#us intervention in latin america | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

transmutationisms · 4 months ago

Text

@cubeghost sure, here are some places to start:

"Spectacles of Difference: The Racial Scripting of Epidemic Disparities", Keith A. Wailoo (Bulletin of the History of Medicine 94.4, 2020, 602–625, DOI 10.1353/bhm.2020.0085)

This essay explores how epidemics in the past and present give rise to distinctive, recurring racial scripts about bodies and identities, with sweeping racial effects beyond the Black experience. Using examples from cholera, influenza, tuberculosis, AIDS, and COVID-19, the essay provides a dramaturgical analysis of race and epidemics in four acts, moving from Act I, racial revelation; to Act II, the staging of bodies and places; to Act III, where race and disease is made into spectacle; and finally, Act IV, in which racial boundaries are fixed, repaired, or made anew in the response to the racial dynamics revealed by epidemics. Focusing primarily on North America but touching on global racial narratives, the essay concludes with reflections on the writers and producers of these racialized dramas, and a discussion of why these racialized repertoires have endured.

"Epidemics Have Lost the Plot", Guillaume Lachenal & Gaëtan Thomas (Bulletin of the History of Medicine 94.4, 2020, 670–689, DOI 10.1353/bhm.2020.0089)

This article draws on Charles Rosenberg's classic essay "What Is an Epidemic?" (1989) to reflect on the complex narrative structures and temporalities of epidemics as they are experienced and storied. We begin with an analysis of Rosenberg's use of Albert Camus's The Plague and a discussion of how epidemics have been modeled in literature and in epidemiology concomitantly. Then, we argue that Charles Rosenberg's characterization of epidemics as events bounded in time that display narrative and epidemiological purity fails to account for the reinvention of life within health crises. Adopting the ecological, archaeological, and anthropological perspectives developed within African studies enriches the range of available plots, roles, and temporal sequences and ultimately transforms our way of depicting epidemics. Instead of events oriented toward their own closure, epidemics might be approached as unsettling, seemingly endless periods during which life has to be recomposed.

"Revisiting "What Is an Epidemic?" in the Time of COVID-19: Lessons from the History of Latin American Public Health", Mariola Espinosa (Bulletin of the History of Medicine 94.4, 2020, 627–636, DOI 10.1353/bhm.2020.0086)

This essay considers what thirty years of scholarship on the history of epidemics in Latin America and the larger hemisphere can bring to a current reading of Charles Rosenberg's influential 1989 essay, "What Is an Epidemic? AIDS in Historical Perspective." It advocates that taking a broader geographical view is valuable to understanding better the arc of an epidemic in society. In addition, it proposes that, to see the ways in which the United States is experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to place the United States alongside the experiences of other countries of the Americas rather than making comparisons to Europe.

"The model crisis, or how to have critical promiscuity in the time of Covid-19", Warwick Anderson (Social Studies of Science 51.2, April 2021, 167–188, DOI 10.1177/0306312721996053)

During the past forty years, statistical modelling and simulation have come to frame perceptions of epidemic disease and to determine public health interventions that might limit or suppress the transmission of the causative agent. The influence of such formulaic disease modelling has pervaded public health policy and practice during the Covid-19 pandemic. The critical vocabulary of epidemiology, and now popular debate, thus includes R0, the basic reproduction number of the virus, ‘flattening the curve’, and epidemic ‘waves’. How did this happen? What are the consequences of framing and foreseeing the pandemic in these modes? Focusing on historical and contemporary disease responses, primarily in Britain, I explore the emergence of statistical modelling as a ‘crisis technology’, a reductive mechanism for making rapid decisions or judgments under uncertain biological constraint. I consider how Covid-19 might be configured or assembled otherwise, constituted as a more heterogeneous object of knowledge, a different and more encompassing moment of truth – not simply as a measured telos directing us to a new normal. Drawing on earlier critical engagements with the AIDS pandemic, inquiries into how to have ‘theory’ and ‘promiscuity’ in a crisis, I seek to open up a space for greater ecological, sociological, and cultural complexity in the biopolitics of modelling, thereby attempting to validate a role for critique in the Covid-19 crisis.

Constructing the Outbreak: Epidemics in Media and Collective Memory, Katherine Foss (2020, ISBN 9781625345271)

Constructing the Outbreak demonstrates how news reporting on epidemics communicates more than just information about pathogens; rather, prejudices, political agendas, religious beliefs, and theories of disease also shape the message. Analyzing seven epidemics spanning more than two hundred years―from Boston's smallpox epidemic and Philadelphia's yellow fever epidemic in the eighteenth century to outbreaks of diphtheria, influenza, and typhoid in the early twentieth century―Katherine A. Foss discusses how shifts in journalism and medicine influenced the coverage, preservation, and fictionalization of different disease outbreaks. Each case study highlights facets of this interplay, delving into topics such as colonization, tourism, war, and politics. Through this investigation into what has been preserved and forgotten in the collective memory of disease, Foss sheds light on current health care debates, like vaccine hesitancy.

"Reconsidering the Dramaturgy", Dora Vargha (Bulletin of the History of Medicine 94.4, 2020, 690–698, DOI 10.1353/bhm.2020.0090)

This essay reconsiders epidemic narratives through the lens of polio to examine temporal shifts and overlapping and conflicting temporalities and assess some of the stakes in how we conceptualize the epidemic dramaturgy. I argue that while the dramaturgy of epidemics serves as a thread around which people, state actors, and institutions organize experiences, responses, and expectations, consideration of the multiplicity of epidemic temporalities is crucial in understanding how medical practice and knowledge are shaped and transferred, particularly with attention to actors that might be rendered invisible by the conventional narrative arc.

i also recommend the September 2023 special issue of the IsisCB, Bibliographic Essays on the History of Pandemics. these essays cover more than disease narratology but many of them do discuss it, and they are intended to serve as guidelines / commentary on their accompanying bibliographies, so they can be really helpful in getting further reading recs or an introduction to any of these sub-topics. also, this entire special issue was published open access (CC-BY license), so you don't have to screw around with bypassing paywalls paying for these essays.

#book recs

83 notes · View notes

seulszn · 9 months ago

Text

WHAT’S GOING ON IN HAITI 🇭🇹

Haiti is a country in the Caribbean and Latin America that has been exploited and oppressed by colonial powers and imperialist forces for centuries. Its people have suffered unimaginable horrors and atrocities. Haiti was the first Black republic in the world, and the second independent nation in the Americas and the first Latin American country It achieved its independence in 1804, after a successful slave revolt against France. Haiti's independence was a threat to the racist and capitalist system that dominated the world. It inspired other enslaved and oppressed people to fight for their freedom and dignity. Haiti was also punished for its independence by the colonial powers. It was forced to pay a huge indemnity to France, and faced trade embargoes, diplomatic isolation, and military interventions.

Haiti was also exploited by multinational corporations and NGOs, who profited from its cheap labor, natural resources, and humanitarian aid. They also imposed their agendas and policies on the Haitian people, undermining their sovereignty and democracy. Haiti was also devastated by natural disasters, such as earthquakes ( a earthquake they are still recovering from that happened in 2010 and then a earthquake that happened in 2021 that killed 1,419 people) hurricanes, and floods, which worsened its already dire situation. Haiti was also victimized by diseases, such as cholera, malaria, and COVID-19, which ravaged its population and health system. The diseases were often introduced or exacerbated by foreign actors, such as the UN peacekeepers who brought cholera to Haiti in 2010. Haiti was also marginalized and silenced by the mainstream media, which portrayed it as a hopeless and helpless case, ignoring its history, culture, and achievements. The media also spread misinformation and stereotypes, fueling racism and stigma.

