Impunity rides the coattails of amnesia and oblivion. Without memory to link the present with the past, current wrongs seem like historical aberrations, rather than the consequence of accumulated injustice. Authoritarian regimes and their allies know this well and are keen to snuff out those who reflect too thoughtfully on the past. By continually wiping the historical slate clean, they are free to do as they please and cover their tracks in the process. Nowhere do these dynamics seem more clearly at work than in Latin America.
Guatemala: The Born-Again Killer
Some Latin American leaders have the nasty habit of being perfectly homicidal. General Efraín Ríos Montt of Guatemala, who dropped Catholicism to become an evangelical minister, was Born Again just in time to seize power in a 1982 CIA-backed coup. His brief eighteen months in office were the bloodiest of Guatemala’s 36-year civil war in which an estimated 200,000 Guatemalans, mostly Mayan campesinos, were slaughtered or disappeared. Some would prefer to leave such details tucked quietly in the past, but graffiti on a Guatemala City street corner clamors: "We will not forget! Gerardi Lives!"
Bishop Juan Gerardi was the head of the Catholic Church in Guatemala and led the Historical Memory Recovery Project (REMHI). The REMHI was an unprecedented grassroots effort by and for Guatemalans to document the atrocities of the civil war. Gerardi began the project a year before the war finally ended in 1996.
For three years, Gerardi and his colleagues crisscrossed the country, tirelessly collecting evidence and testimony. On April 28, 1998, Gerardi presented the REMHI’s final landmark document, a text titled, Guatemala: Nunca Más (Never Again). It revealed some painful statistics: 150,000 murdered, 50,000 disappeared, 1,000,000 displaced, 200,000 orphans, 40,000 widows. The report accused the Guatemalan security forces and their death squad proxies for eight out of every ten of those atrocities.
The report proved unpalatable to those it implicated. Two days after its presentation, Bishop Gerardi was found lying in a pool of blood in his home, his face bludgeoned by a chunk of concrete.
Suspicion immediately fell on retired Colonel Byron Lima Estrada and his son, a captain. Their arrest would have to wait until 2000, when a new government was elected. Lima had been specially trained by the U.S. military in the 1960s, taking courses in Panama and at the infamous School of the Americas (SOA) — a U.S. Army training facility for Latin American soldiers in Fort Benning, Georgia.
After brushing-up his "counterinsurgency" skills in the United States, Lima headed the notoriously brutal D-2 Military Intelligence agency that did much of the government’s dirty work during the civil war. Gerardi had even named one of the Nunca Más chapters: "D-2: The Very Name of Fear." The ever-pious Ríos Montt disagreed. "The Holy Spirit runs our intelligence service," he said.
Despite warrants for torture and genocide hanging over his head, Ríos Montt, another illustrious graduate of the SOA, is not rotting in a jail cell, nor even sipping a cocktail on a beach in exile. The former dictator came in third in Guatemala’s 2003 presidential elections. Undiscouraged by his electoral defeat, Ríos Montt recently launched a bid for congress. If he wins, he’ll enjoy the immunity from prosecution afforded to all Guatemalan congressmen, unless stripped of the privilege by the courts, which are of course stacked with his war buddies.
Argentina: 30,001
Argentina has its own Nunca Más. Its authors sifted through more than 50,000 pages of documents to painstakingly compile an authoritative account of the murders, kidnappings, torture, rapes, and the abduction and sale of babies conducted by Argentina’s last military dictatorship (1976-1983). Military officials coldly referred to this state terror as "el proceso" (the process). Human rights organizations estimate that 30,000 were killed or disappeared.
Despite the return of elections in 1983, the crimes went unpunished. Three years into the country’s fragile democratic opening, the perpetrators were exonerated in the name of stability and "reconciliation." The fledgling congress and president were cowed into approving the amnesty by a restless military, which was inconvenienced by the barrage of human rights trials.
It took more than twenty years for Argentina’s congress and Supreme Court to definitively crush the amnesty. In 2006, Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz, a former police commissioner and torture center supervisor, became the first person to be tried since the repeal. Like Ríos Montt, Etchecolatz is a religious man who found divine inspiration for his monstrous acts: "I never had, or thought to have, or was haunted by, any sense of blame. For having killed? I was the executor of a law made by man. I was the keeper of divine precepts. And I would do it again."
A key witness in the trial was Jorge Julio López, a 77-year-old retired construction worker. López had been abducted in 1976 and spent nearly three years in several prisons where he was repeatedly tortured (he showed the scars during the trial). Unlike several of his friends, López was not thrown alive out of an airplane over the South Atlantic — a favorite sport of the Argentine Navy in the 1970s. López survived one of the camps directed by Etchecolatz, and his testimony proved pivotal in the trial.
On September 17, 2006, one day before he was to give his final testimony, Jorge Julio López again disappeared without a trace. Human rights organizations soon received a flier with an old photo of López with the caption: "Julio López, terrorist #30,001. Who will be #30,002?"
Buenos Aires state governor, Felipe Solá called López "the first disappeared since the years of state terrorism" and publicly blamed police officers with ties to the dictatorship for the disappearance. López’s family members and human rights groups believe his abduction was meant to sow fear among witnesses, activists, lawyers, and judges seeking a degree of long delayed justice.
Despite a nationwide search and a reward of $64,000, López has not been found. At the height of el proceso, it was said that if your loved-one did not reappear within twenty-four hours, the chances of seeing them again alive were slim to none. News of López’s abduction has now slipped from the headlines. It seems he’s disappeared a third time.
Colombia: The Para-Narco State
In 2004, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency declassified a 1991 intelligence report that outlined a "who’s who" of the Colombia’s drug-trafficking underworld. The [1] fourteen-page document, released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request of the National Security Archives, lists over a hundred names, each numbered and followed by a brief personal profile.
