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Colombia 1960s-Present Guatemala 1953-Present El Salvador 1980-Present Cuba 1959-Present Haiti 1987-1994 |
Nicaragua 1981-1990 Panama 1989 Grenada 1979-1984 Chile 1964-1973 Costa Rica Mid-1950s, 1970-71 |
Dominican Republic 1963-1966 Brazil 1961-1964 British Guiana/Guyana 1953-1964 Haiti 1959 Latin America & Around the world 1900-1930s |
1960s – Present
American Support for Colombian State Terrorism of the Colombian People
Estimated civilian deaths: over 67,000 people
Under the guise of aid for “counternarcotics” operations, the U.S. Corporate Mafia Government is supplying weapons, training, troops and $1.3 billion to its apprentices in the Colombian military. The real purpose of all this aid is to support the government’s massive political oppression of the Colombian people. It’s Vietnam all over again.
Colombia is the most violent country in the world. The vast majority of the terror is committed by the U.S.-supported military and right-wing paramilitary forces — who are heavily involved in cocaine production and smuggling. They have tortured and murdered tens of thousands of people in trade unions and left-wing movements, including many human rights activists and grassroots organizers.
See also:
Colombia: the Genocidal Democracy
1953 – Present
American-backed Genocide of the Guatemalan People
Estimated civilian deaths: over 200,000 people
From
Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
by William Blum:
A CIA-organized coup overthrew the democratically elected and progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz, initiating 40 years of military-government death squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions and unimaginable cruelty, totaling more than 200,000 victims — indisputably one of the most inhumane chapters of the 20th century.
The justification for the coup that has been put forth over the years is that Guatemala had been on the verge of the proverbial Soviet takeover. In actuality, the Russians had so little interest in the country that it didn’t even maintain diplomatic relations. The real problem was that Arbenz had taken over some of the uncultivated land of the US firm, United Fruit Company (today’s “United Brands” and Chiquita bananas), which had extremely close ties to the American power elite.
Moreover, in the eyes of Washington, there was the danger of Guatemala’s social-democracy model spreading to other countries in Latin America.
Despite a 1996 “peace” accord between the government and rebels, respect for human rights remains as only a concept in Guatemala:
Death squads continue to operate with a significant measure of impunity against union activists and other dissidents
- Torture still rears its ugly head
- The lower classes are as wretched as ever
- The military endures as a formidable institution
The US continues to arm and train the Guatemalan military and carry out exercises with it
Key provisions of the peace accord concerning military reform have not been carried out.
(End of Rogue State excerpt)
In 1995, a US court ordered former Guatemalan Defense Minister Hector Gramajo Morales to pay $47.5 million in damages to eight Guatemalans and a US citizen for his responsibility in the torture of the American (Sister Dianna Ortiz) and the massacre of family members of the Guatemalans (among thousands of other Indians whose death he was responsible for).
Gramajo had been served a court summons in 1991 as he graduated from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, where he had studied on a scholarship provided by the US government.
The judge stated that “The evidence suggests that Gramajo devised and directed the implementation of an indiscriminate campaign of terror against civilians.” It was only following the court judgment that the Defense Department withdrew Gramajo’s invitation to speak at a military seminar.
Gramajo subsequently returned to Guatemala, without having paid any of the court judgment. In speaking of his previous residence in Guatemala, he said that he had carried out what he described as “a more humanitarian” means of dealing with perceived dissenters:
“We instituted civil affairs [in 1982] which provides development for 70 percent of the population, while we kill 30 percent.
“Before, the strategy was to kill 100 percent.”
Ah, there’s nothing like progress...
And this scuzbag is a good buddy of our U.S. Corporate Mafia Government and military. Makes you sorta proud to be an American, doesn’t it?
