Instruction: Write an article about: Nicaragua signs historic agreements with Iran, discusses bartering to evade illegal US sanctions. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: bartering, Daniel Ortega, Iran, Javad Owji, Nicaragua, oil, sanctions, Venezuela

Output:
Pledging anti-imperialist unity, Nicaragua’s Sandinista government signed economic agreements with Iran concerning oil, agriculture, trade, and technology. They discussed bartering to get around illegal US sanctions.

The Sandinista government of Nicaragua has signed a series of historic agreements with Iran, concerning oil, agriculture, trade, and technology.
The two countries also discussed ways to barter in order to exchange products without the need of the US-dominated financial system, thus circumventing Washington’s unilateral sanctions, which are illegal under international law.
A high-level Iranian delegation arrived to Nicaragua on May 4, led by the West Asian nation’s minister of petroleum, Javad Owji.
On May 6, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo signed three memoranda of understanding with Iran.
President Ortega said the agreements involved trade, oil and petroleum products, petrochemicals, agriculture, livestock, construction and modernization, technology transfers, and engineering.
Ortega added that Tehran is helping Nicaragua boost its agriculture production, and there are plans to export food to Iran and other countries in West Asia.
Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega with Iran’s Petroleum Minister Javad Owji
Iran already cooperates closely with Venezuela, and Tehran’s petroleum minister, Owji, called for strengthening the collaboration between Iran, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
Ortega condemned the US “persecution, blockade, siege, threats against” all three countries.
Highlighting “the great potential that Nicaragua has,” Owji said, “we can unite forces to neutralize the unjust sanctions that have been applied against both of our peoples.”
Nicaragua’s Sandinista government praised the people of Iran for resisting imperialism, referring to the nations’ two revolutions as “brotherly revolutions,” noting they both took place just a few months apart in the same year, 1979.
In his meeting with the senior Iranian officials, Ortega recounted the history of European and US colonialism in Nicaragua, noting how foreign imperialists long tried to build a canal through the Central American country, and now seek to prevent the Sandinista government from building its own sovereign canal.
Ortega thanked Iran for its solidarity with “a country like Nicaragua, a small people in its territory, which has been invaded since the Spanish colonizers to the yankee expansionists.”
“These are the times in which our peoples maintain that historical thread” with anti-imperialist revolutionaries like Augusto Sandino, Ortega said, with “that principle of defending sovereignty, self-determination, and security for the peace and well-being of our peoples.”
The meeting featured an Iranian diplomat responsible for bartering and obtaining basic products. Upon introducing him, Ortega commented, “Bartering was how our First Nations here in all of the regions of America, Latin America and the Caribbean, our First Nations, before the colonialists, the imperialists, the invaders arrived, their form of trade was bartering.”
Ortega said bartering was ideal because “on occasions there are no other options but to exchange resources for products, because there are blockades, sanctions, which are nothing more than aggression by the empire, and by NATO, which is part of the empire, which is blocking financial operations.”
“So an alternative that our peoples have, when they blockade us, and we cannot transfer the payment for a product that we would like to bring from Iran, well, we could pay for it with products that Iran is interested in that we produce here,” the Nicaraguan president added.

As part of the signed agreements, Iran will also provide technical support to expand Nicaragua’s refinery.
Nicaragua is not known to have sizeable hydrocarbons reserves. It does have a refinery on the Pacific coast, near Puerto Sandino – Port Sandino.
This Nicaraguan refinery was built by Venezuelan specialists in an act of solidarity between the two nations, as part of President Hugo Chávez’s Petrocaribe program.
Nicaragua’s refinery is called El Supremo Sueño de Bolívar – The Supreme Dream of Bolívar, dedicated to the 19th-century Venezuelan revolutionary who led a successful armed uprising against Spanish colonialism and united large parts of South America in an anti-imperialist republic.
The term Supreme Dream of Bolívar is a reference to a 1929 plan proposed by Nicaraguan revolutionary Augusto Sandino, who led a guerrilla war against US troops that were militarily occupying his country.
Nicaragua’s Sandinista movement is named after Sandino, who in the early 20th century called for Latin America to unite and expel the new US colonialists, just as they had expelled the previous Spanish colonialists.
Part of Nicaragua’s refinery, El Supremo Sueño de Bolívar (The Supreme Dream of Bolívar)
While visiting Nicaragua, the Iranian delegation met with the Central American nation’s Ministry of Energy and Mines and traveled to the refinery.
The coordinator of the refinery, Marco Centeno, said “the capacity of the plant is to store and distribute [oil] to the Nicaraguan market.”
Iran pledged to help grow the operations of the refinery, while strengthening economic ties between the two countries.
The agreements signed between Iran and Nicaragua follow a historic 25-year pact that Iran signed with China in 2021. As part of this deal, which has been estimated at $400 billion, Tehran will provide Beijing with oil and other resources and China will help develop infrastructure and technology in Iran.


Instruction: Write an article about: Puerto Ricans rise up against US-imposed austerity, protest poverty wages. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: austerity, colonialism, neoliberalism, Puerto Rico

Output:
Puerto Rican public workers are protesting the neoliberal policies imposed by the US government’s unelected Financial Oversight and Management Board. A professor speaks about their demands for higher wages and better social programs.

This February, Puerto Rican public workers have been holding large protests against the neoliberal policies imposed by the US government’s unelected Financial Oversight and Management Board.
Multipolarista spoke with Ángel Rodríguez Rivera, president of the Puerto Rican Association of University Professors. He described how teachers are rising up, after the minimum wage has not increased in 13 years.
You can watch or listen to the interview below:


Instruction: Write an article about: 2/3rds of Nicaraguans support leftist Sandinista Front: Poll debunks ‘dictatorship’ lie. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Daniel Ortega, FSLN, M&R Consultores, neoliberalism, Nicaragua, Sandinistas

Output:
While the US and EU absurdly smear Nicaragua as a “dictatorship” and impose sanctions on it, polls show 2/3rds of the population support the revolutionary Sandinista Front and President Daniel Ortega.

MANAGUA, NICARAGUA — If you only listened to corporate media reporting, you would think Nicaragua is a hellish dystopia. Western governments and their stenographers in the press preposterously claim that the country’s leftist Sandinista government is a “dictatorship,” and an “authoritarian regime.”
Of course, mainstream reporters never talk to average working-class Nicaraguans (as I do often in my reporting at The Grayzone). Instead, they act as mouthpieces for the Central American nation’s small class of wealthy oligarchs, who despise the socialist-oriented Sandinista National Liberation Front for taking away their unearned, inherited privileges.
Actual polling on the ground in Nicaragua, however, shows that the ruling Sandinista Front is quite popular, consistently enjoying the support of roughly two-thirds of the population.
The right-wing opposition, on the other hand, has the support of just around one-fifth of the population. This is the despite the fact that it receives tens of millions of dollars in funding from the United States and European Union, and dominates the media, business sector, academia, and NGOs.
The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) overthrew Nicaragua’s US puppet dictatorship in 1979, and governed until 1990, when it lost power in an election that was essentially stolen by Washington. But the Sandinistas didn’t give up; they organized in poor and working-class barrios and came back to power through democratic elections in 2007, and have governed Nicaragua since.
The leading polling firm in Nicaragua, M&R Consultores, conducts regular studies that show the Sandinista Front to have a solid support base of 60-70%.
M&R Consultores is independent, not affiliated to any political party. It used to be regularly cited by mainstream media outlets like Reuters, but they began to ignore its polls when they became too inconvenient for Nicaragua’s US-backed right-wing opposition.
Between August 3 and 9, M&R conducted a comprehensive survey (PDF) in the departments across Nicaragua. The poll has a sample size of 2000 and a margin of error of +/- 2%.
It found that, in the lead-up to Nicaragua’s national election this November, a majority of people support the government, have confidence in the electoral process, and support the Sandinista Front.
66.6% of Nicaraguans say their country is better with a Sandinista government, whereas just 10.9% believe it is better with the right-wing opposition governing.
76.8% said the current government of President Daniel Ortega respects fundamental human rights and civil liberties.
When asked how they would rate the government on a scale from 1-100, where 1 is as bad as possible and 100 is as good as possible, Nicaraguans gave the Sandinista government a 70.2 rating.
The poll clearly debunks the claim that Nicaragua is a “dictatorship.”

Overall, 69.5% of Nicaraguans lean toward the Sandinista Front, and more than 69% have confidence and hope in the party.
On the other hand, just 26% lean toward the opposition and have confidence and hope in it.

In terms of the actual ballot box, 60% definitely plan to vote for the Sandinista Front this November, and 14.6% definitely plan to vote for the opposition.
One-fourth of participants were indecisive or did not disclose their voting intention.

The survey also studied the gray areas, of how strongly or softly Nicaraguans support these political factions.
It found that the Sandinistas can count on roughly 66.7% of the vote, with 42.4% staunch support, 17.4% soft support, and 6.9% that leans toward them.
The right-wing opposition, on the other hand, can count on around 20.5%, with 3.9% staunch support, 13.6% soft support, and 3% wiggle room.

