Immigration, The Bible, and Monstrous Races

25 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment

by Marvin Lance Wiser in Global Issues, Human Rights, Mexico, Politics, Social Justice, U.S.-Latin American Relations Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We’ve all heard of the phenomena of human migration, and most have been directly affected by immigration of people into their home country or by family members migrating to another country. Speaking of the constituents of the United States, one would have to be 100% Native American to claim that he or she is where s/he is today not dependent upon the immigration of ancestors to this country. We are all here because of the phenomena of immigration. Often times, one is too quick to acknowledge this when approaching the topic. We must recognize that the phenomena is just as valid today as it was centuries ago or even decades ago when our ancestors made the journey to the New World. The reasons for the migration of people groups today are the same that prompted the Mayflower to set out and the same that invoked early man to cross the Bering Strait: Persecution, based on religion, race or tribal/political affiliation; and Scarcity of resources- economic, agricultural, etc. More often than not it is a combination of the two categories. Our own past should serve to humble us, no matter from which side of the argument we engage the subject.

 

Phoenix Arizona artist, Francisco García aka GRAFFTRUTH

In order to properly address the current social issues that arise out of the phenomena of immigration, attention needs to be addressed to how one group (the “in group”- in this case, citizens of the US) views another distinct group (in this case, non-citizen immigrants). This is often referred to as the “us-them” syndrome. It is a binary discrimination that characterizes much of the dominant forms of cognition within the Western world. In writing about the issue of immigration, I’d like to examine biblical texts as well as a text that predates the biblical tradition, paying special attention to their treatment of the “other,” and of the construction of Monster and how the “foreigner” is often denoted as Monster.

Many literary texts deal with the “other,” the “strangers,” and demonstrate the natural tendency toward such binary discrimination. Going back as far as we can trace the archiving of human consciousness, to the earliest writing of epic proportions, the Epic of Gilgamesh, we can see how people some millennia ago that were just beginning to acquire literacy treat this sensitive topic. The two main characters in the Epic of Gilgamesh are Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Gilgamesh is Conan meets Hugh Hefner. He is the quintessential testosterone-filled male hero. He makes the boys squall with his never-ending brawls and the women swoon with his sexual exploits. Nothing is out of his reach of domination. The text begins by stating that he has seen and done it all: there was no match too great for Gilgamesh. On hearing the cries of the daughters and sons of men the gods decide to make a match for Gilgamesh. Thus Enkidu is made by the gods to be an equal (yet simultaneously very different) match for Gilgamesh. Enkidu’s home unlike Gilgamesh’s in the city, was in nature, in the wild. Not only did Enkidu differ from Gilgamesh in his choice of habitat, but also in his physical appearance. Enkidu was covered in hair and fought for not the taming and subduing of creation, but in defense of nature. Enkidu was trusted with uprooting the trapper’s traps and putting a log in the advances of deforestation. Enkidu, as viewed from within his ancient context, shares many affinities with a Laḫmu, a character in Eastern Semitic myth that possesses superhuman strength and is depicted with locks of braided hair (cf. Samson in the Bible), but never can fully assimilate to culture, the civilized way of life. This figure though, is often represented within the confines of civilization, as if it were somehow domesticated, guarding points of entry and exit for the bourgeois. Though they may be domesticated and used as a sustainer of culture, Laḫmu will always be destined to be referred to as “other.”

This description makes me think of how classes will use those from outside (Buber’s I-It relationship) their borders to give form to and maintain their empire, yet never grant them status as citizens. These characters are forever relegated to status of foreigner. This occurs throughout the story of mankind over and over and over again, as if the vinyl of human history had been given a scratch and we repeatedly hear the same story, over and over and over again as it skips into infinity. And then just when we think we’ve heard it all, there’s a cry- a cry that reinitiates history, like the one that we read of in Exodus. . .

The Epic of Gilgamesh beautifully captures the age-old conflict between the wild and the civil, and on a more cosmic level, order and chaos. This theme is extremely important to ancient civilizations of the Near East. This concept as known to the Hebrew peoples is ședeq and is similar to the neighboring Egyptians concept of ma’at. Chaos and Order are constantly waging battle within Creation. My inquiry is to what extent is this narrative still a part of our being and becoming as individuals and collectively on a societal level? After millennia of the record of human history playing, we now come out of the womb hard-wired with this narrative. It was all too easy for a former President to tap into our predisposed constructs of reality where binary discriminations reign in order to garner support for rigidly dichotomizing the geo-political community as we then knew it and allow that to inform an entire nations foreign policy concerning the “axis of evil.” I think I’ve read this story somewhere, and the record keeps on spinning. . . A lot of deconstruction is in order.

Do we at times think that we are aiding in the eviction of Chaos, holding together the lacerated flesh of the heavens to keep the floods of disorder from once again inundating the physical plane of existence, are we helping support the pillars of Boaz and Yachin from buckling up under the vices of evil, the powers and principalities? Are we a part of a cosmic game? If this plays out in the public arena, no wonder fences are constructed to keep out those that threaten our consistency of life, with good reason centers are constructed to detain persons that threaten the very order of our existence. The axis of evil/disorder/chaos has now broadened to incorporate not only North Korea, Iraq, and Iran, but Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, oh yeah the Jews, Blacks, Mexicans, Gays and Lesbians too while we’re at it. The litany at any point in history could be without end. The point is simply this: Monsters do exist and they are the henchmen that grind away at order.

A monster represents an extremity of the category of “the other.” They are wonderfully depicted in art and literature throughout the ages. Many hybrid monsters make their first appearances in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Monsters are ways people distort strangers and are used to explain the proliferation of chaos. Foreigners, those that a particular people group know (intimately) little about, make a great target for monstrous labels and grotesque narratives. Monsters, just as foreigners, in culture lurk at boundaries. Hollywood movies are born out of scenarios of monsters transgressing their lairs and entering the world of civilization. Villages often build forts to keep monsters out, likewise countries raise fences and build walls to inhibit the entrance of foreigners/monsters. Today’s monsters are peoples and races that we do not identify ourselves with and peoples of other faith traditions. This fuels much of the fear that runs rampant in today’s world. In the last century (not to discredit the stories of eastern Europeans that also immigrated) in the U.S. alone we have witnessed the atrocities of concentration camps against the Japanese during WWII, illegal raids and deportations of legal documented U.S. citizen Mexican-Americans (note especially The Mexican Repatriation 1929-1939, and Operation Wetback 1954), the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s and the suffering that the black community had to endure, the so-called “White-flight” of the 1970s from many urban cities to establish more white-concentrated suburbs (which many are gated), and more recently detention centers for Arabs, and the admonishment for teaching monoculturalism in public schools in numerous states (What then happens when our children’s socialization entails a deeper ingraining of “us-them.” Is this beneficial for humanity or are we still riding that same scratched piece of vinyl into we know not what?), and legalizing racial profiling (AZ SB 1070). The same propaganda is always employed: “They’re going to eat our culture! They don’t assimilate! They are Evil! Monsters!“- Mary Shelley had it right. Mary Pipher does too:

Language is weaponized when it used to objectify, depersonalized, and dehumanize, to create an “other.” Once a person is labeled as “not like us,” the rules for civilized behavior no longer apply.

