Essential Afro-Latino/ Caribbean Current Events
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How U.S. Banks Push the Caribbean Toward China
Publication: China Brief Volume: 21 Issue: 17
By: Rasheed Griffith
September 10, 2021 12:32 PM
Image: Suriname President Desire Bouterse meets with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during a state visit to Beijing on November 27, 2019. (Source: Xinhua).
Introduction
The 14th Five-Year Plan adopted this past March has reaffirmed the significance of Renminbi (RMB) internationalization in China’s geopolitical ambitions (Gov.cn, March 13). Global RMB proliferation in cross-border trade would enhance China’s domestic financial security, which also makes it a key element of China’s “dual circulation” (双循环, shuang xunhuang) strategy for economic development (East Money, August 22). As Huang Qifan (黄奇帆), the former Chongqing mayor and renowned authority on Chinese financial policy, has said, “[the] dual circulation strategy will provide a strong opportunity and impetus for the further development of the BRI” (Sina, September 12, 2020). China’s financial policy should be understood under the context of the party-state’s larger foreign policy ambitions. One region that would readily embrace China’s aim to incorporate a greater financial element to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the Caribbean.
The Caribbean countries are small and import nearly everything to meet the wants and needs of their populations. Since these imports are mostly priced in U.S. dollars (USD), the Caribbean’s economic security depends upon its financial relationships with a few large U.S. commercial banks. But following U.S. regulatory changes that took place after the 2008 financial crisis, some Caribbean countries have either lost access to or been restricted from previously existing channels to U.S. banks, putting them in a precarious position. In an effort to build economic resiliency, some Caribbean countries have begun seeking new avenues for international trade finance, including using the RMB, which potentially opens a door to growing Chinese influence in the U.S.’ backyard.
Background
Although the abstract concept of an “international wire transfer” is easy to grasp, the reality involves a messy process to coordinate different domestic transactions. Like all small states, Caribbean countries depend on Correspondent Banking Relationships (CBRs), wherein banks in small countries (respondents) hold accounts in banks of larger ones (correspondents) that enable them to access international financial markets.
Following the 2008 crisis, U.S. regulators increased the stringency of banking compliance requirements for the purposes of anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT). This culminated in sweeping reforms including the Dodd–Frank Act of 2010 and the 2013 U.S. Department of Justice Operation Choke Point effort to reduce the risk of money laundering in the U.S. banking system.
Such reforms (particularly the Dodd-Frank Act) increased the fines faced by U.S. banks for the (actual or perceived) risks and procedural failings of their respondent clients (Baker Institute for Public Policy, September 6, 2019). The intent was not to harm small banks in small countries, but, as with many complex financial system reforms, there were negative externalities. U.S. banks were required to design their own internal control policies to manage the risk of doing business with small international banks. Instead, the banks—understandably not willing to increase their costs for no extra profit—restricted or outright terminated their relationships with small banks. The finance industry refers to this process as “de-risking.”
The Specter of De-Risking
Global de-risking severely impacted the Caribbean in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis (World Bank, November 3, 2015). For example, Belize experienced terminations of Correspondent Banking Relationships (CBRs) that accounted for more than half of their banking assets (CFATF, March-April 2016, accessed August 12).
In 2016, the Honorable Francine Baron, then-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Dominica, focused her speech to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly on what she saw as the greatest developmental threats to Caribbean nations – climate change and de-risking; saying that “today’s interconnectedness of global markets make access to the global financial system a prerequisite to economic development and a sine qua non for sustainable development” (undocs.org, September 24, 2016). Baron’s concerns were echoed across the region. Speaking a year later, the Ambassador to the U.S. from Antigua and Barbuda Sir Ronald Sanders warned that “de-risking is a serious threat to Caribbean security” (The Tribune, March 27, 2017). All of the multilateral finance organizations that operate in the Caribbean also published scathing reports outlining the negative effects of continued de-risking (Caribbean Development Bank, 2016; Inter-American Development Bank, February 2017; International Chamber of Commerce, October 2019; accessed August 12).[1]
In a 2019 survey of Caribbean central bankers, 91 percent of respondents indicated that de-risking remains a threat to the operational viability of the banks in their respective jurisdictions.[2] De-risking is not merely an esoteric topic for closed-door financial policy discussions. Since 2010 this has been one of the main animating concerns underlying current Caribbean foreign policy towards the U.S., and it continues unabated.[3] Accordingly, Caribbean governments and central banks have begun planning contingencies including the increasing adoption of the Chinese RMB.
Toward the RMB in the Caribbean
In 2015, the Central Bank of Suriname signed a Bilateral Swap Agreement (BSA), also known as a cross-currency swap agreement, for 1 billion RMB ($154.34 million) with China (Centrale Bank van Suriname, January 28, 2015). Such agreements give the recipient party (in this case, Suriname) the right to exchange currency with China at a fixed interest rate, reducing the risk of currency conversion fluctuations and lubricating cross-border trade. China has signed 35 BSAs globally, compared to the U.S.’s 14, and has historically used BSAs as a tool for internationalizing the RMB (The China Guys, July 6, 2020).[4] Suriname is currently the only Caribbean country whose currency is tradable directly with the RMB. Reflecting this unique relationship, a Chinese bank called Southern Commercial Bank (南方商业银行, nanfang shangye yinhang) issues UnionPay cards in Suriname (Southcommbanknv.com, accessed August 12).
Following the example of Suriname, other Caribbean countries could actively seek to attract more Chinese banks to fill the void left from the exodus of their traditional partners. Many U.S. banks have departed the Caribbean as profits dwindled, and the largest banks remaining in the Caribbean are currently Canadian. Many of these are now departing as well due to the rising costs of continuing to operate in the Caribbean. Just this year, the Royal Bank of Canada sold its operations in seven Caribbean countries (Newswire, April 1).
In contrast to the decline of Caribbean-U.S. CBRs, the number of Chinese CBRs increased globally from 65 in 2009 to 2,246 in 2016—representing growth of more than 3,355 percent (Accuity, accessed August 12). The rapid increase is a strong indicator that the trend will continue. Additionally, if the Caribbean can pay for Chinese imports using the international Cross-border International Payments System (CIPS, 跨境银行间支付清算, kua jing yinhang jian zhifu qingsuan) (CIPS, accessed August 3), this will lessen the region’s reliance on USD for trade. It also follows that if the Caribbean can use the RMB for imports, then it lessens the dependence on U.S. CBRs, improving the region’s economic resiliency.
The U.S. remains the Caribbean’s largest trading partner according to trade volume. This point is frequently made to demonstrate the strength of regional ties (e.g., The Hill, December 1, 2020). But the size of U.S.-Caribbean trade is the result of measurement constraints, not necessarily economic reality. As with much of the rest of the world, most products sold in the Caribbean are made in China and re-exported through the U.S. If the strength of bilateral trade is calculated based on the manufacturing origin of the goods consumed, then China could be considered the Caribbean’s largest trading partner.[5] The high volume of the U.S.-Caribbean trade is effectively phantom trade. There exists a possible future where goods are shipped directly from China to the Caribbean, circumventing the U.S.’ traditional position as a middleman.
Other factors could also lead Caribbean states to increase their trade purchases from China using the RMB. Traditional shipping routes have privileged trade from the U.S. to the Caribbean. But this is changing because of increased Chinese port construction across the Caribbean (Tearline.mil, August 14, 2020). Caribbean businesses in the past have not had easy RMB access and they have not established direct relationships with Chinese suppliers. But if more Caribbean central banks hold RMB reserves (following the example of Suriname) and more businesses develop relationships with Chinese suppliers (as they have been increasingly doing), their ability to bypass the U.S. dollar market grows.
Publication: China Brief Volume: 21 Issue: 17
By: Rasheed Griffith
September 10, 2021 12:32 PM
Image: Suriname President Desire Bouterse meets with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during a state visit to Beijing on November 27, 2019. (Source: Xinhua).
Introduction
The 14th Five-Year Plan adopted this past March has reaffirmed the significance of Renminbi (RMB) internationalization in China’s geopolitical ambitions (Gov.cn, March 13). Global RMB proliferation in cross-border trade would enhance China’s domestic financial security, which also makes it a key element of China’s “dual circulation” (双循环, shuang xunhuang) strategy for economic development (East Money, August 22). As Huang Qifan (黄奇帆), the former Chongqing mayor and renowned authority on Chinese financial policy, has said, “[the] dual circulation strategy will provide a strong opportunity and impetus for the further development of the BRI” (Sina, September 12, 2020). China’s financial policy should be understood under the context of the party-state’s larger foreign policy ambitions. One region that would readily embrace China’s aim to incorporate a greater financial element to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the Caribbean.
The Caribbean countries are small and import nearly everything to meet the wants and needs of their populations. Since these imports are mostly priced in U.S. dollars (USD), the Caribbean’s economic security depends upon its financial relationships with a few large U.S. commercial banks. But following U.S. regulatory changes that took place after the 2008 financial crisis, some Caribbean countries have either lost access to or been restricted from previously existing channels to U.S. banks, putting them in a precarious position. In an effort to build economic resiliency, some Caribbean countries have begun seeking new avenues for international trade finance, including using the RMB, which potentially opens a door to growing Chinese influence in the U.S.’ backyard.
Background
Although the abstract concept of an “international wire transfer” is easy to grasp, the reality involves a messy process to coordinate different domestic transactions. Like all small states, Caribbean countries depend on Correspondent Banking Relationships (CBRs), wherein banks in small countries (respondents) hold accounts in banks of larger ones (correspondents) that enable them to access international financial markets.
Following the 2008 crisis, U.S. regulators increased the stringency of banking compliance requirements for the purposes of anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT). This culminated in sweeping reforms including the Dodd–Frank Act of 2010 and the 2013 U.S. Department of Justice Operation Choke Point effort to reduce the risk of money laundering in the U.S. banking system.
Such reforms (particularly the Dodd-Frank Act) increased the fines faced by U.S. banks for the (actual or perceived) risks and procedural failings of their respondent clients (Baker Institute for Public Policy, September 6, 2019). The intent was not to harm small banks in small countries, but, as with many complex financial system reforms, there were negative externalities. U.S. banks were required to design their own internal control policies to manage the risk of doing business with small international banks. Instead, the banks—understandably not willing to increase their costs for no extra profit—restricted or outright terminated their relationships with small banks. The finance industry refers to this process as “de-risking.”
The Specter of De-Risking
Global de-risking severely impacted the Caribbean in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis (World Bank, November 3, 2015). For example, Belize experienced terminations of Correspondent Banking Relationships (CBRs) that accounted for more than half of their banking assets (CFATF, March-April 2016, accessed August 12).
In 2016, the Honorable Francine Baron, then-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Dominica, focused her speech to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly on what she saw as the greatest developmental threats to Caribbean nations – climate change and de-risking; saying that “today’s interconnectedness of global markets make access to the global financial system a prerequisite to economic development and a sine qua non for sustainable development” (undocs.org, September 24, 2016). Baron’s concerns were echoed across the region. Speaking a year later, the Ambassador to the U.S. from Antigua and Barbuda Sir Ronald Sanders warned that “de-risking is a serious threat to Caribbean security” (The Tribune, March 27, 2017). All of the multilateral finance organizations that operate in the Caribbean also published scathing reports outlining the negative effects of continued de-risking (Caribbean Development Bank, 2016; Inter-American Development Bank, February 2017; International Chamber of Commerce, October 2019; accessed August 12).[1]
In a 2019 survey of Caribbean central bankers, 91 percent of respondents indicated that de-risking remains a threat to the operational viability of the banks in their respective jurisdictions.[2] De-risking is not merely an esoteric topic for closed-door financial policy discussions. Since 2010 this has been one of the main animating concerns underlying current Caribbean foreign policy towards the U.S., and it continues unabated.[3] Accordingly, Caribbean governments and central banks have begun planning contingencies including the increasing adoption of the Chinese RMB.
Toward the RMB in the Caribbean
In 2015, the Central Bank of Suriname signed a Bilateral Swap Agreement (BSA), also known as a cross-currency swap agreement, for 1 billion RMB ($154.34 million) with China (Centrale Bank van Suriname, January 28, 2015). Such agreements give the recipient party (in this case, Suriname) the right to exchange currency with China at a fixed interest rate, reducing the risk of currency conversion fluctuations and lubricating cross-border trade. China has signed 35 BSAs globally, compared to the U.S.’s 14, and has historically used BSAs as a tool for internationalizing the RMB (The China Guys, July 6, 2020).[4] Suriname is currently the only Caribbean country whose currency is tradable directly with the RMB. Reflecting this unique relationship, a Chinese bank called Southern Commercial Bank (南方商业银行, nanfang shangye yinhang) issues UnionPay cards in Suriname (Southcommbanknv.com, accessed August 12).
Following the example of Suriname, other Caribbean countries could actively seek to attract more Chinese banks to fill the void left from the exodus of their traditional partners. Many U.S. banks have departed the Caribbean as profits dwindled, and the largest banks remaining in the Caribbean are currently Canadian. Many of these are now departing as well due to the rising costs of continuing to operate in the Caribbean. Just this year, the Royal Bank of Canada sold its operations in seven Caribbean countries (Newswire, April 1).
In contrast to the decline of Caribbean-U.S. CBRs, the number of Chinese CBRs increased globally from 65 in 2009 to 2,246 in 2016—representing growth of more than 3,355 percent (Accuity, accessed August 12). The rapid increase is a strong indicator that the trend will continue. Additionally, if the Caribbean can pay for Chinese imports using the international Cross-border International Payments System (CIPS, 跨境银行间支付清算, kua jing yinhang jian zhifu qingsuan) (CIPS, accessed August 3), this will lessen the region’s reliance on USD for trade. It also follows that if the Caribbean can use the RMB for imports, then it lessens the dependence on U.S. CBRs, improving the region’s economic resiliency.
The U.S. remains the Caribbean’s largest trading partner according to trade volume. This point is frequently made to demonstrate the strength of regional ties (e.g., The Hill, December 1, 2020). But the size of U.S.-Caribbean trade is the result of measurement constraints, not necessarily economic reality. As with much of the rest of the world, most products sold in the Caribbean are made in China and re-exported through the U.S. If the strength of bilateral trade is calculated based on the manufacturing origin of the goods consumed, then China could be considered the Caribbean’s largest trading partner.[5] The high volume of the U.S.-Caribbean trade is effectively phantom trade. There exists a possible future where goods are shipped directly from China to the Caribbean, circumventing the U.S.’ traditional position as a middleman.
Other factors could also lead Caribbean states to increase their trade purchases from China using the RMB. Traditional shipping routes have privileged trade from the U.S. to the Caribbean. But this is changing because of increased Chinese port construction across the Caribbean (Tearline.mil, August 14, 2020). Caribbean businesses in the past have not had easy RMB access and they have not established direct relationships with Chinese suppliers. But if more Caribbean central banks hold RMB reserves (following the example of Suriname) and more businesses develop relationships with Chinese suppliers (as they have been increasingly doing), their ability to bypass the U.S. dollar market grows.
RMB Internationalization
Wide-scale RMB usage in the Caribbean does not currently exist, and skeptics might argue that the RMB is not sufficiently internationalized to be able to replace the dollar’s comprehensive regional dominance. The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) published a report in 2017 titled Chinese Renminbi in the Caribbean: Opportunities for Trade, Aid and Investment (CDB, accessed August 12). Most of the discussion centered on the prospects of RMB internationalization and how the Caribbean could potentially tap into this growing benefit in the future.
