In interview, Center for Economic and Policy Research Director Mark Weisbrot talks about how the US government has worked to destroy progressive governments across the Americas.
In a web TV interview conducted by Brasil Wire co-editor Brian Mier for the news medium Brasil 247, economist Mark Weisbrot explains that the US role in overthrowing Dilma Rousseff and imprisoning Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is not unique. The US, he says, has been involved in regime change attempts favoring neoliberal governments in countries across the region, from Honduras to Paraguay, Venezuela, Argentina and Chile.
According to Weisbrot, the methods used very from country to country, ranging from coup attempts in Venezuela to blocking loans to Argentina in the IMF and Inter-American Development Bank, which were immediately allowed after neoliberal US favorite Mauricio Macri won the election.
Regarding US Latin America policy in Democratic and Republican administrations, Weisbrot says, “you couldn’t really argue that Obama’s positions in Latin America were really different than those of George W. Bush.” As an example he cites the fact that Hilary Clinton admits that she supported the coup in Honduras in her new autobiography. Trump, he says, “is a different animal altogether. He doesn’t respect any of the norms of international diplomacy. He asked his cabinet if he could take military action to overthrow the Venezuelan government. They openly support a military coup which they didn’t actually do openly in the previous 16 years, even thought they funded the people who carried out the 2002 coup attempt.”
Weisbrot says that although we already have enough evidence to show a US role in the 2016 ouster of Dilma Rousseff, it is just the tip of the iceberg. “The US Department of Justice participated in the whole Car Wash investigation and other corruption with Judge Moro’s railroading and unjust imprisonment of Lula. There will be some people looking into that here…. As Lula himself said when he was asked about the US role in any of this he said it took us 50 years to find out what the US did in the coup in Brazil in 1964, so you can expect that there will be more in the future that will find out.”
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