The U.S.-backed Latin American dictatorships are still tarnishing their respective countries with the legacy of oblivion. Earlier this month, Uruguay’s “Relatives of the Disappeared” cautioned that President Luis Lacalle is “whitening the history of Juan Bordaberry’s dictatorship” by holding a meeting with the “Representatives of Political Prisoners” group who are claiming an infringement of liberty in terms of the prison sentences meted out to the dictatorship’s executioners. The meeting took place at the presidential residence. According to reports, Lacalle has not committed himself to upholding their concerns.

The notion of political prisoners is misleading. Dictatorship agents serving prison sentences have been convicted for torture, killings and disappearances of dictatorship opponents. Uruguay’s Cabildo Abierto Party has drafted a bill calling for an alternative to prison sentences for former dictatorship agents, such as house arrest, citing humanitarian reasons. One argument championing impunity and put forth by the right-wing in Uruguay is that the imprisoned former dictatorship agents were merely obeying the orders of their superiors and therefore should have not been punished.

However, disappearances were part of a systematic plan implemented by dictators in Latin America to prevent socialist revolutions from gaining ground and establishing an opposition to the U.S.-backed regimes. Uruguay was one of the eight countries participating in Operation Condor – a region-wide initiative backed by the U.S. which emulated Chile’s example of disappearing its opponents. The plan unleashed regional terror across Latin America – the death flights became the most common practice of disappearing dictatorship opponents. A tactic used by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and emulated by Argentinian dictatorship Jorge Videla, the practice involved packaging the bodies of murdered detainees and throwing them off helicopters into the ocean. On occasions, some victims were drugged and disposed of in the same way while still alive.

Manipulating history under the pretext of humanitarianism is a tactic that has been used in other Latin American countries which have prosecuted and sentenced former dictatorship agents. Such calls on purported humanitarian grounds are in direct contradiction with the fact that dictatorship agents committed crimes against humanity which are punishable under international law.

Additionally, the focus on oblivion eliminates the need for justice and recognition of dictatorship era crimes. Isolating enforced disappearances from the context of state and regional terror negates the reign of terror experienced in Uruguay from 1973 until 1985, throughout which the state and its security forces repressed and exterminated left-wing influence in the country. More than 5000 people were detained during this period while 180 were killed and most of them remained disappeared.

In 1986, a law was passed in Uruguay that sought to provide immunity from prosecution to dictatorship agents, thus introducing oblivion into the new transition to democracy. The law was repealed in 2011 after two failed attempts in the 1989 and 2009 referendums.

While Uruguay’s death toll is considerably smaller than that of Argentina, for example, which tallies over 30,000 Argentinians killed or disappeared during the Videla dictatorship, the problems Uruguay faces in its own quest for historical and collective memory is similar to that of other countries in the region. Only the remains of four people killed and disappeared during the Uruguayan dictatorship were recovered in 2005.

Requesting clemency on humanitarian grounds when Uruguayans are still searching for answers is a political imbalance that needs to be addressed. Many former dictatorship agents who could provide clarification on the disappearances are still protected by the military’s might and silence. “The Army gave all the information it had and the families refuse to believe it,” the former leader of Uruguay’s military centre, Colonel Guillermo Cedrez, stated back in 2015. The act of disappearing opponents was the preferred option to avoid questions and accountability. But the perpetrators exist, and any gesture which offers clemency to those involved in crimes against humanity is an added travesty of justice for the relatives still searching for their disappeared loved ones.

The New Development Bank (NDB) was created by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) in 2015. The BRICS bank, as it is more commonly known, invests mainly in developing economies in areas such as transportation, water and sanitation, clean energy, digital infrastructure, social infrastructure and urban development. On September 2, NDB President Marcos Troyjo announced that the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay and Bangladesh were the first members of the bank’s expansion.

“New members will have in NDB a platform to foster their cooperation in infrastructure and sustainable development,” said NDB President Marcos Troyjo in a statement. “We will continue to expand the bank’s membership in a gradual and balanced manner.”

The UAE, Uruguay and Bangladesh will become fully fledged members once internal processes of the NDB is complete. However, the NDB’s ambitions do not end there, and according to Brazilian newspaper Estadão, a fourth partner, likely from Africa, should be announced by the end of the year. In fact, the Shanghai-based bank anticipates three to four new members per year, reaching up to 20 members in the coming years.

Although BRICS is obviously already represented in South America and South Asia by Brazil and India respectively, the accession of Uruguay and Bangladesh into the NDB allows the bank to act on a regional scale. It also opens the possibility for future membership in BRICS. With NDB members neighboring each other in South America and South Asia, the bank has the possibility to finance binational projects that promotes regional economic and transportation integration.

