Latin America - US Interventionism, General Info, etc.

[anathematics]

Latin America – a great topic, but, where to start?

Our involvement in that region, mainly, in Central America (and the northernmost nations of South America) spans most of the 20th century and into this one – as I am sure many of us know.

I believe that one of the most important questions surrounding that region, and how it ties into US foreign politics (and our culture), is: US interventionism – beneficial or not?

Now, the question is this…with the expansion of Soviet Communism to many “satellite” states (Cuba, Chile, etc.) was the US justified in [attempting in some cases] deposing those leftist regimes and installing center-right regimes (some, that were no better than their leftist predecessors – Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile come to mind)?

Now, that’s only one, amongst many we can raise.

Personally, we may have to take it on a case by case basis, in many instances, I believe (as Pollyannaish as it may sound) intervention was beneficial, to the people, the economy, and to the well-being of the American people (not to mention, the civilians of their respective nations). I will provide my take on [historical] US interventionism in a few Latin American countries in the coming days – as well as how it may affect generations living in those nations today.

Discussion:

Someone mentioned the OAS – it would be interesting to hear some information on them, perhaps discuss their influence on politics in that region – as well as their ties with the US – as well as discussing our “sphere of influence” in that region.

Also, anyone know much about the infamous School of Americas? (Which happened to trade in its controversial name for a snappy, “Vigilantly Conservative” title - Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation).

http://www.soaw.org/new/ -- School of Americas Watch

Panama, anyone?

I wouldn’t mind hearing more about Mexico as well – from Vincente Fox, their labor sector problems, them moving decidedly towards the left (and the US unabashedly approving – even promoting!) – anything would be welcomed.

Also, I have always questioned the anti-Communistic stance that US Conservatism has espoused in recent years….is it as simple as a battle between the Left/Right ideologies? I noticed, in that rather brilliant speech by Ron Paul (Neo-Conned), he mentioned Irving Kristol – the pre-eminent Conservative thinker – and he surely wasn’t opposed to every facet of Communism.

Ramesh Ponnuru, a writer/editor for the National Review, provided a detailed analysis (from a conservative perspective, of course) surrounding the nonsense about the prefix “neo” being attached to Conservative ideology in National Review’s June 16 2003 issue entitled, “Getting to the Bottom of This ‘Neo’ Nonsense” (subtitled, “Before you talk about conservatives, know what you are doing” – great words of wisdom) – anyone interested in Left/Right politics in the US would like it. One thing I love about the National Review – they are unapologetically Conservative – it’s quite admirable.

http://www.nationalreview.com/

Other than that, can’t wait to see where this will go…

 

[Mcleanhatch]

http://www.nationalreview.com/

i love that site. especially Byron Yorks articles on Bush43 judicial nominee.

 

[2-0-Sixx]

Latin America – a great topic, but, where to start?

I believe that one of the most important questions surrounding that region, and how it ties into US foreign politics (and our culture), is: US interventionism – beneficial or not?

To me the answer is an obvious NO. I can’t think of one Latin American country that has benefited from the intervention of the U.S. Of course, I am not an expert on all of latin america, I can only speak of the countries that I am familiar with. I would like to hear an argument of any country and how it has been beneficial.

I'll start with Guatemala. If any one claims this country has benefited from U.S intervention I must say, "You’re a fool!!!"
Lets go back shortly before 1954 when the CIA assassinated the democratically elected Jacob Arbenz. Before his assassination, less then 3% of the land owners owned over 70% of the land. Poverty was high, and big (American) corporations controlled the wealth. Arbenz, decided to nationalize over 1.5 million acres of land, including land owned by his own family, and turned it over to the peasants. The United Fruit Company, (A Rockefeller-owned company) previously owned much of this land and was furious. It didn’t take much convincing to overthrow Arbenz. Look up "Operation Success." This by the way killed thousands of innocent people.

Soon after the assassination, america installed their puppets, military dictators who ruled for over 30 years and were accountable for more then 100,000 deaths. Peasants were slaughtered, political rivals exterminated, children starved, the country will never be the same.

Panama.
Remember Noriega? Its well known now that Noriega was on the CIA's payroll since the early 60's, he was even linked as one of Bush's "contacts" for many years. The american government new and in fact, let him transport drugs for years. Only when he became too powerful and stopped taking commands did they find the need to remove him. It’s a simple fact that he only became so powerful because of the U.S government. What has happened to panama since Noriega? Well, just look at it.

Brazil. “The CIA-backed military coup overthrows the democratically elected government of Joao Goulart. The government that replaces it will, in the next two decades, become one of the most bloodthirsty in history. General Castelo Branco will create Latin America’s first death squads, or bands of secret police who hunt down "communists" for torture, interrogation and murder. Often these "communists" are no more than Branco’s political opponents. Later it was even revealed that the CIA trains the death squads.”


Cuba.
Fidel has survived dozens of assassination attempts by the CIA and the country has done quite well considering the U.S sanctions. Obviously Cuba would be a much stronger country if it wasn’t for the U.S.

The Cuban revolution undoubtedly influenced all of Latin America. The Latin americans loved Fidel and Che. If it wasn’t for the U.S, most all of Latin America would have followed Fidel’s lead. Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, etc, etc. It’s clear as day that life would be healthier for all of Latin america with the absence of the U.S.

