OBRADOR'S PARALLEL LEFTIST GOVERNMENT IN MEXICO CITY & THE SPREAD OF "CHAVEZISM" THROUGHOUT LATIN AMERICA

INTRODUCTION

Thousands of supporters of Andres Manual Lopez Obrador filled Mexico City's central plaza, the Zocalo, on November 20, 2006, to witness the creation of a parallel government to that of Felipe Calderon's U.S. client-state government. Obrador's swearing in as Mexico's parallel and "legitimate president" was a momentous affair. Obrador declared to the assembled crowd:

"It is an honor to be the legitimate president of Mexico and above all the leader of free men and women like you. Those neo-fascist reactionaries (meaning the government of Felipe Calderon) better not think they'll have room to maneuver. We're going to keep them on a short leash."

Then Obrador accepted a red-white-and-green "presidential sash" placed over his shoulder by leftist senator and human-rights activist Rosario Ibarra de Piedra.

It was easily the largest demonstration Mexico City has ever seen. John Ross wrote of the event:

"It was quite impressive. A march of … 1.5 million … I was locked into the Zocalo, the great central plaza here, and you couldn't move in any direction … There was a 15-kilometer length march all the way from the edge of town into the center of the city."

MOST AMERICANS HAVE NO IDEA
ABOUT WHAT'S HAPPENING IN MEXICO

Ross continued:

"Though the [American media] is paying scant attention … [to what's happening in Mexico] they should. Obrador is demanding a revision of NAFTA [in favor of 'the people'], and a powerful workers' voice in the government."

That's something that makes the blood of the elites in the United States run cold with terror. A revision of NAFTA in favor of workers' rights? - after all, NAFTA was created to skirt these rights. As the Los Angeles Times noted in 2002,

"Few would argue that NAFTA has been anything but devastating for average Mexicans."

OBRADOR: A MAN OF THE PEOPLE

Who exactly is Andres Manual Lopez Obrador? Ted Lewis calls him a "champion of the poor:"

"In 1996 I met Lopez Obrador at his modest middle-class home in the capital of his native state of Tabasco situated on the oil rich coast of the Gulf of Mexico. After having been fraudulently denied the governorship of the state in 1994 he and hundreds of Indian peasants from the oil producing regions were engaged in a campaign to pressure the … [oil elites] to compensate their communities for damage to their livelihoods caused by intensive drilling, production, and transport of oil in their communities.

"The reparations campaign was strategic and sophisticated, but what was most striking was the disciplined and explicitly non-violent character of it. Lopez Obrador and his close allies had studied the campaigns of Ghandi and Martin Luther King and sought to put those tactics and principles to work on behalf of the downtrodden."

Since then, Obrador's activities have expanded beyond his native state of Tabasco to the nation at large. Obrador promises to preserve subsidies for Mexican farmers that are soon to expire under the NAFTA agreement. He also promises to stop the "privatization" of oil and gas industries (a euphemism for the sale of these industries to American multi-national corporations) and to offer free medical care and food subsidies for citizens over 65.

Obrador says that -

"Neo-liberalism is a failure for the poor of Mexico. It is destroying our strategic national industries and resources: energy, phones, even privatizing health and education, the whole reform model achieved by the Lazaro Cardenas government of the 1930s."

THE RELENTLESS EFFORT BY THE
ELITES TO DISCREDIT OBRADOR

Naturally enough, the elites have been relentless in their effort to discredit Obrador. Lewis reports on the effort by the elites to jail Obrador on trumped up charges of political corruption:

"The effort was orchestrated by Vicente Fox who joined with Mexico's ruling Oligarchs and their puppet masters in the United States in this bold-faced fraud. Obrador was charged for allegedly ignoring a judge’s order to halt construction of an access road to a city hospital across a contested patch of private land. That a low level administrative dispute of this sort could be parlayed into an offense that could have led to Obrador's impeachment (and even jailing) reflects the desperation of the Mexican and American elites to destroy Obrador."

Vicente Fox brazenly called this attempt to politically lynch Obrador a -

"… shining example to the world of law and order in action in a democracy.”