Haiti was also betrayed and abandoned by its allies and neighbors, who turned a blind eye to its plight, or worse, contributed to its misery. The United States of America, in particular, has a long history of meddling and undermining Haiti's sovereignty and stability. Taking 500,000 dollars from Haitian banks and still collecting money. The United States of America has invaded, occupied, and intervened in Haiti numerous times, imposing its political and economic interests. It has also exploited Haiti's labor and resources, and blocked its development and trade. sugar refining, flour milling, and cement and textile manufacturing, clothing, scrap metal, vegetable oils, dates and cocoa are all things given to other countries by Haiti. The United States of America has also supported and funded the Core Group, a coalition of foreign powers that has interfered in Haiti's internal affairs, manipulating its elections, constitution, and government. The United States of America has also failed to protect the human rights and dignity of the Haitian people, both in Haiti and in the US. It has deported and detained thousands of Haitian refugees and asylum seekers, and discriminated and criminalized them.

Here are a list of countries who agreed to help the United States and Canada evade Haiti:

Germany

France (the same country that we had to pay just to be free)

Benin

Jamaica

Kenya

Yes I am Haitian my dad side is from Haiti. My fathers family moved up here to Seattle because Haitian was going through a small silent genocide and have been since they have been free from France in 1804, France took my countries money and told them that they have to pay reparations just for existing and they had to pay France just to be free from the French. And then America jumps onto the bandwagon and decides to take billions of dollars from Haiti. Haiti was once the richest country but became the most poorest because of ignorance.

My people are being killed everyday just for speaking out against their government, my people are being killed because nobody was their for them when the 2010 and the 2021 earthquake happened because “Haiti is a bad country and helping them won’t do anything” and they are still recovering from that to this very day. Families are being displaced, the violence is getting worse, innocent people are dying and are fighting trying to stay alive, women and children are being r$ped and kidnapped. I have family that live in Haiti that I lost all contact with because they are fighting everyday, and who knows if they are even alive.

Here are some important links to help you get a better understanding on what’s going on in Haiti and stuff to donate to

Donations:

Haitian Health foundation

Partner in Health: Haiti

Hope For Haiti

Haiti Aid

Haiti Children

Haiti Twitter Link for More Donations. P2 P3

Videos

FYI a lot of these videos are from last year but a lot of them speak really well on what is always going on and why they are going through it

Haiti Debt

What is Happening in Haiti

Haiti and the Rice

Listen Part 2

Free These countries as well

What we want to free in Haiti

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE TAKE THE TIME OUT OF YOUR DAY TO AT LEAST LOOK AT THESE LINKS. For the sake of My dad and the sake of my family I want to see them happy they wanna go home but won’t be able to until Haiti is free I will update this if I need to and please Like, comment, reblog anything is appreciated

#free haiti #free palestine #genocide #haiti crisis #haiti #☆— mj speaks

241 notes · View notes

grogumaximus · 4 months ago

Text

Generally speaking, if you think the Liberty Media intervention is unbelievable, then it is not

Horner said "We had an inquiry from Flavio Briatore [about Fernando] and from Liberty Media but the position within Red Bull has always been very clear" (BBC, 2018)

Then it happened again a year later

Marko confirms the Red Bull hypothesis – Alonso: “Liberty asked us for a seat, but we said no” (Autobild, 2019)

Rumors about Liberty Media intervention date back to the beginning in 2020, before checo even got the redbull seat. There was concern that they might lose the Mexican GP if checo was not on the grid

“We all want to see Checo at the start next year,” commented Ross Brawn. “It would be a tragedy if he couldn’t find a car, and then it’s undoubtedly a business.” The opinion of the CEO of Formula 1 is not exactly a random one, just as the rumors that Liberty Media could put pressure on Red Bull in favor of Perez are probably not unfounded, because there are all the reasons. (2020, Motorsport)

And now back to the present, one of the reasons redbull extended checo's contract was because he sells better in Latin America

Helmut Marko on why they extended checo's contract "We want to ensure continuity and both drivers get on really well, there are simply no conflicts," reveals the man from Graz. "'Checo' is also incredibly popular in Latin America. We sell more merchandise of his there than of Verstappen and when he has a good day, he's almost unbeatable." (Kleine Zeitung, June 6, 2024)

I read rumors that Carlos slim has shares in F1TV but there is no reliable or unreliable source so, so far its bs (I checked all the stocks holders as well) HOWEVER, he does have partnerships

3 out of the 6 current partners of F1TV are owned by Carlos Slim (source: formula 1 website, Claro, Telcel, Telmex)

And one thing that I found very sus in my opinion there was a podcast where Carlos Slim denied any connection or influence regarding checo's seat literally 4 days before redbull confirmed checo's seat after the summer break

Speaking on the podcast “Desde el paddock” hosted by former Mexican driver Memo Rojas Jr, Carlos Slim Domit said that any type of decision falls solely on the Red Bull management and not on the number of caps or shirts that Checo can sell. (ESPN, July 25, 2024)

Sergio Pérez remains at Red Bull Racing. Confirmation from the team. (Erik Van Haren, Jul 29, 2024)

#last thurs there was a comment on reddit that pissed me off n sent me on search mode while waiting to pick up my brother from the airport #but then he arrived n i completely forgot to respond on that comment n now i remembered it n its too late #bc ppl r talking about it again #so im sharing this bc my time that i wasted on this useless bs will not go for nothing #helmut marko #sergio perez #red bull racing

85 notes · View notes

communistkenobi · 5 months ago

Note

i’d love to get your take on the physical geography/human geography “divide”. we spent a lot of time debating the merits of having both in my first year phd course and in my opinion as a physical geographer the opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration far outweigh any of the issues with housing physical and social scientists together

my familiarity with this debate primarily comes from the academic discourse around the concept of the “Anthropocene” (ie the period in Earth’s history where human beings have made a measurable, global impact on the environment, almost always spoken about in the context of climate change). The way I’ve seen this term used is to argue that the period of the Anthropocene is collapsing the physical/human geography divide, that even if we could separate these disciplines in the past, we can no longer partition the environmental from the social.

I’m partial to critical interventions in this discourse (which is how I will answer your question) - that the ‘human impact’ we’re talking about is actually a function of colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism, not some abstract universal ‘human impact’. Modern human beings have existed on Earth for nearly two hundred thousand years, and human-made climate change has only occurred in roughly the last two centuries - a microscopic timeframe when talking about Earth’s climate. People in the Global South, in imperialized countries, and indigenous and Black peoples in settler colonies are not the classes who produce industrial levels of carbon emissions or wreak industrial-scale environmental devastation - that is the ruling class & the imperial states of the world. Hoelle & Kawa (2021) argue in Placing the Anthropos in Anthropocene that we should call it the plantationocene or capitalocene, because human-made climate change is a function of specific historical and material processes, not some generalized, ahistorical "human impact." Likewise, "human impact" is an imprecise and colonial definition of human involvement with the environment, which dismisses Indigenous peoples' complex and highly sophisticated relationships with what are understood by the Western world to be "pristine environs" (arising from the doctrine of terra nullius, or empty land, which justified colonial expansion into the American continent because there was "no civilization there") such as the Amazon Rainforest, which should be understood as a human-made ecological system the same way we understand farmlands to be human-made (see Roosevelt's 2014 The Amazon and the Anthropocene: 13,000 Years of Human Influence in a Tropical Rainforest).

