Despite hopes among many in the Americas that the election of President Obama would mark a shift toward more peaceful US policy engagement in the region, recent actions have dashed them. A prime example is the agreement signed by the administration and the Colombian government in October 2009 allowing the US military largely unfettered access to seven Colombian bases. Shortly thereafter rumors began circulating about increased US military presence in Panama. Then the earthquake in Haiti happened, and the US military was sent to the ravaged island in large numbers.
Though ordered before President Obama took office, the reactivation in June 2008 of the Fourth Fleet, US Navy, deactivated since the end of WWII, also has many civil society organizations in the region on edge. Activists are concerned that the US military presence is in parts of a region rich in natural resources. The biodiverse Amazon basin and oil reserves in Southern Atlantic waters, for example, are believed to be likely targets. A leaked Pentagon budget document referred to the Colombia base agreement as a strategic opportunity to deal with "anti-American governments" in the region.
In response, civil society organizations throughout Latin America have joined forces to counteract this militarization. In January in Porto Alegre, Brazil, during the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the World Social forum, more than 75 international and national groups launched the Continental Campaign against Foreign Military Bases. Modeled after the Continental Campaign against the Free Trade Area of the Americas that successfully derailed the US government's plans for a region-wide free trade agreement, the campaign seeks the removal of U.S. and other foreign bases from Latin America and the Caribbean. The statement issued at the launch of the campaign called the intensification of US military presence "a clear attack against peace, security and sovereignty of all countries in the region."
The statement also calls for the campaign to collaborate with the fight against the criminalization of social protest and the domination and exploitation of the peoples of the region. Colombia provides clear examples of the criminalization and exploitation. One of several scandals that broke in late 2008 was that of extrajudicial executions. More than 2000 cases—and surely many more have gone unreported—of this macabre practice in which young men were lured from poor neighborhoods by paramilitaries, taken to rural areas, killed by the army, dressed up as guerrilla fighters and claimed as combat kills. The practice was also used in some cases to silence human rights defenders and community organizers. As a forthcoming report by the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) will demonstrate, many of the units that committed the largest number of these killings received substantial US military aid and therefore should have been vetted for human rights abuses under the Leahy Amendment.
It is no wonder that civil society organizations from Colombia to Honduras to Argentina oppose the further intensification of US military presence in the region.

Participation in this campaign represents a clear and tangible way in which Latin American solidarity organizations in the U.S. can support their counterparts in Latin America to attain peace, justice and sovereignty for the region. Opportunities for solidarity include participating in a summer delegation to Colombia that will examine the impacts of the new military installations, human rights and free trade in the country; attending the Social Forum of the Americas in Asuncion, Paraguay; or participating in the Anti-Militarization Conference in Columbus, GA. General questions can be directed to John Lindsay-Poland of the FOR at johnlp@igc.org. 

(The author is with the Lain America program of FOR in California .)