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See also:
Making Guatemala a Killing Field
From What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky
Guatemala: Memory of Silence
Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification
Conclusions and Recommendations http://hrdata.aaas.org/ceh/report/english/toc.html
US government responsible for genocide and terror in Guatemala
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/feb1999/guat-f27.shtml
Guatemala: how we continue the genocide of indigenous peoples, in the name of big business
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/soa/guatemala.htm(From “US Army School of Assassins” at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/soa/ )
Guerillas in Guatemala
http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~delacova/guatemala-rev.htm
1980 – Present
American Terrorism of the El Salvadoran People
Estimated civilian deaths: over 75,000 people
From
Derailing Democracy: The America the Media Don’t Want You to See
by Dave McGowan:
Massive amounts of arms, training and funding were poured into El Salvador to prop up the puppet government against a popular uprising. Featured the covert use of U.S. air power and ground forces, as well as the training, at the “School of the Americas,” of the leaders of the right-wing death squads which executed thousands of Salvadorans.
Some of the highlights of the death squad activities included:
- The assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero
The execution of six Jesuit priests along with their housekeeper and her daughter
- The rape and execution of four American church women
- The mass execution of some 800 civilians at the village of El Mozote
From
Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since WWII
by William Blum:
El Salvador’s dissidents tried to work within the system. But with U.S. support, the government made that impossible, using repeated electoral fraud and murdering hundreds of protesters and strikers. In 1980, the dissidents took to the gun, and civil war.
Officially, the U.S. military presence in El Salvador was limited to an advisory capacity. In actuality, military and CIA personnel played a more active role on a continuous basis. About 20 Americans were killed or wounded in helicopter and plane crashes while flying reconnaissance or other missions over combat areas, and considerable evidence surfaced of a U.S. role in the ground fighting as well. The war came to an official end in 1992; 75,000 civilian deaths and the U.S. Treasury depleted by six billion dollars.
Meaningful social change has been largely thwarted. A handful of the wealthy still own the country, the poor remain as ever, and dissidents still have to fear right-wing death squads.
See also:
The Crucifixion of El Salvador
From What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky
El Salvador: SOA graduates on parade
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/soa/elsalvador.htm(From “US Army School of Assassins” at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/soa/ )
1959 – Present
American Subversion and State Terrorism of the Cuban People
From
Killing Hope
by William Blum:
Fidel Castro came to power at the beginning of 1959. A U.S. National Security Council meeting of March 10, 1959 included on its agenda the feasibility of bringing “another government to power in Cuba.” There followed 40 years of terrorist attacks, bombings, full-scale military invasion, sanctions, embargoes, isolation, assassinations...Cuba had carried out The Unforgivable Revolution, a very serious threat of setting a “good example” in Latin America.
The saddest part of this is that the world will never know what kind of society Cuba could have produced if left alone, if not constantly under the gun and the threat of invasion, if allowed to relax its control at home. The idealism, the vision, the talent were all there. But we’ll never know. And that of course was the idea.
See also the bibliography:
Cuban Liberation: Fidel Castro, Che Guevara & Jose Marti
1987 – 1994
American-supported State Terrorism of the Haitian People
From
Killing Hope
by William Blum:
The U.S. supported the Duvalier family dictatorship for 30 years, then opposed the reformist priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Meanwhile, the CIA was working intimately with death squads, torturers, and drug traffickers.
With this as background, the Clinton White House found itself in the awkward position of having to pretend — because of all their rhetoric about “democracy” — that they supported Aristide’s return to power in Haiti after he had been ousted in a 1991 military coup. After delaying his return for more than two years, Washington finally had its military restore Aristide to office, but only after obliging the priest to guarantee that he would not help the poor at the expense of the rich, and that he would stick closely to free-market economics. This meant that Haiti would continue to be the assembly plant of the Western Hemisphere, with its workers receiving literally starvation wages.
1981 – 1990
American Terrorism of the Nicaraguan People
Estimated civilian deaths: over 13,000 people
From
Derailing Democracy
by Dave McGowan:
Following the fall of the Somoza regime, which had been backed for decades by the U.S., the CIA. formed and armed the covert army known as the “Contras” from the remains of Somoza’s National Guard. Assisted by covert U.S. air power, this proxy army inflicted considerable death and destruction across the Nicaraguan countryside.
