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The CIA’s Crack-Cocaine Enterprise and the Destruction of Urban America

21st Century Wire | November 14, 2021

The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been accused of involvement in drug trafficking. Books and investigations on the subject that have received general notice include works by the historian Alfred McCoy, professor Dale Scott, journalists Gary Webb and Alexander Cockburn, and writer Larry Collins. These claims have led to investigations by the United States government, including hearings and reports by the United States House of Representatives, Senate, Department of Justice, and the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General. U.S. Government Officials said in 1990 the supposed Anti-Drug Unit at the CIA. “accidentally” shipped a ton of cocaine into the US from Venezuela as part of an effort to infiltrate and gather evidence on drug gangs. The cocaine was then sold on the streets of America. As expected, no criminal charges were brought, although CIA officer Mark McFarlin resigned and one officer was disciplined. The CIA issued a statement on the incident saying there was “poor judgment and management on the part of several CIA officers”. We are meant to believe that it all ends there. But this story is much bigger and more wide-ranging than even the issue of drugs on the streets on America and the targeting of black communities with the new deadly drug known as crack.

According to a PBS Frontline investigation, DEA field agent Hector Berrellez said, “I believe that elements working for the CIA were involved in bringing drugs into the country.”

“I know specifically that some of the CIA contract workers, meaning some of the pilots, in fact were bringing drugs into the U.S. and landing some of these drugs in government air bases. And I know so because I was told by some of these pilots that in fact they had done that,” he added.

The impact on poor communities in large cities like Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, Chicago and others was nothing short of devastating.

Interestingly, the CIA’s criminal operation plot also tracks back to Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport where narcotics, weapons, and ammunition were smuggled in both directions – with weapons to the Contras in Nicaragua, and drugs back into the United States. This connects these events directly to Oliver North and former US President Bill Clinton. The recent Hollywood film depiction of some of these events, American Made, is a dramatisation of the story of Barry Seal, a pilot working for both Medellín Cartel and US intelligence, who ran his operations out of Mena, Arkansas.

According to the Kerry Committee report, “it is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the Contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers.”

In 1996, Gary Webb wrote a series of articles which appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, investigating a number of aspects of this illicit trade, including Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had smuggled cocaine into the U.S. which was then distributed as crack cocaine into Los Angeles and funnelled profits to the Contras. His articles exposed how the CIA helped facilitate cocaine transactions and the large shipments of drugs into the U.S. by the Contra personnel, and how the US intelligence agency directly aided drug dealers to raise funds for the Contras. Webb went on to publish a book based on his article series, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, which was later made into a film in 2014 called Kill the Messenger. In 1989, the United States invaded Panama as part of Operation Just Cause, which involved 25,000 American troops. General Manuel Noriega, who ruled Panama at the time (and who was later outed as a CIA informant), had been giving military assistance to Contra terrorist groups in Nicaragua – ordered by the US, which, in exchange, allowed him to continue his own drug-trafficking activities and money laundering which US authorities were fully aware of since the 1960s.

The rest, as they say, is history.

The following video montage forms the historic media record on this issue – providing a visual summary of these events including interviews with Gary Webb and other journalists, as well as clips from Congressional and Senate Hearings on the matter, and which clearly shows how and why the Establishment went to such great lengths to cover-up the state-sponsored criminal enterprise.

November 21, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | 10 Comments

Australia Refuses to Reveal Additional Proof of Its Role in Chile’s CIA-Backed Coup

By Ramona Wadi | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 16, 2021

The U.S. has declassified thousands of documents relating to its involvement in the ousting of Chile’s socialist President Salvador Allende and the installing of dictator Augusto Pinochet. Australia, on the other hand, continues to guard its classified documents on the pretext of security, drawing a discrepancy between its purported democratic principles and obstructing the public’s right to knowledge. As a country which welcomed Chileans fleeing the horrors of Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship, as well as harbouring Chilean agents – the most notable case being that of Adriana Rivas – Australia’s political and moral obligation should not be played down.

This month, the Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal ruled that releasing documents relating to the Australian Secret Intelligence Service’s (ASIS) role in Chile would damage Commonwealth relations. “Protecting our ability to keep secrets – and being seen to do that – may require us to continue suppressing documents containing what may appear to be benign or uncontroversial information about events that occurred long ago,” the ruling partly stated.

In September this year, heavily redacted documents were declassified which confirmed ASIS working with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), following petitions signed by a former Australian intelligence officer, Clinton Fernandes, calling upon the government to clarify its role in Cambodia, Indonesia and Chile.

