How Ronald Reagan Made Genocide Possible in Guatemala

[MrScorpio]

The early 1980s were particularly violent in the Latin American theater of the Cold War. Smack in the middle of Guatemala’s 36-year civil war which claimed 200,000 lives, Rios Montt edged out the winner of a sham election in a bloodless coup and began systematically repressing support for the Marxist opposition,as his forces raped women, burned villages, and murdered indigenous Mayan peasants.

From day one Reagan backed Rios Montt, feeding him millions first in jeeps and trucks, and then helicopter and plane parts, despite clearly articulated reports from both the CIA and international watchdogs that genocide was accumulating bodies in the ditches and gullies of Guatemala.

A cache of internal Guatemalan records from the time revealed the existence of Operation Sofia, which was the operation that led to the massacre of indigenous peasants. It was used by the 1999 UN-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission to classify the counterinsurgency campaign in the summer of 1982 as “acts of genocide against groups of Mayan people.”

The horror described by independent human rights reporters on the ground is enough to turn your stomach: “We heard many, many stories of children being picked up by the ankles and swung against poles so their heads [were] destroyed.”

Despite the fact that he knew all this, Reagan praised Rios Montt, calling him ”a man of great personal integrity and commitment” who wanted to “promote social justice.”

President Bill Clinton apologized in 1999, saying that the U.S. support for the death squads “was wrong.”

http://janedoe225.tumblr.com/post/50184222133/how-ronald-reagan-made-genocide-possible-in-guatemala

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. The horrors were things fit for horror movies

One debrief, a kid went into how her father was forced to dig his grave, mom and her were repeteadly raped, and her younger brother had his head smashed with rifles. The troops took turns.

Then they burned the feet of the women. Young girls were raped and then bayoneted.

Yup, I was dancing a jog when this monster was convicted.

[riverbendviewgal]

2. I am dancing with you

such horror and encouraged by the PRESIDENT OF THE USA.!!!!

[freshwest]

3. Mitt Romney, Bain, Oliver North and the rest.. Can we dig up Ronnie and sent him to be prosecuted.

Gosh, what a terrible time, and it's still going on under different flags, corporate ones, around the planet today. The march of the psychopathic profiteers against the poor or less technologically advanced peoples of the Earth and the planet continues. And it's not just the west and USA. It always been this way, but we are conscious of it and must change.

[HiPointDem]

4. and it looks like another genocideer is going to be the new president.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Ronald Reagan was in this all the way up to his pathetic dyed hair.

What's more, his Republicans would support doing it all over again.

The disease still remains in this country which should have disappeared so long, long ago.

Anyone taking a moment to read about Dos Erres massacre, or Rio Negro massacres will have a much more accurate understanding of what has happened with the full support from the United States, and it's absolutely unholy in every sense.

Dos Erres images, google:

http://images.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4TSND_enUS411US412&q=dos+erres+massacre&biw=1027&bih=648&sei=QFeUUbTxBoOy9gSdoIHIAg&tbm=isch

Rio Negro images, google:

http://images.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4TSND_enUS411US412&q=dos+erres+massacre&biw=1027&bih=648&sei=QFeUUbTxBoOy9gSdoIHIAg&tbm=isch

The photos might explain very quickly more than words can tell you in a short time. Please take time to read accounts of what has happened in Guatemala with full involvement of US taxpayers' money, and "advisors," and the wholehearted backing of Ronald Reagan, and other US presidents, if anyone hasn't already.

The US has been involved in exploiting and killing the poor of Guatemala since acting as the arm of the United Fruit Company (Chiquita) in overthrowing the elected President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954, a President who was trying to improve conditions for the huge poor population. That was NOT acceptable as United Fruit saw it (Eisenhower's Sec. of State and CIA head, John Foster Dulles, and Alan Dulles were on the board of United Fruit).

There are also YouTube videos on the massacres.

[burrowowl]

6. Raygun and Bu$h Senior

Should be tried for genocide
Obama has some questions to answer about agreeing with the overthrow of the previous president and installing the present War Criminal!

[Judi Lynn]

7. The Real News From Guatemala: US Guilty of Genocide

May 15, 2013
The Real News From Guatemala

US Guilty of Genocide

by AJAMU BARAKA

Last week news coverage around the world heralded the conviction of Efrain Rios Montt on the charges of genocide against the Mayan people during his 17 month tenure as Guatemala’s head of government and military strongman. The three-judge panel led by Jazmin Barrios determined that evidence presented to the court established that there was a clear and systematic plan to exterminate the Ixil people as a race and that the plan developed and executed by the Montt government satisfied the definition of genocide. With this conviction, the 86 year-old ex-dictator was sentenced to 80 years in prison.

