Obama and Chavez share handshake and smile at Summit
Refreshingly accommodating at Summit of the Americas in Trinidad
By Stephen Pate, NJN Network, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada, April 20, 2009
President Barack Obama put his hand out in friendship to Latin America after more than 100 years of American intervention and colonialism. Do not expect Latin political leaders to come on side over the weekend, but it is a refreshing change. Do not expect US business and military interests to applaud it either.
Venezuela’s President Chavez gave Obama a copy of Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano which jumped over the weekend to from 54,000th on Amazon to #2. Obama is transferring his hope message to another thorny problem, Latin America.
Open Veins of Latin America, # 2 at Amazon based on gift from Chavez
From the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 onward, the United States has exerted pressure on governments south of the Texas Mexican border. The Monroe doctrine asserted the United States right to fight against European interests in the Americas.
In our era that included efforts by the USSR to spread communism in Central and South America. The US has invaded countries, meddled in local politics, murdered elected leaders like Salvador Allende in Chile. The interfered in Nicaragua, Cuba, El Salvador and Venezuela.
The reasons were complex but usually tied back to economic interests and geopolitical control. While the Monroe doctrine may have kept communism at bay, it fostered fascist dictators who murdered their own citizens by the millions.
The policies also benefited large American multinational companies who pillaged Central and South America for US profit. The United Fruit Company became a wing of the CIA in enforcing its economic interests.
The rain forests of South America are still a target for oil companies. John Perkins documented his nefarious work in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
Let’s hope Obama can turn the tide within the United States.
President Eisenhower identified the military industrial complex as a threat to democracy. They still hold power in many US political circles.
Obama has the lead but he may not keep control of the United States if he disappoints or worries the people behind the public figures.
anon
I’m willing to bet a lot of the people from central and south america have a whole different sense sitting across the table from Obama. Not just as a democrat but as a figure of a people the European founders of America screwed over as well. I am cautiously optomistic that Obama is who he says he is, and won’t just act like every other president has- that the rest of the world is a piggy bank for the west to make endless withdralls from, without ‘deposits’.
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