I want to develop a brief history of US "intervention" in Latin America

to post in GD.

So, I'm going to post headings for countries; under those, links to hard ino, under those, a section for our comments.

Please add anything you feel that should be in there. :)

Fox, Inc. Takes Over Mexico
by John Ross
Multinational Monitor magazine, March 2001


Maria Alonso Fernandez arises before dawn to catch the crowded truck to the gates of the San Cristobal ranch so that she will be first in the fields by 7:00 a.m. With 10 brothers and sisters whose upkeep she contributes to, Maria will spend the next eight hours stooping to pick brussel sprouts and broccoli for the U.S. export market. The day will net her 62 pesos, 372 for a six-day week, about $34.

Maria Alonso should not be working at all. She is 12 years old and barred from picking in the fields by Mexican labor law. Even if she was 14, she would still be restricted to a six-hour day.

But Maria and the 30 other children who have been forced by family circumstances to drop out of school and toil at the San Cristobal ranch will have a hard time finding a sympathetic ear to end such exploitation. Child labor is traditional out in the Guanajuato fields. Even if the kids could get a hearing before Mexico's new labor secretary, Carlos Abascal, a former director of the nation's most prestigious business council, it is highly unlikely that he would take legal action against his boss, President Vicente Fox- the owner of the San Cristobal ranch.

(snip)

During the last dizzying days of the campaign, the PRI leader in the lower house of Congress, Enrique Jackson, produced a wad of checks that apparently had been shuffled between the United States, Belgium, and Mexico before being deposited in the Amigos of Fox bank accounts-most were funneled through a Belgium technology company into the U.S. First National Bank and thence to something called the Institute for International Finance in Puebla, Mexico, where they were then dispensed to the famous Amigos. The checks on display had clearly been obtained through means which violated Mexico's elaborate banking secrecy laws. The PRI never filed charges of illicit campaign financing since the evidence would not have been admissible in court.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Mexico/Fox_Inc_Mexico.html

The first time was in 1846, the second and third times, however, are certainly more recent in 1914 and 1916.

http://www.hispanicvista.com/HVC/Columnist/rcontreras/110104contreras.htm

U.S. - Guatemala File
by Robert Parry
www.consortiumnews.com, May 26, 1999

The modern Guatemalan tragedy traces back to 1954 and a CIA-engineered coup against the reform-minded government of Jacobo Arbenz. But other lesser-known chapters in the blood-soaked saga -- spanning 40 years -- also feature American officials in important supporting roles.

Newly released U.S. government documents describe in chilling detail, often in cold bureaucratic language, how American advisers and their Cold War obsession spurred on the killings and hid the horrible secrets.

In the mid-1960s, for instance, the Guatemalan security forces were disorganized, suffering from internal divisions, and possibly infiltrated by leftist opponents. So, the U.S. government dispatched U.S. public safety adviser John Longon from his base in Venezuela.

Arriving in late 1965, Longon sized up the problem and began reorganizing the Guatemalan security forces into a more efficient - and ultimately, more lethal - organization. In a Jan. 4, 1966, report on his activities, Longon said he recommended both overt and covert components to the military's battle against "terrorism."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Central_America/US_Guatemala_File.html

Noam Chomsky's account of the US-backed “contra” counter-insurgency in Nicaragua against the left-wing government brought to power on the back of a popular mass movement from below.

It wasn't just the events in El Salvador that were ignored by the mainstream US media during the 1970s. In the ten years prior to the overthrow of the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979, US television - all networks - devoted exactly one hour to Nicaragua, and that was entirely on the Managua earthquake of 1972.

From 1960 through 1978, the New York Times had three editorials on Nicaragua. It's not that nothing was happening there - it's just that whatever was happening was unremarkable. Nicaragua was of no concern at all, as long as Somoza's tyrannical rule wasn't challenged.

When his rule was challenged, by the Sandinistas in the late 1970s, the US first tried to institute what was called "Somocismo without Somoza" - that is, the whole corrupt system intact, but with somebody else at the top. That didn't work, so President Carter tried to maintain Somoza's National Guard as a base for US power.

The National Guard had always been remarkably brutal and sadistic. By June 1979, it was carrying out massive atrocities in the war against the Sandinistas, bombing residential neighbourhoods in Managua, killing tens of thousands of people. At that point, the US ambassador sent a cable to the White House saying it would be "ill-advised" to tell the Guard to call off the bombing, because that might interfere with the policy of keeping them in power and the Sandinistas out.

http://libcom.org/history/1970-1987-the-contra-war-in-nicaragua

Walker's Expeditions

British and United States interests in Nicaragua grew during the mid-1800s because of the country's strategic importance as a transit route across the isthmus. British settlers seized the port of San Juan del Norte--at the mouth of the Río San Juan on the southern Caribbean coast--and expelled all Nicaraguan officials on January 1, 1848. The following year, Britain forced Nicaragua to sign a treaty recognizing British rights over the Miskito on the Caribbean coast. Britain's control over much of the Caribbean lowlands, which the British called the Mosquito Coast (present-day Costa de Mosquitos), from 1678 until 1894 was a constant irritant to Nicaraguan nationalists. The start of the gold rush in California in 1849 increased United States interests in Central America as a transoceanic route, and Nicaragua at first encouraged a United States presence to counterbalance the British.

