"We Built It, We Paid for It, It's Ours"
The rhetoric of Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign would suggest that he views the 38 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean much the way he views the Panama Canal. It further suggests...
...dollars in thousands) Country FMS Financing Prog.b Eco...
...We may be still number one but it's a number one in a league of many more powerful teams, some of which can gang up against us...
...Five aspects of Reagan's ideological presentation should be noted...
...3 7 Some Realities Reagan's hard line has to confront the complex realities of the Americas in 1981...
...embassy officials to U.S...
...will increase again and counterintelligence will be beefed up...
...But what they have said bodes ill...
...There is much rethinking of the role of mass participation and the place of armed struggle...
...It is not inappropriately alarmist to say that the Reagan Coalition is preparing for war, in fact is pushing for it in several of the potential "hot spots" of the world...
...Boy, you'll have to pay something for living in the greatest country...
...Ibid., p. 104...
...The first two are regarded as larger zones of crisis...
...During the U.S...
...3 9 If torture and death and the displeasure of the Pope have not deterred the new revolutionary priest movement, Reagan will have little chance...
...Interventionism in Third World," Radical America (Spring 1981), p. 158...
...Ibid...
...It was Castro, according to the Administration view, that single-handedly brought together leaders of warring left factions in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and, more recently, Colombia, to prepare the way for guerrilla war...
...Vincent & Grenadines 0 0 0 0 0 0 46 60 + Surinam 0 0 0 0 0 0 38 75 + Venezuela 0 0 0 0 0 0 10 50 + Pan...
...Mexico has oil...
...Nonetheless, she offers, "There is a far greater likelihood of progressive liberalization and democratization" in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and South Korea than in Cuba, North Korea or Angola...
...It has already suspended a Carter-imposed ban on assistance by U.S...
...Reagan's problem is Mexico's foreign policy.' 5 With Mexico's increased wealth, the last two Mexican governments have pursued an independent road in their relations with hemispheric neighbors...
...But the Reagan Administration will show unusual interest in who that person is...
...CIA lobbyists already have sought relief from what they regard as the "restrictions" of the Freedom of Information Act and pushed for a ban on the publication of the names of CIA agents, a measure aimed particularly at the magazine, Covert Action Information Bulletin...
...As happened with the Cuban revolution in 1959, Nicaragua serves as an example that is energizing new struggles...
...2 6 More significantly, the other islands of the Eastern Caribbean are expected to receive greatly increased economic and military aid, part of which is to be used to create a regional coast guard...
...Such "radical totalitarian" regimes as these, Kirkpatrick notes sagely, "claim jurisdiction over the whole of society and make demands for changes that so violate internalized values and habits that inhabitants flee by the ten thousands...
...34...
...Or perhaps more to the point, as we have learned to treat Japan...
...Holly Sklar speech, July, 1981 One of the things that makes the New Right the wild card is its organizational capacity, together with its vote-getting power...
...What to do about Cuba was the subject of much discussion among Reagan advisers dur- ing the campaign...
...Havana must be held to account for its policies of aggression against its sister states in the Americas...
...Zbigniew Brezinski, 1981 The wild card in this hand is the New Right...
...In the Southern Cone, the Reagan Administration perceives a broad movement toward a "return to constitutional rule and practice...
...military aid...
...Bushnell, "Bilateral Assistance...
...Flattery is the first step in what the Administration hopes will be a successful seduction...
...Mexican agriculture cannot produce all of the food that it needs...
...3 The 1982 budget calls for a $250 million worldwide contingency fund through the Economic Support Program...
...concerns have been essentially economic, with focus on problems of debt, improved trade relations and food sales...
...If the old congressional members allied with, or bought off by, big business lose their seats in significant numbers to New Right candidates in the 1982 elections, it could spell real problems for the Internationalists...
...But they worship traditional gods and observe traditional taboos...
...It must be remembered that the OAS refused to mediate the Nicaraguan crisis in late 1978, and that the Andean Common Market countries, under the leadership of Venezuela, actively supported a solution far to the left of the U.S...
...It now also encompasses not only acts, but threats of acts...
...power for the rest of the century, yet none of the forces contending for power have yet shown themselves capable of bringing the others into line...
...The Reagan Administration hopes to unleash the CIA...
...The rejection of the Reagan policy toward El Salvador suggests that the task will not be easy...
...4 (JulyAugust 1980...
...Helms' opposition to the "Kissinger retreads" brought the Internationalists out in defense...
...6 A draft of an executive order on CIA activities has included a provision that will legalize CIA infiltration and disruption of U.S...
...Representing the most ex- treme view, retired General Gordon Sumner, now special adviser to Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Thomas Enders, co-authored a campaign position paper on hemispheric policy with Roger Fontane, now of the National Security Council...
...presidential campaign, Daniel James from the National Strategy Information Center-part of the American Enterprise Institute/Center for Strategic and International Studies network-counseled pragmatism and respect in U.S...
