CubaMinrex. Sitio del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba

OAS DEALINGS AS THE YANKEE COLONIAL MINISTRY

1948:

Stained with the blood spilt by the Colombian people during the disorganized popular insurrection known as the “Bogotazo” and the Draconian repression following the assassination of the populist leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, the IX International Conference of American States founded the Organization of American States (OAS) and pressured by the then US Secretary of State George Marshall (1947-1949), it passed the Resolution on the Preservation and Defence of Democracy in the Americas, stamped with an obvious anti-Communist mould.

Days before, a bloody uprising, led by José Figueres, the “democratic anti-Communist”, had defeated the popular and Communist forces that were supporting the Christian Socialist Costa Rican government of Teodoro Picardo (1944-1948).  That event, which left a toll of 2,000 dead, was backed by a military invasion carried out with the support of the Caribbean Legion in which the recently “elected” colonial governor of Puerto Rico, Luis  Muñoz Marín. Este, placed an undisputed political-military part. Previously, the Mordaza Law had been instituted in order to repress the independence struggles that had been growing in recent years in that Caribbean archipelago.

Simultaneously, the White House backed the brutal repression launched by the British colonial authorities against the popular and pro-independence manifestations that had been going on in British Guyana.  It also backed the coups which installed the military dictatorship of Colonel Manuel Odría (1948-1956) in Peru and the Military Junta in Venezuela where the Ministry of Defence was occupied by the later dictator Colonel Marcos Pérez Jiménez.

The OAS never said a word about these crimes.

1949:

The Truman administration gave its backing to the wave of terror unleashed by the Colombian government led by Mariano Ospina Pérez and by his mentor and the subsequent president Laureano Gómez (1950-1953).  As a result of that repressive policy and the ill named “liberal conservative violence” it is calculated that between 1948 and 1953 between 200,000 and 300,000 Colombian men and women lost their lives.

The OAS never analyzed or condemned these acts of violence.  

1950:

Luis Muñoz Martín, the colonial governor of Puerto Rico, and the US National Guard started violent repressions against the Puerto Rican independence movement with the excuse of quashing the daring but frustrated uprising of the Nationalist Party which had proclaimed the Republic of Puerto Rico. 

Simultaneously, the White House gave its backing in Haiti to the military coup that brought General Paul Maggloire (1950-1956) to the presidency, immediately joining the Latin American and Caribbean governments that, within the OAS framework, supported American aggression against the recently founded Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea.

1951:

Taking as its excuse the development of the  Korean War (1950-1953), Washington held a Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of all the Latin American  and Caribbean members of the Inter-American System.  At that meeting, at the request of President Harry Truman, a Resolution was passed on the Strengthening of Internal Security of the States of the Western Hemisphere.  This made it possible to deploy hundreds of US military advisors throughout the region playing a  disastrous part in the making up of repressive armies in most of the Latin American and Caribbean countries; from 1952, twelve governments in that area (eight of them in the Caribbean basin) signed Military Assistance Agreements with the United States in the framework of the Mutual Security Program that the White House had been pushing since 1945.

 

1952:

With a view to avoiding the election of the Cuban Peoples’ Party (Ortodoxo) Party candidate for the presidency, the White House gave its backing to the coup against the corrupt government of Carlos Prío Socarrás (1948-1952) in Cuba.  General Fulgencio Batista was at the head of this and he immediately unleashed a bloody repression against all sectors opposing his dictatorship.

Simultaneously, the Bolivian Revolution triumphed in 1952 headed by the reformist National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) led by Víctor Paz Estensoro.  Despite his political inconsistencies, the White House applied a powerful political, diplomatic, economic and military siege that only let up when Paz Estenssoro began to make several concessions to the United States.

.In Puerto Rico, in the middle os a ferocious and indiscriminate repression against the independence movement, the US occupation forces institutionalized the ill-named Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (ELA in Spanish) that to this day serves as a façade for the US colonial domination over that archipelago.

The OAS never made any statement about any of these acts, nor did it debate any of them within the heart of its organization.

1953:

According to the strategy to “contain communism” designed by his predecessor and with a view to create “a friendly climate” for US monopoly investments, the Republican President Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961) bolstered ties with all the military dictatorships  or “repressive democracies” existing in Latin American and the Caribbean.  Likewise, he gave his backing to the British military invasion against the fleeting (lasting 133 days) government of the important Socialist and leader of the Guyanese people’s independence movement, Cheddi Jagan, who had obtained the majority of votes in the parliamentary elections that preceding year.  As a result, once more that Caribbean nation suffered the imposing of a “(terrorist) dictatorship by the British Colonial Office”. 

The OAS never issued any statement about these events.

1954:

With OAS backing and applying terrorist methods against the civilian population and with the support of the bloody military dictatorships in Honduras and Nicaragua, the White House, the CIA and US armed forces organized the so-called “Operation Success”; this was another name for the mercenary invasion that toppled the democratic, popular and nationalist government headed by Jacoba Arbenz (1951-1954).

Arbenz was replaced by the blood-thirsty lieutenant-colonel (and later self-promoted to general) Carlos Castillo Armas (1954-1957) who, after being recruited by the CIA when he was enrolled at a military instruction course at the US Army General Staff School, headed the ill-named Guatemalan National Liberation Army.  A regime of state terrorism was installed under his leadership that killed thousands of Guatemalans.

Simultaneously, the US embassies in Paraguay and Brazil became implicated in the organization of coups that led to the overthrow of the “pro-Peronist” president Federico Chávez (1949-1954) and of the second term of Getulio Vargas (1950-1954), respectively.  As a result of these actions, with White House support, General Alfredo Stroessner occupied the presidency of Paraguay and, until 1989, headed one of the longest state terrorist regimes in the Western Hemisphere. 

Guatemala was invaded by mercenary troops organized by the CIA, overthrowing the progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz.  The OAS had earlier  lent its services to pass a resolution that would introduce the variation of collective regional intervention in express violation of its own charter and that of the UN.  Thus, and in the face of the done deed, the agency limited itself to “allow” the US government to act and it postponed any examination of the situation, ignoring the interests of the attacked country.                                                                                                                                                     

The CIA orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically elected Arbenz government in Guatemala.  A Guatemalan poet described the Arbenz government as “spring-time years in a country of eternal tyranny”. Practically 40 years of violence and repression followed that ended in the “scorched earth” policy of the 1980s.  More than 150,000 persons lost their lives. 

1955:
Preceded by a bloody military uprising supported by the most reactionary sectors of the Radical party and the Catholic Church, along with the direct support of the US and British marines, the second constitutional government of Juan Domingo Perón (1952-1955) was overthrown via a brutal military coup.  He was replaced by General Pedro Eugenio Aramburu (1955-1958) who, while his dictatorship was in power (1955-1958), unleashed a ferocious repression against all the military and leaders of the Justicialista Party (the Peronists) as well as against other popular elements.  Moreover, he undertook other actions directed at normalizing Argentine relations with the US.  The OAS allowed the 1955 bloody military uprising to put an end to the constitutional government of Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina

 

1956:
With the cynical excuse of celebrating the 130th anniversary of the Amphictyonic Congress held in 1826 by Simón Bolívar, the US President Dwight Eisenhower, for the first time in the history of inter-American relations, met in Panama with almost all his Latin American and Caribbean peers.  The only ones to miss the meeting were the dictators of Colombia Gustavo Rojas Pinillas (1953-1957), and of Honduras, Julio Lozano Díaz (1954-1956) who, months later were overthrown by violent popular uprisings that could only be subdued with putsches that were incited by the US embassies in Bogota and Tegucigalpa.

 

1957:
After the execution the year before of Anastasio Tacho Somoza, the founder of the Somoza dynasty, “presidential elections” took place in Nicaragua.  The winner of these elections, in the midst of a stifling repressive climate, was Luis Somoza Debayle (1957-1963); he appointed his brother Anastasio Tachito Somoza Debayle as Chief of the National Guard, a “graduation present” for the “excellent marks” he had received at the West Point Military Academy in the United States.  In that manner the continuity of the terrorist regime installed in that Central American country from 1936 was assured, with the support of the White House and the Pentagon. 

Simultaneously, in Haiti, the US Embassy “gave its blessing” to the fraudulent election that brought François Duvalier (“Papa Doc”) to the presidency; Duvalier inaugurated a dynastic regime of terror that went on until 1986, all with official US support.