From
Killing Hope
by William Blum:
When the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1978, it was clear to Washington that they might well be that long-dreaded beast — “another Cuba.” Under President Carter, attempts to sabotage the revolution took diplomatic and economic forms. Under Reagan, violence was the method of choice. For eight terribly long years, the people of Nicaragua were under attack by Washington’s proxy army, the Contras, formed from Somoza’s vicious National Guard and other supporters of the dictator.
It was all-out war, aiming to destroy the progressive social and economic programs of the government, burning down schools and medical clinics, raping, torturing, mining harbors, bombing and strafing. These were Ronald Reagan’s “freedom fighters.” There would be no revolution in Nicaragua.
From a talk by John Stockwell, 13-year veteran of the CIA and former U.S. Marine Corps major:
“Systematically, the Contras have been assassinating religious workers, teachers, health workers, elected officials, government administrators. Remember the ‘Assassination Manual’ that surfaced in 1984? It caused such a stir that President Reagan had to address it himself in the presidential debates with Walter Mondale. They use terror to traumatize society so that it cannot function.
“I don’t mean to abuse you with verbal violence, but you have to understand what your Government and its agents are doing.
“They go into villages. They haul out families. With the children forced to watch, they castrate the father. They peel the skin off his face. They put a grenade in his mouth, and pull the pin. With the children forced to watch, they gang-rape the mother, and slash her breasts off. And sometimes, for variety, they make the parents watch while they do these things to the children.
“This is nobody’s propaganda!
“There have been over a hundred thousand American “Witnesses for Peace” who’ve gone down there, and they have filmed and photographed and witnessed these atrocities immediately after they’ve happened, and documented thirteen thousand people killed this way — mostly women and children.
“These are the activities done by the Contras. The Contras are the people President Reagan called ‘freedom fighters.’ He said: ‘They are the moral equivalent of our founding fathers.’”
“It is cynical to think that the contra respect human rights. During my four years as a contra director, it was premeditated practice to terrorize civilian non-combatants to prevent their cooperation with the government... No serious attempt has been made to stop them because terror is the most effective weapon of the contra.”
— Edgar Chamorro
See also:
Teaching Nicaragua a lesson
From What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky
1989
American Invasion of Panama
Estimated civilian deaths: several thousand people
From
Rogue State
by William Blum:
Less than two weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States showed its joy that a new era of world peace was now possible by invading Panama, as Washington’s mad bombers struck again. On December 20, 1989, a large tenement barrio in Panama City was wiped out; 15,000 people were left homeless. Counting several days of ground fighting between U.S. and Panamanian forces, 500-something natives dead was the official body count — i.e., what the United States and the new U.S.-installed Panamanian government admitted to. Other sources, examining more evidence, concluded that thousands had died. Additionally, some 3,000 Panamanians were wounded, 23 Americans died, 324 were wounded.
Question from reporter: “Was it really worth it to send people to their death for this? To get Noriega?”
George Bush: “Every human life is precious, and yet I have to answer, yes, it has been worth it.”
Manuel Noriega had been an American ally and informant for years until he outlived his usefulness. But getting him was hardly a major motive for the attack. Bush wanted to send a clear message to the people of Nicaragua, who had an election scheduled in two months, that this might be their fate if they reelected the Sandinistas. Bush also wanted to flex some military muscle to illustrate to Congress the need for a large combat-ready force even after the very recent dissolution of the “Soviet threat.” The official explanation for the American ouster was Noriega’s drug trafficking, which Washington had known about for years and had not been at all bothered by. And they could easily have gotten their hands on the man without wreaking such terrible devastation upon the Panamanian people.
See also:
The Invasion of Panama
From What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky
1979 – 1984
American Subversion and Invasion of tiny Grenada
Estimated civilian deaths: several hundred people
From
Rogue State
by William Blum:
How impoverished, small, weak or far away must a country be before it is not a threat to the U.S. government? In a 1979 coup, Maurice Bishop and his followers had taken power in this island country of 110 thousand, and though their actual policies were not as revolutionary as Castro’s, Washington was again driven by its fear of “another Cuba,” particularly when public appearances by the Grenadian leaders in other countries of the region met with great enthusiasm.
