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Full text of "The Killing Zone
"
See other formats
THE KILLING ZONE
Stephen G. Rabe
SECOND EDITION
Digitized by Original from
HARVARD UNIVERSITY HARVARD UNIVERSITY
The Killing Zone
The United States Wages Cold War
in Latin America
»
The Killing Zone
The United States Wages Cold War
in Latin America
D
STEPHEN G. RABE
The University of Texas at Dallas
SECOND EDITION
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research,
scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. :
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With offices in
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Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Copyright © 2016, 2012 by Oxford University Press
For titles covered by Section 112 of the US Higher Education
Opportunity Act, please visit www.oup.com/us/he for the
latest information about pricing and alternate formats.
Published by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10016
http./www.oup.com
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rabe, Stephen G.
‘The killing zone: the United States wages Cold War in Latin America / Stephen G. Rabe
(University of Texas at Dallas). - Second edition.
ages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-021625-2 (paperback)
1. Latin America Foreign relations--United States. 2, United States--Foreign relations--
Latin America. 3. Cold War--Diplomatic history. 4. Intervention (International lav)--
History--20th century. 5. Latin America--Politics and government--1948-1980. 6. Latin
'olitics and government--1980- 7. United States--Foreign relations--1945-1989.
8. Regime change--Latin America--History--20th century. 9. Espionage, American--Latin
America--History--20th century. I, Title.
F1418.R235 2016
327,80730904--dc23.
2014041246
Printing number:9 8 7 65432
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
NIVERSIT HARVARD UNIVERSI
For the Hamilton College History Faculty (1966-1970)
Charles C. Adler
David M. "Spoolie" Ellis
Edgar Baldwin “Digger” Graves
Edwin B. "Asian Ed" Lee Jr.
David R. Millar
James F. Traer
Dedicated scholars and teachers
HARVARD UNIVERSIT
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
CONTENTS
»
LIST OF PHOTOS IX
NEW TO THIS EDITION XI
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XIII
THE UNITED STATES AND LATIN AMERICA:
COLD WAR CHRONOLOGY XV
INTRODUCTION XXXI
Roots of Cold War Interventions 1
The Kennan Corollary 21
Guatemala—The Mother of Interventions 36
War against Cuba 59
No More Cubas—The Kennedy and Johnson
Doctrines 86
Military Dictators—Cold War Allies 119
Cold War Horrors—Central America 150
AFTERMATH 181
NOTES 207
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER READING
AND RESEARCH 229
INDEX 243
vii
LIST OF PHOTOS
»
Introduction
L Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo xxxiii
2. Suzanne Berghaus xxxv
Chapter 1
3. President Theodore Roosevelt 7
4. President Franklin Roosevelt and President Anastasio Somoza García 18
Chapter 2
5. GeorgeKennan 25
Chapter 3
6. President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán and Wife 47
7. Vice President Richard M. Nixon and President Fulgencio Batista 51
8. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and President Carlos Castillo Armas 54
Chapter 4
9. Fidel Castro and Guerrillas 6l
10. Body of Che Guevara 83
Chapter 5
1l. President John F. Kennedy at La Morita 94
12. President John F. Kennedy and Prime Minister Cheddi Jagan 96
13. President Lyndon B. Johnson and President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz 117
x LIST OF PHOTOS
Chapter 6
M. President Salvador Allende 137
15. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and President Augusto Pinochet 146
16. ESMA Building 149
Chapter 7
17. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick and President Ronald Reagan 164
18. President Ronald Reagan and President Efraín Ríos Montt 180
Aftermath
19. Punta Carretas Shopping Mall 193
20. Three Women Presidents 200
21. White Head Scarf 204
NEW TO THIS EDITION
»
+ An expanded chronology for the years 2010-2014
* New section on Mexico
+ Expansion of the analysis of the Cold War in Argentina and Guatemala
A revised Aftermath section that now includes new developments in Latin
America in 2010-2014 and an analysis of Pope Francis’s role in the Cold
War and post-Cold War period
Updated footnotes and recommended readings to provide the most cur-
rent research literature
xi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
cdi
Ime my gratitude to Dr. B. Hobson Wildenthal, the academic vice president
and provost at The University of Texas at Dallas, and Dr. Dennis M. Kratz, the
dean of the School of Arts and Humanities. Both men have consistently sup-
ported my research over many years. These two academic leaders have provided
me with the generous Ashbel Smith Chair in History and have granted me re-
leased time for my writing. I also thank Brian Wheel, my editor at Oxford Uni-
versity Press, for supporting this project. Finally, I thank the attorneys in my
family, Genice A. G. Rabe, the renowned civil rights and labor law lawyer, and
Elizabeth R. Rabe, the inveterate and compassionate Assistant U.S. Attorney, for
their support.
THE UNITED STATES AND LATIN AMERICA:
COLD WAR CHRONOLOGY
»
1945
* Meeting in Mexico City, the United States and Latin American nations
issue the Act of Chapultepec, pledging collective security. The meeting
represents the highpoint of inter-American wartime cooperation.
* President Franklin Delano Roosevelt dies in April and is succeeded by
Vice President Harry S. Truman. President Roosevelt has been associated.
in Latin America with the Good Neighbor Policy and the principle of
nonintervention.
+ World War II ends with the surrender of Germany in May and of Japan in
August.
1946
* The Unites States unsuccessfully tries to persuade Argentines not to elect
Juan Perón president of Argentina.
+ The Truman administration declines to schedule an economic conference
with Latin Americans to discuss economic aid.
1947
* In March, President Truman pronounces his "Truman Doctrine.” The policy
is established that the United States will assist anti-Communist forces.
+ Secretary of State George Marshall delivers a speech in June calling for
economic assistance for postwar Europe. The "Marshall Plan" will ensue
the next year.
* George Kennan publishes an article in Foreign Affairs that will serve as
the basis for the U.S. policy of "containing" the Soviet Union and com-
munism. In September, the United States concludes the Rio Treaty with
Latin America. Western Hemisphere nations will form a military alliance
against aggression.
xv
xvi
COLD WAR CHRONOLOGY
1948
+ Ina policy paper, NSC 16, the State Department concludes in March that
communism is not a threat in Latin America.
+ Atan inter-American meeting in April in Bogotá, Secretary of State Marshall
informs delegates that there will not be a “Marshall Plan for Latin America."
Delegates establish the Organization of American States, which incorporates
the nonintervention principle.
+ In November, military officers in Venezuela overthrow a constitutional
government. The military action seemingly signals the end of the move-
ment toward democracy and social reform throughout the region.
+ On 10 December, the United Nations adopts the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of President Roosevelt, had led
the movement to adopt the declaration.
1949
* In September, the United States announces that the Soviet Union has
successfully tested an atomic weapon.
+ Communist leader Mao Zedong proclaims on 1 October the People’s
Republic of China.
1950
+ In February, Senator Joseph McCarthy makes sensational allegations
about Communist influence within the U.S. government.
* George Kennan tours Latin America and subsequently submits a report
recommending support for anti-Communists in Latin America even if
they are authoritarian and undemocratic.
+ In April, President Truman secretly approves the policy paper NSC 68/2,
which calls on the United States to confront the Soviet Union globally with
awesome military power.
+ In April, Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America Edward Miller de-
livers his “Miller Doctrine” speech, suggesting that in the fight against
communism the United States could not abide by the nonintervention
principle.
+ In May, the Truman administration adopts the policy paper NSC 56/2,
authorizing military aid for Latin America to fight the Cold War. Aid to
Latin American militaries begins in 1951.
+ In June, the Korean War begins when North Korea invades South Korea.
1951
The Washington Conference concludes in April, with the Truman admin-
istration unable to persuade most Latin American nations to contribute
troops for the Korean War. The failure signals the end of the cooperation
that characterized inter-American relations during World War II.
Cold War Chronology xvii
1952
+ In March, Fulgencio Batista seizes power in Cuba.
+ In June, Guatemala issues Decree 900, expropriating large landholdings,
including properties of the United Fruit Company.
* President Truman recognizes the Bolivian Revolution in June. Assured of
the non-Communist nature of the revolution, both the Truman and the
Eisenhower administrations provide economic assistance to Bolivia.
+ In July, President Truman approves PBFORTUNE, a covert plan to over-
throw the Guatemalan government.
* In October, Secretary of State Dean Acheson halts PBFORTUNE.
1953
+ President Dwight D. Eisenhower takes office.
+ In March, President Eisenhower approves policy paper NSC 144/1 that
confidentially notes that the United States cannot observe the noninter-
vention principle in the Cold War.
+ On 26 July, Fidel Castro leads Cuban rebels on an assault on the Moncada
army barracks in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government of
Fulgencio Batista.
+ In August, President Eisenhower approves PBSUCCESS, a covert plan to
overthrow the Guatemalan government.
+ With US. approval, in October the United Kingdom overthrows the
elected government of Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana.
1954
+ With CIA backing, in June the Guatemalan military overthrows the con-
stitutional Guatemalan government of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán.
‘The United States insists that Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas be installed as
president.
* In September, U.S. analysts, operating under PBHISTORY, report that
they can find no evidence in Guatemalan archives of links between Presi-
dent Arbenz and international communism.
* A presidential panel, the Doolittle Commission; recommends that the
United States improve its abilities to intervene covertly in other nations,
* The Eisenhower administration awards the Legion of Merit to Marcos
Pérez Jiménez, the dictator of Venezuela.
1955
+ In September, President Juan Perón is overthrown by the Argentine mili-
tary. Three decades of political instability ensue in Argentina.
1956
+ On 2 December, Fidel Castro and supporters land in Cuba on a small boat,
the Granma. Cuban forces kill most of the invaders. Castro and the survi-
vors seek refuge in the Cuban mountains in the eastern part of the island.
xviii
1957
1958
1961
COLD WAR CHRONOLOGY
In July, President Castillo Armas of Guatemala is assassinated.
In January, Colonel Marcos Pérez Jiménez, the dictator of Venezuela, is
overthrown by a popular movement. His overthrow marks a movement
toward constitutional regimes throughout the region.
With the Castro insurgency spreading, the United States cuts off arms
shipments to Batista in March.
Vice President Richard Nixon travels to South America and is threatened
with physical harm during a riot in May in Caracas, Venezuela.
The Marxist political leader, Salvador Allende, nearly wins the Chilean
presidential election held in September.
In January, Fidel Castro assumes power in Cuba.
In April, the revolutionary government of Cuba adopts an extensive agrar-
ian reform law.
In April, Castro meets with Vice President Nixon in Washington.
In December, Colonel J. C. King of the CIA calls for the "elimination" of
Castro.
In February, Cuba signs a commercial agreement with the Soviet Union.
In March, President Eisenhower authorizes a program to overthrow Castro.
President Eisenhower announces the Social Progress Trust Fund for Latin
America, The July announcement breaks with the fifteen-year U.S. policy
of not providing extensive economic assistance to the region.
The MR-13 Rebellion breaks out in Guatemala in November. The rebels
protest both social injustice and the U.S. role in their country. More than
three decades of political violence in Guatemala will ensue.
On3 January, President Eisenhower breaks diplomatic relations with Cuba.
On 6 January, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's delivers his "Wars of
National Liberation Speech."
On 19 January, President Eisenhower warns President-elect John F. Kennedy
that the United States cannot live with Fidel Castro.
On 1 March, President Kennedy creates the Peace Corps. Between 1961 and
1969, more than nineteen thousand U.S. citizens serve in Latin America.
In March, President Kennedy announces his Alliance for Progress eco-
nomic aid program.
On 17-19 April, Cuban exiles invade at the Bay of Pigs. Castro's forces
easily rout the invaders.
1962
1963
Cold War Chronology xix
On 30 May, Dominican dissidents assassinate Rafael Trujillo, dictator of
the Dominican Republic. The dissidents had received weapons from the
United States.
In early June, President Kennedy meets with Soviet premier Khrushchev
in Vienna, Kennedy concludes that Khrushchev will support revolution in
Latin America.
‘The United States meets in August with Latin American nations at Punta
del Este, Uruguay, to plan the Alliance for Progress.
In October, President Kennedy hosts Prime Minister Cheddi Jagan of British
Guiana in the White House. Kennedy decides that Jagan must not be allowed
to be the leader of an independent Guyana.
In November, President Kennedy authorizes Operation Mongoose, a covert
plan to destabilize Cuba
‘The Kennedy administration employs diplomatic and military pressure to
force the remaining members of the Trujillo family out of the Dominican
Republic.
In late March, the Argentine military overthrows President Arturo Frondizi.
Frondizi had declined U.S. requests to break relations with Cuba.
Attorney General Robert Kennedy receives a briefing in May on U.S. efforts
to assassinate Castro.
In August, the Kennedy administration begins to provide extensive aid to
Latin American police forces through the Office of Public Safety (OPS):
The Cuban missile crisis erupts in October.
On 20 November, President Kennedy announces the end of the Cuban
missile crisis but continues covert efforts to destabilize Cuba.
In December, Attorney General Kennedy journeys to Brazil to inform
President João Goulart of U.S. displeasure with his domestic and interna-
tional policies.
In March, the Kennedy administration encourages a military seizure of
power in Guatemala to prevent former President Juan José Arévalo from
returning to office.
In June, President Kennedy, using the rubric of “Higher Authority,” autho-
rizes a sabotage campaign against Cuba.
On 30 June, President Kennedy meets with Prime Minister Harold Macmillan
in England and demands that the United Kingdom prevent Cheddi Jagan
from leading an independent Guyana.
In September, President Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic is over-
thrown by the military.
In November, Venezuela announces it has discovered a cache of Cuban
arms on the Venezuelan coast.
xx COLD WAR CHRONOLOGY
+ On 18 November, President Kennedy gives his last speech on inter-American
affairs, pronounces the "Kennedy Doctrine,” and says that Castro is a "bar-
rier” to be removed.
+ On 22 November, President Kennedy is assassinated. On the same day,
the CIA continues the assassination plots against Castro, meeting with
“AM/Lash” in Paris.
+ In December, Venezuela conducts a successful presidential election, de-
spite threats from Cuban-inspired insurgents.
1964
+ In January, riots break out in Panama over U.S. policies in the Canal Zone.
‘Negotiations will ensue to change U.S. control over the Panama Canal and
lead to the Canal Treaties of 1977-1978.
+ In March, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Mann pronounces his
“Mann Doctrine.” The United States will work with military regimes to
prevent communism.
+ In April, the Brazilian military, with U.S. encouragement, overthrows
President Goulart. Two decades of military dictatorship ensue.
+ Eduardo Frei, the U.S.-supported candidate, defeats Salvador Allende in
the September Chilean presidential election.
* Cheddi Jagan is denied power in December in a proportional representa-
tion election system in British Guiana. Forbes Burnham takes power and
creates a dictatorship in independent Guyana.
+ In March, President Johnson begins his massive buildup of U.S ground
forces in Vietnam.
+ In late April, the United States invades the Dominican Republic.
+ On2 May, President Johnson pronounces his “Johnson Doctrine,” vowing
to prevent communism in the hemisphere.
+ In June, President Johnson shuts down the covert war against Castro.
+ In October, President Johnson signs immigration reform (Hart-Celler
Act) that repeals discriminatory immigration policies.
1966
+ The Guatemalan military, with U.S. assistance, launches in March Oper-
ación Limpieza, a counterinsurgency campaign.
+ In April, Senator J. William Fulbright, chair of the Senate Foreign Rela-
tions Committee, denounces President Johnson's invasion of the Domini-
can Republic and the president's Vietnam policy.
+ Joaquín Balaguer, the U.S.-backed candidate, wins the presidential elec-
tion in the Dominican Republic in June.
+ In October, Che Guevara enters Bolivia with the goal of leading a revolu-
tionary movement.
Cold War Chronology xxi
1967
+ In October, Bolivian military forces, trained by the United States, capture
and execute Che Guevara.
1968
+ In September, the Conference of Latin American Bishops, meeting in
Medellin, Colombia, issues a statement calling for the organization of the
poor at the local level.
+ The United States helps Forbes Burnham of Guyana rig an election.
+ In December, Brazil's military rulers issue Decree 5, which outlaws dissent.
in the country.
1969
+ President Richard Nixon takes office and makes Henry Kissinger his chief
foreign policy advisor.
In May, Latin American delegates issue the Consensus of Viña del Mar.
‘They call for fairer terms of trade for Latin America.
In July, the Nixon administration adopts its policy paper for Latin America,
NSSM 15.
Governor Nelson Rockefeller submits in August his report to President
Nixon. Rockefeller suggests that the Latin American military will "mod-
ernize" the region.
On 31 October, President Nixon delivers his only major address on inter-
American affairs. He pledges a new attitude toward the region.
1970
+ Salvador Allende wins a plurality of votes in the September presidential
election in Chile.
* On 15 September, the Nixon administration initiates Project FUBELT to
block Allende from becoming president.
+ On 22 October, General René Schneider, a constitutionalist, is assassinated
by Chilean military men.
+ On 24 October, the Chilean legislature ratifies the results of the presiden-
tial election, Salvador Allende takes office in November.
* On 9 November, President Nixon adopts policy paper NSDM 93. The
United States will pursue a policy of hostility toward Allende.
1971
* President Nixon hosts Emilio Garrastazü Médici, the military dictator of
Brazil, in Washington in December. The leaders agree to cooperate in op-
posing Allende.
1972
+ An earthquake devastates Managua in December. The Nicaraguan gov-
ernment of Anastasio Somoza Debayle embezzles international relief aid.
xxii COLD WAR CHRONOLOGY
1973
1974
1975
1976
In January, the United States signs the Paris Accords, ending the U.S. war
in Vietnam.
In March, Allende's political coalition, Unidad Popular, increases its
strength in legislative elections.
In June, the military seizes effective power in Uruguay, ending the coun-
try's long history of constitutionalism.
In August, Chilean truckers launch a strike, The CIA funds groups that
support strikers.
On 11 September, the Chilean military, led by General Augusto Pinochet,
overthrows Allende, President Allende commits suicide.
On 13 September, the United States rushes aid to Pinochet and grants him.
diplomatic recognition on 24 September.
After eighteen years of exile, Juan Perón returns to Argentina, wins a pres-
idential election, and becomes president in October.
In July, Argentine president Juan Perón dies in office and is succeeded by
his wife, Vice President Isabel Martínez Perón.
In August, President Nixon resigns after being impeached for “high crimes
and misdemeanors” by the House of Representatives. Gerald Ford be-
comes president.
In September, Chilean general Carlos Prats and his wife, who are living in
exile in Buenos Aires, are assassinated by Chilean intelligence agents.
‘The U.S. Congress abolishes the Office of Public Safety in response to re-
ports of human rights abuses carried out by U.S.-trained police officers in
countries such as Uruguay.
In November, Chile organizes Operation Condor, a form of state-sponsored
international terrorism. The military dictatorships of southern cone coun-
ties will cooperate to hunt down political leftists in exile.
A congressional committee, the Church Committee, releases reports doc-
umenting the U.S. involvement in the assassination efforts against Fidel
Castro, Rafael Trujillo, and General Schneider and the U.S. involvement in
the overthrow of President Allende.
In March, Argentine generals overthrow President Isabel Perón, seize
power, and launch their “dirty war” against political leftists.
In June, Secretary of State Kissinger meets with General Pinochet in Santiago
and assures him of U.S. support. Kissinger also delivers a speech defending
human rights principles.
Cold WarChronology xxiii
+ InSeptember, Orlando Letelier, the former Chilean ambassador to the United
States, and Ronni Moffitt, a U.S. citizen, are assassinated in Washington,
DC, by Chilean agents.
+ Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 is brought down on 6 October by a bomb
attack. Cuba and Venezuela allege that Cuban exiles, including Luis
Posada Carriles, masterminded the terrorist attack.
+ Secretary Kissinger meets in October with the Argentine foreign minister
in Washington and assures him of U.S. support for Argentina's war against
radicals.
1977
* President Jimmy Carter takes office. He emphasizes his commitment to
human rights principles in a speech to the United Nations in March.
+ The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo begin to march, protesting the disap-
pearance of their children in Argentina.
+ In September, the United States and Panama sign treaties giving Panama
control over the Panama Canal by the end of the century.
1978
+ In January, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, the editor of La Prensa and a critic
of the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua, is assassinated,
* Argentina hosts and wins the World Cup in June, even as the military
dictatorship prosecutes its dirty war.
1979
* Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the dictator of Nicaragua, flees in July. The
revolutionary organization, the Sandinistas, takes power.
* In September, the Argentine military, responding to U.S. pressure, releases
Jacobo Timerman, a publisher and human rights activist, from prison.
+ In October, General Carlos Humberto Romero, the dictator of El Salvador,
is overthrown by a military-civilian coalition that pledges to bring reform
to the country.
1980
+ In March, Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador and a human
rights crusader, is assassinated while celebrating Mass.
* In December, three Roman Catholic nuns and a lay worker who are U.S.
citizens are murdered by Salvadoran military forces.
1981
+ President Ronald Reagan takes office in January.
* In February, the Reagan administration issues a White Paper, alleging
Sandinista interference in El Salvador.
+ In March, President Reagan approves military aid for El Salvador that will
eventually amount to more than $1 billion in the 1980s.
ERSIT HARVARD
xxiv COLD WAR CHRONOLOGY
+ In April, the Reagan administration suspends the Carter administration's
economic aid program for Nicaragua.
+ In November, President Reagan authorizes a program, NSDD 17, to over-
throw the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.
+ In November, Salvadoran security forces massacre more than nine hun-
dred civilians in the village of El Mozote.
1982
+ In April, the military rulers of Argentina launch an invasion of the Falkland
Islands (Malvinas). The United Kingdom's recapture of the Falklands in
June hastens the end of the military dictatorship.
+ In July, the Guatemalan military begins to execute Operation Sofia, an
attack on Mayan communities.
+ In December, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian novelist, gives his
Nobel Prize speech lamenting the violence in Latin America.
+ Atanews briefing in December, President Reagan defends the Guatemalan
leader, General Efrain Rios Montt, who is overseeing the destruction of
Mayan villages.
© In late December, Congress passes and President Reagan signs the first of
the Boland Amendments, which restricts U.S. aid to Nicaraguan oppo-
nents of the Sandinistas.
1983
+ In July, Latin American leaders, the Contadora Group, call for the end of
foreign intervention in Central America.
+ In October, the United States invades Grenada and overthrows the leftist
regime.
+ Democracy is restored in Argentina with inauguration in December of
President Raúl Alfonsin.
1984
* In January, a U.S. commission headed by Henry Kissinger issues a report
calling for both economic and military aid to Central America.
+ In May, the U.S.-backed candidate, José Napoleón Duarte, wins the presi-
dential election in El Salvador.
+ The study Nunca Mas is published in Argentina. It exposes the atrocities
committed by the Argentine military during the dirty war.
1985
+ Democracy is restored in Brazil with the election in January of Tancredo
Neves as president.
+ At a February news conference, President Reagan admits that it is U.S.
policy to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.
+ Democracy is restored in Uruguay with the inauguration in March of
President Julio Maria Sanguinetti.
Cold War Chronology xxv
1986
+ In June, the World Court finds the United States guilty of violating Nicaragua's
sovereignty.
+ In November, U.S, citizens learn of the Iran-contra scandal. The Reagan
administration has been violating the Boland Amendments, illegally
funding the Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries, or contras.
+ The archbishop of São Paulo publishes Nunca Mais, documenting atroci-
ties committed by the Brazilian military.
1987
+ In August, Central American presidents sign a peace agreement.
+ President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica wins the Nobel Prize for
Peace for his efforts to mediate the conflicts in Central America.
1988
* Ina plebiscite held in October, Chileans vote to reject the continuation of
General Pinochet in office.
1989
+ In January, President George H. W. Bush takes office.
+ In November, the Berlin Wall is toppled, signaling the end of the Cold
War.
* In November, military forces in El Salvador murder six Jesuit priests on
their university campus.
+ In December, U.S. military forces invade Panama and arrest Manuel
Noriega.
1990
* In Chile, democracy is restored in March with General Pinochet relin-
quishing power and the election of Patricio Aylwin as president.
+ The Sandinistas relinquish power in April in Nicaragua, with Violeta
Chamorro becoming president.
+ In May, Arthur M. Schlesinger publicly apologizes to Cheddi Jagan for
U.S. hostility toward him during the Kennedy administration.
* In November, President Bush signs the Immigration Reform Act, which
dramatically expands the immigration quotas.
1991
+ In February, the Rettig Report is released, documenting political murders
in Chile during the Pinochet regime.
+ The Soviet Union collapses in August, and the new leader, Boris Yeltsin,
subsequently abolishes the Communist Party in Russia,
+ In September, the Bush administration and the new government in Nicaragua.
settle the World Court judgment against the United States.
xxvi COLD WAR CHRONOLOGY
1992
«+ In January, the civil war in El Salvador ends, with the government and left-
ist groups signing a peace accord.
+ In October, Cheddi Jagan is elected the head of state of Guyana. Former
President Carter supervises the election.
+ Rigoberta Menchú, a Guatemalan human rights activist and representa-
tive of indigenous communities, is awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.
1993
* In January, President Bill Clinton takes office.
* Russia withdraws troops from Cuba. Soviet troops had been in Cuba since
1962.
1994
* The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among the United
States, Canada, and Mexico goes into effect.
1996
+ In December, the civil war in Guatemala ends with the signing of a peace
accord between the government and leftist groups.
1998
+ In April, Bishop Juan José Geradi of Guatemala is murdered two days after
the release of his study, Nunca Mas, which documents human rights
abuses by security forces.
+ In October, General Pinochet is arrested in London. A judge in Spain has
requested his extradition to stand trial for human rights abuses.
1999
* In February, an international commission releases a report, Guatemala:
Memory of Silence, which documents human rights abuses in Guatemala
from 1954 to 1996.
+ President Clinton apologizes for the U.S. role in the Guatemalan civil war.
+ President Clinton orders the declassification of records relating to the U.S.
role in the overthrow of Salvador Allende and subsequent support for
General Pinochet.
2000
+ In March 2000, General Pinochet is released on medical grounds by the
United Kingdom and returns to Chile.
+ In December, the Clinton administration closes the School of the Americas.
It had trained Latin American military officers for five decades. The school
reopens the next year as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation.
Cold War Chronology xxvii
2001
* In January, President George W. Bush takes office.
2002
* In April, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez survives an attempt to over-
throw him. The George W. Bush administration approved of the attempt.
2003
+ Secretary of State Colin Powell apologizes for the U.S. role in the over-
throw of Allende in Chile.
2004
* In November, the first part of the Valech Report is released in Chile, detail-
ing human rights abuses by security forces during the Pinochet regime. A
second part of the report is released in 2005.
2006
+ In March, Michele Bachelet assumes office as president of Chile. She had
been tortured by the Pinochet regime.
+ In July, an ailing Fidel Castro transfers his duties as president and head of
the Communist Party to his brother, Raúl Castro.
+ In December, General Pinochet dies in Chile, having never stood trial.
2008
* In June, Manuel Contreras, the head of Operation Condor, receives two
life sentences from a Chilean court for the assassination of General Prats
and his wife.
* In September, Michelle Bachelet of Chile presents an award to Senator Edward
M. Kennedy for his defense of human rights during the Pinochet years.
* In October, an Argentine court resentences General Jorge Videla to mili-
tary prison for human rights abuses. General Videla had previously been
convicted in 1985. He dies in prison in 2013.
2009
+ Mauricio Funes assumes the presidency of El Salvador. Funes was a
member of the leftist group FMLN during the civil war of the 1980s.
+ In October, a Uruguayan court sentences the nation’s last dictator, General
Gregorio Alvarez, to twenty-five years in prison,
+ In December, a Chilean judge rules that former President Eduardo Frei
had been poisoned in the early 1980s by agents of the Pinochet regime.
2010
+ In March, José Mujica, a founder of a guerrilla movement, takes office as
president of Uruguay.
ERSIT HARVARD
xxviii
2011
2012
2013
2014
COLD WAR CHRONOLOGY
In April, Reynaldo Bignone, the last leader of Argentina's dictatorship, re-
ceivesa twenty-five-year sentence for human rights abuses from an Argentine
court. In 2011, Bignone receives an additional fifteen years for supervising a
torture center.
In December, a court in Paris convicts, in absentia, thirteen Chilean officials
of the Pinochet era for kidnapping and torturing four French nationals.
On 1 January, Dilma Rouseff, who had been tortured by Brazilian security
forces in the 1970s, assumes office as president of Brazil.
In March, the government of Fl Salvador apologizes for the assassination
of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980. The government subsequently apol-
ogizes for the El Mozote massacre of 1981.
In April, a federal jury in El Paso, Texas, acquits Luis Posada Carriles of
charges that he lied about his immigration status and past terrorist
activities,
In May, Republicans in the U.S, House of Representatives block the declas-
sification of U.S. records on Argentina’s dirty war.
In October, an Argentine court sentences Navy Captain Alfredo Astiz,
"the Angel of Death," to a life sentence for crimes against humanity. Astiz
had conspired in the murders of two French nuns and Mothers of the Plaza
de Mayo.
President Alvaro Colom apologizes for the overthrow of President Jacobo
Arbenz Guzmán in 1954.
In February, a U.S. judge orders the deportation of General Carlos Eugenio
Vides Casanova for the deaths of four U.S. churchwomen in El Salvador in
1980. The general continues to appeal the deportation order.
In May, Brazil establishes a National Truth Commission to investigate
human rights abuses during military rule, 1964-1985.
In March, the College of Cardinals in Rome elevates Jorge Mario Bergoglio
of Argentina to the papacy. He takes the name of Francis I.
On 10 May, a Guatemalan court judges former President Efraín Ríos Montt
guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity. Ten days later, the Consti-
tutional Court of Guatemala voids the conviction on a technicality.
In February, a U.S. judge orders the deportation of General José Guillermo
Garcia, a former minister of defense, for human rights abuses in El
Salvador.
Michele Bachelet begins her second term as president of Chile in March.
Cold WarChronology xxix
Salvador Sánchez Cerén succeeds Mauricio Funes as president of El Salvador.
The new president was a military commander in the FMLN.
Vice President Joseph Biden transfers, to Brazil's National Truth Commis-
sion, U.S. cables and reports on Brazilian torture techniques.
In late June, a Chilean court rules that Ray E. Davis, a U.S. military official
stationed in Santiago, conspired in the September 1973 murders of two
USS. citizens. Charles Hormat and Frank Teruggi were the subjects of the
film Missing (1982).
In July, two former senior Argentine military officers, now in their eight-
ies, are sentenced to life in prison for the murder in 1976 of Bishop Enrique
Angelelli, a left-leaning cleric.
In August, Estela de Carlotto, the president of the Grandmothers of the
Plaza de Mayo, announces that her grandson had been identified through
DNA testing.
INTRODUCTION
»
he Cold War is over. The momentous battle between the United States and
the Soviet Union for the hearts, minds, and even “the soul of mankind” that
dominated international life from 1945 to 1991 ended suddenly, with little warn-
ing. During the period between 1989 and 1991, the world witnessed some of the
most breathtaking developments in human history—the breaching of the Berlin
Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Empire first in Eastern Europe and then in the
Baltic Republics, the overthrow of the Communist system itself in Russia, and
finally the breakup of the Soviet Union. The end of Soviet tyranny meant that
millions of Europeans, from Estonians to Hungarians to Slovaks, had the chance
to fulfill their national aspirations and enjoy their freedom. History seemed to
work out in the way that diplomat and Soviet expert George F. Kennan predicted
in his 1946 “Long Telegram" and in his “Sources of Soviet Conduct” article pub-
lished in 1947. Kennan had called on the Harry S. Truman administration to
develop measures to “contain” the Soviet Union. Kennan reasoned that if the
United States remained steadfast, eventually the Soviet Union would falter and
then implode. The architects of U.S. Cold War policies President Truman, sec-
retaries of state George Marshall and Dean Acheson, and foreign policy experts
like Kennan and Paul Nitze—are celebrated as visionaries. Their handiwork—the
Truman Doctrine (1947), the Marshall Plan (1948), the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (1949), and National Security Council Memorandum 68/2 (1950)—
served as the framework for Cold War victory. President Truman, spectacularly
unpopular with the U.S. public during his time in office, is now ranked as one of
the “greatest” presidents in U.S. history. Other presidents who are perceived as
effectively waging Cold War, like John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, also enjoy
great historical prestige.
My teaching and scholarly experiences have led me to accept, in part, this
congratulatory view of U.S. Cold War policies. Over the past two decades, I have
had the honor and privilege of teaching or lecturing in twenty countries in Europe
and the Western Hemisphere, under the auspices of programs like the Council for
xxxi
xxxii. INTRODUCTION
the International Exchange of Scholars (Fulbright Program). This has included
living for two years in Europe, first teaching at University College, Dublin, in
Ireland and then at the University of Helsinki and the University of Turku in
Finland. Finnish universities offer courses taught in the English language and
attract students from all over the world. Students from twenty countries enrolled
in my course on the history of U.S. foreign relations. Such wonderful opportuni-
ties are voyages of personal discovery and enlightenment. When I teach abroad, I
know that I always learn more from colleagues and students than I can offer them.
My academic journeys have led to encounters with the residues of Soviet tyr-
anny. I have toured the chilling Museum of Occupation of Latvia (1940-1991) in
Riga and seen the grim interrogation rooms of the Soviet secret police, the KGB,
in Tartu, Estonia. In Berlin, near the Brandenburg Gate, one can view the photo-
graphs of East Berliners who were shot and killed in their desperate attempts to
surmount the Berlin Wall. At a Fulbright conference in Sofia, I heard professors
describe the dishonesties that characterized academic life in Bulgarian universi-
ties under the Soviet Communist system. Finland, which had been invaded by the
Soviet Union in 1939-1940 and remained quietly neutral during the Cold War,
has oriented its society and culture toward the West and has created one of the
most serene societies on the face of the earth. While teaching in Europe, I also
noted that students from Eastern European counties unfailingly brought me gifts
at the end of the semester. The gifts seemed to symbolize their appreciation for the
resolute U.S. support for their respective countries’ freedom.
Perhaps my most profound encounter, however, was with Dr. Milos Calda, a
political scientist and the engaging chair of the Department of American Studies
at Charles University (1348) in Prague in the Czech Republic, A Czech student,
whom I had taught at the University of Helsinki, had facilitated my coming to
lecture at Charles University. The Communist authorities banned Dr. Calda from
university teaching for fifteen years. He had to scrape together a living by teach-
ing language courses. Dr. Calda’s crime was that he was “a non-party member
with no perspective.” The forthright scholar apparently found it difficult to wax
eloquently about the 1968 Soviet invasion of the jewel of a city that is Prague.
Dr. Calda's suffering (and ultimate triumph) provided living testimony to the
themes presented in the Academy Award-winning film The Lives of Others (Das
Leben der Anderen) (2006), which explored the nefarious activities of the East
German secret police, the Stasi. In 2014, the U.S. ambassador in Prague awarded
the courageous Dr. Calda the Woodrow Wilson Freedom Award.
History and life do not, however, readily lend themselves to facile generaliza-
tions. Asa scholar who focuses on the history of U.S. relations with Latin America,
I have traveled to many Latin American countries and have had extended
teaching assignments in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador, The Latin
American students whom I have taught do not share the enthusiasm for U.S. Cold
War policies expressed by my Czech, Lithuanian, and Polish students. Memories
of the Cold War in Latin America are bitter, without much sense of appreciation
for the U.S. triumph over the Soviet Union. In Buenos Aires, every Thursday
Introduction xxxii
afternoon, the mothers and grandmothers (las madres y las abuelas) silently
march in the central plaza, the Plaza de Mayo. They have been marching for nearly
four decades. It is a moving experience to watch their procession. The women,
who are quite elderly now, wear photographs stitched to their clothing of the chil-
dren and grandchildren who vanished at the hands of the Argentine military. A
dramatic account of the mothers’ agony can be viewed in the great film Official
Story (La Historia Official) (1985). In the southern cone countries of Argentina,
Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, tens of thousands of people disappeared in the 1960s
and 1970s, earning the sobriquet los desaparecidos, “the disappeared ones,” In
Argentina alone, perhaps thirty thousand disappeared in la guerra sucia (“the
dirty war"). In the School of Economics at the University of Buenos Aires, there
are photographs of the seventy-two students who were murdered by Argentine
security forces. My Argentine students have told me about their parents fleeing for
their lives during that awful time. One student's parents encountered a human
torso that washed ashore on the Argentine coast. A retired Argentine naval officer
calculated that armed forces dropped as many as two thousand people from air-
craft into the Atlantic Ocean on weekly flights over a two-year period. The officer,
Adolfo Scilingo, admitted to shoving thirty prisoners who were still alive out of
aircraft. In Chile, President Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010, 2014- ) surely thinks
m
"PASO i
The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayol, wearing their
characteristic white head scarves, march on a Thursday afternoon in Buenos Aires. The
Mothers want to know the fate of their children, who were abducted by Argentine security
forces during the “dirty war" (la guerra sucia). The Mothers also demand that the
kidnappers face justice. These weekly demonstrations began in 1977 and have continued
into thetwenty-first century. (Stephen G. Rabe)
xxxiv INTRODUCTION
of her father who died of cardiac arrest in 1974 after being tortured by military
thugs under the command of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). As a young
woman, President Bachelet was also abused by Chilean military men. The suffer-
ing endured by the Bachelet family was not unique in Chile. In the aftermath of
the Pinochet regime, thirty-five thousand Chileans submitted testimonies of their
torture to Chilean fact-finding commissions. The United States aided and abetted
these ferocious anti-Communist military regimes.
Horror and savagery also characterized the Cold War in Central America.
‘The covert U.S. intervention in Guatemala in 1954 against a suspected Commu-
nist government sparked a four-decade-long cycle of violence that led to the death
of at least two hundred thousand Guatemalans. Right-wing death squads and the
Guatemalan military carried out more than 90 percent of these murders. The
military massacred indigenous communities of Mayan people. During the last
decade and a half of the Cold War, civil war between the political right and left
raged in the tiny countries of EI Salvador and Nicaragua. When the violence
wound down at the end of the Cold War, the body count was seventy-five thou-
sand in El Salvador and perhaps seventy thousand in Nicaragua. The economies
of both countries were in shambles, and vast numbers of people had fled their
homelands. By 2000, more than eight hundred thousand native-born Salvadorans
resided in the United States. The death toll in Nicaragua relative to population was
more than the casualties the United States suffered in the Civil War of the 1860s
and in its international wars of the twentieth century combined. As in Guatemala,
anti-Communist forces did most of the killing in El Salvador and Nicaragua.
The story of Suzanne Marie Berghaus captured the depravity of the Cold
War in Latin America. In April 2007, Berghaus, twenty-six, returned home to the
tiny village of Cacaopera in the hills of El Salvador near the border with Honduras.
Through the efforts of Asociación Pro-Bésqueda, a Salvadoran group founded by
families seeking their lost children, Berghaus had a bittersweet reunion with the
Sáenz family, including her aged birth parents and some of her siblings. She could
embrace but not converse with them because Berghaus did not speak Spanish. In
1982, Salvadoran soldiers had stolen the bright-eyed fourteen-month-old with
the happy smile, then known as Maria, and passed her on to an orphanage. The
Salvadoran military stole children to terrorize the peasant population to ensure
that they did not support leftist guerrillas. The military also made money
by stealing babies. A couple in Massachusetts adopted and raised little Maria.
‘The Berghaus family was unaware that their Suzanne had been kidnapped in
EI Salvador in the name of anticommunism. Suzanne Berghaus graduated from
college and earned a master's degree in social work from Salem State College?
Stealing babies was a pastime of anti-Communist forces in Latin America.
The Argentine military imprisoned pregnant women suspected of leftist tenden-
cies and allowed them to give birth in prison hospitals. Thereafter, the military
slaughtered the mothers, dropped their bodies from aircraft into the South At-
lantic, and gave the babies to families who supported their dirty war tactics. The
women who march in the Plaza de Mayo estimate that this happened to 500 of
-
Suzanne Marie Berghaus of Massachusetts meets with her birth parents in April 2007 in
Cacaopera, El Salvador. This was Berghaus's first meeting with her parents since she was
kidnapped at age fourteen months by Salvadoran security forces. The woman with her
hand on Ms. Berghaus's shoulder translates for her. (Redux Pictures/Monica Almeida/
New York Times)
their daughters and grandchildren. By mid-2014, las abuelas had been able to
locate 114 of their missing grandchildren. Little wonder that humane U.S. political
leaders have reacted with dismay to this Cold War history. President Bill Clinton
publicly apologized for the U.S. intervention in Guatemala in 1954 and its subse-
quent support for right-wing death squads. Secretary of State Colin Powell ex-
pressed regret for the U.S. intervention in Chile during the Salvador Allende
years (1970-1973).
