The Military Occupation of Latin America and the Caribbean

By Luis Britto García  –  Jan 22, 2025

The battles of Latin America and the Caribbean for independence and sovereignty were bloody. According to the estimation of Liberator Simón Bolívar, the battles took the lives of more than a third of the population.

During the 19th century, the unjust oligarchic order inherited from colonial times led to numerous civil wars. However, apart from the independence struggles, there have been few international conflicts in our region, most of them initiated by financial interests foreign to Our America. To demonstrate their peaceful vocation, the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean signed the Treaty of Tlatelolco in Mexico on February 14, 1967, which prohibits the development, stockpiling or use of nuclear weapons in the region and restricts nuclear energy to peaceful uses. In fact, the agreement reserves the use of such devices to the only hemispheric power that possesses them in the hemisphere, the United States.

In the same vein, on January 29, 2014, the leaders of the 33 countries of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) signed in Havana, Cuba the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, in which they affirm “our commitment to consolidate a zone of peace in Latin America and the Caribbean, in which differences between nations are resolved peacefully, through dialogue and negotiation or other forms of solution, and in full accordance with international law.” It wassigned by Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

In contrast with this constant, firm and explicit vocation for peace of the Latin American and Caribbean peoples, since 1817 the United States has perpetrated more than 50 armed interventions in Our America, some followed by vast plundering, such as the invasion of Mexico in 1848 that snatched from that country more than half of its territory; the intervention in 1899 that interfered with the independence of Cuba and annexed Puerto Rico; or the intervention in 1904 that appropriated the area of the Panama Canal. By virtue of this, two centuries after the battle of Ayacucho, a good part of Our America is militarily occupied again by US troops.

The only difference now is that these troops have not fought battles to install their enclaves in what were once independent territories; in most cases they occupied these territories with the consent of traitorous governments.

The United States, which has some 6,000 military bases in its territory and some 800 in the rest of the world, currently has at least 76 military bases in Our America: almost double the number of countries in the region.

To name all these military enclaves would be too extensive. In Argentina, there is an area occupied by the United States in Tolhuin, Tierra del Fuego, and a military base in Resistencia, province of El Chaco. Military bases are being built in Neuquén and Vaca Muerta, near enormous petroleum reserves. The new neoliberal government will surely authorize other enclaves in an expeditious manner. There is one base in Chile, near Valparaíso. In Colombia, nine US military bases seriously interfere in internal affairs. In fact, each Colombian airport is a bastion that houses, supplies and repairs US military aircraft. In Cuba, the Guantánamo naval base remains open, despite the staunch opposition of the Cuban people and authorities. The government of Rafael Correa freed Ecuador from the Manta Base; the neoliberal Noboa ceded for the same use the Galapagos Islands, causing mortal harm to the ecology of the archipelago, and admitted an invasion of US troops under the pretext of fighting the criminal underworld. Haiti has been repeatedly and for prolonged periods occupied by US troops, with disastrous results. In Honduras, three military bases participated in the coup against Manuel Zelaya. In Panama, 12 bases continue the military occupation, despite the Torrijos-Carter agreements that recognize Panamanian sovereignty over the Panama Canal. Paraguay holds two bases that threaten the Guarani Aquifer and the Lithium Triangle. In Peru, eight US military enclaves support the repression of the dictator Dina Boluarte. In Puerto Rico, 12 bases maintain by force the nation’s humiliating condition of Free Associated Country. In addition to those mentioned above, there are US bases in Aruba, Curaçao, Costa Rica, and El Salvador. In addition, there is a secret and indefinite number of “quasi-bases” that conduct espionage, communication, military tasks, and in general interfere in local affairs.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European armed wing of the United States, also has its own military enclaves in the region. NATO bases in the Malvinas Islands, Belize, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. Argentina has been a “principal non-NATO ally” since 1997, Brazil since 2019, and Colombia has been a “NATO global partner” since 2022. European troops head the Overseas Department of Guyana.

By brute force or the consent of traitorous governments, Latin America and the Caribbean has become a de facto militarily occupied region.

If the neo-liberal opposition came to power in Venezuela, its first act would be to allow the installation of a dozen foreign military bases so that the Empire could plunder the nation’s wealth.

It is said that when there are two roosters in a barnyard, one is playing the role of the hen. The simultaneous presence of foreign and national armed forces in the same territory implies a conflict, a capitulation, or that the latter will serve as cannon fodder for the interests of the former.

The extreme gravity of the military occupation of Our America can be understood if it is taken into account that the invading countries claim for their bases and soldiers abroad the condition of extraterritoriality and impunity. That is, (1) the occupied nation cannot inspect what happens in foreign military installations located in its territory, and (2) the troops of the occupying army are formally endowed with diplomatic immunity, so that their crimes, atrocities, and crimes against humanity cannot be judged according to the constitution and laws of the occupied country.

Just as foreign capitalists in Special Economic Zones are not subject to national tax or labor laws or national courts, foreign occupiers are immune from the laws and courts of the country that they occupy.

Guyanese Revolutionary Gerald Perreira: US Already Has Military Bases in Guyana (Interview)

To maintain these outrageous practices, US military doctrine is periodically readjusted, as was the case of “President William Clinton’s War Plan,” launched at the First Summit of the Americas in Miami in 1994.

This plan presents three strategic objectives on three related fronts to be achieved before 2006: (1) economic reconquest, through the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), (2) political reconquest, and (3) the military reconquest, to which the appropriation of the Amazon was added later.

