Granny Peace Brigade Blog

A large and lively crowd gathered in the lower level of the Church of the Ascension on Sunday November 9, 2008 for a Teach-In entitled:

Say “No” to U.S. Militarization of Latin America and the Caribbean

Nydia Leaf, a member of the Granny Peace Brigade which sponsored the Teach-In, welcomed those present and introduced the speakers and the musician,

Michael Irwin, who played Taps. The format allowed 10 minutes for each speaker and, after a break, a performance by the Metro NY Raging Grannies, then a Q&A session.

Nydia explained that the Teach-in was being held because: a number of US women [including NY Grannies] attending the 14th Congress of the Women’s International Democratic Federation in Venezuela in 2007 had been told by women from countries around the world of their anguish about the presence of unneeded US military bases in their respective countries; the US delegation came home determined to work for closure of the US foreign bases. She also said that US military bases are the worst polluters [of the ground, the soil, the water and the air] both abroad and at home and seem unwilling to be good citizens and clean up their act.

Guy deVeaux of the Vietnam Veterans for Peace told about that group’s current efforts [disco in Harlem, lobbying in Albany and a book event next Friday about Blows Against Empire, by Gerald Horne] then gave a history of Armistice Day, now known as Veterans Day. Mr. deVeaux, a member of several other organizations including the Black Radical Congress, called for Education not Incarceration of our young men, and for elimination of balancing the budget on the backs of the poor.

Greg Wilpert, sociologist, writer and adjunct professor at Brooklyn College, served as moderator for the presentations. He lived for eight years in Venezuela as a Fulbright Scholar; his wife is the Venezuelan Consul General in New York. His most recent book Changing Venezuela by Taking Power was published last year.

 

The first presenter, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, Permanent Representative of Ecuador to the United Nations spoke passionately about her country’s new constitution. Approved September 28, 2008, it states that Ecuador is a country of Peace and does not allow any military bases on Ecuadorian soil. The contract for the US base at Manta in Ecuador expires at the end of this year and Ecuador has no plans to renew it; thus, the base must be closed. During several meetings in the last year with US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Ms. Espinosa made this clear.

In her current post at the UN, she is working to see that pre-emptive war is prohibited and this includes elimination of clauses called “responsibility to protect” which are usually interpreted to mean that one country can interfere in the affairs of another. She encouraged the audience to follow these discussions at the UN closely. Unfortunately, small military base installations are proliferating in Latin America – in El Salvador, Honduras, Columbia, Peru and Puerto Rico.

Greg Grandin, Professor of History at NYU and author, most recently, of Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the Unites States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism, spoke next. He said Latin America is like the canary in a coal mine, and criticized the neo-con thinkers for fostering interference in many sovereign nations, including in Latin America.

He said that due to US overreach in Iraq, the countries of Latin America had been less focused on and so were beginning to take matters into their own hands – expanding democracy, both good left democracies and bad left democracies. The governments of Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil and Chile are trying to make life better for their populations, rather than for a small group.

Unfortunately, a US drug interdiction initiative in Latin America, known as Plan Columbia, praised by the US government as a success, in reality has been a disaster for the people of that country. Plan Columbia [executed in Columbia] is being copied in a new Plan Merida [to be executed in Mexico and other countries]. These plans use military might to address the drug problem rather than strategies recognizing that drug addiction is a social problem. Land reform is critical as is economic integration and abandonment of NAFTA. Unfortunately, President-elect Obama has said he approved Plan Merida, which benefits military contractors, such as United Technologies, not the people of the affected countries. We hope we can change his mind about this and many other issues.

Ann Wright, former US Army veteran and foreign service officer, spoke next. She is well known to the Granny Peace Brigade for speaking out tirelessly for peace, having resigned her diplomatic post on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq by cabling Secretary of State Powell. She offered congratulations to Ecuador on its new constitution and noted that Japan’s was another constitution specifying that the country was a country of Peace. The latter constitution, written entirely by the US at the end of World War II, has been ignored by the US more recently in its actions requiring Japan to aid the war effort by allowing refueling of planes and ships [not to mention the many US bases placed on Japanese soil].

On a trip to Canada Col. Wright was stopped by Canadian border agents and asked if she had been arrested. She learned that they had an FBI list which included arrests for picketing activity, a misdemeanor that should not be on such a list. Establishment of such a list undercuts our civil liberties due to its chilling effect. She noted that the term used by President Bush, Axis of Evil, was presaged by earlier demonization of Cuba, in 1959, Nicaragua in 1979 and later Grenada. She urged us to be vigilant in monitoring the behavior of our government, especially so when officials use euphemisms to describe their actions: saying they are rescuing a country or providing civic assistance, when what they are doing is invading it.