Historians of the US. role in Latin America during the Cold War largely
share the sentiments expressed by President Clinton and Secretary Powell. They
take a critical stance toward inter-American relations. They criticize the United
States for its repeated covert and overt interventions in Latin America. During
the period from 1945 to 1989, the United States destabilized governments in
Argentina, Brazil, British Guiana (Guyana), Bolivia, Chile, the Dominican
Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. These interventions
helped perpetuate and spread violence, poverty, and despair within the region,
El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala are wrecked societies. In 2014, U.S. citizens
caught a glimpse of the despair in Central America, when tens of thousands of
children journeyed to the Texas-Mexico border, seeking asylum from the
violence and poverty that characterized their homelands. The southern cone
countries, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, have made economic progress in
xxxvi INTRODUCTION
the post-Cold War period. Nonetheless, decent Latin Americans are scarred
by the horrific memories of the past and must come to terms with those who
perpetrated the monstrous crimes and still live among them. Guyana has not
been be able to move past the racial hatred and tensions between Guyanese of
African and Indian descent that the U.S. intervention in the 1960s inflamed
and exacerbated.
In the views of inter-Americanists, U.S. Cold War leaders committed several
grave errors. These leaders failed to distinguish between the Soviet Union and
indigenous forms of political and economic nationalism in Latin America.
Throughout most of the Cold War, the Soviet Union judged the Western Hemi-
sphere to be the traditional U.S. sphere of influence and, other than in Fidel Castro's
Cuba, wielded little influence in the region. The Cold War was a global war,
expanding from Central Europe to the "Third World" of Asia, Africa, Latin
America, and the Middle East. The Soviet Union created more than its share of
havoc, approving the North Korean invasion of South Korea in 1950, invading
Afghanistan in 1979, and arming insurgent groups like the Congolese in the early
1960s and the Angolans in the 1970s. The Soviet Union also invested heavily in
Cuba for thirty years and supplied significant military and economic assistance
to the Sandinista government of Nicaragua in the 1970s. And the Cuban Revolu-
tion proved a powerful attraction to many Latin Americans, But the Soviet Union
did not direct events in Guatemala in the early 1950s, nor in Brazil, Guyana, and
the Dominican Republic in the 1960s, nor Chile in the early 1970s. The brilliant
scholar Piero Gleijeses, who has conducted archival research in Cuba, has further
demonstrated that Castro's Cuba focused on making revolution in Africa rather
than Latin America because Cuban leaders feared directly confronting U.S.
power.’ Compared to their activities in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, Com-
munist nations played minor roles in Latin America.
‘Throughout the Cold War, U.S. officials presumed that the Soviet Union pro-
moted subversion in the region and were often surprised when they could not find
evidence to sustain their fears. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles expressed
disappointment that his agents could not find, after the overthrow of the Guatemalan
government in 1954, evidence of a direct link between Moscow and Guatemala
City. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) planted arms with markings from
Communist nations on the coasts of Nicaragua in 1954 and Venezuela in 1963.
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, President Kennedy’s brother, once recom-
mended that the United States bomb its military base at Guantánamo Bay and use
the bombing as a pretext to invade Cuba. President Lyndon Johnson released lists
‘of Communists in the Dominican Republic in 1965 that included people who had
been long dead. The Reagan administration issued various “White Papers” on an
international Communist conspiracy in Central America that generated inter-
national ridicule because the documents were replete with factual errors.
Despite lacking hard evidence of international ties between domestic radi-
cals and the Soviet Union, the United States relentlessly opposed leftist political
leaders in Latin America. Both Democrats and Republicans feared the domestic
Introduction xxxvii
political repercussions of "losing" a Latin American nation to communism. After
1959, the apparition of “another Cuba” haunted U.S. officials. Being charged as
"soft on communism” proved lethal within the context of U.S. domestic politics.
Such political weapons wounded both the Truman and the Jimmy Carter admin-
istrations. U.S. presidential administrations, from Truman to George H. W. Bush,
further believed that they had to keep the region secure and stable so that they
could wage Cold War elsewhere. Latin America was in the “backyard” of the
United States, and U.S. leaders were determined to keep its Western Hemisphere
home tidy and orderly. Secretary of State Dean Rusk explained to an Argentine
official that the U.S. credibility to defend West Berlin would be undermined if
Latin American nations did not support the aggressive U.S. policies toward Com-
munist Cuba. President Johnson thought his Vietnam policy would be questioned
if he did not display his resolution by invading the Dominican Republic in 1965.
Scholars assess this backyard mentality as a reflection of a patronizing, con-
descending attitude that has traditionally informed U.S. attitudes toward Latin
America. President Theodore Roosevelt labeled Colombians "crazy Dagos," and
President Woodrow Wilson famously vowed to “teach South American republics
to elect good men.” During the Cold War, the United States sponsored right-wing
military dictatorships, reasoning that such regimes could best prevent commu-
nism, According to aides, Secretary Dulles would have been happy to see “flour-
ishing little democracies” in Latin America but thought it “not in the nature of
things.” Latin American democrats might allow “instability and social upheaval,
which would lead to Communist penetration." When such regimes engaged in
grotesque violations of human rights, U.S. officials excused them, suggesting that
violence and inhumanity characterized Latin American life, history, and culture.
In 1968, Viron P. Vaky, who served as deputy chief of mission in Guatemala City,
reported to Washington that his colleagues, including Ambassador John Gordon
Mein, argued that “murder, torture and mutilation are all right if our side is doing
it and the victims are Communists.” Indeed, Ambassador Mein had suggested to
Guatemalan security forces that when they carried out summary executions they
bury the bodies. The ambassador advised that leaving bodies to be found created
a bad impression with the international press.’ A 1986 State Department study on
state terror in Guatemala dismissed it by observing that “Guatemala is a violent
society.” U.S. officials often implicitly judged Latin Americans as marked at birth
for lives of wickedness and degeneracy. As historian Greg Grandin has aptly
noted, U.S. officials judged Latin Americans as "the children of Cain.”*
Caveats must be attached to a thesis that lists the people of Latin America as
casualties of U.S. Cold War policies. Deep socioeconomic inequities character-
ized Latin American societies. Latin American elites who held power, wealth,
land, and prestige fought tenaciously to hold on to their privileges. They marked
their opponents as “Communists” and eagerly accepted U.S. support in the form
of weapons and military and police training. Latin American security forces,
who usually resisted thoroughgoing social reform, carried out the killings, ter-
rorized peasants, and stole babies. Cold War fears became entwined with Latin
xxxviii INTRODUCTION
American struggles over issues surrounding race, gender, and sexual orientation.
Traditionalists labeled as “communistic” the women's movement that became
a global phenomenon beginning in the 1960s. The Brazilian military dictators
dispatched troops to attack urban female students who called for sexual liber-
ation. Elite and middle-class Chilean women demanded the overthrow of Salvador
Allende because they were terrified that a socialist Chile would undermine the
mother's role in the traditional family. The racist Forbes Burnham, the leader of
Afro-Guyanese, encouraged the covert U.S. intervention in British Guiana as a
way of depriving the majority Indo-Guyanese led by Cheddi Jagan from holding
power. Historians of Latin America appropriately insist that the Cold War had
local, national, and international dimensions in the region."
Right-wing forces also did not carry out all atrocities and gross violations of
human rights. Inspired by the Cuban Revolution or some other dubious vision of
a Marxist-Leninist heaven, left-wing groups launched armed insurgencies
throughout the region. In Venezuela, the "Movement of the Revolutionary Left"
threatened to shoot any Venezuelan citizen who participated in the December
1963 democratic elections. In the 1970s, urban guerillas created havoc in the
streets of Montevideo with shootings and bombings. Argentine military officers
claimed that subversives killed 495 uniformed personnel, military and police,
between 1960 and 1989. In the 1980s, the Sandinistas of Nicaragua persecuted
the indigenous population of Moskito Indians. Leftists also targeted U.S. officials
in the region. An insurgent group assassinated Ambassador Mein in Guatemala
City in August 1968, and political leftists kidnapped U.S. Ambassador Charles
Burke Elbrick in Rio de Janeiro in 1969.
Appalling incidents committed by political leftists might suggest that an im-
moral equivalency existed between the extreme right and left in Latin America or
that fanatics engaged in a bizarre dialectic, with leftist insurgency making neces-
sary rightist atrocities, By such reasoning, the conduct of something like la
guerra sucia by Argentina's military dictators becomes the logical, albeit exagger-
ated, response to leftist threats. The Reagan administration gave voice to this way
of thinking when it ascribed political violence in Guatemala to a “cycle of provo-
cation from the left and overreaction from the right." Such questionable reason-
ing, also known as the “theory of the two demons,” ignores historical chronology
and trivializes the methodical abuse of human rights and the campaign of state
terror perpetrated by anti-Communists in Latin America. The Guatemalan right,
for example, had systematically stamped out nonviolent civil and political dis-
sent for decades, eliminating the possibility of moderate opposition and making
radicalism a near certainty. Leftist political violence in Brazil followed the over-
throw of a constitutional government by the Brazilian armed forces and the sup-
pression of peaceful politics. In Chile, political leftists were participating in a
constitutional democracy when the Allende government was overthrown. In
Guatemala, Brazil, and Chile, the United States encouraged the military to strike
against constitutional systems. The theory of two demons also ignores the reality
that the Latin American military and their friends in paramilitary groups and
Introduction xxxix
death squads unleashed their violence against society, not just rural guerrillas or
urban terrorists. Democracy was perceived as incompatible with national secu-
rity because open political systems gave voice to subversive political elements.
‘The political right labeled suspect political activities “Communist” and attacked
leftist thought, whether by priests, nuns, trade unionists, students, or peasants.
‘As General Jorge Rafael Videla (1976-1981), the leader of Argentina's military
junta, declared, “one becomes a terrorist not only by killing with a weapon or
setting a bomb but also by encouraging others through ideas that go against our
Western and Christian civilization.” In an incident known as “The Night of the
Pencils,” Argentine security forces abducted seven high school students in La
Plata and murdered six of them because the students had the temerity to protest
the elimination of subsidies for student fares on the city's buses. Argentine secur-
ity forces also murdered a paraplegic, José Liborio Poblete, because he wrote a
petition calling on companies to hire a fixed percentage of disabled workers. Poblete,
who had lost both legs in a car accident, was taunted with the nickname cortito,
or “shorty,” by his torturers.’ Whatever the merits of a thesis that finds historical
justification for torture, the killing of mothers and the kidnapping of their in-
fants, the slaughter of high-school student petitioners, and the humiliation of the
disabled, a fundamental verity cannot be dismissed. Fact-finding and “Truth
Commissions” set up in the various countries after the Cold War established that
leaders and security forces supported by the United States carried out 90 percent
or more of the killings in every Latin American country.
Historians must also be conscious of the limits of U.S. power. Relative to
Latin America, the United States exercised enormous diplomatic, economic, and
military power. Per capita income in any Latin American country was one-eighth
to one-tenth that of the United States. Latin American militaries deployed obso-
lete U.S. equipment. Asa political scientist would have it, “asymmetries of power”
existed between the United States and its southern neighbors. Nonetheless, the
United States did not always have its way in the region. During the 1960s, the
United States repeatedly failed to overthrow the corrupt dictator of Haiti, Francois
“Papa Doc” Duvalier (1957-1971). The wily Duvalier criticized U.S. foreign policies
and stole U.S. humanitarian aid intended for the nation’s desperate poor. Jimmy
Carter, the one president troubled by the ghastly nature of Latin America’s Cold
War, found that his human rights policy moderated but did not end violence in
South America. The United States also fell short of overthrowing Fidel Castro.
‘The Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 turned into a disaster, and the various CIA plots
to assassinate the Cuban leader failed. The United States had to content itself with
the policy of strangling the Cuban economy with an economic embargo that has
lasted more than fifty years.
Coordinate to the “limits to power” thesis is the defensible case that Latin
American leaders knew how to manipulate the United States. Decent democrats
like Rómulo Betancourt (1959-1964) of Venezuela and José “Pepe” Figueres, who
served three times as president of Costa Rica, solicited additional economic aid
from the United States by exaggerating international threats to their countries.
xl INTRODUCTION
Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970) of Chile received several million dollars of
covert U.S. financial assistance to conduct his presidential campaign against
Salvador Allende in 1964. In a conversation with U.S. diplomats in May 1964,
Frei expressed "unusual optimism" concerning his electoral prospects, although
he “jokingly observed that his selfish interests should lead him [to] paint a bleaker
picture to the US authorities for obvious reasons."? When he visited the White
House in 1966, Forbes Burnham lauded President Johnson for his support of civil
rights and his effort in Vietnam, The Johnson administration aided Burnham in
rigging the 1968 election in Guyana.
‘The United States was not omnipotent, and Latin American leaders were not
mere puppets of the United States. But historians can go too far in denying the
realities of the global distribution of power or the active U.S. role in fomenting
chaos in the region during the Cold War. Rafael Trujillo (1930-1961), the vicious
dictator of the Dominican Republic, skillfully manipulated U.S. officials and
public opinion, During World War II he proclaimed his antifascist sympathies,
and after 1945 he pronounced himself the world’s most dedicated anti-Communist.
Trujillo also advertised the glories of his regime in U.S. newspapers and bribed
U.S. legislators. But when the Dwight D. Eisenhower and Kennedy adminis-
trations decided that Trujillo had created the preconditions for Communist
revolution in the Dominican Republic, they informed him he must leave his
nation. The administrations answered Trujillo's rejection of the demand to abdi-
cate the throne by passing arms to Dominicans, who riddled the old dictator with
twenty-seven bullets in May 1961. In the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis,
the Soviet Union secured for Cuba a pledge that the United States would not
invade the island. The pledge did not stop President Kennedy from approving
sabotage and terrorism projects against Cuba. Assassination plots also contin-
ued. U.S. officials probably did not know about the kidnapping of little María,
who became Suzanne Marie Berghaus. However, Reagan administration officials
covered up the massacre of nine hundred residents in the village of El Mozote in
El Salvador by the U.S.-trained Atlacatl battalion in late 1981. The soldiers raped
females before machine-gunning them and tossed babies in the air and caught
them on bayonets.” President Reagan deflected international criticism of the
blood-thirsty Efrain Rios Montt (1982-1983), the Guatemalan military dictator
who may have overseen more political murders in a shorter time than any tyrant
in Latin American history. After meeting with the general at a conference in
Honduras in December 1982, Reagan vouched that “President Rios Montt is a
man of great personal integrity and commitment” who wanted to promote “social
justice” in his country. Reagan added that the Guatemalan dictator was getting “a
bad deal" from international critics.'?
What follows is a concise, interpretative history of the U.S. drive to win the
Cold War in Latin America. It focuses on the U.S. effort to eradicate the real and
perceived threats of communism in the region. Beyond highlighting the critical
crises and events of the period between 1945 and 1991, the study analyzes the
discussions and debates among U.S. officials as they waged Cold War in the
Introduction. xli
region. What motivated U.S. officials to act? How did they assess Latin America
in the context of the Soviet-American confrontation? What did officials fear?
How did they justify their decisions? What did they willfully choose to ignore?
Beyond evaluating decision making, the study asks a bigger question about the
conduct of Cold War in Latin America. How did U.S. actions in the region con-
tribute to the defeat of the Soviet Union? Had the United States chosen not to
destabilize popularly elected governments in Guatemala, British Guiana, Brazil,
or Chile, would the global balance of power have been fundamentally altered?
Did the collapse of the Soviet Union hinge on keeping leftist politicians out of
power in Latin America? Latin Americans suffered widespread death and devas-
tation during the Cold War. Did the Cold War triumph that freed Czechs, Latvians,
and Poles depend on Latin Americans paying such a costly price?
‘The study does not pretend to be a comprehensive examination of U.S. rela-
tions with Latin America in the postwar period. Significant issues of trade, im-
migration, narcotics trafficking, environmental degradation, popular culture,
and globalization are not addressed in detail. The outstanding historian Alan
McPherson has recently labeled the Cold War a “temporary event” in the history
of inter-American relations. In Professor McPherson's view, “unequal interde-
pendence” characterizes inter-American relations in the postwar period. The
Cold War had been “hiding many integrative trends in the post-World War II
era” Latin Americans shop at Walmart, and U.S. citizens have developed an
enduring fondness for “Tex-Mex” food. U.S. residents now buy more jars of zesty
salsa at supermarkets than bottles of tangy ketchup, the condiment associated
with the traditional favorite, the hamburger. In 2012, Latinos comprised about
17 percent of the U.S. population and flexed their voting power in the presidential
election. U.S. residents also sent money back to their relatives in Latin America.
Remittances from the United States represented the largest source of income,
excepting oil revenues, for Mexico. In small countries such as El Salvador, Haiti,
and Honduras remittances accounted for 18 to 30 percent of the national income.
McPherson may be right in emphasizing harmony, consensus, and interdepen-
dence over conflict. But the Cold War ravaged Latin America. The legacies of the
Cold War are woven into the fabric of contemporary Latin American life.
‘This analysis draws on many fine monographs on the U.S. role in Latin
America during the Cold War. Michael Grow, for example, has written a solid
study on “regime change” in Latin America, investigating presidential decisions
to overthrow Latin American governments during the Cold War. Grow thinks
that historians have operated within an inadequate analytic framework, debating
whether national security concerns or economic interests motivated U.S. presi-
dents to authorize interventions. He argues that the respective presidents did not
act to protect the homeland from attack or to safeguard the interests of capital-
ists. Offering a “fresh interpretation,” the author argues that presidents ordered
the CIA or the U.S. Marine Corps into action to enhance their domestic and in-
ternational credibility as tough, decisive leaders. Presidents fought in “symbolic
battlefields” and engaged in “exercises in imagery.” In presenting his intriguing
xlii INTRODUCTION
thesis that the Cold War in Latin America had little to do with the Soviet Union
or the global balance of power, Grow makes the jarring statement that he ac-
knowledges but declines to evaluate the horrific results of regime change." His-
torical inquiry mandates that both the causes and the consequences of decisions
be analyzed. Latin America was not just a symbolic arena for the Cold War. The
fate of Latin Americans merits study.
Keeping in mind that the Cold War in Latin America had local and national
dimensions and that Latin Americans also tried to entangle the United States in
their political and cultural struggles, this study of the United States, Latin America,
and the Cold War proceeds chronologically. Chapter 1 provides historical back-
ground by outlining relations between 1895 and 1945. The United States estab-
lished a sphere of influence in the region and repeatedly intervened in the internal
affairs of Latin American counties, An important question is whether the ap-
proach the United States took toward Latin America in the Cold War differed
substantially from the policies of the previous fifty years. Chapter 2, which covers
1945 to 1952, concentrates on the ideas of George Kennan. Kennan, who made a
controversial tour of Latin America in 1950, concluded that in the context of the
Soviet-American confrontation the United States could not respect the sover-
eignty of Latin American nations or abide popularly elected leaders who did not
‘outlaw domestic political radicals, Kennan's conclusions became U.S. policy, as
evidenced in Chapter 3 on the 1950s. Covert intervention became the preferred
U.S. method of destabilizing suspect regimes. The CIA intervention in Guatemala.
in 1954 represented a defining moment both for U.S. policy and for the political
milieu within Latin America,
The Cuban Revolution reverberated throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Fidel Castro's radical turn terrified U.S. policy makers and revealed new possi-
bilities for systematic change for Latin Americans. Chapter 4 analyzes the relent-
less U.S. war against Fidel Castro's Cuba, especially during the period from 1959
to 1969. Chapter 5 focuses on the efforts of the Democrats, John Kennedy and
Lyndon Johnson, to prevent the spread of "Castro-communism" throughout the
region. Through his Alliance for Progress economic program, Kennedy sought to
immunize Latin Americans against the appeals of communism by transforming
the traditional socioeconomic structure of the region within one decade. Kennedy
also changed U.S. military aid to the region, emphasizing counterinsurgency and
police training to combat rural and urban guerrillas. Vowing also not to permit
“another Cuba” in the region, Kennedy authorized numerous covert interven-
tions. President Johnson followed the “Kennedy Doctrine” with his “Johnson
Doctrine,” invading the Dominican Republic in 1965 to prevent a takeover of
the government by presumed Communists. The invasion of the Dominican
Republic was preceded by a consequential covert intervention—the destabili-
zation of the Brazilian government in 1964. The Johnson administration
finished the work started by the Kennedy government. The Brazilian military
dictators became models for other authoritarians. By the mid-1970s, military
Introduction. xliii
men dominated political life in much of South America. Finally, Chapter 5 ex-
plores how the United States successfully managed relations with Mexico, al-
though Mexico maintained ties with Cuba.
Chapter 6 recounts how the Richard Nixon administration tried to forestall
the election of Salvador Allende in Chile and thereafter examines the adminis-
tration's drive to destroy the Allende presidency. The chapter also analyzes U.S.
programs to assist Latin American security forces to eliminate leftist groups in
Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. The bloodbaths perpetrated by the South American
military and their associates in paramilitary outfits and death squads appalled
many U.S. citizens and helped contribute to the rise of a human rights movement
and the election of Jimmy Carter as president.
‘The Ronald Reagan administration's support for mercenary wars in Central
America represents the last Cold War crusade in Latin America. After briefly ad-
dressing the efficacy of President Carter’s human rights efforts in Latin America
in the late 1970s, Chapter 7 considers the Reagan administration's efforts to
unseat the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua by organizing and funding the
so-called “contras.” The chapter further examines the administration’s decision
to promote civil war in El Salvador. The final section looks at the aftermath of the
Cold War. It assesses how Latin Americans have struggled to come to terms with
their Cold War history. It also explores how the United States has interpreted its
Cold War victory.
No one, least of all Latin Americans, misses the Cold War. Most global citi-
zens do not lament the collapse of the Soviet Union and the relegation of Soviet-
style communism to the dustbin of history. I am pleased that my colleague,
Dr. Milos Calda, has resumed his teaching at Charles University and has received
the Woodrow Wilson Freedom Award. U.S. sacrifice and steadfastness contributed
to the undermining of the Soviet empire. But joy and relief over the liberation of
Eastern Europeans cannot be used as an excuse for ignoring the devastating con-
sequences of U.S. interventions in Latin America both for the region as a whole
and for individuals like the women who march in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos
Aires every Thursday afternoon at 3:30 p.M. and Suzanne Marie Berghaus of
Massachusetts and her birth mother in El Salvador.
CHAPTER 1
P
Roots of Cold War Interventions
L his award-winning study The Global Cold War, historian Odd Arne Westad
asserts that "the Cold War was a continuation of colonialism through slightly
different means," Much as the European imperial powers had done for several
hundred years, the United States and the Soviet Union sought control and domi-
nation over people in Asia and Africa and confronted one another in Latin
America. Prior to 1945, the United States had not colonized Latin American na-
tions, But in the previous fifty years, the United States had created a sphere of
influence within the Western Hemisphere. The United States tried to maintain
peace and stability, exclude foreign influences, expand U.S. trade and investment,
and shape Latin America's political, socioeconomic, and ideological develop-
ment. The anti-Communist crusade that the United States pursued in Latin
America during the Cold War was rooted in that tradition.
THE ROOSEVELT COROLLARY
The United States extended control and domination over the Caribbean region
between 1895 and 1904. During that brief period, U.S. officials achieved momen-
tous diplomatic and military victories. In the Venezuelan Boundary Crisis of
1895, U.S. leaders forced Great Britain, the world’s preeminent power, to accede
to U.S. domination of the region. The United States thereafter defeated Spain in
the War of 1898, established a protectorate over Cuba, secured a naval base at
Guantánamo Bay, and annexed Puerto Rico. With its military position enhanced
in the Caribbean basin, the United States bolstered the province of Panama's
fight in 1903 to win independence from Colombia. The United States easily se-
cured a treaty for the exclusive right to build an interoceanic canal through the
new nation of Panama. President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) locked up
these conquests by announcing in late 1904 that the United States would exercise
“international police power” in the region. The so-called Roosevelt Corollary to
2 THEKILLING ZONE
the Monroe Doctrine served to justify more than thirty armed interventions in
the Caribbean during the following three decades.
The United States ostensibly believed in the principles of the Monroe Doctrine.
In 1823, President James Monroe, with the assistance of his able secretary of
state, John Quincy Adams, issued his striking policy statement. The United States
looked sympathetically on the struggle by its southern neighbors to secure their
independence from colonial Spain and Portugal. The United States opposed
either colonization by any European power or recolonization by the Iberian na-
tions. Subsequent presidential administrations would add that the United States
further opposed the transfer of colonies between imperial powers. Monroe added
to his pledge to defend Latin America his ringing affirmation of the distinct,
harmonious nature of the “New World.” The Americas were “eminently and con-
spicuously different" from old, imperial Europe. “Our southern brethren,” if left
to “their own accord,” would never adopt the political systems of Europe. Inde-
pendent Latin Americans would adopt U.S. models of governance, “under which
we have enjoyed unexampled felicity.”
Historians have long been fond of pointing out that rhetoric did not match
reality when it came to the Monroe Doctrine. For a good part of the nineteenth
century, the United States lacked the military muscle to confront the Europeans.
Between 1823 and 1826, Latin American nations made five direct requests
for U.S. assistance to help protect their independence. All were turned down.
Washington did not protest when Great Britain seized in 1833 the Malvinas
(Falkland Islands) of Argentina. Latin American nations largely maintained the
independence they won during the period from 1808 to 1825, but not because
of the Monroe Doctrine. Great Britain saw economic opportunity in free trade
and investment in the region and used its navy to block the return of Spain and
Portugal. Throughout the nineteenth century, the British exercised authority
over the region's domestic and international policies. British diplomats attended
constitutional conventions in Latin America. The British navy shut down the
Brazilian slave trade with Africa in 1850. In the second half of the nineteenth
century, British warships also shelled Latin American countries, such as Honduras,
when they failed to pay international debts, and the British established a protec-
torate on the Caribbean or “Moskito” coast of Nicaragua.
‘The United States did not always adhere to the noble sentiments expressed in
the great doctrine. U.S. officials and citizens judged Latin Americans to be back-
ward, with “crazed and narrow minds.” Latin Americans allegedly had inferior
racial heritages, practiced the wrong religion (Roman Catholic), and became in-
dolent in their tropical homelands. Beyond being intolerant, nineteenth-century
US. citizens apparently were “geographically challenged” because most Latin
American nations fall within the temperate zone2 Despite these shortcomings,
the land of Latin America seemed alluring to U.S. leaders. Thomas Jefferson
prophesied the vast expansion of the United States into an “Empire of Liberty.” It
was U.S. destiny to take Canada, Mexico, and Central America "piece by piece.”
With his purchase of the Louisiana Territory in 1803, Jefferson hastened what he
CHAPTER 1 * Roots of Cold War Interventions 3
considered the inevitable historical process of U.S. expansionism. In terms of
Cuba, the dominant island in the Caribbean, Secretary of State Adams wrote in
1823 that “it is scarcely possible to resist the conviction that the annexation of
Cuba to our federal republic will be indispensable to the continuance and integ-
rity of the Union itself." Cuba was like a ripe fruit, “an apple severed by the tem-
pest from its native tree,” that inevitably would fall into the lap of the United
States.’ The United States reached for its dreams in the pre-Civil War era. It bul-
lied Spain into relinquishing Florida, annexed the independent republic of Texas,
and defeated Mexico in the 1840s, securing California and the future states of
Arizona and New Mexico. The vision of U.S. territorial expansion persisted into
the late nineteenth century. In 1893, at the dazzling Columbian Exposition held
in Chicago, seventy-four national leaders contributed essays on “America in
1993.” These futurists predicted a “United States of the Americas,” under the U.S.
flag. The imagined nation would stretch from Alaska to Patagonia. Citizens of the
Americas would travel on railroads that linked Chicago to Buenos Aires.*
“The United States developed the power to work its will in the Western Hemi-
sphere. The debate over slavery had hindered the nation’s ability to conduct a
vigorous foreign policy. Whereas the Civil War and Reconstruction failed to
create a racially just society, the epic struggle over the place of African Americans
in U.S. life had the effect of strengthening the power of the federal government.
Washington found itself in a stronger position to conduct international affairs
than before the Civil War. The material demands of the war also gave a great
boost to the industrial process. During the late nineteenth century, the United
States surpassed Great Britain, France, and Germany and became the leading
industrial power in the world. Immigration fueled population growth, with the
country’s population more than doubling between 1865 and 1900. Migration into
the Great Plains, combined with the mechanization of farming, also spurred vast
increases in agricultural output. Late nineteenth-century economic growth was
uneven, with several sharp economic collapses. But by 1895, the United States
was a wealthy, powerful nation, producing surpluses of agricultural and indus-
trial products for export to global markets,
An obscure diplomatic incident, the Venezuelan Boundary Crisis, proved a
watershed event in the history of U.S. relations with Latin America. Venezuela
shared a boundary with the British colony of Guiana (Guyana) in South America.
For more than fifty years, the British and Venezuelans had haggled over the
proper boundary lines, In the 1870s and 1880s, Venezuela implored the United
States to support its boundary claim. The United States, however, made only mild
representations to the British. In 1895 the United States surprised the Venezuelans
and the British by entering the dispute. In a stridently worded note, President
Grover Cleveland (1893-1897) and Secretary of State Richard Olney demanded
that Great Britain state whether it would submit the disputed territory issue to
arbitration. Citing the Monroe Doctrine as moral authority, Secretary Olney
claimed the right to speak for Latin Americans. He boasted that “to-day the
United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the
4 THEKILLING ZONE
subjects to which it confines its interposition." The two powers heatedly debated
the issue for several months. British officials appropriately pointed out that the
Monroe Doctrine, a unilateral declaration, had no standing in international law.
But the British ultimately agreed to arbitration. They concluded that it was foolish
to contest U.S. power over a few thousand square miles of land, and they had
enough difficulties with the Boer War in South Africa.
Although supposedly aiding a neighbor, the United States ignored Venezuela's
desires. Cleveland and Olney never consulted Venezuelan leaders about their
20 July protest, and they excluded Venezuela from the arbitral commission. The
U.S. ambassador in London, Thomas F. Bayard, a former secretary of state,
thought Latin America represented a "lower civilization." After vehement pro-
tests, including street rioting in Caracas, Venezuela gained the right to appoint
one arbitrator, but not a Venezuelan. In any case, U.S. and British officials had
agreed beforehand to exempt from arbitration those areas settled by British sub-
jects for fifty years. These were the very areas that the Venezuelans had hoped to
secure from arbitration.
‘The Cleveland administration used the boundary dispute to achieve eco-
nomic and diplomatic goals. Beset by the economic depression of the mid-1890s
and hopeful of marketing surplus products, the administration wanted to ensure
Venezuela's control of the mouth of the Orinoco River. The river drained deep
into northern South America. U.S. investors had also recently shown interest in
developing the Orinoco region. The Orinoco's mouth was the only key area that
the United States won for Venezuela through the arbitral process. More impor-
tant, by bringing the British to arbitration, the United States demonstrated its
hegemony over the Caribbean basin. U.S. officials were uncertain where the
European imperialists might encroach next. The British had seemed aggressive
in their recent relations with Nicaragua. The Cleveland administration, flexing
the new industrial muscle, wanted to serve notice that the United States now had
the right and responsibility to settle regional disputes. As Olney put it in speak-
ing of his country, "its infinite resources combined with its isolated position
render it master of the situation and practically invulnerable as against any or all
other powers.” The United States had the power to enforce the Monroe Doctrine
as never before
Significant consequences flowed from the U.S. diplomatic victory over the
British and the Venezuelans. Great Britain agreed to the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty,
which the U.S. Senate ratified in 1901. The British conceded that the United States
had the exclusive right to build and fortify an interoceanic canal. The two coun-
tries had agreed in a previous treaty (1850) not to build a canal without the other's
consent. The world took greater note, however, of the new U.S. diplomatic and
military resolve in its confrontation with Spain. Cleveland and Olney had de-
clared that the United States had the right to determine the course of history in
the Western Hemisphere. The new William McKinley administration (1897-1901)
made good on that claim by driving Spain out of the last remnants of its colonial
empire, Cuba and Puerto Rico, in the War of 1898.
CHAPTER 1 * Roots of Cold War Interventions 5
Cubans, who called for a free Cuba, or Cuba Libre, had risen in rebellion
against Spanish colonial authority in 1895. It-marked the second major uprising
in the recent past. Between 1868 and 1878, Cubans had fought for their freedom.
The McKinley administration found a variety of reasons why the United States
needed to declare war against Spain. The Spanish seemed incapable of maintaining
law and order. Their “reconcentration” or “pacification” policy of forcing Cuban
citizens out of their homes and villages into “secure” areas spread disease and
destruction, with more than two hundred thousand Cubans perishing. Official
fact-finding teams and energetic journalists constantly reminded the U.S. public
of Cuba's suffering. The violence imperiled the substantial U.S. trade and invest-
ment on the island. U.S. citizens had property worth $50 million in Cuba. Cuban
exports to the United States fell from $79 million in 1892 to $15 million in 1898.
‘The hullabaloo that followed the sinking of the U.S. warship Maine in Havana
harbor in February 1898 intensified the crisis. The official inquiry into the ship's
sinking asserted that a mine attached to the bottom of the ship's hull caused the
explosion. The administration and the public assumed that Spain bore responsi-
bility for the tragedy. Historians have also argued that President McKinley asked
for a congressional authorization to intervene in Cuba because he feared that
Cubans would defeat the Spanish, without U.S. assistance.‘ The insurgents con-
trolled two-thirds of the island by April 1898. These reasons for action supple-
mented the basic U.S. desire to shape the region's future.
With the assistance of Cubans, U.S. forces routed the Spanish on land and
sea in 1898. US. troops occupied the island from 1898 to 1902. The Theodore
Roosevelt administration (1901-1909) withdrew U.S. forces, but only after Cuban
leaders accepted the Platt Amendment (1901-1933) to their new constitution. Cuba
became a protectorate of the United States, enjoying only quasi-independence. The
Platt Amendment gave the United States the right to supervise Cuba's finances
and internal development and to intervene militarily to enforce order and stabil-
ity. As General Leonard Wood, who served as governor-general of Cuba during
the military occupation observed, “there is, of course, little or no independence
left Cuba under the Platt Amendment." The spoils of victory also included a
naval base at Guantanamo Bay and the annexation of Puerto Rico. Through the
War of 1898, the United States had won the strategic ability to dominate the
Caribbean. A powerful U.S. Navy patrolled the area. In 1898, the United States
had four battleships. From 1899 to 1906, sixteen new battleships were commis-
sioned. With twenty battleships, the United States tied with Germany as the
world’s second leading naval power, after Great Britain.
U.S. power waxed with the acquisition of the right to build a canal in
1903-1904 and the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914. When Colombia re-
fused in 1903 to accept the terms that President Roosevelt offered to build a
canal through Colombia's province of Panama, he intervened in a manner that
foreshadowed subsequent U.S. interventions in the Cold War. His administra-
tion encouraged Panamanians to rise in rebellion against the central govern-
ment in Bogotá. Panamanians had long wanted an independent country. A U.S.
6 THEKILLING ZONE
naval task force arrived off Panama's Atlantic Coast to hinder Colombia from
landing troops to suppress the rebellion. The United States immediately granted
diplomatic recognition to the new nation of Panama and then signed and ratified
a favorable treaty. Beyond gaining the right to build, fortify, and operate a canal,
the United States gained exclusive privileges in the Canal Zone, the ten-mile-
wide, fifty-mile-long region that bisected Panama. Panama, like Cuba, became a
protectorate of the United States. Six decades later, President Lyndon Johnson
adopted, perhaps unknowingly, Theodore Roosevelt's intervention model. His del-
egates encouraged Brazilian generals to overthrow the constitutional government
of President Joào Goulart (1961-1964), and the president readied material and
naval support for the generals. The Johnson administration recognized the new
military dictatorship within hours after it seized power. The military dictators
showed their appreciation for Johnson by backing his invasion of the Dominican
Republic in 1965. In justifying his violation of Colombia's sovereignty and interna-
tional law, Roosevelt claimed that he possessed “the mandate of civilization.”
During the Cold War, U.S. leaders would similarly claim that they acted with high
intentions when they overthrew popularly elected governments.
President Roosevelt consolidated the stunning regional gains that the United
States had made in less than a decade with the pronouncement in late 1904 of the
“Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.” Perhaps, like many U.S. citizens,
Roosevelt had trouble admitting the new U.S. role in Latin America. The United
States did not act “eminently and conspicuously different” from European imperial
powers in the international arena. In 1901, he wrote to his German friend,
Hermann Speck von Sternberg, that the United States still subscribed to the prin-
ciples of the Monroe Doctrine and believed in an “open-door” policy. The United
States did not claim exclusive investment, trade, or treaty rights with South America.
An outside nation might even engage in “transitory intervention” in the region
to redress a grievance. In fact, Roosevelt initially approved a joint Anglo-German
naval maneuver against Venezuela in 1902-1903. The colorful Venezuelan presi-
dent, Cipriano Castro (1899-1908), refused to pay the country’s international
debts, and he harassed foreign investors and diplomats. But subjected to sharp
criticism from military advisors and U.S. citizens and beset by personal doubts,
President Roosevelt reconsidered his position and informed the Europeans that
he wanted a peaceful arbitration of the debt issue. Roosevelt accepted the logic
inherent in the Olney memorandum of 1895, the Platt Amendment, and the
Panama Canal Treaty of 1904. The United States claimed a sphere of influence in
the Western Hemisphere. In his 6 December 1904 message to Congress, Roosevelt
twisted the meaning of the Monroe Doctrine. According to Roosevelt, Monroe
and Adams's handiwork required the United States “to the exercise of interna-
tional police” to redress “chronic wrongdoing” in the hemisphere. The United
States would intervene in a country that misbehaved. U.S. intervention would
forestall foreign intervention and protect Latin America, Roosevelt had extended
the Platt Amendment to the entire region. Indeed, he claimed that under the Platt
Amendment, Cuba was now progressing toward a “stable and just civilization.”
CHAPTER 1 * Roots of Cold War Interventions 7
Ashistorian David F. Healy has noted, "what had been a declaration that European
powers must keep their hands off the independent states of the Americas [the
Monroe Doctrine] became the justification for unilateral United States interven-
tion in the hemisphere at its own discretion. In the name of security, the nation
now claimed regional hegemony.”*
In the brief period from the Olney Memorandum to the Roosevelt Corollary,
the United States had created a sphere of influence, defined by political scientists
as “a determinate region, which limits the independence or freedom of action of
political entities within it.” Within its sphere of influence, a great power assumes
exclusive responsibility for peace. Cubans, Dominicans, Panamanians, and other
Latin American leaders had to keep uppermost in their minds potential U.S. re-
actions to critical international and domestic policies and decisions. Put another
way, the United States had become the Western Hemisphere’s imperial power.
Definitions of imperialism can be tricky. The key to imperialism is power—the
power to make others move as the imperial state dictates, As the British historian
Tony Smith has noted, imperialism exists “when a weaker people cannot act with
respect to what it regardsas fundamental domestic or foreign concerns for fear of
In this photograph taken in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt and his wife inspect the
digging of the Panama Canal. Roosevelt was the first sitting U.S. president to travel outside
the United States. The photograph reveals the president's obvious pride in detaching
Panama from Colombia and securing a canal treaty with Panama. With his “Roosevelt
Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,” Roosevelt further established the U.S. domination of
the Western Hemisphere that would last through the twentieth century. (Courtesy of the
Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-36227)
8 THEKILLING ZONE
foreign reprisals.” Imperialism can take several forms, both formal (annexation,
colonialism, or military occupation) and informal (economic penetration, politi-
cal subversion, or the threat of intervention)? During the period from 1895 to
1945, the United States broughtto bear against Latin Americansboth the "formal"
and the "informal" powers inherent in definitions of imperialism.
During the Cold War era, the United States held onto its sphere of influence
and acted like an "imperial" power. If U.S. officials offered a historical justifica-
tion for covert and overt interventions in Latin America, they mumbled some-
thing about the Monroe Doctrine and nothing about the Roosevelt Corollary.
But as the great Walter LaFeber, the dean of historians of U.S. foreign relations,
has observed, it was the "Roosevelt Doctrine, not Monroe's,” that "justified U.S.
unilateral intervention in the internal affairs of Latin American states.” The
Guatemalans, the Cubans, the Guyanese, the Chileans, and others had engaged
in chronic wrongdoing by pursuing leftist policies and flirting with the Soviet
Union, The United States exercised international police power to protect them,
the region, and, of course, the interests of the United States.
