The 9/11 attacks in numbers 2:41
(CNN Spanish) -
In just over an hour, four commercial airliners with passengers crashed in different parts of the United States on the morning of September 11, 2001. Two crashed into the Twin Towers in New York, one crashed into the Pentagon and the fourth fell in a field, leaving a total of almost 3,000 dead.
This series of tragic incidents was later revealed as a coordinated effort by 19 hijackers belonging to the Islamist group al Qaeda, who carried out the largest terrorist attack in US history.
20 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks: fast facts you need to know
The United States' response was forceful and its effects are still felt today: Afghanistan, a presumed refuge for al Qaeda, was invaded a month later, starting a 20-year war;
in 2003 it would be Iraq's turn, both actions framed in the so-called "War on Terrorism";
and immigration controls were tightened around the world.
But how did these attacks affect the countries of Latin America, just at the beginning of the new millennium?
CNN consulted specialists about the different effects the attacks had on the region.
The first images
"I think that feeling that the colossus of the north was violated in its main city, the reference point of the West, has had a tremendous impact in Latin America," Antonio Herrera Vaillant, a Venezuelan international analyst and historian, told CNN.
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A worker stands above the ruins and leads cleanup efforts through clouds of smoke as work continues at ground zero on October 11, 2001. (Credit: STAN HONDA / AFP via Getty Images)
"In Latin America, which is very close in general to the United States, it was really inevitable that it would have a psychological impact on its leaders and its populations. That put the region on the side of the United States, in general in this situation and it generated a lot of solidarity at the time.
At the time of the September 11 attacks, Herrera Vaillant was being interviewed by a radio station in Caracas, together with the then secretary of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the Venezuelan Alí Rodríguez Araque.
"Araque asked me what I believed, and I told him that I was praying that it was not a terrorist attack, that it was an accident. Because if it was an attack the reaction would be tremendous," he said.
For Roberto Izurieta, a CNN contributor and professor at George Washington University, the impact of this tragedy affected not only the United States but the entire world, and undoubtedly the region.
Seeing the collapse of the Twin Towers, the suffering and the tragedy, the people who were thrown from the towers, those images will be marked in our minds for the citizens of the world. "
"It was the biggest terrorist tragedy on American soil. I think US intelligence has done a good job of preventing a repeat of it. The images of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan remind us of this instance: ISIS continues to be a threat, as Qaeda less because it is more weakened after 20 years of war, "he told CNN.
The 9/11 attacks in numbers 2:41
In 2001 Izurieta lived in Arlington, Virginia, right in front of the Pentagon building.
"My bedroom window was looking at the Pentagon. I had to go to the office and when I came out of the garage I saw the deep wave of smoke. I got to the office, I turned on the television and I saw one of the Twin Towers catch fire, and I saw live how the second plane crashed. "
Relations between the US and Latin America before and after 9/11
"Latin America and the US had had a relative rapprochement in the 1990s due to communions of agenda and political consensus," Arturo López-Levy, professor of International Relations at Holy Names University, told CNN.
"There was a fundamental agenda in which the North American projections had somehow been accepted by the dominant elites in Latin America," he explained.
López-Levy, who had just arrived in New York when the two planes crashed into the Twin Towers, highlights three areas of encounter: nuclear non-proliferation and the adoption of a security agenda that included terrorism;
the consolidation of representative democracy;
free trade and the negotiation of a continental free trade zone.
Protesters hold a banner with the portraits of the presidents (from left to right) of Cuba, Fidel Castro, of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, of Argentina, Néstor Kirchner, of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, and of Uruguay, Tabaré Vázquez, on November 4, 2005 in Mar del Plata, Argentina.
(Credit: DANIEL GARCIA / AFP via Getty Images)
"The defects of that agenda were already beginning to be expressed in the high vote that was given by some left-wing parties in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile," he said.
In 2005, during the IV Summit of the Americas, the initiative of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) promoted by the United States and Canada was harshly criticized by the governments of Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil and since then it has not prospered.
For his part, Izurieta said that "the United States for many years has not developed a sufficiently ambitious plan for the American continent. I perceive that each country in Latin America could have, depending on its circumstances, full cooperation with the United States." .
"This got worse after the September 11 attacks," he said.
For Eric Rojo, a retired US Army colonel and political analyst, "Washington has always had little interest in Latin America, it has always been more focused on east and west, on China, Japan and NATO. created the Northern Command, Mexico reacted to the Mexican ".
That September 11, Rojo was in Washington having breakfast with his family.
"My son told me that a plane had crashed, and we thought it was an accident," he said.
America looks to the East
A month after 9/11, the United States led, in the framework of what it called the "War on Terrorism", a NATO coalition that invaded Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban regime.
In 2003 the United States also invaded Iraq.
Since then, the country's gaze, and its resources, have largely turned to the Middle East.