Personally, we may have to take it on a case by case basis, in many instances, I believe (as Pollyannaish as it may sound) intervention was beneficial, to the people, the economy, and to the well-being of the American people (not to mention, the civilians of their respective nations). I will provide my take on [historical] US interventionism in a few Latin American countries in the coming days – as well as how it may affect generations living in those nations today.

Where? How? Please explain.

Someone mentioned the OAS – it would be interesting to hear some information on them, perhaps discuss their influence on politics in that region – as well as their ties with the US – as well as discussing our “sphere of influence” in that region.

I do not know much about the OAS. I have only read a little here and there on the web, but I suspect that nefar or coldblooded may have some usefull information.

 

[ColdBlooded]

US interventionism – beneficial or not?

NOT

I'll hit some that 2-0-Sixx didn't mention.

Emerging U.S. Policy in Latin America

In the late 1890’s the U.S. stepped on stage in the world of global political interests. During this time European colonial countries were busy dividing Africa and Asia among themselves abandoning Latin America as their time there had run out. The U.S. took a mixed view of colonialism as it developed the foundations of U.S. Foreign policy. The U.S. maintained to have made a decidedly anti-colonial stance against the European powers “claiming” a desire for an open door for foreign trade favoring competition not colonially divided territories. During this time the over production of the U.S. economy forced the U.S. to take a new look at the expanding markets in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. At the same time the U.S. desired to project its self as a world power and actively worked to develop a strong naval/army presence around the world as a way to show off the strength and might of the U.S. and promote itself as a “counter weight” to European colonizers. Then came the Spanish American War of 1898 when the U.S. took over the Philipines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii. Two of which remain under US control to this day. This not only gave the U.S. new economic outlets for goods and provided new sources of raw materials, but it provided several new platforms for U.S. military control. In the case of Cuba and Puerto Rico these countries provided for a stronger hold on U.S. Latin American interests. Seen as “our backyard” the U.S. put the word out for all other countries to stay out of “our” hemisphere. And so begain the very active history of U.S. involvement in Latin America. From 1898 – 1932 alone, the United States intervened 34 separate times in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean in 10 separate countries. Often characterized as “only for a short time” examples prove the opposite, that they were extensive and repeated interventions. U.S. troops were present in Haiti from 1915-1934, The Dominican Republic from 1916 – 1924, and Nicaragua from 1912 – 1925 and again from 1926 – 1933, just to name a few examples.

There are several countries that serve as excellent examples of U.S. intervention in Latin America. Most importantly found in all of these examples is the new threat envisioned by the United States after World War II of the global threat of Communism. In many of these cases the governments were left-leaning or even socialist and at times had communists as members of the government. In the eyes of U.S. policy makers this justified a Moral Intervention to save these countries from going Communist and protecting the interests of the United States within the hemisphere. What many fail to realize or convieniently "forget" is the lack of involvment by the Soviet Union in the establishment of leftist governments in Latin America, especially early on, ie Guatemala, Cuba, Chile.

Guatemala

In the 1950’s a new democratically elected leftist government of Jacobo Arbenz emerged in Guatemala. One of the major platforms of this new government was a policy of agricultural reform where a study of all the country’s large land holdings would be assessed. If the government found that less than one third of the land was being cultivated the other two thirds of the land would be confiscated WITH compensation. The major problem with this in the eyes of the large landholders (especially the U.S. corporation United Fruit which during this time had 3 million acres of land, 2,000 railway miles, and 1,000 ships in Central America alone) was that these lands would be paid for at their declared tax value. Meaning whatever the landowners claimed the land was worth on their taxes would be how much they would be paid for the land. Obviously these landowners were under declaring the value of their land and were both furious and scared. The relationship between the Eisenhower administration and United Fruit were “downright cozy”. CIA Director Allen Dulles was former President of United Fruit (and former director of the Schroder Bank, which the CIA used to launder its funds for covert operations.) and his brother Attorney General John Foster Dulles formerly handled the deal between IRCA (International Railways of Central America) to United Fruit, Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs John Moors Cabot’s family owned interests in United Fruit, and Eisenhower’s personal secretary was also the wife of the company’s public relations director. Calls quickly broke out for the Eisenhower administration to intervene militarily against the “Communists” in Guatemala which so eagerly wanted to “steal their land” and redistribute it to the local population to put it to use, though it should be noted that the reforms of the Arbenz government were no more communist than the Alliance for Progress reforms in the 1960’s pushed by none other than the United States. The CIA soon began to openly circulate through Guatemala “creating a climate of tension and uncertainty to prompt divisions in the armed forces, weaken Arbenz’s resolve, and, hopefully, provoke a coup d’etat.” In a speech to Congress Eisenhower “warned that “the Reds” were already in control of Guatemala and now sought to spread their “tentacles” to El Salvador and other neighbors.” A CIA sponsored coup was put into action in 1954 with planes flown and provided by the United States. This coup against a democratically elected government was not viewed as something bad, all one needs to do is pick up a copy of president Eisenhower’s memoirs. The Guatemalan coup was a success for the newly formed CIA and helped to form many views regarding intervention in Latin America. This pattern follows through history of U.S. intervention in the region both open and covert. Other more brief examples include The Dominican Republic and Chile.

The Dominican Republic: Open Intervention

In December of 1962 Juan Bosch a reform minded president was elected with 60% of the vote in The Dominican Republic replacing an authoritarian dictatorship. Seen as a time of hope for the average citizen the hard core right in the Dominican Republic initiated a coup only 10 months after the elections. The Army coup failed to build a significant social base and the country erupted into civil war. The rebels, unlike the traditional view of the Latin American rebel, were not Communist but rather constitutionalists committed to upholding democracy in the country. President Lyndon Johnson saw this as a Communist plot to destabilize the region and sent in 23,000 U.S. troops after uncovering a “conspiracy” and to “evacuate American students”. President Bosch later commented that the world had seen a “democratic revolution smashed by the most democratic country”.