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) cross-border currency transaction data shows that the share of RMB is currently tiny (1.30 percent) compared to USD dominance in international payments (87.06 percent). The volume of global payments done via RMB is similarly small (2.20 percent) compared to USD (38.43 percent) (SWIFT, accessed August 24). RMB internationalization has not progressed much on a global scale. But Caribbean economies are themselves also small. If all of the Caribbean economies were to conduct all of their international trade payments in RMB, it would merely move the current RMB share of cross-border currency transactions by a few basis points. What matters for Caribbean economies is not aggregates of trade finance or payments throughput but instead sufficient access to RMB exchange, clearing and settlement facilities, which has seen material growth.
The Chinese government has recently signaled that it is willing to assist countries in developing such facilities. In January 2021, the China-Mauritius Free Trade Agreement (FTA) came into effect (The Mauritius Chamber of Commerce and Industry, October 17, 2019). Section 12.8(e) of this FTA stated that China will be “promoting the development of a Renminbi clearing and settlement facility in the territory of Mauritius” by sharing technical expertise and providing financial assistance. China’s willingness to assist in similar future endeavors with Caribbean countries should be considered in the context that Chinese banks tend to have higher risk absorption characteristics and would be more tolerant of the higher structural risk in the Caribbean.
Some have argued that large Chinese banks have less mature risk management capacity than their US counterparts, primarily because the rapid growth, marketization and internationalization of Chinese banks has outpaced their ability minimize risk management constraints.[6] But in this case it is necessary to remember that large Chinese banks are state-owned enterprises whose risk capacity has to be contextualized within the broader policy ambitions of the Chinese state. The Chinese economist Cheng Cheng (程诚) has argued that Chinese banks tend to practice “stem cell finance” (造血金融, zao xue jingrong) in emerging markets in Africa, making an analogy that—similar to the process of growing new blood cells—international development financing is unavoidably energy intensive and slow but unequivocally essential.[7] According to Cheng’s argument, Chinese banks acknowledge that financial profits can only be achieved after risks are absorbed in the long term.
This July, the central Chinese government announced the “Opinions Advancing a High Level of Reform and Opening Up of the Pudong New Area to Build a Leading Area of Socialist Modernization” [关于支持浦东新区高水平改革开放打造社会主义现代化建设引领区的意见], Guanyu zhichi Pudong Xinqu gao shuiping gaige kaifang dazao shehui zhuyi xiandaihua jianshe yin lingqu de yijian), a monumental plan to transform Shanghai into the core financial center of the world (Gov.cn, July 15). In addition to providing a framework for innovation and urban development goals, the plan calls for further liberalizing China’s capital account to enable RMB to trade more effectively on international markets. It envisions a whole-of-government approach to “deeply integrate [China] into global economic development and governance” (Gov.cn, July 15); this is the policy context that Chinese banks are working under. Under such state-driven imperatives, Chinese banks—in contrast to their U.S. counterparts—will strive to widen the correspondent reach of their national currency.[8]
Conclusion
AML and CFT compliance regulations are not typical geopolitical topics unless international sanctions are being discussed. For this reason, one of the most significant economic security threats facing the Caribbean has largely been ignored by U.S. foreign policy analysts. As the regulatory environment of U.S. financial markets continues to corrode the economic security of Caribbean countries, it is inevitable that they will seek to maintain resilience. With no other options available to them, this will likely mean the increased usage of the RMB. Such a development would be significant for several reasons. First, states have been haunted by the prospect of the U.S. weaponizing the dollar for geopolitical ends, but little concern has been placed on the lethal consequences of seemingly benign regulations aimed at addressing money laundering and counter-terrorism issues. The current Caribbean predicament brings this reality to light.
Second, the Caribbean has been colloquially referred to as “America’s backyard” by U.S. policymakers for decades, but the U.S. ineffectual response to its close allies’ worries is concerning and bodes ill for efforts to counter the growing economic security threat from China in further regions. Third, if the RMB takes a foothold in the Caribbean, it will act as a case study of countries in the Western Hemisphere becoming closer to China not because of China’s pull, but rather because they are pushed away by the U.S.
Rasheed Griffith is a Senior Fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue and Host of the ‘China in the Americas’ Podcast. His research focuses on China’s financial and geoeconomic engagement in the Americas.
Notes
[1] For examples, see: “Discussion Paper: Strategic Solutions to ‘De-Risking’ and the Decline of Correspondent Banking Relationships in the Caribbean,” Caribbean Development Bank, 2016, https://www.caribank.org/publications-and-resources/resource-library/discussion-papers/discussion-paper-strategic-solution-de-risking; Allan Wright and Bradley Kellman, “De-Risking in the Barbados Context,” Inter-American Development Bank, February 2017, https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english/document/De-Risking-in-the-Barbados-Context.pdf; De-risking: the hidden issue hindering SDG progress and threatening survival of small island states, October 2019, https://iccwbo.org/media-wall/news-speeches/de-risking-the-hidden-issue-hindering-sdg-progress-and-threatening-survival-of-small-island-states/.
[2] See: ”De-Risking in the Caribbean Region: A Caribbean Financial Action Task Force Perspective,” CFATF, January 30, 2020, https://www.cfatf-gafic.org/documents/resources.
[3] After years of vigorously lobbying the U.S., Caribbean countries have achieved only moderate success in turning back the tide of de-risking. It will take years for the tentative support for anti-de-risking in legislation such as the William M. Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 to be presented, debated and implemented. See specifically Section 6215 (b)(2)(c) and Section 6215(c)(4) in the NDAA 2021, https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/6395/text.
[4] As of January 2020, a full list of China’s currency swap partners includes: Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, Argentina, South Korea, Belarus, Iceland, Singapore, New Zealand, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Thailan, Pakistan, UAE, Turkey, Australia, Ukraine, Brazil, UK, Hungary, Albania, Eurozone, Switzerland, Sri Lanka, Russia, Qatar, Canada, Suriname, Armenia, South Africa, Chile, Tajikistan, Georgia, Morocco, Serbia, Egypt, Nigeria, Japan, Macao, Laos (Hindu Business Line, December 2020).
[5] See: DeLisle Worrell, “China in the Caribbean’s Economic Future,” August 6, 2020, https://ssrn.com/abstract=3668058.
[6] See: Hu Jiarui (胡佳睿), “Analysis on the Credit Risk Management and Control of [Chinese] Commercial Banks” [浅析我国商业银行信贷风险管理与控制], Taxation [纳税] 08 (2018), https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx; Deng Ye (邓野), “Discussion on Commercial Bank Credit Risk Management” [谈商业银行信贷风险管理], Shenyang Chemical Engineering University Economics and Management School, https://www.xchen.com.cn/tzlw/grxdlw/740646.html.
[7] Cheng Cheng (程诚), “The ‘One Belt One Road’ China-Africa New Development Cooperation Model: How ‘Stem Cell Finance’ Can Fix Africa” [‘一带一路’中非发展合作新模式: ’造血金融’ 如何改变非洲], Renmin University, September 29, 2018, http://www.cssn.cn/jjx_lljjx_1/lljjx_blqs/201809/t20180929_4663266.html.
[8] Specifically, the plan calls to “Support Pudong to take the lead in exploring the implementation path of capital account convertibility” (支持浦东率先探索资本项目可兑换的实施路径) (Section 5, Subsection 13), and “Innovate international-facing RMB financial products, expand the scope of overseas RMB [and] domestic financial investment products, promote the two-way flow of cross-border RMB funds” (创新面向国际的人民币金融产品，扩大境外人民币境内投资金融产品范围，促进人民币资金跨境双向流动) (Section 5, Section 13), http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2021-07/15/content_5625279.htm.
How U.S. Banks Push the Caribbean Toward China
Wide-scale RMB usage in the Caribbean does not currently exist, and skeptics might argue that the RMB is not sufficiently internationalized to be able to replace the dollar’s comprehensive regional dominance. The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) published a report in 2017 titled Chinese Renminbi in the Caribbean: Opportunities for Trade, Aid and Investment (CDB, accessed August 12). Most of the discussion centered on the prospects of RMB internationalization and how the Caribbean could potentially tap into this growing benefit in the future.
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) cross-border currency transaction data shows that the share of RMB is currently tiny (1.30 percent) compared to USD dominance in international payments (87.06 percent). The volume of global payments done via RMB is similarly small (2.20 percent) compared to USD (38.43 percent) (SWIFT, accessed August 24). RMB internationalization has not progressed much on a global scale. But Caribbean economies are themselves also small. If all of the Caribbean economies were to conduct all of their international trade payments in RMB, it would merely move the current RMB share of cross-border currency transactions by a few basis points. What matters for Caribbean economies is not aggregates of trade finance or payments throughput but instead sufficient access to RMB exchange, clearing and settlement facilities, which has seen material growth.
The Chinese government has recently signaled that it is willing to assist countries in developing such facilities. In January 2021, the China-Mauritius Free Trade Agreement (FTA) came into effect (The Mauritius Chamber of Commerce and Industry, October 17, 2019). Section 12.8(e) of this FTA stated that China will be “promoting the development of a Renminbi clearing and settlement facility in the territory of Mauritius” by sharing technical expertise and providing financial assistance. China’s willingness to assist in similar future endeavors with Caribbean countries should be considered in the context that Chinese banks tend to have higher risk absorption characteristics and would be more tolerant of the higher structural risk in the Caribbean.
Some have argued that large Chinese banks have less mature risk management capacity than their US counterparts, primarily because the rapid growth, marketization and internationalization of Chinese banks has outpaced their ability minimize risk management constraints.[6] But in this case it is necessary to remember that large Chinese banks are state-owned enterprises whose risk capacity has to be contextualized within the broader policy ambitions of the Chinese state. The Chinese economist Cheng Cheng (程诚) has argued that Chinese banks tend to practice “stem cell finance” (造血金融, zao xue jingrong) in emerging markets in Africa, making an analogy that—similar to the process of growing new blood cells—international development financing is unavoidably energy intensive and slow but unequivocally essential.[7] According to Cheng’s argument, Chinese banks acknowledge that financial profits can only be achieved after risks are absorbed in the long term.
This July, the central Chinese government announced the “Opinions Advancing a High Level of Reform and Opening Up of the Pudong New Area to Build a Leading Area of Socialist Modernization” [关于支持浦东新区高水平改革开放打造社会主义现代化建设引领区的意见], Guanyu zhichi Pudong Xinqu gao shuiping gaige kaifang dazao shehui zhuyi xiandaihua jianshe yin lingqu de yijian), a monumental plan to transform Shanghai into the core financial center of the world (Gov.cn, July 15). In addition to providing a framework for innovation and urban development goals, the plan calls for further liberalizing China’s capital account to enable RMB to trade more effectively on international markets. It envisions a whole-of-government approach to “deeply integrate [China] into global economic development and governance” (Gov.cn, July 15); this is the policy context that Chinese banks are working under. Under such state-driven imperatives, Chinese banks—in contrast to their U.S. counterparts—will strive to widen the correspondent reach of their national currency.[8]
Conclusion
AML and CFT compliance regulations are not typical geopolitical topics unless international sanctions are being discussed. For this reason, one of the most significant economic security threats facing the Caribbean has largely been ignored by U.S. foreign policy analysts. As the regulatory environment of U.S. financial markets continues to corrode the economic security of Caribbean countries, it is inevitable that they will seek to maintain resilience. With no other options available to them, this will likely mean the increased usage of the RMB. Such a development would be significant for several reasons. First, states have been haunted by the prospect of the U.S. weaponizing the dollar for geopolitical ends, but little concern has been placed on the lethal consequences of seemingly benign regulations aimed at addressing money laundering and counter-terrorism issues. The current Caribbean predicament brings this reality to light.
Second, the Caribbean has been colloquially referred to as “America’s backyard” by U.S. policymakers for decades, but the U.S. ineffectual response to its close allies’ worries is concerning and bodes ill for efforts to counter the growing economic security threat from China in further regions. Third, if the RMB takes a foothold in the Caribbean, it will act as a case study of countries in the Western Hemisphere becoming closer to China not because of China’s pull, but rather because they are pushed away by the U.S.
Rasheed Griffith is a Senior Fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue and Host of the ‘China in the Americas’ Podcast. His research focuses on China’s financial and geoeconomic engagement in the Americas.
Notes
[1] For examples, see: “Discussion Paper: Strategic Solutions to ‘De-Risking’ and the Decline of Correspondent Banking Relationships in the Caribbean,” Caribbean Development Bank, 2016, https://www.caribank.org/publications-and-resources/resource-library/discussion-papers/discussion-paper-strategic-solution-de-risking; Allan Wright and Bradley Kellman, “De-Risking in the Barbados Context,” Inter-American Development Bank, February 2017, https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english/document/De-Risking-in-the-Barbados-Context.pdf; De-risking: the hidden issue hindering SDG progress and threatening survival of small island states, October 2019, https://iccwbo.org/media-wall/news-speeches/de-risking-the-hidden-issue-hindering-sdg-progress-and-threatening-survival-of-small-island-states/.
[2] See: ”De-Risking in the Caribbean Region: A Caribbean Financial Action Task Force Perspective,” CFATF, January 30, 2020, https://www.cfatf-gafic.org/documents/resources.
[3] After years of vigorously lobbying the U.S., Caribbean countries have achieved only moderate success in turning back the tide of de-risking. It will take years for the tentative support for anti-de-risking in legislation such as the William M. Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 to be presented, debated and implemented. See specifically Section 6215 (b)(2)(c) and Section 6215(c)(4) in the NDAA 2021, https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/6395/text.
[4] As of January 2020, a full list of China’s currency swap partners includes: Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, Argentina, South Korea, Belarus, Iceland, Singapore, New Zealand, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Thailan, Pakistan, UAE, Turkey, Australia, Ukraine, Brazil, UK, Hungary, Albania, Eurozone, Switzerland, Sri Lanka, Russia, Qatar, Canada, Suriname, Armenia, South Africa, Chile, Tajikistan, Georgia, Morocco, Serbia, Egypt, Nigeria, Japan, Macao, Laos (Hindu Business Line, December 2020).
[5] See: DeLisle Worrell, “China in the Caribbean’s Economic Future,” August 6, 2020, https://ssrn.com/abstract=3668058.
[6] See: Hu Jiarui (胡佳睿), “Analysis on the Credit Risk Management and Control of [Chinese] Commercial Banks” [浅析我国商业银行信贷风险管理与控制], Taxation [纳税] 08 (2018), https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx; Deng Ye (邓野), “Discussion on Commercial Bank Credit Risk Management” [谈商业银行信贷风险管理], Shenyang Chemical Engineering University Economics and Management School, https://www.xchen.com.cn/tzlw/grxdlw/740646.html.
[7] Cheng Cheng (程诚), “The ‘One Belt One Road’ China-Africa New Development Cooperation Model: How ‘Stem Cell Finance’ Can Fix Africa” [‘一带一路’中非发展合作新模式: ’造血金融’ 如何改变非洲], Renmin University, September 29, 2018, http://www.cssn.cn/jjx_lljjx_1/lljjx_blqs/201809/t20180929_4663266.html.
[8] Specifically, the plan calls to “Support Pudong to take the lead in exploring the implementation path of capital account convertibility” (支持浦东率先探索资本项目可兑换的实施路径) (Section 5, Subsection 13), and “Innovate international-facing RMB financial products, expand the scope of overseas RMB [and] domestic financial investment products, promote the two-way flow of cross-border RMB funds” (创新面向国际的人民币金融产品，扩大境外人民币境内投资金融产品范围，促进人民币资金跨境双向流动) (Section 5, Section 13), http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2021-07/15/content_5625279.htm.
How U.S. Banks Push the Caribbean Toward China
First Africa-CARICOM Summit
September 8, 2021
A historic first Africa-CARICOM Summit was held virtually this Tuesday, attended by Heads of States and Government of the African Union and Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Member States.
