Islam has made serious inroads into South America. Hezbollah is know to be active there, particularly in the Tri-Border Area, and Venezuela has been working with Iran for decades. Narco-terrorists and Marxist groups in the region reportedly cooperate with Al Qaeda and other Islamic terror outfits to help smuggle pseudo-Latino operatives across the border between Mexico and the United States.
We don’t often cover these issues, mostly due to a lack of correspondents in the region (see Fausta’s Blog for comprehensive information on Latin American issues, including the Iranian penetration of South America). To help remedy that, below is an email sent to us yesterday by a young Colombian student named Diego. He presents a brief overview of the Islamization of his country and its neighbors:
I am a law student in Colombia, and I wanted to comment on developments on this region of the world, which is so overlooked but might soon become part of the fight against Global Jihad.
I was still too young to remember when, but I can say that at least from the mid-2000s, the Venezuelan Regime of Hugo Chavez began forging ties with Iran. At the time, here in Colombia, Chavez’s Venezuela was looked upon by the mamertos (derogatory term for the left) as a model, just like Cuba. It took me some time, growing up and reading a lot, just to make the connections.
During the 2000s the political discourse was dominated by the narrative of “Narco-Communist Terrorists”. Maybe it is because it has been going on for a long time, or maybe because we have not had the eye-opening experience of Madrid, London or New York, and of course, the big bad guy was Chavez. At the time what most of us ignored was that he was letting Hizbullah in. They had (I am not sure if they still have, but I would not be surprised if they do) camps in Venezuela.
And of course there is the link with Iran’s nuclear program. In the Esequibo zone, the region of Guyana that Venezuela has been reclaiming since the 19th century, there was the discovery of a rather large uranium mine, some parts of it even crossing into the Venezuelan side of the border.
Remember the explosion at the Amuay refinery? Well, there are rumors — for now just rumors — that there was a cover-up for a possible nuclear centrifuge in Amuay; it just blew up before it could start operating. There is no real way to prove these rumors, but something more real, and to me more frightening, is the fact that Iran helped Venezuela build a drone factory at Maracay. And then there were also the planes with aid sent to “Palestine”, at a time when there is hunger and scarcity in Venezuela.
Anti-Semitic speech has been growing in a covert way in South America, and mixed with a small and usually quiet but now more present Muslim minority in Colombia… well, we may still be able to stop it, but our current president seems just as suicidal as European leaders. If he doesn’t sell the nation to FARC, he might do so to the Islamists in Tehran. But I am getting away from what I am really afraid of.
My mother and grandmother told me that, in the past, when people thought about World War III here, it was always a foreign event, let the Gringos and Russkis kill each other and wait until things get better.
But now I fear that a new missile crisis will happen. Venezuela is getting closer and closer to Iran, and while it seems now to be nearing civil war, there is still the rest of ALBA (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América, Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America), Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina… they all could be the next Cuba, holding enemy nuclear weapons targeted at US Cities.
Only in the next Missile Crisis, we won’t have a Khrushchev to calm things down and take the missiles away…
P.S: As for the Muslims in Colombia — I don’t know whose idea was to put a mosque next to the most prestigious Cadet School here, La Escuela Militar de Cadetes José María Córdoba in Bogotá. It’s as if someone put a mosque 100 meters away from West Point Academy. It is an attractive building, but there is something that stinks on it…
For more on the controversy over the mosque in Bogotá, and the “Islamophobes” who opposed it, see this an article from July 2013 in El Espectador (in Spanish).
As I recall, a mosque was also planned to be built next to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, England. (however, the plans were rejected due to public opposition)
More below:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1257094/Plans-build-giant-mosque-Sandhurst-scrapped-following-wave-local-protest.html
Is this a trend? Does anyone know about any such plans elsewhere – or any ideas about what might be the motivation behind them?
Speaking with a friend of mine, a rather nice jewish man who happens to study with me, we got to the conclusion that this is a way of demonstrating power to the future dhimmis, however when we were discussing it, we had no information on this happening elsewhere…
There are a lot of ways to demonstrate power though… why the particular focus on cadets? Is it something psychological? Are the Saudis trying to weaken the resolve of their future opponents on the battlefield, or even convert them? I have no idea.
Dawa. the conversion of young cadets to Islam. I think that’s the strategy and the motivation.
This is just the natural consequence of the marxistization of Latin America. Fix the marxism problem and that’ll fix everything else.
Indeed, it is, if it was just so easy to revert or at least stop the process… as much as I don’t really like Pinochet for his Human Rights Abuses, I really think many nations here need someone like him…
Almost the whole of the EU is culturally marxist and implementing the plans of the Frankfurt School. It will take revolution or a war to reverse this.
There are times when I long for the old Roman Empire. At least they didn’t put up with any crap from outsiders. All of this touchy-feely, multi culturalism is only going to kill us faster than nature intended. And for what it is worth, I don’t trust any Muslim.
My personal opinion is that Multiculturalism leads to a Disaster, I have heard Multiculturalists point to Rome and the Russian Empire to defend their position… I guess I just got what I am writing about next
Oh, some muslims, as individuals are wonderful persons… the problem is that Islam is a cancer, the ”good muslims” are just muslims that do not understand their religion, nor who was really Mohammed, nor what the Koran actually says… I feel pity for them actually.
Didn’t the Roman empire fall precisely because it allowed itself to be infiltrated by outsiders?
Yes and no, for centuries they were the most effective at forcing people to adapt… But when everybody became a Roman, they lost that practice, by the time of the Hunnic-Gothic war and the flight of the Goths to Roman Territory, rome suffered from a similar deconstruction of its society, mixed with inmigrations of entire peoples who remained in their close-knit communities, it was too much to digest, in the 390s and early 400s they tried to be agressive with said Immigrants, trying to expell them or kill them, it ended with Rome Sacked, then they chose appeasment, and they lost what was left of the Empire… The Eastern Empire however, mantained a consistent policy of paying only in coin and grain, never in land, this, along with the almost inpenetrable walls of Constantinople, allowed them to survive
Muchas gracias, Diego. Es la primera vez que oigo algo de los musulmanes (es la palabra de hoy en dia?) en Sudamerica. (Y no puedo poner los accentos en las vocales.)
Tengo miedo. La situacion es mas peor que hubiera creido.
In English: Thank you very much, Diego. This is the first time that I’ve heard anything about the musulmanes [Muslims] (is this the right word these days?) in South America. (And I can’t put the accent marks on the vowels.)
I’m afraid. The situation is much worse than I would have believed.
There are some 25 to 30 million Arabs in Latin America and they have integrated well into their host societies. The reason for this is that these Arabs are all Christians and not Muslims. Here is an excerpt from an article in the American Thinker.
“Latin-American Arabs are overwhelmingly Christian; usually they are Syrian Orthodox or Roman Catholic, the older liturgical churches which blend in seamlessly in the area. Those who aren’t have often converted to Evangelical Christianity. Islam, though found, is not so common among them. Overall, probably 97% or more of Latin-American Arabs are Christians, though this can vary from country to country.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2012/09/the_arabs_of_south_america.html
For more information please go to this site http://latinarabia.com/
This has been going on for a long time, unfortunately.
Speaking from the standpoint of a “gringa” who has lived here in Colombia for the past twenty years or so. The story we heard is that the mosque was actively offering free English classes to the cadets in the “Escuela Militar”. Some Colombians set up a squawk, and hopefully the practice has been discontinued, but obviously trying to get converts or sympathizers is their goal. Some years back a young Colombian guerilla turned himself in because he was terrified that a FARC leader with the nickname “el muselman” was trying to convince him to become a suicide bomber to take out then President Uribe. So far, there have been no voluntary suicide bombers here, though the FARC almost certainly has done things like tell their dupes that they have twenty minutes to get out after they set the bomb, only to have it blow immediately, as happened with El Nogal, according to Semana.
The Palestinians have their little “embassy” or whatever they call it in the sector of Bogota called Palmyra, and have been active with propaganda at least since the 90’s.
I can only add that what Diego says about Venezuela and Iran basically confirms what we have been hearing for years.
The free English classes bit is interesting. Could they be trying to win over converts among Cadets in Colombia, and other places (see my earlier comment about England) to win converts as well as sympathy in the military – which in the future may translate to intelligence about upcoming anti-terror ops, as well as possibly being a source of some nice new “lost” military weapons?
As an aside, what do you think the attitude of locals in Colombia is towards Islam, and other related matters?
I think that depends on whether the Colombian is Catholic, Evangelical or Socialist. At the moment, the current Colombian government is pro-Israel. The Socialists pretty much have swallowed the politically correct yip yip from the U.S. hook, line, sinker and boat. (I’m leaving out hard core Marxists like the FARC who have their own agenda, though it is telling that they were protected by Chavez). The Evangelicals tend to be very pro Israel, the Catholics not necessarily so much. Islam as such does not seem to be on most people’s maps, so they are neither pro or con, but think about it as something different and benign. For instance, one young lady asked me what “jizya” was. I was having trouble with the concept until I thought of the word “vacuna”, which translates as “vaccine” in English. It is also what you have to pay the FARC upon request if you want to go on living. She understood the concept when explained in those terms
Marinka is right on that one, but I must add something, most of the Middle-Aged people, especially among the growing Evangelical Community, is Pro-Zionist, along with most of the young people I have met in said community (myself included)
Now, most young people seem to be part of ”the left” including ”softcore socialism” and the obvious almost intrinsecal to our culture Anti-USA… accompanied by Anti-Zionism…
In Colombia itself Anti-Semitism has not really taken a hold, however in Venezuela’s government it has, as for Islam, most people here could not care less, and I understand them, Colombia’s main issue now is a rather odd negotiation made between Govt. and FARC where we have no idea what is really going on, and what is really being negotiated.
as for our Government being Pro-Israel, it is mostly on the field of Technological and Military Cooperation… if there was a large Anti-Israel population in Colombia, surely Mr. Santos would take Anti-Israelite positions to get their votes…
in the end however, our president is not part of the ”Colombian Politicians” he is one more of the type of politicians plaguing Europe and the West in general…
I’ll go along with the above with one quibble. Santos seems to me (and others) to be a good representative of the old line upper class oligarchy that in general still rules this country when push comes to shove. Yes, a tendency to look to Europe, especially France (the Colombian legal system is still based on the Napoleonic Code) with a basic policy of keeping themselves rich and in control, with a definite apparent goal of using Socialism in order to maintain their position. After all, the socialist model is all about a small group getting and keeping economic and political control, the mass of people being controlled by their “betters” for their own good. Very similar to feudalism, and before “la Violencia” which kicked off around 1948, Colombia was essentially a feudal society.