...Michael Deaver, the President's deputy chief of staff, whose office is immediately next door to the President's, was public relations adviser to Amigos del Pais, a group of rightwing Guatemalan businessmen.32 And Reagan himself met with Guatemalan businessmen during the campaign...
...Using the same familiar phrasing, the Administration is now, with no more substantive proof, accusing it of supplying the Guatemalan guerrilla forces...
...political models...
...Press Handout," selected remarks of Vice President George Bush at the Council of the Americas, Washington, D.C., June 3, 1981...
...The process that Enders envisions will be supported by "quiet diplomacy...
...Washington Post, June 23, 1981...
...You're so damned scared to go to war...
...2 8 The Reagan Administration is also seeking $380 million more this year from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund...
...There has to be a return to patriotism, and I'll tell you this: with Ronnie the puncher there will be more patriotism...
...Senator Howard Baker, Republican majority leader, is a key figure in managing the coalition in Congress...
...1. Anti-Sovietism and Terrorism: After more than four years of elite debate, climaxing in the SALT controversy, the analysis promoted by the Right and the Neo-Conservatives has emerged triumphant...
...Bushnell, "Bilateral Assistance...
...intervention in El Salvador, it has provided important political and diplomatic support to the opposition Democratic Revolutionary Front...
...policy makers to view these pro-U.S...
...Mexico suffers from an inferiority complex, psychoanalyze Reagan advisers...
...appearing to take Mexico seriously as a world power will break down historic defenses...
...No administration since Kennedy's has given hemispheric affairs such importance...
...it wants to rule...
...arms merchants seeking contacts in the host country and has circumvented human rights restrictions to provide military vehicles to the Guatemalan Army in its intensifying war against insurgents...
...It would also give South Africa mili32 NACLAReportJulylAugust 33 tary allies despite its increasing isolation on the African continent...
...Lucia, and St...
...Michael Klare, "Beyond the 'Vietnam Syndrome': Renewed U.S...
...Guatemala's insurgency grows in lockstep with government repression...
...The Defense Department has created the mechanism for that direct intervention through the Rapid Deployment Force (authorized under Carter in 1977), a 300,000-strong force designed to fight in the third world with backup from Navy aircraft carriers and B-52 bomber squadrons...
...response...
...The Reagan Administration regards the region as explicity its "sphere of influence" and will exercise unashamedly what it regards as the historic prerogative of intervention to defend U.S...
...8. James L. Buckley, "Arms Transfers and the National Interest," Current Policy No...
...But a diplomatic alliance with Cuba also helps the Mexican government to manage potentially revolutionary forces within its own society, justifiably frustrated by the hunger, poverty and inequality which the much-touted Mexican revolution did not cure...
...As a consolation prize, they may even be given the arena of "moral" issues where they could continue venting their passions...
...Enders, "Remarks...
...2 9 Fifty-six U.S...
...Kirkpatrick counsels U.S...
...It is incorrect to confuse independence with intervention...
...Barbados and the Bahamas are also to be new recipients of U.S...
...II, no...
...The latter's long coastline along the South Atlantic gives it strategic importance over that vital sea lane through which most Middle East oil passes...
...The Reaganites' use of the terrorist label is already much more indiscriminate than that of past administrations, making no distinction (at least publicly) between adventurist bands and genuine national liberation movements such as El Salvador's Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation...
...The right wing is stupid enough to believe they can achieve their fantasy free-enterprise world of regional robber barons in a fortress America defended by global roughriders...
...That posture earned the Administration the ire of the European Economic Community, just as a U.S...
...military power has always been the basis for the development of a just and humane foreign policy, and it's something we should be proud of...
...political groups either led by foreign nationals or suspected of being "agents" of foreign powers...
...33 According to Secretary Enders, human rights violations are on the decline in Argentina and Chile, a statement that has meaning only if one accepts that selective repression against those struggling to free their countries from the dictatorships is a significant improvement over generalized repression...
...Reagan himself has tried to stave' off the coming battle over abortion and the family by scheduling his economic program as the top priority in the current session of Congress and urgning patience until his foreign policy is in place...
...With Military Assistance- Fiscal Year 1982...
...2. A New Revolutionary Strategy and Example: Revolutionaries throughout the hemisphere are studying the Nicaraguan revolution and the struggle in El Salvador...
...On the continent of South America, Venezuela and Brazil are very much categories unto themselves...
...South America The crises of Central America and the Caribbean preoccupy the Reagan Administration...
...NACLA, March/April 1979...
...6. New York Times, May 14, 1981...
...Enders, "Remarks...
...interests...
...The candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), as is customary, will be the next president...
...XIV, no...
...President Lopez Portillo recently called Cuba Mexico's closest friend...
...The recent controversy about the imprisonment and torture of Jacobo Timerman by the Argentine government has subjected Kirkpatrick's categories to sharp and quite critical scrutiny among the elite...