Fernandes had described Australia’s foreign policy complicity with the U.S. as “a profoundly undemocratic, unfriendly act.” Allende, after all, was democratically elected. U.S. interference to bring about the right-wing dictatorship was a strategy to impede other countries from following Chile’s example in democratic revolutionary socialism.

In 1971, ASIS was tasked to open a radio station in Santiago by the CIA through which spy operations were conducted. Australia’s involvement ceased when the newly-elected Labour Prime Minister Gough Whitlam ordered the closing down of operations, fearing that any public disclosure would make things difficult in terms of explaining ASIS’s presence. At the same time, Australia was also concerned that its decision would be interpreted as anti-American.

Australia’s decision is baffling, considering the amount of declassification which the U.S., as the main instigator of violence in Latin America, has undertaken. The Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal did not make its proceedings public, thus Fernandes and his lawyer could not counter-argue the decision.

To state that not a sufficient passage of time has passed since Australia’s involvement in the coup stands in contrast with how Chile has proceeded since the democratic transition, where the rewriting of a new constitution spells the possibility of a thorough reckoning with the dictatorship legacy. While the Chilean military still holds on to its files and upholds its secret pact which National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) agents are bound to, thus refusing to collaborate with the courts for justice when it comes to locating the disappeared, for example, the Chilean government has been coerced to respond to the people’s call for change, thus ushering in an era where Pinochet’s legacy can be challenged and toppled.

There exists speculation that the Australian government would request permission from the CIA to reveal its role, based upon an agreement between the CIA and ASIS. In the early 90s, Chileans in Australia requested the expulsion of DINA agents living in Australia but were told that the government did not have permission from the CIA to heed the request.

Almost 50 years have passed since Pinochet took power, so what exactly is Australia afraid of? The petition was not calling for a revelation of names, but rather the actions which would shed light on Australia’s role in Chile at the behest of the CIA. Considering the exiled Chileans living in Australia, refusing declassification is a political infringement on their right to memory.

November 17, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | 1 Comment

The 1964 Coup in Brazil

Tales of the American Empire | November 11, 2021

In March 1963, American President John Kennedy proclaimed “We’ve got to do something about Brazil.” He said: “I think we ought to take every step that we can, be prepared to do everything that we need to do.” Kennedy believed Brazilian President Goulart was too friendly with anti-American radicals in Latin America. “Operation Brother Sam” was the code name given to Kennedy’s military plan to “prevent Brazil from becoming another China or Cuba.” After Kennedy was assassinated, President Lyndon Johnson instructed his staff to send a naval task force and aircraft to Brazil to support a coup organized by the CIA with Generals in the Brazilian military.

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“Brazil Marks 50th Anniversary of Military Coup; James Hershberg; National Security Archive; April 2, 2014; https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSA…

November 15, 2021 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Bolivian Coup Regime Sought to Assassinate Luis Arce

Bolivia’s Interior Minister Eduardo Del Castillo informs of an assassination attempt against Luis Arce in 2020 at a press conference on October 18, 2021. Photo: Ministerio De Gobierno
Kawsachan News | October 18, 2021

Bolivia’s Interior Ministry has revealed that Colombian mercenaries, who participated in the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in Haiti, entered Bolivia days before the 2020 election. Fernando Lopez, Defense Minister under Jeanine Añez, was in contact with mercenary groups, with whom he intended to carry out a second coup.

In a press conference, Interior Minister Eduardo del Castillo named Germán Alejandro Rivera García, a Colombian citizen who entered Bolivia on October 16, 2020 and who was later arrested for the assassination of Jovenel Moise. He was followed by Colombian citizen Arcángel Pretel Ortiz and Venezuelan citizen Antonio Intriago, who run the Miami-based ‘security firm’ Counter Terrorist Unit Security (CTU), which hired the mercenaries who murdered Moise.

The mercenaries stayed at the high-end Hotel Presidente in La Paz, just two blocks away from the presidential palace. The purpose of their meeting was to pursue leads with then Defense Minister Fernando Lopez for lucrative contracts for a hit on Luis Arce.

Castillo said, “Days before the elections, the paramilitaries who would go on to kill the President of Haiti, as well as mercenary contractors such as Mr. Arcángel Pretel and Mr. Antonio Intriago were in the country. According to the information we obtained, their intention was to end the life of President Luis Arce”.

