Last year, when the Bolivian people fought back against brutal repression to force out the coup regime that the U.S. empire installed in 2019, the imperialists quietly went into panic mode. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo looked visibly discouraged at the news that the Movement for Socialism (MAS) Party’s Luis Arce was to become the country’s president. Just a year after Washington had used its terrorists to force out the previous MAS president Evo Morales, the indigenous proletarian movement had reversed the counterrevolution.
What had been going through Pompeo’s mind? That Washington’s state-building capabilities must be weakening for the coup regime to have been so swiftly strong-armed by the protesters? That even Israel’s post-coup assistance of the regime’s repressive forces must have some defect if these forces weren’t able to overcome the MAS militias? That this loss of another neo-colony following the socialist revolutions in Cuba, Nicaragua, and numerous other countries was backing Washington into an unprecedented geopolitical and economic corner? That the Organization of American States will surely now have a much harder time selling its pro-coup narratives now that its blatant lies about Morales perpetrating “election fraud” had been exposed?
More likely, these kinds of thoughts were only subconscious. The imperialists don’t grasp dialectics or the dynamics of class and national liberation struggles, because they’re blinded by their idealistic belief in the inevitable triumph of neoliberal “markets.” Their self-overestimation throughout their war against the Taliban shows this. Their hubristic failure to stop Vietnam from becoming socialist showed this. Their ongoing failure to carry out regime change in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Russia, China, the DPRK, and Iran shows this. When all their strength proved futile against the forces of class and anti-colonial struggle in Bolivia, they didn’t learn from their self-sabotaging actions. They intensified a series of reactions that are accelerating the process of imperialist self-destruction.
In March of this year, less than six months after the Bolivia coup had been reversed, the new secretary of state Antony Blinken declared that “We are deeply concerned by growing signs of anti-democratic behavior and politicization of the legal system in Bolivia. The Bolivian government should release detained former officials, pending an independent and transparent inquiry into human rights and due process concerns.” Blinken was responding to the arrest of Jeanine Áñez, the official who had seized the office of president following the Bolivia coup. Blinken’s statement followed a claim earlier that month from Human Rights Watch — the “humanitarian” organization with ties to the U.S. government — about the rights of Áñez supposedly having been violated by Arce’s government.
This transparent ploy to start manufacturing consent for a new coup in Bolivia followed a plot by far-right paramilitary leader and coup regime-era Bolivian minister of defense Luis Fernando López. López aimed to use U.S. mercenaries to overturn the results of the country’s election, and to carry out a new coup. As The Intercept reported last month, López had been in contact with civilian administrator to the U.S. Army Joe Pereira, who promised that “I can get up to 10,000 men with no problem. I don’t think we need 10,000. … All Special Forces. I can also bring about 350 what we call LEPs, law enforcement professionals, to guide the police.”
The imperialist media continues to try to delegitimize Arce’s government in the minds of the U.S. public, parroting the State Department’s narrative that the investigations of Áñez for sedition and terrorism are unjustified. These and other indications of an ongoing desire for neo-colonial restoration in Bolivia have caused Morales to warn about an intensification of meddling across Latin America:
The sending of war materials by the former presidents of Ecuador, (Moreno), and Argentina, (Macri), and the letter of thanks from General Terceros are further evidence that, together with the assassination of the President of Haiti, by former Colombian military personnel, show the execution of a second Condor Plan under U.S. direction. We alert the Latin America social movements about #PlanCóndor2 and the need to strengthen the struggle for peace with social justice and democracy to preserve the sovereignty and independence of our States and the dignity of the people. In the face of the Bolivian right wing and its US-paid media that lie and do not show a single piece of evidence of the alleged fraud [2019 elections], more evidence continues to appear about those who participated in the 2019 coup d’état and the support given by anti-popular governments with war material and money. We reaffirm that #PlanCóndor2 is underway and we must agree on measures so that the right-wing governments of Latin America do not continue to participate in coups d’état under the leadership of the United States, causing mourning and pain to our peoples. We warn the people, militants, sympathizers, patriotic military and professionals committed to their country: We are in the sights of the U.S. because we recovered our natural resources, nationalized strategic companies and closed the military base in Chimoré. They do not forgive us.
The imperialists have indeed been busy in Latin America since the coup regime’s defeat. This spring, they flooded Ecuador with manufactured “leftist” factions which divided the anti-rightist vote and caused the anti-IMF candidate to lose. Colombia shows where Ecuador is headed because of this reactionary turn.
Throughout Colombia’s anti-austerity protests of the last several months, the Nazi-influenced Colombian government has carried out world-shocking police brutality. And Washington has remained complicit in the mutilations, murders, arbitrary detentions, and kidnappings. All that the U.S. Congress has passed in response to the atrocities is a condition stating that Colombia’s National Police will only receive counternarcotics aid if the U.S. Department of State finds Colombia to be sufficiently combating human rights violations. This measure was clearly only done to give Washington plausible deniability for its ongoing backing of Colombian state terror, as the U.S. State Department is the last institution that will hold a neo-colonial government accountable.
To prepare for the attempted ouster of Peru’s soon-to-be-inaugurated leftist Pedro Castillo, the U.S. has appointed a CIA officer as ambassador to Peru. The failure of the racist and anti-communist campaign to negate the vote count, which focused on disenfranchising Peru’s indigenous population, is evidently a stepping stone towards a longer-term campaign of meddling within the country. One that’s paralleled by the effort to oust Mexico’s mildly anti-imperialist government, which finds itself up against a billionaire-backed extremist organization called the National Anti-AMLO Front.
