The Destruction of Guatemalan Democracy by the C.I.A.

Mildewed Police Files May Hold Clues to Atrocities in Guatemala

By GINGER THOMPSON

The documents promise perhaps the last best hope for some degree of justice for the victims of decades of state-sponsored kidnapping and killing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/international/americas/21guatemala.html?th&emc=th

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One of the saddest outcomes of U.S. intervention in the affairs of our Latin American neighbors was the expulsion by our C.I.A. (under Eisenhower) of the elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, in 1954 who had tried to liberate his country from the domination of one of our major U.S. corporate powers in that area, United Fruit Company:

http://www.unitedfruit.org/arbenz.html

The upshot from that time on has been tyrannical rule with more than 200,000 deaths ("state sponsored kidnapping and killing" . . . "of people suspected of being leftists." ) attributed to its cruel (U.S. supported) military regimes

Guatemala's pain has been America's shame! The U.S. record of destruction of democracies over the past 60 years (in the name of 'fighting communism') belies the comparable message now of George W. Bush that our war on Iraq was a necessary extension of a 'war on terrorism'.

The chaos in which we have left such nations -- Iran, Chile, and Guatemala to name some of the more egregious examples -- should be an object lesson as to what may be the all too likely cruel fate of Iraq as we withdraw our troops. Who will be its next Saddam Hussein?
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Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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