This is a tremendous victory for the people of Guatemala that is a powerful expression of justice and accountability for human rights abuses that offers hope to the many victims of atrocities around the world. This victory, however, doesn’t end with the sentence of the Guatemalan dictator. Another chapter needs to be opened with a more thorough examination of the relationship between Montt, the Guatemalan military and the United States government which, if examined objectively, establishes a clear chain of moral and legal culpability. A relationship that even with a cursory understanding of the history of the conflict in Guatemala would lead logically to the inescapable conclusion that if Efrain Rios Montt, and by extension the Guatemalan military, are guilty of the crime of genocide, the U.S. government and its officials are just as guilty as Rio Montt and that justice in Guatemala remains unfulfilled until everyone, including those responsible for pulling the strings in Guatemala, are also brought to justice.

The story of Rio Montt and the U.S. government was uncovered in the bloodstained, declassified U.S. government documents that graphically detail how U.S. officials were fully aware of the pogrom against the Ixil people in the mountains of Guatemala at the very moment that the U.S. government was involved in training and arming the Guatemalan military, passing intelligence to its clandestine services, and providing political and diplomatic support to the government. President Ronald Reagan called Rios Montt “a man of great personal integrity and commitment” even as he was receiving reports from his intelligence agencies documenting the scorched- earth policies of the Guatemalan military in its’ campaign against the Ixil.

As horrible as that 17 month period during the Reagan administration was for the indigenous people of Guatemala it was only a brief moment of horror in the macabre drama of U.S.-Guatemala relations. For many in the world there is no doubt that U.S. support, encouragement and guidance made it culpable in the genocidal policies of its’ client State during that 17-month period. The history of U.S. and Guatemalan relations since the U.S. inspired coup of 1954 that overthrew Guatemala’s reformist President Jacobo Arbenz has been a sordid history of criminal collusion against the people of Guatemala.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/15/us-guilty-of-genocide/

[Jamaal510]

8. And this was the guy who

everybody was saying wouldn't fit in with today's Republican Party?!

[David Zephyr]

9. Yes. More of the Reagan legacy that has been glossed over.

Thank you. I lived throughout all of that period when so little attention was paid to the horror that our government imposed on the people there. Of course, this went on throughout Latin America with dictators trained at the School of the Americas way, way back.

Jackson Browne's brilliant song Lives in the Balance touches on this and more.

Thank you for posting this while everyone is worked up over how the President reacted to an attack on a secret CIA station in Libya. What a tempest in a teapot under comparison.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Did Reagan Finance Genocide in Guatemala?

Did Reagan Finance Genocide in Guatemala?
By SANTIAGO WILLS
May 14, 2013

On Monday, a Guatemalan court ordered the country's government to apologize to the Ixil population for the crimes of José Efraín Ríos Montt, a dictator who was sentenced to 80 years in prison for his role in war crimes committed between 1982 and 1983.

The verdict concluded that the army, under the command of Ríos Montt, had engaged in a campaign of genocide against the Ixiles, a small Mayan ethnic group. In that sense, it finally offered an answer to the thousands of victims' families who had pleaded for justice since the 1980s.

The trial did not answer all questions, however. For example, it did not place much attention on the extent of U.S. involvement in Guatemala during the 17 months of Ríos Montt's regime. That's in spite of the fact that America reached out to the Central American country offering military aid to combat left-wing guerrillas.

"U.S. military and intelligence units worked closely with the Guatemalan army over the decades of Guatemala's civil war," said Geoff Thale, Central America Program Director at the Washington Office for Latin America (WOLA). "Direct U.S. military aid was suspended during the Carter Administration, but then restored by the Reagan Administration, whose Cold War worldview clearly prioritized the fight against insurgents and their civilian supporters over respect for human rights."

More:
http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/News/ronald-reagan-finance-genocide-guatemala/story?id=19179627#.UZSfU-oo7_R

[malaise]

11. + 1,000

Who was his VP again?

[Judi Lynn]

12. GENERAL EFRAIN RIOS MONTT

GENERAL EFRAIN RIOS MONTT

President of Guatemala

"A Christian has to walk around with his Bible and his machine gun", said born-again General Efrain Rios Montt, military ruler of Guatemala from March 1982 to August 1983. Rios Montt was one in a long series of dictators who ran Guatemala after the Dulles brothers and United Fruit, backed by the CIA, decided that democratically-elected President Jacobo Arbenz was too reform-minded. And so, they overthrew the country's constitutional democracy in 1954. The succession of corrupt military dictators ruled Guatemala for over 30 years, one anti-communist tyrant after another receiving U.S. support, aid, and training. After the 1982 coup that brought Rios Montt to power, the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala said "Guatemala has come out of the darkness and into the light". President Reagan claimed Rios Montt was given "a bum rap" by human rights groups, and that he was cleaning up problems inherited from his predecessor, General Romeo Lucas Garcia. Ironically, Garcia had given $500,000 to Reagan's 1980 campaign, and his henchman, Mario Sandoval Alarcon, the 'Godfather' of Central American death squads, was a guest at Reagan's first inaugural celebration. Sandoval proudly calls his National Liberation Movement " the party of organized violence". Montt simply moved Garcia's dirty war from urban centers to the countryside where "the spirit of the lord" guided him against "communist subversives', mostly indigenous Indians. As many as 10,000 Indians were killed and over 100,000 fled to Mexico as a result of Rios Montt's "Christian" campaign.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html