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Latin America and Middle East: What do they have in common?

Truths that kept hidden from people while the racism grows

by system failure

When the most authentic representative of the big capital is attacking on the Mexican immigrants, saying that they are drug dealers and rapists, you should be at least suspicious. Recently, Donald Trump expanded his far-Right rhetoric on Muslims, by saying that they should be banned from entering the US.

What Mr. Trump didn't tell us, and will never do, is that the US imperialism is heavily responsible for the massive immigration of Latin Americans to the United States in the past decades. This is something that is often hidden from the American public, and anyone who uses the extreme far-Right rhetoric, without telling the whole story, simply plants the seeds of hate.

From the wars for territorial expansion that gave the US control of Puerto Rico, Cuba and more than half of Mexico, to the covert operations that imposed oppressive military regimes in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador, the award-winning documentary Harvest of Empire unveils a moving human story that is largely unknown to the great majority of citizens in the US. “They never teach us in school that the huge Latino presence here is a direct result of our own government’s actions in Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America over many decades - actions that forced millions from that region to leave their homeland and journey north,” says Juan González, award-winning journalist and author of the book upon which the documentary is based.

Robert White, former US ambassador to El Salvador reveals that “If you had to pick one date where US foreign policy towards Latin America went wrong, the date would be 1954 and the place: Guatemala. That was the beginning of this terrible, terrible attitude that the United States developed towards Latin America and, particularly, towards Central America, where change became our enemy.”

From the documentary we also learn that Guatemala was one of the few countries in Latin America that, after World War ll, actually experienced a period of democratic rule. President Jacobo Arbenz was determined to reduce widespread poverty by effecting major land reform in Guatemala. Only 2% of the owners controlled 75% of the arable land. Out of all of those, the United Fruit Company was the largest, with some 600,000 acres of property.

In the US Government, John Foster Dulles, who was the Secretary of State under president Eisenhower; his brother Allen Dulles, who was the head of the CIA - had both been law partners in the main law firm that represented United Fruit Company. Melvin Goodman, former CIA division chief says that “The feeling was we could very easily overthrow this progressive government and make it a lot easier for the United Fruit Company and other American businesses to operate in Central America.

The CIA got heavily involved in managing public opinion. It created the image of Arbenz as a crazy radical. And it was a systematic effort, mobilization and financing of opposition forces, until the Arbenz government was overthrown.

A vicious repression of all progressives and supporters of the Arbenz government ensued. Guatemala really began to establish a new pattern whereby the United States government used covert operations, employed local proxies to destabilize and overthrow governments in the region. A civil war erupted in the county that lasted 20 years. The brutality of the US-backed regimes forced many people to flee to the United States. That common US policy nearly to all the Latin America, in order to promote the interests of the US big capital, created massive waves of immigrants towards the US soil.

But if we examine the origins of today's Middle East chaos, we will find them again in the US imperialism. And again, the impact is similar. Many of the architects of the 2003 invasion in Iraq were found involved with companies profiteering from the war. An invasion which, as Tony Blair admitted, led to the appearance of the ISIS monster.

As the US and its allies insisted on supporting the anti-Assad militants, the ISIS nightmare became stronger and spread the terror in the population. The result: thousands of refugees flee, mostly to Europe this time, due to geographic proximity. Refugees come from all the regions that the US have intense presence, like Afghanistan. As has been revealed, CIA is using similar methods to that in Latin America, through paramilitary forces who attack on civilians. Naturally, these people will flee to save their lives. What would you do in their position?

It seems that the new round of the US imperial intervention in Latin America and Middle East is done with the known methods. Maduro has lost the recent elections in Venezuela due to the US economic war which was conducted with the help of the opposition funded by US organizations. But it was also a result of a general economic war using Saudi Arabia and the weapon of oil. By keeping oil prices at historical low levels, the US tried to damage severely both the Russian and the Venezuelan economy.

What is new, and probably shows that the US empire declines, is that the latest round of imperialist intervention both in Latin America and Middle East, is a result of a nervous reaction by the empire against the geopolitical and economic expansion of its major opponents in the global arena. While in the past the global spheres of influence were more or less unofficially determined by all major powers, today's fierce antagonism for global dominance leaves no room for "silent agreements". But the declining empire is more dangerous than ever, and will use all means to retain its dominance.

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