Peru President Reimpose Sunday Curfew to Curb COVID-19 Spike

VOA  August 13, 2020

Peru is reimposing Sunday curfews and banning family gatherings in response to a new surge in coronavirus infections.

In announcing the return of a curfew first introduced in April, President Martin Vizcarra blamed the spike in COVID-19 cases on large social gatherings.

The curfew prohibits people from leaving home on Sundays unless they have special passes given to essential professionals such as medical workers.

The president said his administration believes it is better to go back one step so that citizens are all responsible again for “recovering the conditions that we would all like to have."

Vizcarra also said a COVID-19 vaccine is expected to be available in the first months of next year.

Peru, which trails only Brazil and Mexico in coronavirus cases in Latin America, has confirmed more than 590,000 cases and more than 21,700 deaths.

Pope donated $500,000 to Mexico-based projects to help migrant communities

ABC News Apr 27, 2019

Pope Francis donated $500,000 to Mexico-based projects to help migrant communities as media attention has faded, the Vatican said Saturday. 

 The funds will be distributed between 27 projects associated with 16 Mexican dioceses and congregations, all of which asked for help to continue providing food, lodging, and basic necessities to those fleeing their home countries through Mexico.

“In recent months, thousands of migrants have arrived in Mexico, having travelled more than 4,000 kilometers on foot and with makeshift vehicles from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Men and women, often with young children, flee poverty and violence, hoping for a better future in the United States. However, the U.S. border remains closed to them,” said a press release from Peter's Pence, the organization handling the funds. 

The growing influence of evangelical churches

Times of Israel   6 October 2018

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AFP) — Evangelical churches are flourishing across traditionally Catholic Latin America and as the religious movement grows, its influence — including in this weekend’s elections in Brazil — is transforming the region and swinging its politics to the right, analysts say.

Sharply opposed to abortion, same-sex marriage, the legalization of marijuana, and leftist ideology in general, the evangelical movement has boosted conservatives and helped unseat a slew of left-leaning governments across the region.

Powerful evangelical churches are now helping tip the balance in Brazil, where far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro is riding high in the polls ahead of Sunday’s presidential election first round. 

“The recent elections in Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, and the upcoming one in Brazil reveal both greater electoral polarization and a shift to the political right,” says Andrew Chesnut, director of Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.

In Mexico, “even though he’s left of center, Lopez Obrador felt he had to make an alliance with a small conservative party founded by a Pentecostal pastor, to ensure his victory,” Chesnut says, referring to President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Thousands of Venezuelans are searching for a new life in Colombia as crisis deepens

By Katy Watson  28 September 2017

Many have queued overnight, waiting patiently for the Simón Bolívar International bridge to open. Some 25,000 people cross the bridge into Colombia every day.

It is a short walk between the two countries but with the political and economic crisis in Venezuela deepening, the two neighbours now seem worlds apart.

Venezuela is suffering from acute shortages of medicines, hospitals struggle to treat patients and staple goods have become scarce and unaffordable to many.

Mothers cradle their babies, bringing them to the hospital in the town of Cúcuta, on the Colombian side of the border, to get them vaccinated.

Families push poorly relatives in wheelchairs. Others cross into Colombia with empty suitcases, filling them up with food and supplies they cannot get in Venezuela.

Two women with a baby in a pushchair walk past the border guard, muttering: "What a humiliation." They are clearly embarrassed they have to do this.

Crossing the border for food

The local church in Cúcuta is feeding between 600 and 2,000 people a day in an open-air courtyard filled with plastic tables and chairs.

Verónica Mendoza, 24, is five months pregnant. She is tucking in to a meal of rice, beans, potatoes and mince with her mother, Mariluz.

The two women travel two hours every day from Venezuela to sell fruit at a market in Colombia.

They cannot find work back home. They come here for their only proper meal of the day.

"Look at the weight I've lost," says Mariluz, grabbing her once fleshy arms and showing the loose skin. "I used to be healthy and strong. But we have to walk such a long way and work so hard."