As for how Nicaraguans politically identify, 57.9% openly call themselves Sandinistas, whereas just 7.5% identify with the right-wing opposition.
A solid one-third, 34.6%, consider themselves to be independents.
Of the 7.5% who identify with the opposition, just 2.9% align themselves with the right-wing Ciudadanos por la Libertad (Citizens for Freedom) party, 2.5% with the neoliberal Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (Constitutionalist Liberal Party), and a mere 0.4% with the ultra-elite Partido Liberal Independiente (Independent Liberal Party).

The survey also found that Nicaraguans have a high degree of confidence in their electoral system.
Despite claims by Global North governments and media outlets that Nicaragua is a “dictatorship,” 85.7% of Nicaraguans believe their vote is “very important” in elections. 6.4% say it is somewhat important, and a mere 7.9% believe it doesn’t matter.

Similarly, nearly 80% of Nicaraguans say they feel enthusiasm for the November election — 23.8% have a lot of enthusiasm, 41% have moderate enthusiasm, and 12.8% have some enthusiasm.
Just 10.8% have low enthusiasm, and 11.7% have zero enthusiasm.
What a strange “dictatorship.”

Moreover, 60.3% of Nicaraguans say they are satisfied with the functioning of their nation’s democracy, while 27.4% are not satisfied.
But I guess a bunch of coup-plotting bureaucrats in Western capitals who insist that Nicaragua is an “authoritarian regime” — and who studied at Ivy League universities, live in elite bubbles of privilege, and have often never even been to Latin America — know more Nicaragua’s democracy than the Nicaraguan people themselves.

The poll shows that 65.3 % of Nicaraguans believe the most important thing in a democracy is not that the people running the government regularly change, but rather that “the people have real opportunities to improve their quality of life.”
This shows that Nicaragua has a much more mature understanding of democracy than many Global North bourgeois societies, where democracy is taken to mean that you vote every four or five years for a new figurehead who implements the exact same policies in support of corporations, elites, war, and empire. In those “democracies,” the faces change but the anti-poor, pro-rich policies never do.

Finally, the survey asked Nicaraguans what kind of economic policies they support, divided between progressivism or neoliberalism.
85.3% support the government’s subsidies for people to buy houses, with 14.7% in opposition.
77.2% support taxes based on how much you earn, whereas 22.8% oppose them.
97.4% support the government’s electricity subsidies, with 2.6% opposition.
97.9% support the government’s water subsidies, with 2.1% opposition.
97.6% support the system of free universal education, while 2.4% want to re-privatize it.
And a whopping 98.6% support the system of free universal healthcare, whereas just 1.4% want to re-privatize it.

M&R Consultures concluded surveying electoral participation. 78.5% of Nicaraguans said they plan to vote in the November election, whereas 21.5% said they do not plan to vote.
That is significantly higher voter participation than in US elections, which are taken to be the world’s grand model of bourgeois democracy.
In short, this study has shown what poll after poll has consistently demonstrated for years: roughly two-thirds of Nicaraguans support the Sandinista Front, President Ortega, and the government’s leftist policies. On the other side, just around one-fifth of the population backs the right-wing opposition.
These two-thirds represent the main base of working-class and poor Nicaraguans, whereas the one-fifth represents the country’s wealthy elites.
The US government, the European Union, and their de facto spokespeople in the corporate media have tried to discredit Nicaragua’s November election months before it even takes place by falsely claiming that President Ortega imprisoned his opponents.
In reality, the government detained the leaders of a brutally violent coup attempt, who are now facing consequences for their crimes.
No other country on Earth could allow criminal coup-plotters to get away with zero consequences for trying to violently overthrow the government. But Nicaragua is expected to do so, because the United States funded and sponsored those coup leaders.
So Washington created an entirely new concept, claiming they were so-called “pre-candidates,” to falsely accuse Nicaragua of arresting presidential candidates.
In reality, there is no such thing as a “pre-candidate”; it does not exist as a legal category. The coup leaders arrested were not candidates.
But Washington and Brussels have been desperate to reassert control over Nicaragua ever since the Sandinista Front came back in 2007.
The United States has directly invaded Nicaragua three times, and endlessly meddled in the nation’s internal affairs. Washington will never be content until its neocolonial puppets are back in power.
It just has one small problem: polls like these show a majority of Nicaraguans support their Sandinista government and oppose these US puppets. And as history has shown, Nicaraguans are willing to fight to defend their sovereignty.


Instruction: Write an article about: Colombia elections: Left wins historic victory against narco-regime. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Colombia, Federico Gutiérrez, Francia Márquez, Gustavo Petro, podcast, Rodolfo Hernández

Output:
Colombia’s left-wing presidential candidate Gustavo Petro won round one of the May 29 elections. He will compete against far-right hundred-millionaire real estate mogul Rodolfo Hernández in a runoff on June 19.

Colombia’s presidential candidate Gustavo Petro of the left-wing Pacto Histórico coalition won round one of the May 29 elections in a landslide. He will compete against a far-right hundred-millionaire real estate mogul, Rodolfo Hernández, in a runoff vote on June 19.
Multipolarista editor Benjamin Norton spoke with with members of the anti-imperialist Troika Kollective in Colombia to discuss the election and the political situation in the country.

Troika Kollective website: troikakollective.com


Instruction: Write an article about: Media admits Venezuelan coup puppet Juan Guaidó has no real power – other than what US stole for him. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: AFP, corporate media, Juan Guaidó, media, Nicolás Maduro, UN, United Nations, Venezuela

Output:
After years of promoting the US puppet, mainstream media outlets are finally admitting that Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó is a fraud with no real power other than what Western governments stole for him.

Mainstream international newswire AFP has admitted that US coup puppet Juan Guaidó has no actual power in Venezuela – although like Donald Trump, Joe Biden still recognizes him.
Nearly three years after Trump initiated a coup attempt in Venezuela by appointing Guaidó so-called “interim president” in January 2019, AFP published an article titled “Venezuela’s Guaido digs in as ‘acting president’ without power.”
The outlet snarkily noted that the US puppet’s online Zoom meetings are “as virtual as Guaido’s power.”
“What Guaido does have, though, thanks to backing from Washington, is control of millions of dollars worth of Venezuelan assets held outside the country, much to Maduro’s chagrin,” AFP added.
Western governments and the corporate media outlets that obediently echo them frequently claim that Venezuela’s real, elected President Nicolás Maduro is internationally “isolated,” but in reality it is Guaidó that has very little international support.
The United Nations General Assembly held a vote in December 2021 to see where the international community stands on Venezuela, and just 16 of the UN’s 193 member states (ie, 8%) voted against recognizing the constitutional government of Maduro.


Instruction: Write an article about: Mexico’s President AMLO demands freedom for Julian Assange, ‘prisoner of conscience’ and ‘best journalist of our time’. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: AMLO, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Julian Assange, Mexico, WikiLeaks

Output:
Mexico’s left-wing President López Obrador denounced US hypocrisy and reiterated his call to free Julian Assange, calling him a “prisoner of conscience” and the “best journalist of our time, in the world.” At a press conference, AMLO played a WikiLeaks video showing the US military killing civilians in Iraq.

Mexico’s left-wing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador reiterated his call for the freedom of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, whom he called a “prisoner of conscience” and the “best journalist of our time, in the world.”
In a fiery speech condemning the US government’s hypocrisy in its persecution of Assange, López Obrador asked, “Are we going to take the Statue of Liberty out of New York? Are we going to keep talking about democracy? Are we going to keep talking about the protection of human rights, of the freedom of expression?”
At the press conference in which Mexican President AMLO called for Julian Assange to be freed, he showed a clip of the "collateral murder" video published by @WikiLeaks, which exposed US war crimes and killing of journalists in Iraq.
Read more here: https://t.co/qtR2SIOX1j pic.twitter.com/lEQw6F9rrS
— Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) June 22, 2022

López Obrador, who is known popularly by the acronym AMLO, made these comments in a press conference on the morning of June 21.
AMLO called the imprisonment of Assange a “shame for the world.” He insisted, “The United Nations should take a stance” on behalf of Assange, along with “all organizations that defend human rights. There cannot be silence.”
“Mexico opens the doors to Assange,” the president declared, repeating his promise to give asylum to the imprisoned Australian journalist.
AMLO recalled that Assange “gathered cables, reports, from the embassies of the United States, in which they talked about acts of interventionism, and of crimes committed, of flagrant violations of human rights. Not only texts, but also images.”
At the press conference, AMLO played a clip of the scandalous 2007 video published by WikiLeaks, known as “collateral murder,” in which the US military can be seen killing civilians in Iraq, including a Reuters journalist.
“They are journalists, those who were targets,” López Obrador said, pointing to the screen. “This is what led to the persecution… This is why he is [in prison].”
Mexican President AMLO playing the WikiLeaks “collateral murder” video at a press conference on June 21, 2022
The Mexican president said he is going to pressure US leader Joe Biden to free Assange.
Assange is an Australian national. The US government has no legal jurisdiction over him.
Yet Washington has sought to extradite Assange over his journalistic work, threatening him with up to 175 years in prison.
Even mainstream NGOs like Amnesty International, which are deeply biased on behalf of Western governments, have called for the US government to drop its politically motivated charges against Assange, describing the case as “a full-scale assault on the right to freedom of expression.”
Unlike the Mexican president, however, Amnesty International has refused to designate Assange a prisoner of conscience.
AMLO has repeatedly called for the WikiLeaks journalist to be freed. In January 2021, López Obrador offered Assange asylum in Mexico.
In the final weeks of the Donald Trump administration, AMLO wrote his US counterpart a letter, urging him to free Assange.
The US president ignored AMLO’s letter. Instead of freeing Assange, who exposed US war crimes in Iraq, Trump pardoned convicted war criminals from the mercenary firm Blackwater, who massacred civilians in Iraq.