But what it in fact represented was the desperation of the elites. The fact is, the elites were so lacking in confidence in their own anemic candidates that they felt obliged to stage a pre-emptive coup against Obrador 15 months before the presidential election. As Tom Hayden explained, they knew that -

"… the 'Washington Consensus' model of prosperity through trade pacts and privatization has failed to deliver the promised goods, and that as a result populist and left-wing governments are being elected in unprecedented numbers throughout the hemisphere … So, rather than risk the election of someone who challenges the self-serving structures of wealth and power in Mexico, the conservatives have allied to keep Lopez Obrador from even running."

Obrador answered the elites' challenge by saying:

"I am proud to be accused by those who have deceived Mexico … and defrauded the public."

MEXICO IS A POWDER KEG
WAITING TO EXPLODE

Nonetheless, despite the best efforts of the elites to discredit him, Obrador continues to survive - and he is fast becoming an "evil spirit" for the White House and those who charge that he will become Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro rolled up into one populist monster.

"The country is a powder keg that could ignite any day," warn activists who witnessed the police repression in May of Obrador supporters in San Salvador Atenco, where a land resistance movement had succeeded in becoming a virtually autonomous area of the state.

Another flash point is Oaxaca, where teachers have camped in a tent city during a yearlong campaign for pay increases. The armed forces recently tried to dislodge the protestors, using gas from helicopters, and the resistance broadened to 70,000 in the colonial town square. Talks through a federal mediator have broken down and the standoff continues. Lopez Obrador supports the teachers.

Hayden warns ominously:

"Apocalyptic scenarios are never to be ruled out in Mexico. If … sectors of the elite [decide to take action against Obrador] much of Mexico might become like Oaxaca and San Salvador Atenco, with people pouring into the streets in a prolonged confrontation.

"An even darker projection, commonly if privately expressed by many Mexicans, is that Lopez Obrador will be assassinated if he continues much longer in his effort to set up a 'parallel government'. Luis Donaldo Colosio, a presidential candidate in 1994, was assassinated in broad daylight. That election ushered in the NAFTA era and the simultaneous Zapatista uprising."

OBRADOR EMBRACES CHAVEZ

There certainly can be no doubt that Obrador's "parallel government" of the people, centered as it is in Mexico City, is sending shivers up the backs of both the American elites and their "toadies" in Mexico City. This situation is made all the worse by Hugo Chavez, America's arch enemy in Latin America - especially now as Chavez moves to align ALL of Latin America with his brand of anti-American, leftist populism.

Chavez has already taken a firm stand against Obrador's enemies in Mexico City; he has denounced the former president of Mexico and Obrador's arch-enemy, Vincente Fox as a -

"LAPDOG OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE"

When Fox protested and called for an apology from Chavez, Chavez retorted:

 “Don’t mess with me, sir, or you will get stung."

The poor all over Mexico were delighted to see Chavez taking a stand with Obrador - and Mexico's "lapdogs of empire" were hard pressed to explain Mexico's "lapdog status" with the United States.

There is even speculation that at some point Chavez will send Calderon's ambassador to Venezuela packing because he does not represent the "REAL" government of Mexico, and will instead recognize Obrador's "parallel government."

In addition, Chavez is said to be organizing a Latin American tour of capitals for Obrador. Bolivia and Cuba will certainly be on the flight list, with possible stops in Ecuador and Nicaragua—two more Latin American countries that are home to recently elected leftist presidents.

THE SPREAD OF THE
BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION

Seth R. DeLong writes:

"The Bush administration, already uncomfortable with Latin America's new left, would become apoplectic if this movement reached the US-Mexican border. [If Lopez Obrador ever achieved power in Mexico] it would signal the ultimate domino falling. [The fact is], an Obrador victory in Mexico could precipitate a tectonic shift from America's … grudging acceptance of South America's left-of-center governments TO THE USE OF COLD WAR TACTICS AGAINST THEM."

Nonetheless, the Bolivarian Revolution (Chavez's name for his brand of new-Left anti-Americanism) continues to spread, and as its popularity grows it is providing ever more of an impetus to Obrador's effort to unseat the Mexican Oligarchy and, ipso facto, dislodge American influence in Mexico.