Mariluz's case is not rare. Recent research [in Spanish] suggests that three-quarters of Venezuelans lost weight in the past year, an average of 9kg (20lb).

Living on the streets

The Colombian government recently introduced "border mobility cards" to allow Venezuelans to go back and forth across the border without the need for a passport.

More than 700,000 people have applied for the scheme so far.

But some like Carlos Alberto Ledesma, a professional jazz musician from Caracas, want to stay in Colombia for good.

Mr Ledesma arrived in Cúcuta eight days ago. "I spent a year living on the streets," he says.

"I stopped working in Venezuela because the bars aren't open, half of the musicians have gone."

Official figures put the number of Venezuelans who have left their homeland for Colombia because of the crisis at 300,000. But the actual number is thought to be much higher.

The influx is putting strain on communities in Colombia, which have lived through more than five decades of armed conflict between left-wing guerrilla groups, the armed forces and right-wing paramilitaries.

Luis Fernando Niño López is the secretary for victims, peace and post-conflict for the province of Norte de Santander, where Cúcuta is located.

"At the moment, there's a pretty big flow but not everybody stays," he says of the Venezuelans arriving in the region.

"But what's going to happen when they can't go back because [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro closes the border or because armed groups that control the border won't let people go back?"

Sheltering Venezuelans

At a shelter run by the Scalabrini International Migration Network in the centre of Cúcuta, the growing scale of the problem is evident.

Between January and June, 650 people came through its doors. In August alone, there were 850 people.

Mr Franklin Díaz, who runs the shelter, says those who come to the shelter are in urgent need of attention and more should be done to help them.

"The action of the authorities is fundamental, they are the ones who manage the resources."

Many of those crossing into Colombia from Venezuela originally fled the armed conflict in Colombia.

Nereidis Ascanio is one of them. Her father was killed by paramilitaries so her family left for Venezuela when she was a child.

A single mother, her two little boys have Venezuelan nationality.

She recently returned to Colombia and now lives in a little shack made out of wooden beams and a corrugated iron roof on the outskirts of Cúcuta. The tarpaulin walls do not even cover the entire shack. 

Ms Ascanio is desperate. "I need to find food for my kids," she says while she wipes away tears.

"And I need to find a job that will allow me to look after my boys."

Getting stuck in Cúcuta

Other Colombians left for Venezuela when the oil industry started booming there in the 1980s.

With oil prices now low and the economic crisis in Venezuela worsening, they too are returning in large numbers.

Many arrive in Colombia with great expectations of a new life.

But Venezuela's triple-digit inflation means their savings in Venezuelan bolivares are worthless once converted into Colombian pesos, so many get stuck.

In the middle of the town is a roundabout with a large sculpture which reads "I love Cúcuta". Some people are curled up sleeping in the letters "c".

Jeferson José Gutierres is one of those sleeping rough along with his wife and their three children. 

He came here a month ago and cannot find work.

But he says life in Cúcuta is still better than in Venezuela and he is not planning on going back while President Maduro is in power.

"I'll return when Maduro goes," he says.

"He's a president who spends money while his people die of hunger."         BBC

Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress excerpted from a People's History of the United States

By Howard Zinn

Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log:

"They... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned.... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane.... They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."

These Arawaks of the Bahama Islands were much like Indians on the mainland, who were remarkable (European observers were to say again and again) for their hospitality, their belief in sharing. These traits did not stand out in the Europe of the Renaissance, dominated as it was by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money that marked Western civilization and its first messenger to the Americas, Christopher Columbus.

Columbus wrote:

"As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts."

The information that Columbus wanted most was: Where is the gold?

****

The Indians, Columbus reported, "are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone...." He concluded his report by asking for a little help from their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his next voyage "as much gold as they need . . . and as many slaves as they ask." He was full of religious talk: "Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities."

Because of Columbus's exaggerated report and promises, his second expedition was given seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men. The aim was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But as word spread of the Europeans' intent they found more and more empty villages. On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor.

Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were "naked as the day they were born," they showed "no more embarrassment than animals." Columbus later wrote: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.

The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.

When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates, known later as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island.

The chief source-and, on many matters the only source-of in formation about what happened on the islands after Columbus came is Bartolome de las Casas, who, as a young priest, participated in the conquest of Cuba. For a time he owned a plantation on which Indian slaves worked, but he gave that up and became a vehement critic of Spanish cruelty.

*****

In Book Two of his History of the Indies, Las Casas (who at first urged replacing Indians by black slaves, thinking they were stronger and would survive, but later relented when he saw the effects on blacks) tells about the treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards. It is a unique account and deserves to be quoted at length:

"Endless testimonies . . . prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives.... But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then.... The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians..."

Las Casas tells how the Spaniards "grew more conceited every day" and after a while refused to walk any distance. They "rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry" or were carried on hammocks by Indians running in relays. "In this case they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the sun and others to fan them with goose wings."

Total control led to total cruelty. The Spaniards "thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades." Las Casas tells how "two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys."

The Indians' attempts to defend themselves failed. And when they ran off into the hills they were found and killed. So, Las Casas reports. "they suffered and died in the mines and other labors in desperate silence, knowing not a soul in the world to whom they could tun for help." He describes their work in the mines:

"... mountains are stripped from top to bottom and bottom to top a thousand times; they dig, split rocks, move stones, and carry dirt on their backs to wash it in the rivers, while those who wash gold stay in the water all the time with their backs bent so constantly it breaks them; and when water invades the mines, the most arduous task of all is to dry the mines by scooping up pansful of water and throwing it up outside....

After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died. While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.

Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides . . . they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk . . . and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile ... was depopulated.... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write...."

When he arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, Las Casas says, "there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it...."

Thus began the history, five hundred years ago, of the European invasion of the Indian settlements in the Americas. That beginning, when you read Las Casas-even if his figures are exaggerations (were there 3 million Indians to begin with, as he says, or less than a million, as some historians have calculated, or 8 million as others now believe?) is conquest, slavery, death. When we read the history books given to children in the United States, it all starts with heroic adventure-there is no bloodshed-and Columbus Day is a celebration.

*****

The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks) the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress-is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders. It is as if they, like Columbus, deserve universal acceptance, as if they-the Founding Fathers, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, the leading members of Congress, the famous Justices of the Supreme Court-represent the nation as a whole. The pretense is that there really is such a thing as "the United States," subject to occasional conflicts and quarrels, but fundamentally a community of people with common interests. It is as if there really is a "national interest" represented in the Constitution, in territorial expansion, in the laws passed by Congress, the decisions of the courts, the development of capitalism, the culture of education and the mass media.

"History is the memory of states," wrote Henry Kissinger in his first book, A World Restored, in which he proceeded to tell the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those states men's policies. From his standpoint, the "peace" that Europe had before the French Revolution was "restored" by the diplomacy of a few national leaders.

But for factory workers in England, farmers in France, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper classes, it was a world of conquest, violence, hunger, exploitation-a world not restored but disintegrated.

*****

When the Pilgrims came to New England they too were coming not to vacant land but to territory inhabited by tribes of Indians. The governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, created the excuse to take Indian land by declaring the area legally a "vacuum." The Indians, he said, had not "subdued" the land, and therefore had only a "natural" right to it, but not a "civil right." A "natural right" did not have legal standing.

The Puritans also appealed to the Bible, Psalms 2:8: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." And to justify their use of force to take the land, they cited Romans 13:2: "Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation."

*****

The Indian population of 10 million that lived north of Mexico when Columbus came would ultimately be reduced to less than a million. Huge numbers of Indians would die from diseases introduced by the whites. A Dutch traveler in New Netherland wrote in 1656 that "the Indians . . . affirm, that before the arrival of the Christians, and before the smallpox broke out amongst them, they were ten times as numerous as they now are, and that their population had been melted down by this disease, whereof nine-tenths of them have died." When the English first settled Martha's Vineyard in 1642, the Wampanoags there numbered perhaps three thousand. There were no wars on that island, but by 1764, only 313 Indians were left there. Similarly, Block Island Indians numbered perhaps 1,200 to 1,500 in 1662, and by 1774 were reduced to fifty-one.

