War Crimes in Guatemala
I've begun reading a fascinating book, Blowback by Chalmers Johnson, first published in 2000. Although updated in mid-2003, its analysis of the American empire is essentially unrelated to the exploits of the current Bush administration. I'm reminded of a conversation I had in early 2003, before the invasion of Iraq, with a friend from Belize. "What George W. Bush is doing," I said to her, "is unmasking America." One paragraph from the book follows.
Blowback : The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (Second Edition) (Paperback)
Guatemala is a particularly striking example of American imperial policies in its own "backyard." In 1954, the Eisenhower administration planned and the CIA organized and funded a military coup that overthrew a Guatemalan president whose modest land reform policies were considered a threat to American corporations. Blowback from this led to a Marxist guerrilla insurgency in the 1980s and so to CIA- and Pentagon-supported genocide against Mayan peasants. In the spring of 1999, a report on the Guatemalan civil war from the U.N.-sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification made clear that "the American training of the officer corps in counter-insurgency techniques" was a "key factor" in the "genocide....Entire Mayan villages were attacked and burned and their inhabitants were slaughtered in an effort to deny the guerrillas protection." According to the commission, between 1981 and 1983 the military government of Guatemala--financed and supported by the U.S. government--destroyed some four hundred Mayan villages in a campaign of genocide in which approximately two hundred thousand peasants were killed. José Pertierra, an attorney representing Jennifer Harbury, an American lawyer who spent years trying to find out what happened to her "disappeared" Guatemalan husband and supporter of the guerrillas, Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, writes that the Guatemalan military officer who arrested, tortured, and murdered Bámaca was a CIA "asset" and was paid $44,000 for the information he obtained from him.
Blowback : The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (Second Edition) (Paperback)
Guatemala is a particularly striking example of American imperial policies in its own "backyard." In 1954, the Eisenhower administration planned and the CIA organized and funded a military coup that overthrew a Guatemalan president whose modest land reform policies were considered a threat to American corporations. Blowback from this led to a Marxist guerrilla insurgency in the 1980s and so to CIA- and Pentagon-supported genocide against Mayan peasants. In the spring of 1999, a report on the Guatemalan civil war from the U.N.-sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification made clear that "the American training of the officer corps in counter-insurgency techniques" was a "key factor" in the "genocide....Entire Mayan villages were attacked and burned and their inhabitants were slaughtered in an effort to deny the guerrillas protection." According to the commission, between 1981 and 1983 the military government of Guatemala--financed and supported by the U.S. government--destroyed some four hundred Mayan villages in a campaign of genocide in which approximately two hundred thousand peasants were killed. José Pertierra, an attorney representing Jennifer Harbury, an American lawyer who spent years trying to find out what happened to her "disappeared" Guatemalan husband and supporter of the guerrillas, Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, writes that the Guatemalan military officer who arrested, tortured, and murdered Bámaca was a CIA "asset" and was paid $44,000 for the information he obtained from him.
<< Home