Instruction: Write an article about: Guatemala blocks leftist Indigenous leader from presidential race, in ‘electoral coup’. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Alejandro Giammattei, Guatemala, Jordán Rodas, MLP, Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples, Movimiento para la Liberación de los Pueblos, Thelma Cabrera

Output:
Guatemala’s notoriously corrupt right-wing government banned Indigenous leader Thelma Cabrera and her leftist Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples (MLP) party from running in the presidential election. International observers warn this is an “electoral coup”.

Guatemala’s notoriously corrupt right-wing government has blocked a prominent leftist Indigenous leader from running in the June 2023 presidential election, in a move that international observers have condemned as an “electoral coup”.
Nearly half of Guatemalans (44%) identify as Indigenous. The Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples (MLP) is a left-wing party that was created to represent the First Nations who have for so long been ignored by Guatemala’s political system.
The MLP is led by Thelma Cabrera, a social movement activist and human rights defender from the Maya Mam community. She has pledged to fight poverty in Guatemala (one of the poorest countries in the region), resist neoliberalism, and establish a plurinational state that gives full rights to Indigenous nations, like Bolivia.
The newly created MLP party ran for the first time in the 2019 presidential election. Cabrera came in fourth place, winning more than 10% of the vote in the first round, compared to just 14% for current right-wing President Alejandro Giammattei.
Since then, the MLP has only become more popular, gaining support across Guatemala. Giammattei, a staunch conservative and wealthy dual citizen of Italy, has seen the growth of the MLP as a threat.
The MLP’s vice-presidential candidate is Jordán Rodas Andrade. He was appointed Guatemala’s human rights ombudsman in 2017. Before his term ended in 2022, Rodas had become well known for his criticism of President Giammattei and the blatant corruption in his government.
Upon leaving the position, Rodas condemned Guatemala’s wealthy corporate oligarchs. “They think they are the plantation owners. They have done so much damage to this country”, he said.
Aceptamos el reto y la responsabilidad de los delegados/as del MLP. pic.twitter.com/BpKjFV42jQ
— Thelma Cabrera Pérez DD. HH. (@ThelmaCabreraP2) December 28, 2022

In late January 2023, Guatemala’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) blocked Cabrera and Rodas from participating in the upcoming election, which will be held on June 25.
Guatemalan social movement activists and international observers have reported that the TSE is deeply politicized and acts in the interests of Giammattei and the country’s powerful oligarchs.
Cabrera and her MLP party filed an appeal, but on February 2, the TSE ruled against them, officially banning them from the race.
The Guatemalan electoral authority claimed they cannot run because their application was “invalid”.
Cabrera shared the completed paperwork on Twitter, insisting that “we fulfilled all the legal requirements”. Rodas also explained that he submitted all the required paperwork, and a review of his record found no legal cases or complaints against him.
“Any additional requirement is not found in the law; it cannot be invoked to avoid my candidacy and violate my right to be elected”, he said.
Cualquier requisito adicional no se encuentra en ley, no puede ser invocado para evitar mi candidatura y violentar mi derecho a ser electo. La existencia de denuncias espurias no es impedimento para ser inscrito. Al revisar el QR de mi finiquito no registra ninguna denuncia. pic.twitter.com/eC5KcYEgpJ
— Jordán Rodas Andrade (@JordanRodas) January 29, 2023

Hundreds of activists protested at the TSE, condemning the electoral court’s decision. An MLP supporter said, “If you all don’t register our candidates, there won’t be elections”. Their movement has vowed to go on strike and hold large demonstrations until the decision is reversed.
Even Western government-funded organizations that are deeply biased against the Latin American left have warned that the Giammattei government is increasingly authoritarian.
The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), which is funded by the US government and multiple European states, has long shown prejudice in support of the Latin American right. But IDEA’s regional director, Daniel Zovatto, admitted that TSE’s ban of Cabrera and Rodas is a kind of “electoral coup”.
“The decision declaring inadmissible the appeal for annulment by the MLP, leaving the Cabrera-Rodas ticket out of the electoral contest, is an ‘electoral coup’ that corrupts the integrity and credibility of the elections”, Zovatto said.
Vicenta Jerónimo, the lone MLP representative in Guatemala’s congress, referred to the struggle as “a battle of the oligarchy against the peoples”.
“That is because we also know that all state institutions are co-opted in the hands of corrupt thieves in this country”, she said.
In one of the many demonstrations that have taken place throughout the country, Jerónimo stated, “We also see in the Supreme Electoral Tribunal that they have registered children of the genocide that murdered my parents, my grandparents, my uncles in the armed conflict”.
? #Ahora | La diputada del MLP, Vicenta Jerónimo, está frente al TSE acompañado a simpatizantes del partido que exigen la inscripción del binomio Thelma Cabrera y Jordán Rodas. pic.twitter.com/3G2aljhz37
— Plaza Pública (@PlazaPublicaGT) February 2, 2023

Jerónimo was alluding to Zury Ríos, a right-wing presidential candidate who is the daughter of Guatemala’s former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt.
The United States supported the Ríos Montt regime in the 1980s, as he massacred Indigenous communities. In 2013, he was sentenced for crimes against humanity and genocide.
An independent truth commission found that, during Guatemala’s civil war, the US-backed military carried out 93% of civilian killings, whereas socialist guerrillas were responsible for just 3%.
It is estimated that as a result of the genocide perpetrated by Ríos Montt, at least 200,000 children became orphans and around 5,000 more disappeared.
The vast majority of attacks perpetrated by the Guatemalan military against the population were against civilians who had no connection to the conflict.
Ironically, Zury Ríos launched her presidential campaign for the 2023 elections despite having a constitutional ban that kept her out of the race in 2019, due to her close ties with her father.
But the TSE is now allowing Zury Ríos to run. The same electoral body that once banned the proud, unapologetic daughter of a convicted war criminal is today blocking the candidacy of an Indigenous leader and prominent human rights defender.
Madre mía te recuerdo hoy desde tu tierra, esto es por ti, esto es por Guatemala ?. #Chimaltenango #Tecpán #AhoraSiElPuebloManda pic.twitter.com/W0DK86tL9s
— Zury Rios (@ZuryxGuate) February 4, 2023

Likewise, the TSE has allowed wealthy right-wing businessman Manuel Baldizón to run in the 2023 elections, despite the fact that he was imprisoned in the United States for laundering drug money, and deported to Guatemala in 2022.
Baldizón is running for congress, as part of the right-wing Cambio party. His son Jorge Eduardo Baldizón Vargas is also a congressional candidate, and their fellow family member Álvaro Manuel Trujillo Baldizón is running for president.
When Thelma Cabrera won more than 10% of the vote in the first round of the 2019 election, coming just a few points shy of making the run-off, she frightened Guatemala’s oligarchy.
Among the ideas she was advocating for included recovering territories exploited by agribusiness and extractive corporations, creating an anti-monopoly law, asserting collective rights of the lands of Indigenous peoples, and reducing poverty in one of the poorest countries in the region.
These proposals are very popular among working-class Guatemalans. This explains the large protests the country has seen in response to the TSE ban.
#Elecciones2023 ? Jordán Rodas: las “cortes deberán restaurar nuestros derechos”.
??Luego que el TSE rechazara la inscripción de Thelma Cabrera y Jordán Rodas, el ex PDH anunció que el proceso jurídico lo trasladarán a la CSJ.
✍?@iespinoza_gthttps://t.co/o4hGbZNjjw
— PrensaComunitaria (@PrensaComunitar) February 3, 2023

Cabrera is also a supporter of Latin American integration, and has praised other left-wing governments in the region.
Under Giammattei, Guatemala recognized US-appointed coup leader Juan Guaidó as supposed “interim president” of Venezuela. In 2019, he unsuccessfully tried to enter Venezuela using his Italian passport, hoping to meet with Guaidó.
Guatemala’s right-wing regime is one of the very few governments in Latin America that has supported Ukraine in the NATO proxy war against Russia. Cabrera criticized Giammattei for visiting Kiev and posing for photos with its Western-backed leader Volodymyr Zelensky.
?? #Guate El caporal del @CACIFGuatemala Candil en la calle, obscuridad en su casa… pic.twitter.com/Kz5zppDBuu
— Thelma Cabrera Pérez DD. HH. (@ThelmaCabreraP2) July 28, 2022

The next step for Cabrera and her running mate Jordán Rodas will be to appeal the TSE’s decision at Guatemala’s Supreme Court of Justice.
In the mean time, their Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples is organizing protests, demanding systemic change in the country.


Instruction: Write an article about: From Canada to Brazil, rich right-wing elites are astroturfing ‘trucker’ protests. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Brazil, Canada, Covid-19, Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Justin Trudeau, pandemic, Steve Bannon

Output:
Supported by wealthy right-wing elites, so-called “trucker” protests (led by non-truckers) have paralyzed the capitals of Brazil and Canada in less than six months. The campaigns have many similarities – including some of the same well-funded conservative networks.

(Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.)
Wealthy international right-wing networks have fueled a protest in Canada that paralyzed the capital Ottawa this January and February.
Many of the organizers of the demonstration, which they call a “freedom convoy,” are not truckers, and some have links to far-right groups and Canadian military intelligence and police agencies. But they have exploited the image of truck drivers to confuse observers into thinking it is a working-class movement.
With large sums of money and support from powerful right-wing leaders in Canada and abroad – especially from Donald Trump and his political network in the United States – the “freedom convoy” has used opposition to Covid-19 vaccine mandates as cover to launch an occupation of the capital.
This is despite the fact that nearly 90% of truckers in Canada are vaccinated, and the convoy has been condemned by major unions and organizations representing truck drivers, including the Canadian Labour Congress, Teamsters, and the Canadian Trucking Alliance.
Yet this is not the first time this “trucker convoy” tactic has been employed. It is the latest example of a strategy being developed by well-funded right-wing networks across the Americas, from as far north as Canada and as far south as Brazil.
The convoy in Ottawa is in fact eerily similar to an astroturfed campaign organized just a few months before in Brasilia by rich supporters of the South American nation’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
A trucker protest in Brazil in 2018 paralyzed distribution networks for weeks. Initially rooted in legitimate complaints of unreasonable hikes to the cost of diesel caused by neoliberal economic policies imposed after a 2016 political coup against a democratically elected left-wing government, the trucker protest was soon hijacked by wealthy conservative elites.
2018 was a crucial election year, and Brazil’s media oligarchies turned the trucker protest into a giant campaign commercial for the most subservient politician to US interests in the country’s history: Bolsonaro – its first head of state to ever visit CIA headquarters.
International right-wing networks again resorted to the trucker tactic in 2021. In the first week of September, Brazil held a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), starring Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo. (Donald Trump Jr. was supposed to attend in person, but he ended up speaking via video stream.)
CPAC Brazil also featured Jason Miller, a former Trump senior advisor and close ally of far-right political operative Steve Bannon.
Former senior advisor to Donald Trump, Jason Miller, with Jair Bolsonaro and his son Eduardo in Brazil
Just a few days after CPAC Brazil, on September 7, a group of truckers occupied the national esplanade, briefly paralyzing the capital Brasilia, leading thousands of Bolsonaro supporters in what initially appeared to be a planned storming of the Supreme Court building.
The Brazilian “trucker” protest was organized by a man who called himself Zé Trovão. It was later revealed that he was not really a trucker, and he didn’t even have a driver’s license – but he did receive thousands of dollars from Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo.
Furthemore, most of the truckers who showed up at the September 7 rally in Brasilia had actually been hired by a company, Pro Tork, whose wealthy owner, Marlon Bonilha, was one of Bolsonaro’s biggest campaign contributors.
Hours after the attempted insurgency fizzled out, Miller was detained at the Brasilia airport by federal police, who questioned him over his role in the destabilization of the country.
The clear parallels between these campaigns illustrate how powerful right-wing networks are developing a novel strategy to destabilize governments, under the cynical guise of “working-class” trucker protests.
Row of trucks at the September 7, 2021 protest in Brazil, all owned by Pro Tork, the company run by Bolsonaro campaign financer Marlon Bonilha
In January 2022, the Canadian government began requiring truckers crossing the border with the United States to be vaccinated against Covid-19. For the vast majority of truck drivers, almost 90% of whom are vaccinated, this was not a problem.
But right-wing networks both inside Canada and outside of the country seized on the new policy to protest and shut down the capital.
Numerous members of far-right groups, including white nationalists and Islamophobes, helped to organize what they called a “freedom convoy.” Many of the people involved were in fact not truckers, but they portrayed the demonstrations as a trucker protest.
Some of the leaders of the convoy have backgrounds in Canadian military intelligence and police departments, and appear to have close relationships with state security forces.
"Those involved with organizing protest include former RCMP and military officers," hardly the kind of people who get involved in organizing leftwing pro-labor movements.https://t.co/xeNqY3C5p0
— Stephen Gowans (@GowansStephen) February 11, 2022

Right-wing and xenophobic messaging was ubiquitous at the convoy, and a few protesters even showed up with Nazi and Confederate flags.
Countless photos and videos of the convoy show anti-communist signs, some bizarrely accusing Canada’s neoliberal centrist Prime Minister Trudeau of being a secret communist.
Many more attacked China, and blamed the Communist Party of China for the Covid-19 pandemic. Other protesters were seen with anti-Semitic signs blaming Jews for the crisis.
A website created by supporters of the convoy listed right-wing conspiracy theorist David Icke and anti-vax groups as “allies,” and encouraged readers to follow far-right outlets InfoWars and Rebel News.
Totally disgusted with the Sh.. Show called Freedom Trucker Convoy. Flying nazi and confederate flags, no one seemed bothered including conservative politicians who supported this gathering of white supremacy disguised as a truckers rally. My father a WWII vet would be appalled. pic.twitter.com/pvPVbX57YC
— Ted Williams (@TedWill44) January 31, 2022

As the convoy grew, two right-wing activists who are not truckers, named Tamara Lich, and B.J. Dichter, organized a crowd-funding campaign on the website GoFundMe.
Support poured in from national and international right-wing elites, and the GoFundMe campaign raised $10 million in just over two weeks, with individual donations as high as $215,000.
The fundraiser was supplemented by conservative investment bankers, real estate moguls, and wealthy businesspeople, until it was shut down on February 4.
Fundraising for the convoy had been boosted on social media by a suspicious coordinated campaign involving a hacked account.
Ottawa’s police chief said there was “a significant element from the U.S. that have been involved in the funding, the organizing and the demonstrating.”
Former US president Donald Trump openly promoted the convoy, at rallies and online, referring to Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a neoliberal centrist who has actively campaigned against the left, as a supposed “far-left lunatic.”
Donald Trump is endorsing the Ottawa convoy, calling Justin Trudeau a “far left lunatic who has destroyed Canada,” and backing an attempt to bring a similar truck protest to DC pic.twitter.com/RCyPCD6qwT
— Adrian Morrow (@AdrianMorrow) February 4, 2022

While right-wing groups threw their weight behind the convoy, left-wing groups in Canada came out firmly against the protest, including major labor unions, indigenous leaders, and socialist parties that are staunchly opposed to the Trudeau government.
The largest trucker union in Canada, Teamsters, openly condemned the convoy as a “despicable display of hate lead by the political Right,” lamenting that it “has served to delegitimize the real concerns of most truck drivers today.”
Teamsters Canada noted that 90% of its truckers are vaccinated.
When the convoy created a blockade at the Canada-US border, the union published another statement denouncing the protest “that continues to hurt workers and negatively impact our economy.”
“The livelihood of working Americans and Canadians in the automotive, agricultural, and manufacturing sectors is threatened by this blockade,” Teamsters said.
The Real Enemy for Truckers is Covid-19
Statement by François Laporte, President of Teamsters Canada, representing over 55,000 professional Drivers across Canada.#canlabhttps://t.co/scrrYeXa7x
— Teamsters Canada (@TeamstersCanada) February 7, 2022

The Canadian Labour Congress, the largest labor organization in the country, which represents dozens of unions and millions of workers, also came out firmly against the convoy.
“This is not a protest, it is an occupation by an angry mob trying to disguise itself as a peaceful protest,” the Labour Congress said.
“This occupation of Ottawa streets, on top of the latest wave of the pandemic, is having a devastating effect on the livelihood of already struggling workers and businesses,” it wrote. “Frontline workers, from retail to health workers, have been bullied and harassed.”
Canada’s unions stand together, unequivocally opposed to these vile & hateful messages and condemn the ongoing harassment & violence.Govts must act now to support workers & businesses affected and end the occupation.Our statement: https://t.co/IlOiYLYaoK #canlab #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/m3JH99WuQt
— Canadian Labour (@CanadianLabour) February 9, 2022

In addition to the biggest labor organization and the largest union of actual truck drivers condemning the convoy, the Canadian Trucking Alliance released a statement clearly stating that it “does not support and strongly disapproves of” the protests.
“The vast majority of the Canadian trucking industry is vaccinated,” and alliance said, adding that “most of our nation’s hard-working truck drivers are continuing to move cross-border and domestic freight to ensure our economy continues to function.”
In follow-up statements, the federation emphasized that “a great number of these protestors have no connection to the trucking industry and have a separate agenda beyond a disagreement over cross border vaccine requirements.”
The trucking alliance criticized the convoy for “impairing the hard work of truck drivers who continue to keep our essential goods moving throughout the supply chain during this critical time.”
“Drivers who are simply trying to make a living and get home to their families have been stuck at blocked border crossings for four to eight hours, many of whom have gone without access to washrooms or food,” the federation wrote.
Indigenous communities in Canada similarly denounced the convoy as a right-wing front.
The First Nations Leadership Council strongly condemned the protest for “its spread of misinformation, racism, and violence.”
First Nations Leadership Council Strongly Condemns “Freedom Convoy” Movement Across Canada and its Spread of Misinformation, Racism, and Violence: "The racist double-standard in policing in this country is on full display -" https://t.co/FrNCEF3ajB pic.twitter.com/ITb0z0QRI6
— UBCIC (@UBCIC) February 8, 2022