The OAS did not condemn the 1957 fraudulent election that put François Duvalier in power in Haiti and which began the reign of terror that lasted until 1986.

1958:

With the open backing of the White House and the Pentagon, the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista undertook a massive military operation (called the Summer Offensive) directed to wiping out the Rebel Army lead by Commander Fidel Castro.  After this military operation failed, the Eisenhower administration commenced useless manoeuvres, including a new coup d’état, in order to frustrate the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. 

Simultaneously, in the midst of great popular protests, the then US vice president Richard Nixon visited several Latin American countries, among them Bolivia, Peru and Venezuela.  In the last one of these, popular protests were so great that Eisenhower mobilized Marines units to the Venezuelan coast; but that act of bravado was rejected by the Venezuelan people and by the provisional government of Rear Admiral Wolfgang Larrazabal. 

Likewise, after te the Guatemalan dictator Carlos Castillo Armas was assassinated by “bandits belonging to his very own gang”, the White House promoted the election of the “permitted opposition” candidate Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes;  Fuentes, under CIA orders, had also been connected to the mercenary invasion organized by the US to overthrow the Arbenz government.,

The OAS never made any statement about these events and their terrible implications on the stability of the hemisphere. 

 

1959:

Immediately following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1st, 1959, the Dwight Eisenhower administration along with the CIA gave impetus to the carrying out of several terrorist actions directed towards the overthrow of the Cuban revolutionary government, as well as the assassination of some of its leaders, above all the then prime minister, Commander Fidel Castro.  In some of these schemes, the Dominican lackey Rafael Leónidas Trujillo played an important part; he had also been involved in plans to destabilize the then president of Venezuela Rómulo Betancourt (1959-1964).

As a result, the OAS called a consultation meeting of the foreign ministers in order to evaluate “tensions in the Caribbean”.  At the meeting, the White House vainly manoeuvred to obtain a resolution for the condemnation of the first actions the Cuban Revolution took on in order to provide benefits for the people.  Simultaneously, US Navy ships were constantly starting to prowl Cuban waters with a view to “intervene in the case o crisis is produced in Cuba”.
 
The OAS never opposed the military dictatorship headed by Rafael Leónidas Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.

1960:

President Eisenhower authorizes the carrying out of under-cover actions on a grand scale to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro who had come to power in January 1959 and immediately began a revolutionary works programme with extraordinary social range and popular support.  The under-cover actions included assassinating the Cuban leader, the creation of counter-revolutionary gangs and sabotage on the main sectors of the island’s economy. 

In keeping with the plans previously drawn up by the White House to overthrow the Cuban Revolution (including the training of a CIA-organized mercenary force in Guatemala), the VII Consultation Meeting of OAS Foreign Ministers was held in Costa Rica; besides opportunistically imposing economic sanctions against the Trujillo regime which had organized a frustrated assassination attempt on the Venezuelan president Rómulo Betancourt, the meeting passed a declaration which established that the solidarity towards the Cuban Revolution expressed by the USSR and the Peoples’ Republic of China “put inter-American security at risk”.  Thus began the cascade of OAS resolutions against Cuba under pressure from the State Department.

Simultaneously, with the support of the Military Missions (Navy and Air), along with the US Embassy, the lackey-government of Leónidas Trujillo underlined its terrorist nature with a view to destroying the intense anti-dictatorial mobilization that had been unleashed in the Dominican Republic. 

1961:

In spite of the promises made by the young Democrat president John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) to create “an American civilization where, within the rich diversity of its own traditions, each nation would be free to follow its own path towards progress” and continuing the plans against the Cuban Revolution begun by the preceding administration, the White House, CIA and Pentagon, supported by the military dictatorships in Nicaragua and Guatemala, perpetrated the mercenary Bay of Pigs invasion.  At the same time, trying to neutralize the adverse reaction produced by that “first imperialist defeat in Latin America”, the White House fostered the Alliance for Progress; its demagogic and counter-insurgent characteristics were rapidly condemned by Commander Ernesto Che Guevara.  Earlier, a commando unit organized and armed by the CIA eliminated one of its alleged offspring, the Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.
Thanks to the demonstrations carried out in front of the Dominican coastline by several US warships and the support of the US embassy in Santo Domingo, up to the end of that year, Joaquín Balaguer, the Machiavellian representative of the “Trujillo bureaucracy” was able to hold on to the presidency.  Backed by Ramfis Trujillo, Chief of the Armed Forces, Balaguer unleashed a brutal repression against all of the dictatorship’s opposition.

Mercenary forces recruited, organized, funded and directed by the US invade Cuba through the Bay of Pigs (Playa Giron).  In less than 72 hours, they are defeated thus making it the first great military defeat of Yankee imperialism in Latin America. 

The CIA concocts a coup d’ état against the president-elect of Ecuador, J. M Velazco Ibarra, who had shown too much sympathy with Cuba.  

The OAS never analyzed the military invasion of Cuba.  In fact it had supported this military action that cost our people so many human lives and material damages. 
1962:

Following White House directives, the VIII Consultation Meeting of OAS Foreign Ministers in Montevideo expelled Cuba from that regional organization.  Months later, during the so-called Missile Crisis, with the unanimous backing of the OAS, John F. Kennedy unleashed a naval “quarantine” (blockade) around Cuba with the purpose of preventing the Cuban people, making use of their national sovereignty, from acquiring all those Soviet weapons it deemed necessary to defend themselves from the plans for direct military intervention against the Revolution which, following the lines of Operation Mongoose, the US government continued to get ready.  Just as prime Minister Fidel Castro of Cuba had predicted, the US-Soviet negotiations that ended this crisis did not prevent the continuance of different plans from the US circles of power, even the use of terrorism, directed to destroying the Cuban Revolution.

The above-mentioned OAS anti-Cuban resolutions were favoured by the White House sponsored coups d’état in Argentina and Peru.  In the first of these, against the government of Arturo Frondizi (1958-1962), and in the second, against Manuel Prado Ugarteche.  The latter was temporarily replaced by Senator José María Guido who was easily manipulated by the Armed Forces. 

The OAS did not condemn the naval blockade around Cuba by the US even when Cuba had already been expelled from that organization. 

1963:

Continuing the chaín of coups sponsored by the White House, putsch after putsch was produced in Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.  In the first of these, President Carlos Arosemena (1961-1963).was overthrown by a military junta.  In the second case, the “constitutional” president Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes was overthrown by his minister of defence, Colonel Enrique Peralta Azurdia who, in the middle of a heightened climate of violence, remained in office until 1967.  In the third case, the liberal president Ramón Villena (1957-1963) was replaced by a long military dictatorship headed by Colonel Osvaldo López Arellano (1963-1975).  And in the last one, the short-lived (only seven months in duration) government of the celebrated Dominican intellectual and politician Juan Bosch was overthrown.  It was replaced for three years by a triumvirate made up of the main chiefs of the armed forces. 

According to historical investigation, the ousting of Boschhad the express backing of US President John F. Kennedy, and after his assassination on November 22, 1963 and despite certain contradictions, the triumvirate was backed by the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969), author of the “doctrine” authorizing the US armed forces to intervene unilaterally or to launch “limited or preventive warfare” in any part of the world where “American interests” were being threatened.  The maximum expression of that precept was the criminal Vietnam War (1964-1973).  Here the US military-political machine tried all the methods of state terrorism that were incorporated in its various counter-revolutionary strategies against Latin America and the Caribbean.

The coups occurring under the aegis of the White House on our continent were never debated, analyzed or condemned.

 

1964:
President Jôao Goulart of Brazil who had embarked on a programme of agrarian reform and the nationalization of oil, is victim of a coup d’etat supported and promoted by the US.

According to the reactionary policy unleashed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, the US armed forces violently repressed a student demonstration that was claiming Panamanian sovereignty over the Panama Canal Zone. 