Earlier in the year, leaked audios published by The Intercept revealed that Lopez was in contact with other Miami-based mercenaries to coordinate a second coup. In one audio, Lopez said, “The military high command is already in preliminary talks… the struggle, the rallying cry, is that [the MAS] wants to replace the Bolivian armed forces and the police with militias, Cubans, and Venezuelans. That is the key point. They (the police and armed forces) are going to allow Bolivia to rise up again and block an Arce administration. That’s the reality.”

President Luis Arce addressed the revelations today at a summit with social movement in La Paz, saying, “Our Interior Minister revealed this information at an opportune time, brothers; They wanted to make an attempt on my life. To those right-wing murderers, we are going to respond with a phrase from (historic Bolivian socialist leader) Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz: We know that sooner or later they will make us pay for what we are doing, we are willing to pay that price, we were always willing. We will never shy away from danger because there is something more fearsome than that enemy who is looking for a way to kill us. A guilty conscience is much worse, we would not bear ourselves if we did not fulfill our duty.”

October 21, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Argentine Court Dismisses Case Against Cristina Fernandez

Cristina Fernandez-Kirchner at a hearing, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Cristina Fernandez-Kirchner at a hearing, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
teleSUR | October 8, 2021

On Thursday, the 8th Federal Court dropped the case against Vice-President Cristina Fernandez, who was accused of covering Iran’s participation in the car bombing against the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) that took place in Buenos Aires in July 1994.

In 2013, the then President Fernandez signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) directed towards Iran. This document’s intention was to agree on cooperation mechanisms to restart the investigation of the attack, which remained stagnant for years.

“Argentine and Iranian judicial authorities will meet in Tehran to proceed to questioning… of whom Interpol has issued a red notice. The Commission will have authority to pose questions to the representatives of either side. Each side has the right to give explanations or submit new documents during the meetings,” the MoU reads.

Although the Memorandum was never enforced, her critics argued that it was a tool aimed at interfering with the judiciary system and granting immunity to Interpol fugitives. Prosecutor Alberto Nisman iniciated a legal process in 2017, during the administration of President Mauricio Macri, a right-wing politician who is a staunch political adversary of Fernandez.

October 9, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , | 2 Comments

Pinochet’s Caravan of Death and Its Significance for Chilean Memory

By Ramona Wadi | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 12, 2021

Chile’s September 11, in 1973, brought a brutal end to Salvador Allende’s socialist rule. In its wake, violence permeated Chilean society, through the U.S.-backed military coup which was to provide gruesome inspiration for the later regional systematic surveillance and elimination of socialists and communists known as Operation Condor, in which several Latin American countries were involved.

The mass arrests of Chileans loyal to Allende and socialist politics became a long purge in the country. The Caravan of Death – one of the earlier dictatorship operations aimed at instilling terror within the country – was carried out in the coup’s aftermath, between September 30 and October 22, 1973, after securing Santiago by means of brutal suppression, torture and killings. Dictator Augusto Pinochet’s purge was aimed at silencing dissent throughout the country, and also to ensure the military’s loyalty towards the dictatorship – any negligence or lenience exhibited by any individual would be punished by methods used against dissenting Chileans. The ultimate aim, according to retired Lieutenant Colonel Marcos Herrera Aracena, was “to bring an end to the remaining legal processes… In other words, finish with them once and for all.”

The Caravan of Death massacres are considered to be among the most brutal not only due to the extermination methods involved – at times the corpses were unrecognizable due to bludgeoning – but also because many Chileans willingly turned themselves in for interrogation.

Army officers travelled in Puma helicopters throughout Chile, inspecting detention centres and giving orders for execution, or carrying out the executions themselves. Testimony from La Serena indicates that 15 prisoners were executed by firing squad and their bodies buried in a mass grave. To prevent any possible dissemination of knowledge, at least in the immediate aftermath, the official version publicized by the dictatorship was that the prisoners had attempted an escape.

While at first the dictatorship seemed adamant on making its brutality known to quash any resistance, the more refined methods of disappearance and secret extermination sites hastened a culture of impunity and oblivion. The Calama massacres – the last stop in the Caravan of Death – was such an example. Relatives of the disappeared sought information about the whereabouts of their loved ones to no avail. It was the female relatives of the disappeared in Calama who took matters into their own hands and started physically searching for the bodies of their loved ones in the Atacama Desert. The dictatorship had forbidden any leaking of information due to the extent of mutilations the victims had been subjected to by the execution squads. As the women’s resilience increased, so did the dictatorship’s efforts to prevent any discovery of the bodies through exhumation and reburial of remains.

