La Paz, June 3 (RHC)-- Bolivian President Evo Morales has strongly criticized the chief of the Organization of American States, likening Luis Almagro’s political agenda in Latin America to Washington’s historical intervention in the region to prop up right-wing dictatorships and crush revolutionary and progressive movements.
“Luis Almagro betrays the principles of the OAS. Almagro and the U.S. are a threat to democracy in Latin America,” Morales wrote on his official Twitter account to 179,000 followers, one day after a meeting at the OAS on the political and economic situation in Venezuela that Caracas and its allies slammed for promoting intervention.
“Almagro has an Operation Condor policy,” Morales continued, referring to the U.S.-backed regional counterinsurgency program that killed and disappeared tens of thousands of political dissidents, human rights defenders and other left-wing activists in the 1970s and 1980s in the name of stabilizing brutal military regimes in South America. “If not physically, we wants to politically eliminate the anti-imperialist president and governments.”
Morales has repeatedly taken to Twitter to share sharp words directed at the OAS secretary-general. In April, he accused Almagro of being responsible for violence in Venezuela as a result of calling for foreign intervention in Venezuela and stoking tensions between the government of President Nicolas Maduro and the opposition by refusing to condemn right-wing violence.
“Presidents of the left: of the people. Presidents of the right: of empire,” Morales added. “Social movements must identify internal and external enemies.”
Morales has stressed in the past that the OAS should be a body that promotes regional integration, not foreign intervention, holding respect for sovereignty as a core value.
Meanwhile, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez has accused Almagro of driving the OAS toward destruction. She also thanked the countries of the Caribbean Community, or CARICOM, and ALBA, formally known as Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, for backing Venezuela at the OAS earlier this week and blocking the body from adopting what Caracas has dubbed interventionist measures against the country.
Almagro has garnered criticism in recent months for what some have described as an obsession with Venezuela. The OAS chief has consistently heavily criticized the Maduro government while failing to condemn opposition violence and also turning a blind eye to political and human rights crises in other countries in the region, such as Brazil and Mexico.
