Terror in Latin America and the Caribbean

[Judi Lynn]

October 01, 2014

Sorrow's Season

Terror in Latin America and the Caribbean

by W.T. WHITNEY Jr.


Cuban national hero José Martí referred to land lying between the Rio Grande River and the Straits of Magellan as “Our America.” In an essay with that title published in 1892, Martí evoked the Rio Grande boundary as a divide between peoples with their own history, culture and future and an industrializing, crass civilization to the north promising no good.

Indeed, U.S. agents or proxies would soon be sewing grief and despair. Early in the 20th century they launched military incursions. Subsequently less blatant interventions left terror in their wake. Anniversaries in September and October – a season of sorrow in Our America – recall murder and mayhem. One asks: Can international solidarity prevent victims? Who in North America, epicenter of terrorist plotting, will take on that job?

On September 9, 1954, deposed Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz left for exile. Three months earlier the CIA had colluded with Guatemala’s wealthy elite to engineer a military coup. Civil war between leftist insurgents and the CIA-supported Guatemalan military lasted three decades and took the lives of 200,000 mostly indigenous and poor Guatemalans.

On September 11, 1973, the Chilean military overthrew socialist President Salvador Allende. Speaking to officials plotting against his election three years earlier, National Security Council director Henry Kissinger observed that: “I don’t see why we have to stand by and watch a country go communist by the irresponsibility of its own people.”

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/01/terror-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean/

[Judi Lynn]

1. KISSINGER BLOCKED DEMARCHE ON INTERNATIONAL ASSASSINATIONS TO CONDOR STATES

This material was linked in the article above. Added it here because it's too important to overlook.

KISSINGER BLOCKED DEMARCHE ON INTERNATIONAL ASSASSINATIONS TO CONDOR STATES

RESCINDED ORDERS TO WARN MILITARY REGIMES DAYS BEFORE LETELIER BOMBING IN WASHINGTON D.C.

Overruled Aides who Wanted to "Head Off" a "Series of International Murders"

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 312

Posted - April 10, 2010

Washington, DC, April 10, 2010 - Only five days before a car bomb planted by agents of the Pinochet regime rocked downtown Washington D.C. on September 21, 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger rescinded instructions sent to, but never implemented by, U.S. ambassadors in the Southern Cone to warn military leaders there against orchestrating "a series of international murders," declassified documents obtained and posted by the National Security Archive revealed today.

The Secretary "has instructed that no further action be taken on this matter," stated a September 16, 1976, cable sent from Lusaka (where Kissinger was traveling) to his assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs, Harry Shlaudeman. The instructions effectively ended efforts by senior State Department officials to deliver a diplomatic demarche, approved by Kissinger only three weeks earlier, to express "our deep concern" over "plans for the assassination of subversives, politicians, and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad." Aimed at the heads of state of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, the demarche was never delivered.

"The September 16th cable is the missing piece of the historical puzzle on Kissinger's role in the action, and inaction, of the U.S. government after learning of Condor assassination plots," according to Peter Kornbluh, the Archive's senior analyst on Chile and author of the book, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. "We know now what happened: The State Department initiated a timely effort to thwart a 'Murder Inc' in the Southern Cone, and Kissinger, without explanation, aborted it," Kornbluh said. "The Kissinger cancellation on warning the Condor nations prevented the delivery of a diplomatic protest that conceivably could have deterred an act of terrorism in Washington D.C."

Kissinger's September 16 instructions responded to an August 30, 1976 secret memorandum from Shlaudeman, titled "Operation Condor," that advised him: "what we are trying to head off is a series of international murders that could do serious damage to the international status and reputation of the countries involved." After receiving Kissinger's orders, on September 20, Shlaudeman directed his deputy, William Luers, to "instruct the (U.S.) ambassadors to take no further action noting that there have been no reports in some weeks indicating an intention to activate the Condor scheme."

More:
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB312/