serving as tools to help further their interests, as they are STILL so totally bereft of clean government, depending inwardly upon their occupation and exploitation by mega-business enterprises based in the US of their vast impoverished working class in sweatshops, factories, mines, and natural resource abuse, benefiting the ruling class and devastating everyone else.
For support in US votes, they used Guatemala, for years, to back them on maintaining the Cuban embargo, until very recently. During their elections, they can depend upon US Republican politicians reminding them and threatening them to block remittances from the native Central Americans trying to send home their salaries to support their loved ones since they can't find jobs at home which pay enough to maintain life, due to corporate control of Central American congresses and presidential administrations. Jeb Bush, during one of George W Bush's terms, made trips to El Salvador to renew threats to cut off the remittances of their loved ones working for their families in the U.S.
From a previous D.U. thread on the subject:
~snip~
U.S. intervention in Salvadoran electoral politics began early, long before the official start of the presidential campaign season. Last June, outgoing Ambassador Rose Likins in interviews with the Salvadoran press, publicly denounced the leadership of the FMLN and threatened that U.S. investment in the country could pull-out in the event of an FMLN victory. As the campaign season heated-up at the beginning of this year and polls indicated that the FMLN was closing on ARENA the U.S. turned up the interventionist heat. In early February Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs Roger Noriega visited El Salvador to meet with the presidential candidates but at the last minute canceled his meeting with Handal and then in an afternoon press conference made statements warning the Salvadoran people against voting for a candidate who does not share a common economic vision with the U.S. At the end of February Florida Governor Jeb Bush visited El Salvador while on a five-day tour in Central America touting the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and in interviews with the press touted capitalism as the true economic partner of democracy. He met only with Saca and current ARENA President Francisco Flores.
March 14th's news headlines displayed ostensibly independent reporters ensconced at the ARENA party headquarters, conducting phone interviews with Bush's Special Envoy to Latin America Otto Reich (a familiar name to Latin America solidarity activists). Reich warned Salvadorans "to choose a government that they know will have good relations with the United States and which shares the values of private initiative and the war against terror." And late last week three Republican Congressional representatives in a press conference made perhaps the most outrageous statements of all, with anti-immigration stalwart Rep. Thomas Tancredo from Colorado explicitly warning the Salvadoran people that a vote for the FMLN could well lead to changes in the Temporary Protected Status for Salvadoran immigrants-threatening the remittances (money) that the estimated 1.5 million Salvadorans living in the U.S. send back to their families. Remittances are the biggest source of revenue for the Salvadoran economy (over $2 billion per year).
It is clear that ARENA was able to effectively take advantage of the climate of fear that such intervention generated and will continue to push the prescribed economic agenda of free trade and privatization for the Salvadoran people. While none of this is surprising as the legacy of U.S. intervention in its "backyard" Latin America is well-documented, what happened in El Salvador is yet another indication of the limits of "democracy" as conceived by U.S. global empire.
As it attempts to facilitate the development of a government to its liking in Iraq the Bush Administration is re-asserting itself in Latin America and the Caribbean, with the recent ouster of President Aristide in Haiti perhaps being an indication of things to come. Democracy for developing nations as conceived by Bush foreign policy has stipulations that are central to its real concerns: regimes that bend over backwards to accommodate American business interests and that tow the line in the "War on Terror". Self-determination is OK as long as you vote for the candidate of the empire 's choosing. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0324-10.htm
https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x12073
You will also recall that Donald repeated the well-worn threat against Mexico, in his attempt to scare them into funding his wall which benefits only his ego. He implied he would block the money being sent home by Mexican workers to sustain the lives of their families at home, where work is scarce, and so poorly paid.
Republicans have been yanking the chain on Latin American poor countries with this threat, and others, for ages.
Oh, yes: Using Guatemala to immediate back up the US embassy move to Jerusalem was a decision made to confirm Trump's loathsome move in breaking wiser tradition followed by previous, wiser US Presidents. It was meant to reinforce the "validity" and "rightness" of such a destructive decision. It was available instantly through a little pressure from Adelson, an all too persistent voice in right-wing US policy.
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