PATTERNS OF INTERVENTION
In the aftermath of the Roosevelt Corollary, the United States rapidly expanded
its influence in Latin America. During the first third of the twentieth century, the
United States carried out thirty armed expeditions in the Caribbean basin. U.S.
military forces occupied Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Honduras.
U.S. military forces were stationed in Nicaragua almost continuously from 1909
to 1933. The United States also supervised the financial affairs of these small na-
tions, collecting their export/import taxes and then paying off their international
debts, The security and stability that U.S. marines and bankers created in Central
American and Caribbean nations gave confidence to U.S. entrepreneurs to set up
shop in the region. U.S. enterprises, like the United Fruit Company of Boston,
produced vast quantities of tropical foods such as bananas and sugar. Cuba
became a U.S. playground, as U.S. citizens flocked to Cuban clubs, casinos, and
beaches for fun, sun, and sin. U.S. investors also became @ major presence in
South America, rapidly expanding U.S. holdings in extractive industries like
Chilean copper and Venezuelan oil. U.S. financial advisors proffered advice to
South American governments on how to conform to the dictates of the interna-
tional capitalist economy,
U.S. presidents—Republicans and one Democrat, Woodrow. Wilson—
dispatched U.S. troops to Central American and Caribbean lands for many rea-
sons. All gave high priority to protecting the Panama Canal. The canal opened in
1914, with more than one thousand ships passing through the intricate lock
system during its first year of operation. The canal facilitated the deployment of
the two-ocean navy that the United States had built in the industrial era and
served as a vital strategic asset during World War I. The new nation of Panama
nominally retained its independence and title to the Canal Zone. Panama had
CHAPTER 1 * Roots of Cold War Interventions 9
“titular sovereignty,” although the United States exercised the “equivalent of sov-
ereignty" As William Howard Taft, the secretary of war and future president and
Supreme Court justice noted, the United States could agree that Panama had
titular sovereignty because the term “had a poetic and sentimental appeal to the
Latin mind." But U.S. officials created a replica of the United States in the Canal
Zone, with US. schools, a U.S. judicial system, and the dollar as the legal currency.
The flying of the U.S. flag over the Canal Zone made clear to Panamanians and the
world who was in charge. With U.S. military forces in the Canal Zone, the United
States supervised Panama's political and diplomatic affairs. U.S. investors and
banks controlled economic affairs and tied Panama to the U.S. economy. By 1929,
the United States provided Panama with 67 percent of its imports and bought
94 percent of its exports. Pan American Airways had a monopoly on international
flights to Panama, and the United States operated Panama's railroad."
Preserving such a valuable asset became a justification for regional interven-
tion. As the canal was being built, Secretary of State Elihu Root observed in 1907
ina letter to his boss, President Roosevelt, that “the inevitable effect of our building
the Canal must be to require us to police the surrounding premises." Caribbean
countries had importance. because they lay "in the front yard of the United
States,” Wilson administration officials justified the landing of U.S. marines in
Haiti in 1915 as a way of excluding Germany from the region. U.S. financial su-
pervisors quickly paid off Haiti's international debt, including German creditors,
and the marines shipped German citizens and investors back to Germany.
During the interventions, U.S. officials gave high priority to using local tax rev-
enues to pay off foreign bondholders. They wanted Latin Americans to obtain
credit from New York, not from London or Berliü. In 1917, the United States
also purchased the Virgin Islands for $25 million from Denmark to ensure that
Germany did not obtain a base in the Caribbean. In 1927, Henry L. Stimson, the
future secretary of state, summarized the consistency of U.S. policy on the
Panama Canal. The Monroe Doctrine honored “the principle of national self-
determination.” But when it came to the canal, the United States had to bend its
principles. As Stimson concluded, “the national safety of our country had, how-
ever, imposed upon us a peculiar interest in guarding from foreign influence the
vital sea route through the Caribbean Sea and the Panama Canal, and therefore
in seeing to it that no cause for foreign intervention may arise along the borders
of that route.”
Beyond excluding extracontinental influences from the region, the U.S. ex-
ercise of international police power involved upholding its definition of law and
order. Venezuela's irrepressible Cipriano Castro continued to harass foreigners
and infuriate President Roosevelt. Castro also reneged on his promise to pay his
international debts and expropriated U.S. property. He posed as a nationalist,
defending Venezuela's honor and integrity. Foreigners, including U.S. investors,
had indeed meddled in the country's domestic affairs. A furious President
Roosevelt proposed to Secretary of State Root that U.S. marines land on Venezuelan,
shores and occupy a customs house. Roosevelt would “show those Dagos they
10 THE KILLING ZONE
will have to behave decently.” Root shared the president's contempt for Castro,
calling him a "crazy brute,” but he counseled against war. On 13 June 1908, the
United States broke relations with Venezuela.
Six months later, General Juan Vicente Gómez (1908-1935) solved the Castro
problem for Roosevelt. In late November, Castro left the country for Europe for
medical treatment. On 19 December, Gómez, the vice president, usurped the
presidency and quickly announced that he would resolve Venezuela's interna-
tional obligations. The North Carolina, a U.S. battleship, soon thereafter called at
the Venezuelan port of La Guiara and dispatched a State Department envoy to
negotiate with Gómez. The United States restored relations with Venezuela in
early March 1909. Gómez was free to consolidate a dictatorship that lasted
twenty-seven years and turned out to be unusually venal and vicious.
The Roosevelt administration had conspired with General Gómez. Roosevelt
alerted his team to be ready to act two days before Gómez seized power. The
North Carolina had been readied for its mission. Gómez thought the battleship “a
convenient presence.” It was, as the journal of opinion the Nation jibed, “a nicely
timed revolution.” Roosevelt had learned from his Panama embarrassment of
1903 to wait until the revolution began before dispatching the navy. Thereafter,
the U.S. Navy blocked Castro's return to Venezuela, and U.S. intelligence agents
kept Castro under surveillance until he died in exile in 1924."
President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) had less success punishing General
Francisco “Pancho” Villa of Mexico. In March 1916, Villa led a band of his fol-
lowers across the border and attacked the town of Columbus, New Mexico,
killing seventeen New Mexicans. Villa resented that the United States supplied
arms to his opponent in the Mexican Revolution, Venustiano Carranza. Villa ap-
parently hoped to emerge victorious from the international chaos. Germany also
saw diplomatic advantages to be gained in a clash between the United States and
Mexico. President Wilson ordered General John J. “Blackjack” Pershing and
seven thousand U.S. troops to capture Villa. ‘The U.S. forces penetrated 350 miles
into Mexico chasing after the elusive Villa. The “Punitive Expedition” had its
comic and tragic aspects. Villa made fools of Pershing and his men and enhanced
his reputation as a folk hero to Mexicans. Recognizing the nationalist backlash
that the invasion was generating, General Carranza denounced Wilson, and his
forces clashed with Pershing's expedition in June 1916. With war looming in
Europe, Wilson withdrew U.S. troops from Mexico in February 1917. He recog-
nized Carranza as the legitimate government of Mexico to ensure Mexican neu-
trality in the fight against Germany.
‘The failure of the Punitive Expedition pointed to key interpretative issues in
the history of U.S. relations with Latin America, Despite its immense power, the
United States did not always get its way, especially with the larger, more populous
nations like Mexico. That Pancho Villa baited the United States into invading
Mexico also demonstrated that Latin Americans could manipulate the mighty
United States, Both General Gémez and the United States cooperated in 1908-1909
for their own purposes. Under the aegis of the Platt Amendment, the United States
CHAPTER 1 * Roots of Cold War Interventions 11
sent troops back into Cuba for periods of time in 1906, 1912, and 1917. In 1906, for
example, warring Cuban politicians on both sides urged a U.S. intervention. Presi-
dent Tomás Estrada Palma (1902-1906) asked the United States to send two war-
ships to Cuba. His rival, José Manuel Gómez, traveled to New York and called on
the United States “to intervene and guarantee a fair election." Roosevelt unenthusi-
astically decided he must end “misrule and anarchy” on the island. In Nicaragua,
Adolfo Diaz (1911-1917, 1926-1928), the leader of the Conservative Party, relied on
the U.S. marines to suppress his Liberal Party opponents and buttress his power
and legitimacy. During the Cold War, conservative and elitist groups reliably
played on U.S. Cold War fears to protect their privileged lives. They labeled Latin
American social progressives “Communists.”
The repeated U.S. interventions in the Caribbean flowed from strategic and
diplomatic imperatives. The United States wanted to transform the region into a
calm, placid "American lake.” Presidents did not dispatch U.S. marines to protect
the investments of corporate barons or the dividends of Wall Street brokers,
per se. But as Louis A. Pérez Jr., the preeminent historian of Cuba's history under
the Platt Amendment, has aptly argued, “intervention is not an event, it is a pro-
cess.”"* U.S. officials did not relish occupying foreign lands; they told themselves
that the United States did not act like the European imperialists. U.S. leaders
wanted to achieve the goals of security and stability without resorting to force. They
thought that U.S. credit, investment, and trade would create peace, prosperity,
and happiness in the Caribbean region and forestall future interventions. Ex-
posed to U.S. largess, Latin Americans would presumably adopt the sober values
of "Main Street, USA.” U.S. financiers, investors, and traders eagerly sought op-
portunities in Caribbean and Central American nations because they understood
that the overwhelming presence of the United States provided security for their
money. Some even ventured that the United States could establish a symbiotic
relationship with Latin America that had economic and psychological aspects.
‘The United States would export manufactures and finished goods and import
Latin America's raw materials and tropical foods. In Secretary of State Elihu
Root's view, this trade would reflect complementary personalities. Root opined
that “where we accumulate they spend. While we have less of the cheerful phi-
losophy which finds happiness in the existing conditions of life, as the Latins do,
they have less of the inventive faculty which strives continually to increase the
productive power of men."
During the era of armed intervention, the economic presence of the United
States in the Caribbean region expanded. Under the reciprocity treaty of 1903,
Cuba gained a guaranteed market in the United States for its sugar and, in turn,
gave U.S. traders a privileged position in Cuba. By 1929, U.S.-Cuban trade
amounted to more than $300 million, the largest U.S. trade with any Latin
American country. U.S. direct investments in Cuba, which stoód at $50 million
in 1895, grew to $220 million by 1913 and to more than $900 million in 1929. U.S.
investments in Haiti, which amounted to $11.5 million in 1915, the year the U.S.
marines invaded, rose to $29 million by 1929. By 1929, U.S. capitalists controlled
12 THE KILLING ZONE
more than 50 percent of Central America's trade and had more than $200 million
invested there. United Fruit owned the coastal area of Honduras and had
substantial holdings in Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. The company
also operated steamship lines, railroads, and radio and telegraph communica-
tion facilities. Honduras and Guatemala had become vast plantations of United
Fruit or, in the pejorative vernacular of the time, “banana republics.”
Beyond promoting the expansion of U.S. capital, U.S. officials, especially the
Wilson administration, tried to reform Latin American nations. President Wilson
had denounced the Taft administration’s efforts to stabilize the economies of
countries like Nicaragua by having New York financiers buy up defaulted bonds
and extend new credit. Wilson charged that such policies, dubbed “dollar diplo-
macy,” assisted bankers more than Latin Americans. Wilson warned in a notable
speech in Mobile, Alabama, in 1913 that “it is a very perilous philosophy thing to
determine the foreign policy of a nation in the terms of material interest."*
Wilson, a progressive reformer at home, saw his philosophy at work in Haiti and
the Dominican Republic. Much like urban progressives in the United States who
passed legislation to improve unhealthy living conditions in tenement buildings,
U.S. marines tried to clean up impoverished Haiti, which they considered a
‘pigsty.” The marines improved water and sanitation facilities and built hospitals,
schools, bridges, and roads for the Haitians. However, "progressive intervention-
ism” did not win the favor of Haitians. Haitians were fiercely nationalistic people,
proud of their little nation’s history of liberating itself from the French and abol-
ishing slavery in the early nineteenth century. When Haitians resisted occupa-
tion, the marines slaughtered them. Between 1914 and 1920, the marines killed
3,250 Haitians while taking only 16 casualties. The marines built roads by im-
pressing Haitians into forced-labor or corvée gangs. The oppression reminded
Haitians of slavery. Critical U.S. observers compared the corvée to a southern
prison chain gang? The intense racism of U.S. officials and military men further
alienated the Haitians. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, after receiving
a briefing about Haiti, remarked: "Dear me, think of it. Niggers speaking French.”
Bryan's successor, Robert Lansing, defended the occupation by claiming that the
"African race are devoid of any capacity for political organization and [have no]
genius for government." Colonel Littleton W. T. Waller, the marine commander
who governed Haiti, lamented to his military superiors that he felt humiliated
having to work with light-skinned, mulatto Haitians. Colonel Waller complained:
"They are real nigger and make no mistake— they are some very fine looking, well
educated polished men here but they are real nigs beneath the surface.” A mass
uprising by Haitians in 1929, fourteen years after the occupation, highlighted the
loathing Haitians held for the U.S. model of development
The United States eventually created stability in the Caribbean region but in
an ironic and tragic way. In the Dominican Republic, occupied from 1916 to
1924, the marines first crushed the armies of local strongmen and then disarmed
the population, The marines seized fifty-three thousand firearms and innumer-
able knives and machetes from a population of less than 1 million people. Prior
CHAPTER 1 * Roots of Cold War Interventions 13
to 1916, political life had been chaotic in the Dominican Republic, but tyrants did
not last long because Dominicans had the ability to organize against them. In
1917, the marines established a national constabulary, Guardia Nacional, and a
military academy in 1921 to train officers for the guard. The marines wanted an
apolitical military force loyal to the constitution that could maintain political
order and stability and move swiftly to any part of the country to suppress rebel-
lion. As in Haiti, the marines built roads and telecommunications systems that
radiated from the capital. The marines had created the conditions that fostered a
lasting dictatorship. The Dominican Republic lacked features of a civic society—
a free press, business organizations, agricultural cooperatives, labor unions,
teacher and student organizations—that could balance the power of the military.
The Guardia Nacional had a monopoly on arms, munitions, and power in the
nation. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, an ambitious, talented Dominican with
a criminal past, enlisted in the guard in 1919. A favorite of the marines, who ad-
mired his command of presence and martial spirit, Trujillo rose through the
ranks, attended the military academy, and became commander of the Domini-
can guard in the late 1920s.” In 1930, Trujillo (1930-1961) seized power and used
his control of the Guardia Nacional to buttress his odious, three-decade-long
dictatorship. Appalled international observers compared the murderous Trujillo
to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. What happened in the Dominican Republic
was replicated throughout the Caribbean region. Cuba's Fulgencio Batista and
Nicaragua's Anastasio Somoza Garcia used national constabularies, which had
been created by the marines, to enforce their respective dictatorships.
‘The patterns of intervention woven during the early twentieth century were re-
fashioned during the Cold War. Like Woodrow Wilson, President John F. Kennedy
judged US. policies in Latin America to be both unproductive and immoral. In
1961, he designed a grand economic aid program, the Alliance for Progress, for Latin
America. Also like Wilson, he intervened for democracy. In the Dominican Repub-
lic, for example, he forced the Trujillo family out, sponsored a democratic election,
and awarded the Dominican Republic with substantial economic assistance. But
Kennedy and his advisors quickly lost faith in the Dominican Republic’s democratic
reformers, taking the patronizing attitude that they lacked the toughness and skill
necessary to be effective Cold Warriors. President Lyndon Johnson subsequently
sent U.S. marines into the Dominican Republic to prevent suspect political leftists
from gaining power. In 1966, the Johnson administration helped rig the presidential
election to guarantee that its candidate, the archconservative Joaquin Balaguer, won.
Balaguer, an acolyte of Rafael Trujillo, thereafter provided the Dominican Republic
with the anti-Communist stability that the United States desired.
U.S. influence in South America also spread, especially in the period after
World War I. The major European powers—Great Britain, France, and Germany—
emerged from the war with ravaged economies and horrific population losses.
‘The British and French had also borrowed billions of dollars from U.S. banks to
finance the war. Between 1914 and 1919, the United States went from being a net
debtor nation to a creditor nation. New York replaced London, Paris, and Berlin
14 THE KILLING ZONE
as the international center of finance, Europeans, especially the British, had tra-
ditionally been the chief traders, investors, and bondholders in South America. In
the postwar period, U.S. investors came to dominate the region, investing billions
in extractive industries like copper, lead, tin, zinc, and petroleum. In Chile, for
example, U.S. direct investments soared from $15 million in 1913 to $423 million
in 1929. U.S. companies in Chile mined the copper that went into the wiring
for electrical lines and the new electric refrigerators, stoves, and washers. In
Venezuela, U.S. oil giants like Gulf Oil and Standard Oil of New Jersey pushed
aside the British-Dutch combine, the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company, and gained
control of Venezuela's rich oil resources. The value of U.S. direct investments rose
from $3 million in 1913 to $206 million in 1929, Prior to 1921, Venezuelan fields
produced only a negligible amount of oil. By 1929, Venezuela produced 137 mil-
lion barrels of oil and ranked as the third largest oil producer in the world, after
the United States and the Soviet Union. In gaining a majority share of Venezuelan
production, the U.S. oil companies received able assistance from the U.S. govern-
ment. State Department officials informed President Juan Vicente Gómez that
the United States opposed Royal Dutch Shell having a monopoly of oil conces-
sions. US. officials did not protest, however, when Standard Oil of New Jersey
began to take control of Venezuelan oil. They also looked the other way when
oilmen proffered lucrative bribes to President Gómez. The British resigned them-
selves to second-class status, recognizing what one diplomat lamented as “the
power of the dollar.”
US. banking houses supplanted the European financial institutions as the
chief holders of South American bonds. Prior to 1913, South American govern-
ments financed their capital investments, such as water and sewage systems, by
selling bonds to European investors. In the postwar period, the South Americans
wanted access to U.S. capital markets. But knowing that South Americans had
often defaulted on their debts in the nineteenth century, the United States recom-
mended that governments first put their financial households in order. In the
1920s, Dr. Edwin Walter Kemmerer arrived as an “unofficial” guest in the capital
cities of Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Professor Kemmerer, who
taught economics and finance at Princeton University, became known as the
“Money Doctor of the Andes,” Kemmerer made clear to South American officials
that if they wanted access to capital they would need to create international con-
fidence in the stability of their currencies. Kemmerer required governments to tie
their currency to the gold standard, establish a central bank (banco central) that
would control the currency, and maintain austere, balanced budgets each fiscal
year. Kemmerer preached that governments could issue bonds to underwrite
major projects that would generate revenue, like railroads, but not for non-self-
supporting public works like schools. Once certified by Dr. Kemmerer, a South
American government would receive the seal of approval from Washington and
access to the money of a New York banking house like Dillon, Read. In the five
Andean countries that Kemmerer advised, U.S. direct and portfolio investments
increased by 1,241 percent from 1913 to 1929. By comparison, British investments
CHAPTER 1 + Roots of Cold War Interventions 15
in the five countries increased by only 13.6 percent in the same period. By adopt-
ing Kemmerer's ideas, South American governments also became closely tied to
the international capitalist system that the United States now dominated.”
GOOD NEIGHBOR POLICIES
‘The collapse of international capitalism, the onset of the Great Depression, and
mounting bitterness over the repeated armed interventions in Latin America
led to a reassessment of the U.S. approach to Latin America. The Nicaraguan
patriot Augusto César Sandino had earned international sympathy for his fight
against the occupying U.S. marines. At a tempestuous inter-American confer-
ence in Havana in 1928, Latin American delegates led by Argentina, Mexico, and
EI Salvador resolved that no state had the right to intervene in the internal affairs
of another. The United States successfully tabled that resolution, but U.S. officials
understood that the nation would have to alter tactics. Prior to his inauguration,
Herbert Hoover (1929-1933) made a goodwill tour of South America. The new
administration also embraced the “Clark Memorandum,” an analysis of the
Monroe Doctrine prepared in late 1928 by State Department officer J. Reuben
Clark, The memorandum repudiated the claim that the Monroe Doctrine sanc-
tioned intervention. Nonetheless, Hoover declined to disavow publicly the right
to intervene in Latin America.
‘The economic catastrophes of the early 1930s undermined Hoover's good-
will efforts. Between 1929 and 1933, the value of inter-American trade declined
by 75 percent. The economic depression in the United States accounted for most
of the decline, but Latin Americans blamed the high duties imposed by the
Hawley-Smoot Tariff (1930) for their woes. Latin American nations fell into an
economic abyss. Vitally dependent on international trade for their solvency,
Latin Americans defaulted on the bank loans they had secured in the 1920s
through the Kemmerer missions. Turmoil spread throughout the region, with
governments collapsing. Latin Americans also began to question the principles
of the international capitalist system.
The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration (1933-1945) seemingly trans-
formed inter-American relations with the Good Neighbor policy. President
Roosevelt withdrew troops and financial advisors from the Caribbean region and
relinquished treaty rights, like the Platt Amendment, that Latin Americans
found obnoxious. The administration also publicly repudiated the Roosevelt
Corollary. At a series of inter-American conferences, U.S. delegates voted with
Latin Americans on resolutions outlawing military intervention. This process
culminated in 1948, when the Harry S. Truman administration accepted the
Charter of the Organization of American States, which prohibited any state from
intervening "directly or indirectly, for any reason, whatever, in the internal or
external affairs of another state."
The administration also revived inter-American trade, trying to help the
Western Hemisphere emerge from the Great Depression. In 1929, trade with the
16 THEKILLING ZONE
twenty Latin American nations had accounted for approximately 20 percent of
U.S. international trade. Armed with the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act
(1934), which empowered the president to reduce tariffs by up to 50 percent in
exchange for equivalent concessions, the administration negotiated trade agree-
ments with eleven Latin American countries in the 1930s. By 1939, the value of
U.S. trade with Latin America had nearly doubled from its 1933 low, although it
was still below the 1929 peak. The administration also responded to economic
nationalism in Latin America. It tacitly conceded that Latin Americans needed to
diversify their economies when, in 1940, it granted Brazil a $45 million credit to
construct a steel mill. The administration grudgingly accepted Mexico's expro-
priation of the holdings of U.S. oil companies, and it helped Venezuela write its oil
law of 1943, a bill that required foreign oil companies to share with Venezuela at
least 50 percent of their profits from the sale of Venezuelan oil.
‘The Good Neighbor approach helped forge a strong wartime alliance. By
February 1942, eighteen Latin American nations had declared war or severed
relations with the Axis powers. Chile joined the belligerency in 1943, leaving
Argentina the only neutral nation in the hemisphere. Sixteen nations permitted
USS. forces to use air and naval bases on their territory. Brazil sent an expedition-
ary force to Italy, and Mexico sent an air squadron to the Pacific theater.
Latin America's major contribution to Allied victory came in the form of
commodities and raw materials. Nonmilitary agencies of the United States bought
nearly $2.4 billion worth of commodities from Latin America of an approximate
total of $4.4 billion spent throughout the world. The United States relied on Latin
America for such strategically vital raw materials as beryllium, copper, manga-
nese, mica, quartz crystals, tantalum, tin, tungsten, and zinc. Venezuela supplied
the United Kingdom with 80 percent of its oil imports. Even recalcitrant Argentina
sold its beef and wheat to the Allies. During World War II, Latin America served
as the arsenal for the United States and the United Nations.
Although President Roosevelt had measurably improved the tenor and tone
of inter-American relations, the United States had not forfeited its regional power.
In 1933-1934, the administration refused to recognize the new nationalistic gov-
ernment of Ramón Grau San Martín and ringed Cuba with U.S. warships. With
the blessing of the Roosevelt administration, Sergeant Fulgencio Batista became
the dominant political figure in Cuba. The United States could no longer cite the
Platt Amendment to sanction military intervention. Nonetheless, by controlling
Cuba's access to the U.S. sugar market through the new trade treaty of 1934, the
United States continued to exercise leverage over the island’s political and eco-
nomic life. U.S. forces still patrolled the military and naval base at Guantanamo
Bay. U.S. marines withdrew from Haiti in 1934, and after 1941, U.S. financial ex-
perts stopped collecting the export/import taxes of the Dominican Republic and
Haiti. But the Roosevelt administration required the Dominicans and Haitians to
deposit their funds in New York banks and insisted that U.S. bankers oversee the
repayment of international debts.” The administration also pointedly informed
Chile in 1943 that it would be deprived of postwar economic aid if it did not
CHAPTER 1 * Roots of Cold War Interventions 17
declare war against the Axis powers. The administration further deployed diplo-
matic pressure, albeit unsuccessfully, to force Argentina into the Allied camp.*
U.S. power and influence in Latin America, especially in South America,
grew during World War II. The war devastated Germany and weakened the
United Kingdom, the two major competitors for trade and investment in the
region. Exaggerating the threat of Axis subversion in the hemisphere, U.S. au-
thorities eagerly assisted Latin Americans in confiscating German commercial
holdings. More than 4,000 Germans were deported from countries such as
Colombia and Ecuador to the United States to internment camps in Texas. Only
8 of the 4,058 deported were allegedly involved in espionage. Latin American
leaders, especially dictators, cooperated with the deportation program, seeing
both an opportunity to curry favor with the United States and a chance to seize
the property of the Germain nationals." To enhance hemispheric solidarity and
counter any Nazi propaganda, the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American
Affairs, led by Nelson Rockefeller, saturated Latin American newspapers, air-
waves, and theaters with visions of the U.S. way of life. The War Department also
expanded U.S. influence by disbursing $400 million in military equipment through
the Lend-Lease program. U.S. military officers replaced Western Europeans as the
principal advisors to South American military units.
‘The Franklin Roosevelt administration pursued traditional sphere-of-influence
goals in Latin America. The administration wanted to exclude European influences,
preserve U.S. leadership in the hemisphere, dominate the Caribbean basin, and
maintain political stability. Armed interventions had proven costly, unpopular,
and counterproductive—they had not produced peace and order, and they had
jeopardized trade and investment. In any case, the tumultuous Caribbean and
Central American nations achieved their own stability in the 1930s under dictators
like Batista, Somoza, and Trujillo. These strongmen relied on their respective na-
tional guards to enforce order. Even as it waged war against dictatorship in Asia
and Europe, the Roosevelt administration conducted cordial, even effusive, rela-
tions with these unsavory tyrants because they bowed to U.S. leadership, professed
to be anti-Nazi, and kept their countries quiet.
Although President Roosevelt may not have radically restructured Latin
American policies, he nonetheless inspired many Latin Americans. The president
was nota fervent racial egalitarian like his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt. But Roosevelt
treated Latin Americans with dignity and respect. He dispatched ambassadors,
such as Josephus Daniels to Mexico and Dr. Frank Corrigan to Venezuela, who
sympathized with Latin American efforts to build progressive societies. The pres-
ident's policies and pronouncements—the New Deal, the Atlantic Charter, the
Four Freedoms—motivated liberal groups like the American Popular Revolu-
tionary Alliance or the Aprista movement of Peru and Acción Democrática of
Venezuela to believe that they could break the power of the military and the
landed oligarchy and establish popular governments committed to social reform.
Latin American democrats like Juan José Arévalo of Guatemala, José Figueres of
Costa Rica, and Eduardo Santos of Colombia identified with Roosevelt and
18 THE KILLING ZONE
The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration conducted cordial relations with Latin American.
tyrants like Fulgencio Batista of Cuba, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, and
Anastasio Somoza Garcia of Nicaragua. Here President Roosevelt rides in a splendid
automobile with Nicaragua's Somoza in Washington in 1939. Roosevelt largely adhered
to the nonintervention principles of the Good Neighbor policy. But the dictators of the
Caribbean and Central America provided the security and stability that the United States
had unsuccessfully sought during the era of armed U.S. intervention. U.S. support for Latin
‘American dictators would become a major Cold War issue. (Franklin Roosevelt Library)
considered him a friend of Latin America. Moreover, the idealistic rhetoric of the
war against fascism seemed to undermine the legitimacy of dictators at home. In
Central America, dictators fell in Guatemala and El Salvador in 1944, and
Somoza had to relax his hold on Nicaragua." President Roosevelt had further
managed to leave Latin Americans believing that the United States would be a
partner in their economic growth. During the war, the United States pledged that.
once the enemy was defeated, it would support the economic development and
diversification of Latin America, Latin Americans dreamed of Pan American
cooperation and substantial economic aid.
THE NEW INTERNATIONAL POLICE POWER
During the Roosevelt years, the United States and Latin America embraced the
Western Hemisphere ideal—the idea that “the Americas constitute a group of
nations separate from the ‘Old World’ of Europe." The Western Hemisphere or
CHAPTER 1 * Roots of Cold War Interventions 19
Pan-American ideal assumed a compatibility of interests between the powerful
United States and its southern neighbors. As President Santos of Colombia put it
in a 1941 letter to Roosevelt, the two nations shared a common vision, cherishing
“moral, religious, and political liberty."? The United States seemed to have put
into practice the stirring language of the Monroe Doctrine. But the Good Neigh-
bor policy had an inherent contradiction that would be exposed during the Cold
War. ‘The noted historian of the Good Neighbor policy, the late Bryce Wood,
praised Roosevelt for adhering to the principles of nonintervention and noninter-
ference. The Good Neighbor policy was "not simply rhetoric." The United States
"not only renounced intervention and interference in domestic politics, but it ac-
tually did not intervene or interfere." The Good Neighbor, Wood opined, repre-
sented "a radical change from the 19205, when intervention and interference were
normal features of inter-American relations.” Other historians have suggested
that Wood exaggerated the extent of change that the Roosevelt administration.
brought forth in inter-American relations. In any case, Wood conceded in his.
studies of the Good Neighbor policy that the Roosevelt administration antici-
pated “reciprocity” from Latin American countries—"the expectation that favora-
ble responses would be forthcoming to initiatives from Washington on matters of
mutual concern." The United States further expected that Latin American states
would exercise restraint in the treatment of U.S. business enterprises.”
In practice, reciprocity signified that the United States expected Latin
Americans to follow the U.S. lead in the international arena. During World War Il,
the United States demanded that Argentina and Chile declare war against the
Axis powers. In 1943-1944, the United States withheld diplomatic recognition of
the Bolivian government of Major Gualberto Villarroel until he dismissed aides
whom the United States suspected of having fascist sympathies. During the Cold
War, the United States would turn against Latin American nations that did not
accept the U.S. perception of the external threat of the Soviet Union and the
internal danger of Communist subversion. Without publicly acknowledging it,
US. presidential administrations would return to the premises of the Roosevelt
Corollary when they did not receive “favorable responses” from Latin American
states on vital international issues. Cooperating with the Soviet Union or pursu-
ing left-wing socioeconomic policies constituted the Cold War's version of
chronic wrongdoing. The United States would again necessarily have to exercise
international police power, albeit the new cops on the beat might be agents of the
Central Intelligence Agency instead of U.S. marines. The United States would
also extend its reach in the Western Hemisphere. During the first third of the
twentieth century, the United States overthrew governments—Cuba, Nicaragua,
Venezuela—with some geographic proximity to the United States. In the postwar
period, however, the United States fought a “global Cold War,” destabilizing gov-
ernments not only in nearby Guatemala and the Dominican Republic but also
in Brazil and Chile and in former British possessions like British Guiana and
Grenada. Because the confrontation with the Soviet Union was perceived as in-
volving the very survival of Western civilization, U.S. officials also confidentially
admitted to themselves that the United States could not abide by treaty obligations
20 THE KILLING ZONE
not to intervene in Latin America. As did their predecessors from Grover
Cleveland to Franklin Roosevelt, U.S. Cold War leaders held that upholding
international peace and security depended upon keeping the traditional U.S.
sphere of influence intact and in line. When Latin Americans resisted Cold War
objectives, U.S. policy makers reacted with the same interventionist policies
and superior attitudes that had characterized U.S. behavior in the first part of
the twentieth century.
CHAPTER 2
Pd
The Kennan Corollary
Ihe Harry S. Truman administration constructed the framework of the Cold
War policies that the United States would pursue against the Soviet Union.
In 1947, the administration accepted the premises of “containment.” The United
States would prevent the expansion of the Soviet Union and the international
Communist movement, In March 1947, President Truman announced his
‘Truman Doctrine, vowing that the United States would provide economic and
military assistance to nations threatened by communism. With the Marshall
Plan, the United States promised to rebuild Western Europe as a bulwark against
the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe. In 1949, the United States formed a military
alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with allies in Europe and North
America. Finally, in mid-1950, President Truman confidentially approved a de-
tailed blueprint for Cold War, National Security Council Memorandum No. 68/2
(NSC 68/2). The document warned that the Soviet Union and communism
threatened the survival of Western civilization. The United States must respond
by developing awesome military power to combat and defeat the international
Communist movement.
During the Truman years, the United States would perceive Latin America
as a Cold War arena, albeit not yet as a central front in the struggle against the
Soviet Union. U.S. officials would make decisions about Latin America based on
their weighing of the international balance of power. In the postwar years, they
viewed Latin America through a global rather than a regional prism. Latin
Americans needed to be steady allies of the United States, who followed the U.S.
lead in the international arena and supplied primary products and raw materials
to the United States and its allies. Latin Americans had to understand that the
United States could no longer pay attention to the region. The United States had
the staggering responsibility of protecting Europe and Asia from communism,
The Cold War made Latin America globally insignificant. When Latin Americans
protested these analyses, U.S. officials drew darker conclusions. Latin Americans
were irresponsible, emotional, and immature. They were negligent, ignoring the
az
22 THE KILLING ZONE
threat of communism both abroad and at home. Truman administration officials
told themselves that the United States could not abide by its nonintervention
commitments when it came to communism in the Americas. They also ventured
that authoritarian rulers, who kept Latin American societies secure and stable,
might best serve the international goals of the United States.
GEORGE KENNAN GOES TO LATIN AMERICA
In an ironic and largely unknown way, a revered U.S. diplomat, who professed
to know little about Latin America, reasoned out what would become the Cold
War policy of the United States for the region. George F. Kennan was a veteran
foreign-service officer who specialized in Russian/Soviet affairs. Kennan sent the
famous eight thousand-word “Long Telegram” from Moscow in 1946 and pub-
lished an article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” in 1947 in the influential jour-
nal Foreign Affairs, under the pseudonym "X." In these pieces, Kennan argued
that ideology rather than national security concerns underlay the foreign policies
of the Soviet Union under the brutal Joseph Stalin. The Soviet Union acted
aggressively, constantly testing and probing the tenacity of democratic nations,
because it was driven by the Marxist-Leninist imperative to destroy the inter-
national capitalist system. Stalin kept the world in a constant state of turmoil as
a way of justifying and covering up his barbaric dictatorship. The United States
could not peacefully coexist with such a nation and leader because it was the im-
placable desire of Communists to destroy the United States and its allies. Kennan
advised that the United States needed to be steadfast and patient and to “contain”
the Soviet Union. Faced with resolute resistance from the West, the Soviet Union
would eventually implode, succumbing to the internal contradictions inherent in
the Communist system. In his commentaries, Kennan did not make clear where
the United States should contain the Soviet Union and by what means. Kennan's
words could be interpreted as urging global containment by military means.
Kennan also drew no sharp distinction between the Soviet Union and the ideol-
ogy of communism. National leaders, such as Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh, might
adopt communism for their own purposes and not to supplement the power of
the Soviet Union. Kennan would later claim that he had used imprecise language
and did not intend to urge a global crusade against the international Communist
movement. Nonetheless, his ideas informed such crucial initiatives as the
Truman Doctrine. From 1947 to 1950, Kennan led the State Department's Policy
Planning Staff, which developed plans for waging Cold War.
In February 1950, Kennan made what he called a "Cook's Tour" of Latin
America to learn about the region. The official purpose of the trip was to attend a
meeting of U.S. ambassadors to Latin America in Rio de Janeiro. Kennan trav-
eled by train to Mexico City. He then flew to Caracas and thereafter to Rio, São
Paulo, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Lima, and Panama. If there ever was a case of
the "ugly American,” or el gringo feo, it was George Kennan in Latin America.
Mexico City was noisy at night, disrupting Kennan's sleep. Kennan recorded in
CHAPTER 2 + The Kennan Corollary 23
his diary that “the sounds of its nocturnal activity struck me as disturbed, sultry,
and menacing.” Caracas “appalled” Kennan with its “screaming, honking traffic
jams,” and “its feverish economy debauched by oil money.” Rio was “repulsive”
with its “unbelievable contrasts between luxury and poverty,” and Sao Paulo “was
still worse.” Montevideo and Buenos Aires did not overly offend Kennan, al-
though they “inflicted on me a curious sense of mingled apprehension and mel-
ancholy.” But “in Lima, I was depressed by the reflection that it had not rained in
the place for twenty-nine years and by the thought that some of the dirt had pre-
sumably been there, untouched, for all that time.” It also “galled” Kennan that he
had to call on heads of state in these bleak citiés and act diplomatically. It was “all
painful and slightly disreputable,” he sighed.!
When he returned to Washington, Kennan wrote a ten thousand-word
report for the secretary of state on Latin America as a “problem” in U.S. foreign
policy. Kennan did not dwell on his personal sufferings in Latin America but
persisted in his xenophobia and ethnocentrism. As a general consideration, “it
seems to me unlikely that there could be any region of the earth in which nature
and human behavior could have combined to produce a more unhappy and
hopeless background for the conduct of human life than in Latin America.” As-
suming the role of geographer, Kennan pronounced North America blessed by
topography and climate, whereas South America had been cursed. Into “this un-
favorable geographical background” came the Spanish conquistadors with their
“religious fanaticism, a burning frustrated energy, and addiction to the most
merciless cruelty.” The intermarriage of the Spanish with the indigenous popula-
tion and with African slaves “produced other unfortunate results which seemed
to have weighed scarcely less heavily on the chances for human progress." Kennan
repeated the arguments of nineteenth-century North Americans, who alleged
that Latin Americans were condemned to perpetual backwardness because of
their Catholicism, their racial heritage, and their enervating lives in tropical
climes. Kennan theorized that “Latin American society lives by and large by a
species of make-believe,” a “little world of pretense,” because Latin Americans
implicitly recognized the “bitter realities” of their deficient thought, society, and
culture.
Known for his “realistic” approach to international affairs, Kennan had
harsh recommendations for the conduct of U.S. policies toward Latin America in
the Cold War. He ridiculed Pan-Americanism and multilateral organizations,
such as the Organization of American States, as “a form of agreeable and easy
escapism from the real problems of foreign policy.” As he told U.S. ambassadors
in Rio, U.S. policy should aim at preventing Latin America from being mobilized
against the United States, either militarily or psychologically, and at protecting
access to “our” raw materials. The United States should not hesitate to remind
Latin Americans that the United States was a great power and “that we are by and
large much less in need of them than they are in need of us.” Whether Latin
Americans liked or understood the United States mattered little. Kennan sug-
gested telling Latin Americans: “We are really only concerned for your respect.
24 THE KILLING ZONE
You must recognize that we are a great and strong people; that we have our place
in the world."
The major challenge for the United States would be to prevent the spread of
communism in Latin America, which Kennan predicted would come not from
external attack but through internal subversion. Reviewing the history of the
Monroe Doctrine, Kennan believed the United States had the diplomatic tra-
dition to demand the exclusion of Communists from the hemisphere. Not surpris-
ingly, Kennan doubted whether Latin Americans had the societal resolve to resist
the blandishments of the Communists. Kennan therefore concluded that “harsh
governmental measures of repression may be the only answer; that these mea-
sures may have to proceed from regimes whose origins and methods would not
stand the test of American concepts of democratic procedure; and that such re-
gimes and such methods may be preferable alternatives, to further communist
successes.” To argue that tyranny and dictatorship in Latin America were vital to
U.S. national security did not trouble Kennan. He cited Secretary of State John
Quincy Adams who opined in 1821 that cultural, religious, and racial deficiencies
would prevent the new South American republics from establishing “free or lib-
eral institutions of government.” As Adams saw it, "arbitrary power, military and
ecclesiastical, is stamped upon their education, upon their habits, and upon all
their institutions.”?
Kennan's tome evoked no discussion within the Truman administration.
Officials within the Latin American section of the State Department asked Secre-
tary of State Dean Acheson not to distribute the report. Kennan believed that his
musings about the cultural deficiencies of Latin Americans were judged “intoler-
able.” He thought his report had been locked away, kept out of State Department
files. In fact, the report gathered dust in the file cabinet for twenty-five years, until
it was declassified in 1976 with other records from 1950.? Kennan left his position
in policy planning in August 1950. In the preceding months, he, like other offi-
cials, focused on the outbreak of the Korean War.
Kennan's memorandum can be dismissed as the uncharacteristic ravings of
an otherwise distinguished public servant. Kennan, age 46, was perhaps in the
midst of some mid-life or career crisis. Kennan, who lived to be 101, changed his
views on the Cold War and Latin America. He supported giving the Panama Canal
back to Panama and called for the diplomatic recognition of Fidel Castro's Cuba.
