U.S. Latino leaders, scholars ask that U.S. respect Venezuela’s sovereignty
Latino leaders and scholars, addressing Venezuela’s ‘National Security Threat’ designation, sent the following letter to President Obama before the Summit of the Americas to be held in Panama this weekend.
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The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States of America
Dear President Obama:
We write to express our concerns about the issuance of your recent Executive Order designating Venezuela as a “National Security Threat.”
Americans and Latin Americans alike celebrated your actions to temporarily normalize the status of millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States and to end failed policies towards Cuba. However, a few months after issuing a much anticipated Executive Order on immigration and initiating the historic process of normalizing relations with Cuba, after a fifty-year embargo that you said had failed to achieve its objectives, the United States has imposed sanctions against Venezuelan officials.
If U.S. sanctions against Cuba did not produce change why would we expect them to produce results in Venezuela? We are concerned, moreover, that more sanctions could be on the way. On March 17, State Department official Alex Lee told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the sanctions announced by the White House were the “first salvo.” Already many countries in the region including the Union of South America (UNASUR), which includes all 13 governments of South America, have expressed their repudiation of your Executive Order.
The recent Executive Order threatens to unravel the historic efforts you launched to normalize relations with Cuba. Moreover, it threatens to undermine efforts to build new relations with Latin America casting the United States once again in a negative light with our neighbors to the South.
Mexico, which faces a real human rights crisis, with tens of thousands killed and disappeared, tends to receive little or no attention from the State Department and your administration. A report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur found that torture occurs in Mexico with “impunity” at the hands of security forces. Yet the United States remains silent on this matter.
In Venezuela, during protests in February and March of 2014, forty-three people from both sides of the political spectrum died. In Mexico, forty-three normal school students were disappeared by government forces. Why should one incident serve as a precedent to impose sanctions while the other is overlooked?
The summit of the Americas is scheduled for April 10-11, 2015, in Panama. Rather than introduce a new era of relations, the Executive Order against Venezuela will become the central issue in the Summit to the detriment of your Cuba reconciliation and other regional agenda items.
This is precisely what happened at the last summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia (2012), where the U.S. found itself isolated on matters of Cuba and its approach to the Drug War.
We respectfully urge you to clarify your position by declaring U.S. respect for Venezuela’s sovereignty and disavow direct or indirect military or destabilizing actions or policies against Venezuela before the Summit. We respectfully urge you to engage in dialogue mediated by respected regional organizations like UNASUR or CELAC or ALBA rather than engage in more sanctions to address differences with Venezuela.
Sincerely,
Antonio Gonzalez, President, William C. Velasquez Institute
Arturo Carmona, Executive Director, Presente.org
Raul Macias, President, Anahuak Youth Sports Association
Taina Vega, Director, Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana
Dr. Miguel Tinker Salas, Chairman of Chicano/Chicana Studies, Claremont Colleges
Dr. George Ciccariello-Maher, Drexel University
Dr. Suyapa Portillo, Chicana/o-Latina/o and Transnational Studies Programs Pitzer College
Dr. Jose Calderon, Chicano Studies Program, Claremont Colleges
Dr. Sidney Lemelle, Dept. of History, Pomona College
Dr. April Mayes, Dept. of History, Pomona College