The possibility of economic riches in Nicaragua attracted international business development. Afraid of Britain's colonial intentions, Nicaragua held discussions with the United States in 1849, leading to a treaty that gave the United States exclusive rights to a transit route across Nicaragua. In return, the United States promised protection of Nicaragua from other foreign intervention. On June 22, 1849, the first official United States representative, Ephraim George Squier, arrived in Nicaragua. Both liberals and conservatives welcomed the United States diplomat. A contract between Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, a United States businessman, and the Nicaraguan government was signed on August 26, 1849, granting Vanderbilt's company--the Accessory Transit Company--exclusive rights to build a transisthmian canal within twelve years. The contract also gave Vanderbilt exclusive rights, while the canal was being completed, to use a land-and-water transit route across Nicaragua, part of a larger scheme to move passengers from the eastern United States to California. The westbound journey across Nicaragua began by small boat from San Juan del Norte on the Caribbean coast, traveled up the Río San Juan to San Carlos on Lago de Nicaragua, crossed Lago de Nicaragua to La Virgen on the west shore, and then continued by railroad or stagecoach to San Juan del Sur on the Pacific coast. In September 1849, the United States-Nicaragua treaty, along with Vanderbilt's contract, was approved by the Nicaraguan Congress.

British economic interests were threatened by the United States enterprise led by Vanderbilt, and violence erupted in 1850 when the British tried to block the operations of the Accessory Transit Company. As a result, United States and British government officials held diplomatic talks and on April 19, 1850, without consulting the Nicaraguan government, signed the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, in which both countries agreed that neither would claim exclusive power over a future canal in Central America nor gain exclusive control over any part of the region. Although the Nicaraguan government originally accepted the idea of a transit route because of the economic benefit it would bring Nicaragua, the operation remained under United States and British control. Britain retained control of the Caribbean port of San Juan del Norte, and the United States owned the vessels, hotels, restaurants, and land transportation along the entire transit route.

Continued unrest in the 1850s set the stage for two additional elements in Nicaragua history: frequent United States military interventions in Nicaragua and a propensity for Nicaragua politicians to call on the United States to settle domestic disputes. In 1855 a group of armed United States filibusters headed by William Walker, a soldier of fortune from Tennessee who had previously invaded Mexico, sailed to Nicaragua intent on taking over. Internal conflict facilitated Walker's entry into Nicaragua. In 1853 conservative General Fruto Chamorro had taken over the government and exiled his leading liberal opponents. Aided by the liberal government in neighboring Honduras, an exile army entered Nicaragua on May 5, 1854. The subsequent conflict proved prolonged and bloody; Chamorro declared that his forces would execute all armed rebels who fell into their hands, and the liberal leader, General Máximo Jérez, proclaimed that all government supporters were traitors to the nation.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/walker.htm

As I watched the votes being counted in San Miguel, El Salvador, and listened to the arrogant cheers of the ARENA supporters, one question loomed large for me as a U.S. citizen what would the March 21 elections have looked like without the "U.S. factor"?

U.S. State Department intervention in the Salvadoran campaign started in June 2003 and escalated in February when Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega went to El Salvador to denounce the leftist FMLN party and to call on people to vote for someone who "shares our vision and values." Less than a week before the elections, White House envoy Otto Reich linked the FMLN to various terrorist groups and reiterated the Administration's threats that an FMLN triumph could severely impact the trade, economic, and migratory relations between the U.S. and El Salvador.

The clincher came three days before the elections when Representative Thomas Tancredo (R-Colorado) threatened to introduce legislation that would control the flow of remittances (money sent home from Salvadorans working in the U.S.) should the FMLN win.

Why was the U. S. watching these elections so closely? In part, because of CAFTA, the proposed U.S.-Central American Free Trade Agreement that Bush hopes to sign into law this year. The FMLN, the party of the former guerrillas that holds the most seats in the Salvadoran National Assembly, publicly opposes the trade deal and has pledged to fight it. For several months this winter, and for the first time in the history of El Salvador, the FMLN was in a statistical tie with the right-wing ARENA party. For a while it seemed as if El Salvador would follow in the footsteps of Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina by electing a leftist government that would oppose U.S. policies of "free" trade and neoliberalism.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Central_America/Salvador_Pres_Elec.html

History

Before the arrival of the Spaniards, El Salvador was inhabited by the Pipils, descendants of the Aztecs and the Toltecs of Mexico, who had arrived in the 12th cent. In 1524 Pedro de Alvarado landed and began a series of campaigns that resulted in Spanish control. With independence from Spain in 1821, it became briefly a part of the Mexican Empire of Augustín de Iturbide, and after the empire collapsed (1823) El Salvador joined the Central American Federation. El Salvador protested the dominance of Guatemala and under Francisco Morazán succeeded in having the federal capital transferred (1831) to San Salvador. After the dissolution of the federation (1839), the republic was plagued by frequent interference from the dictators of neighboring countries, notably Rafael Carrera and Justo Rufino Barrios of Guatemala and José Santos Zelaya of Nicaragua.

