by abbie bakan
The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is a regional trade bloc scheduled to come into effect in 2005, extending NAFTA to all of Central and South America and the Caribbean -- with one exception. Cuba is excluded on the grounds that only "democratic" nations are welcome in the FTAA.
The "democratic" credentials of the countries that are being lured into this haven for US and Canadian corporate trade are not, apparently, under scrutiny. Given that the United States government has had a strong hand in the training of many of these Latin American states, clearly their commitment to democracy should not be in doubt.
Indeed.
Latin America is a region that has long been considered by US governments to be that country's "backyard." In 1823, US President Monroe announced that any interference by any European power in the newly emerging Latin American republics would be considered unfriendly to the US itself. The US insisted on its right to "protect" this territory from foreign competition by any means.
The "Monroe Doctrine" was backed up with guns and land troops and economic sanctions. It continues to basically define US imperialism throughout the western hemisphere.
Canada has ridden on the coattails of this policy, investing heavily in the English Caribbean in particular and reaping the profits for Canadian multinationals.
The early part of this century saw a massive extension of US imperialism. It included acquiring Puerto Rico in 1901, and carving Panama out of Columbia in 1903 to protect the Panama Canal. US troops were sent in to Panama in 1908, 1912, and 1918. US troops landed in Honduras in 1905, 1910, 1912, 1919 and 1924. US marines were sent to Nicaragua between 1912 and 1925, then again from 1926 to 1933. US troops occupied Haiti from 1914 to 1934 and the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924.
Again and again, the claim was that the US was entering as the "protector" of democracy.
The troops killed tens of thousands of workers and peasants and students fighting for greater freedoms, or decent wages, or the right to fair prices for their bananas or coffee or sugar on the world market.
Again and again, the US set up and backed dictators.
Nicaragua was seen as a model. The US sent in troops in 1926 after a civil war, provoked by a US-supervised election. Augusto Cesar Sandino challenged the control of land by the local oligarchy, and opposed foreign intervention. Sandino was a militant nationalist, and organized the first guerrilla war that the US had faced in the region.
After sending in 4000 troops, air bombing, establishing a US-trained local military force -- the National Guard -- and anointing its Commander, Anastasio Somoza, as leader and President, by 1933 the US declared the country "stable."
The real story can be seen in the remarkably frank writings of General Smedley D. Butler, who headed many of the US interventions in these years. Writing in 1935, he stated:
"I spent thirty-three years and four months in active service as a member of our country's most agile military force -- the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from a second lieutenant to major-general. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and, for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism."
In the modern era we have seen the CIA-backed invasion of Guatemala in 1954, the invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965, the funding of the counter-revolutionary "contras" during the anti-Somoza Nicaraguan revolution, the backing of dictatorial regimes in Honduras and El Salvador, the invasion of Grenada and the invasion of Panama.
This is the definition of "democracy" that has been adopted by the conditions of the FTAA.
Cuba has been for decades the thorn in the side of US imperialism.
US troops occupied Cuba between 1898 and 1902, from 1906 to 1909, again in 1912, and from 1917 to 1923.
In 1959, a small band of olive-green suited guerrilla soldiers, led by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, succeeded in toppling Fulgencio Batista. Batista was the military dictator who ensured that Cuba was open for US business.
The failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 following the Cuban revolution humiliated the American army.
It also was the main event compelling the Cuban revolutionary leaders to seek military and economic aid from the so-called Communist former USSR.
Cuba claims today to be a nation that is "communist", that follows the traditions of working class power established by Marx and Engels and Lenin and Trotsky. Would that it were so.
Actually, Cuba is a state capitalist economy, desperate to attract foreign capital and US dollars. Since the collapse of the USSR, the Cuban economy has been reeling and the local population have seen their standard of living plummet.
Cuba's exclusion from the FTAA has nothing to do with its domestic political system. But it has everything to do with the fact that Cuba is a symbol of anti-imperialism in a country that is only 90 miles off the Florida coast.
Any Latin American government, regardless of its political stripes, that refuses to accommodate to the dictates of US capital is seen as a threat to American interests in the entire region. The hypocrisy of US, and Canadian, foreign policy knows no bounds.