For Latin America, a question of life or death
To
defend Evo and ensure Bolivia’s integrity
By
Víctor Ego Ducrot Read Spanish Version
Mercosur
News Agency (APM)
No
other task has priority: to slam the brakes on the United States’
strategy and that of the "Half Moon cartel." First, via
politics; if not, with arms. Brazil and Argentina are in the eye of
the storm.
President
Evo Morales must be defended by the Latin American community. The
chiefs of state who meet this Monday in Santiago, Chile, must state
their positions with absolute clarity and condemn the ultra-rightist
forces of Bolivia’s wealthy East, supported by the United States.
Because
of his vocation, because he is a careful reader of the correlation of
forces inside his country and region, and because he is certain about
the provocative component of fascist subversion, Morales prioritized
the path of dialogue, something that must be maintained to its final
consequences.
But
if the prefects, the soy businessmen (who have formed a true cartel
with their farm-boss partners in Argentina and Brazil) and the entire
right-wing conglomerate recently repudiated at the ballot box,
continue their escalation, the governments and peoples of the region
will have to support the decisions the Bolivian president may adopt
at military and police levels.
For
a long time, Argentina and Brazil have designed, and now maintain as
a policy of state, an elaborate program for mutual defense, based on
the protection of their natural resources. They must urgently
incorporate the armed forces of Bolivia into that program. What’s at
stake in that country is a vast reservoir of natural resources.
There
will be neither Mercosur nor a policy of regional integration if the
more aggressive elements of the hegemonic bloc impose their project
on Bolivia.
Neither
Brazil nor Argentina, nor any of the countries in the region, should
allow the oil consortia — openly private or disguised (like
Petrobras) as "state-owned" — to play the nations’ cards.
They, and the corporate complex of the soy industry, have committed
themselves to a separatist strategy for Bolivia.
The
democratic leaders in the region must understand clearly that, if Evo
Morales falls, their own governments will be in danger, unless they
become the tools of the big transnational corporation, the government
of the United States, and the "ambassadors of the Republic of
Soy."
President
Lula should choose between two speeches: the one that sees as "a
strange coincidence" the fact that the U.S. wants to stage naval
maneuvers in the region where Petrobras is finding new offshore oil
reserves, and the one that considers the wills of the government of
Bolivia and the "opposition" to be one and the same.
President
Cristina Fernández should read the use of the Antonini Wilson
case by the government of the United States and the hardening of the
right-wing discourse from the soy-cartel bosses as local chapters of
a hegemonic strategy that has its dramatic epicenter in Bolivia.
In
that sense, it is constructive to realize that the unrestricted
payment to the countries in the Paris Club and the accusations
against leftist parties and others for the actions of popular
indignation only take away their credibility and help to strengthen
that hegemonic strategy.
In
an identical scenario is the putschist offensive denounced last week
by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, to which his government
will surely refer again, especially about the sanctions applied to
the people involved, be they civilians or military men.
A
separate chapter is needed for the behavior of the media oligopolies
that operate in Latin America, systematically committed to putschism,
destitution and the destabilization of the political processes that
dare to affect — albeit with the lowest of intensities — their
corporate interests, forever linked to the designs of the right.
There
is no other possible alternative. Either we defend Evo Morales and
Bolivia’s politico-territorial integrity or the worst of all possible
futures will threaten the entire region.
Victor
Ego Ducrot is editor of APM and Argentina’s Media Observatory.