The primacy of coffee cultivation in the economy began in the second half of the 19th cent. Intense cultivation led to the predominance of landed proprietors, and the economy became vulnerable to fluctuations in the world market price for coffee. In 1931, Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, capitalizing on discontent caused by the collapse of coffee prices, led a coup. His dictatorship lasted until 1944, after which there was chronic political unrest.

Under the authoritarian rule of Major Oscar Osorio (1950–56) and Lt. Col. José María Lemus (1956–60) considerable economic progress was made. Lemus was overthrown by a coup, and after a confused period a junta composed of leaders of the National Conciliation party came to power in June, 1961. The junta's candidate, Lt. Col. Julio Adalberto Rivera, was elected president in 1962. He was succeeded in 1967 by Col. Fidel Sánchez Hernández.

Relations with Honduras deteriorated in the late 1960s. There was a border clash in 1967, and a four-day war broke out in July, 1969. The Salvadoran forces that had invaded Honduras were withdrawn, but not until 1992 was an agreement that largely settled the border controversy with Honduras signed. The last disputed border area was finally marked in 2006.

In the 1970s El Salvador's overpopulation, economic problems, and inequitable social system led to social and political unrest; by the end of the decade, murder and other terrorism by leftist guerrillas and especially by right-wing “death squads” had become common. In 1979, Gen. Carlos Humberto Romero, the last in a series of presidents whose elections were denounced by many as fraudulent, was overthrown by a military junta. Murders and other terrorism continued, and the unrest erupted into a full-scale civil war between the government and guerrillas of the leading opposition group, the FMLN.


The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003,

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/elsalvador/index.html?inline=nyt-geo

The first Spanish attempt to subjugate this area failed in 1524, when Pedro de Alvarado was forced to retreat by Pipil warriors. In 1525, he returned and succeeded in bringing the district under control of the Captaincy General of Guatemala, which retained its authority until 1821, despite an abortive revolution in 1811. It was Alvarado who named the district for "El Salvador ("The Savior.")

(snip)

n 1821, El Salvador and the other Central American provinces declared their independence from Spain. When these provinces were joined with Mexico in early 1822, El Salvador resisted, insisting on autonomy for the Central American countries. Guatemalan troops sent to enforce the union were driven out of El Salvador in June 1822. El Salvador, fearing incorporation into Mexico, petitioned the United States Government for statehood. But in 1823, a revolution in Mexico ousted Emperor Agustín de Iturbide, and a new Mexican congress voted to allow the Central American provinces to decide their own fate. That year, the United Provinces of Central America was formed of the five Central American states under Gen. Manuel José Arce.

(sniP)

El Salvador in its early history was impenetrably localized, aided by its geography, its unbridged rivers that could only be crossed at fords and its lack of any linking highway that could take wheeled vehicles. The first highway for wheeled traffic was begun in 1855. Thus the "Fourteen Families" (actually many dozens of families) that have controlled El Salvador's history were all but independent territorial magnates. Through the 19th century, the much-amended (1859, 1864, 1871, 1872, 1880, 1883, 1886) constitution of 1824 provided for a unicameral legislature of 70 deputies, in which 42 seats (a majority) was set aside for the landowners (3 representing each of the 14 Department), technically chosen by the popular vote. Each Departmental governor however, was appointed by the president. The system was easily manipulated. During the later 19th century smaller landholding, and traditional communal holdings that predated written deeds, were absorbed into the coffee plantations (fincas). The great majority of Salvadoreans were landless.

El Salvador in its early history was impenetrably localized, aided by its geography, its unbridged rivers that could only be crossed at fords and its lack of any linking highway that could take wheeled vehicles. The first highway for wheeled traffic was begun in 1855. Thus the "Fourteen Families" (actually many dozens of families) that have controlled El Salvador's history were all but independent territorial magnates. Through the 19th century, the much-amended (1859, 1864, 1871, 1872, 1880, 1883, 1886) constitution of 1824 provided for a unicameral legislature of 70 deputies, in which 42 seats (a majority) was set aside for the landowners (3 representing each of the 14 Department), technically chosen by the popular vote. Each Departmental governor however, was appointed by the president. The system was easily manipulated. During the later 19th century smaller landholding, and traditional communal holdings that predated written deeds, were absorbed into the coffee plantations (fincas). The great majority of Salvadoreans were landless.

From the 1930s to the 1970s, authoritarian governments employed political repression and limited reform to maintain power, despite the trappings of democracy. The National Conciliation Party was in power from the early 1960s until 1979.Fidel Sánchez Hernández was president from 1967 to 1972. In July 1969 El Salvador invaded Honduras in the short Football War. During the 1970s, the political situation began to unravel. In the 1972 presidential election, the opponents of military rule united under José Napoleón Duarte, leader of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC). Amid widespread fraud, Duarte's broad-based reform movement was defeated. Subsequent protests and an attempted coup were crushed and Duarte exiled. These events eroded hope of reform through democratic means and persuaded those opposed to the government that armed insurrection was the only way to achieve change. As a consequence, leftist groups capitalizing upon social discontent gained strength. By 1979, leftist guerrilla warfare had broken out in the cities and the countryside, launching what became a 12-year civil war. A cycle of violence took hold as rightist vigilante death squads in turn killed thousands. The poorly trained Salvadoran Armed Forces (ESAF) also engaged in repression and indiscriminate killings, the most notorious of which was the El Mozote massacre in December 1981 in which some 900 civilians were slaughtered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_El_Salvador

The Battle for Human Rights in El Salvador (1975-1999)
An academic article on the evolving human rights discourse during the country's civil war.
By Mark Engler
Presented to the symposium, "Human Rights: Changes and Challenges," Georgia Institute of Technology, April 30, 1999.

