{"id":12290,"date":"2012-09-04T14:53:01","date_gmt":"2012-09-04T21:53:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=12290"},"modified":"2012-09-04T14:53:01","modified_gmt":"2012-09-04T21:53:01","slug":"dnc-neoliberals-smoking-crack-delusional-and-out-of-touch-with-reality-latin-america-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=12290","title":{"rendered":"DNC Neoliberals Smoking Crack – Delusional and Out-of-touch with Reality – Latin America and Beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"

Diatribes and Curious Silences – Democrats and U.S. Labor Delusional About Latin America<\/strong>
\nBy ALBERTO C. RUIZ – 04 September, 2012 – Counterpunch<\/p>\n

The Democrats just put out their platform on Latin America, and it demonstrates only the loosest connection to reality. Thus, while praising the \u201cvibrant democracies in countries from Mexico to Brazil and Costa Rica to Chile,\u201d as well as \u201chistoric peaceful transfers of power in places like El Salvador and Uruguay,\u201d the Democrats continue to point to Cuba and Venezuela as outliers in the region in which the Democrats plan \u201cto press for more transparent and accountable governance\u201d and for \u201cgreater freedom.\u201d Of course, it is their Platform\u2019s deafening silence on critical developments in the region which says the most about their position vis a vis the Region.<\/p>\n

Not surprising, the Democrats say nothing about the recent coups in Honduras and Paraguay (both taking place during Obama\u2019s first term) which unseated popular and progressive governments. They also say nothing about the fact that President Obama, against the tide of the other democratic countries in Latin America, quickly recognized the coup governments in both of these countries. Also omitted from the platform is any discussion of the horrendous human rights situation in post-coup Honduras where journalists, human rights advocates and labor leaders have been threatened, harassed and even killed at alarming rates.<\/p>\n

As Reporters Without Borders (RWR) explained on August 16, 25 journalists have been murdered in Honduras since the 2009 coup, making Honduras the journalist murder capital of the world. In this same story, RWR mentions Honduras in the same breath as Mexico (a country the Democrats hold out as one of the \u201cvibrant democracies\u201d in the region) when speaking of the oppression of journalists and social activists, as well as the general climate of violence which plagues both countries. As RWR stated, \u201cLike their Mexican colleagues, Honduran journalists \u2013 along with human rights workers, civil society representatives, lawyers and academics who provide information \u2013 will not break free of the spiral of violent crime and censorship until the way the police and judicial apparatus functions is completely overhauled.\u201d And indeed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 38 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 1992, and it has been confirmed in 27 of these cases that the journalists were killed precisely because they were journalists. Meanwhile, in Mexico, over 40,000 individuals have been killed due to the U.S.-sponsored drug war \u2013 hardly a laudable figure. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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Diatribes and Curious Silences – Democrats and U.S. Labor Delusional About Latin America By ALBERTO C. RUIZ – 04 September, 2012 – Counterpunch The Democrats just put out their platform on Latin America, and it demonstrates only the loosest connection to reality. Thus, while praising the \u201cvibrant democracies in countries from Mexico to Brazil and more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[3453],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12290"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12290"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12292,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12290\/revisions\/12292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}