funding wanton murders of teachers and mayors by the infamous 'contras' or supports the slaughter of 200,000 Mayan villagers in Guatemala, or a Clinton pours billions of our tax dollars into murdering Colombian trade unionists, teachers, peasant leaders and other advocates of the poor, or a Bush pours more billions of our tax dollars into the same "cause," or stations U.S. Navy vessels off Venezuela during a rightwing coup and congratulates the coupsters on overthrowing Venezuelan democracy, or funds/organizes a white separatist insurrection in Bolivia right out of the U.S. embassy, or bombs Ecuador, or pulls off a stunt like the Rumsfeldian "miracle laptop" or the CIA "suitcase full of money" caper out of Miami, or when the plane carrying the kidnapped president of Honduras out of the country at gunpoint stops at the U.S. military base in Honduras for re-fueling (under Obama's auspices, though I'm still not sure if he approved it), or U.S. agents shoot Indigenous men, women and children in a remote Honduran jungle in the name of the "war on drugs," you must be really surprised.
U.S. interference in Latin America is endemic. It takes many forms, from millions of our tax dollars poured into rightwing causes through the USAID and other agencies, to torture training of LatAm military officers at the "School of the Americas," from dirty tricks to the corrupt, failed, murderous "war on drugs." It is naive NOT to think of the U.S. in ANY potentially destabilizing action against leftist governments in Latin America. It's what the U.S. does. The U.S. government has been actively fighting social justice governments in LatAm for many decades, most especially by funding, training and infiltrating LatAm militaries and police forces. The beneficiaries are the local wealthy elite and U.S. transglobal corporations and war profiteers.
So, to say, "well, it isn't always the U.S.," when there is a protest or disturbance or coup attempt against a leftist government, is to look at Latin America in an upside down, "Alice in Wonderland"-ish sort of way, ignoring volumes of recent and past history. It very probably IS the U.S. government in collusion with local fascists. Or, if it didn't start in an office in Washington DC, it very soon gets U.S. tax dollars and "training."
The U.S. has invaded Grenada, Panama and Haiti--in fairly recent history (Haiti, in 2004, to abscond with its elected president and set him down in Africa). Even Lula da Silva is fearful of the U.S. military. HE said, of the Bush Junta's reconstitution of the U.S. 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, that it "is a threat to Brazil's oil." Why would he say that? Hm? What is the threat? The threat is U.S. military action against a Latin American country--to steal its resources or to add to the Pentagon's "forward operating locations" for what it calls its "Southern Command" or for some other imperial reason.
The threat is there. I did not make it up. The U.S. is constantly trying to interfere in Latin America, to turn democracies into U.S. client states on behalf of U.S. transglobal corporations and war profiteers, and has a long history of doing so. It is naive--or deliberately dense--to deny this reality. It has been the overriding reality in Latin America for more than half a century. I quote Lula da Silva again. In his last speech in office (2010)--after the rightwing coup in Honduras, with Obama in office here--he said, "The U.S. has not changed."
And when Alvaro Uribe was running his criminal organization in Colombia--ahem, the Colombian government--while Bush Jr. was running his in Washington, and when those two criminal organizations got together and secretly signed a U.S./Colombia military agreement to greatly expand the U.S. military presence in Colombia, with Uribe warmongering against Venezuela and Ecuador, and the U.S./Colombia actually dropping 500 lb. U.S. "smart bombs" on Ecuador's border, war between the U.S./Colombia and Venezuela/Ecuador--the two South American members of OPEC! (lots and lots of oil!)--was a good possibility. The Bush Junta had just bombed and invaded Iraq and slaughtered a hundred thousand innocent people for that very reason--the oil!
But this is probably something else you are naive about--what U.S. wars in this era are really for.
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