Hosted by Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, and with the theme ‘Unity Across Continents and Oceans: Opportunities for Deepening Integration’, participating governments looked at ways to strengthen the linkages between the people of Africa and the Caribbean regions by addressing integration challenges across continents.
Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda, and Chair of CARICOM, proposed the establishment of a Forum of African and Caribbean Territories and States (FACTS) to be coordinated jointly by the Secretariats of CARICOM and the African Union (AU). He also proposed the designation of September 7th “Africa-CARICOM Day” in every year going forward, which would coincide with a repeat of the Africa-CARICOM summit “to analyze the global situation and our place within it; to discuss initiatives and programs; and to authorize joint actions.”
Browne also proposed the establishment of a Multilateral Air Services Agreement between the AU and CARICOM and the removal of visas for Africans to allow hassle free travel to the Caribbean and vice versa, for CARICOM nationals traveling to Africa.
Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados put forward a proposal for the establishment of a regular weekly direct airline flight between an African country and one CARICOM member state as well as the establishment of a joint AU-CARICOM electronic mass media platform or mechanism that facilitates the flow of news, information and artistic programming between Africa and the Caribbean, for the benefit of our two peoples. Mottley also called for a collective commitment to jointly advance the claim for reparations within the processes of the United Nations during the upcoming High Level meeting of the General Assembly.
Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, called on the summit to show support to Cuba, as it battles the U.S. economic blockade, saying the nation played an instrumental role against Apartheid and other popular struggles in Africa.
“We recall from the Caribbean, the contribution of the heroic and selfless nation of Cuba. This nation shed its blood in the liberation of southern Africa,” Gonsalves said.
“We all know the selflessness of Cuba. It demands of us today, at this summit, that we give a practical commitment to assist Cuba, which is currently being besieged by the twin challenges of the illegal economic blockade by imperialism and the ravages of COVID-19. Cuba will not ask but it is our duty to assist and to do so with urgency.”
Gonsalves stressed the importance of the presence of Caribbean states as non-permanent members of the UN Security Council, beyond Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’ current one year UNSC presidency, which expires at year end.
Remarks by Chair of CARICOM, the Hon. Gaston Browne, can be read here.
Remarks by Trinidad and Tobago PM Dr. Keith Rowley can be read here.
Remarks by Saint Vincent and the Grenadines PM Ralph Gonsalves can be read here.
The full event can be viewed here.
First Africa-CARICOM Summit
September 8, 2021
A historic first Africa-CARICOM Summit was held virtually this Tuesday, attended by Heads of States and Government of the African Union and Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Member States.
Hosted by Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, and with the theme ‘Unity Across Continents and Oceans: Opportunities for Deepening Integration’, participating governments looked at ways to strengthen the linkages between the people of Africa and the Caribbean regions by addressing integration challenges across continents.
Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda, and Chair of CARICOM, proposed the establishment of a Forum of African and Caribbean Territories and States (FACTS) to be coordinated jointly by the Secretariats of CARICOM and the African Union (AU). He also proposed the designation of September 7th “Africa-CARICOM Day” in every year going forward, which would coincide with a repeat of the Africa-CARICOM summit “to analyze the global situation and our place within it; to discuss initiatives and programs; and to authorize joint actions.”
Browne also proposed the establishment of a Multilateral Air Services Agreement between the AU and CARICOM and the removal of visas for Africans to allow hassle free travel to the Caribbean and vice versa, for CARICOM nationals traveling to Africa.
Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados put forward a proposal for the establishment of a regular weekly direct airline flight between an African country and one CARICOM member state as well as the establishment of a joint AU-CARICOM electronic mass media platform or mechanism that facilitates the flow of news, information and artistic programming between Africa and the Caribbean, for the benefit of our two peoples. Mottley also called for a collective commitment to jointly advance the claim for reparations within the processes of the United Nations during the upcoming High Level meeting of the General Assembly.
Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, called on the summit to show support to Cuba, as it battles the U.S. economic blockade, saying the nation played an instrumental role against Apartheid and other popular struggles in Africa.
“We recall from the Caribbean, the contribution of the heroic and selfless nation of Cuba. This nation shed its blood in the liberation of southern Africa,” Gonsalves said.
“We all know the selflessness of Cuba. It demands of us today, at this summit, that we give a practical commitment to assist Cuba, which is currently being besieged by the twin challenges of the illegal economic blockade by imperialism and the ravages of COVID-19. Cuba will not ask but it is our duty to assist and to do so with urgency.”
Gonsalves stressed the importance of the presence of Caribbean states as non-permanent members of the UN Security Council, beyond Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’ current one year UNSC presidency, which expires at year end.
Remarks by Chair of CARICOM, the Hon. Gaston Browne, can be read here.
Remarks by Trinidad and Tobago PM Dr. Keith Rowley can be read here.
Remarks by Saint Vincent and the Grenadines PM Ralph Gonsalves can be read here.
The full event can be viewed here.
First Africa-CARICOM Summit
Latin America and the Caribbean Increasingly Distant from the OAS and Closer to CELAC
2 Sep 2021, 10:12 am.
There is a growing number of voices agreeing on the urgent need to replace the Organization of American States (OAS) with organizations such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), among others. This would allow for a different approach to Latin-Caribbean regional integration.
One of the triggers has been the role of the OAS Secretary General, Luis Almagro, who has enjoyed the strong support of the United States in his interference in the internal affairs of different countries in the region.
BOLIVIA: “ALMAGRO MUST GO”.
Last August 9, Almagro ratified a report presented in 2019 that allegedly detected irregularities in the electoral process of that year and “fraud” in favor of the then president and candidate, Evo Morales.
In an extraordinary virtual meeting of the Permanent Council of the organization, held Wednesday the 25th, the Bolivian ministers of Justice, Iván Lima, and Foreign Affairs, Rogelio Mayta, in addition to the Bolivian ambassador to the OAS, Héctor Arce Zaconeta, condemned the statement accusing Almagro of exceeding his functions and attacking the sovereignty of Bolivia while violating the norms of that organization and of the international principles of non-intervention.
In March, Lima indicated the possibility of taking legal action against Almagro for his statements regarding the alleged electoral fraud in the 2019 presidential elections in Bolivia and his support for the coup d’état.
In early August, Mayta stated that “Almagro has to realize that the best thing he could do is to leave the OAS because, if he does not leave voluntarily now, he is doing things so badly that he may be thrown out of office”.
Morales, for his part, accused him of crimes against humanity, adding that he never spoke out for the 36 murdered, the more than 800 wounded, the 1,500 illegally detained and the hundreds persecuted by the dictatorial government of Jeanine Áñez.
EXPANDING INITIATIVE
The position of La Paz during the aforementioned meeting was supported by Mexico and Nicaragua, which denounced the interference in the electoral process and its support to the de facto government of Jeanine Áñez.
The Nicaraguan ambassador, Luis Alvarado, considered the report presented as “illegal and fallacious” and reiterated the “firm and unwavering solidarity and support to the people and Government of Bolivia, which continues to confront the coup aggression perpetrated by the OAS General Secretariat”.
The Mexican ambassador, Luz Elena Baños, criticized Almagro for “exceeding his functions” and “deepening polarization” in the hemisphere. The Foreign Minister of this country, Marcelo Ebrard, stated last Sunday that “Someone will have to notify Almagro that the OAS cannot continue to be an instrument of intervention”. He warned that, at the Celac summit on September 18, this goal is set and that “Mexico may, through the excellent dialogue that President López Obrador has with the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and the Vice President, Kamala Harris, be the one who can facilitate the reaching of this agreement”.
On July 24, during a speech in homage to the Liberator Simón Bolívar, the Mexican president called for the replacement of the regional organization by a new one that is “nobody’s lackey”, something similar to the European Union (EU).
Why it is important: The initiative, proposed by Commander Hugo Chávez more than a decade ago during his administration, appears to be taking shape in the region, given that its stability and integration has been undermined by an entity that bears the historical burden of being under U.S. control, organizes coups d’état such as the one in Bolivia, propitiates military interventions in Venezuela and supports attempts to isolate Cuba, among other shameful deeds.
Latin America and the Caribbean Increasingly Distant from the OAS and Closer to CELAC
2 Sep 2021, 10:12 am.
There is a growing number of voices agreeing on the urgent need to replace the Organization of American States (OAS) with organizations such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), among others. This would allow for a different approach to Latin-Caribbean regional integration.
One of the triggers has been the role of the OAS Secretary General, Luis Almagro, who has enjoyed the strong support of the United States in his interference in the internal affairs of different countries in the region.
BOLIVIA: “ALMAGRO MUST GO”.
Last August 9, Almagro ratified a report presented in 2019 that allegedly detected irregularities in the electoral process of that year and “fraud” in favor of the then president and candidate, Evo Morales.
In an extraordinary virtual meeting of the Permanent Council of the organization, held Wednesday the 25th, the Bolivian ministers of Justice, Iván Lima, and Foreign Affairs, Rogelio Mayta, in addition to the Bolivian ambassador to the OAS, Héctor Arce Zaconeta, condemned the statement accusing Almagro of exceeding his functions and attacking the sovereignty of Bolivia while violating the norms of that organization and of the international principles of non-intervention.
In March, Lima indicated the possibility of taking legal action against Almagro for his statements regarding the alleged electoral fraud in the 2019 presidential elections in Bolivia and his support for the coup d’état.
In early August, Mayta stated that “Almagro has to realize that the best thing he could do is to leave the OAS because, if he does not leave voluntarily now, he is doing things so badly that he may be thrown out of office”.
Morales, for his part, accused him of crimes against humanity, adding that he never spoke out for the 36 murdered, the more than 800 wounded, the 1,500 illegally detained and the hundreds persecuted by the dictatorial government of Jeanine Áñez.
EXPANDING INITIATIVE
The position of La Paz during the aforementioned meeting was supported by Mexico and Nicaragua, which denounced the interference in the electoral process and its support to the de facto government of Jeanine Áñez.
The Nicaraguan ambassador, Luis Alvarado, considered the report presented as “illegal and fallacious” and reiterated the “firm and unwavering solidarity and support to the people and Government of Bolivia, which continues to confront the coup aggression perpetrated by the OAS General Secretariat”.
The Mexican ambassador, Luz Elena Baños, criticized Almagro for “exceeding his functions” and “deepening polarization” in the hemisphere. The Foreign Minister of this country, Marcelo Ebrard, stated last Sunday that “Someone will have to notify Almagro that the OAS cannot continue to be an instrument of intervention”. He warned that, at the Celac summit on September 18, this goal is set and that “Mexico may, through the excellent dialogue that President López Obrador has with the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and the Vice President, Kamala Harris, be the one who can facilitate the reaching of this agreement”.
On July 24, during a speech in homage to the Liberator Simón Bolívar, the Mexican president called for the replacement of the regional organization by a new one that is “nobody’s lackey”, something similar to the European Union (EU).
Why it is important: The initiative, proposed by Commander Hugo Chávez more than a decade ago during his administration, appears to be taking shape in the region, given that its stability and integration has been undermined by an entity that bears the historical burden of being under U.S. control, organizes coups d’état such as the one in Bolivia, propitiates military interventions in Venezuela and supports attempts to isolate Cuba, among other shameful deeds.
Latin America and the Caribbean Increasingly Distant from the OAS and Closer to CELAC
Haitian trade unions to go on strike amidst insecurity
Armed gangs have made a lucrative business of kidnapping and reselling fuel. | Photo: Prensa Latina
Published 30 September, 2021
The situation of insecurity does not allow for change in the near future, hence the call for a general strike by the unions.
Several Haitian trade unions, including the transportation and subcontracting trade unions said on Thursday that they would go on strike next Monday, October 4, against the climate of insecurity, kidnappings, the fuel crisis and what they consider the lousy handling of the deportation of migrants from the United States.
The trade unionists confirmed that Monday would be the day of a national strike to denounce the increase in kidnappings for ransom, “which threatens everyone,” while the price of the illegal sale of fuel has increased twofold or threefold in the illicit market, Jacques Anderson Desroches, a spokesman for the union forces to save Haiti, said.
The spokesman for the Union Force to Save Haiti (Fòs Sendikal pou Sove Ayiti, FOSSA), Jacques Anderson Desroches, pointed out that the national strike will serve as a denunciation of the increase in kidnappings to demand ransom, “which threatens everyone”; as well as the illegal sale of fuel, which has increased twofold or threefold in the black market in relation to the official one.
Desroches condemned the State for having manufactured “the fuel crisis (shortage) to decapitalize the poor”, in the absence of measures to control these illegal actions committed by the armed gangs that control several districts of Port-au-Prince (the capital) and other cities in the country.
“The State has taken advantage of the widespread insecurity, legalizing theft, rape and kidnapping”, he said, while criticizing Prime Minister Ariel Henry for not condemning the inhumane treatment suffered by the Haitian immigrants to the United States similar to that inflicted on enslaved people. “We did not hear Mr. Ariel Henry request a moratorium on the deportation of Haitians”, he said.
The trade unionists' call for a strike adds to the Protestant religious sector's proposal to close all its institutions with the exception of health centers, in protest of the growing insecurity, and after the murder of a deacon on Sunday 26 in a church in Port-au-Prince and the kidnapping of his wife.
Meanwhile, non-governmental and progressive organizations agreed to demonstrate peacefully this Thursday in front of the US embassy in that Caribbean nation against Washington, D.C.'s interference in their internal affairs.
A few weeks ago, the Association of Petroleum Professionals (Asosyasyon Pwofesyonèl Petwòl, APP) had issued in a letter, an SOS to the authorities about the siege of oil terminals by armed gangs, including Terminal Varreux, which represents 70 percent of the country's storage capacity.
Additionally, in the absence of normality in the near future, gas station owners are suffering losses due to the actions of bandits who steal cargo and demand money to return fuel trucks.
On the other hand, about 4,000 Haitians were deported from the United States from September 19 to date, when a series of massive deportations began that triggered the immigration crisis that brought some 15,000 people to the city of Del Río, Texas, mostly Haitians.
Haitian trade unions to go on strike amidst insecurity
Armed gangs have made a lucrative business of kidnapping and reselling fuel. | Photo: Prensa Latina
Published 30 September, 2021
The situation of insecurity does not allow for change in the near future, hence the call for a general strike by the unions.
Several Haitian trade unions, including the transportation and subcontracting trade unions said on Thursday that they would go on strike next Monday, October 4, against the climate of insecurity, kidnappings, the fuel crisis and what they consider the lousy handling of the deportation of migrants from the United States.
The trade unionists confirmed that Monday would be the day of a national strike to denounce the increase in kidnappings for ransom, “which threatens everyone,” while the price of the illegal sale of fuel has increased twofold or threefold in the illicit market, Jacques Anderson Desroches, a spokesman for the union forces to save Haiti, said.
The spokesman for the Union Force to Save Haiti (Fòs Sendikal pou Sove Ayiti, FOSSA), Jacques Anderson Desroches, pointed out that the national strike will serve as a denunciation of the increase in kidnappings to demand ransom, “which threatens everyone”; as well as the illegal sale of fuel, which has increased twofold or threefold in the black market in relation to the official one.
Desroches condemned the State for having manufactured “the fuel crisis (shortage) to decapitalize the poor”, in the absence of measures to control these illegal actions committed by the armed gangs that control several districts of Port-au-Prince (the capital) and other cities in the country.
“The State has taken advantage of the widespread insecurity, legalizing theft, rape and kidnapping”, he said, while criticizing Prime Minister Ariel Henry for not condemning the inhumane treatment suffered by the Haitian immigrants to the United States similar to that inflicted on enslaved people. “We did not hear Mr. Ariel Henry request a moratorium on the deportation of Haitians”, he said.