Also in Brazil, and with the brazen support of the US ambassador in Rio de Janeiro, the nationalist and democratic government of Jôao Goulart (1961-1964) was overthrown.  He was replaced by Marshal Humberto Castelo Branco (1964-1967) who, along with the high command of the US army, advocated the so-called “ideological borders” and the bloody “national security regimes” (military or civilian-military) that were installed for more than two decades in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Under the disastrous influence of those “doctrines”, the so-called Central American Defence Council (CONDECA) was founded; this was a state agency that, closely coordinated with the South Command of the uS Armed Forces (SOUTHCOM) based in Panama, coordinated the different counter-revolutionary and terrorist strategies unleashed by the military dictatorships or the civilian-military regimes installed in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. 

Simultaneously, with Pentagon backing, the Colombian government headed by the conservative Guillermo León Valencia (1962-1966) undertook the so-called Latin American Security Operation (better known as the LASO Plan), aiming to overthrow the ill named “independent republics” of Marquetalia, Rio Chiquito, El Pato and Guayabero using incredible violence including heavy bombing of the civilian populations.

Likewise, with the barefaced participation of the CIA, the second government (1961-1964) of the Peoples’ Progressive Party (PPP) of Guyana’s leader Cheddi Jagan was overthrown via a virtual coup.  Also, the White House admitted the repression unleashed by the Fifth French Republic, led by President Charles de Gaulle (1959-1969), against the electoral victory of a coalition of leftist parties that were advocating the broadening of Martinican autonomy. 

In that context and via various charters, the IX Meeting of Consultation of OAS Foreign Ministers in Washington passed a new resolution obliging all member states to break diplomatic, commercial and consular relations with the Cuban Revolution.  It was obeyed by all Latin American and Caribbean governments except Mexico.  As part of that policy, the US security establishment brazenly got mixed up in the Chilean electoral campaign which saw the new “defeat” of the candidate representing the people’s forces, Salvador Allende.  The Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970) was elected president brandishing the demagogic motto of “Revolution with Liberty and without bloodshed”.

1965:

Forty-two thousand US soldiers, supported by the OAS, the Inter-American Defence Board and a unit from the Brazilian armed forces, intervened in the Dominican Republic with a view to defeating the popular and constitutional revolution lead by Colonel Francisco Camaño Deñó.  That popular uprising pursued the return to the presidency of the celebrated intellectual and politician Juan Bosch who, fulfilling White house instructions, was being held in Puerto Rico by the colonial governor Luis Muñoz Marín (1949-1965).

In this situation, the OAS sent José A. Mora of Uruguay, its Secretary General, to the Dominican capital with the apparent purpose of obtaining a truce between the warring factions, while the Consulting Body delayed a decision to facilitate the Yankee military forces taking control of the situation.  After multiple diplomatic manoeuvres, the US achieved the passing of a resolution, by the slim margin of one vote, that would create an Inter-American Peace Force.  This was the way, for the first time under the OAS stamp, that a collective intervention of a Latin American country was achieved. 

With the events in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, the role of the OAS entered a crisis; among its fundamental principles was the one stating non-intervention by any state in the internal affairs of any other state.  In the Cold War context, the US prioritized use of this regional body as one more instrument in its confrontation with the USSR. 

The arrival on the OAS scene of the first independent English-speaking Caribbean states coincided with this identity crisis.  Conscious of that reality, the member states met in Buenos Aires in 1967 to forge a new sense of dynamism for the inter-American system.  Among the reforms implemented there was the one referring to the requisites for entry of new members, an aspect which was highly restrictive in the constitutional treaty.  The fact that eighteen of its twenty-one original members had been Spanish colonies gave the OAS an exclusive bias in the face of the Caribbean nations which were colonies of other European powers.  This was translated into an obstacle for the total integration of the insular Caribbean in the organization.

Simultaneously, with US backing, the newly minted Bolivian military dictatorship headed by the generals René Barrientos and Alfredo Ovando, both members of the military junta that at the end of 1964had overthrown the second constitutional government of Víctor Paz Estenssoro, unleashed a brutal and indiscriminate repression against the popular movements, primarily against the struggling miners and the student movement.  In the organization of the repressive structures of that terrorist regime, the notorious SS officer and CIA agent Klaus Barbie (historically known as the Butcher of Lyon) played an important part.

The OAS permitted and helped 42,000 US troops to invade the Dominican Republic to destroy the revolutionary process of Colonel Francisco Camaño Deño

1966:

The United States sent weapons, advisors and Green Berets to Guatemala in order to implement the counter-revolutionary campaign.  In a State Department report it acknowledged that “to eliminate a few hundred guerrillas we have to kill perhaps 10,000 Guatemalan peasants”.

With the declared backing of the White House, a coup led by the appalling General Alejandro Lanusse overthrew the constitutional President Arturo Illia (1963-1966) of Argentina.  Lanusse was “institutionally” replaced by General Juan Carlos Onganía (1966-1970) who, during his mandate and with the support of the P2 fascist Italian Logia (Political Propaganda) erected the first political-ideological, economic and military pillars of the brutal state terrorism regime installed in that South American country ten years later.

At the same time, and as the fruit of an illegal “hemispheric” military intervention the preceding year, the Trujillista Joaquín Balaguer once again assumed the “constitutional” presidency of the Dominican Republic.  In the course of twelve years (1966-1978) and with the irrevocable support of the American foreign policy and security establishment Balaguer introduced a terrorist civilian-military regime that cost the lives of hundreds of Dominican men and women.

Simultaneously, the White House and the British government conspired to mediatize the processes of decolonization that were Ander way in the Caribbean.  So, in Jamaica, via the use of different measures including political violence they favoured the successive electoral victories of candidates from the right-wing Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) and in Guyana they did everything in their power, including the CIA stimuli for racial conflict between the Afro-American and East Indian populations, to avoid a new electoral victory of the already stigmatized socialist candidate of the PPP, Cheddi Jagan.

The OAS never condemned any of these events.  

1967:

A group of Green Berets was sent to Bolivia to find and assassinate Ernesto Che Guevara.

The historical confrontation between Latin Americanism and Pan-Americanism was symbolized in the Second Conference of American Presidents held in Punta del Este, Uruguay under the chairmanship of Lyndon B. Johnson and in the holding of the First Conference of Solidarity with the Peoples of Latin America in Havana.  Some months later,  complying with White House orders, and preceded by the criminal San Juan Night Massacre (June 23) and by other brutal terrorist measures against the civilian population, Commander Ernesto Che Guevara and other internationalist guerrillas making up the National Liberation Army (ELN) of that country were despicably murdered.  Various CIA agents played important parts in these crimes along with US military advisors directly connected to the dictatorship of General René Barrientos and the Army Chief, General y Alfredo Ovando

Simultaneously in Uruguay, with the backing of the US government and the “national Brazilian security” dictatorship of General Artur Da Costa e Silva (1967-1969) a government was constitutionally installed that was made up of the duo of former General Óscar Gestido and his vice president Jorge Pacheco Areco

This was also the year that with US support the last of the descendents of the Somoza dynasty, the then chief of the National Guard Anastasio Tachito Somoza became the “constitutional” president of Nicaragua; during the twelve years he was in power (1967-1979), he strengthened the regime of state terror that had been installed by his predecessors. 

The OAS never was in existence to denounce the dictatorships or their horrendous crimes.

1968:

The CIA organizes a paramilitary force considered to be the precursor of the sinister Death Squads.

With the support of the White House and the national security dictatorships of Argentina and Brazil, the Uruguayan civilian-military dictatorship” of Óscar Gestido and Jorge Pacheco Areco begins to be institutionalized; in the course of their successive terms of office (1967-1971) repression was generalized, as was crime and the torture of political opponents.  That was how the bases of the regime of state terrorism were laid between 1972 and 1985 in what used to be called the “Switzerland of South America”.  During this evolution, CIA advisors placed an important part, masquerading as AID officials, headed by the infamous “teacher of torturers” Dan Mitrione, later executed by the National Liberation Movement Tupac Amaru (Tupamaros).
Simultaneously, in Mexico the pro-imperialist government of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964-1970) sparked the Tlatelolco Massacre.  In response to that event, a wave of indignation and armed and unarmed popular struggles was produced.  These were contained by means of the unleashing of a brutal repressive strategy, especially in the rural and urban areas where the Revolutionary Action Movement and the Urban Zapatista Front were in operation.

In the OAS minutes, there is no record of debate, analysis or condemnation of these events.

