| Home | Community | Message Board |
|
You are not signed in. Sign In New Account | Forum Index Search Posts Trusted Vendors Highlights Galleries FAQ User List Chat Store Random Growery » |

This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.
|
| Shop: |
| |||||||
|
menehune Registered: 09/01/22 Posts: 3,155 Loc: 808 Last seen: 1 day, 20 hours |
| ||||||
|
For any interested, here are some papers I wrote for one of my classes. All of them more or less concern US-backed military coups in Latin America, as well as the consequences of such coups. My papers only touch the surface of the horrific shit that was and is going on and the various governments and corporations that were involved.
-------------------- "Love is seeing the unity under the imaginary diversity."
| |||||||
|
menehune Registered: 09/01/22 Posts: 3,155 Loc: 808 Last seen: 1 day, 20 hours |
| ||||||
|
Imagining Argentina is a film and book written and directed by Christopher Hampton; however, the original novel was written by Lawrence Thornton. The film was released on April 16, 2004, in Spain; however, it is set in 1970s Argentina. The film reveals the horrors unleashed upon the Argentinian people during that time under the oppressive fascist Junta government. The purpose of the film appears to be to reveal to the public the terrible atrocities that occurred during that time as well as the continual disappearance of people across the globe. A few of the topics presented in this film that were discussed include: The Montoneros, the Ford Falcons, and the Uzis.
In relation to The Montoneros, one writer begins by saying, “In offering this critical history of Latin America’s foremost urban guerrilla force to date, I attempt to examine the ambitions and impact of insurrectional violence without depicting its combatants as either saints or sinners” (Gillespie, 1982). It is expressed that while The Montoneros were heroes to many, they still employed tactics that involved bloodshed, kidnapping, and terrorism. That said, when fighting an oppressive fascist dictatorship that is disappearing thousands of civilians, there is not much choice but to engage in violence if one wants to see an end to such a regime. Like any rebel faction seeking to overthrow the current regime, even the saints end up sinning. As shown in the film, the green Ford Falcons were extensively used by the Junta regime as they held an exclusive contract with Ford, who supplied the regime with vehicles, regardless of the atrocities they were used to commit. Eduardo “Tato” Pavlovsky, an Argentinian psychologist and playwright is quoted as saying, “Whenever a Falcon drove by or slowed down, we all knew that there would be kidnappings, disappearances, torture, or murder. It was the symbolic expression of terror. A death-mobile.” (Robert, 2007). This would not be the first time Ford has assisted a fascist dictatorship, as they are known to have supplied the Nazis as well. The next topic that was discovered while watching the movie was when an Uzi sub-machine gun was used to gun down the theater. Why and how would a fascist regime, in league with Nazis, have their paramilitary forces using an Israeli made weapon; it was this question that led to a very disturbing rabbit hole. Regarding Israel’s economic and ethnic policy in Argentina as stated in a journal by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, “This policy was put to the test when the military junta, in blatant violation of human rights, employed an aggressive domestic policy against opponents of the regime and particularly against those Jews who participated in leftist activities.” (Mualem, 2004). This, however, did not stop Israel from supplying the junta regime with dozens of fighter jets, missiles, small arms (like the Uzis), patrol boats, military electronics, and more, including “weapons and other ‘instruments’ for the secret police” (Bahbah, 1986). The fascist junta of Argentina was far from the only terrible regime that Israel would supply with military equipment. In conclusion, the horrific junta regime was no doubt a relative to the Nazi party in the way that they operated. As per usual, US corporations and military allies were also involved in the process. How such things could happen and be sanctioned after the known atrocities of WW2 is a testament to the corruption that was still ever present at the time, and is no doubt still present to this day. It is amazing (in a terrible way) how the US allows its corporations (not to mention its governmental agencies) to aid such atrocities. And the fact that they would use Israel to help facilitate the same horror the Jewish people suffered is even more disgusting. Sadly, it turns out that the US will continue to use Israel as its arms dealer to countless Latin American nations to facilitate their foreign policy goals. Unfortunately, even when Jews are the victims, Israel was unwilling to refuse the United States or the money they would get from the sale of military equipment. References Bahbah, Bishara. “Israel’s Military Relationship with Ecuador and Argentina.” Journal of Palestine Studies, vol. 15, no. 2, 1986, pp. 76–101. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2536828 Gillespie, Richard. Soldiers of Perón. Oxford University Press, 1982. Mualem, Yitzhak, and Yitzchak Mualem. “BETWEEN A JEWISH AND AN ISRAELI FOREIGN POLICY: ISRAEL-ARGENTINA RELATIONS AND THE ISSUE OF JEWISH DISAPPEARED PERSONS AND DETAINEES UNDER THE MILITARY JUNTA, 1976-1983.” Jewish Political Studies Review, vol. 16, no. 1/2, 2004, pp. 51–79. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/258 Robert, Karen. “The Falcon Remembered.” NACLA, 2007, nacla.org/article/falcon-remembe -------------------- "Love is seeing the unity under the imaginary diversity."
