Posted on 10/31/2003 8:34:12 PM PST by The Bronze Titan
HAVANA - If Latin American opponents of Washington's free trade policies join forces, they could deal the United States a blow as serious as its loss in the Vietnam War, Bolivian opposition leader Evo Morales said Thursday.
"Urgent action is important," Morales told leaders of social movements from across the Americas at a gathering here attended by President Fidel Castro (news - web sites). Morales called on the leaders to come together in regional unity and "create people power."
"Very soon we could celebrate in Latin America another Vietnam for the United States," Morales said, referring to the protracted conflict in Asia that sparked widespread opposition protests across the United States in the 1960s.
Morales, a former presidential candidate and now a congressman, is considered a top leader of regional opposition to free-trade policies that have expanded across Latin America in recent years.
The leader of Bolivia's Indian coca-leaf farmers was at the forefront of protests that toppled President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada in mid-October after the president promoted a plan to export Bolivia's natural gas.
Morales, attending a meeting of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences, on Wednesday had called on intellectuals to work with grass roots leaders in their countries to end free-trade economic policies that he says favor the privileged rich while ignoring the majority poor.
"It is important to incorporate intellectuals into the struggle," Morales said Wednesday on the communist government's nightly "Roundtable" television program. He said intellectuals should "not only be concerned, but do something."
Morales on Wednesday repeated his earlier calls for an "alternative summit" by Castro and presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil when heads of state from Spanish- and Portuguese speaking nations gather in Bolivia in mid-November for the annual Ibero-American Summit.
Castro, who for security reasons never announces his trips abroad in advance, has not said if he will attend.
U.S. dollars still talk, and this kind of BS still walks. This is our hemisphere and that's not changing anytime soon.
Politics is the same.
That's a very unthoughtful statement, and it's simply not accurate. Who is the head of state of Brazil? What is his political background?
Who is the head of state of Venezuela? What is his political background?
What is happening in Bolivia? What is happening in Colombia?
Making arrogant declarations about America's preeminence does absolutely nothing to counter the fact that communism is making fresh inroad in much of Latin America, almost 15 years after the fall of the Soviet Union.
TODAY hundreds of millions of South Americans live under communist rulers. Tens of millions of others are considering going communist.
Wake up.
Like they have much of a choice, the socialists tell them that capitalism is a failure and they don't know any different from their local media.
write your congressmember
When I said that it's our hemisphere, perhaps I should have suffixed that with "as much as we want it to be."
And they are coming right across our open borders by the tens of millions to vote and to void the votes of legitimate citizens and bring down the USofA, aided and abetted by both parties.
Now the cocoa producers are in charge.
One of the more difficult concepts for modern-day conservatives to grasp is that "pure" capitalism can be as destructive as any other ideology. If their is not a healthy dose of humanism attached, any system becomes malignant, including capitalism.
As can be seen on this very thread, many Americans are simply too lazy to think about what is happening in our own neighborhood.
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