Washington in no position to give moral lessons: Uruguayan writer

Washington is in no position to give moral lessons either inside or outside its own frontiers, a Uruguayan writer has said.

U.S. arrogance comes from its ignorance of history or perhaps its faith in a loss of popular memories, Jorge Majfud, a writer and also a professor at Jacksonville University in the United States, wrote in an article last month on Spanish news website Rebelion.

In the wake of U.S. President Joe Biden's announcement of his intention to exclude Cuba and Venezuela from the Summit of the Americas, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian A. Nichols said that non-democratic countries could not be invited.

"Deciding which countries can attend a regional summit is not considered authoritative by a country that is historically responsible for thousands of military interventions in the region alone, for several dozen dictatorships, coups, destruction of democracies and massacres of all kinds from the 19th century onwards," wrote Majfud, who believes Washington and U.S. corporations have promoted and supported countless bloody dictatorships in the region since the end of the 19th century.

"All of these crimes and robberies at gunpoint have gone unpunished, without exception," he commented, adding that the fact that in 2010 the administration of then U.S. President Barack Obama apologized for syphilis experiments in Guatemala (which were carried out between 1946-1948) was "nothing more than a tear-drop."

"I believe Latin Americans are, at least, a few centuries behind in terms of economic reparation for destroyed democracies and dictatorships imposed at the point of a cannon," he wrote.

From the dispossession of half of the Mexican territory to the dictatorships in the protectorates, from the Banana wars at the beginning of the 20th century, the multiple massacres of workers, the destruction of democracies with the sole objective of eliminating popular protests, to protecting the interests of large companies, all of these crimes officially recognized by Washington and the CIA, would be more than enough arguments to demand compensation, he stressed.

"Washington is not in a position to moralize either inside or outside its borders. But this arrogance stems from historical ignorance or, more likely, from his faith in popular forgetfulness," Majfud concluded. ■