Anti-Militarism: News & Updates

In 2019, Francia Marquez survived an assassination attempt by men wielding firearms and grenades – an attack that came on the heels of a string of death threats against the award-winning Colombian environmentalist. Now, three years later, she could become the first Afro-Colombian vice president – a historic development in a country where politics has traditionally been the domain of wealthy white men. She was tapped for the position by leftist presidential candidate Gustavo Petro, widely viewed as the frontrunner in the upcoming May election. Marquez has focused her campaign on the need for economic investment in conflict zones, environmentalism, and ensuring implementation of Colombia’s 2016 peace accord. She has vocally opposed the drug wars in Colombia, known as the world’s most dangerous country for environmental defenders.

Central America’s Forgotten History explores how “struggles over historical memory” “can be very political” in the countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Chomsky begins with dispelling “the Black Legend” “that serves to cover up some more inconvenient similarities, contrasts, and connections between British and Spanish colonialism.” The author seeks “to find clues as to what some of the invisible, unheard voices hidden within them might have to say.” Central America’s Forgotten History is a thesis on what today’s America forgot or never knew about the history that drives emigration from Central America. As such, Chomsky omits some history in this concise book while more recent relevant events receive more attention.

Haitian Bridge Alliance v. Biden, a pending federal class action lawsuit, asserts that the U.S. government’s actions at Del Rio were part of a larger strategy that was intentionally designed to send a message of deterrence to other Black immigrants: the United States will not protect you and will deport you back to danger. To perpetrate these human rights abuses, the U.S. used the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext. Invoking an obscure public health statute called Title 42, the Biden Administration fully embraced a Trump-era policy that claimed the unprecedented authority to prevent the entry into the country of people seeking humanitarian protection. Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and the Haitian Bridge Alliance have released a new report unveiling the full scope of the abuses that occurred in Del Rio, Texas, and in some cases are ongoing.

Waves of migration through Mexico and Central America, and people who go missing, will increase in 2022 due to high levels of violence in the region, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said. Immigration authorities in Mexico detained 307,679 migrants in 2021, a 68% increase compared with 182,940 detentions in 2019, according to government data. Most migrants apprehended at the US south-west border come from Mexico and Central America, but an increasing number are arriving from farther places and seeking refuge, including in recent weeks Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion of their country. “In many countries, violence is wreaking more and more havoc, and that’s why there are more and more migrants,” ICRC representative Jordi Raich told Reuters in an interview Wednesday. “And it’s not a situation that is going to improve or slow down, not even in the years to come.“

Nicaragua recognized the “One-China Principle” and resumed diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for the first time since the beginning of the neoliberal period in 1990. Nicaragua’s withdrawal from the OAS and its reestablishment of relations with the PRC are bold decisions that flex Nicaraguan sovereignty and communicate to developing countries that a path of resistance against Western coercion leads to independence, inclusive development, and promising new opportunities. With support from the fastest growing economy in the world with a population of 1.4 billion, in addition to an array of other governments and solidarity movements, Nicaragua has earned the ability to lead a more aggressive charge against Washington’s proposed militarized security and neoliberal development model for Central America. Such a model which aims to enrich corporations through private investment and austerity to the detriment of the poor and working-class remains the antithesis to the Chinese and Sandinista revolutions.

The Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective (WFPSC) and the School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) recently received a delegation of members from the U.S. House of Representatives including Representatives Ilhan Omar (MN-05), Jesus “Chuy” García (IL-04), Cori Bush (MO-01), as well as representation from the office of Jan Schakowsky (IL-09) in Honduras.
The delegation met with President Xiomara Castro who is the first woman president of Honduras and was inaugurated in January following historic elections in which the Honduran people turned out in massive numbers to reject the corrupt U.S.-backed regimes that have devastated Honduras since the 2009 coup d’etat.