Reagan administration destabilization tactics against the Bishop government began soon after the coup, featuring outrageous disinformation and deception. Finally came the invasion in October 1983, which put into power individuals more beholden to U.S. foreign policy objectives. The U.S. suffered 135 killed or wounded; there were also some 400 Grenadian casualties, and 84 Cubans, mainly construction workers. The invasion was attended by yet more transparent lies, created by Washington to justify its gross violations of international law.
(Added note: This invasion was not attended, however, by newsreporters. The 1983 invasion of Grenada was the first major American military assault in which newsreporters were barred from being present. The U.S. government didn’t want the world to witness the great superpower beating up on a tiny island and murdering its civilian inhabitants.)
From
What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky:
No country is exempt from this treatment [American state terrorism], no matter how unimportant. In fact, it’s the weakest, poorest countries that often arouse the greatest hysteria.
Grenada has a hundred thousand people who produce a little nutmeg, and you could hardly find it on a map. But when Grenada began to undergo a mild social revolution, Washington quickly moved to destroy the threat.
There’s a reason for that. The weaker and poorer a country is, the more dangerous it is as an example. If a tiny, poor country like Grenada can succeed in bringing about a better life for its people, some other place that has more resources will ask, “why not us?”
From
Killing Hope
by William Blum:
At the end of 1984, a questionable election was held which was won by a man supported by the Reagan administration. One year later, the human rights organization, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, reported that Grenada’s new U.S.-trained police force and counter-insurgency forces had acquired a reputation for brutality, arbitrary arrest, and abuse of authority, and were eroding civil rights.
In April 1989, the government issued a list of more than 80 books which were prohibited from being imported. Four months later, the prime minister suspended parliament to forestall a threatened no-confidence vote resulting from what his critics called “an increasingly authoritarian style.”
1964 –1973
American-backed Overthrow of the Democratic Government of Chile
Estimated civilian deaths: over 5000 people from the subsequent Pinochet terror campaign; at least 1000 people missing and presumed dead
“Not a nut or bolt shall reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and all Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty.”
— U.S. Ambassador to Chile
three years before the US-supported coup
against Chile’s elected President Allende
From
Killing Hope
by William Blum:
Salvador Allende was the worst possible scenario for a Washington imperialist, [who] could imagine only one thing worse than a Marxist in power — an elected Marxist in power, who honored the constitution, and became increasingly popular. This shook the very foundation stones on which the anti-Communist tower was built: the doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that “communists” can take power only through force and deception, that they can retain that power only through terrorizing and brainwashing the population.
After sabotaging Allende’s electoral endeavor in 1964, and failing to do so in 1970, despite their best efforts, the CIA and the rest of the American foreign policy machine left no stone unturned in their attempt to destabilize the Allende government over the next three years, paying particular attention to building up military hostility. Finally, in September 1973, the military overthrew the government, Allende dying in the process.
They closed the country to the outside world for a week, while the tanks rolled and the soldiers broke down doors; the stadiums rang with the sounds of execution and the bodies piled up along the streets and floated in the river; the torture centers opened for business; the subversive books were thrown into bonfires; soldiers slit the trouser legs of women, shouting that “In Chile women wear dresses!”; the poor returned to their natural state; and the men of the world in Washington and in the halls of international finance opened up their check-books. In the end, more than 3,000 had been executed, thousands more tortured or disappeared.
(End of Killing Hope excerpt)In the bloody coup of September 11, 1973, Henry Kissinger and the CIA helped General Augusto Pinochet overthrow the democratically elected leftist government of President Salvador Allende.
The Fascist puppet-regime of Pinochet then embarked on a 17-year terror campaign against the people of Chile, which included mass arrests and executions, death squads, torture and disappearances.
Many of the victims were fingered as “radicals” by lists provided by the CIA.
