Source: Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) published at Upside Down World.

It is hard to find words that quite describe U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s performance at the June 7 meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Lima, Peru. Cluelessness certainly comes to mind, but leavened with a goodly dash of arrogance and historical amnesia.

Clinton leaned on the 35-member grouping “to move forward and welcome Honduras back into the inter-American community,” urged the OAS to step up the fight against drug trafficking, and scolded the organization for a “proliferation of priorities and mandates that dilute its efforts, drain its budget, and diminish its capacity.” She added that the OAS should “refocus” on such tasks as monitoring elections.

Where does one begin? Well, Honduras and elections for starters.

While Clinton characterized the election that followed the coup against Manuel Zelaya “free and fair,” it was boycotted by 51 percent of the population. The U.S. has been silent about the fact that the new president, Porfirio Lobo, has overseen a reign of terror that, since the June 28, 2009 coup, has seen the assassination of some 130 anti-government activists, including seven journalists. The murders bear a close resemblance to death squad assassinations carried out under military dictator Policarpo Paz Garcia in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Reporters Without Borders recently designated Honduras “the world’s deadliest country for the media.”

“We are living in a state of terror,” says human rights activist Dr. Juan Almendares, a former director of research projects at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. Almendares currently runs a free clinic in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital.

Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino told the OAS meeting that the Honduras coup has put the “inter-American order at risk,” and that “My government cannot recognize the new government in Honduras while there are violations against human rights.”

In the old days, the U.S. would have steamrolled any opposition, but now-a-days supporting the Colossus of the North can be a lonely business. Only a handful of countries, including Canada, Columbia, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Peru, and Guatemala backed re-instating Honduras to the OAS.

Tone deaf was all you could call Clinton’s call for stepping up the war on drugs. A few months ago the 17-member Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, chaired by three former heads of state, concluded “The U.S.-style anti-drug strategy was putting the region’s fragile democratic institutions at risk, and corrupting the judiciary system, government, the political system, and especially the police force.” Former Brazilian president and Commission member Fernando Cardoso said, “The war on drugs is a failed war. We have to move from this approach to another.”

Several Latin American countries, including Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Uruguay have moved to legalize personal drug possession, and other countries in the region are considering how to move from punishment to treatment.

And what did Clinton mean by that phrase “proliferation of priorities”? There was no question as to how OAS members read it: “Keep your nose out of the Middle East,” not an instruction likely to be followed. Brazil and Turkey’s effort to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue peacefully has drawn widespread applause throughout the continent, and a number of Latin American countries have become increasingly critical of Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians. Argentina, El Salvador, Panama, Nicaragua, Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Mexico, Chile, and Brazil were sharply critical of the Israeli attack on the recent Gaza flotilla, and many called for lifting the blockade of Gaza.

Clinton’s efforts to lobby Latin American nations to support sanctions against Iran fell flat.

What Clinton did not mention was why the Obama administration has not ended the blockade of Cuba, failed to tackle the immigration issue, and remained silent on a plan by Britain to drill for gas and oil in waters north of the Malvinas (Falkland Islands).

Back in February the newly minted Rio Group—which excludes the U.S. and Canada— held a Unity Summit in Cancun and endorsed an Argentinean document accusing Britain of violating international law by allowing the British oil company, Desire Petroleum, to drill near the islands. Geologists estimate that the area could hold up to 60 billion barrels of oil, not much smaller than Brazil’s vast offshore Salto Deposits.

“Our attitude is one of solidarity with Argentina,” said Brazilian President Luiz “Lula” da Silva, speaking for the 32-member group. “What is the geographical, political, and economic explanation for England to be in the Malvinas? Is it possible that Argentina is not the owner while England is, despite being 14,000 kilometers away?”

It increasingly looks as if the Rio Group—rumor is that its new name will be the “Latin American and Caribbean Community”—will eventually replace the OAS, which partly explains Clinton’s plea for the organization to “refocus.” The OAS is “refocusing,” but that means members no longer has to curtsy to the United States, that countries in the region should determine diplomatic priorities, and that Brasilia has as much right to become a player in the Middle East as Washington.

Just to show you how the world has turned upside down, the June 6 Financial Times told its readers that “the safest place to be” in a risky world was Latin America.

In her address to the delegates, Clinton complained that the OAS “has not always lived up to its founding ideals.” Now it is, and Washington is less than happy. All in all, a bad week for the Monroe Doctrine, and a very good week for Latin America.

And Plan Mexico is modeled on Plan Colombia except there are no benchmarks to allow the public (or the GAO) to measure its failure. Great.

