http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2008/abril/vier25/OAS.html
Granma International
April 25, 2008
Clinical death for OAS
BY NIDIA DIAZ
History is full of events that later prove to be
defining in the lives of peoples.
The call made by Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa
for the foundation of "an organization of Latin
American states that does not lend itself to tutelage.
and which includes countries of the region that have
been absurdly excluded from international forums," has
put on the table what everyone has recognized: the
clinical death of the Organization of American States
(OAS) and its inevitable end.
The call, supported this time by Mexican President
Felipe Calderon, was made months ago by Venezuelan
leader Hugo Chavez Frias, and was received favorably
by the Brazilian head of state, Luiz Inacio Lula da
Silva, confirming the strategic vision of the Cuban
revolutionary leadership which in the early 1960's
described the Organization of American States (OAS),
as the Ministry of Yankee Colonies, which has nothing
to do with Latin American interests or aspirations.
Examples abound as to the organization's submissive
and compromising behavior over the last 50 years,
during which Washington, owner and master of the
group, dictated the standards, demanded sanctions and
banished those who opposed U.S. domination.
The OAS, for those who don't remember, gave its
blessing to invasions and violations of Latin American
and Caribbean sovereignty, and held in high regard the
main perpetrators of these actions under the guise of
the hypocritical defense of a unilaterally imposed
political model which sought to extend for all time
the colonial and neocolonial past suffered by Latin
Americans, which left the great majority excluded and
marginalized.
Up until recently, the uncompromising voice of Cuba
was the only one heard accusing the group of
disloyalty and ineffectiveness and warning of the
dangerous control that U.S. imperialism exercised from
its seat.
The small island was not always heard and more than a
few attributed its charges to its differences with the
powerful northern neighbor.
The continent paid dearly for decades of
neoliberalism, military dictatorships, governments
that had "carnal" relations with the master - which
occurred not only in Argentina - until the political,
economic and social situation deteriorated to the
point that the masses stepped forward to ensure the
reemergence of a new wave of revolutionary,
nationalist and anti-imperialist movements.
Using the chipped and rusty weapons of representative
democracy, they tore the traditional parties to shreds
and have elected new political leaders who have
assumed their mandates committed to the conquest of
sovereignty and self-determination.
These representatives of the people have been
responsible for Washington's loss of control, little
by little, of lives and land in this part of the world
and have additionally contributed to the decline of
U.S. influence within the OAS, despite its policy of
blackmail.
Still fresh is the defeat suffered by the U.S.
government in June of 2007, when the new iron lady,
Condoleezza Rice, with no convincing arguments, was
forced to leave the 37th General Assembly of the OAS
without managing a happy ending to the show prepared
by the White House to attack the Bolivarian Revolution
when, using its constitutional prerogatives, the
Venezuelan government did not renew the operating
license of coup-supporting Radio Caracas Television
(RCTV).
The previous year, during the OAS' 36th session, the
government of Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo had
taken on Washington's work, unsuccessfully promoting a
condemnation of the Bolivarian Revolution and
attempting to impose on the hemisphere's agenda the
issue of Venezuela's supposed interference in
expressing public support for the candidacy of the
nationalist Ollanta Humala.
Without any doubt, these events contributed to the
development of the current situation in which the
ineffectiveness of the group is clear. It is an
inadequate organization, incapable of facing the
realities of the times, during which, as President
Rafael Correa has said, "Ecuador has stopped being,
forever, the backyard and branch office of a world
power." The same could be said for Venezuela, Bolivia,
Nicaragua, Brazil and others.
It was, therefore, clearer than ever before, when the
Colombian army violated the territorial integrity of
Ecuador with the complicity and support of U.S.
intelligence services, that the new Latin America and
Caribbean needs a new regional organization that will
remove them, once and for all, from the impositions,
control and interests of U.S. imperialism.
The solitary vote of the U.S. within the OAS in
support of the Colombian attack on Ecuador was the
moribund organization's definitive fall into an
irreversible coma and it opened the eyes of the few
who still considered mere rhetoric the Bush doctrine
of "preemptive war" and the willingness of the U.S. to
attack any "dark corner of the world", especially
those where people have begun to say, "No, Mister."
At such a transcendentally important moment and given
the weakness shown by the OAS in the face of such
interference and genocide, the Rio Group, meeting in a
presidential summit in Santo Domingo, did not hesitate
to express its solidarity with Ecuador and defend,
with a united voice, the principles of
self-determination and non-intervention, which are
fundamental.
It is no accident that in Santo Domingo, Nicaraguan
President Daniel Ortega advocated the creation of a
new Organization of Latin American States, as his
Ecuadorian counterpart had done days before, the
embryonic form of which already exists within the Rio
Group, a coordinating group forged in the 1980's to
oppose the interventionist policy of the Reagan
administration.
According to Brazil, the proposed organization should
not be limited to political issues, that equally
necessary is the creation of a regional defense
council, the objectives of which would be far removed
from those of the Inter-American Defense Board, with
its headquarters in Washington and through which
different U.S. administrations have exercised, as
another journalist has said, "harmful interference in
Latin American armed forces, attempting to convert the
aforementioned Board into a coup d'état, genocide and
torture training ground for those in its service."
It is worth remembering that last March 21 a meeting
took place between the Brazilian and U.S. defense
departments during which the Brazilian minister made a
comment to his U.S. counterpart, Robert Gates, on the
South American defense initiative. Gates asked, "What
can we do?" Nelson Jobim answered, "Stay out of the
way."
A memorable response that aptly portrays the new
times.
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