A medley of meddling: US undermines democracy throughout Latin America

The first link is actually from 2010, but it’s an important one that I had missed.

Mark Weisbrot:

The United States actually intervened in Brazilian politics as recently as 2005, organizing a conference to promote a legal change that would make it more difficult for legislators to switch parties. This would have strengthened the opposition to Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT) government, since the PT has party discipline but many opposition politicians do not. This intervention by the U.S. government was only discovered last year through a Freedom of Information Act request filed in Washington.

Weisbrot, April 20th:

Recent events indicate that the Obama administration has stepped up its strategy of “regime change” against the left-of-center governments in Latin America, promoting conflict in ways not seen since the military coup that Washington supported in Venezuela in 2002. The most high-profile example is in Venezuela itself, during the past week. As this goes to press, Washington has grown increasingly isolated in its efforts to destabilize the newly elected government of Nicolas Maduro.

But Venezuela is not the only country to fall prey to Washington’s efforts to reverse the electoral results of the past 15 years in Latin America. It is now clear that last year’s ouster of President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay was also aided and abetted by the United States government. In a brilliant investigative work for Agência Pública, journalist Natalia Viana shows that the Obama administration funded the principal actors involved in the “parliamentary coup” against Lugo. Washington then helped organize international support for coup.

Daniel Kovalik, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

I just returned from Venezuela where I was one of 170 international election observers from around the world, including India, Brazil, Great Britain, Argentina, South Korea and France. Among the observers were two former presidents (of Guatemala and the Dominican Republic), judges, lawyers and high-ranking officials of national electoral councils.

What we found was a transparent, reliable, well-run and thoroughly audited electoral system.

Dawn Paley, Upside Down World:

There’s a new President in Latin America….
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Horacio Cartes is his name,
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Cartes’ link to drug traffickers was reported in the New York Times, and his implication in money laundering has been amply documented. “Through the utilization of a [Drug Enforcement Administration] [Buenos Aires Country Office] cooperating source and other DEA undercover personnel, agents have infiltrated CARTES’ money laundering enterprise, an organization believed to launder large quantities of United States currency generated through illegal means, including through the sale of narcotics, from the [Tri-Border Area of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil] to the United States,” according to a State Department cable leaked by Wikileaks. As if that wasn’t enough, a recent report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists revealed that a bank owned by Cartes opened a secret locale in the offshore tax-haven of the Cook Islands.

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More Honduran follies

The issue is how much money the US is giving to Juan Carlos Bonilla, head of the Honduran police, who is accused of running death squads.

Basically, the State Department spokesman refuses to answer a simple question (how much money does the US give to Honduras for security), provides data that are completely unhelpful ($500 million to Central America over 5 years, with half going to countries including Honduras), and refuses to provide any information on when the last review was done that concluded that US money was not flowing to entities that Bonilla controls [added: they also have a figure of zero for security aid to Honduras on their website].

To read the actual bafflegab, click below.

Folies State Department, 3/25/13

For full context on this story, see Dan Beeton at Upside Down World. But for now, simply marvel at the State Department’s response to a question about Juan Carlos “El Tigre” Bonilla, a fugitive in 2003, now Honduras’s head of the National Police.

Yikes.

Patrick Ventrell
Acting Deputy Spokesperson [State Department]
Daily Press Briefing
Washington, DC
March 25, 2013
…
QUESTION: Okay. And I have a question about Honduras, if I may.

MR. VENTRELL: Okay.

QUESTION: If you were about to close the book, I’ll stop you right there.

MR. VENTRELL: Okay.

QUESTION: We had a story about the U.S. support for Honduran police –

MR. VENTRELL: Yeah.

QUESTION: — which you’d long said had nothing to do with the police chief Bonilla, and we’re saying that every single one of the units you claim was vetted reports directly to Bonilla. How do you square that with what you told Congress and what you’ve said publicly about this?

MR. VENTRELL: Just to say, first of all, Brad, that we remain concerned about high levels of impunity and corruption in Honduras, and we’re working in partnership with the Honduran Government and civil society to address these challenges, advance citizen security, build capacity within the rule of law and judicial institutions, and protect the human rights of all Hondurans.

I can tell you right now that there is a review process undergoing. It’s standard practice for the U.S. Government to form working groups and review and evaluate institutions that receive U.S. assistance. So we review all relevant information that may affect assistance the United States can provide to Honduras, including under the provisions of the Leahy Law. So I can’t comment on the internal deliberations, but we remain in close communication with the U.S. Congress, in compliance with the legal requirements of the Leahy Law.

QUESTION: How did you vet these people if – I mean, they are police units under the police chief, and you say they have no – nothing to do with the police chief.

MR. VENTRELL: I mean, again, I can’t get into the actual vetting procedures other than to say we absolutely comply with congressional mandates and congressional requirements.

