Job Discussion Forums

[Aramas]

Does anyone know a credible site that covers south american governments and their relationships with the world's least favourite terrorist? Obviously Chavez and Lula can Just Say No, whereas Uribe and ex-poodle-in-chief Gutierrez can't (hopefully his successor will give the US military presence in his country the boot and address the mass poisoning of farmers near the Colombian border by US choppers). What about Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina? Do they have US military bases? Are they bending over and spreading their buttocks in order to secure an ironically-named Free Trade Agreement? I'd hate to end up in a country suffering from the political equivalent of HIV.

[Weona]

No country in Latin America, with the exception of Cuba (ironic, I know) and Puerto Rico, has a U.S. Military base. Well, last time I checked....

[Ben Round de Bloc]

[moonraven]

Weona--The last time you "checked" must have been quite some time ago.

Ecuador has a sizable--and very controversial base in Manta. There are also bases in Cura�ao (from where threatening manuevers were made last month in the direction of Venezuela), Aruba and Comalapa, El Salvador. In addition, the US has almost 20 "radar sites"--primarily in Peru and Colombia--ostensibly to monitor movements in the "War against Drugs". There are also a number of US troops in Peru and Colombia at bases that are nominally Peruvian and Colombia. Plus the US troops that are "unofficially" in Paraguay (to direct "war games" against Muslim "terrorists" but really to keep a US military presence around the largest freshwater aquifer) and Bolivia (to try to rub out Evo Morales). The last 4 or 5 US soldiers--part of a US/Venezuela "Cooperation" program) were just evicted from Venezuela--11 months after Venezuela took over the US military office in Fort Tiuna, Caracas, for other uses.

Aramas: Peru, Ecuador and Colombia were engaging in Free Trade Agreement negotiations last week in Lima with the US. Ecuador pulled out when Guti�rrez was ousted. I am in Quito at the moment, and the majority mood here is very anti-Bush, anti-Free Trade Agreement, anti-Plan Colombia.

The Washington Post was squealing and whining that due to the Bush administration's lack of a "plan" in regard to Latin America, that Ch�vez would take advantage of the change of government in Ecuador to pull Ecuador into his camp. The Bushies are very afraid of the influence of Ch�vez, as it is growing daily all around the globe in even greater measure than that of Bush is shrinking.

Both Uruguay and Argentina are in the Venezuelan camp in regard to not accepting the Consensus of Washington, and are actively participating in joint ventures with Venezuela. Bolivia is up in the air--and will be until Carlos Mesa, who took over when "The Gringo" was ousted in Oct. 2003, is history and Morales in the presidential chair.

There are quite a few sites which regularly cover what you are looking for. The Venezuelan ones are probably the best: www.venezuelanalysis.com (in English) and www.aporrea.org. Also, zMag--a US site has good articles on Latin America, as well as several "watches" for specific countries. NarcoNews is also good. La Jornada (excellent Mexican newspaper) is online at www.jornada.mx.

Those will get you started, anyway.

[thelmadatter]

Ben,

Puerto Rico is a US territory. However, when it benefits them, they claim to be a country. I mentioned something about this during the Olympics last year as Puerto Rico and Guam somehow got "country" status.

MR is right that the US has a presence in a number of Latin American countries... its just not as "official" as the bases we have in Cuba, Germany, Japan etc. In those cases, we have a nice formal treaty with these countries. While Im not intimately familiar with the countries MR cites, I did have a boyfriend who was stationed in Honduras - a US base in all but name - at least in the late 1980's. I do know most of these bases are dedicated mostly to intelligence (I used to be MI 98G way back when) and yes, covert actions too. We have similar things in other places too. We will soon have formal bases (of the treaty type) soon in Iraq and maybe Afghanistan.

[moonraven]

The US has formal agreements for 10 years with the governments of Ecuador, El Salvador and The Netherlands (in the cases of Aruba and Cura�ao.

The US base in Honduras in the 1980s was for the "Contras"--the US-funded mercenaries who made raids across the border into Nicaragua to destroy towns and villages, pillage and try to bring down the Sandinista government.

The Honduras base and the mercenaries were primarily financed by the CIA from drug trafficking and the sale of arms to Iran (the Iran-Contra scandal, when it broke landed a few butts in jail briefly--but almost all of the usual suspects are now honchos in the Bush administration.)

[Weona]

[moonraven]

Why not say that it SHOULD be a country? It was a colony of Spain until the US blew up one of its own ships, the Maine, in the harbor of La Habana in 1898 and used that as an excuse to declare war on Spain and take its colonies in the Caribbean and Pacific.

Since 1898 PR has been under US colonial rule. That does not mean that it does not have its own CULTURE.

[Aramas]

Thanks for the links, although the English language site is rather...um...enthusiastically Bolivarian

I still haven't found much on Chile, and what I have found is contradictory. They seem to be chummy with both Chavez and Bush. Chilenos used to be rather right-wing, by all accounts, but where does popular sentiment lie now?