Regardless of Castillo presidency’s evident shortcomings and mistakes, his ouster represents a grave setback for democracy in Peru and Latin America as a whole. His election last year took place on the back of an almighty crisis of credibility and legitimacy of a political system rigged with corruption and venality in which presidents were forced to resign on corruption charges (some ended in prison), with one committing suicide before being arrested on corruption charges. In the last six years Peru has had six presidents.

The rot was so advanced that no mainstream political party or politician could muster sufficient electoral support to succeed in winning the presidency in 2021 (the main right-wing party, Fuerza Popular’s candidate got less than 14% of the vote in the first round). It goes a long way to explain why an unknown rural primary school teacher from the remote Andean indigenous area of Cajamarca, Pedro Castillo, would become the 63^rd president of Peru. In Cajamarca, Castillo obtained up to 72% of the popular vote.

Castillo’s election offered a historic chance to bury Peruvian neoliberalism. I myself penned an article with that prognosis, which I premised on Castillo’s commitment to democratize Peruvian politics via a Constituent Assembly tasked with drafting a new constitution as the base from which to re-found the nation on an anti-neoliberal basis. A proposal that, in the light of recent experience in Latin America, is perfectly implementable but whose precondition, as other experiences in the region have shown, is the vigorous mobilization of the mass of the people, the working class, the peasantry, the urban poor, and all other subordinate strata from society. This did not happen in Peru under Castillo’s presidency.

Ironically, the mass mobilizations that broke out in the Andean regions and in many other areas and cities in Peru when they learned of Castillo’s impeachment solidly confirms that this was the only possible route to implement his programme of change. The mass mobilizations throughout the nation (including Lima) are demanding a Constituent Assembly, the closure of the existing Congress, the liberation, and reinstatement of Castillo to the presidency, and the holding of immediate general elections.

This would explain the paradox that right-wing hostility to president Castillo, unlike other left governments in Latin America, was not waged because Castillo was undertaking any radical government action. In fact, opposition to his government was so blindingly intense that almost every initiative, no matter how trivial or uncontroversial, was met with ferocious rejection by Peru’s right-wing dominated Congress. The Congress’ key right-wing party, was Fuerza Popular led by Keiko Fujimori, daughter of Peru’s former dictator, Alberto Fujimori. In Peru’s Congress of 130 seats, Castillo counted on 15, originally solid, votes from Peru Libre, and 5, not very solid, votes from Juntos por el Peru. In the absence of government mobilization of the masses, the oligarchy knew Castillo represented no threat, thus their intense hostility was to treat his government as an abhorrent abnormality sending a message to the nation that it should never have happened and that would never recur.

One example of parliament’s obtuse obstructionism was the impeachment of his minister of foreign relations, Hector Béjar, a well reputed left-wing academic and intellectual on 17^th August 2021, who, barely 15 days after his appointment and less than a month after Castillo’s inauguration (28^th July 2021), was forced to resign. Béjar’s ‘offence’, a statement made at a public conference in February 2020 during the election – before his ministerial appointment – in which he asserted a historical fact: terrorism was begun by Peru’s Navy in 1974 well before the appearance of the Shining Path [1980]. Béjar was the first minister out of many to be arbitrarily impeached by Congress.

Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), an extreme guerrilla group, was active in substantial parts of the countryside during the 1980s-1990s and whose confrontation with state military forces led to a generalised situation of conflict. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission that, after the collapse of the Fujimori dictatorship, investigated the atrocities perpetrated during the state war against the Shining Path, reported that 69,280 people died or disappeared between 1980 and 2000.

Congress’ harassment aimed at preventing Castillo’s government from even functioning can be verified with numbers: in the 495 days he lasted in office, Castillo was forced to appoint a total of 78 ministers. Invariably, appointed ministers as in the case of Béjar, would be subjected to ferocious attack by the media and the Establishment (in Béjar’s case, by the Navy itself) and by the right-wing parliamentary majority that was forcing ministers’ resignation with the eagerness of zealous witch hunters.

Béjar was ostensibly impeached for his accurate commentary about the Navy’s activities in the 1970s but more likely for having made the decision for Peru to abandon the Lima Group, adopting a non-interventionist foreign policy towards Venezuela and for condemning unilateral sanctions against nations. Béjar made the announcement of the new policy on 3^rd August 2021 and the ‘revelations’ about his Navy commentary were made on August 15^th. The demonization campaign was in full swing immediately after that which included: soldiers holding public rallies demanding his resignation, a parliamentary motion from a coalition of parliamentary forces essentially for ‘not being fit for the post’, and for adhering to a ‘communist ideology.’

Something similar but not identical happened with Béjar’s replacement, Oscar Maurtúa, a career diplomat, who had served as minister of foreign relations in several previous right-wing governments from 2005. When in October 2021, Guido Bellido, a radical member of Peru Libre, who upon being appointed Minister of Government, threatened the nationalisation of Camisea gas, an operation run by multinational capital, for refusing to renegotiate its profits in favour of the Peruvian state, Maurtúa resigned two weeks later. Guido Bellido himself, was forced to resign ostensibly for an “apologia of terrorism” but in reality for having had the audacity to threaten to nationalise an asset that ought to belong to Peru.

On 6^th October 2021, Guido Bellido, a national leader of Peru Libre, who had been Castillo’s Minister of Government since 29 July, offered his resignation at the president’s request triggered by his nationalization threat. Vladimir Cerrón, Peru Libre’s key national leader followed suit by publicly breaking with Castillo on 16^th October, asking him to leave the party and thus leaving Castillo without the party’s parliamentary support. Ever since, Peru Libre has suffered several divisions.

Worse, Castillo was pushed into a corner by being forced to select ministers to the liking of the right-wing parliamentary majority to avoid them not being approved. All took place within a context dominated by intoxicating media demonization, accusations, fake news and generalised hostility to his government but with a Damocles sword – a motion to declare his presidency “vacant” and thus be impeached – hanging over his head.

The first attempt was in November 2021 (a few weeks after Bellido’s forced resignation). It did not gather sufficient parliamentary support (46 against 76, 4 abstentions). The second was in March 2022 with the charge of ‘permanent moral incapacity’, which got 55 votes (54 against and 19 abstentions) but failed because procedurally 87 votes were required. And finally, on 1^st December 2022, Congress voted in favour of initiating a process to declare ‘vacancy’ against Castillo for “permanent moral incapacity.” This time, the right wing had managed to gather 73 votes (32 against and 6 abstentions). The motion of well over 100 pages, included at least six ‘parliamentary investigations’ for allegedly ‘leading a criminal organization’, for traffic of influences, for obstruction of justice, for treason (in an interview Castillo broached the possibility of offering Bolivia access to the sea through Peruvian territory), and even, for ‘plagiarising’ his MA thesis.

By then Castillo was incredibly isolated surrounded by the rarefied, putrid and feverish Lima political establishment that were as a pack of hungry wolves that had scented blood: Castillo would have to face a final hearing set by Peru’s congressional majority on 7^th December. On the same day, in an event surrounded by confusion – maliciously depicted by the world mainstream media as a coup d’état – the president went on national TV to announce his decision to dissolve Congress temporarily, establish an exceptional emergency government and, the holding of elections to elect a new Congress with Constituent Assembly powers within nine months. US ambassador in Lima, Lisa D. Kenna, immediately reacted on that very day with a note stressing the US ‘rejects any unconstitutional act by president Castillo to prevent Congress to fulfil its mandate.’ The Congress’ ‘mandate’ was to impeach president Castillo.

We know the rest of the story: Congress on the same day carried the ‘vacancy’ motion by 101 votes, Castillo was arrested, and Dina Boluarte has been sworn in as interim president. Declaring the dissolution of the Congress may not have been the most skilful tactical move Castillo made but he put the limelight on the key institution that obstinately obstructed the possibility of socio-economic progress that Castillo’s presidency represented.

Castillo had no support whatsoever among the economic or political elite, the judiciary, the state bureaucracy, the police or the armed forces, or the mainstream media. He was politically right in calling for the dissolution of the obstruction of Congress to allow for the mass of the people through the ballot box to be given the chance to democratically remove it. An Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP in its Spanish acronym) survey in November showed the rate of disapproval of Congress to be 86%, up 5 points from October, and staying on 75-78% throughout the second half 2021.

What was not expected with Castillo’s impeachment was the vigorous outburst of social mobilization throughout Peru. Its epicentre was in the Peruvian ‘sierra’, the indigenous hinterlands where Castillo got most of his electoral support, but also in key cities, including Lima. The demands raised by the mass movement are for the reinstatement of Castillo, dissolution of Congress, the resignation of Boluarte, the holding of immediate parliamentary elections and, a new constitution. Demonstrators, expressing their fury in Lima, carried placards declaring “Congress is a den of rats”.

In light of the huge mass mobilizations one inevitably wonders why was this not unleashed before, say, one and a half year ago? Castillo, heavily isolated and under almighty pressure, hoping to buy some breathing space, sought to ingratiate himself with the national and international right by, for example, appointing a neoliberal economist, Julio Valverde, in charge of the Central Bank, tried to get closer to the deadly Organization of American States, met Bolsonaro in Brazil and, distanced himself from Venezuela. To no avail, the elite demanded ever more concessions but would never be satisfied no matter how many Castillo made.

The repression unleashed against the popular mobilizations has been swift and brutal but ineffective. Reports talk of at least eighteen people killed by bullets from the police and more than a hundred injured, yet mobilizations and marches have grown and spread further. Though the ‘interim government’ has already banned demonstrations, they have continued. Three days ago they occupied the Andahuaylas airport; an indefinite strike has been declared in Cusco; in Apurimac, school lessons have been suspended; plus a multiple blockading of motorways in many points in the country. It is evident the political atmosphere in Peru was already pretty charged and these social energies were dormant but waiting to be awaken.

Though it is premature to draw too many conclusions about what this popular resistance might bring about, it is clear that the oligarchy miscalculated what it expected the outcome of Castillo’s ouster would be: the crushing defeat of this attempt, however timid, of the lower classes, especially cholos (pejorative name for indigenous people in Peru), to change the status quo. Peru’s oligarchy found it intolerable that a cholo, Castillo, was the country’s president and even less that he dared to threaten to enlist the mass of the people to actively participate in a Constituent Assembly entrusted with drafting a new constitution.

The appointed interim president, Dina Boluarte, feeling the pressure of the mass mobilization announced a proposal to hold ‘anticipated elections’ in 2024 instead of 2026, the date of the end of Castillo’s official mandate. However, it has been reported that Castillo sent a message to the people encouraging them to fight for a Constituent Assembly and not fall into the ‘dirty trap of new elections.” Through one of his lawyers, Dr Ronald Atencio, Castillo communicated that his detention was illegal and arbitrary with his constitutional rights being violated, that he is the subject of political persecution, which threatens to turn him into a political prisoner, that he has no intention of seeking asylum, and that he is fully aware of the mobilizations throughout the country and the demands for his freedom.

We’ll see how things develop from here. Castillo’s ouster is a negative development; it is a setback for the left in Peru and for democracy in Latin America. Latin America’s left presidents have understood this and condemned the parliamentary coup against democratically elected president Pedro Castillo. Among the presidents condemning the coup are, Cuba’s Miguel Diaz-Canel, Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, Honduras’ Xiomara Castro, Argentina’s Fernandez, Colombia’s Petro, Mexico’s Lopez Obrador, and Bolivia’s Arce.

More dramatically, the presidents of Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Bolivia issued a joint communiqué (12^th December) demanding Castillo’s reinstatement that in its relevant part reads, “It is not news to the world that President Castillo Terrones, from the day of his election, was the victim of anti-democratic harassment […] Our governments call on all actors involved in the above process to prioritise the will of the people as expressed at the ballot box. This is the way to interpret the scope and meaning of the notion of democracy as enshrined in the Inter-American Human Rights System.  We urge those who make up the institutions to refrain from reversing the popular will expressed through free suffrage.” (my translation)

At the XIII ALBA-TCP summit held in Havana on December 15^th, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Vincent and the Grenadines; Saint Lucía, St. Kitts and Nevis, Grenada and Cuba condemned the detention of president Pedro Castillo which they characterised as a coup d’etat.

It is very doubtful that Peru’s oligarchy will be able to bring political stability to the country. Since 2016 the country has had 6 presidents, none of whom has completed their mandate, and the impeachment of Castillo has let the genie (militant mass mobilizations) out of the bottle and it looks pretty unlikely they will be able to put it back. The illegitimate government of Boluarte has on 14^th December declared a state of emergency throughout the national territory and, ominously, placed the armed forces in charge of securing law and order. The armed forces, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that investigated the dirty war between the Peruvian state and the Shining Path guerrillas (1980-1992), were responsible for about 50 per cent of the 70,000 deaths the war cost. It is the typical but worst possible action that Peru’s oligarchy can undertake.

The demands of the mass movement must be met: immediate and unconditional freedom of president Castillo, the immediate holding of elections for a Constituent Assembly for a new anti- neoliberal constitution, and for the immediate cessation of the brutal repression by sending the armed forces back to their barracks.

About the Author

Francisco Dominguez is head of the Research Group on Latin America at Middlesex University. He is also the national secretary of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign and co-author of Right-Wing Politics in the New Latin America (Zed, 2011).

Please read below the Brazil Solidarity Initiative’s urgent statement on the defence of Brazilian democracy and the electoral system in the face of growing political violence and threats of a far-right powergrab from Bolsonaro. The election takes place today (October 2nd.)

On Sunday 2 October, over 150 million Brazilian voters will elect the next president of one of the world’s largest democracies. The choice is between the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and progressive candidate Lula da Silva.
Polls show Lula has a strong lead in the polls and is on track to pass the 50% threshold needed to be elected in the first round.
Lula previously served as Brazil’s president after being elected as the country’s first working class leader earlier this century. When he left office in 2011 he had record-high approval ratings of 83 percent, the result of his government’s success in reducing poverty and addressing social inequality,
Lula was favourite to win the 2018 Presidential election until he was arrested and jailed on trumped-up charges orchestrated by powerful elites in Brazil and Washington.
That injustice opened the door to the election of Jair Bolsonaro, a strong supporter of Brazil’s past military dictatorship and under which he had served as a military officer.
In office, Bolsonaro has repeatedly undermined Brazil’s democracy and trampled on the rights of women, LGBT, Black & Indigenous communities and environmental activists.
The run-up to this Sunday’s Presidential election has been no different. Bolsonaro and his cabinet ministers, nearly half of whom are military generals, have baselessly sought to bring into question the integrity of the election process. They have suggested that the military should have a greater role in overseeing the election and have threatened to reject the results if Bolsonaro loses. Bolsonaro even told supporters that “If necessary, we will go to war” over the election results. While his son has called on the growing number of Brazilian gun-holders to become “Bolsonaro volunteers”.
Threats and a climate of hate whipped up by Bolsonaro and his allies have created a context of rising political violence against supporters of Lula Da Silva. There has been the killing of Lula supporters and Worker’s Party officials and attacks on pro-Lula marches.
We call on all progressives to be alert to the threats posed by Jair Bolsonaro to Brazil’s democracy and any attempts to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. We call on the UK Government to speak out against any efforts to incite political violence and undermine the electoral process and to review relations with any Brazilian government that comes to power through undemocratic means.

Please share the call for vigilance over the Brazilian election on Facebook and twitter. You can also read this urgent statement on the Brazil Solidarity Initiative website here.

A few days ago, when neofascist candidate José Antonio Kast was winning the first round of the country’s presidential elections, Chile’s 2019 rebellion aimed at burying neoliberalism appeared to be at an end. However, it has been greatly reinvigorated with the landslide victory of the Apruebo Dignidad¹ (I Vote For Dignity) candidate, Gabriel Boric Font, who obtained 56 percent of the vote in the second round, that is nearly 5 million votes, the largest ever in the country’s history. Gabriel, age 35 is the youngest president ever.

That result would have been greater had it not been for the policy of the minister of transport, Gloria Hutt Hesse, deliberately offering almost no public transport services, especially buses to the poor barrios, aimed at minimising the number of pro-Boric voters, hoping they would give up and go back home.² Throughout Election Day, there were constant reports on the mainstream media, especially TV, of people in the whole country but particularly at Santiago³ bus stops bitterly complaining for having to wait for 2 and even 3 hours for buses to go to polling centres. Thus, there were justified fears they would rig the election, but the determination of poor voters was such that the manoeuvre did not work.

Kast’s campaign, with the complicity of the right and the mainstream media, waged one of the dirtiest electoral campaigns in the country’s history, reminiscent of the US-funded and US-led ‘terror propaganda’ mounted against socialist candidate Salvador Allende in 1958, 1964 and 1970. Through innuendo and the use of social media, the Kast camp spewed out crass anti-communist propaganda, charged Boric with assisting terrorism, suggested that Boric would install a totalitarian regime in Chile, and such like. The campaign sought to instil fear primarily in the petty bourgeoisie by repeatedly predicting that drug addiction – even implying that Boric takes drugs, crime, and narco-trafficking, would spin out control if Boric became president. Besides, the mainstream media assailed Boric with insidious questions about Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, for which Boric did not produce the most impressive answers.

To no avail, the mass of the population saw it through and knew that their vote was the only way to stop pinochetismo taking hold of the presidency, and they had had enough of president Piñera. Their perception was correct, they knew that in the circumstances the best way to ensure the aims of the social rebellion of October 2019 was by defeating Kast and his brand of unalloyed pinochetismo.

As the electoral campaign unfolded, though Kast backtracked on some of his most virulent pinochetista statements, people knew that if he won he would not hesitate to fully implement them. Among many other gems, Kast declared his intention as president to abolish the ministry for women, same sex marriage, the (very restrictive) law on abortion, eliminate funding for the Museum in the Memory of the victims of the dictatorship and the Gabriela Mistral Centre for the promotion of arts, literature and theatre, withdraw Chile from the International Commission of Human Rights, close down the National Institute of Human Rights, cease the activities of FLACSO (prestigious Latin American centre of sociological investigation), build a ditch in the North of Chile (border with Bolivia and Peru) to stop illegal immigration, and empower the president with the legal authority to detain people in places other than police stations or jails (that is, restore the illegal procedures of Pinochet’s sinister police).

Kast’s intentions left no doubt as to what the correct option was in the election. I was, however, flabbergasted with various leftist analyses advocating not to vote, in one case because ‘there is no essential difference between Kast and Boric’, and, even worse, another suggested that ‘the dilemma between fascism and democracy was false’ because Chile’s democracy is defective. My despair with such ‘principled posturing’, probably dictated by the best of political intentions, turned into shock when on election day itself a Telesur correspondent in Santiago interviewed a Chilean activist who only attacked Boric with the main message of the feature being “whoever wins, Chile loses”.⁴

The centre-left Concertación coalition⁵ that in the 1990-2021 period governed the nation for 24 years, bears a heavy responsibility for maintaining and even perfecting the neoliberal system, expressed openly its preference for Boric, and assiduously courted support for im in the second round. Hence, those who believe there is no difference between Kast and Boric, do so not only from an ultra-left stance but also by finding Boric guilty by association, even though he has not yet had the chance to even perpetrate the crime.

This brings us to a central political issue: what has the October 2019 Rebellion and all its impressively positive consequences posed for the Chilean working class? What is posed in Chile is the struggle not (yet) for power but for the masses that for decades were conned into accepting (however grudgingly) neoliberalism as a fact of life, until the 2019 rebellion that was the first mass mobilization not only to oppose but also to get rid of neoliberalism.⁶ The Rebellion extracted extraordinary concessions from the ruling class: a referendum for a Constitutional Convention entrusted legally with the task to draft an anti-neoliberal constitution to replace the 1980 one promulgated under Pinochet’s rule.

The referendum approved the proposal of a new constitution and the election of a convention by 78 and 79 per cent, respectively in October 2020. The election of the Convention gave Chile’s right only 37 seats out of 155, that is, barely 23 per cent, whereas those in favour of radical change got an aggregated total of 118 seats, or 77 per cent. More noticeably, Socialists and Christian Democrats, the old Concertación parties, got jointly a total 17 seats. The biggest problem remains the fragmentation of the emerging forces aiming for change since together they hold almost all the remaining seats, but structured in easily 50 different groups. Nevertheless, in tune with the political context the Convention elected Elisa Loncón Antileo, a Mapuche indigenous leader as its president, and there were 17 seats reserved exclusively for the indigenous nations and elected only by them; a development of gigantic significance.

The mass rebellion also obtained other concessions from the government and parliament such as the return of 70 percent of their pension contributions from the private ‘pension administrators’, which rightly Chileans see as a massive swindle that has lasted for over 3 decades. This has dealt a heavy blow to Chile’s financial capital. A proposal in parliament for the return of the remaining 30 percent (at the end of September 2021) failed to be approved by a very small margin of votes. I am certain the AFPs have not heard the last on this matter.

The scenario depicted above suddenly became confused with the results of the presidential election’s first round where not only Kast came out first (with 27 percent against 25 for Boric), but which also elected Deputies and Senators for Chile’s two parliament chambers. Though Apruebo Dignidad did very well with 37 deputies (out of 155) and 5 senators (out of 50), the right-wing Chile Podemos Más (Piñera’s supporters) got 53 deputies and 22 senators, whilst the old Concertación got 37 deputies and 17 senators.

There are several dynamics at work here. With regards to the parliamentary election, traditional mechanisms and existing clientelistic relations apply with experienced politicians exerting local influence and getting elected. In contrast, most of the elected members of the Convention are an emerging bunch of motley pressure groups organised around single-issue campaigns (AFP, privatization of water, price of gas, abuse of utilities companies, defence of Mapuche ancestral lands, state corruption and so forth), which did not stand candidates for a parliamentary seat.

A most important fact was Boric’s public commitment in his victory speech (19 Dec) to support and work together with the Constitutional Convention for a new constitution. This has given and will give enormous impetus to the efforts to constitutionally replace the existing neoliberal economic model.

What the Chilean working class must address is their lack of political leadership. They do not have even a Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP) as the people of Honduras to fight against the coup that ousted Mel Zelaya in 2009. The FNPR, made up of many and varied social and political movements, evolved into the Libre party that has just succeeded in electing Xiomara Castro, as the country’s first female president.⁷ The obvious possible avenue to address this potentially dangerous shortcoming would be to bring together in a national conference, all the many single-issue groups together with all social movements and willing political currents to set up a Popular Front for an Anti-Neoliberal Constitution.

After all, they have taken to the streets for two years to bury the oppressive, abusive and exploitative neoliberal model, and it is becoming clearer what to replace it with: a system based on a new constitution that allows the nationalization of all utilities and natural resources, punishes the corrupt, respects the ancestral lands of the Mapuche, and guarantees decent health, education and pensions. The road to get there will continue to be bumpy and messy, but we have won the masses; now, with a sympathetic government in place, we can launch the transformation of the state and build a better Chile.

By means of sheer resistance, resilience, mobilisation, and organisation, they have managed to defeat Juan Orlando Hernandez’s narco-dictatorship at the ballot box. Xiomara Castro, presidential candidate of the left-wing Libre party (the Freedom and Refoundation Party), in its Spanish acronym), obtained a splendid 50+ percent—between 15 to 20 percent more votes than her closest rival candidate, Nasry Asfura, National Party candidate, in an election with historic high levels of participation (68 percent).

The extraordinary feat performed by the people of Honduras takes place under the dictatorial regime of Hernandez (aka JOH) in an election marred by what appears to be targeted assassinations of candidates and activists. Up to October 2021, 64 acts of electoral violence, including 11 attacks and 27 assassinations, had been perpetrated. And in the period preceding the election (11-23 November) another string of assassinations, mainly of candidates, took place.

None of the fatal victims were members of Hernandez’s National Party. The aim seems to have been to terrorise the opposition, and particularly their electorate, into believing that it was unsafe to turn out to vote—and that even if they did, they would again steal the election through fraud and violence, as they have done twice already, in 2013 and 2017.

Commentators correctly characterise this as the ‘Colombianisation’ of Honduran politics—that is, a ruling gang in power deploys security forces and paramilitary groups to assassinate opposition activists. In Honduras, the most despicable act was the murder of environmental activist, feminist, and indigenous leader Berta Caceres by armed intruders in her own house, after years of death threats.

She had been a leading figure in the grassroots struggle against electoral fraud and dictatorship, and had been calling for the urgent re-founding of the nation, a proposal that has been incorporated into the programme of mass social movements such as the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH). Since 2009, hundreds of activists have been assassinated at the hands of the police, the army, and paramilitaries.

The Colombianisation analogy does not stop at the assassination of opponents. Last June, the Washington Post explained the extent of infiltration by organised crime: ‘Military and police chiefs, politicians, businessmen, mayors and even three presidents have been linked to cocaine trafficking or accused of receiving funds from trafficking.’

US Judge Kevin Castel, who sentenced ‘Tony’ Hernandez, JOH’s brother, to life in prison after being found guilty of smuggling 185 tons of cocaine into the US, said: ‘Here, the [drug]trafficking was indeed state-sponsored’. In March 2021, at the trial against Geovanny Fuentes, a Honduran accused of drug trafficking, the prosecutor Jacob Gutwillig said that President JOH helped Fuentes with the trafficking of tons of cocaine.

Corruption permeates the whole Honduran establishment. National Party candidate Nasry Asfura has faced a pre-trial ‘for abuse of authority, use of false documents, embezzlement of public funds, fraud and money laundering’, and Yani Rosenthal, candidate of the once-ruling Liberal party, a congressman and a banker, was found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison in the US for ‘participating in financial transactions using illicit proceeds (drug money laundering).’

The parallels continue. Like Colombia, Honduras is a narco-state in which the US has a host of military bases. It was from Honduran territory that the Contra mercenaries waged a proxy war against Sandinista Nicaragua in the 1980s, and it was also from Honduras that the US-led military invasion of Guatemala was launched in 1954, bringing about the violent ousting of democratically elected left-wing nationalist president Jacobo Arbenz. Specialists aptly refer to the country as ‘USS Honduras’.

So cocaine trafficking and state terrorism, which operates as part of the drug business in cahoots with key state institutions, is ‘tolerated’ and probably supported by various US agencies ‘in exchange’ for a large US military presence—the US has Soto Cano and 12 more US military bases in Honduras—due to geopolitical calculations like regional combat against left-wing governments. This criminal system’s stability requires the elimination of political and social activists.

