June 27, 2018 marked the 64th anniversary of the US coup that threw out Guatemala’s only democratic government. This move by the CIA set in motion a horror that has had effects that are still horrors today in this small country.
Democracy was forever tossed out of Guatemala and the scourge of that one action is a scourge felt today in the way economic disparity. racism and vast economic favoritism to the elites of this country.
Since the US War On Drugs the horror of living in Guatemala has worsened vastly.
Historically the US United Fruit Company has abused Guatemala as no company ever ought to be allowed to do. President Arbenz (democratically elected) was ousted by the US in favour of the US based Untied fruit Company. President Arbenz had resolved to put limits upon the US based United Fruits company in favour of helping to enrich the poor that were in dire poverty.
The United Fruit Company was a true bastard of US and US companies imperialism. It had bought up about 80% of the arable land in Guatemala and would allow no one to farm on that land. The premise was to be devoid of any sort of competition from anyone in this impoverished country. President Arbenze was pushing through land reform in order to have his nation become fed and healthy. This, of course, the US considers Communism.
United Fruits paid workers minimally in company script – think Tennessee Ernie Ford and his song 16 Tons. Company script could only be spent at the company store so the value of payment was further reduced by inflated pricing. Also, company script meant that no value of the workers’ compensation went into the local local economy.
People began to starve.
To make things even worse, in the 1970s and 80s the US funded, trained and armed killer groups that disappeared over 250,000 Guatemalans and displaced by force over a million people.
In 1999 the UN produced a report that concluded that the government repression had, in Mayan areas, become a genocide. The US has been at the core of serious genocides before and since this one in Guatemala.
President Clinton gave an apology but it was a phony as a three dollar bill.
(“For the United States, it is important that I clearly state that support for [Guatemalan] military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong. The United States must not repeat that mistake.”)
The above is not an apology at all. It was an exit for blame that clearly ought to be thrust upon the USA. All he did was to divert the blame to not include the US. There’d been no error in US policy and the only error was letting the word get out about the business that continues in the region now.
The anniversary of the coup by the US remains a day of mourning ignored in the US and ignored by the ‘friends’ of the US. Certainly Trudeau will make no apologies for Canada completely ignoring these vast crimes of the US. Just as he apologizes for the Jews refuse in 1939 he should apologize for ignoring these actions by the US that are also historic fact. Guatemalans will never hear such an apology and it does bring up the question of what Trudeau does know or does not know.
In the 1980s Reagan began to support a true horror of a war in el Salvador. The Christian Democratic Party in el Salvador had taken over. Obama made a most stupid type of apology that really was not one.
The war in el Salvador was an especially brutal one and was fully supported by the US by President Reagan and by GH Bush as CIA boss and later as Reagan’s Vice President. Any thing the Bushes were into were especially cruel and I do hope that GH Bush will attain the same level of disgust as we have for Hitler. It would be well deserved.
In the 1980s the White House routinely hid the horrors of violence being perpetrated in el Salvador, not only by the el Salvadoran military but by the CIA/etc operatives the gave aid which included training. Training out of the Schools of the Americas basically outposts of the CIA.
An important quote is one made by Archbishop Oscar Arnufo Romera who was subsequently murder by the regime or CIA. Here is his plea just before his murder; “In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression.” Romera was shot saying private mass the next day.
After eight months a military informant gave the US embassy in el Salvador evidence that the murder had been a plot by the far right D’Aubuisson in which soldiers drew lots to have the honour to murder Romero. Supposedly this was reported by the CIA but I find that far fetched as the CIA was deep into this war be Reagan.
D’Aubuisson was still very welcome at the US embassy and when testifying before Congress the State Department man in el Salvador claimed D’Aubuisson to not be an extremist.
Washington’s deceits flamed on without control. And the incidents grew. And Obama’s lies continued later as president.
Reagan and GH Bush continued their technique of denial – a technique that seems never to get out of favour. There were not one but many massacres in el Salvador and the US still tries to keep itself out of the range of accusations and putting the blame directly upon the befuddled Reagan. Reagan was mostly managed by GH Bush and el Salvador was an emblem of how horrible Bush really was. However the media liked to tip-toe round the crimes of Bush in the background of the Hollywood style savagery of Reagan.
Let’s take a look at the main massacre in el Salvador by the Christian Democratic Party aided and abetted by the CIA and CIA agents in the mix in el Salvador training the military on how to do what. Here is the massacre backed by the US. I don’t fall for the gasps of the politicians in power because there seems to have been lots in the ‘Reading Room’ available to all politicians.
