BRANKO MARCETIC. In These Times. November 21, 2019
The OAS has long been viewed as a tool of U.S. foreign influence, thanks in large part to the U.S. government’s outsized funding of the organization.
When former Uruguayan Foreign Minister Luis Almagro took the helm of the Organization for American States (OAS) in 2015, members of the U.S. Right despaired that the intergovernmental body would be headed by yet another Latin American leftist and friend of Washington’s foes. Four years later, those same right-wing forces cheered as Almagro led the charge for the overthrow of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, and the OAS contributed to a coup in Bolivia.
The OAS is a regional forum of 34 states that acts something like the United Nations of the Americas. Almagro and the OAS have come under the spotlight in recent weeks, thanks to their controversial role in Bolivia’s most recent presidential election. After winning a fourth straight term last month, longtime indigenous leftist president Evo Morales left office and fled the country in what appears to be a textbook coup: The head of the military called for his resignation, as violence against his supporters surged. The OAS has fallen under increasing criticism in recent weeks, after its contested claims of irregularities and “clear manipulations” by the Morales side were used by the opposition, both Bolivian and American, to invalidate the election results—and intensify pressure to oust Morales.
“The OAS took a political decision, not a technical or legal one,” Morales charged from Mexico, where he had been granted asylum after protesters ransacked his home and kidnapped and abused his allies. “The OAS is in the service of the North American empire.”
The OAS came under similar criticism from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a left-leaning economic think-tank based in Washington, D.C., which disputed the OAS’ claims of election fraud. “There is simply no statistical or evidentiary basis to dispute the vote count results showing that Evo Morales won in the first round,” CEPR Senior Policy Analyst Guillaume Long said on November 8, releasing a paper that showed a step-by-step breakdown disputing the conclusions of OAS.
This incident is just the latest in Almagro’s controversial position as secretary general of the OAS, elected by a majority of member states, a position he hopes to continue for another five years after his current term expires in May 2020. Almagro started his career in Uruguay’s conservative politics before suddenly morphing into a committed Pink Tider, and he once again changed his tune upon becoming OAS secretary general. This shift is particularly evident in his widely-criticized opposition to Maduro—a development successive U.S. administrations have been eager to take advantage of to pursue their interests through an organization they worry they’ve lost control of.
Persistent U.S. influence
The OAS has long been viewed as a tool of U.S. foreign influence, thanks in large part to the U.S. government’s outsized funding of the organization. Even as late as 2018, the U.S. provided 60% of the institution’s annual budget.
From the beginning, the U.S. wielded significant influence over the organization, which excluded Cuba from because its “Marxist-Leninist government” was “incompatible with the principles and objectives of the inter-American system,” as the OAS put it. The subsequent decades would see a range of autocratic—even genocidal—governments remain members of the OAS, while the U.S. mostly made a mockery of its principles, as when Ronald Reagan violated its charter’s ban on the use of armed forces against a fellow member with his administration’s 1983 invasion of Grenada.
U.S. influence over the OAS depleted during the post-Cold War era, and the vast majority of the OAS’ work in observing elections was above board. But the U.S. could still exert influence in strategic moments. During the 2009 coup in Honduras, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leaned on the OAS to back new elections and keep ousted President Manuel Zelaya from returning to power—or as she put it in her memoir, “render the question of Zelaya moot.”
Despite its weakening influence, there is broad acknowledgement within the U.S. government that the OAS continues to be a vehicle for U.S. interests.
“The United States historically has sought to use the OAS to advance economic, political and security objectives in the Western Hemisphere,” a 2014 Congressional report states. “The organization’s goals and day-to-day activities are still generally consistent with U.S. policy toward the region, but the U.S. government has struggled to obtain support from other member states on some high-profile issues.”
Likewise, a 2018 GAO report found that “the strategic goals of the OAS” and other U.S.-financed organizations “are predominantly aligned with the strategic goals of State, USAID, HHS, and USDA. These goals include “a secure and democratic future for all citizens in Latin America and the Caribbean,” “expanded economic opportunity and prosperity for the hemisphere,” and a “public opinion environment that is supportive of U.S. policy initiatives,” the report states.
A rightward shift
When Luis Almagro became OAS General Secretary in March 2015, it at first appeared he would push against these historical trends. From 2010 on, Almagro had served as the foreign minister for the Uruguyan government headed by Jose “Pepe” Mujica, part of the Pink Tide of leftist governments that had swept to power in Latin America at the dawn of the 21st century. Upon being nominated to helm the OAS, Mujica’s government spent no small amount of political capital making sure Almagro won. Almagro later said Mujica had “played a decisive role.” When his sole rival dropped out of the contest due to health concerns, Almagro ascended to the position.
This was unhappy news to conservatives. Under Mujica, Almagro had pushed to revoke the 1986 amnesty law protecting Uruguay’s former military dictatorship from prosecution for crimes against humanity, reacted to Osama Bin Laden’s 2011 assassination by saying “no death should be celebrated,” and joined Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina in calling for recognition of a Palestinian state in 2010. But most worrying to the Right was his attitude toward Venezuela: On the first anniversary of former President Hugo Chavez’s death, Almagro declared Chavez had “reinvented Latin America.” And when Maduro’s government clashed with protesters and violent right-wing forces in 2014, Almagro blamed “both sides” for the ensuing violence.