...A counterpart to Europe's NATO, it would strengthen the rule of each of the region's governments and guarantee mutual protection in the event of an insurrection in any of the countries...
...The proposal met with some skepticism, especially from Mexico, over its provisions to deny aid to Cuba, Grenada and Nicaragua and to include military assistance to recipient countries...
...Counterinsurgency advisers are back in the picture with 56 already in El Salvador and up to 25 in Honduras...
...This leads the Administration to ascribe the causes of third world unrest exclusively to outside interference...
...Center for International Policy, Aid Memo (April 1981...
...They have said little about South America...
...7. Ibid...
...27...
...Washington Quarterly (Summer 1980), p. 87...
...Such an argument gives support to governments which justify their repression of the opposition by arguing that those they repress have violated human rights...
...Cuba] has declared war on its neighbors-our neighbors...
...Libya's Colonel Qaddafi is the new boogie man of the third world...
...A New Inter-American Policy for the Eighties," prepared by the Committee of Santa Fe...
...with deteriorated military and strategic positions but with far fewer nations in a position to work with us in defending common interests and deterring threats by the Soviet Union and its surrogates...
...Both countries are also expected to make large arms purchases from the United States in the year ahead...
...NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol...
...According to its formulation, articulated in early 1979 by Reagan's current UN Ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick, such governments are to be favored first because they only eliminate their political opponents, leaving inviolate the social/cultural lives of their citizenry, and second because they are subject to pressures for ameliorative change...
...Venezuela strongly supports El Salvador's junta and disagrees with Mexico's Central American policy...
...relations...
...The task of leadership in this context is to shape policies that are responsive to it and to educate the public to understand the necessity for these politics, for these decisions, for these new policies...
...The seeds of that response are already sprouting...
...Central America Update (Toronto), Vol...
...Presidential elections in Mexico are scheduled for 1982...
...even, quite probably, working to influence the selection...
...SATO would bring together the governments of South Africa, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and the United States in a mutual defense pact designed ostensibly to protect South Atlantic shipping...
...The Reagan Administration has already asked Congress to lift the arms embargo imposed on Argentina for its human rights violations...
...The hour of decision can no longer be postponed...
...Many have already shown a propensity for active involvement both in trade union struggles here and in solidarity with the struggles in their homeland...
...Both are quite industrialized with relatively strong economies...
...it could, if not resolved, become a crisis of domination, in which the institutions that govern (control), lacking sufficient leadership, would lose their coherence...
...Strong disagreements among the participant nations cause some observers to doubt whether the plan can be implemented...
...This uniquely Latin American theology identifies the Christian message with a duty to overcome social injustice...
...3 Jeane Kirkpatrick has said that it "enables some people operating in its name to use the most murderous means in pursuit of a new utopia...
...references WE BUILT IT, WE PAID FOR IT, IT'S OURS 1. U.S...
...News and World Report, May 4, 1981...
...Soft-line Internationalists, from their own perspective, have suggested that her distinction really has no meaning...
...Those who lead the struggles are identified as "outlaws" or "terrorists...
...leverage with countries of the region (and throughout the third world), the Administration plans to offer most of its economic aid in a direct contract with the recipient country rather than through international lending institutions like the- Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, etc...
...But it is not working...
...Social democracy has offered broad economic and diplomatic support to the revolutionary forces in Central America...
...The last has begun to crumble from the internal conflict provoked by nuns and priests who rejected such a role and embraced the theology of liberation...
...The Committee of Santa Fe, A New Inter-American Policy...
...does not constitute an act of intervention, but precisely a struggle against intervention...
...Either a Pax Sovietica or a worldwide counter-projection of American power is in the offing...
...But while the Carter Administration argued that the causes of instability were the result of internal conditions, the Reagan Administration sees Soviet expansionism through the agency of Fidel Castro as, if not the cause, at least the reason why the crisis is so grave...
...sentiment is an important ingredient in it, even among rightist regimes...
...Haig did not mention the Reagan hit list which, besides Cuba, includes Nicaragua and Grenada...
...1 0 We didn't have the attitude of you young guys...
...The plan is a departure from the bilateralist approach favored by the Administration...
...Among those steps will be the establishment of a Radio Free Cuba, under open U.S...
...19...
...In talks among foreign ministers of the donor countries in July, an agreement was reached, however, that assistance will be available to all countries in the Basin, though a country (the 30 NACLA ReportJulylAugust 31 United States) could refuse to contribute to aid countries it opposed, and that the plan would have no military component...
...allegation by the Nicaraguans...
...28 NACLAReportJulylAugust 29 less energy wasted justifying direct assistance as aimed to meet the region's development needs, bilateral aid is "to be carefully targeted by country and program to contribute directly to U.S...
...2 On such a specious basis, Ms...
...3 This distinction leaves unexplained why, after the American Revolution, as many as 100,000 people permanently fled the United States out of a total population of 2.5 million .' Kirkpatrick's shamelessly paternalistic formulation creates labels for differences where there are none and conveniently liquidates the most critical underyling issue-social change...