Note: The full text of this article is available upon request to Mark Engler.

SUMMARY

For several years during the late 1980s, a visitor entering El Salvador by plane was immediately made aware that human rights were a charged issue in the country. Posters throughout El Salvador's International Airport pictured a young girl with only one leg; the other, the government suggested, had been lost to a guerrilla land mine. "And her human rights?" The poster rhetorically asked, and with this question it aimed to debunk all those who had shortsightedly claimed that the Salvadoran military, in its stalwart defense against communist insurgency, had done anything less than champion the cause of human rights.

Before the end of the war in 1992 the government of El Salvador, making use of over a billion dollars in U.S. military aid, would murder more than 60,000 of its citizens. The sheer magnitude of the killing made it impossible to hide from international view, and El Salvador became a focus of the nascent human rights movement that had emerged in the 1970s. In the United States, President Reagan's proclaimed resolve to defeat communism at any cost was denounced by large groups of "anti-imperialist" protesters. El Salvador also drew the attention of Christians throughout the world, who witnessed the Catholic Church in the country courageously stand in defense of the "rights of the poor."

In this El Salvador of bloody dispute, one commonality united the many conflicting forces: each claimed to stand in defense of human rights. Of course, the nature of these rights was itself a matter of contention, so much so that this country became a crucial proving ground for various conceptions of human rights. In the face of an authoritarian disregard for human life various actors invoked liberal, Marxist, religious views of rights. This complexity alone justifies the use of El Salvador as a case study for examining how the contested theoretical terrain of human rights is mirrored in actual conflict.

As compelling, however, is the fact that the struggle for human rights in El Salvador has shifted but has not ended. For those who accepted the U.S. State Department move to equate human rights with procedural democracy, this small Latin American country finished its tenure as a human rights "problem" with U.N.-monitored elections in 1994. Likewise, for international monitoring groups whose work centers on drawing attention to the most heinous and sanguine of the world's human rights crises, this country no longer merits much focus. But the situation appears very differently to those living in El Salvador, who are now struggling to combat overwhelming poverty, stark economic inequality, a corrupt judiciary, and an epidemic of gang violence. It is through considering their predicament that we can ask how the language of human rights can continue to be a relevant and influential force: How do we talk about human rights in "post-human-rights" El Salvador?

http://www.democracyuprising.com/articles/older/es_hr.php

El Salvador Mathew Creelman, 2003

On a sunny July morning in the town of Alegría, in the mountainous coffee region of Usulután, Catholic workers show a US Government-produced video titled The Hidden Enemy. Ominous music accompanies images of dead bodies, brutal beatings and migrants succumbing to the desert heat along the US southern border.

A few kilometres away, members of the Santa María II coffee co-operative meet to discuss their plight: during the past two years coffee prices were so low, they could not afford fertilizer. Yields dropped sharply and this year they skipped picking where the berries were sparse. Unpicked coffee beans are now spreading the Broca disease, which threatens to destroy next year’s already diminished crop.

For decades, coffee and migration have given the Salvadoran economy stability. One in four Salvadorans lives in the US and 82 per cent of the country’s coffee farms are in the hands of small producers and co-operatives. Today, both migration and coffee are increasingly dubious options for the 45 per cent of people living in poverty.

(snip)

US President George W Bush last year called President Francisco Flores his favourite Latin American leader. You can see why. El Salvador went from having the most advanced revolutionary movement in the region to being the most stable and promising Central American market economy of the last decade. With $2,000 million in remittances pouring in each year from 2.3 million Salvadoran workers in the US, the economy had the reserves needed to assure a smooth transition three years ago from the colón to the US dollar.

http://www.newint.org/issue361/profile.htm

The Colombian weekly Semana took note in its August 23,1999, edition of the remarkable number of U.S. veterans of the war in El Salvador in the 1980s who have turned their attention to Colombia. Among them:

U S Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Pickering, who, as ambassador to El Salvador in 1984, justified the widespread killing of civilians by the Salvadoran army on the grounds that the civilians were masas (i e, part of the mass social base of the insurgent FMLN) and were therefore "somewhat more than innocent civilian bystanders."

Even the establishment human rights organization Americas Watch was flabbergasted, and pointed out that the U.S. State Department had condemned the bombing of civilian populations in the strongest terms only a few months earlier. However, Americas Watch noted, the State Department was speaking of Afghanistan, not El Salvador.