He testified against the Vietnam War. He repudiated Ronald Reagan's strident be-
havior toward the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he observed
that “the general effect of Cold War extremism was to delay rather than hasten the
great change that overtook the Soviet Union." He also warned citizens that the
invasion of Iraq in 2003 would bring unforseen, unwanted consequences.
Although undebated and disowned, Kennan's report revealed the style and
substance of Cold War policies for Latin America. Latin America had no signifi-
cance of its own. It existed to serve U.S. Cold War interests. Latin American lead-
ers were naive about global affairs and unrealistic in expecting their powerful
northern neighbor to assist Latin America’s development. Latin Americans were
CHAPTER 2 * The Kennan Corollary 25
George F. Kennan, a foreign-policy expert, authored the famous article "The Sources of
Soviet Conduct" that served as the basis for the containment strategy that the United
States pursued against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In 1950, Kennan also
submitted a lengthy report on Latin America. Although Kennan's superiors in the U.S. State
Department declined to circulate his report, Kennan's views became U.S. policy for L
America. Winning the Cold War—preventing any hint of political radicalism in the Western
Hemisphere—commanded a higher priority than promoting democracy and respect for
human rights. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-DIG-hec-12925)
not only naive but also foolish and irresponsible. They lacked the cultural requi-
sites to create modernized, democratic societies with high-performance econo-
mies. Dictatorship might be the only answer for preventing communism and
protecting U.S. vital interests. The United States had the power and glory and the
historical tradition of the Monroe Doctrine to save Latin Americans from them-
selves. As Walter LaFeber noted, during the Cold War the United States rein-
stated the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Another distinguished
historian, Gaddis Smith, suggested that U.S. Cold War policies be labeled the
“Kennan Corollary.”
Digitized nal from
HARVARD UNIVERS HARVARD UNIV
26 THEKILLING ZONE
POSTWAR VISIONS
As World War II concluded, bright hope rather than George Kennan's dark pes-
simism characterized inter-American relations. Both domestic and international
developments had drawn the inter-American community closer together. In
1944 only four of the twenty Latin American republics— Chile, Colombia, Costa
Rica, and Uruguay—could be called representative democracies that respected
civil liberties. By 1946, only five nations—the Dominican Republic, El Salvador,
Honduras, Nicaragua, and Paraguay—remained authoritarian states. The other
Latin American states could claim in some sense to be democratic. In Guatemala,
for example, a mass popular uprising toppled the dictator, Jorge Ubico y
Castañeda (1931-1944). During the twentieth century, Latin American societies
had become more complex, with lawyers, doctors, teachers, students, labor, and
small businesses forming associations and unions. These “middle sector” groups
demanded that the traditional arbiters of Latin American life—the landed oli-
garchy, the military, and the Roman Catholic Church—extend voting rights and
share power. Middle-sector groups also called on the state to promote social wel-
fare by improving health and education and passing laws to protect workers.
Leaders like President Juan José Arévalo of Guatemala (1945-1951) admired
Franklin Roosevelt and wanted a New Deal for their countries.*
The idealism inherent in the war against European fascism and Japanese
militarism also undermined tyrants and strengthened the cause of social pro-
gressives. Throughout the war, the Roosevelt administration had disseminated
propaganda that the war was being fought to protect civil and human rights and
to promote economic and social mobility. In Nicaragua, for example, laborers,
protesting the regime of Anastasio Somoza Garcia, carried banners declaring,
“Roosevelt Has Said That the Tyrants of the Earth Will Be Wiped Out.” The
Roosevelt administration also signaled that it preferred democratic leaders. In
1943, it denied a request of General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez of El
Salvador (1931-1944) for one thousand submachine guns through the Lend-
Lease military aid program. As a State Department officer noted, “these lethal
toys [are] more likely to be used for a very different purpose than they were
intended." ‘The next year, Salvadorans overthrew the despotic Hernández
Martinez. The United States appreciated Brazil’s decision to send an expedition-
ary force to Italy. Ambassador Adolf A. Berle Jr. a friend of Roosevelt and fervent
New Dealer, made it clear that the United States wanted to see a democratic evo-
lution in Brazil. In 1945, he told the Brazilian press that he expected that dictator
Gettilio Dornelles Vargas (1930-1945) would permit a free election. The Brazilian
military forced Vargas out of office, and elections took place.
Latin American democrats believed that they would have the financial re-
sources to transform their societies, Latin American economies had prospered
during the war because the region served as the arsenal for Allied victory. Latin
Americans had accumulated credits of $3.4 billion because the capital goods
that they wanted to purchase in the United States were scarce because of wartime
CHAPTER 2 * The Kennan Corollary 27
rationing. Colombia's foreign exchange reserves, for example, increased by
540 percent during the war? Latin Americans felt confident not only that they
would be able to cash in their reserves but also that the United States would pro-
vide new capital. President Roosevelt and his chief emissary to Latin America,
Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, had implied that the region could count
on the United States in the postwar world for economic development assistance.
Latin Americans also expected to wield diplomatic power. Fifty-one nations were
charter members of the new United Nations. The United States and its Latin
American friends held twenty-one votes in the General Assembly. Historians
Leslie Bethell and Ian Roxborough perceive the period from 1944 to 1948 as
“a critical conjuncture in the political and social history of Latin America."
Reform-minded democrats, who had the backing of the United States, dreamed
of a socially just Latin America.
In form, Latin America accomplished much between 1945 and 1948. At the
UN organizing conference held in San Francisco in 1945, the U.S. delegation, at
the urging of the new assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs,
Nelson Rockefeller, agreed with Latin Americans that the United Nations should
sanction regional security organizations. This agreement became Article 51 of
the UN charter. All further agreed to let Argentina, which had remained neutral
during the war, back into the inter-American community and the United Nations.
‘Thereafter, in 1947, the administration signed a mutual defense pact with Latin
America at Rio de Janeiro, and a year later, at Bogotá, it joined with Latin
Americans in incorporating Pan-Americanism into the charter of the Organiza-
tion of American States (OAS). The OAS charter explicitly prohibited interven-
tion in the internal affairs of member states.
‘The Rio Treaty and the OAS reflected the spirit of the Good Neighbor policy
and wartime solidarity. But they also reflected different perspectives on inter-
American relations. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson spoke for many U.S. of-
ficials, seeing Article 51 as a way to preserve the unilateral character of the
Monroe Doctrine and a U.S. sphere of influence. As Stimson noted, “I think it is
not asking too much to have our little region over here” if Russia “is going to take
these steps . . . of building up friendly protectorates around her." In accepting
Article 51, President Truman was also affirming the views of President Roosevelt,
who assured Latin Americans that the inter-American system would not be sup-
planted by a new international organization. In San Francisco, Latin Americans,
led by Mexico and Colombia, lobbied for the inclusion of regional alliances into
the UN charter. With the OAS, Latin Americans would have a forum to influence
the United States, a treaty that codified the nonintervention principle, and a ve-
hicle for transferring economic aid.
Although Latin Americans achieved their organizational goals, the sub-
stance of postwar inter-American relations dismayed them. The United States
emerged from World War II as the world’s dominant power with global ambi-
tions and responsibilities; regional concerns would be subordinated to the larger
task of rebuilding Europe and Japan and containing the Soviet Union. President
28 THE KILLING ZONE
Truman and his foreign policy team also had no background or interest in Latin
America. President Roosevelt considered Latin America significant, and he lis-
tened to powerful figures like Welles, Berle, and Rockefeller who gave priority to
the inter-American community. Truman and his secretaries of state, James
Byrnes, George Marshall, and Dean Acheson, evinced little interest in the region,
did not speak Spanish or Portuguese, and did not appoint influential people to
lead the Latin American Affairs division of the State Department. Truman and
Acheson also displayed the same boorish attitudes toward Latin Americans that
permeated George Kennan's infamous memorandum. Truman thought Latin
Americans were like Jews and the Irish—"very emotional” and difficult to handle.
Secretary Acheson wrote in his memoirs that “Hispano-Indian culture—or lack
of it” had been “piling up its problems for centuries.” For Acheson, Latin America
meant “an explosive population, stagnant economy, archaic society, primitive
politics, massive ignorance, illiteracy, and poverty.”
Neither Truman nor his secretaries of state thought they had an obligation to
assist what they deemed a benighted region and culture. The Roosevelt adminis-
tration had scheduled a special economic conference for 15 June 1945. Latin
‘Americans wanted to talk about international commodity agreements, controls
on foreign investment, linking the prices of raw materials to finished goods, and
economic aid. For the next seven years, the Truman administration would come
up with all manner of excuses of why it could not attend an inter-American eco-
nomic conference. In 1946, for example, the administration delayed action as it
engaged in a noisy debate with Argentina's Colonel Juan Perón (1946-1955) about
his alleged fascist sympathies. The administration feared that an economic con-
ference would be a diplomatic fiasco, with the United States resisting demands
for economic aid and commodity agreements. Brazil had already asked in early
1946 for a five-year $1 billion loan. U.S. officials responded that Latin America
would prosper if it honored free trade and investment principles and prepared for
the massive orders of raw materials that would surely come from a rebuilding
Europe. By 1946, State Department officials wanted “to kill” the conference idea,
but, fearing a stormy reaction from Latin Americans, chose only to postpone it.
‘The United States had reneged on its wartime pledges of economic cooperation.
As State Department officer Louis Halle bluntly put it, “the United States no
longer desperately needs Latin America."
The handling of wartime contracts further dismayed Latin Americans. The
United States had promised not to terminate wartime contracts abruptly, to allo-
cate capital goods fairly, and to remember that Latin America had sold its stra-
tegic commodities in a controlled market, with prices fixed. After the war,
however, the United States abruptly lifted price controls, and prices rose rapidly;
Latin America quickly exhausted its more than $3 billion in credits. Chile, for
example, by selling its copper and nitrates at artificially low prices and buying
goods for industrial development in a free market, may have lost $500 million. In
effect, Latin America made a $3 billion non-interest-bearing loan to the United
States and could not collect on the principal. The United States answered that it
CHAPTER 2 + The Kennan Corollary 29
had repaid Latin Americans by sacrificing men and materiel in war, protecting
the hemisphere from totalitarianism."
Latin American hopes for economic aid revived after Secretary of State
Marshall announced his plan to reconstruct Europe. If the United States was pre-
pared to help former enemies, then a "Marshall Plan for Latin America" might
follow. At the Rio Conference, delegates wanted to focus on economic cooper-
ation, but Marshall persuaded them to wait until meeting in Bogotá. There, the
secretary quashed all hopes of economic aid. In a speech that was greeted by
stony silence, Marshall promised only to increase the lending authority of the
Export-Import Bank by $500 million to facilitate trade. The European Recovery
Program would aid Latin America by restoring markets for raw materials and
tropical foods. Once Europe rebuilt its industrial plant, Latin America would
have another source of supply for capital goods. Latin Americans interpreted
such arguments to mean that their region would be confined to its traditional
role of supplying the industrial world with raw materials. In any case, between
1945 and 1952, Belgium and tiny Luxembourg received more economic aid from
the United States than did all of Latin America.
In lieu of economic assistance, the U.S. prescription for Latin America's
health included self-help, technical cooperation, liberal trade practices, and, in
particular, private enterprise and investment. The Truman administration re-
peatedly preached that Latin Americans could have stacks of money if they cre-
ated a "suitable climate" for foreign investors. Latin Americans found such
arguments wanting, knowing that Latin America already accounted for nearly
40 percent of U.S. direct investments globally and 30 percent of U.S. interna-
tional trade. The United States misled Latin America during the war and now
"neglected" the region. Debates about the efficacy of international capitalism
aside, the Truman administration left Latin America as the one non-Communist
area in the world not under a direct aid program, because it positioned its analyses
of inter-American relations within the context of the Cold War. The Soviet Union
did not threaten the region. As Ambassador Herschel Johnson explained to the
Brazilian press, “the situation might be graphically represented as a case of small-
pox in Europe competing with a common cold in Latin America.”
‘The dreams of Latin American democrats and reformers vanished. In 1948,
military officers overthrew new, popular governments in Peru and Venezuela,
Elsewhere, reform and change slowed dramatically. The Truman administration
bore some responsibility for the collapse of democratic reform. Latin American
democrats had expected that the United States would help fund social reform. As
the Mexican foreign minister put it, economic cooperation was “the one way to
provide [the] only sound basis for hemisphere peace.” The Truman administra-
tion, with its overwhelming focus on Cold War issues, also changed the discourse
within the inter-American community. Talk and fear of international commu-
nism replaced the promotion of democratic values. Anticipating Kennan's cri-
tique of Latin American societies, U.S. diplomats lamented "the revolutionary
and antidemocratic traditions embedded in the minds of Latin Americans.” In
30 THE KILLING ZONE
1944, Nicaragua's Somoza had hesitated to push through a constitutional amend-
ment that would perpetuate his power, fearing both domestic and U.S. reaction.
In 1947, he overthrew Nicaragua's new president, who had been in office less than
a month, and installed his latest puppet, because the new president tried to oust
Somoza from command of the Guardia Nacional. The Truman administration
initially withheld diplomatic recognition but ultimately relented, recognizing So-
moza's anti-Communist credentials and faithful support at the United Nations.
Historians like Bethell, Roxborough, and Greg Grandin go too far, however,
when they assign primary responsibility to the United States for the disintegration
of democracy and social reform in the immediate postwar years.” As the noted
scholar of Brazilian history, Thomas E. Skidmore, observed, U.S. historians have
often “underestimated the power of conservative forces in Latin American soci-
eties.”* Latin American elites fought tenaciously to retain power and privilege. In
Guatemala, President Arévalo, who enacted land and labor reforms, survived
twenty attempts to overthrow him between 1945 and 1951. In Venezuela, the demo-
cratic experiment, led by young leaders of the ruling Acción Democrática party or
adecos, lasted only three years. Military officers, encouraged by aggrieved groups
like wealthy landowners, overthrew President Rómulo Gallegos on 24 November
1948 in a bloodless coup, or golpe frío. The Truman administration had been sup-
portive of the adecos, approving of their commitment to democracy and reform
and their anti-Communist views. The administration lamented the November
golpe. When it recognized the military junta in early 1949, it issued a statement
deploring “the use of force as an instrument of political change.”
ANTICOMMUNISM AND INTERVENTIONISM
During the Truman years, U.S. policy evolved, with anti-Communist fears over-
whelming aspirations for democracy, social justice, and human rights. The ad-
ministration initially did not worry that either the Soviet Union or the international
Communist movement threatened the region. During the war, the United States
assisted Latin American nations in establishing diplomatic relations with the
Soviet Union, its wartime ally. In March 1945, for example, Undersecretary of State
Joseph Grew permitted the Soviet ambassador to use his home in Washington so
he could meet informally with Brazilian diplomats, As late as mid-1948, the State
Department concluded in NSC 16 that “communism in the Americas is a poten-
tial danger, but that, with a few possible exceptions, it is not seriously dangerous
at the present time.” The administration professed these views in the same year
that it decided that the Soviet Union had a master plan. In NSC 7 of 30 March
1948, which anticipated NSC 68/2 of 1950, the administration warned that “the
ultimate objective of Soviet-directed world communism is the domination of the
world.” NSC 7 called for a “world-wide counter-offensive.””
‘Through 1948, the Truman administration acknowledged that anti-Communist
policies had the potential to encourage and sanction wholesale repression in the
region. In 1947, the Dominican Republic of Rafael Trujillo had suggested the
CHAPTER 2 * The Kennan Corollary 31
negotiation of an inter-American anti-Communist agreement. State Department
officers knew that the Dominican dictator would use such an agreement to brand
all opponents as “Communists” and outlaw, imprison, and murder them. As a
policy paper put it, "there would be many cases in which such anti-Communist
agreements would be directed against all political opposition, Communist or
otherwise, by dictatorial governments, with the inevitable result of driving leftist
elements into the hands of the Communist organization." Strong anti-Communist
forces—the Church, the armed forces, large landowners—flourished in Latin
America. “Unfortunately, they sometimes come close to the extreme of reaction
which is very similar to communism as concerns totalitarian police state methods."
Through “extreme selfishness and lack of any sense of social responsibility,” Latin
American elites ignored widespread poverty and illiteracy, alienating “large seg-
ments of the population which otherwise would probably be anti-Communist.”
‘The United States needed to think hard about cooperating with reactionary forces
“in light of our long-range national interests." Defeating international communism
meant cultivating “anti-Communist labor, liberal, and Socialist elements.” The
‘Truman administration had, of course, undercut that recommendation by denying
Latin America economic development assistance.
In mid-1948, the State Department calculated that Communist Party mem-
bership in the twenty Latin American republics totaled 360,000 people. Scholars
have suggested a somewhat higher total membership of 500,000 Communists.”
But Latin American Communists scarcely constituted a revolutionary vanguard.
Moscow largely ignored its ideological brethren during the war and in the immedi-
ate postwar years. Mexican Communists led by the labor leader Vicente Lombardo
Toledano were closely tied to Mexico's ruling party. Latin American Communists
had a history of adhering to Communist theology. A revolutionary situation would
not arise until Latin America entered the industrial phase of history. But only larger
nations—Argentina, Brazil, Mexico—had partially industrialized. Latin American
Communists proved cautious in taking up arms in the Cold War. Cuba's Com-
munist Party did not join with Fidel Castro until after the Cuban revolutionary
won power in 1959, Marxist-inspired radical nationalists, not Communist Party
members, would agitate Latin America from the 1960s on.
After 1949, the Truman administration stopped issuing nuanced analyses of
Latin America's political culture and started professing deep concern about the
region. Latin Americans did not suddenly embrace radical ideas. And Soviet dic-
tator Joseph Stalin, in the last years of his rule, did not unexpectedly evince interest
in Latin America. Anti-Communist fears, both abroad and at home, overwhelmed
the good judgment of U.S. officials. The Soviet Union successfully tested an atomic
weapon in 1949, Mao Zedong and his Communist forces established the People’s
Republic of China in 1949, and North Korea, with tacit support from Joseph Stalin,
invaded South Korea in 1950. The global balance of power seemed to be turning
against the United States, At home, unscrupulous politicians, led by Senator
Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) and Representative Richard M. Nixon (R-CA), alleged
that traitorous Communists operated within the U.S. government. The United
32 THE KILLING ZONE
States dragged Latin America into the Cold War. The Kennan Corollary became
US. policy.
The Truman administration began to criticize publicly attitudes and policies
of Latin Americans. Secretary of State Acheson gave one major address on Latin
America to the Pan American Union in September 1949. The speech was filled
with platitudes, with Acheson conceding he had nothing new to say. The secre-
tary did take time to remind Latin Americans that the United States would not
assist the region's development with public funds. Acheson left Latin America to
his young friend, Assistant Secretary Edward R. Miller Jr. A graduate of Yale and
Harvard Law School and a Wall Street lawyer, Miller had grown up in Cuba and
Puerto Rico. His father owned sugar plantations and mills in Cuba. Miller spoke
excellent Spanish and Portuguese. As Miller saw it, Latin America was now a
"problem of self-pity" because it wanted to ignore the Cold War and return to the
1930s, when “the Good Neighbor Policy was virtually our sole foreign policy.” That
experience, combined with a consequential high-level attention devoted to Latin
America, “had fostered an exaggerated and extreme sense of self-importance on
the part of individuals connected with Latin American governments.” Miller kept
such views confidential, but he authorized a subordinate, Louis Halle, to reveal
them in a July 1950 article, “On a Certain Impatience with Latin America,” in
Foreign Affairs. Imitating George Kennan in the 1947 “X” article, Halle chose the
pseudonym of "Y." Halle argued that the United States would have to follow the
dictates of "noblesse oblige” toward Latin American nations because they were
like children, not yet ready to exercise for themselves the responsibility of adult
nations.? Miller had requested that Acheson withdraw George Kennan’s memo-
randum from circulation. In fact, both Acheson and Miller shared Kennan's con-
descending outlook toward Latin American civilization.
Assistant Secretary Miller also voiced the heightened fear and perception of
international communism. Miller and his colleagues imagined threats rather
than discovering them. In his 1949 speech, Acheson had noted there was no
“direct threat against our independence." In 1950, in a comprehensive review of
the region, the State Department concluded that the Communists had "lost
ground" As late as 1951, Miller assured Congress that the Soviet Union's role in
Latin America “at this time will not be great." Miller criticized the social and eco-
nomic policies of Guatemala, but he reckoned that they could be blamed on Presi-
dent Arévalo, a "wooly-head."* U.S. officials also knew that by 1952 five countries
had severed relations with the Soviet Union and outlawed Communist activities.
For example, the Chilean legislature passed in 1948 the Law for the Permanent
Defense of Democracy, which banned the Chilean Communist Party and removed
all Communists from the voter rolls. The Soviets had diplomatic relations with
only Argentina, Mexico, and Uruguay and only a minuscule amount of trade in
the hemisphere.
The Truman administration lacked evidence of Communist subversion and
it continued to realize that an inter-American, anti-Communist agreement
would be used by authoritarians to "suppress all types of liberal opposition."
CHAPTER 2 * The Kennan Corollary 33
Nonetheless, the administration decided to redefine the Monroe Doctrine and
the OAS charter. In a speech in April 1950, two months before the outbreak of the
Korean War, Assistant Secretary Miller reviewed the history of intervention. He
condoned the decisions of presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow
Wilson, arguing that they had ordered troops into Caribbean nations to forestall
European interference and perhaps colonialism—these decisions had been
“necessary evils,” or “protective interventions.” Miller accepted the Good Neigh-
bor policy, the juridical equality of states, but he warned that “if the circum-
stances that led to the protective interventions by the United States should rise
again today, the organized community of American states would be faced with
the responsibility that the United States had once to assume alone.” The doctrine
of nonintervention incorporated into the OAS charter was not absolute; if a
member state were threatened by Communist political aggression, the OAS
would have to act for the common welfare. This action would be "the alternative
to intervention,” the “corollary of non-intervention."*
Secretary Miller left much unsaid in his speech. He surely understood that
Latin Americans considered the nonintervention pledge the core principle of the
Inter-American community. The thirty armed interventions in the first part of
the twentieth century had outraged Latin Americans. Policy planners in the
Dwight D. Eisenhower administration would confidentially concede that they
would never be able to persuade Latin American states to approve intervention
against internal Communist subversion. President Eisenhower approved a secret
policy that the United States would take all actions “deemed appropriate" to defeat
communism in the Western Hemisphere, Such actions would include covert in-
terventions. Miller's speech represented the most explicit statement that the
United States could not honor the nonintervention pledge in the Cold War until
President John F. Kennedy made similar points in his "Kennedy Doctrine" speech
of 18 November 1963, his last speech on inter-American affairs, President Lyndon
Johnson made the policy obvious when he invaded the Dominican Republic
in 1965 and pronounced his “Johnson Doctrine.” The “Miller Doctrine” was, of
course, a restatement of the Roosevelt Corollary and the Kennan Corollary.
‘The Truman administration coupled the Miller Doctrine with a decision to
arm Latin America against communism. Defense planners wanted Latin America
to be militarily dependent on the United States. Prior to 1941, South Americans
had purchased arms and contracted military training missions from Europe,
including Germany and Italy. Defense officials proposed an arms standardiza-
tion for the hemisphere. The United States would provide arms if Latin America
would cooperate in postwar hemispheric defense, make available its military
bases to U.S. air and naval forces, and agree not to purchase equipment and train-
ing from foreign sources.
Although the Truman administration submitted to Congress in both 1946
and 1947 a military aid package for Latin America, it did not secure funding.
Congressional critics managed to delay legislation, arguing that military aid was
wasteful, would bolster authoritarian regimes, and would trigger a hemispheric
34 THE KILLING ZONE
arms race. State Department officials silently shared those concerns. In any case,
the United States lacked arms to transfer, because programs such as Greek-
Turkish aid, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and support for Chinese
national forces took priority over inter-American military cooperation.”
On 19 May 1950, President Truman authorized military aid for Latin
America, approving NSC 56/2, “United States Policy toward Inter-American
Military Cooperation.” NSC 56/2 fit into the thinking of NSC 68/2, noting that
“the cold war is in fact a real war in which the survival of the free world is at
stake." The document left vital issues unanalyzed. NSC 56/2 did not explain
whether the Soviet Union intended to invade Latin America or make clear how
providing Latin Americans with obsolete tanks would deter the Red Army. The
document also did not resolve the political and diplomatic questions raised by
transferring arms to poor, weak, undemocratic nations. What military aid guaran-
teed, however, was access to high-ranking Latin American military officers, who
traditionally favored conservative, anti-Communist policies. For the Truman ad-
ministration, such questions seemed inconsequential after the outbreak of the
Korean conflict. As it did with NSC 68/2, the war helped “sell” NSC 56/2. In 1951
Congress authorized $38 million for direct military assistance for Latin America
and in 1952 added nearly $52 million to that sum.
Military aid did not inspire Latin Americans to rally to the U.S. cause. After
President Truman declared a national emergency following attacks on U.S.
troops in Korea by Chinese forces, Secretary of State Acheson hastily called an
inter-American conference of foreign ministers, which met in Washington be-
tween March and April 1951. Six years of neglect and broken promises had taken
their toll on inter-American solidarity. For this war, Latin Americans were only
willing to give “rhetorical” support to their northern neighbor. The conference’s
key resolution, calling for increased production of strategic materials, was tied
to a statement citing Latin America's need for economic development. Only
Colombia responded to requests for troops, dispatching a battalion of troops and
a frigate to the Korean theater. The United States was especially disappointed by
Brazil’s refusal to join the war effort. In the previous month, Assistant Secretary
Miller had journeyed to Rio de Janeiro to request a division of troops for Korea.
Latin America’s largest nation had sent an expeditionary force to Italy during
World War II. Miller received a chilly reception in Rio. As the Brazilian foreign
minister observed, “Brazil’s present position would be different and our cooper-
ation in the present emergency could be probably greater,” if Washington “had
elaborated a recovery plan for Latin America similar to the Marshall Plan for
Europe.” Alarmed at the course of inter-American relations, Miller began to
argue that the United States would have to grant Latin America at least a small
amount of assistance. But the administration was too harried and the economy
too strained by the Korean conflict for the United States to consider another eco-
nomic aid program.
‘The decision by Latin American nations, save Colombia, to sit out the Korean
War signaled how far inter-American relations had deteriorated during the
CHAPTER 2 * The Kennan Corollary 35
Truman years. In both the United States and Latin America, the popular view had.
been that hemispheric relations had been strong and cordial between 1933 and
1945. In the 1952 presidential campaign, the Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower
exploited the issue. In a speech in New Orleans on 13 October 1952, Eisenhower
charged that Latin Americans had lost confidence in the United States. He re-
called that during World War II “we frantically wooed Latin America—but after
the war the Truman administration proceeded to forget these countries just as
fast” and “terrible disillusionment set in throughout Latin America.” The United
States reneged on promises to cooperate economically with its neighbors. The
result was economic distress, “followed by popular unrest, skillfully exploited by
Communist agents there.” “Through drift and neglect,” the Truman administra-
tion had turned a good neighbor policy into “a poor neighbor policy.” Candidate
Eisenhower promised change.”
President Eisenhower did not deliver on his campaign promise when it came
to inter-American relations. Continuity, not change, would characterize the U.S.
approach to Latin America, Just as it had with Europe and Asia, the Truman ad-
ministration had developed Cold War policies for Latin America that would
endure for four decades. The Kennan Corollary and the Miller Doctrine proved
to be long-lasting features of U.S. foreign policies. Latin Americans needed to
understand their place in the world. They lived in the U.S. sphere of influence.
‘Their duty was to support the United States in the apocalyptic struggle with the
international Communist movement. Any deviance by a Latin American nation
from the U.S. vision of the proper world order threatened U.S. security and the
global balance of power. Latin Americans often lacked the political maturity to
understand how the world worked. The United States had the right and respon-
sibility to correct the international misbehavior of Latin Americans. ‘This
meant overthrowing suspect governments and bolstering right-wing tyrants
who aped U.S. foreign policies. Indeed, the Eisenhower administration took
a momentous step that had far-reaching ramifications for Latin Americans and
inter-American relations when, in 1954, it destabilized a popularly elected gov-
ernment in Guatemala. The covert intervention, however, was not solely the ini-
tiative of President Eisenhower and the Central Intelligence Agency. True to the
Kennan Corollary, the Truman administration had already begun to move
against Guatemalan political and social democracy.
CHAPTER 3
gs
Guatemala—The Mother
of Interventions
lhe U.S. decision in the early 1950s to destroy the constitutional government
of Guatemala represented a momentous event in the history of inter-American
relations. The attack on Guatemala signaled that the United States could no
longer abide by the nonintervention principle—the heart of the Good Neighbor
policy and the fundamental tenet of the Organization of American States (OAS).
Guatemala served as a training ground for subsequent U.S. interventions in
countries such as Cuba, Brazil, British Guiana, and Chile. In Guatemala, the
Central Intelligence Agency would develop tactics—psychological warfare and
the controlled penetration of military units, labor unions, religious organiza-
tions, student groups, and media outlets—that would be used throughout the
Western Hemisphere during the Cold War. The overthrow of the Guatemalan
government contributed to political polarization in the region. Latin Americans
drew the lesson from the Guatemalan imbroglio that the United States would
oppose fundamental change through constitutional processes. For some, violent,
revolutionary upheaval became the only legitimate path to change and social
justice. The intervention also had grave consequences for the people of Guatemala
and the region. The intervention triggered rounds of political terror that would
last four decades and leave at least two hundred thousand Guatemalans dead.
‘Taking an approving note of the repression in Guatemala, conservative elites
and their military minions in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and El
Salvador unleashed wholesale violence against their political opponents. Latin
America would become the “killing zone” of the Cold War.
THE DRESS REHEARSAL
‘The destabilization of Guatemala is traditionally associated with the presidential
administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Early in his administration, President
Eisenhower ‘authorized two covert interventions, Iran (1953) and Guatemala
(1954), that had momentous international ramifications. The overthrow of the
36
CHAPTER 3 * Guatemala—The Mother of Interventions 37
government of Mohammad Mossadeq (1951-1953) continues to bedevil U.S.
relations with Iran in the twenty-first century. In the case of Guatemala, the
Eisenhower administration restarted a campaign that had been initiated by the
Harry $. Truman administration. Although the Truman administration felt
under siege between 1950 and 1952, both by unfavorable international develop-
ments in Asia and Europe and by mounting domestic criticism, it still found time
to wage Cold War in Latin America. It began to follow the dictates of the Kennan
Corollary. During its last years in office, the administration plotted against the
popularly elected Guatemalan governments of President Juan José Arévalo and
his successor, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán (1951-1954). The administration favored
democracy and reform for Latin America, But it insisted that reform stay within
U.S.-defined limits. In the context of the hysteria that permeated the early Cold
War, the United States opposed any change that hinted of radicalism.
President Arévalo, a self-professed admirer of Franklin Roosevelt and the
New Deal, faced as daunting challenges as did the U.S. president during the Great
Depression. Arévalo assumed power in 1945, in the aftermath of his country’s
middle-sector uprising in October 1944 against dictator Jorge Ubico. Arévalo
credited the New Deal and the idealism of Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” as the
inspiration for the October Revolution. Guatemala had problems that character-
ized other poor Latin America nations. A landed elite, the military, and the
Roman Catholic Church had long wielded power and privilege in the Central
American nation. These groups opposed change and social justice, repeatedly
trying to overthrow President Arévalo and block his reform agenda. Like its
neighbors, Guatemala had a fragile, agricultural economy, depending on the sale
abroad of primary products, like coffee and tropical fruit, for its solvency. Any
downturn in the global economy reverberated through Guatemalan society.
Guatemala also had unique issues. It was a racially polarized society. About half
of the population was indigenous, descendants of the ancient Mayans. They lived
in the central highlands and spoke native languages. They had long suffered eco-
nomic and racial discrimination at the hands of westernized, Spanish-speaking
groups (Europeans and mestizos) known as ladinos. Beginning in the late nine-
teenth century, Guatemalan elites used their control of government machinery
to steal land in the highlands area, create vast coffee plantations or fincas, and
force indigenous people to labor on them. Terms like “serfdom,” "debt peonage,”
and even “slavery” accurately characterized the socioeconomic conditions of
Guatemala's indigenous people. With their unchecked power, landowners sub-
jected plantation workers to appalling indignities. As historian Greg Grandin
noted, “plantation life rested as much on rape and sex as it did on forced labor."
Guatemala's statistical profile reflected the nation’s deep inequalities. More
than 70 percent of the population was illiterate—the highest in Latin America.
Among indigenous people, illiteracy was 90 percent. When they were paid, agri-
cultural workers earned between five and twenty-five cents a day. The nation’s per
capita income was less than two hundred dollars, with the landless poor earning
about seventy dollars a year. Life expectancy was less than forty years, with infant
38 THE KILLING ZONE
mortality rates reaching 50 percent. Despite these grim statistics, Guatemala's
population was growing. International health organizations had made impressive
gains controlling the historic scourges of humankind, like smallpox and malaria,
Guatemala's population grew from 2.4 million in 1945 to 3 million by 1954.2
Change in Guatemala would inevitably have an international dimension. The
United Fruit Company of Boston dominated Guatemala. ‘The banana company
had been prominent in Guatemalan life since the early twentieth century. It ac-
quired vast tracts of land, eventually amounting to 550,000 acres, on Guatemala's
Atlantic and Pacific coasts. It also controlled railroads and telephone and elec-
trical systems. United Fruit was locally known as the “octopus,” or el pulpo, with
its tentacles reaching everywhere in Guatemalan life. The company also rein-
forced Guatemala's racial divisions. It initially imported Afro-Caribbean people
to work the banana plantations and then instituted “Jim Crow” racial segregation
on the plantations. Company executives also discriminated in pay and housing
against native Guatemalans. They took care, however, to cultivate Guatemala's
traditional power holders.’ United Fruit and Guatemalan elites became predict-
able allies in their opposition to President Arévalo's progressive agenda. The
company, landowners, the military, and the Church hierarchy could also count
on the support of the region’s dictators when they resisted change. Rafael Trujillo
of the Dominican Republic, the Somoza family in Nicaragua, and, after 1950,
Colonel Marcos Pérez Jiménez of Venezuela all feared that democracy and social
progress in Guatemala would, by example, encourage their domestic opponents
and threaten their respective oligarchies. The dictators organized conspiracies
against the Guatemalan government.
Freedom of association, free speech, the rights of labor, and land tenure
issues became the central focus of agitation and debate in Guatemala. In the new
democratic Guatemala, political life flourished, with political parties forming,
including a Communist organization, Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo (PGT).
In 1952, it had five hundred members, with less than two hundred actively in-
volved in politics. No member of the PGT had a significant position in either the
Arévalo or the Arbenz government, President Arbenz was a friend, however, of
José Manuel Fortuny, the leader of the PGT, and looked sympathetically on
Marxist doctrines. Beginning in the late 1940s, the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) began to monitor the travel of Guatemalan Communists and look for signs
of ties with Moscow. The CIA would never find any meaningful international
Communist influence in Guatemala, Nonetheless, the agency, led by Colonel J. C.
King of the Western Hemisphere Division, repeatedly issued dark warnings about
Communist influence in Guatemala, In the agency's view, President Arbenzs tol-
eration for known Communists made him at best a "fellow traveler” and at worst
a Communist himself. In January 1952, headquarters asked its CIA agents in
Guatemala City to compile a list of “top flight Communists whom new government
would desire to eliminate immediately in event of successful anti-Communist
coup." The anti-Communist madness known as “McCarthyism” that gripped do-
mestic life in the United States also permeated analyses of international politics.
CHAPTER 3 * Guatemala—The Mother of Interventions 39
Guatemala's enactment in 1947 of a law that established basic labor rights
and granted workers and peasants the right to organize unions proved a critical
turning point in the country's relations with United Fruit and the United States.
The legislation gave Guatemala's workers some of the basic rights that U.S.
workers achieved during the Progressive Era and the New Deal. Guatemalans
began to strike on United Fruit’s plantations, demanding better wages and more
humane working and living conditions. Long accustomed to dictating to
workers, United Fruit executives complained loud and long to the embassy in
Guatemala City and the State Department. They pleaded that the company had
been singled out for discriminatory legislation. In fact, the law also permitted
peasants to organize on large coffee fincas. Company lobbyists also predictably
labeled the new labor laws "communistic." Both the embassy and the State Depart-
ment reacted to United Fruit's whining. Washington pressured Guatemala by
delaying Guatemala's applications for international loans and reducing the al-
ready modest economic aid program. Aid for projects in education, health, and
sanitation, which amounted to $483,000 in 1948, fell to $50,000 by 1953. U.S.
Ambassador Richard C. Patterson Jr. (1948-1950) embraced United Fruit's in-
terpretation of Guatemala's reforms. In 1950 in a speech to the Rotary Club,
Patterson implicitly labeled Guatemala a Communist country by pronouncing
his famous "duck test" A duck wore no label identifying it as a duck. But,
Patterson observed, if the bird quacked and swam like a duck, it was probably a
duck.’ Within the framework of Cold War ethos that informed Ambassador
Patterson's thinking, Guatemala passed the duck test. Guatemala was a stooge of
the Soviet Union.
The promulgation of an agrarian reform law, Decree 900, on 17 June 1952,
intensified the Truman administration's hostility toward Guatemala. The na-
tion's census of 1950 underscored the pressing need for a reform of land tenure
patterns. Two percent of landowners controlled 72 percent of Guatemala's land.
By contrast, 88 percent of farmers owned only 14 percent of the land. Decree
900 expropriated idle land on government and private estates and redistributed it
in plots of 8 to 33 acres to peasants who would pay the government 3 to 5 percent
of the assessed value annually. The government pledged to compensate the previ-
ous owners with 3 percent bonds maturing in twenty-five years. The law was an
intricate and rational response to Guatemalan conditions: it left untouched, for
example, estates of up to 670 acres, if at least two-thirds of the land was culti-
vated; moreover, as appropriate for a mountainous nation, it exempted lands that
had a slope of more than thirty degrees. Decree 900 also fit squarely into past and
recent international efforts to create independent farmers operating with a demo-
cratic, capitalist framework. The law, like the nineteenth-century Homestead Act
of the United States, was designed to create a nation of individual landowners;
the allocated land went mainly to individual families rather than to cooperatives.
General Douglas MacArthur and the occupying U.S. forces in postwar Japan also
encouraged land reform, believing that land-owning farmers provided a basis for
a democratic society.
HARVARD UNIVERSIT
40 THE KILLING ZONE
United Fruit shrieked that Decree 900 was aimed at dismantling the com-
pany's operations in Guatemala. Because 85 percent of the company's land was
uncultivated, the company anticipated losing four hundred thousand acres.
United Fruit claimed that it needed vast reserves for crop rotation and soil con-
servation and as insurance against disastrous hurricanes. United Fruit further
argued that the uncultivated land was worth at least seventy-five dollars an acre.
But, for taxable purposes, the company had declared the value of the land at only
three dollars an acre. The Arbenz government planned to compensate United
Fruit based on what the company had been paying in property taxes. Although
United Fruit, as Guatemala's largest landowner, would lose the most land under
Decree 900, the law was not aimed solely at it. Government officials were also
assessing the nature of the internal struggle for the future of Guatemala. Under
Decree 900, Guatemala would redistribute 1.5 million acres to one hundred thou-
sand families. The government wanted to break the hold of the landed elite on the
indigenous population. Land reform would facilitate vital changes in health, edu-
cation, and social welfare. Wealthy Guatemalans, military officers, and prelates of
the Roman Catholic Church predictably reacted with fear and loathing to the idea
of the dark-skinned, rural poor exercising power. Decree 900 even reached into
the presidential palace. President Arbenz-and his wealthy wife, María Vilanova
Arbenz, saw the state expropriate 1,700 acres of their fallow land."
For U.S. officials, the promulgation of Decree 900 did not stir memories
of Thomas Jefferson's faith in the value of the independent yeoman farmer or
Abraham Lincoln's commitment to the slogan of "free soil, free labor, free men."
Land reform had become associated with Joseph Stalin's forced collectivization of
Russian peasants or kulaks in the 1920s and what the “Red Chinese” were carrying
out in rural China. As one CIA officer noted, Decree 900 “makes land available
to all Guatemalans in the Communist pattern.” Agrarian reform would weaken
the landowning class, strengthening the “Communist tendencies of the present
Guatemalan Government." The CIA drew up a contingency plan, code-named
PBFORTUNE, to overthrow President Arbenz. The CIA's instrument was Colonel
Carlos Castillo Armas, former Commandante of Guatemala's Escuela Militar
(Military Academy). Castillo Armas had studied military issues in the United
States at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, and was judged “definitely pro-American” by
US. military officers. Castillo Armas had led an unsuccessful military assault
against the Guatemalan government in November 1950. The diminutive Colonel,
who was five foot five inches tall and weighed 135 pounds, carried the pseudonym
of John H. Calligeris and the CIA's code-name of “RUFUS.”