Chile: Covert Intervention

In 1970 in Chile Salvador Allende was elected president in Chile, Latin America’s most consistent democratic country. Allende a socialist formed a collation government known as the UP(Unidad Popular) Popular Unity party. Allende’s coalition received a majority of the votes on a platform of combining elections and social reform to create revolution using agrarian reform, increased wages (30% the first year alone), support for the urban poor, with the nationalization of key industries. From 1962 – 1970 the CIA sent 11 million dollars to Chile to keep Allende from being elected; this does not count private funds (this is more than spent by the campaigns of the 1964 American presidential candidates Johnson and Goldwater.). The US soon pushed for a policy to make Chile ungovernable. In 1972 the US funded a truckers strike in an attempt, in Nixon's words, was to "make the Chilean economy scream". The ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry, described his task as "to do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty." There was a massive destabilization and disinformation campaign. The CIA planted stories in El Mercurio, the most prominent newspaper, and fomented labor unrest and strikes. September 11, 1973 US-trained extremists in the Chilean military overthrew the government. Allende and several cabinet members were killed. The universities were put under military control, opposition parties were banned and thousands of Chileans killed, maimed and tortured. Henry Kissinger told the US ambassador, "Don't give me any of these political science lectures. We don't care about torture. We care about important things." Kissinger is also reported to have said, "I don't see why we should have to stand by and let a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people." This is indeed democracy redefined and is unfortunately too common in U.S. policy toward Latin America.

 

[ColdBlooded]

Argentina

"Secret archives released by the US State Department directly implicate former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and other top American officials in backing the brutal military regime of mass murder, “disappearances” and torture that ruled Argentina for more than seven years, beginning in March 1976.

The 4,677 documents declassified late last month spell out a relationship of close collaboration and support offered by the highest levels of official Washington to a military dictatorship responsible for the deaths of at least 30,000 Argentines, most of them workers and students.

The sheer volume of these documents, consisting largely of telegrams, memos and cables that passed between the US Embassy in Buenos Aires and the State Department in Washington, make it clear that the three US administrations that dealt with the junta—those of Ford, Carter and Reagan—were kept fully apprised of the atrocities it carried out. It was well informed largely thanks to US officials’ intimate relations with those who directed the death squads and torture centers.

What emerges most clearly from the paper trail left by the State Department is that the US government was well aware that in the name of a “war on terrorism” the Argentine regime was carrying out a bloodbath. Clearly, Washington saw these actions as a necessary defense of both US interests and those of the native ruling elite.

The documents were released as a result of a pledge that Argentine human rights groups, including the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, extracted from then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright during her visit to the country in 2000. They do not include the equally large and undoubtedly far more incriminating archives that are held by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon. Those documents, which would include cables sent by US military and intelligence officers most intimately involved in the bloody work of the dictatorship, remain classified.

The diplomatic language of the State Department partially masks the extent of the US role in Argentina. The real character of US involvement emerges at times in the form of friction between career diplomats in Buenos Aires attempting to preach human rights to the military dictators and those in the key power positions in Washington, who were urging the military to continue the repression.

Among the most telling documents was an October 1976 cable sent by US Ambassador Richard Hill to the State Department concerning the “euphoric” reaction of Argentina’s Foreign Minister, Admiral César Guzzetti, following a visit to Washington where he held talks with Kissinger, who was then secretary of state, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, and other officials.

Hill recounted separate conversations in which both Kissinger and Rockefeller declared that they “understood” the repressive methods being employed by the junta and asked only that the dictatorship “get the terrorist problem under control as quickly as possible.”

Other officials gave friendly advice, warning that the military should avoid repression against the Catholic Church and rein in a substantial neo-Nazi faction in its ranks that engaged in blatant anti-Semitic attacks and hung swastikas and other fascist symbols in prisons and torture chambers.

“Guzzetti went to the US fully expecting to hear some strong, firm, direct warnings on his government’s human rights practices.” However, the ambassador wrote, “Rather than that, he has returned in a state of jubilation, convinced that there is no real problem with the [US government] over this issue.”

The State Department’s top official on Latin America at the time, Harry Schlaudeman, later described the cable as a “bitter criticism” of Kissinger’s role.

On the eve of Guzzetti’s visit, Ambassador Hill had sent another message to the State Department saying that he had stressed with the Argentine admiral that “murdering priests and dumping 47 bodies in the street in one day could not be seen in context of defeating the terrorists quickly; on the contrary, such acts were probably counterproductive.”

The conversations in Washington echoed the message delivered by Kissinger at a meeting of the Organization of American States in Santiago, Chile four months earlier. At the time, several hundred workers, intellectuals, students and others whom the dictatorship perceived as “subversives” were “disappearing” weekly, picked up by military “task forces” and sent to clandestine concentration camps where they were tortured and murdered. It was Guzzetti who then raised the human rights issue with Kissinger. According to a previously released cable, Kissinger responded by asking how much longer the reign of terror would continue. When Guzzetti promised that the “terrorist problem” would be eliminated within six months, the secretary of state expressed approval.

The declassified files demonstrate that when Kissinger and other top US officials gave the green light to the Argentine junta they were well aware of both the military’s methods and its aims.