| |||||||
|
menehune Registered: 09/01/22 Posts: 3,155 Loc: 808 Last seen: 1 day, 20 hours |
| ||||||
|
The movie Colonia Dignidad was written and directed by Torsten Wenzela and Florian Gallenberger. The film is set in 1973 in the country of Chile shortly before and during the Chilean military coup led by General Pinochet. The film explores the horrors that took place at Colonia Dignidad. The Chilean junta regime would use Colonia Dignidad as a place to torture and relocate political dissidents. Their protection by the Chilean military was also likely linked to the colony’s ability to sell them things like weapons and poison gas. The paper focuses on the involvement of the United States, Germany, and Britain with the Pinochet regime.
The role of the United States, its corporations, military, and intelligence agencies in the Chilean coup is well document. One company, ITT (now ATT), played a significant role in the lobbying of congress to support the coup as well as working with the CIA to do the same. “It helped that they had on their board of directors a former CIA director, John McCone.” said Peter Kornbluh, author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. (Goodman and Mate 2013). Before his overthrow President Allende made this statement, “Well, we were negotiating to nationalize and compensate ITT, but now that we see that they’re a completely criminal enterprise intervening with the CIA in our internal state of affairs, we’re going to expropriate their holdings in Chile.” (Goodman and Mate 2013). Riggs Bank was another collaborator, and despite a court order to freeze Pinochet’s assets, “Riggs Bank violated that court order to freeze his assets by secretly starting to funnel back to him all of his money in $50,000 cashier’s checks. They had a courier that would bring literally bundles of these checks to Pinochet’s house in Santiago.” (Goodman and Mate 2013). These are just a few of the countless examples of the Unites States complicity with the dictatorship that I could write about. “According to a 1991 government report on human rights abuses, Mr. Schäfer allowed DINA agents to hide political prisoners in the enclave and may have taken part in torturing detainees.” (Rohter 2005). Besides the array of human rights abuses that Colonia Dignidad was involved in, “diplomats and rights groups have long suggested that Colonia Dignidad acquired weapons for the Chilean military through trading companies that the sect controlled.” (Rohter 2005). How exactly these weapons were acquired are still not entirely known, but it is known that “The weapons seized include machine guns, rifles, rocket launchers, grenades and mortars. Some were said to be of World War II vintage, and were accompanied by manuals written in German; others were more modern.” (Rohter 2005), suggesting that his relationship with German officials as well as neo-Nazi groups in Europe provided him with the connections needed to acquire these weapons. It should be noted that Germany agreed to “pay compensation of up to €10,000 (£8,700; $11,000) to victims of a notorious and abusive commune in southern Chile.”, why Germany would feel the responsibility to do this is peculiar. The government commission in Berlin agreed upon this “a week after prosecutors dropped their investigation into a German doctor who worked at the commune.” (Rohter 2005) A peculiar event would take place in the region during the time in which General Pinochet was in power in Chile, The Falklands War. Interestingly, this war would break out between the Argentinian junta regime and the United Kingdom. Britain had already been supporting the Chilean junta as well. “Declassified government documents show British diplomats reserved their harshest criticism