1970s-80s ~ South America’s Dirty Wars and Vietnam in Central America

15 Apr 2009 Leave a Comment

by Marvin Lance Wiser in U.S.-Latin American Relations Tags: Augusto Pinochet, Carlos Salinas, Carlos Slim Helú, Chicago Boys, Chile, death squads, Dirty Wars, El Mozote, El Salvador, El Salvadoran Civil War, Eliot Abrams, Greg Grandin, Henry Kissenger, Mark Danner, Mexico, Reagan Doctrine, Reaganomics, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Salvador Allende, U.S.-Latin American Relations

This is entry #7 in a series of entries that can be found in the category U.S.-Latin American Relations.

The 70s was a gruesome decade for South America. In 1973 General Augusto Pinochet ousted democratically-elected President Salvador Allende in a U.S.-backed coup d’état in Chile. Coups ended numerous democratic governments in Latin America during this time frame, including Uruguay, Chile, Ecuador, and Bolivia, culminating in 1976, with Argentina’s fall to a military junta. Surely this sounded an alarm to Washington- having as one of its ideals to spread democracy.  Quite the contrary, for what the States was learning was that it was easier to deal with inhumane militaristic dictators than it was with social democratic governments.  Freedom is only an illusion until Marxist ideals are completely stamped out.  It was better in the eyes of the States to topple socially democratic governments that sympathized with Marxist ideals and allow bloodthirsty dictators that trusted papi Washington in the interest of free markets to rule in their stead than to allow real democracy to flourish.  And so the States was behind many of the coups that took place in Latin America in the 1970s which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.  The 70s should teach us to be very wary of catch words like “freedom” and “democracy.”  They are often used to garner support to carry out actions that undermine their very definition. This is exactly how Bush played the American people. Though he went even further, polarizing the world into good and evil and substituting Jesus with the beloved motherland, saying on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks  “America stands as a beacon of light to the world, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”  This left evangelicals shrieking with joy. He didn’t have to do much more to build the war, it was relatively easy.  I want go into detail on his administration for that will be left to another post, but I would like to express that we really “misunderestimated” this guy- he knew his history.

As soon as the Marxist Salvador Allende was elected to the office of President of Chile in 1970, he had it coming.  President Nixon in dialogue with the ambassador to Chile was recorded at length describing how he was going to “smash the son of a bitch- that bastard!” (Grandin’s EW, 59).  The next three years Allende nationalized the  banking and copper industry, created a universal health care system, and fostered relations with Cuba, while the U.S. poured millions of dollars into destabilization (lessons learned from Guatemala). And finally in 1973 a U.S.-backed coup brought to power one of the most notorious dictators of our time, who reigned relentlessly, shrouded in terror for seventeen years, leaving the Marxist dead in a hospital bed.

This event catapulted South America into a downward spiral.  National Security Advisor and hard practitioner of Realpolitik Henry Kissinger told Pinochet after assuming office, “If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly.”  Kissinger actually saw Allende more of a threat than Castro because Allende wasn’t a dictator, he was democratically elected and had the support of the masses.  The “national threat” for the U.S. was that Chile was going to be the example to the world that socialism could work in the western hemisphere, undermining U.S. hegemony- unless of course somebody stepped in and took action. What Kissinger told Pinochet was a sign of assurance, giving free reign to dispose of any dissidents in the manner in which Pinochet saw fit.  This lead to mass persecution with 80,000 civilians incarcerated without trial, 30,000 tortured, over 3,000 murdered, and some 200,000 forced into exile, mostly to nearby Peru or Argentina. Of those that stayed behind, thousands disappeared during the nights of his bloody reign, with Uncle Sam patting little Pinochet on the back the whole time. Some of Pinochet’s officers graduated from the School of Americas, where they put the tactics taught to them by Washington into force. At the time of his death in 2006, Pinochet had around 300 criminal charges against him still pending for human rights abuses and violations.

The “up-side”- or at least the thing that we are told to believe which outweighs the brutality of his regime, was the “economic miracle” that his government ushered in (sponsored and endorsed in part by the Chicago Boys), which created a free-market society- that was lauded by the States as a huge success and a prime example of progress in the Inter-American System.  As dictator, Pinochet rapidly enforced economic reforms (another incentive for the States to support such a ruthless man).  Almost overnight all things nationalized were sold off, vastly under valued; social programs were slashed; and soon thereafter inflation was brought under control.  This U.S.-encouraged government sell out continued to occur throughout Latin America in the 1980s. Between 1985 and 1992 over 2,000 government industries were sold off, in Chile this went as far as selling national cemeteries (Grandin’s EW, 188). In Mexico, President Carlos Salinas did very much the same thing, selling over a thousand government industries.  During this time of corrupted selling orgies, one man in particular acquired most of the nation-literally.  Carlos Slim Helú became (and still is) one of the richest men in the world, acquiring many of the former national industries of Mexico, the most notable being the telecommunications industry, creating a super-monopoly.  In 2008, according to Forbes List, he was worth more than Bill Gates, coming in second of the World Billionaires only to Warren Buffet.  He was estimated to have the wealth of 17 million citizens of his own country. When Bolivia sold off its water company (in the 90s) due to insistence by the World Bank, its citizens experienced a 200% increase in pay and were even outlawed by the government from collecting rainwater, in order to assure proper repatriation of profits.  Fortunately they marched.  It has been experiences like these that has led Bolivia to place its indigenous president, Evo Morales in office.

