U.S. Incites Secession South of the Border

[Joanne98]

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

All of sudden, three secessionist "movements" have sprung up in South America, all of them located in fossil fuel-rich regions of countries resisting U.S. domination of the hemisphere. Venezuela and its allies Ecuador and Bolivia face revolts of businessmen in their most productive provinces, developments that coincide with the U.S. decision to take the Navy's Fourth Fleet out of mothballs to resume patrols in South American waters. The separatist schemes are transparently American-instigated, yet another escalation of U.S. threats to the sovereignty of its neighbors. Somebody should tell the rough-riders in Washington that the days of Teddy Roosevelt are long gone.

U.S. Incites Secession South of the Border

"The secessionists are all centered in these Andean nations' oil and natural gas rich provinces."

Like all imperialists, the United States seeks to dismember those nations it cannot control. The idea is to divide the country into bite-sized pieces, some of which can be dominated by groups that are more friendly to imperial interests than the population as a whole. The British pulled off this trick by separating oil-rich Kuwait from Iraq, after World War One. The Americans are still toying with the idea of cutting the rest of Iraq up into manageable pieces, the better to extract oil deals from the smaller entities. Now, with much of Latin America floating out of the U.S. orbit, secessionist "movements" are suddenly popping up in the three most independent nations of mainland South America: Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia.

It is no coincidence that the secessionists are all centered in these Andean nations' oil and natural gas rich provinces, or that the organizers are rich businessmen with close ties to the United States, or that the secessionists are all emerging simultaneously, or that it just happens the United States this month reactivated its old Fourth Fleet, which used to enforce American gunboat diplomacy before being shut down 60 years ago. Back when Teddy Roosevelt was president at the turn of the 20th Century, the U.S. was having difficulties squeezing a bargain basement deal out of Colombia, which controlled the Isthmus of Panama, through which the Americans wanted to build a canal. No problem. President Roosevelt simply encouraged locals in the region to declare independence, call themselves the Republic of Panama, and then invite in the American Fourth Fleet. All it took was one gunboat to keep the tiny Colombian Navy from reclaiming its territory long enough for the Americans to send in troops. A new mini-"nation" was born - actually, a new colony of the United States - at the expense of the sovereignty of Colombia. Explaining later how he got access to the route for the Panama Canal, Roosevelt said, simply: "I took it."

"The Americans can stir things up sufficiently to create the threat of civil war."

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