“In addition to dangerous public health and safety misinformation, the convoy is also amplifying hate speech and dangerous racist sentiments,” the indigenous community organization wrote, noting the presence of racist signs and flags at the protest.
The First Nations leaders pointed out the hypocrisy of the Canadian authorities, noting “the police response to the protest-turned-occupation in Ottawa has, up until recently, been almost non-existent and appalling in their unwillingness to intercede.”
“The racist double-standard in policing in this country is on full display — had these protesters been Indigenous, the police would have cleared them out in a heartbeat,” the council added.
Emphasizing this transparent double standard, Canadian journalist David Pugliese reported, “Police in Ottawa stood by and did nothing as protesters installed a hot tub in the middle of a downtown street. We have images of police fist bumping protesters.”
Police in Ottawa @OttawaPolice stood by and did nothing as protesters installed a hot tub in the middle of a downtown street. We have images of police fist bumping protesters…what next…police carrying their bath water or scrubbing their backs? pic.twitter.com/CWfcwRX3OW
— David Pugliese (@davidpugliese) February 13, 2022

Leftist parties that are very much opposed to Trudeau also came out firmly against the convoy.
The Communist Party of Canada denounced the demonstration as “a public expression of the increasingly organized and assertive far right,” noting “the strong support (ideologically and financially) from the US far right and circles close to Donald Trump” and the presence of “Nazi and Confederated flags, election signs for Bernier and all sorts of far-right symbols.”
Canadians frustrated at the weeks-long blockade of their capital even organized counter-protests against the convoy.
Ottawa residents, unions, and community organizations marching today against the far-right occupation of their city. pic.twitter.com/t87bUJu6cy
— Stephen Gowans (@GowansStephen) February 12, 2022

To the extent that actual truckers have participated in the Canada convoy, they represent a small percentage of workers in the industry, and most are in fact petit-bourgeois owner-operators and even company owners who exploit working-class drivers.
It is important to clarify the social position of truckers, because they aren’t all the same. The labor category of truck driver is made up of multiple social classes.
Hired hourly drivers are working class. The brother of the co-author of this article, Brian Mier, is in fact a working-class Teamsters union steward who has been a truck driver in Chicago for 30 years.
But not all truckers are working class. Drivers who have their own rigs are small business owners, or petit-bourgeois.
Then there are those who own multiple rigs, and run companies that hire drivers by the hour to drive them. They are bourgeois capitalists.
All three categories are often referred to simply as “truckers,” but they are from different classes and have antagonistic economic interests.
It is naïve or dishonest to present a protest in which all categories are present as a strictly working-class movement.
In Canada, the trucker protest has been heavily dominated by owner-operators and capitalists who have their own trucking companies, and who therefore exploit working-class truckers.
Ironically many of those participating in the convoy received money from the Canadian government they are now protesting, through its Covid-19 emergency funding program for employers, Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS).
ETS – Elite Transport SolutionsCapitalist / CEWS Collector. pic.twitter.com/4w2Hxu1Fny
— T?ri the Dumb Lefty Canadian Radical (@RodneyTori) February 8, 2022

It is lonely driving a truck. Like mail carriers, truck drivers don’t enjoy the same kind of constant interaction with other employees that people in the service sector do, for example.
This isolation makes it harder to organize unions and strikes, and it causes some truckers, who spend hours every day listening to radio talk shows and satellite podcasts as they drive, to gravitate towards conservative political viewpoints.
Nevertheless, as labor laws have been weakened in North America, and as domestic manufacturing has declined and robotization has decimated traditional labor sectors, transport logistics remains one of the only areas still capable of paralyzing the contemporary capitalist system.
The new just-in-time distribution model, which minimizes use of warehouses by relying on milimetrically precise transport logistics, is especially vulnerable to trucker strikes.
This explains why union-busting right-wing elites have put a special emphasis on trying to hijack trucker protests – and illustrates the importance of political work and labor organizing within this sector.
Journalist Seymour Hersh revealed that, in the year leading up to the 1973 coup against President Salvador Allende in Chile, the CIA spent millions of dollars financing a 26-day truckers strike.
This strike marked the beginning of a period of economic destabilization that weakened the democratically elected socialist government, and set the stage for far-right General Augusto Pinochet to seize power, with US support.
Canada’s centrist Justin Trudeau government has virtually nothing in common with Allende’s Chile, but Brazil’s left-wing Workers’ Party does. And a similar campaign used in Brazil shows how wealthy elites have a history of exploiting the name of truckers to push their reactionary interests.
Brazil’s democratically elected President Dilma Rousseff, of the Workers’ Party, was overthrown in 2016 in a political coup that, like the 1973 Chile coup, was led by right-wing networks with support from the US government.
Rousseff was replaced by her vice president, neoliberal technocrat Michel Temer. In 2017, his administration liberalized fuel pricing policy, linking prices in one of the countries with the world’s largest oil reserves to dollarized international rates. This caused daily price hikes, which were further exacerbated by plummeting exchange rates.
By mid-2018, diesel prices had risen by 56.5%. That May, the National Confederation of Autonomous Transport Workers, which represents tens of thousands of owner-operators, issued an ultimatum to the government: freeze all diesel prices until negotiations take place, or we will paralyze Brazil’s distribution networks. The Temer administration refused to respond.
On May 21, owner-operators all over the country began blocking off roads and ports. With the support of some of the biggest company owners, they were then joined by thousands of hired drivers.
Most of Brazil’s labor unions did not endorse the protest. Due to the participation of trucking company owners, they viewed it as more of a lock-down than a strike, and believed it did not clearly represent the demands of the working class.
However, the truckers quickly gained the support of much of the Brazilian middle class, who were nearly as fed up with rising gas prices as the truckers were with skyrocketing diesel costs.
A history professor named Larissa Jacheta Riberti, who worked her way through graduate school as the editor of the popular trucking industry trade journal Chico do Boleia, reported on the early days of the protest:
There is no unified set of demands. The movement is not hegemonic from a social or ideological point of view. There is a group of truckers who support Jair Bolsonaro, another group that is demanding a return to military dictatorship, and others who are asking for free elections now and freedom for Lula. In other words, it is a movement that is mainly centered around the issue of diesel prices.
Later she added, “There is a clear attempt being made by the business class, which is exerting a greater influence on negotiations with the government, to appropriate the truckers’ demands.”
At first, it looked like Riberti’s prediction of business-class appropriation was going to be a complete success.
Brazil’s conservative media oligarchies framed the strike to damage the reputation of the Workers’ Party (PT) by only filming the most reactionary elements – men dressed in the national colors of green and yellow, waving signs clamoring for return to the dictatorship and supporting the far-right presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro.
They associated the primary beneficiary of the US-backed 2016 coup, Temer, with the government that he helped remove from power. In the eyes of the media oligarchs, the 2017 liberalization of fuel prices was somehow caused by Rousseff, who had been illegally removed from office a year earlier.
2018 was an election year, and the media was doing everything it could to block a return to power by the PT, whose presidential candidate Lula da Silva was leading all polls, with more support than the sum of all other candidates combined – even though he was being held as a political prisoner and illegally barred from speaking with the press.
Amid the media circus, the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) swung into action. Groups of small farmers affiliated with Latin America’s largest peasant movement came out to dozens of locations across the country where truckers were camped out with their rigs and fed the hired drivers three meals a day, made from food produced on their farms.
The MST activists used political organizing tactics influenced by the revolutionary educator Paulo Freire to listen and learn from the truckers’ experiences. The MST organizers then explained why they believed diesel prices were so high, and how the solution suggested by the company owners – lowering taxes – would hurt them.
Little by little, this strategy began to accentuate the class differences between the company owners, the owner-operators, and the hired drivers, and chipped away at support for Bolsonaro.
The Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) distributed hundreds of tons of free meals to truckers across Brazil in 2018
But because Lula was illegally imprisoned and barred from running as a candidate, Bolsonaro ended up winning the 2018 election.
And after taking power, Bolsonaro made it clear that he was not going to undo Temer’s pricing policy liberalization. Instead, he offered a small tax break on diesel, using money appropriated from public health spending cuts (which would come back to haunt him in 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out).
By the time 2021 rolled around, most Brazilian truck drivers felt betrayed by the Bolsonaro administration’s broken promise about diesel prices, which rose a whopping 765% above the level of inflation that year alone.
Most of the big company owners, however, were laughing all the way to the bank. The decimation of labor rights that began in 2017 enabled them to treat workers like they were precarious Uber or Ifood delivery drivers.
Meanwhile, the Bolsonaro administration was engaged in a series of battles with the Supreme Court, which had opened an electoral fraud investigation against the president and his allies.
Bolsonaro’s popularity was nearing an all time low, but he still had a hyper-radicalized core group of supporters, estimated by UNIFESP professor Esther Solano to be around 11% of the electorate.
The problem was that Bolsonaro’s myth of ample support among the working class was crumbling. Polls were showing that even his most supportive electoral demographic in 2018, evangelical Christians, were now as likely to vote for Lula in the 2022 election as they were for him.
Bolsonaro had to do something big. So he decided to fabricate a new truckers’ insurrection.
In 2021, a series of YouTube videos began to spam social accounts connected to a network of right-wing allies of Bolsonaro’s son Carlos, known as the “hate cabinet.”
The videos were filmed inside a truck by a bearded man calling himself “Zé Trovão” – Joe Thunder (the name of the lead character in a popular 1990s soap opera).
Trovão was not actually a trucker, but he portrayed himself as one. And he announced that he was leading a convoy of hundreds of trucks to the presidential esplanade on Brazil’s independence day, September 7, with plans to storm the Supreme Court and make citizen’s arrests of all the ministers.
The non-trucker Trovão called on patriotic truckers in Brazil to join him – on the same day when Bolsonaro’s supporters were already planning a demonstration on Brasilia’s esplanade.
As he continued making videos, Zé Trovão made bigger and bigger claims. In addition to hundreds of truckers, there would be two helicopters providing aerial support, he insisted.
From behind the wheel of a big rig, Brazilian Bolsonaro supporter Zé Trovão calls on truckers to head to the capital
The Brazilian Supreme Court, which has the power to order arrests and investigations, decided Trovão had crossed the line. First it issued a restraining order barring him from entering the city of Brasilia on September 7. Then it issued an arrest warrant. Trovão fled the country.
The co-author of this article, Brian Mier, arrived in Brasilia on September 6 to cover the protest for TeleSur.
Mier stayed in a 2-star hotel built for conventioneers, which was full of people dressed in green and yellow arriving in bus caravans. It was immediately clear that many of them had never been in a big city before.
A nervous looking elderly couple asked Mier for help using the elevator. Another man said he had never seen a vending machine before, and asked for help purchasing a soft drink.
It appeared that a significant percentage of the protesters were bussed in from poor rural areas by rich Bolsonaro supporters.
A video later surfaced showing a wealthy businessman handing out 100 real bills and t-shirts to people as they boarded a bus heading out to the other September 7 pro-Bolsonaro rally in Sao Paulo.
On the night of September 6, Mier heard honking and screaming in the distance. News hit that a group of truckers had invaded the esplanade and, followed by hundreds of jubilant Bolsonaro supporters, driven up and parked in front of the security barrier protecting Congress and the Supreme Court.
Responding to the news, Workers’ Party President Gleisi Hoffman tweeted out reassuring words: “It’s true that tomorrow is September 7th,” she said, “but the next day is September 8th… Look at this video. Congress and the Supreme Court are completely secure. No one is coming anywhere near them. The truckers got onto the Esplanade because the police opened the barricade for them.”
Like the so-called “freedom convoy” in Canada, the trucks in Brasilia displayed large banners preaching anti-communism.
An anti-communist banner on the trucks at the pro-Bolsonaro rally in Brasilia
In the end, there was no storming of the Supreme Court. The real psyop had been to convince the media and the public that it was going to happen.
On September 7, the entire area was completely locked down. Police did their jobs and no one was allowed onto the esplanade without going through a metal detector and getting a pat down.
By the next day, most of the crowd was gone. But a line of trucks remained parked in front of the Supreme Court building. They constantly honked, and a blasted patriotic music.
Mier later confirmed that the entire line was made up of trucks owned by the same company, Pro Tork, whose owner, Marlon Bonilha, was one of Bolsonaro’s biggest campaign contributors.
Fascism and big business have walked hand in hand since the days of Mussolini. Meet Marlon Bonilha (l), the  multimillionaire owner of the Pro-Tork trucking company, which still has a dozen trucks parked on Brasilia's Esplanade honking and intimidating the Supreme Court. pic.twitter.com/TJD3QShuq3
— BrianMier (@BrianMteleSUR) September 9, 2021