On page 10, number 79 is Pablo Escobar, the pudgy, mustachioed former head of the Medellín Cartel, which at one point controlled almost the entirety of the global cocaine trade; no surprise. But below Escobar, at number 82, is Álvaro Uribe Vélez, the twice-elected current president of Colombia.
The intelligence report describes Uribe as "a senator dedicated to collaboration with the Medellín Cartel at high government levels" and "a close personal friend of Escobar." (At the time, Uribe was a Senator from Escobar’s home state of Antioquia, the capital of which is Medellín.)
Both the Colombian and U.S. governments pointed to blatant inaccuracies in the document and vehemently denied any links between Uribe and narcotraffickers. Although the report says the intelligence is checked through "interface with other agencies," it also admits the information is "not finally evaluated."
Allegations about Uribe’s links to violent paramilitaries, which are heavily involved in the drug trade, have long dogged the president. (In Colombia, these links were widely suspected as fact, sort of like George Bush’s frat-boy cocaine habit and spotty military service.) Drug lords, including Escobar, and wealthy landowners created the paramilitary groups in the 1980s to combat kidnappings by leftist guerrillas; both the right-wing paramilitaries and the leftist guerrillas are on the U.S. State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.
Senator Gustavo Petro, an ex-guerrilla, recently accused Uribe’s brother of helping form the paramilitaries. Since Petro originally made the accusations, an unfolding investigation has landed 14 members of congress in jail for having intimate ties with paramilitaries. And Uribe’s Foreign Minister, María Consuelo Araújo, had to resign after her brother (a congressman), cousin (a governor), and father were implicated in the scandal. Her brother, now in jail, is accused of involvement in the kidnapping of one of his opponents in the 2005 elections.
Uribe’s head of the DAS, Colombia’s intelligence service, was also arrested. He is accused of providing paramilitaries with a hit list of human rights workers, college professors, and union activists who were later assassinated. Paramilitary collusion with all levels of government and security forces was Colombia’s worst kept secret, but the extent and the formality of these arrangements have left the public stunned.
Colombia has never had an official Truth Commission. How could it? With more than four decades of ceaseless civil war, it has never had the chance. The closest it has come is the ongoing demobilization process begun in 2003 of the country’s 30,000 paramilitaries, who are blamed for the vast majority of human rights abuses in the country. As part of the demobilization deal, the paramilitaries are to receive extremely lenient sentences for crimes against humanity (six-and-a-half years at most) in exchange for confessing to past crimes.
The first of these confessions came from paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso, one of the most feared men in Colombia. In court, Mancuso sat behind a laptop in an impeccable pinstriped suit and methodically scrolled through [2] eighty-seven slides of a PowerPoint presentation that described in chilling detail the murder and disappearance of 336 people. Some of these slides describe how Mancuso planned — with the help of the military — the massacres of fifteen and as many as fifty campesinos at a time. He called these "anti-subversive operations" — the same euphemism used in Argentina and Guatemala.
The deal with the paramilitaries elicited an unusually harsh rebuke from the head of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch: "The Colombian government is putting the final touches on a scheme to launder the criminal records of top paramilitary commanders — including some of the country’s most powerful drug lords — while allowing them to keep their wealth and maintain their control over much of the country."
Indeed, while Mancuso sat comfortably in the courtroom, Yolanda Izquierdo, who led an organization of dispossessed campesinos seeking the return of stolen lands, was shot twice in the head. A week before, another campesino leader had been assassinated. This wave of brutal killings casts serious doubts as to whether Colombia’s three million internal refugees — the largest displaced population in the world after Iraq’s and Sudan’s — will ever get their land back.
Since their creation, paramilitary leaders and their allies — namely, politicians and landowners — have accumulated large swaths of the country through the forced displacement of campesinos accused of being guerrilla sympathizers when in fact, the guerrillas are despised by most campesinos almost as much as the paramilitaries. Still, it’s the paramilitaries who have seized an estimated 26,000 square miles from the campesinos — a land-grab of an area larger than the state of West Virginia, comprising about a quarter of the country’s arable land. The price of the Faustian bargain for an unquiet peace with the paramilitaries was apparently the livelihood and happiness of three million Colombians.
Imposed by official decree in Colombia, as elsewhere in Latin America, amnesia and oblivion become internalized by society in an unsettling process that greases the wheels of power and bulletproofs the status quo. Memory, however, at the very least, provides the means to ensure that past and future injustices do not go unnoticed and, hopefully, unchallenged.
Teo Ballvé is NACLA’s Web editor. A journalist based in Colombia, he edited, with Vijay Prashad, Dispatches from Latin America: On the Frontlines Against Neoliberalism.
Showing posts with label Guatemala. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guatemala. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Think Guatemala 1954, for Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela
By Council on Hemispheric Affairs
05/15/07 "ICH" --- - In 1954, United Fruit, in concert with the CIA, successfully orchestrated the overthrow of Guatemala’s democratically-elected government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, charging that the Central American nation had fallen under communist influence. The demise of Arbenz took time to accomplish, with the fatal draught being a casual concoction of miscommunication, corporate arrogance, misinformation, outright deception, a naïve reform-minded government and arrogance on the part of the Eisenhower administration. Arbenz was neither a communist, nor was his government profoundly sympathetic to extreme leftist ideas as charged at the time by U.S. government officials and media outlets. Upon his election in 1951, Arbenz took office in a country in which 70% of the arable land was controlled by 2.2% of the population – only 12% of which was being cultivated at the time of his overthrow in 1954. Like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, he wanted to reform what was palpably neither a good nor just society.