Many of the documents include sickening descriptions of the torture employed by the Argentine military against its captives. A 1979 embassy memo cites a report listing “cigarette burns ... sexual abuse, rape ... removing teeth, fingernails and eyes ... burning with boiling water, oil and acid, and even castration” as techniques used by Washington’s ally.

Also forwarded to Washington by the embassy was a 1977 statement smuggled out of a women’s prison detailing the fiendish sadism of the regime. It describes a process involving “days or months submitted to the torture of the electric “picana” [prod], suffocation by immersion, violation by the torturers or by mechanical means, the introduction of rats and spiders into our vaginas, bitten by dogs, watching our relatives or our companions die by torture, losing the children in our wombs.”

Other reports describe pregnant women beaten with rifle butts until they miscarried, mothers forced to watch their children tortured and babies seized at birth from their mothers, who were then executed. This is what Kissinger and Co. sanctioned, as long as the process was completed quickly.

US officials also wrote memos making it clear that under the cover of a battle against “subversion,” the main aim of the junta was to break the back of the Argentine working class. One such document drafted for Kissinger by his aide Shlaudeman in August 1976 compared the “national developmental” aims of the military regime with the ideology of Nazism:

“National developmentalism has obvious and bothersome parallels to National Socialism. Opponents of the military regimes call them fascistic. It is an effective pejorative, the more so because it can be said to be technically accurate ... to recover economically, they must break the power of traditional structures, and especially of the labor movement...”

And, while US officials warned the junta against torturing nuns and engaging in overt acts of anti-Semitic terror, it had no qualms about the repression unleashed against the working class. Within a month of the Shlaudeman memo, the military brutally intervened to suppress a strike wave by auto workers, including a strike at the Ford Plant at General Pacheco, near Buenos Aires, which later became one of the military torture centers. Despite having decreed long prison sentences for strikers and strike leaders, the authorities made little use of the legal system. Instead, the junta used a terror campaign of kidnapping, torture and summary executions to suppress working class resistance.

A March 1978 report from the Buenos Aires embassy estimated the number of disappeared at between 12,000 and 17,000. According to the embassy’s estimate, the largest share of those abducted and killed consisted of rank-and-file workers and union activists picked up for strike activities. The document put the number between 3,750 and 5,000 workers. In many cases, workers’ family members were kidnapped as well. The second largest category of disappeared listed in the document consisted of some 3,000 family members.

The memo drafted by Shlaudeman also detailed the creation of “Operation Condor,” an organized collaboration between the secret police of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia in capturing and executing political opponents across national borders. Each of these military regimes had overthrown constitutionally elected governments with the active collaboration of the CIA and US State Department. Under Condor, opponents of the military repression were kidnapped and “disappeared” in combined transnational operations, which included the use of death squads to assassinate opponents anywhere in the world.

The most infamous of these operations was carried out in the streets of Washington DC, with the car bomb assassination of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and US aide Ronni Moffit in September 1976.

The documents indicate that the Carter administration (1977-1980) expressed some disquiet within over the junta’s policies, publicly emphasizing the issue of “human rights.” As two documents from 1978 make clear, however, the central concern was that the indiscriminate repression could provoke a backlash, destabilizing Argentina.

A report dated March 1, 1978 acknowledges that naked bodies of missing victims, decapitated and with their hands cut off, had washed up on Rio de la Plata beaches. A memo sent two weeks later contains warnings from the Buenos Aires ambassador that the repression could radicalize sections of Argentine society around the demand that a list of the disappeared be produced. However, it recommends that the US continue supporting the dictatorship based on the spurious contention that its human rights record was improving.

 

[ColdBlooded]

As other documents make clear, the decline in the number of disappearances merely reflected the thoroughness of the repression during the first two years of the dictatorship. A February 1979 review of the events of the previous year indicates that the number of kidnappings in 1978 had diminished because of “the scarcity of targets after two years of wide-scale repression.”

In the summer of 1977, the US Senate passed legislation prohibiting military aid to Argentina if by 1979 the regime had not improved its human rights record. One of the documents released—a letter to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance from Senator Edward Kennedy—suggests that the Carter administration was skirting the law by rushing to transfer military equipment to the junta before the legal deadline

A July 1977 memo from the Buenos Aires Embassy to Assistant Secretary of State Terrence Todmann on the eve of his visit to the Argentine junta spells out the attitude of the Carter administration. It advised Todmann to tell the dictators that the US was “encouraged by Argentine official statements that the war against terrorism is well along toward winning.”

It added, however, that he should tell the junta that “what distresses many of Argentina’s friends are the dramatic disappearances,” citing the case of the abduction of a former ambassador. It expressed no such concern for the thousands of disappeared workers and leftists. Finally, it recommended praise for the junta’s economic policy, declaring “our appreciation of the stabilization taking place.... We are encouraged by improvement in the climate for foreign investments.”

With the coming to power of the Reagan administration in 1981, new and closer relations were forged with the Argentine junta, which was recruited to provide training and assistance to the CIA-backed “contra” mercenaries in their attack on Nicaragua and to join in other counterrevolutionary operations in El Salvador and elsewhere in Central America. A State Department cable dated March 24, 1981 reports on the initial negotiations that led to these joint operations. While the US embassy continued filing reports on disappearances and human rights violations, Washington ignored them.