In short, most of the drivers who occupied the esplanade were hired hands, working for Pro-Tork or two other companies. There was nothing working class about it.
Here is Pro Tork owner Marlon Bonilha giving Jair Bolsonaro a motorcycle helmet. pic.twitter.com/uZzaYxPuNG
— BrianMier (@BrianMteleSUR) September 9, 2021

Days later it came out that the self-proclaimed leader of the trucker protest, Zé Trovão, was not really a truck driver. In fact, he didn’t even have a driver’s license.
Brazilian federal police caught up with Trovão in Mexico City. And one of the main figures in the 2018 strike, Plinio Dias, president of the National Highway Cargo Transport Council, commented, “This guy made a video inside of a truck… but we don’t know anything else about him. I’ve been in this business for 22 years. This guy just arrived by parachute.”
Trovão, whose real name is Marcos Antônio Pereira Gomes, was extradited, brought back to Brazil, and thrown in jail, pending trial due to flight risk.
It was also soon revealed that he had also ripped off Jair Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo, who apparently sent him thousands of dollars for fuel for his non-existent helicopters.
Plinio Dias, 2018 strike leader and President of the National Highway Cargo Transport Council, says, "this guy made a video inside of a truck […] but we don't know him. I've been in this business for 22 years. This guy just arrived by parachute." pic.twitter.com/eDkbFSRw1r
— BrianMier (@BrianMteleSUR) September 11, 2021

As Gomes spent his first week in jail, the actress Ingra Lyberato, who played Trovão’s sidekick Ana Raio (Ana Lightning) in the 1990s soap opera that Gomes had taken his nickname from, remarked on Twitter, “This young man is being manipulated by his own vanity, in a game of marked cards in which he will probably by the only victim.”
The wealthy right-wing networks supporting the “trucker” protests in Canada may have learned from this Brazilian game of marked cards.
Mier spoke to a friend whose brother has been a long-distance trucker in Canada for 20 years, and who asked him if anyone from his yard was participating in the Ottawa protest.
Not one of his colleagues was protesting. “Real truck drivers can’t afford to stop working for three weeks,” he said, “we have bills to pay.”
The hired truckers in Brazil made very similar comments during the September 7 protest.


Instruction: Write an article about: Mexico’s AMLO sent Biden letter blasting US ‘interventionism’ and funding of opposition groups. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: AMLO, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, CIA, Claudio X González, Ford Foundation, Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad, Mexico, NED, Nicaragua, USAID, Venezuela

Output:
Mexico’s President AMLO sent Joe Biden a letter condemning US “interventionism”, such as USAID funding of right-wing opposition groups that are trying to destabilize his elected government.

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador sent US leader Joe Biden a letter criticizing Washington for meddling in his country’s internal affairs.
The document condemned funding that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has given to right-wing opposition groups that have organized protests against Mexico’s elected government, seeking to destabilize it.
USAID is a notorious CIA cutout that has been used to finance opposition groups and regime-change attempts in countries that challenge Washington’s foreign-policy interests.

López Obrador, who is popularly referred to by his initials AMLO, is Mexico’s first left-wing president in decades.
AMLO came into office in December 2018 vowing to end the “long and dark neoliberal night”.
He has nationalized the country’s lithium reserves and electrical grid, reversed the partial privatization of the oil industry, boosted social spending, and significantly increased the minimum wage.
This incredible graph shows how much the real minimum wage (measured in purchasing power parity) has increased in Mexico under the left-wing government of President AMLO
Note how the minimum wage was totally stagnant in two decades of neoliberal governments
Credit: @mario_campa pic.twitter.com/ZlGxGvb5QF
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 25, 2022

On May 2, AMLO sent a letter to Biden. The Mexican president’s office made the document public on its official website.
“For a while, the government of the United States, in particular the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has funded groups openly opposed to the legal and legitimate government that I represent, which is without a doubt an act of interventionism, violating international law and the respect that there should be between free and sovereign states”, AMLO wrote.
“Moreover, a few days ago it was announced that said agency will increase the budget given to organizations opposed to our government, as appears published on the official website of the State Department”, he added.
The Mexican president read out the letter in his morning press conference on May 3. His office’s official YouTube channel even made a special video with the clip.
“I feel that it is very arrogant, very offensive, and I can’t remain quiet”, AMLO commented, in reference to the US meddling.
Mexico’s President AMLO sent Joe Biden a letter condemning US “interventionism”, specifically citing USAID funding of right-wing opposition groups that are trying to destabilize AMLO's elected government.
Full video here: https://t.co/LFwp7ZojCy pic.twitter.com/2JrCdI7zyx
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) May 9, 2023

USAID and other US government organizations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), have funded numerous right-wing opposition groups in Mexico, particularly media outlets and so-called “civil society” organizations.
A prominent example is Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad (Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, or MCCI), a group founded by right-wing multimillionaire oligarch Claudio X. González, one of AMLO’s most fervent opponents.
MCCI disclosed on its website that it is financed by USAID and NED, as well as the notorious CIA-linked Ford Foundation.
This right-wing opposition leader in Mexico, rich businessman Claudio X. González, who leads a Pinochet-style neoliberal anti-AMLO alliance called Sí por México, is funded by the US government.
His "NGO" "Mexicanos contra la corrupción" is funded by USAID & NED, both CIA cutouts https://t.co/iIJpNQoj4o pic.twitter.com/Job07hxtKf
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) April 3, 2021

The CIA used USAID “humanitarian aid” flights to send weapons to the far-right Contra death squads in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
When the Sandinistas returned to power in 2007, through democratic elections, USAID spent billions of dollars funding right-wing opposition groups, which then played a key role in a violent coup attempt in 2018, which caused hundreds of deaths.
USAID collaborates closely with the US military, and frequently uses “humanitarian” cover to advance the interests of the Pentagon.
In a regime-change operation targeting Venezuela in 2019, USAID was used as a political weapon, working with the US Department of Defense to try to overthrow the leftist government of President Nicolás Maduro.
The United Nations and International Red Cross condemned USAID’s role in the attempted putsch in Venezuela, clearly stating that the US government organization was not providing humanitarian aid. An internal USAID audit even admitted in 2021 that the operation had violated humanitarian principles.

The NED has played an even more nefarious role in funding US meddling schemes and regime-change operations.
In a 1991 report boasting of the “spyless coups” that Washington had sponsored in the former Soviet Union, the Washington Post described the US government’s NED as “the sugar daddy of overt operations”, crediting it for “dispensing money to anti-communist forces behind the Iron Curtain”.
A co-founder of the NED, Allen Weinstein, told the Post, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA”.
US foundations like Ford and Rockefeller have historically played a similar role, working closely with the CIA to fund anti-communist groups, including violent ones.
In her book The Cultural Cold War, journalist Frances Stonor Saunders showed how the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations “were conscious instruments of covert US foreign policy, with directors and officers who were closely connected to, or even members of American intelligence”.
This extremely important book The Cultural Cold War documents how the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation have long been "conscious instruments of covert US foreign policy, with directors and officers who were closely connected to, or even members of American intelligence" pic.twitter.com/SxbBPSHhlM
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) July 13, 2020

In his May 3 press conference condemning Washington’s meddling, President López Obrador proposed that US-Mexico relations should be based on “cooperation and friendship”.
“Together we should confront problems, like the migration issue, like drug trafficking, especially fentanyl”, he stressed.
In Washington, however, far-right US politicians have called for the opposite.
Prominent Republican Congress members have urged the US military to invade Mexico to attack drug cartels, even proposing legislation to justify an intervention.
Hawkish US politicians have blamed Mexico and China for the opioid epidemic in the United States, while ignoring how large pharmaceutical corporations profited from creating the problem in the first place.
AMLO has repeatedly condemned the US threats against his country.
On March 18, he organized a massive rally in the heart of Mexico City, celebrating the anniversary of the expropriation of the country’s oil reserves and shouting, “We remind those hypocritical and irresponsible politicians that Mexico is an independent and free country, not a colony or a protectorate of the United States!”
In a tweet on April 1, AMLO fumed:
They threaten to invade; they sell high-powered weapons in their markets; they do nothing for their youth; they suffer – unfortunately – from the terrible and deadly fentanyl pandemic, but don’t address its causes.
They don’t care about welfare, only money.
Amenazan con invadir, venden armas de alto poder en sus tianguis, no hacen nada por sus jóvenes, padecen —lamentablemente— de la terrible y mortal pandemia del fentanilo, pero no atienden las causas. No les preocupa el bienestar, sólo el dinero, ni fortalecen valores morales,…
— Andrés Manuel (@lopezobrador_) April 1, 2023

While hawks in Washington have scapegoated foreign nations like Mexico and China for the opioid crisis at home, they have largely ignored billionaire oligarchs like those of the Sackler family, who made enormous profits on selling highly addictive drugs such as OxyContin.
In a blockbuster article in 2018, titled “Origins of an Epidemic: Purdue Pharma Knew Its Opioids Were Widely Abused“, the New York Times noted, “A confidential Justice Department report found the company was aware early on that OxyContin was being crushed and snorted for its powerful narcotic, but continued to promote it as less addictive”.
The Times wrote:
Purdue Pharma, the company that planted the seeds of the opioid epidemic through its aggressive marketing of OxyContin, has long claimed it was unaware of the powerful opioid painkiller’s growing abuse until years after it went on the market.
But a copy of a confidential Justice Department report shows that federal prosecutors investigating the company found that Purdue Pharma knew about “significant” abuse of OxyContin in the first years after the drug’s introduction in 1996 and concealed that information.
Company officials had received reports that the pills were being crushed and snorted; stolen from pharmacies; and that some doctors were being charged with selling prescriptions, according to dozens of previously undisclosed documents that offer a detailed look inside Purdue Pharma. But the drug maker continued “in the face of this knowledge” to market OxyContin as less prone to abuse and addiction than other prescription opioids, prosecutors wrote in 2006.
Based on their findings after a four-year investigation, the prosecutors recommended that three top Purdue Pharma executives be indicted on felony charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, that could have sent the men to prison if convicted.
But top Justice Department officials in the George W. Bush administration did not support the move, said four lawyers who took part in those discussions or were briefed about them. Instead, the government settled the case in 2007.


Instruction: Write an article about: Latin America’s plan to challenge US dollar with new currency and ‘regional financial architecture’. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: ALBA, Andrés Arauz, Argentina, Banco del Sur, Bank of the South, Bolivia, Brazil, dollar, Ecuador, Latin America, Lula da Silva, Mexico, Rafael Correa, Sucre, Sur, UNASUR, Venezuela

Output:
Advising Brazil’s President-elect Lula, Ecuadorian economist and leftist presidential candidate Andrés Arauz made a blueprint for a “new regional financial architecture” to unite Latin America, including an international currency to challenge the hegemony of the US dollar and IMF.

(Se puede leer esta nota en español aquí.)
The US dollar is used in the majority of international trade, and its status as the global reserve currency gives the United States an “exorbitant privilege” that underpins its geopolitical and economic dominance.
Yet opposition to Washington’s hegemony is growing around the world. Institutions of Eurasian integration are proposing their own currencies and payment systems. Latin America, too, has ambitious plans to end its dependence on the US dollar.
Prominent economist Andrés Arauz, a leftist leader who came close to winning Ecuador’s 2021 presidential elections, published a blueprint for a “new regional financial architecture” to unite Latin America, challenging the hegemony of the dollar and Washington-dominated institutions like the International Monetary Fund.

His plan centers around creating a new regional currency for international transactions, thereby bypassing the dollar.
The framework is based on a proposal made by Brazil’s President-elect Lula da Silva, who pledged before winning the October election that “we are going to create a currency in Latin America,” in order to “be freed of the dollar.”
The currency is expected to be called the Sur (“south” in Spanish), and would be overseen by a newly created Banco Central del Sur (Central Bank of the South).
To do all of this, Arauz has advised Lula to revive and strengthen existing institutions of regional integration like the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Banco del Sur (Bank of the South), which were undermined by US-backed coups and the rise of right-wing governments.
The goal is “to harmonize the payment systems of” the countries that make up UNASUR in order “to carry out inter-bank transfers to any bank inside of the region in real time and from a cellphone,” explained Arauz.
The Ecuadorian economist also insisted that Latin America should reject the US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) and work with Africa to create debt relief and new economic opportunities.

Both Lula and Arauz have made it clear that the Sur would not replace local currencies, like the European Union’s euro. Countries in Latin America would still have their own national currencies, so they can pursue a sovereign monetary policy.
Rather, the idea is to use the Sur for bilateral trade between countries, in place of the dollar.
The proposal is very popular in Latin America, given that it is the world’s most dependent region on the US dollar.
The dollar was used in 96% of trade transactions between countries in the Americas from 1999-2019, according to the Federal Reserve.
The creation of the Sur currency could fundamentally change this.

