"In 1954, a CIA-run military coup ended a 10-year
democratic interlude in Guatamala --- " the years of spring,"
as they are known there --- and restored a savage elite to power. In
the 1990's, international organizations conducting inquiries into the fighting reported that
since 1954 some 200,000 people had been killed in Guatamala, 80 percent of whom were
indigenous... The atrocities were carried out with vigorous U.S. support and
participation. Among the standard Cold War pretexts was that Guatamala was a Russion
'beachhead' in Latin America. The real reasons, amply documented, were also standard: concern for the
interests of U.S. investors and fear that a democratic experiment empowering the harshly repressed
peasant majority "might bve a virus" that would "spread contagion", in
Henry Kissinger's thoughtful phrase, referring to Salvador Allende's
democratic socialist Chile. Reagan's murderous assault on Central
America was not limited to Guatamala, of course. In most of the region the
agencies of terror were government security forces
that had been armed and trained by Washington."
Noam Chomsky: Because We Say So. pg 111
— Wide Mind | Fierce Heart 🦓🥄 (@wydmindfeersart) April 13, 2021
So if this uprising spreads, if it becomes an even
broader, deeper movement, and you move from the question of corruption to the
question of justice for mass murder, that can only be resolved by
implicating not just Pérez Molina personally, but also the Guatemalan
army as a whole institution, also the U.S. government, which has armed,
trained and financed that army, backed that program of slaughter, which
the American CIA had Pérez Molina on the payroll when he was head of
G-2, the intelligence unit. And it also can’t be resolved without
implicating CACIF, the association of the oligarchy, which backed the
army during the slaughter and which, individually, ran its own death
squads. The oligarchs, the young men, would go through what was kind of
a ritual of bloodying their own hands, and if there was a
union-organizing drive at their fathers’ factory, some of the boys
would get together, and they’d go out and kill the unionists. And those
young men who did that in the '80s are now in their fifties and
sixties, and they're the leaders of the Guatemalan oligarchy. So the
last thing they want to see is a true investigation and bringing to
justice of perpetrators. That’s the last thing Washington wants to
see." Allan
Nairn: Democracy Now (8/27/2015)
The phrase “banana republic” was coined to describe Honduras and other countries exploited by US multi-nationals and gained popularity after the CIA-backed coup against the Arbenz government in Guatemala that the US arranged on behalf of the United Fruit Company. https://t.co/cBEHlLVJz0
— DSA Metro Cincinnati & Northern Kentucky (@DSACincy) July 20, 2020
"Anyhow, one part has E. Howard
Hunt drooling over this wonderful coup, and he says that the JESUITS were great help.
I think he says that the Archbishop in NYC or Italy contacted the
Jesuit top guy in Guatemala, and they provided both Intelligence
and Propaganda against the government of Jacobo Arbenz --- who was
only trying to get the dirt farmers a little more bling -- or
food."