Now home to thousands of limited liability corporations linked to the CIA, as well as private military contractors, sketchy airlines flying from remote Florida airports, the interventionist US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), and exiled oligarchs running destabilization operations in their native countries, Miami – or MIAMI, “Military Intervention and Mercenaries, Inc.” – serves as the nexus for current Trump administration “regime change” efforts.

The latest example of Miami being a hive of CIA operatives came after five Americans, one Serbian permanent resident of the United States, and another Serbian national, were arrested by the Haitian National Police in Port-au-Prince with weapons, advanced communications devices, drones, and other military hardware amid anti-government protests linked to CIA regime change operations. The government of Haitian President Jovenel Moise and Prime Minister Jean Henry Céant is under US pressure to sever its diplomatic and financial links with the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who the Trump administration is attempting to replace with Juan Guaido, a CIA agent-of-influence and US puppet.

The Americans and Serbs were subsequently transferred to Miami on the authorization of Haitian Justice Minister Jean Roody Aly, who was assured by the Donald Trump administration that the seven men would be criminally tried by the United States. Once in Miami, the US Attorney’s Office in Miami, which takes its orders from the CIA-friendly Attorney General, William Barr, declined prosecution of the men but “debriefed” them, a term usually applied to intelligence agents who are caught and expelled by foreign authorities. The decision by the Haitian administration to release the seven men has resulted in a political firestorm in Port-au-Prince, with the Haitian Senate demanding answers about the role Moise played in ordering the Central Bureau of the Judicial Police of Haiti to release the individuals, described by Prime Minister Céant as “mercenaries” and “terrorists.”

Two of the Americans – Christopher Michael Osman and Christopher Mark McKinley – are former US Navy SEAL officers. Another, Kent Leland Kroeker, is a former US Marine. A fourth American, Talon Ray Burton, is a former US Army military policeman and an ex-employee of the American mercenary Blackwater firm, which was founded by ex-Navy SEAL Erik Prince, the brother of Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

The fifth American, Dustin Porte, also ex-US military, is the president of Patriot Group Services, a subcontractor for the US Department of Homeland Security.

The two Serbians, Vlade Jankvic and Danilo Bajagic, were permitted to fly to Washington, DC after arriving in Miami from Haiti. An eighth man arrested with the Americans and Serbs, Michael Estera, a Haitian national, remains in Haiti. Curiously, Estera had earlier been deported to Haiti from the United States.

McKinley reportedly changed his name from Christopher Heben. In 2015, a jury found Heben not guilty of filing a false police report claiming an African-American man shot him outside a store in Ohio. He subsequently changed his last name to McKinley, the same name of one of the Ohio-born US presidents. Heben previously served with SEAL Team 8 in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Iraq. Sfter leaving the Navy, Heben was found guilty of forging physician prescriptions for anabolic steroids. McKinley runs a security company called Invictvs Group. It is noteworthy that Augustus Sol Invictus, also known as Austin Gillespie, is a far-right white nationalist, who ran for the Libertarian Party’s nomination for the US Senate in Florida in 2016. He was also a speaker at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which led to neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan violence against counter-protesters.

For Miami, the more things change, the more they stay the same. In the 1960s, Miami and Dade County was the home to hundreds of CIA mercenaries, many with ties to criminal organizations, including the Mafia. In addition to, once again, serving as the home to CIA mercenaries, Miami International Airport has reverted to its traditional role of smuggling illegal weapons to Latin American hot spots. The latest incident involved a Boeing 767 cargo plane, belonging to 21 Air LLC of Greensboro, North Carolina, being seized by Venezuelan authorities on February 3 for transporting weapons and ammunition from Miami International Airport to Valencia, the third largest city in Venezuela.

The mercenaries arrested in Haiti appear to be unprofessional clowns. The CIA has a history of hiring such bumbling fools. In 1985, the CIA, trying to recruit American mercenaries for its Operation PEGASUS covert war against Nicaragua, held recruiting sessions in a rather seedy Miami Howard Johnson’s motel room. Other CIA case officers recruited Cubans, including known drug dealers, at bars, such as “Cherries” in Key Biscayne. Garbage in, garbage out has always been the unofficial motto bestowed by critics upon the “Black Knights of the Potomac.”

