land. Since the late 19^th century, Mapuche territory had been targeted and the people expelled, thus initiating the imbalance of power between the state and the indigenous population.

Despite Argentinian law recognising the Mapuche people’s ancestral rights to land, the state and corporate interests hold sway over such rights. As happens elsewhere in Latin America, the complicity between states and multinational companies has resulted in militarisation and securitisation of indigenous land, the criminalisation of indigenous resistance, as well as the targeting of environmental and indigenous activists; Argentina having been heavily scrutinised for the killing and disappearance of Santiago Maldonado. Maldonado had been involved in protests against Benetton in which the Mapuche were demanding their ancestral rights to occupied land.

While the Escazu Agreement seeks more civilian participation in environmental decision-making, as well as protection for activists, a change in politics in imperative. The protection afforded to multinational companies, as well as influential lobby groups, such as agribusiness in Brazil and hydroelectric projects in Chile for example, has resulted in widespread impunity. If the Escazu Agreement is to reach its full potential, a political reckoning with human rights is unavoidable, not only by countries which have refused ratification, but also those which have signed and still operate with a discrepancy between protection and violation in the name of profit.

It is also impossible to negate the link between Latin America’s dictatorial past and the current impunity. Decades of dictatorships which ushered in the politics of neoliberalism have left the people exploited by governments whose main priority has been to utilise dictatorship tactics under democratic rule. Access to information on environmental matters, which is part of the Escazu Agreement, is anathema for governments relying upon the exploitation of land and corruption. Security for citizens is not what corrupt governance is seeking, hence the need to consider the Escazu Agreement within the context of local and regional politics, to prevent its aims from being overruled by lucrative ventures at the expense of civilians.

U.S. intelligence was deeply involved in the propping of dictatorships in Latin America in particular after Chile’s Unidad Popular led by Salvador Allende triumphed at the polls. Declassified documents have shown that the U.S. knew about the tactics used by the Argentinian dictatorship – emulated after Chile’s practice of disappearing opponents into the ocean, packaged and thrown off helicopters provided by the U.S. In some cases, the death flights also served as a murder practice – some victims were thrown into the ocean drugged, yet still alive.

Recently, it has also been revealed that U.S. intelligence surveillance over the extent of human rights violations in Latin America was aided by Germany and Switzerland. A Swiss company, Crypto AG, was jointly owned by the U.S. and West Germany. The company was then acquired by the participating countries in Operation Condor and later incorporated into the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) technology.

News reports have revealed that the Swiss government was knowledgeable about the CIA operations conducted through Crypto AG, which makes the country complicit in the dealings of Operation Condor and sheds doubt about Switzerland’s purported political neutrality, a stance which has enabled it to embrace duplicity and serve both oppressor and the oppressed.

Eventually, the surveillance technology targeted over 100 countries. Swiss media have reported that along with Sweden, Israel and Britain, Switzerland was privy to the information compiled through the operation. The Swiss government has launched an investigation into the case and the company’s licence has been suspended.

Among the intelligence gathered by the U.S. through the surveillance programme was the plan for the assassination of Chilean diplomat and ambassador to the U.S. in the Allende era, Orlando Letelier, who was murdered by a car bomb in Washington in 1976. Michael Townley, a CIA agent who also worked for the Pinochet dictatorship’s National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) was responsible for placing the bomb underneath Letelier’s vehicle. The murder was directly ordered by Pinochet. Operation Silence, in which efforts were made to prevent judges from investigating dictatorship crimes in the 1990s, resulted in the murder of Townley’s DINA partner, Eugenio Berrios, a chemist tasked with producing sarin gas for the dictatorship. Berrios’s body was discovered, heavily mutilated, in Uruguay, thus eliminating the possibility of further evidence being given in the Letelier case.

The link between Chile and Argentina in terms of dictatorship cooperation to eliminate opponents resulted in the killing and disappearance of Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) militants.

Revelations regarding Crypto AG will likely add to the level of U.S. complicity in Operation Condor, apart from other forms of political violence globally which were aided by the CIA. In Latin America, particularly given the current turbulence from coups, such as in the case of Bolivia, to popular mobilisation as we are seeing in Chile, the news regarding surveillance is likely to have an impact on both current happenings and in terms of the region’s collective memory.

Argentina is in trouble again. Even after a substantial aid package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it is struggling to service its sovereign debt. One should not be surprised: when you keep employing the same policies, you are likely to end up with similar outcomes. This, however, is not the lesson Harvard economist Ken Rogoff draws from Argentina’s experience. Instead, he calls for even more aid flows to Argentina.

