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WHO IS CARLOS TRUJILLO, RUMORED TO BE THE NEXT ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF
STATE FOR WESTERN HEMISPHERE AFFAIRS?  
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Dan Beeton
November 14, 2024
CEPR
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_ Trujillo is a hard-line supporter of lethal economic sanctions
against Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela. He reportedly played a key role in
providing the pretext for the 2019 coup d’etat in Bolivia and
supported antidemocratic leaders in other countries. _

Carlos Trujillo, former ambassador, Organization of American States,
(OAS)

 

Media reports in the Miami Herald
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other outlets suggest that Carlos Trujillo, a Cuban-American who
served as ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS) in
the first Trump administration, may soon be nominated for “assistant
secretary of state for Latin American affairs or a similar
position,” alongside Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state, in
the new Trump administration. This should concern anyone who supports
the sovereignty and self-determination of Latin American and Caribbean
countries, and who opposes the various US interventions and regime
change efforts in the region.

Trujillo not only is a hard-line supporter of lethal economic
sanctions against countries like Cuba, he also reportedly played a key
role in providing and reaffirming the pretext for the 2019 coup
d’etat in Bolivia.

Trujillo promoted false claims of electoral fraud in Evo Morales’s
favor in the 2019 elections, despite a lack of evidence and debunking
of the claims by The New York Times
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at Tulane and University of Pennsylvania
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at MIT’s Election Data and Science Lab
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post
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the Washington Post site), 133 economists and statisticians
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a study by a University of Michigan statistician
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Los Angeles Times reported
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“Carlos Trujillo, the U.S. ambassador to the OAS, had steered the
group’s election-monitoring team to report widespread fraud and
pushed the Trump administration to support the ouster of Morales.”

Just days after angry opponents of Morales attacked the homes and
relatives
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Morales and his cabinet members
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tribunal offices, and humiliated and dragged
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mayor through the streets — and just two days after Morales was
forced to step down and flee — Trujillo praised
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mobs’ actions in a speech at the OAS. “We salute the courage and
strength of the Bolivian people who protested against a government
trying to steal an election,” Trujillo said, before going on to also
commend the police and military for their actions; the police had
mutinied
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and the military had pressured Morales to step down.

The OAS, which receives about 60 percent of its budget from the US
government, aggressively perpetuated the election fraud narrative,
beginning the day after the vote. As the New York Times reported
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this “fueled a chain of events that changed the South American
nation’s history. The opposition seized on the claim to escalate
protests, gather international support, and push Mr. Morales from
power with military support weeks later.”

OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro even defended the violent coup —
which was followed in short succession by massacres
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Indigenous coup opponents — by Tweeting
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“real coup” had been carried out by the Morales campaign. Almagro
also attacked the New York Times
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its reporting that debunked the election fraud narrative.

As OAS ambassador, Trujillo supported other antidemocratic leaders,
including the since-assassinated right-wing Haitian president Jovenel
Moïse [[link removed]]; the
unelected, briefly self-proclaimed “president” of Venezuela, Juan
Guaidó
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and Honduras’s Juan Orlando Hernández
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who is now serving a 45-year US prison sentence
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drug trafficking and weapons charges.

Trujillo is also a hard-line hawk on immigration, which he has
signaled
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be the focus of the next Trump administration’s Latin America
policy. As the New Yorker reported
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month:

Trujillo had sponsored a bill to make it a felony for immigrants who
had been deported to reënter the state of Florida, and he supported a
bill sponsored by another Republican state legislator which would have
allowed the governor to use the military to keep certain immigrants
out of the state. (Neither bill became law, and Trujillo later
distanced himself from a revised version of the bill that was more
expansive than he intended it to be.)

Trujillo reportedly wound up in the first Trump administration due at
least in part to the urgings of Rubio and Susan Wiles, Trump’s 2024
campaign cochair and Florida political operative whom Trump has picked
to be chief of staff in his new administration.

Rubio’s nomination to be the next secretary of state is now
official, despite pushback
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some in Trump World. Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein has
published
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dossier on Rubio, reportedly compiled by the Trump campaign and
obtained by an Iranian hacker who leaked it to media.
Klippenstein reports
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numerous passages in the dossier detail areas where Rubio’s
neoconservative positions have been at odds with Trump, including in
Rubio’s support for the now-dead Trans-Pacific Partnership and other
“free trade” deals, for the Iraq War, and for a robust NATO.
Klippenstein also reports that the dossier notes various criticisms
that Rubio had leveled against Trump since 2016, including Rubio’s
suggestion that Putin had interfered in the 2016 election in support
of Trump.

The Miami Herald notes that with Rubio’s nomination, the Trump
administration’s top officials overseeing Latin America policy are
likely to be hard-line proponents of economic sanctions and of other
regime change efforts aimed at left-wing governments in the region,
especially Venezuela and Nicaragua, as well as Cuba. Cuba is currently
facing a humanitarian and economic crisis
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with reports
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some hungry Cubans are resorting to drinking sugar water for
sustenance, and the island has suffered several major power outages
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recent months following hurricanes.

As CEPR has shown in multiple reports
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US unilateral economic sanctions against countries such as Cuba target
the civilian population as a form of collective punishment, leading to
many thousands of excess deaths, illness, and hunger. They are
also illegal under international law
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And numerous scholars
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government officials have noted that US sanctions on Cuba and
Venezuela have helped to fuel out-migration — ironically
contributing to an immigration wave that Trump has signaled will be a
major priority, and that he has vowed to meet with the deportation of
some 11 million or more
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_Dan Beeton is Communications Director for the International Program
at the Center for Economic and Policy Research._

_The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) was established in
1999 to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and
social issues that affect people’s lives. In order for citizens to
effectively exercise their voices in a democracy, they should be
informed about the problems and choices that they face. CEPR is
committed to presenting issues in an accurate and understandable
manner, so that the public is better prepared to choose among the
various policy options._

* Latin America
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* OAS
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* marco rubio
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* Cuba
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* Bolivia
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* Venezuela
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