Several conservative newspapers and think tanks raised alarm about his support for Chavismo. Right-leaning Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer warned that Almagro and one other candidate were “causing concern—and in some cases, alarm—in international circles for the defense of human rights.” Oppenheimer wrote that Almagro was “Venezuela’s favorite,” warning of his “close ties with Iran,” owing to the five years he had spent in the Uruguayan embassy in Tehran. Sonia Osorio, columnist with the El Nuevo Herald, a Spanish-language paper in Florida, likewise called him “a diplomat with close ties to Chavismo who also maintains worrying relations with Iran.”
Upon ascending to the head of the OAS, Almagro appeared to confirm conservatives’ fears. He continued his election-promise call for Cuba’s reintegration into the OAS. In August 2015, he announced he “deplore[d] the acts of the [OAS] that validated” the 1965 U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic, “twisting the sovereign path chosen by its people.” Pledging early on to “leave the OAS behind the Cold War,” he promised to return the OAS to “a credibility that everyone demands,” and be the “facilitator of its renewal.”
But his choice of transition team hinted at the direction he would end up going. Besides Luis Porto, a Uruguayan economist who had served in various positions under Mujica, Almagro’s transition to the new post was also headed by Dan Restrepo. Obama’s Latin America adviser, Restrepo has a long history with the corporate-funded liberal think tank Center for American Progress (CAP), and he continued to advise Almagro for at least the next year.
As special counsel to Washington law firm Jones Walker LLP since 2014—a year before heading Almagro’s transition, and a position he still holds today—Restrepo works “on behalf of a wide range of clients, including multinational media and technology companies, independent energy producers, private equity funds, major consumer products companies, major infrastructure companies, and global law firms,” according to his bio on the firm’s site. While those clients aren’t listed, some of Jones Walker’s lobbying clients over the past five years included Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Sasol Chemicals, tobacco company Pyxus International, and oil-drilling company Hercules Offshore Inc. These are all exactly the kinds of firms that have itched to access the vast natural wealth of Latin American countries governed by leftist populists like Chavez and Morales
Provocations towards Maduro
It took many months for Almagro to become more bullish on Venezuela, following Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s repeated rejection of his offer to send OAS election observers to the country. November 2015 saw Almagro send a harshly worded letter to the president of the country’s National Electoral Council, criticizing the upcoming electoral process and warning it lacked “transparency and electoral justice.” The letter prompted public reproach from Mujica, who rebuked “the direction” Almagro was taking, and formally told him “goodbye.” The letter also garnered public praise from hawkish Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Despite Almagro’s preemptive efforts to cast the elections as illegitimate, the Venezuelan opposition won in a landslide, securing a two-thirds supermajority in the National Assembly with which they vowed to force Maduro from office.
A series of tit-for-tat escalations between the government and the opposition spiraled out of control over the next few years. The Maduro government and its loyalist-controlled Supreme Court took increasingly authoritarian steps to nullify the opposition’s existing and future electoral gains. And the opposition resorted to alarming measures and continued use of violence to foment a crisis it could use to achieve its longstanding goal of ousting Maduro and reversing Chavismo. Rather than choose a path of diplomacy to help end the crisis, Almagro chose a more provocative approach, siding with the country’s violent, right-wing opposition.
As Henry Ramos Allup, the opposition head of Venezuela’s National Assembly, called for the OAS to take a tougher position, Almagro put out a scathing 132-page report that backed the oppositions’ calls for a recall referendum. Almagro also invoked the OAS’ Democratic Charter, suggesting Venezuela could be suspended from the organization. Almagro engaged repeatedly in an inflammatory war of words with Maduro, responding to his insults by calling him a “petty dictator” and a “traitor.” Prior to a July OAS debate over the recall, Almagro met with Allup, and Almagro’s effort to pass the recall was backed by a number of right-wing former Latin American presidents, including Peru’s Alejandro Toledo, Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe, and Costa Rica’s Laura Chinchilla.
The governments of countries like Ecuador, Argentina and Chile, in turn, raised concerns about Almagro’s “systematic aggressions” against the country. When Almagro pushed for the recall at a meeting of the OAS permanent council, member states rejected his call for a more intense intervention in Venezuela, instead urging dialogue. According to CEPR Director of International Policy Alexander Main, member states rejected his call for a more intense intervention in Venezuela, instead urging dialogue. Main told The Real News Network that Almagro would become “an instrument of the [U.S.] state department…to intervene in the internal affairs of member states.” In June 2016, the foreign minister of Venezuela—whose backing from OAS member states had by this point taken a ding thanks to Maduro’s actions—urged the OAS General Assembly to put a break on Almagro’s actions. She received a round of applause.
But perhaps most controversial was Almagro’s relationship with Leopoldo López, the right-wing leader of the Venezuelan opposition then under house arrest. In August 2016, Almagro wrote a treacly eight-page letter to his “esteemed friend Leopoldo,” telling López he “felt immensely close to the injustice you are suffering.” López was “one of the few” examples of “public greatness,” Almagro later wrote. In July 2017, the two had a publicized phone conversation, agreeing “to continue working for the return of democracy to Venezuela and the recovery of the rights of the Venezuelan people,” according to an OAS statement.
Far from the Gandhi-like figure painted by Almagro, however, López is an elite scion with Republican ties who was described by a diplomat in Caracas as a “divisive figure within the opposition” who is “arrogant, vindictive, and power-hungry.” More alarmingly, he had backed and played a role in the 2002 military coup against the democratically elected Chavez.
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