Transcription
This is Democracy Now. democracynow.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman.
As we look now at how Trump's military attack on Venezuela will impact Latin America, where the US-led coup on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has resurfaced the historical echoes of decades of US intervention in the region.
The US State Department posting a message online saying, quote, "This is our hemisphere, and President Trump will not allow our security to be threatened." Quote.
The comment followed remarks by President Trump, who referenced the Monroe Doctrine, a credo enacted by US President James Monroe in 19 in 1823 that's been repeatedly invoked by US presidents in order to justify US political and military interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean through much of the 20th and 21st centuries.
This is President Trump speaking Saturday. "And the Monroe Doctrine is a, a big deal, but we've superseded it by a lot, by a real lot. They now call it the Donro document. I don't know. It's uh, Monroe Doctrine. We sort of forgot about it. It was very important, but we forgot about it. We don't forget about it anymore. Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again."
Leftist governments across Latin America swiftly condemned the US military attack on Venezuela and Maduro's abduction. Colombian President Gustavo Petro said Monday he would, quote, "take up arms for his country if necessary" in response to Trump's threats against Colombia. Petro also said in a statement, quote, "Come get me, I'm waiting for you here." Unquote.
As Trump specifically targeted Petro, claiming without evidence Petro's involvement in cocaine trafficking. Trump has also threatened military action against Cuba and Mexico.
This is Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. "Mexico's position against any form of intervention is firm, clear, and historic. Following recent events in Venezuela, where the United States government carried out a direct intervention that resulted in the capture of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, as well as the loss of human lives, Mexico reaffirms a principle that is not new and admits no ambiguities. We categorically reject intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. Latin America's history is clear and compelling. Intervention has never brought democracy, never generated well-being or lasting stability. Only the people themselves can build their own future, decide their path, exercise sovereignty over their natural resources, and freely define their form of government. Our position is clearly enshrined in the Constitution of the United Mexican States."
That was Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. For more, we go to Phoenix, Arizona, where we're joined by Alexander Aho, associate professor of Latin American history at Arizona State University, who's extensively researched and written about capitalism, the US-backed war on drugs, and state violence, author of the award-winning book "Specters of Revolution: Peasant Guerrilleras in the Cold War Mexican Countryside."
So, if you can talk, Professor Aho, about what this attack on Venezuela means for Latin America, what some are calling the, um, re-hemispherization, um, of Latin of Latin America.
"Good morning, Amy. Uh, yeah, I think this is, you know, in contrary to what what Trump was saying, the Monroe Doctrine has never quite been forgotten by the United States. It's just the methods of enforcing it or implementing it in the region have varied across presidential administrations and across political parties. I think it, it bears to keep in mind that the US empire in Latin America is a bipartisan project that involves both Republican and Democratic parties. Just thinking about how President Obama is the one who labeled Venezuela a threat to US national security back in 2015 is as one pertinent example. So I think what we're witnessing now is just a, a quite visible and unabashed assertment, uh, assertion of US power over Latin America.
Now, that's one way to read it. The other way to read, uh, this move, and particularly in light of the national security strategy, it's also, it's a moment to read it is a moment of US weakness, right? They, they're basically conceding other parts of the world to peer rivals. They've more or less accepted that they cannot compete frontally with China, for example, in Asia. So, as has happened in the past, when the US has faced resistance or defeat elsewhere in the world, they come back, quote unquote, home to the Western Hemisphere, and they use Latin America as an imperial laboratory, as they have since almost the founding of the United States. And it, so the US has long served as, as historians like Greg Grandin have have written about, as, as a workshop of empire where the US gets to refine its imperialist tactics abroad, but they also use those moments to try to create internal domestic political hegemony depending on which political party or which political coalition is in the ascendancy.
The moment, the difference now, I think, is that this is, again, to reiterate, this is a US, a moment of US weakness internationally, but I think also for the Trump coalition is a moment of weakness internally. Uh, so one way I think the way I read this is this is a, you know, if you have to continually have to say that you're strong and you're powerful and that you own the Americas constantly online, through different images, through different, uh, public appearances. In a way, that's a, that's that's a weakness, right? The fact that you have to continuously assert how powerful you are. Um, so that's one way to read it."
Talk about the Monroe Doctrine. What most people, you know, certainly don't understand going back to the early 1800s.
"So, the Monroe Doctrine is famously contains multiple meanings. I mean, it depends on on who's reading it at what moment in time, etc. But initially, this was not a law, right? It was a promulgation of President James Monroe that asserted that Latin America, or the Americas, was to remain a place strictly for Americans, broadly defined of the region. And it was an, a sort of an anti-colonial statement against European rival powers in the context of Latin American independence wars. And initially, Latin American independence leaders like Simon Bolivar saw this as a positive. They, they figured that the United States was going to be an ally in their efforts to overthrow colonial rule. Uh, but even someone like Bolivar really quickly learned that that the United States was not going to play that role and that it was going to just resume the imperialist control over the region that had previously been taken up by European powers.
The other, the other important moment in this history is when, uh, with President Theodore Roosevelt invoked his own Roosevelt Corollary in the late 18 or the early, uh, early 20th century, when he essentially made, uh, the United States an international police power over the Americas. Um, and it justified a constant US military intervention in the region using the justification of, well, the justification that any, quote unquote, loosening of ties of civilization in Latin America would then trigger some sort of US police response in the form of, uh, US Marines invading Latin American countries to the tune of about 34 between 1900 to 1934. Um, and then Trump comes in, and he's first he talked about a Trump Corollary, and now he's taken over the entire Monroe Doctrine to call it the Donro Doctrine. And again, as, as your previous guest was saying, it's, it's difficult to assign some sort of serious ideological coherence to whatever Trump says. But I do see that this is an effort to coalesce a really fractious internal political coalition within his party, within the United States, at the same time that it's wielding, uh, illegal violent actions against sovereign Latin American nations like Venezuela.
And when you look at the history of the US involved with the coup against, uh, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, as he was trying to enact land reform, against Allende, who died in the palace on another September 11th, September 11th, 1973, as the US-backed Pinochet forces rose to power. Do you see this as an extension of this, as we wrap up?"
"Yeah, I do. And, and again, it's just part of this long history of constant US intervention in the region to prevent and not tolerate Latin American assertions of sovereignty and self-determination. Those two examples are also good to highlight that it doesn't matter what type of Latin American leader is in power and how they achieve that power. In the end, if they are deemed intolerable or antithetical to US imperial designs, they are going to be overthrown or destabilized by the United States. You could have St. Francis as the president, and he will still be overthrown by the United States if a president of this country deems that leader to be a threat or or an obstacle to US imperial designs and what they have long characterized as, quote unquote, our hemisphere, our backyard. So, this is just one more action. The one, the one new thing, well, relatively new thing, is that they're using narco-terrorism charges, uh, against President Nicolas Maduro. And that's a more recent 1980s origin story, but it still fits within this longer history of constant US violation of Latin American sovereignty and attempts to assert self-determination."
Alexander Aho, I want to thank you for being with us, associate professor of Latin American history at Arizona State University, who's researched and written about capitalism, the US-backed war on drugs, and state violence. Thanks for watching Democracy Now on YouTube. Subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications to make sure you never miss a video. And for more of our audience-supported journalism, go to democracynow.org, or where you can download our news app, sign up for our newsletter, subscribe to the daily podcast, and so much