Thus many US institutions, from the White House all the way down the food chain, turn a blind eye to the colossal levels of corruption. In fact, SOUTHCOM has been actively building Honduras’ repressive military capabilities by funding and training special units like Batallion-316, which reportedly acts as a death squad, ‘guilty of kidnap, torture, and murder’. ‘Between 2010 and 2016, as US “aid” and training continued to flow, over 120 environmental activists were murdered by hitmen, gangs, police, and the military for opposing illegal logging and mining,’ one report explains.

The legacy left by right-wing governments since the violent ousting of Mel Zelaya in 2009 is abysmal. Honduras is one the most violent countries in the world (37 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, with 60 percent attributable to organised crime), with staggering levels of poverty (73.6 percent of households live below the poverty line, out of which 53.7 percent live in extreme poverty), high levels of unemployment (well over 12 percent), and even higher levels of underemployment (the informal sector of the economy, due to the effects of Covid-19, grew from 60 to 70 percent). Its external debt is over US$15 billion (57 percent of its GDP), and the nation suffers from high incidences of embezzlement and illegal appropriation of state resources by this criminal administration.

The rot is so pronounced that back in February this year, a group of Democrats in the US Senate introduced legislation intended to cut off economic aid and sales of ammunition to Honduran security forces. The proposal ‘lays bare the violence and abuses perpetrated since the 2009 military-backed coup, as a result of widespread collusion between government officials, state and private security forces, organised crime and business leaders.’ In Britain, Colin Burgon, the president of Labour Friends of Progressive Latin America, issued scathing criticism of the British government’s complicity for ‘having sold (when Boris Johnson was Foreign Minister no less) to the Honduran government spyware designed to eavesdrop on its citizens, months before the state rounded up thousands of people in a well-orchestrated surveillance operation.’

To top it all off, through the ZEDES (Special Zones of Development and Employment) initiative, whole chunks of the national territory are being given to private enterprise subjected to a ‘special regime’ that empowers investors to establish their own security bodies—including their own police force and penitentiary system—to investigate criminal offences and instigate legal prosecutions. This is taking neoliberalism to abhorrent levels, the dream of multinational capital: the selling-off of portions of the national territory to private enterprise. Stating that the Honduran oligarchy, led by JOH, is ‘selling the country down the river’ is not a figure of speech.

It is this monstrosity, constructed since the overthrow of President Mel Zelaya in 2009 on top of the existing oligarchic state, that the now victorious Libre party and incoming president Xiomara Castro need to overcome to start improving the lives of the people of Honduras. The array of extremely nasty internal and external forces that her government will be up against is frighteningly powerful, and they have demonstrated in abundance what they are prepared to do to defend their felonious interests.

President-elect Xiomara’s party Libre, is the largest in the 128-seat Congress, and with its coalition partner, Salvador, will have a very strong parliamentary presence, which will be central to any proposed referendum for a Constituent Assembly aimed at re-founding the nation. Libre has also won in the capital city Tegucigalpa, and in San Pedro Sula, the country’s second largest city. More importantly, unlike elections elsewhere (in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia), the National Party’s candidate, Asfura, has conceded defeat. Thus, Xiomara has a very strong mandate.

However, in a region dominated by US-led ‘regime change’ operations—the coup in Bolivia, the coup attempt in Nicaragua, the mercenary attack against Venezuela, plus a raft of violent street disorders in Cuba, vigorous destabilisation against recently elected President Castillo in Peru, and so on ad nausea—Honduras will need all the international solidarity we can provide, which we must do.

The heroic struggle of the people of Honduras has again demonstrated that it can be done: neoliberalism and its brutal foreign and imperialist instigators can be defeated and a better world can be built. So, before Washington, their Honduran cronies, their European accomplices, and the world corporate media unleash any shenanigans, let’s say loud and clear: US hands off Honduras!

This article first appeared in Tribune.

And this is a continuing problem: in recent weeks we have seen further attempts. The left has been successful in the regional elections in Venezuela but the US refuses to recognise the left’s victory. Instead Venezuela is suffering from a punishing raft of sanctions, imposed by Trump and maintained by President Biden. The sanctions, which amount to a blockade, are designed to inflict such damage on the economy that the people will be amenable to ‘regime change’. Such a result would be enormously damaging for the people of Venezuela, their self-determination and progress.

And US attempts to undermine and destroy Cuba continue. Recently the US has tried to mobilise demonstrations against the government in Cuba in an attempt to foment regime change. These have met with little support. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has so far left all the Trump-era sanctions in place. These powerful sanctions coupled with Covid have halved foreign currency inflows over the last two years, leading to shortages of basic goods with the goal of generating discontent.

But nevertheless Cuba’s anti-covid work goes from strength to strength. More than 81 percent of Cuba’s population of 11 million is fully vaccinated, and researchers are upgrading the Cuban vaccine to ensure protection against the new Omicron variant. This is the reality of the Cuban system that the US wishes to destroy – health security for its people, not to mention the health solidarity that we have seen Cuba extend to other countries.

Given the amount of effort that the US puts into destabilising socialist governments and progressive advance in Latin America, it is not surprising that at times there have been victories which have been reversed or overthrown. But what we see is that the reversal is never accepted, whether in Bolivia or most recently Honduras, where the people have organised and fought back until victory. Bolivia recently celebrated the first anniversary of reversing the coup which took place against Evo Morales in 2019. The 2020 election saw a landslide victory for the MAS candidate after a year of brutal repression and neoliberal hardship. The process has taken longer in Honduras, but the coup in 2009 against Manuel Zelaya has now been reversed with the recent glorious victory of Castro, after 12 terrible years of neo-liberalism. Now Honduras will begin the process of building a democratic socialist society.

Of course there are many other examples across Latin America of imperialist intervention, and the common theme over decades has been western determination to introduce neoliberal economic policies to allow unfettered exploitation of the people and their economic resources. Indeed we can say that Latin America has been a testbed for neoliberal policies which have for decades been the main weapon for destroying socialism and for advancing US interests across the globe.

There has of course been repeated rejection of neoliberalism, Argentina is a powerful case that comes to mind, but when the US fails to impose its economic policy prescriptions it resorts to other means. Military intervention and war is one such method, but in Latin America the US has perfected a whole range of methods, from political intervention in elections, to lawfare and its use to conduct coups against legitimately elected representatives of the people.

Struggles on this front still continue – in Ecuador, for example, with the lawfare coup against Correa, but the left is still a huge force and I have no doubt that it will recover and prevail.

Brazil’s election next year is of the utmost importance globally. At the minute it is looking like Lula versus Bolsonaro and the US will do everything it can to support Bolsonaro. Lula is ahead and we must do everything possible to support his re-election. His victory will change geopolitics significantly for the better – whether it’s climate change, or increasing multipolarity. Brazil is an economic power house and it can once again be a political power house for the left.

Many of us will have been directly involved in one of the great initiatives of the Brazilian Workers Party – the World Social Forum, founded in Porto Alegre and backed by the city’s PT government, twenty years ago. 12,000 people attended that first meeting from around the world, organising and discussing alternatives to neoliberalism, and for a globalisation from below. That was a moment of transformation not only for the movement internationally but for Brazil, leading eventually to the electoral victory of Lula. No wonder the Brazilian elite and its US allies worked to drive him out of politics, but those malign forces will be defeated.

It is that kind of international cooperation, that emerged from Porto Alegre, that we need to regain, to re-empower ourselves as an international movement. A fighting movement, like the movements in Latin America, that don’t lie down when faced with coups, lawfare, economic warfare, military intervention, but re-organise and win.

We must stand together with the forces of progress internationally, get ourselves united and organised to challenge our own ruling class and the imperialist role it plays across the world. There is nowhere better to look to for lessons, guidance and inspiration than to our comrades in Latin America.

This is the text of a speech delivered at the Latin America conference in London on 4th December, 2021

Giorgio Trucchi writes: Honduras is at the most important crossroads of its recent history.

On November 28, more than 5 million Hondurans will be asked to elect the President of the Republic, 128 deputies to the National Congress, 20 to the Central American Parliament, 298 mayors and more than 2 thousand municipal councillors.

As the election date approaches, the political atmosphere has become polarized, conflict has intensified and social tension grown.

No one has forgetten the violent repression of 2017 against those who protested against the gross electoral fraud that prolonged the agony of the current government regime. At that time, more than thirty people lost their lives violently and these crimes have remained in total impunity.

The bloody events of the last few days reawaken the ghosts of that violence and repression.

On November 11, a Liberal Party candidate for councillor, Óscar Moya, was shot several times in Santiago de Puringla (La Paz). Two days later the mayor of Cantarranas (Francisco Morazán) and candidate for reelection for the Liberal Party, Francisco Gaitán, was assassinated.

The following day the leader of the opposition Libertad y Refundación (Libre) Party, Elvir Casaña, and a Liberal Party activist, Luis Gustavo Castellanos, were killed in San Luis (Santa Bárbara) and San Jerónimo (Copán), respectively. Two other activists were wounded in the deadly attack on Castellanos.

On November 15, another attack killed Dario Juarez, a Liberal Party vice-mayor candidate in the municipality of Concordia (Olancho). Two days later, unknown persons made an attempt on the lives of Héctor Estrada, independent candidate for mayor of Campamento (Olancho) and Juan Carlos Carbajal, candidate for mayor of El Progreso for the Salvador Party of Honduras.

According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Honduras and the National Violence Observatory (ONV) of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH), more than 30 violent deaths have been registered in the context of the current electoral process, which is shaping up to be even more violent than that of 2017.

The Observatory reported at least 64 cases of electoral violence up until October 25, including 27 homicides and 11 attacks. To these must be added the most recent attacks that took the lives of five people in five days (as detailed above) and other non-fatal attacks.

The OHCHR condemned these acts of electoral violence “that affect the right to political participation” and urged the authorities to carry out “prompt, thorough and impartial investigations”.

A legacy of impunity

“These murders of local leaders are a prelude to what could happen during and after the elections. Let us remember that all this is happening after the approval in Congress of reforms and laws that deepen the criminalization of social protest and citizen mobilization,” warned Bertha Oliva, coordinator of the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (Cofadeh).

“They have been practically legalizing repression against those who demonstrate their discontent and defend human rights. These are the results,” she added.

In 2017, repression against those protesting the electoral fraud orchestrated by the ruling National Party claimed the lives of 37 innocent victims (Cofadeh 2018). Of all these cases only one was successfully prosecuted and the charges against the police officer accused of shooting and killing were dismissed.

“The chain of command was never investigated, nor the context in which these deaths were caused. The dictatorship gave the military police guarantees of impunity to capture, torture and execute opponents in the streets. This only generates the conditions for similar and even more violent events to be repeated”, predicted the human rights defender.

In this sense, Cofadeh will be monitoring and denouncing any electoral crimes committed before and during Election Day, as well as violations against people exercising their right to vote.

Three for the presidency

Of the 16 presidential aspirants, only three have a real chance of winning: Xiomara Castro of the opposition Libre Party, who leads most polls; Nasry “Tito” Asfura Zablah of the National Party, main opponent of the former first lady and Yani Rosenthal of the Liberal Party, representing the other traditional party in Honduras but with little chance of victory.

For Xiomara Castro, this is her second attempt to reach the presidency of the country, after the allegations of fraud around the questionable defeat she suffered in 2013 at the hands of Juan Orlando Hernandez.

After the public presentation of her “Government Plan to Refound Honduras 2022-2026”, Castro and Salvador Nasralla (of the Salvador Party of Honduras) formed an alliance, joined by the Innovation and Unity Party (Pinu), some sectors of the Liberal Party and an independent candidacy. In order to join efforts and potential votes, Nasralla renounced his presidential candidacy and supported Libre’s candidacy.

Nasralla, an eccentric, well known sports talk show host, was the 2017 presidential candidate of the Opposition Alliance against the Dictatorship, which also included Libre and Pinu and which received the support of a wide range of social, popular and union organizations.

On that occasion, the Alliance denounced the unconstitutionality of a new candidacy of Juan Orlando Hernández, since in Honduras the Constitution prohibited presidential reelection. The Alliance also mobilized for weeks against the electoral fraud that deprived Nasralla of the presidential seat, with the tacit consent of the United States, the European Union and the OAS.

“Tito” Asfura, popularly known as “Papi a la orden”, has been mayor of Tegucigalpa for two terms (2014-2022) for the ruling National party. A businessman with more than 30 years occupying governmental and legislative positions, he was a shareholder of an offshore company in Panama while still a public official. In the end, the said company ended up under the control of Banco Ficohsa, owned by the powerful Atala Faraj family.

In June of this year, the Court of Appeals suspended a pre-trial hearing against Asfura for abuse of authority, use of false documents, embezzlement of public funds, fraud and money laundering. In order to reactivate the hearing, the Superior Court of Accounts will have to carry out a special audit on the funds investigated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

According to information published in recent days, the former mayor of Tegucigalpa has also been linked to the notorious “Diamante” corruption case involving the mayor of San José, Costa Rica, Johnny Araya, who is being investigated by Costa Rican authorities for alleged bribes in exchange for public works.

The third candidate is former congressman and banker Yani Rosenthal, who in 2017 was indicted and sentenced to three years in prison in the United States for participating in financial transactions using illicit proceeds (drug money laundering). He voluntarily turned himself in and was held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York but returned to Honduras in mid-2020.

Both the investigations carried out by US prosecutors and the media Pandora Papers investigation revealed the connection between the Rosenthal family, one of the richest in the region, and several offshore companies that may have been used to launder money.

Programs and proposals

In her government program, Xiomara Castro points out the need to rebuild the democracy broken by the 2009 coup and to re-found the country through a Constituent Assembly that “gathers all sectors to agree on the legal bases of their future coexistence in a new consensual order”, leading the nation towards the construction of a democratic socialist state. While, by contrast, both Asfura and Rosenthal propose the same worn out neoliberal recipes that have led Honduras to be among the poorest and most unequal countries of the continent.

“Xiomara proposes a government of national reconciliation that includes all sectors of the opposition. A government that aims to overcome these disastrous years that have deepened the neoliberal model, privatizing services, ceding national territory, handing over public goods, expanding extractivism, putting national sovereignty up for sale,” said Gilberto Ríos, candidate for congressman for Libre.

The social movement leader explained that Libre’s government plan proposes to move from a deeply oligarchic State to a democratic socialist one. Among many other points, it intends to repeal all those laws and reforms approved by the dictatorship, which deeply harm the interests and rights of the immense majority of the Honduran population.

Thus, we are talking about, among others, the Hourly Employment Law that deepens labor insecurity and annuls the rights of workers, the Secrecy Law that blocks public auditing of State funds, as well as the Surveillance Law that allows spying on the political opposition and too the Organic Law of the Economic Development Zones (ZEDEs) that violates national sovereignty. It is also expected to reverse reforms made to the Penal Code that criminalize social protest and mobilization.

“It will be a more redistributive government, of social works and projects, that defends human rights, consistent with the needs and security of the population. In this sense – clarified Ríos – we differentiate ourselves from the other candidates and political parties because they are openly neoliberal and represent the interests of the Honduran oligarchy, transnational capital and the old bipartisanship. That is what it is all about: defeating the traditional bipartisanship and neoliberalism”.

How is Honduras now?

The Central American country arrives at these elections in difficult conditions, to put it euphemistically.

Honduras currently ranks among the most unequal countries in Latin America, with 62 percent of the population mired in poverty and almost 40 percent in extreme poverty (EPHPM 2020). According to a recent report by the National Institute of Statistics (INE 2021), removed from the institution’s website twelve hours after its publication, in July 2021 poverty had reached 73.6 percent of the population.

That increase is also the result of disappointing government management in the face of the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the two hurricanes that struck the country last year.

According to figures from the Technical Unit for Food and Nutritional Security (Utsan), 1.3 million Hondurans face food insecurity and almost 350 thousand people are in a “critical situation”. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate has reached 10% of the economically active population (EAP), perhaps the highest in the Latin American region. There are at least 4 million Hondurans with employment problems and more than 700 thousand unemployed workers.

Faced with this scenario, thousands of families have taken irregular migration as their only option, the vast majority of whom are being held up at the borders. It is a portrait of one of the deepest tragedies of the last 40 years.

“In the last ten years Honduras has had a frank deterioration, not only in the rule of law in general, in democratic institutionality, in the population’s access to basic services and in the fight against poverty, but also socio-economically. When one looks at all these indicators, one realizes that rather than a failed state, we should speak of a dead state,” said Ismael Zepeda, economist at the Social Forum on Foreign Debt and Development of Honduras (Fosdeh).

Currently Honduras’ public debt exceeds 70% of GDP: the country’s economic growth is concentrated mainly in three sectors: financial, energy and telecommunications.

“These are sectors that do not produce development, nor do they generate redistribution, rather they produce more concentration of weath. In addition, we have an army of more than 250,000 public employees who absorb almost 50% of the budget, while there is a worrying drop in revenue. The situation is unsustainable and will represent a very heavy burden for whoever wins the elections”, explained Zepeda.

For years, the National Party has maintained a supernumerary staff, mainly composed of party activists. In practice, it has plundered the State so as to employ its political leaders and create client networks so as to stay in power.

State reengineering

For the Fosdeh economist, an immediate reengineering of the government, a reconversion of the productive system, a fiscal pact to dynamize the economy and efforts towards progressive taxation are necessary. Likewise, it is imperative to guarantee transparency, accountability and the fight against corruption, while promoting a strategy of internal and external debt reduction.

Finally, the generation of decent jobs, the creation of programs that prevent the deepening of poverty, more equitable management and redistributive policies to reduce social inequality, are also key elements the new government must implement.

“When a country is mired in a multiple crisis and has badly deteriorated, it is easy, so to speak, for a candidate to make promises. The most important thing, then, is not so much what is offered, but the way in which things eventually get done”, concluded Zepeda.

Labor insecurity

The 2009 coup d’état in Honduras not only broke the institutional framework and strengthened the oligarchy and elite power groups, but also allowed the governments that followed the coup to deepen the neoliberal extractivist model, encouraging the plundering of national territory and public wealth and increasingly deregulating the labor market.

For Joel Almendares, secretary general of the United Confederation of Honduran Workers (CUTH), the impacts of these policies on labor and union rights have been devastating for the vast majority of the population.

“There has been a growing deregulation of labor, coupled with the deepening of labor flexibilization and insecurity. One of the most nefarious laws has undoubtedly been the Hourly Employment Law: rights have been lost and permanent jobs have been made precarious,” said Almendares.

“There were also companies or institutions that simply changed their name or corporate name and did away with unions. Others created parallel unions to counteract a genuine organizing process,” he added.

Regression

All of these anti-worker measures have negatively impacted the safeguarding of rights.

“There are clear setbacks in the right to free unionization and collective bargaining. The programs to generate employment have been a mockery, tailored to the interests of large transnationals. Juan Orlando Hernández has definitely been a disaster for the labor and union sector”, stated the CUTH general secretary.

Another factor contributing to the deepening of the crisis has been the behavior of the government’s labor authorities.

“Shielding themselves behind the need to generate employment and supposed development, they have been biased and have systematically protected the interests of big national and transnational capital. They have done so at the expense of the rights of workers, abandoning them and allowing the violation of their rights. They have not protected them, and have been their executioners instead,” he lamented.

In view of this situation, the CUTH presented the Libre candidate with the political proposal of the union sector where, among other points, it calls for the immediate repeal of the above mentioned laws, to put a stop to outsourcing and labor insecurity, and to guarantee respect for the Teachers’ Statute and the ILO conventions[1].

The cancer of corruption

On November 17, the feature film “At the edge of the shadows” (you can see it here) was released in a movie theater in Tegucigalpa, a documentary that reflects the web of corruption, impunity, territorial dispossession and violence experienced by the Honduran people, forced to confront perverse plans that operate from the shadows.

Luís Méndez, member of the collective ‘La Cofradía’ that made the documentary, explained that the objective of the work is precisely to show citizens how corruption networks are formed and how they are articulated to involve politicians, public officials, national and transnational economic groups in a way cutting across all society.

The documentary addresses four crucial areas: the looting of Social Security and the health crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the dispossession of territories and pubic wealth, the co-optation of the justice system and its collusion with corruption, organized crime and the criminalization of protest. The fourth area has to do with the concept of democracy in a context as broken as the Honduran one.

Through key characters and experts, and with the participation of the current head of the Specialized Prosecutor Unit against Corruption Networks (Uferco), Luis Javier Santos, to tie up loose ends, the film rocks the country’s foundations, shaking up the conscience of the people, showing how Honduras is controlled by a criminal network that has ruled since the 2009 coup, and has become entrenched in the state apparatus.

“The documentary provokes disappointment, anger and rage, but also leaves the feeling that we are not defeated, that it is possible to fight, as many organizations and people do from the territories and cities.

In the midst of so much State violence, in the midst of a State held hostage – continued Méndez – there is resistance and struggle. As Berta Cáceres said, our peoples know how to do justice and they do it following their own trajectory, from their resistance, from their struggle for emancipation”.

Enough is enough!

A few days before the elections, the Convergence against Continuity, a platform made up of several organizations and personalities, made a public statement and recalled that these elections “are being held in a context of narco-dictatorship, whose creators came to control the State by violent and unconstitutional means and are not willing to hand over power by democratic political means”.

In this sense, the Convergence ratified its repudiation of “the mafia led by Juan Orlando Hernandez” and warned of the possibility that, in view of an imminent defeat, “he may orchestrate a new and violent electoral fraud by manipulating the voting process and vote counting”.

Finally, they made a vehement call to the Honduran people to “mobilize massively to the polls” and defend their vote “from these anti-democratic machinations”.

They also urged them to punish with their vote “the criminal group that has hijacked the State” and to vote for those candidates “who have shown firm signs of being against the narco-dictatorship, of fighting against corruption and for the defense of national sovereignty”.

Violence against human rights defenders

Several international reports, including “Last Line of Defense” published this year by the British organization Global Witness, point to Honduras as one of the most dangerous places in the world for human rights defenders, especially for those who defend land and common wealth.

The emblematic cases of the murder of Berta Cáceres, the disappearance of the Garífuna activists of Triunfo de la Cruz and the illegal imprisonment of the eight water and life defenders of Guapinol are a clear example of what is happening in the country.

The use and abuse of the justice system and the collusion of the State with extractive companies are two of the elements that characterize the systematic violation of human rights in Honduras.

According to Global Witness, in 2020 at least 129 Garifuna and indigenous people suffered attacks for opposing extractive projects and 153 defenders have been murdered in the last decade. In addition, the Center for Information on Business and Human Rights (Ciedh) points to Honduras as the country with the most judicial harassment against human rights defenders.

The situation of women and LGBTI people is also dramatic.

The Women’s Human Rights Observatory of the Women’s Rights Center (CDM) reports that in the first five months of the year, the Public Ministry registered a total of 1,423 complaints of sexual crimes (9.5 per day). Of these, 1,238 were attacks against women (8.1 per day) and 63.4 percent (785) were against minors. These data confirm that in Honduras a woman or girl is sexually assaulted every 3 hours.

In the last ten years, 4,707 women have been murdered in Honduras. 710 were killed in the last two years (2019-2020) and 301 women were victims of femicide up until November 15 of this year. Impunity is practically absolute.

According to the Observatory of Violent Deaths of the Catrachas Lesbian Network, in just over 12 years 390 LGBTI people have been murdered, 17 so far this year. Ninety-one percent of the cases remain in complete oblivion and impunity. Only 9 percent of perpetrators are convicted.

In recent months, a large and representative group of women’s and feminist organizations held a discussion with Xiomara Castro to present their demands and proposals. The activity led to the signing of a ‘State Pact’, the content of which will be implemented if Xiomara is elected as the first woman president of Honduras.

Similarly, in her government plan, Xiomara pledged to implement public policies safeguarding the existence and guaranteed access to fundamental human rights for LGBTI people (p.64).

Voting against the dictatorship

The Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (Copinh) added its voice “in moments of the battle for survival in the face of the maximum expression of dispossession, fear and violence in the history of our country under a de facto and authoritarian government.”

Although the ballot box will not change Honduras – explains the Copinh communiqué – voting against the dictatorship that governs us will be a step. The Honduran people, for the most part, will cast a vote of rejection in the face of all the accumulated suffering.

The organization co-founded by Berta Cáceres alerted the population that “the conditions for fraud are in place” and expressed that as citizens “we are preparing to reject the electoral fraud at grass roots”.

Finally, Copinh urged the immediate convocation of a Popular and Democratic Constituent Assembly “that will give rise to the reconstruction of our country, assuming the historical demands of the indigenous, black and peasant communities, women, migrant communities, workers, LGBTI community, church sectors, among others, to repeal all legislation that exposes the peoples to the surrender of their territories and the violation of their rights”.

“We call on the peoples – concludes the communiqué – to activate the organizational, articulation and debate processes to achieve Berta Cáceres’ urgent dream of re-founding Honduras. The people of Honduras need a people’s government to confront the economic sectors that have enriched themselves unjustly in these 12 years of attacks on indigenous, black and peasant peoples and the majority of the population”.

The challenge of putting an end to neoliberalism

Undoubtedly, next Sunday’s elections represent a very important move on the Honduran political and social chessboard.

“The citizenry has an enormous desire for change. They want to have an alternative to what they have had to live through during these years. They expect a process to begin of recovery of lost rights. They want to have opportunities, that their territories and national sovereignty be respected,” explained sociologist and political analyst Eugenio Sosa.

“Honduras is at a crossroads. It must choose between the continuity of a regime and its failed model or the beginning of a process of openness and change”, added the analyst.

Will the regime respect an eventual defeat or will it seek, as in 2017, an illegal way to retain power, asks Sosa.

“People have not forgotten what happened four years ago. There is a lot of uncertainty around how the electoral authorities will behave, the vote count, the transmission of results, the identification of poll station personnel to avoid the purchase of credentials. At the same time there is a determination never seen before and Xiomara (Castro) has been able to rescue and bring together a consensus of wide and diverse sectors of Honduran society”, he concluded.

Note
[1] Conventions on freedom of association, collective bargaining, labor relations in the public administration, domestic workers, violence and harassment in the world of work, free, prior and informed consultation.

