central america: the countries we have fucked and forgotten about

what the united states has done to guatemala, el salvador, and nicaragua

once a week i will be posting a perspective on global issues. please be sure to check out last week’s perspective: palestinian rights are absolute.

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we like to imagine that we have our country and they have theirs. so why, we ask, can’t “they” just follow “our” laws? we have nothing against immigrants: we just want them to come here “legally.” conservatives say “if you don’t have a border, you don’t have a country,” and this statement is presumably taken to mean an effectively controlled border that undergirds u.s. sovereignty over “its own laws.”

🇵🇸 palestinian rights are absolute 🇵🇸

“national sovereignty” is the same excuse the u.s. uses to escape from ratifying a wide range of international treaties: the kyoto protocol on climate change in 1997, the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities in 2007, the rome statute of the international criminal court, the ottawa mine ban treaty in 1997 which bill clinton did not even sign, and the international covenant on economic, social, and cultural rights in 1966. the refusal to compromise “national sovereignty,” even in order to participate in the alleviation of global suffering and to secure additional legal rights for its own citizens, is a core characteristic of u.s. foreign policy throughout the post-war period.

the obsession with this purified and absolutist form of “national sovereignty” as a supposedly necessary device for ensuring america’s “national security” is behind a huge range of illegal american actions: whether the pyshotic and lonely invasion of iraq by george w. bush that killed over a million people, the bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in sudan by bill clinton, or the wanton destruction of 5,000 villages in el salvador by u.s.-funded death squads under ronald reagan.

and now “our national sovereignty,” even the mere existence of our country itself, is portrayed as necessitating: expelling millions of undocumented people from the united states, locking black and brown people into cages under bridges, separating children from their families, and making day-to-day life for already-suffering beings so intolerable that they will opt to “self-deport.”

how absurd this language sounds from the perspective of anyone living south of the border! “national sovereignty,” “borders,” and “laws” mean nothing to washington when it comes to central americans. we say “fix your country!” and they have tried that, but then we funded an invasion to restore right-wing government (guatemala). we say “uphold human rights” — and then we funnel money to death squads laying waste to thousands of villages (el salvador). we ask “we provide security for the whole world, what more do they want from us?” and then we support camps of insurgents to invade el salvador and nicaragua from honduras because we don’t like their left-wing governments.

and why is the left such a threat to the united states?

because we have treated these fragile states as outposts in our own economic empire.

we have violently forced their governments to stay in line with policies favorable to our own corporations: the same corporations that control their natural resources and much of the major infrastructure, repatriating the profits to banks in new york.

throughout the cold war the united states claimed to stand for democracy: but in truth the united states stood for capitalism as the foundational principle of a neo-colonial economic empire. american policies ensured the cash would continue to flow, regardless of the wishes washington might encounter among local inhabitants and governments. the left could not be allowed to rise, but not because of the soviet union! the real spectre was the threat which left-wing policies posed to american corporations: higher taxes, nationalization of foreign assets, strict labor laws, unionization, popular participation. if the people of some other country cannot see for themselves the benefits of unbridled capitalism, then washington will force them to.

there are many countries around the world which the united states has fucked and then forgotten about, but today i will focus on guatemala, el salvador, and nicaragua. my factual details come from world politics 1945 - 2000 by peter calvocoressi.

guatemala

after a turbulent period during which various military officers contested for control of the state, guatemala held elections in 1950. the result was a victory for a left-leaning candidate.

through the lens of cold war propaganda, this victory was a problem because communism threatened to take over the world under soviet orchestration. this is how american foreign policy was sold to the general public, and that is how many from that time still see u.s. actions.

but guatemalan relations with the soviet union played no role in the story of american intervention. what the united states was trying to achieve: ensure that no left-wing government could take power and adjust conditions in guatemala to the potential benefit of guatemalans but to the detriment of american corporate interests. and the left commanded much appeal: guatemala was a country where the vast majority of the population lived in horrific poverty while foreign corporations controlled the trains, the railroads, the shipyards, and all the utilities, cooly repatriating fat profits back to new york. from new york, american banks could lend the deposits back to countries like guatemala at profitable interest rates. meanwhile the united fruit company owned 10% of all guatemalan land. significant amounts of land that could be used to produce food sat fallow while the corporations who owned it kept the deeds locked up in a drawer, hardly even realizing they owned these patches of dirt. a major threat to corporate interests was the left’s program of nationalizing privately owned land.

the united states was intent on maintaining this situation which was so beneficial to the interests of american business and banking elites. washington took action. president eisenhower did what americans often do before intervention: make a show of pretending to seek international approval and legal sanction. but when american diplomats showed up to a pan-american conference in venezeula seeking a specific condemnation of guatemala, the other latin american countries refused.

