“We are just weeks out from the Brazilian Presidential elections where Lula is facing the far-right Bolsonaro, the result of which will have far-reaching ramifications.”
By Siân Errington
This weekend delegates, observers, campaigners, protesters, lobbyists, journalist and the caravan that political party conferences herald descends on Liverpool for the start of Labour Party Conference.
As part of the programme, on Sunday for the fifth year at Labour Conference Arise and Latin America campaigns will be hosting a fringe to focus attention on Trump’s actions and crucially our opposition and resistance, and our solidarity with those in Latin America.
It comes days after Trump’s speech at the United Nations where he – amongst much else – threatened to ‘annihilate’ Iran and ‘drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness’; cited the US’ actions in Venezuela as demonstrating that the US “will no longer permit threats to America to gain a foothold anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.” He also again said his rogue regime sought a “fundamental change” in Cuba, and the threat of war remains very real.
As highlighted in previous Labour Outlook articles, the history of US intervention in Latin America, is long and bloody and crosses both parties’ administrations. The Monroe doctrine dates from 1823, with the President warning European colonial powers that any interference or intervention in the region would be regarded as a hostile act towards the US. It was, in short, the US’ ambit.
Since then, the pendulum between the US (both overt and covert) intervention and those movements and governments in the Latin American region seeking liberation and control of their resources for their peoples has swung between the two to differing degrees. Most of us politically active in Britain will be especially aware of both the intensity of the periods of US coups and military dictatorships in the Seventies and Eighties (for example, the coup against Allende in Chile and resourcing of the Contras in Nicaragua) and the emergence of Hugo Chávez and other leaders across countries in the ‘red tide’ in the 2000s onwards, with Cuba as a constant.
So Trump’s agenda is not new as such, it is in many ways a continuation of what has gone beforehand, but it is the latest reaffirmation of abandonment of any pretence of a higher moral or philosophical reason for US imperialism. There is no false cloaking of motives in talk of democracy for example with resource grabs being openly cited, and there is no need seen for treading carefully. The world has been shown that sheer destructive power and military might will be quickly and readily reached for to force a towing of the line.
The violent kidnapping of the Venezuelan President, the economic strangling of Cuba and Nicaragua, the accumulation of military bases in Ecuador and the funnelling of support to the far-right Milei in Argentina illustrate that there is an acute intensity about this period of US intervention in Latin America.
Furthermore, we are just weeks out from the Brazilian Presidential elections where Lula is facing the far-right Bolsonaro, the result of which will have far-reaching ramifications. Indeed, at the UN this week Lula himself warned the international community of how much the US is interfering in the battle for Brazil in the hope of another far-right victory.
Now is an incredibly dangerous time then also. It makes standing in solidarity to say ‘No to Trump’s war on Latin America’ even more vital, though it feels more difficult.
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- EVENT – ¡Viva La Solidaridad! No to Trump’s War on Latin America, Sunday 27th September, 1pm, Racquet Club Hotel (first floor meeting room,) 5 Chapel Street, Liverpool, L3 9AG. Register here. Speakers include Gabriel Becerra, Colombian MP (‘Pacto Historico’ party) / Francisco Dominguez, Venezuela Solidarity / Julia Felmanas, Brazilian Workers’ Party activist / Richard Burgon MP.
- Sign a solidarity statement with the struggle against the far-right in Brazil here.