"When it comes to El Salvador, the State Department has an entire]y different attitude," the Watch committee noted, and quoted from Pickering's February 25, 1984, cable, which was widely circulated in Congress and among right-wing columnists.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Latin_America/Salvador_Boys.html

Hugo Chávez
By Greg Palast
The Progressive

July 2006 Issue

You'd think George Bush would get down on his knees and kiss Hugo Chávez's behind. Not only has Chávez delivered cheap oil to the Bronx and other poor communities in the United States. And not only did he offer to bring aid to the victims of Katrina. In my interview with the president of Venezuela on March 28, he made Bush the following astonishing offer: Chávez would drop the price of oil to $50 a barrel, "not too high, a fair price," he said-a third less than the $75 a barrel for oil recently posted on the spot market. That would bring down the price at the pump by about a buck, from $3 to $2 a gallon.

But our President has basically told Chávez to take his cheaper oil and stick it up his pipeline. Before I explain why Bush has done so, let me explain why Chávez has the power to pull it off-and the method in the seeming madness of his "take-my-oil-please!" deal.

Venezuela, Chávez told me, has more oil than Saudi Arabia. A nutty boast? Not by a long shot. In fact, his surprising claim comes from a most surprising source: the U.S. Department of Energy. In an internal report, the DOE estimates that Venezuela has five times the Saudis' reserves.

However, most of Venezuela's mega-horde of crude is in the form of "extra-heavy" oil-liquid asphalt-which is ghastly expensive to pull up and refine. Oil has to sell above $30 a barrel to make the investment in extra-heavy oil worthwhile. A big dip in oil's price-and, after all, oil cost only $18 a barrel six years ago-would bankrupt heavy-oil investors. Hence Chávez's offer: Drop the price to $50-and keep it there. That would guarantee Venezuela's investment in heavy oil.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/062906D.shtml

First there was the appropriation of natural assets by Great Britain and the USA, keeping the country in poverty, after the country severed its ties with Spain in the Nineteenth Century for starters.

Second the assassination of a Democratically elected president, with the aid of our State Department under Henry Kissinger during Nixon's administration. This resulted in the country becoming a brutal fascist dictatorship under Augusto Pinnochet.

I will post more on this when I get some historical material together and I will give you some ancedotal information from myself and other Chileans I have spoken to.

Thanks for posting. I think we need to put some history up on this board.

US 'undermined Chile's democracy'
The US Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, has released thousands of secret documents relating to covert operations in Chile before and during the period of military rule there.

Among the 16,000 documents is a CIA memorandum confirming US funded attempts to undermine the democratically elected Marxist president, Salvador Allende, who was overthrown in a bloody coup in 1973.

A researcher at the National Security Archive in Washington Peter Kornbluh, told the BBC he thought the documents would re-write America's role in Chile.

Earlier records showed that the US turned a blind eye to political repression against opponents of the military ruler, General Augusto Pinochet, who came to power in the coup.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1022347.stm

I recently got hold of a declassified memorandum about Henry Kissinger's only meeting with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. The meeting occurred on June 8, 1976, in Santiago, and the internal State Department memorandum shows how hard Kissinger tried to shield the Chilean general from criticism and assure him that his human rights violations were not a serious problem as far as the U.S. government was concerned.

I had been trying since 1995 to get the memorandum, which was stamped Secret/Nodis (No Distribution). My initial request was refused, but suddenly, to my surprise, the State Department "memorandum of conversation" arrived in the mail in October, shortly after Pinochet's arrest, with a note explaining that, on re-review, it had been opened in full.

The memo describes how Secretary of State Kissinger stroked and bolstered Pinochet, how--with hundreds of political prisoners still being jailed and tortured--Kissinger told Pinochet that the Ford Administration would not hold those human rights violations against him. At a time when Pinochet was the target of international censure for state-sponsored torture, disappearances, and murders, Kis-singer assured him that he was a victim of communist propaganda and urged him not to pay too much attention to American critics.

http://www.thememoryhole.org/pol/kissinger-declass.htm

What Brought Evo Morales to Power?

By ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ

What has been left out of reports and analysis in both the mainstream press and among anti-imperialists and leftists about the triumph of Evo Morales' election as President of Bolivia is the role played by the three-decade international indigenous movement that preceded it. Few are even aware of that powerful and remarkable historic movement, which springs from generations of grassroots organizing.

If the left, particularly the Latin American left, misses this point, it's a shame, as mistrust of and racism against the indigenous nations has been the Achilles heel of previous revolutionary movements in Latin America (as well as North America).

Indeed, some indigenous activists and organizations in the Andean region are wary of Evo Morales because of his left politics and alliances, for the very reason that the Latin American left has so consistently either ignored indigenous issues and aspirations, or used the indigenous and tossed them aside (recall that the liberation armies of Bolivar and San Martin and the independence movement and 20th century revolution in Mexico, as well as the recent Guatemalan revolution, were made up of indigenous foot soldiers).