therefore I think it's productive to think of the divide between the physical and the human geographies as a colonial framework, or at least one that is deeply implicated in colonial thinking - it positions the environment as an ‘object’ terrain that ‘subjects’ are situated on top of, as opposed to understanding human beings as part of nature. This is part of the logic that relegates Indigenous people to the status of animals ("savages"), as "part of" nature, while human 'subjects', ie white bourgeois Europeans, are separated from nature (see Quijano's 2000 Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America). This type of thinking is attributed to climate change-denialism in fascist circles (see Acker's 2020 What Could Carbofascism Look Like?), whose denialism is premised on a settler colonial understanding of the environment as a resource to be dominated and extracted from - the environment has no agency in this framework, no ability to react to the violence of colonial extraction, it is a purely inert economic resource. Likewise, this psychical/human divide obfuscates the fact that historical processes like colonialism are also environmental processes. In North America, the genocides of indigenous peoples carried out by European settlers over the past five centuries have been so monumental that the resulting reduction in carbon dioxide output by human bodies is measurable in the geological record (see Hoelle & Kawa again). The environmental devastation of silver mining in South America led by Spanish colonizers, and the resulting misery inflicted on colonized peoples forced to conduct this mining (see Galeano's 1971 The Open Veins of Latin America) was foundational to the forming of the modern Spanish nation-state, who imported so much stolen silver into Europe that they crashed their own economy (see chapter 3 of Perry Anderson’s 1974 Lineages of the Absolutist State).

Likewise, efforts at environmental protections from Indigenous nations has resulted in unique advancements in the law, such as enshrining legal personhood on rivers, as was the case with the Whanganui River in Aotearoa (see Brierly et al's 2018 A geomorphic perspective on the rights of the river in Aotearoa New Zealand), or the forsaking of sovereign mining rights by the state in order to protect indigenous land claims for environmental protection, as was the case in Ecuador (see Gümplova's 2019 Yasuní ITT Initiative and the reinventing of sovereignty over natural resources). These are social, political, and legal efforts at environmental protection, done with an eye towards decolonization (or at the very least, decolonial policy regimes), and separating the environmental from the social in trying to understand this subject would be absurd.

And so the question of discipline specificity is obviously bound up in these debates, and the academic production of environmental scientists on the one hand and geographic social scientists on the other is part of the maintenance of that divide. Environmental protection policy requires specialised knowledge of the environments being protected, and that specialised knowledge likewise requires expertise in how state policy functions. And it has required decades and centuries of resistance and legal challenges for Indigenous people to be involved in these respective sites of knowledge production - all of this is bound up in debates about if we should keep the physical and human geographies separated. I think the example of medical doctors talking about “shit life syndrome” (ie the medical problems faced by people as a result of poverty and inequality) speaks to a consequence of the debates around disciplinary divides - most medical doctors are not social policy experts, it’s not their job to write legislation or policy programs, their job is to provide medical services to people, but they are nonetheless identifying in their supposedly separate discipline of medicine and human biology the harmful social outputs of capitalist societies, which is intense systemic poverty

#asks #book club #some of this might be review from your class but im just speaking generally ! not aiming all of this explanation at just you anon #reading list

76 notes · View notes

lilyliveredlittlerichboy · 1 year ago

Text

it's time now. it's time to imagine the brightest future you can, and talk about it.

a future where people only work 8 hours a week and everyone's basic needs are met. a future where we are more connected to nature and eat seasonal, local produce. a future where you look out for your neighbours and they look out for you. a future where you actually know who your neighbours are. a future where everyone is just a lot more relaxed and able to do whatever they want to do - this 8 hour working week has given people their lives back and now they're able to make community events, work in community gardens, sing and dance and spend time with their kids, play whatever sport they want, travel, read, create art and music.

People are interacting with each other in good faith again because money as an ulterior motive has all but disappeared. Cus you see a few decades ago they made profits illegal. All money has to be put back into the company and CEOs can take home a salary only, no bonuses and it can't be more than 3x what the lowest paid employee makes. You can go to jail if your company is found to make profits, advertise on a large scale or pay its high ranking members more than what's allowed.

Jail still exists but mostly people go in for financial crimes (greed still exists); drugs are decriminalised and available to use safely. people are not as desperate now so there's been a massive reduction of violent and petty crime and most of the people who still do this are teenagers who get away with a slap on the wrist. police are not armed anymore and are heavily penalised if they abuse their power or hurt a civilian, and their role is more that of mediator, signposter (to community services, social services, and free and accessible healthcare including for mental health) and security. together with the former military they make up an "emergency task force" which are called upon in times of need and crisis, for floods, fires, other such disasters.

the stock market completely collapsed after profits were made illegal and people had to find other ways to figure out what a company was worth: such as how they treat their staff or how accessible their processes are. as a result of this, as well as more widespread disability thanks to Covid and an ageing population, accessibility is fucking incredible now. most places are accessible to the vast majority of disabled people even without them having to ask for a single thing. If they have to ask, accommodations are made quickly and without fuss and this is completely normal now. disabled people are more visible than ever in public life and this has led to a generally kinder, more tolerant public life.

Everything is slower now. Social media as we know it died decades ago and Internet 4.0 is efficient, will find you accurate answers and the websites you're looking for very easily and fast. there's monopoly laws restricting how large companies operate online. online ads are all but illegal - there's "phone book" esque pages where you can promote your business or service and that's allowed but not anywhere else. Lots of people are still annoying and some of them are still cruel but overall living together as humans has gotten so much more chill. We've tackled climate change and reversed much of it, now it's a global day of mourning whenever a species is found to be extinct through human intervention. these days used to happen much more frequently but it's very rare these days. Most everyone gets the day off and is encouraged to read about the lost species or hold themed funerals. Globally everything has gotten better - there's much more global equality now after a bunch of western/formerly colonising countries almost self destructed and then instead decided to own up for colonialism, pay reparations to a lot of countries in Africa Asia and Latin America, as well as indigenous nations of North America, Oceania, even in Europe. The USA doesn't exist anymore instead its a whole host of separate nations all managed by the native people whose land it is. The UK doesn't exist anymore. England is still sad about it but Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Cornwall are called Cymru, Alba, Eire and Kernow again and they've formed a Celtic Union for better collective bargaining power in the EU (which still exists, somehow. Its better now. England may still be out of the EU I'm not sure). Migration is common and foreigners are welcomed into any country with open arms.

I may try to write something about this. I have a vision for a future and it's so lovely. Here, on earth, with the starting point being now. We have a lot to work with and only a few changes could make such a difference. Demilitarisation, UBI and maximum working hours, greedy financial practices made illegal. Conservation and education on local plants and nature and food. Community building on every level. Giving people their lives back.

This is all extremely possible. If it were up to me, very little in society would be left unchanged but it would all be people friendly changes. changes that aim to support the poorest and most marginalised, changes that aim to punish greed and exploitation. It's a work in progress of course. But I have a vision for a better world and dammit if I'm not going to share it with you.

#i need a tag for my own rambles #hopepunk #solarpunk #community building #decolonialism #demilitarize #ubi #universal basic income #defund the police #public healthcare #free healthcare #please feel free to add on #i need to expand on this more cus i have so many thoughts on this

435 notes · View notes

kropotkindersurprise · 11 months ago

Text

December 26, 2023 - A migrant caravan marches through Mexico to the American border chanting slogans. The migrants are looking for a better life in the rich country, fleeing their homes to escape poverty and violence largely caused by decades of US intervention across Latin America. [video]

#immigrants welcome #immigration #workers #working class #2023 #migrant caravan #refugees welcome #gif #video #usa #mexico #chiapas #latin america #solidarity #no borders #no nations #border

211 notes · View notes

daisyachain · 3 months ago

Text

It’s been read into the record that the US Army committed egregious civilian massacres in Vietnam, killed an estimated 100-500 thousand civilians in total in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, caused thousands more poisonings, birth defects, and related deaths in the Agent Orange ecocide. Vietnam is considered by most residents of developed countries to be an unfortunate policy bungle in which US soldiers suffered trauma.

