Latin America is ready to defy the US over Snowden and other issues

Latin America is ready to defy the US over Snowden and other issues

Latin America has long lived in the US shadow, but the fact that some countries might take Snowden shows how that's changed

Stephen Kinzer
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 25 June 2013 12.16 EDT

No offense to Iceland, but Latin America is where the fugitive leaker Edward Snowden should settle.

He apparently has the same idea. News reports suggest that he is in Moscow awaiting transport to Cuba, Venezuela, and/or Ecuador. A Facebook post suggests Bolivia may have granted Snowden asylum. Nothing has been heard from Nicaragua, Peru, Brazil, or Argentina, but any or all might also welcome him.

Any country that grants asylum to Snowden risks retaliation from the United States, including diplomatic isolation and costly trade sanctions. Several don't seem to care. The fact that Latin America has become the favored refuge for a United States citizen accused of treason and espionage is an eye-popping reminder of how fully the continent has emerged from Washington's shadow.

"Latin America is not gone, and we want to keep it," President Richard Nixon told aides as he was pressing the covert operation that brought down the Chilean government in 1973. A decade later, the Reagan administration was fighting proxy wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. In the 1980s the US Army invaded two Caribbean countries, Grenada and Panama, to depose leaders who had defied Washington.

During the 1990s the United States sought to impose the "Washington Consensus" on Latin American governments. It embodied what Latin Americans call "neo-liberal" principles: budget cuts, privatization, deregulation of business, and incentives for foreign companies. This campaign sparked bitter resistance and ultimately collapsed.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/25/edward-snowden-ecuador-defy-united-states