RUFUS planned to lead 650 men with sufficient strength to initiate an armed
revolt in Guatemala, CIA planners discussed providing Castillo Armas with
$50,000 worth of arms—500 automatic rifles, 180 machine guns, 500 hand
grenades, and 600,000 rounds of ammunition. Castillo Armas operated out of
Managua, Nicaragua. President Anastasio Somoza García and his son, Anastasio
Somoza Debayle, known as “Tachito,” coordinated the operation. ‘The Somozas
pledged military and logistical support to the Guatemalan conspiracy. Rafael
CHAPTER 3 + Guatemala—The Mother of Interventions 41
Trujillo of the Dominican Republic also promised to aid Castillo Armas “with
arms, aircraft, men, and money.” In turn, the murderous Trujillo requested that
Castillo Armas kill four anti-Trujillo Dominicans residing in Guatemala City.
Castillo Armas stated that he would “be glad to carry out the executive action,”
pointing out “that his own plans included similar action and that special squads
were being designated.”
Within the U.S. government, the CIA took the lead in planning and coordi-
nating the covert operation with Castillo Armas, the Somozas, and Trujillo. The
agency, which had been created by the National Security Act (1947), had seen its
capacity to take action rise, Its staff of three hundred in 1949 had increased to six.
thousand by 1952. Allen Dulles, the deputy director of the CIA, Frank Wisner,
the deputy director for plans, and Colonel King oversaw PBFORTUNE. These
men would be involved in directing other covert operations in Latin America
over the next decade. Beyond supplying Castillo Armas with money and advice,
the CIA planned to ship contraband arms, labeled “farm machinery,” from New
Orleans to Nicaragua. President Truman, although not directly involved in the
planning, approved of the operation. In early July 1952, he received a briefing
from Colonel Cornelius J. Mara, a military aid. “Neil” Mara had discussed the
operation with President Somoza. Somoza had previously boasted to Truman,
during a state visit to Washington in the spring of 1952, that he could “knock off”
President Arbenz “with six hundred pieces of hardware.” Mara's report con-
vinced Truman, who immediately authorized CIA action without informing the
Department of State."
The CIA failed, however, to persuade everyone within the government that
USS. security required an attack against an OAS member. The Truman adminis-
tration did not display the unity of purpose that characterized subsequent presi-
dential administrations’ campaigns to destabilize and overthrow targeted Latin
American governments. In July 1952, Allen Dulles led a CIA delegation to the
State Department, where they met with Assistant Secretary Edward Miller and
‘Thomas Mann, the deputy assistant secretary of state. Dulles asked Miller and
Mann whether they wanted a new government in Guatemala and whether they
wished the “CIA to take steps to bring about a change of government.” The State
Department officers replied that they wanted a new government and that their
office would not oppose a Guatemalan government established by force. They did
not respond clearly, however, to the question of whether they wanted the CIA to
participate in the overthrow of President Arbenz, although CIA officers believed
that “by implication" they received a positive answer." Indeed, Assistant Secre-
tary Miller seemed determined to remove President Arbenz and save the United
Fruit Company. CIA officers recalled that Miller said “that a large American
company must be protected almost as strongly as the United States Government
because South Americans do not make any distinction between the two in their
political thinking.” Two years previously, Miller had justified a policy of inter-
vention by pronouncing his Miller Doctrine. Nonetheless, General Walter Bedell
Smith, the director of the CIA, was dissatisfied with the lack of a direct answer
42 THE KILLING ZONE
from Miller on the CIA's role. Director Smith called Undersecretary of State
David K. E. Bruce and received a satisfactory answer on whether the State
Department supported a covert intervention.
Support for the intervention within the State Department waned, however,
as the Truman presidency neared its end. Officers like Miller and Mann worried
about the diplomatic repercussions of violating the OAS Charter. They realized
that the U.S. hand could not be kept hidden. The CIA discovered that the
Guatemalan government was intercepting correspondence between Castillo
Armas and his agents. Moreover, the Nicaraguan and Dominican ambassadors
had approached Mann to discuss the conspiracy, and "Tachito" Somoza had asked
Miller about shipments of arms. These indiscretions led Colonel King of the CIA
to conclude that "this confirmed our general belief that no Latin American can be
trusted to keep his mouth shut.” By October 1952, Miller wanted the CIA to limit
itself to supplying money to Castillo Armas but not to ship arms to him. Perhaps
Assistant Secretary Miller did not want to be publicly identified with undermin-
ing the basic premise of the Good Neighbor policy—the nonintervention
pledge—as he left office. In any case, a CIA document of 8 October 1952 notes
that "State stops the show.”*
Robert L. Beisner, the distinguished biographer of Dean Acheson, believes
that the powerful secretary of state deserves full credit for killing the 1952 con-
spiracy against President Arbenz. Acheson cared little about Latin America and
disdained Latin American culture, Busy tending to crises and issues in other
parts of the world, Acheson seems not to have been kept apprised on the ongoing
conspiracy. By the fall of 1952, he had learned of Miller and Mann's apprehen-
sions and of plans to ship arms from the United States to Castillo Armas. Beisner
persuasively argues that Acheson either telephoned Truman or met with him
during the first half of October 1952. No memorandum of the conversation
exists. Beisner believes that Acheson probably emphasized to the president that
indiscreet Latin Americans had blown the cover of the plot. But Acheson, who
believed in the tenets of international law, considered the agency's plans to over-
throw governments in Guatemala and Iran both illegal and “asinine.” Acheson
judged Europe, especially Germany, to be the central front of the Cold War. He
characteristically took a hard line toward the Soviet Union over Europe, advising
President John F. Kennedy to consider using nuclear weapons during the Berlin
crisis of 1961. Acheson offered only withering criticism, however, of the presi-
dent's decision to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Acheson thought no develop-
ment in Latin America merited risking the international standing of the United
States." Secretary Acheson's calculation of the international balance of power
along with his dismissal of all things Latin American combined to give President
Arbenz and Guatemala a reprieve from the power of the United States.
Secretary Acheson had not, however, put a permanent stop to the U.S. cam-
paign to undermine the Guatemalan Revolution. On 10 October 1952, Colonel
King informed RUFUS through an intermediary that the United States would
not ship arms to him because of the indiscrete actions of the Nicaraguans and
CHAPTER 3 * Guatemala—The Mother of Interventions 43
Dominicans. But the CIA had not abandoned either Castillo Armas or its hostil-
ity toward President Arbenz. CIA Director Smith authorized $15,000 in support
for Castillo Armas through 1952. The CIA station in Guatemala City continued
propaganda and psychological warfare efforts, and CIA agents continued to plot
with the Guatemalan military. CIA agents also organized commando groups to
carry out sabotage and “to kill all political and military leaders.” In a 1 December
1952 report, an agent boasted that “I have in my home a city map showing the
location of the homes and offices of all targets." The implementation of this vio-
lence would have to await the inauguration of a new presidential administration
in Washington.
OPERATION PBSUCCESS
The Eisenhower administration would wage a foreign policy of relentless anti-
communism in Guatemala and throughout the region during the 1950s. During
the 1952 presidential campaign, Republicans denounced the Truman adminis-
tration for losing Eastern Europe and China to communism and pledged to roll
back Communist advances, liberate captive peoples, and win the Cold War.
‘Turning rhetoric into reality, however, presented complex, dangerous problems.
Confronting the Soviet Union over its empire in Eastern Europe could precipitate
World War III and the destruction of Eastern Europe in a nuclear exchange.
Clashes with troops from the People's Republic of China in Korea had led to
major U.S. casualties. Indeed, General Eisenhower had suggested during the
campaign that he would find a solution to the military stalemate in Korea. But
rolling back communism in Latin America posed little risk of global conflict and
would help the administration make good on its claim that it was fulfilling its
campaign pledge to wage vigorous Cold War,
Less than two months into office, the Eisenhower administration had its
basic approach to Latin America outlined, adopting NSC 144/1. NSC 144/1 inter-
preted inter-American affairs solely within the context of the global struggle with
the Soviet Union. The document had little to say about political and social de-
mocracy or human rights in Latin America. What the United States wanted was for
Latin America to support the U.S. position at the United Nations, eliminate the
“menace of internal Communist or other anti-U.S. subversion,” produce strategic
raw materials, and cooperate in defending the hemisphere. President Eisenhower
approved NSC 144/1 after having previously heard an alarming briefing from his
new director of the CIA, Allen Dulles. Dulles warned that the political and eco-
nomic situation was deteriorating in Latin America and that "the Kremlin was
exploiting the situation." In particular, Dulles warned that "Communist infec-
tion” in Guatemala was “such to mark an approaching crisis."
The National Security Council staff study that served as the basis for NSC
144/1 took the same haughty attitude toward Latin America that informed
George Kennan's 1950 report. The study claimed that the region was filled
with social democrats, “immature and impractical idealists,” who “not only are
HARVARD
44 THE KILLING ZONE
inadequately trained to conduct government business efficiently but also lack the
disposition to combat extremists within their ranks, including communists.”
Latin American reformers weakened respect for property rights, a pillar of capital-
ism and anticommunism, by advocating the expropriation of haciendas and plan-
tations without adequate compensation. Latin American leaders also ignored their
international responsibilities, failing to grasp the aggressive, expansionist nature of
the Soviet Union. The staff study predicted that the majority of Latin American
nations would oppose a multilateral intervention to rescue a Latin American nation
from communism. It therefore concluded that “overriding security interests” re-
quired the United States to consider acting unilaterally, recognizing that “this
would be a violation of our treaty commitments, would endanger the Organization
of American States . . . and would probably intensify anti-U.S. attitudes.”
‘The adoption of NSC 144/1 signaled that the CIA could resume its campaign
to overthrow President Arbenz of Guatemala. On 8 March 1953, CIA Director
Dulles informed colleagues that “we now expect to be in a position to proceed
with our phase of the project if desired.”” The transition had been seamless.
Allen Dulles's brother, John Foster Dulles, was now secretary of state. His former
boss at the CIA, Walter Bedell Smith, was undersecretary of state. Smith agreed
that the conspirators would not repeat the mistake of the past by seeking the ap-
proval of State Department officers. The CIA would confine its consultations
to Secretary Dulles and Undersecretary Smith. Indeed, Louis Halle of the State
Department's Latin American Division would prepare a lengthy memorandum
in 1954 challenging the premise that communism and the Soviet Union underlay
Guatemala's October 1944 revolution and President Arbenz's land reform pol-
icies. As a State Department study had earlier noted, the overthrow of President
Arbenz would represent “a Czechoslovakia in reverse.”” The United States would
be acting like an imperial power, much as the Soviet Union did in Eastern Europe
in the immediate postwar years.
On 12 August 1953, Eisenhower's NSC authorized the overthrow of President.
Arbenz. The CIA was given principal responsibility for the intervention, under the
supervisory direction of Colonel King. PBFORTUNE was renamed PBSUCCESS
and granted an initial budget of $3 million. Overthrowing Arbenz was “now the
number one priority in the Agency.” The administration sent a new ambassador,
John E. Peurifoy, to Guatemala City to coordinate with the CIA. Allen Dulles
thought the incumbent ambassador, Rudolf E. Schoenfeld, “timid” and insuffi-
ciently forceful in defending U.S. interests. Dulles recommended a “two-fisted
guy” for the country. Peurifoy, who was an admirer of Senator Joseph McCarthy,
fit the bill. He had served from 1950 to 1953 as U.S. ambassador in Greece and
organized an anti-Communist government that included the Greek royal family.
On 1 September 1953, Frank Wisner of the CIA briefed Peurifoy that “this Agency
has now been authorized to take strong action against the government of
President Arbenz in the hope of facilitating a change to a more democratically
oriented regime.” Peurifoy pledged to support the program, requesting only that
the CIA send to Guatemala City a "Chief" who was fluent in Spanish.”
CHAPTER 3 * Guatemala—The Mother of Interventions 45
Analysts have pointed to the ties that the Dulles brothers and other admin-
istration officials had to United Fruit to explain the launching of PBSUCCESS.
John Foster Dulles, for example, was an international lawyer whose law firm,
Sullivan and Cromwell, represented United Fruit? But U.S. concerns about
Guatemala transcended United Fruit's objections over the labor law of 1947 and.
Decree 900. In the context of the Cold War, the United States persuaded itself.
that such reforms constituted a Communist menace. One study noted that land
reform would break the power of the conservative, anti-Arbenz landowners and
would "furnish a basis for the strengthening of political and Communist control
over the rural population." Secretary Dulles spoke truthfully from his perspec-
tive when he told journalists that "if the United Fruit matter were settled, if they
gave a gold piece for every banana, the problem would remain just as it is today as
far as the presence of Communist infiltration in Guatemala is concerned.” At an
NSC meeting, Dulles urged the Justice Department to file a long: pending anti-
trust suit against United Fruit because “many of the Central American countries
were convinced that the sole objective of United States foreign policy was to pro-
tect the fruit company.”
Finding hard evidence to sustain U.S. fears about communism in Guatemala
continued to prove problematic. A State Department intelligence study reported
on 1 January 1953 that the PGT had between five hundred and one thousand
members, But the study could find no Guatemalan connections with the
Soviet Union, other than to raise the “guilt by association” charge, noting that
Guatemalans toured Soviet bloc countries and attended international meetings
that Communists attended. The Soviet Union did not have diplomatic represen-
tation in Guatemala. As late as 21 April 1954, less than two months before the
covert intervention, the CIA, in a paper prepared at PBSUCCESS headquarters
in Florida, could not cite any direct contact between Guatemalan Communists
and Moscow. The paper offered ideology, not facts, when it reasoned that “all
‘Communist Parties, acting under the direction of the Soviet Union, follow
the same general pattern in seeking to capture free social institutions and
democratic governments,” After the overthrow of President Arbenz, the CIA
initiated Operation PBHISTORY to find “the mass of documentation which un-
doubtedly exists in Guatemala attesting to activities and workings [of] inter-
national communism there.” The PBHISTORY team subsequently reviewed five
hundred thousand documents in the Foreign Ministry and the PGT archives and
“masses of Communist propaganda, books, leaflets, and magazines.” The history
team conceded in a summary report of 28 September 1954 that it found “very
few” documents that could be characterized as “Communist damaging.” The best
the team apparently could do was to find invoices totaling $22.95 that revealed
the PGT had purchased books from a Moscow bookstore.
Ambassador Peurifoy arrived in Guatemala City in October 1953 and had
a “frank” six-hour discussion with President Arbenz on 17 December 1953 at
Arbenz's home. Arbenz and his wife, María, entertained the ambassador and his
wife at dinner. Peurifoy pressed the president about Communist influence in the
46 THE KILLING ZONE
government. Arbenz freely and happily admitted his friendship with prominent.
Communists, like José Manuel Fortuny and Victor Manuel Gutiérrez. In
Arbenz’s judgment the two Communist leaders were “honest” and followed
Guatemalan, not Soviet, interests. Arbenz even contradicted his wife, who denied
that party members participated in government organizations. Arbenz empha-
sized that Communists in the government were “local.” Ambassador Peurifoy
rejected the president's effort to depict Guatemalan Communists as nationalists.
Reprising Ambassador Patterson's duck test of 1950, the ambassador informed
Washington that “I came away definitely convinced that if President is not
a Communist he will certainly do until one comes along, and that normal ap-
proaches will not work in Guatemala.”
Scholars have debated what beliefs informed President Arbenz's public pol-
icies. The president, who was in his late thirties, was a striking, athletic, career
military officer who came from a middle-class background. His father had been
a pharmacist. A graduate of Guatemala's military academy, Arbenz participated
in the overthrow of Ubico and served as minister of defense under President
Arévalo. In the 1950 presidential campaign, Arbenz garnered 60 percent of the
vote, defeating two conservative candidates. Arbenz’s wife, Maria Vilanova de
Arbenz, was the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner from El Salvador.
Appalled at the treatment of the rural poor in El Salvador, Maria Vilanova de
Arbenz resigned her role as a member of high society and committed herself
to social activism. In her beauty, concern for the poor, and influence with her
husband, she reminded many of Eva Perón of Argentina.
Three decades after Arbenz's overthrow, Piero Gleijeses, a superb scholar,
interviewed María Vilanova de Arbenz and Guatemalan Communists such
as Fortuny. They alleged that President Arbenz read widely in the history of
Marxism and the Soviet Union and accepted Marxist views on the sweep of his-
tory. In Maria’s words, “Jacobo was convinced that the triumph of communism
in the world was inevitable and desirable. The march of history was toward com-
munism. Capitalism was doomed.”” After his overthrow, Arbenz joined the PGT
in 1957 and spent time in Fidel Castro's Cuba in the 1960s. Arbenz disliked life in
Communist Cuba. The distraught Arbenz, who spent the rest of his life in exile,
drowned in his bathtub in Mexico in early 1971. President Arbenz never wrote
a memoir or gave extensive interviews outlining his political views.
Whatever the merits of the claim that President Arbenz had secretly con-
verted to communism, Decree 900 was not intended to collectivize agriculture
in Guatemala. Arbenz's relatives and colleagues. pointed out to Gleijeses that
Guatemala was still in a feudal stage of development and that, under Marxist the-
ories, Guatemala would have to pass through a capitalist phase. Agrarian reform
in Guatemala indeed followed the models favored by Jefferson and Lincoln
and advocated by President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s with his Alliance for
Progress program for Latin America. By redistributing land, the Arbenz adminis-
tration also sought to break the hold of the oligarchy on Guatemala's dispossessed,
rural poor. President Arbenz's colleagues further affirmed that the president spoke
CHAPTER 3 * Guatemala—The Mother of Interventions 47
President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán (holding hat) and his spouse, María Vilanova de Arbenz,
appear at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a public works project in Guatemala. The
president and first lady dedicated themselves to economic development and social justice.
Calling ita “great crime,” the government of Guatemala formally apologized tothe
couple's son in 2011 for the overthrow of President Arbenz in 1954. The government also
named a highway after the former president. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)
forthrightly when he assured Ambassador Peurifoy that Guatemalans thought
and acted “local” and did not consult with Moscow.
‘The Eisenhower administration believed that they found hard evidence and
that they had reaped a propaganda bonanza when, on 15 May 1954, a Swedish
freighter, the Alfhem, docked at Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, with a shipment of
arms from Czechoslovakia. The CIA learned that the Bank of Guatemala had
transferred $4.8 million to a Czech firm. But the purchase hardly proved that
Guatemala had joined the Communist camp. The Soviet client state had not
granted arms to Guatemala; it had sold them on a "cash and carry” basis, More-
over, the Eisenhower administration had reports of Guatemalan officials trying
to purchase arms in Western Europe. The arms purchase reflected the Arbenz
administration's accurate assessment that the country would soon be invaded.
‘The United States had also imposed an arms embargo on Guatemala. In the end
U.S. officials had to fall back on ideological convictions to justify the intervention
in Guatemala. In May 1954, Secretary of State Dulles admitted to a Brazilian
official that it would be "impossible to produce evidence clearly tying the
48 THE KILLING ZONE
Guatemalan Government to Moscow; that the decision must be a political one
and based on our deep conviction that such a tie must exist.”
THE INVASION
‘The CIA's plan to overthrow President Arbenz consisted of three major com-
ponents: a psychological warfare operation; an invasion of the country led by
Colonel Castillo Armas; and a campaign to coerce Guatemalan military officers
into striking against their president. In Guatemala, the CIA developed the tech-
niques of “controlled penetration,” infiltrating student, labor, church, women’s,
business, and media groups and inciting them to oppose the regime through
strikes and demonstrations. Controlled penetration would be repeatedly used to
destabilize regimes throughout Latin America over the next three decades. For
example, CIA agent E. Howard Hunt worked with Archbishop Mariano Rossell
Arellano of Guatemala City. The archbishop issued a vitriolic anti-Arbenz pas-
toral letter, and CIA pilots dropped thousands of copies of the letter throughout
the countryside. In doing so, Archbishop Rossell and Hunt ignored the advice of
the papal nuncio in Guatemala, representing Pope Pius XII in Rome. The papacy
did not think that Decree 900 threatened the Roman Catholic Church.
‘The CIA's unsparing effort to vilify the Arbenz government and generate
panic in Guatemala often took on ludicrous tones. The agency distributed thirty
thousand anti-Communist comic books. It used the famous broadcast, The War
of the Worlds (1938) by Orson Welles, as a model for spreading propaganda
via the radio. U.S. citizens who listened to the broadcast wondered whether the
Martians were invading the homeland. In Guatemala's case, the leader of the
Martians was Colonel Castillo Armas. The CIA station, La Voz de la Liberación,
told Guatemalans that Castillo Armas led a massive army of crack troops. CIA
broadcasters also disseminated “black propaganda,” informing military officers
that Arbenz had concluded a secret pact with the Soviet Union that would lead to
“the bolshevization of army,” complete with political commissars and a Red
Army indoctrination team. All boys and girls sixteen years of age allegedly would
be sent to special camps for one year of labor duty and political training so as to
break the influence of the church and family on young people. When, in January
1954, the Arbenz government exposed key elements of PBSUCCESS, operational
headquarters recommended responding by fabricating a “big human interest
story, like flying saucers, birth of sextuplets in remote area to take play away."
‘A sense of irony and self-awareness did not characterize CIA officials and
operatives, CIA officers justified destroying a popularly elected government by
reasoning that democracy was an “unrealistic” alternative for Guatemala, One
case officer opined that “premature extension of democratic privileges and re-
sponsibilities to a people still accustomed to patriarchal methods can only be
harmful.” When Arbenz exposed parts of the conspiracy, a CIA officer rallied
agents in the field by reminding them that “the morale of the Nazis in the winter
of 1932, just before the seizure of power in Spring 1933, was at all time low ebb.””
CHAPTER 3 + Guatemala—The Mother of Interventions 49
The CIA not only thoughtlessly compared themselves to Nazis but also replicated
tactics employed by the Nazis in the 1930s. Before invading Poland in 1939, Nazi
Germany created a pretext for the invasion by putting German prisoners in uni-
form, murdering them, dumping the bodies along the Polish border, and blaming
Poland for the crime. In “Operation Washtub,” the CIA planted arms along the
Nicaragua's Pacific coast and charged Guatemala with aggression against its
neighbor. The always cooperative President Somoza also reported that a Soviet
submarine surfaced off Nicaragua's coast." Fabricating evidence, especially
planting arms, would be a regular tactic used by the CIA in Latin America during
the Cold War.
The CIA had great difficulties organizing an army to invade Guatemala and
spark a popular rebellion, Castillo Armas organized his forces in Nicaragua and
“invaded” Guatemala from Honduras on 18 June 1954, The Guatemalan colonel
led a ragtag army of 480 men, divided into four groups. The diminutive Castillo
Armas crossed the border dressed in a leather jacket and checked shirt and driv-
ing a battered station wagon. He was photographed with a pistol stuck in the
middle of his waistband, pointing downward. In the preceding months, the CIA
had grown frustrated with the Guatemalan colonel. It inquired about what hap-
pened to some of the money it had passed to him. The CIA considered intelli-
gence and propaganda its purview and accused Castillo Armas of violating
previous agreements. It also alleged that the colonel breached secrecy by not
confining his communications to secure channels. Operational headquarters in
Florida actually suggested that Castillo Armas be administered a polygraph or
“lie-detector” test, or in CIA lingo an “LCFLUTTER.” In mid-May, a month
before the invasion, a CIA analyst offered a devastating assessment of "Calligeris."
The Colonel lacked military aptitude, was stubborn, and judged colleagues by
their loyalty to him rather than on their military skills. Castillo Armas also had no
military support within the country." These critiques proved accurate. Castillo
Armas "shock troops" were no match for Guatemala's six thousand-strong regular
army. By 21 June, Guatemalan forces had soundly defeated the rebel forces in two
encounters. Three days after it started, the invasion was effectively over. La Voz de la
Liberación continued to announce rebel victories. Nonetheless, a sense of despair,
even panic, permeated CIA headquarters and the U.S. embassy in Guatemala City.
The CIA and Ambassador Peurifoy had correctly estimated, however, that
the key to victory was not in relying on Castillo Armas's fighting spirit but in
undermining the loyalty of military officers to President Arbenz. The initial CIA
plan of September 1953 for destabilizing Guatemala observed “that the army is
the only organized element in Guatemala capable of rapidly and decisively alter-
ing the political situation." It lamented that the army high command remained
loyal to the president and the constitution. In late December 1953, Peurifoy
agreed that the United States needed to “select the Guatemalan Armed Forces as
the primary area in which any effort to stimulate anti-government action is most
likely to be fruitful."* The Eisenhower administration accordingly applied all
manners of pressure on Guatemalan officers. It cut off U.S. arms shipments to
50 THEKILLING ZONE
Guatemala and rewarded neighboring Central American nations with new mili-
tary assistance pacts. U.S. diplomatic and military officials and the CIA intensi-
fied daily contacts with Guatemalan officers and worked on passing “on to them
selected statements and observations best calculated to weaken the morale and
shake the faith of the Guatemalan armed forces in the present Guatemalan
regime.” The CIA's disinformation or “black propaganda" campaign included
warning officers that their personal and professional lives would be jeopardized
by President Arbenz's drive to transform the nation “into the beachhead of inter-
national communism in the Western Hemisphere.” By late April 1954, the CIA
had identified key military leaders who it believed would turn against Arbenz,
including Minister of Defense José Angel Sánchez and Chief of the Armed Forces
Colonel Carlos Enrique Díaz.
The Guatemalan military overthrew President Arbenz on 27 June 1954. Mili-
tary officers apparently concluded that the United States would not permit them to
destroy the army of Castillo Armas and that U.S. marines would soon be on the
shores of Guatemala. This fear had been reinforced by President Eisenhower's deci-
sion to permit the CIA to have U.S. pilots stationed in Nicaragua drop bombs on
Guatemala City. The CIA took care, however, not to bomb Guatemalan forces or
installations, fearing that would turn the military against Castillo Armas. Beyond
fearing a U.S. invasion, Guatemalan officers may have also acted out of ideologi-
cal concerns. Military officers were ladinos and had traditionally sided with land-
owners and the church. Many resented the growing empowerment of Mayan
Indians and the pace and direction of change in the Guatemalan countryside.
Raw ambition and greed also informed the high command's decision to under-
mine the constitution. CIA analysts had counted on military officers being "op-
portunistic." One CIA agent had $10,000 a month in bribes to proffer and bought
the loyalty of Colonel Elfego Monzón, a minister without portfolio.
‘The Guatemalan military did not initially embrace the CIA's man, “RUFUS,”
asthe savior of Guatemala. Colonel Díaz seized power on the evening of 27 June in.
the name of the October 1944 Revolution. His action reflected the widespread dis-
dain that military officers had for Castillo Armas. The CIA station chief explained
to Diaz, “Colonel, you are not convenient for American foreign policy.” Authorized
by Secretary of State Dulles to "crack some heads together,” Ambassador Peurifoy
faced down five Guatemalan military juntas." On 1 September 1954, the ambas-
sador announced a settlement with officers that left Castillo Armas the president
of a military junta. Castillo Armas ruled Guatemala until 26 July 1957, when he
was assassinated by a palace guard. The guard was found dead a short time later.
THE LESSONS OF GUATEMALA
‘The CIA intervention in Guatemala taught different historical lessons. President
Eisenhower was immensely pleased that his bold policy had triumphed. The
Truman administration had "lost" Eastern Europe and China. The president
could now claim that with the successful covert interventions in Iran and
CHAPTER 3 * Guatemala—The Mother of Interventions 51
Guatemala, he was rolling back the Communist tide. Eisenhower pointed to
Guatemala with pride during the 1956 presidential campaign. The president had
a grand reception in the White House for CIA agents. He joshed with them, won-
dering why they had let Arbenz escape. And he shook everyone's hand, ending
with CIA Director Dulles, and said, "Thanks Allen, and thanks to all of you.
You've averted a Soviet beachhead in our hemisphere.”
‘The overthrow of Arbenz reinforced the administration's inclination to
ignore the nonintervention principle, disdain Latin American reformers, and
bolster anti-Communist dictators. In subsequent NSC policy statements on Latin
America, the administration included the statement that the United States would
take all actions “deemed appropriate” to sever ties between any Latin American
nation and the Communist bloc. The administration maintained warm relations
with the dictators of the Caribbean basin—the Somoza family, Rafael Trujillo,
and Fulgencio Batista of Cuba. In 1955, in a toast to Batista in Havana, Vice Presi-
dent Richard M. Nixon compared the Cuban dictator to Abraham Lincoln, After
Nixon returned to the United States, he reported that “Latinos had shown a pref-
erence for a dictatorial form of government rather than a democracy.” President
Eisenhower awarded the Legion of Merit, the nation’s highest award for foreign
Vice President Richard Nixon presents a photograph of Dwightand Mamie Eisenhower
to Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista during a visit in 1955 to Havana, The Eisenhower
administration worked closely and uncritically with Latin American dictators in the 1950s.
(Dwight D. Eisenhower Library)
52 THE KILLING ZONE
personages, to Manuel Odría (1948-1956), the military dictator of Peru, and
Colonel Marcos Pérez Jiménez (1952-1958), the strongman of Venezuela. Both.
tyrants earned Washington's gratitude by dutifully following the anti-Communist
line. Both President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles told subordinates
they preferred Latin American democrats, but their policies belied their words. As
John Dreier, the U.S. ambassador to the OAS, observed, Secretary Dulles “was in-
clined to feel that governments which contributed to stability in the area were
preferable to those which introduced instability and social upheaval, which would
lead to Communist penetration.” Dulles, therefore, was “very tolerant” of dictator-
ships “as long as they took a firm stand against communism."°
The CIA emerged from PBSUCCESS brimming with confidence. The over-
throw of Arbenz seemed to validate the tactics of covert intervention. In the thrill
of victory, CIA officials would forget, however, that part of their plan—the "inva-
sion” of Guatemala by Castillo Armas—had failed miserably. The disastrous Bay
of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961 would be patterned on the Guatemalan in-
tervention. Nonetheless, the tactics of “controlled penetration” and psychological
warfare worked effectively in subsequent destabilization campaigns in Brazil,
British Guiana, and Chile. In the aftermath of the successful interventions in Iran
and Guatemala, President Eisenhower commissioned his friend, General Jimmy
Doolittle, to oversee a commission that assessed the CIA's capabilities of covert
intervention. In October 1954, the Doolittle Commission reported to Eisenhower
that winning the Cold War demanded that the United States have “an aggressive
covert psychological, political, and paramilitary organization more effective, more
unique, and, if necessary, more ruthless than that employed by the enemy.” Revis-
iting the language of NSC 68/2, the Doolittle Commission warned that the United
States faced “an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination
by whatever means and by whatever cost.” “No rules” applied in this struggle.
“Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply.” To survive, the
United States would have to reconsider “long-standing American concepts of ‘fair
play"! This philosophy would permeate CIA activities—assassination, terrorism,
and sabotage—in Latin America throughout the Cold War.
The CIA intervention in Guatemala also had a dramatic impact on the
thinking of Latin Americans. The dictatorships predictably acquiesced in the
golpe de estado. But Latin American intellectuals and politicians immediately
understood that the United States had discarded the nonintervention principle.
Legislators in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay passed resolutions either support-
ing President Arbenz or condemning U.S. “aggression” in Guatemala, Student
and labor groups in countries such as Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, and Mexico dem-
onstrated against the intervention and issued statements of protest. In the urbane,
placid city of Santiago, Chile, students dressed in coats and ties burned the U.S.
flag in Plaza de Armas, the central plaza. Chilean protestors also burned Presi-
dent Eisenhower in effigy. The poet and future Nobel Laureate, Pablo Neruda,
and Eduardo Frei Montalva, the future president of Chile, led a mass march on
24 June 1954 through the streets of Santiago in support of President Arbenz.”
CHAPTER 3 + Guatemala—The Mother of Interventions 53
Latin American leftists drew bitter, hard lessons from the U.S. intervention.
Among the leaders of the march in Santiago was Salvador Allende Gossens, the
Chilean socialist. Allende had spoken favorably about how President Roosevelt
had transformed U.S. foreign policy, and in the early 1950s, U.S. diplomatic offi-
cials had welcomed Allende's entry into Chilean electoral politics. U.S. diplomats
judged Allende to be an effective counter to authoritarian Chilean politicians.
But the CIA intervention soured Allende on the United States. His prominent
defense of President Arbenz helped make Allende a national leader. He thereafter
took a trip to the Soviet Union and published an article in Pravda, the Soviet
newspaper, noting that Chileans had "learned the methods of reactionary forces.
from the experience of Guatemala." U.S. officials thereafter considered Allende a
foe of the United States. Allende nearly won the Chilean presidency in 1958,
losing by only thirty thousand votes. At a campaign rally of more than sixty-five
thousand supporters, Allende declared that the U.S. State Department pursued
policies that were “odious and anti-popular."^
Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the young Argentine medical doctor, witnessed the
CIA intervention. During his years as a medical student, Guevara had engaged in a
life-changing experience in 1951-1952, touring South America on a motorcycle
with a friend, His journey was immortalized in the posthumously published travel-
ogue The Motorcycle Diaries (1993) and subsequent feature film (2004) of the same
title. Guevara, who grew up in comfort in Buenos Aires, encountered poverty and
injustice, working in a leper colony in’ Peru and meeting impoverished Chilean
copper workers. After passing his medical examinations in 1953, Guevara left
Buenos Aires, announcing to relatives that his destiny was to be “a soldier of the
Americas.” Guevara eventually made it to revolutionary Guatemala, where he stud-
ied Marxism intensively with other young Latin American intellectuals and avant-
garde artists who had congregated in Guatemala City. Guevara met Cuban rebels.
who, with Fidel Castro, had tried to overthrow Fulgencio Batista in 1953. He also
studied and fell in love with the Peruvian economist, Hilda Gadea, who became his
first wife. Guevara criticized President Arbenz for not destroying his rightist op-
position and not arming his supporters. After the golpe, Guevara fled to the Argen-
tine embassy and escaped Guatemala. Guevara took three lessons from the
overthrow of President Arbenz. To defend a socioeconomic change, revolutionaries
had to destroy the old army and build a new people's army loyal to the revolution.
A government should give peasants and workers the means to defend a revolution
by arming them. Finally, Latin American revolutionaries should anticipate the
United States sponsoring a counterrevolution.** Guevara would apply these lessons
in combating domestic and international opposition to the Cuban Revolution.
GUATEMALA IN BLOOD
Whereas US. officials and Latin American leaders debated the meaning of the
CIA intervention, Guatemalans suffered the consequences of the golpe. Greg
Grandin, a historian of the rural savagery in Guatemala, estimates that the
51 THEKILLINGZ
ONE
military,
police, and vigilante groups murdered between three thousand and five
thousand supporters of Arbenz in the immediate months after the overthrow."
Throughout its planning, the CIA discussed assassination with Castillo Armas
and compiled a list, labeled a "disposal list," of Guatemalans to be executed. One
agent waxed literary about assassination, noting on 1 June 1954 that "no real
analysis has been made to date to determine who is ‘to be’ or ‘not to be." A CIA
research paper, “A Study in Assassination,” discussed the advantages and disad-
vantages of killing tools and methods, including employing firearms, explosives,
blunt and edged weapons, and manual techniques. Much of the killing took place
in the countryside, where the landed oligarchs took their vengeance on peasants
who had gained land and power from Decree 900. On a United Fruit plantation,
more than one thousand rural organizers were taken into custody and murdered.
In the banana town of Morales, a United Fruit foreman, Rosendo Pérez, fired
his machine gun into the face of an Afro-Guatemalan union organizer and then
executed more than twenty other captured union organizers.
“Communist” became a term loosely applied in post-Arbenz Guatemala
under a new law, “the Preventive and Penal Law against Communism.” The
CIA helped Castillo Armas's regime compile a register of those who allegedly par-
ticipated in Communist activities, By November 1954, the list included more
President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his wife meet with President Carlos Castillo Armas
of Guatemala and his wife in Denver, Colorado, in 1955. Eisenhower was recuperating
from a heart attack. Eisenhower made this extraordinary gesture to demonstrate that he
considered the covert CIA intervention inGuatemala a great Cold War triumph. Two years
later, Castillo Armas would be assassinated. (U.S. Army/Dwight D. Eisenhower Library)
CHAPTER 3 + Guatemala—The Mother of Interventions 55
than seventy-two thousand names. In essence, Guatemalans who had publicly
identified with the October Revolution were dubbed criminals. Castillo Armas
appointed José Bernabé Linares to be the new director of the Guardia Judicial, the
same post Linares held under dictator Jorge Ubico. Linares had established a repu-
tation for torturing those in custody with electric-shock baths and head-shrinking
steel skullcaps. A Guatemalan official boasted to a U.S. embassy officer that with
the new anti-Communist law, which suspended the writ of habeas corpus, “we can
pick up practically anybody we want and hold them as long as we want."
Beyond suppressing political dissent, Castillo Armas focused his counter-
revolution on crushing peasants and workers, the beneficiaries of the October
Revolution. The franchise was again limited to literate Guatemalans, effectively
disenfranchising the indigenous population, Decree 900 had benefited one hun-
dred thousand families, or about five hundred thousand people. Castillo Armas
dispossessed the campesinos, returning the land to United Fruit and the rural
oligarchy. Castillo Armas instituted a U.S.-designed land resettlement program,
but it assisted only about twenty-five thousand Guatemalans. By 1956, the U.S.
trade union, the American Federation of Labor, which had supported the over-
throw of Arbenz, was reporting that agricultural workers were "in conditions of
servitude if not actual slavery,” working eighty-four hours a week and earning
fifty cents a day. The American Federation of Labor was further appalled by the
regime's labor policies. It repealed the 1947 labor law, abolished collective bar-
gaining rights, and predictably labeled trade union activity as “communism.™*
The Eisenhower administration pledged to foster a democratic, modern
Guatemala. As Secretary of States Dulles observed, "it was important that an ex-
ample be given to the free world of the success of a people in recovering after Com-
munist rule.” The administration dedicated more than $100 million in economic
assistance, accounting for 15 percent of U.S. grant aid to Latin America in the
19505. U.S. political officers, economic technicians, military advisors, and trade
union officials trooped to Guatemala, proffering advice and money. As a historian
of the counterrevolution noted, the United States nearly established a "parallel
government" in Guatemala from 1954 to 1961."” But the parallel government did
not produce a peaceful, prosperous, or socially just nation. Castillo Armas and his
successor, the archconservative General Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes (1958-1963),
restored the traditional arbiters of Guatemalan life—upper-class ladinos, landed
interests, the Church hierarchy, and the military—to their accustomed positions
of privilege and power. Guatemalan leaders understood that U.S. officials would
overlook financial corruption and political repression as long as they trumpeted
anti-Communist views and respected U.S. investments. President Ydígoras per-
mitted the CIA to train Cubans on Guatemalan soil in 1960-1961 in preparation
for the Bay of Pigs invasion. The renewed injustice in Guatemala troubled even
CIA agents. David Phillips, who directed La Voz de la Liberacién, condemned
Castillo Armas as “a bad president, tolerating corruption throughout his govern-
ment and kowtowing to United Fruit Company more than to his own people.”
By the mid-1960s, Guatemala had descended into a hell of violence, torture,
and death that lasted three decades. By the 1990s, at least two hundred thousand
56 THE KILLING ZONE
Guatemalans had perished; more than 90 percent of these deaths came at the
hands of the military or their grisly allies, paramilitary groups and right-wing
death squads with names like Mano Blanca (“White Hand”) and Ojo por Ojo
(“Eye for an Eye”). Perhaps another two hundred thousand Guatemalans fled the
terror, running away first to Mexico and then sometimes to the United States.
The CIA intervention in 1954 had effectively removed Guatemala's nonviolent,
political center. Within the context of both Latin American and U.S. history, the
labor and land reforms pursued by Presidents Arévalo and Arbenz were moder-
ate and aimed at redressing Guatemala's centuries of socioeconomic injustice.
After 1954, Guatemalans demonized one another, confronting their political op-
ponents with horrifying aggression. Richard H. Immerman, one of the first
chroniclers of the CIA intervention, concluded in 1982 that “the CIA's 1954 coup
made moderation impossible.” In 1999, Guatemala's “Truth Commission,” The
Commission for Historical Clarification (Comisión para el Esclarecimiento
Histórico) seconded Immerman's conclusion in its twelve-volume study of
Guatemala's agony from 1954 to 1996. The commission, which was sponsored by
the United Nations, observed that "after the overthrow of Colonel Jacobo Arbenz
in 1954, there was a rapid reduction of the opportunity for political expressions."