...35...
...h) The embargo on military aid to Guatemala, imposed as the result of human rights violations, was skirted by the Reagan administration when it authorized the delivery of military vehicles...
...The clear intent: to end the quasipariah status attached to these countries by the human rights community during the Carter years...
...At this point, the struggle shows itself as a crisis of legitimacy...
...Those who do not believe that history could take such a profound step backward have trouble taking him seriously...
...sphere of interest...
...In the past few years, the New Right has managed to gain 10% of the seats in the House and Senate...
...The Carter Administration's sensitivity to intimations of colonialism led to renegotiation of the Panama Canal treaties...
...Mexico has more people than its economy can feed...
...It is a different world than the period of Cold War I. Among the realities the Reagan Administration will have to deal with are the following: 1. Nationalism and Anti-Yanquism: Hemispheric nationalism is stronger than ever before and, as always, anti-U.S...
...the United States needs oil...
...The Committee of Santa Fe, A New Inter-American Policy for the Eighties (Washington, D.C.: Council for InterAmerican Security, 1980...
...Whether the Reagan Coalition can forge what Neo-Conservative Norman Podhoretz has called a "new nationalism" or whether the continuing trauma of Vietnam will turn people against the new militarism is an unknown...
...6 Central American-Caribbean Basin Both Carter and Reagan saw Central America and the Caribbean as the hemispheric zone of crisis...
...it needs an escape valve to the north...
...Fragmented and let loose on a population suffering the effects of increasing economic hardship but not effectively organized to fight back politically, institutions such as the police, FBI, CIA, newly-empowered investigative committees, etc., could wreak havoc...
...Very simply," he said, "it is necessary to treat Mexico exactly as we do any European nation like France or England...
...Mexico and the United States have contrary policies toward Cuba, El Salvador, Grenada and Nicaragua...
...Canada is more sympathetic toward Mexico than toward the United States, and has continued economic aid to Nicaragua in the face of the U.S...
...Since then, there have been periodic and ill-substantiated reports of Soviet arms, including tanks, arriving in Managua...
...government sponsorship, which will beam objective information to the Cuban people that, among other things, details the costs of Havana's unholy alliance with Moscow...
...His hands are already full...
...Often Castro personally worked out their differences in long negotiating sessions...
...25...
...The credits are an indebtedness which the recipient government must repay with interest...
...2 4 This kind of rhetoric promises little but harassment and destabilization against the Sandinista government, which faces grave economic problems, the difficult task of bringing the diverse cultures of the Atlantic Coast closer to the revolutionary process, and the threat of invasion from counterrevolutionary bands training outside Nicaragua...
...As a sign of the direction of Reagan policy, both countries in FY82 are to send officers of their armed forces to participate in U.S.-sponsored military training and education in Panama and the United States...
...There has to be some responsibilityyou have to give up something...
...third world autocracies with tolerance and patience...
...He forged unified directorates, counseled the formation of broader fronts to manipulate opposition groups and unleashed a global progaganda campaign," Assistant Secretary Enders recently charged.'" The notion that these processes were the manipulations of a master puppeteer is a mystification of what in fact are testaments to the commitment and maturity of the people and organizations in question...
...The plan is the brainchild of Assistant Secretary Enders, a Kissingerian Internationalist who, during an earlier tour of duty in Cambodia, supervised the selection of bomb targets for U.S...
...Mexican oil, continued illegal migration by thousands of Mexican workers, President Portillo's Central America policy-all are elements in a power game whose victory is essential to the Reagan Administration's achievement of its regional objectives...
...LEAVES MANY OF THESE FUNCTIOt To THE PRIVATE 5ECTDc Dan Wasserman JulylAugust 2528 NACLA Report quest to the CIA to broaden its former criteria for what is "terrorist" activity, quadrupling, as a result, the 1980 figures for international terrorist attacks over the highest previous year.' The new definition, which is now in contradiction to generally accepted United Nations standards, would include most wars of national liberation...
...The New Right offends the sensibilities of its more practiced allies...
...Reagan's commitment to the bloody status quo is rooted in significant contacts between his advisers and the Guatemalan ruling class...
...The Trilateralists think they can use Reagan's acting skills and the righting shock troops to do the dirty work, clearing space for their more managed reindustrialization and interventionist policies...
...To reject the use of military force in the hemisphere is to go beyond the limits of reasonable action...
...5. See, for example, Tom J. Farer, "Reagan and the Dictators," New York Review of Books, March 19, 1981...
...The U.S...
...2 5 The new government of Edward Seaga in Jamaica will receive $59 million in bilateral economic aid and $1 million in security assistance, which supplements $1.5 million granted by Washington immediately after Seaga's electoral victory last winter...
...military assistance for FY82 ($10.7 million) than in all the years between 1950 and 1979.30 This aid is strengthening hardliners in its military and threatens the elections scheduled to return the country to "civilian" rule later this year...