The burden is on the American (and I mean Western Hemisphere) left to catch up with what has been going on with the indigenous movement in order to understand the victory of Evo Morales, which is a victory for the indigenous peoples of the world AND for anti-imperialism/anti-capitalism. If there is ever to be socialism and just societies in the Americas, the leadership and form of it must come from the indigenous peoples. Peruvian communist pioneer, José Carlos Mariátegui recognized this reality, and it's time to take another look at past and future strategies and not just pay guilty lip service to the "plight" of indigenous peoples.

http://www.counterpunch.org/ortiz02102006.html

The Return of the Repressed?
South America in the Age of US Supremacy
by Jorge Rogachevsky
Resist newsletter, July / August 2002

A t this time, South America finds itself steeped in the quagmire of its own historical failures, a situation fraught with both promise and danger. Economic chaos could give way to social chaos and ultra-right political shifts. On the other hand, new alternatives for progressive social change could emerge, at a time when few such options appear to be taking root anywhere else in the world. The United States will certainly play a key role in any future developments, just as it holds significant responsibility for the failures of the past.

Three South American societies-Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela-show the overall limitations of US policy towards Latin America. Each in its own way threatens to dismantle the post-Cold War policy framework developed by the United States.

US Historical Role as Co-Conspirator

To understand the present and what the future might bring, it's important to recapitulate the role of the United States as a co-conspirator in the history of atrocities that precedes the current moment.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/South_America/Return_Repressed.html

US Campaign against Haiti: Why?
by Dale Sorenson, MITF Director
MITF Report, April 4, 2001


Why are the US government and its friends in the corporate media mounting a new campaign against a country and people moving towards genuine democratic development? Here's a thumbnail sketch of reasons.

* Haiti is resisting corporate globalization.

Since 1994 the Haitian people and government have stood their ground against intense pressure to adopt neoliberal economic policies (opening markets to US goods, austerity programs, and the privatization of state owned enterprises). Newly elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has continued to be a spokesman for an alternative vision that places human development at the center of all economic programs.

To date only the flour mill and the cement plant have been sold. Now Aristide is back in power and the US is again tightening the screws, hoping to force privatization.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Haiti/US_Campaign_Haiti.html

An interview of Noam Chomsky by David Barsamian
from the book Secrets, Lies and Democracy, published in 1994
Odonian Press

Let's stay in Latin America and the Caribbean, which Henry Stimson called "our little region over here which has never bothered anyone." Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president of Haiti in what's been widely described as a free and democratic election. Would you comment on what's happened since?

When Aristide won in December 1990 (he took office in February, 1991), it was a big surprise. He was swept into power by a network of popular grassroots organizations, what was called Lavalas-the flood-which outside observers just weren't aware of (since they don't pay attention to what happens among poor people). There had been very extensive and very successful organizing, and out of nowhere came this massive popular organization that managed to sweep their candidate into power.

The US was willing to support a democratic election, figuring that its candidate, a former World Bank official named Marc Bazin, would easily win. He had all the resources and support, and it looked like a shoe-in. He ended up getting 14% of the vote, and Aristide got about 67%. The only question in the mind of anybody who knows a little history should have been, How is the US going to get rid of Aristide? The disaster became even worse in the first seven months of Aristide's office. There were some really amazing developments.

Haiti is, of course, an extremely impoverished country, with awful conditions. Aristide was nevertheless beginning to get places. He was able to reduce corruption extensively, and to trim a highly bloated state bureaucracy. He won a lot of international praise for this, even from the international lending institutions, which were offering him loans and preferential terms because they liked what he was doing.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/ChomskyOdonian_Haiti.html

http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/womensstudies/bibliogs/puerwom.htm

The colonial legacy of controlling women's sexuality and reproduction continues to prevail with such policies as the testing of the I.U.D., birth control pills and the sterilization of women. In the case of sterilization, the subject of this bibliography, between the 1930s and the 1970s approximately one-third of Puerto Rico's female population of childbearing age had undergone the operation, the highest rate in the world. So common was the practice that the words "sterilization" and "la operacion" (the operation) were used interchangeably. The massive sterilization of Puerto Rican females warrants that their experience be brought to the forefront, and there's the hope that this bibliography will stimulates interest and further research in the subject.


http://chnm.gmu.edu/wwh/modules/lesson16/lesson16.php?s=0

In 1917, with the support of American industrialists, scientists, social workers, and middle and upper-class Puerto Ricans influenced by neo-Malthusian arguments supporting widespread birth control, public health officials decided to put into effect a plan to control the birth rate on the island. This policy, though seemingly based on scientific principles, was based on a set of stereotypes about Puerto Ricans that characterized them as racially inferior and unable to make their own decisions about their fertility. It is in this way that the insular government developed public policy to control what they labeled as a “culture of poverty.” In this regard the fate of the Puerto Rican women was in the hands of American scientists and demographers and local government officials. By distinguishing between superior and inferior persons in their policy of population control, these officials implemented policies based on eugenic assumptions that served the needs of U.S. business interests by disciplining the reproductive habits of their workforce.

Americans’ views about the connection between Puerto Rican racial inferiority and what they saw as an out-of-control birth rate reinforced the assumptions that justified the Americans’ presence on the island. One might agree with Nancy Stepan’s book The Hour of Eugenics where she observes that for an imperial power like the United States, “Eugenics, was more than a set of national programs embedded in national debates; it was also part of international relations.” Thus, the attempt to discipline the reproductive habits of Puerto Rican women was not unusual since they were colonial subjects and the population policy was part of the colonial experiment.

