PRESS RELEASE
Mexico's Castañeda Has
Strange Reaction to LaRouche's
Efforts on Behalf of Sovereignty
MEXICO CITY, Sept. 17, 2003 (EIRNS)—The following statement was issued here today by the Ibero-American Labor Committees:
Interventions by members of Mexico's LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) and Ibero-American Labor Committees (IALC) at two public conferences given by former Mexican foreign secretary Jorge Castañeda—at the History Museum of Monterrey and at the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) in Mexico City, on Sept. 8 and 11 respectively—have unleashed a strange and hysterical response on the part of Castañeda himself, now an announced Presidential pre-candidate for the 2006 elections, and his supporters. To judge by the Sept. 15 coverage published in the daily Milenio-Diario, under the incoherent headline, "From the U.S., LaRouche Sows Punishment for Castañeda," it is the efforts of LaRouche and the LYM to build a "cross-border pact ... to revive the tradition of the alliance between Benito Juárez and Abraham Lincoln, and in favor of Mexican sovereignty," that is driving Castañeda and his supporters crazy. During the years in which he served as foreign minister in the Vicente Fox government, Castañeda was in the forefront of promoting an end to Mexican sovereignty, and the nation's submission to the dictates of the multinationals and their representatives in the U.S.
It is widely known that Lyndon LaRouche, currently a Democratic pre-candidate for the U.S. Presidency, has been openly promoting a policy of U.S. support for Mexican development and sovereignty since at least the summer of 1982, when he issued his famous Operation Juárez manifesto. Further, LaRouche believes that the United States is obligated to take such a stand, given the United States' historic blunders in this relationship. It would appear that Castañeda's co-thinkers inside the U.S. right wing, such as Vice-President Dick Cheney, are opposed to such a defense of Mexico, and have provoked this hysterical reaction on the part of Castañeda and his colleagues at Milenio-Diario.
Also notable is the fact that Castañeda has refused to answer to the LYM's charges against him at these public events—charges which we repeat here:
- That Jorge Castañeda is a promoter of the doctrine of "preventive war," conducted by the government in Washington, whose principal author is Vice-President Dick Cheney. This doctrine is being carried out against such countries as Iraq and Afghanistan, and threatens to be extended to countries like Iran, Syria, North Korea, and others. Lyndon LaRouche heads the international opposition to this policy, and is calling for Cheney to resign or be impeached. Castañeda, on the contrary, tried to involve Mexico in these looting wars, as could be seen in his support for Cheney and company's imperial war against Iraq.
- That Jorge Castañeda supports the legalization of drugs, just like mega-speculator George Soros, who has spent millions sponsoring political figures who promote this idea. The most recent case is that of Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo and his Peru Posible party, which received $1 million from Soros toward the overthrow of President Alberto Fujimori in that country. Further, Jorge Castañeda is a member of the board of directors of Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental organization which receives substantial financing from Soros, and which also promotes drug legalization. It was the director of Milenio-Diario, Federico Arreola, who some months ago publicized Soros's plan to name Castañeda as his representative in Mexico, at the helm of the Soros Foundation.
- That Jorge Castañeda is a supporter and promoter of the so-called "structural reforms" which the International Monetary Fund, Wall Street creditor banks, and the "Houston cartel" (which includes such companies as Dick Cheney's Halliburton, Enron, Reliant, El Paso, and Schlumberger) wish to impose on Mexico, for the purpose of looting the country's labor force and natural resources. Castañeda promotes these reforms under the amorphous cover of "seeking change." In this same way, Castañeda has called for an "energy chapter" of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which would convert Mexican oil into a U.S. strategic reserve, just as Cheney had proposed in the energy plan he designed for the Bush government in 2001. Castañeda insists that Mexico must double its oil production, for the purpose of guaranteeing the servicing of the cancerous foreign debt, and not for the development of the country.
Instead of answering these concrete accusations, Castañeda and his cronies at Milenio-Diario and other newspapers, have taken refuge by spreading the lie that LaRouche is an "anti-Semite." It is widely known that this absurd accusation against LaRouche comes from the writings of Dennis King, financed by right-wing U.S. foundations such as the Smith Richardson Foundation, where the author himself confesses to having worked with a faction of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The great "intellectual" Castañeda, has opted to hide behind the skirts of this tired slander, rather than debate like a man. His supposedly great intellect turns out to be as artificially inflated as the muscles of Arnold Schwarzenegger—another puppet candidate of Cheney and the Houston Cartel—whose physique today shows the sorry effects of his excessive use of steroids over the years.
The LaRouche Youth Movement and Ibero-American Labor Committees are fighting for an alliance among sovereign nations of the Americas, to guarantee development based on scientific and technological progress, and the realization of great infrastructure works, such as those proposed by LaRouche in his program for developing the "Great American Desert" through the joint efforts of the United States, Mexico, and Canada, precisely in opposition to the imperial designs of Cheney and his puppets, such as Castañeda. The LaRouche Presidential campaign has just published a new document on this, entitled "The Sovereign States of the Americas," which can be obtained via the campaign's website, www.larouchein2004.org, together with other writings by the candidate.
A final note: It would be a public service for Castañeda to agree to a debate with us. We propose, as the topic: "Why Castañeda Would Be a Worse President than Salinas, Zedillo, and Fox combined."
