We did this. We need to fix it.
Scores of immigrants are coming into the United States from countries like El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala, fleeing violence and economic catastrophe. Governments and safety forces are deeply corrupt, gangs run the streets, unemployment and domestic violence levels are frighteningly high in these countries. How did this happen? Why are these countries in such deep crisis that people would leave everything they know behind and risk their lives and being separated from their children? How did this happen? Who did this?
We did this. The government of the United States, in alignment with corporate powers, led coups and campaigns of destabilization in Latin America for the past 50 years. We pulled down elected leaders and propped up violent dictatorships. We financed and trained soldiers responsible for mass atrocities. We did this. And now the people from nations we intentionally destablized are crossing our borders asking for help and not only do we turn them away, we incarcerate them and rip children from families, only adding trauma upon trauma upon generations of trauma.
In the early 1950’s, a revolution was underway in Latin America. Old regimes were being overthrown and democracies were bring born. After generations of rule by dictators, the people were having their say, and those elected were often committed to large scale economic reform through state ownership of utilities, redistribution of land, and supporting unions, among other things. This would not stand.
In Guatemala, for example, 45% of the land was owned by an American company, the United Fruit Company. This land was, in large part, given to the company by the previous dictator, Jorge Ubico, and they paid no taxes or import duties. They did, however, make Ubico rich and help him retain his power. Until the people revolted. After the revolution, the people elected Dr. Juan Jose Arevalo who build schools and established health clinics. In 1951, the people of Guatemala elected Jacobo Arbenz. Arbenz did two things that put him in danger: he allowed the tiny Communist party in Guatemala (.1% of the population) to participate in politics and began enacting land reforms.
Arbenz wanted to redistribute land, particularly land that wasn’t actively being used, to the 90% of the population that was landless. Afraid for their profits, United Fruit Company started a massive disinformation campaign accusing Arbenz and the Guatemalan government of communism. As United Fruit Company had deep ties in the Eisenhower Administration (the whole Dulles family was tied to both UFC and the administration, the Rockefellers were involved, etc), it did not take long to convince the US Government something must be done. On June 17, 1954, the CIA assisted Carlos Castillo Armas in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Guatemala and saw Armas become dictator.
This began 40 years of civil war. Fourty years of mass executions, disappearances, dictator after dictator (all somehow supported by the US government), each one horrible in their own way. Whole villages were massacred, towns burned to the ground.
We, the US government and armed forces, trained soldiers to “fight the communists” in Guatemala. These soldiers went on to do things like march women and children up a hill to their deaths, cut unborn babies out of their mothers stomachs and smash childrens heads against rocks. Of the many graduates of this particular fighting program who were abominable, one, in particular, stands out. General Manuel Noriega.
With different details but a similar story, between 1950 and 1990, the US did this in El Salvador, in Nicaragua, Bolivia, Chile, Panama.
I remember as a kid in the 80's hearing stories of those terrible communists in Central America. In 2001 I got to go meet some of these “communists,” people forced to flee to the mountains for running a rebel radio station, people whose village was destroyed and most of the people slaughtered because the did not want to move off their land so a damn could be built. A damn forced by the IMF and World Bank through development loans and reconstruction deals. I met people who were forcibly moved to land that is impossible to farm, people living in colonias with no electricity or water, people who couldn’t afford to send their children to school. Each of these problems were being eliminated before the US got involved.
Through our interventionist policies, the United States paved the way for generations of people living in Latin America to live under the constant presence of extreme violence. Actually, we paid for this to happen with our tax dollars, providing training and weapons to militias throughout Latin America. We created generations of parent-less children. We sent children to war. We created (or helped create or propped up) economic systems of extreme inequality. Between this, our deep craving for drugs and drug policies that require illegal drugs to come in from elsewhere, we created the situation that led to the strength of gangs like MS-13 in Latin America.
And now, as the victims of our policies, of our violence, of our willingness to prop up violent dictators so that we can have cheap bananas, show up at our borders, we have the gall to tell them we will not help them. We have the total lack of humanity and compassion to lock them up, to take away their children, to further commit violence to people we have directly and indirectly terrorized for 50 years. It’s complete and utter bullshit.
We did this. We created the situations that have forced these people to flee. Literally the least we can do is tell them it’s okay, you can stay.
*I could put up a bunch of resources, but I have a cold and you can Google. But you can check out the Guatemala Commission on Human Rights, and google word combos like “coup” “United Fruit Company” or read Confessions of an Economic Hitman.