‘Thereafter, “fundamentalist anti-communism" led to the outlawing of “the ex-
tensive and diverse social movement and consolidated the restrictive and exclu-
sionary nature of the political system."
After the initial bloodletting in the months after Arbenz's overthrow, the
Castillo Armas and Ydígoras regimes suppressed strikes and demonstrations
against the loss of land and labor rights with selective brutality. Guatemalan gov-
ernments resorted to wholesale, indiscriminate violence after the political left re-
sorted to guerrilla warfare. On 13 November 1960, young, nationalistic military
officers, in the MR-13 Rebellion, rose in a rebellion against Ydígoras. The officers
protested both the government's corruption and the CIA' use of Guatemala as a
training base for Cuban exiles. Deciding immediately that Fidel Castro was
behind the rebellion, President Eisenhower authorized the CIA's B-26 bombers
already stationed in Guatemala to bomb and strafe the rebels. Eisenhower re-
peated the same mistake of 1954—wrongly assuming that international Com-
munists had infiltrated Guatemala. Within a few days, the government broke the
military rebellion. But some young officers continued the fight, deciding that
they would have to enlist workers and peasants to their cause if they wanted to
restore Guatemala’s sovereignty and end its debasement.” Guatemalan Commu-
nists who had survived the golpe of 1954 and others who believed in the ideals of
the October Revolution also decided to take up arms, proclaiming that peaceful
and legal forms of political struggle were not possible in Guatemala. Young radi-
cals, who were inspired by the Cuban Revolution, also joined the fight, forming
the Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (Armed Rebel Forces). By the mid-1960s, several
hundred guerrillas operated in Guatemala.
‘The John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson administration intensified
Guatemala's agony. The United States wanted democracy and peaceful evolutionary
HARVARD
CHAPTER 3 * Guatemala—The Mother of Interventions 57
progress but raised the alarm when Ydígoras announced that he would permit an
open presidential election in 1963. Former President Arévalo vowed to return to
Guatemala and compete in the election. Arévalo had denounced the 1954 inter-
vention in his scathing allegory, The Shark and the Sardines (1956). He had a good
chance of winning in a multicandidate election because he represented the pro-
gressive hopes of the past. The Kennedy administration flatly opposed Arévalo's
return to office. In a meeting, President Kennedy warned Ydigoras that Arévalo
“would undoubtedly campaign as an anti-Communist moderate, but he would
be dangerous if he won [the] election." Colonel King of the CIA also called on
Yáigoras. In a meeting with the Guatemalan foreign minister, Secretary of State
Dean Rusk referred to the "Arévalo menace.” When the Guatemalan president
inexplicably resisted U.S. pressure, the Kennedy administration encouraged a
military golpe. On 31 March 1963, Colonel Enrique Peralta Azurdia (1963-1966)
seized power. The U.S. ambassador in Guatemala City reported that Colonel
Peralta and his men acted "from an honest conviction that such action was re-
quired to protect the country from a succession of events which would once again
lead it into Communist control." In 1966, the Guatemalan military scheduled a
free election, and a non-Communist liberal, Julio César Méndez Montenegro
(1966-1970), won. Méndez Montenegro, who was Guatemala's last civilian presi-
dent for sixteen years, was allowed to take office by the military only after he
signed a statement relinquishing civilian oversight of the military and giving it
carte blanche in internal security matters.
Beyond encouraging military domination of Guatemala, the Kennedy and
Johnson administrations bolstered the nation's coercive forces. In September
1961, President Kennedy approved military assistance for Guatemala, accepting
a finding that it was among the “prime targets” for Communist subversion,
Between 1961 and 1963, the administration sent $4.3 million in military aid
compared to the $950,000 in military aid that the Eisenhower administration
delivered between 1956 and 1960. The Defense Department assured President
Kennedy that the new aid would help Colonel Peralta maintain order. U.S. Army
Special Forces and Air Commando teams visited Guatemala, and Guatemalan
officers received counterinsurgency training in a center established in their coun-
try. Seven hundred twenty officers a year also took basic police courses and stud-
ied riot control techniques under U.S. auspices. The Kennedy and Johnson
administrations would ultimately supply the 6,500 Guatemalan police officers
and men with all their handguns, 50 percent of their shoulder weapons, and
more than 6,000 tear gas grenades. As Guatemala's Truth Commission noted,
USS. military assistance “was directed towards reinforcing the national intelli-
gence apparatus and for training the officer corps in counterinsurgency tech-
niques, key factors which had significant bearing on human rights violations
during the armed confrontation.” U.S. military aid and the concomitant anti-
Communist policies culminated “in criminal counterinsurgency.”*
‘The Guatemalan army and police made ferocious use of their new hardware
and training. Under the rubric of Operacién Limpieza (“Operation Cleanup”),
58 THE KILLING ZONE
Guatemalan forces, advised by U.S. police trainers, carried out eighty roundups
and multiple assassinations in early 1966. In March 1966, they captured about
thirty insurgents, including Victor Manuel Gutiérrez, a leader of the PGT and
former ally of President Arbenz. Security forces interrogated, tortured, and exe-
cuted the prisoners. Judicial police subjected Gutiérrez to a torture known as la
capucha, covering his head with a cowl and shocking him with electrical currents.
Gutiérrez apparently succumbed to a heart attack during the torture. Security
forces placed the bodies of Gutiérrez and the other insurgents in burlap bags and
dumped them in the Pacific Ocean.” By denying access to the corpses, security
forces intensified the grief of the victims’ friends and relatives. Guatemalan secur-
ity forces had also established a new, terrifying precedent in Latin America. In the
1970s, the military and death squads in Argentina and Chile would similarly dis-
pose of the bodies of their victims, dropping them in the ocean or burying them in
the desert, The concept of the “disappeared,” or desaparecido, would become a ter-
rifying reality in Latin America. People would vanish and security forces would
deny any knowledge of what happened. Parents throughout Latin America, like the
mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, would spend decades vainly trying
to discover the fate of their children, Beyond “disappearing” people, Guatemalan
security forces initiated the practice of “scorched earth” tactics, destroying villages
to undermine popular support for insurgents. In October 1966, security forces
murdered eight thousand rural folk, setting the stage for far worse atrocities against
the indigenous population in the 1980s. The political right's brutality knew no
bounds, In 1968, security forces murdered Rogelia Cruz Martinez, an architecture
student, leftist, and former “Miss Guatemala” who had represented her nation at
the Miss Universe contest in Long Beach, California, in 1959. In this case, the
butchers publicly displayed Cruz’s mutilated and raped, naked corpse."
‘The forces of the left acted violently, blowing up electrical towers, attacking
military installations, murdering government officials, robbing banks, and kid-
napping wealthy Guatemalans for ransom. They also attacked the U.S. presence,
Killing U.S. military advisors and, in August 1968, assassinating Ambassador
John Gordon Mein. But nothing in the history of Western law, philosophy, or
statecraft justified the wholesale, wanton murder that the Guatemalan military
perpetrated on the population. The response to armed insurgents transcended
issues of defending the state or fighting the good Cold War fight against Soviet-
or Cuban-inspired Marxism. The military, supported by elites, landed oligarchs,
and the Church hierarchy, was determined to preserve the pre-1944 status
quo. John Longan, a U.S. security trainer, organized Operación Limpieza. As he
considered the course and conduct of the operation, Longan conceded that
Guatemalan security forces “will be continued to be used, as in the past, not
so much as protectors of the nation against Communist enslavement, but as the
oligarchy’s oppressors of legitimate social change."
In the words of historian Piero Gleijeses, the U.S. covert intervention in
Guatemala in 1954 was the “original sin."* It condemned Guatemala to a life of
horror. For the United States, however, it would be a sin worth committing again
in the Cold War.
CHAPTER 4
»
War against Cuba
Fe more than five decades, the United States has pursued hostile policies
toward Cuba under the leadership of Fidel Castro (1959-2008) and his
brother, Raúl Castro (2008- ). As of 2014, the United States has not conducted
diplomatic relations with Cuba since 1961, and it has maintained the trade em-
bargo it imposed on the Caribbean island in 1962. Five years after overthrowing
an alleged Communist government in Guatemala, the United States encountered
anew, threatening presence in its traditional sphere of influence. Fidel Castro and
his 26th of July Movement seized power in early 1959 and rapidly transformed
Cuba into a radical state allied with the Soviet Union. Castro, an authoritarian
populist, converted to communism and proclaimed his duty to make revolution
throughout the world. The United States reacted to the Castro challenge with fury
and force. Beyond isolating Cuba, diplomatically and economically, U.S. officials.
waged war against the island, sponsoring an invasion and authorizing sabotage
and terrorism. The United States also conspired to assassinate Cuban leaders.
During the first ten years of life with Fidel Castro, the United States did not suc-
ceed in toppling the Castro regime, although it managed to contain the Cuban
Revolution. Nonetheless, the United States remained obsessed with Castro's
Cuba. ‘The basic thrust of U.S. policy toward the rest of Latin America would be
to prevent a "second Cuba" in the region.
THE CUBAN REVOLUTION
Fidel Castro and his band of bearded guerrillas, los barbudos, rode on tanks into
Havana in January 1959, Their triumphant entry into the capital city, which was
greeted with wild, delirious crowds, marked the culmination of Castro's six-year
struggle against dictator Fulgencio Batista. Batista had used his control of the
Cuban army to dominate the island's political life since the 1930s and had occu-
pied the presidency between 1940 and 1944. In 1952, Batista again seized presi-
dential power. With his army and police in disarray, the venal and vicious Batista
59
60 THEKILLING ZONE
hustled his relatives onto an airplane as the New Year dawned and flew to the
safety of the Dominican Republic, the home of dictator Rafael Trujillo.
Fidel Castro (1926- ), the son of a prosperous sugar planter who had emi-
grated from Spain, had led a privileged life. He was a good athlete and an excellent
student, attending a preparatory school administered by Jesuit priests and then
earning a law degree from the University of Havana. Castro participated in stu-
dent politics at the university. Castro first came to international attention on
26 July 1953 when he led a group of 135 young rebels, students, urban workers,
and peasants in a disastrous storming of the army barracks at Moncada, located
in the Cuban city of Santiago. He received a fifteen-year sentence for his rebellion
but was freed from prison in 1955 by the confident Batista. Castro and his brother
Raúl fled to Mexico to plan another assault on the Batista regime. In 1956, Fidel
Castro and eighty-one other men struggled ashore after their leaky ship, Granma,
beached on Cuba's eastern shore. Within a few days, Batista forces killed most
of the insurgents. The sixteen survivors, who included the Castro brothers and
Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, retreated into the Sierra Maestra,
the mountains of southeastern Cuba. Castro steadily rebuilt his forces to more
than 1,000 men and launched hit-and-run attacks against Bastista's forces. The
turn to guerrilla warfare was out of necessity rather than choice. Castro had
counted on a mass uprising following the landing of the Granma. Che Guevara
especially designed the guerrilla warfare tactics. The determination and courage of
the guerrillas inspired other Cubans, and by 1958 the insurgency had spread from
rural areas into the cities. Batista’s power and legitimacy were as much under-
mined by demonstrations and strikes conducted by professional, union, and stu-
dent organizations as by Castro's forces. By the end of the year, support for Batista
had evaporated. Castro, an authoritarian, proved effective at quickly gathering
power in his own hands and overwhelming the other anti-Batista groups."
What Castro and the 26th of July Movement intended for Cuba was initially
unclear. The manifesto of the movement was Castro's long, rambling, “History
Will Absolve Me” speech, which he gave at his trial and subsequently rewrote in
prison. Castro promised agrarian and industrial reform, administrative honesty,
and a liberal and progressive constitution for Cuba. During the two years he
spent in the Sierra Maestra, Castro released letters and issued declarations that
his movement was libertarian and democratic, but also reformist and perhaps
socialistic. Those thoughts had been especially conveyed in a dramatic interview
Castro gave to New York Times correspondent Herbert Matthews, who was spir-
ited to Castro's mountain hideaway in February 1957. Although his statements
were vague and ambiguous, scholars do not believe that Castro was trying to
deceive Cubans or the international community. Prior to 1959, Castro lacked a
clear vision for a post-Batista Cuba, and he had not committed himself to an
ideological doctrine. Castro was almost certainly not a Marxist-Leninist, an ally
of the Soviet Union, or an agent of the international Communist movement. The
Cuban Communist Party, which was one of Latin America's largest Communist
parties with seventeen thousand members, provided no substantial aid to the
CHAPTER 4 + War against Cuba 6l
Fidel Castro, his brother, Raúl Castro (kneeling in front of Fidel), and other members of
Castro's revolutionary staff appear in southeastern Cuba in June 1957. Castro and his
followers had been fighting and organizing against the regime of Fulgencio Batista since
landing in Cuba on the Granma in December 1956. Castro and his guerrilla fighters would
claim credit for toppling Batista and would subsequently seize control of Cuba in January
1959. In fact, the uprising against Batista was widespread, with many urban insurgents.
(© Bettmann/CORBIS)
26th of July Movement. Cuban Communists had a long history of cooperating
with Batista. As exemplified in analyses published in the Soviet Union's official
newspaper, Pravda, international Communists judged Castro a well-intentioned
but naive, romantic revolutionary.”
Like other educated Cubans, Castro held ambivalent views about the United
States. He appreciated the wealth and technological prowess of the United States
and wished the same for Cuba. He also enjoyed U.S. popular culture, playing
baseball and following major league teams. But Cubans resented the role that the
United States had played in Cuba's history. After assisting Cuba's struggle for in-
dependence in 1898, the United States attached the Platt Amendment (1901-1933)
to the Cuban constitution, giving the United States the right to intervene militar-
ily and oversee Cuba's internal affairs. The United States also created a perman-
ent military base, Guantánamo Bay, in Cuba. U.S. troops repeatedly landed in
independent Cuba, and U.S. warships plied the waters in sight of Havana's harbor.
‘The U.S. ambassador was usually considered the second most powerful figure
in Cuba, after the Cuban president. With their money guaranteed by the bayo-
nets of U.S. marines, U.S. investors came to dominate Cuba's economic life. With
62 THEKILLING ZONE
approximately $900 million invested in Cuba in 1959, U.S. investors accounted
for 40 percent of the country's sugar production. U.S. companies also controlled
public utilities, oil refineries, mines, railroads, and the tourist industry. Cubans
took further offense that U.S. tourists considered Havana their playground for
gambling, narcotics, and prostitution. The U.S. criminal underworld, “the Mafia,”
operated freely in Batista's Cuba. The celebrated film, The Godfather Part II (1974),
truthfully portrays the sordid underside of life in Cuba in the late 1950s. Castro
took note of the popular feeling that the United States had stolen Cuba's inde-
pendence in issuing his first statement after Batista's army capitulated. In a radio
broadcast on 1 January 1959, Castro pledged: “This time, fortunately for Cuba, the
revolution will truly achieve power. It won't be as in 1895, when the Americans
came at the last hour and took over the country."
Reforming Cuban society inevitably meant altering both Cuba's peculiar so-
cioeconomic structure and the overwhelming U.S. presence in Cuba. Casual ob-
servers might judge Cuba a relatively prosperous country in the 19505. In
international rankings, Cuba stood thirty-first in the world in per capita income—
an income roughly similar to that of Latin American countries like Argentina,
Uruguay, and Venezuela. Havana was a glittering metropolis, the Malecón was a
stunning walkway along Havana's northern shore, and tourists loved the island's
gorgeous beaches. But there were grave structural imbalances in the Cuban econ-
omy. About one-third of Cuba's labor force was employed in sugar production.
However, sugar production required a sizeable labor force only during the harvest.
period, or zafra; most of the year, during the tiempo muerto, or “dead time,” rural
workers were unemployed. Sugar work, combined with some government-funded
road maintenance work, provided six hundred thousand rural workers only four
to five months of gainful employment a year. In the impoverished countryside,
where more than 40 percent of Cubans lived, access to schools and health-care
facilities was limited. More than 40 percent of rural folk could not read or write.
‘Afro-Cubans, who especially predominated among the rural proletariat, suffered
the further indignity of experiencing racial discrimination and even segregation.
Population pressures compounded Cuba's problems. Increasing at 2.5 percent a
year, the population had grown from 5 million in 1945 to 7 million in 1960. The
Cuban economy could not accommodate the fifty thousand young people who
were entering the work force each year. Perhaps one-third of Cubans were un-
employed or underemployed.‘
Cubans, including Castro, blamed the United States for Cuba's poverty and
backwardness. Cubans held that the constant U.S. meddling in Cuban life had
fostered a political system that had produced only corrupt tyrants like Batista or
weak, inept rulers like Carlos Prío Socarrás (1948-1952). Whereas they de-
nounced U.S. interference, Cubans felt compelled to compare their lot to the life-
styles of their rich and famous northern neighbors. Cubans, who lived as close as
ninety miles to Florida, interpreted their socioeconomic status within the context
of the United States, not the Dominican Republic or Nicaragua. What mattered
to Cubans was that Cuba was significantly poorer than Mississippi, the poorest
CHAPTER 4 * War against Cuba 63
USS. state. Frustrated Cubans further held that their nation lacked the economic
independence that would give them the opportunity to build a prosperous soci-
ety. Throughout the twentieth century, the United States controlled Cuba's trade.
Under the Sugar Act (1948), the United States reserved 55 percent of sugar con-
sumption for domestic producers and 45 percent for foreign sources. Cuba was
assigned a generous 70 percent of the foreign quota. The sugar trade represented
about 80 percent of the value of Cuba's exports. In turn, 80 percent of Cuba's im-
ports came from the United States. The bilateral trade arrangement gave Cubans
access to U.S. consumer goods, albeit not a U.S. standard of living. Cubans fur-
ther understood that the Sugar Act gave the United States enormous power over
Cuban society. By altering or repealing the Sugar Act, the United States could
generate chaos in Cuba. This sense of dependence and helplessness fueled Cuban
demands for change."
Castro's agrarian reform law of April 1959 set the tone for U.S.- Cuban rela-
tions. The law expropriated farmlands larger than one thousand acres, with com-
pensation to be paid in Cuban bonds and based on the land's declared value for
taxes in 1958, The revolutionary government vowed to create a life of equality and
justice for the rural poor. Sugar barons, both foreign and domestic, had predict-
ably undervalued their land in Batista's Cuba. Howls of protest from Washington,
US. investors, and propertied Cubans seemed only to encourage the Castro gov-
ernment to limit further the prerogatives of the wealthy in Cuba. Tens of thou-
sands of Cubans fled the island, landing in Miami, Florida. Cuban revolutionaries
also drove the criminal underworld out of Cuba, closing down the narcotics
rings, brothels, and gambling dens. By the end of 1961, Castro had expropriated
US. investments in Cuba:
Between 1959 and 1961, the Cuban Revolution took on the tone and shape of
a Communist revolution. On 1 December 1961, Castro publicly declared: “I am a
Marxist-Leninist, and I will continue to be a Marxist-Leninist until the last days
of my life.” In moving toward communism, Fidel Castro joined his brother Raúl
and Che Guevara, both committed radicals. Castro probably concluded that
communism provided solutions to Cuba's unique and pressing socioeconomic
problems. The Soviet Union, given its impressive economic growth rate since 1917
and scientific triumphs in outer space in the 1950s, seemed a viable model for
poor countries. As he faced domestic opposition, Castro also welcomed and em-
braced Cuban Communists. Communism may have also suited Castro's authori-
tarian personality. The Communist concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”
would enhance Castro's drive for personal domination of Cuba. Historians of Latin
American history have often noted that Castro was a Latin-American type—a
caudillo or strongman in the tradition of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1832-1835) of
Argentina. But Castro was a caudillo with political ideas.*
As his growing radicalism reaped mounting hostility from the United States,
Castro turned to the Soviet Union for help. In the 1950s, Soviet Premier Nikita
Khrushchev had widened Soviet contacts with Asian and African nations emerging
from colonialism, But the Soviets gave short shrift to Latin America, conceding the
64 THE KILLING ZONE
overwhelming U.S. influence in the region. In 1959, Soviet leaders began to sense
the radical nature of the Cuban Revolution. In April 1959, the Soviets approved
Raúl Castro's request to send Spanish-speaking military officers to Cuba to help
reorganize the Cuban military. Remembering what happened to President Jacobo
Arbenz Guzman of Guatemala, Cubans wanted an army loyal to the revolution. In
October 1959, the Soviets sent Alexsandr Alekseev as an unofficial envoy to discuss
establishing diplomatic relations. Alekseev, who was fluent in Spanish, served as the
Soviet ambassador in Havana from 1962 to 1968. In February 1960, at Castro's re-
quest, the Soviets held a trade fair in Cuba and signed a commercial agreement with
the Cubans, which included purchasing Cuban sugar. At least initially, the Soviet
Union was overjoyed to join the Castro-led revolution, Anastas Mikoyan (1895-1978),
the first deputy premier of the Soviet Union, attended the trade fair in Cuba. As
Mikoyan recounted to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, “You Americans must realize
what Cuba means to us old Bolsheviks. We have been waiting all of our lives for a
country to go communist without the Red Army. It has happened in Cuba, and it
makes us feel like boys again." As the 1960s progressed, the Soviets would learn to
temper their boyish enthusiasm for the Cuban Revolution.
THE CUBAN THREAT
Fidel Castro's rapid elimination of the historic U.S. economic influence in Cuba
threatened by example the approximately $8 billion in U.S. direct investments in
the rest of Latin America. U.S. companies had massive investments in strategically
vital resources such as Chilean copper and Venezuelan oil. As United Fruit Com-
pany officials had done in the early 1950s in regard to Guatemala, U.S. capitalists—
cattle barons and sugar executives—bombarded presidential administrations with
livid complaints about Cuban perfidy. But in responding to the Castro threat, U.S.
officials in the Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson adminis-
trations did not regularly use the language of property rights or refer to the tenets
of international capitalism in their public pronouncements and private delibera-
tions about Cuba. They perceived Castro’s Cuba as a direct threat to U.S. national
security in the Cold War. Destroying U.S. economic influence in Latin America
was part of the threat, but not the core of the challenge that the Cuban Revolution
presented. U.S. leaders vowed to destroy the Castro regime because they feared
that revolutionary Cuba would spread international communism throughout the
hemisphere. On his last day in office, 19 January 1961, President Eisenhower told
President-elect Kennedy that “in the long-run the United States cannot allow the
Castro government to continue to exist in Cuba." President Kennedy accepted his
predecessor's judgment. As his administration often put it, communism in the
Western Hemisphere imperiled the United States, impeded the U.S. ability to act
in other areas of the world, and threatened to become a divisive domestic political
issue. However, U.S. presidential administrations exaggerated the dangers that
Cuba presented to the United States and took actions that intensified the U.S. con-
flict with Cuba.
CHAPTER 4 + War against Cuba 65
In early 1962, Fidel Castro, in his Second Declaration of Havana, asserted that
"the duty of every revolutionary is to make revolution." In October 1965, Castro
read aloud on television Che Guevara's farewell letter to the Cuban leader.
Guevara, who was popularly identified with guerrilla warfare, vowed "to fight
against imperialism wherever it may be.” In January 1966, Cuba hosted the
Tricontinental Conference, attended by five hundred delegates from the “tricon-
tinent" of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The conference created a new orga-
nization, with headquarters in Havana, to support armed revolutionary activity
throughout the world. In Castro's words, "the battle will take on the most violent
terms.” In April 1967, the Tricontinental organization received a message from
Guevara “somewhere in the world.” Che Guevara was putting into practice his
commitment to armed revolutionary struggle, leading a small band of guerrillas
in southeastern Bolivia. Beyond the rhetoric and resolutions and Guevara's ex-
ploits, Cuba served as the “Liberation Department” or “guerrilla central” for Latin
American radicals. Perhaps fifteen hundred to two thousand Latin Americans, by
CIA estimates, received political indoctrination and military training in revolu-
tionary Cuba in the early 1960s.’
In analyzing and assessing Cuba's commitment to spread revolution in Latin
America, a variety of issues must be highlighted. In the 1960s, Cuba covertly as-
sisted radicals in Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, and, most notably, Venezuela. In
Venezuela, radicals attacked the popularly elected government of Romulo Betan-
court (1959-1964) and tried to intimidate Venezuelans into not participating in
the December 1963 presidential elections that led to the victory of Raúl Leoni
(1964-1969). Although Venezuela's Communist Party for a time perpetrated vio-
lence, the chief agitators and terrorists were young members of Movimiento de
Izquiereda Revolucionaria (Movement of the Revolutionary Left), or MIR. Venezuela's
guerrilla fighters, who numbered between one thousand and two thousand, cre-
ated havoc and committed unspeakable crimes in the country. The Venezuelan
government reported that more than four hundred people died in revolts in mid-
1962. But blame for death and destruction in Venezuela could not be mainly as-
cribed to Fidel Castro. A CIA study concluded that MIR members “ran their own
shows,” “were a home-grown revolutionary organization,” and could be described
as “an extreme-nationalist, revolutionary nationalist movement.” Venezuelan
‘Communists, who entered the fray in late 1962 and quit by 1965, rejected Castro's
criticism of their actions, deploring “the role of revolutionary ‘pope’ which Fidel
Castro arrogates to himself.” Cuba's intervention in Venezuela also did not occur
ina political vacuum. President Betancourt was Castro's chief adversary in Latin
America. He permitted anti-Castro Cubans to operate from Venezuela. The
Venezuelan president supported U.S. efforts to overthrow Castro, even inform-
ing U.S. officials that he favored the assassination of Castro, would finance it,
and help find someone to do the job.”
President Betancourt and the Venezuelan military and police gradually sup-
pressed the leftist rebellion. Betancourt's success was repeated throughout Latin
America in the 1960s. Radicals failed throughout the region, as highlighted by
66 THE KILLING ZONE
the Bolivian military's capture of Che Guevara's pathetic band of warriors in
1967. The memory of Guevara's ill-fated mission creates an impression that
Cubans were engaged in guerrilla warfare through the hemisphere in the 1960s.
In fact, scholars have estimated that only about forty Cubans fought in Latin
America during the 1960s. Cuban volunteers, soldiers, and doctors joined anti-
colonial movements in the 1960s, but in Africa, not Latin America. Between 1962
and 1964, perhaps two thousand Cubans operated in Algeria, Zaire (Congo), and
Guinea-Bissau. This preceded the massive Cuban military intervention in Angola
in 1975-1976. U.S. intelligence analysts were unaware, for example, that Guevara
led a column of Cuban fighters in Zaire in 1965. Cubans yearned for the heroic
life and the mystique of guerrilla warfare. Castro further theorized that Cuba,
a racially mixed, impoverished, colonized nation, shared a special empathy for
African liberation movements. But the Cuban interventions also involved real-
politik. The United States waged war against Cuba. Cubans feared a U.S. invasion
of the island. Castro and his advisors concluded that the United States would live
with the Cuban Revolution only when confronted with revolutionary movements
throughout the world. As one Cuban put it, by challenging “the Yankees along all
the paths of the world,” Cuba would divide their forces, “so that they wouldn't be
able to descend on us (or any other country) with all their might.” In Che Guevara's
words, Cuba's survival depended on nurturing “two, three, many Vietnams."!
Castro and Guevara rarely bothered to inform the Soviet Union about their
African adventures. U.S. officials assumed that Castro served as a surrogate for the
Soviet Union and that Cuba would do the Soviets’ bidding, spreading the Com-
munist manifesto throughout Latin America. But Cuban-Soviet relations were
filled with tensions and inconsistencies. Between 1959 and 1962, the partnership
intensified, culminating in the Cuban agreement to allow the Soviet Union to in-
stall nuclear-tipped, ballistic missiles on the island. The Soviets also became the
underwriters of the Cuban Revolution, providing economic aid and vital resources
like oil. But between October 1962 and 1968, bilateral relations deteriorated. The
Cubans believed that the Soviets had sacrificed Cuban security in negotiating an
end to the Cuban missile crisis. They considered the noninvasion pledge that the
United States gave to the Soviets worthless because the United States continued to
wage a covert war against Cuba from 1963 to 1965, In Guevara's words, the reso-
lution of the missile crisis represented “sad and luminous days” for the Cubans.
Cuban revolutionaries had learned the shocking, awful truth that the Soviets were
not prepared to die for either Cuba or the cause. The Soviets wanted national se-
curity, economic growth, and better relations or a détente with the United States.
From November 1962 through 1979, Soviet-American relations steadily improved,
with gaudy summit meetings, nuclear-arms control agreements, cultural ex-
changes, and trade treaties. From the Cuban perspective, the pursuit of détente by
the Soviets exposed them as cowardly imperialists.”
‘The Soviets drew different lessons from the missile crisis, They saw the
Cubans as emotional and irresponsible, recalling that in the midst of the crisis
Castro had sent a letter to Khrushchev recommending a preemptive nuclear
CHAPTER 4 + Waragainst Cuba 67
strike against the United States. This could have led to general war and the de-
struction of human civilization. The Cubans had to learn to follow the Soviets’
lead and remember that within the world socialist movement Soviet security had
the highest priority. In terms of Latin America, this meant not challenging the
United States in its traditional sphere of influence. The Soviets also wanted to
maintain control over Latin America's Communist parties, which ranged in
number from one hundred fifty members in Panama to more than sixty thou-
sand in Argentina. Moscow judged Latin America's revolutionary potential as
dismal and advised local Communists to organize and to eschew violence and
subversion. U.S. intelligence analysts ironically agreed with Moscow, rating the
Argentine Communist Party, the largest in the Western Hemisphere, as "not an.
influential political force.” When Castro visited the Soviet Union in May 1963,
Premier Khrushchev informed the Cuban that the Soviet Union would not sup-
port armed insurrection in Latin America and that Castro should not attempt to
dictate the policies of Latin American Communists. The Cuban foreign minister
would later say that Castro believed that Khrushchev wanted nothing to do with
Latin America and “would never send a single revolver to the region.” The Soviets
took a dim view of the Tricontinental Conference and Castro's sarcastic charac:
terization of Latin American Communists as more eager to pass resolutions than
to foment revolution. The new Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev (1964-1982),
erupted when he found out in 1966 that Che Guevara was in Bolivia. Brezhnev's
colleague, Alexei Kosygin, delivered a stern rebuke to Castro in Havana in mid-
1967, demanding that Cuba cease its meddling in Latin America, Remarkably,
Kosygin had just concluded a summit with President Johnson in Glassboro, New
Jersey, and implied to the president that he would deliver just such a message to
Castro. The Cold War between Cuba and the Soviet Union continued until mid-
1968. Castro declined to attend the fiftieth anniversary celebration in Moscow of
the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917. Brezhnev cut Cuba's oil supplies.
Castro ordered the arrest of Cuba's pro-Soviet Communist Party leader, Aníbal
Escalante. Escalante would receive a fifteen-year sentence for treason.”
Ideological blinders prevented U.S. officials from always grasping the essence
of the Cuban-Soviet split or assessing the shortcomings of the efficacy of inter-
national communism in Latin America. To be sure, the Cuban Revolution had
profound influence in Latin America. But Cuba's dramatic role in the region's
history did not arise from Cuban support for armed rebellion. Latin Americans—
the young, the poor, intellectuals—admired the Cuban Revolution because of
what it accomplished within Cuba. The most important influence that Cuba exer-
cised in the hemisphere was the power of its example. Like Communist societies
throughout the world and history, the Cuban economy flopped, both in the 1960s
and thereafter. The country became relatively poorer and stayed dependent on the
sugar trade for its economic solvency. Cuba traded one patron—the United
States—for another—the Soviet Union. But as one historian put it, Cuba was an
“austere success.” Cuban Communists created an egalitarian society, raising the
wages of the rural poor and delivering to them services in health, education, and
68 THE KILLING ZONE
welfare. As measured in indices such as life expectancy, infant mortality rates,
and literacy, Cuba developed a society that measured well against Western indus-
trial democracies. Cuban teachers, dispatched to the countryside, reduced illit-
eracy from 24 percent to 4 percent in the 1960s. Cuba also did an excellent job
controlling its explosive population growth, whereas its impoverished Caribbean
and Central American neighbors continued to see their populations double every
twenty years. Afro-Cubans, traditionally the poorest of Cubans, especially bene-
fited from this redistribution of resources. Admiring these accomplishments,
Latin America's masses closed their eyes to the lack of political rights in Cuba.
The island nation remained a repressive political dictatorship under Castro.
The Cuban Revolution also excited the imagination of Latin Americans be-
cause of what it accomplished outside of Cuba. Cuba became an internationally
significant nation, culturally and politically. Cuba funded artists and filmmak-
ers who played major roles in the cultural arena. Memorias del subdesarrollo
(Memories of Underdevelopment), the 1968 film directed by Tomás Gutiérrez
Alea, garnered international awards. Film historians consider it a seminal work.
The film explores how an aspiring writer, who led a privileged life, responds to.
the vast social changes sweeping revolutionary Cuba. The writer's parents had
fled to Miami. Alea would later direct Cuban films that would merit Oscar nom-
inations from Hollywood. Cuban athletes also starred, winning gold, silver, and
bronze at the Olympics. The great Alberto Juantorena, “el caballo" (the horse),
dominated the track and field events at the 1976 summer games in Montreal.
Latin Americans took further satisfaction in Cuba's prominent role at inter-
national conferences of “Third World” nations. Fidel Castro was an international
celebrity. Che Guevara became a mythic figure. Latin American leaders nor-
‘mally did not enjoy such status. Latin Americans also applauded Cuba's escape
from U.S. domination. Latin American intellectuals had not forgotten what had
happened to Guatemala in 1954.
TO PLAYA GIRON (THE BAY OF PIGS)
US. leaders conceded the appeal that the Cuban Revolution had for tens of millions
of frustrated, impoverished Latin Americans, They designed the Social Progress
Trust Fund and the Alliance for Progress economic aid programs in the 19605 as a
response to demands for revolutionary change (Chapter 5). Although understand-
ing that Latin Americans yearned for their place in the sun, Eisenhower, Kennedy,
and Johnson administration officials gave the highest priority to destroying the
Cuban Revolution and murdering its leaders. Using a term that became wide-
spread in the twenty-first century, the United States waged “state-supported ter-
rorism” against Cuba in the 1960s.
‘The Eisenhower administration initially reacted in a confused and uncertain
fashion to Fidel Castro and the 26th of July Movement. Like most international
observers, the administration wondered what Castro believed and whether he
had the power and support to take control of Cuba. State Department analysts
CHAPTER 4 + War against Cuba 69
labeled Castro “immature” and “irresponsible.” The administration did not per-
ceive the Castro movement as Communist. On 23 December 1958, Christian
Herter, the future secretary of state, informed President Eisenhower that, al-
though Communists were utilizing the movement “to some extent,” “there is in-
sufficient evidence on which to base a charge that the rebels are Communist
dominated.” In early 1959, CIA Director Allan Dulles testified to U.S. legislators
that Castro was not a Communist agent. These assessments were accurate. None-
theless, the Eisenhower administration opposed Castro taking power. In March
1958, the administration cut off arms shipment to its long-term client, Fulgencio
Batista, after his U.S.-supplied air force inflicted heavy civilian casualties while
bombing rebel positions. In late December, it encouraged Batista to abdicate his
throne. The administration ineffectually looked for a credible, anti-Castro third
force to take control of Cuba. But the administration could not temper the revo-
lutionary fever that swept over Cuba.
Less than a year after Castro's triumphal entry into Havana, the United
States decided it could not abide the Cuban. On 5 November 1959, Secretary
Herter recommended to Eisenhower that the United States generate opposition
“to the extremist, anti-American course of the Castro regime.” In December,
Colonel J. C. King of the CIA's Western Hemisphere Division recommended to
his boss that “thorough consideration be given to the elimination of Fidel Castro.”
King used the same language that CIA officers had used in compiling assassina-
tion targets of Guatemalans. Sensing that Cuba would become a domestic polit-
ical issue in the upcoming presidential campaign, Vice President Richard Nixon,
in late December, urged the president to focus on Cuba. The vice president had
met with Castro for three hours in Washington in April 1959. At that time, Nixon
believed that Castro could be saved. He considered the Cuban's ideas on eco-
nomic development naive and simplistic, but came away impressed with Castro
the person. Castro had those "indefinable qualities that make him a leader of
men." Nixon further predicted that Castro "was going to be a great factor in the
development of Cuba and very possibly in Latin American affairs generally"
Taking the patronizing tone toward Castro that had characterized the U.S. ap-
proach to Cuba for sixty years, Nixon called for the United States to try “to orient
him in the right direction.” The Cuban Revolution’s attack on both the realities
and the symbols of U.S. power in Cuba undermined Nixon’s hopes. Cuba's grow-
ing flirtation with the Soviet Union hardened administration attitudes. By Janu-
ary 1960, President Eisenhower was calling Castro a “mad man." In February,
Eisenhower told a senator he had received plans for clandestine action against
Castro “approximating gangsterism."*
On 17 March 1960, President Eisenhower put the United States on a course to
overthrow Castro. Eisenhower authorized "A Program of Covert Operation against
the Castro Regime.” The program, initially budgeted at $4.4 million, included
launching a propaganda offensive, organizing anti-Castro forces within Cuba, and
training a paramilitary force outside Cuba for future action." Eisenhower's plan
had the earmarks of PBSUCCESS. The administration hoped to replay its success
70 THEKILLING ZONE
in destroying the Arbenz government of Guatemala. For the rest of the year, the.
administration attacked Cuba. The CIA broadcast anti-Castro tirades from a radio
station on Swan Island, a dot of land off the coast of Honduras. The administration
tried to strangle the Cuban economy, cutting off sugar imports and banning ex-
ports to the island. The CIA began to train Cuban exiles in Guatemala with the
mission of carrying out an amphibious invasion of Cuba. The exile army would
grow from 300 men to more than 700 by the end of the year and eventually to
1,400 men in April 1961.
‘The CIA also took up Colonel King’s proposal to “eliminate” Fidel Castro. The
agency, with the approval of Director Dulles, contacted criminal figures interested
in carrying out “gangster action” against Castro. CIA operatives presumably cal-
culated that the Mafia wanted Castro dead so that it could resume its nefarious
activities in Cuba. At the gangsters’ request, CIA technicians developed poison
pills to place in Castro's food and drink. The CIA worked with Sam Giancana,
who was on the attorney general’s list of the “ten most wanted men” in America.
Giancana, a successor to Al Capone of Chicago, was the “Cosa Nostra” boss of the
mob’s Cuban operations.'* Finally, on 3 January 1961, President Eisenhower broke
diplomatic relations with Cuba.
President-elect John F. Kennedy’s attitude toward Cuba evolved rapidly. As a
senator, he denounced the Eisenhower administration for supporting the Batista
regime through the 1950s. Like many U.S. citizens, Senator Kennedy welcomed the
overthrow of Batista and hoped that Castro was a moderate democratic reformer.
But in 1960, Kennedy seized on the mounting tension with Castro and turned it
into a major campaign issue. The radicalization of the Cuban Revolution and the
growing relationship between Cuba and the Soviet Union corroborated his basic
campaign issue—the United States was losing the Cold War. ‘The president-elect
received a briefing from Allen Dulles on the covert campaign against Castro. In two
meetings with Kennedy, on 6 December and 19 January, President Eisenhower
emphasized the need to oust Castro, telling the president-elect that the United
States was helping the exile army “to the utmost” and that their training should be
“continued and accelerated." Kennedy accepted Eisenhower's judgment that the
Cuban Revolution posed a mortal danger to U.S. vital interests.
President Kennedy carried out Eisenhower's policy. The U.S.-backed inva-
sion of Cuba took place at the Bay of Pigs on the island's southwestern shores
between 17 and 19 April 1961, less than three months after Kennedy took office.
Castro's forces quickly routed the 1,400-man invasion force known as "Brigade
2506.” His soldiers killed 114 and captured another 1,179 of the exiles. Castro's
doctors estimated his fighters suffered 3,650 casualties, including more than
1,600 dead. Castro took personal command of the Cuban military, directed the
counterattack, and won domestic and international prestige for having defeated
the United States. Castro seemed a hero to many Latin Americans.