Santiago’s national stadium was used as a mass execution site. Robert Saldias, the first army officer to come forward publicly without concealing his identity, said prisoners entering the stadium were identified by yellow, black, and red discs. “Whoever received a red disc had no chance,” Saldias said.
Many of the professional torturers and assassins in the Chilean military (and in every other Fascist country of Central and South America) were trained at the “School of the Americas”, in Fort Benning, Georgia.
Under Pinochet, Chile also participated in “Operation Condor,” a joint collaboration between the U.S.-backed dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil to hunt down and murder exiled opponents of those regimes. Successful hits included the 1976 car-bomb explosion in Washington, DC, which killed Allende’s exiled foreign minister Orlando Letelier, and his aide, American Ronnie Moffitt.
“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people.”
— Henry Kissinger
referring to Chilean voters
(after a few drinks, perhaps?)
1970
See also:
Remember Chile: General Pinochet and human rights abuses
http://www.remember-chile.org.uk/
Mid-1950s, 1970-71
American Assassination Attempts on the Elected Leader of Costa Rica
From
Rogue State
by William Blum:
To liberal American political leaders, President Jose Figueres was the quintessential “liberal democrat”, the kind of statesman they liked to think, and liked the world to think, was the natural partner of US foreign policy rather than the military dictators who somehow kept popping up as allies.
Yet the United States tried to overthrow Figueres (in the 1950s, and perhaps also in the 1970s, when he was again president), and tried to assassinate him twice.
The reasons? Figueres was not tough enough on the left, led Costa Rica to become the first country in Central America to establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and on occasion questioned American foreign policy, like the Bay of Pigs invasion.
1963 – 1966
American Subversion and Tyranny in the Dominican Republic
From
Killing Hope
by William Blum:
In February 1963, Juan Bosch took office as the first democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic since 1924. Here at last was John F. Kennedy’s liberal anti-Communist, to counter the charge that the U.S. supported only military dictatorships. Bosch’s government was to be the long sought “showcase of democracy” that would put the lie to Fidel Castro. He was given the grand treatment in Washington shortly before he took office.
Bosch was true to his beliefs. He called for land reform, low-rent housing, modest nationalization of business, and foreign investment provided it was not excessively exploitative of the country and other policies making up the program of any liberal Third World leader serious about social change. He was likewise serious about civil liberties: Communists, or those labeled as such, were not to be persecuted unless they actually violated the law.
A number of American officials and congresspeople expressed their discomfort with Bosch’s plans, as well as his stance of independence from the United States. Land reform and nationalization are always touchy issues in Washington, the stuff that “creeping socialism” is made of. In several quarters of the U.S. press Bosch was red-baited.
In September, the military boots marched. Bosch was out. The United States, which could discourage a military coup in Latin America with a frown, did nothing.
Nineteen months later, a revolt broke out which promised to put the exiled Bosch back into power. The United States sent 23,000 troops to help crush it.
1961 – 1964
American-backed State Terrorism and Overthrow of Democracy in Brazil
From
Killing Hope
by William Blum:
President Joao Goulart was guilty of the usual crimes: He took an independent stand in foreign policy, resuming relations with socialist countries and opposing sanctions against Cuba; his administration passed a law limiting the amount of profits multinationals could transmit outside the country; a subsidiary of ITT was nationalized; he promoted economic and social reforms. And Attorney-General Robert Kennedy was uneasy about Goulart allowing “communists” to hold positions in government agencies.
Yet the man was no radical. He was a millionaire land-owner and a Catholic who wore a medal of the Virgin around his neck. That, however, was not enough to save him. In 1964, he was overthrown in a military coup which had deep, covert American involvement. The official Washington line was...yes, it’s unfortunate that democracy has been overthrown in Brazil...but, still, the country has been saved from communism.
For the next 15 years, all the features of military dictatorship that Latin America has come to know were instituted: Congress was shut down, political opposition was reduced to virtual extinction, habeas corpus for “political crimes” was suspended, criticism of the president was forbidden by law, labor unions were taken over by government interveners, mounting protests were met by police and military firing into crowds, peasants’ homes were burned down, priests were brutalized...disappearances, death squads, a remarkable degree and depravity of torture...the government had a name for its program: the “moral rehabilitation” of Brazil.