Afghan soldiers, left, and US troops blew up a Taliban firing position in the Afghan village of Layadira in February 2013. (Credit: Bryan Denton / The New York Times / Redux)
"Obviously, US resources, while enormous, are not unlimited, and its spending patterns take higher priority where a new threat is presumed," Herrera Vaillant said.
"In the new order of priorities, attention was diverted to Latin America, a region that has not been the center of shocks. By the way, the US attention has always been more important to Europe and Asia."
For López-Levy, "by placing the emphasis on other regions, the agenda of complementation of democratic governance ends up weakening, because it takes a back seat, just at the time of the Inter-American Democratic Charter."
The Inter-American Democratic Charter was approved by the Organization of American States (OAS) precisely on September 11, 2001, and establishes, among other issues, that "any unconstitutional alteration or rupture of the democratic order in a state in the hemisphere constitutes an insurmountable obstacle to the participation of the government of said State "in the body.
"It is important to distinguish the impact of 9/11 from Bush's decision to invade Iraq. That has to do with magnitude. That impact that takes away attention, resources and goodwill from the region, given the decision to change the entire Middle East, a neoconservative project, the US becomes intractable, "he added.
Truncated immigration reform
The September 11 attacks had a huge impact on US immigration policy and the global situation of immigrants.
US President George W. Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox face the press on March 23, 2005. (Credit: Rod Aydelotte- / Pool / Getty Images)
Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, has said that "the narrative on immigration changed dramatically after the tragic events of 9/11," in the foreword to the book "The Effect of 9/11 and Its Legacy in the Law. Immigration Law ".
"Most of the 9/11 hijackers were able to obtain a visa from an American consulate and enter the United States through an inspection point. This revealed a vulnerability in the immigration system and presented the United States government with the difficult task of address these failures, "he noted.
Some of the resulting measures include the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the abolition of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), replaced by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE).
In this regard, López-Levy recalled that "on the issue of hemispheric relations there was a serious immigration reform project. There was the idea of the [Vicente] Fox government, which had requested as a matter of bilateral policy a project to legalize the number of Towering Number of Hispanic Immigrants in the United States ".
At the beginning of 2001, the governments of the United States and Mexico began to discuss a possible immigration reform that included legalizing the immigration status of undocumented Mexicans and an expanded program of opening to temporary workers, but those projects stalled after the 9/11 attacks.
An image of the border between the United States and Mexico.
"In addition, in the 90s a discussion began in the OAS for security issues due to climate change issues. Those two things are frustrated and unfortunately paralyzed. It must be seen as a lowering of the priority of the region and an adulteration of the agenda. ", he indicated.
Rojo considered that the strongest impact in terms of security is that barriers began to be created in the United States that did not exist, especially with Mexico but also with the rest of Latin America.
"To protect ourselves from terrorists, accesses and visas were reduced. Embassies became fortresses and entry processes became more difficult."
"The border relationship with Mexico is not improving," he said.
Izurieta, on the other hand, says he is still waiting for the United States to develop a "comprehensive economic and social plan for the entire region."
"For me it is part of the integral solution to migration problems, first an immigration reform and then measures so that the majority of the citizens of Latin America prefer to stay and work in their countries and are not forced to migrate."
Recategorization of threats
"The public security agenda was diverted according to the new priorities in the US," said López-Levy, meanwhile.
"The adoption of the anti-terrorist paradigm is not the most correct for the security situation in Latin America."
Carlos Medina Gallego, professor of Political Science at the National University of Colombia, recalled that at the time of the 9/11 attacks, Colombia was in the framework of a peace process between the government of Andrés Pastrana and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). ).
"A very eventful process because the correlation of forces was in favor of the insurgent group and there was a withdrawal of the Colombian forces," he told CNN.
A Colombian soldier protects a group of manual eradicators in a coca-planted field in Colombia (Credit: RAUL ARBOLEDA / AFP / Getty Images)
At the time of the attacks, Medina Gallego was developing an investigative work on the phenomenon of drug trafficking in northern Colombia, in an area of high conflict, he said.
"As of the 9/11 attacks, the perception of the armed actors in general in Latin America and in Colombia changed, they went from being armed groups with a political stance to narco-terrorists. That made it become the international legal order to deal with these conflicts. And it took many years for the peace talks to open. Almost a decade passed, "he said, referring to the negotiations started in 2012 by the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC that finally led to an agreement.
"As a consequence of the 9/11 attacks, the military relations of Colombia and Latin America with the United States are transformed. The development of Plan Colombia, which acquires regional connotations, is part of this process of recategorizing threats. The country is going to transform itself. in a strategic place of hemispheric security, "he said.
Plan Colombia, conceived as a military cooperation strategy between Colombia and the United States for the fight against drug trafficking and guerrillas and channeled funds for US $ 10 billion, was launched in 2000. The program ended in 2016, in the middle of the process. of peace between the government and the FARC.
Latin America Terrorism