For his part, Emirati Minister of State for Financial Affairs, Obaid Humaid Al Tayer, said: “The United Arab Emirates membership in the New Development Bank represents a new step to enhance the role of the UAE economy on the global stage, especially in light of the great capabilities and expertise that the country possesses in supporting infrastructure projects and sustainable development. This monumental step would not have been achieved without the vision and direction of the UAE leadership, who believe in the importance of supporting development projects around the world, especially in emerging economies.”

The UAE has undergone a massive transformation in the past quarter of a century, turning desert wastelands into thriving economic hubs and progressing from reactionary Salafi ideology to one of tolerance and open-mindedness. As recently as the beginning of the Syrian War in 2011, the UAE was backing jihadist groups, but in a matter of only a few years reverted from this policy and became far more moderate and independent in their decision making and pursuit of partnerships.

Originally a major oil exporter, and still is, the UAE has now diversified its economy so that it is in line with the UN 2030 agenda to end poverty and hunger, protect human rights and gender equality, and protect the planet from degradation. The UAE has immense resources that can be directed towards projects that are in line with not only the UN’s vision, but also the NDB’s.

BRICS signed an agreement on Tuesday involving 28 projects in the fields of computer programming, technical services, culture, art, economy, commerce, logistics and transportation – with a total value of more than $2.1 billion. The UAE’s contribution to such projects will be fundamental in deciding whether the mega-rich Arab country should ascend into BRICS and not only the NDB.

The selection of the UAE, Uruguay and Bangladesh as the first three non-founding partners of the NDB indicates the intentions of BRICS – regional expansion with a focus on economic and transportation cooperation. This cooperation, as well as integration, is especially crucial as the world struggles to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic fallout. Because of this, the NDB will likely focus in the short to medium term on the rejuvenation of member countries following the pandemic, particularly in transitioning to a digital economy and green energy.

It was estimated that emerging economies needed about $2 trillion in infrastructure investments per year for the next 20 years to maintain growth rates, however, commercial banks have refused to meet the gap. Essentially, the NDB partly fills the gap that Western financial institutions refuse to do.

By positioning itself to take advantage of a unique opportunity to project a new vision for financing, the NDB is challenging the dominance of Western financial institutions and also progressing the prestige of BRICS in its endeavour to advance a multipolar world order. The accession of the UAE sees one of the Middle East’s most influential countries join the NDB, whilst Uruguay and Bangladesh open the path for regional integration under the context of BRICS, something that has not occurred since the group was established in 2006.

infobrics.org

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.

During the October visits to Peru and Uruguay, Panetta took steps to implement the Concept. He agreed to begin work with each country to update their 60-year-old defense cooperation accords to move them beyond Cold War agenda and accommodate changes in the laws. The Secretary also chaired the Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas in Punta Del Este (Uruguay) on October 8, an event that takes place every two years. The issues of the conference include defense and security, peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. The secretary called these issues a central part of efforts to enhance regional security and increase cooperation between military forces in the hemisphere. He stressed the region is going through significant changes. The countries apply great efforts to enhance their security and the USA sees it as a historic opportunity to boost defense partnership.

According to the new policy, the United States will reinvigorate its defense partnerships and pursue new ones, consistent with President Barack Obama’s approach to the region.

The statement defines three core objectives the USA is to promote accordingly:

– Strong national government institutions that allow all nations in the region to address legitimate threats to the state and their citizens.

– Shared action against shared threats through more effectively and efficiently coordinating defense forces.

– Multilateral mechanisms and institutions, like the current conference and the Inter-American Defense Board, to achieve consensus on the direction of hemispheric defense collaboration.

On humanitarian assistance and disaster relief the United States supports the Chilean initiative to accelerate and coordinate support for civilian-led relief efforts. On peacekeeping, countries in the Western Hemisphere have assumed an impressive leadership role by engaging, addressing and improving United Nations efforts. In a new era of defense cooperation in the hemisphere, Panetta said, “Our goal is to work with those nations that want us to help them to develop their capabilities so that they can defend and secure themselves. Our interest is to work with you, not against you.”

Since the new century started Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chili, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay have taken part in UN peacekeeping missions throughout the world. To unite the joint military and defense efforts president Obama launched a new counterdrugs and security initiative in April 2009: the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI), a multiyear, multifaceted effort by the U.S. government and Caribbean partners to develop a joint regional citizen safety strategy to tackle the full range of security and criminal threats to the Caribbean Basin. There is also the Central American Integration System that integrates seven Central American states, all of them get significant support from Washington, that acts in accordance with the U.S. Central American Regional Security Initiative – CARSI.

The new period of intensifying US-led cooperation is taking place along with the emergence of new growing threats. The statement says law is not always prevalent in the countries of the continent and lack of transparency is still a specific feature of many elections. Corruption is still strong and the top officials decisions not always meet the interests of grassroots but rather ruling elites. Over 30% of the continent’s population live in misery, the distribution of wealth is the most unfair in the world. Racial and national divisions stand in the way of equal rights and fair participation in politics. Leon Panetta thinks all these things weaken the military potentials because the issues are intertwined. The military materiel storage is not protected well enough to prevent conventional proliferation. The arms destines to protect the governments may jolly well get into the hands of those who aspire to overthrow them. 

According to US vision the threats used to come from intergovernment conflicts, destabilizing activities of right wing militants and the left wing extremist organizations. At present something new comes to the fore. It’s smugglers, illegal drug traffickers who steal the show. Their activities exacerbated by nature emergencies and cyber threats. The Pentagon finds it expedient to unite so that the traditional and newly emerged threats could be countered. 

The statement stresses an ability to react immediately whatever the threat is and keep up the balance between the military and civilian agencies in case of emergencies. 

The USA plans to launch professional military and civilian personnel education programs. The military training will focus on interoperability issues based on US-made weapons, equipment and logistics. The statement envisages joint efforts devoted to countering drug trafficking, fighting terrorist and extremist organizations and WMD non- proliferation. The US Department of Defense Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace also mentions joint operations aimed at countering cyberattacks. 

The statement and other documents actually presuppose significant increase of financial expenditure on the part of the USA against the backdrop of financial woes and fiscal restraint. Despite budget cuts that are taking place in the United States, including in the military, Panetta said the Department of Defense has an array of programs to be paid for that can help develop capabilities in Latin America.

There is a certain background the Concept came out against. 

While the murder of American diplomats and violent anti-American riots across the Islamic world dominate the news cycle, the slow burn of anti-Americanism takes place in the Western Hemisphere. In the post–Cold War era anti-Americanism has staged a substantial comeback owing to US persistent efforts to interfere into the countries internal affairs and impose its will. 

With a long, complicated history of interventions and meddling in Latin America, the United States will have to overcome deep suspicions as it works to build broader military ties in a region where stable democracies have taken root in recent decades. American President James Monroe launched the "Monroe Doctrine” as far back as 1823 establishing American protection for the nations of the Western Hemisphere and insisting the Europeans limit their commercial interests, their conflicts and their wars to their own continent. Captain A. T. Mahan of the U.S. navy, a popular propagandist for expansion, greatly influenced Theodore Roosevelt and other American leaders. In his famous work The Influence of Sea Power Upon History published in 1890 he stressed the fact that the countries with the biggest navies capable of intervention in different parts of the world would inherit the earth. Since 1890 to 2009 the USA has intervened militarily 56 times, ending up with supporting the coup that toppled the president of Honduras Manuel Zelaya in 2009. 

The US intelligence is making systematic efforts to energize the political opposition in Latin American countries deemed unfriendly in Washington. The US influenced media in Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are full of acrimonious anti-government propaganda. The USAID, the agency told to leave Russia this month for meddling into the country’s internal affairs, is notorious for serving as a cover for intelligence efforts many a time aimed at undermining legitimate governments in a number of Latin American countries… 

The suspicions and apprehensions concerning the USA are going strong on the continent today. In 2005 in Argentina, at a continent-wide summit meeting, the US friendly Free Trade Area of the Americas project was buried to be substituted with the Union of South American Nations formed in 2008. It is joined by 12 states now to undertake joint defense, economic development, and infrastructure projects. The 21 years old MERCOSUR is a six-nation organization expanding South American customs union and common market. Cuba and Venezuela initiated the now nine-nation Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America, known as ALBA in 2004. That organization organizes cooperative ventures ranging from health care, education, communications, and banking to regional commercial and economic development initiatives, all organized on the basis of solidarity exchanges. 

In December 2011 thirty-three Latin American leaders have come together and formed a new regional bloc, pledging closer economic and political ties. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) pointedly excludes the US and Canada. The foundation of the bloc has been praised as the realization of the two-centuries-old idea of Latin American independence envisioned by Simon Bolivar. Analysts view CELAC as an alternative to the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS) and as an attempt by Latin American countries to reduce US influence in the region. As the president of Venezuela said back then, “No more interference. Enough is enough! We have to take shape as a center of the world power and demand respect for all of us as community and for each one of our countries.” The countries of CELAC have a combined population of nearly 600 million people, and a combined GDP of about US$6 trillion, a force to reckon with on the international arena. 

The last Summit of the Americas in April 2012 brought to light serious discords on many core issues and failed to adopt a joint declaration. Many nations expressed their discontent with the US policies in the region.

The newly adopted Concept shows the US intent to preserve the world supremacy at any cost. It’s almost a tall order to make it a success against the background of strong and growing anti-US sentiments spread on the continent and strive for taking the fate of the America’s nations into their own hands.