Washington was very pleased. Brazil broke relations with Cuba and became one of the United States’ most reliable allies in Latin America.
1953 – 1964
American/British Overthrow of the Democratically-Elected President of Guyana
From
Killing Hope
by William Blum:
For 11 years, two of the oldest democracies in the world, Great Britain and the United States, went to great lengths to prevent a democratically elected leader from occupying his office. Cheddi Jagan was another Third World leader who tried to remain neutral and independent. He was elected three times. Although a leftist-more so than Sukarno or Arbenz — his policies in office were not revolutionary. But he was still a marked man, for he represented Washington’s greatest fear: building a society that might be a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model. Using a wide variety of tactics — from general strikes and disinformation to terrorism and British legalisms, the U. S. and Britain finally forced Jagan out in 1964. John F. Kennedy had given a direct order for his ouster, as, presumably, had Eisenhower.
One of the better-off countries in the region under Jagan, Guyana, by the 1980s, was one of the poorest. Its principal export became people.
1959
American Support of Dictatorship in Haiti
From
Rogue State
by William Blum:
The US military mission, in Haiti to train the troops of noted dictator Francois Duvalier, used its air, sea and ground power to smash an attempt to overthrow Duvalier by a small group of Haitians, aided by some Cubans and other Latin Americans.
1900 – 1930s
American Terrorism and Tyranny in Latin America and Around the World
From
A People’s History of the United States
by Howard Zinn:
“For the United States to step forward [in WWII] as a defender of helpless countries matched its image in American high school history textbooks, but not its record in world affairs.
“It had instigated a war with Mexico and taken half of that country.
“It had pretended to help Cuba win freedom from Spain, and then planted itself in Cuba with a military base, investments, and rights of intervention.
“It had seized Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and fought a brutal war to subjugate the Filipinos.
“It had ‘opened’ Japan to its trade with gunboats and threats.
“It had declared an Open Door Policy in China as a means of assuring that the United States would have opportunities equal to other imperial powers in exploiting China. It had sent troops to Peking with other nations, to assert Western supremacy in China, and kept them there for over thirty years.
“While demanding an Open Door in China, it had insisted (with the Monroe Doctrine and many military interventions) on a Closed Door in Latin America — that is, closed to everyone but the United States.
“It had engineered a revolution against Colombia and created the ‘independent’ state of Panama in order to build and control the Canal.
“It sent five thousand marines to Nicaragua in 1926 to counter a revolution, and kept a force there for seven years.
“It intervened in the Dominican Republic for the fourth time in 1916 and kept troops there for eight years.
“It intervened for the second time in Haiti in 1915 and kept troops there for nineteen years.
“Between 1900 and 1933, the United States intervened in Cuba four times, in Nicaragua twice, in Panama six times, in Guatemala once, in Honduras seven times.
“By 1924 the finances of half of the twenty Latin American states were being directed to some extent by the United States. By 1935, over half of U.S. steel and cotton exports were being sold in Latin America.”
“And in every single case, these interventions were for the purpose of crushing popular revolts against the tyranny of the puppet governments the United States had installed in hapless countries around the world.
“Perhaps we’ll never know how many innocent men, women and children were murdered during all these “interventions.”
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Gen. Smedley Butler’s confession
In 1935, two-time Medal of Honor winner, retired Gen. Smedley D. Butler accused major New York investment banks of using the U.S. Marines as racketeers and gangsters to exploit the peasants of Nicaragua.
Later, Butler stated:
“The trouble is that when American dollars earn only six percent over here, they get restless and go overseas to get 100 percent. The flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
“I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to defend some lousy investment of the bankers. We should fight only for the defense of our home and the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
“There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It had its ‘finger men’ to point out enemies, its ‘muscle men’ to destroy enemies, its ‘brain men’ to plan war preparations and a ‘Big Boss’ — supernationalistic capitalism.
“I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.
“I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.
“War is a racket.”