Today, we are no different than our counterparts of antiquity. There were those in classical Rome that used to identify peoples of new religions with monsters, going to extremes of telling stories of how they would partake in incestial orgiastic love feasts were they would also consume human flesh and blood. Christians created quite a name for themselves in the Pre-Constantinian Roman Empire. Oh sure, today we may not be as blunt about it- though at times we’re pretty damn blunt, try watching Fox News- we try to seem accepting and welcoming, “Sure come in, just speak the way I do, dress the way I do, eat what I eat when I eat, and adopt many of the other mannerisms that I have so I won’t feel threatened. Today, our society likes to conjure up many images for the immigrant, muslim, homosexual, etc., you fill in the blank. What have you been socialized to associate with any of the aforementioned peoples? If you are honest, truly honest I think you would be able to recall a time in which you equated a people group with a Monster. grrrrrrrrrr.

“Ok so what? I am a Christian. I am counter-cultural.  Those old books or even international relations don’t influence me, I let the Bible guide my life. It’s a light to my path and a lamp to my feet. Besides, my religion teaches me to love my neighbor.” If you find yourself aligning with this statement, then perhaps the question should be asked: “Does the Bible- the most authoritative text in the Western world- legitimize a worldview that repeatedly demonizes the foreigner and labels them as Monster?”

My answer is partially yes. Conceivably, this could help enforce why this over-exaggerated binary distinction keeps cropping up in our western (I personally cannot speak of Eastern cultures, although I suspect they experience similar phenomena, due to my limited knowledge I chose not to overstep realms of experience) cultures. One must remember that the Bible is multiphonic and multivalent.  There exists many voices within the Biblical canon and it is imperative that not one voice triumph over the others at any given time- history can be a grim reminder to us when that has happened- but rather they all must be allowed to be held in tension, not as one coagulated harmony, but rather as many traditions keeping the other in constant check.

Within the Bible we find monstrous races (aside from flat-out monsters, which are many to behold). In Canaan exist the giants from Hebron, the Anakim; in Jordan, Og of Bashan; in Philistia, perhaps the most famous monster of all, Goliath. All these accounts represent demeaning racial generalizations taken to their extremities, superfluidity of digits and enormity is caricatured in many passages. And as so elegantly put forth by the Deuteronomic Historian and the Priestly Visionary, they should all be exterminated (see the genocidal campaigns against the Amalekites in Exodus, the book of Judges, and Josiah’s reforms in Kings for primers), for the sustaining and proliferation of dominion/order of course. In Ezra-Nehemiah, intermarriage was more than frowned upon, force was used upon the people of Israel to “purify/cleanse” them from all things foreign, and even the texts makes out an ally to interracial relations to be a monster, stating that “Tobiah tried to frighten us,” which is what monsters do best. It is of no consolation to think that this anti-miscegenation concept is at best archaic and far removed from our modern situation when it wasn’t until 1967 that it became legal in my state of birth for a person to marry outside of their race. So it seems as though these “biblical” concepts have followed us throughout the millennia. But are they biblical? Or are they part of a larger natural narrative that just so happened to be a part of the biblical inventors landscape, just a part of the backdrop. If this is the case we must listen more acutely to distinguish more radical and subversive voices- voices that have either gone unnoticed because they are nearly muted by the mundaneness of everyday life that speaks to us from the pages, or because they were intentionally quietened for the service of some status quo.

As Westerners, these narratives have been imprinted on our consciouses whether we choose to admit it or not. Thankfully the Bible is multivalent and offers texts to counteract this treatment of the other, narratives that function to disassemble the normative. Within the many voices of the biblical corpus exists a Ruth, and no tradition should have the right to extinguish her voice. Her voice is one of compassion and inclusivity. And across that skipping vinyl record of human history her story is on par with the Exodus event (note Ex. 12:38 attests to the formation of Israel as a mosaic consisting of many peoples), though you must strain to hear it. Her complete and total acceptance as a stranger/foreigner coupled with statements from the Holiness Code (i.e., Leviticus 19:33-37), and Jesus’ ethic of open commensality table fellowship should be held in tension over against the above narratives concerning the treatment of strangers. One such text, Exodus 18, deserves special attention. In it a foreigner, a Midianite, Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, imparts the knowledge of self governance and judiciary law to the camp of Israel. He’s an outsider! Israel began to govern using a “foreign” pattern Not only that, he was the first individual to witness and give testimony concerning the great acts of YHWH post-exodus. It states that “Moses listened to his father-in-law and he did all that he had said.” (Augustine’s was on to something when he stated: “All knowledge is God’s Knowledge.”) By the way, Moses had married this guy’s daughter, a Midianite, uhm. . .

We need to come to terms with the monsters, confront them and find out for what reason they were constructed, what purpose do they serve the dominant narrative, the status quo? Why am I supposed to be afraid of homosexuals, of Muslims, of Arabs, of Mexicans? What purpose is it serving that I buy into over-exaggerated stereotypes and drive the wedge of binary discriminations deeper into collective human consciousness? Do I project grotesque labels onto people groups that are unlike me? Do I describe “the other,” with monstrous physiognomy,  projecting horrid things from narratives of uncertain origins onto peoples that I have yet to have had the opportunity with whom to experience an authentic subjective relationship. Do I realize that my biases might be naturally working to exaggerate differences to protect my own “in-group.” This is a plea to be brutally honest. A theology of monsters can go a long way in adding to ministries of reconciliation, how faith communities approach immigrants, and can help inform interfaith dialogue. Monsters and humans are not in the end enemies, but are really brothers. This can be seen not only in biblical texts, but if we go back to the ancient story of the Epic of Gilgamesh, we see Enkidu and Gilgamesh befriending one another, having life long adventures with one another, loving each other, making love to each other, and in the end Gilgamesh laments over Enkidu’s deceased body and feels as though a part of himself has died. This is the moral: To see the Monster within and see ourselves in others. As with all things, a little epistemological humility can go a long way. And this brings us back to GRAFFTRUTH’s piece of art: “Who’s the Illegal Now?” for you were once slaves in Egypt, you walked many miles sharing the same moccasins. . . This too is a narrative that we have the power to choose.