This is not counting massacres by allied forces. It is unsealed public knowledge that the United States either installed or propped up military dictatorships in a majority of Latin American countries and Indonesia, which engaged in political killings. The United States backed the governments which carried out the genocide of the Maya. US interventions in Latin America are considered by most residents of developed countries to consist of a heroic opposition to Cuban dictatorship, where they are considered at all. Indonesia does not exist.

The word ‘genocide’ was coined to describe the Armenian genocide. Descendants of Armenian survivors have risen to prominence in US pop culture (Cher, System of a Down). Armenians have suffered crimes, military aggression, and civilian killings by Azerbaijani and allied forces multiple times within the past five years. The US government recognized the Armenian genocide for the first time in 2019. The United Nations organized COP29 in Baku with no formal dissent or objection from developed countries, and I’ve seen accounts on here with my own eyes praising the current Turkish government (more of a case of ‘you do not under any circumstances have to hand it to a far-right nationalist regime because they’re geopolitically opposed to Israel’s far-right nationalist regime’). Most residents of developed countries couldn’t point to the Caucasus on a map.

These atrocities and many, many more are cases of factual unarguable history that have been acknowledged by hegemonic governments. There is no public or intellectual debate on the fact of the Armenian genocide, American installation of Pinochet, the My Lai massacre. It’s gone down in history.

It’s also true that the average resident, even the average sensible political moderate in the suite of developed countries has an understanding of the world that denies or excludes these facts. Tumblr fandom blogs will share a video of Erdogan if he’s saying something politically convenient, a mildly left-wing guy will disbelieve me when I mention the Pinochet thing until I make him look it up on friggin Wikipedia, there are 2 Vietnam War films focusing on heroic American characters released in or after Anno Domini 2020. One of which is by a solidly progressive director.

I’ve seen the sentiment frequently that history will show the Israeli genocide as the most vicious, cruel, inhuman assault on humanity since the turn of the millennium. That is true. It will show as fact, records will be unsealed, media distortions will die down. Already, internal Israeli news sources Haaretz and +972 have disproven many of the claims used by the US government as an excuse to dismember children on the basis of ethnicity.

At the same time, I think that there’s a lot of evidence that factual atrocities will be ignored by the liberal hegemony as long as they’re inconvenient. The Shoah is remembered as a tragedy in part because it fits into a narrative that portrays the US as a morally just world power. Universally acknowledged genocides mass killings have little to no impact on the memories or politics of ‘normal people’ in developed countries. Most people don’t know that the UAE is currently playing a key role in the decimation of Sudan’s population and most people, if they ever did find out, would not see any reason for the US to use its economic leverage to have any impact on the UAE at all.

The record does and will show that Israel is guilty of genocide. It will go away sooner or later because of the efforts of Palestinians and allies to free Palestine from occupation, apartheid, and genocide. I don’t think that anyone who cheered on genocide will be aware of any of this, reflect on any of it, or do anything at all make up for the people they’ve killed. Vindication by history might not change them at all. Which is why it makes sense to keep bringing up the Palestinian genocide in all contexts whether ‘appropriate’ or not, because all historical evidence shows that it will be swept under the rug, forgotten, or misremembered if it doesn’t remain a conversational landmine forever

#kelsey rambles #in 20 years it’s got to be something you can’t bring up at the dinner table without being shouted down #because look at the Iraq war—transparent undeniable war crime committed by the US government that everyone pretends didn’t happen (NYT)

11 notes · View notes

orfeolookback · 11 months ago

Note

¡Hola!

¿Hay recursos que recomiendes para leer y aprender más sobre que esta occuriendo en argentina? He leido su post de fascismo en su país, y, como un estadounidense, quiero ayudar, pero no sé exactamente qué esta occuriendo en más detalle o qué puedo hacer para ayudar.

(puede responder en ingles o español, este mensaje es en español porque trato communicar más en español, lo siento si hay errores)

I'll answer in English since the post was in English. Thank you for reaching out!

Unlike many other crisis, we don't have a place for donations. You can help by organizing in your own country, being anti-capitalist and making sure the right doesn't spread elsewhere. If you live in the USA you can join strikes, rallies and protests, and anti fascist groups locally. Unionize. Demand rights. Reject US intervention. When Musk buys shit, boycott him, organize against him. Support Indigenous people's fight for Land Back and make sure no billionaire buys their land In your own country first. When you hear the people in power talking about Argentina (or any country!) as 'an important asset' make sure there's outrage.

I won't share sources that are easily digestible. If you really want to be educated, you can read about Operación Cóndor, read The Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano, watch 1985 (a movie about the last dictatorship's aftermath) and read through the comments of my post, lots of people linked articles. Most sources will be in Spanish.

If you really REALLY want to immediately support Argentina financially, support Argentinian businesses. If you commission artists often, consider us. If there's an Argentinian band you like, buy their stuff. I won't pretend like this will do much but a single dollar is 1000 Argentinian pesos, so you might change someone's month just with 10 dollars. I make a living through my art, personally.

Thank you for the interest, have a nice weekend

#argentina

16 notes · View notes

elbiotipo · 3 months ago

Note

Honestly surprised the rest of south America doesn't hate Brazil. We were such pieces of shit in the 19th century lol. Constantly installing puppet governments in Uruguay and Argentina, killing 80% of Paraguay's male population, etc. Real empire stuff lol

It was a big deal between the mid XIX and early XX century, the Argentina-Brazil rivalry today is mostly fútbol but back then it was a real geopolitical thing (see the South American Dreadnought Race, one of the stupidest episodes of the continent). I'm not sure when the modern sense of Latin American unity started to develop (since the idea predates independence) but I think it was in the period of relative peace in the XXth century. Perón is one of the first Argentine leaders of note who especifically talks about an union with Brazil to overcome imperialism.

When I look back at the sad mess that was the XIX century and the wars of independence and "national organization" it only reinforces my belief that you can't understand Latin American history without taking it as a whole. Brasil intervened in Argentina, Argentina intervened in Brasil, Chile with Bolivia and Perú, Colombia with the Caribbean, and all with the interventions of the European powers (IIRC Spain tried to invade Perú as late as the 1840s) and the US, it's all connected.

76 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 1 month ago

Text

Ahead of November’s U.S. presidential election, several right-wing Latin American leaders have been open about their support for Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump. Among them are Argentine President Javier Milei, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, as well as their allies and supporters. “With Trump’s election, we can see a major turnaround. And we will, God willing,” Eduardo Bolsonaro, the former president’s son and member of Brazil’s Congress, said at Brazil’s Conservative Political Action Conference in July.

Trump supporters across Latin America identify with the former U.S. president’s various culture war crusades and economic policies. Many also suggest that his return to the White House would put an end to U.S. interventions abroad and create a more peaceful world. In 2022, Jair Bolsonaro said, “Some think the war in Ukraine would not have happened if [Trump] were still been in power. I agree with that.” Bia Kicis, a politician and Bolsonaro ally, recently told the New York Times, “Back when Trump was a candidate, there was talk of a possible third war. But there was no war—until Trump left office, and now war is affecting the whole world.” Agustín Laje, an Argentine writer and Milei supporter, said that Trump’s return is essential “to guarantee peace.”