IN PART:
Introduction
Between 1980 and 1991, the Republic of El Salvador in Central America was engulfed
in a war which plunged Salvadorian society into violence, left it with thousands and
thousands of people dead and exposed it to appalling crimes, until the day -16 January 1992
– when the parties, reconciled, signed the Peace Agreement in the Castle of Chapultepec, Mexico, and brought back
the light and the chance to re-emerge from madness to hope.
Click to access ElSalvador-Report.pdf
Reading this report I do not understand why Reagan and GH Bush were not put in prison. Seems the report had no intention of actually doing anything to help the people of el Salvador and the report a long-winded naughty-naughty triviality in the end.
We’ skip over the things that made the most news and look at the people of el Salvador.
“In Argentina, Obama tossed white roses into the water at a memorial to the victims of that country’s dirty war. No US official, not even a mid-level one, has ever visited the monument at El Mozote or apologized or expressed regrets about that massacre or, more broadly, for Washington’s active role in funding and encouraging El Salvador’s dirty war.”
As Obama tossed white roses as if this meant anything at all his wars, dirty ones too, expanded and murdered all over the Middle East/North Africa.
The British Telegraph of Tuesday 06 November 2018 had an interesting headline;
“Welcome to Honduras, the most dangerous country on the planet”
(I’d suggest Yemen and Colombia too)
Since the US tore this country apart this country has been driven into fierce and frightening and continuous drug wars. Gangs are a product of the US destabilization of this four country region I’m concentration on today with respect to the Caravan heading north to the US border. The US forces are out, walls are being built the border guards doing overtime and the military lining up for war against an unarmed group hoping to be saved from the ravages that have taken over Honduras since the US interventions now long past.
Let’s go back to 1988 and Reagan. He was running a war along with his bud GH Bush with Nicaragua (which we will speak of lastly) in an effort to support the regime in Nicaragua. Another nasty regime so loved by the US. Reagan/Bush were trying to destabilize the left leaning Sandanistas and had sent 3,000 US soldiers into Nicaragua to fight. Clearly an act of war based upon lies. Another ‘American’ government that lies like a school boy caught again skipping class.
The cruelty of the 50s rose its big head as Reagan tried the old Commy blame game. As with Trump in Iran Reagan tried the destabilization game as if a routine from his Hollywood acting in the was effort of WW2. A brave man on film. A grotesque creature otherwise. Reagan put up millions of dollars in an effort to destabilize the Sandinista government.
Then he created the Contras that were trained, illegally in the US. He pushed the Contras into Nicaragua from two sides; both from Honduras and from Costa Rica – normally a very peace loving country. A few of us; not many understood the Contras to be mercenaries not so much different that the US use of al Qaeda and up to ISIS in the Middle East.
The New York Times had reported that Washington had initiated the call for US Troops and this proved true because the Honduran government could not confirm Sandinista troops ever entering Honduras. The Sandinista war was lost by the US.
However, US policy in Honduras under Obama raises its ugly head.
Under Obama in 2014 more more than 68,000 unaccompanied children were apprehended at the US/Mexico boundary and more than 60,000 in 2016. These children, given from their parents in deep distress because of the past efforts of the US in war upon these countries. Wars that have exploited and dehumanized these countries previously dehumanized by US business slave style practices etc as above.
Honduras did not sink into viciousness on its own. It sank first at the hands of US businesses that were corrupt to the extreme along with the nefarious backing of the CIA both quietly and then loudly destroying millions of lives in favour of US businesses getting rich. This is all about how US policy and actions continue to destroy lives all over our poor world.
This is not a fiction but only a scraping of the surface of US and US business policies in these lands committing them to vast poverty and chaos. The US is doing the same again in Venezuela. You’re likely only going to see lies out of Hollywood movies so I do not trust anything coming out of Hollywood about anything.
I expect as the caravan comes through Mexico and approaches the US the fever in the US will intensify as the ‘news’ ignores the realities of the US actions in other countries will have a murderous event on the border enthused by the President and others in a major criminal set of a ctions both by the US and it’s people.
I expect this because the US and its citizens just don’t care to look at their cruel deeds of the past but will cry and thunder as if they’re Puritans and will slay mothers, fathers and children just as they have done for centuries now.
DH
So Palestine never existed!
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Our Poor World 