Behind the English invasion of North America, behind their massacre of Indians, their deception, their brutality, was that special powerful drive born in civilizations based on private property. It was a morally ambiguous drive; the need for space, for land, was a real human need. But in conditions of scarcity, in a barbarous epoch of history ruled by competition, this human need was transformed into the murder of whole peoples.                  Third World Traveler

The Ten Most Lethal CIA Interventions in Latin America

By Dr. Gary G. Kohls Global Research, October 11, 2016 

Note: In its 200 year history, the USA has intervened in, invaded or militarily occupied the following Western Hemisphere nations:

Canada, Confederate States of America, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, Surinam, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Puerto Rico, Grenada.

While the dates most associated with the Central Intelligence Agency are the 1953 coup against Iran’s Mohammed Mossadeq and the following year against Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz, the world’s most notorious–and possibly ignoble–spy agency actually was chartered on this day, 18 September, in 1947.

Since then, the CIA has played a role in hundreds of assassinations, military coups, and rebellions around the globe, from Argentina to Zaire.

Despite it’s championing of freedom, the CIA’s true objective has always been imperialist in nature. Whether oil in Iran or bananas in Guatemala, the U.S. has a material interest in every country in whose affairs it has meddled.

In order to meet its goals, the CIA recruits influential, intellectual and charismatic personalities. The agency also resorts to threats, kidnappings, torture, enforced disappearances and assassinations. The organization incites violence, uprisings and military rebellion, and causes economic chaos and misery to the people through scarcity of basic foods, etc..

The CIA has been exposed on a number of occasions through documented evidence, leaks of information and whistleblowing by active and former agents.

1. 1954 – Guatemala

In 1944, the violent U.S.-backed dictatorship of Jorge Ubico was overthrown by a popular uprising. The people of Guatemala were sick and tired of the brutal injustices of his regime, although in reality Ubico was merely a puppet of The United Fruit Company, which obeyed Washington’s orders. They basically enslaved the population. They stripped campesinos and Indigenous people of their lands and forced them to work their own parcels and paid them bread crumbs. Those who dared to disobey were brutally punished by a police force working for the U.S. fruit company.

The victory of the uprising brought peace to the country but it only took 10 years for U S President Dwight Eisenhower (and two of Ike’s cabinet members [who were also United Fruit Company insiders] Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and CIA Chief Allen Dulles) to implement a plan to overthrow the government.

In 1954, (US President Dwight Eisenhower’s) CIA launched the so-called Operation PBSuccess. The country’s capital, Guatemala City, was bombed by U.S. warplanes. The young Ernesto “Che” Guevara was there and witnessed the ordeal first hand. Hundreds of campesino leaders were executed and many campesino and Mayan Indigenous communities were completely wiped out. The brutal CIA intervention wasn’t complete until 200,000 had been killed. U.S. companies were again enjoying huge profits in the Central American country and Washington was happy.

2. 1959 – Haiti

Haiti is equally strategic to the United States as are the Dominican Republic and Cuba. So, Washington doesn’t hesitate when their brutal control appears to wane in the Caribbean. Under no circumstance, would the U.S. allow governments in the region to lean to the left, and if they dare to, (US President Dwight Eisenhower’) CIA steps in to push them back to the right. Of course, Cuba is a rare example of resilience to U.S. efforts to achieve hegemony in the area. Since 1959, the Cuban revolution of Fidel Castro has repealed the relentless U.S. attacks.

But in Haiti, the story is different. In 1959 as well, popular discontent rose against the brutal puppet of the U.S., Francois Duvalier. The CIA stepped in and stopped it immediately. With the help of the intelligence agency, Duvalier wasted no time and created an army to violently repress all those who rose up against him. He and his heir to the regime, Jean Claude Duvalier, ordered massacres that were so horrendous they defy words. Over 100,000 people were murdered. And in 1986, when a new but uncontrollable rebellion took over, a U.S. Air Force plane rescued Jean Claude and took him to France so he could live in peaceful luxury.