But there is strong evidence that, at least in the case of Latin America, Trump’s return to the White House would lead to a far more interventionist U.S. foreign policy, as was the case during his first term. At the time, Trump adopted “maximum pressure” tactics against countries like Cuba and Venezuela, and pressured—in vain—countries like Brazil to ban Chinese tech giant Huawei.

A second Trump presidency would likely see the return of more explicit U.S. pressure on Latin American countries to pick sides in the brewing competition between the United States and China. That could create considerable friction in the region, just as it did during Trump’s first term in office, when many countries warmed to China’s embrace. The more aggressive Trump’s approach to Latin America, the faster governments can be expected to balance Washington by fostering closer ties to Beijing.

Most of the recent U.S. administrations have explicitly distanced themselves from the Monroe Doctrine, which, in 1823, asserted Washington’s authority over meddling European powers in Latin America. The doctrine was often used as a pretext for U.S. military or diplomatic interventions in the Western Hemisphere and was largely seen as a form of U.S. imperialism, especially during the 20th century. In 2013, then-Secretary of State John Kerry announced, “The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over.”

Trump and his allies, however, have explicitly defended the doctrine. At the United Nations General Assembly in 2018, Trump argued that “it has been the formal policy of our country since President Monroe that we reject the interference of foreign nations in this hemisphere and in our own affairs.” This time, the warning was not directed at Europeans, but at Russia and China, the latter of which became the main trading partner of most South American countries in the last decade.

Perhaps the most extreme element of Trump’s worldview was revealed by his former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who noted in his 2020 book, The Room Where it Happened: A White House Memoir, “Trump insisted he wanted military options for Venezuela and then keep it because ‘it’s really part of the United States.’” In April 2019, Bolton said, “Today, we proudly proclaim for all to hear: The Monroe Doctrine is alive and well.”

All this suggests that Trump’s isolationist foreign policy in the world at large translates into a stronger urge to dominate the Western Hemisphere, a detail often lost on Trump supporters in the region. As Johns Hopkins University professor Hal Brands argued in Foreign Affairs, “‘America First’ would feature a reenergized Monroe Doctrine: U.S. retrenchment from Old World outposts would presage intensified and perhaps heavier-handed efforts to safeguard American influence in the New World, and to prevent rivals from gaining a foothold there.”

In retrospect, Trump’s strategy in Latin American failed to achieve its goals. Despite crippling sanctions and menacing rhetoric, the regimes of Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba—which Bolton dubbed the “Troika of Tyranny”—remain in power. Trump’s efforts to convince Latin American governments to ban Huawei or downgrade their ties to China also did not produce any tangible results. Even during the Bolsonaro administration, Brazil’s trade with China only grew.

The Trump administration’s strategy vis-à-vis Huawei in particular caused bewilderment among Latin American policymakers. The United States pressured Latin American countries to exclude Huawei as a component provider of their 5G networks, arguing that the company could be used as a Trojan horse for Chinese spying activities. At the time, Trump officials threatened governments in Europe and Latin America not to use Huawei, warning them that doing so could lead Washington to stop sharing U.S. intelligence with them.

Yet Washington ignored political realities in Latin America, where there was little appetite among political or economic elites to confront Beijing. Worse, the United States offered no real alternative to Chinese 5G technology; Huawei’s competitors—including Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung—were more expensive, and Washington refrained from offering to pay the difference.

Trump’s warnings about the dangers that Huawei posed also largely fell flat: To most Latin Americans, there is little daylight between being spied on by China and being spied on by the United States, which has—for example—refused to apologize for putting former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff under NSA surveillance, among many other instances of U.S. interventionism and covert activities in the region.

Trump’s muscular approach to the region largely served Beijing’s interests; Latin American governments strengthened ties to China to balance Trump’s posturing. Beijing has emphasized respecting sovereignty in its interactions with Latin American governments, aware of how attractive the prospect sounds to governments across the global south.

While Trump ultimately decided against a military intervention to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, his aggressive rhetoric had the region on edge. Even the remote specter of a U.S. invasion led to a rally-round-the-flag effect that strengthened Maduro’s narrative that Venezuela faces serious threats to its sovereignty. It also became an opportunity to blame all the country’s economic woes on U.S. sanctions. As a result, several regional leaders reluctantly sided with Maduro.

Although Trump’s hostile approach to Latin America during his first term as president failed, he would likely repeat the strategy upon returning to the White House, Juan Gabriel Tokatlian, a professor at Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires, warned in Americas Quarterly. Republican senators and representatives have presented resolutions reaffirming the Monroe Doctrine’s validity. Numerous leading voices in the Republican Party also regularly employ threatening language toward the region.

Last year, Trump lamented the United States’ loss of control over the Panama Canal. Trump, his vice presidential pick J.D. Vance, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley have all threatened to bomb Mexico to combat drug cartels. Such rhetoric—which promotes U.S. violations of international law—is a boon to anti-American voices and would make it easy for China to position itself as a more attractive partner in the region.

Trump could impose high tariffs against products from countries that are engaged in initiatives to circumvent the dollar. That would likely apply to Brazil, which uses local currencies for some of its trade with fellow countries in the BRICS grouping. Mexico is likely to be one of the countries most affected by Trump’s return, as he pledges to impose hefty tariffs on goods produced in the country, reduce immigration, and cut the U.S. trade deficit.

Trump may back down from some of his most extreme proposals for Latin America, however. If he followed through on his pledge to conduct mass deportations of more than 10 million undocumented immigrants, the majority of whom hail from the region, remittances would drop and returning workers could de-stabilize labor markets. The resulting worker shortage would negatively affect the U.S. economy and potentially increase inflation, making it unlikely Trump fully delivers on his threats.

During Trump’s first term, leaders from Brasília to Buenos Aires were largely able to ride out U.S. pressure to align with Washington and move away from China. Across the region, there continues to be a consensus that multialignment between great powers remains feasible for years to come and that U.S. pressure to reduce ties to China can be resisted at little cost.

Trump is often described as holding a transactional foreign-policy view, and the same applies to most Latin American governments. Brazil is a case in point: While President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s decision to refrain from unequivocally condemning Russia for its war in Ukraine has been couched in moralistic language—accusing the West of hypocrisy—it is, above all, rooted in hard-headed pragmatism. Brazil’s positioning on the war, for example, allowed it to save millions of dollars when purchasing Russian diesel and fertilizers at a heavy discount. Protecting ties to Moscow is seen as crucial to preserving Brazil’s strategic wiggle room and constraining the United States.

For the same reason, Latin American countries care little about U.S. rhetoric about the risks of being technologically dependent on a dictatorship like China, as embodied by the Huawei dispute. Governments would certainly consider excluding Huawei from their 5G networks if doing so would create a measurable economic benefit. But without tangible U.S. incentives or funding, that seems implausible.

Trump’s attempts to reduce China’s role in Latin America via a renewed Monroe Doctrine will likely backfire again. In Trump’s erratic approach to foreign affairs, Latin American leaders perceive instability—and believe that they must hedge relations with the United States to strengthen their ties to other large powers.

3 notes · View notes

antoine-roquentin · 1 year ago

Text

This is part of a series on American assassinations of foreign and possibly domestic leaders, and part of a miniseries on the American intervention in the Dominican Republic and Cuba during and prior to 1965. It has been held up to some extent by writer's block surrounding the use of violence and detail. I hope the salaciousness meets but does not exceed nor lag expectations. The previous part, part 7, is available here.