The Rettig Commission established that 75 Chileans were killed and their bodies disappeared throughout the operation, headed by Brigadier General Sergio Arellano Stark, and with the participation of agents Manuel Contreras, Marcelo Moren Brito, Sergio Arredondo Gonzalez, Armando Fernandez Larios and Pedro Espinoza Bravo – all of who played prominent roles in the torture and disappearances of dictatorship opponents throughout Pinochet’s rule. Contreras headed the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), Brito oversaw torture at Villa Grimaldi, while Fernandez Larios was involved in the assassination of Chilean economist and diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington, carried out by double agent for DINA and the CIA, Michael Townley.

Although indicted by Judge Juan Guzman Tapia on December 1, 2000 for ordering the Caravan of Death killings, dictator Pinochet escaped justice on account of purported health reasons. In relation to dictatorship memory and rupture, the Caravan of Death stands as a forewarning of what was to be unleashed in Chile throughout Pinochet’s rule and its aftermath. Particularly in Calama, the women’s resilience against the dictatorship can be seen as one of the earliest expressions against the nationwide oblivion through which Pinochet attempted to crush any questioning, let alone investigations, into dictatorship-era crimes.

September 12, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Australia helped CIA in toppling Chile’s Allende, records show

Press TV – September 11, 2021

Australian government documents have revealed that the country assisted the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in launching a coup against Chilean President Salvador Allende.

On September 11, 1973, an American-orchestrated military coup against Allende’s government resulted in a long-time dictatorship led by the coup leader Augusto Pinochet.

On the eve of the 48 anniversary of the coup, declassified documents published by the National Security Archive reveal that spies from the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) assisted in the destabilization of Allende’s leftist government.

At the request of the CIA, ASIS established a secret base in Santiago in the fall of 1970.

Liberal Party Foreign Minister William (Billy) McMahon had reportedly approved the cooperation of ASIS agents with the CIA.

The base operated for approximately 18 months and involved Australian agents and equipment alongside several Chilean s[pies recruited by the CIA in Santiago.

The group gathered intelligence that was relayed to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

According to one of the declassified documents, Austalia’s then-Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, elected in December 1972, was “uncomfortable” with the participation of Australia, because if the acts of international espionage were made public it would be “extremely difficult” to justify their presence there.

Whitlam ordered ASIS director at the time, William Robertson, to dissolve the den of spies that Australia set up in Chile to assist the Americans to topple Allende’s democratically-elected government.

Despite Whitlam’s order, an Australian intelligence agent reportedly stayed in Santiago until after the US-led coup.

Another report also noted that the prime minister “was well aware of the importance of this (operation) to the Americans” and “was very concerned that the CIA should not interpret this decision (of the closure of the base) as a hostile gesture towards the US in general or towards the CIA in particular. “

Numerous crimes against humanity, persecution of opponents, political repression, and state terrorism were committed by the Chilean armed forces, members of Carabineros de Chile, and agents of the secret police of the Pinochet regime from 1973 to 1990.

September 11, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment

Bolivia: General Montero Arrested for Senkata Massacre

teleSUR | September 8, 2021

Former Commander-General of the Bolivian Police Rodolfo Montero was arrested on Tuesday after giving his statement about the episodes of violence which occurred in the Senkata massacre on Nov. 19, 2019.

“The Public Prosecutor’s Office has determined the arrest of the former Commander of the Bolivian Police, Rodolfo Montero, for the crimes of genocide, homicide, and serious injuries in relation to the Senkata massacre” Interior Minister Carlos Del Castillo tweeted.

The resolution of the Prosecutor’s Office is part of a judicial process that will continue through a precautionary hearing, in which the judges may or may not ratify the imprisonment of Montero.

In Nov. 2019, the United States supported a coup against President Evo Morales which was executed on the pretext that the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) had committed fraud in the presidential elections. The breakdown of the constitutional order was led by Jeanine Añez, a senator who proclaimed herself “Interim President.”

Workers, farmers, students, and MAS supporters took the streets to repudiate the coup. After being inaugurated as Commander-General, Montero spearheaded repressive actions that were brutal, disproportionate, and unjustified.

On Nov. 15, the Bolivian security forces repressed a demonstration in Sacaba, leaving ten people dead from gunfire. The same happened only four days later, when citizens protesting against the Añez regime blocked the Bolivian Oilfields plant in Senkata, where 11 citizens were killed and 78 wounded.

