[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 170 (Monday, November 5, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H12732-H12737]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 TERRORIST ACTIVITIES IN LATIN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak about an issue that 
troubles me quite a bit and I think should trouble a lot of the 
American people. Certainly it should concern Members of Congress.
  A resolution was passed this afternoon by voice vote dealing with the 
alleged involvement and behavior of the President of Iran, therefore, 
the Government of Iran, in Latin America and supporting, according to 
this resolution, terrorist activities in Latin America.
  Let me briefly read the opening statement of this resolution, the 
title, if you will: expressing concern relating to the threatening 
behavior of the Iranian regime and the activities of terrorist 
organizations sponsored by that regime in Latin America.
  Well, just to deal with language itself, we know that when our 
government calls another government a regime, it is not saying anything 
positive about it. It is, in fact, confronting it in some way. But I 
think that as unnoticed as this went by, as I said it was passed on a 
voice vote, as unnoticed that this went by, this puts us in a 
situation, the Congress, the American people, our Nation, on a road, on 
a path to a very dangerous situation in the future, perhaps in the near 
future.
  We all know how concerned the administration is and how concerned 
some Members of Congress are about the possibility that Iran could be 
involved in activities that would be hurtful to us. I want to correct 
that. I think all Members of Congress are concerned about that 
possibility.
  But I think we are also concerned about the fact, many of us, that 
there seems to be a drumbeat towards war with Iran, a drumbeat that 
says, basically, some of the same things that were said when we were 
taken off to war against Iraq. Just about everything that was told to 
us at that time happened not to be true. History will tell whether, in 
fact, we were lied to, or whether the information was so bad that the 
administration had no choice but to pass that on to us thinking that it 
was correct.
  But there are many who feel that we were lied to. Again, history will 
have to deal with that.
  My concern is that this resolution today moves away from just a 
concern about the behavior of the Government in Iran and begins to 
suggest that there are neighbors of ours, and, yes, I say neighbors, 
because that's what the Latin American people are, neighbors of ours, 
that could be involved in this behavior, behavior which would be 
dangerous to the United States, behavior which we all should be 
concerned about, behavior that, perhaps, would lead us to get involved 
in Latin America in a way that we haven't been involved for a long, 
long time.
  But I think in order to understand where we are with this issue, we 
also have to have, I think, an understanding of how history repeats 
itself, how some things that we are hearing now we have heard before. 
For close to 50 years now, we have had a very strong lobbying effort in 
this country against a Cuban Government. The so-called anti-Castro 
lobby has been very strong, and that lobby has been very influential in 
getting many Members of Congress and Presidents, present and past, to 
feel that the only path towards changes in Cuba is to continuously 
attack and confront the Cuban Government. To the dismay of many people, 
I am sure, and with all due respect to many people, it is no secret 
that for the most part that lobby, this effort, has come out of anti-
Castro groups who, for the most part, live in the State of Florida.
  Well, something very interesting has happened in the last few years. 
As Latin America has elected leftist-leaning leaders, people who 
propose to put forth a modern-day socialism, as they call it, 21st-
century socialism, but people who have been elected and reelected as 
they have emerged, they have decided that it would not be improper for 
them as leaders of those countries to have a relationship with the 
Cuban Government.
  Well, that upsets the same people who have been upset with the Cuban 
Government. The fact that some new governments in Latin America would 
now be friendly to the Government in Cuba would upset these folks.
  Our policy towards Cuba has been heavily influenced by this anti-
Castro movement. I can't tell you how many times in the 17 years that I 
have been in Congress and have tried to change that policy. I have been 
told by Members of Congress on both sides, Democrats and Republicans, 
liberals and conservatives, I have been told by them, I agree with you, 
you are right with this policy having to change.
  But I think we have to continue it, and most of them will tell you, 
because the lobbying effort, out of a couple of communities in this 
country is so strong, that I really don't want to face that. Right on 
the House floor they have told me, I don't want to face that, I will 
just go along with this policy, as outdated as this may be, as 
inefficient as that may be, because it hasn't changed anything in Cuba, 
not that we should necessarily be changing things in another country. 
But now we find that those same folks have now picked new targets.
  Chief among those targets, top of the list, is the President of 
Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, who has over and over again shown his 
friendship to President Castro of Cuba, and that irritates the folks 
who support ending Mr. Castro's stay in Cuba. Those folks then have 
started to say the same things that they have said for years about Mr. 
Castro.
  Now, the fact of life is that the Cuban Government, the system in 
Cuba, and the system in Venezuela, for instance, are totally different, 
totally different. But not to those folks who simply would want to get 
rid of one. They now feel that they have a target which is the 
President of Venezuela.
  That target then, I think, leads us to situations like today, where a 
resolution presented here speaks of putting together all these groups 
who have one thing in common. They speak out against our government, 
they say things we don't like, and who happen to have been visited or 
received telephone calls or offers of help from Iran.
  Now, Communist China, and I use that title, that phrase, that word, 
so we understand what we are talking about, are involved in the economy 
of every country in Latin America; but you don't see a resolution on 
the House floor condemning Communist China for being involved in Latin 
America.

