Venezuelan Defense Minister Major General Vladimir Padrino LĂłpez (left), and the head of US Southern Command, General Laura Richardson (right). Photo composition by Orinoco Tribune.
Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino LĂłpez stated that Latin America is not a place to plunder in response to US interests in the region’s resources.
“The US empire is right about the quantity of strategic resources that this region has,” Minister Padrino LĂłpez wrote on his social media on Monday, January 23. “But Latin America is no longer a piece of land for plunder.”
The Venezuelan minister made this comment in response to statements made by the head of the US Southern Command, General Laura Richardson. In a conversation with the Atlantic Council (a US think tank in the field of international affairs) last week, she said that Washington really cares about Latin America for its resources such as water, lithium, oil, copper and gold.
In the interview, General Richardson noted the presence of approximately 60% of the world’s lithium reserves in the “lithium triangle” of Chile, Bolivia and Argentina; “the largest oil reserves,” including those of “light and sweet crude discovered off Guyana more than a year ago;” and the resources of Venezuela like oil, copper and gold. She said that these resources have a lot to do with “the national security of the United States” and, therefore, the United States has to up its game.
Tiene razĂłn el imperio sobre la cantidad de recursos estratĂ©gicos con los que cuenta esta regiĂłn. Pero LatinoamĂ©rica ya no es un pedazo de tierra para saquear. AquĂ se construye un bloque geopolĂtico emergente que será clave en la construcciĂłn de un Nuevo Orden Mundial Multipolar pic.twitter.com/5XH1KOFbRy
— Vladimir Padrino L. (@vladimirpadrino) January 22, 2023
In response to such statements, the Venezuelan minister of defense made it clear that Latin America “is building an emerging geopolitical bloc that will be key in the construction of a New Multipolar World Order.”
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Venezuelan Minister of Communication and Information Freddy Ñáñez also responded to the US military official’s comments about Latin America’s strategic resources. He considered the US intentions regarding the natural wealth of Latin America “brazen” and stressed that the US government should know that for “200 years, the anti-imperialist spirit has been inherent to our republics.”
Indeed, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, as well as other authorities of Venezuela, have always advocated for multipolarity in order to resist the unipolarity exercised by the United States. “We simply want to see the emergence and construction of a multicentric, multipolar world where there will be a dialogue of civilizations, cultures, political models and religions. Where no one tries to impose their way of being, their culture or their economic model by force or coercion,” President Maduro said back in 2017.
(HispanTV)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/SF