DeLong elaborates:

"The growing center-left ideological tilt among Latin American states is symptomatic of a growing movement towards a continental alliance and a political stance markedly different from that being fielded by the U.S. The inauguration of Tabare Vadzquez in Uruguay shows that Latin America's democratic march to the left continues …"

There is also the matter of Lula da Silva in Brazil and Nestor Kichner in Argentina, who - while their "new-left" credentials are in many respects more a matter of "show" than reality - are slowly but inexorably being pushed in the direction of Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution largely as a result of popular pressure being pressed upon them by "Chavanistas" in their own countries.

A CASUS BELLI

So what do we have developing in Latin America? - a popular revolution OF THE PEOPLE against the American New World Order System, and if the HARDCORE of this revolution ever spreads beyond Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Uruguay and takes hold on Latin America's BIG THREE countries of Brazil, Argentina and most especially Mexico, then the American imperial system in Latin America would stand in great jeopardy.

Brazil and Argentina are already halfway down the road to socialism, and Mexico is teetering under the remorseless pressure of Obrador's parallel government. Together, these three countries have a combined population that is three-quarters the size of America's, AND THEY POSSESS UNTOLD RICHES IN NATURAL RESOURCES, resources that the American elites LUST after. And that's especially true of Latin America's oil resources. If Obrador's popular revolution in Mexico succeeds and combines with Chavez's Venezuela to form an anti-American oil bloc, that would be a nightmare scenario for the United States; specifically; if Mexico's Pemex and Venezuela's Petrosur formed a cooperative arrangement that excluded the American elites from profiting from their oil wealth.

Mexico and Venezuela are two of the US' top four sources of foreign oil imports (behind Saudi Arabia and Canada). They account for upwards of a quarter of all US petroleum imports. As DeLong says:

"One can pretty easily anticipate how the [United States] would react to such a petro bloc emerging, recalling Henry Kissinger's old adage that any threat to Saudi oil exports to the US would be a casus belli (i.e., a reason to go to war)."

After all, as Kissinger famously remarked concerning Allende's socialist revolution in Chile just before the CIA toppled his government and assassinated him:

"I DON'T SEE WHY WE NEED TO STAND BY AND WATCH A COUNTRY GO COMMUNIST BECAUSE OF THE IRRESPONSIBILITY OF ITS OWN PEOPLE."

So much for the elite's care for democracy. It's for this reason that the United States brazenly interfered in the election of Obrador to the presidency of Mexico, channeled funds to Chavez's opposition and supported a coup against him, and arranged the de facto ouster of Haiti's first democratically elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

WAR IS COMING BETWEEN LATIN AMERICA AND
THE AMERICAN NEW WORLD ORDER SYSTEM

At a public event held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston on the occasion of the 30th Anniversary of the infamous bombing of Cubana airline flight 455 by anti-Castro Cubans operating out of Miami (an event that cost the lives of 73 passengers), Noam Chomsky was asked to comment on the chances that the United States might go to war to prevent the emergence of an anti-American coalition of Latin American states - even if this coalition enjoyed popular support. Chomsky responded:

"We know that the US did support a military coup, which briefly overthrew President Chavez and the US had to back down, when he was restored quickly and also had to back down in the face of a very angry reaction in Latin American. In almost all of Latin America, there was a very angry reaction. THEY TAKE DEMOCRACY THERE MORE SERIOUSLY THEN WE DO HERE.

"Right after trying to overthrow the government by force, the US immediately turned to subversion, supporting anti-Chavez groups. That’s described in the press, the way it’s described is, the US is supporting pro-democracy groups, which are opposed to President Chavez.

"[But] Chavez has won several elections that have been recognized to be free and fair, he has won numerous referendums. Still he is called a dictator by the United States - a tin-pot dictator, which is proven by the fact that our dear leader [i.e., Bush] said so … So therefore, he’s a dictator, and if you carry out subversion to overthrow him, that’s pro-democracy by definition."