A Question and Answer period followed. The Navy’s Fourth Fleet, located in the South Atlantic, had been deactivated since the 1960s, but was recently reactivated, which seems symbolic and provocative towards Latin American countries [e.g., Venezuela] and is perhaps a response to the sense that the US influence in the Latin American and Caribbean area is diminishing. Or perhaps it is in response to recent activity by Russian Fleets.

The Southern Command, the Department of Defense’s agency for the Southern part of the Western Hemisphere, has control over all US agencies in the area, including those which have nothing to do with the military, such as agriculture and education. This is seen as ominous and reflects the militarization of our foreign policy.

In 2005 at a ministerial conference Secretary Rumsfeld tried to get Latin American countries to fold everything into the larger war on terror, but they rejected this concept and also repudiated the Free Trade zone.

Resource depletion, including water and biodiversity as well as oil, was noted as a significant reason for concern. This concern can be a vehicle for cooperation, or it could continue as a motivator for war. The US may feel itself threatened by dialogue with China and Russia by the South American Security Council. But another attitude could be adopted.

The UnisulVirtual is a recently formed distance learning institution in Brazil with branches throughout South America and Central America; the first distance programs were offered in 2001. By September 2008 it had 41,000 students enrolled, about half in face-to-face classes and half in distance learning.

Ambassador Espinosa was asked to comment on the expected effect closing the US military base at Manta would have on employment for the local Ecuadoran people. She explained that Manta is a promising port that will not suffer if the base closes; as with many US bases, everything they use there is shipped in from the US, not purchased from the local economy. The local economy is involved in shipping to Asia and elsewhere, so it will be O.K.

Another issue raised was human trafficking. This is a more severe problem than drug trafficking and must be addressed by improving the local economies to discourage people from being mislead about opportunities abroad that turn out to be slavery.

The teach-in was concluded with discussion of
How can activists help and press the UN?
How can they monitor military contractors?
How they can monitor Special Forces?

The School of the Americas, now known as The Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation, has to be kept under surveillance by activists. There will be a protest there soon. Yearly protests are being held.

IMET [International Military Education and Training Program] Special Forces are all over the place. There are web-sites that track how they are used and where. Good sources are Samantha Power, at Harvard, and Dan Restrepo at The Center for American Progress.

The UN has been undergoing reformation for the last 15 years. Mr. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, President of the General Assembly and former Nicaraguan Foreign Minister. Next Tuesday, there will be a meeting on reform of the Security Council. DOHA third round on Financing for Development. President Bush is calling a meeting with the G20 next week, taking steam out of DOHA. It should be G122 – the entire UN – which would be the venue for solving the world financial crisis.

We also need to keep an eye on Chris Dodd, senator from Connecticut who has a bad idea with Plan Columbia, but wants to be known as good on foreign policy. Perhaps we can make him see the light and get him to support other methods for drug control and also for support of populations in Central and South America.

Four years ago Somalia and the US were the only two countries that hadn’t signed the U.N. Convention on the Child. Now only the US has not signed it.

- Edith Cresmer
Photos by Anthony Lanzilote

Granny Peace Brigade Holds Teach-In To Oppose Militarization By U.S. Of Latin America And The Caribbean

The legendary grannies of the New York Granny Peace Brigade, who were arrested, jailed and put on trial for six days in 2005 when we attempted to enlist in the military at the Times Square recruiting station, are still out there fighting U.S. preemptive war and militarization of foreign nations. Though most, if not all, of us are jubilant about Barack Obama’s historic election, nevertheless we feisty grandmothers held a teach-in days after his victory to alert the public and, hopefully, the President-elect to our concerns about the plethora of U.S. military installations and operations in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The teach-in, held Sunday, Nov. 9, at Manhattan’s Church of the Ascension, was the third in a series of teach-ins sponsored by the grandmothers to oppose the more than 1,000 military bases installed in every continent except Antarctica. The first teach-in emphasized Guantanamo, the second stressed AFRICOM, the new U.S. military command for Africa. In this latest forum, moderated by Greg Wilpert, sociologist and author of “Changing Venezuela by Taking Power” 2007 and editor of Venezuelanalysis.com, the 19 countries of South and Central America as well as the 13 countries of the Caribbean were the focus of discussion. To our knowledge, there are a few major bases in Latin America and the Caribbean — Guantanamo in Cuba, of course, Manta in Ecuador, Soto Cano in Honduras and several in Columbia, as well as a number of smaller installations, termed “lily pads,” used for various military purposes, but often disguised as centers for drug interdiction.

