It
might seem cavalier for an academically credentialed anthropologist
to assert political influence on the population he is supposed to be
studying; however, Goette-Luciak’s activities fit within a long
tradition.
by
Max Blumenthal
Part
5 - A “dual use” anthropologist
Prior to
the unrest that swept across Nicaragua last April, there was little
record of Goette-Luciak’s presence as a writer or journalist. He
had written one piece for NPR on how Nicaraguans were not as happy as
the World Happiness Report said they were.
His
co-author, Carlos Salinas Maldonado, was a writer for the opposition
magazine Confidencial, which is funded by the U.S. government’s
regime-change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the Open
Society Foundation.
In his
byline, Goette-Luciak described himself as “an anthropologist in
Managua.” He was listed in conference papers as a graduate
student at the University of Virginia around that time, focusing his
work on the Rama-Kriol and Miskito populations of Nicaragua’s
eastern coast.
These
indigenous groups have been at loggerheads with the Sandinista
movement since the civil war in the 1980’s, when the CIA cultivated
them as U.S. allies. Ronald Reagan made the relationship a
centerpiece of his administration’s Cold War crusade when he
declared in a 1985 speech, “I am … a Miskito Indian. I too, am
a potential victim of totalitarianism.”
The
indigenous North Atlantic Autonomous Region of Nicaragua remains a
key target for U.S. influence, as Washington seeks to exploit the
simmering conflict between its local population and the leftist
government in Managua. Leaked diplomatic cables demonstrate efforts
by the U.S. embassy to cultivate anti-Sandinista sentiment in the
area by working to facilitate human-rights complaints by former
CIA-backed Contra fighters against FSLN leadership.
In 2013,
the Ortega government announced plans by a Chinese magnate to
construct a canal through his country, presenting a direct threat to
U.S. control over shipping lines in the western hemisphere and
prompting an outcry from the U.S. embassy. Soon, an anti-canal
movement emerged in the countryside as one of the main drivers of
anti-Sandinista sentiment. The campaign against the canal poured fuel
on the fire of the coastal indigenous population’s long-simmering
conflict with the government.
Though
Goette-Luciak described himself in his bio as an “anthropologist
in Managua,” he later revealed that he was working among the
Miskito population and with the Rama-Kriol communal government to
stimulate opposition to the Sandinistas.
“I
worked on informing the indigenous community of their rights at a
time of crisis, when the government was attempting to depict to the
international audience consent among the indigenous population for
the sale of their land,” Goette-Luciak said in an interview
this year with The Edge of Adventure.
It might
seem cavalier for an academically credentialed anthropologist to
assert political influence on the population he is supposed to be
studying; however, Goette-Luciak’s activities fit within a long
tradition. As author David Price illustrated in several book-length
studies on what he called “dual use anthropology,” many
American anthropologists were supported during the Cold War by
private foundations and even the CIA to conduct activities on behalf
of their government. More recently, the Pentagon weaponized the field
of study through programs like its Human Terrain System, which lured
newly graduated anthropologists with lucrative salaries to assist
U.S. military counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is
no evidence that Goette-Luciak is an asset of the CIA or any other
U.S. agency. However, his advancement of Washington’s divisive
political objectives during the course of his ethnographic fieldwork
represented a fairly clear example of dual-use anthropology.
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