Case Studies of Guatemala and Venezuela
The parallels between Guatemala in 1954 and present day Venezuela are uncomfortably close, which is cause enough for concern that the U.S. government and its compliant media have predictably taken sides. It was of little surprise therefore that land reform was one of the priorities chosen by the democratically-elected Arbenz just as it has become for President Chavez. Soon after taking office, both reformers similarly instituted wide ranging agricultural reform policies that sought to distribute uncultivated land to thousands of poor, landless peasants. Arbenz’s plan, however modest it initially was in scope, struck a raw nerve with the largest landowning enterprise in Guatemala, the United Fruit Company. The holdings of this agro-industrial giant in the country were 85% uncultivated, therefore facing heavy taxes under extant law. A similar shock faced Venezuelan land holders when their fallow and speculative land parcels were scheduled to be seized by the government, to be redistributed to landless campesinos.
Bananas or Oil, the Process is the Same
Back in the early 1950’s, United Fruit, a major hemispheric banana company with extensive ties to U.S. power brokers both within and outside the government, had consistently undervalued the worth of its land reserves for the purposes of evading heavy property tax obligations. Yet, when Arbenz approached United Fruit with a compensation plan for their land scheduled for expropriation, the company balked at the $3 per acre validation price. In fact, this was the artificially low figure which had been previously designated by the company itself for tax purposes. The Guatemalan government, for its part, claimed that in fact the true assessed value of the land should have been pegged at $75 per acre. The details of this squabble mattered little, because ultimately ‘might made right’, a parable regarding the articulation of U.S. hemispheric policy that Hugo Chavez would be well advised to have on his mind without interruption.
In fact, be it Guatemalan bananas or Venezuelan oil, the differences were only in the details. The more recent round in the endemic corruption of Venezuela’s legal and administrative systems could be easily witnessed beginning in the early 1990s. At the time, traditional Venezuelan venal practices chronically engaged in by rotating the Social Democratic and Christian Democratic governments, then traditionally ruling the country, were very much in evidence. These resulted in sweetheart deals for U.S. and other foreign oil companies then seeking prized drilling rights in the Orinoco tar belt in return for shockingly low taxes and royalties.
By 1954, United Fruit was in full gear to bring down the Arbenz administration, claiming through its government and media connections, that communist labor forces had overtaken the Guatemalan government and were spreading their ideological toxicity. It did not take long for United Fruit’s public disinformation campaign to disseminate throughout the U.S. press and then to Washington’s decision makers, which subsequently resulted in the plot to rid Guatemala of Arbenz and his leftist cabal before their noxious leftist reforms had sufficient time to take root in the country. As a result of the staging of the 1954 CIA-orchestrated golpe, Arbenz was pushed out of the presidency on June 27, 1954, giving way to a U.S.-backed military regime that initiated two decades of oppressive rule in Guatemala. This regime left a cumulative death toll of almost 200,000 lives and a legacy of violence that is still being echoed today. Today, a similarly danger–fraught relationship is ongoing between another Latin American nation and the U.S – this time, Venezuela.
Defaming Venezuela
Increasingly malignant allegations of illegality and impropriety have been volleyed between the two adversaries for several years. Venezuelan relations with Washington have been particularly strained since shortly after Hugo Chavez’s 1998 electoral victory and again with the U.S.-backed 2002 attempted overthrow of the leftist regime. While these tensions have persisted ever since, they have recently manifested themselves in increasingly acidic comments made by Chavez and some of his senior colleagues regarding Caracas’ potential expropriation of the country’s banks as well as its largest steel producer, Sidor. Additionally, comments from Venezuela also have broadly hinted about the possible nationalization of the country’s private medical facilities. As a result, a brief scan of the news traffic now being run on the national and international media outlets yields an abundance of coverage dedicated to the lampooning, deprecation and disparagement of Venezuela by President Chavez’s political foes. These have been triggered by media reports which initially may have been based on pro-Chavez accounts, but were almost immediately doctored into running anti-Chavez schemes. These adroitly portray a distorted picture of Chavez of pressing to nationalize every sector in sight, when in actuality he may have had something quite different in mind.
Absent from the rampant speculation and rush to judgment by the media regarding Chavez’s intentions are a set of facts presenting a different story. More to the point, what seems to be at work here is mainly a sustained attempt by anti-Chavez elements to ridicule his government, rather than to accurately spell out exactly what was being proposed by Venezuelan government sources, as well as providing an active context in which these statements were being made by he and his associates. On the part of these Chavistas, such speculations were never meant to be a hard agenda of things to come, but more akin to blue sky thinking.
Immunizing Oneself from Coups
The ineffectiveness of Arbenz in demonstrating the intrinsic fairness of his land reforms in the 1950’s brought on disastrous consequences, when challenged by the wild misrepresentation of an alleged communist threat that United Fruit falsely claimed was being posed by the Arbenz government. In this instance, a thoroughly responsible effort to enact land reform was vetoed by an organized campaign of mockery and misinformation that played off the main weaknesses of the Arbenz administration – its chaotic nature and its shortage of effective administrative skills. In a similar spirit, who is to blame for today’s exchange between the incendiary words emanating from Caracas and being answered by a mendacious press and the negative commentary that it generates, with only rare attempts to accurately present the government’s economic policy?
The New York Times has characterized Chavez’s recent words regarding the potential nationalization of the country’s banks as “saber rattling.” The implication here is that the Venezuelan president’s words amount to nothing more than hollow boasts, which is dramatized by speculative quotes offered up in a number of Associated Press and other articles syndicated across the U.S. The Wall Street Journal’s slashing sword went even further, malevolently publishing a beggaring article on, “How Chávez Aims to Weaken U.S.”, one of the many rants it has directed against Chavez. The attack was severe enough to evoke a letter to the editor from Bernardo Alvarez, the Venezuelan Ambassador to the United States, who wrote the Journal in order, “to correct your suggestion that the Venezuelan government’s purchase of oil reserves along the Orinoco River is an affront to U.S. energy interests.” While it may have been a question of time for the Ambassador to respond to what is arguably the most reactionary editorial page in the U.S., someone had to answer the brand of jingoist journalistic bias that is to be found in that paper on this subject, let alone in its more respectable media brethren, including the New York Times and The Washington Post.
Though one is naturally hesitant to join in the hyperbole that characterizes so much of the commentary featured in the mainstream media regarding contemporary Venezuela, it is becoming increasingly evident that the extreme disparity between Chavez’s counter-hegemonic messages and what should be the practice of responsible journalism in the U.S. media, may not merely be a matter of random ex parte fulminations by Chavez’s ideological foes.
President Chavez has always been ready to indulge himself in rapid come-backs to malignant barbs featured in the U.S. major media (at times even provoking them) even if it means dispatching arrows in return, only to have them quickly countered by the Ambassador’s reply. Such a process is meant to cast grave doubts on the earnestness and authenticity of Venezuela’s progressive reforms up to this point. Such harsh polemics on the part of much of the U.S. media reflects an unrelenting bias on the part of the anti-Chavez media. But, it also exposes a needlessly random and often counterproductive tone emanating from Caracas. The theme here is that Chavez has every right to come forth with a nationalization program backed by a majority of Venezuelans, but it should be done in a responsible manner befitting the importance of his mission and the need of an effective strategy to put his best foot forward and not to needlessly arm his enemies.
Chavez’s Style
The often conflicted nature of Chavez’s message to the people of Latin America and beyond has allowed the U.S. media to engage in mischief making and to dismiss Caracas’ words in a derisive manner – a dilemma that recently has allowed for the transformation of the speculative musings of Chavez and some of his senior colleagues regarding the banking, medical and steel industries into a veritable road map for nationalization, as depicted by his enemies. These, in turn, have been twisted into miles of conjecture and disrespect in newspaper columns across the globe, presenting a common, although largely unwarranted, interpretation that Venezuela intends to go ahead with a reckless nationalization policy heading in all directions, and that there now is solid proof that Chavez is on his way to emerge as an authoritarian figure who lacks an authentic democratic vision of what is best for his country.
If there is anything for Venezuela to learn from United Fruit’s fateful role in bringing down the Arbenz government, it is the critical importance of the targeted victim (in this instance, Venezuela) speaking with a single voice regarding the complex matters associated with the country’s economy. To do otherwise invites obfuscation and confusion. Today’s political climate throughout Latin America is such that President Chavez’s words reverberate to every corner of the hemisphere. Often, the reactions to the leadership role he now plays and the visions he now espouses are very positive, but sometimes they are not.
If Venezuela is to avoid having its message being bushwhacked by the State Department as well as by a hostile and dismissive Western media, the country would be wise to anticipate the possible likelihood that its own ‘United Fruit’ saga may be waiting in the wings to be played out against it. If Chavez’s reform policies are to meet a different and kindlier fate than those of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán’s, it might be able to ward off such bad fortune by effective coherence, fixity of purpose, the amplitude of popular support and continuity of programs in order to protect the revolution from the web of its own miscommunication and self absorption, as well as the animus of its own foes. What must be avoided is the present confusion coming from different wings of the presidential palace and ministerial offices that over half a century ago led to the overthrow of the Guatemalan government.
This analysis was prepared by COHA Staff
05/15/07 "ICH" --- - In 1954, United Fruit, in concert with the CIA, successfully orchestrated the overthrow of Guatemala’s democratically-elected government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, charging that the Central American nation had fallen under communist influence. The demise of Arbenz took time to accomplish, with the fatal draught being a casual concoction of miscommunication, corporate arrogance, misinformation, outright deception, a naïve reform-minded government and arrogance on the part of the Eisenhower administration. Arbenz was neither a communist, nor was his government profoundly sympathetic to extreme leftist ideas as charged at the time by U.S. government officials and media outlets. Upon his election in 1951, Arbenz took office in a country in which 70% of the arable land was controlled by 2.2% of the population – only 12% of which was being cultivated at the time of his overthrow in 1954. Like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, he wanted to reform what was palpably neither a good nor just society.
Case Studies of Guatemala and Venezuela
The parallels between Guatemala in 1954 and present day Venezuela are uncomfortably close, which is cause enough for concern that the U.S. government and its compliant media have predictably taken sides. It was of little surprise therefore that land reform was one of the priorities chosen by the democratically-elected Arbenz just as it has become for President Chavez. Soon after taking office, both reformers similarly instituted wide ranging agricultural reform policies that sought to distribute uncultivated land to thousands of poor, landless peasants. Arbenz’s plan, however modest it initially was in scope, struck a raw nerve with the largest landowning enterprise in Guatemala, the United Fruit Company. The holdings of this agro-industrial giant in the country were 85% uncultivated, therefore facing heavy taxes under extant law. A similar shock faced Venezuelan land holders when their fallow and speculative land parcels were scheduled to be seized by the government, to be redistributed to landless campesinos.
Bananas or Oil, the Process is the Same
Back in the early 1950’s, United Fruit, a major hemispheric banana company with extensive ties to U.S. power brokers both within and outside the government, had consistently undervalued the worth of its land reserves for the purposes of evading heavy property tax obligations. Yet, when Arbenz approached United Fruit with a compensation plan for their land scheduled for expropriation, the company balked at the $3 per acre validation price. In fact, this was the artificially low figure which had been previously designated by the company itself for tax purposes. The Guatemalan government, for its part, claimed that in fact the true assessed value of the land should have been pegged at $75 per acre. The details of this squabble mattered little, because ultimately ‘might made right’, a parable regarding the articulation of U.S. hemispheric policy that Hugo Chavez would be well advised to have on his mind without interruption.
In fact, be it Guatemalan bananas or Venezuelan oil, the differences were only in the details. The more recent round in the endemic corruption of Venezuela’s legal and administrative systems could be easily witnessed beginning in the early 1990s. At the time, traditional Venezuelan venal practices chronically engaged in by rotating the Social Democratic and Christian Democratic governments, then traditionally ruling the country, were very much in evidence. These resulted in sweetheart deals for U.S. and other foreign oil companies then seeking prized drilling rights in the Orinoco tar belt in return for shockingly low taxes and royalties.
By 1954, United Fruit was in full gear to bring down the Arbenz administration, claiming through its government and media connections, that communist labor forces had overtaken the Guatemalan government and were spreading their ideological toxicity. It did not take long for United Fruit’s public disinformation campaign to disseminate throughout the U.S. press and then to Washington’s decision makers, which subsequently resulted in the plot to rid Guatemala of Arbenz and his leftist cabal before their noxious leftist reforms had sufficient time to take root in the country. As a result of the staging of the 1954 CIA-orchestrated golpe, Arbenz was pushed out of the presidency on June 27, 1954, giving way to a U.S.-backed military regime that initiated two decades of oppressive rule in Guatemala. This regime left a cumulative death toll of almost 200,000 lives and a legacy of violence that is still being echoed today. Today, a similarly danger–fraught relationship is ongoing between another Latin American nation and the U.S – this time, Venezuela.
Defaming Venezuela
Increasingly malignant allegations of illegality and impropriety have been volleyed between the two adversaries for several years. Venezuelan relations with Washington have been particularly strained since shortly after Hugo Chavez’s 1998 electoral victory and again with the U.S.-backed 2002 attempted overthrow of the leftist regime. While these tensions have persisted ever since, they have recently manifested themselves in increasingly acidic comments made by Chavez and some of his senior colleagues regarding Caracas’ potential expropriation of the country’s banks as well as its largest steel producer, Sidor. Additionally, comments from Venezuela also have broadly hinted about the possible nationalization of the country’s private medical facilities. As a result, a brief scan of the news traffic now being run on the national and international media outlets yields an abundance of coverage dedicated to the lampooning, deprecation and disparagement of Venezuela by President Chavez’s political foes. These have been triggered by media reports which initially may have been based on pro-Chavez accounts, but were almost immediately doctored into running anti-Chavez schemes. These adroitly portray a distorted picture of Chavez of pressing to nationalize every sector in sight, when in actuality he may have had something quite different in mind.
Absent from the rampant speculation and rush to judgment by the media regarding Chavez’s intentions are a set of facts presenting a different story. More to the point, what seems to be at work here is mainly a sustained attempt by anti-Chavez elements to ridicule his government, rather than to accurately spell out exactly what was being proposed by Venezuelan government sources, as well as providing an active context in which these statements were being made by he and his associates. On the part of these Chavistas, such speculations were never meant to be a hard agenda of things to come, but more akin to blue sky thinking.
Immunizing Oneself from Coups
The ineffectiveness of Arbenz in demonstrating the intrinsic fairness of his land reforms in the 1950’s brought on disastrous consequences, when challenged by the wild misrepresentation of an alleged communist threat that United Fruit falsely claimed was being posed by the Arbenz government. In this instance, a thoroughly responsible effort to enact land reform was vetoed by an organized campaign of mockery and misinformation that played off the main weaknesses of the Arbenz administration – its chaotic nature and its shortage of effective administrative skills. In a similar spirit, who is to blame for today’s exchange between the incendiary words emanating from Caracas and being answered by a mendacious press and the negative commentary that it generates, with only rare attempts to accurately present the government’s economic policy?
The New York Times has characterized Chavez’s recent words regarding the potential nationalization of the country’s banks as “saber rattling.” The implication here is that the Venezuelan president’s words amount to nothing more than hollow boasts, which is dramatized by speculative quotes offered up in a number of Associated Press and other articles syndicated across the U.S. The Wall Street Journal’s slashing sword went even further, malevolently publishing a beggaring article on, “How Chávez Aims to Weaken U.S.”, one of the many rants it has directed against Chavez. The attack was severe enough to evoke a letter to the editor from Bernardo Alvarez, the Venezuelan Ambassador to the United States, who wrote the Journal in order, “to correct your suggestion that the Venezuelan government’s purchase of oil reserves along the Orinoco River is an affront to U.S. energy interests.” While it may have been a question of time for the Ambassador to respond to what is arguably the most reactionary editorial page in the U.S., someone had to answer the brand of jingoist journalistic bias that is to be found in that paper on this subject, let alone in its more respectable media brethren, including the New York Times and The Washington Post.
Though one is naturally hesitant to join in the hyperbole that characterizes so much of the commentary featured in the mainstream media regarding contemporary Venezuela, it is becoming increasingly evident that the extreme disparity between Chavez’s counter-hegemonic messages and what should be the practice of responsible journalism in the U.S. media, may not merely be a matter of random ex parte fulminations by Chavez’s ideological foes.
President Chavez has always been ready to indulge himself in rapid come-backs to malignant barbs featured in the U.S. major media (at times even provoking them) even if it means dispatching arrows in return, only to have them quickly countered by the Ambassador’s reply. Such a process is meant to cast grave doubts on the earnestness and authenticity of Venezuela’s progressive reforms up to this point. Such harsh polemics on the part of much of the U.S. media reflects an unrelenting bias on the part of the anti-Chavez media. But, it also exposes a needlessly random and often counterproductive tone emanating from Caracas. The theme here is that Chavez has every right to come forth with a nationalization program backed by a majority of Venezuelans, but it should be done in a responsible manner befitting the importance of his mission and the need of an effective strategy to put his best foot forward and not to needlessly arm his enemies.
Chavez’s Style
The often conflicted nature of Chavez’s message to the people of Latin America and beyond has allowed the U.S. media to engage in mischief making and to dismiss Caracas’ words in a derisive manner – a dilemma that recently has allowed for the transformation of the speculative musings of Chavez and some of his senior colleagues regarding the banking, medical and steel industries into a veritable road map for nationalization, as depicted by his enemies. These, in turn, have been twisted into miles of conjecture and disrespect in newspaper columns across the globe, presenting a common, although largely unwarranted, interpretation that Venezuela intends to go ahead with a reckless nationalization policy heading in all directions, and that there now is solid proof that Chavez is on his way to emerge as an authoritarian figure who lacks an authentic democratic vision of what is best for his country.
If there is anything for Venezuela to learn from United Fruit’s fateful role in bringing down the Arbenz government, it is the critical importance of the targeted victim (in this instance, Venezuela) speaking with a single voice regarding the complex matters associated with the country’s economy. To do otherwise invites obfuscation and confusion. Today’s political climate throughout Latin America is such that President Chavez’s words reverberate to every corner of the hemisphere. Often, the reactions to the leadership role he now plays and the visions he now espouses are very positive, but sometimes they are not.
If Venezuela is to avoid having its message being bushwhacked by the State Department as well as by a hostile and dismissive Western media, the country would be wise to anticipate the possible likelihood that its own ‘United Fruit’ saga may be waiting in the wings to be played out against it. If Chavez’s reform policies are to meet a different and kindlier fate than those of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán’s, it might be able to ward off such bad fortune by effective coherence, fixity of purpose, the amplitude of popular support and continuity of programs in order to protect the revolution from the web of its own miscommunication and self absorption, as well as the animus of its own foes. What must be avoided is the present confusion coming from different wings of the presidential palace and ministerial offices that over half a century ago led to the overthrow of the Guatemalan government.
This analysis was prepared by COHA Staff
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Menchú plots Guatemala's way out of 'darkness'
By Adam Thomson in Guatemala City
In a middle-class home in Guatemala City, and surrounded by five hyperactive puppies and a bodyguard carrying two sub-machine guns, Rigoberta Menchú is mapping out a campaign that she hopes will culminate in victory in September's presidential election.
Dressed in a traditional multicoloured dress and headband, the 48-year-old indigenous leader and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 adopts mystical tones when she begins to describe the problems Guatemala faces. "We are in a time of darkness," she tells the FT. "It is a time of no time. We cannot see the path because it is still dark."
Such ways of seeing and describing the world are a new concept in Guatemalan politics, which, since independence in 1821, has been dominated by a small and overwhelmingly light-skinned elite.
But while these Mayan musings may not fit easily in the western mind, she believes they will be easily understood by the country's majority indigenous population and stir a traditionally apathetic segment of the country to vote for her. If she succeeds, she would become Guatemala's first indigenous president.
She would also follow the example of Evo Morales, the indigenous Bolivian head of state who, since assuming power in January 2006, has courted controversy with his brand of leftwing rhetoric and strengthened political and trade ties with Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's oil-rich president and self-proclaimed socialist.
Ms Menchú, a diminutive figure with a bright smile and a round face that hides her years, speaks fondly of Mr Morales, whom she describes as "a great brother and friend". "Bolivia is a country that is building its future," she says.
Yet she adopts a more cautious tone when asked whether her policy proposals could be seen as leftwing. "Concepts of left and right cannot be applied to what we stand for," she says. "I am a Mayan and that makes me different."
Some of her proposals – or at least the way she describes them – do set her apart from her competitors. For example, while Álvaro Colom, a runner-up in the 2003 presidential election and the leading centre-left candidate for the September election, advocates simple "rural development", Ms Menchú talks of promoting national agriculture to cement traditional Mayan produce as the cornerstone of the nation's diet.
She also says she would open a national debate on whether Cafta, the 2004 trade agreement between Central America and the US, truly benefits Guatemala. Central America's most populous country ratified the agreement in July and while the effects of the agreement are still unclear, it has met with strong opposition in some particularly sensitive sectors, such as agriculture.
On other issues, however, Ms Menchú's proposals echo those of the mainstream opposition. She talks of the need to make government spending more efficient and transparent, make Congress more accountable and raise Guatemala's pitiful tax take to help resolve poverty, which affects more than 50 per cent of the roughly 12m inhabitants.
Like the other candidates, she says purging and improving the national police force is a priority. The subject has become a principal theme in Guatemala since the apparent discovery of death squads operating within the force, after four policemen were accused of slaying three congressmen from neighbouring El Salvador along with their driver last month.
The incident, which this week produced the resignation of Carlos Vielmann, the interior minister, acquired an even more sinister air when the arrested policemen were found murdered in their cells several days later.
Despite the fanfare that greeted the announcement of her candidacy, most political analysts in Guatemala believe her chances are slim. They admit her fame is a strong asset in an electoral system where personality often counts for more than policy.
But they also point out the indigenous movement is fragmented and that she does not enjoy the support from the indigenous community that she might. According to a recent poll, she only has 19 per cent of the vote compared with more than 38 per cent for Mr Colom.
But sitting in her garden, where two oil drums stand next to a pen containing yet another dog, Ms Menchú dismisses the scepticism.
She leans across and points to a thick column of ants scaling a wall and says: "That is what my campaign is about. It is a campaign of the poor but, above all, about collective action."
In a middle-class home in Guatemala City, and surrounded by five hyperactive puppies and a bodyguard carrying two sub-machine guns, Rigoberta Menchú is mapping out a campaign that she hopes will culminate in victory in September's presidential election.
Dressed in a traditional multicoloured dress and headband, the 48-year-old indigenous leader and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 adopts mystical tones when she begins to describe the problems Guatemala faces. "We are in a time of darkness," she tells the FT. "It is a time of no time. We cannot see the path because it is still dark."
Such ways of seeing and describing the world are a new concept in Guatemalan politics, which, since independence in 1821, has been dominated by a small and overwhelmingly light-skinned elite.
But while these Mayan musings may not fit easily in the western mind, she believes they will be easily understood by the country's majority indigenous population and stir a traditionally apathetic segment of the country to vote for her. If she succeeds, she would become Guatemala's first indigenous president.
She would also follow the example of Evo Morales, the indigenous Bolivian head of state who, since assuming power in January 2006, has courted controversy with his brand of leftwing rhetoric and strengthened political and trade ties with Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's oil-rich president and self-proclaimed socialist.
