The year is 1954. Government agencies resurrect secret plans previously discarded until a more forceful administration comes to power. Behind the scenes, the CIA and State Department are fervently working in over time trying to engineer a government overthrow against a populist nationalist in their own backyard who has the dare audacity to threaten both US economic and geopolitical interest. Accusations of communism and Soviet penetration permeate the discourse and heat up the rhetoric; swift action must be taken to stabilize the hemisphere. Intervention by any means necessary. Exiled opposition leaders are paid off, trained, equipped, and installed. Propaganda transmits through jammed radio towers and warns the peasant population of invasion and liberation. Psychological warfare in conjunction with paramilitary covert operation is launched. The target—Guatemala, a third world poverty stricken country in which the fruits of revolution and conflict are as ripe as the bananas that dot the landscape. Such a riveting story could easily fill the pages of Tom Clancy’s next best-selling and fictional political thriller but instead, it is the true story unearthed through extensive investigation by Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, who with Bitter Fruit, meticulously detail a thought provoking and well-documented historical account of the Guatemalan coup d’état. The sowing of the seeds, subsequent cultivation, and ultimately the dangerous harvest of these bitter fruits is the basis for this compelling chronicle of one of the most controversial and…
The massacre at El Mozote is a book about all the horrible series of events that occurred at El Mozote. When one looks at the massacre, it is obvious the United States aided in these events. The United States government chose turn its eye and pretended as if nothing happened. This book introduces one to the events in El Salvador in 1981. The author gives a reconstruction of the events and shows it importance. The massacre is not to be forgotten.…
It is here where the battles between peasants versus planters, Europeans versus natives that violence erupted throughout El Salvador’s troubled history.…
The tensions between the classes, the halves and the halve-nots are therefore represented by the two warring factions. The harrowing events in Mark Danner’s Massacre at El Mozote investigates and questions three central issues; the Massacre, the role of American Policies in the region during the Cold War and the executive cover-up of the events as Propaganda. One of the concerns is what responsibility (if any) did the U.S. government have for the massacre at El Mozote?El Mozote was “uniquely” different from most villages because it had resisted the Liberation Theology taught by left-leaning Catholic Priests and according to the author was “as as stronghold of the Protestant evangelical movement” (pg 19) . The villagers of El Mozote had their own chapel and referred themselves as born-again Christians and as Danner states were known for “their anti-communism” (pg 19). The villagers of El Mozote did not support the guerillas. According to Danner the Massacre at El Mozote takes place when American trained Salvadoran Armed forces called the Atlacatl Batallion arrived at the village and began systematically killing men, women and children by various means such as torturing, hangings, decapitation, and shooting. The U.S government was responsible for the massacre at El Mozote for a plethora of reasons. First, The Reagan…
media, organized resistance by Guatemalan peasants is only described as guerrilla warfare, a revolutionary military resistance negatively known for harassment of their political enemies. However, this understanding simplifies the nature and objectives of the Guatemalan Indians’ organized resistance. Their fight manifested itself in many different ways: community groups, religious groups, and labor strikes, in addition to military groups. They were most commonly depicted in the U.S. as armed resistors, but according to Menchú, they didn’t have arms and instead used household items as weapons, such as hot water, stones, chile, salt, and lime (Menchú, ch. 17). Menchú most emphasizes their religion as their form of resistance, with “the Bible as [their] main weapon” (Menchú, p. 158).…
When the Sandinistas’ first started to rise to power, those opposing begun to engage in violent actions. The United States is backing this opposing group by supplying them with weapons and other necessities for this fight. Currently in Nicaragua, these same anti-communist groups have begun to flee in efforts to escape the rule of the Sadanista’s. It is rumored that the groups are forming what are known as guerilla units. Guerilla warfare is fought in “fast-moving, small-scale actions.” The rebels and their supporters are trudging into southern Honduras. They have made camps there to accommodate the massive evacuation. Less than 2,000 fighters are still in Nicaragua today.…
At the root of this system of institutionalized violence lay the fear of an indigenous uprising “coming down from the highlands”; the uprising of the early 1980s came closer than any other experience to realizing that great fear” (p.364). During this time, although the genocide had concluded…the ambition of ridding out the communist within the Mayan society was still continuing, especially from 1983-1990s. It was because of this that the Mayas were forced: to serve in the PACS (the self-defense patrol), to live in modern villages under military control, and to be overseen by the militarily administration in a constant effort to establish martial law which was all supervised by the General Victores. It was during this effort that the PACS were forced to kill villagers, the army used the essence of hunger to establish social control, and the ladino army felt it had the rights to control the Maya civilization of the highlands. Therefore… although the genocide itself was concluded…the efforts to control the Mayan society continued until 1990 when the war finally was concluded through the Guatemalan Peace…
Watch the video “Guatemala: In the Shadow of the Raid” and type your response to the following questions in your Discussion Board post:…
Page, Smith. The Rise of Industrial America: A People’s History of the Post Reconstruction Era…
Bibliography: Stoll, David. Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999.…
It is estimated that around 200 thousand people were killed (Heifer International). One million were homeless and 45 thousand “disappeared” (Odyssey: Latin American Stage). These numbers signify failure of a counterinsurgency because instead of killing the people that were fighting against the government, the counter attacks were placed on civilians. Even though some of the indigenous people were not part of the insurgents, they were still prosecuted because they were “communists.” On the other hand, from the Guatemalan’s point of view, these numbers could be seen as a success because of the amount of leftist insurgents dead. The threats of these guerilla groups were decreasing in the government’s…
Following the Civil War corporations began to develop at a steady pace. The needed fast transportation and abundance of materials during the Civil War fueled the correct conditions to give rise to the large-scale enterprises and financial capitalism in the United States after the Civil War. Resources such as natural resources and a growing population, paired with large corporation and the government, were the conditions that gave rise to the large-scale enterprise and financial capitalism in the United States following the Civil War. Though there were many benefits from these conditions there were multiple problems that resulted.…
“They took them one by one to a ravine that was about twenty meters from where we were. We heard shots, screams and crying.”- Jesús Tecú Osorio. This was a testimony given by one on the survivors of the Guatemalan genocide of the Mayan highlands. The Guatemalan government used its counter insurgency force, to put pressure upon the Mayans who claimed they were starting a communist group. The Mayans natural allies the guerrillas added to the uprising human rights violations. This led masse of defenseless Mayan communities, including children, women and the elderly to be slaughtered, through many methods of cruelty.…
Guatemala was once the center of the Mayan Kingdom, until the 10th century AD. It was until Spanish explorers conquered the land and made the Mayans slaves in their own country. To this day, the Mayans are still the most underprivileged in Guatemala. The genocide of the Mayans had started as an accusation of being involved in a communist revolution in 1981. With this, it led to many deaths of the Mayans and millions being dragged out of their homes. In what had seemed a typical civil war, fighting for their rights, it turned into a deadly massacre of the poor Mayans.…
Corporate attack on President of Guatemala by convincing neighboring countries that the land was the companies and not the peasants…