The Front’s goal is to overthrow AMLO, the country’s left-leaning president, through the same kinds of color revolution tactics that the U.S. empire is now targeting Cuba with. Since the vandalism-filled recent anti-communist protests in Cuba have reportedly occurred with the aid of U.S.-funded mercenaries, whatever unrest these reactionaries stir up within Mexico or Peru in the coming years is going to involve similar destabilization agents.
Chile is another prime target, since the communist Palestinian candidate Daniel Jadue has emerged as the frontrunner in its election; even though Jadue has clarified that he has a problem with Zionists and not Jews, he’s being targeted with accusations of antisemitism by the rightists. Despite these charges being based off of comments written by Jadue’s schoolmates several decades ago, the charges were recently propagated by members of the U.S. Congress. While ignoring the antisemitic death squads that Washington funds within fascist-controlled Ukraine, a group of U.S. lawmakers has warned Blinken about a “dangerous climate” of antisemitism within Chile that Jadue is implied to be complicit in. Perhaps Blinken will soon express another statement of concern, no doubt just as genuine as his last one.
The imperialists may also bring their meddling to Brazil, which has lately been undergoing anti-Bolsonaro protests. Bolsonaro’s recent incitements of paranoia over election fraud in the country’s 2022 election, which parallel the cries from the Peruvian right about Castillo having “stolen” the election and Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being rigged, could produce a version of the U.S. Capitol Hill Riot that has the backing of the CIA.
Alternatively, the empire could let Bolsonaro lose to the rising social democratic candidate Lula da Silva, who carried water for the imperialists the last time he was in power by sending Brazilian troops to occupy Haiti. Should Lula be co-opted in this way again, it will advance Washington’s unfolding scheme to crush Haiti’s liberation struggle. As anthropologist Jemima Pierre assessed in 2015, before the 2016 U.S. coup that ousted Lula, Lula was already engaged in a campaign to further imperialist militarization in Haiti and elsewhere:
For Brazil, the country in Latin America with the largest Black population and a supposedly leftist government, Haiti is its “imperial ground zero.” Brazil has used its contribution to the occupation of the Black Republic to demonstrate its credentials as a regional power and to show the Americans and Europeans that it is ready for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. For Brazil, Haiti is also a training ground for domestic security and enforcements; its Haitian forces return to the country and deploy the tactics of military terror on its own poor Black and Brown favela dwellers.
The conditions are being readied for an intensified new version of this occupation. Imperialism’s destabilization mercenaries have sought to prevent the Haitian masses from throwing off imperial control by manufacturing instability within the country. This month’s assassination of Haiti’s dictator — who despite serving neo-colonial interests was an extremely unpopular figure whose presence had caused rising dissension — was done by Colombian mercenaries. As MR Online has observed, this killing off of one of the empire’s less convenient servants has let Washington drive towards a new intervention in Haiti, making for “A preemptive counter-revolution.” Kim Ives, director of Haiti Liberté, has described the neo-colonial crackdown which is set to be carried out:
We’re wondering if this isn’t once again another grisly murder, which can allow the U.S. to say, “Oh my God, look how incredibly savage and crazy Haiti is. And, you know, we have to go in and help them”…The OAS is faced with another sort of pink tide 2.0 happening. Where you see what happened in Peru. We see a victory in Bolivia. Maduro is holding on. The Sandinistas in Nicaragua are holding on. So they may end up having a harder time than they think getting this OAS Inter-American Charter through and have the first OAS intervention since the 1965 intervention in the Dominican Republic next door, which, of course, was very bloody and terrible as well. But, in the end, they can do what they did in Grenada and make a coalition with local Caribbean countries. They only need two or three or four. They can probably get [Colombian president] Duque. Surely they’d get Bolsonaro, maybe Honduras. A few other countries might sign on to such an adventure. And they could go in and try to basically put down this rebellion in the shanty towns.
Such is the approach that the imperialists aim to apply to every other regime change target country in the region. Especially Venezuela, which has been massively lagging behind on Covid-19 vaccinations due to U.S. sanctions. Washington’s hope is that it can destabilize Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico, and ultimately Bolivia enough to gain the perceived moral authority to invade these countries. At least this is Washington’s backup route for if its coup attempts throughout the region continue to flounder, which they almost certainly will.
Despite the imminent threat that Washington and its increasingly militarized right-wing partner regimes in the region pose to Haiti’s liberation movement, it’s unrealistic that they can realize such interventions in all or even one of the countries they seek regime change within. Washington’s hand is decrepit, challenged by a rising multi-polar world order and by a new Latin American pink tide that could easily turn into a red tide. And the anti-imperialists are vigilant for any imperialist subversion attempts, with even the milder defier of U.S. policies AMLO accusingWashington of attempting a “coup against Mexico.”
For the besieged revolutionaries in Haiti, Colombia, and Latin America’s other neo-colonies, encouragement can be taken from Che Guevara’s words about how anti-imperialism’s victories in neighboring countries fan revolutions in the surrounding countries:
It is the task of the revolutionary force in each country to initiate it when the conditions are present, regardless of the situation in other countries. The general strategy will emerge as the struggle develops. The prediction of the continental character of the struggle is borne out by analysis of the strength of each contender, but this does not in the least exclude independent outbreaks. Just as the beginning of the struggle in one part of a country is bound to develop it throughout its area, the beginning of a revolutionary war contributes to the development of new conditions in the neighbouring countries.
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