Argentina's president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, declared that she "felt a shiver going down my spine when we learned that they are spying on us all through their services in Brazil."
Certainly all of these bourgeois governments have carried out their own spying programs, several of them in collaboration with US intelligence.
Colombia's secret police agency, the Department of Administrative Services, was revealed to be involved in a wide-ranging wire-tapping operation two years ago, targeting members of parliament and Supreme Court justices.
Fernandez de Kirchner was compelled to dismiss a close political ally as minister of security following revelations that the agency was overseeing "Project X," in which the national police were spying on social activists and dissident trade unionists.
Until a recent decision by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, CIA personnel worked directly alongside their Mexican counterparts in "intelligence fusion centers" set up inside Mexico.
And among the reports based on the leaked NSA documents published in O Globo was the revelation that so-called "Special Collection Service" centers were set up by the CIA and the NSA in Brasilia, Bogota, Caracas, Panama City and Mexico City to monitor information from foreign satellites.
Nonetheless, the exposure of the wholesale espionage by US intelligence has escalated tensions between the various Latin American governments and Washington, fueled in no small part by conflicting economic interests under conditions where the historic hegemony of US imperialism in the region has been eroded by increased trade and investment from China and Europe, as well as the growing role of Brazilian capital.
It is expected that the NSA spying operation as well as the recent incident in which the plane of Bolivian President Evo Morales was forced down in Europe over alleged suspicions that it was carrying Edward Snowden from Moscow to asylum in Bolivia will figure prominently in the deliberations of a summit meeting of the Latin American trade bloc, Mercosur, which convenes in Montevideo Friday.
The Organization of American States, a body traditionally dominated by Washington, passed a resolution Tuesday condemning the act of state air piracy conducted by European governments at the behest of the CIA against Morales. Only the US and Canada failed to join in backing the statement, which demanded apologies from the governments of France, Spain, Italy and Portugal and explanations for their actions.
Spain, which initially refused such an apology, changed course Tuesday, with Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo declaring, "If any misunderstanding has taken place, I don't have any objection to saying sorry to President Morales."
Under questioning by reporters. Garcia-Margallo confirmed that the false information that Snowden had been aboard Morales's plane had come from the US.
The Bolivian government has charged that Washington knew its allegations to be false, but spread them as a means of retaliating against Morales for saying he was prepared to offer Snowden asylum and using the incident to intimidate him and anyone else contemplating aid to the ex-NSA contractor.
Despite relentless government and media vilification of Snowden, the latest opinion poll conducted by Quinnipiac University found a clear majority, 55 percent, identifying him as a "whistle-blower," i.e., someone who exposed government crimes, while barely one third agreed with the Obama administration in classifying him as a "traitor."
While it is far from clear whether the offers of asylum made by the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua will amount to more than left-nationalist rhetoric, it is clear that Snowden enjoys massive popular support both in the US and among working people all across the globe. It is only in the political mobilization of this support that his real defense lies.
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