What
we're Up Against
(Lessons From Guatemala)
By Mickey Z.
04 December, 2006
Countercurrents.org
There
are many battles being fought in the name of social justice...some more
pitched than others. In general, however, these struggles do not result
in victory thanks to a petition, a candlelight vigil, or a ballot pull.
In other words, those seeking peace, justice, and solidarity should
never underestimate the relentless and brutal power of what they are
up against. I am reminded of this every time I re-read "Bridge
of Courage: Life Stories of the Guatemalan Compañeros and Compañeras,"
(Common Courage Press, 1995) an amazing book by Jennifer Harbury.
Guatemala (a nation perched on the border of Chiapas, Mexico) is an
easy place to overlook. Therefore, if we were to trust the corporate
media, our knowledge would be limited to ill-informed, racist diatribes
like this from Clifford Krauss of The New York Times (April 9, 1995):
"Guatemala required neither Karl Marx nor the Central Intelligence
Agency to be consumed by class and ethnic war, and ... The Guatemalan
army, currently in the news because some of its officers received secret
CIA payments, is essentially finishing the job that the conquistadors
started. The cross and the sword may have been replaced by modern counterinsurgency
tactics, but the essential driving forces of Guatemalan history remain
the same ... the fact remains that Guatemalans do not need prompting
to kill one another."
Krauss went on to tell of chickens "sacrificed...to...pre-Columbian
gods" and "bizarre" religious cults (Krauss' tactics
are indeed for those seeking to absolve the U.S. from any culpability
in the wanton destruction of a people). While admitting CIA complicity
in the 1954 coup that saw the end of Jacobo Arbenz, Krauss is quick
to remind us "modern Guatemalan political history began not with
the coup of 1954."
He has a point. It was at a February 1945 conference that State Department
Political Advisor Laurence Duggan called for "An Economic Charter
of the Americas," complaining that "Latin Americans are convinced
that the first beneficiaries of the development of a country's resources
should be the people of that country." From this unacceptable premise,
the seeds of the 1954 coup were sown, and the U.S.-sponsored results
include possibly irreversible environmental devastation and upwards
of 200,000 civilians killed or "disappeared."
In a landslide victory, Jacobo Arbenz was freely and fairly elected
president of Guatemala in 1951. Wishing to transform his country, Arbenz'
modest reforms and his legalizing of the Communist Party were frowned
upon in American business circles. The Arbenz government became the
target of a U.S. public relations campaign. Two years after Arbenz became
president, Life magazine featured a piece on his "Red" land
reforms, claiming that a nation just "two hours bombing time from
the Panama Canal" was "openly and diligently toiling to create
a Communist state." It matters little that the USSR didn't even
maintain diplomatic relations with Guatemala; the Cold War was in full
effect. Ever on the lookout for that invaluable pretext, the U.S. business
class scored a public relations coup when Arbenz expropriated some unused
land controlled by United Fruit Company. His payment offer was predictably
deemed inappropriate. "If they gave a gold piece for every banana,"
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles clarified, "the problem would
still be Communist infiltration."
The CIA put Operation Success into action. "A legally elected government
was overthrown by an invasion force of mercenaries trained by the CIA
at military bases in Honduras and Nicaragua and supported by four American
fighter planes flown by American pilots," explains Howard Zinn.
Operation Success ushered in 40 years of repression, more than 200,000
deaths, and what William Blum calls "indisputably one of the most
inhumane chapters of the 20th century." These chapters could never
have been written without permission from the United States and its
proxies, e.g. Israel.
"The Israelis may be seen as American proxies in Honduras and Guatemala,"
stated Israeli journalist, Yoav Karni in Yediot Ahronot. Also, Ha'aretz
correspondent Gidon Samet has explained that the most important features
of the U.S.-Israeli strategic cooperation in the 1980s were not in the
Middle East, but with Central America. "The U.S. needs Israel in
Africa and Latin America, among other reasons, because of the government's
difficulties in obtaining congressional authorization for its ambitious
aid programs and naturally, for military actions," Gamet wrote
on November 6, 1983, adding that America has "long been interested
in using Israel as a pipeline for military and other aid" to Central
America. Earlier that same year, Yosef Priel reported in Davar that
Latin America "has become the leading market for Israeli arms exports."
