Independent
geopolitical analyst Eric Draitser reviews the Obama’s legacy of
destabilizing, militarizing, and exploiting Latin America.
by
Eric Draitser of stopimperialism.org
Part
2 - Obama’s love affair with the right wing
A mural in Lithuania depicting Russian President
Vladimir Putin and President-elect Donald Trump embracing in a
passionate kiss has gone viral. The meaning of the image is about as
subtle as a sledgehammer to the skull, but it is no less
perspicacious for its lack of subtlety. And while Russia has indeed
tacitly, and rather shamefully, supported far-right candidates and
causes for its own coldly pragmatic political reasons — Brexit,
Trump, Le Pen, etc. — the truth is that Obama’s administration
has also backed right-wing reactionaries and extremists where it has
suited its interests.
Throughout Latin America, President Obama has been a
driving force behind the resurgence of right-wing forces that have
rolled back the gains of socialist and social democratic governments,
targeted indigenous and African diaspora communities, assassinated
activists, and toppled governments where they could.
So, yes, let’s talk about “legacy.”
In Honduras, Obama’s legacy was cemented from the very
beginning of his presidency. In the summer of 2009, Manuel Zelaya,
the country’s democratically-elected left-wing president, was
removed from power in a midnight coup orchestrated by then-Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton and her cronies in Washington and in
Tegucigalpa. And while Obama’s tepid condemnation of the coup
elicited cheers from many liberals in its contrast to the Bush
administration’s loving embrace of the coup against Hugo Chávez in
Venezuela in 2002, the reality is that, as with all things Obama, it
was mere words. The support of the president and his henchwoman was
the driving force behind the coup.
Clinton is never one to shy away from an opportunity to
boast about the amount of blood on her hands. In a passage which
removed from later editions of her book “Hard Choices,” she
rather brazenly admitted:
“In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke
with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary
[Patricia] Espinosa in Mexico. We strategized on a plan to restore
order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be
held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of
Zelaya moot and give the Honduran people a chance to choose their own
future.”
Obama’s top diplomat was instrumental in installing a
right-wing government backed by the wealthiest business interests in
Honduras and powerful players in Washington. As Clinton bagman Lanny
Davis openly stated in an interview just weeks after the coup:
“My clients represent the CEAL, the [Honduras
Chapter of] Business Council of Latin America. … I do not represent
the government and do not talk to [interim] President [Roberto]
Micheletti. My main contacts are [billionaires] Camilo Atala and
Jorge Canahuati. I’m proud to represent businessmen who are
committed to the rule of law.”
Indeed, Davis quite candidly exposed himself as an agent
of powerful oligarch financiers and landowners who, until the
election of Zelaya, had always maintained firm control of the reins
of government in Honduras. These are precisely the people, backed by
the Obama administration, wielding power in Honduras today through a
violent right-wing government that assassinates indigenous leaders
and human rights defenders such as Berta Cáceres, Margarita Murillo,
and many others for the sake of investors who seek to develop
indigenous, Afro-Caribbean, and peasant lands for massive profits.
Beyond the killings of activists and the political
backing of a right-wing coup government, Obama’s legacy in Honduras
is also one of militarization. In 2014, The North American Congress
on Latin America reported:
“The steady increase of U.S. assistance to
[Honduran] national armed forces has, if anything, been an indicator
of tacit U.S. support. But the U.S. role in militarization of
national police forces has been direct as well. In 2011 and 2012, the
Drug Enforcement Administration’s Foreign-deployed Advisory Support
Team (FAST)—which had previously carried out military-style
missions in Afghanistan—set up camp in Honduras to train a local
counternarcotics police unit and help plan and execute drug
interdiction operations … Supported by U.S. helicopters mounted
with high caliber machine guns, these operations were nearly
indistinguishable from military missions, and locals routinely
referred to the DEA and Honduran police agents as “soldados”
(soldiers).”
The NACLA report further noted that the Obama
administration deployed at least five “commando style squads” of
FAST teams across Central America. It added that, in Honduras, U.S.
and Colombian special forces units have been training, equipping, and
deploying with a new “elite” police unit called the Intelligence
Troop and Special Security Group, or TIGRES (Spanish for “tigers”),
which human rights groups argue is military in nature.
Ultimately, the man who rode the crest of a wave of
“Hope” and “Change” not only brought more of the same to
Honduras, and Latin America generally, he actually accelerated the
re-conquest of the region by the forces of the military-industrial
complex and finance capital.
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