John Nichols: U.S. is 'imperialist minority' in Latin America

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."

Nowhere is that evidence more abundantly on display that in El Salvador, the Central American country that suffered so horribly during the dirty wars of the 1980s and that now suffers under the yolk of a model of globalization that has made the country one of the last stops on the corporate race to the bottom.

Grass-roots activists in El Salvador have struggled mightily to maintain civil society and a measure of democracy in the country, but they have been badly battered by a partnership between multinational corporations, the U.S. government and its allies in the Salvadoran government. Fights over privatization of basic services and the exploitation of natural resources have been common, bitter and at times violent.

What public space had existed is closing rapidly, with the enactment of ambiguous "anti-terrorist" legislation modeled on the Bush administration's Patriot Act -- even as federal judges in the U.S. rule sections of the act unconstitutional -- and so-called "public disorder" legislation that imposes draconian jail sentences on dissenters.

The new laws are being used to prevent protest against water privatization schemes and environmentally destructive mining proposals. Activists with the country's leading civil society grouping, the Association of Rural Communities for the Development of El Salvador (CRIPDES), who were seeking to defend not just natural resources but essential services and protections for the country's poorest citizens, have been arrested. They face the prospect of extended incarceration for the "crime" of organizing citizens to mount peaceful challenges to the illegitimate initiatives of exploitative multinational corporations.

Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders and Catholic human rights groups in Salvador have challenged the arrests, the use of excessive force by police, and the misuse of the anti-terrorism law. More than three dozen members of the U.S. House, including U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, have expressed deep concern about the deterioration of human rights in El Salvador. But the Bush administration continues to aid and abet assaults on Salvadoran democracy and freedom.

The crisis in El Salvador is real, and it demands a response from Americans who do not want their country to act as an economic, political and military empire. But for that to happen, the crisis must be placed on America's radar. That's what the U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities network is seeking to do, as it brings Salvadorans to the United States in coming days to discuss what is being done in our name but without our informed consent in Latin America.

Learn more at the group's Web site, www.us-elsalvador-sisters.org, or contact the Madison Arcatao Sister City Project at 251-9280. And check out this weekend's national gathering of the network in Madison -- including a terrific free concert featuring local blues and reggae bands at the Madison Labor Temple at 7:30 p.m. Saturday.