The writing has been on the wall ever since certain populist leaders gained the upper hand in Latino politics.

Long distracted by events in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East, America has too often ignored the nations that press against its own back door. Now they are clubbing together to form their own regional alliance to replace the Organization of American States (oas). The oas has, to this point, operated as the principle alliance of the Americas, incorporating Canada and the United States. The new alliance is slated to deny Canada and the U.S. a forum at regional summits south of the border.

Washington’s initial reaction to all this was to present a ho-hum attitude of seeming disinterest. Such an response to current developments in this strategic southern Atlantic/Pacific region will prove disastrous to the U.S.

As if to carry more force behind this Latin slap across America’s face, it fell to the leader of America’s closest neighbor, Mexico—source of its largest intake of migrant labor and thus of the flight of billions of dollars via remittances to destinations south of the border—to deliver the blow.

At the conclusion of a two-day summit in Cancun, Mexican President Felipe Calderon announced to participants from 32 nations representing Latin America and the Caribbean that this new bloc “must as a priority push for regional integration … and promote the regional agenda in global meetings.” He added that the name and structure of the new organization will be determined at a further summit to be held in Caracas, Venezuela, next year. Mexico and Brazil are the driving forces behind the new bloc.

In an early sign of strengthening anti-Anglo-Saxon orientation in the region, this Latin bloc threw its weight behind Argentina’s renewed calls for Britain to hand over of the Falkland Islands to that southern Latino nation.

In an early opinion on the new organization, China, already well entrenched in the region, said the development could help Beijing increase its cooperation with Caribbean and Latin American countries. China Daily reported that “Trade between China and Latin America reached $111.461 billion in the first three quarters of 2008, with China’s direct non-financial investment in the region involving trade, manufacturing, gas and oil exploration amounting to $960 million at the end of June in 2008” (February 22).

Yet observers are cautious as to the new bloc’s prospects for success given the disunity that presently divides more conservative leaders in countries such as Colombia, Chile and Peru from leftists such as lead Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. Brazil’s President Lula da Silva is quite often the balancing factor in any political feuds between these factions.

Despite the outward show of bravado in seeking to distance the region from Anglo-Saxon influence, Latin America has no real history of intra-regional cohesion. It is not unlike the unwieldy and fractious European Union in this respect. Yet both these regions have one overarching potentially binding force in common that could, amid crisis, rapidly unify their respective masses together: Roman Catholicism.

International relations guru Hans J. Morgenthau famously declared that true power is the control over the mind. Few pundits in these post-Cold War days appreciate the power of ideology, once unleashed, to control the minds of the masses. Too many commentators raised in post-Cold War secularism consider ideology in international relations as passé.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

It is ideological extremism that drives hatred of the Jew and Anglo-Saxon in the minds of Islamist terrorists and that fuels Islamic expansionism. It is the ideology of Rome that, though it has seemingly lain dormant for decades, is destined to suddenly spark a roaring flame of zealously militant passion in a time of great crisis this world, caught in the vortex of global financial collapse, is hurtling daily toward.

Bible prophecy declares it will be Rome’s religion that finally binds the unwieldy European Union together to give it the political unity it needs in order to lead globally in the near future. The EU will wield that power over a very Catholic Latin America in particular.

It will be Rome’s religious ideology that exerts the power over the minds of the public as it evangelizes anew all traditionally Catholic nations, drawing them into imperial Europe’s developing global economic, financial and military empire. This control is destined to prevail, believe it or not, over and above any influence that other world powers, such as China, may seek to exert in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean. The effort to establish a regional Latin American and Caribbean alliance, excluding the U.S. and Canada, is moving the nations of that region one more step in that direction.

Herbert Armstrong prophesied that this—as not yet fully evident to the public, yet rapidly developing—final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire would ultimately transport people from North America to South America to a condition of servitude in its workforce. Sound unrealistic? Not if you know the astoundingly accurate prophecies for these times in your Bible.

Request a copy of our booklet He Was Right to prove this developing reality in greater detail.