By Luis Britto Garcia on January 22, 2025
Laura Richardson and the US Southern Command
The battles of Latin America and the Caribbean for independence and sovereignty were bloody. According to the estimation of the Liberator Simón Bolívar, they cost more than a third of the population.
During the 19th century, the unjust oligarchic order inherited from colonial times led to numerous civil wars. But apart from the independence struggles, there have been few international conflicts in our region, most of them initiated by financial interests foreign to our America. To demonstrate their peaceful vocation, the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean signed the “Treaty of Tlatelolco” in Mexico on February 14, 1967, which prohibits the development, stockpiling or use of nuclear weapons in the region and restricts atomic energy to peaceful uses. In fact, the agreement reserves the use of such devices to the only hemispheric power that possesses them in the hemisphere, the United States.
In the same vein, on January 29, 2014, the leaders of the 33 countries of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) signed in Havana the “Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace”, in which they affirm “our commitment to consolidate a zone of peace in Latin America and the Caribbean, in which differences between nations are resolved peacefully, through dialogue and negotiation or other forms of solution, and in full accordance with international law”. It was ratified by Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay and Venezuela.
In contrast with this constant, firm and explicit vocation for the peace of the Latin American and Caribbean peoples, since 1817 the United States has perpetrated more than fifty armed interventions in Our America, some followed by vast plundering, such as the one that in 1848 snatched from Mexico more than half of its territory, the one that in 1899 interfered in the Independence of Cuba and annexed Puerto Rico, the one that in 1904 appropriated the area of the Panama Canal. By virtue of this, two centuries after the battle of Ayacucho, we find a good part of Our America partly militarily occupied again by troops foreign to the region.
Only that these militias have not fought battles to install their enclaves in what were once independent territories: in most cases they occupied them with the consent of stateless governments.
The United States, which has some 6,000 military bases in its territory and some 800 in the rest of the world, currently has some 76 military bases in the territory of Our America: almost double the number of countries in the region.
To mention all these enclaves would be too extensive.
The new neoliberal government will surely authorize other enclaves in an expeditious manner. Chile supports one near Valparaíso. In Colombia, 9 US military bases seriously interfere in internal affairs: in fact, each Colombian airport is a bastion that houses, supplies and repairs northern military aircraft. In Cuba, the Guantanamo enclave remains, despite the staunch opposition of the people and authorities. The government of Rafael Correa freed Ecuador from the Manta Base: the neoliberal Noboa ceded for the same use the Galapagos Islands, with mortal damage to the ecology of the archipelago, and admitted an invasion of US troops under the pretext of fighting the criminal underworld. Haiti has been repeatedly and prolongedly occupied by northern soldiers, with disastrous results. In Honduras, 3 military bases participated in the coup against Mel Zelaya. In Panama, 12 bases prolong the military occupation, despite the Torrijos-Carter agreements that recognize Panamanian sovereignty over the Canal. Paraguay supports two, which threaten the Guarani Aquifer and the Lithium Triangle. In Peru 8 enclaves support the repression of the dictator Dina Boluarte. In Puerto Rico 12 bases maintain by force the humiliating condition of Free Associated Country. In addition to those mentioned above, there are US bases in Aruba, Curacao, Costa Rica and El Salvador. To which are added a secret and indefinite number of “quasi-bases” that cooperate in tasks of espionage, communication, quartermaster and in general interference in local affairs.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European armed wing of the United States, also sows its enclaves in the region. This military alliance maintains bases in the Falklands, Belize, Guadeloupe and Martinique. Argentina has been a “Principal Extra-NATO Ally” since 1997, Brazil since 2019, and Colombia has been a “NATO Global Partner” since 2022. European troops guard the Overseas Department of Guyana.
By brute force or the consent of stateless governments, Latin America and the Caribbean has become in practice a militarily occupied region.
Should the neo-liberal opposition come to power in Venezuela, its first act would be to allow the installation of a dozen foreign military bases to guarantee the Empire the plundering of our wealth.
When there are two roosters in a barnyard, one is playing the role of the hen.
The simultaneous presence of foreign and national armed forces in the same territory implies a conflict, a capitulation, or that the latter will serve as cannon fodder for the interests of the former.
The extreme gravity of the military occupation of Our America can be understood if it is taken into account that the invading countries also claim for their bases and soldiers abroad the condition of extraterritoriality and impunity. That is to say: 1) the occupied nation cannot inspect what happens in foreign military installations located in its territory, and 2) the troops of the occupying army are formally endowed with diplomatic immunity, so that their crimes, atrocities and crimes against humanity cannot be judged according to the Constitution and local laws.
Just as foreign capitalists in Special Economic Zones are not subject to tax or labor laws or national courts, foreign occupiers are immune from the laws and courts of the country they occupy.
To maintain such outrages, U.S. military doctrine is periodically readjusted, as was the case with “President William Clinton’s War Plan,” launched at the First Summit of the Americas in Miami in 1994.
