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US base takes on new repressive meaning, Argentine journalist warns

Buenos Aires, Feb 4 (Prensa Latina) The Guantanamo naval base, whose existence expresses the colonialist spirit of US policy, is taking on a new repressive connotation under the Donald Trump administration, Argentine journalist Gustavo Veiga warned on Tuesday.

In an article published in the newspaper Página 12, the writer and teacher questioned the US president’s decision to expel migrants and transfer them to that Cuban territory, illegally occupied by the United States.

Some 117 square kilometers have been taken from the island since 1903. Trump has just fulfilled the first objective of his government: to launch the largest deportation operation in history. He spread fear throughout the country, but not content with his aggressive policy, which discriminates on the basis of facial appearance, look or Latin accent, he raises the concrete possibility of confinement where those accused of terrorism are still being held, Veiga stated.

In addition, he warned about the existence of numerous complaints about torture at that base and the poor conditions in which the detainees are kept. On the other hand, he criticized the way in which migrants are returned “in the same conditions as slaves were taken by force to the United States between 1619 and 1865. Chained at the waist, handcuffed and with shackles on their feet. The passage of centuries caused the type of transportation to change. It went from slave ships to airplanes. Brazilians, Colombians, Mexicans, Hondurans and Guatemalans ended up as if they were disposable merchandise.”

The mere projection of these images on the news raised criticism from presidents of important Latin American countries: Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Gustavo Petro of Colombia.

“Humiliated” was the adjective used by several of those expelled upon returning to their homeland. In the United States, their property was seized, they were dressed in prison garb, their shoelaces were removed and they reported being treated “like dogs,” the article points out.

The base could receive 30,000 migrants that the Republican administration considers criminals. The degrading treatment of the deportees so far confirms the construction of meaning that the White House has installed to satisfy its most reactionary electorate, it adds.

It also notes that “it is clear that Trump’s purpose is to spread fear. Today the United States is the staging of a witch hunt, of quasi-Calvinist persecution against the enemy revealed by anti-immigrant rhetoric.”

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