The trade unionists' call for a strike adds to the Protestant religious sector's proposal to close all its institutions with the exception of health centers, in protest of the growing insecurity, and after the murder of a deacon on Sunday 26 in a church in Port-au-Prince and the kidnapping of his wife.
Meanwhile, non-governmental and progressive organizations agreed to demonstrate peacefully this Thursday in front of the US embassy in that Caribbean nation against Washington, D.C.'s interference in their internal affairs.
A few weeks ago, the Association of Petroleum Professionals (Asosyasyon Pwofesyonèl Petwòl, APP) had issued in a letter, an SOS to the authorities about the siege of oil terminals by armed gangs, including Terminal Varreux, which represents 70 percent of the country's storage capacity.
Additionally, in the absence of normality in the near future, gas station owners are suffering losses due to the actions of bandits who steal cargo and demand money to return fuel trucks.
On the other hand, about 4,000 Haitians were deported from the United States from September 19 to date, when a series of massive deportations began that triggered the immigration crisis that brought some 15,000 people to the city of Del Río, Texas, mostly Haitians.
Haitian trade unions to go on strike amidst insecurity
The War against Petrocaribe: Examining U.S. Imperial Geopolitics on the Caribbean Spectrum
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 13, 2021
Map of the Caribbean (Photo: Archive)
Professor Jean-Claude Gerlus, in his research “The Effects of the Cold War on U.S.-Haitian Relationsos “, was correct in pointing out that the Caribbean Basin was transformed into an undeclared war zone during that period. Reminiscences continue to be experienced in the region. A few days ago, the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse took place, the perpetrators of which are mercenaries of U.S. and Colombian origin.
In view of this fact, uncertainty and political volatility are on the table in Haití, and as the assassination is being clarified, the interference of the United States and its satellite, Colombia, becomes apparent.
“A country that has endured earthquake, pandemic, hurricanes, cholera, military interventions is, moreover, in the midst of a dilemma similar to the power vacuum Magnicidio de Moïse: una nueva escalada de inestabilidad en Haití”
– MV (@Mision_Verdad) July 10, 2021
Thus, it is appropriate to make a historiographic and political review, from a macro perspective, on the role of the Caribbean Basin in the geopolitical chessboard, taking into account two axes: the U.S. Caribbean Basin Initiative and the U.S. doctrine in the management of international relations in the Caribbean area.
But first, it is pertinent to point out some geopolitical considerations made by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on the importance of Haiti on the Caribbean radar:
Haiti has a controlling position for access to the Caribbean Sea, since 70% of the Panama Canal’s maritime traffic transits through the Windward Passage between Haiti and Cuba; it connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Caribbean Sea.
The Windward Passage (Photo: sv-exit.com)
1. Origin and promotion of the Caribbean Basin Initiative
The Caribbean Basin corresponds to the geographic strip that envelops the Caribbean nations, stretching from the northern coastline of Venezuela and Colombia, passing through eastern Central America and ending in southern Florida.
This vast maritime space is of paramount importance to the United States, which, beyond its proximity, resources and trade routes, makes this area a frequent target for interference and interventions of all kinds by U.S. administrations.
Part of the basis for that approach is driven by Alfred Mahan’s book The Influence of Maritime Power in History: 1660-1783, which inspired then U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt to expand U.S. maritime power in order to secure resources and naval “highways” (as Mahan categorized them) for ships of all types throughout the Caribbean and Pacific.
In that book, Mahan explained some important clues about that framework:
So the general elements raised by Mahan contextualize the tactics made by the United States that were executed in the 19th century, hand in hand with a legal instrument that extrapolated the borders: The Guano Islands Act of 1856, since that law gave the abusive power to U.S. citizens to take possession of Caribbean lands that possessed guano deposits, an important resource for the time because it allowed the refertilization of U.S. agricultural lands.
After this stage of imperial expansion and following the invasion of Grenada, sponsored and coordinated by the White House, the United States shades the tactic towards the Caribbean by unilaterally raising trade programs known as the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI).
This program was launched through the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (CBERA) in 1983, then expanded to the nature of shared security in 2010, purportedly to reduce illicit trafficking and increase U.S.-Caribbean security.
With this cornerstone, the United States invested more than $556 million for CBI through programs administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from fiscal year 2010 through 2018. Such investment, for example, has not brought real benefits to the region, so it is ostensible that it responds to opaque agendas in favor of U.S. interests, both in security and trade.
As a result, the agreements lead the Caribbean countries to depend drastically on foreign “aid”, creating disadvantages in negotiations with the U.S. government of the day, putting the respective national agendas at risk.
In short, the character of the IWC is openly bilateral and threatens regional integration, promoting and strengthening U.S. interests as well as its economic and military predominance in the Caribbean front, an area regarded by Washington as its fiefdom in the South.
In 2015, Barack Obama’s administration was pushing the Caribbean Energy Security Initiative at an energy summit, and then Vice President Joe Biden was saying a few words about it:
The new U.S. escalation against Venezuela had already begun, the first target to be attacked being the platform of integral cooperation between Venezuela and the Caribbean nations: Petrocaribe.
2. Monroe Doctrine and Roosevelt Corollary
The United States’ geostrategic approach to the Caribbean space is made up of its main foreign policy lines, transmuted into its self-proclaimed virtues: exceptionalism and universalism.
“U.S. Exceptionalism: cultural instrument or excuse to legitimize its actions of interference by generating the belief or myth that the United States is a qualitatively different or superior nation to the rest of the world, in other words, a unique nation.
American universalism: belief in the broad scope of some American idea or doctrine that has universal applicability.
With these two tenets, U.S. officials assert or justify their actions because, for them, under this conception, any international actor or state that is not in tune with U.S. interests is considered a threat.”
Under these precepts, history tells how the Monroe Doctrine with its “America for (North) Americans” aimed at Europe later became part of the gringo raison d’état. However, it was Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 who expanded the interference towards Latin America and the Caribbean, and this is what is known as the “Roosevelt Corollary”.
This variant of the Monroe Doctrine consisted, according to Roosevelt, in that the United States could “exercise international police power in flagrant cases of such irregularities or impotence”, serving as justification for uninhibited U.S. intervention in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
“In an antagonistic manner, Commander Hugo Chávez rescued and promoted the integrationist ideology of the Liberator Simón Bolívar. With a geostrategic vision, energy alliances were expanded, in a sovereign manner, towards all regions and a great turn was made in the dynamics of Venezuelan foreign policy directed towards the Caribbean.
After repeated meetings and signed commitments, in 2005 the Petrocaribe Agreement was signed for the supply and financing of oil and other products, under the pillars of cooperation among the participating nations.
This geopolitical milestone marked the beginning of the construction of an alternative in the dynamics of international relations in order to counteract the influence of the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean, giving a slap in the face to the US corollaries of the last century, freeing them from the exploitation of oil transnationals.”
In 2012, Comandante Chávez expressed: “Petrocaribe has truly become an unprecedented cooperation mechanism, unprecedented in this world and I believe that it is the most advanced in the planet today, of cooperation and exchange, of solidarity, and may serve us much more besides”.
It was no coincidence that Barack Obama, before leaving the Oval Office, made a presidential trip in 2015 to Jamaica, which his predecessors in office had not done since 1982. The purpose of that visit was to address the issue of energy security, with which the former Democratic president prepared the ground so that, in the years to come, the onslaught of “sanctions” would hit the Venezuelan oil industry harder in order to break Petrocaribe.
While this geopolitical review of the Caribbean area is being written, they intend to destabilize Cuba, as part of the Paso de los Vientos and founder of ALBA-TCP, trying to impose on it a color revolution with a US patent. The strategy against the Caribbean has that island at the center of the dispute, and is directly connected to the geopolitical framework that goes from northern Florida to the southern Caribbean basin.
Currently, in the midst of the U.S. siege against Venezuela, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is focusing on the guidelines set forth in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – Peoples’ Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP) as a space for strengthening Petrocaribe, because regional integration requires the implementation of fair and comprehensive international policies that allow transcending the energy issue and moving towards commercial forms of cooperation and international relations, which leave the already defeated U.S. position, still entangled in the conflict, light years behind.
The War against Petrocaribe: Examining U.S. Imperial Geopolitics on the Caribbean Spectrum
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 13, 2021
Map of the Caribbean (Photo: Archive)
Professor Jean-Claude Gerlus, in his research “The Effects of the Cold War on U.S.-Haitian Relationsos “, was correct in pointing out that the Caribbean Basin was transformed into an undeclared war zone during that period. Reminiscences continue to be experienced in the region. A few days ago, the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse took place, the perpetrators of which are mercenaries of U.S. and Colombian origin.
In view of this fact, uncertainty and political volatility are on the table in Haití, and as the assassination is being clarified, the interference of the United States and its satellite, Colombia, becomes apparent.
“A country that has endured earthquake, pandemic, hurricanes, cholera, military interventions is, moreover, in the midst of a dilemma similar to the power vacuum Magnicidio de Moïse: una nueva escalada de inestabilidad en Haití”
– MV (@Mision_Verdad) July 10, 2021
Thus, it is appropriate to make a historiographic and political review, from a macro perspective, on the role of the Caribbean Basin in the geopolitical chessboard, taking into account two axes: the U.S. Caribbean Basin Initiative and the U.S. doctrine in the management of international relations in the Caribbean area.
But first, it is pertinent to point out some geopolitical considerations made by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on the importance of Haiti on the Caribbean radar:
Haiti has a controlling position for access to the Caribbean Sea, since 70% of the Panama Canal’s maritime traffic transits through the Windward Passage between Haiti and Cuba; it connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Caribbean Sea.
The Windward Passage (Photo: sv-exit.com)
1. Origin and promotion of the Caribbean Basin Initiative
The Caribbean Basin corresponds to the geographic strip that envelops the Caribbean nations, stretching from the northern coastline of Venezuela and Colombia, passing through eastern Central America and ending in southern Florida.
This vast maritime space is of paramount importance to the United States, which, beyond its proximity, resources and trade routes, makes this area a frequent target for interference and interventions of all kinds by U.S. administrations.
Part of the basis for that approach is driven by Alfred Mahan’s book The Influence of Maritime Power in History: 1660-1783, which inspired then U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt to expand U.S. maritime power in order to secure resources and naval “highways” (as Mahan categorized them) for ships of all types throughout the Caribbean and Pacific.
In that book, Mahan explained some important clues about that framework:
- He employed the premise “Anything that moves on water, as opposed to what moves on land, possesses the prerogative of offensive defense,” which justified the need to empower the U.S. Navy.
- The Caribbean Sea should be of the utmost importance for U.S. foreign and security policy, and should even be considered as a kind of American Mare Nostrum. The adjective “American” refers to the United States, not to the continent in its splendor.
- The Isthmus of Panama is the nerve center for achieving naval power and fleet effectiveness in the plans.
So the general elements raised by Mahan contextualize the tactics made by the United States that were executed in the 19th century, hand in hand with a legal instrument that extrapolated the borders: The Guano Islands Act of 1856, since that law gave the abusive power to U.S. citizens to take possession of Caribbean lands that possessed guano deposits, an important resource for the time because it allowed the refertilization of U.S. agricultural lands.
After this stage of imperial expansion and following the invasion of Grenada, sponsored and coordinated by the White House, the United States shades the tactic towards the Caribbean by unilaterally raising trade programs known as the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI).
This program was launched through the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (CBERA) in 1983, then expanded to the nature of shared security in 2010, purportedly to reduce illicit trafficking and increase U.S.-Caribbean security.
With this cornerstone, the United States invested more than $556 million for CBI through programs administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from fiscal year 2010 through 2018. Such investment, for example, has not brought real benefits to the region, so it is ostensible that it responds to opaque agendas in favor of U.S. interests, both in security and trade.
As a result, the agreements lead the Caribbean countries to depend drastically on foreign “aid”, creating disadvantages in negotiations with the U.S. government of the day, putting the respective national agendas at risk.
In short, the character of the IWC is openly bilateral and threatens regional integration, promoting and strengthening U.S. interests as well as its economic and military predominance in the Caribbean front, an area regarded by Washington as its fiefdom in the South.
In 2015, Barack Obama’s administration was pushing the Caribbean Energy Security Initiative at an energy summit, and then Vice President Joe Biden was saying a few words about it:
- He made it clear that both Caribbean and Central American energy and security are paramount issues for the United States.
- He also explained that low oil prices, plus plummeting renewable energy costs, opened a window to invest more overseas and specified that overseas is across the sea to the Caribbean.
- He pointed out examples of new energy projects with some Caribbean countries, such as the 90 million dollars disbursed to Jamaica for the construction of a renewable energy project.
- It also indicates that the United States and the “international community” can also provide technical assistance to supposedly help countries attract investment in their energy sectors. At the time, USAID announced a $10 million program to provide energy investments in Jamaica.
- It then concluded that the new U.S. focus was on the Caribbean, to ensure that projects could be connected to financing.
The new U.S. escalation against Venezuela had already begun, the first target to be attacked being the platform of integral cooperation between Venezuela and the Caribbean nations: Petrocaribe.
2. Monroe Doctrine and Roosevelt Corollary
The United States’ geostrategic approach to the Caribbean space is made up of its main foreign policy lines, transmuted into its self-proclaimed virtues: exceptionalism and universalism.
“U.S. Exceptionalism: cultural instrument or excuse to legitimize its actions of interference by generating the belief or myth that the United States is a qualitatively different or superior nation to the rest of the world, in other words, a unique nation.
American universalism: belief in the broad scope of some American idea or doctrine that has universal applicability.
With these two tenets, U.S. officials assert or justify their actions because, for them, under this conception, any international actor or state that is not in tune with U.S. interests is considered a threat.”
Under these precepts, history tells how the Monroe Doctrine with its “America for (North) Americans” aimed at Europe later became part of the gringo raison d’état. However, it was Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 who expanded the interference towards Latin America and the Caribbean, and this is what is known as the “Roosevelt Corollary”.
This variant of the Monroe Doctrine consisted, according to Roosevelt, in that the United States could “exercise international police power in flagrant cases of such irregularities or impotence”, serving as justification for uninhibited U.S. intervention in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
“In an antagonistic manner, Commander Hugo Chávez rescued and promoted the integrationist ideology of the Liberator Simón Bolívar. With a geostrategic vision, energy alliances were expanded, in a sovereign manner, towards all regions and a great turn was made in the dynamics of Venezuelan foreign policy directed towards the Caribbean.
After repeated meetings and signed commitments, in 2005 the Petrocaribe Agreement was signed for the supply and financing of oil and other products, under the pillars of cooperation among the participating nations.
This geopolitical milestone marked the beginning of the construction of an alternative in the dynamics of international relations in order to counteract the influence of the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean, giving a slap in the face to the US corollaries of the last century, freeing them from the exploitation of oil transnationals.”
In 2012, Comandante Chávez expressed: “Petrocaribe has truly become an unprecedented cooperation mechanism, unprecedented in this world and I believe that it is the most advanced in the planet today, of cooperation and exchange, of solidarity, and may serve us much more besides”.
It was no coincidence that Barack Obama, before leaving the Oval Office, made a presidential trip in 2015 to Jamaica, which his predecessors in office had not done since 1982. The purpose of that visit was to address the issue of energy security, with which the former Democratic president prepared the ground so that, in the years to come, the onslaught of “sanctions” would hit the Venezuelan oil industry harder in order to break Petrocaribe.
While this geopolitical review of the Caribbean area is being written, they intend to destabilize Cuba, as part of the Paso de los Vientos and founder of ALBA-TCP, trying to impose on it a color revolution with a US patent. The strategy against the Caribbean has that island at the center of the dispute, and is directly connected to the geopolitical framework that goes from northern Florida to the southern Caribbean basin.
