US State Department: Radical Populism is as Dangerous as Terrorism

On May 8 El Nuevo Diario published a special report, written by Roberto Collado in Washington, about the US government's position on what are referred to as "radical populist" governments and political organizations in Latin America. It quoted a US military official of the Southern Command of the US army who classified "movements that undermine democracy in Latin America" as one more link in the chain of evil that the Bush administration is willing to destroy in the hemisphere.

According to Collado the possibility of a Sandinista victory in 2006 does not officially worry the US government but it does "awake its interest." Linda Jewell, Director of the Office of Policy Planning and Coordination of the State Department's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, said, "Nicaragua is of great interest for two reasons; firstly, the continuity of its democracy; secondly, the destruction of its SAM-7 missiles. It is essential to understand that after September 11 things have changed, the world has changed. Our internal security depends on the security of our neighbors." What she meant, of course, is "securing our neighbors" under US military hegemony.

The report said that Washington is warning of new threats for the American continent. Apart from regional terrorism and drug trafficking, it has warned that "radical populists" are destabilizing democratic structures. Condoleezza Rice has indicated that in some cases democratic governments are the ones that are threatening the stability of the hemisphere with their use of populist mechanisms. Rice said that one of the most difficult situations is when a person who has been democratically elected converts himself into an undemocratic public official. "Undemocratic" in the Rice definition is one who opposes the savage capitalism of neoliberalism and rejects militarism. A growing number of Latin America's democratically elected leaders are becoming "undemocratic" as Rice defines the word.

Last week, images of Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban President Fidel Castro were published in newspapers all over the world. Despite the fact that many Nicaraguan Sandinistas have now lost faith in Ortega as a truly revolutionary leader, the US government considers him to be radical populist.

A new front in the US campaign to force the Nicaraguan army to destroy its stock of defensive SAM-7 missiles was opened recently when a Colombian military official, Jairo Pena, charged that six rifles carried by the FARC, a Colombian guerilla army, were originally property of Somoza's National Guard, giving the implication that the Nicaraguan army is involved in arms trafficking. However, several months ago when the black market sale of a SAM-7 missile was "discovered" in Managua, it turned out not to have belonged to the army but was rather a missile supplied by the US to the contras in the 1980s. Escaping members of Somoza's National Guard carried off many weapons that were turned against the Nicaraguan people during the US-backed contra war, and many of them were never turned in when the contras demobilized in the 1990s.

Omar Halleslevens, head of the Nicaraguan Army, said, "Historically, when arms appear in the South, Nicaragua is mentioned. The truth is that there are weapons in all Central American countries, not just in Nicaragua." Julio Vega, Minister of Governance, said that the new arms law, recently ratified by the National Assembly, requires all army weaponry to be marked with a National Police marking so that cases like this one will become easier to resolve in the future.

An unnamed source with links to the Ministry of Defense informed El Nuevo Diario that these unofficial claims made by a Colombian army official form part of a campaign to dirty the image of Nicaragua within the international community. Nicaragua and Colombia have a territorial dispute being considered by the World Court over the island of San Andres located off the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. "Claims such as these should not surprise us considering the circumstances," according to the anonymous source.