Other links...
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9602%28196101%2966%3A4%3C389%3ATFAPCA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G&size=LARGE

http://www.puertorico-herald.org/issues/2004/vol8n27/AngerPill.shtml

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3926ba0b3bfa.htm

Puerto Rico, The Great Experiment

Population control came to Puerto Rico in the early 1900s largely through the efforts of Protestant denominations and evangelical sects who wished to refashion Puerto Rican society and Catholic culture along more White-Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) lines. The Neo-Malthusian program was openly eugenic--to improve, what the WASPs perceived as "inferior human stock" (principally through direct sterilizations). (11) This island served as the United States' first experimental model for "the intelligent and scientific control of population," the key element of which was the "education of the people and overcoming the prejudices of the Catholic Church."

http://www.nl.edu/academics/cas/ace/resources/campos.cfm

He was called "El Maestro" by all who loved him and valued his leadership. Pedro Albizu Campos was the most prominent Puerto Rican political figure of the 20th century, a National Hero who sacrificed his life for the freedom of his country. Under his direction, the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico became a major force in the fight for independence. A powerful speaker, thousands would gather to listen to his passionate discourses of freedom. He urged the Puerto Rican people to reclaim their cultural history and national symbols such as the flag and the national anthem.

Pedro Albizu Campos was instrumental in winning an island wide sugar cane strike and exposing secret medical experiments sponsored by the Rockefeller Institute. He developed the theory of non-collaboration (retraimiento) with the colonial structures, i.e. boycotting elections and military service. He soon became a target of the colonial forces and was arrested and charged with seditious conspiracy. From the mid-thirties to the early sixties, Pedro Albizu Campos would be in and out of U.S. prisons (25 years). During his incarceration, he repeatedly charged that he was a target of human radiation experiments. His skin severely swollen and cracking he covered himself with wet towels. Jailers thought he was crazy, but today there is proof that radiation experiments did take place.

Philosophically Pedro Albizu Campos was neither a communist nor an anti-American. In fact, he was a deeply religious man of the Catholic faith.

"The good people of the U. S. are not to be blamed for the shameless conduct of certain government officials." He argued in court and at the podium, that the U.S. occupation of Puerto Rico was illegal. His legal argument was based on the question of the USA being awarded proprietary rights over Puerto Rico by virtue of the Paris Peace Treaty of 1898. The island was handed over by Spain along with Cuba and the Philippines as spoils of war to the U.S.

http://www.ahrp.org/history/chronology.php

1931: Dr. Cornelius Rhoads, a pathologist, conducted a cancer experiment in Puerto Rico under the auspices of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations. Dr. Rhoads has been accused of purposely infecting his Puerto Rican subjects with cancer cells. Thirteen of the subjects died. A Puerto Rican physician uncovered the experiment an investigation covered-up the facts. Despite Rhoads' hand written statements that the Puerto Rican population should be eradicated, Rhoads went on to establish U.S. Army Biological Warfare facilities in Maryland, Utah, and Panama, and was later named to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Rhoads was also responsible for the radiation experiments on prisoners, hospital patients, and soldiers. The American Association for Cancer Research honored him by naming its exemplary scientist award the Cornelius Rhoads Award.


http://www.puertorico-herald.org/issues/2002/vol6n44/PROutragMedExp-en.shtml

SAN JUAN, Oct. 21 (IPS) -- Puerto Rican activists are outraged by news that local residents were used as guinea pigs in two sets of secret medical experiments.

The first tests were allegedly carried out by a doctor whose cancer research in a local hospital in the 1930s reportedly included injecting unknowing patients with cancer cells.

The second experiments, using biological and chemical weapons, were performed by the U.S. military in the 1960s and 1970s at various locations in the United States and beyond, including the Puerto Rico town of Vieques .

Since April 1999, Vieques has been the site of a prolonged and massive civil disobedience campaign against the U.S. Navy presence there.

Well over 1,000 activists have been arrested and imprisoned for trespassing on the firing range, including actor Edward James Olmos, environmentalist Robert Kennedy Jr., Rev. Al Sharpton and U.S. Congressman Luis Gutierrez.

Link from a post that I started in this forum. Long thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=379x1000

This post is a great idea, a way for all to learn a little about Latin America and the reasons why even with all the resources available some nations seem to be lagging.

America. I'm going to try to spend a little time every day finding something clear and accurate.

Competition or Massacre?
Central American Farmers' Dismal Prospects Under CAFTA
by Tom Ricker
Multinational Monitor, April 2004

"Prices are so low we have to grow more and more just to meet ends."

That's how a leader of a new Nicaraguan campesino organization, FEDICAMP, describes the current situation for small farmers here.

Already struggling to compete with subsidized imports from the United States, small farmers in Nicaragua are concerned about the prospect of being inundated with corn and rice imports sold below costs of production if the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is implemented.

CAFTA-referred to as El TLC, the free trade treaty in Spanish-is already well known and much feared in Central America. The roadsides in Managua are full of graffiti denouncing the agreement. The favorite is "TLC = miseria" (CAFTA equals misery).