Rogoff is right to criticize President Macri’s decision to cut the fiscal deficit gradually, rather than attacking the issue more forcefully early on. That strategy ultimately required Macri to seek help from the IMF. But he is wrong to characterize the Macri tax cuts and liberalization efforts as “Big Bang reforms.” The tax cut was marginal at best. And, while capital controls were lifted under Macri, more comprehensive measures of economic freedom show no significant improvements.

Getting the story straight is important. If Macri is a great economic reformer, as Rogoff suggests, it calls into question the standard view that countries facing a sovereign debt crisis should engage in structural reforms (cutting marginal tax rates, liberalizing labor and financial markets, etc.). “Argentina tried structural reforms,” some will say, “and those reforms did not work.”

Moreover, since structural reforms cause political instability, the argument goes, they might make matters even worse.

If, instead, the Macri reforms are seen as they were — a slow, inadequate response to a huge, pressing problem — then one need not call on the IMF to provide even more aid to those countries struggling to service their sovereign debt. Indeed, aid from the IMF and other organizations might even make matters worse by shielding policy makers from the consequences of their policies.

Rogoff’s case for more aid would be stronger if Argentina’s problems were temporary. An unexpected emergency can be handled with emergency funding. But the problem in Argentina is not temporary. It is structural. Argentina must deal with its chronic budget deficits. Additional funds enable the profligate spending and inadequate taxation to continue. It doesn’t solve the problem. It perpetuates it, requiring even-more-painful structural reforms in the future.

The IMF may be reluctant to dictate domestic policy. Yet, as Rogoff explains, the IMF does not give out (free) grants, but loans. And, as such, its loans can be issued conditionally on required structural-reform requirements. It might require specific fiscal or market liberalization reforms.

Or, it might require an increase by so many points on a given index (e.g.,  Economic Freedom of the World, Doing Business report, labor-rigidity index, Global Competitiveness Report) and allow domestic policy makers to decide how best to achieve those results. In either case, however, it would be recognizing that the reforms — and not the short-term funding — are what is ultimately required. And governments failing to make those reforms would bear the costs.

aier.org

Pepe ESCOBAR

The presidential election in Argentina was no less than a game-changer and a graphic lesson for the whole Global South. It pitted, in a nutshell, the people versus neoliberalism. The people won – with new President Alberto Fernandez and former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) as his VP.

Neoliberalism was represented by Mauricio Macri: a marketing product, former millionaire playboy, president of football legends Boca Juniors, fanatic of New Age superstitions, and CEO obsessed with spending cuts, who was unanimously sold by Western mainstream media as the new paradigm of a post-modern, efficient politician.

Well, the paradigm will soon be evacuated, leaving behind a wasteland: $250 billion in foreign debt; less than $50 billion in reserves; inflation at 55 percent; the U.S. dollar at over 60 pesos (a family needs roughly $500 to spend in a month; 35.4 percent of Argentine homes can’t make it); and, incredible as it may seem in a self-sufficient nation, a food emergency.

“The Head of Macri: How the First President of ‘No Politics’  Thinks, Lives and Leads.”

Macri, in fact the president of so-called Anti-Politics, No- Politics in Argentina, was a full IMF baby, enjoying total “support” (and gifted with a humongous $58 billion loan). New lines of credit, for the moment, are suspended.   Fernandez is going to have a really hard time trying to preserve sovereignty while negotiating with foreign creditors, or “vultures,” as masses of Argentines define them. There will be howls on Wall Street and in the City of London about “fiery populism,” “market panicking,” “pariahs among international investors.” Fernandez refuses to resort to a sovereign default, which would add even more unbearable pain for the general public.

The good news is that Argentina is now the ultimate progressive lab on how to rebuild a devastated nation away from the familiar, predominant framework: a state mired in debt; rapacious, ignorant comprador elites; and “efforts” to balance the budget always at the expense of people’s interests.

What happens next will have a tremendous impact all over Latin America, not to mention serve as a blueprint for assorted Global South struggles. And then there’s the particularly explosive issue of how it will influence neighboring Brazil, which as it stands, is being devastated by a “Captain” Bolsonaro even more toxic than Macri.
It took less than four years for neoliberal barbarism, implemented by Macri, to virtually destroy Argentina. For the first time in its history Argentina is experiencing mass hunger.

In these elections, the role of charismatic former President CFK was essential. CFK prevented the fragmentation of Peronism and the whole progressive arc, always insisting, on the campaign trail, on the importance of unity.

