I just returned from an amazing trip with several of my colleagues to Brazil, Chile, and Colombia.
Our hope was that this visit could help chart a new course for the relationship between the United States and Latin America. Rather than continuing the old Cold War mentality, we want the two regions to build a relationship of trust and respect — so that we can work on shared challenges like migration, climate change, and threats to democracy.
Here are some highlights from the trip…
I led the first all Spanish-speaking delegation from the U.S., which included Representatives Nydia Velázquez, Greg Casar, Maxwell Frost, and Joaquin Castro. Nearly every meeting our delegation took was conducted in Spanish — even in Brazil, given the amount of diplomacy they engage with in the region most of their representatives speak Spanish as well as Portugues. It makes a huge difference having a U.S. congressional delegation where every member is fluent in a language spoken by the folks we are visiting. Completely changes the dynamic!
We learned a lot about community organizing. In Brazil, our delegation met with the Landless Workers Movement and the Homeless Workers Movement. Both groups engage in radical, direct actions like land occupation. At the same time, they are deeply pragmatic movements. They have community kitchens to support their members, and have built markets to sell workers’ goods that finance their operations. It was a good lesson in how idealism and pragmatism can, and should, coexist in our progressive organizing.
Ahead of our visit to Chile, we helped declassify documents detailing U.S. involvement in the Pinochet coup,1 which overthrew Chile’s government in 1973 and was one of the first coup d’etats caught on TV. The U.S., under President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, launched a campaign of economic warfare and covert operations in Chile in order to destabilize the region after the country elected its first socialist president, Salvador Allende. After ousting Allende, the new Pinochet regime — with support from our government — tortured and murdered over 40,000 Chileans, and forced over 200,000 more to flee the country. For years, the U.S. has refused to disclose the extent of its involvement, and while there are still many documents that should be declassified, this was an important first step.
We met with Colombia’s first leftist President, Gustavo Petro, and discussed his efforts for peace. The endless stream of disinformation around the globe — including Fox News and the far-right in the U.S. — flattens the perception of Colombia to a hazy picture of violence, narcos, and guerrillas. The reality is that the Colombian people are extremely motivated towards peace, and efforts by Senator Marco Rubio and other Republicans to block ambassadorships — and other normal diplomatic relationships — with Colombia only serves to further destabilize the country.
We have much to learn from our counterparts in these countries. My hope is that the trip also demonstrated that the U.S. is more than the right-wing extremism that dominates headlines, and that we are a diverse nation not only in identity, but also in our openness towards the world — and especially Latin America.
Thank you for reading,
Alexandria
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