Closer US relations did little for the junta’s standing in Argentina, however. Growing opposition erupted into massive labor demonstrations by the end of March 1982, including pitched battles in the streets of Buenos Aires. Embassy cables reflect growing concern about the regime’s stability.

In April 1982, in an attempt to divert opposition and rally nationalist sentiment behind the military regime, then-junta leader Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri launched an ill-prepared invasion of the Malvinas Islands, a British colonial possession. The junta believed that in recognition of its services in Central America Washington would pressure London to give up the islands. Instead, the Reagan administration backed Britain, helping it carry out a massacre of virtually defenseless conscripts abandoned by the junta on the freezing south Atlantic islands. The humiliating defeat signaled the dictatorship’s downfall.

Included among the documents are reports from US intelligence officers that will likely figure as key evidence in a planned trial of Galtieri for his role in the abduction and execution of Argentine exiles captured in Brazil in 1979-1980. The former general is currently under house arrest.

Though many of the most incriminating documents are at least 25 years old, their repeated justifications of the crimes of military assassins and torturers—not only in Argentina but throughout Latin America—in the name of a “war on terrorism” sound all too contemporary.

This is not merely historical coincidence. Kissinger remains a highly influential figure in foreign policy circles. Moreover, those directing the combination of unrestrained US militarism abroad and attacks on democratic rights at home in the current “war on terrorism” had a direct hand in US support for the hideous crimes of the Argentine junta in the 1970s."

 

[ColdBlooded]

The Dirty Wars:

Nicaragua

In the 1980’s a glaring example of our national posture is still reflected in the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt when he said, “Somoza (Nicaragua’s legendary dictator) is a son-of-a-bitch, but he is our son-of-a-bitch.” For over 50 years, the U.S. backed the Somoza dynasty while they pillaged their own economy for personal gain. By 1979, the dynasty had only enemies and, therefore, fell without much of a fight to the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). President Reagan largely through illegal channels, financed a covert war against the Sandinista government. He mined Nicaragua’s harbers; he destroyed power plants and bridges; he paid people to fight against their own. In the mid-1980’s, the World Court found the United States guilty of interfering in the affairs of a sovereign nation. The Court ordered our government to pay billions in war reparations. Those payments were never made and the U.S. refused to recognize the ruling of the World Court.

El Salvador

In the 1980’s military and economic aid to El Salvador exceeded 6 billion dollars. Two-thirds of the 750,000 people who fled El Salvador ended up in the U.S.: many were deported back to join the imprisoned or the disappeared. Archbishop Oscar Romero was gunned down in 1980 while conducting mass, and many church workers, mostly Jesuits, were assassinated. Three nuns and one layworker from the U.S. were also raped and murdered, their bodies found in a collective grave at a dumpsite. By 1984, 65,000 civilians were murdered by the National Guard and right-wing paramilitary forces. Despite this contradictory evidence, President Reagan's National Bipartisan Commission on Central America justified massive military support to El Salvador because of their promise for "democratic reform." One of the most striking examples of the death and horror encouraged by the United States occurred in El Mozote El Salvador. “Between December 11 and 13th 1981, the Atlacatl Battalion, the first immediate-reaction infantry battalion in the Salvadoran army to be trained and equipped by the United States, massacred more than a thousand people in six hamlets(refuge camps) located in the municipalities of Meanguera and Joateca, northern Morazan, El Salvador.”

Mounting Evidence of US Involvement in Venezuela’s Coup

We won't know what really happened in Venezuela for another 10-20 years probably, but . . .

Suspicion of senior officials of the US government being involved in the coup in Venezuela are beginning to form based on their sorted histories in the “dirty wars” of the 1980’s under president Reagan and their links to Central American death squads during that time. Several visits by the Venezuelans plotting the coup, including Carmona himself, began several months ago and continued up until the weeks preceding the coup. President Bush’s key policy maker for Latin America, Otto Reich, received them at the White House. A Defense Department official who is involved in the development of policy toward Venezuela said the administration's message was less categorical. "We were not discouraging people," the official said. "We were sending informal, subtle signals that we don't like this guy. We didn't say, `No, don't you dare,' “Otto Reich is a right-wing Cuban-American who, under Reagan, ran the Office for Public Diplomacy.” In congressional investigations it was show that he reported not to the State Department as it is said to under its official program, but to Reagan’s National Security Aide, Colonel Oliver North. “North was convicted and shamed for this role in Iran-Contra, whereby arms bought by busting US sanctions on Iran were sold to the Contra guerrillas and death squads, in revolt against the leftist government in Nicaragua.” Reich also has close ties to Venezuela as ambassador to Caracas in 1986. A second member of the Bush ties to the dirty wars of the 1980’s is John Negroponte, now UN ambassador for the United States. Negroponte was Reagan’s “ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 when a US trained death squad tortured and murdered scores of civilians.” Third on the list, Elliot Abrams “who operates in the White House as senior director of the National Security Council for ‘democracy, human rights and international operations’.” He was a leader in the theory of “Hemispherism” which “lead to the coup in Chile and the sponsorship of regimes and death squads that followed in Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Brazil, Panama, Bolivia, and elsewhere” During the Iran-Contra scandal he reported directly to Oliver North and harvested illegal funding for the rebellion and was convicted for misleading Congress and withholding information was subsequently pardoned by President Bush Sr. Other connections include Gustavo Cinseros, a Venezuelan media tycoon and fishing companion of former President Bush. AFP news agency reported “according to a Venezuelan military source, US Army Lieutenant Colonel James Rodgers – an aide to the US military attaché – was present at Fort Tiuna in Caracas before Chavez was brought to that installation after the coup.” AFP is also now reporting that a “second US military officer, Army Colonel Ronald MacCammorn, was also present.” Jorge Rodon member of Venezuelan parliament has “confirmed that one of those arrested who had fired upon demonstrators – the excuse to carry out the coup – is of US nationality. If for some reason the U.S. was not directly involved in the coup in Venezuela, and these all happen to be coincidence, you can bet the CIA will intensify its campaign of sabotage and disruption now.