                              {time}  2245

  Why? Because they're a big trading partner of ours. And secondly, 
let's be

[[Page H12733]]

honest, because there is no Chinese American lobby in this country 
influencing how we behave in Congress. And so we could deal with China 
every day and they could do whatever they want in their country, and we 
will never say more than maybe say every so often, behave yourself.
  And there are countries in the Middle East who treat their folks in 
ways that you could spend every day in Congress condemning them, but we 
won't do that because we have a relationship with them.
  But nothing, and I say this with great admiration, nothing is as 
strong as the anti-Castro lobby, which has made it clear that the 
leadership in Latin America that is friendly to Mr. Castro must pay a 
price, and one of the prices you pay is to lump them together as this 
hate group that is now going to be involved in terrorist activities in 
Latin America.
  We have democratically elected leaders in Latin America that have 
these friendly relations with the Cuban Government. That doesn't matter 
to us that these folks were elected and re-elected. As long as they are 
friendly to Cuba, Miami hates them. And as long as Miami hates them, 
then Congress must hate them too.
  So when you hear comments about Chavez, when you hear comments about 
Evo Morales, the President of Bolivia, when you hear comments about 
President Correa in Ecuador, understand, when you hear these comments, 
or about any one of the other left-leaning presidents in Latin America, 
that you're basically hearing from the same playbook, the comments that 
you heard about Cuba for all these years.
  But please understand something, that you are not hearing direct 
attacks on those governments; you're still hearing an attack on the 
Cuban Government. It is just being played out in this new scenario 
called the other countries in Latin America.
  Now, it is true that we have, or they have elected leaders in Latin 
America that are not happy with the U.S. Government and that words have 
been strong at times towards us. But some of this rhetoric has a 
history behind it.
  While our country paid a great deal of attention to Asia, Europe and 
the Middle East, we neglected Latin America. That is a fact. That is 
not Congressman Serrano from the Bronx, New York, just making those 
comments to sound nice at this time of night. That's a fact. We 
neglected Latin America, and they suffered, and still do, through some 
very difficult periods.
  And during the Cold War, it was really interesting. We would go to 
Latin America and we would say, General So-and-So, Senor, do you 
support communism in the Soviet Union or do you support our style of 
government? And those generals would say, oh, no; we support your 
style. We would say, great, you're our friend. We'll see you in a 
couple of years. And meanwhile, they mistreated their folks; they 
ransacked the country. But it didn't matter to us because they were not 
for communism. They were not to the left of the political spectrum. 
They were not for socialism.
  During that time, however, we would say something very positive. 
Every so often we would kind of knock them on the shoulder and say 
democracy is the most important thing. Nothing is as important as 
democracy.
  Well, you know something? They've tried it all in Latin America. They 
tried military dictatorships. The people didn't try it. They were the 
victims of it, and it didn't work. Then they tried regular 
dictatorships, if there's such a thing different from a military 
dictatorship. But it didn't work either. The people suffered, but the 
ones who tried it didn't work. Then they tried something new for Latin 
America in many cases, new to some countries, new to many countries. 
They tried democracy. They elected folks. But they elected folks who 
were very much tied to international corporate interests, who got 
elected, many in questionable elections, and then neglected the people, 
neglected the people. And the people found out that they had elected 
people, they had done everything they were asked to do, and they were 
getting poorer and poorer every day. So what have they done in the last 
couple of years? They've elected left-of-center candidates in Chile, in 
Argentina, in Ecuador, in Bolivia, in Venezuela. And these folks have 
been, and are, revolutionaries. They, themselves, claim to be 
revolutionaries, and that, again, we hear that word, that upsets us. We 
forget that this great system we have here was created through a 
revolution against the British. But we were the last ones to use that 
word in a way that we liked it. Now anybody who calls himself a 
revolutionary we get upset about. But these people are revolutionaries. 
They're trying something new in Latin America. Embarrassing as it may 
seem, it is new to many countries in Latin America, this whole notion 
that the person at the bottom, the person who's been suffering for 
years, the indigenous people, the darker skinned people, that they 
would now have an opportunity to have something better.
  Now, and this is important what I just mentioned about the fact that 
in Latin America, the darker skinned folks are beginning to feel that 
they have a stake in their system.
  When Secretary of State Colin Powell, one of the greatest Americans, 
left the administration at the last, the end of the last term, he came 
before our Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State, and I was the 
ranking member at that time. And he said to us something very important 
when he was talking about Latin America. He said, the big change in 
Latin America, and what we Americans need to understand, now he didn't 
say it was good. He didn't say it was bad. He didn't say it was a 
problem for us. He just said it was something that was happening in 
Latin America, that we as Americans have to pay attention to. He said, 
those folks are beginning to elect people who look like themselves. 
Now, that's a heck of a statement by a very intelligent man who has a 
good understanding of the world. I don't know if that upsets some of 
us, but I think it does upset some folks in this country and throughout 
the hemisphere, that countries that are composed primarily mostly of 
indigenous people and people of color have now decided to elect people 
who look like themself, people who come from them. And when they decide 
to make changes that are very dramatic and, yes, very revolutionary, we 
get upset because it doesn't serve the corporate interests of a lot of 
American corporations.
  So Hugo Chavez in Venezuela decides that he's going to revolutionize 
the way Venezuela behaves. He came to the Bronx. He visited the Bronx. 
He spoke to us and he said something very interesting. He told us who 
he was. And you never hear about this in this country. He told us he 
was a kid, very poor, who didn't have shoes until he was a teenager, 
walked barefoot, who wanted only one dream in life, to become a major 
league baseball pitcher. And he was pretty good. But from where he 
lived, to be seen by major league scouts, he had to go to Caracas. And 
he was told that the only way to get to Caracas was to join the Army. 
So he joined the Army. He jokes that it was the worst mistake his 
country ever made, letting him join the Army, because when he began to 
travel with the Army he noticed something very interesting of 
Venezuela. He noticed that people who looked like him were very poor, 
and other folks who didn't look like him were living in a country with 
a lot of oil and a lot of money. He also noticed that not all 
neighborhoods were like his. He thought all of Venezuela was like his 
neighborhood, and it wasn't. It had serious pockets of serious money. 
So he began to grow a conscience about that; became a military leader, 
eventually led him into politics. He got elected. And when he got 
elected he immediately set out to change the way Venezuela behaves. And 
the opposition to him knows that. That's why they all admit that he's 
so popular within his country, by the folks who are at the bottom.

