By Hedelberto López Blanch on April 7, 2023
Luis Almagro, photo: El Tiempo
Like the movie “Around the World in 80 Days” the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro tried to compete with that film and for two years spent honeymoons in about 30 countries with a dear whose expenses were mostly paid by the organization.
In total, this right-wing enemy of the democratic peoples of Latin America, who complies with the guidelines emanating from Washington, traveled at least 34 times accompanied by an advisor with whom he maintained a “sentimental relationship”, according to the investigation carried out by the organization.
The details of the trips, advanced by the press media and which took place between 2018 and December 2019, also appear in a series of reports that the secretary general submits on his activities outside the headquarters of the institution in Washington to the presidency of the Permanent Council.
The investigation, commissioned by the OAS to an external law firm to determine whether the relationship between the secretary general and the Mexican Marian Vidaurri, an employee of the organization had an improper character and the advisor was promoted to better positions within the institution as favored treatment, indicates that in some cases, the cost of the trip of Almagro’s “beloved” were covered by the organizers of the events and in others by the OAS.
Everything indicates that Luis and Marian, enjoyed “Honeymoons” in Cartagena de Indias, during a meeting of the Inter-American Press Association in March 2019; in Pamplona, in a visit organized by the University of that city; in the Bahamas, in October 2019 to meet with the Prime Minister of that island; in Buenos Aires, in March of that year, to participate in a seminar on populism, and in a discussion with young people at the EAFIT University in Medellin (Colombia), among others.
Almagro has been a faithful ally of the United States since his investiture in that position, and has complied with all the guidelines emanating from Washington against progressive movements and governments in the region.
Let us remember that he helped and gave the go-ahead to the coup d’état against Evo Morales in Bolivia; he attacked on countless occasions the legitimate governments of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua and urged that the economic and financial blockades that the United States maintains against them not be lifted.
Nor has Almagro condemned the massacres carried out by the Bolivian ultra-right after the coup against Evo in 2019, nor those of Dina Boluarte in Peru upon the consummation of the parliamentary coup against President Pedro Castillo that have left more than 60 dead and hundreds wounded, among other violent acts of right-wing forces in the area.
But it seems that the U.S. subject’s days at the OAS are coming to an end because it is no longer in Washington’s interest to keep in office a character so detested by most Latin American governments.
In an attempt to clean up Washington’s image, a group of U.S. congressmen, in a letter addressed to Secretary of State Anthony Blinden, have now requested that Almagro be investigated for allegedly having incurred in “ethical infractions and irregularities” and, if proven, that he be sanctioned and removed from office.
Ah, that smells like the United States has no more use for its “man” in the OAS.
Let us remember that the obsession of the United States to control all of Latin America and the Caribbean has been a constant since long before the Organization of American States was founded on April 30, 1948.
The roots of the OAS are deeply linked to those of the United States since it was created to serve the hegemonic interests of the “colonial power” in the quest to dominate the countries of Our America. Its antecedents are the so-called Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine.
From the thirteen colonies to the 21st century, the Manifest Destiny, adopted by the then President James Knox Polk, promoter of the war against Mexico in 1846-48, to annex more than half of the Aztec nation, has maintained the conviction that God chose the United States to be a “superior nation” and thus took over territories with different tricks or wars.
Later, the Monroe Doctrine (America for the Americans or better said for the Americans), was announced by the fifth president James Monroe, and directed mainly to the European powers with the intention that Washington would not tolerate any interference or meddling of the European powers in America.
For the sake of this Doctrine, the United States has intervened more than a hundred times in Latin American nations or has promoted coups d’état against progressive governments and even attacks and assassinations against nationalist leaders in the region.
The OAS, with design and rules made by the United States, came to round out the policy of control that Washington has maintained for more than a century over Latin America.
As for Almagro, his days in the OAS are numbered because, paraphrasing the adage of Rome, the United States is willing to pay traitors but despises them.
Hedelberto López Blanch is a Cuban journalist. He writes for the daily Juventud Rebelde and the weekly Opciones. He is the author of “La Emigración cubana en Estados Unidos”, “Historias Secretas de Médicos Cubanos en África” and “Miami, dinero sucio”, among others.
Source: Cuba en Resumen