But the most appealing phenomenon was the emergence of a political superstar: Axel Kicillof, born in 1971 and CFK’s former economy minister. When I was in Buenos Aires two months ago everyone wanted to talk about Kicillof.

The province of Buenos Aires congregates 40 percent of the Argentine electorate. Fernandez won over Macri by roughly 8 percent nationally. In Buenos Aires province though, the Macrists lost by 16 percent – because of Kicillof.

Kicillof’s campaign strategy was delightfully described as “Clio mata big data” (“Clio kills big data”), which sounds great when delivered with a porteño accent. He went literally all over the place – 180,000 km in two years, visiting all 135 cities in the province – in a humble 2008 Renault Clio, accompanied only by his campaign chief Carlos Bianco (the actual owner of the Clio) and his press officer Jesica Rey. He was duly demonized 24/7 by the whole mainstream media apparatus.

What Kicillof was selling was the absolute antithesis of Cambridge Analytica and Duran Barba – the Ecuadorian guru, junkie of big data, social networks and focus groups, who actually invented Macri the politician in the first place.

Argentina’s new president, Alberto Fernandez, at right, with his vice president, former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. (Screen shot/YouTube)

Kicillof played the role of educator – translating macroeconomic language into prices in the supermarket, and Central Bank decisions into credit card balance, all to the benefit of elaborating a workable government program. He will be the governor of no less than the economic and financial core of Argentina, much like Sao Paulo in Brazil.

Fernandez, for his part, is aiming even higher: an ambitious, new, national, social pact – congregating unions, social movements, businessmen, the Church, popular associations, aimed at  implementing something close to the Zero Hunger program launched by Lula in 2003.

In his historic victory speech, Fernandez cried, “Lula libre!” (“Free Lula”). The crowd went nuts. Fernandez said he would fight with all his powers for Lula’s freedom; he considers the former Brazilian president, fondly, as a Latin American pop hero. Both Lula and Evo Morales are extremely popular in Argentina.

Inevitably, in neighboring, top trading partner and Mercosur member Brazil, the two-bit neofascist posing as president, who’s oblivious to the rules of diplomacy, not to mention good manners, said he won’t send any compliments to Fernandez. The same applies to the destroyed-from-the-inside Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations, once a proud institution, globally respected, now “led” by an irredeemable fool.

Former Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, a great friend of Fernandez, fears that “hidden forces will sabotage him.” Amorim suggests a serious dialogue with the Armed Forces, and an emphasis on developing a “healthy nationalism.” Compare it to Brazil, which has regressed to the status of semi-disguised military dictatorship, with the ominous possibility of a tropical Patriot Act being approved in Congress to essentially allow the “nationalist” military to criminalize any dissidence.

Hit the Ho Chi Minh Trail

Beyond Argentina, South America is fighting neoliberal barbarism in its crucial axis, Chile, while destroying the possibility of an irreversible neoliberal take over in Ecuador. Chile was the model adopted by Macri, and also by Bolsonaro’s Finance Minister Paulo Guedes, a Chicago boy and Pinochetist fan. In a glaring instance of historical regression, the destruction of Brazil is being operated by a model now denounced in Chile as a dismal failure.

No surprises, considering that Brazil is Inequality Central. Irish economist Marc Morgan, a disciple of Thomas Piketty, in a 2018 research paper showed that the Brazilian 1 percent controls no less than 28 percent of national wealth, compared to 20 percent in the U.S. and 11 percent in France.

Axel Kicillof in 2014. (2violetas, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Which bring us, inevitably, to the immediate future of Lula – still hanging, and hostage to a supremely flawed Supreme Court. Even conservative businessmen admit that the only possible cure for Brazil’s political recovery – not to mention rebuilding an economic model centered on wealth distribution – is represented by “Free Lula.”

When that happens we will finally have Brazil-Argentina leading a key Global South vector towards a post-neoliberal, multipolar world.

Across the West, usual suspects have been trying to impose the narrative that protests from Barcelona to Santiago have been inspired by Hong Kong. That’s nonsense. Hong Kong is a complex, very specific situation, which I have analyzed, for instance, here, mixing anger against political non-representation with a ghostly image of China.

Each of the outbursts – Catalonia, Lebanon, Iraq, the Gilets Jaunes/Yellow Vests for nearly a year now – are due to very specific reasons. Lebanese and Iraqis are not specifically targeting neoliberalism, but they do target a crucial subplot: political corruption.