1969:

With the support of the then newly elected Republican president Richard M. Nixon (1969-1976) and the US Marines, the Royal Dutch Army of Holland landed more than a thousand paratroopers with a view to quash the powerful popular uprising led by the recently constituted Workers’ and Liberation of Curaçao Front.  At the same time, the White house began to develop different strategies, including the applying of economic sanctions, against the nationalist military governments in Peru and Panama, lead since the year before by General Juan Velasco Alvarado and Lieutenant Colonel Omar Torrijos, respectively.

At par value, Nixon and his then chief of the National Security Council Henry Kissinger
Organized a trip through South America for the multimillionaire and former Coordinator of the Office of Inter-American Affairs of the State Department Nelson Rockefeller who drew up a report in which he proposed the “reinforcement of the system o collective security” for the Western Hemisphere and the OAS.  He also recommended tightening the ties of the United States with the Latin American military circles and strengthening “their own efforts” being developed by some Latin American and Caribbean governments in order to “avert social revolution”.  Thus the foundations for the Nixon Doctrine were laid down.  Opposed to the military interventions, more or less direct, that had been carried out by his predecessors, Nixon wanted to “Latin Americanize” repression in the Western Hemisphere. 

 

1970:

With a view to thwart the electoral victory of the Chilean Popular Unity candidate Salvador Allende, the CIA began several actions, including the premeditated assassination of the then chief of the army, René Schneider, directed to provoke an institutional crisis that would bring about a coup d’état.  In the face of the decision by the Chilean congress to ratify Allende’s electoral victory, the Nixon administration along with the most reactionary forces in Chilean society, began to put in place a systematic plan for the economic, political and military destabilization of that popular government. 

Simultaneously, the White House and the government of the United Kingdom backed the Draconian repressive measures started by Premier Eric Williams (1962-1981) designed to harshly stifle the violent popular outbreak headed by the National Joint Action Committee in Trinidad and Tobago.  That repression was produced under the benign gaze of the accomplices in the American armed forces stationed at the Chaguaramas military base, installed in that Caribbean nation from the days of World War II.

These actions were never condemned by the OAS.  

1971:
The Washington Post confirms that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had tried to assassinate Fidel Castro, the leader of the Cuban Revolution, on several occasions.  Years later, and in the measure that the secret CIA documents were being declassified it has been learned that the attempts can be calculated in the dozens and the plans number in the hundreds.

Backed by the White House, the US embassy in La Paz, as well as the military dictatorships of Brazil and Argentina, the most reactionary sectors of the Bolivian armed forces and the ruling class unleashed a bloody coup against the government of General Juan José Torres (1970-1971) who, with the support of and pressured by the popular movement, headed a new civilian-military intent to bring up to date and bring about the main democratic and nationalist precepts of the betrayed Bolivian Revolution of 1952.  As a result, the bloody terrorist dictatorship of General Hugo Banzer was installed (1971-1979).  

Later, a new and thwarted CIA plan to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro during official visits to Chile, Peru and Ecuador was revealed.  Likewise, new details were learned about the  plans developed by the government and by some American transnational companies, such as International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), designed to create the political-military conditions that, two years later, would allow for the violent overthrow of the popular Salvador Allende government.

After François Duvalier’s death of natural causes, and with the backing of the White House, his son Jean-Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc) takes over the government of Haiti; at the time he was only 19 years old. The terrorist regime installed in that country in 1957 continued until 1986.

The OAS also neither debated nor condemned at any time, any of these events.  

1972:

The US foreign policy and security establishment, the Inter-American Defence Board (based in Washington) and the bloody dictatorships in Guatemala and Nicaragua  got directly involved in the ferocious defeat of the popular uprising (backed by the Youth Military Movement) that erupted in El Salvador as a reaction to the brazen electoral fraud perpetrated against Napoleón Duarte, the National Opposition Union candidate, headed by Colonel Armando Molina, the figurehead for the Salvadoran oligarchy.  After those devastating events, El Salvador fell to the grip of a new wave of “white terror” for the next couple of decades.

Simultaneously, the White House maintained its backing for the reign of terror installed in Guatemala both by the Dr. Julio César Méndez Montenegro government (1996-1970) as by that of General Carlos Arana Osorio (1970-1974).  The latter applied a strategy of genocide throughout the indigenous zones where the main Guatemalan guerrilla organizations were active.  With CIA backing, he also began a brutal repression in the country’s principal cities.

None of these actions was condemned by the OAS.

1973:

The military take power in Uruguay, supported by the United States.  The repression that followed reached extremely high proportions with great numbers of the population being imprisoned for political reasons.

A coup instigated and organized by the United States overthrows the elected government of President Salvador Allende in Chile and General Augusto Pinochet installs himself in power, taking charge of a horrendous and long tyrannical reign.

With White House, Pentagon and CIA participation, along with ITT, the Braden Cupper Corporation and other American monopolies and preceded by the fierce blockade by international financial bodies (IMF, WB) and inter-American agencies, Chile’s constitutional president Salvador Allende was ousted and assassinated.  Thus began the extended regime of terror held in place by the fascist dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

Earlier, with the support of the United States and the “national security dictatorships” installed in Brazil and Paraguay, the terrorist dictatorship of General Juan María Bordaberry (1971-1976) was institutionalized in Uruguay.

At the same time, with the collision of the American embassy in Buenos Aires and the above mentioned national security regimes, the first terrorist groups started to be formed, such as the AAA (Alianza Anticomunista Argentina); employing physical elimination, of both individuals and groups of important cadres and activists in the left wing organizations, both Peronistas and non-Peronistas, they began to destabilize the recently installed “Campora-Peron government”.

Likewise, the White House and its powerful military mission in the Dominican Republic backed the decision of the second “constitutional” government of Joaquín Balaguer (1970-1974) to assassinate, in cold blood, the constitutionalist leader Francisco Caamaño Deñó and his principal followers.  They had landed in the country so that they could commence an armed guerrilla struggle.

Simultaneously, with the backing of the Anglo imperial clique, the colonial government of Grenada, headed by the dictator Eric Gairy, launched a Draconian repression against the struggle for the true independence of that small Caribbean island; among them, there was the machine-gunning down of a peaceful popular demonstration.  It went down in the history of that country as “Bloody Sunday”.

The OAS acted as accomplices in Pinochet’s coup against Salvador Allende, the constitutional president of Chile.

The OAS did not adopt energetic measures against the anti-constitutional coup that brought about the death of President Salvador Allende in 1973, a crime that had full support of the United States.

The OAS never energetically condemned that dictatorship’s genocide, nor the coup itself.

1974:

As part of its policy of economic aggressions toward the continent, the White House enacted a new Trade Law, excluding Venezuela and Ecuador from its benefits because they were members of OPEC.  Likewise, it threatened similar reprisals on the rest of the countries on the continent (Peru, Panama, Ecuador, Jamaica, Guyana…) which, in those years, had joined various international organizations designed to defend the prices of their main export products, for example, bananas, copper, tin, bauxite and oil.

After the death of Juan Domingo Perón (July 1, 1974), CIA agent José López Rega, who at the time was the Minister of Social Welfare in the weak Isabel Martínez (1974-1976) government, unleashed a wave of terrorist actions against the peoples’ movement.  At the same time, he began a conspiracy with the blood-thirsty and corrupt Chief of the Navy, Admiral Emilio Massera, in order to produce a “white coup” or a new “military uprising”.
Simultaneously, as answer to the wave of strikes that shook the country in the two previous years, the colonial governor of Puerto Rico Rafael Hernández Colón (1973-1977) embarked upon brutal police repression of the popular movement and against the principal independence movement organizations, all with the support of the Gerald Ford administration (1974-1977), the FBI and the National Guard.

In the eyes of  the OAS, these events never happened.

1975:

From 1975 Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (1973-1977) was being informed by the American ambassador in Buenos Aires, Robert Hill, that Argentina was getting a new military coup ready that, because of its cruelty, implied serious human rights violations.  Simultaneously, Admiral Emilio Massera started to train Marines troops in the United States in counter-insurgency techniques and the then army chief, General Jorge Videla, travelled to West Point in the US.  He also took part in the meeting of the chiefs of Latin American armies, organized by the Inter-American Defence Board and taking place in Montevideo, with the purpose of building the international alliances that would facilitate the coordination of repressive activity with SOUTHCOM and with the terrorist dictatorships already in place in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Simultaneously, a “white coup” was produced in Peru against the already ill president General Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968-1975).  He was replaced by another general, Francisco Morales Bermúdez, who, favoured by the recommendations of the US Treasury Department, immediately signed various “neo-liberal” treaties with the IMF; these rapidly eroded the popular and nationalistic momentum that had begun in 1968.  As a result, during his term (1975-1980) he had to undertake violent repressive measures against the popular movement.