The ruling governments in Central America, however, celebrate CAFTA. In March 2004, trade and commerce ministers from Central America came to Washington, D.C. to lobby members of the U.S. Congress to pass the agreement. Ministers argue that CAFTA will help consolidate democracies in the region and open a new path for development. "This is the consolidation of a very difficult, very grave process that for some of our neighbors started with civil war. It has taken courage and vision to get to this point," Alberto Trejos, Costa Rica's Trade Minister told reporters.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Trade/CAFTA_Massacre.html

http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/50.htm

Excerpt: In Monroe's message to Congress on December 2, 1823, he delivered what we have always called the Monroe Doctrine, although in truth it should have been called the Adams Doctrine. Essentially, the United States was informing the powers of the Old World that the American continents were no longer open to European colonization, and that any effort to extend European political influence into the New World would be considered by the United States "as dangerous to our peace and safety." The United States would not interfere in European wars or internal affairs, and expected Europe to stay out of American affairs.

What is the SOA?

The School of the Americas (SOA), in 2001 renamed the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation,” is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Initially established in Panama in 1946, it was kicked out of that country in 1984 under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty. Former Panamanian President, Jorge Illueca, stated that the School of the Americas was the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.” The SOA, frequently dubbed the “School of Assassins,” has left a trail of blood and suffering in every country where its graduates have returned.

Over its 59 years, the SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. These graduates have consistently used their skills to wage a war against their own people. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, “disappeared,” massacred, and forced into refugee by those trained at the School of Assassins.

http://www.soaw.org/new/type.php?type=8

Manifest Destiny
A Conversation With David M. Pletcher
Indiana University

What were the driving forces behind the United States' quest for Manifest Destiny during the 19th century?

The term "Manifest Destiny" was, in part, an expression of a genuine ideal on the part of Americans. But it was also a justification, in that they wanted territory and needed an excuse or justification for a push into territory that they did not control.

The idea of Manifest Destiny was foreshadowed by some of the writings during the revolutionary times, with the desire for Canada in the period between the American War for Independence and the War of 1812. It rationalized the Louisiana Purchase and United States' support for Texas independence and annexation.

More broadly stated, Manifest Destiny was a conviction that God intended North America to be under the control of Americans. It's a kind of early projection of Anglo-saxon supremacy and there's a racist element to it.

But there was also an idealistic element. It was very hard to measure the two, since it would differ from person to person. If you asked a person to define Manifest Destiny, he might tell you it is an ideal, or he might say, "Well, we want the land and this is the easiest way to justify our taking it."

http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/prelude/md_an_ideal_or_a_justification.html

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/zimmermann/

mvs

what are the relationships between official US agencies and the death
squads in southern mexico and elsewhere? what are the unnoficial
relationships with 'private' security companies and the same?
does anyone have good resources for this?

i know nothing, but i have been making a few calls initially for any
help Brad's family might want in the future in these areas

is there anyone else doing this research for work with the press or
other messaging? is this something we need to do more strategically?

beyond the work already being done by mexican groups, there are some
organizations here doing work as it relates to the US. there are
people who are willing to help file both US FOI requests, and
requests to the Mexican equivalent if anyone is interested

WOLA: The Washington Office on Latin America

http://www.wola.org/


National Security Archives
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/

stuff already in the archives (mostly old stuff)

http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/marketing/index.jsp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Archive

info on mexican "foi" laws. i have no idea how effectively
they are
being implemented, but they apparently well written and
more easily
applied to than the corrupted US FOI process

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB68/

My grandfather worked for him for a while, during his exile, as a surveyor. And no, I didn't know about the other two invasions. Thanks!

Known in Mexico as "Doheny el Cruel" (Doheny the Cruel), this is the man most responsible for precipitating the expropriation of Petroleum in Mexico during the Cardenas Administration.


If there had been a "Life Styles of the Rich and Famous" in the 1920s, the notorious oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny would surely have been featured. For at the peak of his powers, between 1904 and 1927, this L.A. hometown boy was one of the most important men of his times and, in fact, one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. As the first to discover oil in Los Angeles--which sparked an oil boom there--this multi-faceted entrepreneur profoundly influenced the growth of both Los Angeles and the state of California. Then, as one of its earliest developers, Doheny helped put Beverly Hills on the map. On an international scale, he established vast oil fields in Mexico and virtually controlled that country's oil industry. This "petroleum state" that Doheny created and ruled extended over Veracruz, Tamaulipas, and San Luis Patosi and was defended by a Doheny-financed army of 6,000 men. The oil baron's opposition to the various revolutionary governments is legendary and some historians believe that Doheny was responsible for the murder of Mexican President Carranza. Finally, Doheny played a major role in the Teapot Dome Scandal, the greatest political impropriety in U.S. history up to that time."

http://www.amazon.com/Edward-L-Doheny-Petroleum-Politics/dp/027593599X/sr=8-1/qid=1168997148/ref=sr_1_1/105-7227944-8656462?ie=UTF8&s=books

What a strange negotiation, Doheny and Cardenas.

What else but the "good old" Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano. It should be practically required reading; as much time as has passed since its appearance, it is still an invaluable introduction to "the rest of the Western Hemisphere".

As far as I'm concerned, catching up with the aftermath of the genocidal maniac Reagan and the subsequent $#!% isn't too much work from where you finish the book...

:hi: