"killing field" in the Americas:
US policy in Guatemala
The early history
The harsh realities of present day Guatemala sprouted from the bitter seeds that were planted in its early history. Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarada (1485-1541) began the conquest and subjugation of the Mayan city-states in the 1500s. Land ownership, mineral production, and agriculture were organized to benefit the Spanish. Although independence came in 1821, foreign control of huge banana and coffee plantations continued the patterns that developed in the colonial period, and Indian lands continued to be confiscated.
In the 1920s, after a century of involvement in agriculture in Guatemala and the export of its food crops, the US established military missions in all Latin American countries. Guatemala's military was tied to the US military through training, aid, and a commitment to protect US economic interests, and the Army became a major force.
United Fruit Company
Under dictator Jorqe Ubico (1931-1944), American-owned United Fruit Company (UFC) gained control of forty-two percent of Guatemala's land, and was exempted from taxes and import duties. The three main enterprises in Guatemala -- United Fruit Company, International Railways of Central America, and Empress Electrica -- were American-owned (and controlled by United Fruit Company). Seventy-seven percent of all exports went to the US and sixty-five percent of imports came from the US.
-----------------------------
United Fruit, Eisenhower and the end of reform
United Fruit was a state within the Guatemalan state. It not only owned all of Guatemala's banana production and monopolized banana exports, it also owned the country's telephone and telegraph system, and almost all of the railroad track. In addition to redistributing United Fruit land, the government also began competing with United Fruit in the production and export of bananas.
Important people in the ruling circles of the US, involved with United Fruit Company, used their influence to convince the US government to step in. (Secretary of State John Foster Dulles' law firm had prepared United Fruit's contracts with Guatemala; his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, belonged to United Fruit's law firm; John Moors Cabot, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, was the brother of a former United Fruit president; President Eisenhower's personal secretary was married to the head of United Fruit's Public Relations Department.)
In 1954, Eisenhower and Dulles decided that Arbenz finally had to go, and the US State Department labeled Guatemala "communist". On this pretext, US aid and equipment were provided to the Guatemalan Army. The US also sent a CIA army and CIA planes. They bombed a military base and a government radio station, and overthrew Arbenz Guzmán, who fled to Cuba.
The coup restored the stranglehold on the Guatemalan economy of both the landed elite and US economic interests. President Eisenhower was willing to make the poor, illiterate Guatemalan peasants pay in hunger and torture for supporting land reform, and for trying to attain a better future for themselves and their families. In order to ensure ever-increasing profits for an American corporation, the US State Department, the CIA, and United Fruit Company had succeeded in taking freedom and land from Guatemala's peasants, unions from its workers, and hope for a democratic Guatemala from all of its people.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/US_Guat.htmlhttp://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2255100 (Plus) Years of Regime Change
George Bush is just the last of a long, long line
by Robert Sherrill
Illustration by Matt Wuerker
Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change
From Hawaii to Iraq
By Stephen Kinzer
Times Books: Henry Holt and Company
=====================================
Overthrow is an infuriating recitation of our government’s military bullying over the past 110 years—a century of interventions around the world that resulted in the overthrow of 14 governments—in Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Chile, Iran, Grenada, Afghanistan, and … Iraq.
Stephen Kinzer, who spent years on various front lines for The New York Times, calls these regime changes “catastrophic victories,” but of course some were more catastrophic than others.
Most of these coups were triggered by foreign combatants and then taken over and finished by us. But four of them, in many ways the worst of the lot, were all our own, from conspiracy to conclusion. “American agents engaged in complex, well-financed campaigns to bring down the governments of Iran, Guatemala, South Vietnam, and Chile. None would have fallen—certainly not in the same way or at the same time—if Washington had not acted as it did.
Death Squads in El Salvador:
A Pattern of U.S. Complicity
by David Kirsch
Covert Action Quarterly, Summer 1990
In 1963, the U.S. government sent 10 Special Forces personnel to El Salvador to help General Jose Alberto Medrano set up the Organizacion Democratica Nacionalista (ORDEN)-the first paramilitary death squad in that country. These Green Berets assisted in the organization and indoctrination of rural "civic" squads which gathered intelligence and carried out political assassinations in coordination with the Salvadoran military.
Now, there is compelling evidence to show that for over 30 years, members of the U.S. military and the CIA have helped organize, train, and fund death squad activity in El Salvador.
In the last eight years, six Salvadoran military deserters have publicly acknowledged their participation in the death squads. Their stories are notable because they not only confirm suspicions that the death squads are made up of members of the Salvadoran military, but also because each one implicates U.S. personnel in death squad activity.
The term "death squad" while appropriately vivid, can be misleading because it obscures their fundamental identity. Evidence shows that "death squads" are primarily military or paramilitary units carrying out political assassinations and intimidation as part of the Salvadoran government's counterinsurgency strategy. Civilian death squads do exist but have often been comprised of off-duty soldiers financed by wealthy Salvadoran businessmen.
==============================================
It is important to point out that the use of death squads has been a strategy of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine. For example, the CIA's "Phoenix Program" was responsible for the "neutralization" of over 40,000 Vietnamese suspected of working with the National Liberation Front.
Part of the U.S. counterinsurgency program was run from the Office of Public Safety (OPS). OPS was part of U.S. AID, and worked with the Defense Department and the CIA to modernize and centralize the repressive capabilities of client state police forces, including those in El Salvador. In 1974 Congress ordered the discontinuation of OPS.
David Kirsh is author of the booklet, "Central America Without Crying Uncle." It is available from Primer Project, 107 Mosswood Court, Chapel Hill, NC 27516.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/deathsquads_ElSal.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