Asked whether the administration now recognizes Mr. Chavez as Venezuela's legitimate president, one administration official replied, "He was democratically elected," then added, "Legitimacy is something that is conferred not just by a majority of the voters, however."

The Washington Post recalled that as some Latin American leaders were invoking the Inter-American Democratic Charter on Friday, Fleischer announced that a transition civilian government had been installed in Venezuela -- with no mention of the Democratic Charter. It also recalled that when the Bush administration summoned all the hemisphere's ambassadors to a State Department briefing, Assistant Secretary Otto Reich is reported to have said that Chavez had it coming.

 

[ColdBlooded]

I wrote all that except the quoted shit and the part about Argentina.


I'll post up a couple more articles after this.

If anyone wants to know anything about the OAS in particular just ask, i know a decent amount about it.

 

[ColdBlooded]

U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba
By David Ruppe

N E W Y O R K, May 1 — In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.
The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes.

The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.

"These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing," Bamford told ABCNEWS.com.

"The whole point of a democracy is to have leaders responding to the public will, and here this is the complete reverse, the military trying to trick the American people into a war that they want but that nobody else wants."

Gunning for War

The documents show "the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government," writes Bamford.

The Joint Chiefs even proposed using the potential death of astronaut John Glenn during the first attempt to put an American into orbit as a false pretext for war with Cuba, the documents show.

Should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, they wrote, "the objective is to provide irrevocable proof … that the fault lies with the Communists et all Cuba [sic]."

The plans were motivated by an intense desire among senior military leaders to depose Castro, who seized power in 1959 to become the first communist leader in the Western Hemisphere — only 90 miles from U.S. shores.

The earlier CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles had been a disastrous failure, in which the military was not allowed to provide firepower.The military leaders now wanted a shot at it.

"The whole thing was so bizarre," says Bamford, noting public and international support would be needed for an invasion, but apparently neither the American public, nor the Cuban public, wanted to see U.S. troops deployed to drive out Castro.

Reflecting this, the U.S. plan called for establishing prolonged military — not democratic — control over the island nation after the invasion.

"That's what we're supposed to be freeing them from," Bamford says. "The only way we would have succeeded is by doing exactly what the Russians were doing all over the world, by imposing a government by tyranny, basically what we were accusing Castro himself of doing."

'Over the Edge'

The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed by Eisenhower appointee Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who, with the signed plans in hand made a pitch to McNamara on March 13, 1962, recommending Operation Northwoods be run by the military.

Whether the Joint Chiefs' plans were rejected by McNamara in the meeting is not clear. But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer directly there was virtually no possibility of ever using overt force to take Cuba, Bamford reports. Within months, Lemnitzer would be denied another term as chairman and transferred to another job.

The secret plans came at a time when there was distrust in the military leadership about their civilian leadership, with leaders in the Kennedy administration viewed as too liberal, insufficiently experienced and soft on communism. At the same time, however, there real were concerns in American society about their military overstepping its bounds.

There were reports U.S. military leaders had encouraged their subordinates to vote conservative during the election.

And at least two popular books were published focusing on a right-wing military leadership pushing the limits against government policy of the day. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee published its own report on right-wing extremism in the military, warning a "considerable danger" in the "education and propaganda activities of military personnel" had been uncovered. The committee even called for an examination of any ties between Lemnitzer and right-wing groups. But Congress didn't get wind of Northwoods, says Bamford.

"Although no one in Congress could have known at the time," he writes, "Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge."

Even after Lemnitzer was gone, he writes, the Joint Chiefs continued to plan "pretext" operations at least through 1963.

One idea was to create a war between Cuba and another Latin American country so that the United States could intervene. Another was to pay someone in the Castro government to attack U.S. forces at the Guantanamo naval base — an act, which Bamford notes, would have amounted to treason. And another was to fly low level U-2 flights over Cuba, with the intention of having one shot down as a pretext for a war.

"There really was a worry at the time about the military going off crazy and they did, but they never succeeded, but it wasn't for lack of trying," he says.

After 40 Years

Ironically, the documents came to light, says Bamford, in part because of the 1992 Oliver Stone film JFK, which examined the possibility of a conspiracy behind the assassination of President Kennedy.

As public interest in the assassination swelled after JFK's release, Congress passed a law designed to increase the public's access to government records related to the assassination.

The author says a friend on the board tipped him off to the documents.

Afraid of a congressional investigation, Lemnitzer had ordered all Joint Chiefs documents related to the Bay of Pigs destroyed, says Bamford. But somehow, these remained.

"The scary thing is none of this stuff comes out until 40 years after," says Bamford.

 

[ColdBlooded]

September 11 in Chile—clashes on coup’s anniversary
By Bill Vann
14 September 2002

In Chile, September 11 was marked by violent clashes between demonstrators and Carabinero military police, resulting in over 500 arrests and scores of wounded.

While the media in the US and Western Europe concentrated exclusively on ceremonies marking the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Chile was rocked by protests in observance of the 29th anniversary of the US-backed coup that inaugurated 17 years of brutal military dictatorship.

