The Mex Files

I expect we’ll be hearing some more about the Bush famil y’s 98,000 acre spread in Paraguay in the coming months. Neil Bush (last month) and First Drunk Daughter Jenna (in October 2006) both made mysterious trips to the otherwise forgotten country in recent months.

Down With Tyranny has been one of the few widely read news blogs to follow the story, and actually went to Paraguay to investigate:

…I was hoping to track down the humongous Bush estate in the most remote part of Latin America’s least known country. I never did manage to get anywhere near the Bush estate– it was meant to be remote for a reason and the only way to get there is by private plane and then you need permission to land on their airstrip– but I did take note of a certain backwardness that might make it very alluring not just to Bush but to many of the potential war crimes defendants from his regime. They were actually selling Nazi memorabilia on the streets of Asuncion.

Well, Paraguay is in the news this morning– and not in a way likely to please the Bushes. The fascistic-oriented ruling party was deposed yesterday. Fernando Lugo, a former Roman Catholic Bishop– the “bishop of the poor”– and the leader of a left-of-center coalition of unions, Indians and poor farmers, beat Blanca Ovelar, who headed the very corrupt far right Colorado Party, widely considered to be in Bush’s pocket.

President-Elect Lugo, and his party, are promising to redistribute land in the last country in Latin America (like the United States, most agricultural land is held by corporate interests. Unlike the U.S., most Paraguayans are farmers). The Bush family lands are said to be investments in soya (Paraguay’s largest legal export) though there are rumors the Bush’s were interested in capturing water drilling rights in expectation that neo-liberal policies in the Southern Cone would lead to privatizing water distribution within those countries. However, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia and Uruguay have all elected social democratic leaders who have rejected neo-liberalism, leaving Paraguay as the last hope for making a fortune from these privatized natural resources.

Then again, maybe some of the more sinister suggestions about the Bush compound are true, and water isn’t their main concern. Paraguay was, of course, best known as the refuge of Nazi war criminals and other nasty types. There are those who believe the Bushs are planning for their eventual exile somewhere beyond the jurisdiction of the United States and international courts. If even slightly true, the Bushs may have to start asking “Is it safe?” before they pack their bags.

Fernando Lugo’s election in Paraguay is also more proof, if any is needed, of my own hare-brained theory that the Bush family are working for Castro... think of it. Since Chinese Commie lovin’ George W. Bush was “elected” — with the help of Cubans in Florida (where his brother was conveniently Governor), Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, ,Panama ,Nicaragua, Suriname, Venezuela and Uruguay, have all moved to the left. the fractured Mexican left united — and Bush’s handler, Fidel Castro, having achieved his goal of a leftist Latin America, could finally retire.

The Presidential election has come down to a cranky old ex-military guy (with ties to the Bush inner circle), the party establishment backed woman and the candidate for change who has to deal with the fallout from his long-time affiliation with his church.

Paraguay’s Presidential elections are 20 April, and former Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo stands a fair chance of adding to the list of leftist leaders elected in Latin America ever since  George W. trashed the reputation of democratic capitalism:

Now that much of Latin America has shifted to the left, Paraguay remains a key Washington ally. The country’s political landscape continues to be dominated by the Colorado Party, which has been in power for 61 years, the longest continuous rule of any political party in the world. This enormous political machine, much of it built and consolidated during the 35-year military dictatorship (1954–89) of General Alfredo Stroessner, still permeates every inch of Paraguayan society. Yet as the panorama of candidates for the April presidential election makes clear, a new right-wing faction is emerging within the party, pledging to cut the umbilical cord with the past.

The two main contenders for the Colorado Party’s nomination best represent this new Paraguayan right: Blanca Ovelar, a former minister of education, and Luis Castiglioni, who renounced his post as vice president in October in order to run.

…

Ovelar attacked corruption, promising “systematic, rigorous, and professional” fiscal control. But she also used new populist rhetoric. “My fight and my government have and will have a clear objective, a well-identified enemy: poverty,” she declared on her blog. (More than half of the Paraguayan population lives under the poverty line.)

Castiglioni, on the other hand, is a close Washington ally and promoter of neoliberal policies. Washington has cultivated close ties with him, especially on trade. On a trip to the United States in 2005, Castiglioni was photographed in chummy meetings with Roger Noriega, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the director of the FBI.

…In contrast to the other candidates, Fernando Lugo, the bearded former bishop running for president, represents a link to the new left in Latin America. Yet his base comprises a wide coalition of opposition forces whose interests probably don’t coincide past a rejection of Colorado rule.

In case anyone is keeping score, since George W. Bush was “elected” in 2000, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Panama, Suriname, Uruguary, and Venezuela have all elected leftist or social-democratic leaders. Add Guatemala to the list.

Alvaro Colom, a social-democrat, was elected on the UNE ticket, seems to offer a program similar to that offered by Mexico’s not-elected (by 0.05 percent) Andres Manuel López Obradór: expanded social spending and integration with Latin America, and attacking crime by going after the root causes — poverty and corruption — rather than the approach favored by both Colom and AMLO’s main rivals — the hard hand.