-mlw


RESOURCES

    To Read:

Books:

  1. Timothy K. Beal - Religion and Its Monsters
  2. Martin Buber - I and Thou
  3. Richard Kearney - Strangers, Gods, and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness
  4. Lawrence M. Wills – Not God’s People: Insider’s and Outsiders in the Biblical World
  5. Miraslov Volf - Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation

Articles:


International Trade Action Day

12 Oct 2009 Leave a Comment

by Marvin Lance Wiser in Global Issues, Human Rights, Mexico, Politics, Religion and Society, Social Justice, U.S.-Latin American Relations Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

christopher_columbus8

Here’s some recommended reading for this a very special day:

Witness for Peace Oct. 12th: International Trade Action Day

Jobs erased, farmers displaced.
Environment polluted, democracy diluted.

NAFTA at Fifteen

&

My post: 1989-2009 ~ Drugs, Mexico, The Failures of Neoliberalism, & The Beginnings of a Post-Imperial New Era

It’s time for change.

1989-2009 ~ Drugs, Mexico, The Failures of Neoliberalism, & The Beginnings of a Post-Imperial New Era

13 May 2009 Leave a Comment

by Marvin Lance Wiser in Global Issues, Human Rights, Mexico, Politics, Social Justice, U.S.-Latin American Relations Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This is entry #8 and the final one in a series of entries that can be found in the category U.S.-Latin American Relations.

The 1980s was a decade decidedly marked with drugs and blood (just rent the movie Scareface).  At the close of the decade the U.S. decided it was time to try direct military force again; this time against Panama’s brutal and corrupt dictator Manual Noriega (who by the way, received some of his military training at non other, you guessed it: the School of the Americas- one of its many blowbacks).  He served the CIA in counterintelligence issues and by laundering drug money to the U.S.-backed Contras.  However, in 1989 when the CIA discovered that he was also a double agent serving his own self-interests (selling arms and intelligence to the Sandinistas), the CIA no longer had any use for the monster that it had created, and when psychological warfare proved to have no affect in removing him, President George H. W. Bush ousted him.  This involved a full out invasion, Operation Just Cause, of Panama overseen by Colin Powell, that resulted in thousands of civilian deaths and tens of thousands displaced and homeless.  This would prove to be a significant stepping stone for Bush Jr.’s Operation Iraqi Freedom. Last year one of my students confided in me that she and her family emigrated to Mexico during this invasion due to the U.S. attacks and bombings in her neighborhood in Panama.

The 1990s saw the U.S. covertly and overtly sticking its greedy little hands in the Nicaraguan elections. Washington shamelessly and openly used taxpayer’s money to illegally fund the opposition coalition.  An escalation of the so-called “War on Drugs” took the limelight, where it became honorable to obliterate a third-world country’s cash-crop.

In 2000, as part of the so-called “War on Drugs”, the U.S. initiated Plan Columbia, a military aid program that pumped 1.3 Billion USD into the Colombian military to combat what would later be dubbed as the “War on Terror”.

In 2002, the U.S., with Bush at its helm, backed a coup that sought to take Hugo Chávez out of power- no wonder Chávez addresses him as the Devil! This is ironic as most conservative evangelicals thereafter were worshiping Bush and asking for Chávez’s head to be presented on a platter (See the previous post in this series for Bush’s tactics for garnering support of the evangelical Christian base). Perhaps Chávez was one of the first to catch on to little Bush’s ‘cowboy and Indian’ game of secret “executive assassination rings” which were operating in dozens of countries that Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, Seymour Hersh later brought to light.

This brings us to the year 2004.  This is a pivotal year in relation to the situation that currently plagues Mexico.  In 2004 Bush allowed the decade-old assault weapons ban to expire, which allowed for greater ease of trafficking heavy arms across the border into Mexico.  Senator Kerry, who has continued to champion the ban’s reinstatement, could but then exclaim that yet again Bush had failed. He had failed the Inter-American community, and as a result has the U.S. along with Mexico paying direly.

Circa 40 Billion USD in drugs crosses US border per year.  Almost all of it comes from one of the most corrupted countries on Earth: Mexico.  Mexico, where mordidas or bribes (nearly 3 Billion USD worth in 2007 alone) and impunity to anything that faintly resembles law are the only manners in which the country conducts its business- it is the rule.  If that fails there’s always a last resort in the country where there are more assassinations than many countries in the middle east combined (murders actually rose 117% from 2007 to 2008, and thus far 2009 looks like we’re in for much of the same). After all, in 2008, 10% of all journalists that were assassinated in the world were assassinated in Mexico.  All of this has been a long process in the making and in 2008 Mexico officially underwent “Columbianization”.  It is the new battleground for the “War on Drugs”; if you’re not already corrupt, your life expectancy has just been cut in half.

In 2008 over 6,500 people were murder due to drug/gang related violence (mostly in the north, in and around Ciudad Juárez), often times in very public displays like beheadings and grenade attacks- last august there was a person found decapitated for every day.  Also in 2008, Mexico claimed the crown for kidnapping capitol of the world.  On independence day last year (September 15th) a terrorist attack took place in the square of Morelia, Michoacán injuring many civilians, sending the message that if the government did not back off, civilians would be intentionally targeted.  One for the books: the Mexican Drug Czar was indicted for selling Mexican intelligence to the Pacific Cartel at a rate of $500,000USD a month (he would be enjoying a nice exchange rate right about now, had he not been the one given up to the wolves). 2008 was the year President Felipe Calderón began to openly wage war against the cartels.

The beginning of 2009 saw the capture of Teo el Pozolero, who worked for the Pacific Cartel; his job position required him to melt bodies in acid- all in all totaling to more than 300 bodies in his Mexican town of Tijuana which borders San Diego, CA.  Forbes list also inducted its newest Billionaire this year: Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman of the Sinaloa Cartel. Mexico is a mess!  In Ciudad Juárez recently, where at the height of the violence there were as many as 10 murders per day, the police chief was forced to resign by the cartel-  they were murdering one police officer per day until he did.  The mayor’s family is now living in Texas and President Calderón has sent 7,500 soldiers and 2,500 federal police to Ciudad Juárez where the brunt of the combat is taking place and an additional 45,000 soldiers throughout the republic- though he is standing firm in stating that no territory has yet been lost, as was the case in Columbia not too long ago.  A cartel/gang member has stated to CNN’s Anderson Cooper that “We stick ice picks in feet, burn flesh with blowtorches and acid, cut off testicles; it just takes $100USD to kill a person in Mexico, $500-1000 to kill someone in the States- no one is immune. We have operations in 250 U.S. cities, even in Alaska.” One of my students just recently returned from Juárez and all he could say is that “it feels like it’s the twilight zone- no, better, a war zone, the morgues are overflowing, you don’t go out at night.” And this war zone is beginning to know no borders, as the cartels develop their own intelligence operations and increased violence is beginning to infiltrate the States across the border.  This is, as Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has stated, “The States’ number one national security threat.”

