There has been more controversy on the southern border of
the United States, this time involving “unaccompanied children” from Central
America, who by law must be given an opportunity to “prove” refugee status—as
other undocumented entrants into the country like the Chinese and Southeast
Asians are usually granted without question—unlike Mexicans, who can be
deported immediately, even if fleeing from drug violence being exacerbated by
the U.S.-financed and armed “war.” Pres.
Obama, who has yet to fulfill a single promise to the Latino community that
help elect him twice, is now succumbing to pressure from the right by calling
for abrogation of stated law and seeks to deport immigrants from violence-prone
Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras with no due process.
These countries have issues that go well beyond mere drug
violence, and where political ideological definitions like “conservative” and
“liberal” have little to do with “right” and “left.” Part of the problem is
that these countries are mostly highlands with little arable land for farming,
while China and other Asian countries have decimated their manufacturing base
by imposing their will on markets that formerly served export products from
Central America. Despite claiming to be the “leader” of the Western Hemisphere,
the U.S. seems more interested in merely exerting political influence in those
countries that maintain the status quo rather than actually find ways to solve
the underlying economic problems.
Most Americans seem to have a blind spot about what is going
on in the countries of Central America. They don’t remember that the Reagan
administration for a time actively supported and armed a murder regime in El
Salvador that carried out killings of even peaceful advocates of the impoverished,
like Archbishop Oscar Romero. Most don’t know anything about these countries,
only that they hate the people there (or at least when they come here). There
are those who say the problems in those countries are not the U.S.’ “problem,”
when the presence of these people on the border clearly makes it so. And the
U.S. has plenty of blood on its hands.
Throughout its history, the United States has taken on a
patronizing, “big brother” attitude toward its neighbors to the south. The
Monroe Doctrine of 1823 was fairly benign in principle; the U.S. would
“protect” newly independent Latin American countries from interference from
European powers, and proclaimed that the U.S. had an interest in maintaining
the “separateness” of the New World against the taint of Old World political
and social philosophies; it didn’t mention the “taint” of American
interference, of course. Until the invention of ships using faster steam
engines, the isolationist internationalism of the doctrine was more a matter of
practicality than an actual “pacifist” stance.
But with the Spanish-American War, the U.S. developed a
“taste” for foreign adventurism. The U.S. actually had some prior practice, as
Southerners sought new territories that were “compatible” with the slave
economy in order to “balance” representation in Congress, and this was the
unspoken and underlying motivation of Texas’ fight for independence and the
Mexican-American War. Abraham Lincoln saw the war for it was, and opposed it as
one of a stronger nation bullying a weaker nation. After the easy victory, Pres.
James K. Polk was angered that U.S. envoy Nicholas Trist appeared to be
negotiating a treaty in which Polk’s sudden interest in annexing virtually all
of Mexico (and eventually Central America) was not taken seriously, and sent a
letter recalling him. Trist, however, ignored the summons and concluded the
Treaty Guadalupe Hidalgo, which a Northern majority in Congress approved and
Polk was forced to sign.
Not that Southerners didn’t give-up the idea of creating new
slave states south of the border. During the 1850s, “filibustering”—then the
word coined to describe independently-financed schemes by private citizens to
take over countries—reached its apex in the person of Southerner William
Walker. Walker first attempted to “conquer” Baja California without success,
and then traveled to Nicaragua with a small force, aided by some local
insurgents and backed by money from a couple of Cornelius Vanderbilt stooges
with a gripe against their boss, and
somehow “conquered” the country and ruled as a virtual dictator for a few years.
The two businessmen wanted something in return, of course; they wanted him to
take over Vanderbilt’s company assets in the country and give it to them, which
Walker did. In retaliation, Vanderbilt funded an alliance of other Central
American countries to oust Walker from power, which was successful. After two
more aborted attempts to set himself up as a Central American dictator, the
British Navy handed Walker over to Honduran authorities, who executed him.