That September 11, in 1973, also saw planes flying low over a country's largest city, leaving one of its most important buildings in flames and its people in a state of shock. But in Chile it was the bombing of the La Moneda presidential palace, where the elected president, Salvador Allende, died. The attack inaugurated a bloodbath from which Chile has yet to recover.

Ironically, the official death toll in the Chilean coup—3,197—is almost identical to the number killed on September 11, 2001 in the US. Several hundred were machine-gunned in the Santiago soccer stadium, which was turned into a makeshift concentration camp and torture center. Others were shot to death in the street, at military barracks and in other detention centers, many after enduing horrific torture. All told, more than 60,000 Chileans were subjected to torture under the dictatorship, and one million were forced into exile: this in a country of less than 14 million.

On the 29th anniversary of that black day, the Socialist Party government of President Ricardo Lagos roundly condemned demonstrators for burning a US flag, calling it "insensitive." Lagos, among Washington’s closest Latin American allies, attended a ceremony at the US embassy and declared that the two countries "are united on this date by tragedy and sadness." The next day he issued a statement announcing Chile's support for the positions outlined in Bush's September 12 speech before the UN General Assembly threatening war against Iraq.

That many Chileans, while understanding the pain of those who lost relatives in the US, find it difficult to solidarize themselves with Washington is understandable. The Chilean coup was sponsored by Washington and the Central Intelligence Agency, which funneled millions of dollars to both the military and right-wing groups to overthrow the country’s elected government.

President Richard Nixon and his top foreign policy adviser, Henry Kissinger, played direct roles in orchestrating the military overthrow. The latter had famously remarked, "I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people."

Washington continued its backing for the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, with the CIA providing lists of suspected "subversives" to be exterminated. American aid helped the mass murderer stay in power longer than any other Latin American military ruler.

On Wednesday, thousands of people participated in a march to the Santiago cemetery to place wreaths at a memorial to the disappeared. At the La Moneda presidential palace they were met by Carabineros who used tear gas and water cannons to attack the protest.

Tensions later erupted at the cemetery, where members of the Communist Party and other left-wing groups brawled with representatives of Lagos' ruling Socialist Party, throwing paint and eggs and exchanging blows with fists and sticks. The fighting forced the SP to postpone its memorial to the following day.

As night fell in Santiago and other Chilean cities, barricades went up in a number of poor neighborhoods. Gunshots were traded between the police and demonstrators, and there was scattered looting. Police detained 505 people in the capital.

Chile's interior minister, José Miguel Insulza, arrogantly dismissed the protests as "delinquency," echoing similar statements made under the dictatorship. He attributed the clashes to "lumpen activity." The protests were not "political activity," he said, since no organized political tendencies had led them.

 

[ColdBlooded]

Insulza's statements expressed the hostility of the Socialist Party leadership to the Chilean working class and the growing ranks of poor and unemployed. First brought to power at the head of the Concertación coalition in 2000, the SP has continued the neo-liberal "free market" policies of privatization and deregulation inaugurated under the dictatorship.

Touted as a model for economic growth, these policies have only intensified social polarization in Chile, making it one of the most unequal countries in the world in terms of income distribution, and leaving most workers considerably worse off than they were 29 years ago when the coup took place.

The official unemployment rate has remained steady at approximately 10 percent, while 20 percent of the population is listed as living below the poverty line. While the richest 10 percent of Chileans monopolize 53.4 percent of the country's national income, the poorest tenth account for barely 3.7 percent.

Asked by the Santiago daily El Mercurio whether the violence on the September 11 anniversary may have been triggered by growing misery for the poor, Insulza responded: "These are phenomena that have been happening for some time and are not necessarily related to poverty."

The government is calling for new laws promoting "labor flexibility" as a cure for unemployment. They would allow companies to override existing regulations on working hours, using cheaper part-time labor.

Lagos used the occasion of the anniversary to make a ritualistic appeal for "reconciliation" between the torturers and the tortured. Those who took an active part in the coup and the subsequent repression, he said, "must have a moment of contrition." He then praised the armed forces for making "a definitive contribution."

This same theme was sounded in a bizarre joint television appearance by the grandson of Allende and the granddaughter of Pinochet. Maria José Pinochet conceded that her grandfather may have been "politically" responsible for human rights violations during his 17-year reign, but added that he was so busy that "some things got by him."

Gonzalo Meza Allende, for his part, echoed the current position of his grandfather's Socialist Party, praising the Pinochet dictatorship for its "successful" economic policies.

The military used the occasion to further its demand for a "full stop" amnesty, guaranteeing that no one will ever be held accountable for the assassinations, kidnappings and torture committed under the dictatorship.

In past years, military officials, right-wing groups and prominent businessmen staged ostentatious celebrations on the coup's anniversary, dubbing it "National Liberation Day." Until two years ago, it was observed as a national holiday in Chile. Recognizing that this only contributed to larger protests, the Lagos government abolished the practice.

This year, the dictatorship's supporters limited themselves to a musical concert performed by retired officers and a mass for those military personnel killed in the coup--most of them suspected Allende sympathizers murdered by the army itself.

While in the past, active-duty and retired army officers made a pilgrimage to the home of Pinochet in the wealthy Las Condes neighborhood, this year they stayed away. The 86-year-old former tyrant has played almost no public political role since his lawyers secured a ruling by Chile's Supreme Court that he is suffering from dementia and is therefore unfit to stand trial for his role in the so-called "Caravan of Death," a roving military assassination squad that murdered and “disappeared” scores of his political opponents following the coup. The ruling effectively halted hundreds of other suits pending against the ex-dictator.