After the cheap sell off to mostly business tycoons, foreign investors, family, and as political favors, government debt in Latin America ballooned.  This set the stage for a New International Economic Order.  Regan triumphantly entered with a solution: “Trade not Aid” (we may ask ourselves, quid pro quo?). The NIEO obliged participating countries to slash taxes; devalue their currencies; lower minimum wage; exempt foreign companies from environmental and labor laws; cut health care, education, and social services; deregulate business; dispose of unions; allow 100% repatriation of profits; and privatize virtually everything owned by the state (and Cui bono?) [Grandin's EW, 187].

Back Stateside, over the previous decades before Reagan took office, the amount of income claimed by the nation’s top one percentile had been cut in half from 16 to 8%, with the introduction of social programs and progressive personal tax codes. Reagan sought to reverse this progressive trend. He did so by ordering supply-side across the board tax cuts coupled with massive increase in defense spending (smells like Bush to me).  That spending went straight to Central America. At times during the Reagan administration, more than a million dollars were provided per day to conduct covert operations in El Salvador, interfering in its civil war, arming boys and girls to fight, and giving them U.S. muscle and ammunition to get the job done (Grandin’s EW, 71).

After the dirty wars and the economic reforms of that rocked South America, Central America found itself in its own political quagmire- not that unlike Vietnam. Trouble was brewing in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.  Yet the States learned its lesson in both the Bay of Pigs Operation and in Vietnam: perhaps direct intervention is not the answer. Too many risks of humiliation and civil discontent abounded with a full-fledged military intervention, low warfare counterinsurgency tactics coupled with money and arms funneling appeared much better, not to mention they were (seemingly) off the radar. The Reagan Doctrine called not for a ‘containment’ of Soviet or Marxist influences but a ‘pushing back’ of them- especially in the vulnerable, politically unsound “third world”, which in this case translates to “El Salvador.”  All said, at the end of Reagan’s second term, more than 300,000 people were murdered, hundreds of thousands more tortured, and millions driven into exile in part due to the U.S. involvement in ‘pushing-back’ policies .  Do we still have to ask the question, “Why do they not like Americans?”

In some places the Reagan Doctrine was meeting a shove with every push it enacted.  For many “El Salvador” became Spanish for Vietnam.  During his presidency, account after account was reported of U.S.-trained soldiers (more commonly known as death squads- similar to those seen in Chile in the 1970s) raiding towns in El Salvador, torturing civilians, cutting off genitalia, and murdering infants.  One such event occurred in 1981 in El Mozote, El Salvador.  In December of that year there was a systematic execution of nearly 1,000 civilians.  The entire town was ravaged by a U.S.-trained and sponsored government battalion. The event was completely denied by both the U.S. and El Salvadoran governments for years.  Yet, as time passed and excavations of El Mozote revealed hundreds of bullets manufactured in Lake City, Missouri, the truth became difficult to deny and the public difficult to deceive.  It has been projected that in just two years, 1981-1983, more than 100,000 Mayan peasants that were resisting to the changes that Washington was sponsoring were executed.  Many U.S. reporters were pulled out of the country during this time; children were drowned in front of their mothers; infants were bashed against rocks; peasants were burned alive; families were made to drink the blood of their pets; farmers were made to bathe in sewage and made to try to outrun soldiers wielding machetes; pregnant women had their stomachs cut open and their fetuses pulled out; young boys were kidnapped and made to fight with the government, raping women and girls (Grandin’s EW, 90).  This is not WWII Poland, this is not even Vietnam, this is El Salvador a mere quarter of a century ago.  For many “El Salvador” became Spanish for Vietnam.   For further reading about the heinous crimes committed at El Mozote, I suggest you read the book The Massacre at El Mozote by the New Yorker journalist and now University of California Professor who broke the story in 1993, Mark Danner.

Due to space, the events that surrounded Manual Noriega of Panama in 1989 will be saved for the next post.  Needless to say the 70s and 80s were the most violently gruesome decades in the western hemisphere in the 20th century- even without mentioning the atrocities of Noriega. I think we could safely stop here and go no farther than the 1980s and successfully answer the question that led to this series of posts.

“We will never maintain wide public support for our foreign policy unless we can relate it to American ideals and to the defense of freedom.” -Eliot Abrams, 1981 (served under both President Reagan and President George W. Bush)

-MLW