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To prevent anti-globalist protesters from gathering, and to keep US leftists from allying with Latin American leftists, in opposition to Corporate Rule. Also, to prevent the spread of Latin American leftist (majorityist) ideas to the US.
If you've been paying attention to events in Latin America, you're aware that a huge, unstoppable, peaceful, democratic revolution has occurred there--with leftist/socialist governments elected in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela and Bolivia--virtually the entire South American continent. And soon in Ecuador (this year). And next election cycle in Peru. In addition, a full scale rebellion is taking place in southern Mexico, centered in Oaxaca, and allied with the huge leftist movement in Mexico City. Currently, Fox/Calderon is stymied on how to deal with this PEACEFUL and massive rebellion. They've surrounded the Oaxaca protesters--led by the local teachers union --with the military, but if they attack them, all hell is going to break loose in Mexico. Calderon won by only a 1/2 percent margin in a contested election. The corporatist regime will not survive if they assault the teachers and their peaceful supporters. So they are now holding peace talks. Also, Daniel Ortega--leader of the Sandinista revolution of the '80s (a relatively benign armed revolution, destroyed by Reagan thugs and murderers, in violation of the express will of the US Congress, and focus of the Iran/Contra scandal) is way ahead in the polls in the presidential race in Nicaragua.
Key to many of these situations in So. America in which leftist governments have been elected are popular uprisings against Corporate Rule. For instance, in Argentina, where the country's economy and its society was being ruined by onerous World Bank/IMF debt*, the poor and the middle class formed an alliance and went round with tiny hammers, breaking every bank ATM display window in the country, to protest the bankers' collusion with these destructive policies. Three governments later--in quick succession--the Argentinians finally got a leftist government that pledged to get them out of World Bank debt permanently and never get into it again. Venezuela then bought out some of that existing debt on easy terms, and, in Argentina, now, all indicators are up. They are doing well. As a consequence of the stabilization of their economy--and economic recovery--they are now in talks with Brazil about a common currency, like the euro (getting off the US dollar).
Another for instance: In Bolivia, the rebellion started when Bechtel Corp. privatized the water in one Bolivian city and then started jacking up the prices to the poorest of the poor, even charging poor peasants for collecting rainwater! The Bolivians rebelled, threw Bechtel out of their country, and elected socialist Evo Morales as president, the first indigenous president of Bolivia.
The common themes of all these popular governments are self-determination, regional cooperation, fairness and justice for the poor, and anti-US imperialism and anti-US corporate domination. It's not just Hugo Chavez, as our corporate media tries to play it. It's the entire continent. And this vast sea change in Latin American politics is built upon some long hard work on TRANSPARENT elections, conducted by the OAS, the Carter Center, EU election monitoring groups, and local civil groups. It didn't happen overnight. (US voters, take note!)
As Evo Morales has said: "The time of the people has come."
And OUR Corporate Rulers don't want any such ideas to catch on here, where they are now squeezing the last of the "golden goose" of US labor and resources (and tax money--a $10 TRILLION debt--in corporate tax breaks, multiple tax cuts for the super-rich, and hogfeed to war profiteers).
Thus, travel restrictions. And the targets will be the anti-globalization networkers, like those who traveled to Caracas recently, for the World Social Forum, or to Cancun a few years ago, to the WTO meeting (where Brazil led a 20-country third world rebellion against unfair and undemocratic WTO policies).
And don't forget Seattle 1999. That's the real threat to our Corporate Rulers--the common bonds among the poor, the middle class, third world farmers, organic farmers, labor unions, environmentalists, human rights groups, small businesses, students, religious groups and other progressives and majorityists, all represented in that awesome 50,000-strong gathering, that shut down the WTO meeting for its anti-democratic, anti-labor and anti-environment polices.
They don't want us to gather. They don't want us to share ideas. And they don't want to see anything like that Seattle protest in the U.S. ever again.
They will keep us from traveling to Latin America. And they will keep Latin Americans from coming here. They've already begun building the wall.
And if the ludicrous physical wall doesn't work, they are building this electronic one--consisting of any names associated with anti-corporate dissent, who will be barred from travel.
The war is over in Iraq. The fundamentalists won. But the other war--and perhaps the more important one to global profiteers--has just begun.
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(How globalization--i.e, unfair trade-- works is that the World Bank gives big loans to corrupt government officials in third world countries, and the IMF extracts, as the terms of repayment, the shutdown of social programs, and environmental and labor protections, and opening the country up to corporate exploitation--resource extraction, dumping of US ag products, sweatshop labor, etc. And while these great prices are being paid to service the debt, the corrupt officials often steal the loan funds, leaving the county helpless AND penniless. Peru just elected a very corrupt leftist, Alan Garcia, who is likely making this sort of bad bargain, and when Peru's economy lay in similar ruin, the real leftist, Ollanta Humala--who almost won this time, coming out of nowhere--will be back. Like Morales in Bolivia, Humala is 100% indigenous Andes Indian.)
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