— General Smedley Butler
former U.S. Marine Commandant
Common Sense
November 1935
“I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar soaked fingers out of the business of these (Third World) nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own. And if unfortunately their revolution must be of the violent type because the “haves” refuse to share with the “have-nots” by any peaceful method, at least what they get will be their own, and not the American style, which they don’t want and above all don’t want crammed down their throats by Americans.”
— General David Sharp
former United States Marine Commandant
1966
“The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy.”
— Ramsey Clark
former U.S. Attorney General
under President Lyndon Johnson
Related pages
The Crucifixion of El Salvador
From
What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky
Making Guatemala a Killing Field
From
What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky
Teaching Nicaragua a lesson
From
What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky
The Invasion of Panama
From
What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky
Free online book from Common Courage Press:
Colombia: The Genocidal Democracy
by Javier Giraldo
Inside American State Terrorism: A Soldier Speaks
by Stan Goff
Bibliography:
Cuban Liberation: Castro, Che Guevara and Jose Marti
Related sites
“The Panama Deception documents the untold story of the December 1989 U.S. Invasion of Panama; the events which led to it, the excessive force used, the enormity of the death and destruction, and the devastating aftermath.”
Writings by Peace Activist S. Brian Willson
http://www.brianwillson.com/
Brian Willson is a courageous Vietnam vet who was wounded in combat — but not during the Vietnam Genocide. He was fighting a war of conscience. In 1987 a military train at a U.S. Navy munitions base intentionally ran over him and severed his legs as he and two other veterans sat on the tracks to block it. The train was carrying weapons to be used in America’s ongoing holocaust of innocent civilian people in Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador.
His autobiography is heartfelt, utterly unself-pitying and very instructive, particularly his experiences from Vietnam onward. Brian Willson’s writing is extremely valuable, being from a deeply intelligent and genuinely moral man who has witnessed firsthand the horrors of American state terrorism around the world.
From the site:
“THIS SITE CONTAINS essays describing the incredible historic pattern of U.S. arrogance, ethnocentrism, violence and lawlessness in domestic and global affairs, and the severe danger this pattern poses for the future health of Homo sapiens and Mother Earth. Other essays discuss revolutionary, nonviolent alternative approaches based on the principle of radical relational mutuality. This is a term increasingly used by physicists, mathematicians and cosmologists to describe the nature of the omnicentric*, ever-unfolding universe. Every being, every aspect of life energy in the cosmos, is intrinsically interconnected with and affects every other being and aspect of life energy at every moment.”
*everything is at the center of the cosmos at every moment
Remember Chile:
General Pinochet and human rights abuses
http://www.remember-chile.org.uk/
“No healthy, solid, stable democracy can build itself upon a foundation of forgetting the most serious crimes against the right to life, integrity and freedom committed in Chilean history and within a policy of state terrorism that unleashed maximum political violence against society.”
WSWS : News & Analysis : South & Central America
http://www.wsws.org/sections/category/news/americas.shtml
WSWS : News & Analysis : Colombia http://www.wsws.org/sections/category/news/am-colom.shtml
School of the Americas Watch
http://www.soaw.org/index.html
The United States Army “School of the Americas,” in Fort Benning, Georgia, teaches its students how to torture human beings.
Graduates of the U.S. Army School of the Americas have been responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America.
Among the SOA’s nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia.
Lower-level SOA graduates have participated in human rights abuses that include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the torture of countless people throughout Central and South America and the El Mozote Massacre of 900 human beings.
The US Army School of Assassins
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/soa/
Exposes the dirty deeds of the U.S. Army School of “the Americas” (Assassins) throughout Latin America. Special sections on Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Grenada, Colombia, Panama, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
Bibliography
Body of Secrets:
Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency
by James Bamford
In 1962, U.S. military leaders had a top-secret plan for committing terrorist attacks on Americans in Miami and Washington D.C., while blaming Cuba. Codenamed “Operation Northwoods”, the plan was intended to provide the propaganda necessary to create popular support for an invasion of Cuba.
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