This article was first published here

It is defended” – Cesar Augusto Sandino

It is an irrefutable fact that the United States orchestrated, financed and unleashed the violent coup attempt in 2018 against the democratically elected FSLN government. Spokespeople of the U.S. establishment, from former president Trump, extreme right-wing senators and deputies, all the way down the food chain of its formidable ‘regime change’ machinery, including National Security Advisor John Bolton, the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and, of course, USAID, repeatedly stated their aim was to bring about ‘regime change’ in Nicaragua. In this connection, the significance of U.S. Nicaraguan proxies is ephemeral and purely utilitarian (does anybody remember Adolfo Calero, Miami-based Contra leader?). Such proxies are activated to sow chaos, violence and confusion to facilitate a U.S.-driven ‘regime change’ intervention, but for the huge U.S. democracy-crushing machine, when plans do not work, its proxies are disposable human assets. In the 2018 coup attempt, the operatives on the ground, disguised as civil society bodies committed to the rule of law, democracy, civil liberties, human rights and other fake descriptions, were in fact U.S.-funded proxies entrusted with the task to bring down the FSLN government by means of violence. The resistance of the Nicaraguan people defeated the coup and thus the nation will go to the polls in November 2021, prompting the U.S. ‘regime change’ apparatus to launch, in despair, an international campaign aimed at demonising the electoral process itself.

The brutal ‘regime change’ machinery

The US, through open and shady channels, disbursed millions to pay, organise, and train thousands of the cadre that would carry out the coup attempt in 2018. Between 2014 and 2017 the U.S. funded over 50 projects in Nicaragua for a total of US$4.2 million. Furthermore, William Grigsby, an investigative journalist, revealed that USAID and the NED distributed over US$30 million to a range of groups opposed to the Nicaraguan government who were involved in the violence of 2018.¹

A pro-U.S. commentator, writing in NED-funded magazine Global Americans (1 May 2018), admitted that these resources had been deployed to lay the ‘groundwork for insurrection’: “Looking back at the developments of the last several months it is now quite evident that the U.S. government actively helped build the political space and capacity of Nicaraguan society for the social uprising that is currently unfolding”.² Furthermore, millions of U.S. taxpayers’ money also went into financing a Nicaraguan coup-plotting media.³

The ingredients of U.S. ‘regime change’ operations are buttressed by illegal unilateral coercive measures (aka sanctions) aimed at isolating internationally the target government and causing as much havoc as possible to its economy so as to destabilise it thus bringing about a crisis, leading to the ousting of the government, and to a U.S.-led transition. For example, since 2016-17, the U.S. has applied 431 and 243 sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba, respectively. With the NICA Act and the RENACER bill, the U.S. is piling up sanctions against Nicaragua’s economy and FSLN government officials. The strategy is invariably complemented by a worldwide intoxicating corporate media demonization campaign labelling these governments ‘authoritarian’ and ‘dictatorial’, sometimes going as far as charging them as ‘fascists’ and, in the case of Nicaragua, even of ‘Somocismo’.⁴

This technique has been used in the efforts to violently oust the government of Venezuela (including the recognition of Juan Guaidó as “interim president”), and also in the recent violent push to overthrow the government in Cuba⁵. U.S. National Security Adviser, John Bolton identified Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua (“a troika of tyranny”) as target governments to be overthrown. In the speech (1 Nov 2018), he also praised Bolsonaro as one of the “positive signs for the future of the region”).

U.S. war on Latin American democracy

Reams have been written about U.S. interventions in Latin America (and the world) both by U.S. sycophants and detractors, who, despite their antipodal viewpoints, agree that notwithstanding the altruistic pronouncements of U.S. officialdom and their accomplices, they have never led to the establishment of democracy and, in most cases, such as in Salvador Allende’s Chile, ended in its total destruction. Thus, the 1954 U.S. military invasion of Guatemala leading to the violent ousting of democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz, was celebrated by U.S. president Eisenhower as a “magnificent effort’ and “devotion to the cause of freedom”, an event that was followed by decades of US-supported and US-sponsored slaughter of well over 200,000 Guatemalans. El Salvador did not have the ‘benefit’ of a U.S. military invasion but in the 1980s, U.S.-funded, US-trained and U.S.-armed death squads, would slaughter about 80,000 mostly innocent civilians.

Nicaragua has been the target of many U.S. interventions, the largest being the military invasion of 1926-1933 that was heroically resisted by General Sandino’s guerrillas. It did not lead to anything resembling democracy but to the 43 years-long Somoza dictatorship that ended in 1979, when the Sandinista revolution implemented democracy for the first time in the country’s history. Sadly, the U.S. sought to prevent Nicaragua from pursuing an alternative, democratic, sovereign pathway by unleashing a destructive war by proxy through organising, funding, training, arming and directing the Contras under the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations. The war led to the obliteration of the economy, the electoral defeat of the FSLN in 1990, and to well over 40,000 people killed.⁶ The Sandinistas respected the election result – even though it had been obtained under U.S.-led war conditions – did not engage in violent confrontations during the 16 years of neoliberal governments (1990-2006), and participated in all electoral processes during that period, dutifully recognising unfavourable election results in 1990, 1996, and 2001.

Neoliberalism in Nicaragua was socially and economically disastrous: by 2005, 62% of the population was below the poverty line with high levels of extreme poverty (14% in 2009); 85% had no access to healthcare systems; 64% of the economically active were in the informal sector with no pension or health cover; the level of illiteracy was 22% even though it had been eradicated during the 1979-1990 Sandinista government⁷, and so forth, mirroring neoliberal wreckage elsewhere in the region.

Unsurprisingly, the FSLN gathered electoral strength: winning the presidency by 38% in 2006; re-elected in 2011 with 63% and again with 72% in 2016. The return of the FSLN to government in 2006 led to a reduction of poverty to 42.5% and extreme poverty to 7% in 2016, on the back of a 4.7% average rate of economic growth, one of the highest in the region. The country’s social economy, driven primarily by the informal sector, was given a gigantic impetus making Nicaragua 90% self-sufficient in food (a dream for nations under U.S. siege, such as Cuba and Venezuela). By 2018-19 poverty had been halved, 1.2 million children were taken out of food poverty, 27,378 new classrooms had been built, 11,000 new teachers had been employed, 353 new healthcare units had been created including 109 birth & childcare facilities, 229 health centres, 15 primary hospitals, plus social housing, social security, the mass inclusion of women earning the nation the 5th world position on gender equality, and much more. So why would the FSLN, enjoying an electoral support of 70%+, resort to state violence in 2018 when the economy was going well, social indexes were improving and standards of living going up? Why would the FSLN turn viciously against its own people by becoming a dictatorship overnight?

Demonization, prelude to aggression

The intense, intoxicating and well-orchestrated worldwide demonization campaign against the FSLN government has inevitably influenced and obfuscated the vision of many individuals of goodwill who may have a healthy concern about the media-generated torrent of allegations of undemocratic behaviour attributed to the Nicaraguan government. Many also believed that Evo had fathered an illegitimate child – which, The Guardian (24 June 2016) labelled a scandalous “telenovela of sex lies, and paternity claims” – that was an undeniable factor in Morales narrowly losing a referendum in 2016. However, the child never existed but was ‘materialised’ by the world media just before the referendum was held. No media outrage was elicited by such grotesque fabrication. So, never underestimate the power and impact of U.S.-led psychological warfare carried through the world corporate media, especially when it comes to Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela, or any government targeted by U.S. ‘regime change’ plans.

Psychological warfare and its concomitant media demonization have the function to alienate progressive public opinion support from U.S. targeted governments or individuals. Lula and his party, for example, were subjected to such media demonization managing to persuade many primarily in Europe and the U.S. of his culpability in the Lava Jato corruption scandal that rocked Brazil, for which he was tried and convicted on [T]rumped up charges that led to his illegal and unjust imprisonment for over 580 days. No media outrage has followed Brazil Supreme Court’s verdicts of his being innocent of all the charges. Nevertheless, the damage done is pretty hefty: the lawfare against Lula prevented him from being a presidential candidate, creating propitious conditions for the election of fascist Bolsonaro.

The demonization of Evo seems to have been part of a broader plan aimed at his ousting, which was achieved in November 2019 thanks to the corrupt intervention of OAS Secretary General, Luis Almagro, who, with the support of the European Union ‘electoral mission’ in Bolivia, falsely reported ‘irregularities’ implying election fraud. The coup brought to power the de facto racist and fascist government led by Jeanine Añez, that unleashed brutal police repression and persecution against the social movements, perpetrated several massacres, and engaged in vast amounts of corruption. No media outrage has followed Almagro’s disgusting behaviour, not even after him being publicly denounced by Bolivia’s president, Luis Arce, and Mexico’s foreign minister.

Actually, the plot thickens: the Bolivian government with the help of the government of Argentina, have produced irrefutable evidence that in November 2019 right-wing former president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, sent to Bolivia a war arsenal of thousands of rounds of ammunition, 70,000 anti-riot cartridges, thousands of rubber bullets, many long and short weapons, including machine guns, as a ‘contribution’ to the coup that ousted president Morales. No media outrage has followed this either; instead, most of the corporate media has opted for omitting it.

In Venezuela, President Maduro has denounced several attempts on his life, one of which in 2018 was televised; yet it led to no corporate media condemnation. In May 2020 Venezuela was subjected to a mercenary attack with the perpetrators publicly admitting it, yet it led to no media condemnation either. At least the brutal assassination of Haiti’s president Jovenel Moise by a hit squad of Colombian mercenaries that appear to be connected to the Colombian authorities, has received a modicum of media condemnation and there is some journalistic probing into Colombia’s involvement in it. Haiti’s gory magnicide (Moise was first tortured then killed with 12 bullets) shows the U.S. and its allies in the region are prepared to go to any lengths to obtain results. There is no reason to think Nicaragua, as the 2018 coup attempt shows, would be treated differently.

The empire’s desperation

Right now the issue for the U.S. interventionist machinery in Nicaragua is the coming election to be held on 7 November 2021 with the likely victory of the FSLN. The people of Nicaragua will elect president, vice-president and 90 national assembly deputies. The U.S. is desperate to discredit these elections by orchestrating a stream of media-oriented provocations that may allow it not to recognise the results (though, after the embarrassing experience with corrupt primus inter pares, Juan Guaidó, it is unlikely to proclaim a Nicaraguan ‘interim president’; though I wouldn’t hold my breath). The desperation of the U.S. interventionist establishment, especially its extreme right-wing (Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, the NED, USAID et al), manifests itself in a media-driven effort to discredit the coming election by seeking to influence international progressive public opinion with a narrative of disillusionment with the FSLN (labelled Orteguismo), aimed at creating the impression the FSLN is isolated, thus resorting to dictatorial measures, and that it has betrayed Sandinismo. Apart from being malicious this is thoroughly false.

Under president Daniel Ortega and vice-president Rosario Murillo Nicaragua has successfully defended the nation’s sovereignty by restoring the social gains of the 1979-1990 revolution, by defeating the U.S.-orchestrated violent coup attempt of 2018, and by deepening the progressive socio-economic measures implemented since 2006. A good gauge of what would have happened had the 2018 coup attempt been victorious are the Añez government actions in Bolivia, Bolsonaro’s fascist brutality and recklessness, Guaidó’s criminal “interim presidency”, and Almagro’s abject servility to imperial objectives, whose common factor is the United States. Had the coup succeeded, the structural connection between Nicaragua’s socio-economic developments and national sovereignty, on which the latter rests, would have been brutally demolished, including the repression and murder of many Sandinistas and social leaders. The atrocities perpetrated during the coup attempt in 2018 (torture, burning people, setting fire to houses, health centres, radio stations, and generalised violence), are irrefutable proof of this.

The FSLN government is not isolated; it not only enjoys majority support in Nicaragua but it also has the robust solidarity of the Sao Paulo Forum, the Latin American body that brings together 48 social and political organizations. Among these are the Cuban Communist party, Venezuela’s PSUV, Bolivia’s MAS, Brazil’s Workers Party, Argentina’s Frente Grande, and Mexico’s MORENA – just to mention the most important ones – parties that command literally well over 120 million votes, and are or have been in government. The Forum (16 June 2021) has issued a robust statement in support of Nicaragua’s sovereignty stating as false the allegations of “arbitrary detention of opposition figures”.⁸

The Puebla Group, a body that assembles a large number of regional political leaders set up jointly by Lopez Obrador and Alberto Fernandez, presidents of Mexico and Argentina, respectively, issued a manifesto in February 2021 expressing support for Nicaragua (as well as Cuba and Venezuela) and condemning the aggression, external interference, and destabilisation these nations have been subjected to by the U.S.⁹ Among the Group’s members are Lula, Dilma Rousseff, Evo, Rafael Correa, Fernando Lugo, Ernesto Samper, Leonel Fernandez, Luis Guillermo Solis and Jose Luis Zapatero, former presidents of Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Spain, and many other prominent politicians.

Furthermore, the Executive Secretary of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – People’s Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP), Sacha Llorenti, also condemned the aggression and the illegal sanctions against Nicaragua (and Cuba and Venezuela). Llorenti praised the “lessons of dignity given by the Nicaraguan people to the world” and paid tribute to them for the “achievements [of]the Sandinista Revolution.”¹⁰ He was attending the 42nd anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution held in Caracas. ALBA-TCP is a radical coordination founded in 2004 that includes Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Grenada and the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis.

Though in Europe opposition to U.S. aggression is strong, it is less so than in Latin America. Foreign affairs are dominated by the European Union’s abject and systematic capitulation to U.S. foreign policy (on Latin America, and the world). Thus we have witnessed the shameful spectacle of Europe’s recognition of Guaidó as Venezuela’s ‘interim president’, and the European Parliament, led by the nose by Spanish extreme right-wing Vox party, to issue condemnations of Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia. The latter for the temerity of bringing Jeanine Añez to justice, key player in the 2019 coup against Evo and directly responsible for the persecution, repression and massacres perpetrated against Bolivians during her illegal 11 months in office.

Since the EU supports every violent assault against democracy in the Americas, it would be coherent to have supported the Trump-inspired assault on Washington’s Capitol. On January 6, 2021, U.S.’s extreme right applied techniques of “regime change” at home as the televised violent storming of the Capitol showed. The assault was carried out by armed, extreme right-wing (white supremacist) thugs, almost identical to U.S.-led efforts in Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Cuba, which involved non-recognition of election results, incessant spread of fake news, questioning the credibility of state institutions, fanaticization of supporters, all aimed at bringing about a crisis seeking to prevent the proclamation as president of the real winner.

Conclusion

Supporting any form of U.S. interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation under U.S. attack, by calling for ‘the international community to act’, or by (un)wittingly parroting U.S. State Dept. narrative on that nation, is tantamount to legitimising U.S. policy of “regime change”.

Were it not for U.S. aggression and interference, countries such as Nicaragua would have taken off and developed democracy and social progress, as the short national sovereignty intervals (1979-1990 and 2006-2018) have demonstrated. Cuba, for example, is an educational, sport, medical and biotechnological power, even though it has lost US$144 bn. (that is, the equivalent of 10 Nicaraguan economies at current prices) in the past six decades due to the U.S. blockade. Imagine how Cuba could have developed and multiplied its generous solidarity contribution to the world if it had not had to endure the criminal Yankee blockade.

Taking from its 1909 intervention, the U.S. maintained Nicaragua militarily invaded from 1912 until 1933, exerted direct control during the Somoza dictatorship until 1979, then when the Contra War (1980-1990) and the neoliberal governments (1990-2016), are added, the U.S. systemically curtailed or annulled Nicaragua’s national sovereignty for 97 years in the 20th century! If we add U.S. aggressive 19th century expansionism in the Caribbean, including the U.S. mercenary incursion of William Walker in 1856 –when he took power by military force and restored slavery – poor Nicaragua has been under the U.S. imperial thumb for over 140 years!

Nicaragua is entitled to embark on its own alternative path of development that, as a matter of sacrosanct moral principle, must be determined by Nicaraguans only without any external interference, and above all, in peace.

U.S. hands off Latin America, U.S. hands off Nicaragua!

Sign the Open Letter to President Biden

Dear President Joe Biden,

It is time to take a new path forward in U.S.-Cuban relations. We, the undersigned, are making this urgent, public appeal to you to reject the cruel policies put into place by the Trump White House that have created so much suffering among the Cuban people.

Cuba – a country of eleven million people – is living through a difficult crisis due to the growing scarcity of food and medicine. Recent protests have drawn the world’s attention to this. While the Covid-19 pandemic has proven challenging for all countries, it has been even more so for a small island under the heavy weight of an economic embargo.

We find it unconscionable, especially during a pandemic, to intentionally block remittances and Cuba’s use of global financial institutions, given that access to dollars is necessary for the importation of food and medicine.

As the pandemic struck the island, its people – and their government – lost billions in revenue from international tourism that would normally go to their public health care system, food distribution and economic relief.

During the pandemic, Donald Trump’s administration tightened the embargo, pushed aside the Obama opening, and put in place 243 “coercive measures” that have intentionally throttled life on the island and created more suffering.

The prohibition on remittances and the end of direct commercial flights between the U.S. and Cuba are impediments to the wellbeing of a majority of Cuban families.

“We stand with the Cuban people,” you wrote on July 12. If that is the case, we ask you to immediately sign an executive order and annul Trump’s 243 “coercive measures.”

There is no reason to maintain the Cold War politics that required the U.S. to treat Cuba as an existential enemy rather than a neighbor. Instead of maintaining the path set by Trump in his efforts to undo President Obama’s opening to Cuba, we call on you to move forward. Resume the opening and begin the process of ending the embargo. Ending the severe shortages in food and medicine must be the top priority.

On 23 June, most of the member states of the United Nations voted to ask the U.S. to end the embargo. For the past 30 years this has been the consistent position of a majority of member states. In addition, seven UN Special Rapporteurs wrote a letter to the U.S. government in April 2020 regarding the sanctions on Cuba. “In the pandemic emergency,” they wrote, “the lack of will of the U.S. government to suspend sanctions may lead to a higher risk of suffering in Cuba.”

We ask you to end the Trump “coercive measures” and return to the Obama opening or, even better, begin the process of ending the embargo and fully normalizing relations between the United States and Cuba.

See other signatories and Sign here

This letter was first published as an advert in the New York Times

With 100% of the votes counted, Castillo, candidate of left-wing coalition Peru Libre, won with 50.14 % of the votes, against Keiko Fujimori, daughter of infamous and disgraced corrupt dictator, Alberto Fujimori and right-wing candidate of Fuerza Popular, a coalition supported by the country’s oligarchic elite, obtained 49,86%.

To many, Castillo’s electoral robust performance in the first round with 18% of the vote was a surprise, since up to that point, the main contender for the left was Veronika Mendoza, candidate of the Juntos por el Peru coalition, who obtained slightly less than 8%. Below we examine the main events and developments that would culminate in this extraordinary victory for the Peruvian and Latin American Left.

The ongoing crisis of legitimacy

As it typifies oligarchic rule in Latin America, whenever the elite faces a serious challenge to its dominance it resorts to authoritarian methods, including brutal repression and if need be, mass murder. This is what the Peruvian elite did when in the early 1990s it faced mass opposition to the imposition of neoliberal impoverishment; one of the most extreme manifestations of opposition was the Shining Path guerrilla insurgency. State repression was substantially intensified with the election of Alberto Fujimori as president in 1990.

Fujimori’s dictatorial regime lasted a full decade (1990-2000) but it fell under the weight of its own corruption, engulfed in a constitutional crisis of legitimacy caused by his contempt for democratic procedure: he closed down congress, usurped judicial authority, promulgated a neo-liberal constitution and governed brutally and autocratically. He is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence for his role in killings and kidnappings by death squads during his government’s military campaign against leftist guerrillas.

Fujimori’s successor, president Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006) fared no better, even though, unlike Fujimori, he did not resort to underhand and brutal methods during his presidency. Nevertheless, he is under house arrest in San Francisco, awaiting extradition on charges of receiving multimillionaire bribes.

Then it was the turn of Alan Garcia, leader of APRA, an originally progressive populist party, who succeeded Toledo for the period 2006-2011, and who committed suicide in 2020 as the police came to arrest him for personal graft and corruption during his administration.

Ollanta Humala, briefly depicted as a sort of Peruvian Chavez and even publicly supported by the Comandante himself, defeated Keiko Fujimori at the 2011 elections thereby becoming the country’s president for the 2011-2016 period. But at it seems to befit Peru’s presidents, in 2017 he and his wife were arrested on charges of corruption and money laundering associated with it. Both are banned from leaving Peru and are awaiting trial.

The 2017 election crowned Pedro Pablo Kuczynski as the country’s president for 2016-2021, but he was not to break with the ‘cultural tradition’ and was forced to resign in 2018 (to avoid impeachment procedures began in 2017) for lying to congress and for receiving bribes in exchange for government contracts. Kuczynski also claimed to suffer from heart problems (as Fujimori, Toledo and Humala have done) thus benefiting from house arrest. It is evident that being the tenant of the House of Pizarro (the popular name for Peru’s presidential palace) is a tough job full of so many exciting incentives that can gravely affect their cardiac system.

Kuczynski had to be replaced by his vice-president, Martin Vizcarra, who launched an offensive against corruption but was impeached by congress in November 2020 for taking bribes on several occasions in 2014 in exchange for awarding public work contracts. It is widely believed his impeachment was prompted by his decision to close down congress for obstructing the investigations against corruption.¹

Vizcarra (who has not as yet claimed heart problems) accepted the congress decision and was replaced by the Congress’s President, Manuel Merino, as caretaker leader with a cabinet dominated by the business elite. Merino’s brief 6-day government sent strong hints of ignoring popular demands for the reform of the political and judicial systems and even entertained postponing the scheduled 2021 elections justified by the problems brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The country exploded in huge mass demonstrations that were met by brutal police repression with two dead, dozens injured and many more arrested. Merino was forced to resign on 15 November 2020 and Congress then appointed Francisco Sagasti (who had voted against Vizcarra’s impeachment) as interim president, and was entrusted with the task of organising the presidential elections in April 2021.

Thus since Peru’s elite had for decades undermined the rule of law and the credibility of the nation’s institutions, the state key positions had been filled in by corrupt or corruptible members of the political class (involving all mainstream political parties), in a system overwhelmingly dominated by finance capital, mining concerns, raw materials exporters, one media monopoly, and multinational companies. These powerful groups pay almost no taxes whilst taking away the nation’s wealth, leaving the agricultural sector in a state of total neglect. Such was the context surrounding the election that elected Pedro Castillo as president of Peru.

The consequences of Peru’s neoliberal dictatorship

In the last two decades, the country’s economic performance has been impressive receiving praise from the IMF: “Peru continues to be one of the best-performing Latin American economies. With annual real GDP growth averaging 5.4 percent over the past fifteen years, Peru has been one of the fastest-growing economies in the region, which enabled it to make significant progress in reducing poverty.”²

However, a deeper look into it produces a different impression. In 1970 Peru’s level of poverty was 50%, and by 2000 had slightly increased to 54.1%;³ by 2006 poverty had barely declined to 49.1%, and though it went down to about 20% in 2019, with the pandemic it has gone right back up to 30%⁴. In short, half of the country’s population have remained in a state of poverty for almost two generations and about one third for the last decade. However, 30% is deceptive since the level of labour informality in the country’s economy is a staggering 70%, of people who live day to day as street vendors; they and their families have gone hungry during the lockdown.⁵

The two decades of macroeconomic economic success and social horror correlate to the coming to office of Alberto Fujimori who successfully defeated Mario Vargas Llosa’s comprehensive neoliberal privatisation plan, at the 1990 election. Fujimori’s government systematised the use of counterinsurgency state terror to purge society from rebellious constituencies, such as those in the Sierra (Peru’s highlands), inhabited predominantly by indigenous people. Already by the end of the 1980s the departments of Ayacucho, Apurimac and Huancavelica were under martial law.

The military campaign against the Left was aided by the combination of extreme sectarianism, intense dogmatism, and the insurrectionary and violent methods practised by the Shining Path, a splinter group from the Communist Party. They enjoyed strong support precisely in the highlands departments mentioned and by the early 1990s had made considerable inroads into Lima’s shanty towns not only challenging the state but also waging a vicious campaign against the rest of the country’s Left.

The government response was the Fujimorazo, a self-coup carried out on 5 April 1992, with the president dissolving Congress and dismantling the judiciary, assuming full executive and legislative powers. He also used these powers to decree stringent and repressive labour laws that destroyed the remnants of an already seriously weakened labour movement. Under Fujimori labour legislation was crafted so as to make Peru a paradise of labour flexibility, management’s right to fire, casualization of labour contracts and workers’ unionisation and collective bargaining action, difficult.⁶

By 1993 Fujimori had increased the provinces under a military state of emergency from 52 to 66 and by 1994, nearly half of the population lived in such zones, areas where the security forces repressed the whole of the Left not just the Shining Path. It is estimated that by 1995 “insurgents, state security forces, drug traffickers, death squads, and civilian paramilitaries had killed more than 27,000 Peruvians.” And according to Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission the number of fatal victims of internal strife between 1980 and 2000 was 69,000.⁷ Peru had become a killing field.

The brutal state counterinsurgency offensive launched in 1980 had not only halted but also reversed the development of a Left that was becoming politically and electorally stronger. In the 1980 election it had obtained a combined vote of about 12-15%, though divided between 5 candidates, but in the 1985 election, a united left candidate got an impressive 24%. However, in the 1990 election the Left went down to 12% split between two candidates; it had almost no presence in the elections in 1995, 2000, 2006, and 2011 and began to painfully recover only in 2016.

