EU Reaches Out to Latin America for Economic Help

On Friday, Latin American leaders met with their Spanish and Portuguese counterparts in Cadiz, Spain, for the annual Iberoamerican summit. The main topic on the agenda was Europe’s desire to enroll Latin American nations into helping Europe overcome its economic maladies.

Until recently, Latin American countries have largely been economic weaklings in need of aid. Now, however, the former European colonies are becoming stronger, and migration has reversed directions with many Europeans leaving their home countries for a better life in Latin America.

The economic downturn in both the eurozone and in the U.S. has decreased demand for goods from Latin American countries, but the European states are determined to reverse course with help from Latin American nations, and by making strides toward unification among themselves.

Decades ago, Herbert W. Armstrong predicted both of these trends. As early as May 1962, the Plain Truth magazine issued this warning: “Germany’s plans in South America were temporarily halted by its defeat in World War ii. … ‘South America will be conquered by business agents, not by guns!’” (quoting T.H. Teten’s Germany Plots With the Kremlin; emphasis added throughout). Mr. Armstrong knew far in advance that communism would fail to entice the Latinos and that British and American influence would dwindle. He knew it was Europe that would ultimately achieve its long-term goal of economic and religious domination of Latin America. Today, Europe has significantly achieved that goal.

At the summit on Friday, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo explained the other facet of the solution to Europe’s problems: “The European crisis is not an economic crisis but a political one. If we compare our public debts to those of the U.S., ours are better. But the investors prefer to invest in the U.S. and not in the eurozone, because they don’t trust our will to stay together (in Europe).”

The foreign minister’s assessment is eerily similar it is to a forecast Mr. Armstrong made in 1984. He wrote that a massive banking crisis in America “could suddenly result in triggering European nations to unite as a new world power larger than either the Soviet Union or the U.S.” (co-worker letter, July 22, 1984). The U.S. has already suffered a banking crisis to some extent, and the EU sees that political union among its members is the remedy for Europe’s economic trouble, as evidenced by Garcia-Margallo’s statement on Friday.

Expect Europe to continue making inroads into its former Latin American colonies, and to maintain its quest for unification.To understand more about Mr. Armstrong’s predictions and the speed with which they are coming to pass, read He Was Right.