The OAS never analyzed these matters.

 

1976:

A military dictatorship takes power in Argentina.  Years later, almost 5,000 secret documents revealing the close collaboration and the backing coming from the highest power brokers in Washington for the Argentine military were declassified in the United States.  The Argentine military was responsible for the deaths of at least 30,000 Argentines, many of them young students and workers.  The US State Department has recently declassified documents that directly implicate the former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and other senior US officials in the crimes committed by the Argentine dictatorship which had put into action a campaign of murders, tortures and “disappearances” after they assumed power.  Kissinger was involved in the operations called “Plan Condor”, a cooperative network to capture and execute political opposition members in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia.

With the knowledge of the American president Gerald Ford and the Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a bloody military junta was installed in Argentina headed by the chief of the army General Jorge Videla.  In that context, with the approval of the US special services, the so-called Operation Bat and Operation Condor were put together; using these, the military dictatorships in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay made an alliance to develop one of the most sadistic witch-hunts of the continent’s most prominent leaders in the people’s revolutionary movements. 
Joining that “repression and terror multinational” headed by the dictators of Chile and Paraguay, Augusto Pinochet and Alfredo Stroessner, respectively, was the dictatorship of Eric Gairy in Grenada, the principal Central American military dictatorships and some counter-revolutionary organizations of Cuban origin, all nurtured by the US security establishment.

The last of these, guided by the motto of taking “the war against Cuba to all corners of the globe” carried out more than 279 terrorist actions against various civilian targets in western Europe, Latin American and the Caribbean; among these, the sadistic blowing up of a civilian Cubana Airlines plane, in mid-flight, on its commercial route between the different islands of the Caribbean on October 6, 1976.

The OAS never condemned these crimes.  It was an accomplice by omission.  It has never classified the authors of these terrorist acts as such.  It continues to close its eyes while the brains behind the operation, a well known and self-confessed terrorist, walks freely along the streets of the US, protected by that nation. 
Furthermore, it did not stop the military coup in Argentina that unleashed, with US government backing, the criminal Bat and Condor operations in order to assassinate thousands of opposition in that country and in Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay.  

1977:

Surrounded by promising predictions for inter-American relations, the Democrat President James Carter (1977-1981) entered the White House; he immediately announced his commitment to promote human rights and basic rights in the continent, as well as “a multifaceted development plan for the Caribbean”.  However, indicating the limits of that policy, he made statements favouring the possible annexation of Puerto Rico and the White House admitted to another bloody coup d’état in El Salvador designed to not recognize the electoral victory of the then presidential candidate for the National Opposition Union, retired Colonel Ernesto Claramount.  As a result, the presidency fell into the hands of the blood-thirsty General Carlos Humberto Romero (1977-1979).  Likewise, the White House maintained its ties with General Fernando Romeo Lucas García (1978-1982) despite the brutal repressive policy that marked his entire term in office.

Simultaneously, the Carter administration adopted an accommodating attitude in the face of the remaining state terrorist regimes installed over the continent, especially after most of them decided to break off their military treaties with the United States. Thus it was expressed at the Inter-American Conference on Human Rights called by the OAS in Grenada.  On that occasion, US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance “Accepted” the pressure of the military governments’ representatives.  These were opposed to the conference condemning the brutal violations of all human rights being produced in Latin America and the Caribbean.

 

1978:

With a view to preventing electoral fraud, along with a possible coup organized by the supporters of the Dominican “civilian dictator” Joaquín Balaguer, the Carter administration undertook a new “democratic intervention” in that country.  That favoured the “social democratic” landowner Silvestre Guzmán Fernández (1978-1982) who, in order to repay the favour, further opened the doors of his country to US economic, political and military penetration.

Simultaneously, and against the wishes of the White House, the dictatorship of Anastasio Tachito Somoza (1957-1979) assassinated the director of the La Prensa newspaper, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro.  In spite of that and the continuous advances of the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN), the Carter administration undertook various manoeuvres to preserve its system of domination over that country and to install what came to be called “a Somoza-regime without Somoza”.  Earlier, continuing with the policy of “privileged allies”, Carter saw to “re-establishing harmony” in his relations with the military dictatorships of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Uruguay and Paraguay.  According to this policy, the American trans-nationals saw their juicy investments grow fatter in the region and the trans-national bank, supported by the IMF and the WB, continued transferring hefty credits to those military dictatorships; all this despite the fact that it was clear that one part of those credits was being directed to the acquisition of armament in various US allies such as Germany and South Korea.

The OAS never tackled these subjects.

1979:

With the purpose of preventing the victory of the FSLN, the White House, backed by the dictatorships in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, proposed the formation of an Inter-American Peace Force for intervention in Nicaragua at the XVIII Consultation Meeting of the OAS Foreign Ministers.  That proposal was rejected.  Nonetheless, US armed forces, from SOUTHCOM stationed in Panama, continued supplying Somoza’s dictatorship with all the military resources needed to repress the Nicaraguan peoples’ uprising.  Despite that, on July 19th the Sandinista Revolution triumphed.  In spite of its broad program announcements, the US circles of power began conspiring against it, just as they were doing against the fledgling revolution which had occurred on the small island of Grenada under the leadership of Maurice Bishop.  

Likewise, the Carter administration provoked a “mini-crisis” in its relations with Cuba.  In that context, the Pentagon organized various aggressive military manoeuvres in the region, including those that took place at the Naval Base located at Guantanamo Bay.

Earlier, and to the disgust of General Omar Torrijos, the US Senate had passed the Conchini Amendment and the Murphy Law as an unavoidable condition for the approval of the 1977 Torrijos-Carter treaties.  Both legal instruments, accepted by the White House, once again vindicated the alleged US right to “protect” the Panama Canal ad infinitum.

Simultaneously, with the complicity of the US security establishment, the “drug-dictatorship” of General Policarpo Paz Díaz (1978-1981) was consolidated in Honduras and, with the intervention of the American embassy an uprising by the Young Military Organization of El Salvador was “neutralized”.  As a result, a Civilian-Military Junta was formed through which the repressive sectors of the National Guard and the Military Intelligence Service held on to their power.

On the other hand, with the sure backing of the Argentine military dictatorship, the “drug-dictatorship” headed by General Luis García Meza.was installed in Bolivia.  Just like its predecessor, this one established a reign of terror throughout the country.
.

1980:

The US increases massive aid to the military in El Salvador who are confronting the FNLN guerrilla.  The death squads proliferated; Archbishop Romero was assassinated by right wing terrorists; 35,000 civilians die between 1978 and 1981.  The rape and murder of 4 nuns by military henchmen causes the Yankee government to suspend military aid for one month.

Simultaneously, the Carter administration launched a successful plan designed to defeat Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley in a virtual “coup d’état”; he was replaced “in elections” as the PM by the right-wing leader of the JLP, Edward Seaga.  It also conspired with the Dutch constitutional monarchy in order to overthrow the progressive government of Sgt. Desy Bouterse (1980-1987) in Suriname.

Likewise, the White House maintaining its backing for the reactionary government of the Colombian liberal Julio César Turbay Ayala (1978-1982) even though he and his reactionary minister of defence, General Luis Carlos Camacho Leyva had undertaken repressive Draconian measures with a view to defeating the growing popular discontent against his administration.  The situation was so serious that the well known institution Amnesty International published a report severely condemning the Colombian government.

On a parallel level, a heightened militarization process was produced in the Caribbean.  As part of that, powerful US military manoeuvres were carried out in the ill-named Guantanamo Naval Base, in the vicinity of the Panama Canal, in Puerto Rico and throughout the length and breadth of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.  In the words of Carter, those and other similar military actions were designed to “defend US interests in the region”, as well as to “satisfy the requests for help coming from allies and friends”, among these the terrorist regime installed since 1971 by Jean-Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc) in Haiti and the repressive government of the Dominican “social democrat” land baron Silvestre Guzmán Fernández who received several delegations of senior officials of the US armed forces.