...military...
...The just demands of the liberation struggles and the structural causes of those demands (for which the United States is often primarily responsible) are ignored or dismissed as cultural quirks...
...Unlike the New Right, the Internationalists don't want to govern...
...Through their not inconsiderable means of persuasion, the Internationalists can be expected to begin to rein in or neutralize the extreme elements of the Right, with the help of the more reasonable Neo-Conservatives...
...c) Economic Support Fund Program is a loan and grant program for selected countries of special political and security interest to the United States...
...As part of its Orwellian rampage, the Administration also wants to change the definition of human rights...
...In a speech to the Council on the Americas, a Rockefeller business lobby, Secretary Enders called Nicaragua Cuba's "forward base of operations...
...In the interim, the center of political gravity will move to the right, and troublesome sectors of the militant disadvantaged and the Left, they hope, will be isolated...
...At stake is U.S...
...Clearly, the makings of a deal are there...
...Most encouraging to date was the initially troubled but eventually successful effort of groups long atomized into single-issue organizations to plan and carry out a 100,000-strong demonstration against U.S...
...It further suggests he is as committed to a swaggering militaristic foreign policy posture as was Theodore Roosevelt in his day...
...Roger Fontane, Latin American specialist for the National Security Council, is one of its directors...
...Some of these are rightwing exiles, such as those from Cuba and Nicaragua, but the vast majority are those fleeing political and economic repression in their own countries...
...It develops an officer corps with a knowledge of and close relations with the U.S...
...But the deals that were cut to win approval leave Internationalists surrounded by New Right deputies and special assistants...
...4 Regional Strategy The policy of the Reagan Administration toward the Americas divides the hemisphere into three strategic areas: Mexico, the Central America-Caribbean Basin and South America...
...It is time to seize the initiative...
...This responds to the controversy with Congress which arose in the spring over reallocating El Salvador aid and will give the Administration money to play with without risking congressional interference...
...The New Rightists press on...
...It has also maintained firm support for the revolutionary government of Nicaragua...
...Disagreements over the third world among the Western powers at the recent Ottawa conference can be traced, in part, to the participation of both Helmut Schmidt's German Social Democrats and Francois Mitterand's Socialist Party in the Socialist International...
...Daniel James, "Mexico: America's Newest Problem...
...locations without government obstruction...
...12 To increase its flexibility, the Administration wants to create a "crisis slush fund" to meet rapidly changing situations throughout the world...
...Will the neo-conservative and rightist ideologues be able to accept a more militant nationalism within the traditional U.S...
...military advisers in El Salvador are the first counterinsurgency forces that the United States has used in the hemisphere since the late 60s in Guatemala...
...At heart it doesn't want to be an ally, and it isn't content to be vultures of the new culture or the Brown Shirts of the ruling class...
...In either case, conditions imply a need for organized response on the part of the American people who will surely be affected politically, economically and culturally in the coming period...
...proposal to the Caribbean Development Bank that would bar Grenada from aid for "basic human needs" projects resulted in a rebuff from the Caribbean member nations...
...Today, the official view more and more presents Nicaragua as a satellite of Cuba, which is itself, supposedly, a satellite of the Soviet Union...
...Public censure is a tactic reserved for unfriendly governments-the Soviet Union, Cuba, Libya...
...They want secure allies in government who will govern on their 34 NACLA ReportJulylAugust 35 behalf, so they can get back to more serious business...
...Fundc IMETd FY 81 FY 82 Change FY 81 FY 82 Change FY 81 FY 82 Change Bahamas 0 1,000 new 0 0 0 40 60 + Barbados 5,000 2,000 - - 0 0 84 100 + Bolivia 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Brazil 0 0 0 0 0 0 10f 50 + Colombia 12,700 12,700 0 0 0 0 280 850 + Costa Rica 0 0 0 0 0 0 30 60 + Dominica 0 0 0 0 0 0 33 60 + Dom...
...Instead, they say that they will not take up the question publicly, at least with the newly declared friendly governments...
...At the conclu- sion of the section on Cuba, the report states, "If propaganda fails, a war of national liberation against Castro much be launched...
...Bushnell, "Bilateral Assistance...
...And they are ready to wage social civil war to got there...
...2 7 The Iron Triangle El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras-the Iron Triangle-are the Reagan AdministraJulylAugust 3132 NACLA Report tion's ticking time-bombs...
...KittsNevis, St...
...On that day, representatives of gay and women's rights groups, minority groups, organizations in support of other liberation struggles and groups working on economic and political issues in this country took the microphone to affirm the common root of all these struggles: the Reagan Administration was the immediate enemy, they each recognized, but the problem lies deep within the system itself...
...Mexico It is hard to overestimate the importance the Reagan Administration attaches to good relations with the government of Mexico...
...State Department, Bureau of Public Affairs...
...But Casey's recent legal troubles and pressures for his resignation have set back CIA morale again...