3. 1964 – Brazil

The year of 1964 was one of incredible transformation in Brazil. Democratically-elected President Joao Goulart implemented his “Plan of Basic Reforms.” Even though the U.S. had exerted much of its power through ensuring people weren’t lifted from ignorance and illiteracy, Brazil implemented real changes that made Washington very uncomfortable. Firstly, a tax reform was put in place that would hugely carve into the profits of the multinational corporations of the United States and its allies. Washington was also very unhappy with a reform by which land would be given back to their legitimate owners and would redistribute other lands to poor people.

It was now time to send in (US President Lyndon Johnson’s) CIA to take action against the government of Goulart, which they did in 1964. They put in power a brutal dictatorship that lasted 19 years. During this regime, thousands were tortured and hundreds executed. The CIA also made sure all those leaders who had leftist tendencies were eliminated, particularly Marxists.

4. 1969 – Uruguay

During the sixties, revolutionary movements spread through Latin America. Uruguay was drowned in crises. United States saw influential socialist leaders emerge in this South American nation. For example, the urban revolutionary guerrilla known as the Tupamaros. Jose “Pepe” Mujica was part of it, and so was his wife Lucia Topolansky. Washington became obsessed with eliminating them, fearing the influence and power they were achieving.

Nelson Rockefeller went to Uruguay to observe first-hand how they were, generating a growing anti-Yankee sentiment. He returned to Washington to alert authorities that something needed to be done urgently.

Of course, (US President Richard Nixon’s) CIA responded immediately. They sent their special agent Dan Mitrione. He trained security forces in the art of torture and other highly macabre practices that are indescribable in nature. And then the CIA put in power Juan Maria Bordaberry and his military dictatorship. He ruled under direct order from Washington the next 12 years, during which he killed hundreds of people and tortured tens of thousands more. Repression was so brutal and Uruguayans were so traumatized and fearful they no longer carried out their traditional dances, which symbolize happiness and victory.

5. 1971 – Bolivia

The vast Latin American natural resources are the envy of the greedy and powerful politicians of the United States, who resort to any means to control them for their own benefit, and never for the people and countries they brutally exploit. During decades, U.S. multinational corporations enslaved people in vast regions of Chile, Bolivia and Peru. When those living under slavery conditions dared to rebel against their oppressors, they were annihilated in bulk. Che Guevara felt compelled to go to Bolivia and help the people rise in revolution.

This was 1967. By then, U.S. mining companies had enslaved entire communities, including children, who they banned from school. Two years later, Che Guevara was murdered by (US President Richard Nixon’s) CIA. Once out of their way, CIA officials established a military regime.

However, the people again turned on Washington. General Juan Jose Torres took power and implemented reforms to benefit workers and those living in poverty. Hope returned to Bolivia and its people, but the CIA would not allow this to continue. The agency recruited General Hugo Banzer. He led the coup against Torres and in 1971, he kicked off his violent dictatorship. He ordered the torture of a number of opposition leaders and the execution of hundreds of influential political leaders. He sent about 8,000 other leaders to jail. Washington was happy.

6. 1973 – Chile

Chilean President Salvador Allende was just another of the many victims of the many coups on democracy carried out by the United States (Note the date: 9/11/73)

Chile was another country brutally exploited by U.S. corporations.Washington (US President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger) made sure the people lived in utter misery. The CIA used different tactics but the results were the same. The agency led a smear campaign against the government of Chile, as it is currently doing in Venezuela. They used national and international media to demonize President Salvador Allende. They made sure people who had once been loyal to him because of his benevolent way of governing turned on him.