Fujimori’s 1993 neoliberal structural reforms (the ‘Fuji-shock’) included the elimination of price controls, total deregulation of markets, privatisation of state-owned companies and activities, and a tight monetary policy. The privatisation programme attracted foreign investment (particularly from the US) in natural resources, finances and consumer markets. This resulted in intense concentration of ownership by foreign concerns thereby shrinking the influence and leverage of national industrial capital.⁸

Over time the country’s income distribution drastically worsened thus by 2019 the top 1% and 10% of income earners got 29.6% and 56.6% of GDP, respectively; 40% of middle income earners got 35.8% of GDP, whilst 50% of low income earners only received 9.4% of GDP; one of the most unequal in the world.⁹ No wonder Covid-19 has wreaked havoc among the poor, since one lockdown day at home for the 70% working in the informal sector (this is millions of people and their families), means one day without income. Decades of neoliberal privatisation and cuts in state expenditure (health, education and the like) having thrown millions into precariousness and hardship made them the unavoidable victims of Covid-19: by 4 June Peru had the highest mortality rate in the world per million people (188,000 with 1,998,056 confirmed cases).¹⁰

Castillo’s Long March

It was reported that when it was announced that a teacher had won the first round of elections, the staff at CCN scrambled to obtain information about, and get hold of a photo of Pedro Castillo because they did not have even a picture of him in their database. How did Pedro Castillo and Peru Libre, managed to win the presidency, even though by a whisker? Castillo’s manifesto makes it even more puzzling since the key tenets of his government programme include a frontal attack on neoliberalism, proposes the election of a Constituent Assembly to draft and promulgate a new constitution to substitute the dominant neoliberal economic model, land reform, the nationalisation of the nation’s natural resources ensuring most of the wealth they produce remains in Peru so as to eradicate poverty, increase state expenditure on social services (health and education), and implement income redistribution.¹¹ Even worse (or better) Castillo declares himself a Marxist and a mariateguista (follower of Peruvian intellectual, Jose Carlos Mariátegui, perhaps one the most original and influential Latin American Marxist thinkers).¹²

The Partido Nacional Peru Libre (PNPL) places political emphasis on the specific demands of Peru’s peasantry: land reform, social rights, education and health, thus expressing the demands and aspirations of the deep, rural, indigenous Peru. Mariátegui, writing in the 1920s, posited there would not be bourgeois revolution in Peru because there was no social class interested in carrying it out, thus the only concrete possibility of society’s structural transformation would come from a socialist revolution, the precondition of which was bringing in the indigenous people as a fundamental agent of such change.

This framework is still basically correct in 2021 Peru. Keiko Fujimori got strong support in key cities (for example, Lima and Callao, with 65% and 67%, respectively), but Castillo got a landslide in the Andean (indigenous) provinces such as Puno (89%), Huancavelica (85%), Cusco (83%), Ayacucho (82%), Apurimac (81%), Moquegua (73%), Cajamarca (71%), Huánuco (68%), and Pasco (66%). It was an indigenous victory¹³ that is not identical to a victory of rural against urban Peru, as some in the media have portrayed Castillo’s victory. After all, 73% of the population live in cities whilst only 27% live in rural areas, that is, the Marxist teacher could not have won without substantial support in the urban centres. The validity of the PNPL central tenet of refounding the nation as a Plurinational State along the basic lines of Ecuador and Bolivia is therefore undeniable: in Peru there are 4 indigenous languages in the Andes (Quechua, Aymara, Cauqui and Jaqaru) and 43 more in the Amazon region, 500 years after the Spanish Conquest.

The implementation of brutal neoliberal policies coupled with the DEA-inspired ‘war on drugs’ principally in the Amazon region (La Selva) from the 1990s onwards, meant that communities in Amazonia suffered the brunt of the ‘dirty war’ against the Shining Path and the army-led fight against drug trafficking, whilst in the Andes, indigenous communities were further marginalised by aggressive mining from the operation of multinational companies. The racism that supplemented these twin aggressions led to organised resistance and, therefore, to the rise of popular, communitarian and indigenous leaderships.

Hence, for example the election of some of these emerging leaders to the governorships of Puno, Junín and Moquegua. Many more such leaders were elected to lead provinces and municipalities with teachers playing a protagonist role in them (Castillo himself had been mayor of his town, Anguía, in Cajamarca).¹⁴ Thus, resulting from a decades-long political development, PNPL is a well-organised, militant, political outfit with strong territorial support in key areas, and with solid association and collaboration with peasant and indigenous communities and organizations (such as the ronderos¹⁵), and trade unions, especially, but not exclusively, among teachers. Castillo himself led the 2017 teachers’ strike to defend wages and demand budget increases in education.

In short, the PNPL has had access to local resources, has enjoyed an institutional presence in local, provincial and regional governments, and, since 60% of Peruvians do not have access to internet, for its election campaign it has relied on community radios, personal visits to small towns, and cultural events. Thus, in the context of the 2021 election (first and second rounds) Castillo was not only the outsider, but a breath of fresh air who, in the midst of a criminally managed pandemic and the deep institutional crisis the nation faced, gave hope and voice to the rural and urban downtrodden.¹⁶

The tasks ahead

The election result was incredibly tight: 8,883,185 for Castillo against 8,783,765 for Keiko Fujimori. Furthermore, the PNPL got a minority of 37 seats that together with the 5 obtained by Juntos por el Peru, president Castillo will command 42 out of the 130 seats in Congress, whilst Fujimori’s Fuerza Popular and the other right wing electoral coalitions have a combined parliamentary strength of at least 80 seats. The latter, with the full complicity and support of the country’s media, ran an intoxicating electoral campaign of fear charging Castillo with being a Shinning Path sympathiser, a “terruco”, pejorative slang term that means ‘terrorist’ used by Peru’s establishment to stigmatize the Left.

Days before the second round, Keiko deployed arch-reactionary Peruvian writer, Mario Vargas Llosa and Venezuelan extreme right-winger and outlawed coup-monger, Leopoldo Lopez, to support her electoral campaign so as to defeat Castillo’s “communism”. Keiko, with no evidence whatsoever, has persisted in accusing the PNPL of election fraud demanding the annulment of the votes of more than 800 voting points in the country’s interior. Then she mobilised 22 right-wing ex-presidents of Latin America and Spain (with Aznar and Uribe being prominent) who issued a statement making similar allegations, demanding Castillo was not proclaimed the winner. In desperation then, she staged marches to military barracks and to the Ministry of Defence (9 June 2021) to request the military to act to prevent the “victory of communism.” However, barely hours after Castillo proclaimed himself the winner, the Defence Ministry issued a statement confirming the political neutrality of the armed forces and calling for respect for the election results.

Such threats have been met with large demonstrations in Lima and the rest of the country with the ronderos promising a march on Lima if through electoral fraud, Castillo’s electoral victory is stolen. On 22 May 2021 the National Coordination of Army, Navy, Air Force and Police Reservists (Retired) – CONAFAP – issued a strong statement warning against any possible election fraud in the second round and in support of Pedro Castillo. Though it is not clear how strong Castillo’s support may be within the armed forces, there is a historic left-wing nationalist influence in them that stems from the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces led by General Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968-1975)¹⁷; many of PNPL’s proposals strongly resemble those of Velasco.

With his clean victory, Castillo and his programme of progressive structural change are now being noticed by millions of the poor in the main urban centres, particularly Lima (with 10 million out of a total population of 32). The more his government engages, mobilises and commits to the poor in supporting the implementation of his policies, the greater the chances of being adopted by them as their own political social objectives. This will allow him to prepare the ground for a referendum for a Constituent Assembly to draft an anti-neoliberal constitution as the basis for the creation of a Plurinational State, the premise for the carrying out of a mariateguista socio-economic transformation of Peru.

Contrary to media misrepresentation, the PNLP programme also includes, among many other interesting policies, the decriminalisation of abortion, a head-on attack on the traffic of persons – especially women, the elimination of patriarchy and machismo in state and society, the respect and promotion of women’s reproductive rights and the promotion of the self-organization of women at every level.¹⁸ This contrasts sharply with Keiko’s defence of her father’s legacy that among other stains, has his Eugenic plan that led to the forcible sterilization of about 350,000 mainly peasant and indigenous women carried out to deal with the nation’s ‘Indian problem’ (higher birth rates among indigenous people than Peruvians of European descent).¹⁹

Castillo’s immediate concern is to ensure a smooth transition of presidential power to guarantee the country’s governability, prevent a run on the currency, prevent financial panic, violent street demonstrations, destabilisation plans and such like that have characterised many electoral victories of presidential candidates of the Left in Latin America. A major cause for concern is the Biden administration’s ‘Trumpian inertia’, maintaining pretty much unchanged US’s aggression against governments of the left in the region of his predecessor, despite his promise to, for example, restore Obama’s constructive policies towards Cuba.

On the other hand, the coming Peru Libre administration does and will benefit from a changing relation of forces for the better in the region with robust left victories in neighbouring Argentina, Chile and especially Bolivia. Castillo has already received the open support of Nicaragua, Mexico, Cuba and from the mass parties of the Latin American Left organised in the Sao Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group, with the latter two issuing strong statements of support calling to respect the will of the Peruvian people. Castillo has also in his favour, the visible deterioration of the US regional machinery of intervention with Luis Almagro, Secretary General of the Organization of the American States (OAS), suffering massive discredit after his disgraceful and criminal complicity in the coup d’état that ousted Evo Morales in 2019 and facing a criminal accusation from Bolivia in the International Criminal Court. He has been openly and publicly repudiated by the governments of Argentina and Mexico, and with the US-inspired Lima group (set up to overthrow the Bolivarian government of Venezuela and led by Almagro) just having lost Lima to a party whose programme includes Peru leaving the OAS and going back to UNASUR. To top it all, the PNLP programme includes strong support for Cuba and Venezuela.

Our job in the imperialist North is to tell the truth about Pedro Castillo’s progressive, anti-neoliberal programme aimed at reversing decades of neoliberal policies to support his beleaguered nation and people by counteracting the unavoidable mainstream media misrepresentations; to remain vigilant and denounce and reject any external or domestic attempt to undermine the victory of the people of Peru by foul means (violence, coup d’état, lawfare, economic blockade, extra-territorial legislation, sanctions, the usual European Union shenanigans, and such like); and to help construct the broadest solidarity movement in their support.

Neoliberalism digs in

With most votes counted, Lasso had secured around 52%. He embraced some centrist positioning in his campaign, including proposing to raise the minimum wage, protect the rights of women and end discrimination against LGBTQIA+ people. But he’s a staunch supporter of the extreme capitalist doctrine of neoliberalism; and he will likely intensify the economic, political and social attacks the Ecuadorian people have faced in the last four years.

The left’s defeat follows on from the political betrayal of Lenín Moreno, who became president in 2017 with the support of incumbent president Rafael Correa and had promised to build on the latter’s progressive achievements. Moreno instead launched austerity attacks; and he aligned Ecuador firmly with US foreign policy interests.

With Moreno in power, the US saw its chance to weaken the left. And to do this, it collaborated closely with the Ecuadorian state, business class and media.

Indeed, Lasso’s victory wasn’t about him gaining more support than in his last run for president. Because in 2017 he got 4.8 million votes, but he only got 4.65 million in 2021. His win was more about Arauz getting just 4.2 million votes in comparison to Moreno’s 5 million in 2017.

A big defeat for the left

Andrés Arauz stood on a platform of returning Ecuador to Correa’s progressive project. But as a relatively unknown candidate, he was unable to defeat the combined forces of US imperialism, its regional allies, and the Ecuadorian right.

While Arauz received the backing of an influential indigenous leader, his campaign was damaged in part by a call for abstentions from other sections of the indigenous movement, some of which had links to the US (in particular failed indigenous candidate Yaku Pérez, who prominently called for supporters to spoil their ballots). There were around 1.7 million null votes in the end. When Correa was in power, he clashed with indigenous movements on several occasions; and while Arauz acknowledged these issues during his own campaign, tensions remained.

The US and its allies have not crushed the left, though. The 47% of support that Arauz received is testament to that.

The IMF-inspired neoliberal agenda Lasso will pursue is deeply unpopular and will inevitably face mass opposition. Outgoing president Moreno pursued such an agenda himself and became one of the most unpopular Latin American presidents in modern times as a result. His policies provoked a massive anti-IMF uprising in October 2019 and caused his personal approval rating to plummet from 77% in 2017 to 7% in 2020. The true character of Lasso’s regime will be revealed when he’s in office; and his political honeymoon may be even shorter than Moreno’s.

The US project to subvert democracy and reverse the ‘Pink Tide’ in Latin America

Western mainstream media coverage of Lasso’s victory has largely ignored the history of US influence and interference in Ecuador (and Latin America in general).

The US has a long history of intervention in Latin America to promote its own interests – from sponsoring military coups and backing dictatorships to launching economic warfare. And it still treats the continent as its ‘backyard’ nearly 200 years after the infamous Monroe Doctrine was first declared.

In the first decade of the 21st century, the US faced a huge challenge to its project of subordinating Latin America, as a wave of left-wing governments took office across the continent – rejecting the neoliberalism that had impoverished so many millions of people.

Ecuador joined this ‘Pink Tide’ when Rafael Correa became president in 2007. His government slashed poverty from 36.7% in 2007 to 21.5% by 2017, lifting more than 1.5 million people out of poverty through progressive social reforms and building infrastructure.

Unacceptably to the US, Correa also pursued an independent foreign policy. His government kicked a US military base out of the country, gave asylum to Julian Assange, pursued mutually beneficial economic relations with China, and tried to make US oil company Chevron pay for the damage its oil spill caused in the Amazon.

Washington took a number of steps to fight back in both Ecuador and elsewhere. One of these was ‘lawfare.’

‘Lawfare’: a strategy to stop Latin America’s left

In the ominous words of Hillary Clinton in 2009, “having a functioning democracy isn’t enough in Latin America, we have to support these countries to have strong, independent judiciaries”. The implication: ‘there must be levers independent from the will of the people to intervene in the continent’s political processes’.

US allies have attempted to use judiciaries to attack the most popular left-wing leaders in Latin America with the goal of decapitating the left of its most commanding figures. Elections can effectively be rigged by preventing the left from putting forward their chosen candidates, by either throwing them in jail or forcing them into exile.

This approach had a devastating impact on Brazil, where former president Lula da Silva was jailed and blocked from standing in the 2018 presidential election against far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro. Opinion polls showed Lula would have won by a landslide had he been on the ballot paper.

That Lula was the victim of a witch-hunt has now been exposed with the decision of Brazil’s Supreme Court to annul his corruption convictions in March 2021. But jailing Lula paved the way for Bolsonaro to win in 2018, and his rule has been catastrophic. Around 360,000 people, for example, have died so far as a consequence of his appalling handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Lawfare in Ecuador

A similar lawfare offensive took place in Ecuador too, with Moreno persecuting both Correa and his allies. This helped to prevent a truly free and fair presidential election in 2021.

On 7 April 2020, a court sentenced Correa (already living in exile in Belgium) to eight years in prison on trumped-up charges of corruption. The apparent goal was to stop him returning to Ecuador and standing as Arauz’s vice president. This came after a referendum from Moreno in 2018 that effectively banned Correa from running again for president by retrospectively imposing term limits.

In addition to Correa not being able to participate, his new party was also barred from registering as a political party. This forced the movement to put Arauz forward on a different electoral platform, the Union for Hope.

Other leading progressives also suffered ‘lawfare’ attacks, including former vice president Jorge Glas, who is serving a six-year prison sentence on trumped-up corruption charges.

Arauz, meanwhile, faced bogus corruption charges, including the claim that he received funding from Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN). This was part of a concerted campaign of disinformation to inflict damage on Arauz’s campaign.

Perilous times

The US-led hybrid war on Ecuador’s left has succeeded in electing right-wing banker Lasso. But he won’t have it easy. Because Moreno’s neoliberal policies have already seen the country’s economy contract by 7.5% in 2020 and led to one of the worst coronavirus catastrophes of 2020. Morgues overflowed, leaving dead bodies lining the streets.

The left, meanwhile, remains a major political force in Ecuador and will resist the avalanche of attacks to come. But it will need all the international solidarity it can get as it struggles against political persecution, to defend ordinary people’s living standards, and to resist the offensive on basic democratic rights and sovereignty.

The above article was originally published here by the Phoenix Media Co-operative.

The specifics of the landslide reveal the size of the defeat of the de facto extreme right wing regime: the MAS-IPSP won the presidency with a 55% of the votes cast, against 28% of right-wing Carlos Mesa, and 14% of extreme right-wing Luis Camacho. This was a much improved performance compared to the election in November 2019 when their candidate, Evo Morales won with 48% against right wing Carlos Mesa’s 36%.

Not only that, the MAS-IPSP won in 6 out of the country’s 9 departments (with 68% in La Paz; 65% in Cochabamba; 62% in Oruro; 57% in Potosí; 49% in Chuquisaca; and 46% in Pando), with the right wing winning in 2 (with 50% in Tarija, and 39% in Beni) and the extreme right wing being victorious only in Santa Cruz (by 45% with the MS-IPSP getting 36%). The 6 departments where Arce was victorious contain nearly 7 million of Bolivia’s total population of 11 million.

It gets better: MAS-IPSP candidates obtained 75 out of the 130 seats of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly, and 21 out of 36 in the Senate. The MAS-IPSP presidential candidate also won in 314 municipalities, the extreme right in 21, and the right wing in 18.

This was a very robust electoral victory indeed, all the more impressive given that it took place against the background of a year of systematic political and judicial persecution against the MAS-IPSP, its leaders and cadre (Morales himself was charged with terrorism that forced him to flee the country), including brutal repression against the social movements associated with it; the illegal imprisonment, harassment and exile of its leaderships and the spirited use of lawfare. All in a context of well-organised and very well-funded racist violence unleashed specially against indigenous women, by fascist paramilitary groups, the police, and the armed forces who perpetrated massacres against social movements defending their rights and fighting for democracy. To top it all, the mainstream media nationally and internationally was at best seeking to whitewash, and at worst supporting, the golpistas and Añez’ regime’s brutal violation of human rights.

Añez’ economic policies, in line with extreme right wing ideology and that of its foreign mentors, deliberately aimed at both demolishing what had been achieved for the nation in the 14 years of Evo Morales’ administration and brutally reversing all the social policies that had benefited the people. Not a small undertaking given the rather amazing progress and transformation that Bolivia and its people had undergone in that short period of time. Below we list some of the most important achievements of the MAS-IPSP government during the 2006-2019 period:

• Bolivia’s GDP went from US$9,574 bn in 2005 to US$40,000 bn in 2013 (an increase of over 400%), that is, an annual average of 4,6%, the highest in the region, thus from 2006

• Bolivia had a fiscal surplus in 2006 for the first time in its history; and by 2018 it had US$8,946 million in international reserves

• Extreme poverty was reduced from 38% in 2006 to 16% in 2018 (a historic low)

• Infant mortality declined by 56%

• Social bonuses (the elders, primary and secondary school pupils, pregnant women) benefited 5,5 million people (more than 50% of the population)

• Domestic savings in the period 2006-2018 increased from US$4,361 million to US$27,123 million

• External debt went down from 61% of GDP in 2004 to 23% in 2018

• Number of health centres went from 2,870 to 3902, and 49 new hospitals were built that were well equipped by the state with the latest medical technology (public health is free of charge)

• With the collaboration of Cuban doctors, Operation Miracle conducted over 3 million ophthalmological visits and 742,000 surgeries leading to many Bolivians having their eye sight restored (Añez expelled the Cuban doctors) – the budget for health went from 2,5 million Bolivianos (national currency) in 2005 to 18, 805 million in 2018

• Illiteracy, with the use of Cuba’s Yo Si Puedo method, was eradicated by 2014.

• Between 2014-18 the nine-lines metro-cable in La Paz (completed in 2014), had transported 174 million passengers

• Drinking water by 2020 reaches 9,7 million people out of total population of 11 million

• The end of the latifundia system led to the redistribution of about 1 million hectares of land to peasants and peasant families

• In 2005 only 18% of the parliamentarians were women, by 2018 they have increased to 51%

• Under decades of neoliberalism only 1,098 km of motorways were built but between 2006-18 new 4,796 km were added to existing motorways

• All of the above was financed by the renationalization of the energy industry (Bolivia is rich mainly in gas but also has oil; and it is extraordinarily rich in minerals, especially lithium)

• Bolivia placed in space the Tupac Katari satellite and renationalised ENTEL (telecommunications company) granting Internet access to millions of Bolivians free of charge, as a fundamental right

• With a world historic decision, 36 indigenous nations were recognised special cultural and ancestral land rights, for the first time in 500 years that are enshrined in the new Constitution of the Plurinational State

• No wonder, in 2018 the World Human Development Report, classified Bolivia for the first time a “high human development country”

• The MAS-IPSP under Morales affirmed national sovereignty by eliminating foreign (US) interference with the expulsion of the DEA, USAID, CIA and even the US ambassador

• And much, much, more.

The Añez regime adopted policies that sought to wreck all these advances, something she nearly achieved in less than one year. Nothing too surprising here, a popular refrain among activists in Latin America goes like this: ‘whereas Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno took 3 years to wreck both the achievements of the Left government and the country’s economy, Bolsonaro did it in Brazil in 2; but Añez did it in only 6 months’. Thus, one of Añez’ first measures was a wave a mass lay-offs of public employees, compounded by a total lack of state support to companies, business, and workers in trouble due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

With regard to the pandemic, instead of taking extra measures of support, just as contagions and deaths raged, the de facto government not only expelled hundreds of Cuban doctors who were in Bolivia as part of Cuba’s collaboration with Evo’s government –literally days after the coup d’état – it also refused point blank to allocate extra resources to health so as to strengthen the fight against Coronavirus, and, for good measure, it reduced expenditure on health. But, when, forced by the pressure of mass mobilization, to make available extra resources to purchase health inputs, the minister in charge engaged in gross corruption leading to his resignation but not to a serious investigation or trial. The new authorities of Arce’s government have already instigated investigations in ‘emblematic’ corruption cases such as the overcharging in the purchase of ventilators; the hiring of cronies to work in state companies with huge salaries or unjustified stipends; millionaire ‘emergency’ contracts in YPFB (state/gas oil company) without due process or public legal tender thus massively defrauding the company; millions paid in ‘ghost’ contracts for public housing; and so forth.

Worse, by the end of 2020, the de facto government did not yet have a list of the companies that had closed down business caused by the pandemic, nor a clear idea of how many jobs had been lost in the country’s economy, even though the information was available. According to the Centro de Desarrollo Laboral y Agrario (Labour and Agrarian Development Centre) not only had poverty massively increased but unemployment had jumped from 4,3% to 9,6% in a country where the informal sector of employment has reached 80%.²

The neoliberal response of the de facto government to poverty, unemployment and the biting economic crisis was not policies but repression, thus thousands literally went hungry. A report at the time (May 2020) informed that about 1,7 million Bolivians were unable to cover the costs even of a basic food basket. The total neglect and lack of measures by Añez and Co allowed the pandemic to wreak havoc among the poorest with hundreds of thousands being infected and thousands dying. Thus, as Añez’ ‘interim government’ added illegitimacy to illegality, brutality to incompetence, and neoliberalism to corruption, the consequences of such a terrifying ‘Bolsonaresque’ cocktail the situation had created nearly 2 million new poor. And invariably their explanation to any criticism of such messy governance was to blame everything on Evo Morales and the MAS-IPSP government. And, as night follows day, Añez’ neoliberal ‘urges’ led her to end up requesting unnecessary financial emergency assistance from the IMF, which immediately obliged by issuing a loan of US$327 million with the customary onerous conditionalities undermining Bolivia’s hard-won economic sovereignty.

By 2020, the economy had shrunk by about 10% causing further unemployment, hardship and hunger, leading to mass protests, and, of course, more repression. Añez’ by now infamous minister of interior, Arturo Murillo, in response to this mass political opposition, said, “firing bullets [on protestors]would be what is required politically”. This was not idle rhetoric; the repressive forces had already perpetrated two massacres in November 2019, in Senkata (La Paz) and Sacaba (Cochabamba), about which a human rights organization reported 36 people dead and over 500 injured, describing the situation with the eloquent title “They shot us like animals’³.

As Añez’s government was only temporary with no constitutional or legal authority to change anything since its only task was to organise national elections, the extreme right wing coalition holding the reins of power used the pandemic as an excuse – about which it was doing very little – to postpone the elections, which it did four times. Thankfully, through mass pressure, political discipline, intelligent unity in action of the MAS-led mass movement, and the use of a few positions in the existing political edifice, the people managed to persuade (actually force) Añez’s de facto government to accept a legal decision by Parliament to hold elections on 18 October 2020, with the extraordinary above-mentioned results.

When the newly elected president, Luis Arce, who had been Evo’s minister of economic policy and architect of Bolivia’s impressive economic performance in the 2006-2019 period, announced that as his first political decision he was restoring full diplomatic relations with Cuba, Venezuela and Iran, it sent shivers down the spine of right wingers from Patagonia all the way to the Klondike.

Arce’s first economic measures were as interesting. First, there is the Bonus Against Hunger of 1,000 Bolivianos (US$150 / £100) aimed at the most disadvantaged (disabled, pregnant women, the elderly, the poorest, etc.) that will benefit about 4 million people. Secondly, a reduction of the tax on credit card payments from 13% to 8% and returning the difference (5%) to the customer, the return of VAT to low income people, and a tax on large fortunes over their assets on real and non-real estate, and income. Thirdly, to enter into negotiations with multilateral bodies (World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank) to obtain credit without economic or political conditionalities attached, and including a moratorium and condoning the country’s debt and the interest on it. Fourthly, if at all possible, avoid devaluation of the national currency so as to encourage economic growth, and foment import substitution among other reactivating policies. Fifthly, strengthen domestic economic demand so as to help reactivate economic activity via subsidies to the poorest and other segments of society. Sixthly, professionalization of the judiciary through merit and qualifications not by political quotas determined by the relative strength of existing political forces, a method Arce characterised as “useless”. And seventh, in the medium and long term to continue with the industrialization of lithium and iron, coupled with a programme towards food sovereignty, promotion of domestic tourism, export of electricity and the industrialization of gas, all within the context of keeping all these activities broadly under state control and ownership.

State expenditure on health and education to be increased to 10 and 11 percent, respectively. A crucial factor will be public investment, which is to be increased so as to bring about a rate of economic growth of 4,8% for 2021 (Añez had destroyed or dismantled all the ongoing public works, which Arce intends to retake and bring to completion as another plank for the reactivation of the domestic economy). In this connection, prompted by Arce, the MAS-IPSP majority in parliament has already passed legislation to ensure the implementation of all these urgent measures. To be noted is Arce’s decision to return the IMF loan contracted by Añez in 2020.⁴

Furthermore, Arce has developed a comprehensive strategic plan to combat Covid-19 involving rigorous methods to stop contagion, biosecurity measures at the workplace, strengthening existing medical facilities and furnishing them with appropriate equipment and health inputs, the carrying out of mass tests so as to substantially improve detection, the mass use of ancestral herbs to aid prevention, and mass vaccination. For the latter, Arce has secured the mass supply of vaccines from Russia and China (Sputnik V and Sinopharm respectively), and mass vaccination has already begun.