These were going about advocating the forming of a “collective security system” in the Caribbean Sea designed to “confront Cuban and Soviet aggression in that part of the western hemisphere”, ideas that fell on receptive ears among the right-wing governments that predominated at the time in the western Caribbean, especially that of the right wing Rime Minister Tom Adams of Barbados who proposed, with SOUTHCOM support, the forming of a System of Joint Coast Guard Services, magistracies and police forces in the countries making up the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS).

By contrast, the Carter administration suspended economic aid to the National Reconstruction Board of Nicaragua.

The OAS never debated any of these occurrences.

1981:

The US presidency was now occupied by the candidate coming from the most reactionary sector of the Republican Party, Ronald Reagan; his vice president was one of the former CIA chiefs, George H. Bush.  As a result, the White House unleashed an intense offensive designed to tighten their relations with all the military dictatorships, with all the “repressive democracies” and with all the conservative governments in power in Latin America and the Caribbean.  According to that decision, several secret meetings were held in Washington with several of the military dictators.

In that context and continuing with the treaties adopted in Washington the previous year with various leaders of the Christian Democratic International, the White House backed the repressive and counter-insurgent Christian Democrat-Military Junta installed in El Salvador under the presidency of José Napoleón Duarte (1980-1982).

Likewise, with the support of the governments of El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras and later, Colombia and Venezuela, the so called Central American Democratic Community (CADC)  was institutionalized, aimed at attacking the Sandinista Revolution and to quash the different forms of struggle for democracy and social justice that were being waged in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.  In that context, the governments of those countries, with the support of the Argentine military dictatorship and the CIA, began to organize the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionary groups that were already in place on Honduran territory and, to a lesser extent, in Guatemala.  Thus the conditions were beginning to be created for the “dirty wars”, described in US military jargon as “low intensity conflicts”, and carried out by the Reagan-Bush duo in Central America. 

The CIA moved forward in its organization of the “Contras” in Nicaragua.  The previous year they had begun with a group of 60 of Somoza’s former guards.  Four years later there were almost 12,000 former guards integrating the “Contras”.  Of the 48 most important Contra military chiefs, 46 had been officers in the National Guard.  The US also moved forward in the economic war against Nicaragua and in pressure applied by the International Monetary Fun and the World Bank.

In the middle of the deployment of that policy, General Omar Torrijos, the Panamanian leader, perished in a strange plane crash.

1982:

The British intervention that commenced the Falkland Islands War occurred.  It was the first time that an extra-continental foreign power had attacked a country belonging to the Inter-American System and, according to ITRA terms, this should have called upon continental solidarity in opposition to the attack.  Far from the case, the US gave political and military support to Great Britain and imposed economic sanctions on Argentina.  On this occasion, the OAS also delayed its reaction, adopting a lukewarm resolution that called on the conflict to cease and, only a month later, at the XX Consultation Meeting, it adopted a condemnation “of the armed attack perpetrated by the United Kingdom” and urged the US government to “provide for the immediate lifting of the coercive measures applied to the Argentine Republic”.

President Ronald Reagan, in collusion with the prime ministers of Barbados and Jamaica, Tom Adams and Edward Seaga respectively, announced the so called Initiative for the Caribbean Basin that, apart from its later economic-trade derivatives, served as a façade for the unleashing of an intensive counter-revolutionary plan in the Caribbean.  To such ends, and following the directions of the Pentagon, the conservative governments which were at the time members of the Eastern Caribbean Organization (ECO) finally signed an agreement for Regional Cooperation on Security Matters that had been in the works since 1980.  Earlier, the White House and the Chilean dictatorship had backed the military actions undertaken by the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, in order to preserve British colonial dominion over the Falklands. 

Reagan made a trip to Costa Rica and Honduras.  In Honduras, he obtained the support of President Roberto Suazo Córdova (1982-1986), the higher Council of the Armed Forces (COSUFA) and the then minister of the defence, General Guillermo Álvarez Martínez to transform that nation into the principal “place d’armes” in the “dirty war” unleashed during one decade by the United States against the Sandinista Revolution.  As part of that strategy, the White House and the US fundamentalist churches backed the genocidal “scorched earth” policy of the new Guatemalan dictator José Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-1983).

1983:

Maurice Bishop, the Prime Minister of Grenada, was ousted and assassinated in a   military coup.  US reaction was unexpected and they sent an invasion force of 1.900 Marines who took control of the island.  For Washington the excuse was an alleged request by the citizens of Grenada and protection for the lives of American students.  The real reason was the Grenadian leader’s left-wing inclination; he had begun cooperation projects with Cuba, among them the construction of a new airport.

US action again demonstrated that the non-intervention principle lacked validity for that country and that containing socialism on the continent kept on being one of its main foreign policy priorities.  Within the OAS, a division of opinion was produced regarding this intervention. The majority approved the action as a “preventative measure” while others rejected it.  Finally, the invasion was condemned under the category of violating the Bogota Charter.

The White House and the Pentagon set out on an intense process of militarization of the Central American and Caribbean nations.  As a result, the military and civilian-military dictatorships in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala grew stronger.  This allowed for the re-establishment of the criminal work of the Central American Defence Council (now made up of the armed forces of Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and the US), something that had been interrupted after the “The Soccer War between Honduras and El Salvador of 1969”.

Likewise, a powerful US military mechanism was set up in Honduras, including various military bases and the action of a secret battalion that, at least until 1984 (the date on which General Guillermo Álvarez Martínez was expelled from the country under CIA orders and the US ambassador John Dimitri Negroponte took it upon himself to develop the “dirty war” on Honduran territory).

1986:

Thanks to an agreement between the US and French governments, the Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc), defeated in a popular revolt, was able to abandon Port au Prince with impunity.  With the White House “blessing”, he was replaced by a General Government Council in which the decisive voice was that of the blood-thirsty General Henry Namphy.

Simultaneously, the American press started to uncover the details of what would later be known as the “Iran-Contra scandal”, in other words, the close ties between senior Ronald Reagan government officials (among them Colonel Olive North, member of the National Security Council) and his military advisors in El Salvador, and the drug traffic and arms smuggling from Iran, directed to carry out the “dirty war” against the Sandinista Revolution.  That denunciation weakened US strategy against Central America and it facilitated the diplomatic action of the Contadora Group (Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela) and the so called “friends of Contadora group” (Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Uruguay).  These and other democratic South American governments made up the Rio de Janeiro Coordination and Cooperation Group known as the “Rio Group”.  In spite of official US resistance this group advocated a “political-negotiated exit from the Central American crisis”.  It also demanded negotiations with creditors to solve “the foreign debt crisis” that had been affecting the continent since 1982. 

Simultaneously, on the basis of its recent definition of “drug trafficking” as a danger for US national security, the Reagan-Bush duo started to press the governments of Víctor Paz Estenssoro (1986-1990) in Bolivia, Alan García (1985-1990) in Peru and Virgilio Barco (1986-1990) in Colombia in order that they take up what was later to be called the “war against drugs”.  With American “help”, Colombian and Peruvian military forces, along with “paramilitary” groups got involved in the brutal repression of the peasant populations living in the areas where the so called “drug lords” were operating. 

The OAS never made any declarations against these serious events.  

1987:

In an attempt to contain the intense popular movement growing in Haiti and also to “control” the results of the elections planned for the end of this year, the Haitian armed forced (FAH), particularly the Leopard Battalion which was trained and equipped by the US, and the “death squads” made up of security services undertook several terrorist actions against sectors of the population, among them the Jean Rabel Massacre (more than a thousand peasants were wiped out) and the assassination of the leader of the Democratic Movement for the Liberation of Haiti, Louis-Eugène Athis.

Nonetheless, the White House praised the high command of the FAH for having “liberalized” the regime; it doubled its financial aid and sent military advisors to train the Haitian army in anti-riot tactics.  Also, senior US officials met several times in secret with the criminal Haitian General William Régala and the Pentagon sent several warships and 2,400 Marines to carry out “manoeuvres” in front of the Haitian coast. 

The OAS never discussed these events in its meetings.