Currently, in the midst of the U.S. siege against Venezuela, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is focusing on the guidelines set forth in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – Peoples’ Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP) as a space for strengthening Petrocaribe, because regional integration requires the implementation of fair and comprehensive international policies that allow transcending the energy issue and moving towards commercial forms of cooperation and international relations, which leave the already defeated U.S. position, still entangled in the conflict, light years behind.
The War against Petrocaribe: Examining U.S. Imperial Geopolitics on the Caribbean Spectrum
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☭☭☭
Former Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe is among those named in the Pandora Papers leak. He remained the beneficial owner of a BVI company, Lightfoot Ventures, while in office. Also connected to Lightfoot: former President Michel (aka Michael) Martelly.
10:25 AM · Oct 4, 2021
Enclaves, Mercenaries and Exterminations: The Common Ground between Colombia and Israel
Eder Peña
1 Ago 2021, 11:33 am.
Militarization as a tool for the management of plunder and regional destabilization is common in both imperial enclaves (Photo: Oliver Ehmig).
It has long been said that Colombia is the Israel of Latin America, this statement has been made by different analysts and political figures, especially when in the last decade it has deepened its role as a U.S. base that serves as an experiment and focus for destabilization in the region.
A number of military bases have been located in that country that have served as counterinsurgency units, because as far as drug trafficking is concerned, they have clearly and conclusively failed. Just look at this week’s news regarding the coordination between some high-ranking army officers and narco-paramilitary groups, in particular protecting the actions of Clan Barros, a Guajira clan allied with the Gulf Clan dedicated to drug trafficking and gasoline smuggling in the departments of Guajira, Cesar, Magdalena, Atlántico and southern Bolivar.
Colombia is the first supplier of cocaine to the United States, every year it beats its own record as a producer of the narcotic, and this fact is closely linked to two aspects in which its coincidence with Israel is absolute: war as a permanent mechanism of an elite to exercise supremacy and the paramilitarization of this mechanism.
However, in the area of drug trafficking, which today is vital to the capitalist economy, the two imperial enclaves are not similar. In this “division of labor” they do not play the same role because Colombia provides the raw material while Israel provides the weapons and genocidal strategies to protect production.
Enclaves of imperial control and battering rams of militarization
Both enclaves have the mission of imposing the war waged by the United States on Latin America and West Asia respectively. In the case of the neighboring country and its Plan Colombia, the failure has been evident because the real objectives of “preventing the flow of illegal drugs to the United States” were not achieved.
The only achievement was to weaken the FARC guerrilla movement by implementing various strategies to the point of incubating a counterinsurgency model that could be applied in other latitudes such as Mexico or Afghanistan, where the results have been as disastrous, if not more so.
The militarization of Colombian society has had a greater impact on the guerrilla insurgency and the political opposition to neoliberalism than on drug trafficking, whose numbers are increasing relentlessly (Photo: AP Photo).
Meanwhile, a State that emerged on the basis of the violent expulsion of the Palestinian population that had inhabited that territory for many centuries, called “Israel”, carries out repression and the world’s largest weapons tests in an open-air laboratory in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. There it holds a captive population of several million Palestinians while claiming that it is the resistance movements that are carrying out its kidnappings.
Their origins are dissimilar, but the corporate plans emanating from the United States have made the coincidences more than evident, the elites of both countries have sought to ensure that they are amply armed and financed. Israel, with an important nuclear arsenal, has sought to crush as many Arab revolutionary expressions as possible, and has also invaded its neighbors Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, annexing strategic territories such as the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Colombia’s symbiosis with the United States is such that Uribism, in government for almost 20 years, accelerated plans to maintain control of the region by installing U.S. military bases. The results are captured in the report of a member of the Fundación Proclade, promoted by the Claretian missionaries, “North American Military Bases in Colombia”, which highlights:
“Since the beginning of Plan Colombia and then Plan Patriota, the bases of Tres Esquinas and Larandia, located in the Department of Caquetá, had been used for the operation of airplanes and North American technical intelligence. From there, fumigations with glyphosate were monitored and control over the population was maintained, leading to an increase in the war and an escalation in the number of displacements. As in the case of the communities of Bajo Ariari in the Department of Meta, or the communities of Puerto Asis in Putumayo, the true intentions are evident: in these regions the military control was directed towards the civilian population, there were murders and disappearances for which the Military Forces were responsible”.
Colombia, after the so-called Plan for Peace and Strengthening of the State (aka Plan Colombia), which provided the population with less peace and less security, has moved in the opposite direction to the objective postulated by the Pastrana administration in 1998: to promote peace, economic development, increase security and put an end to illegal drug trafficking. What it has achieved is to strengthen the army, which had 35 helicopters in 1999 and reached more than 200 aircraft in 2015, after the supposed end of the plan.
The number of military personnel increased by 50 thousand soldiers and 80 thousand new members were incorporated to the National Police, which depends on the Ministry of Defense even though its function is supposedly civilian.
Eduardo Giordano affirms that after the peace agreement, the Pentagon sought to have the Colombian military replace its marines by establishing links between Plan Colombia, the Merida Initiative and the Central American Regional Security Initiative. Thus, the Colombian Army has been trained in anti-guerrilla techniques by the Southern Command and, in turn, they have trained forces from other countries such as the Joint Task Force (FTC) of the Paraguayan army.
This support coincided with the massacre of two Argentinean girls of 12 and 11 years old respectively last November, who were housed in a camp of the Paraguayan People’s Army (EPP), a guerrilla organization formed in 2006 that gained a foothold in some rural territories after the legislative coup against former president Fernando Lugo in 2012. President Abdo Benítez, in the style of any recent Colombian government, reported them as casualties of the guerrilla forces in combat.
Gendarmes of looting
Multiple investigations relate the results of the militarization of the enclave that Colombia has become, how it has focused on rural territories and its correlation with extractive interests, that is, with the ordering of the world according to the plundering appetite of the Global North.
The resistance of rural populations, expressed in peasant, indigenous and Afro-Colombian struggles, is fought with blood and fire by the Colombian State which, like the gendarme of a great mine, imposes a regime of terror that orders the primary accumulation of capital, both from monoculture (including coca), mining and extensive cattle ranching.
According to Oxfam, Colombia is a country where 1% of landowners own 81% of the land, while the remaining 19% -which produces 78% of the food- is distributed among 99% of small landowners; militarization has intensified the concentration of rural property, paramilitarism and forced displacement.
In the Catatumbo region of the Department of Norte de Santander alone, bordering Venezuela and with the greatest extension of coca crops, there are 9,200 members of the Armed Forces (without adding the police) and almost 300,000 people. This means one soldier for every 33 inhabitants.
This does not translate into security for the communities. The Indepaz Foundation geo-referenced the risk for both social leaders and opposition politicians, and found that it is greater in the territories with a higher concentration of military and concluded that the most violent municipalities for organized society are in Catatumbo, Cauca and Arauca.
In parallel, the government of Iván Duque has sustained the war to maintain the authoritarian and genocidal policies of his mentor Álvaro Uribe on the pretext of an internal enemy, has done everything to sabotage the opportunity to eradicate war as a political code in Colombia.
He has failed to comply with the peace agreement, particularly the integral rural reform that allowed the expropriation of lands from the big landowners to give them to the peasants, who could recover them and return to their territories. It has inverted the logic of the Alienation of the Right of Domain, a legal figure included in the 1992 Constitution in order to expropriate land from the large landowners and give it to the peasants, putting more and more land in the hands of transnationals through internal displacement.
Indigenous communities have mobilized to demand that Duque’s pro-Uribe government concretely resolve the violence and displacement in their territories (Photo: La República).
In addition, in August 2020 he signed the Free Trade Agreement between Colombia and Israel, which has been criticized by various sectors, including the BDS organization, because it violates International Humanitarian Law. Four of the 312 Israeli companies that exported their products to Colombia between August 2014 and August 2015 have their headquarters in territories illegally occupied by Israel since 1967, and therefore, more than coincidence, it is a coexistence based on dispossession and subordination.
Colombian exports are lower than those of Israel, which would generate unequal competition. In telecommunications, Colombia would open up to Israeli companies, while Israel would be closed to the participation of Colombian companies in its market.
Official documents from the Ministry of Commerce confirm the increase in imports of arms and military equipment, which was 49.6% in 2010, and with the treaty, they assure that imports will grow more easily, which may affect the already complicated transition to the country’s post-conflict.
1 Ago 2021, 11:33 am.
Militarization as a tool for the management of plunder and regional destabilization is common in both imperial enclaves (Photo: Oliver Ehmig).
It has long been said that Colombia is the Israel of Latin America, this statement has been made by different analysts and political figures, especially when in the last decade it has deepened its role as a U.S. base that serves as an experiment and focus for destabilization in the region.
A number of military bases have been located in that country that have served as counterinsurgency units, because as far as drug trafficking is concerned, they have clearly and conclusively failed. Just look at this week’s news regarding the coordination between some high-ranking army officers and narco-paramilitary groups, in particular protecting the actions of Clan Barros, a Guajira clan allied with the Gulf Clan dedicated to drug trafficking and gasoline smuggling in the departments of Guajira, Cesar, Magdalena, Atlántico and southern Bolivar.
Colombia is the first supplier of cocaine to the United States, every year it beats its own record as a producer of the narcotic, and this fact is closely linked to two aspects in which its coincidence with Israel is absolute: war as a permanent mechanism of an elite to exercise supremacy and the paramilitarization of this mechanism.
However, in the area of drug trafficking, which today is vital to the capitalist economy, the two imperial enclaves are not similar. In this “division of labor” they do not play the same role because Colombia provides the raw material while Israel provides the weapons and genocidal strategies to protect production.
Enclaves of imperial control and battering rams of militarization
Both enclaves have the mission of imposing the war waged by the United States on Latin America and West Asia respectively. In the case of the neighboring country and its Plan Colombia, the failure has been evident because the real objectives of “preventing the flow of illegal drugs to the United States” were not achieved.
The only achievement was to weaken the FARC guerrilla movement by implementing various strategies to the point of incubating a counterinsurgency model that could be applied in other latitudes such as Mexico or Afghanistan, where the results have been as disastrous, if not more so.
The militarization of Colombian society has had a greater impact on the guerrilla insurgency and the political opposition to neoliberalism than on drug trafficking, whose numbers are increasing relentlessly (Photo: AP Photo).
Meanwhile, a State that emerged on the basis of the violent expulsion of the Palestinian population that had inhabited that territory for many centuries, called “Israel”, carries out repression and the world’s largest weapons tests in an open-air laboratory in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. There it holds a captive population of several million Palestinians while claiming that it is the resistance movements that are carrying out its kidnappings.
Their origins are dissimilar, but the corporate plans emanating from the United States have made the coincidences more than evident, the elites of both countries have sought to ensure that they are amply armed and financed. Israel, with an important nuclear arsenal, has sought to crush as many Arab revolutionary expressions as possible, and has also invaded its neighbors Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, annexing strategic territories such as the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Colombia’s symbiosis with the United States is such that Uribism, in government for almost 20 years, accelerated plans to maintain control of the region by installing U.S. military bases. The results are captured in the report of a member of the Fundación Proclade, promoted by the Claretian missionaries, “North American Military Bases in Colombia”, which highlights:
“Since the beginning of Plan Colombia and then Plan Patriota, the bases of Tres Esquinas and Larandia, located in the Department of Caquetá, had been used for the operation of airplanes and North American technical intelligence. From there, fumigations with glyphosate were monitored and control over the population was maintained, leading to an increase in the war and an escalation in the number of displacements. As in the case of the communities of Bajo Ariari in the Department of Meta, or the communities of Puerto Asis in Putumayo, the true intentions are evident: in these regions the military control was directed towards the civilian population, there were murders and disappearances for which the Military Forces were responsible”.
Colombia, after the so-called Plan for Peace and Strengthening of the State (aka Plan Colombia), which provided the population with less peace and less security, has moved in the opposite direction to the objective postulated by the Pastrana administration in 1998: to promote peace, economic development, increase security and put an end to illegal drug trafficking. What it has achieved is to strengthen the army, which had 35 helicopters in 1999 and reached more than 200 aircraft in 2015, after the supposed end of the plan.
The number of military personnel increased by 50 thousand soldiers and 80 thousand new members were incorporated to the National Police, which depends on the Ministry of Defense even though its function is supposedly civilian.
Eduardo Giordano affirms that after the peace agreement, the Pentagon sought to have the Colombian military replace its marines by establishing links between Plan Colombia, the Merida Initiative and the Central American Regional Security Initiative. Thus, the Colombian Army has been trained in anti-guerrilla techniques by the Southern Command and, in turn, they have trained forces from other countries such as the Joint Task Force (FTC) of the Paraguayan army.
This support coincided with the massacre of two Argentinean girls of 12 and 11 years old respectively last November, who were housed in a camp of the Paraguayan People’s Army (EPP), a guerrilla organization formed in 2006 that gained a foothold in some rural territories after the legislative coup against former president Fernando Lugo in 2012. President Abdo Benítez, in the style of any recent Colombian government, reported them as casualties of the guerrilla forces in combat.
Gendarmes of looting
Multiple investigations relate the results of the militarization of the enclave that Colombia has become, how it has focused on rural territories and its correlation with extractive interests, that is, with the ordering of the world according to the plundering appetite of the Global North.
The resistance of rural populations, expressed in peasant, indigenous and Afro-Colombian struggles, is fought with blood and fire by the Colombian State which, like the gendarme of a great mine, imposes a regime of terror that orders the primary accumulation of capital, both from monoculture (including coca), mining and extensive cattle ranching.
According to Oxfam, Colombia is a country where 1% of landowners own 81% of the land, while the remaining 19% -which produces 78% of the food- is distributed among 99% of small landowners; militarization has intensified the concentration of rural property, paramilitarism and forced displacement.
In the Catatumbo region of the Department of Norte de Santander alone, bordering Venezuela and with the greatest extension of coca crops, there are 9,200 members of the Armed Forces (without adding the police) and almost 300,000 people. This means one soldier for every 33 inhabitants.
This does not translate into security for the communities. The Indepaz Foundation geo-referenced the risk for both social leaders and opposition politicians, and found that it is greater in the territories with a higher concentration of military and concluded that the most violent municipalities for organized society are in Catatumbo, Cauca and Arauca.
In parallel, the government of Iván Duque has sustained the war to maintain the authoritarian and genocidal policies of his mentor Álvaro Uribe on the pretext of an internal enemy, has done everything to sabotage the opportunity to eradicate war as a political code in Colombia.
He has failed to comply with the peace agreement, particularly the integral rural reform that allowed the expropriation of lands from the big landowners to give them to the peasants, who could recover them and return to their territories. It has inverted the logic of the Alienation of the Right of Domain, a legal figure included in the 1992 Constitution in order to expropriate land from the large landowners and give it to the peasants, putting more and more land in the hands of transnationals through internal displacement.
Indigenous communities have mobilized to demand that Duque’s pro-Uribe government concretely resolve the violence and displacement in their territories (Photo: La República).
In addition, in August 2020 he signed the Free Trade Agreement between Colombia and Israel, which has been criticized by various sectors, including the BDS organization, because it violates International Humanitarian Law. Four of the 312 Israeli companies that exported their products to Colombia between August 2014 and August 2015 have their headquarters in territories illegally occupied by Israel since 1967, and therefore, more than coincidence, it is a coexistence based on dispossession and subordination.