However, the decision by Arce to decree a law of sanitary emergency, thoroughly justified in the lethal context of the Covid-19 pandemic, is being used by doctors in the private sector to launch a national strike which has very little to do with their ostensible objection to the law as being ‘punitive’. A racist ultra right plot seems to be rearing its ugly head on the back of this clearly orchestrated destabilisation ‘mass action’ by reactionary forces. In support of the doctors, extreme right wing leader, Luis Camacho, on 20 February 2021, totally opposed the law of sanitary emergency, and called on the government to respect the health professionals, in effect threatening a (another) coup d’état.⁵

We should expect Bolivia’s right and extreme right to cooperate in unleashing anti-government mobilisations of ‘middle class’ groups such as doctors, lawyers, non-indigenous elite women, university students, commerce, private enterprise and the like. In other Latin American countries these groups are likely to receive millionaire subsidies funded by the US taxpayer and distributed by the US interventionist machinery through USAID, NED, and such like, as they did in Chile under Allende, and have done also, for example, in Nicaragua and Venezuela. This means that in the coming period we should expect all sorts of provocations, fake news, false flags, international demonization campaigns, with the almost guaranteed fervent support of the national and international mainstream corporate media (including not corporate, BBC and ‘progressive’ The Guardian in the UK, which at the time ‘editorialised’ that the coup had been Evo’s fault).⁶ In other words, the robust electoral victory of 18 October 2020 has taken Bolivia on the way to recuperate their democracy, reactivate their economy, restore all people’s social, political, economic and cultural, but the MAS-SPSP Arce government is not yet out of the difficult terrain: the road ahead is likely to be a tortuous and uphill battle.

This brings our analysis to the crucial matter of solidarity with the people of Bolivia and with the progressive transformation of that nation that begun in 2006 under the presidency of Evo. The key principle of solidarity with the people of Bolivia must be the unconditional defence of their right to self-determination and national sovereignty, thus opposing, rejecting and condemning any external interference especially coming, as it has done for so long, from the United States and its allies. Secondly, the full recovery of the economy, despite the formidable economic base built by Evo’s government in 2006-2013, will not at all be easy. The additional difficulty stems from the fact that the Covid-19 pandemic has triggered a protracted world economic crisis of rather gigantic proportions thereby depressing demand for raw materials and minerals, the strength of Bolivia’s economy.

This means that Bolivia’s right wing will use any economic complications or difficulties the Arce government may face, by mobilising –especially middle class-– discontent to oppose it thus, as Wiphalas Across the World has correctly stated: international solidarity played a fundamental role in helping the people of Bolivia to fight for a full year against the racist and fascist regime of Jeanine Añez, but this solidarity must be maintained for at least the next five years of reconstruction. It must be borne in mind that the explicit aim of the racist right wing opposition to the current MAS-IPSP Arce government, as it was with Evo’s government, is not to be a loyal opposition that respect the rules of the game, but to inflict a political/electoral defeat, and use every opportunity to capitalise on any problems that may arise seeking the violent overthrow of the democratically elected government. Furthermore, the persistent golpista threats from Bolivia’s reactionary forces are driven by an intensely racist hatred of the country’s indigenous majority.

Given this context, the full recuperation of democracy will present similar complexities. Among the many tasks there is the unavoidable one of bringing to trial all those guilty of corruption, law breaking, unconstitutional acts, and human rights atrocities. The latter raises the delicate but unavoidable matter of reforming the armed forces and the police to ensure they do not participate in supporting coup d’état in the future as they did in November 2019. Thus the road ahead will be littered with traps, provocations and dangers. In this connection, the solidarity movement must not rush to draw ultimatist, purist or doctrinaire conclusions from any difficult decision or tactical move the Arce government may be obliged to take.

More importantly, given its gigantic geopolitical significance, it is vital to continue organising solidarity to defend and help preserve the electoral and political victory of October 2020. Furthermore, the heroic triumph of the Bolivian people has dramatically contributed to changing the continental relation of forces in favour of progressive politics. The victory obtained in October 2020 is immense and precious, but precarious. We must do everything in our power to preserve it, defend it, and protect it.

But the good news is that his symptoms w  ere relatively mild and a fortnight later (on February 8) he was back at his morning press conference, apparently fully recovered and with inspiring energy and enthusiasm.

Nationalising Electric Power

The President continued dealing with some government business while in quarantine, and showed remarkable vigour with the announcement that on February 1st he had sent a formal proposal to Congress for an urgent reform of electric power legislation. The bill he proposes will give priority to power generation by the public Federal Electricity Commission (CFE by its Spanish initials), reversing 30 years of privatisation and in effect re-nationalising the industry.

The bill, which should be approved within 30 days, requires examination of all contracts with private operators for corrupt or illegal clauses, leading to their elimination and recovery of lost funds, an end to subsidies of private companies and restoration of national self-sufficiency in the sector.¹

Recent events make it clear that the essence of the 4T Transformation is to restore the power of the state – the Mexican Federal Government – to develop the country as an independent nation, indeed as a medium-sized power, on the basis of a productive national economy with social justice, aligned with its Latin American neighbours.

Mexico’s leading progressive daily La Jornada describes the electric power proposal as “probably the most important set of legal changes undertaken by the Fourth Transformation”. It fulfills a campaign promise, and “we should celebrate the fact that today the authorities are seeking to return to the people the property and the energy sovereignty given away by the corrupt and unscrupulous political class that took over the country during the long neoliberal night”.²

Back in the 1980s the public CFE generated all the country’s electricity, but by 2018 this had fallen to 54%. Further privatisation measures under President Peña Nieto (2012-18) led the CFE to financial losses of $450 million in 2017 and $1,900 million in the first half of 2018.

Giveaway contracts to foreign companies, in which the state built the infrastructure and transferred it to the private operators for free and also paid inflated rates for power generated (ripping off Mexican consumers in the process) are the explanation for these astronomical losses. The most notorious case was that of Spanish company Iberdrola which is now under investigation for bribery.

The new legislation does not outlaw private contracts but subjects them to strict control and confirms Mexican sovereignty in the sector. As La Jornada points out, regaining control of the industry and restoring it as a public asset will not be achieved overnight, but it is crucial for the country’s future.

When questioned as to possible friction with the US on this issue, AMLO declared that there has been no statement on the subject so far from Washington. He also showed the relevant clauses of the USMCA Trade Agreement which recognises Mexican energy sovereignty.

To make the matter crystal clear, the President displayed the public letter to the Mexican people by President Adolfo López Mateos on 27 September 1960, when electric power was first nationalised, in which López Mateos concluded with this dramatic statement: “People of Mexico, I release you from any obligation to obey future rulers who may try to give away our resources…”³

As if sent from on high to confirm AMLO’s views on energy sovereignty, in mid-February a massive snowstorm hit Texas, leading to serious power blackouts and leaving large numbers of people freezing, without electricity or gas and in some cases without water. The effects spilled over into northeastern Mexico (Coahuila, Nuevo León and neighbouring states) because of the import dependency resulting from neoliberal reforms. One journalist compared Texas to a “failed state” and pointed out that the disaster was not just due to the weather but to the extreme privatisation of the state’s power grid imposed by far-right state governments over the years.⁴

Law, Order and Justice

Reclaiming national control over key industries and resources goes hand-in-hand with restoring the power of the Federal Government to enforce law and order, which had been seriously undermined by more than three decades of neoliberal privatisation and corruption. The pervasive growth of organised crime, and a response by the authorities which alternated between ineffective policing and indiscriminate military repression, left the country in a state of social and political decomposition.

This accounts for Mexico’s appalling record on human rights of all kinds which was from the beginning a fundamental issue for AMLO and the 4T Transformation. Homicides, femicides, forced disappearances and criminal violence in general naturally grab the headlines, and the government is engaged in a tenacious struggle to root out corruption, reform the justice system and end impunity. But it is important to see these issues in context and avoid jumping to conclusions; as in all his actions, AMLO’s approach to this does not necessarily conform to conventional liberal nostrums which prioritise the role of “civil society” and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). In his view, many NGOs have become lucrative careerist outfits pursuing self-serving or political agendas.

AMLO has made investigation of homicides and forced disappearances a top priority, engaging personally with families and communities affected by such appalling crimes, beginning with relatives of the 43 students in the Ayotzinapa case. Such cases are complex and more importantly they present serious obstacles arising from the entrenched interests of corrupt and repressive networks linked to the old regime.

As the Deputy Secretary of the interior Ministry, Alejandro Encinas, declared in a recent press conference,⁵ “We are treading on the tiger’s tale”, and it is to be expected that the investigation will face media distortions, threats and potential violence. But he insisted that they will continue and that progress is being made.

Indeed in the Ayotzinapa case the Special Attorney’s Office established by the President has succeeded in debunking the “official story” invented by the previous government as a cover-up, and has arrested a total of 80 individuals on charges related to the case.⁶ A great deal remains to be done and the investigation is linked to a coordinated effort to overcome bureaucratic inertia and political sabotage by vested interests.

At the January 29 press conference the head of the National Search Commission, Carla Quintana, reported on efforts to reinforce the forensic capacity of regional authorities. State Search Commissions now exist throughout the country and the federal authorities are working systematically with families, communities and international organisations to establish appropriate protocols. There is now a national registry of all documented disappearances which is available for general public consultation.

Another crucial human rights issue which is a matter of great public concern is gender violence. The government has created a Transversal Programme Against Gender Violence across departments at the highest level, with weekly meetings.⁷ There are 24 State Panels for Promotion of Peace & Security focusing particularly on protection of women and children, with (so far) 117 local networks of Women Peace Promoters working on solutions.⁸ There is now gender parity in the Federal Cabinet and official recognition that the 4T Transformation is feminist.

Effective Policing and Intelligence

The search for truth and justice in relation to past crimes goes hand-in-hand with efforts to reduce current levels of violence and criminality. Effective policing based on community cooperation and intelligence rather than brute force is the way forward, hence the importance of the National Guard (GN), trained in human rights and with a growing presence throughout the country. As of January 2021 the GN had 172 barracks (of a planned total of 266),⁹ with 93,000 active personnel; given the unreliability and corruption of many state and municipal police forces, this large-scale federal presence is crucial for public security. It is also significant that in December 2020 AMLO appointed a woman, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, as Secretary of Security & Public Protection, responsible among other things for the GN.¹⁰

AMLO’s critics, particularly on the left, condemn what they see as the “militarisation” of public security, but they have no answer as to how security is to be achieved and the law enforced given the pervasive presence of organised crime. Only restoration of the state’s monopoly of legitimate force, coupled with effective detection and impartial, corruption-free administration of justice, will achieve a long-term reduction of criminality, and on all these fronts AMLO is moving forward steadily.

Serious crimes continue to occur with disturbing frequency; the difference is that there is an immediate response from the federal authorities, and there is no attempt at a cover-up, or if there are signs of a cover-up by local authorities, the federal government takes action to investigate and ensure justice is done.

Thus in late January, just when US President Biden had announced his intention to implement a radical change of migration law and AMLO had expressed hope that treatment of migrants would improve substantially, there occurred a massacre of 17 people, Guatemalans and Mexicans, shot dead in a truck in the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas.

The response from Interior Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero (and then from AMLO when he returned from his Covid convalescence) was immediate, and within days 12 members of the Tamaulipas State Police were arrested on suspicion of responsibility and other local officials were dismissed. Sánchez Cordero also declared in response to questions that in relation to the abuse of migrants in general, the government has dismissed dozens of employees, presumably for abuse or negligence.¹¹

The case was raised again in questions at the press conference on February 11, and AMLO did not mince words. He explained that the border area in Tamaulipas (with Texas) is the most violent of all, with confrontations between two criminal gangs and between them and the state police, with the criminals often wearing military uniforms. Action was only taken when the federal government intervened, but now in addition to the arrest of local police officers there are Mexican migration officials who have been charged.¹²

The President insisted that they are working with the Biden administration for change in the entire system, and that their number one priority in this respect is the welfare of migrants. This is why Mexico previously closed its southern border to prevent the unchecked entry of migrants, granting them the option of applying for asylum in Mexico, and trying to ensure good treatment in camps on the southern border because the northern border is where they are in greatest danger. Mexico is also providing development assistance to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador and urging the US to do the same so that citizens of these countries will not feel obliged to leave.

Another headline case is that of Mariana Sánchez Dávalos, a medical student doing social service in Ocosingo, Chiapas, who was raped and murdered in what seems like a classic case of femicide.¹³ Outrage from students and women’s organisations has been followed by an arrest and the resignation of a local official (the case is ongoing).

Also in the President’s morning press conference on 9 February a woman from Cancún identified herself as one of several female victims of repression by local police in an incident which occurred three months before (she had been shot in the leg and others were injured by police using live ammunition to suppress a peaceful demonstration); she said all their efforts to obtain justice had been ignored. AMLO responded that she would be received immediately by the Interior Secretary to deal with the matter.¹⁴

As the President insisted, all of these lamentable crimes are a product of the situation of social decay inherited from the previous neoliberal regime. His government is doing all it can to rectify the situation, but it will take time.

Political Corruption the Key Issue

The fundamental problem here, as AMLO never tires of explaining, is corruption: corruption of the justice system, of the police, of the military, of the civil servants and above all, of the politicians. Moreover – he insists – the problem started at the top, which is why it was so important to end the immunity from prosecution of former (and current) presidents and to pursue legal cases against former ministers or directors of public enterprises like PEMEX. The intention, by encouraging citizen complaints, whistle-blowing and investigation, is to document as many cases of corruption and/or violation of human rights as possible and to take legal action through a reinvigorated justice system.

This is also why AMLO does not share the liberal obsession with condemnation of the military as the main solution to the country’s problems. He is well aware that corruption had also penetrated the military and that some officers and units were responsible for brutal repression (and they like all delinquent officials should answer for their crimes), but in his view the root of the problem lies among civilians, above all politicians.

It was politicians – former President Felipe Calderón and his Security Chief García Luna – who ordered the brutal militarised War on Drugs which caused much innocent blood to be shed, and who authorised the illegal “Fast & Furious” intervention by armed US personnel. It was politicians – former President Enrique Peña Nieto with backing from his PRI party and the “opposition” PAN and PRD, apparently brought on side by having their palms generously greased – who pushed through the privatising Energy Reform which virtually destroyed PEMEX and the CFE and cost Mexico billions of dollars.

The solution in AMLO’s view is to make politicians accountable (ending immunity from prosecution and instituting the right of recall are steps in that direction). Reform of the justice system (including, again, preventing politicians from appointing or dismissing judges) and reform of the police and military are also essential: not as some NGOs would have it, by weakening these institutions or campaigning against them, but by reinforcing their community links, instilling a consciousness of their popular and patriotic roots, and providing training in human rights.

AMLO’s approach from the start has been to emphasise the revolutionary origins of the Mexican military, their roots in the working class and peasantry and the historical contribution of armed insurgency to the country’s development. The 4T Transformation is peaceful and democratic and repression of any kind is excluded, but the heroic struggle for independence and the early 20th-century uprising against the Díaz dictatorship and for social justice are key elements of the 4T ideology.

On several occasions AMLO has expressed his admiration for General Lázaro Cárdenas, a revolutionary who became president from 1934 to 1940 and who did more than any other president to distribute land to the peasants, who promoted workers’ rights and nationalised the oil in 1938. On 15 January this year AMLO visited the port on the Pacific coast named after Cárdenas, as part of the current plan to eliminate corruption in the customs administration and promote development of the port. He stressed Cárdenas’ contribution to the country’s infrastructure through hydroelectric dams, highways and ports.¹⁵

Then on 14 February AMLO organised a major symbolic gathering in the village of Cuilápam, Oaxaca, to commemorate the 190th anniversary of the execution of Vicente Guerrero, an Afro-Indigenous hero of the Independence struggle against Spain, hitherto rather neglected in the country’s historical iconography.¹⁶ In a short-lived presidency in 1829 Guerrero decreed the abolition of slavery and promoted public education and land reform before being overthrown by a conservative revolt and then executed.

The event was attended by the State Governors of Oaxaca and Guerrero (named after the valiant leader) and several other dignitaries including Martin Luther King III, son of the great US martyr of the Civil Rights movement. It would be difficult to find a more appropriate figure than Guerrero to symbolise AMLO’s intent.

David L. Raby is a writer, political activist and retired academic living in Norwich (UK). Professor Emeritus in Latin American History, University of Toronto, and former Senior Fellow in Latin American Studies, University of Liverpool. Former City Councillor in Norwich. Executive member, Venezuela Solidarity Campaign; Chair, Norwich-El Viejo (Nicaragua) Twinning Link. He can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @DLRaby.

First of all, it is important to remember that only the United Nations Security Council has the capacity to impose sanctions at the international level, in accordance with Articles 39 and 41 of the United Nations Charter. Therefore, sanctions imposed by the European Union only have legitimacy when they are imposed on countries of the European Union itself. The rest are illegal and unilateral coercive measures that the United States and the EU impose on some countries as a form of collective punishment.

But in addition, sanctions and blockades in the midst of a global pandemic such as COVID-19 are even more outrageous, if that is possible. The UN Human Rights Council has already expressed its concern about these unilateral extraterritorial coercive measures, and the Special Rapporteur herself requested that these measures be lifted or eased so that people could receive basic products such as disinfectants, soap, ventilators or other medical equipment for hospitals.

From the European Union…

And in the midst of this context, the European Union decides to adopt its own comprehensive sanctions regime. It is worth mentioning that the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy has already been increasingly resorting to sanctions for some time now, as an alleged “method” of defending human rights in other countries. Thus, we have reached the point where the EU accounts for approximately 36% of the sanctions imposed worldwide, with the European Parliament being a key player in all this.

Let’s focus on the facts, the European Parliament has repeatedly defended these years ago the need to create a mechanism at European level on sanctions against human rights violations, despite the fact that – as we already know – the legality of these sanctions are in question.

Precisely in March 2019, a resolution on a European sanctions regime was adopted and already at the end of that same year, but especially throughout 2020, both the European Council, as well as the foreign ministries of the Member States and the EU High Representative (formerly Federica Mogherini, now Josep Borrell) set out to design this European sanctions policy. The Netherlands was undoubtedly the leading country within the European Union on this issue.

Finally, the framework of this comprehensive EU sanctions regime came into force on December 8, 2020, following its approval by the Council.

Perhaps some of you have heard of this European sanctions regime referred to as the “EU Magnitsky Act”. It does not yet have an official name, however right-wing and far-right groups in the European Parliament have so named it, in clear reference to the law that in 2012 the United States introduced to punish Russian officials accused of the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, and which became a globally applicable law that authorizes the US government to sanction whoever, that government itself and unilaterally, considers to be in violation of human rights.

As an overview of this regime that is about to see the light of day in the European Union, we can say that, in theory, it seeks to prosecute persons, entities and bodies (both state and non-state) that are responsible for serious human rights violations and abuses anywhere in the world. Persons and entities providing financial, technical or material support to persons/entities on this list, who may also be subject to prosecution.

Sanctions will consist of travel bans, and freezing of funds and economic resources – again, on both individuals and entities. And individuals and entities of the European Union will be prohibited from providing financial, technical or material support to those on the list.

The human rights violations and abuses addressed by the regime are genocide, crimes against humanity, torture and other cruel treatment, slavery, extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearance of persons, and arbitrary detention. It also addresses those violations or abuses that are widespread, systematic or otherwise of concern to the objectives of the Common Foreign and Security Policy.

Who includes these persons or entities on this famous list? Well, the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy may submit proposals to the Council, and then it will be the Council who, on the basis of these proposals, will decide on the final list. This list will have to be approved unanimously by all the Member States.

Here I would like to highlight one thing: the whole process, including who may or may not be considered on the list, is confidential. And the application of sanctions will be the responsibility of the member states. There is therefore no independent body in this process, and both civil society and the European Parliament are once again excluded from the process. Nor are any objective criteria proposed for deciding on sanctions.

Negative points to highlight

1) On the one hand, it is worrying that this is a mechanism that will almost certainly be used as a new tool of interference towards third countries, weaponizing human rights.

2) There are no uniform and objective criteria on the table to decide on the application of sanctions. What does this mean? What we already know: that if the human rights violators are from friendly countries, surely there will be no consequences.

3) Also notable is the lack of transparency throughout the process and in the decision making. In addition, the process by which information is obtained on individuals or entities is not transparent, and many times this information is obtained from intelligence services.

4) While it is true that the European Union is putting a lot of emphasis on the fact that this is a targeted sanctions mechanism (i.e., not a whole country), we know that targeted sanctions do not prevent harm to the civilian population of a country.

Correlation of forces in the European Parliament

For us it is a matter of principle to strongly oppose this future European sanctions regime. In the coming months we will certainly have debates on this issue in the European Parliament but, honestly, it is not easy for us.

We have to understand the reality of the European Parliament, where the tendency of the right but especially of the extreme right is very strong, and the latter are gaining more and more hegemony in political discourse despite not having a numerical majority. Right now there is representation of the extreme right in the parliamentary group of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), in the parliamentary group Identity and Democracy (ID) and also within the European People’s Party (EPP) itself, which accepted to have in its ranks the formation of Viktor Orbán (Hungary). In other words, we have extreme right-wing members in no more and no less than 3 of the 7 parliamentary groups.

And this is causing us to witness debates in which, even from groups self-defined as progressive, their hate speech is being assumed with total normality in the parliamentary seat. An example of this can be seen in how the European Parliament has dealt with the issue of the new Pact on Migration and Asylum, accepting with very little questioning that the European foreign policy in this regard is that of more Fortress Europe, more deportations, more agreements with third countries to accelerate the expulsions of people who come to our continent fleeing conflicts, and where it is intended to allow Member States that do not want to receive migrants, to put money to pay for their returns. This is a scandal in terms of human rights, and yet it is only a few of us who are pointing it out and denouncing it. But the most scandalous and illustrative case of inferiority complex and capitulation to ultra-right positions on the part of the majority of the European Parliament was the approval of an infamous resolution in which communism was equated with Nazism and fascism.

It is the same with sanctions. When there are such debates in the European Parliament, it is accepted almost as a matter of course that imposing unilateral sanctions is part of the EU’s foreign policy competences. And unfortunately, this is accepted not only by the extreme right-wing groups.

This is the correlation of forces in the European Parliament, we cannot fool ourselves. To this, we must add what we have been denouncing for some time, and that is that the foreign policy of the European Union is constantly subordinated to the foreign policy of the United States. Our position is clear, and whenever we can we emphasize it to Mr. Vice President and High Representative, Josep Borrell: we urgently need the EU to abandon its subordination to Washington and have an autonomous foreign policy.

Otherwise things like this happen: we are now on the verge of approving a sanctions mechanism, as the United States has, making the European Union fall into illegality as well. A European mechanism that, to all appearances, will continue to be used to fire against the countries that the United States targets: China, Russia, Venezuela, Iran…. and that will never be used against the Saudi or Israeli regimes, nor against the Colombian narco-government or against many others that systematically violate human rights but are protected by the U.S. administration.

I repeat again: only the United Nations Security Council has the capacity to impose international sanctions, everything else is to want to ignore international law.

To conclude…

In short and in conclusion, as you can see, the scenario is not at all encouraging for the European Union. This new policy will be added to the cruel policies of sanctions that the US continues to carry out. We cannot forget that the arrival of Trump to the White House was a strong brake on the progress made by the Obama administration in US-Cuba relations, even limiting remittances from the United States to the island, knowing that they are a source of income of high significance in its economy, and also limited non-family travel by Americans. More recently, in September 2020, Trump unveiled a ban on U.S. citizens staying in hotels with ownership ties to the Cuban government.

What to say about Venezuela, where unilateral sanctions have ended up causing the country to receive today only 1% of the foreign currency it received in 2014 from oil sales, when it is undoubtedly one of the main engines of the national economy. In the European Parliament the debates on this country are continuous, the EU has already established the travel ban to some officials and the embargo of assets held in banks of the European bloc, and in November it informed that it will extend until November 2021 the sanctions, with the objective of “promoting democratic solutions and bringing about political stability”.

And finally, the EU also pronounced itself against Nicaragua. In October, a resolution was approved by an overwhelming majority (609 votes in favour, 21 against, 64 abstentions), calling for new sanctions against Managua.

The future of the EU sanctions regime will be on the table in the coming months and it is foreseeable that we will have several debates on this issue. For our part, we will continue to stand for coherence: rejection of unilateral sanctions that do not contribute in any way to peace or stability; and that are nothing more than a terrible policy of weaponization of human rights to put them at the service of the interests of certain powers.

Those of us, who truly defend human rights, respect for sovereignty and peace, will continue to support respect for international law.

Manu Pineda is a Member of the European Parliament for Izquierda Unida, Spain’s United Left. This article was originally presented by Manu as a speech at a conference opposing US and EU sanctions on Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela.

In the same vein he has insisted that no-one is above the law, and not only did he succeed in getting legal approval for a public vote on possible prosecution of corrupt ex-presidents, he has now persuaded a reluctant legislature to pass a constitutional reform eliminating immunity from prosecution for sitting presidents, starting with himself.

AMLO has repeatedly proclaimed his respect for the autonomy of the justice system, starting at the top with the appointment of a highly respected independent legal expert, Alejandro Gertz Manero, as Fiscal General (Attorney-General). But prosecutions for financial and administrative wrongdoing or human rights violations are complex and time-consuming, and many Mexicans are naturally impatient to see results. Moreover, the entire justice system – like the public administration as a whole – needs reform. It is as the President says rather like “pushing an elephant”.

Also crucial to the Transformation project is insistence on sovereignty and self-determination for all nations: a key principle of foreign policy with support for progressive governments in Latin America, and above all in the defence of Mexico’s own sovereignty and freedom from interference.

AMLO and his Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard have sought to cultivate cooperative but sovereign relations in all fields, including justice, with the US (and other relevant partners such as Canada and Spain). It is not surprising that some of the most important suspects wanted on charges of corruption in previous Mexican administrations have been arrested abroad: Genaro García Luna (ex-president Calderón’s head of public security) in New York, Emilio Lozoya (head of PEMEX under ex-president Enrique Peña Nieto) in Spain, and César Duarte (former Governor of Chihuahua) in Florida. But both García Luna and Duarte are US residents and therefore subject to both US and Mexican jurisdiction, while Lozoya was arrested via Interpol on a Mexican warrant and subsequently extradited back to Mexico.