SUPPORTING SECESSONIST
MOVEMENTS IN LATIN AMERICA

Getting to the meat of the question, Chomsky said:

"The number of US personnel—military personnel—in Latin America is probably as high as its ever been. The number of Latin American officers being trained by the US is going up very sharply … There are more air bases all over the place.

"If you want my speculation, the idea that immediately comes to mind, so I assume the Pentagon is working on it, is to SUPPORT SECESSIONIST MOVEMENTS, which is conceivable if you look at the geography and the places where the oil is and so on.

"In Venezuela, the oil is in Zulia province, which is … right on the boarder of Colombia, ONE OF THE ONLY STATES IN LATIN AMERICA WHERE THE U.S. HAS A FIRM MILITARY PRESENCE. There is already a rumor [being spread most likely by the CIA] of a Zulia independence movement, which, if they can carry it off, the US could then intervene to protect against the dictator. That’s Chavez.

"In Bolivia, the major gas resources are in the low-lands, the eastern low-lands, which is mostly European, not indigenous, opposed to the government … near Paraguay, ONE OF THE OTHER COUNTRIES WHERE THE U.S. HAS MILITARY BASES. So you can imagine the same project going on – also secessionist movements."

BUILDING AMERICAN BASES IN LATIN AMERICA

Conn Hallinan has been following the emergence in Latin America of a string of POWERFUL military bases that the U.S. can use in support of secessionist movements in Latin America. We've already spoken of the huge American presence in Colombia, composed not only of the American military per se, but thousands and thousands of mercenaries under contract to the CIA.

Then there's the huge American Eloy Alfaro airbase in Manta, Ecuador [the site of the old Wycliffe Bible Translators base camp for Latin America]. The United States has claimed that the Manta base is nothing more than a “dirt strip” used for weather surveillance. But local journalists who have visited the airbase say that it harbors thousands of mercenaries and hundreds of U.S. troops. Washington claims that it has a basing agreement with Ecuador giving it untrammeled use of the base, an agreement that it will not permit the new leftist government of Rafael Correa to break - kind of like the lease the United States has with Cuba for Guantanamo.

Hallinan continues:

"The Eloy Alfaro base [in Ecuador] is used to rotate U.S. troops in and out of Columbia, and to house an immense network of private corporations who do most of the military's dirty work in Columbia. According to the Miami Herald, U.S. mercenaries armed with M-16s have gotten into fire fights with guerrillas in southern Columbia, and American civilians working for Air Scan International of Florida called in air strikes that killed 19 civilians and wounded 25 others in the town of Santo Domingo.

"The base is crawling with U.S. civilians—many of them retired military—working for Military Professional Resources Inc., Virginia Electronics, DynCorp, Lockheed Martin (the world's largest arms maker), Northrop Grumman, TRW, and dozens of others.

"It was U.S. intelligence agents working out of Manta who fingered Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia leader Ricardo Palmera last year, and several leaders of the U.S.-supported coup against Haitian President Bertram Aristide spent several months there before launching the 2004 coup that exiled Aristide to South Africa."

Then there's the gigantic base that the U.S. is building in Paraguay where Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia intersect.

According to W.T. Whitney Jr., the U.S. has been pouring troops into Paraguay, where - in a secret session - Paraguay’s Congress passed legislation protecting US soldiers from prosecution for criminal activity, both within Paraguay and by the International Criminal Court.

The troops are billeted at a base near Mariscal Estigarribia, a small city located 200 kilometers from the Bolivian border in the arid, sparsely populated Chaco area of Paraguay. The facility, built by US contractors … offers a runway long enough to accommodate the largest military transport planes and bombers. It provides barrack space for 16,000 troops.

Common people throughout Latin America are terrified at what this new base portends for the future. Argentine Nobel Peace laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel warns ominously:

“Once the United States arrives, it takes it a long time to leave. And that really frightens me.”

 THE "AFRICANIZATION" OF LATIN AMERICA

What the U.S. is aiming to do in Latin America if Latin America continues in its leftward drift is -

1. Continue to BRUTALLY and RUTHLESSLY prop up what client-states it has left in Latin America: specifically, Paraguay, Chile, Colombia, etc., and to "fight like hell" to hold on to Mexico, Argentina and Brazil.

