In its nonstop campaign against the government of Venezuela, the New York Times (“Neighbors Stand Up to Venezuela,” 7/11/16) is now forced to lean on the thin reed of Paraguay’s ultra-rightist government, which took power in elections widely characterized by fraud, as even the Times (4/21/13) noted when they occurred.
Paraguayan Foreign Minister Eladio Loizaga, pictured in Paraguay’s E’a (photo: Ñanduti)
Even more bizarre is the Times editorial’s reliance on Paraguay’s foreign minister, Eladio Loizaga, a diplomat left over from the decades-long dictatorship of Gen. Alfredo Stroessner. The foreign minister is accused by Latin Americans (E’a, 8/12/13) of involvement in the hit squad operations of the World Anti-Communist League and Operation Condor.
Loizaga, whom the Times apparently interviewed and treats favorably in its editorial (“We can’t condone any action that silences dissident voices,” the editorial quotes him), was an important Latin American member of WACL, an extreme right-wing organization incorporating fascist and Nazi elements and involved in murders around the globe.
In Latin America and most assuredly in Stroessner’s Paraguay, WACL interfaced with Operation Condor, the transnational death squad organized by Stroessner and the military dictatorships of Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, to the point where they often functioned as the same organization.
All those military dictatorships were imposed in Washington-sponsored coups and applauded by the New York Times in news coverage (e.g., 7/24/76). US authorities collaborated closely with Operation Condor’s murder and “disappearance” operations, at least until Condor operatives killed former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and his American assistant Ronni Moffitt with a car bomb on Washington’s Embassy Row.
Loizaga’s role came out in revelations from the Truth and Justice Commission of Paraguay established after Stroessner’s fall (E’a, 8/12/13). The Truth and Justice Commission was effectively closed down once Stroessner’s old Colorado Party got back in power in the above-mentioned disputed elections.
Not surprisingly, Loizaga has won scant support for his effort to isolate Venezuela diplomatically and prevent its taking the six-month rotating presidency of the Mercosur economic group that comprises Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela. Loizaga’s ugly history may cause him no problem—may even win him applause—in Washington and at the New York Times, but the dictatorships are not regarded so fondly in Latin America.
Dictatorship torture victims included four democratically elected Latin American presidents or recent ex-presidents: Chile’s Michele Bachelet, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff (currently deposed) and former President Jose Mujica of Uruguay. Many close advisors to presidents throughout the region were torture victims, or had family and friends who were tortured, murdered or “disappeared.”
The only government to support Loizaga, and then only partially, is the government of Brazil, itself the product of the recent coup against democratically elected President Dilma Rousseff. Her ouster, widely denounced in Latin America, is similar to the one that was used against Paraguay’s democratically elected President Fernando Lugo in 2012. (The Times did not mention that Paraguay received support from Brazil’s coup government, which the Times itself has recently criticized for its illegitimate seizure of power, perhaps leaving readers to wonder how many “neighbors” are involved in “standing up” to Venezuela.) Loizaga is not receiving support even from Argentina, a right-wing but democratically elected government.
Paraguayan President Horacio Cartes depicted in the New York Times (photo: Jorge Adorno/Reuters)
As for the current president of Paraguay, Horacio Cartes, he is a wealthy ultra-right businessman with an unsavory record of his own, as the Times itself noted during his election campaign (4/17/13), especially after he referred to gays as “monkeys” and declared that he would shoot himself in the testicles if he found that his 28-year-old son was gay.
Imprisoned repeatedly on currency-fraud charges before he became a politician, Cartes was suspected by the DEA of laundering drug money until he became president and useful to the US authorities. When police found a plane loaded with cocaine and marijuana on his estate, he claimed the plane was just an aircraft in distress and that it was pure coincidence that it had to make its landing on his property. Since he is from the Stroessner dictatorship’s Colorado Party, he was repeatedly able to use party connections to get charges abandoned by the authorities.
One of the motives behind the bizarre nonstop propaganda campaign against Venezuela was revealed in one of the sources the Times editorial linked to: a blog post from the Council on Foreign Relations (7/7/16) that made clear Washington’s and Wall Street’s urgent need to oust Venezuela’s government, or at least isolate it diplomatically, in order to shift the agenda of Mercosur.
The CFR blog focused on trade with countries outside of Mercosur (essentially diminishing or effectively ending the economic group) and expressed the hope that next year the rotating presidency of Mercosur would pass for 18 months to what it called “center-right” governments—Argentina, Brazil’s coup government and Paraguay. Paraguay’s government, for its part, followed up with the claim that the need was to refocus Mercosur toward “free trade.” Washington and Wall Street (and the Times) have been pushing hard for “Washington consensus” neoliberal economic regimes throughout Latin America, despite disastrous results for the populations in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela and other countries in the past.
OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro (photo: El Salvador/Wikimedia)
The Times has also championed attacks on Venezuela’s government by Luis Almagro, secretary general of the Organization of American States. Almagro was unable to win support for OAS action in support of his charges, and has been forced to retreat. For all its coverage of Venezuela, the Times did not find room to report the contents of a letter written to Almagro last November, recently released by its author and published in the centrist Caracas newspaper Ultimas Noticias (6/17/16). The letter, written by then-Uruguayan President Jose Mujica, whom Almagro served as foreign minister, expressed astonishment at his changes in position. “Luis,” he wrote:
You know that I have always supported and promoted you. You know that I quietly supported your candidacy for the OAS. I am sorry that the facts have repeatedly shown me that I was wrong. I don’t understand your silence on Haiti, Guatemala and Paraguay [the letter was written before the coup in Brazil – MC] while you publish your letter in response to Venezuela.
How or why would a diplomat posted to the OAS change positions so dramatically? Perhaps an explanation comes from a Latin American diplomat who served as his country’s ambassador to that body.
“The US behaves at the Organization of American States exactly like the Corleone family,” said the diplomat, who asked not to be publicly identified. “The first time, they make you an offer: ‘After your tour of duty is up here, if you’d like to stay on in Washington, we can arrange a nice position for you at the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund.’
“If you don’t do what they want,” the diplomat said, “the second time, they threaten you. And if you still don’t do what they want, the third time they destroy you.”
When he was asked, “What do you mean by ‘destroy’?” he answered, “Believe me, you do not want to know what I mean by ‘destroy.’”
Mark Cook is a longtime media analyst for FAIR, now living in Venezuela.
Ultra-rightists and former criminals from the US supported latin american ex-dictatorships are re-emerging like feces in our infant democracies. NYT pays only an additional service to these scumbags that should have been wiped out from a minimally civilized country.
Mr Cook, you are rambling. What is your point? It’s clear you are biased in favor of the Venezuelan regime. What next? Your perception is flawed IMO.
This alternate media is called FAIR, for the simple reason that it is biased against corporate mainstream media, which is a gross, manifest injustice toward all that is fair.
So, your here to protect your excessive wealth by destroying the place.
David Glenn cannot refute the facts and cannot defend the use of death squad narcotraffickres as “sources” for NYT and the crimes of USA imperialsm.
So, David Glenn resorts to calling the author names. Not that I am surprised. Tell such people about Zionist colonizers’ crimes and all they could answer – you are biased(rambling). And Zionist colonizers’ whitewashers are never biased or rambling, no matter how much they lie.
Neither Hugo Chavez nor the current socialist President have done anything material to end the rich man’s paradise that has existed since the white man took control of Venezuela away from the indigenous people. Most of the land and wealth is owned by the rich ruling class, virtually all of mainstream media is owned by High Society and 40% of politicians that are of the upper half of society.
The perfect solution would be a law that gave the lower half of society the right to own a forth of the land and wealth.
You are more or less right, but
1) why the 50% should get only 25% of the wealth?
2) How could such law be implemented against the will of the capitalists – both in Venezuela and in USA?
Bolsheviks made a “decree” about all(!) the land been of use to peasants. But then the peasants had already taken the land already from big landlords already.
One of the most informative pieces I’ve read in a long time.
Thank you.
By the way, in my opinion when the People govern the US of A, my first recommendation is that we have no intercourse with any nation engaged in oppression, thus, on the very first day of the People’s Republic, there should be no trade until all the oppressors are made to submit and beg forgiveness.
I believe there is an exception to every rule, and so we should welcome Cuba and Iceland to the fold, at least I’d be willing to see if what I say is so. Of course, we would ask the same conditions apply to our partners. If that’s unacceptable, then America should go it alone. Granted, any people wishing to join America in, ahem, leveling the play field, are more than welcome to join us, but until then there should be no ties with any Peoples on Earth.
When we talk about nations specially those hegemonic and imperialist ones we have to separate its government and corporations from its people. In the case of China, once the archrival and “enemy” of the US and western democracies, all lack of “democracy”, “human rigths”, “freedom” bulshit were instantly gone when China embraced almost all western corporations to profit from its highly skilled, submissive, disciplined and, above all, poorly paid work force, as well their lack of environment protection laws and widespread disregard for nature conservancy.
I’m not surprised in the least: The guy is showing all the signs of being a CIA asset, and the CIA almost definitely helped in the Venezuelan right wing’s attempt to oust Hugo Chavez via military coup. So it would not be surprising that the CIA would be pushing propaganda attacking Chavez’ successor Nicholas Maduro.
And I’d bet you’d find similar shenanigans under the surface of the coup attempt against Rafael Correa in Ecuador, the boarding of Bolivian president Evo Morales’ plane, and the ouster of Dilma Rousseff in Brazil.
Right on, Dave! Latin America in special is experiencing an ultra-right backlash that will or are making our countries go back to the middle ages on social and environmental values, after a couple of decades heading toward less unjust future. It is very sad and I hope that the people realize this in time and rise up!