Protests are back in Iraq including Shi’ite-majority areas. Iraq’s 2005 constitution is similar to Lebanon’s, passed in 1943: power is distributed according to religion, not politics. This is a French colonizer thing – to keep Lebanon always dependent, and replicated by the Exceptionalists in Iraq. Indirectly, the protests are also against this dependency.

The Yellow Vests are targeting essentially President Emmanuel Macron’s drive to implement neoliberalism in France – thus the movement’s demonization by hegemonic media. But it’s in South America that protests go straight to the point: it’s the economy, stupid. We are being strangled and we’re not gonna take it anymore. A great lesson  can be had by paying attention to Bolivian Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera.

As much as Slavoj Zizek and Chantal Mouffe may dream of Left Populism, there are no signs of progressive anger organizing itself across Europe, apart from the Yellow Vests. Portugal may be a very interesting case to watch – but not necessarily progressive.

To digress about “populism” is nonsensical. What’s happening is the Age of Anger exploding in serial geysers that simply cannot be contained by the same, old, tired, corrupt forms of political representation allowed by that fiction, Western liberal democracy.

Zizek spoke of a difficult “Leninist” task ahead – of how to organize all these eruptions into a “large-scale coordinated movement.” It’s not gonna happen anytime soon. But, eventually, it will. As it stands, pay attention to Linera, pay attention to Kiciloff, let a collection of insidious, rhizomatic, underground strategies intertwine. Long live the post-neoliberal Ho Chi Minh trail.

consortiumnews.com

Although there are attempts by the right-wing in Latin America and the United States to turn Bolivian progressive president Evo Morales into a Hugo Chavez or Nicolas Maduro, and thus, worthy of sanctions on him and his government, there are clear indications that Morales won the election for his fourth term in receiving 47.07% to 36.51% for former President Carlos Mesa in the first round of the presidential election held on October 19^th and 20^th. Morales’s 10.56 edge over Mesa gave him a 10 percent lead with over 40 percent of the vote, the threshold necessary to be declared winner of the first round.

Although the usual suspects in the Organization of American States (OAS) and European Union, reinforced by right-wing US senator Marco Rubio of Florida – Washington’s main lobbyist for all of Latin America’s oligarchs and narcotics lords – demanded a second-round election, Morales and his Movement for Socialism party was confident of their victory to agree an OAS audit of the vote tally. However, Mexico’s government warned the OAS not to interfere in the Bolivian election. Since the advent of the Trump administration, the OAS has become more vocal against progressive governments in Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, all of which have been hit with crippling US economic and travel sanctions.

The Trump administration and its right-wing allies in the OAS and the governments of Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia cried foul and demanded a second-round vote. Those questioning Morales’s victory are the same corporatist quarters that propelled Bolsonaro, Pinera, and Argentine president Mauricio Macri into power. Morales’s traditional political enemies in provinces like Beni and Santa Cruz, hit the streets with protests. It is well-known that the Bolsonaro government in Brazil has provided political and financial support to Morales’s right-wing opposition, the Civic Community alliance.

Rather than rely on military coups to overthrow popularly-elected progressive governments – a tactic long used by the Central Intelligence Agency in the Western hemisphere – the new architects of “regime change” in Langley, Virginia have discovered “lawfare,” the use of corrupt judges and prosecutors, to bring falsified criminal charges of corruption against leaders opposed by Washington.

In Brazil, lawfare was used to justify the impeachment and removal from office of progressive President Dilma Rousseff and the imprisonment on a cooked-up bribery conviction of her progressive predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula’s imprisonment and ineligibility to run for president in 2018 opened the door for the victory of Bolsonaro in the presidential election. The selection by Bolsonaro of Sergio Moro as his justice minister exposed the entire corruption that is inherent with Moro and Brazil’s far-right. Moro was the federal prosecutor who waged lawfare actions against Lula and Rousseff in charging them with involvement in the “Operation Car Wash” bribery scandal involving the Brazilian construction company, Odebrecht SA. It is more than apparent that Car Wash was a lawfare tactic developed by the CIA to overturn progressive leaders in Latin America.