...From whence comes the need, for and by whom is it to be carried out, and how are we to respond to the price exacted by those who stand to lose their old privileges...
...Different from Cuba in 1959, the Nicaraguan revolution as well as the struggles in Guatemala and El Salvador enjoy the support of a stronger and more independent Mexico and of the international social democratic movement...
...4. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, After the Cataclysm (Boston: South End Press, 1979), p. 41...
...cutoff...
...Honduras, meanwhile, has been scheduled to receive more U.S...
...School 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 4.6 + (a) Fiscal Year 1982 begins October 1982 and reflects Reagan administration priorities (b) Foreign Military Sales Financing Program provides credits to governments to purchase military weapons and equipment from U.S...
...Covert action (undermining governments, assassinations, etc...
...g) The Eastern Caribbean includes the following countries: Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Montserrat, St...
...One must bear in mind that democratization will be a long process since, according to the Ambassador, these societies lack the "requisite political culture" for democracy...
...Toward the Future The power struggle going on in the United States today is a dangerous one because the situation is unstable, potentially more so than it has been at any time since the late 20s...
...relations with Mexico...
...The money which it replaces can then be used for security costs...
...If propaganda falls, a war of national liberation against Castro must be launched...
...1 Reagan and the Americas Within the context of global concerns described above, several propositions particularly inform regional policy...
...1 9 Secretary Enders has described Cuba as a "misshapen society," a view shared by the organizations of Cuban and Central American exiles training in Miami and other U.S...
...plan...
...It is, in summary, that the Soviet Union has taken advantage of detente, pursues an expansionist foreign policy, continues to support wars of liberation and is trying to surpass the United States in military power...
...Such societies create no refugees...
...The United States cannot expect the simple falling into line of its allies characteristic of earlier periods...
...It is imperative that this message not be forgotten and that the numbers of those working together to reach out with it multiply...
...The State Department will use "quiet diplomacy" to encourage an end to human rights abuses in such countries as Guatemala, Argentina and South Africa...
...Such programs are designed to tighten the links between the military and the United States...
...intervention in El Salvador, in Washington on May 3rd of this year...
...The Administration's seriousness about the terrorism argument was evident in the recent reWiAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEE14 "'T'ALItlIAN AND AUThRITARIAW ? WELL, A TOTALITARIAW4 GOVERNMENT ARRWETS, TORWRES AND MUMDER5 AW AUEtoRITARIA 4 (CNERNMENT, ON THE OfTER HAWD...
...2. Authoritarianism vs...
...Security Assistance Programs, FY 1982, Congressional Presentation (Washington, D.C.: U.S...
...Brazil has the hemisphere's largest army...
...hegemony...
...Honduran media breed a war mentality with harangues about the "communists" ruling in Nicaragua and threatening to rule in El Salvador...
...For a report from one of the training camps in Honduras, see Soldier of Fortune (September 1981), p. 56...
...The latter category, by the vagueness of its definition, serves as a particularly handy way to harass third world solidarity movements.' 5. Military Security and Arms Sales: Undersecretary of State James L. Buckley, brother of conservative columnist William, recently told a gathering in Williamsburg, Virginia, "We find ourselves in 1981 not only *Of the 39 international human rights covenants and protocols, most pertaining to policial and economic rights, including the most important ones, have not been ratified by the United States, including nine which were pending before the Senate during the Carter Administration...
...Enders, "Remarks," and Latin America Weekly Report, May 15, 1981, p. 8 . 36...
...response has been a dramatic increase in economi- and military assistance to Grenada's neighbors, and an idiotic attack on Grenada's request for economic assistance to build an international airport with Cuban help...
...The Mexico/Cuba alliance is a consequence of anti-Yanqui sentiment, which lies deep in Mexico/U.S...
...People are more sure than ever that "what's good for General Motors" isn't good for them...
...Air Force planes in what has been called the "sideshow" to the Vietnam war...
...i) Aid to Nicaragua has been cut...
...ExSomoza supporters and others disaffected with the revolution have formed commando brigades to launch a counteroffensive, and the Sandinistas have mobilized the general population into militias...
...To strengthen the CIA, Casey and his secondin-command, Bobby Ray Inman, are planning to reverse the massive exodus of personnel during the decade of the 70s by recruiting many of these former agents back to their original posts...
...Reagan's appointment of a close associate and fellow member of the Committee on the Present Danger, William Casey, was a measure of the importance which all members of the Coalition give to restoring the weapons of covert action and intelligence to their full strength within the arsenal of U.S...
...The U.S...
...Canal Mill...
...9 In pursuit of this end, the Administration is also expected to ask that human rights and nuclear proliferation restrictions on arms sales be eased or lifted to permit friendly governments to get the weapons they need...