Colom is an intriguing figure. His uncle was the martyred mayor of Guatamala City, Manuel Colom, who was one of a spate of left-leaning democrats murdered after Guatelemala supposedly returned to Democracy. The new president’s background as a business executive and social services administrator (the big scandal in the election involved supposedly diverted funds from his campaign going to social services — even if true better than the other way around) is about what you’d expect for the president of a small country. One other interesting piece of trivia: those a “ladino” (a Guatemalan of non-indigenous ancestry) he is a Mayan priest.

Other than bananas (and workers) Guatemala doesn’t have much in the way of resources — no oil to make the election caputure the attention of the U.S. It has already signed on to CAFTA (the Central American Free Trade Agreement) which hopes to repeat the mistakes of NAFTA over a wider area.

Under the Spanish, Guatemala was a “vice-viceroyalty” of Nueva España, and until the 1820s, its history is Mexican history. Chiapas was once part of Guatemala and is a slightly better-off version of conditions in Guatemala. The Revolution never having reached Guatemala, it’s indigenous population has never had the advantages of legal equality.

Though, both in Mexico and Guatemala, Mayans have been treated as less than human, and often denied their civil rights, Mexican Mayans could at least get an education, vote and a wider economic and social sphere than their relations across the border. In 1954, Jacabo Arbenz, a rare democratically elected president, was overthrown in a bloody coup. His “crime” was attempting to nationalize the banana industry, and reform agriculture, modeled on Lazaro Cardenás’ nationalizations in 1930s Mexico. Unfortunately, the foreign entity controlling Guatemalan bananas was the United Fruit Company. One of the directors of United Fruit was Alan Dulles, the director of the CIA.

Arbenz was painted as a “Communist” (much as Venezuela’s elected left-wing leader, Hugo Chavez, is) and overthrown in a not-very-covert — though very bloody — coup. Guatemala remained under military dictatorships until the 1980s, democracy sacrificed for bananas . The bat-shit crazy Guatemalan dictator of the 80s, Efríam Rios Montt, was …well… bananas.

With no legitimate route to change, Guatemala had been in the middle of an on-and-off civil war since Arbenz was tossed out. Rios Montt launched a “scorched earth” campaign against his own people — or rather, the Mayans. Allegedly putting down Communists, Rios Montt was of the theory that he should “kill em all and let the Lord sort ‘em out.” Like Colom, Rios Montt was also a minister… though in his case, it was a California-based Fundamentalist Christian sect that won his allegiance.

A Mexican brokered peace agreement ended the “official” civil war in 1996. While largely a forgotten step-child of Mexico, foreign reaction to Guatemalan events influences Mexican actions. After the 1954 CIA-sponsored coup, Mexico foreign policy turned conservative and did not seek to challenge the United States. The “socialist” PRI began repressing leftist challenges where before Mexican leaders coopted them, or made space for them within the system.

Rios Montt and the odious right-wing dictatorships that were only slightly better sent waves of Guatemalan refugees into Mexico… When the United States began withdrawing its support for the Guatemalan dictators, Mexico began making space within the system for indigenous groups and paying more attention to indigenous affairs. In many ways the latest in a long string of Mayan uprisings (the Zapatista movement) was a indirect result of the Guatemalan situation. The Mexican Army would not have been in a confrontation with the Mayans had it not been for the refugees, nor would there have been a push to identify Mayan dissent with the left if it hadn’t been for the U.S.-backed regimes in Guatemala.

And, while you are already starting to hear rumbles on the right that Guatemala may be “going left” (well, it is… but “going commie” has lost its cachet and now countries “fall under the sphere of influence of Hugo Chavez”) I’d expect Mexico is going to recognize that the U.S. is losing its hegonomy in the region, or — at least — is starting to recognize that social democrats are not a threat.

( A bit off topic, but I don’t know how to insert a footnote when writing directly on “wordpress”: Paraguay is also likely to join the left-list — and, there too, it is likely to elect a clergyman as president. Though Fernando Lugo Méndez is more what you expect a Latin American clergyman/leader to be: he is — or was — a Roman Catholic bishop).

Remember George W. Bush’s Magical Mystery Latin American Tour?  The magical part was that he didn’t end up getting Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Guatemala and Mexico to declare war.  The mystery was what he thought to accomplish.

Ah… the Bush Administration.  Latin America’s best friend since… oh… Calvin Coolidge or maybe John Quincey Adams was in the White House.

¡Que bárbaro! (from “The Hill”, Washington)

Bush loss, Starbucks gain

By Daphne Retter

October 18, 2007

President Bush has long advocated for immigration reform to make this country more welcoming to Hispanics. But at a Rose Garden ceremony last Wednesday to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, Bush ended up locking a group of foreign Hispanic leaders out on the street.

“Mr. Fisk reached out and made apologies to those in the diplomatic corps who were invited and affected,” said National Security Council spokeswoman Kate Starr. “No insult was intended and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.”

 Our Prez at the diplomatic reception