All of this is due to drug trafficking and of course a long history of corruption by one party and consumption by the other.  80% of the cocaine that is consumed in the U.S. is brought through Mexico and much of Marijuana is as well.  It’s not only a 40 Billion dollar a year industry, it’s Mexico’s and the State’s War. I’d like to share some statistics from a March 26th ed. of a respected periodical:

The News- March 26, 2009

  • “9 out of 10 guns found at crime scenes and raids are traced to U.S. dealers.” -(Obama reiterated this in a speech)
  • Anywhere from hundreds to 2,000 guns move from the States to Mexico everyday.
  • ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives) say there are 6,700 licensed firearm dealers along the Southwest border, and in 2008 they were only able to inspect 28% of them.

I’d also like to share some sayings of President Obama and Secretary Clinton during Secretary Clinton’s visit to Mexico this March.  Their statements starkly contrasted those put forth by the Pentagon, implying that Mexico was on the verge of becoming a failed state:

“We need to do more to make sure illegal guns and cash aren’t flowing back to these cartels- that’s part of what’s financing their operation, that’s part of what’s arming them, that’s what’s making them so dangerous.” –President Obama, 24 March 2009

“We recognize drug trafficking is a shared problem. . . Mexico is not a failed state. . . we have to do a better job. . .obviously our demand for these drugs is what motivates these drug gangs ” – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 25 March 2009

And again, after President Obama’s visit to Mexico City (Marine One was outside of my window more than once), speaking before the Summit of the Americas:

I have a lot to learn and I very much look forward to listening and figuring out how we can work together more effectively.

We can overcome our shared challenges with a sense of common purpose, or we can stay mired in the old debates of the past. For the sake of all our people, we must choose the future. Too often, the United States has not pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors. We have been too easily distracted by other priorities and have failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas. My obama_chavezadministration is committed to renewing and sustaining a broader partnership between the United States and the hemisphere on behalf of our common prosperity and our common security.

It seems as though we are moving forward.  Hopefully, if this drug problem leads to an intervention, it will be one of another type; one of hands extended for a pursuit of mutual benefit, not arms extended to take what God has destined for the white man- it’s a welcome and long overdue contrast, would you not agree?  This is change I can believe in. Though we must recognized the failed policies of the past- yes, even the economic ones- particularly those of the likes of Milton Friedman and the travails of “shock therapy“.  Perhaps so many are finding their way into the drug industry because neoliberalism and globalization has utterly failed them?  Is it that U.S. enforced policies have forced millions of peasants off of their land because of forced entry into free-trade agreements and that they can no longer compete with the U.S. agro-industry?  Is it that the U.S. would rather burn a nation’s cash crop than face their own consumption problem and moral schism at home?  Is it that “free-trade” has actually increased the cost of living outside of the U.S.? Is it that the U.S. has brought this travesty upon itself?  Why is it that in 2002, 58% of the Argentine population and 1 in 5 Chileans were below the poverty line? Why is it that the U.S. pumped over 10 Billion dollars into Nicaragua and El Salvador during wars of the 1980s, yet did not feel compelled to help reconstruct? Why is it that 20,000,000 million people live in poverty in Central America today?  Why is that absolute poverty and severe malnutrition and inequality exist in the hemisphere that is the “light to the world”? Why is it that NAFTA has actually increased poverty in Mexico? Why was the President of Bolivia, Evo Morales targeted for an assassination attempt this year? Why can’t we have a fair-market instead of a free-market?

These are the questions that I hoped to raise along with the more simple question of “Why do they hate us?”  We must learn to become responsible global citizens and think critically.  Albert Einstein has been credited with saying, “Never stop questioning.”  I hope we heed his wisdom. For example, what would happen if we follow Colorado’s and California’s precedent and legalize marijuana? What impact could this have on our struggling economy and on the escalating drug-related violence?  Maybe we should question people that have been affected by the drug and economic wars, perhaps we should listen to their voices.

If there’s one thing to learn from our shenanigans in Latin America is that behind every ‘nation-building’ project there are a lot of bananas. I sit here at my desk and recall the words of our current President on the morning of his inauguration:

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

Now it is our job to hold him responsible, just as we are now holding Bush responsible for shaming this country.  Let us urge President Obama and the 111th congress to reason from their ethical centers and say no- not to drugs, but to the continuation of detrimental and broken relations with Latin America as we enter into this new era of change.  Let’s make an effort to reinstate the assault weapons ban as we assist our neighbors to the south, lift the 47-year trade embargo against Cuba, and rally the closure of  WHINSEC (formerly the School of the Americas) which continues to train Latin American soldiers in tactics of war and counterinsurgency.  These acts (coupled with Obama’s acceptance of Eduardo Galeano’s book Open Veins of Latin America from Hugo Chávez) can prove as significant symbolic and concrete actions of construing an alternative reality or as President Obama puts it: “choosing the future”.

-MLW

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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.

pinochetAs 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).

el-salvador-guerilla

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, death-squads_el-salvador1and 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.

civil-war_managua

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

1950s & 60s ~ Guatemala, The Potassium Deficiency Scare, & Disorder in the Caribbean

25 Mar 2009 Leave a Comment

by Marvin Lance Wiser in U.S.-Latin American Relations Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This is entry #6 in a series of entries that can be found in the category U.S.-Latin American Relations.

As the Koren War came to a close something sinister, something rotten was brewing in Central America.  In 1954 the CIA embarked on its first full-scale covert operation: the overthrow of the Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, which plunged the country into political turmoil and social chaos. This was much more than just renegade business magnates, the U.S. had become much more sophisticated in its dealings within the Inter-American System; it had now entered a new era, one in which it charaded under anti-communism.

What was it that caused the U.S. to engage with such outright (though seemingly covert) force?