How you ask? The same way they’re doing it in Venezuela. By causing scarcity through extortion, through torture, imprisonment, enforced disappearances and by assassinating all those who refused to bow to them. Washington was irritated beyond control after Allende nationalized natural resources. They were also annoyed because Allende built houses for those who couldn’t afford homes. He made sure his people had access to education. When Allende’s popularity was successfully undermined, the next step was to plan a coup against him. It would now be easy. And on September. 11, 1973, Gen. Augusto Pinochet led the military all the way to the presidential palace with the backing of the CIA, who provided him with all the necessary weapons and armored vehicles.

War planes dropped bombs on the palace. Before he died, Allende told his people: “I will not give up! Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for the loyalty of the people with my life. And I tell you with certainty that that which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever. They are strong and they may be able to dominate us, but the social processes cannot be halted nor with crime nor by force.”

Pinochet ruled for 17 years. He jailed 80,000 people, tortured 30,000 and murdered 3,200.

7. 1976 – Argentina

The Argentine people endured arguably the bloodiest dictatorship of South America. It was so terrible that reading about it can be traumatic. Concentration camps, torture centers, massacres, massive rape of women and children, the beating of pregnant women, and the execution of boys and girls. In total, 30,000 people were executed. Behind it all: the CIA.

In 1973, Argentina was going through a political crisis so grave that President Juan Peron collapsed and ultimately died of a heart attack in 1974. His wife, Eva Peron, took power only to confront conflicts everywhere, even within her own Peronist party.

The CIA waited like a cat hunting its prey until 1976, when the situation they themselves provoked was so bad their intervention would be a walk in the park. Of course, as usual, a key recruitment was in order. The right-wing military dictator-to-be was Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla. The next step – a coup d’etat in yet another Latin American nation, and again another dictatorship at the service of the United States.

This time, (US President Richard Nixon’s) nefarious Henry Kissinger would be in charge of supervising the brutal regime. The rest is history: genocide, massive human rights violations, enforced disappearances, child theft, among other heinous crimes. All this, with the approval of the hypocritical and shameless owners of power in Washington.

8. 1980 – El Salvador

The people of this Central American country suffered no less than Argentina under the U.S. intervention that was carried out by you know who: the CIA. Washington had already backed a brutal dictatorship that lasted 50 years from 1931 to 1981. Campesinos and Indigenous were smashed without mercy. More than 40,000 were massacred.

Things were so bad a rare incident occurred. The Catholic church tried to intervene in favor of the poor and oppressed. At this point in time, El Salvador was controlled by 13 mafia-style families who had expropriated about half of the national territory. The 13 families were closely linked to Washington. And (US President Jimmy Carter’s and later US President Ronald Reagan’s) CIA, just in case, made sure the military was very well trained in everything horrific.

They were provided with all the right lethal equipment. And when the CIA found out that Jesuits were helping out the masses, they made sure they were killed. They also asked Pope John Paul II to speak to Archbishop Óscar Romero to try to persuade him to desist. Romero refused to comply and so they murdered him when he was officiating mass in 1980. When the U.S. intervention was over, 75,000 people were reported murdered, but the U.S. was at peace.

9. 1989 – Panama

CIA agent and Washington-backed drug trafficker Manuel Noriega enraged the U.S. when he refused to obey their orders, prompting an invasion that left 3,500 innocent civilians dead.

Another unprecedented incident occurs in this Central American country. A (US President George H. W. Bush’s) CIA agent rises to power as a dictator in the form of Manuel “Pineapple Face” Noriega. Washington’s interest here, among others, is the inter-oceanic canal.

When President Omar Torrijos tried to take over control of the Panama Canal, the CIA planted a bomb on his plane and that was the end of that.

In 1983, Noriega took power. He was a drug trafficker for the CIA. He had been for some 30 years. That was fine with Washington. He was of huge service to them. In fact, he was instrumental in the Iran-Contra affair, by which the CIA circumvented Congress’ prohibition to provide the Nicaraguan contras with weapons to be used against the leftist Sandinista movement.

Noriega helped with cocaine to be sent mainly to Los Angeles, California, where it was sold in form of crack and served to poison vast Black communities, another of the devious objectives of the CIA. The money was used to buy arms in Iran to provide the contras with them.

