By Alex Aquino

The ongoing economic crisis created an opening for the TeaParty movement, fueled by ignorance, xenophobia and major corporate sponsors,to propel the Republicans back in control of the House of Representativesduring the November, 2010 mid-term elections. Given that the right-wing House’sfirst order of business was a symbolic vote to repeal Obama’s health carereform, it’s clear that further red-baiting and obstructionism is on its way, butwill the new House leadership produce a tangible impact on foreign relationswith Latin America?

                  Anti-imperialistsnote that the difference between Democrats and Republicans on Latin Americanpolicy is largely a matter of style, not substance. Up until last month, it wasa Democrat-led Executive, Senate and House that has enabled the coupperpetrators and human rights violators in Honduras to continue to escapejustice. Two of the most vocal supporters of the illegitimate Hondurasgovernment have now taken over as chairs of the House committees dealing withLatin America.

                  IleanaRos-Lehtinen (R-Fl), one of the most notorious anti-Castro crusaders fromMiami, is now the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Anuncompromising promoter of multinational corporate interests, her first trip aschairwoman was to Haiti, where neoliberalism has wreaked untold disaster. Theonly optimism she expressed on her trip was for a new maquila park being built on the island’s north coast. Ros-Lehtinenalso threatened to withhold the billions of dollars of earthquake aid that theUS has promised (but has mostly failed to disperse one year later) if theHaitians did not certify the fraudulent elections that excluded the mostpopular party in Haiti, Fanmi Lavalas, which brought Jean-Bertrand Aristide topower before the US-sponsored coup in 2004.

                  ConnieMack (R-Fl), one of the four hard-line Republicans who threatened to retaliateagainst El Salvador in the event of an FMLN victory on the eve on the 2009Presidential Elections, predicting that “El Salvador likely would quicklybecome a satellite and proxy of Venezuela, Russia, and perhaps Iran” under theFMLN, is now the new chairman of the House Subcommittee on Western HemisphereAffairs. Ros-Lehtinen has promised to use her new position to move aggressivelyagainst the governments of Venezuela and Bolivia, but it is Rep. Mack that hastaken the rhetoric to a whole new level.

                  Ata far-right event organized by Otto Reich in November 2010 on Capitol Hill(“Danger in the Andes: Threats to Democracy, Human Rights, and Inter-AmericanSecurity”), Mack pledged to try to place Venezuela on the state sponsors ofterrorism list. Recently, Mack used his speech at the 2011 ConservativePolitical Action Conference (CPAC) in January to call for a “full-scaleeconomic embargo” on Venezuela. Ros-Lehtinen, Mack and their ilk are strainingto connect the leftist governments of Latin America to some sort of conspiracyinvolving drug-trafficking and Islamist terrorist groups. Progressives’ firstreaction to the right-wing hysteria may be to laugh, but as Honduras hasproven, one should not underestimate the Obama administration’s willingness toconcede their position to Ros-Lehtinen, Mack and other Cold Warriors. Duringthe first Mack-chaired subcommittee hearing on February 15, Arturo Valenzuela,the top State Department diplomat for Latin America, promised to furtherinvestigate whether or not Venezuela was violating international sanctions withits energy agreements with Iran.

                  Investigativejournalist Eva Golinger reports that the threats go beyond rhetoric. Accordingto Golinger, “For the first time in recent history, the [2011] ForeignOperations Budget (State Department) openly details direct funding of at least$5 million to anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela…This type of funding has been aprincipal source of promoting subversion and destabilization in Venezuelaagainst the democratic and majority-supported government of Hugo Chavez duringthe past eight years.”

                  Itremains to be seen, however, how influential the new Congressional leadership’ssaber-rattling against Venezuela and countries in the ALBA (BolivarianAlternative for the Americas) alliance will be; a lot depends on the responseof the solidarity movement; strong challenges from other Representatives, andthe degree of overlap with the State Department’s agenda. On policy towardPresident Chavez, whom Secretary of State Clinton has previously called a“thug,” there may be relatively few contradictions; on El Salvador, a more complexpicture emerges.

                                    Despitethe shameless hostility aimed at Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras and other leftist governmentsand movements in the hemisphere, present U.S. – El Salvador relations areextremely cordial. President Obama’s first trip to Latin America in March,during which he will visit only three countries – Brazil, Chile and El Salvador– is very significant, confirming that the U.S. is content with direction ofthe Funes administration so far. El Salvador’s Minister of Foreign Affairs andlong-time FMLN party member, Hugo Martinez, has stated that that the trip will“seal the strategic alliance” between El Salvador and the U.S.

Stay tuned for news and analysis of President Obama’s firstvisit to Central America and the implications of this ‘strategic alliance’ inthe next issue of El Salvador Watch.