Alright y'all, welcome back to the show, this is Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, I'm talking, or now I have on the line, Joe Shansky.
He writes for Counterpunch, and for Upside Down World, and works with Democracy Now!
, and Español, which I don't even know if I can pronounce Español right, anyway.
Welcome to the show, Joe, how are you?
Hi, how are you doing?
Can you hear me okay?
Yeah, just fine.
How are you doing?
I'm doing really well.
Really well, thanks.
Good deal.
So, listen, I know very little about Latin America, I should know more, but I don't.
But anyway, I saw this headline, I'm sure a lot of people did, last week, U.S. Navy, Marine Corps invade Costa Rica, take it over!
What happened?
Well, some people are calling it an invasion, it's a little bit of a stretch right now since we don't exactly know what's happening, but basically, about two and a half weeks ago or so, the Costa Rican Legislative Assembly agreed to a request from the U.S. Embassy to allow a fleet, a military fleet of about 46 warships, and up to about, which can hold about 7,000 Navy officers, under the pretext of fighting drug trafficking in Costa Rica.
So this is not, you know, preparation for another invasion of Panama, or something?
There's a lot of theories going around about what it could mean, all I can do is tell you what we know for sure, which is that the Costa Rican Congress agreed to approve this, and the vessels will be there for about six months to help out counter narcotics operations in Costa Rica.
And there have been problems that have been recognized as security issues because of the drug trade coming up from Panama and through the Panama Canal going north, but this is, for anybody who's concerned about militarization and obviously increasing militarization in Latin America, this is a pretty big deal because Costa Rica is, of course, one of the only countries and certainly the only country in Latin America with no army themselves.
In their constitution, they've pledged to deal with conflict non-violently, and so it's a pretty fearful thing for a sudden group of, you can imagine, these gigantic warships, which can actually equip about 200 helicopters, all of a sudden landing on the shores of Costa Rica from the U.S.
So it's a bit scary, and it's certainly something to keep an eye on, to watch carefully.
Yeah, I wonder, you know, when you talk about drug wars and intercepting shipments and this kind of thing, patrolling, it makes me wonder, are we just talking about, you know, the DEA being used, the military being used to eliminate the CIA's competition from their favored cartels, or is that just the bad old days?
That, I can't speak to.
I don't know.
What I can say for sure is that it's a bit odd for the U.S. to be requesting to assist Costa Rica with drug trafficking.
We know that the United States military in Latin America does not have a peaceful history in any way, in fact, quite the opposite.
So it's a bit strange.
I can't really say whether or not the CIA is involved or what's going on with the drug cartels, but it's certainly something that's...
The most...
I think the most notable thing about this story is how little information is really out there and available to even journalists or people who have been trying to get more information.
The United States has been real silent about it.
And Costa Rica is...
On the Costa Rican end, they're pretty upset.
The Congress people are upset, legislators are upset.
There are about five legal recourses in action right now to disprove or to fight this on constitutional grounds, on the grounds that in the Costa Rican Constitution it specifically says that any kind of military, foreign or national, is prohibited.
In fact, it specifically says that military forces may only be organized under a continental agreement or for the national defense.
In any case, they shall always be subordinate to the civil power.
They may not be deliberate...
Or, excuse me, they may not deliberate or make statements or representations individually or collectively.
So those are the grounds under which it's being fought right now.
And people in Costa Rica are pretty upset too.
There's marches, protests going on.
The first of the ships are scheduled to arrive on July 26th, and there is going to be a...
As far as I understand it, there's going to be a big public sector protest and possibly, potentially a strike in opposition to it.
Now, help me out with this.
It seems like, you know, kind of larger picture question here.
It seems like since the end of the Cold War, the drug war is kind of a flimsy excuse, and the American empire has had less and less plausible reason to intervene in South America.
And of course, they abuse everybody with all their economic hitman style loans so badly.
They basically just kind of turn the whole, you know, southern half of the hemisphere over to the leadership of Hugo Chavez, it seems like.
At least when it comes to, you know, if a country needs a loan there, he actually gives them a decent deal.
It's not all a big scam to seize all their property, like when the IMF gives them a loan.
It seems like more and more South America and Central America are spinning off from the American empire and actually declaring their independence.
I wonder, you know, which states you think are, you know, is that the most true and which states are still in the fold?
I guess Colombia is still pretty close to the United States, right?
Right.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, Colombia is one of our main allies, along with Panama.
And of course, people are, I'm sure, familiar with the military coup in Honduras last year, which was certainly at least tacitly approved by the United States, if not directly, because we all know what happened there, that the U.S. turned its shoulder on thousands of human rights violations, random detentions, murder, torture.
And I was in Honduras during the military coup last year, doing some writing on that as well, which is one of the reasons that I became interested in this story, of course.
But you're absolutely right.
In Colombia, there was an approval for an agreement for seven new military bases last year.
There's been talk about the United States keeping their eye on the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
And there was, of course, what's going on in Honduras is continuing under the Lobo regime, the new president.
This military coup is not over.
So in many ways, you're right, Latin America is seeing a new surge in, if not direct militarization, then certainly some real strong warning signs.
Now, tell me more about this brutality in Honduras.
This is something that didn't get too much coverage, at least not that I saw.
But that doesn't necessarily mean anything, really.
Sure.
Well, I mean, the coup in Honduras was, I'm not going to go through the whole history of it.
But the main idea is that last summer, in late June, the president of Honduras was kidnapped and sent off to Costa Rica, actually.
In the middle of the night, and it really paved the way for a large, well, pretty much an entire year full of resistance and repression in response to that resistance.
So it was an old school Latin America style military coup supported by the United States, even though they went through the motions of attempting to, you know, resolve it democratically or what there was an election for a new president in the middle of it.
And the United States approved that, even though the conditions were absurd.
There was no free or fair process.
We're real short on time here.
So please, everybody knows it was all Hillary Clinton and Richard Holbrooke.
Skip ahead to the brutality part.
That's the part I like the most.
The brutality part, that's the part I don't know about, and we're very short on time.
Sure.
Okay, well, when I say thousands of violations, that's literally what I mean.
There was a lot of people, especially since the new president has been approved by the United States, think that the violence is over.
But the people who resisted against the military coup last year have been targeted.
Farmers in rural areas have been targeted, who are attempting for land reform.
Teachers, journalists, nine journalists were killed this year already, this year alone, who've been connected to writing in opposition to the coup.
So it's all kinds of random and also specifically targeted violence against people who are in opposition to the military coup in Honduras, which is, of course, connected to what's going on in the new militarization and what we're seeing in Costa Rica as well.
Well, we got to sell those helicopters somehow.
You know, Ron Paul at one time said that whenever it comes to planned Colombia debate in Congress, the only lobbyists around anywhere are helicopter lobbyists.
It's not even about drugs at all.
You can't even get, you know, concerned moms of America to show up.
It's just about helicopter sales.
All right.
Well, thanks very much for your time.
I'm sorry we're out of it.
Appreciate it very much, Joe.
No problem.