On the eve of the anniversary, Pinochet registered another judicial victory, with the decision by the Court of Appeals in Santiago rejecting an extradition request from an Argentine court investigating the car bomb assassination in Buenos Aires of former Chilean army chief Carlos Prats González and his wife, who had fled Chile after the coup.

An agent of DINA, the Chilean regime's secret police, is serving a life sentence in Argentina for the killings, while Michael Townley, a US citizen who was a DINA agent, has confessed to planting the bomb on orders from the former secret police director General Manuel Contreras. Surviving members of the Prats family have charged that as head of the ruling junta, Pinochet controlled DINA and its agents acted only on his orders.

Pinochet's CIA-backed regime was responsible for other acts of international terrorism, including the car bomb murder of Orlando Letelier and his 25-year-old American colleague Ronni Moffitt in the streets of Washington in 1976. The killings were carried out under Operation Condor, a joint operation by the secret police of six Latin American dictatorships acting with the knowledge of the CIA.

Meanwhile, the Chilean daily La Nación carried a report last Sunday that a sinister group known as the "Comando Conjunto" or "Joint Command," responsible for repression and atrocities under the dictatorship, had reformed for the purpose of halting judicial proceedings against the junta’s assassins and torturers.

A former member of the group said that it now enjoyed the "protection" of the Chilean air force and would "carry out operations, surveillance, telephone taps, threats, theft of court papers, bribes and national and international jobs" to put a stop to human rights cases.

The report overshadowed Lagos’s proclamation that, as the 29th anniversary approached, Chile was entering a "new era" in relations between the civilian government and the armed forces.

 

[ColdBlooded]

Were the lives of those killed at the World Trade Centre more valuable than the innocents murdered in Chile's US-backed coup, asks Tito Tricot

Monday September 16, 2002

Our dreams were shattered one cloudy morning when the military overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. Twenty-nine years later, at midday, Chile's's firemen sounded their sirens paying tribute to thousands of men and women who lost their lives without really understanding what was happening.

It was a moment of remembrance, not for the victims of the military coup, but for those killed at the World Trade Centre in New York. Sad as that might have been, it is even sadder that Chilean firemen have never sounded their sirens to remember our own dead. And there are thousands of them, including many children, who were murdered by the military.

It is not a matter of comparing sorrow and pain, but for the past year the US media has tried to convince us that north American lives are worth more than other people's lives. After all, we are from the third world, citizens of underdeveloped countries who deserve to be arrested, tortured and killed. How else are we interpret the fact that the military coup in our country was planned in the United States?

The truth is that no US president ever shed a tear for our dead; no US politician ever sent a flower to our widows. The US government and media use different standards to measure suffering. It is precisely this hypocrisy and these double standards that make us sick, especially when on such a symbolic day for Chileans, the president of Chile, Ricardo Lagos, attended a memorial service at the United States embassy where the ambassador, William Brownfield, stated that "people who hate the United States must be controlled, arrested or eliminated".

In what kind of a world are we living? Can we stand idly by while in the name of the fight against terrorism countries are bombed or invaded by the US war machine? I think not, especially because, irrespective of the horror of the World Trade Centre attacks, the US has no moral right to impose its will on our continent. After all, we in Latin America have ample experience with US terrorist tactics. In our continent alone 90,000 people disappeared as a direct result of the operation of the School of the Americas and US "counterinsurgency" policies - 30 times more than the victims of the World Trade Centre.

One cannot - and should not - attempt to quantify suffering, but we do have the right to denounce this double standard. We also have the right to question President Lagos's assertion that "for the youth of today what happened in 1973 is part of history, which means we must undertake the task of looking to the future". Only a few hours after the president's speech, thousands of people - mostly young people- took over parts of Santiago and other Chilean cities to express their true feelings about this fateful day in Chile's history. They organised demonstrations, candle-lit vigils, concerts, meetings, seminars and put up barricades to defend themselves from the police.

It was a way of saying: Neither the United States nor anybody has the right to steal our memory. No one has the right to steal our day, for September the 11 1973 is marked in our hearts with tears.

 

[ColdBlooded]

P.S.

One of the most moving audio bites i've ever heard was the last speech that Salvador Allende gave before he was murdered. The president of chille, under his desk in the presidential pallace, with flack jacket and helmet on, giving a speech over the radio to the people of Chile. My Latin America prof. played it for us in class. Shit was deep!

 

[2-0-Sixx]

Bravo coldblooded.

I can't believe I left out Argentina.

 

[2-0-Sixx]

America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans..possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.
The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

I think I posted this on another thread some time ago.

And people think its crazy that america is capable of blowing up their own commercial airplanes.

 

[2-0-Sixx]

Recent news in Guatemala. Not any better

http://www.counterpunch.com/stclair07292003.html

 

[ColdBlooded]

I think i killed this post by giving people too much reading material.

 

[2-0-Sixx]

I think i killed this post by giving people too much reading material.

Damn you for posting good information

 

[ColdBlooded]

Just another one served by the CB

 

[SlickSickSix]

I feel very very uneducated (which isn't untrue) after reading some of these posts, but I'll give my opinion anyways...

I think that the United States should mind their own God damn business and stop intervening in every country that doesn't live the way they want them to.