Ms Menchú, a diminutive figure with a bright smile and a round face that hides her years, speaks fondly of Mr Morales, whom she describes as "a great brother and friend". "Bolivia is a country that is building its future," she says.
Yet she adopts a more cautious tone when asked whether her policy proposals could be seen as leftwing. "Concepts of left and right cannot be applied to what we stand for," she says. "I am a Mayan and that makes me different."
Some of her proposals – or at least the way she describes them – do set her apart from her competitors. For example, while Álvaro Colom, a runner-up in the 2003 presidential election and the leading centre-left candidate for the September election, advocates simple "rural development", Ms Menchú talks of promoting national agriculture to cement traditional Mayan produce as the cornerstone of the nation's diet.
She also says she would open a national debate on whether Cafta, the 2004 trade agreement between Central America and the US, truly benefits Guatemala. Central America's most populous country ratified the agreement in July and while the effects of the agreement are still unclear, it has met with strong opposition in some particularly sensitive sectors, such as agriculture.
On other issues, however, Ms Menchú's proposals echo those of the mainstream opposition. She talks of the need to make government spending more efficient and transparent, make Congress more accountable and raise Guatemala's pitiful tax take to help resolve poverty, which affects more than 50 per cent of the roughly 12m inhabitants.
Like the other candidates, she says purging and improving the national police force is a priority. The subject has become a principal theme in Guatemala since the apparent discovery of death squads operating within the force, after four policemen were accused of slaying three congressmen from neighbouring El Salvador along with their driver last month.
The incident, which this week produced the resignation of Carlos Vielmann, the interior minister, acquired an even more sinister air when the arrested policemen were found murdered in their cells several days later.
Despite the fanfare that greeted the announcement of her candidacy, most political analysts in Guatemala believe her chances are slim. They admit her fame is a strong asset in an electoral system where personality often counts for more than policy.
But they also point out the indigenous movement is fragmented and that she does not enjoy the support from the indigenous community that she might. According to a recent poll, she only has 19 per cent of the vote compared with more than 38 per cent for Mr Colom.
But sitting in her garden, where two oil drums stand next to a pen containing yet another dog, Ms Menchú dismisses the scepticism.
She leans across and points to a thick column of ants scaling a wall and says: "That is what my campaign is about. It is a campaign of the poor but, above all, about collective action."
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Pisar tierra sagrada Maya por el señor Bush, es una ofensa al pueblo Maya
Ofensa a Pueblo Maya, visita de Bush
Coordinación y Convergencia Nacional Maya
La Coordinación y Convergencia Nacional Maya Waq’ib Kej sintetiza las opiniones y aspiraciones de decenas de organizaciones Mayas, locales, regionales y nacionales, expresa en el presente comunicado su valoración ética respecto a la visita del Sr. Bush a nuestro país.
1. Repudiamos la visita del señor George W. Bush a Guatemala. Su llegada aL suelo sagrado de Iximche y otras comunidades maya, es una ofensa e insulto al pueblo maya, por la implicación de este señor en las guerras y muertes en el mundo y su responsabilidad por el genocidio en Guatemala. NO Señor Bush, no esta en su rancho de Texas para pisotear y burlarse de la memoria de nuestros abuelos, Kaji’ Imox, B’eleje’ K’at y Oxi’ Kej, irrumpiendo la paz y armonía de nuestro sagrado Iximche.
2. Resulta incomprensible y muy contradictorio para el pueblo Maya, cómo el Presidente de un País que se asume ser democrático, invierte millardos de dólares en guerras que absurdamente persiguen crear condiciones para imponer principios democráticos que según occidente regulan armónicamente la convivencia humana.
Los millardos de dólares gastados en guerras durante los últimos años serian suficientes para erradicar la desnutrición infantil y una gama de enfermedades curables en Latinoamérica
3. Consideramos como una gran falta de ética, respeto y reciprocidad, que el gobierno de Estados Unidos de Norteamérica firme un Tratado de Libre Comercio con Centro América y República Dominicana, pero por otro lado persigue, captura, humilla, deporta y mata a hermanos y hermanas connacionales en Estados Unidos. Las agresiones físicas, moral y emocionalmente que reciben hermanos connacionales en los Estados Unidos por El Kuklux Klan y su aparato de seguridad es la clara expresión de la Xenofobia y Racismo de su gobierno ante nuestros pueblos.
4. Usted ofrece libre mercado a nuestros países, sin embargo dicta leyes y normas para que su país se lleve todos nuestros recursos naturales y conocimientos de nuestros antepasados y nosotros gobiernos servilistas siguen pidiéndole ayuda y prestamos para nuestro desarrollo.
5. Nuestros gobiernos, atendiendo sus órdenes, emitiendo leyes de áreas protegidas para entregar en mano de las transnacionales de su país nuestras tierras y recursos naturales, mientras a nosotros, como pueblos indígenas nos desalojan y desplazan de nuestros territorios. Usted pretende concentrarnos en “reservaciones” como tiene a nuestros hermanos indígenas en Estados Unidos. No señor Bush, nosotros somos parte y herederos de este territorio y madre naturaleza.
4. Su política de “control de natalidad” que sigue impulsando en América Latina, no es otra cosa que la política de exterminio y dominación de nuestros pueblos. 5. Rechazamos la actitud servilista de funcionarios indígenas del gobierno al organizar actos folkloristas ante la visita del sr. Bush.