This plan presents three strategic objectives on three related fronts to be achieved before the year 2006: 1) the economic reconquest, through the FTAA, 2) the political reconquest, 3) the military reconquest and 4) the appropriation of the Amazon, added later.
The “military reconquest” of Latin America and the Caribbean is being prepared by armed hemispheric intervention organizations created by William Clinton in 1995: the Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas, which adopted the doctrine of the OAS Democratic Charter in 2002 at its fifth meeting in Santiago, Chile, and the Hemispheric Center for Defense Studies.
When examining the possibilities of “military reconquest” it must be taken into account that the United States has 1,328,800 soldiers in active service. According to data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in 2001 Latin America and the Caribbean had 1,251,000 troops: it is possible that today it will equal the number of US troops.
It would be extremely costly, complicated and demanding for the power of the North to maintain a total occupation force of its own nationals throughout the whole of Our America. To train and maintain it, they would have to recruit and equip a force at least equivalent to that of the sum of their local armies, which would mean doubling their current contingent, would be incalculably expensive and would force them to weaken their other strategic world fronts.
The total military occupation of Our America by the United States is therefore impossible. It has been our disunity and our lack of solidarity, if not our collaboration, that allowed the northern power to impose its will through consecutive interventions focused on republics that had no choice but to face diplomatically and strategically alone the disproportionate power of the northern colossus.
Therefore, the ideal for the United States would be for its hegemony over Latin America and the Caribbean to be maintained by troops from its own nations, paid for as far as possible by the occupied peoples themselves.
Thus, in 1963, the Americans supported the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic, and to prevent Colonel Caamaño Deñó from replacing him in command, the marines were supported in 1965 by contingents sent by the Latin American dictatorships of the time in Brazil, Nicaragua, Honduras and Paraguay.
An OAS resolution legitimized the blockade against Cuba. U.S. diplomacy obtained from a group of small Caribbean islands the request for the invasion of Grenada in 1983; troops from the British Colony of Jamaica participated in that invasion. At present the head of the Jamaican state is the British monarch: the troops of that island are therefore under British command. Repeated destabilization and invasion attempts against Venezuela have been made by neighboring countries since 2002.
It is possible that, taking advantage of its progressive military occupation of Our America, the United States is trying to revitalize the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR) of 1947, a sort of complement to the Monroe Doctrine and predecessor of NATO, which provided for the joint use of forces of the countries of the Americas against any aggression.
This Treaty was signed by Argentina, Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, United States and Uruguay. It has been invoked a score of times without much effect, but died a natural death when, in 1982, in order to claim its dominion over the Malvinas, Great Britain militarily attacked Argentina, and neither the United States nor the other countries of the pact lifted a finger to defend the latter. Since then, it was clear that the instrument would only be applied in favor of the interests of the United States, avoiding any conflict with the European countries subject to NATO. In fact, it was never used against the colonial enclaves maintained in America by England, France and Holland: Jamaica, Belize, the British, French and Dutch Guianas. For such reasons, Mexico abandoned it in 2002; Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia in 2012.
However, the proliferation of Atlantic Alliance military bases makes a revitalization of TIAR foreseeable. The expansionist and aggressive policy announced by Donald Trump before his second presidency also points to it: strict border closures, massive expulsion of 11 million immigrants, annexation of Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal Zone, customs duties of 60% against Chinese products and against countries whose ports, airports or other means of transport facilitate the transport of such goods.
These are measures that would be difficult to impose peacefully.
Declining empires tend to replace their national armies with mercenary militias recruited from among the colonized peoples themselves. The Rome of the decline nourished its legions with mercenaries from the conquered provinces; the British sustained their domination over India with sepoys; the Atlantic Alliance maintains its domination over Europe with militias from the peoples subdued by the North Atlantic Organization.
Venezuela today has in its neighborhood countries infested with US or NATO military bases: Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Aruba, Curacao, Guadeloupe, Martinique. In the South, the “Main Extra-NATO Ally” Brazil ignores our elections and therefore our government. On its eastern border, the Cooperative Republic of Guyana surrenders resources from the Reclamation Zone, allows continuous intimidating military exercises by the United States and other countries and receives massive contingents of armaments. It is to be feared that a false flag attack will serve as a pretext to assault our riches to the hydrocarbon-hungry powers.
Against this massive occupation, comparable to that of an area invaded by the enemy after a crushing military defeat, we suggest the following measures:
Latin America and the Caribbean urgently need a new Ayacucho. Nothing embitters the days as much as knowing that they no longer pass for friends. Isaías was and continues to be in our memories, a cordial man, a loving father, a humorist and at times a poet in classic rhyming verses, a splendid ambassador, a prosecutor in difficult times when being one could cost his life and perhaps he saved us all. His courageous televised speech on April 12 contributed greatly to the reestablishment of democracy. More than a man of law, he was and is, as St. Paul would say, a Law in himself.
Source: ALBA Portal, translation Internationalist 360