for human rights campaigners and journalists trying to alert the world to the "disappearance" and torture of thousands of Chileans.” and “A British embassy official wrote: "The balance of the programme should be 60 to 75% favourable to the new regime."” (Livingstone 2013). There were even reports that ‘The shipbuilders' union urged the government not to sell warships to Pinochet, even though losing these contracts could threaten their own jobs. The government's response? To send spies to shipyards across Britain to check workers were not sabotaging vessels destined for Chile.” (Livingstone 2013). Temporarily the UK ceased arms sales to Pinochet in 1974 as a result of the Labour party coming to power, however, when “Margaret Thatcher came to office in 1979, diplomatic relations were soon restored and arms sales resumed. Declassified papers reveal that, by June 1982, her government had sold the dictatorship: two warships, 60 blowpipe missiles, 10 Hunter Hawker bomber planes, naval pyrotechnics, communications equipment, gun sights, machine guns and ammunition.” (Livingstone 2013) To summarize the situation in Chile, which seems to be almost a carbon copy of what happened in Argentina, and I assume also happened in other Latin American countries, various Western nations, including The United States, Great Britain, and Germany, were involved in the overthrow of a democratically elected leader and the propping up of a sickeningly terrible and evil dictatorship. If anything, these revelations go to show how quickly a nation can fall under tyranny and how important it is for the population to be armed and ready to defend themselves against such regimes. It also goes to show that many of the world's largest corporations cannot be trusted and should be boycotted if not completely shut down for their complicity in the litany of human rights abuses that they were and likely still are engaged in. It also makes you wonder, if the US, the UK, Germany, etc are willing to prop up tyrannical dictatorships abroad, will they one day decide to erect such a regime in their own nations? And if so, what horrors are potentially in store for us? Can we prevent such a future, and if not, what will we do when it comes to our door? All I know is the more I learn about these dictatorships the more I believe that every person on earth should be armed with an assault rifle so as to deter such regimes from taking power. References Goodman, Amy, and Aaron Maté. The War and Peace Report. Democracy Now, 10 Sept. 2013, www.democracynow.org/2013/9/10/ Livingstone, Grace. “Uncovering Britain’s Secret Role in Protecting Chile’s 1973 Coup | Grace Livingstone.” The Guardian, 11 Sept. 2013, www.theguardian.com/commentisfr Rohter, Larry. “At Cult’s Enclave in Chile, Guns and Intelligence Files.” The New York Times, 17 June 2005, www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/worl -------------------- "Love is seeing the unity under the imaginary diversity."
| |||||||
|
menehune Registered: 09/01/22 Posts: 3,155 Loc: 808 Last seen: 1 day, 20 hours |
| ||||||
|
Voces Inocentes written and directed by Luis Mandoki and Óscar Orlando Torres. The film was made in 2004, but is set in 1986 during the Salvadoran Civil War. The film shows the life of a family in a poor village in El Salvador and how they must attempt to survive during a brutal time of constant conflict. Boys were taken at the age of 12 to serve in the Salvadoran Army against the rebels. The U.S. Military trained and supplied the military junta who committed countless human rights abuses, likely including the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. The Salvadoran military junta even went so far as to burn down entire villages and massacre over 1000 people.