Árbenz assumed the presidency in 1951 as the first to undergo a peaceful democratically-elected transition to power in Guatemala.  He allowed the legalization of the Guatemalan Party of Labor (which allowed a communist minority) and repossessed and distributed uncultivated land in attempts to create an independent economy and initiate agrarian reforms- not at all unlike the Homestead Act in the United States.  Reform was very much needed for the progression of the country, which in 1945 had 2% of its population controlling 72% of its land. The U.S. corporation United Fruit Company was, at the time, the largest land owner in Guatemala, with nearly 85% of its holdings uncultivated.  It is easy to see why the U.S. government frowned upon Árbenz and his reforms.  The U.S. gets a little touchy when people mess with their bananas (by bananas, I mean business).  Gringos love their potassium- and they like it cheap, at the expense of others.  Árbenz’s sympathy towards communism would serve as the perfect initiative for intervention, as the world-over had been polarized into good and evil (much as Bush did in his “War on Terror” to harbor support). Árbenz clearly fell into the “evil” category. After the Eisenhower administration had been lobbied by the UFC, it and then CIA director, Allen Dulles (who had connections with UFC and Sam the Banana Man, as did the U.S. Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles) decided they would tolerate no such “evil” happenings on their continent.

The CIA operation was dubbed PBSUCCESS, working in close connection with new fangled psych-war techniques and strategies designed to create a sense of anxiety, stress, and uncertainty among the citizens to distrust the outcomes of Árbenz’s administration and to sponsor a coup d’état.  Even Sigmund Freud’s nephew was on board.  Media and press was infiltrated by the CIA, resulting in the systematic manufacturing and implantation of lies and deceit. Common townsfolk were led to believe that underground movements were on the rise and were about to topple the government and create civil unrest.  Of course,  later we learn that these radio transmissions were recorded in Florida and transmitted into the country from Nicaragua (Grandin’s EW, 43). Some transmissions were even staged battles. The campaign also entailed U.S. planes flying at low altitudes over Guatemala City, dropping propaganda material. Among the material were manuals on how to produce bombs and explosives, telling the people to take matters into their own hands (Grandin’s EW, 44).

On February 19, 1954, the CIA orchestrated Operation WASHTUB, which planted Soviet arms in Nicaragua in order to facilitate a Soviet connection to Guatemala (I was extremely surprised that the Bush administration did not celebrate the 50th anniversary of Operation WASHTUB by following suit and authorizing the planting of WMDs in Iraq post-invasion to tie Saddam’s regime with intelligence assertions and to maintain public opinion). On June 27, 1954, Árbenz resigned after a CIA-backed invasion of the capitol by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, sensing that a U.S.-led invasion was imminent.  He sought refuge in the Mexican embassy.   Immediately after the coup the CIA conducted Operation PBHISTORY, which entailed the confiscation of all of Árbenz’s government documents.  It’s intention was to prove the Soviet-Guatemalan connection in order to give good reason for intervention. As Grandin puts it: “They wanted to appear as acting within the letter of Roosevelt’s “non-intervention” pledge, if not the spirit.”  In the end, the CIA disclosed that out of roughly 150,000 reviewed documents, the only ties Árbenz’s government had to the Soviet Union were a receipt from a bookstore in Moscow and an unrealized agriculture deal. U.S. business interests were secure.  The threat of potassium deficiency had been eradicated.

The U.S. left Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas in power, crushing a flowering democracy which resulted in 40 years of violence and oppression in Guatemala, culminating in the loss of over 150,000 lives.  However, compared to later hellish operations of pure terror, this was small bananas- time being spent in the laboratory perfecting “non-intervention”.

For further reading, I recommend Stephen Schlesinger, et. al Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala.

Perhaps a more well-known U.S. military intervention in Latin America was conducted under the Kennedy administration: The Bay of Pigs invasion, which sought to oust Fidel Castro.

Shortly after the U.S.-backed coup in Guatemala, attorney Fidel Castro and his brother che-guevaraRaúl began to meet in Mexico City (where I live) to plan the overthrow of the “U.S. puppet” Batista’s regime, which was responsible for nearly 20,000 deaths in Cuba.  During this time Ernesto “Che” Guevara, an Argentine philosopher, physician, and Marxist revolutionary, who had been in Guatemala during the coup, joined the crew in September of that year.

In 1959, the Marxist revolution was realized and Batista fled to the States with hundreds of millions of dollars. Fidel took control of the government, executed numbers of Batista soldiers, and swiftly implemented Marxist ideals.  Before the revolution foreigner’s (mostly from the U.S.) owned over 75% of Cuba’s arable land and enjoyed quite the gambling playground.  Not only do gringos not like people messing with their bananas, they can’t stand it when people interfere with their leisure time.

The U.S. invasion in 1961 of Bay of Pigs, Cuba, designed to topple Castro ended in humility.  Fidel liked to chide Washington saying, “Cuba will not be Guatemala.”  And it wasn’t, to this day Fidel Castro remains in power.  The U.S. learned that maybe “non-intervention” really is better.  This led to mass covert activity in the coming decades. Che became a very important figure in the new government, traveling as far as the Congo.  However, he was executed by the CIA in Bolivia in 1967.  He went on to become one of the most inspiring figures in Latin America, in some places overshadowing Christ himself.   In 1965 the U.S. sent 23,000 troops into the Dominican Republic to “restore order,” or to look after its interests.  During George W. Bush’s time in office the U.S.-Cuba relationship was extremely stressed (as it was with nearly every country in the international community), but signs of a more normalized relationship is seen in the Obama administration.

The 1960s saw the U.S. preoccupied with Asia and the Pacific with operations conducted in Loas, Thailand, Zaire (Congo), Vietnam and Cambodia, this deterred attention from what it was doing in its own backyard.  The following decades would be the most gruesome in history for U.S.-Latin American relations, as the U.S. would still charade under the Cold War to get what it wanted from ruthless dictators.

-MLW

1930s & 40s ~ The New Inter-American System

18 Mar 2009 Leave a Comment

by Marvin Lance Wiser in U.S.-Latin American Relations Tags: , , , , , , ,

This is entry #5 in a series of entries that can be found in the category U.S.-Latin American Relations.

The decade of the 1930s perhaps saw the least amount of U.S. military intervention in foreign countries than any decade since the end of the eighteenth century and the start of the nineteenth. This is due to in part to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy, which stood in stark contrast to the last 40 years of American foreign policy. He pleaded that the United States could be a “good” empire.

