Latin America Solidarity Coalition

Stand in Solidarity with the People of Honduras

The Latin America Solidarity Coalition (LASC) condemns the military coup against the democratically elected Honduran President Zelaya. The Honduran social movements, who are courageously resisting the military take-over through protests, occupations and strikes, are calling on the international community to speak up in defense of real and direct democracy, for life, justice, liberty, dignity and peace.

Call the State Department and the White House and ask for actions, including:

• unequivocal denunciation of the military coup and no regognition of the Honduran November election if President Zelaya is not reinstated as president by October 15, 2009
• no recognition of this military coup and the ‘de facto’ government of Roberto Micheletti
• withdraw U.S. ambassador Hugo Llorens from Honduras, investigate his actions and the actions of US government agencies in the lead-up to the coup
• unconditional return of the entire constitutional government
• concrete economic, military and diplomatic sanctions against the coup regime
• respect for safety and human rights of all Hondurans
• application of international and national justice against the coup plotters
• reparations for the illegal actions and rights violations committed during this illegal coup Continue Reading »

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.

A teach-in organized by the Latin America Solidarity Coalition (LASC) and the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) and co-sponsored by SOA Watch, CISPES, the Alliance for Global Justice and other organizations drew a crowd of over 125 people to Howard University to hear about the problems in Latin America which are caused by US militarism including US-funding of Latin American military and police as well as militarization of social problems such as drug use and immigration. The teach-in on Feb. 15, 2009 is the first of three LASC/NACLA teach-ins on 11 foreign policy changes the LASC is working on as part of its campaign “Toward a New US Latin America Foreign Policy.” Teach-ins in Chicago and Berkeley in April will address the LASC demands on sovereignty and democracy manipulation and trade and economic justice, respectively.

The crowd first heard from Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of SOA Watch, an organization whose purpose is to close the School of the Americas (or as it is sometimes referred to in Latin America, “The School of the Assassins”), which has trained many of the hemisphere’s worst dictators and human rights offenders. At the SOA (now named the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), US instructors have trained Latin American military officers on the finer points of torture, murder, and defense of US corporate interests. He told the audience about the feelings of many in Latin America that the US in an imperial power and that powerful countries most often become involved in the affairs of weaker nations to take rather than to give. He also spoke of the “sea change” in Latin America, as many countries are now rejecting US influence because of the decades of failed policies coming out of Washington.

Professor Lesley Gill, the chair of the Department of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University, questioned whether or not we are likely to see much promised “change” from president Obama in Latin American policy. She pointed out that he has already begun hostile rhetoric towards Venezuela and promised to continue the Cuba embargo. She pointed out that the United States has been a destabilizing force in Latin America for decades; however, the Left is on the rise all over Latin America. Latin America has become more economically independent from the US, with the Bank of the South, UNASUR and access to new markets in Europe and China.

Argentina has begun to prosecute offenders from the “dirty war” and democratic governments throughout the region have started to deal with issues of inequity. She told the audience that Bush’s response to this was aggressive. He responded with more intervention in the region: supporting coups in Haiti and Venezuela, viewing people in Latin America as a security threat, and continuing “Plan Columbia”, a program which has the stated purpose to combat drugs, but ends up funneling money to paramilitaries. These paramilitaries make alliances with drug lords, murder civilians and burn through the country side. Continue Reading »

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.

Continue Reading »

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.

June 2008

As Congress enters the final stages to approve the Merida Initiative, an aid package to Mexico and Central America that seeks to further militarize the region under the guise of the U.S.’s “war on drugs/war on terror,” we find manifold reasons to stand in opposition:

1) Money for Central America through the Merida Initiative would mark a significant increase in funding for military/police equipment and training in the region at a time when the need is for anti-poverty and crime-prevention programs.

The Merida Initiative, also known as Plan Mexico, builds on the troubling model of Plan Colombia, which has poured billions of dollars into a failed military approach to combating drugs while doing little to address rural poverty and urban unemployment. Central America has already become a satellite for U.S. military and police training in Latin America, despite the poor human rights records of some governments in the region.  With the opening of the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in 2005, El Salvador—already the second largest recipient of military training in the region—became the hub of police training. The ILEA has the capacity to train 1500 students per year, more than the current Western Hemisphere Institute for Security and Cooperation, also known as the SOA. U.S. officials refuse to acknowledge the corruption, misconduct and human rights violations committed by the Salvadoran police.  To the contrary, the Merida Initiative now proposes to further support ILEA and further equip those police.  Continue Reading »

Given the way the primaries have been going, we are currently having more leverage with the U.S. presidential candidates than at any other time. Let’s use it! Committing one or more of them to come out publicly for the closure of the School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC) is a realistic and attainable goal. Once the candidate is elected president, we can hold him or her accountable to follow through and to close the school by executive order.

Please sign the Latin America Solidarity Coalition (LASC) online petition about the School of the Americas to the presidential candidates here:

http://www.LASolidarity.org/petition

The success of a popular movement forcing the closure of the school will send a critical message everywhere that people power can be stronger than the Pentagon. Social movements throughout the Americas are leading the way: The people of Vieques, Puerto Rico have forced the U.S. Navy to close its bombing range on the island of Vieques; human rights defenders in Argentina and Chile are stripping the perpetrators of their impunity to bring them to justice; civil society mobilizations have swept progressive governments into power from Venezuela to Ecuador. Together, we will will close the School of the Americas and put an end to oppressive U.S. policies.

It is up to us to change the political climate by working towards a culture of justice and peace and by defying systems of violence and domination. History is made by movements, mass movements of people who organize themselves to struggle collectively for a better world.”

Sign the petition here: http://www.LASolidarity.org/petition