The Prince Is Aloft, 60th Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Electra): I've been influenced in life as much by art as by fact - song and fiction have shaped my views as much as historical and current events.  

Jaimie Aiquina is a fictional character, never met, in John Barth's novel, The Tidewater Tales (1989). One of the former lovers of main character Katherine Sherritt Sagamore, Aiquina's influence had led her 

to help establish HOSCA, the anti-interventionist group which could by 1970 boast chapters on fifty major U.S. campuses and serious infiltration by both the FBI and the CIA. The acronym was English - Hands Off South and Central America - but the word was Spanish.  

In the timeframe on the novel (1970), Aiquina was in Santiago de Chile, "trying unsuccessfully to keep our government's hands off his hero and leader, Salvador Allende." It was Aiquina's prediction that "the combined forces of ITT, Anaconda Copper, the Chilean right wing, and the CIA would never permit a Marxist administration in Chile even if legally elected, and that the coup when it came would be a bloodbath in which Chilean democracy would drown like Argentina's, for the rest of this century at least."  

Aiquina believed the generals were going to overthrow Allende and turn Chile into another strong-arm state, with a lot of help from Uncle Sam. He believed that thousands of people like himself will get deseparicido'd: tortured and shot. He hated injustice but was skeptical of revolutions and had no confidence in the ultimate victory of good over evil, but nonetheless invited Katherine Sherritt (she hadn't yet married Peter Sagamore) to live with him in Santiago. 

She declined, but the fact was, she was patriotic. She despised what the U.S. had done in Vietnam and South America and deplored about half of what we'd done in our history. But she did not admire any other major country more, and she liked being American Kathy Sherritt and living on Chesapeake Bay (the tidewater setting of the novel).       

Aiquina was right about Allende. He clashed with the judiciary and with the right-wing parties that controlled Chile's Congress. On September 11, 1973, the military moved to oust Allende's democratically elected government in a coup d'état supported by the CIA. Declassified documents showed that Nixon and Kissinger were aware of the military's plans to overthrow Allende in the days before the revolt. As troops surrounded his residence, Allende gave his last speech vowing never to resign, but later that day, he died by suicide in his office. The exact circumstances of his death are still disputed.

Following Allende's death, General Augusto Pinochet refused to return authority to a civilian government, and Chile was ruled by a military junta, ending more than four decades of uninterrupted democratic governance. He dissolved Congress, suspended the Constitution, and initiated a program of persecuting alleged dissidents, in which at least 3,095 civilians disappeared or were killed. Pinochet's military dictatorship lasted until 1989 when an internationally-backed constitutional referendum led to a peaceful transition to democracy.

As Sherritt-Sagamore's HOSCA would point out, if it were not fictitious, the U.S. has a long and deplorable history in South and Central America. Most recently, the Stable Genius has overseen a major military deployment off the coast of Venezuela, and this week instituted a blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving the country, which he accuses of using oil to fund drug trafficking and other crimes. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who to be sure is not a good person and certainly no Allendel, claims the US seeks regime change instead of stopping drug trafficking. 

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves. U.S. oil companies dominated Venezuela’s petroleum industry until the country’s leaders moved to nationalize the industry in 1976.

On Wednesday, the Stable Genius cited lost US investments when asked about the blockade, suggesting his moves were motivated by disputes over oil investments. “You remember they took all of our energy rights. They took all of our oil not that long ago. And we want it back. They took it – they illegally took it.”  But his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told Vanity Fair that the campaign is actually intended to oust Maduro.

With the huge military buildup, the strikes of alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that have killed at least 100, and increasingly bellicose language, we are clearly heading to war. I deplore and condemn all war and am not willing to see blood sacrificed for oil like this was Iraq in 2003. NO BLOOD FOR OIL! 

Where is the real HOSCA when we need them?