on their way to slaughter teachers and mayors and nuns and bishops and other 'dangerous' people in Nicaragua and El Salvador, in the 1980s.
And their reward? The reward that all poor countries get for colluding with U.S. fascists--extreme poverty--and, often combined with that, major drugs and weapons trafficking, that the failed, corrupt, murderous U.S. "war on drugs" never stops or even slows down--resulting in intractable problems of poverty and lawlessness.
Guatemala is another example of rich elites in poor countries colluding with the U.S. and creating a basketcase of poverty and crime, that then gets inflicted with the major thievery of U.S.-dominated "free trade." In the case of Guatemala, this degradation and humiliation was also combined with the Reagan-backed slaughter of 200,000 Mayan villagers, in the 1980s--from which Guatemala is only just recovering.
Wherever the U.S. dominates, the indigenous and other poor people, and their leaders, get tortured and murdererd, and poverty gets worse. And that is why Guatemala and Honduras--and likely Mexico, in the next election--are going leftist. Guatemala just elected its first progressive government, ever, with social justice goals similar to the Bolivarian countries. Honduras' government, once a "free trade" advocate, has joined ALBA (Bolivarian trade group). Mexico came within a hairsbreadth--0.05%--of electing a strong leftist president in the last election, and if the rightwing/Corpo effort to privatize Mexico's constitutionally protected oil resource, and U.S.-funded "war on drugs" nazism toward the poor, continue, Mexico will join this amazing leftist democracy and Latin American sovereignty movement.
This is one of the reasons that I am rather worried about the U.S.-Bush plot in oil rich Zulia, Venezuela, on the Caribbean coast. Although elements of the plot (a fascist secessionist scheme, as in Bolivia) were recently exposed, the Bushwhacks may still try to grab Zulia--using the recently reconstituted U.S. 4th Fleet, the Colombian military and its paramilitary death squads, Blackwater and U.S. special forces (Zulia is adjacent to Colombia), and local fascist militias, to take over Venezuela's main oil reserve, cripple Venezuela, and try to create a leftist-free zone in the Caribbean, using the oil resource for blackmail, with violent enforcement. This could then be a U.S. Corpo/fascist bulwark--a "circling of the wagons"--against the coming powerhouse of the social justice-oriented, South American "Common Market" (UNASUR).
The countries of the peninsula--Panama, (leftist) Nicaragua, (left-leaning) Honduras, El Salvador (very likely to elect a strong leftist this winter) and up the peninsula to Guatemala and Mexico--could suffer serious repression, like the 1980s, if this Bushwhack war plot is sucessful. This is no doubt why Chavez invited the Russians to naval maneuvers in the Caribbean--as a warning off. Another key strength in Latin America is the long hard work of many people on transparent elections. Although I think Mexico's 2005 election was stolen, Latin America's elections, on the whole, are trustworthy and far more transparent than our own (with the exception of Colombia). South America has led the way, once again--as on so many issues--is strengthening democratic institutions, and Central America is coming along. Real democracies--where the people have a major say in the government--are difficult to topple, as Venezuela has time and again proven. And when democratic countries strongly ally with each other, and have each other's backs--as has happened in South America--they are nearly impossible to topple, even without strong militaries. Central America is not as strong as South America, in this regard. Bushwhack "divide and conquer" has been more successful there, thus far--but that is changing for the better, as well.
I doubt that this Bushwhack Zulia plot will succeed, if they try it, but it could cause a lot of suffering and mayhem. And Obama getting elected is no guarantee against it. The Bushwhacks could present him with a war-in-progress (in support of those poor, freedom-loving Venezuelan assassins and fascists who just want their "independence")--the short-term plan, which would have to happen in the next few months (and is similar to the CIA/Miami mafia "Bay of Pigs" scheme, to involve JFK in a war on Cuba in his first months in office)--or they could conceivably instigate a private Corpo war using U.S. taxpayer bought and paid for operatives in South America, and some of those billions of dollars stolen from us in Iraq, which Rumsfeld (who is quite possibly orchestrating Oil War II-South America) has stashed away for such contingencies. This longer term plan could unfold at any time, on into the next few years.
The short-term plan--fascist insurrections and secessionist movements in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela, all erupting at once, which may have been scheduled for March of this year--seems to have been stymied by a number of developments, including Chavez not taking the bait, in March (after the U.S./Colombia bombing/raid on Ecuador), and the creation of UNASUR this May, the South American "Common Market," which has already intervened to prevent the Bush-backed split up of Bolivia--and has done so with total unanimity. The South Americans have had it with this "divide and conquer" crap, and are acting strongly and in a unified way to counter it.
So Exxon Mobil & brethren may go to Plan B, the private Corpo war, and try to drag the U.S. into it. That won't likely succeed either, and will simply alienate Latin America even more.
This joke that Michele Batchelet, president of Chile, told the other day, in the U.S., at the expense of the U.S. and the Bushwhacks, is perhaps the best indicator of how things are going for the Bushwhacks and their dirty rotten schemes in South America. If a center-leftist like Batchelet can tell a joke like this about U.S. interventionism, to an audience of U.S. investers, you know times have changed. It would have been unheard of, just a couple of years ago, and at any time in the past.
See
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x8240When centrist South American leaders start joking about U.S. interventions, to our faces, you have to be impressed with the self-confidence, unity and determination that is behind such a joke. Jokes don't come out of nowhere. They come from bantering among friends--in this case, all the other leaders of South America, fresh from their counter-intervention in Bolivia, which Chile organized.