by TAMARA PEARSON
Any help or aid from the US always comes with conditions and ulterior motives.
The US government says it is going to help Central America fight corruption, will combat the “root causes” of migration in Mexico and Central America, and it wants to help the Cuban people with freedom too.
Its recent discourse regarding Latin American countries is aimed at dressing itself, the bully, as the savior.
But the US’s domestic and foreign track record demonstrates that it isn’t qualified to teach anyone about democracy, combating poverty, ending corruption, or anything related to human rights. Instead, its recent discourse regarding Latin American countries is aimed at dressing itself, the bully, as the savior.
By manufacturing problems (ie by directly causing hunger and medicine shortages), as well as by magnifying or distorting existing problems and combining those with real hardships, the US has been framing its intervention and dominance in certain countries as help that no one can reasonably oppose. The help discourse makes it hard for many people to perceive the US’s real agenda and political interests, and it makes it very easy for the mainstream media to cover up the US’s desire to increase it’s exploitation of Latin America.
In US help speak, financial support for anti-government (read pro-US agenda) groups is spun as aid, particularly through USAID. Bringing a pro-US leader to power is framed as toppling a cruel dictator. Building towns where US corporations and manufacturing plants can do what ever they want (ie the ZEDES in Honduras, or industrial parks in Mexico) and imposing privatization policies on poor countries is called “freedom,” “democracy,” “investment” or “economic support.”
While the US’s blockade of Cuba for the past six decades has caused over US$144 billion in losses to the country’s economy, Biden this week sided with protests there, and called for “relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic … and economic suffering.” The blockade is what is causing severe shortages in Cuba, an oil crisis, and making it hard for the country to manufacture enough vaccines.
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