Why Does the U.S. Have a Military Base in Cuba?
Latin America Solidarity Coalition Calls for Closing Guantanamo and Returning it to Cuba
The Latin America Solidarity Coalition (LASC) demands that occupied Guantanamo, including its prison torture center, be shut down. Guantanamo is occupied against the will of the Cuban people, is used as a military base against Cuba and other Caribbean countries. LASC calls for shutting down not just the Guantanamo prison camp, but also demands the shutting down of the entire illegal Guantanamo US military base, and its return to Cuba. Continue Reading »
November 2011: Converge on Fort Benning, Georgia
The Latin America Solidarity Coalition has endorsed the November Vigil to Close the SOA and Resist Militarization from November 18-20, 2011 at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia. We are calling on solidarity activists to converge at the gates of Fort Benning to speak out against oppressive U.S. foreign policy.
Click here for more information about the vigil, workshops, nonviolent direct action and more.
October 2011: March on the U.S. Southern Command
Join us on October 8-9, 2011 in South Florida and at the gates of the U.S. Southern Command outside of Miami, Florida.
Click here to pledge your support for the mobilization.
For over 200 years the United States, with its military, has been interfering in the internal affairs of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. We want that to end! So on Invasion Day (Columbus) Weekend we will hold a series of events and actions centering around the U.S Southern Command in Doral Florida, just to the west of Miami Florida.
We are inviting groups and organizations to co-sponsor and participate in this national event. This weekend of education, entertainment, and protest, with groups from all over the country, grew out of last April’s conference on Latin America that was held in Washington DC.
Call for an Organizers’ Strategy Conference on U.S. Militarization – Nov. 18, 2010, Columbus, Georgia
Click here to register for the conference
We 
have seen US policy tilt more and more toward military options in its relations with Latin America and the Caribbean and the world. Support for the Honduras coup, the military response to Haiti’s earthquake, seven new bases in Colombia and four in Panama, continued restoration of the mothballed Fourth Fleet, all provide support for statements heard at the SOA Watch vigil in November 2009 that “Obama’s policies are more dangerous for Latin America than were Bush’s.” At the same time, the US government continues to prefer military solutions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and continues to escalate tensions with Iran, Venezuela and other countries which assert independence from US hegemony.
In the United States we are witnessing the militarization of our borders and law enforcement in our cities — aimed at immigrants, Muslims, and, as always, African-descended people. Desperately needed social programs such as health care and education are being short-changed while the Pentagon budget continues to grow beyond any rational need for defense. Continue Reading »
Videos from the Not Just Change But Justice teach-ins!
Plenary panel at LASC-NACLA Teach-In at Univ. of CA, Berkeley.
From left to right: Christy Thornton, NACLA; Maria Lya Ramos, NISGUA; Eric Holt-Giménez, Institute for Food & Development Policy; Kathy Hoyt, NicaNet; David Bacon, journalist; and Martin Sanchez of the Consulate of Venezuela.
Between February and May 2009, the Latin America Solidarity Coalition (LASC) and the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) held a series of three teach-ins in Washington, DC, in Chicago, IL, and in the San Francisco Bay Area in CA. The title of the teach-ins was: “Not Just Change, But Justice” and each had a separate focus. The focus of the Washington, DC, teach-in was on U.S. militarization in Latin America, the second in Chicago was on issues of sovereignty and democracy manipulation and the third in California was on U.S. Trade Policy and its Impacts on Food, Land, and Immigration in the Americas.
Click here to view videos from the Washington, DC teach-in.
Click here to view videos of the plenary of the Bay Area teach-in.
Talking Points Toward a New US-Latin America Foreign Policy
The Latin America Solidarity Coalition Coordinating Committee has adopted the following talking points for use by local activists to educate their communities and influence opinion makers and elected officials. With a new administration installed in Washington, DC it is time for progressive activists to demand a new foreign policy toward Latin American and the Caribbean.
The Latin America Solidarity Coalition (LASC) is an association of national and local US-based grassroots Latin America and Caribbean solidarity groups, many of which have long histories of working with grassroots organizations throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. LASC’s mission is to define common goals and shared strategies for these groups. LASC’s work circles around several hemisphere-wide issues as well as country-specific topics.
We operate and structure our work from a solidarity model: we operate on the principle of self-determination; it is not up to us to determine what our partners in the Global South should or should not do. Nor is it up to us to determine the strategies and methodologies they use. We determine our strategies based on the needs of our partners in Latin America and the Caribbean.
1. Close the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation also known as the School of the Americas
2. Close the International Law Enforcement Academy in San Salvador
3. Stop funding Plan Colombia and cut off all military aid to that country
4. Stop funding the Merida Initiative and the militarization of the US/Mexico border
5. Close the National Endowment for Democracy and return USAID to its original foreign aid mission
6. Return President Aristide to Haiti, advocate freedom for all political prisoners and support the end of the UN occupation
7. End belligerence toward Venezuela and other Latin American countries whose citizens have elected left leaning governments over the past decade
8. End the embargo against Cuba and normalize relations with our island neighbor
9. Stop initiating “Free Trade” agreements that benefit only corporations while destroying local agriculture and forcing Latin Americans to leave their homeland to work in the US
10. Publicly state support for the legitimate elected government of Bolivia, condemn the separatist violence and take no actions to further inflame the crisis there
11. Extradite the terrorist Luis Posada Carrilles to Venezuela, as required by extradition treaty, to stand trial for the fatal bombing of a Cubana Airlines flight that killed 73 people. Free the five Cuban anti-terrorist agents falsely convicted of espionage for infiltrating Cuban exile terrorist groups in Miami whose repeated attacks have killed over 3,000 Cubans and foreigners in Cuba.
LASC letter to Obama
September 2008
The Latin America Solidarity Coalition (LASC) has issued a letter to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, expressing our disappointment about positions that he has taken on U.S.-Latin America relations.
The letter further requests a meeting with the Obama campaign to provide them with our ideas for a more positive U.S. policy toward our neighbors to the South. Our hope would be to
(1) help Senator Obama to keep his discussions as accurate as he would like, and
(2) help Senator Obama develop a moral and sustainable U.S. foreign policy in the region as soon as he becomes President.
Click here to download a copy of the letter (PDF).
We are encouraging local Latin America Solidarity groups to use the issues that are being raised in the letter in their local organizing work.
Tell the Dep. of Justice to lay off CISPES
In January this year the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) received a letter from the Department of Justice claiming CISPES might be in violation of a 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act. The evidence was an article [that did not mentioned CISPES]in the Washington Post about an event with the FMLN candidate for president, and the CISPES’ website.
We have no doubt that the Bush administration would disagree with the content on the CISPES website. CISPES is working in opposition to the establishment of the International Law Enforcement Academy in El Salvador, has worked tirelessly to oppose the Bush trade agenda in the region and routinely speaks out against U.S. interference in the electoral process in El Salvador. All while promoting an alternative vision of democracy based on the desires of the people of El Salvador.
None of which is criminal of course.
So it seems the U.S. government would prefer to intimidate the folks at CISPES in the hope they will shut up. Well they are not going to shut up, so the rest of us need to stand by them. Please sign the open letter to the Department of Justice demanding an end to this intimidation.
If your organization can sign this letter, please send e-mail Tom Ricker at tomr@quixote.org
For more background about the case read this press release from CISPES, and visit the CISPES website. You can also listen to a story about the case on Free Speech Radio.
