Laura Richardson and the Monroe Doctrine

By Guillermo Alvarado

During a recent conference on security issues held in Miami, the general and head of the infamous Southern Command of the Pentagon, Laura Richardson, ratified her firm conviction that, a century later, the Monroe Doctrine is still in force.

The high official, who does not hide her ambitions for the strategic natural resources that are the heritage of the people of Latin America and the Caribbean, insisted on her attacks against the region's commercial links with China, an issue in which this lady is also repetitive.

Speaking as the owner of the world, particularly the American continent, Richardson had the shamelessness to assure that our countries do not benefit at all from the trade they maintain with the Asian Giant, which is false and hypocritical.

First of all, it would be good to recommend that the general review a little history over the last decades of the entity she directs and review when, by chance, she has done something that benefits our people?

This entity is one of the ten combat commands deployed by the US Department of Defense.

It adopted the name Southern Command in 1963, although it existed as such long before under the name U.S. Caribbean Command, and according to a Harvard University study, between 1898 and 1994, it carried out at least 41 armed interventions in the region, all of them with bloody results.

There is not, that I remember, a single occasion in which our people have benefited in any way from the actions of the disastrous military body led today by General Richardson.

It would also be advisable for the lady to study the effects of the so-called Free Trade Agreements imposed from Washington on Latin Americans and Caribbeans and their impact on the growth of poverty and inequalities, especially in rural areas.

Latin America and the Caribbean is a militarily occupied region. Of the almost 800 bases that the United States has in the world, more than 76 are here and the Southern Command operates 17 radars through which it controls all continental air traffic without counting, of course, its satellite system.

In case General Richardson ignores it, we can enlighten her a little by telling her that there is not a single Chinese installation of that nature around here.

So, you don't have to have too many neurons to understand where the threats to our people come from, who takes advantage of our resources, oppresses us and keeps us in poverty.