During this turnaround the U.S. drastically downsized its presence in both the Caribbean and in Latin America (though the U.S. remained in Nicaragua until 1933, leaving dictator Somoza in command upon its withdrawal), even going so far as to reverse past orders and treaties, such as the Platt Amendment. As many Latin American countries were nationalizing U.S. stakes in their oil production, the U.S. hurriedly negotiated new treaties with fifteen Latin American countries between 1934 and 1942 (Grandin’s EW, 35). All of this paved the way for the ‘non-(direct)-intervention’ of the New Deal diplomacy and the transformation of Teddy’s militaristic “big stick” into post WWII economic imperialism.

soaDuring WWII, U.S. interest was almost entirely directed towards Europe, Asia, and the Pacific, yet one year after its ending, the U.S. set up a new kind of influence throughout the Western Hemisphere.  In 1946, in Panama it erected the Latin American Training Center (renamed in 1963, “School of the Americas“) that would later go on to produce the masterminds of numerous U.S.-backed coups in Latin America and would create the muscle behind countless death squads and “counterinsurgency” operations that would plague the continent for decades to come. It would later be called up into a heap of controversy for its questionable teaching manuals and its infringement on human rights and serve as target for tens of thousands of protesters.

In 1947, a new kind of tool of ‘detection and prevention’ was initiated in the aftermath of Europe’s depravity: the CIA. This newly formed agency would do wonders in implementing the new “non-(direct)-intervention” strand of foreign policy (as we shall see in later posts). It was also in this year that new routes to military intervention were drawn up in pacts throughout Latin America (such as the Rio pact). As unrest began to surmount in Central America, and political reforms took South America by storm,  it was evident that the tides of relative peace within the Inter-American System were subsiding, and it would only be time before empire would intervene in its best interest- albeit more subtly and stealthy than in past times as the coming Cold War called for a new change in tactic.

Your Americanism and mine must be a structure built of confidence, cemented by a sympathy which recognizes only equality and fraternity. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933

The United States must protect its international position through the use of economic means that are competitively effective against totalitarian techniques. ~ Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1940

Here in the Western Hemisphere, we have already achieved in substantial measure what the world as a whole must achieve. . .we have learned to solve our problems by friendly cooperation and mutual respect. ~ Harry S. Truman, 1947

-MLW

1910s-1930s ~ Sam the Banana Man & Henry Ford’s “Fordlandia”

11 Mar 2009 Leave a Comment

by Marvin Lance Wiser in U.S.-Latin American Relations Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

This is entry #4 in a series of entries that can be found in the category U.S.-Latin American Relations.

sum07_zemurray_bananas

About half a century after Walker met his demise in Honduras, a young immigrant from Russia was entering into the fruit industry.  Samuel Zemurray first lived in Alabama at the close of the nineteenth century, but at the dawn of the twentieth he moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, where he would buy already ripened bananas that would come in by cargo ship from Central America and quickly resell them. He quickly acquired wealth and in 1910 partnered with Ashbell Hubbard of United Fruit Company to purchase 5,000 acres of land in Honduras alongside the Cuyamel River. This purchase formed the Cuyamel Fruit Company, with Sam as its President.

All the while, U.S. Secretary of State, Philander Knox and bank J.P. Morgan was working with countries in Central America to pay their foreign debts.  A solution was agreed upon by which representatives of J.P. Morgan would oversee customs in the participating countries (which included Honduras), and tax exports so as to repay the country’s debt.  With Sam’s new investment, it doesn’t need to be imagined that this arrangement didn’t set well with him.  Knox sensing Sam’s unrest ordered the deployment of Secret Service agents into Honduras in order to monitor his company’s activities.

It wasn’t long before Sam the Banana Man had had enough.  He contracted Guy “Machine Gun” Molony and Lee Christmas to join him in sailing to Honduras with friend and former President of Honduras, Manuel Bonilla (who was living in New Orleans at the time).  They initiated an attack with machine guns (now that’s something Walker didn’t have access to) on the local government.  Within six weeks time the President of Honduras stepped down.  With the Honduran government overthrown,  Sam’s friend and former President was reinstated into office (1912) and Sam was rewarded large land grants and had his obligation of paying taxes waived for the next 25 years.  It’s amazing what some people will do to get out of paying taxes.

Sam went on to become President of United Fruit Company and worked with bananas all of his life.  He retired in 1951, yet remained chairman of the executive committee, wherein he used his power to assist in the overthrow of the Guatemalan government in 1954, this time working alongside the U.S. government, not against it.  He again assisted the U.S. government in the 1961 invasion of Cuba by providing 2 ships for the Bay of Pigs operation. He did much to shape the economies of Central American countries to benefit U.S. business. He died in New Orleans in 1961. For further reading, I suggest The Banana Men:American Mercenaries and Entrepreneurs in Central America, 1880-1930, by Lester D. Langley and Thomas D. Schoonover.

fordlandia-brazil-001

Around the same time in history another American icon was well underway exploiting the resources to our south.  Henry Ford, in the late 1920s set up a utopian ‘Fordville’ rubber plantation in the Amazon of Brazil.  It came to house 4,000 workers and was equipped with manicured lawns and white picket fences to boot.  Ford had the idea to attract U.S. citizens to work in the Detroit of the South.  With wages at $5 per day, golf courses, churches, and movie theaters right in the jungle, what adventurer could resist?

However, with extreme racial inequalities, worker (Brazilian) revolts, and Ford’s reluctance to heed advice from the locals, his jungle-Detroit was in quicksand within a decade.  In 1934, a severe blight visited his plantation. Due to his stubbornness of planting them in close rows, the blight spread to nearly all of the rubber trees.  Still swept away with the utopian idea, he decided to transplant the community, operations and all down river.  However due to rough terrain and numerous other factors, Ford had to call it quits.  After $20 million invested into the project, Henry Ford II sold the property back to the Brazilian government for a mere $250,000.  Remains can still be seen of this once capitalist-driven jungle paradise.

Ford Motor Company, although it deserted its Latin American rubber plantation, did not leave the continent all together.  Gandin states quite the opposite.  Due to its massive sale of automobiles throughout Latin America, it would have been bad business to stay out.  It, along with numerous other big businesses (U.S. Steel, Dupont, Standard Oil, United Fruit, and Chase Manhattan to name a few) joined “Business Group for Latin America” which kept tabs on U.S. business interests on both continents in the Western Hemisphere, and took steps to assure that the political pendulum would swing in their favor. This group has had connections to the CIA in forming coups throughout Central and South America, supporting death squads responsible for murdering thousands of civilians. President Taft’s ideal of substituting dollars for bullets, although it did explain the difference between American and European Empire, was never fully realized.  But then again, realpolitik would never allow it to be.  For further reading, I suggest Professor Grandin’s forthcoming book, which is due out in June 2009: Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City.

We must recognize the social responsibilities of corporations. . .if we don’t they [Latin American governments] will take away our ownership.

-Nelson A. Rockefeller

-MLW

1898-1918 ~ The Spanish-American War to The Great War: The Beginnings of Empire

04 Mar 2009 1 Comment

by Marvin Lance Wiser in U.S.-Latin American Relations Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This is entry #3 in a series of entries that can be found in the category U.S.-Latin American Relations.