On the afternoon of March 4, 1960, a Belgian ship was offloading 76 tons of explosive munitions directly onto the docks at Havana. At 3:10, an explosion rocked the ship. It was big enough to damage the docks, and dozens were killed or wounded. The Cuban army organized a relief effort. Che Guevara, a trained doctor, drove down as fast as he could. Fidel Castro observed overhead in a helicopter. 30 minutes after the first explosion, a second, seemingly well-timed, hit the relief workers and damaged the helicopter. The total death toll may have been as high as 100. The American State Department in memos blamed the French, who they said were incensed by Cuban support for an independent Algeria. At a memorial the next day, Castro made it quite clear who he blamed. A photojournalist took the following pictures there, including perhaps the most famous image to ever be placed on a t-shirt:

A few days later the Miami Herald, whose journalists in the employ of the CIA were known as AMCARBON-1, -2, and -3 (AM being Cuba), published an interview fingering a culprit. A man had witnessed William Alexander Morgan, an American who had fought with Castro, board the ship the day before. Morgan was both a strong believer in the Cuban Revolution and a liberal who insisted that Castro had no communist leanings. He'd actually participated in the armed suppression of a Trujillo-backed invasion months before. Dominican intelligence agents had approached him and offered $1 million, raised in part from American mafia figures, with a quarter as a down payment to facilitate the landing of former Batista soldiers and arms. Morgan pocketed the money then told the Cuban government, and the invasion force was either captured or slaughtered. Trujillo placed a bounty on his head. He walked hand-in-hand with Castro and Che during the memorial service, but by June 1960 at the latest he was known to be smuggling weapons on behalf of the CIA to rebels. He claimed he was disenchanted with Cuba's increasing closeness to the Soviet Union. Ultimately, he was arrested and executed the month before the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Adam Driver will be playing him in the biopic.

On March 17 and April 14, Eisenhower once again affirmed the plans for Castro and Trujillo, albeit with hours of discussion on the former and only minutes on the latter. American staff did "not find Cuba to be under Communist control", but nevertheless felt that Castro was "the Communist type", as "his confused doctrine of Castro-humanism will take him to a position of world prominence as a radical agitator of under-developed areas". Castro, meanwhile, was still hedging his bets, buying guns from the Czechs rather than the Soviets directly, who he did not allow to reopen their embassy in Havana. While “Trujillo is a man of great pride with great love for his country, his people and his family,” he had to go because “it appears impossible to shake the belief of Latin America that the Trujillo situation is more serious than the Castro situation. Until Trujillo is eliminated, we cannot get our Latin American friends to reach a proper level of indignation in dealing with Castro.” The plan for Cuba was to flood the country with propaganda, train dissidents in peaceful and violent protest, and build a paramilitary force for an eventual invasion. The plan for Trujillo was to "make prior arrangements with an appropriate civil military leader group in a position to and willing to take over the Dominican Government with the assurance of United States support", then take out Trujillo through bribery, pressure, or violence, as well as any others who stood in the way of that group.

One reason Eisenhower's staff did not take kindly to the attempt by Castro to play one imperialist against another was because they were intensely racist and regarded any effort by post-colonial states to manage their resources in their own interest as a sign that they were being controlled by the Soviets. A typical example was the incoming administration of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. At the end of July, Lumumba stopped in America to visit New York and then Washington D.C. He hoped to woo prominent business leaders and then meet with the president. However, in New York, he explained against the advice of his advisors to a group of bankers that Congolese uranium would now be traded under new agreements since the old ones with the Belgians were void. The next day, an advisor to Eisenhower called an advisor to Lumumba and said "I’m sorry, tell your Prime Minister that the President prefers to go and play golf than to meet Lumumba". Like with Castro, the Americans stonewalled Lumumba, and then when he looked instead to the Soviets for aid, they decided he was an open communist. On 18 August 1960, Eisenhower met with his National Security Council and made a vague comment that he wished somebody would get rid of Lumumba. During a 20 minute break in the meeting, he authorized $10 million for the coming invasion of Cuba so long as it consisted entirely of Cuban nationals. Three days later, America cut off diplomatic relations with the Dominican Republic on the urging of President Betancourt of Venezuela, who Trujillo had openly tried to assassinate in a carbombing, and downgraded its embassy to a consulate.

Around the same time, a CIA agent named Sheffield Edwards, known for doing odd jobs for director Allen Dulles, was meeting with a man named Robert Maheu. As a former FBI agent, Maheu had struck out on his own in 1947, doing wiretaps, burglary, and intimidation in the name of protecting a list of clients that included Howard Hughes and members of the Mafia. Maheu went through a mid-level mafia man named John Roselli to set up a meeting between two CIA agents, Sam Giancana, and Santo Trafficante, both of the Chicago mob, in late September. Together, they began to plot ways to kill Castro and get back the $100 million they'd lost in Cuban casinos to the revolution. Five- and six-figure cheques flowed freely. Poison was ordered, both to Cuba and the Congo. When it arrived in the former, a mafia man in charge of distributing it was told to keep it away from heat, so he stuck it in a freezer and rendered it useless. A plantation in Guatemala found where 500 men could be trained for an invasion, with 6 men a week ferried in teams to the mainland to build networks of anti-Castro Cubans. Reportedly, they were all were killed or captured. A few weeks later, an FBI agent in Miami told the CIA station chief there that he'd better plug up his leaks, since they'd picked up chatter among Castro's agents in the city as to a plan to kill Castro and invade from Guatemala. By November, the magazine Nation had reported what they'd learned from Guatemalan newspapers about the paramilitary training operation. By January it was in the NYT. For Trujillo, the plan was merely to send people who knew him, like his close friend and CIA agent William Pawley who'd helped overthrow Arbenz, to convince him to retire, as well as to supply small arms to rebels.

This period was largely overshadowed by the election, particularly due to JFK's shenanigans. It's unknown who let it slip to him that there was an invasion being planned, but Allen Dulles was one of the suspects. JFK's foreign policy experience in the senate had largely been to spout liberal bromides about economic development as a greater cure for communism than military might. One man he'd held a true admiration for was Patrice Lumumba. However, he was also someone who delegated rather than bringing his own ideas to the table. His dad Joe Kennedy had a meeting with Henry Luce, the CIA-linked boss of Time Magazine and namesake of Warren Hinckle's chimp, whose emissary to the agency was Charles Douglas Jackson, the mentor of Sacha Volman. Luce told Joe that any candidate he backed would have to be very tough on Castro. Joe told JFK, and his advisors came up with a wonderful idea: since his opponent Nixon couldn't mention the planned invasion of Cuba because it was covert, he should suggest that very action repeatedly and loudly, claiming that Nixon's failure to do the same was a sign he was easy on communism. It worked so well that Trujillo poured some money and manpower into JFK's campaign, which he felt would get him back into America's good books once he was elected. Part of this was because Trujillo often hung out in the same group of friends as the Kennedy family. For instance, Igor Cassini, a Russian aristocrat who fled the revolution, had become an American gossip columnist covering what he termed the "jet set", including the Kennedy family. He plead guilty in 1963 to using his influence as well as that of his brother, the designer of many of Jackie Kennedy's dresses, to try and convince JFK to back Trujillo. JFK also had an assist in the very close election campaign from the Chicago machine, an integrated network of Democratic politicians, mafia men like Giancana, and other power players in Illinois. Additionally, his token effort on civil rights, getting the son of a local preacher named Martin Luther King Senior released from prison in Georgia, won him a few votes. Ultimately, his margin in Illinois was less than 9,000. An interesting figure here is Judith Exner, a mistress of Kennedy's who was recorded visiting the White House a number of times (Bobby Baker quotes JFK in Seymour Hersh's book: "You know, I get a migraine headache if I don't get a strange piece of ass every day"). While her story repeatedly changed over the years, she claimed to have been introduced to both Kennedy and Giancana by Frank Sinatra, becoming a go-between on both the 1960 campaign and the attempts to kill Castro.

By Kennedy's election, any chance of a friendship between the American and Cuban governments had died. It was a typical tit-for-tat escalation. America threatened to withhold sugar rights if Cuba didn't return plantations owned by Americans but redistributed to Cuban peasants. Cuba then did a deal with the Soviets to sell sugar for oil. America banned its citizens at Cuban refineries from working on Soviet imports. Cuba nationalized American refineries. In October, America blocked all non-food exports to Cuba. In December, Cuba issued a statement saying they supported Soviet foreign policy wholeheartedly. That was the last straw. Castro had called in 1959 for a $30 billion American investment in Latin America to serve as a Marshall Plan for the region and was laughed out of the room by Eisenhower's flunkies. Kennedy announced a similar $20 billion investment two months after he was inaugurated specifically to counter Castro's popularity and was condemned by him as an imperialist. One month later, on April 15, the Bay of Pigs Invasion began. Kennedy had cut off Eisenhower's all-hands-on-board meetings with his diplomatic, military, and intelligence leadership because they bored him. He claimed he had not been told how bad the chances of success were despite being presented with documents stating a 30% chance of winning. To some degree, he was right. Dulles and Deputy Director for Plans Dick Bissell had systematically suppressed any reports that said Castro was popular. They were so sure the Cuban people hated the revolution that they immediately rewarded anybody they could find who said so. The result was a series of operational failures that doomed the invasion long before it started. Dulles called it the worst day of his life. Kennedy had slept peacefully through the election nailbiter but could not get a moment of rest on the night of the invasion. His most prominent demand had been for plausible deniability that America backed the attempt, yet the media had gotten the story out months prior. The result was the near death of America's Latin American priorities and national humiliation. It took weeks for Kennedy to get over it, after which he told his advisor McGeorge Bundy "Well, at least I've got three more years. Nobody can take that away from me."

At the very same time, the head of the American consular mission in the Dominican Republic, Henry Dearborn, was getting word of the plans for a new assassination attempt against Trujillo. When diplomatic relations had been broken off the previous August, both the ambassador and the CIA station chief had left the country immediately, and Dearborn filled in for both. He had already made contact with a group of conspirators believed to be sufficiently pro-American. They'd asked for small arms and funding. He was friendly to their cause, once comparing Trujillo to Dracula. As Dearborn told Charles Stuart Kennedy in an engaging interview, "I knew they were planning to do it, I knew how they were planning to do it, I knew, more or less, who was involved. Although I was always able to say that I personally did not know any of the assassins, I knew those who were pulling the strings. I knew everything except when. The only reason I didn't know when was because they didn't know either. There had to be a certain set of circumstances when they could put their plan into action." The reason for this was that the conspirators could only act when Trujillo was unguarded, which meant when he had gotten the urge to visit a favourite young mistress of his. He preferred she remain a secret and would only go to visit her at night in a 1957 blue Chevy Bel-Air with a chauffeur and no guards.

They counted among their number Antonio de la Maza, brother of Octavio who was killed in prison and used as the scapegoat for the silencing of an American citizen who had participated in the Galindez murder. Antonio and the entire de la Maza family had despised Trujillo since he came to power in 1930. The year after, he'd taken shots at an army patrol, a teenage idealist hoping to force an uprising. His father was friends with a general who put in a good word for him with the president. It was suggested that he join the army as penance. He rose to become a lieutenant, then retired to go into business. Most of the conspirators were like him. They'd spent time working for Trujillo in the military but had been poisoned by the various indignities they were forced to suffer. There were many in the country like this, who'd had a relative murdered, or a wife or daughter whose virginity Trujillo demanded as proof of their complete loyalty. General Juan Tomas Diaz had a nephew participate in an assassination plot, forcing him and his mother to seek asylum at the Brazilian embassy. Trujillo ordered him to get them out, and when he couldn't, he was forced into early retirement. General Antonio Imbert had a brother in prison for similar reasons and his career was on thin ice. They worked with a man named Severo Cabral, a longtime friend of de la Maza who was in contact with a local American grocer recruited as a deep cover CIA operative. The collective was named EMOTH, EM for the Dominican Republic.

The CIA wanted them to get an actually serving army officer as a patron to ensure they could take over once the deed was done. They managed to get General Pupo Roman, the nephew-in-law of Trujillo. Pupo had run up large debts due to his incompetence running his businesses and, while indecisive, was also easily flattered. The conspirators told him he would be interim president and saviour of the country from communism, and that the CIA had endorsed (in actuality, said he was acceptable) his candidacy for the office. Moreover, Pupo's incompetence had also earned him repeated scoldings over decades from Trujillo. He'd been placed in higher positions because the leader knew he would never act on his burning desire for revenge. Now, an easy way to do so had presented itself. One last figure of importance was Amado Garcia Guerrero, a member of Trujillo's personal guard who held a "rabid hatred of the man" because he prevented him from marrying his sweetheart, the sister of an anti-Trujillo rebel. He was the one who suggested the method of assassination. Together, the men plotted at Juan Tomas Diaz' house, often after watching a Hollywood film on his 16mm projector. Seeing people killed from a moving vehicle repeatedly was one reason they ultimately went with Guerrero's plan.

They imported a Chevrolet Biscayne on credit, knowing that American cops favoured it for its no-frills interior and high speed, and upgraded an old Oldsmobile. Juan Tomas had his service weapon, a .45. Together they came up with two hunting shotguns as well as a Remington and sawed off the barrels. The CIA added three .38 Smith & Wessons and six M-1 carbines with 500 rounds, a disappointment for the assassins but easily enough to get one tortured if they were caught posessing them (codename EMDEED). They staged their drive over and over, plotting out bullet trajectories and wind speeds to determine angles of fire. They almost went on May 17, but Trujillo decided to go to a brewery instead. On the 24th, they waited again in ambush in their cars on the side of the road. Trujillo had a fever. One of the men's wife asked him on the 29th how he would escape retribution for killing the dictator. "This is a man's plan, there is no need to hide," he replied. On the evening of the 30th, Trujillo visited an air force base with Pupo. There was a leaky faucet near the front door and mud had collected outside. Trujillo had gotten his boots muddy days ago and the problem had still not been fixed. He forced Pupo to stand in it and gave him a dressing down for letting the problem fester, telling him to stay at the base until it was fixed. Just before leaving, Trujillo had informed his driver that he would be going to see his mistress a day earlier than usual and that he should be prepared for when he got back. Fortunately, Guerrero had overheard and gotten the word out.

De la Maza, Guerrero, Imbert, and one more sat in the Biscayne by an on-ramp to the Sanchez highway at the edge of the capital, in a position where they could see any car coming from a long distance away. Two others were in the Oldsmobile three kilometres away, waiting for a flash of headlights from the Biscayne to block Trujillo's car if it could not be overtaken. Two kilometres further, a third car waited with only its driver for a second chance to block. All carried at least one weapon supplied by the Americans. The chauffeur was an old comrade of Trujillo's from when he was out raping and killing peasants for the Americans, who knew to turn off the police radio because the dictator did not enjoy the chatter. As it passed the Biscayne, Imbert did a u-turn and floored it. At the 3 kilometre mark, the cars were only 150 feet apart. The Biscayne, driven by a vengeful chauvinist, did not give the signal to the Oldsmobile but instead made to pass the Bel-Air, which pulled into the slow lane to facilitate. They came side by side. De la Maza opened fire with his lever action shotgun. The first shot was true. "Cunt, I've been hit," said Trujillo. The shotgun jammed and a few seconds passed before he was hit again. The Bel-Air pulled over and the Biscayne overshot it by a few hundred feet. "Get the guns, we fight," screamed Trujillo, referring to the Thompsons and pistols in the car. The chauffeur tried to turn the car around and drive back to the capital, but Trujillo pulled open his door, and he was forced to stop it lest the man spill out. Instead, he picked up the gun from the side passenger seat and opened up on the attackers, who had jumped out of the car and lay prone on the pavement. De la Maza was impatient and in the midst of a berserker rage, hoped to make the final kill. He charged forward, shotgun at the ready. Imbert ordered the other two men with the M-1s to cover him and ran too. Trujillo crawled, hands on his personal .38, firing the odd shot in the direction of his attackers. Both Imbert and de la Maza would claim they made the final shot. It ripped through the man's body and he fell to the ground, limp. The chauffeur was hit, a bullet chipping off the top of his skull, and he fell, unconscious but not yet dead. De la Maza stood over the Trujillo and took one more shot, sending his dental bridge flying into the bushes where it would be used two hours later to confirm his death. The quadrumvirate had all at least been brushed by a bullet themselves if not hit directly. When the Oldsmobile came close, the four, thinking they were being attacked by Trujillistas, fired and hit their co-conspirator. All of them were in need of medical care and made to get it. Dazed and confused, they did nothing to cover up their act save for loading the body in their trunk to bring to Pupo as proof of the act. Juan Tomas had given his .45 to de la Maza and it lay on the sidewalk, serial number in plain view for anybody who sought to look it up. It was just after 10 pm.

It was here that the conspiracy collapsed. Three groups raced independently to find Pupo, who had already been spirited away within minutes of the killing by Trujillo's henchman Arturo Espillat. As the killing took place, Espillat was with his wife parked at the highway entrance and heard the gunshots. He got close enough to the gunfight to see the muzzle flashes, then decided he would be better served getting Pupo's help. The two of them drove past the car with Trujillo's body inside of it. The latter were in search of Juan Tomas Diaz to bring to Pupo's now empty house. Under Espillat's watchful eye, at no point did Pupo ever call for his coup d'etat. Instead, everybody acted as though Trujillo was still in charge but hiding. His family, who had tried to kill him many times themselves, refused to believe the words of Espillat and his boss, intelligence head Johnny Abbes, assuming that this was a plot to see what they would do if he died. They could have easily been overruled by a stronger authority figure. The conspirators meanwhile were quick to tell their family members and the doctors they sought out for treatment what they had done, feeling a sense of pride. Wiretapped phone calls, as all in the Dominican Republic were, ensured that the man in the Oldsmobile who'd been shot had secret police in his room within 3 hours. He quickly gave up Pupo. By 7 p.m. the next day, they had another who had given up more names and the CIA connection. By June 2, 3 of the 7 were in custody or dead while the CIA station chief was on a flight to Puerto Rico. By the 5th, two more were taken and Dearborn was out too. Juan Tomas, de la Maza, and Guerrero all went down shooting. Others were tortured. The last two, one of whom was Imbert, would never be caught. Neither would Severo Cabral.

The men who ended up in charge were Joaquin Balaguer and Ramfis Trujillo. The former had been appointed puppet president by Trujillo in one of his periods of international pressure where he could not be seen taking a direct leadership role. The latter, the dictator's son, had come back from his playboy life on his French estate with Porfiro Rubirosa the day after the assassination. He ruled simply by virtue of most others in the state apparatus listening to him despite his lack of a formal role. He finally had his cousin-in-law Pupo arrested on the 5th and subjected him to such intense tortures that he tried to commit suicide by eating a lightbulb and hitting his head on the toilet repeatedly. His death came four months later when Ramfis, torturing him while holding a loaded gun for fun, accidentally shot him. By that point, Ramfis' mental state had taken a nosedive. Dominicans began to protest, acting out when the symbol of their oppression had been removed. Johnny Abbes, who was brutal enough to repress them, was forced out to a diplomatic post in Japan for fear that he might take control. Arturo Espillat, despite being a loyal supporter, was tortured for a few days and then released to flee the country. The rest of the Trujillo family had their own little fiefdoms and resented Ramfis' increasing control. Two uncles in particular, Petan and Hector, were considered even more brutal than Rafael had been. JFK nicknamed them the "wicked uncles". They used their connections in the Popular Dominican Movement, the fake communist opposition their brother had set up to convince the Americans that there was a serious threat of the country going red, to stage riots. The American regime duly responded with 40 ships off the coast.

America was threading a tight needle. It wanted recognition in Latin America that it was a force for good after the humiliation of the Bay of Pigs which committed it to at least a "facade of democracy", in the State Department's words. At the same time, its greatest fear was another Castro, and it was far more willing to support another Trujillo, referred to by both the Americans and the Dominican opposition as the "Nicaraguan option" after the Somoza family there, than a democratic election where a left wing government won. Preference would be given to whoever could suppress the riots and keep the communists down without violating human rights too blatantly. The opposition had two elements. One was the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) founded by CIA asset Juan Bosch. He had the moral support of Latin America's liberals, including the very strong government of Venezuela. The other was the nascent National Civic Union (UNC), essentially a shell for businessmen and notables opposed to Trujillo. It had some popular support because its leader was Severo Cabral, the middle man between the CIA and the conspiracy to kill Trujillo. Many other members had been close to the conspirators. In this way, the CIA defined Overton Window of the Dominican opposition.

Things were in chaos for the summer and fall. Ramfis forced out his wicked uncles only to see himself become the face of brutality, with Balaguer capitalizing. He increasingly tortured for fun and pleasure because running the country made him feel sick. By November, he'd had enough. He allowed his uncles back in for one final explosive moment. Using his connections, he staged the escape of the remaining conspirators, having a few cops killed so their bodies could be dumped by a police van supposedly carrying the prisoners. He then took the conspirators to an estate and let the extended family have a go at tormenting and shooting them. He ditched the country for Spain on his personal yacht with his father's body and hundreds of millions in savings. His uncles proclaimed themselves leaders, then woke up days later with American ships once again in harbour forcing them to step down. Balaguer thought he'd taken over, but by January 1962 he'd stepped down from his post, forced to share power with UNC and military figures, including Imbert and the 7th co-conspirator who were finally able to come out from hiding, in a council system in a desperate attempt to claim legitimacy.

The initial budget for the covert program against Cuba was $5 million, and it would ultimately grow to $50 million a year. It was named Operation Mongoose. It covered a host of actions against Cuba, mostly sabotage and bombings, but also assassinations. Bobby Kennedy was in charge since he felt personal animosity towards Castro. Unfortunately, we don't have a clear picture of it because a significant amount of the records were destroyed in 1967. Today, Cuba is still under control of the same government as under Eisenhower. Meanwhile, 6 rifles, 3 revolvers, and a few thousand dollars were enough to change the Dominican Republic and overthrow the longest ruling dictator in the history of Latin America until that point. However, it was an operation the president was far less willing to support, as Trujillo was respected in the social circles of the richest Americans and had dozens of Senators and Congressional Representatives on his side. Of course, the question of what the president was willing to support has always been a bit of a mystery, as plausible deniability has always been on the minds of those in a position to know the true history of America's system of espionage.

Dick Bissell: “If you had asked Eisenhower what he was thinking at that moment he probably would have said, ‘I sure as hell would rather get rid of Lumumba without killing him, but if that’s the only way, then it’s got to be that way’. Eisenhower was a tough man behind that smile.”

36 notes · View notes