1989:
The US invaded Panama to arrest Manuel Noriega, its former protégé and it speeded up its various destabilizing manoeuvres, including the economic blockade, against the Panamanian government.  To that end, in the context of the monitored elections being held in that country, it increased its military forces in the Panama Canal and, after the undefined results of the elections and a “frustrated” OAS mediation, it undertook a brutal military intervention against that country.  As a result of that the puppet government of Guillermo Endara (1989-1994) was installed.  Endara, setting a new interventionist precedent, was sanctioned as a drug trafficker by the American courts. The operation left no less than 3,000 civilian casualties. 

The recently elected US president George H. Bush (1989-1993) accepted the promises of the millionaire follower of Duvalier, General Prósper Avril (who had manipulated the “sergeants’ coup” the previous year) that he would undertake a process of “irreversible democratization” in Haiti.  Despite these promises and with the conspiratory silence of the White House, Avril continued to repress popular movements after defeating a coup attempt by the Leopard Battalion.

The White House announced the Andean Anti-Drug Initiative.  As part of that, military and police military advisors and Special Forces Teams to Colombia with a view to help the military forces of that country to combat the “drug-guerrilla” and “drug trafficking”.

Simultaneously, and without abandoning its political-military backing for the “Contras”, UDAID broadened its so called “democratic intervention” in Nicaragua and supported the coup that ousted the long-lived despotism of Alfredo Stroessner. He was replaced, first de facto and later “constitutionally, by General Andrés Rodríguez who had been previously linked to the crimes and larceny of his predecessor.
 
The OAS did not condemn the US military intervention in Panama. 

 

1990:

The US massively intervenes in the Nicaraguan electoral process via undercover and public actions.  Washington openly strengthened the opposition coalition even though such practices are illegal under US law.

As a result of the harsh economic and social effects of the extended “dirty war” developed by the Reagan-Bush duo against the Sandinista Revolution, as well as thanks to the generous financial support USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (founded in 1981 at the proposal of the CIA, the government and the US Congress) granted to the so-called National Opposition Union (having the participation of important Somoza sympathizers), the FSLN candidate Daniel Ortega was defeated in the presidential elections.  With brazen official US backing, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (1990-1997) became the president of Nicaragua, assimilating the US political and economic pressures designed to eliminate “Sandinista enclaves” especially in the army and the Nicaraguan security forces.

The White House backed the so called “agreed transition to democracy in Chile” by which the already elected president Patricio Aylwin (1990-1994) had accepted the constitution imposed by Augusto Pinochet and, therefore the survival of the “authoritarian enclaves” in the various state institutions.

The US Treasury Department, the IMF and the World Bank drew up the so called “Washington Consensus” whose “neo-liberal recipes” (expressed in the Structural Adjustment Plans) turned into a powerful interventionist instrument in the internal affairs of most of the Latin American and Caribbean states.

Moreover, the George H. Bush administration enacted the “Initiative for the Americas Law” designed to promote a “free trade area” from “Alaska to Tierra del Fuego”.  In that context, negotiations began with the government of Canada, led by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney (1984-1993) and the government of Mexico led by its president Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994), of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
 
The OAS did not face up to the “dirty wars” being Developer by the US government with the complicity of the area’s military dictators to prevent the electoral triumph of

1991:

Under White House pressure and in conspiracy with important governments in the Western Hemisphere (including Canada whose government had joined OAS the previous year), the General Assembly of that organization held in Santiago de Chile passed the “Santiago de Chile Commitment with Democracy and the Renewal of the Inter-American System”; in following years this pact institutionalized the so called “collective democratic interventions” carried out, with greater or lesser honesty and consistency, by the OAS Secretary General (and his mentor, the US government) in various Latin American and Caribbean countries.

 The fallacies of this “Pan-American” commitment to “representative democracy” were rapidly demonstrated in Haiti where the most reactionary sectors undertook a bloody coup against the newly elected constitutional president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.  Duvalier’s man Lt. Gen. Raúl Cedrás (1991-1994) assumed the government and immediately launched into a bloody repression against the generalised popular rejection and, in particular, against Aristide’s followers. 

Even though the White House “was sorry” about the overthrow of a constitutional government that had been democratically elected, it soon began to throw road blocks in the way of Aristide’s return from exile in Venezuela; that encouraged the perpetrators of the coup to stay in power and continue their crimes and larceny, including their close ties with drug trafficking, especially because the Bush administration left the “Haitian problem” in the hands of the OAS in an extremely off-handed manner. 

1992:

As part of the extended economic and political war on the Cuban Revolution and the express support of the Democratic candidate to the presidency William Clinton, the White House, egged on by the “Miami Cuban mafia” and with the support of the most reactionary sectors of the US Congress, promoted the “Torricelli Amendment” by which they wanted to achieve the international isolation and surrender of the Cuban people via hunger and illness, as well as to push forward the alleged “peaceful and democratic  subversion” of the revolutionary government of that country.

At the same time, as part of the “war on drugs”, the White House, the Pentagon and other US agencies (the CIA and the DEA) broadened their political and military intervention in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru.  In the first of these countries, the US military advisors backed the constant massacres of the civilian population and the political assassinations perpetrated by the military or by paramilitary groups (now known as Self-Defence Units of Colombia) with the collusion of successive governments and the Colombian armed forces.

In Bolivia, with various threats (including suspension of economic aid), the Bush administration successfully pressured President Jaime Paz Zamora (allied with the criminal former dictator Hugo Banzer between 1989 y 1993) to carry on with the militarization of the wr on drugs and the forced eradication of the “illegal plantations” of coca existing in that country.

In Peru, SOUTHCOM strengthened the Santa Lucia military base and supported, along with the CIA, the criminal counter-insurgency strategies carried out by the civilian-military regime of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000).  In spite of the fact that Fujimori had dissolved Congress, annulled several articles in the constitution and imprisoned hundreds of political opposition under the pretext of a war against the “drug-guerrilla”, his “repressive democracy” was legitimated by a mission sent by the OAS in compliance with its “Washington Protocol”. This authorized that organization to take on “democratic interventions” of various kinds in any of its member states.  Simultaneously, the White House maintained its indifference in the face of terrorist practices undertaken in Haiti by the dictator Raúl Cedrás who, at all times, refused OAS “mediation”.

 

1993:

The Clinton administration became implicated in another “democratic intervention” in Guatemala when that country’s president at the time Jorge Serrano Elías, with the support of army sectors, annulled the constitution and dissolved congress. The lack of internal backing and international manoeuvres promoted the defeat of this rash attempt and the appointment of Ramiro León Carpio until the up-coming elections.

Application of the Torricelli Act, the White House began to strengthen the extra-territorial nature of its economic war against Cuba and to elaborate strategies (the so-called “two-track” of the above mentioned Act) that were to lead towards the “peaceful and democratic subversion” of that country’s government.

US Congress continued threatening all those Latin American and Caribbean governments that wouldn’t “cooperate” with the US in their “war on drugs” with its so-called “desertifications”.  Many of them, first of all Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, continued to send their military officers to receive “counter-narcotic”  training at the ill reputed School of the Americas and at other US military and police institutions. 

 

1996:

Because of his own weaknesses and instigated by the more reactionary members of the American Congress as well as by the “Cuban mafia of Miami”, and availing himself of the excuse of the Cuban air force downing of a light plane belonging to the counter-revolutionary Brothers to the Rescue organization that had previously flown over Havana as provocation, President William Clinton enacted the Helms-Burton Act.  With this measure, the executive branch had the power to undertake new actions to overthrow the Cuban Revolution, as well as to continue pressure on the governments and private companies all over the world for this purpose.  Some of these that had not broken off relations with Cuba were Canada, and countries in Latin American and the Caribbean. 

The White House put into motion yet another “democratic intervention” in Latin America and the Caribbean.  This time, it contributed (using various diplomatic actions) in the plotting of an attempted coup against the Paraguayan president Juan Carlos Wasmosy (1993-1998), led by the head of the army General Lino César Oviedo, accused of being involved in many of the crimes perpetrated by the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner.

1999:

Following intense popular mobilizations caused by the assassination of Vice President Luis María Egaña along with seven other people, as well as a new coup attempt headed by former general Lino Oviedo in collusion with President Raúl Cubas Grau (1998-1999),  the American embassy in Paraguay “negotiated” Grau’s exit from the country and by way of another “democratic intervention” it applied pressure so that the government would be handed over to the president of congress, Luis González Macchi; following the postulates of the Washington Consensus, Macchi undertook a Draconian and unpopular Structural Adjustment Plan for the Paraguayan economy.