Colombian exports are lower than those of Israel, which would generate unequal competition. In telecommunications, Colombia would open up to Israeli companies, while Israel would be closed to the participation of Colombian companies in its market.
Official documents from the Ministry of Commerce confirm the increase in imports of arms and military equipment, which was 49.6% in 2010, and with the treaty, they assure that imports will grow more easily, which may affect the already complicated transition to the country’s post-conflict.
Peace agreements as an impetus for more extermination
Another coincidence (or coexistence) is that, in both countries, the dialogue is only a way to gain time to organize the extermination of whoever resists the plunder and occupation. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), founded in 1969 as a representation of a nation without territory, Palestine, sought to unify those living in the occupied territories and refugee camps.
Since its birth, it claimed a democratic, secular and non-racist Palestine, and its leader Yasser Arafat, after years of leading the resistance against the Zionist entity, accepted UN Resolution 242 recognizing its existence as the State of Israel; later he also agreed to negotiate the Oslo Accords.
In these agreements, signed in 1993 between Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, US President Bill Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, it was agreed to create a Palestinian state limited to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which only exists under a limited administration of the current Palestinian National Authority (PNA), in a West Bank occupied by Zionist troops and their illegal colonies.
While Arafat was poisoned with polonium-210, the two-state policy did not prevent the process of forced displacement of the Palestinian people, but rather Israel has tried to occupy all the territory of historic Palestine.
In Colombia, according to data presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Colombian State produced 6,000 victims following a peace agreement signed in 1985 between the then conservative president, Belisario Betancur, and the FARC to put an end to almost three decades of armed conflict. At the same time that the negotiations were advancing, members of the Patriotic Union (UP), as the political formation was called, made up of former guerrillas, communists, trade unionists, community action boards and leftist intellectuals, were being murdered or forced to flee.
Assassinations, disappearances, torture, forced displacements and other outrages contributed to the figure. Between May 1984 and December 2002, at least 4,153 full members of the party were murdered. This figure includes 2 presidential candidates, 14 parliamentarians, 15 mayors, 9 mayoral candidates, 3 members of the House of Representatives and 3 senators. Not a month went by without a murder or disappearance of a militant.
Within 14 months of Liberal Virgilio Barco Vargas assuming the presidency, in May 1986, some 400 members of the UP were assassinated. Journalist Dan Cohen cites an investigation by Colombian journalist Alberto Donadio that claims that the “Baile Rojo” was masterminded by Barco Vargas, implementing a plan drawn up by the decorated Israeli spy Rafael “Rafi” Eitan.
The mass extermination of pacified opposition groups is a story that repeats itself within Colombia but is also common to Israel (Photo: Archive).
Since the signing of the 2016 peace agreement until today there have been 1 thousand 219 murders of social leaders with a high concentration in the most militarized areas. In addition, 278 signatories of the peace agreement have been murdered and 400 former combatants still remain in prison, to whom the agreed amnesty has not been applied.
Nor are the committed development plans, which would allow former combatants to integrate into civil society, being implemented. Reintegration has stopped the persecution, imprisonment and killing, but it does not allow them to survive for integration.
Mercenaries: Lethal Weapons for Hire
Another coincidence (or coexistence) is the export of “human talent” for war. In 2019, the Israeli daily Haaretz revealed that Israeli officials were training foreign mercenaries mostly Colombians and Nepalese in camps financed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the Negev desert, located in the southern occupied territories. The mission was to participate in the aggression launched in March 2015 against Yemen, in which the Saudi coalition had left, until last December, some 233 thousand dead according to the UN, mostly due to “indirect causes” such as malnutrition because of the naval blockade supported by the United States.
Another Israeli arrived in Colombia to “train” manpower for supposed security, Yair Klein, who trained narco-paramilitaries on how to defeat the FARC. From former Israeli police and special operations units, the retired military officer founded a mercenary company called Hod Hahanit (Spearhead) in 1984.
In his research Cohen relates how Hod Hahanit supported the “notoriously brutal” Christian Phalangist militias that massacred between 800 and 3,500 Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Chatila camps under direct Israeli military supervision in September 1982.
In Colombia, Klein trained the brothers Carlos and Fidel Castaño, the leaders of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) financed by landowners, drug traffickers, cattle ranchers, politicians and Colombian military, responsible for massacres in which chainsaws were used to murder and dismember peasants, to the point that the UN estimated in 2016 that they were responsible for 80% of the deaths in the conflict.
The AUC were promoted by the Colombian oligarchy and their training underpinned by Yair Klein, retired Israeli officer whom the Zionist entity refuses to give in extradition for the murder of Luis Carlos Galán (Photo: Pedro Ugarte / AFP)
The AUC was promoted by the Colombian landowning oligarchy and its training underpinned by Yair Klein, a retired Israeli officer whom the Zionist entity refuses to extradite for the murder of Luis Carlos Galán.
He told the BBC in 2012 that he had direct support for his work with the paramilitaries from the army and other Colombian state institutions, as well as funding from someone who would later become the country’s president. “It was one of the landowners in the area, who financed me, like all the landowners, so that I could do the training at that time,” he said.
He also trained Jaime Eduardo Rueda Rocha, material author of the assassination of the presidential candidate of the Liberal Party, Luis Carlos Galán, the great favorite to win the elections. He imported the Israeli-made weapon used from Miami and remains in Israel, where the authorities refuse to hand him over to Colombia for extradition.
The clearest example of where all these coincidences are heading is the announcement by John Kirby, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Defense, who confirmed that the Pentagon trained at least seven of the 23 former Colombian military personnel who participated in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise on July 7.
Although the warmongering bureaucrat refused to provide the names of those involved, he affirmed that, being active military personnel, they participated in “training courses” which, according to him, were not aimed at encouraging events such as those that took place in Haiti.
A paramilitary network protected and encouraged by the Colombian State, such as the so-called “security companies”, participated directly in the assassination. Colombian authorities admitted that four of them were involved.
Five Americans of Haitian origin, those in charge of the surveillance of the president and a Haitian doctor residing in Florida participated in the operation in which the mercenaries were recruited by Anthony Intriago, a Venezuelan anti-Chavista representative of CTU Security LLC, and Alfred Santamaría, a Colombian close to Uribe and Duque.
Intriago carried out together with the Colombian president the Live Aid Venezuela concert in Cúcuta in February 2019 that sought to prepare the ground for a “humanitarian” invasion of Venezuelan territory and called the Battle of the Bridges. Recently the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, Jorge Rodriguez, announced having information linking CTU to the August 4, 2018 foiled assassination of President Nicolas Maduro.
The militarization focused on repression and extermination is functional to a concept that has privatized war, the Colombian military “human talent” is trained for these objectives and is cheap labor, or weapons for hire. The military forces have up to 220 thousand troops and thousands of them retire due to lack of promotion opportunities, misconduct or after 20 years of service.
Regarding Venezuela, in addition to the 153 paramilitaries captured in 2004 when, with the proven support of the Uribe government, a plan was hatched from Colombia to assassinate then President Hugo Chávez.
Recently, Israeli mercenaries participated in Operation Gideon against the Venezuelan government, the operation with full participation of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was articulated by Venezuelan Major Juvenal Sequea Torres, both for the entry of mercenaries into Venezuelan territory and to stop the kidnapping and transfer out of the country of the President and Congressman Diosdado Cabello.
Ruling No. 89 of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice states that “Two platoons of Israeli commandos would participate in the mercenary group, who are in the Caribbean Sea aboard the US IV Fleet under the direction of Admiral Craig Faller (…) justifying the Operation according to the unfounded accusations against the Venezuelan State as a Narco State”.
Neither republics nor democracies
The transformation of Colombia into an imperialist enclave is aimed at the deconfiguration of regional stability and integration. Its impact is already beginning to be seen in the assassination carried out in Haiti, which has sought to deepen the crisis of a country on the verge of total collapse.
Within Colombia, the rural population are exploited, oppressed and displaced with methods that resemble the apartheid applied by Israel against the Palestinians. In addition to being expelled, the population has been stripped of its basic rights, making them second or third class citizens within their own country.
The notion of State that sustains both countries is based on their being war machines at the service of political-economic networks that exercise hegemony to the detriment of impoverished sectors. This is achieved through territorial displacement, a fundamental tool.
The coexistence of Colombia and Israel, today, is only justified by war and the plundering of resources. It is not about national identity, much less about republican or democratic values: it is about accumulation by dispossession in its pure essence.
Enclaves, Mercenaries and Exterminations: The Common Ground between Colombia and Israel
Another coincidence (or coexistence) is that, in both countries, the dialogue is only a way to gain time to organize the extermination of whoever resists the plunder and occupation. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), founded in 1969 as a representation of a nation without territory, Palestine, sought to unify those living in the occupied territories and refugee camps.
Since its birth, it claimed a democratic, secular and non-racist Palestine, and its leader Yasser Arafat, after years of leading the resistance against the Zionist entity, accepted UN Resolution 242 recognizing its existence as the State of Israel; later he also agreed to negotiate the Oslo Accords.
In these agreements, signed in 1993 between Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, US President Bill Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, it was agreed to create a Palestinian state limited to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which only exists under a limited administration of the current Palestinian National Authority (PNA), in a West Bank occupied by Zionist troops and their illegal colonies.
While Arafat was poisoned with polonium-210, the two-state policy did not prevent the process of forced displacement of the Palestinian people, but rather Israel has tried to occupy all the territory of historic Palestine.
In Colombia, according to data presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Colombian State produced 6,000 victims following a peace agreement signed in 1985 between the then conservative president, Belisario Betancur, and the FARC to put an end to almost three decades of armed conflict. At the same time that the negotiations were advancing, members of the Patriotic Union (UP), as the political formation was called, made up of former guerrillas, communists, trade unionists, community action boards and leftist intellectuals, were being murdered or forced to flee.
Assassinations, disappearances, torture, forced displacements and other outrages contributed to the figure. Between May 1984 and December 2002, at least 4,153 full members of the party were murdered. This figure includes 2 presidential candidates, 14 parliamentarians, 15 mayors, 9 mayoral candidates, 3 members of the House of Representatives and 3 senators. Not a month went by without a murder or disappearance of a militant.
Within 14 months of Liberal Virgilio Barco Vargas assuming the presidency, in May 1986, some 400 members of the UP were assassinated. Journalist Dan Cohen cites an investigation by Colombian journalist Alberto Donadio that claims that the “Baile Rojo” was masterminded by Barco Vargas, implementing a plan drawn up by the decorated Israeli spy Rafael “Rafi” Eitan.
The mass extermination of pacified opposition groups is a story that repeats itself within Colombia but is also common to Israel (Photo: Archive).
Since the signing of the 2016 peace agreement until today there have been 1 thousand 219 murders of social leaders with a high concentration in the most militarized areas. In addition, 278 signatories of the peace agreement have been murdered and 400 former combatants still remain in prison, to whom the agreed amnesty has not been applied.
Nor are the committed development plans, which would allow former combatants to integrate into civil society, being implemented. Reintegration has stopped the persecution, imprisonment and killing, but it does not allow them to survive for integration.
Mercenaries: Lethal Weapons for Hire
Another coincidence (or coexistence) is the export of “human talent” for war. In 2019, the Israeli daily Haaretz revealed that Israeli officials were training foreign mercenaries mostly Colombians and Nepalese in camps financed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the Negev desert, located in the southern occupied territories. The mission was to participate in the aggression launched in March 2015 against Yemen, in which the Saudi coalition had left, until last December, some 233 thousand dead according to the UN, mostly due to “indirect causes” such as malnutrition because of the naval blockade supported by the United States.
Another Israeli arrived in Colombia to “train” manpower for supposed security, Yair Klein, who trained narco-paramilitaries on how to defeat the FARC. From former Israeli police and special operations units, the retired military officer founded a mercenary company called Hod Hahanit (Spearhead) in 1984.
In his research Cohen relates how Hod Hahanit supported the “notoriously brutal” Christian Phalangist militias that massacred between 800 and 3,500 Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Chatila camps under direct Israeli military supervision in September 1982.
In Colombia, Klein trained the brothers Carlos and Fidel Castaño, the leaders of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) financed by landowners, drug traffickers, cattle ranchers, politicians and Colombian military, responsible for massacres in which chainsaws were used to murder and dismember peasants, to the point that the UN estimated in 2016 that they were responsible for 80% of the deaths in the conflict.
The AUC were promoted by the Colombian oligarchy and their training underpinned by Yair Klein, retired Israeli officer whom the Zionist entity refuses to give in extradition for the murder of Luis Carlos Galán (Photo: Pedro Ugarte / AFP)
The AUC was promoted by the Colombian landowning oligarchy and its training underpinned by Yair Klein, a retired Israeli officer whom the Zionist entity refuses to extradite for the murder of Luis Carlos Galán.
He told the BBC in 2012 that he had direct support for his work with the paramilitaries from the army and other Colombian state institutions, as well as funding from someone who would later become the country’s president. “It was one of the landowners in the area, who financed me, like all the landowners, so that I could do the training at that time,” he said.
He also trained Jaime Eduardo Rueda Rocha, material author of the assassination of the presidential candidate of the Liberal Party, Luis Carlos Galán, the great favorite to win the elections. He imported the Israeli-made weapon used from Miami and remains in Israel, where the authorities refuse to hand him over to Colombia for extradition.
The clearest example of where all these coincidences are heading is the announcement by John Kirby, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Defense, who confirmed that the Pentagon trained at least seven of the 23 former Colombian military personnel who participated in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise on July 7.
Although the warmongering bureaucrat refused to provide the names of those involved, he affirmed that, being active military personnel, they participated in “training courses” which, according to him, were not aimed at encouraging events such as those that took place in Haiti.
A paramilitary network protected and encouraged by the Colombian State, such as the so-called “security companies”, participated directly in the assassination. Colombian authorities admitted that four of them were involved.
Five Americans of Haitian origin, those in charge of the surveillance of the president and a Haitian doctor residing in Florida participated in the operation in which the mercenaries were recruited by Anthony Intriago, a Venezuelan anti-Chavista representative of CTU Security LLC, and Alfred Santamaría, a Colombian close to Uribe and Duque.
Intriago carried out together with the Colombian president the Live Aid Venezuela concert in Cúcuta in February 2019 that sought to prepare the ground for a “humanitarian” invasion of Venezuelan territory and called the Battle of the Bridges. Recently the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, Jorge Rodriguez, announced having information linking CTU to the August 4, 2018 foiled assassination of President Nicolas Maduro.
The militarization focused on repression and extermination is functional to a concept that has privatized war, the Colombian military “human talent” is trained for these objectives and is cheap labor, or weapons for hire. The military forces have up to 220 thousand troops and thousands of them retire due to lack of promotion opportunities, misconduct or after 20 years of service.
Regarding Venezuela, in addition to the 153 paramilitaries captured in 2004 when, with the proven support of the Uribe government, a plan was hatched from Colombia to assassinate then President Hugo Chávez.
Recently, Israeli mercenaries participated in Operation Gideon against the Venezuelan government, the operation with full participation of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was articulated by Venezuelan Major Juvenal Sequea Torres, both for the entry of mercenaries into Venezuelan territory and to stop the kidnapping and transfer out of the country of the President and Congressman Diosdado Cabello.
Ruling No. 89 of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice states that “Two platoons of Israeli commandos would participate in the mercenary group, who are in the Caribbean Sea aboard the US IV Fleet under the direction of Admiral Craig Faller (…) justifying the Operation according to the unfounded accusations against the Venezuelan State as a Narco State”.
Neither republics nor democracies
The transformation of Colombia into an imperialist enclave is aimed at the deconfiguration of regional stability and integration. Its impact is already beginning to be seen in the assassination carried out in Haiti, which has sought to deepen the crisis of a country on the verge of total collapse.