Money and power transforms the weak and devious. Noriega wasn’t exempt. It went to his head. He now believed he was untouchable and felt he could ignore Washington’s orders and instead of helping the U.S. place Guillermo Endara in power in Nicaragua, he decided he would impose a president of his own choosing: Francisco Rodriguez. Noriega also began harassing U.S. military bases in Panama. The U.S. was not about to put up his unruly behavior. Washington deployed troops to invade Panama in December 1989.

They captured Noriega and locked him up in a Miami jail, but before that, they killed 3,500 innocent civilians and displaced 20,000 more… (The CIA called the operation against Panama “Operation Just Cause.”)

10. 1990 – Peru

Finally, we arrive at Peru (and US President George H. W. Bush’s CIA). First we need to understand that this list by no means represents the end of U.S. interventions worldwide. The CIA continues to cause havoc across Latin America and the rest of the world. However, these 10 cases may enlighten those who refuse to believe that the United States is responsible for death and destruction. It also serves to show how they operate and can be easily detected in places where there is instability, hunger and chaos. Instability, hunger and chaos is their specialty.

In Peru another CIA agent rose to power. Alberto Fujimori was elected president in 1990. The reason why his election is highly suspicious is because he was a mediocre person with no education and no charisma. He had no political influence, and he was known to nobody but his family.

But he did show some intelligence when he asked Vladimiro Montesinos to be his associate. Montesinos was a lawyer and a very intelligent person with above average strategic thinking. He was also a CIA man.

Fujimori named him National Intelligence Service director. A paramilitary group was created only to murder leftist and Marxist leaders. Fujimori dissolved Congress and locked up all the members of the Supreme Court of Justice. The CIA helped him with his plan, they financed him and supervised all his atrocities. Today, Fujimori is in jail.

Note: The 10 sovereign Latin American nations that were discussed in some detail above were just the Ten Most Lethal CIA-led Coups. The article did not include the militarily-invaded Latin American nations of Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Venezuela, Surinam, Paraguay, Puerto Rico and Grenada. – GGK                    Global Research

 

UN says 13 million affected by disasters in Latin America and the Caribbean region in 2015

Epidemics like chikungunya, a virus transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, was among the disasters which affected 13 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean region in 2015. Photo: WHO/PAHO/Luz Sosa

13 November 2015 – A staggering 13.2 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean were affected by disasters between January and October 2015, a report from the United Nations relief wing revealed, warning the situation could be further exacerbated by the current powerful El Niño.

According to a bulletin published by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the figure exceeds the number of people affected in 2014 (11.4 million), serving as a reminder that “preparedness efforts must remain a priority to reduce impacts and humanitarian needs.”

The report also found that drought affected most people (7 million), followed by excessive rains, floods and epidemics like dengue, chikungunya and cholera.

Some of the other disasters that affected the region in 2015 are hurricanes, violence, environmental emergencies and cold waves, the report said.

Additionally, the report warns that El Niño will worsen drought in Central America and will bring above average rainfall in South America, where it is expected to peak in November-December.

Further, the study Hunger without Borders, conducted by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the World Food Programme (WFP) revealed that there is a correlation between food insecurity, violence and migration in countries of the Northern Triangle in Central America.

The report recommended a more profound analysis of the situation in order to have a deeper understanding of the effects of violence, food insecurity and their impact on migratory patterns.

Further recommendations included reinsertion of deportees and returnees, strengthening the resilience of children and youth whose parents have emigrated against crime and violence, promoting livelihoods, and developing advocacy strategies where local governments play a leading role, along with UN agencies and other international organizations.

Lastly, the report underscored the need to initiate concrete actions at the first World Humanitarian Summit, slated to take place in Istanbul, Turkey in 2016, and to find new ways to address the humanitarian needs in a changing world.

“The World Humanitarian Summit is our generation’s opportunity to re-inspire the world with our humanitarian ambition,” said Under-Secretary-General for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien.

UN