Most trade in the Americas is dominated by the United States, which has the world’s second-largest economy (after the People’s Republic of China, when measured with purchasing power parity).
The GDP of the United States is roughly $23 trillion, while that of Canada is nearly $2 trillion.
It is often reported that the nominal GDP of Latin America and the Caribbean is around $5.5 trillion, according to World Bank data, and that the three largest economies in the region are Brazil ($1.6 trillion), Mexico ($1.3 trillion), and Argentina ($491 billion).
But nominal GDP measurements can be misleading, and only reinforce the hegemony of the US dollar. A much more accurate measurement of GDP, purchasing power parity (PPP), takes into account the cost of living in each respective country.
Adjusted accordingly with PPP measurements, the more precise estimate of the GDP of Latin America and the Caribbean is actually $11.4 trillion, with Brazil at $3.4 trillion, Mexico at $2.6 trillion, and Argentina at $1.1 trillion.
This shows that the combined economies of Latin America and the Caribbean make up nearly half of the size of the US economy.
The region is also very rich in natural resources, including oil, minerals, and agriculture.
If Latin America could unify with its own independent financial institutions, it has enormous economic potential.
Latin America’s vast economic potential has long been recognized by left-wing, anti-imperialist leaders in the region.
In the 2000s, the leftist presidents of Venezuela (Hugo Chávez), Brazil (Lula da Silva), Argentina (Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner), Bolivia (Evo Morales), Ecuador (Rafael Correa), and Paraguay (Fernando Lugo) made plans to create alternative financial institutions to challenge the US-dominated World Bank and IMF.
The World Bank and IMF have a history of trapping Global South countries in unpayable odious debt, and subsequently imposing neoliberal “structural adjustment” programs that force governments to implement suffocating austerity policies that benefit US corporations.
Following the vision of Venezuela’s revolutionary President Hugo Chávez, Latin America’s left-wing leaders agreed to create a bank aimed at regional unity, called the Banco del Sur (Bank of the South).
Chávez, Lula, the Kirchners, Morales, and Correa met in Argentina in 2007 and signed a treaty officially creating the bank.
The presidents of (Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Venezuela (from left to right) meet in Argentina in 2007 to sign the treaty forming the Banco del Sur
But the launch of the Banco del Sur was delayed.
In 2009, the leaders of these countries met again for the Africa-South America Summit (ASA) in Venezuela, where they vowed a combined $20 billion in initial capital.
These plans were never realized, however.
Several leftist governments in Latin America were destabilized and overthrown in a series of brutal geopolitical attacks waged by the United States and right-wing oligarchies – namely several US-sponsored coups: a military coup in Honduras in 2009, judicial coup in Paraguay in 2012, internal coup in Ecuador in 2017, soft coups in Brazil in 2016 and 2018, and violent coup in Bolivia in 2019, as well as numerous failed coup attempts in Venezuela and Nicaragua.
These US attacks and the ensuing right-wing surge also led to the sabotage of another key instrument of regional integration, the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR).
While the Banco del Sur was meant to economically integrate the region, political integration was be overseen by UNASUR.
UNASUR was formally created in a 2008 treaty, and officially operational by 2011.
But as Washington prepared another coup attempt against Venezuela, in 2018 and 2019, the right-wing leaders of Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Paraguay coordinated together to withdraw from UNASUR, leaving the institution very weak.
Another important regional institution created in parallel to the Banco del Sur and UNASUR was the ALBA: the Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America).
Venezuela and Cuba formed the ALBA in 2004 as an economic alliance of left-wing governments in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The ALBA created its own currency for inter-state trade in the region. Adopted in 2009, it was called the Sucre: the “Unified System for Regional Compensation.” (This acronym also referenced the South American revolutionary Antonio José de Sucre, who joined General Simón Bolívar in the anti-colonialist struggle against the Spanish empire in the early 19th century.)
At its peak, the ALBA brought together Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Honduras in a trade bloc, and they used the Sucre in more than $1 billion in bilateral trade in 2012.
The symbol for the Sucre, used by the ALBA
Chávez’s dream of unifying the region was undermined by his untimely death in 2013, and what followed was a devastating US economic war waged against Venezuela, including an artificial US-orchestrated commodities crash in 2014, several violent Washington-backed coup attempts, the imposition of harsh sanctions that gradually escalated into a Cuba-style embargo, and the Donald Trump’s attempt to forcibly install unelected coup leader Juan Guaidó as supposed “interim president.”
Despite setbacks in the previous decade, by 2022, the left is back on the rise in Latin America.
For the first time in history, the region’s seven most-populated countries are governed by left-wing leaders (Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, and Chile).
Colombia’s deeply pro-US right-wing governments were always a thorn in the side of the patria grande (the project of Latin American unity). But that changed with the election in June of Colombia’s first-ever left-wing president: Gustavo Petro.
Recognizing the potential of this historic moment to realize true regional unity, Ecuador’s leftist leader Andrés Arauz has laid out a blueprint for not only political but also economic integration.
Arauz has called for reviving both UNASUR and the Banco del Sur, and strengthening them further with a new Banco Central del Sur (Central Bank of the South).
Arauz is an accomplished economist. He spent more than a decade working at Ecuador’s central bank, eventually serving as its general director. He is currently completing his PhD in financial economics.
Under Ecuador’s former socialist President Rafael Correa, Arauz served as minister of knowledge and human talent.
Arauz has since become a leading figure in Ecuador’s leftist Correísta movement, continuing the “Citizens’ Revolution” launched by Correa.
Arauz was Correísmo’s candidate in the 2021 presidential elections. He won the first round in a landslide, but lost the second round with 47.6% of the vote compared to the 52.4% of Ecuador’s current President Guillermo Lasso, a right-wing multi-millionaire banker notorious for his corruption.
Ecuador’s Andres Arauz (right) with former President Rafael Correa (left) in a campaign ad for the 2021 elections
Although he is not formally in office, Arauz has served as an economic advisor for left-wing politicians in the region.
Arauz is a co-founder of the Grupo de Puebla, a political forum bringing together progressive forces in Latin America. He is also a member of the council of the Progressive International.
Lula da Silva, who governed Brazil from 2003 to 2010, is closely allied with both of these organizations. This makes it likely that Arauz will serve in some capacity as an advisor for the new Brazilian government.
In 2020, Lula published an article at the Progressive International website, titled “For a Multipolar World.” In it, the Brazilian left-wing leader said he seeks “the creation of a multipolar world, free from unilateral hegemony and from sterile bipolar confrontation.”
During his presidential campaign, at a rally in May 2022, Lula promised, “We are going to create a currency in Latin America, because we can’t keep depending on the dollar.”
Lula won the October 30 presidential election and will once again become head of state of the largest country in Latin America on January 1, 2023.
In response to Lula’s electoral victory, Arauz wrote a blueprint outlining steps that Brazil can take to help develop “a new regional financial architecture.”
The article, published at the pan-Latin American website NODAL, is a guide that Lula can follow when he becomes president.
“The goal: that on January 1, 2023, in the inauguration of Lula, the treaties are signed for the new UNASUR,” Arauz wrote.
“We must put in operation the Bank of the South and sign the founding treaty of the Central Bank of the South and the Sur, the regional currency – in addition to national currencies – that President Lula proposed,” he added.
“The initial step should be immediate,” Arauz stressed.
The system will seek “to harmonize the payment systems of UNASUR to carry out inter-bank transfers to any bank inside of the region in real time and from a cellphone,” he explained.
Arauz cautioned that these actions must be taken soon and quickly, because “the political window of opportunity is between January and September 2023, the date of primary elections in Argentina.”
Argentina’s right-wing opposition, which is much more pro-US and supportive of dollar hegemony and neoliberal economics, could win these elections, throwing a wrench into the project of regional unity.
Arauz warned, “We can’t give up this historic window of opportunity to the slow inertia of the foreign ministries and the backwardness of malinchismo” – a pejorative term that refers to people in Latin America who feel self-hate toward their own societies and have internalized the inferiority complex of cultural imperialism.
“Progressive presidents must create an immediate channel of communication between each other,” he emphasized. “The political will is there, there is no time to lose.”
If Latin America manages to create this “new regional financial architecture,” the Ecuadorian economist argued, it could “allow a breather for Argentina.”
Argentina has faced a deep economic crisis, caused largely by unpayable odious debt owed to the IMF, after the previous right-wing government in Buenos Aires took the largest loan in the fund’s history.
Arauz has been a vocal critic of the IMF. In his article, he said Latin America should take “collective action to retroactively nullify the illegal surcharges of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).”
IMF surcharges are extra interest payments that the US-dominated financial institution imposes on borrowing countries that owe it large debts.
The Bretton Woods Project noted that “civil society organisations, human rights experts and others have argued that surcharges effectively discriminate against and punish countries that are most in need of IMF assistance.”
Arauz proposed that, in order to annul these IMF surcharges, “if necessary,” Latin America and Africa should propose a resolution in the United Nations General Assembly.
He added that Latin America should work together with Africa to demand that the United States issue them IMF special drawing rights to help their economies.
The region could then “recycle” these special drawing rights to help Argentina, Arauz said.
The Ecuadorian economist also wrote that UNASUR could try to make some of the capital fleeing the region to the United States instead return to its countries of origin, by invoking article VIII.2.b of the founding articles of agreement of the IMF.
Arauz offered economic advice for Brazil’s domestic affairs as well.
Lula should “undo the de facto privatization of the Central Bank of Brazil that was implemented” by current far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, and “rearticulate the Central Bank of Brazil in the line of development, integration, and democracy,” he wrote.
“It is very difficult to be able to meet the goals of eradicating hunger and the reindustrialization the Brazilian people need if he has a central bank permanently boycotting it,” Arauz added.
He noted that Colombia’s central bank has already taken actions to oppose the proposed reforms of new left-wing President Gustavo Petro.
But Arauz pointed out that “this wave of regional integration cannot remain only at the level of presidents; it should be a true integration of the peoples.”
“That implies profound participation of the social movements of all of the region, but above all, immediate and tangible benefits for the citizenry,” he stressed.
“It also implies giving preferential treatment to the smallest countries,” Arauz added. “The leadership of President Lula is crucial to join together the countries with distinct ideological orientations.”
In the article, the Ecuadorian economist proposed another idea: creating a “massive program of student exchange,” so that “the youth of Latin American public education are able to study a semester or a year in another country in the region.”
The goal should be “a million youths in student exchange in” 2023, Arauz wrote. “This will be the motor of integration.”
He called for forms of cultural integration as well, proposing a regional contest inviting musicians, writers, and poets to make a hymn for UNASUR.
Arauz concluded the blueprint suggesting that Lula should create a “plenipotentiary ambassador for regional integration.”
The Ecuadorian leftist leader made it clear that he has major ambitions for the region.
It’s not enough for Latin America only to unite, Arauz argued. It needs more representation in international institutions.
“The countries of UNASUR should demand a collective position at the table of the G20, which the African Union is about to obtain,” he wrote.