QUESTION: Are you urging the Honduran Government to relieve Mr. Bonilla of his duties, since you’ve essentially raised the allegations of extrajudicial killings and various human rights violations by him and his alleged death squads?

MR. VENTRELL: I’m not aware that we’ve taken a position before this review is finished, so I think we’re going to conduct a thorough review and then take a look and be back in communication not only with Honduras but with the U.S. Congress.

QUESTION: You specifically said that you’re withholding money from anything that he touches.

MR. VENTRELL: Right, but –

QUESTION: So I would wonder why you would not urge that he then be removed if he’s an obstacle of your cooperation.

MR. VENTRELL: We’ve got to get to the bottom of this through our review before we make any decisions.

QUESTION: Do you know how much – I can’t seem to find anywhere that says how much money you guys are actually providing the Honduran security sector. According to, I think, like, the State Department/USAID website it was zero, which can’t be correct since –

MR. VENTRELL: Yeah, we have large security cooperation with a number of Central American partners.

QUESTION: Could you get back to me with how much you provide?

MR. VENTRELL: I will endeavor this afternoon to get you –

QUESTION: I imagine it’s more than zero.

MR. VENTRELL: I will endeavor to get you an expert this afternoon.

QUESTION: Thank you.

Your tax dollars at work.

When is it ok to intervene?

If one is curious about just how the US meddles abroad, the NS Archive released some documents from a lawsuit filed by a man who has been jailed by the Cuban government. The documents released by Peter Kornbluh describe providing “support to the Cuban people in hastening transition:

The U.S. government has “between five to seven different transition plans” for Cuba, and the USAID-sponsored “Democracy” program aimed at the Castro government is “an operational activity” that demands “continuous discretion,” according to documents filed in court this week, and posted today by the National Security Archive. The records were filed by Development Alternatives Inc (DAI), one of USAID’s largest contractors, in response to a lawsuit filed by the family of Alan Gross, who was arrested in Cuba in December 2009 for attempting to set up satellite communications networks on the island, as part of the USAID program.

In an August 2008 meeting toward the end of the George W. Bush administration, according to a confidential memorandum of conversation attached to DAI’s filing, officials from the “Cuba Democracy and Contingency Planning Program,” as the Democracy effort is officially known, told DAI representatives that “USAID is not telling Cubans how or why they need a democratic transition, but rather, the Agency wants to provide the technology and means for communicating the spark which could benefit the population.” The program, the officials stated, intended to “provide a base from which Cubans can ‘develop alternative visions of the future.’”

There’s a useful conversation to be had about how the US government should respond to authoritarian states. Alan Gross was jailed simply for providing communications equipment to Cuban Jews, a jailing which seems manifestly unfair…unless it was part of a campaign to destabilize the Cuban government.

If we supplied communications equipment to the Arab Spring or to the Syrian rebels to resist dictatorial censorship, most Americans would probably approve. We would never do the same thing to a rival like Russia or China, since it would have serious diplomatic consequences. So part of the judgment about what is ok is actually based on what we can get away with. And we would never intervene in an authoritarian state whose government we support like, say, Saudi Arabia. In the case of Cuba, the rest of the world has concluded that we are obsessed with Castro and that we are behaving like bullies.

We need a consistent policy, one that doesn’t vary depending on how strong or weak authoritarian states are, or whether we support the government or not.

One other interesting angle is that one can find the quality of partner the USG is using to learn about Cuba, like The Babalu Blog which relies on FrontPage Mag and Judicial Watch for its reality, as well as The Cuban Triangle. Really, if this is what the USAID is using to find out about Cuba, they are very confused.

Honduras: what we’d like to say

Press session at the State Department:

QUESTION: I actually have one more Latin American question.

MS. NULAND: Yeah.

QUESTION: And if you don’t have anything on it, maybe you could take it. It’s on Honduras.

MS. NULAND: Okay.

QUESTION: Political intimidation, repression – apparently, I believe, a litany of recent events, mainly directed towards one opposition party. Do you have anything to say about those incidents specifically or more broadly about just the political environment in Honduras right now?

MS. NULAND: I don’t have anything on the political environment in Honduras. Let me take it and see if we have anything we’d like to say.

Thanks.

I know what I’d like to say.

Annals of Republican Hypocrisy, Stardate … unknown

Sarah Bufkin, HuffPo:

On Wednesday morning, CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien asked the Utah Republican if he had “voted to cut the funding for embassy security.”

“Absolutely,” Chaffetz said. “Look we have to make priorities and choices in this country. We have…15,000 contractors in Iraq. We have more than 6,000 contractors, a private army there, for President Obama, in Baghdad. And we’re talking about can we get two dozen or so people into Libya to help protect our forces. When you’re in tough economic times, you have to make difficult choices. You have to prioritize things.”

