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Colombia's Military Agreement for Venezuelan Natural Resources

Fidel Castro Ruz, August 27, 2009

This reflection is not directed at governments, but the brotherly peoples of Latin America.

Tomorrow 28 August, starting in Argentina UNASUR summit meeting whose significance can not be ignored. It must analyze the award of seven military bases in territory of Colombia, to the American superpower. Discussions leading both governments kept strictly secret.

In the early morning hours of 1 March 2008, the Armed Forces of Colombia, trained and armed by the United States had attacked with precision bombs to a group of guerrillas who entered in a remote area of Ecuador. At dawn, men from the elite Colombian troops transported by helicopters took the little camp, killed the wounded and took the body of the guerrilla leader Raul Reyes, who appears in those days held a meeting with young visitors from other countries interested in the experiences of the guerrillas since the death of the Liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, more than 50 years, supports the armed struggle. Among the victims were university students from Mexico and Ecuador who were unarmed. The method was brutal, Yankee style. Ecuador's government had not received any warning before the attack.

The action was a humbling fact for the heroic little South American country, wrapped in a democratic political process. It is strongly suspected that the U.S. air base at Manta had offered information and cooperated with the attackers. President Rafael Correa took the bold decision to request the return of occupied territory of the Manta military base, strict compliance with the terms of the military agreement with the United States and withdrew its ambassador from Bogota.

The supply of land for the establishment of seven U.S. military bases in Colombia, directly threatens the sovereignty and integrity of the other peoples of South and Central America with which our forefathers dreamed of creating the great Latin American homeland.

Yankee imperialism is a hundred times more powerful than the colonial empires of Spain and Portugal, completely alien to the origin, habits and culture of our people.

It is not narrow chauvinism. "Homeland is humanity", as proclaimed Marti, but never under the control of an empire the world has imposed a bloody dictatorship. In our own hemisphere, the hundreds of thousands of fellow American killed, tortured or disappeared in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and other countries of Our America, during the last five decades of hits statements and actions that the United States promoted and supported, irrefutably demonstrate what I am saying.

When I examine the arguments with which the U.S. seeks to justify the granting of military bases in territory of Colombia, I can only describe as cynics such pretexts. He claims that these bases need to cooperate in combating drug trafficking, terrorism, arms trafficking, illegal migration, possession of weapons of mass destruction, flooding and natural disasters nationalists.

That powerful country is the largest purchaser and consumer of drugs in the world. An analysis of banknotes circulating in Washington, capital of the United States revealed that 95 percent passed through the hands of drug users, is the largest market and once the largest supplier of weapons for organized crime in Latin America, with they are dying, tens of thousands of people each year south of the border; is the biggest terrorist state that has never existed. Not only launched bombs against civilians in cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in its imperial wars such as those promoted in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries located thousands of miles away where millions have died, is the largest producer and possessor of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

The Colombian paramilitaries, many of whom come from demobilized from the armed forces and are, in part, its reserves are the best allies and protectors of drug traffickers.

The so-called civilian personnel would accompany the troops on bases in Colombia are, as a rule, former U.S. military well trained, who are then hired by private companies like Blackwater, which is notorious for crimes committed in Iraq and elsewhere .

A country that respects itself does not need mercenaries or soldiers, or U.S. military bases to fight drug trafficking, and protect the population in cases of natural disasters or provide humanitarian cooperation to other peoples.

Cuba is a country with no drug problems or high rates of violent deaths, the number decreases each year.

The United States sole purpose of these bases in Latin America is to put troops in a matter of hours. The Brazilian military hierarchy with real displeasure received the surprising news of the agreement on the installation of U.S. military bases in Colombia. Palanquero base is near the border with Brazil. With these bases, together with the Falkland Islands, Paraguay, Peru, Honduras, Aruba, Curacao and other, would not be a single point in the territory of Brazil and the rest of South America away from the Southern Command, which involved of hours, using its modern transport aircraft, you can get troops and other sophisticated means of combat. The best specialists in the field have provided the data necessary to demonstrate military reach Yankee-Colombian agreement. Such a program, which included restoring the Fourth Fleet, was designed by Bush and inherited by the current U.S. government, whom some South American leaders demand the clarification because of its military policy in Latin America. The nuclear aircraft carriers are not needed to fight drugs.

The immediate objective of this plan is to liquidate the Bolivarian revolutionary process and to ensure control of oil and other natural resources of Venezuela. The rule, moreover, does not accept the jurisdiction of the newly emerging economies in their backyard, or truly independent countries in Latin America. It has the reactionary oligarchy, the fascist right and control of mass media major internal and external. Nothing that resembles true equity and social justice have their support.

The emigration from Latin America to the United States is a consequence of underdevelopment, and this is the result of looting that have been submitted by that country and unequal exchange with the industrialized nations.

Mexico was broken off by the Latin American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada. Most of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the first of these countries are from Mexico and most of the hundreds who die each year in the border wall with that country.

With a population of 107 million people, amid the current global economic crisis, the extreme poverty rate in Mexico has risen to 18 percent and overall poverty reaches more than half of its inhabitants.