Reader's view: Latin America rejecting the tyranny of free trade

The protests of an anti-democratic minority in Venezuela elicit the usual group-think propaganda in the U.S., from Fox News to National Public Radio. We’re told a democratically elected leader is being overthrown in the name of democracy.
Venezuela does pose a threat, however: the threat of the good example. We can’t have socialists reducing poverty and increasing literacy, or other Latin American countries might get ideas and the dominoes will fall. But it’s too late. Except for a few countries, like our narco-state ally Colombia, Latin America has rejected the tyranny of “free trade.”
Now in a reaction straight out of the CIA playbook, corporatists hope to turn back the clock to a time when people lived under dictators and only trade was free. President Barack Obama already has supported the coup in Honduras, so his reactionary foreign policy can be counted on in Venezuela.
The little-known history of our interventions in this hemisphere is full of coups against popular leaders and the brutality of the U.S.-backed dictators that followed.
And in the rest of the world as well, we only like free elections when our preferred candidate wins, whether those elections take place in Gaza, Egypt or Ukraine. Of course there’s no need to worry about elections in China, our biggest trading partner, because it’s a police state. And no worries in Saudi Arabia; a monarchy will do.
Yet we’re drowning in tales about capitalism’s good intentions in the world. We’re told the U.S. is spreading democracy abroad, but we’re not even saving any for ourselves.
David A. Sorensen
Duluth