For the past two years, House Republicans have continued to deprioritize the security forces protecting State Department personnel around the world. In fiscal year 2011, lawmakers shaved $128 million off of the administration’s request for embassy security funding. House Republicans drained off even more funds in fiscal year 2012 — cutting back on the department’s request by $331 million.

Meanwhile, Chaffetz & Co. are trying to put all the blame on Obama for the death of Ambassador Stephens and those protecting him in Benghazi. The Administration may have handled the PR badly, but the Congress has handled its primary duties badly.

Newspeak at State

State Dept:

U.S. officials congratulated Secretary [Arturo] Corrales on the steps President Lobo’s administration has taken in these areas [poverty reduction, protection of human rights, government transparency, strengthening of democratic institutions and the judicial sector, countering organized crime, and other issues of regional interest] and, in particular, on the important results it has achieved in the fight against drug trafficking.

Human Rights Watch:

Law enforcement officials committed widespread human rights violations under the de facto government that took power after the 2009 military coup. Impunity for post-coup abuses remains a serious problem, despite the government’s establishment of a truth commission in May 2010 to examine events surrounding the coup, and efforts by prosecutors at the human rights unit in the attorney general’s office to investigate abuses.

Journalists, human rights defenders, political activists, and transgender people face violence and threats. Those responsible for these abuses are rarely held to account.

InSight Crime:

In recent years, Honduras has become an important transshipment point for US-bound cocaine. The Central American country has also seen an increase in cocaine processing, which is believed to be operated by Mexican cartels. It struggles with several violent gangs, including Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18, and currently has the highest murder rate in the world.

In 2011, President Porfirio Lobo deployed troops in the cities of Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula in an effort to crack down on rising violence.
…
In a region with a history of military coups, giving more powers to the military has a potential to destabilize the power balance between civilian and military authorities.

Sounds like progress!

Double your pleasure, double your fun with Doubletalk! Doubletalk! Doubletalk dumb!

First, some straight talk from James Earl Carter:

THE United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.
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our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.
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At a time when popular revolutions are sweeping the globe, the United States should be strengthening, not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But instead of making the world safer, America’s violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends.

As concerned citizens, we must persuade Washington to reverse course and regain moral leadership according to international human rights norms that we had officially adopted as our own and cherished throughout the years.

While his OpEd is mostly about torture, wiretapping, and targeted assassination, it seems oddly relevant in light of the following short play called Our State Department:

QUESTION: On Paraguay.

MS. NULAND: Yep.

QUESTION: A couple of things. First of all regarding the conversation yesterday, has there been any further determination on the part of the U.S. about what happened in Paraguay, whether this constitutes a coup or more broadly whether the U.S. has objections to what took place in Paraguay?

MS. NULAND: Well, as you know, we are having consultations in the OAS today, and we would expect that the OAS will come forward after those consultations. As a general matter, we haven’t called this a coup because the processes were followed. I think the question is one of speed. And the OAS is looking at how it can support the Paraguayan democratic process going forward. You know that they’re supposed to have elections in 2013, which need to go forward. So I think we will refrain from further comment until we see how we come out of the OAS meeting. But our interest remains in protecting and preserving Paraguayan democracy.

QUESTION: Sure. The current leadership in Paraguay – does the U.S. recognize them as legitimate – the current president?

MS. NULAND: Again, we are going to be guided by the conversation that we have at the OAS about how we should deal with formers, currents, all those kinds of things.

QUESTION: When you said you –

QUESTION: And –

QUESTION: Sorry.

QUESTION: And just – you issued a response to a question yesterday. President Lugo – then-President Lugo a day before the impeachment to go in at his own request to the U.S. Embassy.

MS. NULAND: Right.

QUESTION: I just wanted to see if there’s any more substance that you can tell us, what happened, what was the nature of the conversation. Obviously, the fact that this was right before his impeachment draws questions about what was discussed there.

MS. NULAND: Yeah. I wish I did. I have nothing more for you there, Sean.

QUESTION: You said you haven’t called it a coup because the processes were followed. Does that mean you’ve decided it’s not a coup?

MS. NULAND: Yeah. We have not decided to call it a coup because it was – there were constitutional processes that were followed. The concerns that we’ve had, as we said yesterday, were that the process seemed to be extremely speedy, so –

QUESTION: Her question – that wasn’t her question. Her question was: Have you decided not to call it a coup?

MS. NULAND: I think, again, we will make our final conclusions on all of this as we see how the OAS comes forward.

Please.

QUESTION: So if the OAS decides that this was a coup –

MS. NULAND: Said, you’re taking me into all kinds of hypotheticals that I’m not going into.

QUESTION: You said that you will be consistent with the OAS decision. If they decide that it was a coup, that means that you will recognize it as such?

MS. NULAND: Again, I’m not going to prejudge the outcome of the meeting until we’ve had the meeting.

