THE SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS [sic] has ended, as the promised veto by Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, of the Final declaration, no declaration was forthcoming. I watched some of the Youtube videos of the opening speeches. It filled me with such emotion to see Daniel Ortega, who lead a socialist revolution against the US-backed dictator, Agustin Somoza, and for this crime Nicaragua was rained on with US bombs, and a Contra War. The US Government finally told the Sandinista revolutionaries that they would stop the war only if a US-sanctioned "election" was staged. Violeta Chamorro, backed by the CIA, won ... of course. But there was Ortega. President, speaking of being ashamed at being at such a summit without Cuba, and without PUERTO RICO, which remains under US control. Christina Fernandez de Kirchner also spoke on behalf of Cuba and highlighted the hypocrisy that Cuba should have been expelled for threatening the hemisphere but Argentina, 20 years later, was left alone when the UK sent the royal navy in the Falklands War.
At this point, this is sort of like an earthquake. Not sure what will fall and what will be left standing. Clearly, all but one of the Latin American/Caribbean countries have taken a turn Left, some moreso than others. All but one have embraced Cuba in their family of nations. The US stands alone, but I do not underestimate the US to bow under such pressure, right or wrong.
A BBC online news story makes this assessment: "US President Barack Obama said he saw positive signs from Cuba and Venezuela ..." Once again, the world is to be seen from the vantage point of the US! Even from the British side of the pond. This is predictabe since the UK is what Gore Vidal called a "US aircraft carrier."
When Fidel and the Revolutionaries rode into Havana January 1, 1959, they were approached by a delegation of the US military. Fidel told them they should return to their home country, that their pupils had failed, and that the Cubans had no use for their lessons. I imagine he gave them a RuPaul double-snap.
It would seem in light of the global melt-down - or, I still suspect the manufacture of said meltdown - Obama would be told the same in no uncertain terms.
But I am not a diplomat. I am an essayist, stream-of-consciouser, provocateur.
The BBC further reports: "In a news conference at the close of the summit, Mr Obama conceded that decades of US policy on Cuba 'hasn't worked the way we wanted it to'. But he highlighted a string of key issues where Cuba must make progress. 'Issues of political prisoners, freedom of speech and democracy are important, and can't simply be brushed aside,' Mr Obama said."
I am sure, although it went unreported by the BBC, which made every excuse not to air the Gaza Appeal a few months ago, our American neighbors had a reply to these comments from our president, which to me only speaks to our pig-headed stubbornness to dictate how the world is to be shaped. For our benefit, of course. How, praytell, did we "want" US policy to work? The assassination of the Cuban leadership, destruction of commerce, buildig mass internal discontent?
Let Obama address the issues listed at home first, openly. Let him begin with the heinos constitutional crimes committed by the Bush administration and work his way back through J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO.
And what about democracy in such disparate places as Saudi Arabia. Israel. The Vatican. Will this be brushed aside? History answers in the affirmative.
Reading the bourgeois press is indeed seductive. Thanks to YOUTUBE I watched the Summit speeches, understood as much as I was able with my remedial Spanish. I also watched a speech by Cuban president Raul Castro a few days before the Summit. Raul has been protrayed lately in a quote attributed to him that he would discuss anything with the US. It was implied, but never directly stated, this meant the Cuban government was ready to negotiate certain acheivements. But then I watched the speech, in the presence of international journalists and other Latin American leaders who are forming a new bloc of their own, ALBA. Raul was in military uniform and was as animated as his older, famous brother on the subject of US duplicity.
Chavez, during one aired session, stood and gave Obama the gift of an Eduardo Galeano book, OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA: FIVE CENTURIES OF THE PILLAGE OF A CONTINENT. I have read Galeano, a Uruguayan leftist who cooled his support of Cuba after the arrests of 70+ dissidents a few years ago. His is the history of the conquerors and victims. The gift was symbolically important, but it suggests the trap many of us fall into when having a disagreement with someone: that the other person is simply unaware of the "facts", and, once informed, the sky will open up. The powerful interests behind the US government very simply have a different universe of facts from which they act. These facts would indicate a South African-style, regional-wide TRUTH COMMISSION, where everything can be brought to bear, British involvement in the Caribbean and Latin America, US involvement in the same; border disputes between South American countries; all levels of human rights, including the right to housing food, and work.
It is from these pages we must glean new lessons, and form the new bonds that Kirchner demanded of the region. But the ensuing days and months will tell, the period after the earthquake, when things are properly assessed. Which Summit? A fractured one unable to come to any approved agreement, or one marking the Turning-Point in seeing positive signs from the US?
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