Maria Fernanda Espinosa, Permanent Representative of Ecuador to the United Nations and former Minister of Foreign Affairs for Ecuador, a petite young woman (40ish is young to us grannies, at any rate), spoke of Ecuador’s refusal to renew its contract with the U.S. for its use of the military base at Manta. According to Ambassador Espinosa, when she was foreign minister she had three meetings with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, who applied tremendous pressure upon the government of Ecuador to sign on with the U.S. for another ten years, but Ecuador stuck by its guns — or rather against the guns and said “No.”

The Ambassador said she was hopeful that Barack Obama would make policy changes favorable to Latin America and the Caribbean that would preclude United States militarization and recognize the sovereignty of the countries within. Ecuador has written a new constitution articulating that it is a country of peace, and prohibits military bases for any purpose. It is the only country other than Japan to specify peace in its constitution, and she expressed a wish that the document would become a model for other nations.

Espinosa also revealed that there are now high-level meetings at the U.N. discussing preemptive war and the concept of protection by one nation for others. She urged us to pay attention to what’s going on in the U.N. in those respects, and we sensed an optimism in her remarks that perhaps we can anticipate welcome strides forward.

Following the impressive Ambassador, we heard from Greg Grandin, professor of History at New York University and an award-winning author of several books, most recently Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (2006). Professor Grandin discussed the United States attempts to curb the growing democratization of Latin America by its imposition of military control. He declared that the Bush policy has been a “disaster” for Latin America, and cited, for example, how its giving resources and support to Columbia to militarize (the Columbia Plan), ostensibly to fight drug trafficking, has in actuality allowed the U.S. to further its manipulation of Columbia into its militaristic web. In his view, it has been a failure in its intended aim to fight drugs but has succeeded all too well in gaining U.S. military domination of the area. He warned that the U.S. is seeking to impose the Columbia Plan across Latin America and in Mexico.

Professor Grandin said that what really matters in stopping United States domination of our neighbors to the south and in the Caribbean is to repudiate preventive war and to recognize their sovereignty. Latin America, he ventured, will be a test case for how substantial the break from past policy will be under an Obama administration.

And, finally, the grannies were pleased to attend the words of our remarkable buddy, Army Colonel (retired) Ann Wright, renowned for resigning her diplomatic post the night before the United States invaded Iraq, and author of an important new book, Dissent: Voices of Conscience (2008). Col. Wright, a dedicated anti-war protester who has spent considerable time in jail for her patriotic efforts, spoke of her shock when she attempted to enter Canada recently and was forbidden entry. The authorities knew of her arrests, such information available only through FBI files, which are to itemize only serious offenders and definitely not Bush protesters. Col. Wright described the incident as “creepy” and warned that undoubtedly access into Mexico will be subject to the same illegal process. She advised us to urge President-Elect Obama to stop this subversion of our rights.

The Colonel referred to the Axis of Evil — which, according to Bush, is composed of Iraq, North Korea and Iran. However, she reminded us of how the term was implicit earlier under the Reagan administration when the U.S. demonized the Cuban revolution, the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and, that in Granada. She believes the new administration has the potential for a great presidency, but exhorted us to tell Obama about our opposition to the past and current United States’ dangerous policies toward Latin America and the Caribbean.

There followed a most informative question and answer forum ending with the query, “What can we here in New York do about this urgent problem of U.S. militarization of our Latin American and Caribbean neighbors?” Ann Wright stated that our teach-in was a good first step, that educating people was vital. She encouraged participation in the upcoming protest at Ft. Benning against the School of the Americas. It was suggested that we entreat the authorities to bring the national guard home from Iraq, that we march with the Veterans for Peace in the Veterans Day parade. Most of all, we should target Congress. Some of our leading Democrat policymakers, as, for instance, Sen. Christopher Dodd, voted for the Columbia Plan. We must re-educate him and others.

The Granny Peace Brigade, for its part, will keep on keeping on with its teach-ins, its counter-recruitment actions and its various other activities toward its fundamental purpose of ending the Iraq war and preventing other preemptive invasions.

- Joan Wile
-Photos: Diane Dreyfus