The Cienfuegos Case

Much more controversial, and sensitive for Mexico, was the arrest on October 15th at Los Angeles airport of General (retired) Salvador Cienfuegos, former head of the Mexican army, on narcotics charges. Cienfuegos is not a US resident and apparently has no financial interests there, and arrived with his family as a tourist when he was suddenly arrested.

The initial reaction of many – including quite a few supporters of AMLO and the 4T Transformation – was to assume that the General was guilty and that the Mexican Government would accept the situation. They could not have been more mistaken.

There was no immediate public comment from the Mexican authorities, but in private they immediately expressed to the US Ambassador their discontent at the lack of prior consultation. Then on October 28th Mexico sent a diplomatic note on the subject, and two days later they received a communication from the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) with a 732-page file of legal documents.

Foreign Secretary Ebrard had a further conversation with US Attorney-General William Barr, and in mid-November there was a joint declaration reaffirming existing arrangements on judicial cooperation. On November 18th a US judge in New York (where the General had been taken under custody) agreed to drop charges in order for the accused to be transferred to Mexico for further investigation and possible trial in his own country.

There was of course speculation on both sides of the border that AMLO might be giving in to pressure from the Mexican military and abandoning his pledge to end impunity. But both the President and Ebrard were emphatic in saying that no-one, including the General, is above the law, and that criminal investigation of individual officers does not affect civil-military relations as a whole or the importance of the Armed Forces for the Transformation project. The Mexican Fiscal General will now take charge of the investigation.

The ramifications of this are profound. More than ever, Mexico is proclaiming its judicial sovereignty, and it has scored a notable victory in persuading the US to back down. It would be ingenuous to assume that US prosecutions of Mexican officials, even when based on sound legal grounds as in the García Luna case, have an altruistic motivation.

It is remarkable that the 732-page DEA file on Cienfuegos goes all the way back to 2013, yet no action was taken until now. As pointed out in a trenchant article by John M Ackerman, “Espionage by US authorities against Cienfuegos since 2013 was never intended to struggle against corruption or combat drug trafficking. These two issues are of no concern to the US so long as foreign governments maintain blind obedience to Washington.”¹ Rather such intelligence gathering would be aimed at obtaining compromising information with which to blackmail Mexico.

Ackerman points out that the US could have taken action against Cienfuegos during the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto who was his boss, but they had no interest in doing so given the corrupt servility of the PRI President to Washington. The decision to arrest the General this year, without any prior warning, was surely aimed at reasserting control over Mexico now that AMLO is taking measures to reclaim sovereignty.

Indeed, the issue of sovereignty has been made very explicit, not only in the successful Mexican demand for the return of Cienfuegos but in other declarations by Ebrard. In response to a journalist’s question about the possible presence of DEA officers in Mexico, the Foreign Secretary declared that any US agent must respect Mexican law and could not therefore bear arms.² This is being followed up by a legislative proposal in the Mexican Congress to regulate the activities of all foreign agents, which has already prompted a critical response from US Attorney-General William Barr who says it will “make cooperation more difficult” and favour organised crime.³ The chequered role of the DEA and other US agencies in favouring organised crime when it suits them, going back at least to the Iran-Contra affair, is not of course considered by Barr.

Domestic Justice Reform

Domestically also AMLO’s quest for justice continues to advance despite many obstacles. Mexican Attorney-General Gertz Manero has now formalised a case against Calderón’s Security Chief García Luna and a request for his extradition has been filed with US authorities, in another indication of Mexico’s determination to take responsibility for its own dirty linen.

Most important, a Constitutional Reform of the Federal Justice System has just been approved by both houses of the Mexican Congress.⁴ The product of two years’ work, it was prepared by justice department officials and then accepted by AMLO who of course had expressed his desire for such a reform ever since his inauguration (or before). Respecting judicial autonomy as far as possible (always a fine line to tread), the President did not interfere in the process other than to indicate that it must promote impartiality and professionalism, combat corruption and nepotism and guarantee equal access to justice.

Arturo Zaldívar, President of the Supreme Court, indicates that the reform will place human rights at the centre of all judicial decisions. The judicial career will be professionalised as never before: all judges must have attended a reformed Judicial College and be appointed by public examination (oposición), and not by politicians as often used to happen. There must also be gender parity in the profession.

Similar measures will improve the legal aid system; in Zaldívar’s words “We will reach all corners of the country to provide legal defence and advice of the highest quality to the marginalised, the poor and abandoned so that the poorest will not be the only ones who lose in the justice system.”

These are noble words; the hard task will be to put them into practice. It will take time and determination, but certainly the new system of judicial training and appointments should make a real difference.

In the meantime AMLO’s commitment to justice is constantly demonstrated by specific decisions announced in his morning press conferences. November 25th was the International Day to Combat Violence Against Women, and AMLO brought along several women directors of relevant programmes to report directly to the public. Leading the team was Home Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero who spoke passionately about efforts to combat femicide and domestic abuse.⁵ She also pointed out the need to overcome corruption, bureaucratic inertia and legal obscurantism in the justice system: far too many judges relied on legal technicalities which only served to prevent authentic justice.

AMLO declared his agreement with this: the much-proclaimed “Rule of Law” should not mean just formal legality but the “Rule of Justice”. He has taken a clear stand on a number of individual cases of flagrant injustice which have been brought to his attention. A particularly moving case is that of a young man in Sinaloa framed by corrupt authorities on drugs and illegal weapons charges, and jailed for years despite new evidence in his favour and confirmation that he had been tortured; the case was brought to the press conference on December 10th (Human Rights Day) by his mother, a local journalist, who was at her wits’ end. AMLO declared he would immediately grant a pardon if he could; the very next day the young man was released, and the mother, overcome with emotion, came to thank the President.⁶

Of course such individual decisions do not change the system, and most aggrieved parties cannot get to the press conferences. But there are signs that attitudes are changing in the justice system and the entire public administration. As well as the judicial reform already mentioned, there are several initiatives in other departments that have legal and judicial implications. For example, the Fiscal Investigations Unit (UIF by its Spanish initials) of the Finance Ministry, under its outstanding Director Santiago Nieto, has been working tirelessly to expose financial wrongdoing and has greatly increased the number of bank accounts blocked or suspended for fraud or money-laundering;⁷ it works closely with the Fiscalía to bring prosecutions. Similarly the Secretary of Public Administration, Irma Eréndira Sandoval, has been working with great diligence to uncover malpractice by civil servants and refer them to the justice system.

AMLO constantly announces decisions which help to “push the elephant” of government in the right direction. Thus on December 7th he announced the appointment of women to five key positions: Economy Minister, Head of the Bank of Mexico, Federal Treasurer, Director of the National Statistical Office and Director of Merchant Marine.⁸ The wheels of justice, and of public administration, may move slowly, but they are moving, and if AMLO can really change the justice system his Transformation will indeed be a success. Moreover real justice, and real transformation, can only achieved if the country can demonstrate its sovereignty and independence. Relations with the “Colossus of the North” must be based on mutual acceptance and respect.

A History Fraught with Conflict

Mexico’s relationship with the US has been problematic ever since independence in the early 19th century and the war of 1846-48 which deprived it of more than half its territory, from Texas to California and including several other states. A pattern of intimidation and actual military invasion continued down to the early 20th century and contributed to a deep-rooted Mexican distrust, even if good relations prevailed at times.

Recent weeks have witnessed two significant anniversaries: November 20th marked 110 years since the formal beginning of the great Mexican revolution, and December 1st saw the completion of two years since AMLO’s inauguration. Although celebrations were low-key due to Covid-19 restrictions, the President emphasised his achievements in office and also made clear the importance of the revolution for Mexico and Latin America.

AMLO claims that the essential foundations of his 4T Transformation have now been laid. With an impressive array of social programmes based on the principle “For the Good of All, First the Poor”, with a reassertion of the role of the state and the public sector, with the principle of official modesty and frugality (Austeridad Republicana), with a systematic campaign to end corruption and impunity, with investment in a wide range of public works and an independent foreign policy based on national sovereignty and respect for the self-determination of all nations, the achievements are remarkable. Much remains to be done, but AMLO’s impact is clear if only from the growing hysteria of the opposition and the hostility of the media, both national and international.

As for the 1910-20 Mexican revolution, even in Latin America it is little understood, partly because it occurred well before the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions or the Chilean Popular Unity, let alone Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and other more recent upheavals. Also the lack of a vanguard party or socialist programme has led to a certain condescension on the part of the orthodox left (who ought to know better since neither Cuba, Nicaragua nor Venezuela followed the prescribed rulebook). But the Mexican revolutionary forces led by Emiliano Zapata, Francisco Villa, Alvaro Obregón and others numbered in the tens of thousands and were “the greatest popular armies in the history of Latin America, bearing dreams and injustices and transformation with their actions”⁹ The result also, while lacking in a number of ways, was a profound renewal of the second most populous country in the region.

The 1910 uprising brought to an end the 34-year dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, one of the first and greatest examples of neocolonial exploitation of a formally independent nation (since most of Africa and Asia were then actual colonies of European powers). Under Díaz foreign capital – primarily from the US and Britain – took control of mines and plantations on a huge scale and built railways to ship out the products. Indigenous communities lost more land than even in colonial times, rural workers were subjected to debt slavery and urban workers in mines, railways and factories were denied all rights and repressed by force.

A call to arms by a wealthy democratic idealist, Francisco I Madero, would lead to successful mass revolt, and despite much factional conflict and bloodshed Mexico achieved a new progressive Constitution in 1917. The following decades would bring a vast agrarian reform (the first in Latin America), a rural public education programme (also without precedent in the region), an advanced labour code and the 1938 oil nationalisation (described at the time as Mexico’s second independence).

AMLO has repeatedly referred to the Porfiriato – the 34-year Díaz dictatorship – as a precedent for the 36 years of neoliberalism that preceded his own victory in 2018. The corruption, the inequality and the sellout to foreign interests were indeed very similar. US interests were predominant in financing the Díaz regime, and when in 1913 Mexican conservatives organised a brutal coup against the democratic President Madero, US Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson was directly involved in the coup, something of which AMLO has reminded his audience on several occasions.

After this, US intervention in the armed conflicts of the revolution was limited and in no way decisive: they occupied the port of Veracruz for six months in 1914 (paradoxically tending to favour the revolutionaries fighting the coup regime), and in 1916 General Pershing led a futile punitive expedition chasing around the mountains of Chihuahua in retaliation for a raid on a US border town by Pancho Villa.

Washington refrained from further intervention, and the reforming Mexican governments of the 1920s and 1930s were able to negotiate differences without conflict. A key factor in this was that the major socialising reforms (land redistribution, support for labour and the oil expropriation) carried out by the great President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-40) coincided with the administration of Franklin D Roosevelt with his New Deal and Good Neighbor Policy. FDR was without doubt the most progressive US President of the 20th century and was also preoccupied with the rise of fascism in Europe. Again, AMLO has repeatedly expressed his admiration for Cárdenas, “the president who showed most love for the common people”.

It is no accident that from the 1940s onwards the post-revolutionary Mexican regime became more conservative, more pro-capitalist and more corrupt. The one-party rule of the PRI, based on patronage and astute manipulation of the revolutionary legacy, was tolerated by Washington until the global neoliberal wave initiated with Thatcher and Reagan swept Mexico along into what AMLO calls “Neo-Porfirismo”, the modern equivalent of the privatising, plutocratic and corrupt Díaz dictatorship.

To achieve justice – social, economic and legal – after 1910 required a decade of armed struggle in which hundreds of thousands died in Mexico’s third great transformation (the first being Independence from Spain and the second, the Liberal Reform of the 1850s-1860s). AMLO’s aim is to achieve justice once again with a Fourth Transformation, but one which is to be peaceful and democratic: an extraordinary challenge requiring exceptional political skill, mass popular support and a relationship with Washington based on respect, restraint, and sovereignty.

David L Raby is a writer, political activist and retired academic living in Norwich (UK). Professor Emeritus in Latin American History, University of Toronto, and former Senior Fellow in Latin American History, University of Liverpool. Former City Councillor in Norwich. Executive member, Venezuela Solidarity Campaign; Chair, Norwich-El Viejo (Nicaragua) Twinning Link. He can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @DLRaby.

 Francisco Dominguez¹ writes:

Before the 23 of January 2019, Juan Guaidó was an unknown entity. He acquired notoriety due to a series of coincidences … and decisions made in Washington. The practice of annually rotating the National Assembly’s presidency among the parties holding the majority meant that in 2019-2020 it was the turn of the extreme right-wing party, Voluntad Popular (VP); unfortunately, all VP’s key figures (Leopoldo López, Freddy Guevara) were under arrest or were fugitives of the law for their participation in seditious and violent acts against the Venezuelan state. Guaidó happened to be the next in line making him rightfully president of the National Assembly.² In a bold move he (and Washington) decided he would proclaim himself “interim president” of Venezuela. His self-proclamation that was to catapult him into the world’s media limelight was part of Washington’s “regime change” strategy.

Mr. Guaidó’s “interim presidency” lacks constitutional or legal bases and his self-proclamation occurred in a public square in Caracas, in front of a small group of supporters. Guaidó has never been elected president of Venezuela nor has he ever stood as a presidential candidate for any election. His claim that his “interim presidency’ rests on the Venezuelan Constitution’s Art 233 is thoroughly false; the article reads: The President of the Republic shall become permanently unavailable to serve by reason of any of the following events: death; resignation; removal from office by decision of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice; permanent physical or mental disability certified by a medical board designated by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice with the approval of the National Assembly; abandonment of his position, duly declared by the National Assembly; and recall by popular vote.³ President Maduro is alive, has not resigned, has not been removed from office, is not physically or mentally incapacitated, has not abandoned the Presidency, and has not been recalled by popular vote. Additionally, the notion of ‘interim presidency’ does not exist in the Venezuelan Constitution. This ought to have been sufficient for European governments to never extend recognition, whatever they may think of President Maduro’s government.

The recognition of Juan Guaidó as “interim president” of Venezuela by European governments violates all basic principles informing political legitimacy, and should have never been awarded. The decision to award recognition is the result of political blackmail. Pedro Sánchez warned the Bolivarian government of Venezuela, on the EU’s behalf, that unless presidential elections, preferably without President Maduro as a candidate, were held within 8 days, the EU would have to recognise Guaidó. On this shaky, arrogant, and calculating basis EU governments proceeded to toe Trump’s line of elevating Mr Guaidó to the fictional position of “president” of Venezuela.

Ever since Jan-Feb 2019, Mr Guaidó has behaved abysmally.

In February 2019, Guaidó in complicity with the Colombian government, narco-paramilitaries, and the US government (Mike Pompeo), on the pretence of a concert at the Colombian border, tried to violently push ‘humanitarian aid’ into Venezuela by military means. The plan was sinister; it was naturally expected that Venezuela would oppose the illegal and violent action and it was intended to charge President Maduro with refusing to allow aid to his people, followed by serious military confrontation.

Guaidó made it to the concert through Colombian territory where he received military protection from the Los Rastrojos criminal narco-paramilitary gang, who Guaidó took several selfies with. The intensely anti-Chavista UK newspaper, The Guardian (14/09/2019) wrote: “Juan Guaidó, the Venezuelan politician fighting to topple Nicolás Maduro, is facing awkward questions about his relationship with organised crime after the publication of compromising photographs showing him with two Colombian paramilitaries.” It was revealed later that one truck was set on fire, by Guaidó supporters. The media had blamed President Maduro. The episode did not merit comment from European governments: was their silence forgiveness?

On 30^th April 2019, Juan Guaidó led probably the most televised coup d’état in the history of Latin America. One wonders which features of this illegal, unconstitutional and armed action to violently overthrow President Maduro’s government – with incalculable consequences in human lives – are the European governments not prepared to condemn? The scandalously bland statement by the EU and European Parliament was inconsistent with the intense harshness and speed with which they are prepared to condemn the Maduro government. Euronews reported “Guaidó defiant after failed coup attempt.”

Mr Guaidó was complicit with the UK’s right-wing government in setting up a secret “Unit for the Reconstruction of Venezuela”. Records show that Guaidó and his entourage were prepared to offer oil and infrastructure contracts, and the restructuring of Venezuela’s debt, whilst his ‘ambassador’ to the UK, Vanessa Neumann, was reportedly prepared to surrender the Essequibo region in exchange for political support from the UK government. In short, Guaidó and his ‘team’ were ready to betray their nation on almost everything.

In May 2020 Guaidó contracted US-led mercenaries to launch an attack (‘Operation Gedeon’) against his own nation and to assassinate President Maduro and high officials in the government, followed – as stated in the contract – by a Pinochet-style purge aimed at the thorough eradication of Chavismo from Venezuela. Here again, the European governments either pretended the event did not happen or they confined themselves to lame and soft generalities, a far cry from their unforgiving criticism of the Maduro government.

Guaidó has deliberately complicated the Venezuelan government’s access to 31 tons of gold in custody in the custody of the Bank of England on the ‘merits’ of his ‘interim presidency’. The gold is needed for the purchase of food, medicine and vital health inputs in order to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, through the UN Development Programme (UNDP). The Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV)’s appeal led the UK Appeals Court to annul a first verdict giving Guaidó access to the gold.

It is preposterous to imagine Guaidó having the capacity or the will to make good use of those resources. In Venezuela he has no control whatsoever, and given his obsession with imposing more sanctions on his own country, it is doubtful that he would spend money on the people of Venezuela. His lack of interest in paying the legal costs of the case (US$529,000) confirms he is not interested in complying with the law and is not desperate to obtain the gold to help the people of Venezuela.

Guaidó has made repeated calls to the military to wage a coup d’état to topple President Maduro, and has repeatedly (more then 20 times) organised a “final march” on Miraflores, Venezuela’s Presidential Palace, seeking to create a pretext for violent confrontations. In line with US and EU policy, he has repeatedly opposed the right of Venezuelans to vote in elections. The EU has at best commented on these flagrant undemocratic and seditious acts with deafening silence and at worst welcome them with enthusiastic approval.

Guaidó is not only a willing accomplice in aiding the US to illegally confiscate his own nation’s assets but he and his closest associates are also deeply involved in corruption. Through the protection of Trump, Guaidó and Co have been lining their pockets with hundreds of millions of US dollars resulting from the US illegal confiscation of Venezuelan assets ‘legalised’ by the ‘interim president’. On 24 January 2019 the US State Department gave US$20 million to the ‘new government’; a 2015 Citibank loan to Venezuela was unilaterally settled in advance and the saved difference (US$340 million) – with US government support – was given to Guaidó; in May 2020 OFAC gave Guaidó’s “government” US$80 million for the “liberation” of Venezuela; USAID gave Guaidó US$128 million to assist Venezuela migrants who have not seen one penny; and Guaidó was instrumental in Trump’s illegal confiscation of Venezuela state, US-based, gasoline distribution company CITGO, valued at about US$8,000 million. Venezuela has incurred US$11,000 in losses due to the freezing of assets. There is more but you get the picture. Europe has been the continent of colonial pillage so, is this ‘historic affinity’ maybe the reason they recognise Guaidó?⁴

In fact, European governments and the EU itself, de facto work with and recognise the Bolivarian government of President Maduro, by not only not recognising Guaidó’s appointees as “ambassadors” but by also sending ambassadors to Caracas who present their credentials to President Maduro in nationally televised public ceremonies. This sublime duplicity should end by the formalisation of a perspective of constructive engagement with the Bolivarian Government.

There is no justification whatsoever for European governments to continue their untenable policy of recognising Juan Guaidó as ‘interim president’ of Venezuela when in reality, he is totally bereft of any legal, political, or constitutional legitimacy for his self-proclamation, and especially since his thoroughly undemocratic and criminal credentials have been irrefutably proved. An unconditional withdrawal of his recognition is long overdue.

This spectacular triumph was the culmination of almost a year of intense struggle, led by Bolivia’s working class and indigenous majority, to reverse the US-backed military coup of November 2019 which overthrew the country’s legitimate and democratically elected President Evo Morales.

In the face of intense racist violence, massacres, political persecution and imprisonment, the people of Bolivia rose up against an illegitimate regime and defeated the combined forces of US imperialism and their lackeys in Bolivia – including the neo-liberal elites, the state security forces and the fascist militias. Against all these odds, it is clear that the MAS won a resounding win in the first round. With 90% of the votes counted, MAS has secured 54.5% of the vote, whilst the neo-liberal, US-backed candidate Carlos Mesa has only received 29.2%.

The struggle to defend this great and crucial victory will be fierce. It’s already started.

As the official count was still underway far right extremist groups gathered in Santa Cruz, Cochabamba and Sucre to protest against MAS’s overwhelming victory at the ballot box.

The US has cultivated close links with these far right extremists as well as a plethora of other groups, a number of right wing political parties and key actors in the Bolivian state, security apparatus and military. While it has suffered a serious defeat the US will already be plotting how to reverse this triumph of the left. Washington’s goal will be nothing less than to overthrow by every means possible the legitimate and democratic government of Luis Arce.

In addition to the prospect of the permanent aggression of the most powerful force in the world – the US government – and the hostility of an entrenched right wing domestically, Bolivia’s new left government will also confront a number of other immense challenges. Most immediately amongst these is saving lives and protecting public health in the face of the raging coronavirus pandemic which has already claimed the lives of over 8,000 people in Bolivia. The new Bolivian government also faces the issue of defending living standards and rebuilding the economy against the backdrop of a gigantic global economic crisis, which threatens to plunge 150 million people into extreme poverty worldwide over the next year.

To overcome these daunting challenges, the support of left governments in Latin America and the cooperation and friendship of rising economic giant China will be crucial for the Bolivian government as it defends and consolidates its victory. This poses numerous issues the solidarity movement in the West needs to understand clearly.

The US project is to make Bolivia its “backyard” again

MAS’s electoral victory represents a major blow to the US project of dominating Bolivia. The US has a particular interest in re-gaining control of Bolivia’s natural resources, which includes the world’s largest known reserves of lithium – a crucial component in the production of batteries for phones, laptops and electric cars. Under the leadership of the MAS, Bolivia had nationalised its lithium and was investing to create state industries that would process this resource into higher value-added products such as batteries and electric vehicles. Bolivia was entering into a mutually beneficial partnership with China to develop its lithium industry in order to benefit from the investment and expertise the Asian giant could offer. This was intolerable to the US – who wanted to put such resources under the control of US companies such as right-wing billionaire Elon Musk.

Like the rest of Latin America, the US regards Bolivia as its own “backyard” and any government which seeks to forge an independent path, work with other countries outside of the orbit of US domination and govern in the interests of its people rather than multinational corporations is regarded as an enemy that must be crushed.

Prior to the election of Evo Morales in 2006, Bolivia’s economic affairs were directed by the US. The extent to which the US controlled Bolivia was eloquently expressed in 2005 by the country’s then President, Carlos Mesa (the same Mesa that was defeated in this year’s Presidential election by Luis Arce), who was forced to resign in the wake of a popular uprising against neo-liberalism. In his resignation speech Mesa dismissed the idea that Bolivia’s natural gas could be nationalised as “unviable” because the US and World Bank “have told us so.”

Evo Morales and the MAS proved that nationalising the country’s natural resources was not just “viable” but was the key to developing Bolivia’s economy and liberating the Bolivian people from a life of extreme poverty. Through nationalising Bolivia’s natural resources and using the profits to invest in new state industries, infrastructure and social programmes the MAS succeeded in slashing poverty in half from 48.1% to 24.7% during its 14 years in office.

The financial crash of 2008 and the crash in commodity prices in 2014 hit most countries in Latin America very hard, causing economic crisis and political instability across the region. Bolivia’s robust economic policy, which embraced the dynamic role of state intervention, meant that the country’s economy continued to grow through these turbulent times. The central driver of this economic success was strong state investment with the proportion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) directed towards investment increased from 14% in 2006 to 21% in 2015. This powered economic growth and aided the poverty reduction programmes. As a result per capita GDP expanded by 46% from 2006 to 2017. In 2018 Bolivia had one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America, recording a 4.7% growth rate.

The US is determined to turn the clock back and reverse these huge economic and social gains. Washington wants to install a government in Bolivia that is willing to impose a brutal neo-liberal programme to privatise Bolivia’s natural resources, end the social programmes and dismantle the country’s state-development projects.

The enemy never sleeps: the challenge of preventing the next US coup attempt

While immediately the right wing in Bolivia has suffered a defeat, and is on the defensive, there should be no illusions for the solidarity movement –  in the wake of the MAS’s victory US imperialism’s hybrid war on Bolivia will be intensified. The US has a long record of intervening in Latin America to overthrow progressive governments when these are installed, and Bolivia is no exception.

The US role in the failed ‘media luna’ coup attempt in Bolivia of 2008/09 was exposed by WikiLeaks – the US provided funding to opposition groups involved.

The US role in overthrowing Evo Morales in 2019 is also clear. Audio tapes were published just days before Morales was forced to resign by the Bolivian military that implicated the US embassy, US senators and right-wing Bolivian politicians in a coup plot. The Washington-based Organisation of America States (OAS) played a key role in creating the pretext for the coup, confirming once more that the organisation is a tool for US foreign policy. The OAS intervened to de-legitimatise the election of Evo Morales by claiming there was electoral fraud as the ballots were still being counted – a claim that has been thoroughly debunked by US researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Center For Economic Policy Research.

Washington will now be considering its next move to undermine Bolivia’s newly elected government with the aim of eventually removing it. A whole range of tactics, as are being used elsewhere in the region, could be deployed by the US in order to significantly destabilise the situation within Bolivia – from imposing draconian sanctions to sponsoring far right violence.

In addition to the threat of destabilisation there is the on-going danger of a new military coup, as Bolivian journalist and analyst Ollie Vargas has pointed out:

“The next few days will be key for consolidating democracy in Bolivia. The MAS will need to embrace the patriotic elements within the police & military, to ensure the US/Murillo don’t launch a second coup against the majority of Bolivians.”

The threat of a new coup raises the question of how the MAS will contend with those actors in the police and army that are effectively agents for the US and played a role in last year’s coup.

The challenge of defeating the coronavirus pandemic

Bolivia’s new government faces the immediate challenge of saving lives and defeating the coronavirus pandemic.

