U.S. is 'imperialist minority' in Latin America

Capital Times

The most profound speech delivered to last week's United Nations General Assembly session was that of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. Returned to the leadership of his country after decades in a wilderness fashioned by U.S. interventions against the man and his ideas, Ortega returned to the world stage as a popular elected leader with a blunt message.

"The presidents of the U.S. change," he told the Assembly. "And they may come to office with the greatest of intentions and they may feel that they are doing good for humanity, but they fail to understand that they are no more than instruments of one more empire in a long list of empires that have been imposed on our planet."

In the 1980s, when liberation movements struggled to free the countries of Central America to set their own destinies, the United States erred against the values of its own revolution and advanced policies more in tune with those of King George III than George Washington.

There is not so much open conflict in Latin America these days. The end of the Cold War changed political and economic dynamics on the ground in countries such as Nicaragua and El Salvador and in the great capitals of the world, where the meddlers in the affairs of supposedly sovereign Central American states were resident.

But the impulse toward empire remains, filtered now through the lens of corporate globalization. And Ortega, whose election last year was actively opposed by U.S. corporate interests and the U.S. government, has more than enough evidence to support his argument that an "imperialist minority is imposing global capitalism to impoverish us all and impose apartheid against Latin American immigrants and against African immigrants."........