Who are these governments so willingly snapping up weapons manufactured
in the Holy Land? One illustrative example is, yes, Guatemala. In 1981,
shortly after Israel agreed to provide military aid to this oppressive
regime, a Guatemalan officer had a feature article published in the
army's Staff College review. In that article, the officer praised Adolf
Hitler, National Socialism, and the Final Solution-quoting extensively
from "Mein Kampf" and chalking up Hitler's anti-Semitism to
the "discovery" that communism was part of a "Jewish
conspiracy." Despite such seemingly incompatible ideology, Israel's
estimated military assistance to Guatemala in 1982 was $90 million.
What type of policies did the Guatemalan government pursue with the
help they received from a nation populated with thousands of Holocaust
survivors? This question brings us back to Harbury's book...a book filled
with the "inhumane chapters" Blum mentions. One member of
the Guatemalan resistance Harbury interviewed was Lorena and her story
provides a good example of what happens in a U.S. client state (with
Israeli help).
Lorena's lover, a compañero named Daniel, was out with a small
unit to engage Guatemalan soldiers when he was hit by enemy fire. Lorena
tells what happened next: "The other compañeros ran to where
Daniel had fallen and found him dying there, quiet but very clear-minded.
He refused to let them try and bandage him up, telling them to first
go and find the others who had a chance of surviving. The he gave away
the things in his pack, the food, the blanket, his small book. He writing
a note, shaken but determined, when they left him. The note was for
me, but I never received it."
When Lorena learned of Daniel's injuries, she and a comrade named Roberto
ran to find him. "Roberto and I arrived, breathless, at the place
where he had left Daniel," Lorena said, "but at first we could
see nothing." When Roberto tried to shield her from looking in
on particular direction, Lorena broke away to see. "Daniel was
not there," she said. "His body had vanished, with his pack,
his boots, his book, and the note for me. There on the ground lay only
his brain, bloody and intact." Lorena concluded: "The soldiers
had found Daniel first."
(Aside: Can anyone imagine Americans organizing under such onerous conditions?
We throw a hissy fit if someone brings 11 items to the supermarket express
lane.)
As another resistance fighter in "Bridge of Courage" explained:
"Don't talk to me about Gandhi; he wouldn't have survived a week
here."
Similar stories can be culled from countries throughout the region,
but apparently have had little effect on the foreign policy of the U.S.
or Israel. For example, when Israel faced an international arms embargo
after the 1967 war, a plan to divert Belgian and Swiss arms to the Holy
Land was implemented. These weapons were supposedly destined for Bolivia
where they would be transported by a company managed by Klaus Barbie.
As in "The Butcher of Lyon."
Any moral reservations of such an arrangement are dismissed with a vague
"national security" excuse that should sound familiar to any
American. "The welfare of our people and the state supersedes all
other considerations," pronounced Michael Schur, director of Ta'as,
the Israeli state military industry in the August 23, 1983 Ha'aretz.
"If the state has decided in favor of export, my conscience is
clear."
One Jewish figure that might be expected to find fault with such policy
is Elie Wiesel. An episode from mid-1985, documented by Yoav Karni in
Ha'aretz, should put to rest any exalted expectations of the revered
moralist. When Wiesel received a letter from a Nobel Prize laureate
documenting Israel's contributions to the atrocities in Guatemala, suggesting
that he use his considerable influence to put a stop to Israel's practice
of arming neo-Nazis, Wiesel "sighed" and admitted to Karni
that he did not reply to that particular letter. "I usually answer
at once," he explained, "but what can I answer to him?"
One is left to only wonder how Wiesel's silent sigh might have been
received if it was in response to a letter not about Jewish complicity
in the murder of Guatemalans but instead about the function of Auschwitz
during the 40s.
In 1951, Guatemalan president Juan José Arévalo (whose
term gave that country a ten-year respite from military rule during
which he provoked U.S. ire by modeling his government "in many
ways after the Roosevelt New Deal") stepped down to be replaced
by his ill-fated successor and kindred spirit, the aforementioned Arbenz.
This to what Arévalo had to say about the aftermath of a war
known as "good": "The arms of the Third Reich were broken
and conquered ... but in the ideological dialogue ...the real winner
was Hitler."
Never forget: This is what we're up against.
Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.
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