Please.

QUESTION: Can we change the subject?

Burnt sacrifices to the war on some drugs

DemocracyNow:

JUAN GONZALEZ: We turn now to Honduras, where a fire swept through an overcrowded prison Tuesday night and killed more than 350 inmates. It’s the world’s deadliest prison fire in a century. According to the Associated Press, most of the inmates who died had never been charged, let alone convicted. More than half were either awaiting trial or being held as suspected gang members.

A local official says an inmate called her moments before the fire and told her he was going to set the facility on fire and kill everyone inside. Many of the prisoners burned to death in their cells.
…
AMY GOODMAN: Honduran prisons are plagued with overcrowding, due in part to drug trafficking arrests. The United Nations says Honduras also has the highest murder rate in the world. All this comes as the country recovers from a 2009 coup.

For more, we’re joined by Dana Frank, professor of history at University of California, Santa Cruz, and Honduras correspondent for The Nation magazine. Her most recent piece appears in the New York Times; it’s called “In Honduras, a Mess Made in the U.S.”

What happened here? What do you understand, Professor Frank?

DANA FRANK: Well, let’s be clear right off: this was not a natural disaster. There were two previous prison fires like this in 2003 and 2004, when people died because the police either deliberately set the fire to kill gang—alleged gang members or because they allowed it to happen because of overcrowding. There have been reports saying that this should have been cleaned up long ago, and it’s just gotten worse and worse.

The other thing to understand is, when the fire broke out, the prisoners were locked down. There are many, many, now, testimonies from prisoners who managed to survive, saying that the police—the police, they’re guards. And I want to understand that these—underscore that these are regular police that manage the prisons; they’re not prison guards in a separate system. The prisoners that escaped are saying—or that survived, are saying that the police threw away the keys, they laughed at them, they refused to open the cells. And one prisoner is saying that they shot at the prisoners. And when the prison—and so, these people died because they died in their cells screaming, trying to get out, locked down in their cells. And human rights advocates are underscoring that penitentiary officials have a sacred duty to protect the lives of those inside.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Dana Frank, there were some reports that firefighters were delayed in being able to get to the fire to put it out?

DANA FRANK: Absolutely. The police wouldn’t let the firefighters into the prison for 30 minutes. They also tear-gassed and fired at family members who were rushing to the prison to try to figure out what was happening. And there were also the firefighters 15 minutes away at the U.S. Air Force base, at Soto Cano, that were also not there.

AMY GOODMAN: Hundreds of prisoners killed. Can you talk about the relationship between the Honduran government and the United States and where you think that weighs in here?

DANA FRANK: Well, you know, but this is the ongoing coup regime. It’s really important to not act like the coup that happened on June 28th, 2009, is somehow over. The same people are controlling the Honduran government. Pepe Lobo has appointed, for example, Daniel Orellana, the head of the prisons, was one of the—the chief of the police at the time of the coup.

And all of this is being supported by the Obama government. You know, the Obama administration has, in fact, just in its budget two days ago, asked for a doubling of the U.S. military aid to Honduras. They’ve just spent $50 million to expand Soto Cano Air Force Base, as this—knowing full well about the total corruption of the ongoing Lobo government. And this is a really—a tremendously outrageous thing that the Obama administration is doing, and people need to be paying more attention to this.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Dana Frank, the impact of the spreading U.S. war on drugs on—especially on Central America, as thousands of inmates from U.S. prisons are released from prison, deported down there, the growth of crime and drugs, and then the government crackdowns on drugs in those countries?

DANA FRANK: Well, you know, human rights defenders in Honduras will be the first to say that the drug problem is very serious, and it’s growing. They would also be the first to say that it’s mushroomed since the coup, in this context on complete impunity. There’s no functioning judicial system. And it’s important to understand that the Lobo government is completely in bed with the drug traffickers. So you can’t say here’s the government helping clean up the drug traffickers, and here’s the drug traffickers; it’s all corrupt from top to bottom. And the Honduran police and judicial systems are especially—are especially corrupt.

The problem is, there’s been a lot of spin saying, “Well, we have to spend even more money on the Honduran military and police in order to fight drugs.” And that’s just throwing money at the same problem, because you can’t make a distinction between the Lobo government and its police and the drug trafficking. And this is the issue all over Central America, this militarization in the name of fighting drugs, which is not what the Honduran human rights people, it’s not what the Honduran opposition is calling for. They are the first to suffer from the drug issues. But they say that this corrupt government, very highly backed and increasingly backed by the Lobo administration in the United—excuse me, the Obama administration in the United States, is the problem here. And so, it’s really important to not let this spin to the right to increase militarization of Central America in the name of fighting drugs or cleaning this up.(emphases added)

Update: KPFA take on it here. American University Professor Adrienne Pine is the interview.