POR ANTERIOR EXIGIMOS:
a. No necesitamos de su ayuda económica señor BUSH , EXIGIMOS la devolución del saqueo de nuestros recursos y el respeto de nuestra dignidad, que por derecho nos corresponden.
b. Exigimos el respeto a nuestros hermanos connacionales en los Estados Unidos, no más racismo ni xenofobia contra ellos y ellas.
c. El respeto de los hermanos y hermanas indígenas de los Estados Unidos, libertad a Leonard Peltier, preso político y condenado a cadena perpetua, para que pueda vivir libres y dignamente en sus territorios.
d. Cese su política guerrerista e intervencionista en el mundo, su retiro inmediato de sus y tropas y bases militares. e. Anunciamos a los hermanos indígenas y pueblo en general de Guatemala y al mundo, que después del pisoteo del señor Bush en Iximchè, estaremos haciendo una limpia espiritual de Iximchè, ciudad sagrada, para restaurar la armonía y la paz del lugar y para garantizar la seguridad de visitantes y a los delegados y delegadas a la III Cumbre de los Pueblos Indígenas de ABYA YALA, que se realizara del 26 al 30 de marzo.
NUESTRA CULTURA Y MADRE NATURALEZA…NO ESTAN EN VENTA
Ixim Ulew, B’eleje’ Keme’, 9 de marzo, 2007.
COORDINACION Y CONVERGENCIA NACIONAL MAYA WAQIB’ KEJ
Caminando hacia la Convergencia, la Unidad, Dignidad y Derechos del Pueblo Maya ______________________________________________________________________ 1 Avenida 8-00 zona 9 tels. 2360-4949,2361-09052 E-mail waqibkej@turbonett.com, Convergencia.waqibkej@gmail.com
Coordinación y Convergencia Nacional Maya
La Coordinación y Convergencia Nacional Maya Waq’ib Kej sintetiza las opiniones y aspiraciones de decenas de organizaciones Mayas, locales, regionales y nacionales, expresa en el presente comunicado su valoración ética respecto a la visita del Sr. Bush a nuestro país.
1. Repudiamos la visita del señor George W. Bush a Guatemala. Su llegada aL suelo sagrado de Iximche y otras comunidades maya, es una ofensa e insulto al pueblo maya, por la implicación de este señor en las guerras y muertes en el mundo y su responsabilidad por el genocidio en Guatemala. NO Señor Bush, no esta en su rancho de Texas para pisotear y burlarse de la memoria de nuestros abuelos, Kaji’ Imox, B’eleje’ K’at y Oxi’ Kej, irrumpiendo la paz y armonía de nuestro sagrado Iximche.
2. Resulta incomprensible y muy contradictorio para el pueblo Maya, cómo el Presidente de un País que se asume ser democrático, invierte millardos de dólares en guerras que absurdamente persiguen crear condiciones para imponer principios democráticos que según occidente regulan armónicamente la convivencia humana.
Los millardos de dólares gastados en guerras durante los últimos años serian suficientes para erradicar la desnutrición infantil y una gama de enfermedades curables en Latinoamérica
3. Consideramos como una gran falta de ética, respeto y reciprocidad, que el gobierno de Estados Unidos de Norteamérica firme un Tratado de Libre Comercio con Centro América y República Dominicana, pero por otro lado persigue, captura, humilla, deporta y mata a hermanos y hermanas connacionales en Estados Unidos. Las agresiones físicas, moral y emocionalmente que reciben hermanos connacionales en los Estados Unidos por El Kuklux Klan y su aparato de seguridad es la clara expresión de la Xenofobia y Racismo de su gobierno ante nuestros pueblos.
4. Usted ofrece libre mercado a nuestros países, sin embargo dicta leyes y normas para que su país se lleve todos nuestros recursos naturales y conocimientos de nuestros antepasados y nosotros gobiernos servilistas siguen pidiéndole ayuda y prestamos para nuestro desarrollo.
5. Nuestros gobiernos, atendiendo sus órdenes, emitiendo leyes de áreas protegidas para entregar en mano de las transnacionales de su país nuestras tierras y recursos naturales, mientras a nosotros, como pueblos indígenas nos desalojan y desplazan de nuestros territorios. Usted pretende concentrarnos en “reservaciones” como tiene a nuestros hermanos indígenas en Estados Unidos. No señor Bush, nosotros somos parte y herederos de este territorio y madre naturaleza.
4. Su política de “control de natalidad” que sigue impulsando en América Latina, no es otra cosa que la política de exterminio y dominación de nuestros pueblos. 5. Rechazamos la actitud servilista de funcionarios indígenas del gobierno al organizar actos folkloristas ante la visita del sr. Bush.
POR ANTERIOR EXIGIMOS:
a. No necesitamos de su ayuda económica señor BUSH , EXIGIMOS la devolución del saqueo de nuestros recursos y el respeto de nuestra dignidad, que por derecho nos corresponden.
b. Exigimos el respeto a nuestros hermanos connacionales en los Estados Unidos, no más racismo ni xenofobia contra ellos y ellas.
c. El respeto de los hermanos y hermanas indígenas de los Estados Unidos, libertad a Leonard Peltier, preso político y condenado a cadena perpetua, para que pueda vivir libres y dignamente en sus territorios.
d. Cese su política guerrerista e intervencionista en el mundo, su retiro inmediato de sus y tropas y bases militares. e. Anunciamos a los hermanos indígenas y pueblo en general de Guatemala y al mundo, que después del pisoteo del señor Bush en Iximchè, estaremos haciendo una limpia espiritual de Iximchè, ciudad sagrada, para restaurar la armonía y la paz del lugar y para garantizar la seguridad de visitantes y a los delegados y delegadas a la III Cumbre de los Pueblos Indígenas de ABYA YALA, que se realizara del 26 al 30 de marzo.
NUESTRA CULTURA Y MADRE NATURALEZA…NO ESTAN EN VENTA
Ixim Ulew, B’eleje’ Keme’, 9 de marzo, 2007.
COORDINACION Y CONVERGENCIA NACIONAL MAYA WAQIB’ KEJ
Caminando hacia la Convergencia, la Unidad, Dignidad y Derechos del Pueblo Maya ______________________________________________________________________ 1 Avenida 8-00 zona 9 tels. 2360-4949,2361-09052 E-mail waqibkej@turbonett.com, Convergencia.waqibkej@gmail.com
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