  But, you know, I get to watch Spanish television from Latin America 
on my cable system in the Bronx, and you know, as tough as we are in 
American politics, some of the stuff you hear about President Chavez 
from the owners of these stations who open up their morning programming 
by reminding people that their President has curly hair and is dark 
skinned, as if that was a sin, but it's such a revolutionary thing that 
has happened in Latin America that some people still can't get over it. 
So he's an idiot. He's crazy. He's corrupt.

[[Page H12734]]

  But even the opposition, at times, in attempting to say something 
against him, really says dumb things. I wish I had the name of the 
person, although I wouldn't use it on the House floor, but during the 
last elections in Venezuela when the polls indicated that President 
Chavez was at 62 percent of the vote, one of the New York Times 
reporters, I think it was, asked this leader of the opposition, Why do 
you think he's so popular? And the gentleman said, and this has to be 
the dumbest statement ever made by a politician in the history of the 
world, the gentleman said, You would be popular too if you were always 
building schools and hospitals for the poor. Well, to that I say, what 
American teenagers taught us to say, duh. I mean, isn't that the reason 
why you elect people to take care of those in the society who need help 
amongst others? Because you don't play class warfare. So they're saying 
that because he's building hospitals and because he's building schools, 
he's very popular. Well, yeah, Mr. Opposition. Why didn't you try that 
when you were in power for the last couple of hundred years to do some 
of that?
  Now, these leaders in Latin America that we attack, it's important to 
know how they got to that point of being the leaders of these 
countries. For instance, in this resolution, it says, whereas in 
January of 2007, the President of Iran made his second visit to Central 
and South America in 5 months to meet with Hugo Chavez, President of 
Venezuela, to visit Daniel Ortega, President of Nicaragua, and to 
attend the inauguration of Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador.
  Well, if we're going to be technical about this, the fact is he went 
there for the President's inauguration, something we all did. I mean, 
every country in the world sent a representative. I imagine our 
Ambassador was there. If he wasn't, he should have been there because 
this was an elected President of Ecuador.
  When you make those visits, as our President does, and I commend him 
for it, you go and you take the time that you're in that country and 
you visit neighboring countries if you don't get a chance to meet with 
everybody. That's something you do.
  But we attack these people in this resolution that we passed today, 
this, in my opinion, dangerous resolution, and that's why we're here 
today. We're here today because Congress passed a resolution today 
condemning Iran's involvement in Latin America and suggesting that 
these progressive leftist semi, if you want to call them, socialists in 
Latin America have a bond going with the President of Iran to create 
havoc for us and to fund terrorist organizations.
  But there's something we forget. Let's look at Daniel Ortega of 
Nicaragua. He was elected in a free and fair election, recognized by 
world organizations. As part of the Central American peace plan, 
Ortega's Sandinista government agreed to internationally monitored 
democratic elections in 1990.
  Now, this guy we don't like submitted himself to elections in 1990 
and he lost, and peacefully, after having won a revolution, peacefully 
turned his government over to Violetta Chamorro, who was the victor, 
with our support, heavily with our support, because all the arguments 
in those days about how much money we sent into her campaign.

                              {time}  2300

  Now, can you imagine if somebody from another country sent money to 
one of our Presidential campaigns, another government, what we would do 
with that candidate in this country? But we do that.
  Ortega ran for President in 1996 and lost, ran for democratically 
provided elections in 2001 and lost. Because he came in second place 
both times, however, Nicaraguan law gave him a seat in the national 
assembly where he has served as an opposition leader. Then he ran for 
President again in 2006 and won. Now, shouldn't that alone make us want 
to go to Nicaragua or call him up and say, We asked you, we asked 
everybody in Latin America, to get elected. You ran four times and 
finally you got elected. Let's at least talk. No? We are on his case. 
In fact, we are linking him to terrorist organizations in this 
resolution.
  Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador, elected in free and fair 
elections January 15 of this year. He is a U.S.-trained economist. What 
does that mean? That he learned what he knows about what he wants to 
put in practice in Ecuador in American schools. So shouldn't we be 
applauding that? Shouldn't we be applauding the fact that he got 
elected democratically? He is Ecuador's eighth President in 10 years. 
The instability has been horrible. Maybe there could be stability now. 
We should be supportive of that. He defeated Alvaro Noboa, a wealthy 
banana magnate, in a run-off election held in 2006. Contrary to our 
predictions, he got 57 percent of the vote.
  Now, the one that we attack the most, of course, is President Hugo 
Chavez of Venezuela. Well, let's review this for a second. President 
Chavez has won elections in 1998, in 2000, and in 2006. In other words, 
he got elected in 1998. He then went out and had his coalition elect 
delegates to a constitutional convention. Those delegates wrote a new 
constitution that, and listen to this revolutionary idea, gave power to 
the poor and to the indigenous people. They changed the constitution to 
do that, and they put it before the people. The constitution was passed 
by the people. So I'd say that that is another referendum on Chavez. 
Then the new constitution said that he had to cut his 6-year term short 
and run right away. So he ran in 1998; then he had to run again in 
2000.
  Then in 2006 in between the opposition again with support from 
outside forces, a lot of them based right in the State of Florida, they 
held a referendum. He submitted himself to that referendum to be 
recalled as the President. He wins in 1998. He doesn't finish his full 
term. He goes again in 2000. But by 2004 they were ready to kick him 
out, the opposition. They hold a referendum. And he wins it big. The 
recall, he wins it big. In 1999, as I said, he won a referendum for a 
new constitution. And in 2005 his coalition of parties won election for 
the Parliament, for the Congress.
  Now, here's the question I have: Didn't we tell Latin American 
countries to use the democratic process? Isn't that what we always said 
was the bottom line? Everything else could be negotiable, we said at 
times. But democracy was the bottom line. Even when we didn't practice 
it, as I said before, we did say this is what you must do. Now I just 
read you three examples of people who have used the democratic system 
to reach their positions. So why are we attacking them continuously on 
the House floor? Once a month we get a resolution here attacking 
somebody in Latin America instead of getting close.
  Now, what we don't understand is that this whole situation with Latin 
America's electing people who are left of center is because the people 
are tired of the poverty, tired of the pain, and they now have leaders 
who at least in what they have attempted to do up to now indicates that 
they want to balance off the wealth of those countries. Balance off.
  We don't celebrate the fact that Hugo Chavez comes from poverty, 
reaches the presidency, and has been elected three times himself and 
his government another five times totaling eight elections since 1998. 
We don't celebrate the fact that in over close to 500 years, the people 
of Bolivia, a country mostly made up of indigenous people, what we call 
Indians, elected for the first time an Indian, Evo Morales. We don't 
celebrate that.
  I felt so good when I saw this man take the oath of the presidency 
dressed in the native dress of his people. I thought it was a great 
day. Our comments right away were, what is he going to do with the gas 
industry? Well, he did what we expected. He told some of the gas 
companies this is a very poor country. We have a lot of natural 
resources here. We are going to start sharing some of those profits 
with the people. Oh, he's a communist. We have got to get rid of him. 
He's a problem. So now in this resolution we lump him together with the 
President of Iran. When you do that, you immediately make enemies of 
the American people and those people.
  But you also make a very serious mistake, and this is perhaps the 
most important thing that we have to pay attention to. When you reject 
the electoral victories of these folks; when you don't celebrate the 
fact that people from the lower class, economic class,

[[Page H12735]]

that people of darker skin of indigenous people are being elected; when 
you as the American Government, the greatest and largest government in 
the world, don't celebrate that and, in fact, spend a lot of time 
trying to bring them down; when you don't do that, it is natural that 
you drive them to places where you don't want them to be.
  Now, when you are a Member of Congress and you stand up in front of 
the House and people may watch you on TV, you are supposed to speak as 
exactly that. My problem, or my strength, is that I so often remind 
people that I grew up in a public housing project. And in the projects 
you have certain rules of behavior. And one is that if somebody is 
trying to do you in and that person is stronger and bigger than you, 
you go find someone who can help you confront that person. That's a 
fact of life for survival. Most Members of Congress, most American 
elected officials don't talk about the rule of the projects because 
they didn't grow in the projects. I am not saying that makes them worse 
than me, just different. So I use that as a point of understanding. 
Again, I grew up in the South Bronx in a public housing project. If you 
came after me, if you came after my mother, my sister, my cousin, you 
were my enemy.

  Well, when President Chavez came to the U.N., our country was 
outraged. And I was not happy with what he said. He called President 
Bush the devil, and that was enough for us to go to war. But let's talk 
about a little history now. There was a coup attempt on President 
Chavez by members of the military and members of the elite. All of 
Latin America, most of Europe, some folks in the Middle East all got up 
and said you can't do that. You can't do that. That man was elected. 
He's got to serve his term. What did the United States say? Well, at 
the White House some folks said publicly he brought it on himself. No, 
you can't say that, he brought it on himself. You don't bring on a coup 
against your government.
  In Latin America they said that our fingerprints were all over that 
attempted coup; that if we actually did not participate in it, we gave 
aid to it through our comments and said it was okay. Now, when I met 
President Chavez when he came to visit the Bronx, he spoke to us for a 
couple of hours. He's famous for speaking a couple of hours. He told us 
about all the things I have mentioned here. But he said when they took 
him out of the presidential palace, the ``White House,'' if you will, 
took him up to the mountains, he knew he was going to die. He knew he 
was going to get killed. And you can imagine what is going through his 
head because he doesn't know what is happening in Washington. He found 
out later that what was happening to him and when he thought he was 
going to get killed, he thought the whole world was outraged.
  He found out later that Washington was basically saying we'll figure 
it out. And we didn't say anything when the guy who took over for him 
momentarily suspended the Congress, suspended the constitution, and 
that's when the people reacted to it. Of course, Chavez came back 
because two things happened. One was the folks from the mountain side, 
the poor folks, the dark-skin folks, the indigenous people found out 
and they started running to the city and demanding to have their 
President back. The people won, the power didn't. But we didn't say 
anything.
  And he tells us that when he goes there, a young soldier, he's 
sitting in a room and opens the door and he hears the rifle load up and 
he thinks he's going to get shot right there, and the soldier says, If 
our President is killed, we will all be killed here. And that did a 
turnaround where the young soldiers told the older soldiers, We're not 
going back to those days. This man was elected and he has to serve his 
term.
  Now, let's go back a second to my focal point of growing up in the 
projects. They tried to kill the man and he came back into power. He 
thinks a few people were involved in it. He calls our President the 
devil as a representative of the country that didn't help him during 
that time. We don't appreciate having our President called the devil. 
We don't encourage that and we all denounced it. But in the projects if 
you try to bump me off, the least I am going to call you is the devil. 
In fact, the ramifications may be even more dangerous. So I think it 
was really a light comment compared to what he felt was happening to 
him.
  Now, there is another issue here that has been discussed a lot. We 
all heard about how recently President Chavez closed a TV station in 
Venezuela, and we were outraged. Nobody likes to do that. But what we 
were not told here is the history behind that. I'm not suggesting it 
was a good move. If I had been his adviser, I would have said leave it 
alone. But do you know who was on in the middle of the attempted coup 
against President Chavez in the Venezuela equivalent of the White 
House? The owner of the TV station that lost its license a few months 
ago. He was there as part of the coup to overthrow this government.
  Now, listen to me. I don't support most of the policies of President 
Bush. But if I heard that CBS, ABC, CNN, anyone tomorrow was involved 
in a coup against President Bush, I would ask that their license not be 
renewed because that is not freedom of speech. That is violence against 
the government.

                              {time}  2315

  And you can't treat them any differently than you would treat 
someone. I would say we have to seriously consider not allowing them to 
continue in that role because they just attempted to overthrow a 
government by force.
  Also, they refused to televise the coup. And when they did televise, 
they only televised the opposition; they never televised the people. 
The country never knew that Chavez was gone because they didn't want 
the people to know. And when he came back, they didn't know that 
either, although they had televised part in the middle of the coup 
because they were supposedly playing cartoons and movies on TV because 
they didn't want to support the government in any way. That is the 
truth behind that licensing situation.
  Now, what is the danger in what we've done today? Today, we committed 
the mistake of allowing our emotions on the issue of Cuba to blind us 
into attacks on Latin American countries, blanket attacks on many 
countries. And in this resolution we make claims on issues that in no 
way can be proven.
  We're suggesting that Iran is going to fund terrorist organizations 
in Latin America. These are some of the same folks that told us there 
were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. How many of us have forgotten 
those words, ``weapons of mass destruction''? They also told us that 
Iraq was tied to al Qaeda. They also told us that Iraq helped al Qaeda 
in the 9/11 attacks. Even the White House has now admitted that most of 
that, if not all, was not true. So, I can't understand this desire to 
lump this together with Iran, present bad information, if not outright 
lies, and begin to move us towards a confrontation with Latin America 
at the same time we have confrontation with Iran.
  But look at some of the silly things that the resolution says. It 
says, Whereas, at the Iranian Conference on Latin America, Iran 
announced that it would reopen embassies in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, 
Nicaragua, Uruguay, and send a representative to Bolivia. And what is 
wrong with that? Don't we want people to talk to each other? Don't we 
have relations with most of the countries of the world? But when Iran 
does it, just to reopen relations they had before, re-establish, we get 
upset. Well, that's an acceptable action for a sovereign state.
  Now, I spoke about the various leaders, and I neglected to remind us 
that the President of Bolivia was elected on December 18, 2005, with a 
record 85 percent of the Bolivian people voting in the elections. They 
were deemed by world organizations to be free and fair. He won a 
convincing victory, getting 54 percent of the vote, compared to 29 
percent for his opposition. Although a lot of people were predicting 
that he would win, no one thought that he could win this big.
  Now, here's another part of the resolution. And I leave it to the 
people watching or listening to this to try to figure out what this 
means, because I don't know what the crime is here. It says, Whereas, 
routine civilian airline flights have been established from Tehran, 
Iran directly into Caracas,

[[Page H12736]]

Venezuela, and the Government of Venezuela has been found to be 
indiscriminate in the issuance of Venezuelan passports and other 
identifying documents to people coming on those flights. So, they're 
allowing people to fly directly to them, and they are allowing Iran to 
fly direct flights. Well, we have direct flights all over the world. 
What is the issue?
  Now, here is the most dangerous one: Whereas, Iran and Hezbollah were 
involved in the two deadliest terrorist attacks in Argentina, and we 
all know that this is true, now they claim that Hezbollah is setting up 
in Latin America with the support of Iran. Well, my God, if that is 
true, why are we waiting until this particular resolution, which passed 
in what one could call the quickness of the afternoon without a vote, 
to bring up such a serious situation? If it's true that Hezbollah is 
involved in Latin America setting up bases, recruiting people, 
shouldn't we be outraged and really consider how to address that rather 
than just as a throw-away line in a resolution? This is so much more of 
this attempt to link Iran to Latin America.
  And let me reach the last few minutes here by telling you why I think 
this is extremely dangerous.
  It is pretty clear around here that we are beating the drum towards 
war with Iran. That's no longer an alarmed behavior. I'm not trying to 
alarm people into feeling nervous, but I think most American people are 
hearing a lot of what they heard before we went to Iraq. And you know 
that Iraq has been a very, very difficult situation for us, and we 
don't know when we will be able to get out of Iraq. And now there is 
this drumbeat, both inside and outside the Congress, throughout the 
country, but coming from the government, from the White House, coming 
out of the President's office, coming out of the Vice President's 
office, that we have to somehow confront Iran. That's a problem all by 
itself. And it's a horrible problem that we could be discussing here 
for hours.
  But my concern, and my reason for speaking on a resolution today, a 
resolution which was introduced primarily by Democrats, and I know this 
is not something we usually do, speak against members of our own party, 
but we can all be nervous about a situation because on both sides of 
the aisle people are marching forward to war with Iran.
  So, now we link these other countries. What does that mean? Does that 
mean that we now have an excuse to go and try military action against 
Bolivia? against Argentina? against Ecuador? against Venezuela? Is it 
because, indeed, they've earned the right, if you will, of having us 
react that way, or is it because we're using Iran as an excuse to deal 
with other things we wanted to deal with in the first place, which is 
getting at these folks.
  And so, I go back to my initial statement, that the same lobby group 
that has been directing our policy towards Cuba and preventing us from 
making changes in that policy, that same group has been intelligent 
enough, enabled enough to now direct our attention towards Latin 
American leftist leaders because they're friendly to Cuba, and what 
best way to get at them? To link them to Iran, the ugly country for us 
right now.
  And I'm not suggesting, by the way, that we should not have some 
concerns, if not serious concerns, about the behavior of Iran. That's 
not the issue here. I don't want people tomorrow saying, oh, he was 
defending Iran. No. I'm defending no one. What I'm defending is the 
right of the Latin American people to make their own democratic 
choices, if you will, and that we will respect that. But by linking 
them, I have to ask the question, if we go after Iran, and we just 
finished saying this afternoon that these Latin American countries are 
tied into Iran's behavior, aren't we also giving ourselves the 
opportunity, the reason, the power to go after these countries, too? 
That's my concern.
  Let me conclude by speaking to a subject that I know well. You don't 
have to live in Latin America to know how Latin Americans feel about 
the United States or about American people. This may sound like a joke, 
it may even sound sarcastic, but it is honestly true. All you have to 
live is in southern Maryland, in northern Virginia, in D.C., in New 
York, in LA, in Houston, in Dallas, in any city, any suburb in this 
country that has the growing number of immigrants from Latin America, 
whether documented or not, they're here for a reason. And if we were 
discussing immigration, I would tell you that they're here because they 
like this country. They want to work. They want to feed their families. 
But that is no different than how people in Latin America feel about 
us. To link them with a group of folks in the Middle East who have 
openly said, not all of them, but some, who have openly said that they 
don't like us, to link them to that is to make two horrible mistakes. 
One is to have bad information again put forth about a people who 
actually like us, and also, the worst mistake of all, to drive them 
into the arms of people we don't like. Because as I told you before, 
when you pick on someone and you're the toughest guy on the block, that 
person is going to have to find someone to help them out.

  So, instead of reaching out to Latin America, we say to them, you're 
as bad as the other guy. And we hate the other guy, and we're going to 
eventually take action against the other guy, so you know what you can 
expect. And even if that's not our intent, it will only make them think 
that that is our intent, and they will have to try to drum up new 
relationships. Because they're not going to give into us, they're not 
going to leave office and say we'll go back to the days when the 
general ran the country.
  Latin Americans, my friends, can be found in any city, any suburb, 
any neighborhood. And so many of them have such a close relationship to 
the people back home that they want to do nothing in this country to 
jeopardize the ability to continue to deal with their family back home. 
And their family back home will never allow any behavior in those 
countries that can hurt us. They need us and we need them.
  And so, when you speak to Latin Americans in our communities, you 
never hear hatred of the United States as you do in some other 
countries. They are materially poor, yes, suspicious of America's 
intentions in their hemisphere, yes, but interested in making common 
cause with Hezbollah and other foreign movements to target American 
interests? Never. Let me repeat that. They would never team up with a 
terrorist organization against the United States. They don't have 
anything against us of that nature. They just don't like our rhetoric 
and our indifference to them, but they're not going to team up with 
anybody to hurt us, because most of those countries have so many of 
their people living here that it would be like attacking another part 
of your neighborhood. Because to hurt the American interests would 
almost certainly hurt their own. Money that flows from here to there 
would be cut off from relatives. Those family ties of people living and 
working in the United States would be gone.
  A broad cultural admiration for the U.S. have knit together places 
like Caracas, Quito, and New York. One of the ironies of the current 
immigration debate is how folks often evoke how immigration from Latin 
America is changing this country. What they forget is how that same 
phenomenon is changing Latin America, which, despite its general 
political rejection of this administration, is growing ever closer in 
its embrace of a Pan-American culture and a Pan-American economy.

                              {time}  2330

  For many thousands of people in Venezuela, Ecuador and Nicaragua, 
Americans are their cousins, their siblings and their children. They 
can be our greatest allies in the world if we don't continue to push 
them into the embrace of hostile regimes with foolish resolutions like 
this one.
  Mr. Speaker, it wasn't easy for me to decide to speak on this today. 
As I said, this resolution was presented by many Democrats, well-
intentioned folks. I just see us going down a dangerous road here, a 
very dangerous road. If we have a problem with Iran, deal with that 
problem. Don't link the poor people of Latin America who have nothing 
against us.
  We have tried to export democracy to Latin America, and I think 
finally it is working. But we don't like the results. We have tried to 
export capitalism, and in many ways what they do with each other by 
trading oil for doctors and oil for technology is capitalism at its 
best. I often joke, but profoundly so, I think,

[[Page H12737]]

that we exported baseball to Latin America. I don't have to tell you 
how well that is doing in Latin America and doing right here. I am a 
Yankee fan. But just ask the Boston Red Sox how they feel about Latin 
American ballplayers and Latin American baseball.
  So these folks don't dislike us. But they are going to be troubled 
tomorrow morning when they find out what we did here in Congress today. 
They are going to be troubled that we are linking them with people we 
hate and they don't want to be hated by us.
  So I hope we can spend some time reviewing this, thinking about it, 
and perhaps understanding that in our desire to do what is right for us 
and to protect our great country, this country I love, this country in 
whose Army I served proudly, this country whose Congress I serve 
proudly, this country that I would give my life for, that as you love 
your country, you don't love it different from a child. When that child 
is not doing the right thing, you have to correct that child. And our 
country is wrong right now in its desire to treat Latin America with 
hate and disdain and to make of it something that it is not. They are 
our neighbors and our friends. We should treat them as such. We should 
extend our hand to them and tell them, you are our neighbor, you are 
our friends, you are, in fact, members of this family in more ways than 
one, and we are members of yours. Let's work together. Let's not show a 
lack of respect for each other.

                          ____________________