A ruling by Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court in November of this year could overturn Lula’s conviction. If that occurs, Lula will be free to challenge Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential election. Bolsonaro, who plans to run for re-election, has been trying, along with Moro, to unconstitutionally and illegally influence the Supreme Court decision. Workers Party leaders Lula and Rousseff were not the only progressive leaders painted with the wide brush of the Car Wash probe. Others targeted include Chile’s former president, Michelle Bachelet and Argentina’s former president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

The right-wing plot to tarnish Mrs. Kirchner with Car Wash was a complete failure. Although Macri, with the support of the administration of his old business partner, Trump, and the Bolsonaro regime, launched a propaganda campaign against Kirchner, her leftist Frente de Todos party scored a major win over Macri in the October 27 presidential election in Argentina. The victory of leftist presidential candidate Alberto Fernandez and his vice-presidential running mate, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (no relation to the presidential candidate), sent a message to Latin America and Washington that the rightward tilt of the hemisphere was in check. In one of his first statements after his victory, Alberto Fernandez called on Brazil to release Lula from prison. A revitalized progressive left bloc emerged with Argentina’s President Fernandez and Mexico’s leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrado as its cornerstones.

In Uruguay, the leftist Frente Amplio, which has ruled Uruguay for over 14 years, saw its presidential candidate, Daniel Martinez, with a plurality of the vote over his right-wing challenger, Luis Lacalle Pou. Since neither candidate achieved a 50 percent threshold, the election will go to a second round on November 24. Uruguayans have been alarmed by Pou’s willingness to reconstitute the country’s national security force. During past military rule, such a force was responsible for countless human rights violations.

The accusations in Chile against former President Bachelet came as her right-wing billionaire successor, Pinera, was coping with massive street protests that resulted in a state of emergency declaration. Pinera’s security forces killed 11 protesters. The heavy-handed response was reminiscent of the darkest days of military junta rule of dictator General Augusto Pinochet, someone who Pinera generally admires. The timing of the charges against Bachelet was extremely suspicious and appeared to undermine Bachelet’s position as the head of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and her condemnation of the human rights abuses by Pinera’s government.

The protests in Chile were mirrored by those in Ecuador, where President Moreno, who was named Lenin because of his father’s great admiration for Vladimir Lenin, had decided to break with the socialist policies of his predecessor, Correa, but had instituted crippling austerity measures, including slashing fuel subsidies, which were all designed to placate the International Monetary Fund and foreign creditors. The protests against Moreno were so intense, the government was forced to temporarily relocate government functions from Quito, the capital, to Guayaquil amid a declaration of a state of emergency. Meanwhile, the faltering Moreno regime continues its attempts to have former President Correa extradited from Belgium, where he has political asylum. As Moreno’s hold on power became shakier, his regime grew closer to the US military while Moreno began making wild accusations about Correa “spying” on him from Belgium.

Another US puppet, President Juan Orlando Hernandez of Honduras, was faced with massive labor and student protests after his younger brother, Tony Hernandez , was convicted of drug trafficking charges by a US federal court in New York. During the trial, several witnesses linked the Honduran president to his brother’s drug trafficking cartel. The US has ensured that CIA-approved puppets like Hernandez have maintained political control of Honduras ever since a CIA-backed coup toppled progressive president Manuel Zelaya in 2009. Evidence presented during the trial implicated not only President Hernandez, but also his predecessor, Porfirio Lobo, who was installed after the 2009 CIA coup against Zelaya. Former President Zelaya and supporters of his leftist LIBRE party were among several protesters on the streets of Tegucigalpa calling for Hernandez’s resignation.

Protests also swept Haiti, with demonstrators calling for the corrupt president, Jovenel Moise, to step down. As with Honduras, Haiti has been subjected to repeated CIA-backed coups, with two directed against former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Recent local elections in Colombia, governed by the far-right President Ivan Duque, were marred by the assassination of one of several leaders of the de-mobilized FARC leftist guerilla movement. The latest victim was Alexander Parra. Although a peace agreement was negotiated between the FARC and Duque’s more centrist predecessor, Juan Manuel Santos, the recipient of the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize, Duque and his narco-trafficker ally, former President Alvaro Uribe, have done their best to scuttle the FARC peace deal by assassinating its leaders.

Election results from throughout Colombia were devastating for Duque; his political godfather, Uribe; and Uribistas tied to right-wing paramilitary groups and drug cartels. In Medellin, an Uribista stronghold, Daniel Quintero, an opponent of Duque and Urbe, was elected mayor. Reformist mayors also won mayor’s races in Bogota, which saw its first female mayor, Claudia Lopez, elected on the Green Alliance ticket. A progressive party, Fuerza Ciudadana, won the governorship in the right-wing paramilitary stronghold of Magdalena province.

Trump and his fellow neo-fascists in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Honduras, and Colombia were hoping for a right-wing tide to continue to sweep through the Western Hemisphere. The news from Buenos Aires, La Paz, Bogota, and Montevideo suggests that the region’s right-wingers can put away their champagne bottles.