Trump names former Green Beret and CIA agent ambassador to Mexico

Donald Trump’s nomination last week of former Green Beret and CIA agent Ronald Johnson as ambassador to Mexico underscored the new fascist president’s threats of military and economic aggression against the southern neighbor and main partner trader of Washington.

Ronald Johnson holds a press conference with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, August 2020 (Photo: Presidency of the Republic of El Salvador)

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Johnson’s appointment is a serious warning. It makes clear that threats of military operations and a reckless tariff war against Mexico are not mere bluster and are aimed at much more than reducing migration and fentanyl. US imperialism is using its most brutal methods of the 20th century to recolonize Latin America and crush working class opposition.

The occupant of the embassy in Mexico City is one of the most influential positions in US foreign policy across the hemisphere, and his appointment comes at a time when “Latin America is poised to become a priority of American foreign policy,” as the report points out. Foreign Affairs.

The magazine highlights the nomination of Florida Senator Marco Rubio for Secretary of State. Rubio is the son of Cuban immigrants who have long advocated devastating economic sanctions, coups and military invasions against Latin American governments that do not toe the line of U.S. imperialism.

Rubio called Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the predecessor and mentor of current Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, “not a good ally” for “handing over a large part of his national territory to drug traffickers” and for making apology for the governments of Cuba and Nicaragua. and Venezuela. Last year, Rubio approved plans for military intervention in Mexico, ostensibly against drug cartels, on the condition that it be coordinated with Mexico’s armed forces and police.

Trump also named national security adviser Mike Waltz, another former Green Beret who last year introduced legislation authorizing the use of military force against Mexican cartels, a policy also supported by new Vice President JD Vance , a Marine Corps veteran.

Sheinbaum clearly interpreted Johnson’s nomination as a threat, saying the next morning of the nominee: “Mexicans should have confidence that we will always defend Mexico as a free, sovereign, independent country…We will work together, coordinate, but we will never subordinate each other.

After reaching the rank of Special Forces captain in the 1970s, Johnson began his active military career as a detachment commander in 1984, deployed to Panama. He was selected as the first special forces officer to be trained as a CIA agent on a scholarship from the Army War College, leading him to become a key liaison between the intelligence apparatus and the Southern Command, which oversees Pentagon operations in Central and South America. .

According to his biography provided by the U.S. Army’s John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, “he directed combat operations in El Salvador as one of 55 authorized military advisors during the civil war in the 1980s “.

Between 1980 and 1992, a series of fascist military dictatorships killed tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, in a genocidal war against the leftist guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). The United States sponsored efforts to expand the Salvadoran military fivefold and direct its operations during this period through “advisors” like Johnson.

The new ambassador is implicated in some of the worst war crimes committed in Latin America during the 20th century.

As an indication of the role of US forces in El Salvador in the 1980s and the Pentagon’s culpable cover-up, it was not revealed until 2021 that a US military advisor, Sergeant Major Allen Bruce Hazelwood, was present during the December 1981 war. El Mozote massacre, when the Atlacatl battalion, trained by the United States, massacred 978 unarmed peasants, including 533 children (248 under six years old). Babies were thrown for target practice in what was the largest massacre in Latin America in the 20th century.

The limit of 55 “advisors” was implemented (very flexibly) by Ronald Reagan in August 1983, shortly before Johnson began full-time active duty.

At the time, opposition to American participation in the atrocities in El Salvador was growing, as details of the carnage became known. A March 1981 Gallup poll showed that 80 percent of Americans opposed sending advisers like Johnson, even though they would play a key role in the following years.

A report by journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard for the right-wing British weekly The Spectator, quoted by Noam Chomsky during a speech in early 1986, notes an “improvement” in El Salvador:

With the CIA, Johnson then joined the imperialist dismemberment of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, as part of operations to capture suspected war criminals targeted by the US government. He would lead numerous departments for two decades within the agency.

Trump first appointed Johnson ambassador to El Salvador in 2019, with the primary task of removing fascist President Nayib Bukele from China, in exchange for supporting the Salvadoran’s transition to establishing a personalist dictatorship.

On February 9, 2020, Bukele invaded the Salvadoran Congress with armed troops, demanding approval of a U.S. security loan at gunpoint. Once inside, he sat in the legislative speaker’s chair, led a prayer and walked out to meet supporters. As the crowd demanded the heads of opposition members, Bukele said: “If we wanted to press the button, we would just have to press it.”

As the most experienced individual in such an anti-democratic conspiracy present at the time – not to mention the task of getting military aid into the hands of Salvadoran troops – Johnson participated both behind the scenes and publicly . Bukele first called the special session of Congress on the loan in a press conference with Johnson on February 6.

The State Department then denied knowledge of the attack, but acknowledged The Faro: “Ambassador Johnson accepted a personal invitation from President Bukele to meet with him and the First Lady on the night of February 9,” after the invasion. The Faro also reported, citing a direct witness, that Johnson met privately with Bukele’s private secretary, legal secretary and chief of staff at a private home that evening for a briefing on what had happened.

It was not until the next day that Johnson made a public statement, meekly writing, “I do not approve of the presence of the armed forces in the Assembly of El Salvador,” before praising Bukele’s calls for “patience and patience.” caution “. At a February 11 meeting between Bukele’s cabinet and foreign diplomats, Johnson reportedly intervened to put an end to recriminations over the invasion, saying: “I don’t want to talk about yesterday; I want to talk about tomorrow.

In the months that followed, Bukele and Johnson made a point of posting photos of themselves dining and vacationing together. They also worked closely to sacrifice tens of thousands of Salvadorans to COVID-19 in an effort to reopen the economy.

Bukele’s ties to Trump have only strengthened since San Salvador declared a state of emergency in March 2022, deploying the military nationwide, declaring martial law and arresting nearly 2% of the population as part of its “war against criminal gangs”. There are numerous reports of people going missing or being tortured and killed in custody.

The ground for Trump’s threats against Mexico and for Johnson’s nomination was set by the Biden administration, which funded pro-opposition groups and carried out numerous other provocations against Mexico.

Even the right Universal admitted: “At a time when the relationship between (US Ambassador) Ken Salazar and the government of Mexico had reached its worst point with his open criticism of the ‘abrazos no balazos’ (hugs, no bullets) policy” of the government of In Mexico, Trump marked a major change by appointing a former US military officer,” whom the newspaper described as a “Rambo.”

At the same time, López Obrador and Sheinbaum have caved to US imperialism on every major issue, with Trump declaring on the campaign trail that his “friend” AMLO had given him “everything he wanted.”

Sheinbaum hopes that working together by deploying Mexican troops to arrest hundreds of thousands of migrants, while imposing tariffs on Chinese goods and blocking Chinese investment, will appease Trump. But these measures will only encourage American imperialism to assert even more direct control over its strategic interests in Mexico and the region.

U.S. imperialism sees Mexico’s military forces and its shared 3,000-mile border as a necessary military, industrial and mining bastion against its geopolitical rivals, primarily China and Russia, as well as against any mass revolutionary challenge from the class. Latin American worker. As Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote during his exile in Mexico in 1938, Latin America “is to the United States what Austria and the Sudetenland were to Hitler.”

THE World Socialist Website explained that Trump’s claims that America is facing an “invasion” of migrants, whom he describes as composed largely of violent convicts and “terrorists,” are not mere rhetoric, “but an assertion of legal and constitutional justification for all repressive actions.” undertaken by the new administration.

The target of these repressive policies is the working class and youth, immigrant and native-born, in the United States, Mexico, Canada and the Americas, who cannot fight the threat of fascism and imperialist oppression. than by uniting politically against the capitalist ruling elites around the world. , and for the socialist revolution.