On Wednesday, August 7, during an event in the city of El Alto for the 194th anniversary of the Bolivian Armed Forces, President Evo Morales launched a bold proposal. Convert the Anti-Imperialist Military School ( founded in 2016 ) into a “Southern Command” that defends the interests of Latin America.
Morales was responsible for highlighting the internationalist character of the initiative since this new military body would be “of the people and for the people, not only for the Bolivian, but for the Latin American and the world.”
Addressing the soldiers, the head of state said that “the future will bring new threats” for the region. “Interventions, extraterritorial weapons, financial blockades, economic sanctions and unilateral embargoes of criminal and genocidal scope,” he said, clearly referring to US foreign policy.
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Hoy más que nunca, las FFAA defienden nuestro territorio y protegen nuestros recursos naturales. Hemos nacionalizado las FFAA, al mismo tiempo que nacionalizamos nuestros recursos naturales. No podemos concebir la preservación de nuestros RRNN sin la protección de nuestras FFAA. pic.twitter.com/UF9wb2hinc
— Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) August 7, 2019
The president concluded:
“The empire is more greedy than ever and wants to recover its apparent geopolitical privileges” through the “arrogant and abusive use of hegemonic military forces.”
THE COUNTER COMMAND
Within the US military structure there are ten Commands. The so-called Southern Command (SOUTHCOM, for its acronym in English) has within its “area of responsibility ” 31 countries of America that are south of its territory, from Mexico to Argentina.
Created in 1963, it has historically been one of Washington’s interference tools on the region. Either giving advice to the Armed Forces, supporting coups or direct invasions.
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This has been complemented by the School of the Americas established in Panama in 1946 and which trained several generations of Latin American generals in the US military doctrine.
In response, in 2016 the Government of Bolivia created the Anti-Imperialist Military School for the Peoples of Abya Yala with the mission of changing the strategic orientation of Bolivian military political thinking.
When announcing its creation, Morales explained that “before there was a great school, the School of the Americas, where the best students of the Armed Forces, the Police went to become indoctrinated” and clarified that “it is a [US] right and we respect it.”
“But we also have another school, not of the empire, but of the people,” he said and added the importance of “liberating economically, politically, socially and culturally but also ideologically.” That is why, since then, the anti-imperialist course is a requirement to ascend to the rank of captain in the Bolivian army.
For his part, Vice President Álvaro García Linera said
“The essence of the armed forces, a central state institution, is anti-imperialism. They were born facing the empire and colonization. This root cannot be lost, it must be consolidated, it must be enhanced. ”
On this basis, a Command is now proposed that is the counterpart of the American and can, at least, deter its interventionist actions.
Although the political winds of Latin America do not accompany regional integration measures such as the one proposed by Morales, the next elections in Uruguay, Argentina and Bolivia itself could begin to set another trend.
Source URL: Redvolucion.net
Translated by JRE/EF