The Monroe Doctrine was first “modified” by the Platt
Amendment in 1901, in which the U.S. permitted itself to occupy and intervene
in Cuba for any reason it saw fit. The so-called “Roosevelt Corollary” soon
followed. Theodore Roosevelt—who was a “closet” racist who in the closing
months of his presidency conducted a bizarre personal campaign (influenced by
the then popular theory of eugenics) against “race suicide” by declining
birthrate in white Americans—decided like a playground bully that the “little
kid” Latin American countries were most vulnerable to beat on with his “Big
Stick.” Roosevelt claimed that the purpose of the corollary was to “police” the
region and force these countries to “meet their international
obligations”—which effectively not only denied the sovereignty of these
countries, but rationalized bald-faced intervention to forward U.S business
interests in the region.
During Roosevelt’s presidency and his immediate successors,
the “corollary” was frequently put to use. Roosevelt supported Panama’s quest
for independence from Colombia. Why? Because the Panamanians promised to cede
the Isthmus in order for the U.S. to build and control a canal it wished to
build. At the same time Roosevelt effectively installed a U.S. business puppet
as leader in the Dominican Republican. Nicaragua was ruled by a nationalist
“president” who opposed U.S. influence in the region, prompting frequent
unfriendly visits by the U.S. Navy and Marines—until the Marines arrived to
permanently occupy the country for two decades, lasting until 1933. At that
time FDR instituted his “Good Neighbor” policy, which after World War II would
predictably be abandoned during the Cold War.
The U.S. frequently conspired to topple regimes all over the
globe which threatened its “interests”—including Salvador Allende’s socialist
government in Chile, and would continue even if it meant breaking the law in supporting
so-called “freedom fighters” against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government during
the Reagan’s presidency.
During the years in which the Roosevelt Corollary was most
actively practiced, the U.S.’ principle muscleman and go-to guy in Central
America and the Caribbean was Marine officer Smedley Butler. Butler was awarded
the Medal of Honor twice during these actions—the second in Haiti, after a
“battle” which lasted all of 20 minutes, and required such “conspicuous
bravery” that the only U.S. casualty was a Marine who lost two teeth after he
was hit by a rock. In 1935, Butler wrote in his pamphlet War is a Racket that
I spent 33 years and
four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of
my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the
bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make
Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped
make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect
revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics
for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International
Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican
Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right
for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it
that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have
given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in
three districts. I operated on three continents."
Honduras held a “special place” in the quest to maintain such
U.S. “interests.” The writer O. Henry coined the phrase “Banana Republic” to
describe the country under U.S. “patronage.” The country’s frequent bouts of
political and economic instability was in part due to the frequent
interventions by U.S. business interests hoping to take advantage of the
instability by making “deals” with local powerbrokers who were most pliable. If
opposition was encountered, these business interests would finance local
insurgents to destabilize and topple the current government in favor of those
more amenable to American demands.
Between 1903 and 1925 there were at least seven
“interventions” by U.S. forces in Honduras to enforce the interests of the
Standard Fruit Company, the Cuyamel Fruit Company, and United Fruit Company.
These companies controlled much of the country’s land as a de facto autonomous territory, and provided just enough
infrastructure (mainly railroads) to satisfy the needs of its business (unlike,
say, China, which in exchange for access to resources in Africa and Latin
American builds schools and hospitals for local workers). When these companies
left Honduras after diseases had decimated fruit crops and made continued
operations unprofitable, they pettily dismantled the railroads and other
infrastructures and left the country even poorer than before. They only
“export” they seem interested in now is drugs, further fueling the country’s
many problems.
Most Americans are simply too purposefully ignorant of this
country’s role in how Central America (and Mexico, for that matter) was shaped
by the greed and arrogance of U.S. “interests.” These things do have
“consequences,” regardless if people are ignorant of them or not.
No comments:
Post a Comment