“An estimated 300,000 children are actively participating in 36 ongoing or recently ended conflicts around the world” (Dickson-Gomez, 2002). This is the recent state of the world, and during the Salvadoran Civil War children were actively used by the military junta government as cannon fodder against the rebels. However, the military junta were not the only ones to use child soldiers, as the rebels engaged in the same practice as well, although perhaps for different reasons, as it seems more that the government was forcing children to fight for them, whereas children fleeing from the chaos of the war were volunteering to fight alongside the rebels. Regardless, the trauma accrued as a result of being “young adults who had essentially grown up in guerrilla camps of the FMLN, some of whom eventually served as combatants in early adolescence (12 to 16 years old)”, “was even more devastating when they occurred in early childhood as they destroyed the ability to establish basic trust in competent and nurturing caretakers. Becoming a soldier created additional conflicts as these adolescent soldiers behaved in ways they felt were morally incorrect. Adolescent soldiers were also not given the opportunity to develop autonomy and learn adult peace-time roles. Both the psychological trauma suffered as children as well as continued economic scarcity and violence contribute to these campesinos’ difficulties in creating meaningful lives as adults” (Dickson-Gomez, 2002). “The disaster of cataclysmic proportions known as the Carter administration foreign policy is beginning to reap the whirlwind in Central America. The revolutionary turmoil and terrorism now attacking El Salvador is the result of the administration’s appeasement policies toward the Soviet Union, its satellites, and client states… Under the guise of protecting human rights, this administration began a campaign of destabilizing anti- Communist governments in Central America which were reliable free-world allies” (Fisher, 1982). Ironically enough this was the opinion of some American representatives at the time, that the U.S. wasn’t being proactive enough in Latin America, and that they were too concerned with human rights abuses. And so the U.S. would go on to fund the right-wing military junta in their cold war against the USSR. Which resulted in an, “unknown assassin, generally assumed to have been a rightist commando who killed Archbishop Oscar Romero at his altar on 27 March 1980, the day after the Archbishop had pleaded for government troops to stop killing their brothers. On 27 November 1980 men in civilian dress - some of whom were later identified as members of the security forces - disrupted a press conference being held by the top leadership of the democratic opposition. The commandos dragged the opposition leaders from the building and drove away with their captives. The next day all of the kidnapped victims were found dead on a rural highway” (Fisher, 1982) “Religious observers, who include the current Archbishop of San Salvador, Arturo Rivera y Damas, have stated that government repression has reached a new peak since the junta took power” (Fisher, 1982). It would seem that the Americans who felt the US was being weak and too concerned with human rights abuses go their way. “Approximately 1,000 men, women, and children, including infants and the elderly, were slaughtered by a Salvadoran battalion in El Mozote and surrounding villages over a period of days in December 1981. The soldiers were trained by the U.S. and came with American rifles”, (Najarro, 2020). This is yet another of the many human rights abuses that took place during this time. Yet another example of the U.S. aiding terrorism to fight terrorism in their war against Communism and the USSR and their goal of dominating Latin America and the world. Descriptions of taken from witness are horrifying: “men beheaded, women raped, children with throats sliced open. Bodies, livestock, and houses burned.” (Najarro, 2020). There are some accounts of the U.S. military telling the Salvadoran military they were training that they had to treat their people better if they wanted to win. It seems that those words fell on deaf ears, and honestly, a few nice words unsurprisingly did little to combat training to repeat what had been done in Vietnam. Though perhaps that caveat of wisdom, “You’re not going to get anywhere by killing these people, because they’re poor people who are trying to change things,” he said. “You know, some of them are really bad communists, but not most of them.” (Najarro, 2020), said by Morgan, one of the US military men training the Salvadorans, was a sentiment that could have lessened the atrocities to come had they been taken more to heart. In the end, “It would have been impossible for the Salvadoran civil war to last so long and to be so brutal without the enormous amount of military and economic aid, as well as political and diplomatic support provided by the U.S,” (Najarro, 2020). The atrocities that occurred were but an echo, a mirror, of the countless near-identical atrocities being committed all across the globe at that time, particularly in Latin America. Is America and NATO to blame? Perhaps it was the fault of the USSR? Perhaps it was the fault of the governments and the people of each country that allowed what happened to happen. Perhaps it was all three. Either way, it is a depressing episode in our history, an episode that has not truly ended. Perhaps one day it will. References Dickson-Gómez, Julia. “Growing up in Guerrilla Camps: The Long-Term Impact of Being a Child Soldier in El Salvador’s Civil War.” Ethos, vol. 30, no. 4, 2002, pp. 327–56. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/365 Fisher, Stewart W. “Human Rights in El Salvador and U. S. Foreign Policy.” Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 1, 1982, pp. 1–38. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/761988 Najarro, Ileana. “With U.S. Weapons, Salvadoran Military Massacred a Village. the Trial Continues.” Tampa Bay Times, 2020, https://www.tampabay.com/specia -------------------- "Love is seeing the unity under the imaginary diversity."
