In early July 2013, when the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, was preparing to return home after the Summit of the gas exporting countries in Moscow, his presidential plane was diverted to Vienna in Austria for an unexpected stop after France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy refused to let it go through their airspace, according to Reuters.
False rumors had circulated that the presidential plane carried the ex-contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency, Edward Snowden, who earlier in the year had disclosed secret intelligence information of millions of civilians by the United State government.
President Morales blamed the United States for pressuring the European countries that denied him free passage, reminding those nations that the time of imperialism has long passed. Having offered political asylum in Bolivia to Snowden and knowing that President Morales was not friendly to the policy of the United States, it was only a matter of time that the United States and its allies broke international courtesy rules to keep Snowden from leaving Bolivia.
Bolivia’s government will file a complaint to the United Nations and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights against European countries as a result of holding the presidential plane. Further, the United States has received deeper criticism from certain Latin American governments that did not have a positive disposition towards the United States to begin with.
While nations such as Colombia, Brazil and Chile, and Central American nations have historically maintained friendly relations with the U.S., several other Latin American countries, including Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru and Cuba, have become agitated after the shameful episode and have once again united in their condemnation against the U.S.
In September, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff canceled her state visit to the U.S. because of revelations that the NSA spied on her personal communications between Rousseff and her aids, Reuters reported. U.S. officials claimed that the surveillance was tracking suspected terrorist activity and did not pry into personal communications. Last week, Rousseff released a statement that relations between the two countries will not suffer despite that the White House has not issued an apology to the Brazilian president.
During the decades, offenses have accumulated and popular opinion that “the United States gets into everything” was strengthened further with the Snowden incident. Not only has a single country been offended, but much of Latin America has found further reasons to pull all U.S. influence out of their countries. Most disclosures on various web sites insist that the United States was not in the right to trespass on Bolivian jurisdiction, implying that even if Snowden had been on the plane, the officers had no right to extradite him.
There are a number of reports covering this event, but not all of them are in agreement. Some of them have said that neither France or Portugal denied access to their airspace, while just as many disagreed. Others said that Morales Snowden extended his hand while others find that the alleged offender had never officially applied for political asylum in Bolivia.
Whatever the truth may be, the result was that a presidential plane was detained for a minimum of 13 hours in a foreign country in search of a person who only posed a threat to a country that is located thousands of miles away, international laws of courtesy were unjustly violated, leaving some Latin Americans infuriated.
Some Latinos compare it to a slap in the face of Latin America, and some also take it as an act of aggression, among those the president of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez, who called the incident, “an embarrassment to a sister nation, and for the South American continent.”
The U.S. government has refused to confirm or deny involvement with what occurred, but some insist that it is more likely that this incident is just another diplomatic dispute that will go unnoticed in a long history of international laws trespassed by the United States.