With over 8,000 deaths, the outgoing coup regime has catastrophically mishandled the pandemic. On a per capita basis, Bolivia has the third highest Covid19 death toll in the world – at the time of writing Bolivia’s has an even higher per capita death rate than Bolsonaro’s Brazil.

The country was poorly prepared to deal with the crisis. One of the first actions of the coup regime was to expel 700 Cuban doctors from the Bolivia which left many of the country’s most vulnerable communities at risk.

Bolivia’s official – and unreliable – data indicates the on-going presence of the virus in the country, which is continuing to claim the lives of an average of 25 people per day. Therefore there is a real danger that a major resurgence of Covid19 could occur.

Bolivia’s new government can turn to other left wing governments within Latin America – Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba – which have succeeded in containing the virus and saving lives for help and advice in how to prevent or tackle any future major outbreak.

China can also play an important role in helping Bolivia fight against coronavirus. Firstly in terms of sharing its expertise on how it succeeded in crushing the virus with a zero covid strategy and also in providing the necessary materials to fight the disease. For example, during the pandemic Venezuela had received 8 shipments of medical supplies from China including 1.9 million rapid tests, over 9.7 million masks, 5 ambulances and 70 ventilators.

The challenge of reducing poverty in a global economic crisis

The new MAS government inherits a dire economic and social situation. The IMF estimates that the Bolivian economy will shrink by 7.9% in 2020. Bolivian commentators believe that poverty has risen so sharply that the country is experiencing the high poverty rates of the early 2000s before Evo Morales took office. Production has collapsed and the entire project of building state-owned industry in Bolivia to exploit and process the country’s huge lithium reserves and produce lithium batteries has been completely paralyzed. The coup government of Jeanine Añez also agreed a loan with the IMF for $327m – Bolivia’s first loan from IMF in 17 years.

Luis Arce announced that the first measure of his government will be to give out anti-hunger bonds to the poor – making clear that its priority was to support the population. He has also indicated that at the same time his government is “going to start rebuilding production, which has also been affected by the measures that {the current government} has taken.”

As Evo Morales’ Economy Minister for 14 years, Luis Arce was one of the architects of Bolivia’s successful development model which nationalised the country’s natural resources, increased state investment to build industries and significantly raised the population’s living standards.

Bolivia’s new President-elect faces now the prospect of rebuilding the economy in even more difficult circumstances than the MAS confronted in 2006 following years of neo-liberal economic stagnation.

There is no prospect for a boom in commodity prices of the kind which Latin America’s left governments took advantage of in the early 2000s. There is also a massive global economic crisis to navigate. According to the IMF the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean are projected to contract by 8.1% in 2020 and to then grow by only 3.6% in 2021.

China is the only major economy in the world projected to grow at all in 2020, by 1.9%, and will account for the majority of world growth in 2021, with a projected growth rate of 8.2%. Meanwhile the US economy is projected to contract by 4.3% in 2020 and then to grow by only 3.1% in 2021.

The question of Bolivia rebuilding its previously close partnership with China on the basis of ‘win-win’ economic development will play a crucial role in the successful rebuilding of the Bolivian economy.

Under Evo Morales’ leadership Bolivia was developing trading links with China on the basis of creating a multipolar world and mutual benefits. From 2000 to 2014, bilateral trade between China and Bolivia grew from $75m to $2.25bn.

One clear example of ‘win-win’ cooperation took place in 2013, when China launched Bolivia’s first satellite into space. Bolivian journalist Ollie Vargas explained the significance of this:

“Bolivia is a small country, it doesn’t have the expertise to launch a rocket into space, so it worked with China to launch the satellite which now provides internet and phone signal to all corners of the country… although China brought the expertise and a lot of the investment, they didn’t seek to take ownership of the final product. That satellite belongs to Bolivia.”

In June 2018 Bolivia signed up to the Belt and Road Initiative. On joining Evo Morales said: “China’s support and aid to Bolivia’s economic and social development never attaches any political conditions.”

Just months before the US-backed coup, in February 2019 it was announced that Bolivia had chosen China’s Xinjiang TBEA Group Co Ltd to hold a 49% stake in a planned joint venture with Bolivia’s state lithium company, YLB. The Chinese firm was to provide the initial investment in a project that’s estimated to cost at least $2.3billion. Bolivia taking forward such a partnership with China will be very important in developing its lithium industry and spurring an economic recovery.

Building international solidarity to defend Bolivia’s victory against US imperialism

The victory of the Movement Towards Socialism in 18 October’s Presidential election is a triumph for the Bolivian people. It is also a testament to the fact that MAS, as political movement, has proven itself to be extremely well organised, deeply rooted in the life of the Bolivian people and capable of waging a heroic struggle against an extremely powerful opponent, US imperialism, and win.

After their huge victory immense challenges confront the Bolivian people: a hostile US administration that is intent on overthrowing their government, a highly organised and US-backed Bolivian right wing opposition, a raging coronavirus pandemic and a deep global economic crisis.

The left internationally must, as an absolute top priority, build solidarity with the people of Bolivia as they fight on to defend their inspiring victory.

This article was first published on Eyes on Latin America

Allende’s presidency accelerated a process of political revolution that had begun years earlier. Washington had been worried as early as 1958, when Salvador Allende came within a whisker of winning the presidential election. He lost by less than 3% with candidate Zamorano, who mimicked his programme aiming at taking votes away from him, getting over 3% of the votes cast (41,304 votes). The final results were 389,909 votes for Jorge Alessandri (candidate of the right-wing Conservative and Liberal parties – Chile’s rancid aristocracy) against 356,493 for Salvador Allende, candidate of the FRAP (Popular Action Front, essentially an alliance of Communists and Socialists). Chile’s establishment also fielded Radical Party candidate Luis Bossay (15,5%, 192,077 votes) and US imperialism invested heavily in the Christian Democratic party whose candidate, Eduardo Frei, scored 20,7% of the vote (255,769 votes). In other words, the Chilean bourgeoisie, in cahoots with imperialism, did everything in its power to fragment the popular vote to ensure the Right’s victory. Even so, Allende came close to winning.

The disquiet in Washington did not abate; they knew that Allende’s leadership, steering an alliance of Communists and Socialists, represented a formidable threat to its hegemony in what they deemed a crucial country. Such a political alliance had the potential to reduce, if not eliminate, the politico-electoral fragmentation of the popular forces; it had the real capacity to mount a formidable challenge in the presidential elections of 1964. Washington’s disquiet was substantially heightened by developments in Cuba where a young lawyer, Fidel Castro, had not only ousted US-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista in 1959; he had also inflicted a humiliating defeat on a US-sponsored military invasion in 1961. He had then accepted Soviet nuclear missiles on the island and had gone as far as to declare the revolution socialist, right under their noses.

So Allende’s closeness to victory in 1958 was managed with manipulation and chicanery, and what Washington had identified as crises or problems in the region were sorted out with swift brutality (Guatemala 1954, for instance); but the challenge posed by Allende in 1964 appeared much more serious given the existence of socialist Cuba and its geopolitical Soviet dimension. So much so that the CIA funded a multimillion-dollar and very aggressive anti-communist propaganda campaign of demonization. Its message was that if Allende won in Chile the presidential palace would be surrounded by Soviet tanks.

The US financed a scare campaign, aimed particularly at women, that if Allende won, the new ‘communist regime’ would take away their children. Additionally, despite massive political differences between the Christian Democrat candidate, Eduardo Frei, and the traditional elite (Liberals and Conservatives, the landowning elite) particularly on the question of carrying out a thoroughgoing land reform, the US managed to persuade the whole elite to fall behind Frei. Frei also offered to ‘Chileanize’ the copper industry, and successfully appealed to the poor that weren’t organised in trade unions (especially shanty town dwellers), a large constituency indeed. These reforms were palatable to the US since they were framed within the context of US President John Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress programme (implement reform to prevent the regional spread of Cuban communism) designed to isolate Fidel’s revolution. The FRAP was outflanked and its propaganda apparatus overwhelmed thus, unsurprisingly, giving Frei a 56.1% (1,409,012 votes) compared to Allende’s 38,9% (977,902).

The failure of Frei’s “Revolution in Liberty” government programme had the double consequence of legitimising structural reforms to society, economy and political system, and breaking the traditional consensus based on the peasantry’s political inactivity. Frei’s land reform saw the tumultuous political awakening of the peasantry whose last ‘revolt’ had taken place back in 1934, involving a small group of farmers in one little community in Lonquimay that was brutally supressed. In contrast, between 1964 and 1970, the number of peasant strikes was 4,815 with 670 land occupations (many were armed occupations). Furthermore, whereas in 1967 there were 211 peasant trade unions organising 47,473 members, by 1970 there were 632 peasant trade unions with 127,782 members. The peasantry had erupted as an explosive and militant social and political force which seriously destabilised the apparently solid democratic Chilean edifice. This cumulative political, social and historic process created the context, which would lead to the election of Salvador Allende as President of Chile.

Chile’s democracy had a long history, notwithstanding being an underdeveloped country. It was in many respects unique in Latin America: elections took place according to the constitutional calendar; all political parties involved respected election results; Communists and Socialists were legal mass parties with strong representation in both Congress and the Senate, and they could and did form part of coalition governments (such as the Popular Front government elected in 1938 that would industrialise the country and that would last until 1947-52); and there was no electoral fraud. In more than one sense, Chile’s democracy resembled pre-1989 Western European democracy. In fact, Allende had been minister of public health in the Popular Front government (1938-42) and before being elected President he was President of the Senate (1967-69). That is to say, Chile’s democracy had expanded so much that it made it possible for a Marxist presidential candidate, propounding a political programme of structural reforms to begin the transition to a socialist society, to be elected.

Allende’s Popular Unity elected to government

The period leading to the election of Salvador Allende as President of Chile was heavily dominated by an unusual degree of political, artistic, musical and, ideological effervescence. This period saw the rise of Victor Jara, Inti-Illimani and Quilapayún as musicians, writers, poets and singers who gave expression to the pent-up aspirations of workers, peasants, the homeless, the poor, women, and the downtrodden. The dominant themes were: the existing capitalist system is rotten; bourgeois Christian Democracy reformism does not work, is a con and we have had enough; all power to the people.

The politicization of large sections of the population had taken decades, but its socialist radicalization occurred during the Frei administration (1964-70) that saw the rise of artists and radical protest singers such as the Nueva Canción Chilena (New Chilean Song Movement). The terrain for such politicization had been prepared by the unremitting pioneer folkloric music about Chile’s underdog accomplished by Violeta Parra, and by Pablo Neruda’s Latin Americanist poetry in his 1950 Canto General.

In this period the Cantata Santa Maria de Iquique, composed by Luis Advis, that combined classical and folkloric music and mixed songs, lyrics and narrative, symbolised and epitomised the spirit of the period. The Cantata sang the history of a massacre of nitrate miners in the northern city of Iquique in December 1907. It powerfully linked up past proletarian struggles and their aspirations of social redemption with the prospect of realizing them by building a new Chile free from exploitation, inequality and institutionalised violence that would become a reality with the election of Salvador Allende. Quilapayún premiered the Cantata in July 1970 at the second Festival of New Chilean Song, barely months away from the presidential election.

Already in the first Festival of New Chilean Song, held in July 1969, a manifestation of a militant cultural movement aimed explicitly at revolutionising society, Victor Jara had shaken Chile with his winning song ‘Prayer of a Tiller’: in a powerful dialogue with God, a farmer begs to be delivered from those who oppress him and his kind, asks for the barrel of his rifle to be cleaned so His Will on Earth is finally done, and implores God to give him the strength and courage to fight united with his brethren to build the future Chile needs. Jara had already impacted Chile’s politics with songs such as his memorable anti-war Te Recuerdo Amanda, and later on in 1971 with his extraordinary The Right to Live in Peace in homage to Ho Chi Minh and the struggle of the people of Vietnam. It was this inspirational eruption of radical songs that in 1970 led a number of composers to produce the by now globally known and immortal Venceremos, the marching hymn of Popular Unity.¹

The failure of Frei’s reform programme both strengthened the Left and weakened Chile’s Right which confronted a confident Allende whose popularity was rising whilst theirs was declining. Not only had the Christian Democracy congressional vote declined from 43% in 1965 to 31% in 1969, the party had also suffered two splits from left-wing currents (the Christian Left and the MAPU) that joined the Popular Unity coalition. Furthermore, Allende’s standing had massively increased when in 1968 he showed he had the courage of his convictions and was prepared, in his capacity as President of Chile’s Senate, to personally accompany the survivors of Che’s guerrillas in Bolivia on a long and convoluted trip back to Cuba. He visited them as detainees in Iquique after they crossed into Chile from Bolivia, where they requested political asylum. This unadulterated courage was a personal trait that marked Allende out from other, moderate politicians who promoted the strategy of a peaceful socialist revolution.

Given this context, the chances of the Left led by Allende winning the 1970 presidential elections grew by the day. This led Chile’s Right and US imperialism to resort to their full arsenal of dirty tricks, to mobilise all social and political forces they could and to deploy all their assets. The CIA bankrolled Christian Democracy to try and prevent more members leaning towards Allende – there was particular concern about a potential collaboration between Christian Democrat candidate, Radomiro Tomic, and Popular Unity. They ensured there was a Tomic candidacy whose election manifesto was – rhetorically – at least as radical as Popular Unity’s so as to fragment the popular vote and thus deny Allende an absolute majority. Simultaneously they sought the victory of the traditional right-wing candidate and ex-president, Jorge Alessandri. For good measure, the CIA (as in the 1964 election) launched a massive scare campaign, about which the Church Commission’s report (Covert Action in Chile 1963-1973, Select Committee US Senate, 1975, p. 22) stated:

There was a wide variety of propaganda products: a newsletter mailed to approximately two thousand journalists, academicians, politicians, and other opinion makers; a booklet showing what life would be like if Allende won the presidential election; translation and distribution of chronicles of opposition to the Soviet regime; poster distribution and sign-painting teams. The sign-painting teams had instructions to paint the slogan “su paredón” (execution wall) on 2,000 walls, evoking an image of communist firing squads. The “scare campaign” (campaña del terror) exploited the violence of the invasion of Czechoslovakia with large photographs of Prague and of tanks in downtown Santiago. Other posters, resembling those used in 1964, portrayed Cuban political prisoners before the firing squad, and warned that an Allende victory would mean the end of religion and family life in Chile.

Additionally, El Mercurio, one of the most influential Latin American newspapers, “enabled the (local CIA) Station to generate more than one editorial per day based on CIA guidance.” “According to the CIA, partial returns showed that 726 articles, broadcasts, editorials, and similar items directly resulted from Agency activity (placed in the Latin American and European media).” This was part of the “propaganda mounted during the six-week interim period (between Allende’s election and his inauguration).” (Church Commission, pp. 22, 25)

Despite all these efforts, Allende won the election with 1,070,334 votes (36,6%), Alessandri got 1,031,159 votes (35.3%) and Tomic 821,801 votes (28.1%). That is, the percentage in favour of the radical transformation of Chile was nearly two thirds compared to those in favour of the status quo. On the dawn of September 5th once the victory had been confirmed, tens of thousands of Allende and Tomic supporters joined together in the streets to celebrate the defeat of the Right.

Democracy, the obstacle to stop Allende

As soon as the 1970 electoral results were announced, US imperialism activated Track I of their plan to prevent Allende from becoming the constitutional president of Chile. Given that Allende had won a plurality of the popular vote, the constitution demanded that he was confirmed by the joint meeting of Parliament (Congress and Senate – normally a mere formality). The US gambit involved inducing sufficient parliamentarians from Christian Democracy to elect Alessandri over Allende with the proviso that Alessandri would immediately resign, thus creating the legal conditions for a special election in which Eduardo Frei could be legally a presidential candidate. US taxpayers’ dollars (officially US$250,000 to be handled by US Ambassador Korry) were allocated to bribe Chilean parliamentarians to swing behind Alessandri. A variation on this plan was the mass resignation of the cabinet and its replacement with a military cabinet. This US effort to prevent Chile’s democratic will being respected, failed.

US President Richard Nixon then launched Track II on September 15th 1970, instructing the CIA to organize a coup d’état in Chile. The CIA engaged in intense contact with key military and police officers who were willing to mount a coup but were deemed unable to carry one out without the support of the armed institutions. Among those contacted was General Camilo Valenzuela, in charge of the Santiago garrison, and General Vicente Huerta, a senior police officer. The CIA also subsidised and supported the recently formed fascist organization, Patria y Libertad. But the plans did not take off because institutionally Chile’s armed forces were strongly ‘constitutionalists’, that is, they would not act unconstitutionally by staging a coup. This stance was sturdily held by the Commander in Chief, René Schneider Chereau (known as the “Schneider Doctrine”). The plotters, the CIA and Nixon and his advisers, especially Henry Kissinger, drew the conclusion that Schneider would have to be removed so that a coup could unfold. The CIA authorized the kidnapping of Schneider and through diplomatic luggage supplied the weapons.

The incumbent government through its minister of economics, Andrés Zaldívar, went on national radio and TV on 23^rd September to announce that as a consequence of Allende’s victory, the economy had suffered severe changes that jeopardised the country’s existing economic normality. It was sufficient to generate financial panic and a serious run on the national currency, leading thousands of ordinary middle class Chileans to queue up in banks to withdraw their savings. The intention was to create a financial crisis that would contribute to the success of the ongoing US-led coup plot.

According to CIA reports, the plan was that once abducted, Schneider would be flown to Argentina, whilst simultaneously Frei would resign and leave the county, and so would his cabinet, then a junta led by a general would dissolve parliament. On 22nd October, a small group of armed men ambushed General Schneider whilst on his to work. In self-defence he drew his official weapon and was shot by the attackers. He died on 25^th October on the operation table, two days before Allende was actually confirmed. Thus Track II and the planned military coup also failed. And so Allende was inaugurated on 3^rd November 1970, after seven very agitated weeks.

The Allende government, a crucible for mass political participation

Many of us were very active during the election campaign by setting up or joining the tens of thousands of Popular Unity Committees (CUPs) that sprang up throughout the nation, taking to the streets to march for the people’s victory, going out at nights to do graffiti and other propaganda for Allende and tensing our spirits and psyches throughout the difficult passage from a government of the old regime to the establishment of the ‘government of the people.’ We knew it would be difficult, but we had been radicalised by the recent struggles and our impetus had been galvanised by the inspirational culture that had engulfed us in the previous decade. Millions of us would get deeply involved in taking our destiny in our own hands, hourly, daily, for three intense years.

During that period, we made it impossible for the ruling class to continue to rule in the old way, but we would not, despite strenuous efforts, succeed in imposing our own political power. Though the old system was moribund it refused to die, thus the new could not be born. A classic revolutionary situation, with the novelty that the downtrodden had elected their own government.

On election day, we were glued to the radio (a TV set was not yet a feature of every household), waiting for the results. It had been an intense and exhausting election campaign and, ironically on election day, thousands of us, who had worked so hard for Allende and Popular Unity, realized we could not vote because the law deemed us to be minors. By about midnight, suddenly the news stopped broadcasting the results for a long, tense, amount of time, so we knew we had won, but was the silence an ominous sign of a coup d’état? Then suddenly again, the broadcasts continue with Allende’s victory and we exploded in joy hugging our loved ones and taking immediately to the streets to celebrate and to defend the triumph from the sinister and powerful forces operating in the shadows.

Popular Unity’s programme was simple but contained robust structural transformations that had revolutionary implications, a feature the Chilean bourgeoisie and US imperialism fully understood. So did the mass movement supporting it. The programme involved the building of a popular state and a planned economy, most of it state owned, including key banks; the deepening of the land reform begun by Christian Democracy so as to liquidate the scourge of the latifundia system, identified as a major obstacle to both the nation’s development and the wellbeing of millions of rural and urban poor; and the nationalization of the copper mining industry, Chile’s main foreign revenue earner, up to then in the hands of US multinational companies. Although it was to be accomplished through legal and parliamentary reform, it was the most ambitious programme of social, political and economic transformation ever attempted in the country’s history.

The election of Allende to the presidency led to an extraordinary and unprecedented surge of popular participation in politics: people, through tens of thousands of every type of existing social organization (trade unions, neighbourhood committees, etc.) or through ad hoc bodies created for specific objectives (Popular Unity Committees, factory committees, local councils, regional committees, peasant unions, and such like) realized that their government was a decisive factor in the progressive transformation of Chile, they also understood that they had to take their destiny into their own hands and carry out Chile’s socialist transformation themselves.

Allende had no difficulty in expropriating 4,000 large farms, completing in this way the end of the latifundia system but he was also compelled to expropriate 2,000 additional farms because of their militant occupation by peasant organisations that demanded it. This was dictated by the logical dynamics of the process of land reform initiated by Christian Democracy; up to literally 1967, Chile’s peasantry had been kept in conditions of semi-servitude and the substantial democratic gains obtained by militant struggle had exclusively benefited the urban sector.

The levels of peasant self-organisation confirm this: in 1965 there were only 32 unions with a total of 2,118 members in the countryside. This increased to 580 peasant unions in 1970 (the end of the Christian Democratic government) affiliating a total of 143,142 members. This trend intensified under Allende since by 1973 the total number of peasant unions was 881, affiliating 313,700 members, reaching a rate of almost 100% unionisation in the Chilean countryside. The gigantic surge in unionisation and the very militant actions undertaken by the peasantry amounted to a peasant revolution. The key difference with Christian Democracy’s land reform was the level of ferocious repression inflicted on the militant peasant movement, whereas Allende never resorted to state repression of the peasantry’s revolutionary activity. (Rodrigo Medel, Movimiento Sindicalista Campesino en Chile, 1942-2000, CIPSTRA N 2, June 2013, pp. 8-9)

The urban working class underwent a similar process of self-organisation and unprecedented militancy, though it had had a long and strong trade union tradition, first in the Chilean Workers’ Federation (FOCH in its Spanish acronym) founded in 1909 by the revered and iconic Luis Emilio Recabarren, who was also the founder of Chile’s Communist Party. Recabarren also achieved the feat of affiliating the FOCH to the communist-led Red International of Labour Unions. By 1960, vigorous trade union militancy especially among public sector workers (health, education, etc.) had achieved the unionisation of 10% of all workers, a figure that went up substantially, proportionately with militant strike action in opposition to the Christian Democratic government, reaching about 24% in 1970 and jumping to nearly 34% in 1973 under Allende, the highest ever in Chile’s history (Tasa de Sindicalización Efectiva (1960-2013), Fundación Sol, http://www.fundacionsol.cl/graficos/tasa-de-sindicalizacion-1960-2013/)

As with its agrarian programme, the Popular Unity government had almost no difficulty in implementing the programme of nationalisation of monopolies, industry, banks and US imperialist industry. The Law of Nationalization of the Copper industry was passed by Congress without opposition, but Allende applied a calculation to deduct excess profits from the compensation to the US multinationals, which resulted in them being told they owed money to the Chilean State. Since the government did not enjoy a parliamentary majority, it resorted to a forgotten law promulgated during a short-lived Socialist Republic in 1932, which endowed the government with the power to expropriate all large Chilean companies. The government also resorted to purchasing shares of the companies to be expropriated thus becoming the main shareholder thereby gaining control over them. Prior to being expropriated by Allende many of these companies were occupied by their workers. In this way, the government managed to get control over 80% of the large Chilean companies and a number of key banks.

Faced with such an onslaught, Chile’s bourgeoisie and US imperialism resorted to destroying and blockading the economy, mobilising petty bourgeois forces to oppose ‘communism’, together with a systematic campaign of terror. Nixon gave the order to make the Chilean economy scream, the purpose of which – as with Venezuela today – was to punish the poorest. By punishing Allende’s social, political and electoral base, the intention was to create the conditions for the overthrow of the government as a precondition to cleansing the nation of the ‘scourge of Marxism’. To engineer economic aggression the US threw into the market large amounts of its own reserves of copper making the price fall, thus denying Chile the bonanza of high world prices for this metal caused by the war in Vietnam.

Chile was then subjected to a savage programme of violent destabilisation, economic hardship, aggression, and civil disobedience. It would not have been possible if the traditional right had undertaken it by itself. However, Christian Democracy had sufficient social bases to give this “regime change” effort a mass character. Transport stoppages created dislocation and chaos. The extreme right had the support of the medical profession whose strikes caused havoc among the poor (I witnessed this in person when I was a shop steward in FENATS, the health workers trade union). But perhaps the worst aspect of the destabilisation plan, exactly as it is with Venezuela today, was the hoarding of foodstuffs and basic necessities by the privately owned retail sector, forcing people, particularly women to queue up for hours on end to purchase ordinary items for daily consumption by their families. This torment was compounded by the deliberate rise in prices to hyperinflation levels, causing economic devastation and huge hardship among the poorest. The people responded with the Juntas de Abastecimientos y Precios (Committees of Supply and Prices – JAP in its Spanish acronym) seeking to ensure the supply of basic necessities and foodstuffs to the poor.

The levels of popular resistance to the US-led onslaught and Allende’s refusal to capitulate, persuaded Washington to deal a killer below by staging a general strike in 1972 – Paro de Octubre – mainly though a national stoppage of truck drivers, heavily financed with millions of Washington’s dollars. It was supported by professional associations (doctors mainly), retail shops, and some student bodies (principally right-wing university students). Given the geographical shape of the country, it was clear that a transport stoppage would have devastating logistic and economic consequences, with the real intention being to bring the country to a halt. The Paro de Octubre formed part of the CIA Track II plan which among other things involved substantial financing of the fascist shock group Patria y Libertad.

In response, public and private sector workers occupied their workplaces and made them function throughout the country in a show of force that stunned the bourgeoisie and imperialism. And though facing tremendous odds they managed to keep most things flowing, supplying hospitals and workers’ canteens as well as communities, where the salient feature was spontaneous self-organization and the setting up of ad hoc committees to deal with the emergency created by the transport stoppage. The instances of sacrifice, commitment and heroism during this period were legendary. The resilience and resistance of the working class and its allies, the poor in urban and rural communities, plus hundreds of thousands of women swelling the JAP ranks contributed decisively to defeat the Paro.