| |||||||
|
i am the liquor Registered: 07/11/18 Posts: 21,288 |
| ||||||
|
these are film reviews, yeah?
| |||||||
|
menehune Registered: 09/01/22 Posts: 3,155 Loc: 808 Last seen: 1 day, 20 hours |
| ||||||
|
Sin Nombre is a film written and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. The film was released in 2009 and appears to occur around the same time. It is a Mexican-American film that takes place across Central America, beginning in Honduras and ending at the Mexican-American border. The issues that are consistent throughout the film involve gang life - particularly as it relates to Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13 - as well as the desire for people to escape the violence and poverty associated with it. This paper will discuss these two topics as well as the steps that are being taken by the government in El Salvador, one of the countries plagued most by MS-13.
Sadly, something that seems to have bled over from the Salvadoran Civil War is the use of child soldiers. Vice News reporter Danny Gold, who went to El Salvador to report on the gang problems there mentions how, “The gangs, 18th Street and MS-13 are recruiting as young as 10 years old.” (Gold4, 2015). Part of the reason behind this is that if they are convicted of a crime they receive much lesser sentences. Even in school children are not safe from the gangs, as young gang members extort their classmates and teachers. Danny goes on to report that in El Salvador, “90% of schools have a gang problem” (Gold3, 2015). A man who mentions that he was trained by US Special Forces during the civil war, remarks after being asked to compare the situation during the Civil War to the situation now by saying, “It’s worse than the time of the war. Because back then we knew who we were fighting. Now we don’t. It could be a 10, 11-year-old kid who shoots you in the back”(Gold3, 2015). Despite this, many members of the gangs have a different opinion and see the gang as their family and as their only option to live. Santiago joined the 18th Street Gang when he was 15; now he is their leader, he had this to say, “We come from broken homes, extreme poverty, the only strong force which is alive and real in our communities are called gangs” (Gold2, 2015). That said, the gangs are ruthless; in the MS-13 members are beaten in for “13 seconds” or as long as it takes to satisfy the leader as is shown in the film Sin Nombre. Initiates are required to kill a member of a rival gang to join; if they ever disobey, they receive “cortes”, the 13 second beating, and if they ever attempt to leave the gang, they are killed. In relation to the civilians who have to endure life in areas plagued by gang violence many seek to leave the country or send whomever they can afford to send. “It’s $7,000 USD for a man and $4,000 USD for a woman or child” (Gold4 , 2015) to migrate to the US with the help of a coyote (human trafficker). According to a coyote who Danny interviews, “In the past six months there has been a huge rise in violence, and that’s why people are migrating. We do about 20 families a month” (Gold4 , 2015). While it has been reported that many migrants are taken advantage of, kidnapped, or killed, this coyote assures Danny that his group is not involved in those things. “No one wants to see their children dead in the hands of the gangs. That’s why everyone migrates to the US” (Gold4 , 2015), says the coyote. As for some of the youth, they are joining volunteer ambulance brigades instead of leaving the country or joining the gangs. Many move into the ambulance call centers; Maurico, a boy who works there says, “I feel our current situation isn’t doing anything for us. It’s like we’re finished with the country” (Gold4 , 2015). He goes on to say how he prefers to sleep at the ambulance center, where he and some of the other boys sleep four to a room on bunk beds; saying that it is a ‘neutral zone’, without crime. He feels safer there than in his neighborhood. Things may be slightly different now, however, according to the mass incarceration of gang members in El Salvador that has been all over the news, it seems that the government has only doubled down on what their policy was in 2015. This policy essentially is a policy of total war against the gangs. All attempts at talks and peace have been shelved. The police go around arresting people in the middle of the night and many have compared the current government to the right-wing junta that ruled during the Civil War, despite the fact that the leftist FMLN rebels won the war and now control the nation. Jose Luis