...3,000 7,000 + 0 0 0 420 600 + East Carlb.g 0 5,500 new 0 20,000 0 0 0 Ecuador 4,000 6,000 + 0 0 0 420 600 + El Salvador 10,000 25,000 + 20,000 40,000 + 440 1,000 + Guatemalah 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Guyana 0 0 0 0 0 0 25 40 + Haiti 300 300 0 0 0 0 145 415 + Honduras 5,000 10,000 + 0 0 0 420 700 + Jamaica 1,587 1,000 + 41,000 40,000 - 25 75 + Mexico 0 0 0 0 0 0 130 245 + Nicaragual 0 0 0 66,300 20,000 - 0 0 0 Panama 0 0 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 Paraguay 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Peru 4,000 6,000 + 0 0 0 310 750 + St...
...New York Times, June 23, 1981...
...f) The Reagan administration reallocated these funds from other sources to give them to Brazil...
...Jeane Kirkpatrick 3. Human Rights: By Reagan's election, elite opinion had abandoned Carter's human rights policy as unworkable or naive...
...The role that militarism plays in the Reagan Administration's foreign policy framework, under the aegis of its current proponents, appears to transcend questions of short term economic interest into the realm of ideological motive...
...3. European Capital and Politics in the Hemisphere: European capital has shown increased interest in the region over the past ten years, particularly from West Germany...
...Alfred Bloomingdale, early supporter of Reagan and member of the Kitchen Cabinet...
...Totalitarianism: To distinguish friends from enemies, the Reagan Administration has offered a two-part justification for maintaining good relations with authoritarian governments...
...Yet the Reagan Administration politically cannot declare opposition to human rights...
...Cuba brings to the hemisphere the ideology of the Soviet Union with a commitment to spread toJulylAugust 2930 NACLA Report talitarianism in its own image and to extend Soviet-Cuban influence," declared Vice President Bush in a speech to the business-oriented Council on the Americas...
...The United States has technology to "green" the deserts of Sonora and grain reserves to feed the hungry...
...It is time to sound a clarion call for freedom, dignity and national self interest which will echo the spirit of the American people...
...Meanwhile, President Reagan has set about to woo the Portillo government with private talks at Camp David and horseback rides in the woods...
...It is an unruly scenario, and an unlikely one...
...3 4 The most significant initiative under study by the Reagan Administration is the controversial South Atlantic Treaty Organization (SATO).3 Its creation still not official policy, SATO is being pushed by Reagan advisers close to the rightist Council on Inter-American Security...
...national interests...
...His government has not only criticized U.S...
...The money can be used for military-related public works or it can replace money already budgeted by the recipient country...
...El Salvador, now an international symbol of third world resistance, is the subject of a special inter-agency task force chaired by William Clark, Undersecretary of State and close friend of President Reagan...
...279 (Washington, D.C.: U.S...
...Security Assistance Programs, FY1982...
...Reagan's Hit Ust During the hearings last spring on proposed foreign policy, Secretary of State Alexander Haig talked of a Soviet "hit list" in Central America...
...With new military assistance from the United States and the promise from special envoy General Vernon Walters of Reagan's support, the Guatemalan military will step up its attempt to eradicate the growing guerrilla movement...
...bilateral aid that had been granted earlier to the Sandinista government was suspended, despite denials of the U.S...
...Rightist opponents had attacked it from its inception, and most in the Reagan Coalition consider it the key factor in the downfall of the Shah and Somoza...
...Tiny Grenada is another Cuban satellite, according to the State Department...
...An integrated global foreign policy is essential...
...2. Jeane Kirkpatrick, "Dictatorships and Double Standards," Commentary (November 1979), p. 34...
...Press Handout," remarks by Thomas O. Enders at the Council of the Americas, Washington, D.C., June 3, 1981...
...It is proving itself daily not to be...
...Fidel Castro, in a letter to the General Secretary of the UN, December, 1965 The Mini-Marshall Plan To stabilize the region and supplement its destabilization of Cuba, the Administration wants to launch a new assistance effort that will bring together the governments of the United States, Canada, Venezuela and Mexico in a joint pact to administer aid to the Caribbean Basin countries...
...It is to be expected that regional mechanisms like the Organization of American States (OAS), so long under control of the United States, will continue to resist losing their newfound independent voice...
...2 ' Enders will be the man responsible for State Department policy toward the Latin American and Caribbean region for the next four years...
...They do not disturb the habitual rhythms of work and leisure, habitual places of residence, habitual patterns of family and personal relations...
...State Department, Bureau of Public Affairs), March 23, 1981...
...But to an alarming degree he is serious...
...It is the preferred method of intervention...
...Source: Security Assistance Programs, FY82, Congressional Presentation, Department of State...
...Richard Allen, President Reagan's National Security Adviser Almost immediately upon taking office, the new Administration was accusing Nicaragua of aiding the FMLN...
...William Shawcross, Sideshow (New York: Pocket Books, 1979), p. 265...
...Joint operations of Honduran and Salvadorean military have been responsible for at least two massacres of Salvadorean refugees on the Sumpul River, the border between the two countries...
...JulylAugust 2728 NACLA Report * The Americas are a key battleground in the worldwide struggle to reassert U.S...
