[Translated for ZNet by Jose Luna]
The rupture of diplomatic relations with Cuba, the coup d’etat in Venezuela, the cancelling of peace negotiations in Colombia and the economic destruction in Argentina to annihilate MERCOSUR [trading treaty] show the dramatic advances of Latin America’s re-colonization. After two centuries, the annexationist essence of the Monroe doctrine has become the chief and decisive principle of the hemisphere. North America and Central America, which are already under the control of Washington, make South America the final annexationist battlefield.
The Uruguayan diplomatic rupture with Cuba is only the start of a chain reaction programmed for this and next year. By covering themselves with excuses of different degree of clumsiness and hypocrisy, the countries in Central America and the Andes will continue along the luminous path delineated in the White House and Miami. Its consummation will be the rupture of state links between the island and any country of size in the hemisphere.
The bounty expected by the private operatives of the project, whose executive instrument is the government in Washington, is not of the same range of other capitalist mega-projects in the region – for example, the annexation of the Amazon or Patagonia. But neither is it worthless. Only the value of natural resources and Cuban biotechnology and medical know-how varies between 25 and 50 billion US dollars, depending on the chosen period of calculation. The urbanization potential and the real estate developments of the island, under market rules, surpass 200 USD billion. That is the criminal energy which from Miami relentlessly propels the advance of the mega-project ‘Cuba’.
The annexation mega-project in Colombia, known as ‘Plan Colombia,’ has as its targets the Amazon region of this country : its fresh water resources, oil, coal, agro-industries and a host of water and land transoceanic ways. In Argentina, the IMF policies coming from the U.S. and Europe tend to the establishment of a neoliberal dictatorship (as was attempted in Venezuela), aiming to transform the country in a protectorate just as proposed by MIT professor Ruediger Dornbursh. This would bring the destruction of the regional integration alternative of MERCOSUR as well as yield Patagonia and the Argentinean rights over Antarctica to the Atlantic bourgeois, that is, to the U.S. and European transnational corporations.
The mega- project Venezuela, planned to be set up with the business-military coup of April 11th had as an end to secure the biggest company in Latin America: Petróleos de Venezuela (PdVSA) [ the state oil company], as well as the gigantic reserves of minerals, gas, fresh water, bio-diversity and coal for the transnational corporations backed by Washington. Given that Venezuela is along with Argentina the decisive figure in the hemispheric chessboard, it merits a brief analysis on its own.
The transnational-military coup in Venezuela failed as a result of the 3 factors: a) divisions among the rebels; b) the courageous resistance of the popular classes; and c) the determined opposition to the coup by a group of patriotic military men and constitutionalists. Regarding the first factor, there was a sort of a coup inside the coup, which weakened the conspirators. The business union (Central de Trabajadores de Venezuela, CTV) headed by the illegitimate leader Carlos Ortega and the business chamber ‘Fedecamaras’ with its president, Pedro Carmona appeared as the visible heads of the coup. In fact, they were no more than mere puppets of a transnational operation planned from Washington, New York, Miami, Madrid and highly probably from a terrorist country in the Middle East.
The ease with which the coup was attained emboldened its decisive component – the transnationals – who then decided that the mask of ‘democratic rebellion against Chavez dictatorship’ was no longer necessary. It could openly implement a dictatorship to serve Washington by dissolving all democratic institutions, terrorising dissidents, privatising PdVSA and cancelling immediately all oil supplies to Cuba. It was this premature action which brought together all anti-dictatorship sectors into a broad front that eventually decided the fate of the subversion.
Within this alliance for democracy and the nation, the participation of popular sectors was key, along with historic and new leaders who confronted the subversives of Fedecamaras and Miami. They provide a remarkable example of democratic praxis and political consciousness in the streets. Decisive, however, was ‘Operación Restitución de la Dignidad Nacional’ [Operation Reinstatement for the National Dignity] through which 14 generals with 200 battalions equivalent to twenty thousand men with tanks and warplanes neutralized the coup perpetrators when it issued an ultimatum to restore the constitution.
The failure of the coup in Venezuela is the first strategic defeat of the Third World Order (TWO) project of George Bush II, which consists in turning the global village into a military operation field. For that reason, Bush has to reverse the defeat. That is why the coup perpetrators are advancing at great speeds with a de-stabilisation plan, which has as new date for a clash May 1st. To stop at their roots the coup militants who have no desire for reconciliation, the Venezuelan government has to urgently resolve four tasks: 1) drastically reorganize its systems for conducting processes; 2) rise above the its current improvisation and reactive nature by means of a strategic plan; 3) define with greater clarity the political and economic character of the Bolivarian project to establish internal and external alliances; and 4) resolve the problem of the media.
The modern version of capitalist mega-projects was developed by the planning strategists of Adolf Hitler. With it he constituted the basis of his annexationist policy in Europe (Gross-Raumordnungspolitik) which unleashed Second World War. The re-colonization project of Latin America is an offshoot of the same tree.
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