Within Colombia, the rural population are exploited, oppressed and displaced with methods that resemble the apartheid applied by Israel against the Palestinians. In addition to being expelled, the population has been stripped of its basic rights, making them second or third class citizens within their own country.
The notion of State that sustains both countries is based on their being war machines at the service of political-economic networks that exercise hegemony to the detriment of impoverished sectors. This is achieved through territorial displacement, a fundamental tool.
The coexistence of Colombia and Israel, today, is only justified by war and the plundering of resources. It is not about national identity, much less about republican or democratic values: it is about accumulation by dispossession in its pure essence.
Enclaves, Mercenaries and Exterminations: The Common Ground between Colombia and Israel
La Paz Coca Growers Displaced by Violent Groups: Interview
October 6, 2021
A right-wing minority faction of the coca growers association in the Yungas region of La Paz violently seized control of the official coca market in La Paz known as ADEPCOCA, on Monday. Their first move was to remove the indigenous wiphala flag.
The pro-MAS majority have been displaced from their headquarters after weeks of armed protests by the right-wing minority. We spoke to the former President of ADEPCOCA, Elena Flores. Flores is an Afro-Bolivian leader who was jailed by the Añez dictatorship.
Context
Bolivia has two legal coca-growing regions, the Trópico of Cochabamba, where Evo Morales comes from. The other is the Yungas region of La Paz. Both regions are bastions of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS). This year, MAS candidates won every single mayoral race in both regions.
In the Trópico, the opposition has no presence at all. However, in the Yungas region, there is a violent right-wing minority faction that held a rally for Fernando Camachoduring the 2019 coup and joined the failed election campaign of ex-dictator Jeanine Añez. On Monday, that minority faction seized control of the coca market in La Paz, known as ADEPCOCA, by force. The majority and minority factions have been fighting for control of the market for years due to the large revenues it brings in.
The right-wing faction took full control under the Añez dictatorship and they banned the MAS-supporting campesinos from selling their produce, leading to a spike in poverty within the region. When the coup was defeated by the landslide electoral victory of Luis Arce, ADEPCOCA returned to the majority. Flores immediately called fresh elections which were to be organized by the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) to ensure transparency. The far-right minority refused to participate and instead chose to violently seize the building of ADEPCOCA, this follows months of armed violence by this group which includes the murder of a police officer in July.
Below is our interview with Elena Flores on Tuesday, October 5th.
Former President of ADEPCOCA, Elena Flores. Archive: ABI, April 2021.
How did this conflict get out of hand? Why didn’t the right-wing faction accept your proposal for independently organized elections?
Well, their leader Armin Lluta is a self-declared leader, he’s never been elected for any position within ADEPCOCA, he’s only ever tried to seize control undemocratically in a capricious manner. He’s been organizing the external financing for this faction. He was present at our initiatives to organize dialogue, but they didn’t want that to work.
Clearly, there is a split within the Yungas. We have 17 regional branches within the real ADEPCOCA, and the Lluta group has created their own parallel-group within their own 17 branches. The bases want unity for the whole Yungas region, but Lluta wants the opposition to take control of the institution. Why? The Bolivian opposition has lost everything, they lost the elections last year, but if they can seize ADEPCOCA then they obtain an important base of social and economic power, our institution has 40,000 members who sell their coca through here. They want to neutralize this bastion of struggle and turn it into a base from which to attack the government. They claim that the government was getting involved in our internal affairs, but that’s false, all they’ve done is protect the building from violence.
KN: Who are the violent protesters who’ve stolen ADEPCOCA? What were they doing last year during the dictatorship?
The majority of them are people who’ve always been opposed to the MAS, but we fought hard last year to prove that we are the majority and in the 2020 elections the MAS won by a huge majority in the Yungas region. They lost the elections, but they didn’t give up, they began a misinformation campaign with the aim of seizing ADEPCOCA for a small handful of individuals. They think they can get ahead by trampling on others.
We fought so hard last year to win back our institutions for the majority. I was jailed by Añez, MAS supporting coca growers were banned from selling their produce by this group who’ve now taken back power (of the market). They’ve assaulted us. I remember how in 2019 the day before the coup, they went around looting the produce of MAS supporters on Calle 10.
We didn’t do that to them, we always allowed everyone to sell coca without political discrimination. We have to reflect on how we got here, and hopefully, a new generation of leaders can emerge from the Yungas.
KN: They also held a rally for Fernando Camacho and joined Añez’s failed election campaign.
Yes, when the people of the Yungas were suffering under the coup, this group was celebrating and rallying for Camacho. Their leader at the time, Franklin Gutierrez, now has to answer for his role in the coup, but now he’ll be coming back to ADEPCOCA surely. They don’t want the government involved in ADEPCOCA, but the government has every right, and responsibility, to supervise what goes on, in terms of eradicating illicit production and sales and other important things. Why don’t they want the government involved in that?
I’m sure they feel like victors today, they’ll want to once again use ADEPCOCA to launch a coup, but we won’t allow that. We recognize that we’ve been naive and complacent since we’re in government. We need to do an internal analysis about how to rebuild. We have elected representatives in Congress and at other levels, so those people need to now lead the way in helping to put the Yungas back on its feet.
KN: Every single Municipality in the Yungas region has an elected MAS mayor. Surely it will be possible to rebuild after this defeat?
It’s definitely possible, but we have to reevaluate things. After years in power, we grew complacent and many weren’t worried about the threats we faced. Our people are very innocent (naive) sometimes. Yesterday, all of our supporters were rallied and only had a bag of coca each, nothing to defend themselves with, and we got assaulted by the right-wing mobs that were armed to the teeth.
Their group celebrates saying they’ve ‘seized’ ADEPCOCA, well no one seizes something that is rightfully one’s own, if you seize something that means it doesn’t belong to you. Seizing an institution in this violent manner is illegal and even they recognize it when they talk about ‘seizing’ the market.
We’ve won every single mayoral race in the Yungas region, but those mayors haven’t wanted to get involved and have tried to work with all sides. That approach is coming from the government itself, but here are the results of that. This is the result of not being strong and defending ourselves, many comrades are disappointed at how we struggled for democracy against the coup, but now many authorities have been too cautious and haven’t supported us against the right in a strong enough way.
Let’s see what happens. The last time these right-wing groups held power, they wielded it in a vengeful way to persecute us as the majority, hopefully, that won’t return. I’m certain that I won’t be able to sell my own produce again, they’ll ban me as revenge. Let’s see, ADEPCOCA is an incredibly important institution for the region so let’s hope it doesn’t fall into the abyss.
La Paz Coca Growers Displaced by Violent Groups: Interview
October 6, 2021
A right-wing minority faction of the coca growers association in the Yungas region of La Paz violently seized control of the official coca market in La Paz known as ADEPCOCA, on Monday. Their first move was to remove the indigenous wiphala flag.
The pro-MAS majority have been displaced from their headquarters after weeks of armed protests by the right-wing minority. We spoke to the former President of ADEPCOCA, Elena Flores. Flores is an Afro-Bolivian leader who was jailed by the Añez dictatorship.
Context
Bolivia has two legal coca-growing regions, the Trópico of Cochabamba, where Evo Morales comes from. The other is the Yungas region of La Paz. Both regions are bastions of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS). This year, MAS candidates won every single mayoral race in both regions.
In the Trópico, the opposition has no presence at all. However, in the Yungas region, there is a violent right-wing minority faction that held a rally for Fernando Camachoduring the 2019 coup and joined the failed election campaign of ex-dictator Jeanine Añez. On Monday, that minority faction seized control of the coca market in La Paz, known as ADEPCOCA, by force. The majority and minority factions have been fighting for control of the market for years due to the large revenues it brings in.
The right-wing faction took full control under the Añez dictatorship and they banned the MAS-supporting campesinos from selling their produce, leading to a spike in poverty within the region. When the coup was defeated by the landslide electoral victory of Luis Arce, ADEPCOCA returned to the majority. Flores immediately called fresh elections which were to be organized by the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) to ensure transparency. The far-right minority refused to participate and instead chose to violently seize the building of ADEPCOCA, this follows months of armed violence by this group which includes the murder of a police officer in July.
Below is our interview with Elena Flores on Tuesday, October 5th.
Former President of ADEPCOCA, Elena Flores. Archive: ABI, April 2021.
How did this conflict get out of hand? Why didn’t the right-wing faction accept your proposal for independently organized elections?
Well, their leader Armin Lluta is a self-declared leader, he’s never been elected for any position within ADEPCOCA, he’s only ever tried to seize control undemocratically in a capricious manner. He’s been organizing the external financing for this faction. He was present at our initiatives to organize dialogue, but they didn’t want that to work.
Clearly, there is a split within the Yungas. We have 17 regional branches within the real ADEPCOCA, and the Lluta group has created their own parallel-group within their own 17 branches. The bases want unity for the whole Yungas region, but Lluta wants the opposition to take control of the institution. Why? The Bolivian opposition has lost everything, they lost the elections last year, but if they can seize ADEPCOCA then they obtain an important base of social and economic power, our institution has 40,000 members who sell their coca through here. They want to neutralize this bastion of struggle and turn it into a base from which to attack the government. They claim that the government was getting involved in our internal affairs, but that’s false, all they’ve done is protect the building from violence.
KN: Who are the violent protesters who’ve stolen ADEPCOCA? What were they doing last year during the dictatorship?
The majority of them are people who’ve always been opposed to the MAS, but we fought hard last year to prove that we are the majority and in the 2020 elections the MAS won by a huge majority in the Yungas region. They lost the elections, but they didn’t give up, they began a misinformation campaign with the aim of seizing ADEPCOCA for a small handful of individuals. They think they can get ahead by trampling on others.
We fought so hard last year to win back our institutions for the majority. I was jailed by Añez, MAS supporting coca growers were banned from selling their produce by this group who’ve now taken back power (of the market). They’ve assaulted us. I remember how in 2019 the day before the coup, they went around looting the produce of MAS supporters on Calle 10.
We didn’t do that to them, we always allowed everyone to sell coca without political discrimination. We have to reflect on how we got here, and hopefully, a new generation of leaders can emerge from the Yungas.
KN: They also held a rally for Fernando Camacho and joined Añez’s failed election campaign.
Yes, when the people of the Yungas were suffering under the coup, this group was celebrating and rallying for Camacho. Their leader at the time, Franklin Gutierrez, now has to answer for his role in the coup, but now he’ll be coming back to ADEPCOCA surely. They don’t want the government involved in ADEPCOCA, but the government has every right, and responsibility, to supervise what goes on, in terms of eradicating illicit production and sales and other important things. Why don’t they want the government involved in that?
I’m sure they feel like victors today, they’ll want to once again use ADEPCOCA to launch a coup, but we won’t allow that. We recognize that we’ve been naive and complacent since we’re in government. We need to do an internal analysis about how to rebuild. We have elected representatives in Congress and at other levels, so those people need to now lead the way in helping to put the Yungas back on its feet.
KN: Every single Municipality in the Yungas region has an elected MAS mayor. Surely it will be possible to rebuild after this defeat?
It’s definitely possible, but we have to reevaluate things. After years in power, we grew complacent and many weren’t worried about the threats we faced. Our people are very innocent (naive) sometimes. Yesterday, all of our supporters were rallied and only had a bag of coca each, nothing to defend themselves with, and we got assaulted by the right-wing mobs that were armed to the teeth.
Their group celebrates saying they’ve ‘seized’ ADEPCOCA, well no one seizes something that is rightfully one’s own, if you seize something that means it doesn’t belong to you. Seizing an institution in this violent manner is illegal and even they recognize it when they talk about ‘seizing’ the market.
We’ve won every single mayoral race in the Yungas region, but those mayors haven’t wanted to get involved and have tried to work with all sides. That approach is coming from the government itself, but here are the results of that. This is the result of not being strong and defending ourselves, many comrades are disappointed at how we struggled for democracy against the coup, but now many authorities have been too cautious and haven’t supported us against the right in a strong enough way.
Let’s see what happens. The last time these right-wing groups held power, they wielded it in a vengeful way to persecute us as the majority, hopefully, that won’t return. I’m certain that I won’t be able to sell my own produce again, they’ll ban me as revenge. Let’s see, ADEPCOCA is an incredibly important institution for the region so let’s hope it doesn’t fall into the abyss.
La Paz Coca Growers Displaced by Violent Groups: Interview
Caribbean quits the Queen
Barbados' move to a republic sparks 'domino-effect' in the Caribbean.
Written by: Leah Mahon
7th October 2021
BAJAN BLUES: Queen Elizabeth II (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
CARIBBEAN NATIONS are tipped to be leaving behind Queen Elizabeth as its head of state following Barbados’ own departure into becoming a republic later this year.
The move has sparked a “domino-effect” among other Caribbean countries left in the “Commonwealth Realms” where the Queen remains it head of state, including Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley wants to “fully leave our colonial past behind”, according to Governor-General Sandra Mason.
“This is the ultimate statement of confidence in who we are and what we are capable of achieving.”
Barbados aims to formally ditch the Queen by 1st December after the country marks their 55th anniversary of independence from Britain in November this year.
Jamaica’s opposition leader Mark Golding, of the People’s National Party (PNP), said that the Queen’s removal as head of state in the country as “fundamental to our identity and our nationhood.”
He said: “I don’t think that one could argue that we are fully independent when our head of state is somebody who lives on the other side of the Atlantic ocean and isn’t a Jamaican.”
Jamaican Governor-General Patrick Allen proposed a constitutional amendment which set out to undo the monarchy’s influence in the country.
“There is, as I understand it, bi-partisan support on the matter of removing the Queen as our Head of State in Jamaica, to having a Jamaican person as our Head of State through a non-executive presidency within the Commonwealth.”
Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness made removing the Queen as head of state a priority in his 2016 manifesto, but has yet to call a long-awaited referendum due to complex, high constitutional thresholds.
Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines are the other Caribbean countries to consider the removal of the Queen.
However, St. Vincentian voters defeated a proposal for the nation to become a republic in 2009.
At the time, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said he hoped the decision would grown a “nationalist, home-grown constitution”.
Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago and Dominica are the only Caribbean countries to to turn to republicanism.
Guyana first in 1970, four years after independence, Trinidad and Tobago removed the Queen as head of state in 1976 and Dominica in 1978.
The ongoing debate in cutting ties with the monarchy came during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement where many considered the firm’s part in colonialism and reparations.
As Barbados announced their intentions to become a republic, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said: “Regarding removing the Queen as head of state, this is a matter for the people of Jamaica. With regards to the petition for reparations, this is a matter for the Government.”
Caribbean quits the Queen
Barbados' move to a republic sparks 'domino-effect' in the Caribbean.
Written by: Leah Mahon
7th October 2021
BAJAN BLUES: Queen Elizabeth II (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
CARIBBEAN NATIONS are tipped to be leaving behind Queen Elizabeth as its head of state following Barbados’ own departure into becoming a republic later this year.
The move has sparked a “domino-effect” among other Caribbean countries left in the “Commonwealth Realms” where the Queen remains it head of state, including Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley wants to “fully leave our colonial past behind”, according to Governor-General Sandra Mason.
“This is the ultimate statement of confidence in who we are and what we are capable of achieving.”
Barbados aims to formally ditch the Queen by 1st December after the country marks their 55th anniversary of independence from Britain in November this year.
Jamaica’s opposition leader Mark Golding, of the People’s National Party (PNP), said that the Queen’s removal as head of state in the country as “fundamental to our identity and our nationhood.”
He said: “I don’t think that one could argue that we are fully independent when our head of state is somebody who lives on the other side of the Atlantic ocean and isn’t a Jamaican.”