The “military reconquest” of Latin America and the Caribbean is being prepared by armed hemispheric intervention organizations created by Bill Clinton in 1995: the Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas, which adopted the doctrine of the OAS Democratic Charter in 2002 at its fifth meeting in Santiago, Chile, and the Hemispheric Center for Defense Studies.

When examining the possibilities of “military reconquest,” it must be taken into account that the United States has 1,328,800 soldiers in active service. According to data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in 2001, Latin America and the Caribbean had 1,251,000 troops. It may be that today the Latin American troops equal the number of US troops.

It would be extremely costly, complicated and demanding for the US to maintain a full occupation force of its own nationals throughout the whole of Our America. To train and maintain it, they would have to recruit and equip a force at least equivalent to that of the sum of their local armies, which would mean doubling their current contingent. That would be incalculably expensive and would force them to weaken their other strategic world fronts.

The total military occupation of Our America by the United States is therefore impossible. It has been our disunity and our lack of solidarity, if not our collaboration, that allowed the imperialist power to impose its will through consecutive interventions in republics that had no choice but to face diplomatically and strategically alone the disproportionate power of the northern colossus.

Therefore, it would be ideal for the United States if its hegemony over Latin America and the Caribbean is maintained by troops from the countries themselves, paid for as far as possible by the occupied peoples themselves.

Thus, in 1963, the Americans supported the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic, and to prevent Colonel Caamaño Deñó from becoming president, the US marines were supported in 1965 by contingents sent by the Latin American dictatorships of the time, that is, Brazil, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Paraguay.

An OAS resolution legitimized the blockade against Cuba. US diplomacy obtained from a group of small Caribbean islands the request for the invasion of Grenada in 1983; troops from the British colony of Jamaica participated in that invasion. At present, the head of the Jamaican state is the British monarch: the troops of that island are therefore under British command. Repeated destabilization and invasion attempts against Venezuela have been made by neighboring countries since 2002.

It is possible that, taking advantage of its expanding military occupation of Our America, the United States is trying to revitalize the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR) of 1947, a sort of complement to the Monroe Doctrine and predecessor of NATO, which provided for the joint use of forces of the countries of the Americas against any aggression.

This Treaty was signed by Argentina, Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, United States, and Uruguay. It has been invoked a score of times without much effect, but died a natural death when, in 1982, in order to claim its dominion over the Malvinas, Great Britain militarily attacked Argentina, and neither the United States nor the other countries of the pact lifted a finger to defend the latter. Since then, it was clear that the treaty would only be applied in favor of the interests of the United States, avoiding any conflict with the European members of NATO. In fact, it was never used against the colonial enclaves maintained in America by England, France, and Netherlands: Jamaica, Belize, and the British, French, and Dutch Guianas. For these reasons, Mexico abandoned the treaty in 2002, and Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia in 2012.

However, the proliferation of NATO military bases makes a revitalization of TIAR foreseeable. The expansionist and aggressive policy announced by Donald Trump before assuming his second presidency also points to it: strict border closures, massive expulsion of 11 million immigrants, annexation of Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal Zone, customs duties of 60% against Chinese products and against countries whose ports, airports or other means of transport facilitate the transport of such goods.

It would be difficult to impose these measures peacefully.

Declining empires tend to replace their national armies with mercenaries recruited from the colonized peoples themselves. The declining Roman Empire nourished its legions with mercenaries from the conquered provinces; the British sustained their domination over India with Indian sepoys; NATO maintains its domination over Europe with militaries from the peoples subdued by the organization.

Today Venezuela has in its neighborhood countries and territories infested with US or NATO military bases: Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Aruba, Curaçao, Guadeloupe, Martinique. In the South, the “principal non-NATO ally” Brazil refuses to recognize the results of Venezuelan elections and therefore the Venezuelan government. On the eastern border of Venezuela, the Cooperative Republic of Guyana surrenders to the US the resources of the Essequibo, allows continuous intimidating military exercises by the United States and other countries, and receives massive contingents of armaments. It is to be feared that a false flag attack will serve as a pretext for the oil-hungry powers to assault Venezuelan riches.

Against this massive occupation, comparable to that of an area invaded by the enemy after a crushing military defeat, we suggest the following measures:

1. To promote a culture of sovereignty, imparting through all levels of education and the media a culture of sovereignty, defining and clarifying the concept, and clarifying that sovereignty disappears when foreign powers are attributed the power to modify our laws, execute them, decide on controversies related to internal public order or occupy the territory with foreign militaries installed in enclaves where local laws do not apply.
2. To constitute, using organizations such as ALBA, Unasur and CELAC, a military alliance of Latin America and the Caribbean that excludes the participation and above all the interference of the United States, the Southern Command, NATO and other forces and unions foreign to Our America.
3. To advance in the democratization of our armies, opening access to all ranks of the military career to all social classes; maintaining in form support bodies such as the Reserve and the Militia, and imparting in all branches of education the basic elements of armed defense—this without necessarily implying conscription for service.
4. To initiate a diplomatic, juridical, cultural and communicational offensive to demand the withdrawal of the foreign bases that currently occupy Our America.
5. To modernize and train our armed forces, together with the people, in order to effectively repel any invasion, interference, interference, or attempt of annexation or colonization in Our America.
6. To complement these measures with pacts, alliances and agreements in defense of our sovereignty with countries and organizations of the multipolar world.

Latin America and the Caribbean urgently needs a new Ayacucho.

 

 

(Resumen Latinoamericano-English) with additional editing by Orinoco Tribune