Currently, some military and police chiefs have been prosecuted for Sacaba and Senkata massacres, while others have left the country. This week, relatives of the victims, activists and public officials held a march in La Paz to demand results from the Prosecutor’s Office and the judiciary.

September 8, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

The Añez Regime Tried To Assassinate Morales, Mexico Reveals

teleSUR | September 1, 2021

On Tuesday, Mexican Air Force (FAM) pilot Miguel Hernandez disclosed that a projectile could have been fired at the aircraft in which he rescued former President Evo Morales after the 2019 coup in Bolivia.

“Upon taking off from Cochabamba airport in Bolivia, the pilot observed a rocket-like trail of light from the left side of the cockpit when he nearly reached 1,500 feet over the ground,” FAM stated.

To avoid the projectile, Hernandez made a turn to the opposite side of its trajectory and increased the ascent speed. While making this maneuver, he observed that the projectile returned to the ground in a parabola-shaped trace without reaching much height.

The pilot did not communicate the incident to his crew so as not to increase tension during a diplomatic mission whose purpose was to lead Morales to Mexico as a political asylee. The aircraft was chased by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) while taking off from Cochabamba airport. Therefore, he suspects that the rocket could have come from this launcher.

“I got a lump in my throat when I thought what could have happened in our country if Morales had been murdered. The shadows of terror sown over the Bolivian people cannot go unpunished,” Gabriela Montaño, Health Ministry during the Morales administration, tweeted.

In a plenary meeting of the Bolivian Congress, President Luis Arce affirmed that he would not rest until Jeanine Añez’s facto government is punished for torture, persecution, illegal detentions, and murders that it committed during the coup d’état.

On Aug. 19, the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) confirmed that 38 citizens were killed and over 100 were injured during the protests against the Añez regime, which allowed Armed Forces and the Police to act with impunity during their repressive operations against Bolivians.

September 1, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | 1 Comment

Report Confirms Human Rights Violations in the 2019 U.S.-Backed Coup in Bolivia

By Ramona Wadi | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 23, 2021

A 471-page report by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts for Bolivia (GIEI-Bolivia) recently presented to Bolivian President Luis Arce in La Paz on Tuesday this week confirms the U.S.-backed coup’s persecution of opponents, including “systematic torture and summary executions” in 2019. The report is based on interviews with 400 victims of the Anez regime and other witnesses, as well as 120,000 files related to abuses between September 1 and December 31, 2019.

The findings prompted Bolivian prosecutors to charge the self-styled “interim leader” Jeanine Anez with genocide. Anez faces charges over the massacres in Sacaba and Senkata, where 20 protestors were killed by the security forces.

At the announcement of her arrest in March this year, Anez tweeted, “They are sending me to detention for four months to await a trial for a ‘coup’ that never happened.”

Yet the U.S. was swift to recognize Anez as interim president as well as to endorse the Organization of American State’s (OAS) report in 2019, which alleged electoral fraud in Bolivia with the intent to keep Evo Morales in power.

The former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s address to the OAS office in Washington gives quite a succinct summary of U.S. interference in Latin America – a twisted narrative of alleged democratic intent trickling down from the U.S., when the facts speak otherwise. Pompeo spoke of the U.S. role in recognizing Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president and how members of the OAS followed suit, as well as a historical overview which attempted to disfigure the leftist movements in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s as “producing repression for their own kind at home.”

Pompeo also described Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela as the countries through which “we face stains of tyranny on a great canvas of freedom in our hemisphere,” before moving on to praise the OAS for its role in ousting Morales. And as is typical of the U.S., with its long history of supporting military coups in the region, not a word was uttered about Anez’s persecution of the indigenous in Bolivia.

Yet the OAS report was denounced by the New York Times as having “relied on incorrect data and inappropriate statistical techniques.” The Center for Economic and Policy Research’s Co-Director Mark Weisbrot declared, “If the OAS and Secretary General Luis Almagro are allowed to get away with such politically driven falsification of their electoral observation results again, this threatens not only Bolivian democracy but the democracy of any country where the OAS may be involved in elections in the future.”

The GIEI report has established that the Anez regime committed summary executions, torture and sexual violence against indigenous people. Through the report, the Sacaba and Senkata massacres were revisited and will once again form part of Bolivia’s most recent memory of U.S.-backed violence. Just a day prior to the Sacaba massacres, on November 14, 2019, Anez signed a decree which established impunity for Bolivia’s armed forces.