Jamaican Governor-General Patrick Allen proposed a constitutional amendment which set out to undo the monarchy’s influence in the country.
“There is, as I understand it, bi-partisan support on the matter of removing the Queen as our Head of State in Jamaica, to having a Jamaican person as our Head of State through a non-executive presidency within the Commonwealth.”
Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness made removing the Queen as head of state a priority in his 2016 manifesto, but has yet to call a long-awaited referendum due to complex, high constitutional thresholds.
Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines are the other Caribbean countries to consider the removal of the Queen.
However, St. Vincentian voters defeated a proposal for the nation to become a republic in 2009.
At the time, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said he hoped the decision would grown a “nationalist, home-grown constitution”.
Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago and Dominica are the only Caribbean countries to to turn to republicanism.
Guyana first in 1970, four years after independence, Trinidad and Tobago removed the Queen as head of state in 1976 and Dominica in 1978.
The ongoing debate in cutting ties with the monarchy came during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement where many considered the firm’s part in colonialism and reparations.
As Barbados announced their intentions to become a republic, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said: “Regarding removing the Queen as head of state, this is a matter for the people of Jamaica. With regards to the petition for reparations, this is a matter for the Government.”
Caribbean quits the Queen
Cuba Insists on Strengthening Cooperation Relations with Africa
Cuba has graduated professionals and technicians from the 55 countries of the African Union, figures exceeding more than 30,000. Today many of them carry out important responsibilities in their countries, including Heads of Government and Ministers of several sectors. | Photo: Twitter/@siempreconcuba
Published 7 October 2021
The president of the National Assembly of People's Power (Parliament) of Cuba, Esteban Lazo, insisted today on the need to strengthen cooperation relations with Africa for the sake of both peoples.
On speaking at the 7th African Continental Meeting of Solidarity with Cuba, the president of the Council of State also called for closer and more dynamic ties between the legislative bodies of those territories, based on exchanges of information, experiences and consultations.
Lazo thanked the participants in the event for supporting the fight against the US economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba for almost six decades, tightened with 243 coercive measures amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
RELATED: President of Cuba: Africa Deserves Global Solidarity
He also pointed out that Cuba has admiration, affection and respect for that continent "to which we are united by deep historical, cultural, solidarity and sisterhood ties."
The president of the Parliament recalled that over 1.2 million Africans had arrived in Cuba torn away from their land by slave traders, which was fundamental in the formation of the Cuban nationality.
In addition, Lazo underscored the participation of Afro-descendants in Cuba's independence efforts and the honor it meant for the country to have the opportunity to fight against colonialism and racism in that region in the second half of the 20th century.
"Excited to participate in friendship meeting with Africa "The footprints of those who walk together." Cuba needs #Africa, of which we are part. Its heroes are stars in the #RevolucionCubana. We appreciate solidarity with #Cuba and support the claim to end the #Blockade."
"We are certain that we will always be able to count on the solidarity of our African brothers and sisters," he emphasized.
The Continental Meeting, arranged by the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, was to be held in Mozambique in November 2021, but due to COVID-19, it will be held online through the Jitsi Meet platform.
The meeting has strengthened ties; those present will ratify their rejection of Washington's hostile policy against Cuba and pay tribute to Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara, internationalist symbols in the struggles for independence of the peoples.
Cuba Insists on Strengthening Cooperation Relations with Africa
Cuba has graduated professionals and technicians from the 55 countries of the African Union, figures exceeding more than 30,000. Today many of them carry out important responsibilities in their countries, including Heads of Government and Ministers of several sectors. | Photo: Twitter/@siempreconcuba
Published 7 October 2021
The president of the National Assembly of People's Power (Parliament) of Cuba, Esteban Lazo, insisted today on the need to strengthen cooperation relations with Africa for the sake of both peoples.
On speaking at the 7th African Continental Meeting of Solidarity with Cuba, the president of the Council of State also called for closer and more dynamic ties between the legislative bodies of those territories, based on exchanges of information, experiences and consultations.
Lazo thanked the participants in the event for supporting the fight against the US economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba for almost six decades, tightened with 243 coercive measures amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
RELATED: President of Cuba: Africa Deserves Global Solidarity
He also pointed out that Cuba has admiration, affection and respect for that continent "to which we are united by deep historical, cultural, solidarity and sisterhood ties."
The president of the Parliament recalled that over 1.2 million Africans had arrived in Cuba torn away from their land by slave traders, which was fundamental in the formation of the Cuban nationality.
In addition, Lazo underscored the participation of Afro-descendants in Cuba's independence efforts and the honor it meant for the country to have the opportunity to fight against colonialism and racism in that region in the second half of the 20th century.
"Excited to participate in friendship meeting with Africa "The footprints of those who walk together." Cuba needs #Africa, of which we are part. Its heroes are stars in the #RevolucionCubana. We appreciate solidarity with #Cuba and support the claim to end the #Blockade."
"We are certain that we will always be able to count on the solidarity of our African brothers and sisters," he emphasized.
The Continental Meeting, arranged by the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, was to be held in Mozambique in November 2021, but due to COVID-19, it will be held online through the Jitsi Meet platform.
The meeting has strengthened ties; those present will ratify their rejection of Washington's hostile policy against Cuba and pay tribute to Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara, internationalist symbols in the struggles for independence of the peoples.
Cuba Insists on Strengthening Cooperation Relations with Africa
"Pocha" Lamadrid, a militant for the visibility of the Afro-Argentine community, has passed away
Published September 28, 2021
She was 75 and lived in La Matanza. She was working part-time as a domestic worker in 1996 when she responded to then-President Menem, who had said that there were no black people in the country
Photo: Misibamba
María Magdalena “Pocha” de Lamadrid, a pioneer in raising awareness of the black community in Argentina and a representative of the África Vive organization, has passed away at the age of 75 at her home in La Matanza.
"The only problem was that we did not exist. We had all died in the War against Paraguay. But the thing is, I was not born from a bullet", María Magdalena de Lamadrid had said conclusively while pointing to her entire body as to leave no doubt that she was a fifth-generation Argentine, a descendant of Africans and one of those responsible for the census that was being carried out among the Afro-Argentine community.
Argentina entered the 21st century in debt. A few months later, in August 2002, Pocha — as she was known — was not allowed to leave the country. She traveling as a guest to a congress against discrimination in Panama when she was held by Immigration at the airport on the suspicion that her passport was fake, because "there were no black people" in Argentina.
Thus, Pocha built a life of struggle that ended a few hours ago, at age 75, in Ciudad Evita. Near the Puerta de Hierro neighborhood, Pocha taught the generations that came after her about the customs and stories that her parents and aunts had taught her.
The newspaper Clarín reporting what happened when Pocha Delamadrid could not leave the country because they believed that her passport was false, since "there were no blacks in Argentina." It was in 2002. Photo: Alejandro Frigerio's archive
The other story, about her militancy, had begun precisely one day in 1996, when she came face to face with the myth that there were no black people in Argentina. She had heard about her enslaved ancestors, how her grandpartents had been transferred from the tenement houses to the land where their nieces and nephews were raised and where songs with drums were still ringing throughout the patios. On this day in 1996, two researchers had come from the United States to Uruguay to study the Afro-descendant population there. As it happened with everyone else, they had been told that, on the other side of the La Plata River, there was no black population. But someone denied it and got them in contact with Pocha, a descendant of an enslaved couple who had lived here since the times of the Viceroyalty.
Pocha, who worked part-time in family homes, was invited to the United States. With her presence at Howard University, in Washington, D.C., she denied the words that, she had been told, were said by then-President Carlos Menem two months before her arrival: "In Argentina there are no black people, that is Brazil's problem". She then responded: "We are here, president, the black people you claim cannot be found in Argentina". And she returned to her country with one goal: to found África Vive, an NGO that would be in charge of preserving the values of the Afro-Argentine community. She obtained a loan from the Inter-American Development Bank and assistance from the Kellogs Foundation.
Despite suffering from being excluded in a country where most people are excluded, in 2001 Pocha doubled down on her stance. She decided to census her community. "All it takes is one drop of blood to be black", she said, explaining whom she considered to be Afro-descendant. Overall, she estimated that they were more than two million.
Learning about their rights and how to fight against discrimination and neglect took Pocha to several trips to different meetings. Since 1996, she had secured scholarships and a $ 300 micro-business loan program to help people fight unemployment. The census was carried out with the support of the Buenos Aires City Ombundsman's Office. Pocha said it was like pulling lint. Sometimes — she recalled — the census takers received silence as an answer: the myth that hit black people during years also seemed to have silenced them. Pocha's great-great-grandfather was a freed slave who worked with General Lamadrid and fell in love with Pepa, a slave he bought so he could free and marry her. Most of his descendants were born after 1813, when children born to slaves were freed in the country.
In the interviews made from that census, the history of this community (which in 1810 was one third of the population of Buenos Aires) was repeated. One day, a councilman — said Pocha — opened her office's door and, upon closing it, told her: "You are just like my grandmother, but we kept her hidden in a room so no one would see her".
"In Washington, I realized that the situation was the same, but I was by myself in here. Besides not existing, the problem is that we live on the periphery", she once said in an interview with Clarín, one which unfortunately cannot be accessed on the digital archive. It was not the Paraguayan War (1861–1870), nor the yellow fever epidemic (which swept through Buenos Aires in 1871) that erased them from the map, but poverty. "(Those) who were better off bought some land outside the city, then had children who could not get out of the limitations imposed by discrimination". So, "a woman who had a park with fruit trees now has it with the houses where her children live", she said.
Perón removed her relatives from the tenement houses of San Telmo and sent them to some houses in Villa Soldati. From there, the military transferred them to Ciudad Evita. Pocha spent her childhood in this city, in a house with 32 first cousins. She grew up with a single mother. Her elementary school days were spent at a convent school run by nuns "who did not ask questions" thanks to the influence of an aunt from whom she inherited the beauty of her features. This aunt was the first black art model at the Bellas Artes. "I had her beauty marks", she had said in the same interview.
A Facebook post from the Misibamba Association two hours ago told the news: "It is with deep sadness and grief that we bid farewell Afro-Argentine tribe sister Maria Magdalena "Pocha" Lamadrid". And it continued: “Today is a painful day for the Misibamba family, for the entire Afro-descendant community in Argentina, for all of us who have been inspired by Pocha to go out and fight for our rights. May our ancestors welcome you, dear sister! Kiambote Mfumbi, Pocha (salute to your spirit, Pocha)".
"Pocha" Delamadrid, a militant for the visibility of the Afro-Argentine community, has passed away
Published September 28, 2021
She was 75 and lived in La Matanza. She was working part-time as a domestic worker in 1996 when she responded to then-President Menem, who had said that there were no black people in the country
Photo: Misibamba
María Magdalena “Pocha” de Lamadrid, a pioneer in raising awareness of the black community in Argentina and a representative of the África Vive organization, has passed away at the age of 75 at her home in La Matanza.
"The only problem was that we did not exist. We had all died in the War against Paraguay. But the thing is, I was not born from a bullet", María Magdalena de Lamadrid had said conclusively while pointing to her entire body as to leave no doubt that she was a fifth-generation Argentine, a descendant of Africans and one of those responsible for the census that was being carried out among the Afro-Argentine community.
Argentina entered the 21st century in debt. A few months later, in August 2002, Pocha — as she was known — was not allowed to leave the country. She traveling as a guest to a congress against discrimination in Panama when she was held by Immigration at the airport on the suspicion that her passport was fake, because "there were no black people" in Argentina.
Thus, Pocha built a life of struggle that ended a few hours ago, at age 75, in Ciudad Evita. Near the Puerta de Hierro neighborhood, Pocha taught the generations that came after her about the customs and stories that her parents and aunts had taught her.
The newspaper Clarín reporting what happened when Pocha Delamadrid could not leave the country because they believed that her passport was false, since "there were no blacks in Argentina." It was in 2002. Photo: Alejandro Frigerio's archive
The other story, about her militancy, had begun precisely one day in 1996, when she came face to face with the myth that there were no black people in Argentina. She had heard about her enslaved ancestors, how her grandpartents had been transferred from the tenement houses to the land where their nieces and nephews were raised and where songs with drums were still ringing throughout the patios. On this day in 1996, two researchers had come from the United States to Uruguay to study the Afro-descendant population there. As it happened with everyone else, they had been told that, on the other side of the La Plata River, there was no black population. But someone denied it and got them in contact with Pocha, a descendant of an enslaved couple who had lived here since the times of the Viceroyalty.
Pocha, who worked part-time in family homes, was invited to the United States. With her presence at Howard University, in Washington, D.C., she denied the words that, she had been told, were said by then-President Carlos Menem two months before her arrival: "In Argentina there are no black people, that is Brazil's problem". She then responded: "We are here, president, the black people you claim cannot be found in Argentina". And she returned to her country with one goal: to found África Vive, an NGO that would be in charge of preserving the values of the Afro-Argentine community. She obtained a loan from the Inter-American Development Bank and assistance from the Kellogs Foundation.
Despite suffering from being excluded in a country where most people are excluded, in 2001 Pocha doubled down on her stance. She decided to census her community. "All it takes is one drop of blood to be black", she said, explaining whom she considered to be Afro-descendant. Overall, she estimated that they were more than two million.
Learning about their rights and how to fight against discrimination and neglect took Pocha to several trips to different meetings. Since 1996, she had secured scholarships and a $ 300 micro-business loan program to help people fight unemployment. The census was carried out with the support of the Buenos Aires City Ombundsman's Office. Pocha said it was like pulling lint. Sometimes — she recalled — the census takers received silence as an answer: the myth that hit black people during years also seemed to have silenced them. Pocha's great-great-grandfather was a freed slave who worked with General Lamadrid and fell in love with Pepa, a slave he bought so he could free and marry her. Most of his descendants were born after 1813, when children born to slaves were freed in the country.
In the interviews made from that census, the history of this community (which in 1810 was one third of the population of Buenos Aires) was repeated. One day, a councilman — said Pocha — opened her office's door and, upon closing it, told her: "You are just like my grandmother, but we kept her hidden in a room so no one would see her".
"In Washington, I realized that the situation was the same, but I was by myself in here. Besides not existing, the problem is that we live on the periphery", she once said in an interview with Clarín, one which unfortunately cannot be accessed on the digital archive. It was not the Paraguayan War (1861–1870), nor the yellow fever epidemic (which swept through Buenos Aires in 1871) that erased them from the map, but poverty. "(Those) who were better off bought some land outside the city, then had children who could not get out of the limitations imposed by discrimination". So, "a woman who had a park with fruit trees now has it with the houses where her children live", she said.
Perón removed her relatives from the tenement houses of San Telmo and sent them to some houses in Villa Soldati. From there, the military transferred them to Ciudad Evita. Pocha spent her childhood in this city, in a house with 32 first cousins. She grew up with a single mother. Her elementary school days were spent at a convent school run by nuns "who did not ask questions" thanks to the influence of an aunt from whom she inherited the beauty of her features. This aunt was the first black art model at the Bellas Artes. "I had her beauty marks", she had said in the same interview.
A Facebook post from the Misibamba Association two hours ago told the news: "It is with deep sadness and grief that we bid farewell Afro-Argentine tribe sister Maria Magdalena "Pocha" Lamadrid". And it continued: “Today is a painful day for the Misibamba family, for the entire Afro-descendant community in Argentina, for all of us who have been inspired by Pocha to go out and fight for our rights. May our ancestors welcome you, dear sister! Kiambote Mfumbi, Pocha (salute to your spirit, Pocha)".
"Pocha" Delamadrid, a militant for the visibility of the Afro-Argentine community, has passed away