Miami has been a historical hub for right-wing Cuban exiles, most employed by the CIA, who have maintained the goal of overthrowing the government of Cuba. Even though Cuba is no longer governed by members of the family of Fidel Castro, the Trump administration has increased sanctions and the US embargo on Cuba with the avowed aim of overthrowing President Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel. The presence of SOUTHCOM in Miami provides the CIA with a base of operations to conduct regime change liaison with Miami-based oligarchs from not only Venezuela and Cuba, but Nicaragua and Bolivia. During the CIA’s heyday in Miami, Cuban exiles were recruited to fight illegal CIA wars and insurrections in the Congo, Angola, Ghana, and Mozambique. In some cases, the Miami-based covert operations involved members of Israel’s Mossad, who were able to blend into Miami’s sizable Jewish population without any suspicion. Today, the Latin American right-wing oligarchs in Miami have found comfortable allies in the city’s large expatriate Russian- and Ukrainian-Jewish population of tax evaders, embezzlers, professional assassins, weapons smugglers, drug kingpins, human sex traffickers, and multi-million- dollar investors in Trump’s condominiums.

Some of Latin America’s wealthiest oligarchs have fled, along with their money, to the Miami area. They have been joined, in some cases, by the commanders of genocidal death squads, including Gilberto Jordán of the Guatemalan “Red Berets,” the Kaibiles. Jordán’s military unit specialized in murdering helpless Guatemalan Mayan families, including infants. He found a safe haven in Delray Beach, north of Miami. Although Jordán, a US citizen – thanks to the “good offices” of the CIA – was arrested by US authorities in 2010, he was merely convicted of lying on his US immigration papers and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. The federal sentencing document stated that in November 1982, Jordán’s unit entered the village of Dos Erres where Jordán ordered his men to systematically kill the men, women and children of the village, raping the women and girls, before hitting the villagers in the head with sledgehammers and throwing them into the village well.

Bolivia’s former Defense Minister, Carlos Sánchez Berzaín, another genocidal murderer of indigenous villagers, lives in a gated community in affluent Pinecrest in Miami-Dade County. He and his fellow Miami exilée, former Bolivian President Gonzalo "Goni" Sánchez de Lozada, were sued in US Court in Fort Lauderdale for $10 million in compensatory claims by family members and survivors of the 2003 “Black October” deaths of 67 indigenous protesters in the village of Sorata. In 2014, a federal judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, pursuant to the provisions of the Torture Victim Protection Act. The Bolivian genocidal duo appealed the decision and last year, US Judge James Cohn, a George W. Bush-nominee, overturned the verdict, even though there was a previous unanimous jury verdict siding with the plaintiffs. The Bolivian genocide twins are now biding their time in Miami until Trump, working with the blatantly neo-Nazi regime of President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, organizes the overthrow of Bolivian socialist President Evo Morales, that nation’s first native Aymara president. Bolsonaro and Bolivia’s fascists-in-waiting will then be free to jointly target their nations’ indigenous tribes for annihilation, without a peep from the White House.

Another one of “Miami’s finest” was Telmo Ricardo Hurtado, nicknamed the “Butcher of the Andes” for his Peruvian military unit’s massacres of Peruvian indigenous villagers. In 2009, Hurtado was found guilty of lying on his US visa application and deported back to Peru. Another South Florida war criminal was Juan Angel Hernández Lara, the commander of Honduras’s Special Forces Battalion 3-16, a death squad formed by the CIA in the 1980s. Lara specialized in torture involving fingernails and plastic bags over victims’ heads. Lara was later found living in a $250,000 home in Wellington in Palm Beach County.

Under the Trump administration, which coddles Latin America’s neo-fascist leaders of Colombia, Brazil, Honduras, Paraguay, Guatemala, and Argentina, is more likely to extend a hearty welcome to genocidal death squad leaders and continue to deport largely indigenous refugees at the US southern border seeking asylum from uniformed mass murderers.