Contrary to the rushed way in which the Trump Administration had recognised Anez as Bolivia’s legitimate leader, the U.S. is reluctant to comment on the GIEI report findings which established the U.S.-backed regime as having committed human rights violations. This year, however, the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a statement in March after Anez’s arrest, stating he was “deeply concerned by growing signs of anti-democratic behavior and politicization” with regard to Bolivia’s quest for justice.

Of Bolivia’s quest for justice now, the U.S. can hardly be expected to voice support. Yet the report goes a long way in overturning the U.S. intervention narrative. Bolivia’s victims are victims of a U.S.-backed coup, and U.S.-funded political violence should equally share the spotlight now highlighting Anez’s short-lived legacy of human rights violations in Bolivia.

August 25, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , | 5 Comments

Lima Group Loses Lima

By Yves Engler · August 11, 2021

The Canadian instigated Lima Group has been dealt a probably fatal blow that ought to elicit serious discussion about this country’s foreign policy. But, don’t expect the media or politicians to even mention it.

In a likely death knell for a coalition seeking to overthrow the Venezuelan government, Peru’s new Foreign Affairs Minister called the Lima Group the country’s “most disastrous” ever foreign policy initiative. Héctor Béjar said, “the Lima Group must be the most disastrous thing we have done in international politics in the history of Perú.”

Two days after Béjar’s statement St Lucia’s external affairs minister, Alva Baptiste, declared: “With immediate effect, we are going to get out of the Lima Group arrangement – that morally bankrupt, mongoose gang, we are going to get out of it because this group has imposed needless hardship on the children, men and women of Venezuela.”

Prior to Baptiste and Béjar’s statements, the Lima Group had lost a handful of members and its support for Juan Guaidó’s bid to declare himself president had failed. Considering its name, the Peruvian government’s aggressive turn against the Lima Group probably marks the end of it. As Kawsachun News tweeted a Peruvian congressman noting, “the Lima Group has been left without Lima.”

The Lima Group’s demise would be a major blow to Trudeau’s foreign policy. Ottawa founded it with Peru. Amidst discussions between the two countries foreign ministers in Spring 2017, Trudeau called his Peruvian counterpart, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, to “‎stress the need for dialogue and respect for the democratic rights of Venezuelan citizens, as enshrined in the charter of the Organization of American States and the Inter-American Democratic Charter.” But the Lima Group was established in August 2017 as a structure outside of the OAS largely because that organization’s members refused to back Washington and Ottawa’s bid to interfere in Venezuelan affairs, which they believed defied the OAS’ charter.

Canada has been maybe the most active member of the coalition. Former Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland participated in a half dozen Lima Group meetings and its second meeting was held in Toronto. That October 2017 meeting urged regional governments to take steps to “further isolate” Venezuela.

At the second Lima Group meeting in Canada, a few weeks after Juan Guaidó proclaimed himself president, Trudeau declared, “the international community must immediately unite behind the interim president.” The final declaration of the February 2019 meeting called on Venezuela’s armed forces “to demonstrate their loyalty to the interim president” and remove the elected president.

Freeland repeatedly prodded Caribbean and Central American countries to join the Lima Group and its anti-Maduro efforts. In May 2019 Trudeau called Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel to pressure him to join Ottawa’s effort to oust President Maduro. The release noted, “the Prime Minister, on behalf of the Lima Group, underscored the desire to see free and fair elections and the constitution upheld in Venezuela.”

In a sign of the importance Canadian diplomats placed on the Lima Group, the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers gave Patricia Atkinson, Head of the Venezuela Task Force at Global Affairs, its Foreign Service Officers award in June 2019. The write-up explained, “Patricia, and the superb team she assembled and led, supported the Minister’s engagement and played key roles in the substance and organization of 11 meetings of the 13 country Lima group which coordinates action on Venezuela.”

Solidarity activists have protested the Lima Group since its first meeting in Toronto. There were also protests at the second Lima Group meeting in Canada, including an impressive disruption of the final press conference. At a talk last year, NDP MP Matthew Green declared “we ought not be a part of a pseudo-imperialist group like the Lima Group” while a resolution submitted (though never discussed) to that party’s April convention called for Canada to leave the Lima Group.

Hopefully the Peruvian and St Lucia governments’ recent criticism marks the end of the Lima Group. But, we should seek to ensure it doesn’t disappear quietly. We need a discussion of how Canada became a central player in this interventionist alliance.

August 14, 2021 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | , , | 1 Comment

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