2000:

As part of its “War on Drugs”, the US launched Plan Colombia, a programme of massive civilian and military aid to a country having, probably, the worst human rights record on the hemisphere. US funding for this Plan reaches 1,300 million dollars; 83 percent of this goes towards military spending.

The White House and the CIA accepted the promise of the corrupt and criminal President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) of Peru to call new elections as a “solution” to the outbreak of popular opposition caused by the bare-faced electoral fraud that Fujimori had perpetrated with the help of his shady personal advisor Vladimiro Montesinos, CIA drug-trafficking agent along with the support of the Joint Armed Forces.

2001:

Unaware of all the agreements that made the political and negotiated solution to the “Central American conflict” (1980-1987) possible, the external policy and security establishment of the United States, closely tied to the right-wing governments of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, continued pushing for the re-militarization of southern Mexico and the Central American isthmus; particularly after the bloody terrorist attack on the World Trade Center of New York and the Pentagon, an event that was taken as an excuse by the reactionary groups in power in the White House to revitalize their military and security treaties with the most repressive sectors of the armed forces and police forces in the western hemisphere, all with the backing of the OAS and the complicity of the Inter-American Defence Board.

On September 11th of this year, on the very day of the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in the United States, the US took advantage of the fact that a special session of the OAS General Assembly was being held in Lima Peru in order to continue with the negotiation of the draft Inter-American Democratic Charter and due to the real commotion caused by this attack among the nations in the hemisphere, it attained the necessary support and, therefore, the approval for such a disastrous document. In contrast, the organization has not assumed the same energy to approve the Social Charter of the Americas which would commit its governments to comply with the principles established in the UN Economic and Social Rights Convention and the Millennium Goals.  Various countries have gone even further and have now proposed a demand for the reform of the so-called Democratic Charter since it does not match up its postulates to the realities of a region where every day, with increasing force, those systems of government which do not answer to those who elected them cannot be called democratic

In December, a serious political crisis breaks out in Argentina as a result of the economic depression caused by the unrestricted application of the neo-liberal model and the Washington Consensus. In one week, a series of provisional governments took power following the sudden fall of President Fernando de la Rúa.  The international and hemispheric financial bodies played a terrible role, about which the OAS kept quiet, maintaining its defence of the Washington Consensus and not supporting the economic and social rights of the Argentine people, crushed by the IMF, the World Bank, the Club of Paris and the IDB.  With the advent of Kirchnerism, the pressures exerted by the financial bodies have kept up and the OAS maintains its silence.  

 

2002:

The United States supported and funded the elements that organized the failed counter-revolutionary coup d’état on April 11 in Venezuela, bolstered by the CIA and the State Department and headed by the president of the powerful business enterprise FEDECAMARAS Pedro Carmona Estanca.  Estanca, in violation of the Inter-American Democratic Charter (approved by the OAS the previous year) immediately found official US government encouragement along with that of other reactionary Latin American governments.

The OAS did nothing nor did it apply any of its legal instruments allegedly designed to restore democratic order in the Americas.  It was the unabashed accomplice in the coup.  It proved it continued being the ministry of Yankee colonies.   

 

2003:

Carrying on with its aggressions against the constitutional government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the George W. Bush administration enigmatically supported “the Oil Coup” (including several sabotages on oil industry facilities) undertaken by right-wing sectors in collusion with the great communications monopolies and sectors of the oil  “working class aristocracy” organized by the opposing Central Workers’ Union of Venezuela.   Faced with the defeat of this endeavour, and unaware of tat country’s sovereignty, USAID, NED and other US foundations funded the principal organizations of “civilian society” that started to promote a revoking referendum for President Hugo Chavez.  The OAS kept silent. 

2004:

Continuing with its centenarian interventionist policy in Haiti’s internal affairs, US and French military forces occupied that country and deported President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.  Immediately following that, they set up a government headed by “President” Boniface Alexandre and Prime Minister Gerard Latortue.  In the face of the illegitimate nature of their mandate, and their inability to control the agitated situation in this impoverished country, they requested the UN to send a multi-national force to help in the peace-keeping of that country. 

In Venezuela, the George Bush administration did all it could to cast a pall of illegitimacy over the results of the revoking referendum against the president.  Nevertheless, the process was so spotless that, faced with the vacillations of the OAS Secretary General César Gaviria to certify the Chavist peoples’ victory, James Carter himself, the former US president, acknowledged the overwhelming victory of the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution. 

2005:

Popular unrest and violent social protests as a result of the neo-liberalization and “dollar-ization” of the country led the Ecuadoran congress to depose the president of Ecuador, Lucio Gutiérrez, in the wake of a deep institutional crisis that brutally exposed the fragility of that Andean country’s democracy.  From the moment he came to power in January 2003, Gutiérrez’ obvious indifference for institutions and his lack of respect for the State powers, the removal of the Supreme Court of Justice proved to be the trigger that put an end to his government.  His replacement was Vice President  Alfredo Palacio who kept up an insuperable confrontation with the deposed president, but this did not stop the wave of protests crying “Get rid of them all!”, as it had occurred in Argentina after the fall of Fernando de la Rúa in December 2001, the sign of a serious political crisis in Ecuador.  The crisis in the Andean country made manifest the worrying wave of recurring institutional instability that, in recent years, shook up and led several countries in the region to the brink of the abyss, with violent clashes that plunged the continent into mourning.  In the case of Ecuador, as it had happened with its predecessors, the OAS neither censured nor sanctioned any government, and it abstained from intervening in what it considered to be an Ecuadoran “internal matter”, in spite of the fact that the Democratic Charter was now in force. 

2008:

The OAS did not condemn the attack and the later incursion of Colombian military and police into Ecuadoran territory on March 1st as part of a manoeuvre against an irregular FARC encampment in Sucumbios province, Ecuador, and a mere ten days later it sent an investigation mission to the border between the two nations; its results were partially controlled.  Moreover, the Quito government made a claim to the OAS for it to hand over a copy of the aerial monitoring that had been carried out in the days around March 1st, to learn if any of the blanket base planes had been involved in the events.  The OAS refused to hand over such copies.

On September 11th of that same year, a column of peasants going to attend an assembly were ambushed by armed henchmen in the area of Porvenir, Pando Department, Bolivia, and they were attacked and massacred; there were reports of dozens wounded and of these, 20 died.  The principal suspect for these events was the former department prefect,  Leopoldo Fernández, being held in a La Paz prison, accused of crimes of lese-humanité.  In the beginning, the OAS did not give its support to the international investigation requested by the Evo Morales government and it issued no condemnation.  It was UNASUR that assumed a frontal attitude and enounced the serious occurrence which intended to spark off a political crisis and a coup against Evo, and it was backed by the UN and its Human Rights High Commissioner in La Paz, after which and before the numerous evidence and testimony on the events that were presented by Bolivian authorities, the Inter-American Human Rights Council was obliged to issue some timid statements.  This very same body, like the organization, had not reacted earlier or afterwards to the negative response by the Yankees to accede to the claims for the extradition from Bolivia of the former president Gonzalo Sánchez de Losada,  fugitive from Bolivian justice after having been accused for crimes of lese-humanité.  It took until December, before the worsening of the political crisis and on the eve of the constitutional referendum that the OAS Secretary General issued a statement in favour of the end of violence in Bolivia, acknowledgement and compliance with the legitimate authorities, and the installation of a dialogue table was requested so that the pending problems could be resolved.   

2009:

In April of this year, the OAS and its Secretary General José Miguel Insulza attempted using all possible measures to prevent the subject of Cuba be excluded from the V Summit of the Americas agenda.  When this proved to be impossible, they tried to take the discussion into a different area.  Due to American pressure and in order to achieve their purpose for the world not to be able to hear the region’s voices in opposition to the US blockade of the Island, and the demands that the United States eliminate its hostility towards Cuba, press participation was blocked and they tried to hold the entire event in complete secrecy. 

Also in April, a dangerous international terrorist plot in Bolivia was deactivated; this plot which involved the equal participation of foreign special and mercenary services, several of them from outside the region, placed the constitutional order, the security and the social peace of this Andean country at risk. 

 

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