2. Treat all those nations that go the way of Venezuela in very much the same way the U.S. has treated Cuba - by cutting them out of the international trading system and ruining them economically.

3. "Africanize" as many nations as it can in Latin America by promoting chaos and secessionist movements in much the same fashion as it is doing today in the Congo and Angola - thus, stripping off those portions of these countries that are rich in natural resources and handing them over to U.S. multi-nationals as economic fiefdoms to be pillaged on behalf of the richy-riches of New York and America's puppet elites in Europe.

4. Strategically place powerful U.S. ground and air assets throughout Latin America - in Colombia, at the Eloy Alfaro base in Ecuador, at its giant base in Mariscal Estigarribia and in its innumerable bases in Panama - from whence the U.S. can sally forth and destroy any forces that are marshaled against it. And if all this produces chaos in Latin America, so what! The U.S. doesn't care if the masses of the people in Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Sao Paolo, Quito, Mexico City, etc. are plunged into turmoil and beggary - so long as the U.S. can continue to plunder Latin America's resources.

AN OVERFLOWING SCOURGE

It's not without reason that the Bible refers to the American New World Order System as a "BEAST NATION" (Dan. 7:7); a nation that is "... DREADFUL" and "TERRIBLE," and "STRONG EXCEEDINGLY" with "great iron teeth;" one that "DEVOURS" and "BRAKE IN PIECES" the rest of the nations of the world (Daniel 7:7); and one that Isaiah describes as an "OVERFLOWING SCOURGE" (Is. 28:18).

And it's precisely for that reason that Jesus commands ALL His people who are left in this BEAST-NATION to -

"COME OUT OF HER.” (Rev. 18:4)

The Bible says "COME OUT" - and that is PRECISELY what should be occupying your mind now if you are still in Babylon. No "special mission" that you can dream up will excuse you from obeying God's holy command in Revelation 18:4, and anyone who tells you otherwise in word or in deed is causing you to stumble. There's no middle ground here!

TRAITORS TO THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST

Come on now, how is it possible for someone who calls himself a Christian to have any part with a BEAST-NATION that tramples on the poor of the world the way the United States does. To continue in such a relationship cannot help but make one an "enemy of the cross of Christ." Jesus said:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, TO SET AT LIBERTY THEM THAT ARE BRUISED."  (Luke 4:18)

In light of this, how can anyone claim that he is involved in "PREACHING THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR" while at the same time he remains connected to the American New World Order System - a system that is irrevocably committed to robbing the poor of the little they have, that breaks the hearts of the wretched of the earth, and brings the world into captivity?  Yet that's what many of my erstwhile colleagues believe - thinking that they are on some kind of "special mission" from God to reach the rich. But Jesus said:

"Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.

"And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a [sewing] needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:23-24)

And the Apostle Paul wrote:

"For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:

"But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

"And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are." (1 Cor. 1:26-28)

A LIGHT THAT SHINETH IN A DARK PLACE

As I have said before on numerous occasions, truly we are immersed in dark times. But the Bible says:

"We have … the sure word of prophecy; WHEREUNTO YE DO WELL THAT YE TAKE HEED, as unto a LIGHT THAT SHINETH IN A DARK PLACE ..." (2 Peter 1:19)

I URGE you, therefore, with all of my heart to sign up for the training here and begin putting your life on the line for Christ. This training well equip you for the hard times that are coming, and it well involve you in action. It will bring you out of your isolation into the open field where people will join you or cast insults at you and eventually persecute you for your belief. But isn't this what Christiantiy is about, and isn't this what Christ said:

"Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

"Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for GREAT IS YOUR REWARD IN HEAVEN: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

"Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

"Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." (Matt. 5:11-12, 14-16)

WE CONTINUE TO NEED YOUR FINANCIAL HELP

Finally, we continue to need your financial support as we begin to transition the ministry out of North America to Germany. So I say to you, if the spiritual treasures that we have ministered unto you have profited you, then please respond with your material treasures. As Paul said under similar circumstances so many years ago:

"If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things?" (1 Cor. 9:11)

God bless you all,

S.R. Shearer
Antipas Ministries