Sanz, Editor-in-Chief at El Faro says, “It’s the feeling that if 100, 200, 300, 400 gang members died, it's a solution” (Gold5, 2015). He goes on to mention that the police have been getting more aggressive and that many of the youth in these poor areas dress like gang members even if they are not a part of the gang, and that “-right now, any youth from a poor community in El Salvador is a suspect (in the eyes of the police)” (Gold5, 2015). In an interview with the National Police Chief of El Salvador, the police chief tells Danny, “We will overcome this situation, and there’s no better way to do that than to combat these people head on '' (Gold5, 2015). He goes on to say that they are terrorists and deserve to be treated as such. When he is questioned about accusations of police brutality, he responds by saying that the police are under extreme attack by the gangs, being targeted and killed regularly. He then says, “If in a case, it’s presumed an officer has taken revenge or retaliation, it has to be investigated. But up until now, there hasn’t been a case that demonstrates this.” Despite this, a pastor, Mario Vega says, “The kind of police that we had before the civil war, was a force that violated human rights, was very arbitrary in its decisions, with a lot of power, and that’s a pattern that’s repeating itself now. There’s a lot of evidence that shows they are going on killing sprees that are indiscriminate, and totally outside of the law, reproducing what this government itself fought against in the 1980s.” (Gold5, 2015) The situation surrounding the gangs in El Salvador all the way through Central America, and into The United States is a dire one. It is hard to see much light at the end of this tunnel. Even with a reformation of the region’s policy on drugs, it is hard to say that would be enough to solve some of these problems, as they seem to have a deeper root, in particular a lack of opportunity with some members of the gangs saying that if they had opportunities they wouldn’t be in the gang. How can these problems be solved? One idea is that all of Central America from Mexico to Panama could unify as a single nation. This could possibly bring positive economic changes to the region as they would be able to share their wealth, helping poorer areas and thus reducing crime. However, this of course would have to overcome the rampant corruption that is present in the region, not to mention the vast power of the drug cartels and the street gangs. Perhaps ending the war on drugs and allowing this region to produce and export drugs legally could see a shift that would lead to a decline in violence. References Gold2, Danny. “Living in Fear: Gangs of El Salvador (Part 2).” YouTube, Vice News, 24 Nov. 2015, Gold3, Danny. “One Day in Usulután: Gangs of El Salvador (Part 3).” YouTube, Vice News, 25 Nov. 2015, Gold4, Danny. “Targeting the Young: Gangs of El Salvador (Part 4).” YouTube, Vice News, 26 Nov. 2015, Gold5, Danny. “No End to the Bloodshed: Gangs of El Salvador (Part 5).” YouTube, Vice News, 27 Nov. 2015, -------------------- "Love is seeing the unity under the imaginary diversity."
| |||||||
|
menehune Registered: 09/01/22 Posts: 3,155 Loc: 808 Last seen: 1 day, 20 hours |
| ||||||
Quote: Not exactly. The films were the primer the class used to introduce us to the specific topic / country / military coup. All but the first paragraph of each paper is talking about the real-world events that occurred. -------------------- "Love is seeing the unity under the imaginary diversity."
| |||||||
| |||||||
| Shop: |
|
| Similar Threads | Poster | Views | Replies | Last post | ||
![]() |
Latin America faces down "free trade" | 359 | 0 | 11/16/05 10:52 AM by Alex213 | ||
![]() |
Possible Military Coup in Fiji. | 510 | 1 | 11/02/06 08:57 PM by quiver | ||
![]() |
domestic issues in latin america | 1,322 | 14 | 10/21/06 01:26 PM by Luddite | ||
![]() |
Notorious international terrorists trained in America | 799 | 7 | 01/14/04 06:10 PM by Xochitl | ||
![]() |
The betrayal of America ( |
3,201 | 33 | 03/07/06 05:30 AM by Phred | ||
![]() |
Isolationist America | 670 | 11 | 10/21/06 08:31 PM by Luddite | ||
![]() |
Mandatory Military Service? ( |
6,486 | 107 | 05/07/06 11:01 AM by Syle | ||
![]() |
America power on the decline? ( |
2,610 | 21 | 12/15/04 02:21 AM by GazzBut |
| Extra information | ||
| You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled Moderator: Enlil, ballsalsa 1,769 topic views. 2 members, 6 guests and 5 web crawlers are browsing this forum. [ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ] | ||


