Independent
geopolitical analyst Eric Draitser reviews the Obama’s legacy of
destabilizing, militarizing, and exploiting Latin America.
by
Eric Draitser of stopimperialism.org
Part
4 - Obama’s quiet militarization of Latin America
One of Obama’s great accomplishments in the service of
the military-industrial complex was his below-the-radar
militarization of the region. The pervasive myth of Obama as
distinctly different from George W. Bush lives on in the diseased
minds of liberal sycophants, but the facts tell a different story.
Obama represented continuity with, and an expansion of,
the worst policies of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton when it came to
Latin America. Plan Colombia, the broad heading for the billions of
dollars spent on U.S. military engagement and cooperation in Colombia
begun by Clinton and expanded by Bush, was further expanded under
Obama.
Just totaling the military, police, and economic aid to
Colombia for 2010 to 2015, the United States has given nearly $3
billion to Colombia in the form of “aid” to fight the so-called
“War on Drugs,” widely seen as merely a cover for U.S. military
power projection in South America. Add to that the fact that during
Obama’s tenure, and under former commander of the U.S. Special
Operations Command William McRaven, special forces troop deployments
ballooned to more than 65,000, with many spread throughout Latin
America.
In an eerily similar fashion, Obama expanded funding and
scope for the Mérida Initiative, a project launched by Bush in 2008
which essentially makes Mexico’s military and law enforcement into
a de facto arm of the U.S. military and government. As with Plan
Colombia (and AFRICOM), even though Obama did not launch this
initiative, he expanded it significantly, providing more than $2.5
billion since 2008.
But if liberals want to soothe their broken hearts with
the fact that Obama did not actually launch these programs, they
might want to consider the Central American Regional Security
Initiative, created by Obama in 2011.
According to a March 2014 report from the Igarapé
Institute, an independent security and development think tank based
in Brazil, CARSI and Mérida alone received nearly $3 billion
(2008-2013). It is an open secret that the massive funding has been
channeled primarily into military and paramilitary programs. Though
the United States touts these programs as success stories, their
expansion has coincided with increased militarization in every
country where U.S. funds have been provided.
In El Salvador, the government led by President Mauricio
Funes consolidated military control of law enforcement in the
interests of its U.S. backers. These changes took place simultaneous
to the implementation of CARSI, and should be seen as an outgrowth of
U.S. militarization. In Guatemala, the government of Otto Pérez
Molina, a former military leader with a record of atrocities and
genocide, further militarized the country before being imprisoned for
corruption in September of 2015.
Similarly, Honduras has been transformed into the U.S.
military’s primary foothold in Central America. U.S. Coordinator of
the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) and Refoundation Party
(LIBRE) Lucy Pagoada explained in a 2015 interview that “[Honduras]
has turned into a large military base trained and funded by the U.S.
They even have School of the Americas forces there.”
“There have been high levels of violence and
torture since the [2009] coup,” Pagoada continued.
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