...4. Latin Americans Living in the United States: There are 17 million Latinos in the United States...
...European-based political movements, such as the Socialist International, funded primarily from West Germany, and the Christian Democrats, whose largest party is German, have challenged U.S...
...New Rightist advisers of Reagan have described it as "less Christian than Communist...
...4. The Revival of the CIA: Since the scandals of Watergate and the overthrow of Allende in Chile, the Central Intelligence Agency has suffered a restriction of its powers and internal morale problems...
...3. Ibid., p. 44...
...Vincent & The Grenadines...
...Because the miseries of traditional life are familiar, they are bearable to ordinary people who, growing up in society, learn to cope, as children born to untouchables in India acquire skills and attitudes necessary for survival in the miserable roles they are destined to fill...
...With the increasing attention paid to the region, and the probable worsening of living conditions for relatives left behind (as well as for those who are here), there exists the possibility of greater communication and contact between Latin and Caribbean people in this country and July/August 3334 NACLA Report those in the region...
...A New Inter-American Policy for the Eighties," prepared by the Committee of Santa Fe...
...I think the electoral outcome clearly shows that we did not do as well in communicating to the public why we need to head the way we were headed...
...Ibid...
...Far more probable is that the powerful Internationalists will give the Right more leash for a while, allowing them to act as their "shock trocps"--with the aim of dividing the population and cowing those that move into opposition...
...3 6 This will be the first program of its kind in several years...
...2 2 Scheduled for implementation in Fiscal Year 1983 (which begins October 1, 1982), the miniMarshall Plan has a long way to go...
...Department of State...
...Dubbed the "mini-Marshall Plan" (after a massive relief and redevelopment program undertaken by the United States in Europe after World War II), the plan proposes new economic and military assistance in a multilateral approach that would include as suppliers of credit not only the four governments but also the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank...
...269 (Washington, D.C.: U.S...
...Its trade relations with southern African countries have forged an African foreign policy that puts Brazil outside the SATO project...
...9. Ibid...
...e) FY 81 are estimated expenditures...
...Ibid...
...Representatives of the "establishment" are losing their charisma...
...The undisbursed balance of the $75 million in U.S...
...This island republic in the Caribbean has thrown that part of the region into turmoil with its independent foreign policy, its dramatic attempts to deal with its domestic problems, and its close ties with Cuba...
...It is increasingly probable that others will be detached to crisis areas as an intermediate step to direct intervention...
...Venezuela is a major supplier of oil...
...5. Radicalizaion of the Catholic Church: The three pillars of authority in Latin America were, until recently, the oligarchy, the military and the Catholic Church...
...For example, oil interests are upset by the Administration's break with Libya and its threatening posture toward Angola...
...Enders' special adviser, General Gordon Sumner, is the Council's chairman...
...How sensitive the present Administration will be is open to question...
...8 Concretely, that means a one billion dollar increase worldwide over Fiscal Year 81 in credits and loans to enable eligible foreign governments to purchase "defense articles, services and training...
...Enders, "Remarks...
...Alan Nairn, "Controversial Reagan Campaign Links with Guatemalan Government and Private Sector Leaders," a research memorandum (Washington, D.C.: Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 1980...
...d) International Military Education and Training Program is training given to officers of the recipient government in facilities in the US, In Panama or with mobile training teams...
...Lucia 0 0 0 0 0 0 58 60 + St...
...To maximize U.S...
...6. The Vietnam Syndrome: Reagan's aggressive militarism will require popular acquiesence to foreign adventures and covert action...
...will join with them to bring the costs of that war back home to Havana.' 20 To proclaim the rights of those people oppressed and exploited by imperialism with the complicity of the oligarchies...
...5 Traditional autocrats leave in place existing allocations of wealth, power, status and other resources in which most traditional societies favor an affluent few and maintain masses in poverty...
...29...
...Ibid...
...arms dealers...
...Thus we are faced not only with the need to rebuild and modernize our own military forces, but to help other nations in the free world rebuild theirs...
...2 3 During and after the presidential campaign, Reagan's Latin Americanists talked of Nicaragua as "lost...
...Enders, "Remarks...
...Cuba In no administration since that of Kennedy has anti-Castro sentiment been so great...
...his presence complements the Soviet Union, Cuba and the PLO in Administration fantasies about the shadowy forces that lurk behind every revolution...
...John A. Bushnell, "Bilateral Assistance," Current Policy, No...
...As defined under international law, human rights are protected against infringement by the state and imposed as a duty on the state for their guarantee.* General Haig has argued that the greatest violators of human rights are the "terrorists," not governments, and that they should be the focus of international 26 NACLAReportJulylAugust 27 concern...
...21...
...FY82 budget proposals for the junta total $117.2 million in direct economic and military aid while the current year's estimated spending will be $143.1 million...
...Y (December 1980), p. 26...
Vol. 15 • July 1981 • No. 4