Equally notorious in Miami’s “Little Havana” neighborhood of right-wing Cuban exiles were two terrorists, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, both responsible for the terrorist bombing in October 1976 of Cubana Flight 455, en route from Bridgetown, Barbados to Kingston, Jamaica. All 73 passengers and crew were killed, including children. In addition to Bosch and Posada Carriles, members of the pre-Hugo Chavez CIA-trained Venezuelan intelligence service, General Sectoral Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services (DISIP) were implicated in the attack. Veterans of DISIP are behind the current CIA efforts to toppled President Maduro, many of them also having sought and received sanctuary in the Miami area, particularly Doral.

It is no surprise that Miami and South Florida, once again, buzzes with activity as Trump’s CIA launches coups in Latin America. While dodgy CIA contractors meet with one another in Miami bars that resemble Rick’s Café in the movie “Casablanca,” or for science fiction fans, the weird alien-crowded bar on the planet Tatooine in “Star Wars,” Trump regularly rubs shoulders with Latin American oligarch members of his faux-posh Palm Beach, Florida Mar-a-Lago billionaires’ and multi-millionaires’ club. Some of these wealthy members once relied upon some of Latin America’s most notorious mass murderers for security in their native countries. And, if Mr. Trump has his way, they will do so again in countries like Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba, and Bolivia.

Diosdado Cabello said the man had a history of service in the US Defense intelligence Agency (DIA) before joining the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He has seen service in Mexico, Peru, Jordan and Guyana. Tenney Smith has been sent on a special mission to Venezuela. The statement attracted special attention as it was made public right after the US intelligence officer came to Caracas. «We’ll be watching you, Mr Tenney Smith. If your activities will not be incompatible with the status of diplomat, we’ll make the revelations public, have no doubt about it!» This stern warning made no bones about it. It’s easy to explain. At the time Tenney Smith came to Caracas, the Southern Command (a Unified Combatant Command responsible for providing contingency planning and operations in Central and South America and the Caribbean) intensified its activities in the vicinity of Venezuelan borders. The Defense Intelligence Agency station in the embassy, which conducts its activities under cover, was reinforced by a professional experienced in coordinating special operations. A team of seasoned specialists also came to take low profile «technical» positions in the embassy. 

Washington appears to believe that Venezuela is heading for confrontation. The US administration is adamant in its desire to destabilize the ruling Bolivarian regime and topple incumbent President Nicolas Maduro. The nearest D-day is December 6, the date a parliamentary election is slated for. In Venezuela the elections are always accompanied by conflicts. This time the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (Spanish: Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela, PSUV) confronts the Democratic Unity Roundtable (Spanish: Mesa de la Unidad Democrática, MUD). The political struggle has greatly escalated. The opposition is trying to use  the drawn-out economic and financial crisis to its ends and influence the outcome to change the correlation of forces in the National Assembly in its favor. 

The US propaganda brainwashing effort is on the rise. Some voters start to believe that the regime is doomed. Many Venezuelans got accustomed to live comfortably in the prosperous oil exporting country. They can find no explanation for growing deficit of consumer goods. The government spends a lot to buy foodstuffs, care products, household appliances, car parts and other spares. Masses of consumers seem to make it all disappear in thin air. The state coffers are not filled regularly as oil prices go down. The purchasing power of Bolivar, the national currency, falls. The official exchange rate is 6.3 Bolívar/US-Dollar and the black market rate is 845 to 1. The shady speculative market is thriving. Some goods subsidized by the government are smuggled to Colombia and Brazil despite the measures taken recently to strengthen border and customs controls. The fight against corruption does not always meet expectations. Many «Bolivarians», including power agencies officials, have had their careers finished unable to resist the temptation of rapid enrichment.

The United States special services use the whole range of true-and-tried methods to expedite the disintegration of «the regime». The subversive operations will reach peak activity in early December (the parliamentary election is scheduled on December 6). No matter what the outcome of election is, they will try to stir up mass unrest in big cities. The subversive efforts to cut off electricity have become routine. Venezuelan Minister for Electric Energy, Luis Motta Domínguez, denounced the recent attacks against the national electrical grid. According to him, 19 acts of sabotage have taken place in the recent 6 weeks. 

