NACLA Update 2/11/10 - Haiti's Nightmare / Students As Spies




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From the NACLA Archives:
Haiti's Nightmare and the Lessons of History

by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

"History teaches us not to expect the United States to ride in on a white horse and altruistically save the day for democracy," says the introduction of the NACLA Report's January/February 1994 edition, which examines the question of U.S. interventionism in Haiti. Now that the U.S. military has deployed some 12,000 soldiers to Haiti in the wake of January's devastating earthquake, we republish this article from that edition in the hopes that it can offer a useful historical context for understanding current events.
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Students as Spies: The Deep Politics of U.S.-Colombian Relations
by Forrest Hylton

On January 27, bucking for a third term in spite of Washington's objections, Colombian president Álvaro Uribe announced his goal of putting a thousand spies in college classrooms: "We need citizens to be the ones who commit to informing the police and armed forces, and if young people over 18 can help us in this by participating in networks of informants, it would help us a lot." Uribe offered to pay students $50 per month to report any suspicious ideas or behavior to the Colombian police and armed forces. His drive to recruit informants among university students is eerily similar to what is taking place in the United States, where Washington has served as a pilot project.
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Out Now! Jan/Feb 2010

Same Difference: Obama's Militarized Status Quo

In April, President Obama made his hemispheric debut at the Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. "I'm here to launch a new chapter of engagement that will be sustained throughout my administration," he told his counter-parts, to applause. He later added that his administration would condemn "any efforts at violent overthrows of democratically elected governments, wherever it happens in the hemisphere."Since then, however, Obama's honeymoon with Latin America has definitively ended—largely because of his administration's efforts to prevent the reinstatement of Manuel Zelaya to the presidency of Honduras, following the military coup in June, and its granting of legitimacy to the coup government. This Report approaches the question of continuities by examining the institutional and ideological obstacles to progressive policies, as well as the political and economic bases of such tragically failed policies as Plan Colombia.
Read the Jan/Feb 2010 Report online
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