eisenhower began arming and funding guatemalan rebels in honduras and nicaragua and then, a mere three months after the conference in caracas, these bands of right-wing killers invaded guatemala, overthrew the democratically elected government, and restored right-wing government. the results were perhaps good for american corporations: but the guatemalan economy plummeted from an average of growth rate of 8.5% between 1944 - 1955, to just 3% annually after the u.s.-sponsored invasion, which left guatemala in a constant state of unrest and violence, permanently debilitating its economy as well as its health and educational infrastructure.

el salvador

by the 1980s, after a lengthy period of rule oscillating between generals and civilians with the military always lurking as the ultimate source of power, el salvador had fallen into civil war between left- and right-wing factions. the right-wing factions were supported by the state, which frequently denied its association with them yet hardly had control over its own formal army.

despite mounting evidence of atrocities committed throughout el salvador on behalf of its right-wing government, reagan officially certified that el salvador was in compliance with the human rights conditions that congress had legally linked to u.s. aid. he also classified the left-wing guerilla front as a “terrorist” organization, a favorite term with the united states, a term that justifies all manner of horrific atrocities. but i suppose if the president says that something is true, it must be? but another interpretation leaves reagan as an inhuman criminal, so obsessed with communism and destroying the “evil empire,” so immersed in these abstract ideals that he did not care what was happening to ordinary people in el salvador.

here is what was happening. death squads, funded by the united states, destroyed 5,000 villages. 50,000 people lost their lives. the country was left permanently awash with weapons and young men who knew no other way of life beyond violence. and it was the united states, in the name of delusional ideals and economic interests, who left a whole country in such a devastating situation. there is no question that this legacy continues to shape conditions in el salvador.

but the same people who voted for ronald reagan now tell these fellow beings, principle victims of their favorite president, “go back where you came from!”

nicaragua

in 1979 the left-wing sandinista movement finally overthrew the samoza dictatorship, long supported by the united states (“he may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard,” said president franklin roosevelt). the samoza regime had recently assassinated a the editor of a major newspaper and the roman catholic clergy were turning against the dictatorship. the sandinistas initially promised to hold free elections with a multiparty system, but their coalition fell apart and elections were suspended.

was a lack of elections the cause for u.s. intervention? certainly not. as soon as an election goes against american interests, washington has felt fine overturning the results by deploying force or supporting internal dissidents (iran 1953; chile 1973).

what the united states could not tolerate was a left-wing government posing a threat to u.s. economic interests. american and other foreign corporations possessed significant interests in several sectors: mining, manufacturing, lumbering.

in view of the threat he saw sandinistas posing to american corporate and banking interests, combined with his hatred for a vaguely defined “communism,” reagan threw together the “contras”: a group of 12,000 “freedom fighters,” many of them bandits and psychopathic killers. reagan set them up with secure bases in honduras, to which he increased american aid tenfold. the war against the sandinistas also justified support for the death squads in el salvador, seen as fellow travelers with the contras. nicaragua spent the entire decade suffering from devastating warfare.

for the united states, the law means nothing

think about the long term effects of these types of interventions. thousands of young men trained to kill and experienced in doing so. the political conflict may end, but where does that leave these demobilized men who spent years in the death squads? there are other opportunities, also facilitated by the united states, but this time by the american market: there are drugs to be transported.

think about the effects on education, on economic infrastructure, on food production, on the skills of the workforce, on the stock of domestic capital, on the prospects of life for a baby just being born!

the united states created these conditions, and the law meant nothing to us. borders meant nothing. national sovereignty meant nothing. now it means something: because we don’t want “them” here. we think they should “just follow the law.”

it’s amazing how easily we hide behind these empty concepts of “legality,” “borders,” and “national sovereignty.” as soon as american corporate interests are at stake, these concepts mean absolutely nothing. all that matters is making money and ensuring the persistence of right-wing government, even if that means murdering countless thousands while facilitating the systematic weakening of central american states.

fuck your parents: 5 reasons why

now we tell people to “go back” to the “countries” whose borders we have systematically disregarded in the name of our own enrichment.

now we say they are stealing “our jobs” after we have spent decades pillaging their natural resources.

now we say they are “breaking our laws” after we have spent decades violently and illegally forcing their governments to comply with the preferences of our corporations.

now we say these people are not our problem: because we are “americans” and they are “central americans” and so they don’t matter. we hide behind these identities and we deploy these empty concepts, which shatter the moment they conflict with our own agenda, for a simple reason: firmly believing in the reality of these concepts shields us from caring about the suffering of our fellow beings.

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“you should not go along with something because of what you have been told, because of authority, because of tradition, because of accordance with transmitted text, on the grounds of reason, on the grounds of logic, because of analytical thought, because of abstract theoretic pondering, because of the appearance of the speaker, or because some ascetic is your teacher. when you know for yourselves that particular qualities are unwholesome, blameworthy, censured by the wise, and lead to harm and suffering when taken on and pursued, you should give them up." (the buddha, from an introduction to buddhism by peter harvey)

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