The remainder of the 19th Century, after the United States’ own civil war, saw a massive increase of U.S. intervention on (and off) the continent.  Between 1869 and 1897 the U.S. had sent warships to Latin America ports some 5,980 times (Grandin’s EW, 20). Not to mention the U.S. backed revolutions that were underway at the same time in the Pacific that would eventually lead to the toppling of Hawaii’s monarchy and its ultimate annexation. It would appear that the U.S. not only heeded the call of William Walker, but took notes concerning his expeditions.

In 1898, from April to August, the U.S. with the expansionist McKinley at its helm was at war with Spain (Spain, for occupying states within the American continent, was in violation of the Monroe Doctrine).  After thousands of mortalities and even more thousands left diseased-stricken, the U.S. annexed Guam, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Hawaii.  As well the U.S. began to occupy Cuba at this time. This event initiated direct military control of both the Caribbean and Central America by the United States.  A new empire was being birthed.

After 3 years of occupying Cuba, U.S. forces left it to its independence- under one condition: that it sign the Platt Amendment, which gave the U.S. the right to intervene in Cuba’s internal affairs as the U.S. deems fit to.  At this time Cuba was also obliged to cede Guantanamo Bay to the U.S.

Much could be said of the early 1900s and one of the States’ most adored Presidents: teddy_rooseveltTeddy Roosevelt.  However, for the sake of brevity, I will only mention his taking of Panama from Columbia.  In 1903, Teddy, disgusted with the french failure at engineering a canal (which resulted in the loss of nearly 22,000 lives), teamed up with banker J.P. Morgan to create the separate state of Panama for the sole purpose of creating such a canal.  Columbia was later compensated $25 Million USD for playing along. In 1905, Teddy went so far as to declare the United States to be “the policeman” of the Caribbean. This announcement and the example he set by taking Panama and leaving Congress to quarrel, would set the tone for “Big Stick” American foreign policy for years to come. For more on the U.S. and its Panamanian excapades, I recommend How Wall Street Created a Nation: J.P. Morgan, Teddy Roosevelt, and the Panama Canal, by Ovidio Diaz Espino, a native of Panama.

In 1910, under Porfirio Diaz’s rule, Mexico fell into an all-out revolution that took the country into civil war, lasting until 1920. At the time 27% of all of Mexico’s territory was owned by U.S. citizens and 45% of Mexico’s industrial investment was from the U.S.  By 1911, John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil owned virtually all of Mexican oil and was well into operations in Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and Brazil when it was finally broken-up by the U.S. Supreme Court. The protection of these interests pushed both Presidents Taft and Wilson to intervene in Mexico on various accounts.

In 1912, Taft ordered the U.S. Marines to re-invaded Nicaragua, which began an occupation that lasted 22 years. And in 1914, Wilson allowed the U.S. Navy to capture the Mexican port city of Veracruz.  It is said that this incident was instigated by the refusal of Mexicans to salute Old Glory. The U.S. would stay there occupying Veracruz for some 20 years using it as a base to protect U.S. business interests throughout the country in its time of political unrest.  Meanwhile, the U.S. invaded the island of Hispaniola (modern day Haiti and Dominican Republic) and would stay there for the same length of time. In the same year, 1914, the Panama Canal was completed and opened under U.S. control.

pancho-villaIn 1916, in retaliation to U.S. interventions and its backing of the Carranza regime, Pancho Villa, a Mexican revolutionary general from the state of Chihuahua that commanded el Division del Norte, crossed the U.S.-Mexican border and invaded Columbus, New Mexico with 500-700 men. They attacked a U.S. Army regiment, killed 18 Americans, stole 100 horses, and set part of the town afire. Under pressure, President Wilson then order 10,000 U.S. troops into Mexico to capture the revolutionary.  The campaign was unsuccessful.

The Mexican Revolution, the centennial celebration of its commencement only one year a way, produced such legendary heroes as Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, and Alvaro Obregon, but most importantly it produced the Constitution of 1917, allowing agrarian land reform (so much for U.S. interests) and women’s rights among other revolutionary ideals.

The close of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century laid the ground work for a new imperialism.  Not colonial, as was the European style, but one that was dictated by, as President Taft so eloquently put it: “Dollar Diplomacy.”

“The day is not far distant when three Stars & Stripes at three equidistant points will mark our territory: one at the North Pole, another at the Panama Canal and the third at the South Pole. The whole hemisphere will be ours in fact as, by virtue of our superiority of race, it already is ours morally.” -President William Howard Taft, 1912

-MLW

1849-1860 ~ The Adventures of a Ruthless Business Tycoon and a Gray-eyed Man of Destiny

25 Feb 2009 Leave a Comment

by Marvin Lance Wiser in U.S.-Latin American Relations Tags: , , , , , , , ,

This is entry #2 in a series of entries that can be found in the category U.S.-Latin American Relations.

U.S. millionaire billionaire (in today’s dollar) and business tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt’s legacy is construed on the back of ferries, ships, 20norrislargeand railroads.  The Vanderbilt houses that would succeed him would give rise to America’s gilded age.  But every legacy is tainted by inconspicuous incidents in history, one only has to look hard enough. Despite his families net worth of nearly 165 Billion USD and having one of the country’s tier-one research universities named for him, not everything that transpired in his life was to be smiled upon by history.

Shortly after the Mexican-American War, many were seeking some form of advancement West.  This was exacerbated by the 1849 ‘Gold Rush.’  Everyone had ‘gold fever’. Vanderbilt seizing the times, took it upon himself to create a shorter passage for ships en route to the Californian pot of gold: through Nicaragua.  He did so offering passage to the 49ers at half price of those passing through the Isthmus of Panama and in addition cut approximately 1000 km off of the trip, it was an easy choice over Panama and passing under Tierra de Fuego.  Yes, this was a cheaper fare, but in the end came at a much greater price for others.

All the while, a Manifest Destiny-driven Tennessean by the name of William Walker was preparing a private militia of Kentucky and Tennessean men.  His intentions were to conquer the Latin American states and create an English-speaking rule and allow slavery to once again flourish, as the federal government was doing so at an unpleasant rate.

In 1853 he embarked on his first expedition to Mexico, in which he captured La Paz, the capital city of the state Baja California. He renamed the capital the Republic of Lower California and cordially declared himself the President. He then moved on to Ensenada and had wishes of conquering the state of Sonora, although it was never realized.