Here’s a quote:

“If Colombians are victims of this regime, indeed of this State, one has to ask who the beneficiaries are. The answer has to be sought. This is an International Criminal Legal issue. Amongst many other facts that require volumes to be exposed, Colombia is the largest recipient of US military aid and cooperation in the continent. The Colombian regime is the closest ally of transnational corporate interests (pharmaceutical, tourism, mining, oil, agribusiness, food, energy, biopiracy, infrastructure projects such as dams, the arms trade and almost anyone involved in anything and everything from the legal and illegal organized global crime networks). Through FTAs, the Colombian regime has delivered national sovereignty, freedoms, resources, labour, nature and more to foreign interests at an intolerable expense for Colombians. Investors are attracted to put money into the Colombian economy for guaranteed profit in exchange for absolutely nothing for the Colombian population: No jobs, no transfer of technologies, no profit for the Colombian economy. The Colombian criminal regime promised Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, on November 21 2008, to deliver 50% of Colombian territory to mining and other transnational corporate interests [iii]. Every crime of the Colombian State revolves around corporate profit.”

Luis Paredes Moctezuma, the former mayor of Puebla who claims to have spent three decades in the secret group El Yunque, declared to the Dallas Morning News in June 2007, that “El Yunque is more dangerous than the narcos.” Hundreds of Yunque members are now in the bureaucracy, and they control four state governments, he warned.

An investigative piece by journalist and feminist activist Irene Ortiz in the January/February 2008 issue of NACLA Report on the Americas, ‘Putting Down Roots: The Latin American Right Today’. detailed the history of the secretive organization dedicated to ‘eternal combat (with) the forces of Judaism, Masonry and Communism’. Açlvaro Delgado, who published a book on El Yunque in 2003, used the group’s written internal communications and the testimonies of members and deserters, to expose its determination to “create the City of God in accordance with the Gospels”.

Friends of Brad Will have joined the United Steel Workers, Witness for Peace, WESPAC and others, in opposing the Merida Initiative, dubbed “Plan Mexico” after Plan Colombia, the $7 billion military ‘drug war’ package which failed to reduce exports of coca from the strife-ridden South American nation. The Initiative would cost $1.1 billion over two years, with the overwhelming majority of money to be spent on providing U.S. military equipment and training, including helicopters and surveillance equipment, to Mexican President Calderon. Many observers, such as Global Exchange, have recognized the initiative is destined to fail, given the “drug cartel’s penetration into seemingly every facet of the Mexican police, military, and judicial system”. The last major counter-narcotics training program of Mexican military units by U.S. Special Forces resulted in the entire Mexican force – known as the Zetas – defecting to work for the narcos, taking with them state-of-the-art tactics and methods.

Friends of Brad Will is informing many Jewish, gay, and women’s rights organizations about the nature of this organization, whose members the Calderon Administration has appointed to some of its highest positions. The organization believes that the United States government should not be supporting any government which threatens to set the clock back on women’s and gay rights or on religious tolerance. This Bush ’security’ initiative threatens to empower an ultra-right-wing government out of step with American values. The creed of El Yunque would be considered deeply offensive to most Americans (as it is to most Mexicans).

Please download the frightening report on the appointment of extremists into the corrupt Executive branch of Mexico’s government below.

El Yunque is so secretive an organization. Nevertheless there is a general consensus about who, in the Calderon Government, is a current member of El Yunque:

The Calderon Government has at its highest cabinet level posts members of the extremist anti-semitic, homophobic, and anti-women’s rights Catholic organization known as El Yunque. Among “first-level” cabinet members, Calderón’s private secretary César Nava Vázquez is a member of the Yunque, as is the head of the National Water Commission, José Luis Luege, and the head of the National Institute of Migration, Cecilia Romero. The Secretary of Public Education, Josefina Vázquez Mota, is also said to be a yunquista but she denies it. The outgoing president of he PAN, Manuel Espino, is a member of the Yunque, as are three state governors (all PANistas), Juan Manuel Oliva, in Guanajuato; Emilio González Márquez, in Jalisco, and Marco Antonio Adame, in Morelos.

Background of El Yunque’s incursions into Mexican government since the end of the one-party state:

After his 2000 election, Fox quietly appointed many Yunque members to his cabinet. Many of these appointments were made in the Labor Department at the behest of Labor Secretary Carlos Abascal (a pro-Yunque activist who has never acknowledged his membership in the organization). Abascal was Interior Secretary throughout the Oaxaca blow up and was in close touch with corrupt and brutal Governor Ulises Ortiz Ruis, including during the action on the ground the day Brad was killed. Fox Administration Yunque members include Abascal’s private secretary, Raúl Vázquez Osorio, Undersecretary of Labor Francisco Xavier Salazar Saénz, Planning Coordinator Jesús Rivera Barroso, and the department’s budget director, Fernando Urbiola Ledezma. In addition to the Labor Department, the Department of Social Development became home for many Yunque members at the undersecretary level.

The above information was compiled from the NACLA article provided above and correspondence with journalist John Ross and senior NACLA advisor Fred Rosen. Thanks to NACLA, which has generously allowed us to offer this article to visitors to this site.