This kind of activities are intended to disturb and disrupt the December 6 election. It’s worth to note that the Venezuelan counterintelligence received the information that such plots were in works a few years ago, when it exposed a group of Colombian agents working for US military intelligence filming and taking pictures of electric grid infrastructure of cities and enterprises. US aircraft have recently violated the Venezuelan air space. Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino told about it at a press-conference held on November 8. According to him, the Dash-8 bombardier aircraft flew out of Curacao, a Dutch island not far off Venezuela's Caribbean coast, to enter the Venezuelan airspace over the tiny archipelago of Los Monjes. Caracas insisted the Dash 8 was accompanied by a C-17 Globemaster, a large military transport aircraft used to carry airborne troops and hardware, as it was reported by Telesur. In other comments, the Minister also confirmed that another US intelligence plane, model RC-135 Combat Sent, had come «unusually» close to Venezuelan airspace after departing from a US Air Force base in Nebraska.

The aircraft is equipped with electronic systems enabling it to collect intelligence, intercept radio communications and monitor the activities of enemy’s ground, sea and air forces. The pro-government media outlets described the flights as provocative actions.

The Venezuelan military leadership also paid attention on the movement of the USS George Washington aircraft carrier strike group. It plans to pass nearby Venezuela moving from San Diego, California, to Panama Canal on December 5–6 – around the same time as the Dec. 6 vote. The group will kick off exercises in the Pacific at the time tumultuous events are expected to occur in Venezuela. It is possible that the Southern Command is preparing to conduct an armed provocation. This fact is confirmed by increasingly frequent exposures and arrests of paramilitares – the Colombian paramilitary terrorist formations. Many of them have been used to fight the FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerillas.

Small arms and ammunition caches are routinely discovered in the country. Grenades are more frequently used against policemen, especially in the areas near the Colombian border. Time and again Willard Tenney Smith meets the representatives of radical opposition and non-government organizations in the embassy. Off and on, such meetings take place in universities where people are recruited for taking part in street protests. It has become known that Rita Buck Rico of the political affairs section, the right hand of Tenney Smith, has recently held meetings with the opposition. 

Recruitment activities are disguised as conferences, forums and discussion clubs. It sounds innocuous, even a bloodhound couldn't sniff it out. The agenda is «democracy, elections and fostering ties in Caracas», but in reality the veiled goal of these vibrant activities is to overthrow Nicolas Maduro.

Moscow is closely watching the pre-election campaign and the attempts undertaken to exert a negative impact on the situation. In late September, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov published a statement making precise the Moscow’s stance on the upcoming election. It says, «We hope that the upcoming parliamentary elections, scheduled for December 6, 2015, will take place in a calm atmosphere and without foreign interference». 

The document emphasizes that owing to complicated domestic situation in the country Russia expresses solidarity with the people of Venezuela, its President Nicolas Maduro and the government. The statement also notes that «Venezuela is an important partner for the Russian Federation in Latin America and internationally. Our countries are united by the firm intention to combat methods of power-politics and sanction-based dictate in global affairs and a willingness to defend the principles of multi-polarity and the rule of international law for maintaining peace and stability».

Up to this point this is a «humanitarian» initiative shown as some help in case of catastrophes from a superpower to a south republic, which surprisingly has not been relevant to the Media (being the latter the first to speak out against the disastrous measures taken by the government, but clearly avoids investigating or reporting on USA measures in the region and/or Argentina).

The first approach to this issue of the foreign base was mentioned by Chaco (and Argentina as well, as this issue was agreed by the former minister and current senator Aníbal Fernández and the Chaco Governor in that moment). It was related to the reason «why we need of foreign special support to be prepared to face an eventual natural catastrophe «, when we know that the national state counts on the necessary means, personnel and bodies which have been duly trained to be up to the needs under catastrophic situations. But, even when we could be short of resources in that area, why not resorting to international organizations which are specialists (White Helmets, Pan-American Health Organization, Unicef or the Red Cross) and instead of them we are requiring the support of a military body from a foreign power through the Southern Command.