During this time a civil war was underway in Nicaragua which involved the U.S. Navy destroying the town of San Juan del Norte.  This set into motion the events that would lead William Walker in 1855, sponsored by bankers Morgan & Garrison (at the time associates of Vanderbilt), to invade.  Morgan & Garrison, having their own interests, sought to support Walker in seizing Vanderbilt’s operations in Nicaragua.  But Walker had far more than that in view.  He wanted to set-up an English-speaking, slave-holding republic that would serve as a base to invite North American immigrants and be the epicenter of operations to conquer all of Central America.

william-walkerAfter several battles, in 1856 Walker appointed himself President of Nicaragua and reinstituted slavery, which had been abolished by Nicaraguans three decades prior to his invasion, and declared English the official language. He ruled for two years, during which he continued to build up a military of North Americans, having sights of conquering Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Costa Rica. Also, at the behest of his financial supporters, while in Nicaragua he seized control of Vanderbilt’s operations.  To which Vanderbilt spouted:

“Gentlemen, you have undertaken to cheat me. I won’t sue you, for the law is too slow. I’ll ruin you. Yours truly, Cornelius Vanderbilt.”

This event led to an ugly skirmish between the business tycoon and the Tennessean filibuster. Vanderbilt lobbied the renouncing of the United States’ recognition and support of William Walker and his regime, and went so far as to raise a militia of his own in Costa Rica.  Walker tried to garner as much backing from slave-owning southerners as he could, to continue extending the empire, but was halted as Vanderbilt convinced Washington that his own interests were in the best interest of the country (that is the United States).  Battles soon turned between Walker and his men and Vanderbilt’s Costa Rican army.

In 1857, Walker surrendered to the U.S. Navy and was repatriated back to the States, only to resume his expeditions founded in an unquenchable thirst for Manifest Destiny.  In 1860, on his way to Trujillo, Honduras to wage war, Walker finally met his end. He was captured and executed by firing squad under the orders of the Honduran government.

To southerners he was regarded as General Walker or “the gray-eyed man of destiny,” as they saw in him and in his expeditions the furthering of their exploitative interests of slavery in the tropics; while northerners regarded him with disdain as simply a pirate.  The accounts of William Walker show the great divide and dissonance of interests between the North and South, leading up to our own civil war.  But it also shows how others have paid the price for our greed and ideals.  Though many in the States know little of Walker, his surname is scorned in many countries to our south.  Costa Rica even has a national holiday in honor of his defeat.

Vanderbilt went on to become one of the wealthiest persons in U.S. history, like others, capitalizing on the resources of those that lived south of the U.S. border, while assisting those in search of gold dust.

What do I care about law? Ain’t I got the power?! -Cornelius Vanderbilt

In the entries to come I will be writing about the annexation of Puerto Rico, the taking of Guantanamo Bay, the Mexican Revolution, the taking of Veracruz, and America as Empire.  As well, I’ll write about a banana man by the name of Samuel Zemurray and his notorious fruit company- let’s just say there was more than bananas being peeled in his story.

-MLW

1821-1848 ~ The Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny, & The Mexican-American War

18 Feb 2009 3 Comments

by Marvin Lance Wiser in U.S.-Latin American Relations Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Due to one of my more recent posts, it has been brought to my attention that one area in which I am passionate about is Latin America.  I want to make it my personal goal to work hard in being a participator in bringing to a realization of more just societies in our hemisphere.  This realization is or has been hindered by certain multinational corporations, oil and banana tycoons, social inequalities presented in class systems, and past and present hegemonic interests of particular states within the international community, among other factors.

Today, as I am undertaking New York University Professor Greg Grandin’s acclaimed book, “Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, The United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (henceforth referred to as Grandin’s EW),” I am starting a new series entitled “U.S.-Latin American Relations,” it may be accessed in the Categories column on the right side of the page.  It will consist of snippets of U.S. intervention in Latin American affairs throughout history- expounding on which I could not expound in one of my earlier post, and drawing from Grandin’s work or as my research, acting as a companion to it. I will try to keep to individual events in a chronological bend, rather than examining and dissecting over-arching policies as I am not schooled per se in American Foreign Policy.  This series is meant to raise awareness of the delicacy of the situation concerning U.S.-Latin American Relations, showing the history that lies beneath the situations that we find ourselves amidst today and why there remains for a number of Latin Americans, resentment towards people from the States. Grandin responds to the question as posed by United States citizens, “Why do they [the 'third world'] hate us?’  like this:

The United States would go on thinking of America as an anticolonial power, but elsewhere in the world many now condemn U.S. policy as imperialism- informal as opposed to the European variety but imperialism nonetheless (Grandin’s EW, 55).

This shall also serve as an exercise for me to reacquaint myself with the ‘other side’ of American history, perhaps making new acquaintances along the way while exploring the ideas of empire and imperialism.

The first entries will take us back prior to the U.S. Civil War. Under the Presidency of monroe_doctrineJames Monroe in 1823 a doctrine was put into action that told Europe that they have no right to continue colonizing in the Americas (or to put it more bluntly- “you are no longer welcome here!”), it is known as the Monroe Doctrine. This transpired shortly after Mexico claimed independence from Spain after a bloody duel in 1821. Basically, it assured that the U.S. would not interfere with Europe’s- that is Britain, France, and Spain’s- matters in their respected hemisphere, but expected the same cordial gesture in return.  This along with the ever present idea of Manifest Destiny, the God-given right of American expansion- created quite the political milieu. The two factors essentially secured the pursuit of interests for the United States. In this political climate the states of Central America claimed independence in 1824.

Some years later in 1846 the Mexican-American War transpired, due to the annexation of Texas (which succeeded in a military victory in 1836 from Mexico, but the Mexican government refused to acknowledge the succession) in 1845 by the U.S. (that’s the Manifest Destiny concept).  The war resulted in over 20,000 deaths. At the close of the war and the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Mexico lost nearly half of its territory to the U.S., this included then Alta California and Nuevo Mejico along with Tejas and Mexico received as its border to the U.S. the Rio Bravo.   Mexico received a sum of 18,250,000 USD in exchange for the lands- about half of what was initially offered before the outbreak of war (actually 15 million USD for the land and 3.25 million in debt cancellation). This act would be later known as the Mexican Cession. The whole affair was a source of great controversy.  A U.S. newspaper at the time, both prophetically and satirically stated:

We [the U.S.] take nothing by conquest. . . thank God.

I think this is a good launching pad to begin a series about U.S.-Latin American Relations.  Look for a new post in this category every Wednesday.  The next entry will be about Cornelius Vanderbilt & William Walker and their adventures in Nicaragua.

-MLW

América no es tanto una tradición que continuar como un futuro que realizar -Octavio Paz

U.S. Intervention Map

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