The most worrying feature of the outcome for US imperialism and the Chilean elite was the determined decision by the workers who had occupied hundreds of enterprises not to return them once the stoppage was over. Worse, workers resisted and opposed efforts from some UP leaders to return them to their original owners and took to the streets to demonstrate against such a conciliatory move with the Paro de Octubre golpistas. As it happened, the government announced officially that none of them would be returned. A Socialist Party editorial stated that in the 30 days of Paro, Chile’s working class had learned more than in the previous 36 years of struggle. Another newspaper article registered that in the ‘social economy’ (state-owned or state-controlled) could be found 100% of steel making, 90% of banking, all of the nitrate, iron an copper extraction, 85% of textile production, 70% of all foundries and metallurgy, and 95% of domestic appliances. It added that the 90 large companies that the government owned or controlled were responsible for 60% of all manufacturing.

The US-led destabilisation plan was causing huge difficulties, but it was not producing the desired results: popular support for Allende and the government remained strong and looked like becoming even stronger. US calculations were that the parliamentary elections scheduled for March 1973 would give right-wing parties an absolute majority in Congress with which to impeach Allende, an attainable objective since they had the complicity of Chile’s reactionary judiciary and the support of the Catholic Church. Frei popularised this by depicting the coming election as a plebiscite on Allende’s government in preparation for what they believe to be a crushing defeat for the Popular Unity coalition, blaming all the country’s problems on the very existence of the Allende government. The results came as a shock: the Popular Unity coalition increased their percentage of the vote to 43%, surpassing the 36% that saw Allende elected in September 1970. Paradoxically, the favourable election result for Allende was going to seal its fate: Christian Democracy moved sharply to support the line of Chile’s extreme right and US imperialism – a coup d’état became an absolute necessity.

The rest is well known. On 11th September 1973, Pinochet led the armed forces in a coup that ordered Hawker Hunters to bomb the presidential palace in the violent overthrow of Salvador Allende, events during which he was murdered; the coup led to the establishment of a murderous dictatorship that sought to brutally eradicate any trace of Marxism or socialism in Chilean society.

Conclusion

For millions of us, the Allende years have remained indelibly imprinted on our hearts, memory and consciousness. Never before had the nation seen so much independent political activity by so many for so long, myself included. In the context of the revolutionary process unleashed with the election of Salvador Allende, independent political activity meant taking the country’s destiny into your hands at whatever level you happen to be, something I experienced personally very intensely. One of the memories I have is the sense of not having slept for three years.

Youngsters like myself found ourselves catapulted into the centre stage of politics in the maelstrom years of 1970-1973. At first, we were deeply inspired and politicized by the messages of rebellion spread by the protest song movement, the opposition to the timid reformism of the Christian Democratic government and its failure to deliver on their promise of structural reform.

Then above all, we were inspired by Popular Unity’s promise of the socialist transformation of our country, but we were particularly stimulated, fired and galvanized by the fact we were doing the transforming ourselves. Never before had we heard so many educational and rousing speeches from so many, such as old experienced trade unionists about decades of past struggles; articulate parliamentarians on complex constitutional and political issues; competent cadre imparting fascinating political education talks; barrio female and male leaders on defending their communities and organising the supply of basic necessities to their members; beardless secondary school activists and uniformed school women expressing boundless optimism on the commitment of youth to the struggle for socialism; peasant leaders growling their determination to finish with landownership and landowners; and so much more, every single day. They exuded generosity and self-sacrifice, being prepared to give everything, including their lives, for the socialist cause. The richness and fullness of those years made you wish for the next day to come because there was so much to be done.

The Popular Unity government set up a state publishing house, Editorial Quimantú that produced the most wonderful volumes of world politics, history, philosophy and literature that I had come across first as a young student and then as a trade unionist. How could a young person forget Carlos Luis Fallas’ Mamita Yunai (about the United Fruit crimes in Guatemala) or John Reed’s Ten Days that Shook the World, or the weekly mini-book among which, I vividly remember H.G. Wells’ The Country of the Blind? We read literally volumes in that short historic period. I was so busy with politics and went back home usually at dawn or not at all, that I made a deal with my local kiosk: they kept a copy of the mini-book which I’d collect and pay for at some point during the week; it was the only way since the mini-book would sell out barely hours after distribution.

Editorial Quimantú was originally the Zig-Zag privately owned publishing house, taken over by the workers after a conflict with the owners in 1970. They demanded that Allende expropriate it and for three years its workers ran it, during which time it published 11 million books, from about 250 authors, with every mini-book title selling between 50,000 and 80,000 copies. Some editions such as Popular Education Notebooks (Marxist political education) sold 100,000 copies each, and some even sold 250,000 copies. The books were well-designed, attractive, and above all, very cheap. I do not know where we found the time to read so much, but we did and in large quantities, enhancing our consciousness and commitment. Revolutions, despite the unavoidable imperialist punitive brutal aggression and the concomitant sacrifices they entail, are in more than one sense wonderful historic episodes.

Allende’s years continue to resonate today because of the promise of a new, better, socialist Chile, a nation without oppression, capitalist exploitation or imperialist domination. A society of conscious, active, cultured citizens. Despite all the odds they faced during the Popular Unity government, the masses in Chile resisted horrific US economic and political aggression, US-financed domestic destabilisation, and terrorism because they hung on to that promise, they held on to that dream. The experiment, whatever its shortcomings, did not fail. It was crushed with utter brutality. The dream has never died and it never will, and it is with elation that I register the fact that one of the emblematic songs of the 2019 rebellion against neoliberalism in Chile, was Víctor Jara’s El Derecho de Vivir en Paz, from 50 years ago. What we attempted back in 1970-73 is inspiring them today, thus making it so much more worthy to have tried.

Venceremos!

David Raby writes: In Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has insisted from the beginning that his Fourth Transformation (4T) will be peaceful and democratic. Even while courting criticism by using the military for assistance in delivering social programmes and public works, and setting up a National Guard with military direction (for the first five years) for public security, he has nevertheless gone to remarkable lengths to avoid using violence or repression except against hardened criminals. Indeed, even against organised crime he has prioritised intelligence over brute force.

Opposition Governors are Brought to Heel

The opposition, which has coalesced in recent months around a group of conservative and/or corrupt State Governors, tried to take advantage of this by focussing on problems of organised crime and implying that AMLO is neglecting the problem. They have also used his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, based on persuasion rather than compulsion for public compliance, to criticise federal policy and use coercion to promote an image of strength in their own states.

One key area of opposition strength is the west-central Bajío region including the states of Jalisco, Michoacán, Guanajuato and Colima. It is also an area where organised crime is very active: the major drugs gang at the moment is the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), and a rival outfit, the Cartel Santa Rosa de Lima, is based in Guanajuato. As I explained in a previous article¹, these cartels have recently been involved in several spectacular acts of violence which the media regard as a serious challenge to AMLO´s public security strategy.

The governors of these states gave the impression of wanting to pursue the old strategy of hard-line confrontation with the cartels, a policy which had led to much innocent blood being shed under President Felipe Calderón of the PAN (2006-12). At the same time there is widespread suspicion that they may in fact have corrupt links to the very cartels they claim to combat, and indeed Calderón himself is now under suspicion in this regard.

This scenario is potentially explosive and quite dangerous for the President and his staff. It therefore came as something of a surprise when AMLO decided to visit Michoacán on June 26th, accompanied by his Secretary of Defence, General Sandoval; and then from July 15th to 17th (after his crucial trip to Washington) to visit Guanajuato, Jalisco and Colima, accompanied in all cases by General Sandoval and other members of his defence and security team. More recently he has visited other states with opposition governors in the North-West (Nayarit, Sinaloa, Sonora and Baja California Sur).

These visits included AMLO´s all-important morning press conferences (mañaneras) where he and members of his staff make announcements and field questions for about two hours on end. In each of the states in question, the State Governor also attended and was obliged to speak and answer questions alongside the President and his security team.

It was clear in all cases that the Governors were far from comfortable with the situation. They all expressed some disagreements with the President but were obliged to accept his insistence on dialogue and collaboration, and indeed to publicly accept working together on security strategy as laid down by the Federal Government.

AMLO tours the Bajío

In Michoacán, Governor Silvano Aureoles of the PRD (originally a left-wing party but profoundly affected by corruption) had directly criticised the role of the National Guard and the Armed Forces in general in public security. But given the poor record of his state in crime and public order, he was visibly nervous in the presence of AMLO and his security chiefs. Similarly, when questioned by journalists about eliminating excess and waste in his administration (as AMLO has done with great determination), Aureoles attempted to justify his record with dubious assertions.² He also appears to have close links to a prominent opposition online media platform, Latinus, which has been very active in attacking the President and the 4T Transformation;³ again, the Michoacán Governor was obliged to offer rather unconvincing denials of this.

Even more telling was the Guanajuato meeting on July 15th, in which the Governor, Diego Sinhué Rodríguez of the right-wing PAN, was forced to admit the error of his ways. AMLO has daily meetings of his security team at 6 am (before the 7 am press conferences), and all state governors are encouraged to participate online, but Governor Sinhué in December 2019 publicly refused to do so.

On July 15th Sinhué declared that he had changed his mind and had begun to participate ten days earlier, and had agreed to accept federal security strategy “for the sake of the security of the guanajuatenses”⁴ (the state’s appalling homicide rate made the need for this patently obvious). Sinhué (who is nearing the end of his term), along with his PAN predecessors, is widely suspected of collusion with organised crime and thus of direct responsibility for the violent chaos in Guanajuato, but it seems he has now met his match.

The next day, July 16th, a similar drama was played out in Jalisco, home to Mexico’s second city Guadalajara and with another right-wing governor, Enrique Alfaro of the “Citizens’ Movement”. Alfaro is regarded as the unofficial leader of the alliance of some 10 or 11 opposition governors, and had openly challenged the President some six weeks earlier over problems of popular protests and repression in Jalisco.⁵

The tension at this press conference was palpable, and there was a thinly-veiled confrontation in the speeches of AMLO and Governor Alfaro. But it was Alfaro who looked nervous and was visibly sweating, and who was directly challenged not just by the President but by several journalists, including two brave young women from local media who confronted him over repression by state forces. Despite his hostile attitude Alfaro was forced to recognise the need for change in the state Attorney-General’s office and to accept federal investigations into human rights issues.⁶

The third governor to be put on the spot in this remarkable presidential tour was José Ignacio Peralta of Colima, a small Pacific coast state bordering on Jalisco and home to Manzanillo, Mexico’s largest port. On July 17th Governor Peralta, like his colleagues in Guanajuato and Jalisco, expressed differences with the President over some issues, but equally had to accept federal security policy.

But the biggest blow for Peralta came when AMLO announced that administration of all of the country’s ports was being taken over by the Navy in order to end smuggling and corruption, and that customs administration was also being completely overhauled at all ports of entry, maritime, terrestrial and air. “Who ran the customs?” asked AMLO rhetorically: “The politicians!”, and he explained how running the customs service of a port had been a handy money-spinner for many sleazy operators.⁷ Peralta (a member of the PRI) put on a brave face as he tried to hide his discomfort.

Recent events have further vindicated AMLO’s intelligence-led security strategy and demonstrated the vulnerability of corrupt governors. On August 2nd the boss of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, El Marro, was captured along with five associates in a skilful operation headed by a military Special Forces unit, with scarcely a shot being fired.⁸ Although for both legal and political reasons members of the State Attorney’s office took part, the key to the operation was intelligence coordinated by AMLO’s security chief Alfonso Durazo.

In terms of military force no chances were taken, with 120 Special Forces personnel and another 120 federal troops engaged in the operation, but the decisive action which involved the simultaneous seizure of four of the Cartel’s “safe houses” produced only one casualty, one of El Marro’s bodyguards who was wounded in the leg. A similar operation under previous administrations would probably have featured troops going in with all guns blazing and dozens of casualties, many of them innocent. El Marro was held at a State Penitentiary for initial interrogation and then transferred four days later, under heavy guard, to a Federal Gaol in Mexico State.

Members of the PAN in the Federal Congress initially tried (on Twitter) to credit their colleague Governor Diego Sinhué with the operation, but they were so ill-informed that they confused El Marro with the boss of the rival Jalisco Cartel, El Mencho. More important, as pointed out by independent journalists, is that Sinhué had five years to deal with El Marro and had done nothing, presiding over the near-quadrupling of homicides in Guanajuato from 600 in 2015 to 2,261 in 2019.⁹

Even ex-Presidents are No Longer Safe

Of course Mexican governments always claimed to combat corruption, but it is significant that under President Carlos Salinas in 1994 corruption ceased to be classified as a “serious crime” under the criminal code; and as AMLO pointed out, the “Anti-Corruption Institute” subsequently created was “pure simulation”.¹⁰ Under the present administration it has once again been classified as a serious crime. The national anti-corruption campaign has advanced dramatically in the last two months on the legal front, with prominent former politicians and officials facing charges from the Attorney-General’s office (Fiscalía) and/or being sought for extradition back to Mexico from the US, Spain and Canada.

Such extraditions would have been almost inconceivable until recently when it was only Mexicans who were extradited (usually to the US), but the strengthening of judicial independence and the rule of law, and the forging of a relationship of mutual respect and institutional cooperation with the US and other powers has transformed the situation. With a Fiscal-General, Alejandro Gertz Manero, of unquestioned integrity and a remarkably efficient and professional Foreign Secretary in Marcelo Ebrard, AMLO´s Government is gaining unprecedented international respect and practical results.

The most spectacular case is that of former PEMEX boss Emilio Lozoya, who spearheaded the privatising “Energy Reform” under President Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI (2012-18) and who has just been extradited to Mexico from Spain.¹¹ Subject to serious corruption charges himself, he has been given the status of “collaborating witness” subject to reduced penalties in return for spilling the beans on gross corruption at the highest level.

Also spectacular, and potentially devastating for the old regime of the PRI and PAN parties, is the case of Genaro García Luna, head of security under President Calderón and currently on trial in New York on corruption and narcotics charges. The case against García Luna has advanced rapidly due to cooperation by the Mexican authorities, and seems likely to implicate Calderón himself in responsibility for collusion with the Sinaloa Cartel.

Other cases that have come to light recently are that of the former Governor of Chihuahua State, César Duarte of the PRI, under arrest in Florida on corruption charges and now requested in extradition by Mexico; and that of the former head of Mexico’s Criminal Investigation Agency, Tomás Zerón de Lucio, under suspicion in relation to the 2014 Ayotzinapa massacre of 43 students, and currently living in Canada.

Returning to the case of Emilio Lozoya, he was detained in Málaga, Spain in February 2020 on an Interpol warrant after being on the run for some time; five months later his extradition was approved and he arrived back in Mexico on July 17th. He is in hospital in the State of Mexico but under arrest and has already made formal declarations to the Fiscalía,¹² relating in particular to the notorious Odebrecht scandal in which the Brazilian engineering firm of that name has been shown to have bribed politicians in several Latin American countries.

Mexico was one of the few countries where the Odebrecht affair had not yet caused heads to roll, but Lozoya has revealed million-dollar payments which he says were used to finance Enrique Peña Nieto’s 2012 election campaign and to bribe Mexican Congress members to pass the privatising “Energy Reform” in 2014. His testimony includes colourful details about huge amounts of cash held in safes at a house in the luxury Lomas de Chapultepec district and handed over in person to politicians for their cooperation. His revelations also relate to purchase by PEMEX of a fertiliser plant at a highly inflated price (some $200 million US above market value).¹³

In all these cases AMLO has insisted on the independence of the Fiscalía, unlike the former Procuraduría which was subordinate to the President. Due legal process must be followed, but what matters is (1) that the truth be known; (2) there must be punishment and not impunity; and (3) the proceeds of crime must be recovered as far as possible for the benefit of the nation.¹⁴

Worst of all, in AMLO’s view, was the cynical attitude which predominated, assuming that no politician worth his salt would fail to profit from office, and that even those few who were convicted of graft did not lose their respectability. This cynicism was accompanied by the offensive view that corruption was part of Mexican culture, an idea that AMLO rejects vehemently.

An entire corrupt system is on trial

So far those on trial or under arrest and interrogation are former ministers or secretaries of state, or bosses of institutions like PEMEX, which is already an indictment of corruption at high level. But the most prominent cases now under way are a direct threat to two ex-presidents, Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto. At present Peña Nieto has not said a word, but Calderón has been very vocal both in general political attacks on AMLO and in claiming that he is subject to political persecution. But as AMLO has pointed out more than once, if Calderón feels aggrieved he should complain to the judge in New York, since the evidence against him comes primarily from the trial of García Luna, his former Secretary of Public Security now detained in a high-security prison in Brooklyn and implicated in receiving multi-million-dollar bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel.

As things stand the Constitution prevents putting ex-presidents (or the serving President) on trial except for High Treason or “serious crimes”; AMLO tried to remove this immunity but Congress did not accept the reform. It may well be that evidence emerging in the García Luna and Lozoya cases might establish a legal basis for charges of “serious crimes” against these two ex-presidents; there is good reason to suspect that both of them were up to their necks in sleaze and graft, and many of AMLO’s popular supporters would love to see them in gaol.

But the implementation of such verdicts would threaten the entire pre-2018 political establishment and could well precipitate a dramatic confrontation. AMLO is well aware of this and has repeatedly declared that he is not in favour of punishing ex-presidents: the facts should be known, their guilt should be established before the court of public opinion, “but we do not want to set the country on the road to rupture” and “we are not going to persecute anyone”.¹⁵ What is at stake is a matter of policy, to expose corruption through due legal process, to ensure that it is seen as unacceptable and that it will not occur again. If a legal case against any ex-president is to be brought, AMLO argues there should be a popular vote on whether to go ahead, and says that he himself would oppose such action although he would respect the result of a vote.

This however does not mean abandonment of serious legal investigations, and in his August 14th press conference AMLO made it clear that if they are implicated by Lozoya’s testimony, both Peña Nieto and Calderón should be required to testify, even if only in writing. Moreover, their testimony should be made public because it is “a matter of State” that the full sordid truth be known in order to banish corruption in future. Furthermore, such investigations should not be limited to the last two presidents but should apply to all holders of the supreme office in the neoliberal period, starting with Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-94).¹⁶

The stakes are very high, not least because in the meantime the 4T Transformation continues and positive achievements are announced almost every week: a coordinated plan for schools to resume classes very soon but through distance education, including a formal agreement for the major private TV channels to help by showing public educational programmes arranged with the Education Ministry; control of the ports and the customs administration by the Navy to end corruption there; guaranteed Mexican access to a Covid-19 vaccine being developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca on a not-for-profit basis, with Mexico and Argentina responsible for manufacture and distribution throughout Latin America; and creation of a single public agency for purchase and distribution of all pharmaceuticals.

David Raby is a writer, political activist and retired academic living in Norwich, UK. Professor Emeritus in Latin American History, University of Toronto, Canada; former Senior Fellow in Latin American Studies, University of Liverpool (UK). Former City Councillor in Norwich. Executive member, Venezuela Solidarity Campaign; Chair, Norfolk & Norwich El Viejo (Nicaragua) Twinning Link. He can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @DLRaby.

Chronologically, the latest measure of July 2 is the decision of a British judge not to return 31 tons of gold deposited by Venezuela in the Bank of England, for a total of about 1 billion dollars. The official motivation of the judge and “Her Majesty’s” bankers is that the British government does not recognize the constitutional government of Nicolás Maduro but the self-proclaimed puppet Juan Guaidò. Last March Venezuela had requested an emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to fight the Covid-19, a loan denied under pressure from the United States. Again, the IMF’s “justification” was not to recognize Nicolás Maduro as the legitimate President.

In their obsession to asphyxiate Venezuela, the different U.S. and British administrations have followed a script of growing attacks in a framework of “multi-dimensional war”: media, military, diplomatic, commercial, financial, etc. As in the sieges of the Middle Ages to conquer the enemy’s castle, they try to vanquish the population by hunger and hardship. Only to then invoke the “humanitarian crisis” and the need for a foreign military intervention. Parallel to the military interventions (in May, the umpteenth attempt with “Operaciòn Gedeón“), the last attacks were concentrated on the commercial and financial side, creating a real “bloqueo“, as with Cuba. A bloqueo that became more aggressive after Venezuela’s announcement to abandon the dollar in commercial transactions and the adoption of a crypto-currency in international trade.

A few days ago, coincidentally after the announcement of upcoming elections (scheduled for December 6), in line with the United States, the European Union announced new sanctions, not only against representatives of the government, but also against opposition leaders, guilty of disagreeing with the violent and golpista strategy of the extremist fringes of the opposition.

But let us take things one by one.

The hostilities have started since Chavez’s electoral victory in 1998, well before the self-proclamation of an obscure character as ‘interim president’ of Venezuela in January 2019. Chavez’s victory caused Washington to lose control of “Saudi Venezuela,” a country with the largest proven oil reserves on the planet and only two days’ sailing from refineries on the US West Coast. An unacceptable situation for the voracious multinational oil companies, which have since then done everything they could to grab the lost loot. In a crescendo of aggressive actions (including the engineered fall in crude oil prices) after Chavez’s departure, it is the Maduro government that suffers the heaviest blows. From March 2015, with “Executive Order 13692” of Barack Obama, later reconfirmed also by Donald Trump. The presidential decree declares Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the security of the United States“, giving a legal mantle to media, political, diplomatic, financial, military and paramilitary operations, which have been covered for a long time. Wikileaks’ revelations, the declassified documents of the U.S. government and the latest book (The Room Where It Happened) by John Bolton, former national security adviser, have confirmed its existence.

At first, the retaliatory measures were applied to people linked to or close to the government, politically or for economic reasons, (including companies), as well as civil and military officials. Later, it was decided to “make the economy scream”, as Nixon suggested to Kissinger in the aftermath of the victory in Chile of socialist Salvador Allende, to protect the economic interests of US multinationals. And so, from individuals they then moved on to trade and finance, affecting the entire economy and therefore the entire population in its essential needs.

Modern “sanctions” try to bring about the country’s political and social collapse, hindering trade and preventing the import of food, medicines and essential goods, or blocking funds destined for their purchase, to make the population rise against the government. In Covid-19 times this strategy is even more criminal. The list of measures is long and not exhaustive. But by listing them, the figures and facts speak for themselves.

For example, the US Citybank refused to receive the funds for the purchase of 300,000 doses of insulin for diabetics, in open violation of international law.

The Colombian government has blocked the purchase of malaria medicines purchased by Venezuela from BSN Medical. More than $9 million for dialysis and $29.7 million for the purchase of food have been blocked.

In the “clearing houses” sector, Clearstream and Euroclear act in a context of duopoly. We are talking about two giants among the “exchange agencies”, financial intermediaries between governments that issue bonds and holders of securities that collect dividends. The first is based in Luxembourg, the second in Brussels.

The Maduro government has always honoured its debts, but Clearstream has not paid the shareholders the interest on the securities (for example in the case of PDVSA bonds maturing in 2019 and 2024). Under pressure and blackmail, some US funds have “suggested” to carry out checks on the “regularity of Venezuelan payments”, freezing dividend payments using an uncommon procedure.ⁱ

Under pressure from the U.S. Treasury Department, the other giant, Euroclear (custodian of a significant portion of Venezuelan sovereign bonds) has been freezing bond transactions since 2017 for “reviewing” and “procedural reasons”. These white-collar thieves are thus blocking more than 1.2 billion Venezuelan dollars earmarked for the purchase of food and medicine.

On the British side, modern privateers pull off a big score. In the past, privateers were famous for their assaults on the oceans on behalf of “Her Majesty”. In the present, reviving traditions of service, the Bank of England initially refused to return 14 tons of gold bars (about $550 million) deposited from Venezuela in London.

To the first 14 tons of gold, 17 more were added, given as collateral to Deutsche Bank, which unilaterally closed a “swap” contract with Caracas (guaranteed by the bars), and kindly turned them over to the British in the London account. In other words, the Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV) not only had to repay the loan obtained in valuable currency, but did not regain possession of the guarantee. In short, the Bank of England is the protagonist of a double theft by thieves in double-breasted suits, of an international piracy operation with the White House at its fingertips.

As you will remember, in 2011 Hugo Chavez tried to repatriate 211 tons of gold sent by the governments of the Fourth Republic to England and other banks around the world as collateral for loans from the International Monetary Fund to the governments of Jaime Lusinchi in 1988 and Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1989. But Caracas failed to repatriate the bars in their entirety.

And according to Bloomberg’s financial service, the July 2018 bonds listed on the international stock exchanges had lost at least 57.24%.

In March 2018, Trump renewed Decrees 13692 and 13808 and launched new unilateral coercive measures, prohibiting debt restructuring and preventing the repatriation of dividends from CITGO, a subsidiary of the Venezuelan state-owned oil company. Following this, the U.S. Treasury Department alerts financial institutions to the “possible link with the corruption of Venezuelan public transactions”. It makes it even more difficult to pay suppliers of essential goods, such as food and medicine.

In January 2019, the White House announced new “sanctions” to the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) through its CITGO subsidiary in Texas. The loot is 7 billion dollars in goods and the blockade of another 11 billion in crude oil exports for 2019. The first effect is to strengthen the theft of Venezuelan resources and goods in the U.S. and other countries, a process that began with CITGO’s pirate boarding, but now covers all Venezuelan assets in the U.S. and affects any country or company that has business relations with Venezuela.

The “continuous coup d’état” also includes economic sanctions and a financial blockade that, according to a study by the Centro Estratégico Latinoamericano de Geopolítica (CELAG), caused losses of 350 thousand million dollars in production of goods and services between 2013 and 2017ⁱⁱ.

At the height of cynicism, and in the face of the blockade of at least 18 billion Venezuelan dollars on the U.S. side, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (former head of the CIA) had promised aid of 20 million dollars for “humanitarian aid”, and Canada another 39.

Although the “sanctions” would have effect only on the territory of the United States, in reality, they are applied also in third countries on the basis of the principle of “extra-territoriality”. Currently, more than 6,000 million Venezuelan dollars are illegally blocked in private international banks outside the United Statesⁱⁱⁱ.

Similarly, transactions by U.S. companies or individuals with Venezuela are prohibited, extending this obstacle to third countries under threat of extortion to receive sanctions.

It’s easy to agree with the Venezuelan government: “If the United States really wants to help Venezuela, start releasing blocked bank accounts,” said its Foreign Minister at the UN Assembly.

Immediately lifting “sanctions”, peace, dialogue and respect for sovereignty are the only way to support the present and future of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Marco Consolo is Head of International and Peace Affairs, Communist Refoundation Party – European Left (Italy)