What is the Southern Command? It is a body which has for years taken the role of: the leader organization among the existing North American Agencies (State Department – CIA –DEA, etc.), in order to guarantee: «security, stability and prosperity in all America», and this role of the South Command lies within the rising power of the Defense Department along the North American foreign politics, as part of a comprehensive plan, being this separate from the other issues US is involved in and, even more importantly, independent of any possible «change» in US administration. Besides, we can mention that the XXI century is not and shall not be a peaceful period in time. The political dynamics which leads this century is more and more expressed in military terms.

Since USA started to lose its influence over Latin America, economically speaking: China, India and Russia and the EU have become important partners in the region, leaving aside US power along the XX century; and politically speaking: as Latin America, mainly South America, led integration processes which were consolidated with Mercosur, UNASUR, ALBA, CELAC, and which do not include USA. The role of USA presence in the area was done by the Southern Command which took the role of the representative of the empire in our territory, as once were the Proconsuls of the Roman Empire. Not to acknowledge this fact is a serious crime when we need to make strategic alliances, for the consequences they might bring us. One of the new strategies of the Southern Command to make less suspicious and better seen their presence in the region is their humanitarian role, which is neither harmless nor neutral. This means to appear with military bases, which should not be either military or bases, but Security and Cooperation Centers; being this the new ‘flexible’ concept of the Pentagon of the 'military bases' which are not clear enough as regards the civil activities, bringing this greater 'confusion' on the public opinion (2).

Within this context, it is not a coincidence that Chaco Governor, Jorge Capitanich has already started a crusade to settle here the «American Union», when in September 2010 he welcomed a group of North American delegates, who were invited by a local Foundation (as there´s always a foundation which is the «link» to have these meetings. In that event the governor called for a strategic Alliance between North and South America for the goodwill of the continent, which by being unified would be able to reposition itself as a world power, as Capitanich firmly stated: «I will defend this. Together we can be the greatest reservoir of mining, sweet water, food, energy, cultural resources, touristic spots, human resources talents and technology related to productive processes», these were the words of the governor who spoke as a president. He ended his speech by saying: «From South America we perceive with certain sadness that the United States does not consider us an ally» (3), he also stated that this crisis is an opportunity to strengthen our relations. «I go for a strategic Alliance and I am willing to fight for this idea», he added.

These declarations which are sustained by the base being set up in the Province, takes us to questioning, Are these policies agreeing with the idea of South American continental integration without US intervention, which most of the countries of the region and the national government backs up and defends? Clearly not. What would happen with the UNASUR and the CELAC if the idea of the American Liaison, claimed by Capitanich and the South American Defense Council, eventually succeeds? All we have done would be useless if we dare reject the state of dependency we have been leading with wrong national policies supported by this humanitarian power, which today comes to our rescue with the «non bases». Is this governor stoking once again the balkanization – division of the South American countries in the XXI century? It is clearly happening with the feelings of mistrust he might bring up. Which might be the true role of a humanitarian base in Chaco which is monitoring a region which seems to be unstable? All these within the context of the chief of the Southern Command, Douglas Fraser, who warned against about possible «geopolitical turbulence» in Bolivia; or with the annually submitted reports about the presence of international terrorists in the triple frontier (which have never been firmly proved); or its intervention with the argument of being of «help» to fight against drug dealing, these being the basis for President Evo Morales to agree that: the fight against drugs is the clear geopolitical tool for the USA to lead domain in our region (4). Even more this humanitarian base is located in an area which is rich in natural resources and might eventually controlled by western powers, mainly after the «water» became for the pentagon an strategic resource, together with petrol and gas, here and in the world, these are not neutral, but on the contrary, they are part of an initiative to set conflicts as the ones seen in South America when they promoted many contradictions among the different people; or by neutralizing processes which are contrary to their interests.

While our National Government promotes an international campaign to convince the world that the American partner, the UK has militarized the South Atlantic by having a news military base in Malvinas, the Chaco Governor, Jorge Capitanich, allows the legal admission of a military base in the continental territory, being him compared to the «Troyan horse» of the Southern Command in Argentina. 

For all mentioned above, I dare say that the current situation in Chaco seems to be compared to sleeping with the enemy. 

Notes: