Venezuela Rejects Negroponte’s “Concerns” Over its Democracy

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The Venezuelan government’s response, issued through a Ministry of Foreign Relations (MRE) press release, stated that “Mr. Negroponte represents a real threat to peace and democracy,” in Latin America. “It is not credible to anybody in the hemisphere that [the U.S. government] is considering a new policy for Latin America when it assigns individuals such as Mr. Negroponte,” it added.

In reference to the period (1981-1985) that Negroponte served as U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, the MRE press release said, “Latin America has the worst memories of this individual when he was an instrument of genocidal and imperialist policies in Central America."

Negroponte is widely known to have been complicit with human rights abuses perpetrated by the Honduran military that he worked closely with during his tenure in Honduras. Declassified State Department documents show that Negroponte played a leading role in supporting the U.S. government funded terrorist organization, the Contras, to violently undermine the democratically elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua while he was US Ambassador to Honduras.[...]