President Kennedy received pressure to authorize the invasion. If he had
canceled the invasion, he would have been rejecting the plans of the nation’s
most trusted military leader, General Dwight Eisenhower. He would also have
CHAPTER 4 + War against Cuba 71
what Director Dulles called a "disposal" problem. The Cuban exiles training in
Guatemala would return to the United States and loudly complain to journalists.
and politicians that President Kennedy feared Castro and that he lacked the
fortitude to wage Cold War. But aborting the invasion would have averted a dis-
aster. Although not debated within the administration between January and
April 1961, there was a politically expedient way for Kennedy to relieve the pres-
sure, Newspapers and journals reported about the Cuban exiles training in
Guatemala. Cuban exiles in Miami openly discussed the invasion plans. The
president privately grumbled that Castro did not need intelligence agents in the
United States because “all he has to do is read our papers.” Kennedy could have
conceivably lamented this exposure and terminated the training. Instead, he
asked editors to suppress the news.
President Kennedy also received misleading advice about the invasion from
key advisors, especially Richard Bissell, the CIA's deputy director of plans. Bissell
met frequently with Kennedy and sent him numerous memorandums. Bissell
structured his arguments in a way to compel the president to authorize the inva-
sion. Bissell assured the president that the invasion had a good chance of over-
throwing Castro or sparking a damaging civil war in Cuba. If the invasion did
not go forth, however, Bissell warned that Latin Americans would lose faith in
the United States and that “David will again have defeated Goliath.” Moreover,
the failure to overthrow Castro in the near future would lead “to the elimination
of all internal and external Cuban opposition of any effective nature.” When
Kennedy repeatedly demanded that the U.S. role be limited in the operation,
Bissell always assured the president that the invasion would succeed without
overt U.S. support. Kennedy assumed that the exiles would be able to retreat into
Cuban mountains if they could not hold and expand their beachhead at the Bay
of Pigs. Bissell failed to make clear that the nearest mountains were far away and
the area around the Bay of Pigs was filled with swamps.”
The counsel that President Kennedy received was not, however, one sided; he
received strong advice to cancel Eisenhower's plan. Congressional leaders like
Senator J. William Fulbright, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Commit-
tee, and State Department officers raised philosophical, diplomatic, and practical
objections to the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country. Former Secretary
of State Dean Acheson, an inveterate Cold Warrior, told the president that one
did not have to be a certified public accountant “to discover that 1,500 Cubans
were not as good as 25,000 Cubans” (the size of Castro's army). Presidential aide
Arthur Schlesinger dismissed the idea that the U.S. hand could be kept hidden in
the invasion. Given the long U.S. history of military intervention in Caribbean
countries, global observers would immediately assume that the United States
controlled the Cuban exiles. The U.S. standing in the world would be harmed. As
Schlesinger warned, “Cuba will become our Hungary,” referring to the ugly Soviet
invasion of Hungary in 1956.
In the end, President Kennedy authorized the Bay of Pigs invasion because he
wanted Castro overthrown and because he thought the exile army could accomplish.
72 THE KILLING ZONE
that goal with a minimal cost to the United States. In early April 1961, the president
dispatched Colonel Jack Hawkins to Guatemala to assess the fighting abilities of
the brigade. Colonel Hawkins impressed the president with his report, noting that
"these officers are young, vigorous, intelligent, and motivated with a fanatical urge
to begin battle.” The exiles assured Hawkins that once the battle began, all they
wanted was supplies and would not need direct U.S, military support?
More than dubious reports, however, led Kennedy to give the signal to invade
Cuba. He embraced the mass delusion that had existed in the United States since
1959 about political life in Castro's Cuba. Cubans allegedly suffered under Castro
and prayed for their deliverance. The invasion supposedly would produce a
“shock” in Cuba, triggering a mass uprising. Those who planned the Bay of Pigs
always understood that the exile brigade could not conquer Cuba. As the plan-
ners noted, “the primary objective of the force will be to survive and maintain its
integrity on Cuban soil.” Brigade 2506 leaders predicted that thereafter thirty
thousand Cubans would rush to the side of their liberators, and Cuban soldiers
would desert Castro. CIA analysts tossed around wildly inflated numbers, rang-
ing from one thousand to seven thousand, of resistance fighters already in Cuba.
But enemies of the Cuban Revolution were more likely to reside in Miami than in
Havana. Another CIA report cited a private survey that “less than 30 percent of
the population was still with Fidel” and “in this 30 percent of the population are
included the negroes, who have always followed the strong man in Cuba, but will
not fight."* Beyond being racist, the survey was historically inaccurate, because
Afro-Cubans had fought for the island’s independence in the 1890s. In a post-
mortem report on the Bay of Pigs, the inspector general of the CIA wrote that “we
can confidently assert that the CIA had no intelligence evidence that Cubans in
significant numbers could or would join the invaders or that there was any kind
of effective and cohesive resistance movement under anybody's control."
Historical discourse about the Bay of Pigs invasion has focused on President
Kennedy’s decision not to authorize U.S. air and naval support on the day of the
invasion, Such a U.S.-centered approach inevitably leads scholars to ignore im-
portant facts. The Guatemalan intervention had taught Latin Americans, includ-
ing the Castro brothers and Che Guevara, unforgettable lessons. Castro and his
forces prepared for an invasion. Fidel and Raúl Castro built an army of twenty-
five thousand and a loyal, self-defense force of more than two hundred thousand.
Cubans, who were armed with weapons from the Soviet bloc. In April 1961, one
battalion of troops patrolled every beach in Cuba. Castro's intelligence agents
anticipated an invasion, because, just like President Kennedy, they could read in
U.S. publications about the training base in Guatemala. Cuban spies presumably
had also penetrated the exile community of Miami. Prior to the invasion, Cuban
security forces also arrested citizens on the island suspected of disloyalty. Finally,
in Fidel Castro, the Cubans had an experienced military commander who had
fought for three hard years in the Cuban mountains, Before and during the inva-
sion, Castro acted decisively. A preinvasion air strike by the exiles on April 15
had destroyed Cuban airplanes. To forestall further losses, Castro ordered pilots
CHAPTER 4 + War against Cuba 73
to be prepared to take off at a moment's notice. The pilots actually slept under-
neath their planes. If President Kennedy had authorized additional air strikes, the
bombers would have likely hit empty airfields. The Bay of Pigs should be counted
asa Cuban victory.
OPERATION MONGOOSE
President Kennedy did not waver from the goal of destroying the Cuban Revolu-
tion and ensuring that Castro's victory at the Bay of Pigs was short lived. On
5 May 1961, he presided over a meeting of the NSC and ruled that U.S. policy
would continue “to aim at the downfall of Castro.” The United States would not
invade Cuba now, but neither would it foreclose the possibility of a future mi
tary invasion. The president designated his brother to be his point man on Cuba.
Robert Kennedy roughly informed U.S. military and intelligence officials that
“the Cuban problem” was the top priority of the government and that “no time,
money, efforts, or manpower is to be spared.” The attorney general often berated
senior CIA officers about their lack of success in Cuba. Richard Bissell recounted
being “chewed out" by the Kennedy brothers at the White House “for sitting on
his ass and doing nothing about Cuba." Richard Helms, Bissell's successor at the
CIA, was told in early 1962 by Robert Kennedy, speaking for his brother, that "the
final chapter on Cuba has not been written.”
President Kennedy judged Castro's Cuba a dire threat to vital U.S. national
interests. But his administration's assessment of the Cuban threat did not sustain
those fears. In preparation for the NSC meeting of 5 May, Paul Nitze of the De-
fense Department coordinated a lengthy evaluation of "Cuba's threat to the na-
tional interests.” The report depicted Cuba as more of a psychological than a real
threat to the traditional U.S. domination of the Western Hemisphere. The Cuban
Revolution inspired radicals and militants throughout the region. Cuba assisted
these potential revolutionaries through propaganda and perhaps the supply of
funds. But the administration had “no hard evidence of an actual supply of arms
or armed men going from Cuba to other countries to assist indigenous revolu-
tionary movements.” In any case, poverty and economic discontent, not Castro,
generated social ferment throughout Latin America. The report also considered
it “a remote possibility” that the Soviet Union would transform Cuba into a mili-
tary base for a strategic attack on the United States. Castro's real crime was that
"he had provided a working example of a communist state in the Americas, suc-
cessfully defying the United States.”
While awaiting a new campaign for undermining Castro, President Kennedy
brushed aside a Cuban peace offer. On 17 August 1961, Che Guevara spoke late
into the night with presidential aide Richard Goodwin. Both men were attending
an inter-American conference in Uruguay. Guevara had previously sent Goodwin
a fancy box filled with the finest Cuban cigars, Guevara suggested that by dis-
cussing issues like the U.S. expropriated properties, trade, and Cuba's role in
Latin America, the two countries could reach a modus vivendi—a way of living
74 THE KILLING ZONE
together. Goodwin informed his president of the conversation. Nothing de-
veloped from the Goodwin-Guevara exchange. President Kennedy's only tan-
gible gesture was to smoke one of Guevara's cigars.”
In November 1961, the president launched a new war against Castro, “Oper-
ation Mongoose,” under the direction of General Edward G. Lansdale. Lansdale
was a flamboyant Air Force officer who claimed expertise in counterinsurgency
and guerrilla warfare based on his experience in the Philippines and Vietnam in
the 1950s. Armed with a $50 million budget, Lansdale assembled a team of more
than four hundred CIA employees and thousands of Cuban exiles who operated
from headquarters near the University of Miami campus. The mission of the
exiles was to make their way from Florida to Cuba in speedboats, infiltrate the
island, collect intelligence, organize resistance fighters, and carry out sabotage on
the island, A Cuban official later cited “5,700 acts of terrorism, sabotage, and
murder" in 1962 alone. Lansdale’s plan was predicated on sparking a massive
popular rebellion in Cuba that would prompt demands for a rescue mission. The
U.S. military would then have the international legitimacy to invade the island
and dispose of Castro. Like the Bay of Pigs planners, Lansdale denied Castro’s
political strength. In November 1961, a chastened CIA had conceded that “the
great bulk of the population still accepts the regime and a substantial number still
support it with enthusiasm.” Lansdale constantly pressured CIA analysts to
modify their conclusions, as if changing things on paper in Washington would
alter political loyalties in Cuba.”
‘The Kennedy administration applied other pressures to Cuba. It imposed a
near total trade embargo on Cuba. It demanded that Latin Americans drive Cuba
out of the inter-American community, the Organization of American States
(OAS). The Defense Department drew up extensive plans to attack Cuba with air
strikes, parachute drops, and an amphibious assault. In the spring of 1962, U.S.
Marines trained for an amphibious assault by invading Vieques Island, Puerto
Rico. The military exercise carried the codename "ORTSAC;" or “Castro” spelled
backward. Attorney General Kennedy proposed staging a violent incident at the
U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, thus providing a rationale for an attack on
Cuba. Under pressure from the administration, the Joint Chiefs developed “Op-
eration Northwoods” as a complement to Operation Mongoose. Among the
schemes military planners suggested was sinking a boatload of Cuban refugees
sailing for Florida or shooting Cuban refugees in the United States. Castro would
be then blamed for the violence.
The CIA's assassination efforts against Castro, which began under President
Eisenhower, continued throughout the Kennedy presidency. The proposed
schemes included killing Castro with poisoned pills, pens, darts, or cigars, shoot-
ing him with a telescopic rifle, or taking advantage of Castro’s love for the sea by
either giving him a diving suit with a deadly contaminant or rigging an exotic-
looking seashell with explosives near Castro's favorite snorkeling area. The CIA
also hoped the Mafia would carry out a gangland-style "rubout" of Castro. His-
torian Howard Jones has argued that assassination was the *lynchpin" of the Bay
CHAPTER 4 + War against Cuba 75
of Pigs invasion scenario. CIA planners expected that a leaderless Cuba would be
in chaos when Brigade 2506 hit the Cuban beaches.”
What precise knowledge President Kennedy had ofthese conspiracies cannot
be determined. Shortly after taking office, NCS advisor McGeorge Bundy re-
ceived a briefing on the CIA's assassination capabilities. In May 1962, Attorney
General Kennedy received a thorough briefing about the CIA's contacts with
gambling syndicate figures John Roselli and Sam Giancana, No document has
yet appeared proving that either Bundy or Robert Kennedy told the president
about the assassination plots. According to aides, President Kennedy asked for
military intervention plans for the day when Castro might be removed from the
Cuban scene. He also broached the subject of assassination with his good friend,
Senator George Smathers (D-FL), and with a journalist. Both men later said that
the president expressed distaste for the idea. Biographers like Arthur Schlesinger
have also claimed that a Roman Catholic like Kennedy could not countenance
assassination. On the other hand, Richard Helms, who commanded the CIA's
clandestine service, answered a journalist’s question about. whether President
Kennedy wanted Castro dead. Helms replied that “there is nothing on paper, of
course.” Helms added that “there is certainly no question in my mind that he
did"? No document exists that shows that the president ordered the end of assas-
sination efforts against Castro.
Scholars and journalists have speculated about what led the Kennedy ad-
ministration to engage in this bizarre, extreme behavior. Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara would later lament that the administration was “hysterical”
about Castro. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who interviewed former
CIA operatives, has charged that the Kennedy brothers had a personal vendetta
against Castro, taking a blood oath to make Castro and his Communist friends
pay for the staining of the family's honor at the Bay of Pigs." Although personal
animus may have informed the administration's policies, no document or taped
conversation has appeared in which the Kennedy brothers vowed revenge against
Castro. Concerns about national security, the global balance of power, and do-
mestic politics informed their discussions about Cuba.
MISSILE CRISIS
President Kennedy’s national security fears came true on 16 October 1962, when
he learned that the Soviets were developing sites in Cuba for medium- and
intermediate-range ballistic missiles equipped to carry nuclear weapons. U.S.
intelligence analysts had not anticipated this development. Soviet Chairman
Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro bear significant responsibility for the crisis.
President Kennedy had publicly warned that “the gravest issues would arise” if
the Soviets sent “ground to ground missiles” to Cuba. Soviet and Cuban officials
repeatedly assured the United States that the Soviet Union would not base offen-
sive weapon systems in Cuba. But the Kennedy administration also caused the
confrontation. The administration had committed acts of war against Castro's
76 THEKILLING ZONE
Cuba. The president did not think about the consequences of his anti-Cuban pol-
icies. In fact, at the beginning of the crisis, Kennedy confessed that he did not
understand the motives behind missiles in Cuba, blurting out that "it's a god-
damn mystery to me.” From the Soviet and Cuban perspective, all evidence—
assassination plots, the rejection of Che Guevara's peace offering, Operation
Mongoose, the trade embargo, military training exercises in the Caribbean—
pointed to the conclusion that the United States wanted to invade Cuba and murder
its leader. Secretary of Defense McNamara has conceded that "with hindsight, if
Thad been a Cuban leader, I think I might have expected a US. invasion.”
The course and conduct of the Cuban Missile Crisis are familiar." After ex-
tensive discussions in Moscow in mid-1962 with Cuban leaders, the Soviets re-
ceived permission from the Cubans in early September 1962 to install nuclear
weapons in Cuba. The Soviets planned to send thirty-six medium-range missiles,
twenty-four intermediate-range missiles, forty-eight light IL-28 bombers, and
tactical nuclear weapons. The Soviets could hit cities in the United States with the
missiles and bombers. The approximately one hundred tactical nuclear weapons
could be used to repel an invasion of the island. After the discovery, President
Kennedy met secretly with advisors for almost a week. The president immedi-
ately vowed that “we're going to take out those missiles.” Initial discussions fo-
cused on a military response, perhaps an air strike on the missile sites. The
president decided, however, to postpone the military solution advocated strenu-
ously by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to impose a naval blockade, or “quarantine,”
around Cuba. On 22 October, in a televised address, President Kennedy informed
the nation of the crisis, announced the quarantine, and demanded that the Sovi-
ets remove the missiles. Over the next week, tensions mounted between the two
superpowers. But on 28 October, the president and Soviet Chairman Khrushchev
struck a deal. The Soviets would remove the missiles, and, in turn, the United
States would pledge not to invade Cuba. The United States also confidentially
promised to dismantle Jupiter missile sites in Turkey. By 20 November, Kennedy
announced the end of the crisis, with the Soviets having withdrawn the missiles
and bombers from Cuba. U.S.-Soviet relations thereafter improved, with nuclear
arms control treaties in the 1960s and an era of détente in the 1970s.
Cuban-Soviet relations soured in the aftermath of the missile crisis. Chair-
man Khrushchev had been unnerved by a letter he received from Castro during
the crisis. Warning that an attack on the island was imminent, Castro urged
Khrushchev not to “allow the circumstances in which the imperialists could
launch the first nuclear strike.” Troubled by Castro's rash talk about nuclear war,
Khrushchev unilaterally decided to withdraw the tactical nuclear weapons from
Cuba. The United States had not discovered these nuclear weapons. Castro fur-
ther angered Khrushchev when he refused to allow an international inspection
team on the islands. The furious Cubans alleged that the Soviets had sacrificed
Cuban security and socialist solidarity for the removal of the Turkish missiles and
a better relationship with the United States. Subsequent developments also seemed
to confirm the Cuban belief that the “no-invasion pledge” was meaningless.”
HARVARD
CHAPTER 4 + WaragainstCuba 77
RENEWED WAR
"The denouement of the missile crisis did not lead to a détente between the United
States and Cuba. The Kennedy administration continued to pursue an aggressive,
belligerent policy toward Cuba. In his 27 October letter to Chairman Khrushchev,
Kennedy offered a noninvasion pledge for the removal of missiles from Cuba. But
after 27 October, the administration conditioned its noninvasion pledge with the
provisos that Cuba must cease being a source of Communist aggression, that the
United States reserved the right to halt subversion from Cuba, and that the United
States intended for the Cuban people to gain their freedom one day. Because it
judged that Castro's Cuba would never conform to U.S. standards, the adminis-
tration considered itself free to attack Cuba, foreswearing only an unprovoked
military invasion of the island.
Between December 1962 and November 1963, the administration renewed its
war against Castro on all fronts. The Agriculture and State Departments investi-
gated whether the United States could hurt the Cuban economy by manipulating
the price of sugar on world markets. The State Department pressured U.S. allies to
curtail trade with Cuba. The administration also began the process of ejecting
Cuba from the International Monetary Fund. The president coupled economic
warfare with new military preparations. In April 1963, he urged his national se-
curity team to prepare for an invasion of Cuba, asking, “Are we keeping our
Cuban contingency plans up to date?" Kennedy wanted to send troops to Cuba
quickly in case of a general uprising.”
The administration's fury against Castro mounted when the Cuban spent
the entire month of May 1963 in the Soviet Union. Khrushchev soothed Castro's
hurt feelings over the missile crisis with a package of economic and military aid
for Cuba. In April, Kennedy had approved the sabotage of cargoes on Cuban
ships and the crippling of ships. He also authorized inciting Cubans to harass,
attack, and sabotage Soviet military personnel in Cuba, "provided every precau-
tion is taken to prevent attribution." After Castro's trip, the president demanded
and received an integrated program of propaganda, economic denial, and sabo-
tage against Cuba, On 19 June, Kennedy, dubbed “Higher Authority” in CIA
parlance, approved a sabotage program against Cuba, expressing “a particular
interest” in external sabotage operations. The CIA was subsequently authorized
to carry out thirteen major sabotage operations in Cuba, including attacks on an
electric power plant, an oil refinery, and a sugar mill. On 12 November, Higher
Authority conducted a major review of his anti-Castro program and received an
upbeat assessment from the CIA. The president was also informed that the CIA
would launch new attacks, including the underwater demolition of docks and
ships. The memorandums of record state that “Higher Authority” rather than
President Kennedy attended these meetings. This was to give the president,
again in CIA language, the option of "plausible denial.” U.S. officials wanted the
president of the United States to be able to deny that he had authorized terrorism
and sabotage."
78 THE KILLING ZONE
Khrushchev protested these attacks on Cuba, averring that the United States
had reneged on the agreement that ended the missile crisis. President Kennedy
deflected the complaints, charging that the Cubans were fomenting revolution
throughout the Western Hemisphere. Lacking evidence to sustain those claims,
the United States perhaps fabricated evidence, as it previously had in 1954, when,
with "Operation Washtub,” the CIA planted arms in Nicaragua and blamed
Guatemala. In early November 1963, Venezuela announced that it had discovered
a cache of Cuban arms on a Venezuelan beach, allegedly left for leftist radicals
determined to disrupt upcoming elections. This detection of the purported
Cuban intervention raised many questions. Former CIA agents have subsequently
written that they believed that their colleagues planted the arms in Venezuela. In
May 1963, the CIA sent an anti-Cuba plan to the NSC that included the idea of
placing caches of arms from Communist countries in selected regions of Latin
America, “ostensibly proving the arms were smuggled from Cuba."
Assassination plots against Castro also continued after the missile crisis. On
22 November 1963, the day of the president's death in Dallas, CIA agents rendez-
voused in Paris with a Cuban official, Rolando Cubela Secades, code-named AM/
LASH. The agents passed to Cubela a ballpoint pen rigged with a poisonous hypo-
dermic needle intended to produce Castro's instant death. In the previous month,
the CIA had assured Cubela that it operated with the approval of Attorney Gen-
eral Kennedy. Former CIA operatives have also alleged that the president signaled
encouragement to AM/LASH. On 18 November in Miami, in what turned out to
be his last speech on inter-American affairs, Kennedy referred to Castro as a “bar-
rier” to be removed."
Some scholars have suggested that Kennedy showed interest, during his last
months in office, in improving relations with Castro. Intermediaries were autho-
rized to speak with Cuban officials. The Kennedy administration however, at-
tached stringent conditions to these preliminary discussions, insisting that Cuba
would have to break ties with the Soviet Union, expel Soviet troops from the
island, and end subversion in Latin America. The United States also wanted
Castro to renounce his faith in communism. In short, President Kennedy was
prepared only to accept Castro's surrender.“ His administration never renounced
its policy of either overthrowing Castro or plotting his death.
LYNDON JOHNSON AND CUBA
President Lyndon B. Johnson maintained the U.S. policy of hostility toward
Castro's government. The Johnson administration refused to negotiate with Castro's
Cuba, and it intensified the economic pressure on the island. In mid-1964, it per-
suaded two-thirds of the members of the OAS to support a resolution calling on
member states to sever all political and economic ties with Cuba. Defenders of
the resolution included anti-Communist, dictatorial regimes like Brazil and
Nicaragua. This resolution was in retaliation for Cuba's alleged intervention in
Venezuela. Democratic states, like Chile and Uruguay, which had opposed the
CHAPTER 4 + War against Cuba 79
resolution eventually complied with the OAS mandate. Only Mexico resisted
U.S. pressure and maintained its ties with Castro's Cuba.
The Johnson administration also cajoled European allies to join the eco-
nomic embargo of Cuba. In Johnson's characteristic salty language, he wanted
“to pinch their [Cuban] nuts." After the OAS meeting, Secretary of State Dean
Rusk met with the ambassadors of allies such as Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands,
and West Germany to press the U.S. case against Cuba. Belgium, for example,
succumbed to U.S. pressure and canceled a sale of locomotives to Cuba. The ad-
ministration especially wanted its closest ally, the United Kingdom, to sever rela-
tions with Cuba. President Johnson made a personal appeal to Prime Minister Sir
Alec Douglas-Home in a meeting at the White House in 1964. The U.S. position
was that “economic sanctions against Cuba was the only weapon short of an act
of war that could make the support of Castro's Cuba more costly to the Soviet
Union.” The United States further believed that an embargo of trade could create
“conditions of economic stringency that might ultimately bring about the elim-
ination of the Communist regime.” However, the British rejected the U.S. argu-
ments and continued to trade with Cuba. The United Kingdom depended on
trade for its economic vitality.
The Johnson administration, like the Eisenhower and Kennedy adminis-
trations, refused to accept the legitimacy of the Cuban Revolution. The admin-
istration also had a confrontation with Cuba in 1964. A dispute over a Cuban
fishing boat led Fidel Castro to cut the water supply to the military base at
Guantanamo Bay. President Johnson responded by transforming the base into
a sealed enclave with little Cuban contact. The United States created its own
water supply, constructing a desalinization plant. But President Johnson made
one significant change in his predecessor's policy. He gradually shut down the
campaign of assassination, sabotage, and terrorism directed at Castro's Cuba.
Johnson, who had not been actively involved as vice president in the covert war
against Castro, received his first comprehensive briefing on CIA activities on
19 December 1963. CIA officials reviewed the various sabotage and terrorism
attacks that President Kennedy had personally approved in June and November
1963. At the briefing, President Johnson asked the pointed question “whether
there is any significant insurgency within Cuba.” Desmond Fitzgerald, the CIA
official who directed the covert campaign, admitted that “there is no national
movement on which we can build.” Thereafter, at the briefing, President Johnson
ruled that the CIA's next attack on a major target—the Matanzas power plant—
would be canceled.**
Over the next eighteen months, President Johnson shut down the covert war
against Fidel Castro. The United States stopped sponsoring raids on Cuban tar-
gets, it terminated the funding of Cuban exile groups that planned to attack Cuba,
and it severed its contacts with potential assassins. By June 1965, the United States
no longer waged covert, violent war against Cuba. Johnson overruled powerful
bureaucracies like the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. military that
wanted to continue to attack Cuba. His decision was supported by influential
80 THE KILLING ZONE
administration figures such as Secretary Rusk, Secretary of Defense McNamara,
and the new assistant secretary of state for Latin America, Thomas Mann.
President Johnson probably had several reasons for reversing the
Eisenhower-Kennedy policy of attacking Cuba. The new president disliked At-
torney General Kennedy, the person most identified with the anti-Castro cam-
paign. He wanted to improve relations with the Soviet Union and did not want
another Soviet-American confrontation over Cuba. Johnson wanted to be per-
ceived as a steady, reliable man of peace during the 1964 presidential campaign. In
any case, Johnson already had his share of foreign policy challenges, especially in
Vietnam. His decision to invade the Dominican Republic in late March 1965 to
forestall an alleged Communist takeover only compounded his international
problems. President Johnson also seems to have been repelled by the nature of
some U.S. actions, such as assassination plots, against Castro's Cuba. Shortly after
taking office, he told CIA Director John McCone that he no longer wanted his CIA
chief to have the image of a “cloak and dagger role." After he left office, Johnson
revealed in an interview that “we were running a damned Murder Incorporated in
the Caribbean."
Perhaps the key reason for Johnson's decision to halt the war against Castro
was that he concluded that the CIA's war against Castro would not work. Attacks
on Cuba's economic infrastructure and maritime raids on coastal targets were
designed to spark a mass uprising in Cuba against Castro. However grudgingly,
Johnson and his advisors conceded that Fidel Castro enjoyed widespread popular
support. President Johnson wanted to "get rid of" Castro. But as Assistant Secre-
tary Mann explained about Castro, “as long as that army is loyal to him, he is
going to be there until he dies.” Mann further observed in a memorandum to
Secretary of State Rusk that Cuban political figures in exile in Miami, Florida,
had little support within Cuba.“
After mid-1965 and for the rest of the Johnson presidency, the United States
pursued “containment” policies against Fidel Castro. In essence, it adapted the
policies it practiced against the Soviet Union. The administration authorized the
CIA to disseminate propaganda, covertly collect intelligence and counterintelli-
gence, and wage economic warfare against Cuba. The United States would make
life hard for Cubans, hoping either that the Communist system would collapse in
Cuba or that Castro would die.
CHE GUEVARA IN BOLIVIA
Castro would not die in the twentieth century. But his compañero, Ernesto "Che"
Guevara, would be executed in the village of La Higuera, in southeastern
Bolivia, by a Bolivian soldier on 9 October 1967. The president of Bolivia, Gen-
eral René Barrientos Otuña (1964-1969), issued the order to execute the pris-
oner. Che Guevara's capture and execution in a remote part of Bolivia exposed
the complicated realities of promoting revolution in Latin America. Guevara's
demise and the defeat of his guerrilla army in Bolivia further demonstrated that
CHAPTER 4 * Waragainst Cuba 8l
the United States held exaggerated fears about Cuba's revolutionary role in the
hemisphere.
Guevara's decision in 1966 to organize a guerrilla movement in Bolivia re-
flected his political philosophy, Cuba's geopolitical challenges, and his yearning
for glory. Guevara rejected Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev's call for
“peaceful coexistence” with the United States and the Western capitalist nations.
He also abhorred Latin American Communist parties who participated in peace-
ful, political activities and spurned armed revolution. Guevara preached “the tri-
continental strategy” of promoting revolution in Asia, Africa, and Latin America
and defeating imperialism. The Vietnamese Communists had shown the way by
defending national liberation and socialism and sinking the United States into
the quagmire of endless war. Guevara's contribution to revolutionary thinking
was his " foco theory.” A small band of guerrillas could spark a mass revolution-
ary movement. The guerrillas could count on the forces of imperialism, including
the United States, responding to the foco threat in a heavy-handed way, alienating
the local population and turning them into guerrilla supporters. The insurgency
would spread throughout the country. With the United States militarily tied
down in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, socialist countries like Cuba would be
free. The United States would no longer be able to focus on attacking Cuba and
murdering its leaders. Guevara's patron, Fidel Castro, subscribed to Guevara's
worldview, but always had to be conscious of the Soviet Union's disapproval of
armed rebellion in Latin America. Cuba depended on the Soviet Union for eco-
nomic and military aid. Guevara's strategy also fit his sense of heroic destiny. He
once told reporters: “I am convinced that I have a mission to fulfill in this world,
and on the altar of this mission I have to sacrifice my home, I have to sacrifice all
the pleasures of daily life, I have to sacrifice my personal security, and I might
even have to sacrifice my life."
Guevara's experience in Bolivia made obvious the errors in his thinking. He
presumed a universal code of revolution. Whereas Guevara, an Argentine, was
an international revolutionary, not all who wanted change and social justice
were. Cuba was not the world or even Latin America. Impoverished, oppressed
Latin Americans dreamed of a better life, but they also had loyalties to their
nation, their region or state, their ethnic and racial heritage, and their Roman
Catholic religion. The campesinos of southeastern Bolivia proved not to be the
sea in which guerrillas could swim. Neither Guevara nor his men could speak
the local indigenous language, Guarani. Bolivian country folk did not join the
guerrilla movement, declined to supply the guerrillas, asked Guevara to leave the
region, and reported Guevara's movements to the Bolivian army. Guevara and
his men had to resort to stealing food and supplies from villages to survive.
Bolivian Communists, adhering to the dictates of Moscow, also refused to enlist in
Guevara's movement. Bolivian Communist leader Mario Monje warned: "When
the people learn that this guerrilla movement is led by a foreigner, they will turn
their backs and refuse to support it.” Monje added: “You will die very heroically,
but you have no prospects of victory.” Guevara's vanity and recklessness also
HARVARD UNIVERS
82 THE KILLING ZONE
contributed to the Bolivian disaster. He insisted on sole control of the guerrilla
movement, declaring in Bolivia that “here I am adviser to no one.” Guevara
failed to heed the advice he once received from Gamal Abdel Nasser, the nation-
alist leader of Egypt. The Egyptian wondered why Guevara talked of accepting
“the challenge of death." Nasser noted: “You are a young man. If necessary we
should die for the revolution, but it would be much better if we could live for the
revolution."
Guevara slipped into Bolivia in November 1966. He would be joined by six-
teen Cubans, Bolivians, and a few other Latin Americans, eventually creating a
force of forty-seven combatants. These numbers easily superseded the numbers
of men who retreated into the Cuban mountains in 1956. But the Castro brothers
and Guevara had glorified their guerrilla movement, forgetting that they had a
vital network of urban support in Cuba in the late 1950s. Only a handful of urban
Bolivians supported the guerrillas, and their organization was penetrated by the
CIA and Bolivian police. The Bolivian army, numbering about a thousand men,
chased the guerrillas for seven months in 1967, eventually trapping them in a
canyon. Bolivian soldiers found Guevara in a pathetic state. Guevara, who turned
thirty-nine in 1967, realized that he no longer had the physical agility that he had
in Cuba in the 1950s. A life-long asthmatic, the former doctor could not find the
medicine in rural Bolivia that he needed. He appeared emaciated and dirty. His
hair was long, straggly, and matted, his clothes were torn, and he had rough lea-
ther sheaths, not boots, on his feet. Before being captured on 7 October 1967,
Guevara had been wounded in the calf. After executing Guevara, the Bolivian
military flew the body to the town of Vallegrande, where the corpse was photo-
graphed. Guevara achieved mythic status in death. To some, Guevara in death
resembled Jesus Christ. The reality, however, was that Guevara failed as a revolu-
tionary everywhere, except for Cuba.
The United States played a rolé in the defeat of Guevara, In response to the
Cuban revolution, the Kennedy administration had transformed military aid
policies for Latin America from hemispheric defense to counterinsurgency—
developing tactics to defeat guerrilla movements. ‘The Kennedy administration
increased military aid to Latin America to $77 million a year, a 50 percent in-
crease over the average of the Eisenhower years. In fiscal 1962, the peak year, the
United States trained 9,000 Latin American officers and enlisted personnel.
Overall, during the 1960s, an average of 3,500 Latin American officers and men
annually attended military schools such as the U.S. Army Caribbean School in
the Canal Zone, renamed the “School of the Americas.” Select Latin Americans
trained at the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the home
of the famed “Green Berets.” Latin Americans studied topics taught in Spanish
on the essentials of counterinsurgency—clandestine operations, communism
and democracy, defoliation, the use of informants, interrogation of prisoners
and suspects, handling mass rallies and meetings, intelligence photography, and
polygraphs.”
CHAPTER 4 + War against Cuba 83
The body of Ernesto “Che” Guevara is surrounded by Bolivian soldiers in this photograph
taken in Vallegrande, Bolivia, in October 1967. By the time the Bolivians captured him,
Guevara was in poor physical shape, looking emaciated and bedraggled. Although the
Bolivians displayed Guevara like a hunting trophy, the international inpact of the
photograph was not as they perhaps intended. The photograph added to Guevara's
mythic status. To some, Guevara looked as they imagined Jesus Christ might have looked
in death after his crucifixion. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)
At the request of President Barrientos, the Johnson administration dis-
patched a highly decorated combat veteran and trainer, Major Ralph “Pappy”
Shelton of the Green Berets, to Bolivia in April 1967. He trained a Bolivian ranger
battalion that joined the hunt for Guevara and captured him. U.S. advisors did
not join the Bolivians in the field. A CIA operative, Felix Rodriguez, helped or-
ganize an intelligence network in the rural areas and briefly interrogated the cap-
tured Guevara. The United States did not request the execution of Guevara.
Johnson administration officials thought the Bolivians had acted unwisely in kill-
ing the renowned Argentine revolutionary. Walt W. Rostow, President Johnson's
national security advisor, called the execution “stupid,” perhaps believing that the
Bolivians had created a martyr for the Communist cause.
The death of Guevara symbolized what had been apparent for some years—
the collapse of revolutionary movements throughout Latin America. As a State
84 THE KILLING ZONE
Department official happily summarized in 1967, "The confident predictions of
sweeping Communist victories which have often emanated from Havana have
not been borne out.” In March 1968, the U.S. intelligence community reiterated
the State Department's optimism, noting in a "National Intelligence Estimate” on
"The Potential for Revolution for Latin America" that "in no case do insurgencies
pose a serious short-run threat to take over a government." In truth, the Cubans
had talked more about revolution in Latin America than of actually fomenting it.
Their only sustained efforts had been in Venezuela and Bolivia. Both efforts had
failed miserably. Throughout the 1960s, Latin American Communists obeyed
Moscow and abjured armed conflict. Moscow informed Latin American nations
that it did not support resolutions, such as at the Tricontinental Conference, call-
ing for revolution in Latin America, Except for gaining a difficult ally in Cuba,
the Soviet Union did not appreciably increase its influence in the region in
the 1960s. During the Cold War, only three nations—Argentina, Mexico, and
Uruguay—continuously maintained ties with the Soviet Union, and only
Mexico always kept its embassy open in Havana. The Soviet Union allocated
only about 6 percent of its foreign aid to the non-Communist world to Latin
America, Excluding Cuba, its trade with Latin America was minuscule. The
balance of trade always favored the Latin Americans. For example, the hungry
Soviets needed to purchase Argentine wheat because of perennial shortcomings
in the Soviet agricultural sector.*!
By mid-1968, Fidel Castro accepted the major objectives of Soviet foreign
policy, which included peaceful coexistence with the West. Castro waited for news
of victory from Bolivia. But the Cuban leader lacked the logistical resources to aid
Guevara and his guerrilla band. Guevara's defeat and Brezhnev and Kosygin's
fury over Guevara's mission forced Castro back into the Soviet camp. Castro
shocked idealistic supporters and admirers of the Cuban Revolution around the
world when, in August 1968, he publicly defended the appalling Soviet invasion
of Czechoslovakia. Soviet tanks had entered Prague to crush the liberal reforms.
of the "Prague Spring” pursued by Alexander Dubček. Castro now appeared to
be little more than a Communist stooge because he conceded that the Soviet
Union had illegally violated Czechoslovakia's sovereignty. Castro could only
offer that the socialist camp had the right to prevent a socialist country from
breaking away. Both Soviet and U.S. officials habitually characterized Castro as
emotional, immature, and irresponsible. In fact, Castro was shrewd, calculating,
and realistic. He stayed in power for five decades because he had a pragmatic
side to his governing philosophy. The Cuban Revolution’s survival depended on
Soviet economic and military assistance because the United States had succeeded
in isolating the island. Fidel Castro could not follow the path of ideological
purity; he could not “be like Che.”
‘The United States had not achieved total victory in its war against Fidel
Castro's Cuba. A Communist state survived in the traditional U.S. sphere of in-
fluence. And the Kennedy brothers had not succeeded in “eliminating” the Castro
brothers. The policy of sponsoring assassination, sabotage, and terrorism had
CHAPTER 4 + War against Cuba 85
fallen short of its goals. But the United States had contained the Cuban Revolu-
tion. By the end of the 1960s, Cuba no longer posed a revolutionary threat to the
region. U.S. political and economic pressure had also hobbled the island. The
containment of Cuba involved more than just attacking Castro and his revolu-
tion. The United States tried to undercut the appeal of the Cuban Revolution by
building a better life for Latin Americans through the Alliance for Progress eco-
nomic development program. The Kennedy and Johnson administrations also
attacked and undermined Latin American leaders deemed soft on Castro and
communism.
CHAPTER 5
pt
No More Cubas—The Kennedy
and Johnson Doctrines
Ihe United States waged war against Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution
on many fronts in the 1960s. The United States sponsored an invasion of the
island by Cuban exiles and conducted a campaign of assassination, sabotage, and
terrorism against Cuban leaders and their revolutionary supporters. By the mid-
1960s, U.S. officials concluded that they could not destroy the Cuban Revolution
through violence. They resorted to containing the revolution, keeping the island
diplomatically and economically isolated. U.S. officials believed that they needed
to counter the Cuban Revolution with more than force, however. They recognized
that Latin Americans had legitimate aspirations for economic progress and social
justice. The John F. Kennedy administration designed a grand program—the
Alliance for Progress—to transform and modernize Latin America. President
Kennedy pledged to transfer U.S. wealth to uplift the conditions of Latin America’s
poor. The U.S response to Cuban communism would be representative democracy
and socioeconomic progress. The United States had revivified Western Europe
with the Marshall Plan. The Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson administrations be-
lieved that they could repeat the historic achievements of the Marshall Plan by
building, in the 1960s, sturdy, stable Latin American nations that would resist the
false promises of communism and remain closely allied to the United States.
However, high ideals and nobility of purpose did not always characterize the
U.S. approach to Latin America in the 1960s. The Kennedy and Johnson admin-
istrations wanted democracy and development for the region, but they held exag-
gerated fears about Communist expansion in the Western Hemisphere. Both
President Kennedy and President Johnson were racial egalitarians who enjoyed
the company and friendship of Latin Americans. But the two presidents and their
advisors did not trust Latin American leaders when it came to the menace of
communism, From the U.S. perspective, preventing a “second Cuba” in the
region remained the highest foreign policy goal for both international and do-
mestic reasons. National security fears triumphed over U.S. dreams for the good
life for Latin Americans. The Kennedy and Johnson administrations intervened
86
CHAPTER 5 * No More Cubas—The Kennedy and Johnson Doctrines 87
throughout Latin America, invading counties, destabilizing popularly elected
governments, penetrating Latin American associations and institutions, and ma-
nipulating elections. The two administrations helped create the political and
ideological climate in Latin America in which mass murder and gross violations
of human rights characterized political life during the 1970s and 1980s.
ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS
President Kennedy unveiled his reform program for Latin America in an impres-
sive White House ceremony on the evening of 13 March 1961, just a month before
the Bay of Pigs invasion. After hosting an elegant reception for 250 people, in-
cluding the diplomatic corps of the Latin American republics and congressional
leaders, the president and his wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, directed guests
to move to the East Room. They seated themselves on gilt-edged chairs arranged
in semicircles on both sides of the rostrum. President Kennedy's speech was si-
multaneously broadcast by the Voice of America in English, Spanish, French, and
Portuguese, the languages of the Western Hemisphere. Kennedy thrilled his at-
tentive audience, telling Latin Americans what they had been waiting nearly two
decades to hear. The United States would underwrite the region's social and eco-
nomic transformation. The United States would join in a "vast cooperative effort,
unparalleled in magnitude and nobility of purpose, to satisfy the basic needs of
Latin American people for homes, work and land, health and schools—techo,
trabajo y tierra, salud y escuela.” Dubbed the Alliance for Progress—Alianza para
el Progreso—the new program would be Latin America's "Marshall Plan."
Kennedy delivered more than $600 million in emergency economic aid to
Latin America in early 1961. His administration, however, gave real substance to
his splendid rhetoric at an inter-American economic conference held in August
1961 at the Uruguayan seaside resort of Punta del Este. Secretary of the Treasury
C. Douglas Dillon informed Latin American delegates that they could count on
receiving $20 billion in public and private capital over the next ten years, “the
decade of development.” In early twenty-first-century terms, this would be the
equivalent of the impressive sum of more than $100 billion. With this influx of for-
eign money, combined with an additional $80 billion that Latin Americans could
reasonably expect to generate in internal savings, Latin American nations would
achieve a real economic growth rate of 2.5 percent a year. Administration officials
chose to be publicly cautious; they actually expected that growth might reach
5 percent a year. Marvelous changes would flow from foreign aid and economic
growth. The Charter of the Punta del Este Conference enumerated more than
ninety lofty goals. Latin Americans would witness a five-year increase in life ex-
pectancy, a halving of the infant mortality rate, the elimination of adult illiteracy,
and the provision of six years of primary education to every school-age child?
‘The Alliance for Progress meant more than improvements in health, educa-
tion, and welfare. This would be a revolution that would surpass the Cuban Revo-
lution, Political freedom and social reform would go hand in hand with material
88 THEKILLING ZONE
progress. Archaic tax and land-tenure structures would be dismantled and self-
serving tyrants cast aside. President Kennedy vowed that North and South
Americans would "demonstrate to the entire world that man's unsatisfied aspir-
ation for economic progress and social justice can best be achieved by free men
working within a framework of democratic institutions."
The Kennedy administration decided to embark on a campaign to under-
write change and social development in Latin America because it perceived that
the region was vulnerable to radical social revolution. President Kennedy charac-
terized the region as “the most dangerous area in the world.” If poverty and in-
justice were preconditions for upheaval, Latin America was indeed ripe for
revolution. In several countries—Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador,
Guatemala, and Haiti—malnutrition was widespread, with a grossly inadequate
daily per capita consumption of 2,000 calories or less and a daily intake of fifteen
grams of animal protein. In eight other countries, daily per capita consumption
only approached 2,400 calories, the bare minimum necessary to sustain people
who toiled in fields and factories. By comparison, in 1961, U.S. adults consumed
every day more than 3,000 calories and sixty-six grams of animal protein. Hungry
people had predictably poor health records. Guatemalans had a life expectancy of
less than fifty years, twenty years less than that for a U.S. citizen. In the Andean
nations of Ecuador and Peru, approximately 10 percent of newborns died during
their first year of life. The poor of Latin America also lacked education and skills.
Adult illiteracy rates ranged from 35 to 40 percent in relatively prosperous na-
tions like Brazil and Venezuela. This misery was concentrated in the countryside,
with campesinos working tiny plots of land and a rural oligarchy operating vast
estates, or latifundia. In Colombia, 1.3 percent of landowners controlled more
than 50 percent of the land, and in Chile 7 percent owned 80 percent of the land.
Desperate rural people were fleeing to urban areas, moving into squalid shanty-
towns that surrounded cities like Bogotá, Caracas, and Rio de Janeiro.*
Although it had never been especially troubled by poverty and desperation in
Latin America, the Dwight Eisenhower administration poured the foundation for
the Alliance for Progress. The administration knew that Latin Americans pro-
tested that they had been "neglected" in the postwar period. Between mid-1953
and mid-1958, the United States had provided $12.8 billion in foreign aid. But
only $783 million, less than 7 percent, had been directed toward Latin America.
Latin American democrats further resented that the administration had lav-
ished medals and military support on right-wing dictators because they pro-
fessed to be anti-Communist. Latin Americans visibly expressed their anger
with U.S. policies in May 1958, when Vice President Richard M. Nixon toured
South America. Protestors hounded Nixon in Argentina, Peru, and Uruguay
and in Caracas, Venezuela, a howling mob tried to assault the vice president. In
the aftermath of the Nixon trip, Eisenhower and his advisors began to listen to
Latin Americans like President Juscelino Kubitschek of Brazil (1956-1961), who
spoke of inter-American economic cooperation, an “Operation Pan America.”
President Kubitschek had won international acclaim for launching the creation
CHAPTER 5 * No More Cubas—The Kennedy and Johnson Doctrines 89
of a fantastic capital city, Brasilia, in the heart of the country. The Eisenhower
administration responded by funding an Inter-American Development Bank. In
the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, the administration went farther, putting
$500 million into a Social Progress Trust Fund (1960) to underwrite health, edu-
cation, housing, and land reform projects.
Beyond the sense of crisis that informed U.S. perspectives about Latin
America, U.S. officials judged it a propitious time to foster progressive reform in
Latin America. In a series of popular upheavals dubbed the “twilight of the ty-
rants,” ten Latin American military dictators fell from power between 1956 and
1960. Middle-class reformers, like Rómulo Betancourt of Venezuela, replaced
the military men. They vowed to rule democratically and to reform the region's
archaic social structures. Betancourt and influential political leaders like Arturo
Frondizi of Argentina and José Figueres of Costa Rica joined with Kubitschek in
pleading for U.S. help. They unabashedly played on the U.S. fear of communism.
Latin America’s poverty and injustice, they warned, was a fertile breeding
ground for the Communist contagion to fester and spread. A second, third, and
fourth “Cuba” might be on the horizon. Indeed, Che Guevara attended the con-
ference at Punta del Este and debated Secretary of the Treasury Dillon. Guevara
boasted that Latin America's “new age” would be under “the star of Cuba,” not the
Alliance for Progress.
President Kennedy perceived the Cuban Revolution as part and parcel of
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's “wars of national liberation strategy.” In a
lengthy address given in Moscow on 6 January 1961, Khrushchev briefly raised
the issue. Scholars have questioned whether Khrushchev intended to provoke the
president-elect; they have suggested that the Soviet leader was addressing doc-
trinal issues within the Communist camp? Nonetheless, ambassador to Brazil
Lincoln Gordon, who helped design the Alliance for Progress, decided that
Khrushchev had signaled his intention to use Cuba as “a base for military and
intelligence activities against the United States and for further opportunistic con-
quests in Latin America.” President Kennedy drew similar conclusions from his
one unpleasant meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961. Upon return-
ing home, the president soberly reported to the nation that his Soviet adversary
predicted that in the developing countries “the revolution of rising peoples would
eventually be a Communist revolution, and that the so-called wars of liberation,
supported by the Kremlin, would replace the old methods of direct aggression
and invasion.” Kennedy added that it was "the Communist theory” that “a small
group of disciplined Communists could exploit discontent and misery in a coun-
try where the average income may be $60 or $70 a year, and seize control, therefore,
of an entire country without Communist troops ever crossing any international
border.” Secretary of State Dean Rusk followed the president's public warning with
a confidential alert to U.S. diplomats in Latin America. Khrushchev was targeting
Latin America®
Not to oppose the alleged Communist master plan for Latin America would
imperil the national security of the United States. The United States would be
90 THEKILLING ZONE
surrounded if Communists came to power in Central and South American na-
tions. U.S. officials also believed that they had to maintain U.S. credibility “in our
own backyard." The U.S. ability to act on the global stage would be impeded if it
could not maintain order and stability in Latin America, the traditional U.S.
sphere of influence. Secretary Rusk once noted to Argentine diplomats that the
Communist adversaries measured the resolve of the United States in the Western
Hemisphere. “A lack of determination on our part,” Rusk warned, might encour-
age Soviet aggression in the divided city of Berlin."
Not only national security anxieties but also domestic political calculations
informed President Kennedy's approach to the region. The president was loath to
face the same charge in his 1964 reelection campaign—losing a Latin American
country (Cuba) to communism—that he had thrown at the Eisenhower/Nixon
team in 1960. Throughout his tenure, Kennedy predicted disaster in Latin
America. In January 1961, he told an aide, “the whole place could blow up on us."
In November 1962, he cautioned Argentina's General Pedro Eugenio Aramburu
to be alert, observing “that the next twelve months would be critical in Latin
America with respect to renewed Communist attempts at penetration,” In October
1963, a month before his death, he warned that Latin America posed “the great-
est danger to us.” A few months earlier, in a meeting with Prime Minister Harold
Macmillan, Kennedy demanded that the United Kingdom postpone the inde-
pendence of its South American colony, British Guiana. Kennedy alleged that
British Guiana might become a Communist state. British Guiana would then
join Cuba as a major campaign issue and jeopardize the president's reelection."
As presidential advisor and biographer Arthur Schlesinger put it, it was his boss's
“absolute determination” to prevent a second Communist outpost in the West-
ern Hemisphere.”
Although motivated by Cold War imperatives, the president and his team
approached the task of building a prosperous, democratic, anti-Communist
Latin America with supreme confidence. They thought they knew how to “mod-
ernize” Latin America. They fashioned the Alliance for Progress on contempor-
ary social science theories, espoused by intellectuals, which included Ambassador
Gordon and presidential assistant Walt W. Rostow. In the postwar period, social
scientists had enunciated formal theories on political and economic develop-
ment. They posited a universal, quantitatively measurable movement of all soci-
eties from a "traditional" situation toward a single ideal form or “modern”
organization. Traditional societies, as they presumably existed in Latin America,
had authoritarian political structures, rural, backward economies, and a lack of
faith in scientific progress and the entrepreneurial spirit. A modern society,
which would look remarkably like the United States, would be characterized by a
competitive political system, a commercialized and technologically sophisticated
economic system, mass consumption, high literacy rates, and a geographically
and socially mobile population.” The assumption that modern Latin Americans
wanted to replicate superior U.S.-style institutions and inculcate Anglo-American
values in their societies belied the concept of an “alliance.”
CHAPTER 5 * No More Cubas—The Kennedy and Johnson Doctrines 91
The mission of the United States was to accelerate the modernization process
before the Communists could subvert it. The United States would identify and
support urban, middle-class leaders in Latin America who favored democracy,
universal education, and state policies that promoted economic development and
social welfare. The United States would assist these leaders with substantial
amounts of economic aid until these Latin American societies could generate
enough internal capital to underwrite their own economic development. At that
point, presumably within ten years, Latin American nations would have reached
the “take-off stage,” as outlined in Rostow's famous treatise, The Stages of Eco-
nomic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960). The modernization theory
further held that democratic structures would flourish in nations that could sus-
tain their own economic growth.
‘The lessons of history affirmed the administration's faith in the moderniza-
tion process. U.S. leaders were proud that the past democratic administration of
Harry S. Truman had rebuilt war-torn Western Europe and Japan. The Alliance
for Progress would be the “Marshall Plan for Latin America.” The United States
would pursue a policy of “enlightened anti-Communism." The United States
would win the Cold War in Latin America by performing righteous works. The
United States would build sturdy, progressive societies that uplifted the poor and
dispossessed. These modernized societies would naturally align themselves with
the United States and reject the false promises of Khrushchev, Castro, and their
fellow Communist travelers.
President Kennedy displayed the enthusiasm, confidence, and empathy in-
herent in the Alliance for Progress. During his abbreviated presidency, he
toured Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, and Costa Rica and received tumultuous
welcomes. He participated, for example, in a land redistribution ceremony in
Venezuela. Kennedy also opened the Oval Office to Latin American presidents,
former presidents, foreign, finance, and labor ministers, ambassadors, generals,
trade unionists, and economists. A telling example of the president's commit-
ment occurred during his visit to Costa Rica. He noticed an unoccupied hos-
pital and told aides to find funds to staff it. The U.S. Agency for International
Development subsequently granted $130,000 for a children's hospital in San
José. Bedeviled by his quagmire of a war in Vietnam, President Johnson spent
less time with Latin Americans. He made only one major trip to Latin America,
meeting leaders at Punta del Este in 1967 to review the Alliance. Johnson how-
ever, enjoyed reading reports about schools and hospitals being built in Latin
America with Alliance funds.
THE DECADE OF DEVELOPMENT
The enthusiasm, energy, and optimism that infused the Alliance for Progress did
not result in meaningful political and social change in Latin America. The Alli-
ance proved to be a notable policy failure of the Cold War. During the 1960s,
sixteen extraconstitutional changes of government shook Latin America. Latin
92 THEKILLING ZONE
American economies hardly reached the take-off stage, registering an unimpres-
sive annual growth rate of about 2 percent. Most of the growth took place at the
very end of the 1960s. The Alliance failed to reach any of its ninety-four numer-
ical goals in health, education, and welfare. The number of unemployed Latin
Americans rose from 18 million to 25 million during the decade.
USS. officials misled themselves trying to apply dubious social science the-
ories and misleading historical analogies like the Marshall Plan for Latin America.
Latin America was not Europe. Western European countries had been devastated
by war, but they had financial and technical expertise, familiarity with industrial
forms of organization, institutionalized political parties, strong national identi-
ties, and, except for Germany, a robust democratic tradition. The Truman admin-
istration had helped “rebuild” countries whose social fabrics, political traditions,
and economic institutions were notably similar to those of the United States. On
the other hand, the Spanish/Portuguese (Iberian) and Amerindian political heri-
tages emphasized planned economies, strong central governments, and the orga-
nization of society into corporate groups. Latin Americans traditionally gave greater
significance to group achievement than to individual success. Latin Americans
further believed that national progress came from a unified government rather
than one slowed by a mixed form of power sharing with checks and balances, In
his last address on inter-American affairs, President Kennedy conceded that the
Alliance for Progress should not be compared to the Marshall Plan because “then
we helped rebuild a shattered economy whose human and social foundation re-
mained. Today we are trying to create a basic new foundation, capable of reshap-
ing the centuries-old societies and economies of half of a hemisphere.” Yet
Kennedy assured his audience that idealism, energy, and optimism would bridge
the vast cultural gap and bring about the “modernization” of Latin America." Al-
though recognizing the challenges ahead, Kennedy was still assuming that Latin
Americans wanted their modernized societies to replicate the social structures of
the United States. :
‘The United States also lacked the power to reform Latin America. In the
postwar years, the United States militarily occupied both Germany and Japan,
reordering their societies. General Douglas MacArthur, for example, directed the
writing of the Japanese constitution, requiring the redistribution of land and
limitations on military expenditures, In the 1960s, the Kennedy and Johnson
administrations repeatedly meddled and intervened in Latin America. But the
United States could hardly claim the right to invade a Latin American country
because the government wasted resources, abused campesinos, or discriminated
against citizens of African or indigenous heritages. Neither Kennedy nor Johnson
could act in Latin America, as they did when they dispatched federal marshals to
protect the civil rights of African Americans in the U.S. South.” In any case, the
history of U.S. rule in Latin America taught sobering lessons, During the first
third of the twentieth century, the United States had militarily occupied coun-
tries like Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua in the name of democ-
racy and progress. But the United States had not successfully exported its values.
CHAPTER 5 * No More Cubas—The Kennedy and Johnson Doctrines 93
Dictators like Fulgencio Batista, Rafael Trujillo, and Anastasio Somoza García,
not democrats, had emerged in the aftermath of those occupations.
‘The Alliance for Progress also proved far less generous than the Marshall
Plan. President Kennedy regretfully had to inform Latin American leaders in pri-
vate that the United States "could not give aid to Latin American countries in the
same way that it helped to rebuild Europe with the Marshall Plan." Through his
eloquence and spectacularly successful trips to Latin America, he had galvanized
public and congressional support for the Alliance. But with Kennedy’s rapid ex-
pansion of military spending on nuclear weapons and Johnson's war in Vietnam,
the United States took on heavy financial burdens in the international arena, Leg-
islators, worried about government spending, cut both Kennedy’s and Johnson's
budget requests for foreign aid, sometimes by as much as 25 percent. Most
Marshall Plan aid was in the form of grants, whereas the Alliance offered loans,
which had to be eventually repaid. In the 1960s, the region received about $15 bil-
lion of the promised $20 billion. Even then, with Latin American nations being
required to repay principal and interest on pre-1961 and Alliance loans, this meant
that the actual net capital flow to Latin America during the 1960s averaged about
$920 million a year. This was the equivalent of about $4 per Latin American per
year. By comparison, Marshall Plan money, which did not have to be repaid,
amounted to $109 a year in assistance for every person in the Netherlands.
The Alliance money that Latin America received did have salubrious effects.
Both presidents Kennedy and Johnson could read upbeat reports about schools
and hospitals being built and more people gaining access to potable water. Demo-
cratic leaders in countries such as Costa Rica, Chile, and Venezuela performed
within the spirit of the Alliance for Progress. During the early 1960s, Venezuela,
for example, received more than $200 million in loans and grants from the
United States to finance public housing and public works projects. The United
States further backed Venezuela's requests for an additional $200 million'in loans
from international agencies like the Inter-American Development Bank and
World Bank. President Rómulo Betancourt and his successor, Raúl Leoni, toiled
diligently for the poor, resettling approximately 160,000 families on their own
farms, allocating budgetary expenditures to health and education, and cutting
unemployment. But Venezuela never hit the Alliance's target of 2.5 percent
annual growth, and 75 percent of Venezuelan youth still did not complete the
sixth grade. Economic growth stagnated because Venezuela depended on the
export of oil, and oil prices declined precipitously in the 1960s, falling from $2.65
a barrel in 1957 to $1.81 in 1969.
Population growth eroded many gains, With a 2.9 percent annual rate of in-
crease, Latin America experienced the most rapid population increase in the world
in the 19605. Colombia saw its population increase from 15.6 million to 21 million,
and Brazil added 25 million people, from 70 to 95 million. Alliance programs
helped cut the percentage of Latin American children not attending school from
52 to 43 percent, but because of this population growth, the actual number of chil-
dren not attending school increased during the 1960s. Latin America added
94 THE KILLING ZONE
President John F. Kennedy participates ina land redistribution ceremony in La Morita,
Venezuela, on 16 December 1961. Also present is President Rómulo Betancourt (dark
glasses) of Venezuela, Land reform was an essential part of the Alliance for Progress's plan
to transform the socioeconomic structure of Latin America, Venezuela was one of the few
Latin American counties to achieve some of the Alliance's goals in the 1960s. (Cecil
Stoughton/John F. Kennedy Library)
151,670 hospital beds in the 1960s and ended up with fewer hospital beds per thou-
sand people in 1969 than in 1960.2"
The Alliance for Progress did not place population control on its agenda.
President Kennedy took no interest in population control, apparently believing it
to be politically and medically impractical and morally dubious, He once dis-
pated what proved to be the accurate prediction that the world’s population of
3 billion in 1960 would double to 6 billion in 2000. In truth, no Latin American
leader raised population issues with presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Nicaragua
took the position that it was underpopulated. Oral contraceptives, an effective
method of birth control, became commercially available in the United States in
1960. Bolivian nationalists reacted furiously when they discovered that Peace
Corps volunteers dispensed oral contraceptives to the rural poor. ‘The family
planning program was small, nonaggressive, and voluntary and initially ap-
proved by Bolivian authorities. Nonetheless, some Bolivians perceived birth con-
trol as part of a conspiracy to reduce Bolivia's geopolitical power, and the
government responded by expelling the approximately one hundred Peace Corps
volunteers in 1971." Latin America's most populous nations, Mexico and Brazil,
would eventually take effective steps to encourage family planning and popula-
tion control in the 1970s and 19805.
CHAPTER 5 + No More Cubas—The Kennedy and Johnson Doctrines 95
Latin American leaders also bore responsibility for the Alliance's failures.
"Their governments often proved incapable of designing the long-range plans re-
quired for putting their countries on the path of sustainable economic growth.
By January 1962, only Colombia had submitted a development plan. Govern-
ments wasted U.S. money on short-term, politically expedient projects or di-
rected the spending at enhancing the living standards of middle-income groups,
rather than the poor. Latin American leaders, other than in Chile and Venezuela,
also hesitated to attack traditional land tenure patterns, with 5 to 10 percent of
the population, the landed oligarchy, owning 70 to 90 percent of the land. The
rural regions were the locus of Latin America's poverty, underdevelopment, and
population explosion. Ecuadorian agricultural laborers, for example, earned fif-
teen cents a day. Mexico continued to sustain its post-1940 economic growth in
the countryside. In the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), succes-
sive Mexican governments had redistributed over 100 million acres of land, often
in the form of communal holdings, or ejidos. The Alliance for Progress, however,
played a minimal role in Mexico.
In their defense, Latin American leaders pointed to the declining terms of
trade as the cause of the region's economic stagnation. To generate the $80 billion
in domestic savings mandated by the Alliance, Latin America needed to sell on
the global markets their primary products—coffee, sugar, bananas, copper, tin,
lead, zinc, and oil. But the prices of these tropical foods and raw materials de-
clined in the 1960s even as the prices of imported industrial machinery and fin-
ished goods, the very things needed for economic development, rose. The price of
coffee, Latin America's chief export, fell from ninety cents a pound in the 1950s to
thirty-six cents a pound in the early 1960s.?? In May 1969, at an inter-American
conclave, delegates produced the “Consensus of Viña del Mar,” calling on the
United States to open its markets to Latin American exports and to work for
fair terms of trade. Recognizing the failure of the Alliance for Progress, Latin
Americans now wanted trade, as much as aid, from the United States.
DEVELOPMENT VERSUS ANTICOMMUNISM
The failure of the Alliance for Progress cannot be explained solely by faulty
social science theories, misread lessons of history, or structural problems. If so,
historians could limit their analyses to noting that President Kennedy virtu-
ously but unsuccessfully tried to end poverty and injustice in the hemisphere
with a bold, imaginative program. Scholars could then add that the Alliance,
like the Great Society domestic reform program, became a casualty of President
Johnson's tragic venture in Vietnam. They would further point to President
Kennedy’s untimely death in November 1963. Kennedy had repeatedly told aides
that he had not given up on his cherished program. Kennedy presumably would
not also have blundered by dispatching five hundred thousand U.S. troops to
Vietnam. More money would have been available for Latin American develop-
ment. Indeed, U.S. economic aid to Latin America dropped during the Johnson
96 THE KILLING ZONE
years, although Latin American economies did better in the late 1960s than during
the Kennedy years.
A fair assessment of Kennedy and Latin America reveals that the president's
Cold War initiatives undermined the Alliance for Progress. Kennedy judged re-
gional governments on whether they affirmed the U.S. faith that Fidel Castro's
Cuba represented the focus of evil. He demanded that Latin American nations
break diplomatic relations with Cuba and enlist in the U.S. campaign to strangle
Cuba's economy. He further required Latin American leaders to outlaw domestic
Communists and to forswear from establishing relations with the Soviet Union
or the Communist bloc. Constitutional heads of state, like Arturo Frondizi of
Argentina, Joao Goulart of Brazil, Cheddi Jagan of British Guiana, and Juan José
Arévalo, the former president of Guatemala, failed Kennedy’s Cold War test. These
leaders respected constitutional processes and praised the Alliance for Progress,
but they believed that the administration was obsessed with Castro. They also dis-
counted the threat of Cuban communism to their counties and the hemisphere.
Cheddi Jagan, the prime minister of British Guiana, meets with President John F. Kennedy
inthe White House on 25 October 1961. Jagan thought the meeting went well and that the
president would look sympathetically on the British colony's request for economic
assistance. Kennedy decided, however, that Jagan was untrustworthy in the context of the
Cold War and that he could not accept an independent Guyana under the leadership of
Jagan. The president authorized the CIA to undermine Prime Minister Jagan and pressured
the United Kingdom to find an alternative to Jagan. (Abbie Rowe/John F. Kennedy Library)
CHAPTER 5 * No More Cubas—The Kennedy and Johnson Doctrines 97
The Kennedy administration would not, however, trust any progressive leader or `
group deemed suspect on the issues of Castro and communism. The Kennedy ad-
ministration authorized 163 major covert operations in less than three years,
many of them in Latin America. It launched campaigns to undermine the author-
ity of Frondizi, Goulart, and Jagan and to prevent Arévalo from returning to elect-
oral office in Guatemala. These destabilization campaigns produced ironic results.
‘The authoritarian, anti-Communist leaders who seized power in Argentina,
Brazil, Guatemala, and British Guiana opposed free elections and disdained the
idea of social reform, the essence of the Alliance for Progress.
President Johnson also waged ruthless Cold War in Latin America. He ful-
filled President Kennedy's goals of driving President Goulart out of power in
Brazil and Prime Minister Jagan out of British Guiana (Guyana)? He authorized
the military invasion of the Dominican Republic, depriving the supporters of
constitutionalism from restoring the legitimate president to power. U.S. military
and civilian advisors became intimately involved in the Guatemalan govern-
ment's and military's slaughter of political opponents and Mayan Indians. Under
President Johnson, the CIA also became adept at manipulating elections in coun-
tries such as Bolivia and Chile. In the Dominican Republic and Guyana, the CIA.
went beyond pouring funds into the campaign coffers of favorite candidates and
worked to rig elections to ensure the victory of strident anti-Communists. As
exemplified in U.S. policies toward the small nation of the Dominican Republic
and Latin America’s largest and most populous nation, Brazil, fervent anticom-
munism permeated the U.S. approach to Latin America in the 1960s.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
During the 1960s, U.S. officials devoted almost as much time to the Dominican
Republic as they did to its Caribbean neighbor, Cuba. A month after the Bay
of Pigs invasion, the United States confronted another Caribbean crisis when
Dominican dissidents assassinated the nation’s long-time dictator, Rafael
‘Trujillo, on 30 May 1961. The assassins caught Trujillo driving on a lonely stretch
of road. The aged dictator was on his way to see his twenty-year-old mistress. The
assassins riddled Trujillo’s body with twenty-seven rounds of ammunition. Both
the Eisenhower and the Kennedy administrations had authorized the CIA to
make contact with Trujillo's enemies. The assassins carried with them pistols
and carbines supplied by the CLA. The weapons had arrived via diplomatic pouch
and were passed to the assassins by the U.S. consul in Ciudad Trujillo (Santo
Domingo) through an intermediary. For the assassins, the weapons served as a
tangible sign that the United States approved of their plans.
For the United States to turn against the Dominican dictator, who had slav-
ishly backed U.S. foreign policy for three decades, was a remarkable historical
development. In the aftermath of the Nixon trip to South America, the collapse of
dictators throughout the region, and the Cuban Revolution, U.S. officials and in-
formed citizens concluded that the traditional U.S. support of anti-Communist
98 THE KILLING ZONE
dictators had been shortsighted. Officials worried that desperate Dominicans
would turn to political extremism and communism if not released from Trujillo's
tyranny. They foresaw history repeating itself, reasoning that Cubans had turned
to Fidel Castro when they saw no end to the dictatorship of the U.S. ally, Fulgencio
Batista. Both the Eisenhower and the Kennedy administrations pressured Trujillo
to leave the country, suggesting a comfortable exile on a sunny beach. When the
defiant Trujillo rejected U.S. demands, the Eisenhower administration broke diplo-
matic relations, imposed economic sanctions on the island country, and contacted
men prepared to eliminate Trujillo. President Kennedy continued that policy.”
When he delivered his Alliance for Progress speech in March 1961, Kennedy con-
spicuously paired Cuba and the Dominican Republic, affirming that the United
States rejected dictatorships of the left and right.
‘Terror and repression gripped the Dominican Republic after Trujillo's death.
‘The dictator's son, known as “Ramfis,” seized power, capturing and torturing his
father's enemies. Ramfis was aided by his father's two brothers, known locally as
"the wicked uncles.” The Trujillos had not only oppressed Dominicans for thirty
years; they had also stolen from them, turning the country into the Trujillo family
hacienda. The restoration of the family tyranny posed a dilemma for the new
Kennedy administration, still reeling from the Bay of Pigs debacle. According to
presidential aide Arthur Schlesinger, President Kennedy speculated what policy
he should now pursue. Kennedy said: “There are three possibilities in descending
order of preference: a decent, democratic regime, a continuation of the Trujillo
regime, or a Castro regime. We ought to aim at the first, but we really can't re-
nounce the second until we are sure that we can avoid the third." Kennedy's
memorable remark about the descending order of possibilities on the post-
Trujillo era proved to be a reliable guide to what choices his and other Cold
War presidential administrations would make in the Dominican Republic and
throughout the hemisphere.
In the case of the Dominican Republic, the administration used extreme
pressure, which included shows of U.S. naval and air force, to force the Trujillo
family out of the country in late 1961. Ramfis Trujillo slipped away on his yacht,
bringing along his father’s refrigerated body and bags full of money. ‘The United
States had again intervened in a Latin American country in a Cold War context.
But this time it attacked a right-wing dictatorship in the name of creating “a
decent, democratic regime.” The Kennedy administration thereafter arranged for
a transition government and supervised a fair presidential election in late 1962,
which saw the election of Juan Bosch, an intellectual and poet and a man re-
nowned for his honesty, dedication, and frugality. The Kennedy administration
provided the new government with $40 million in U.S. loans and grants to help
underwrite public construction projects. However, President Bosch lasted only
nine months in office before being overthrown by a right-wing, reactionary coali-
tion in September 1963. Bosch had shepherded through the Dominican assembly
a modern constitution that created a secular state and protected the rights of
workers. He also maintained public order, preserved individual liberty, and
CHAPTER 5 + No More Cubas—The Kennedy and Johnson Doctrines 99
preached fiscal responsibility. These reforms predictably earned Bosch the enmity
of traditionally privileged sectors of Dominican society. ‘The hierarchy of the
Catholic Church, for example, denounced President Bosch because the new con-
stitution permitted divorce.
Whereas the Kennedy administration did not encourage this golpe de estado,
it did little to save President Bosch and ultimately decided to recognize the
Dominican junta. It lost faith in Bosch because he had not outlawed the Com-
munist party and imprisoned Dominican radicals. President Bosch had reasoned
that after three decades of tyranny, freedom of expression and association should
be respected. He allowed exiled political leftists to come home and participate in
political activities. He also repealed the U.S.-sponsored Emergency Law of 1962,
which controlled the entrance of subversives and permitted their deportation.
Bosch’s supporters considered the Emergency Law a Trujillo-like measure. Presi-
dent Kennedy’s major priority for the Dominican Republic was not, however,
safeguarding civil liberties. He repeatedly told aides that “we don't want to have
another Cuba to come out of the Dominican Republic.” The State Department
informed the president that the new Dominican junta seemed amenable to enact-
ing “a Dominican Republic version of our Smith Act.” By November 1963, U.S.
policy toward the Dominican Republic had come full circle, or back to President
Kennedy's second choice in the descending order of possibilities—"a continu-
ation of the Trujillo regime.” U.S. officials prepared to deal with men such as
Colonel Elias Wessin y Wessin, who trained under Trujillo, pilfered public funds,
and indiscriminately condemned all opponents as “Communists.”
In disdaining Bosch, U.S. officials also revisited the patronizing attitude
toward Latin Americans contained in George Kennan's infamous 1950 report.
President Bosch did not meet U.S. expectations of a Cold Warrior. Secretary of
State Dean Rusk and Undersecretary of State George Ball judged Bosch an im-
practical dreamer, lacking administrative skills. Ball labeled Bosch “unrealistic,
arrogant, and erratic” and “incapable of even running a small social club, much
less a country in turmoil.” The U.S. ambassador, the undiplomatic John Barlow
Martin, reported to Washington that Bosch was “a lousy president.” To be sure,
Bosch did not always act like a modern North American chief executive. He de-
clined to delegate responsibility, and he spent countless hours listening to the
problems of poor Dominicans. But in the aftermath of the Trujillo tyranny, few
Dominicans had administrative or governmental experience. And the new presi-
dent, who worked sixteen-hour days, spent time with people who had been sub-
jected to unspeakable crimes for decades. The Johnson administration also
denigrated the exiled president. National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy
characterized the Dominican Republic as “a crooked, foggy, and irresponsible
island." Thomas Mann, President Johnson's chief advisor on Latin America, be-
littled Bosch to the president, noting that "Bosch writes books." Mann added:
"He's the most impractical fellow in the world. Sort of an idealist. We don't think
that he is a Communist [but we] don't think that [he] understands that the Com-
munistsare dangerous." Abe Fortas, President Johnson'sloyal friend, complained
100 THE KILLING ZONE
that “this fellow Bosch is a complete Latin poet-hero type and he's completely
devoted to this damn constitution." Fortas's denigrating comments about a pol-
itician's faith in constitutional procedures seemed ironic coming from a man
who would take a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.
INVASION
Johnson administration officials were negotiating with former President Bosch be-
cause the United States had invaded Bosch’s country. In April/May 1965, President
Johnson ordered twenty-two thousand U.S. troops into the Dominican Republic.
Civil war erupted in the streets of Santo Domingo because humble Dominicans
wanted their honest and humane president back in office. On 24 April 1965, seg-
ments of the Dominican Armed Forces led by Colonel Francisco Caamaño Deñó
rose in rebellion against the conservative government headed by Donald Reid
Cabral. Citizens joined the insurrection, demanding the return of President Bosch,
who was in exile in Puerto Rico. Military officers, led by Colonel Wessin y Wessin,
seized power and began attacking the insurgents, strafing and bombing them with
jet aircraft. The insurgents, who suffered heavy casualties, showed remarkable re-
siliency, however, and gained control over large sectors of Santo Domingo.
President Johnson initially responded to the Dominican civil war by dispatch-
ing a contingent of U.S. marines on 28 April to facilitate the evacuation of foreign
residents and tourists on the island. Several thousand foreign nationals from forty-
six countries were evacuated without a serious incident. But Johnson and his advi-
sors in Washington and Santo Domingo saw larger stakes in the Dominican civil
war than protecting foreign bystanders. As they sensed a political crisis looming in
early 1965, Ambassador W. Tapley Bennett Jr., Thomas Mann, and State Depart-
ment and CIA officers discussed how they would keep Juan Bosch out of the Do-
minican Republic, Ten days before the beginning of the civil war, U.S. officials
spoke of encouraging Colonel Wessin y Wessin, pushing the unpopular Reid
Cabral out of power, and then arranging for election of the arch-conservative
Joaquín Balaguer to the presidency.” Once violence broke out in the island nation,
the Johnson administration placed the civil war within the context of U.S. national
security interests. The embassy in Santo Domingo and CIA officials began to speak
of "pro-Castro" elements among the insurgents. There may have been pro-Bosch
Dominicans who once traveled to Cuba and even trained there. But the United
States had flimsy evidence to sustain fears of connections to international com-
munism. On 30 April, presidential advisor Bill Moyers told Johnson that “the CIA
man in Cuba tells me Havana is still taken off balance by this." Secretary of De-
fense Robert McNamara added in a telephone conversation with the president that
the CIA had not "shown any evidence that I have seen that Castro has been direct-
ing this or has had any control over those people once they got back there." Castro
was again receiving credit for a revolution that was not his.
Despite these admonitions, Johnson decided to order combat-ready troops
into the Dominican Republic. The 1965 intervention represented the first overt
CHAPTER 5 * No More Cubas—The Kennedy and Johnson Doctrines 101
USS. intervention in Latin America in more than thirty years. In a televised address
to the nation, on 2 May 1965, the president pronounced his Johnson Doctrine—
“the American nations cannot, must not, and will not permit the establishment of
another Communist government in the Western Hemisphere.” The United States
had to act immediately because “what began as popular democratic revolution,
committed to democracy and social justice, very shortly moved and was taken over
and really seized and placed into the hands of a band of Communist conspir-
ators.” The containment and defeat of the international Communist movement
mattered more than adhering to the legal niceties of hemispheric affairs. Although
Johnson emphasized the multilateral nature of the concern about communism in
the Dominican Republic, the invasion was a unilateral action, The United States
justified its action to the OAS after military action had begun. The intervention
violated the nonintervention principle of the OAS charter. The invasion also vio-
lated the nonintervention pledge that had been the fundamental nature of Franklin
Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy and seemingly shattered the sense of hemi-
spheric partnership inherent in the Alliance for Progress.
Johnson's dramatic decision reflected both his ideas and the view of Latin
America held by U.S. officials throughout the Cold War. Johnson took responsi-
bility for the disastrous intervention. In a telephone conversation on 23 May 1965
with Fortas, Johnson lamented his decision, crying out that “the man that misled
me was Lyndon Johnson, nobody else! I did that! I can't blame a damn human."
Johnson had indeed become obsessed with the Dominican civil war. In the first
nine days of the crisis, he met with major advisors on the Dominican civil war
180 times. Between April and June 1965, he spent more time on the Dominican,
Republic than on civil rights legislation or the war in Vietnam. During this
period, Johnson lost all perspective, producing lists in McCarthy-like fashion of
alleged Communists in the Dominican Republic. Journalists deflated Johnson's
lists, noting some were double-listed, in jail, or not in the region. As criticism
mounted, Johnson exaggerated even more, claiming “some 1,500 people were
murdered and shot, and their heads cut off.” The pro-Bosch forces had not, how-
ever, caused most casualties. The military's bombing of poor neighborhoods in
Santo Domingo took a heavy toll on Dominican citizens.
When he was not dwelling on the horrors of beheaded Dominicans, Johnson
offered familiar explanations for a U.S. intervention in Latin America. Johnson
wanted to be perceived as a tough anti-Communist to immunize himself from
right-wing criticism of his domestic agenda, the Great Society, and civil rights le-
gislation. He vowed that he would not suffer the same loss of political standing
that Truman had for “losing” China and that Dwight Eisenhower and Richard
Nixon had for not preventing the Cuban Revolution. Although he claimed “I am
not an intervener,” Johnson apparently judged that pursuing progressive policies
for U.S. citizens justified trampling on the rights of Latin Americans. Like other
Cold War presidents, Johnson also imbibed in “backyard” credibility thinking,
holding that regional strength translated into global vitality. In March 1965,
Johnson had taken the momentous step of changing the U.S. military mission in
102 THE KILLING ZONE
Vietnam from advising South Vietnamese forces to U.S. forces taking the fight to
the Communist enemy. As he asked, "what can we do in Vietnam, if we can't clean
up the Dominican Republic?" Johnson also saw a global Communist conspiracy,
telling National Security Advisor Bundy on 1 May that “I see a pattern and I just.
cannot be silent," because "what they are doing in Vietnam and the Dominican
Republic is not totally unrelated."? In pronouncing his Johnson Doctrine, Johnson
was, ofcourse, reiterating the confidential views of George Kennan, Edward Miller,
and Eisenhower's national security council on the need to take all measures
"deemed appropriate" to keep communism out of the hemisphere. In his 2 May
1965 address to the nation, Johnson repeated President Kennedy's public pledge of
“no more Cubas.” In his last address on inter-American affairs, on 18 November
1963, Kennedy pronounced his “Kennedy Doctrine,” making it a matter of “inter-
national responsibility" to come "to the aid of any government requesting aid to
prevent takeover aligned to the policies of foreign communism” `
Like previous U.S. officials, President Johnson questioned the abilities of
Latin American democrats to be Cold Warriors. The United States organized an
OAS peacekeeping mission of 1,769 troops to supplement the U.S. occupation
force in the Dominican Republic. But five of the six nations contributing troops
were led by dictators. The military dictators of Brazil sent 1,152 troops, the largest
contingent. In 1964, the United States had helped the Brazilian military over-
throw a civilian government. Juan Bosch did not qualify as Johnson's definition
ofan alpha male. In Johnson's words, “this Bosch is no good.” Johnson had been
unimpressed with the Dominican leader when, in January 1963, he attended
Bosch's presidential inauguration. The president agreed with Thomas Mann that
Bosch lacked the strength and intelligence to defeat Communists. As recorded
by presidential aide Jack Valenti, Johnson predicted, in a meeting in the White
House Cabinet Room on 30 April, that in the Dominican Republic “We will have
one of 3 dictators: (1) U.S., (2) Moderate dictator, (3) Castro dictator.” The United
States would find its “moderate dictator” in Joaquin Balaguer.
ELECTING BALAGUER
‘The overwhelming U.S. military presence in the Dominican Republic helped
forestall a lengthy, bloody civil war. Although ostensibly neutral in the political
struggle, U.S. civilian and military leaders deployed the troops in a way that
aided the anti-Bosch forces and forced the Bosch legions to accept a political
compromise. During the occupation, U.S. forces chose and then rejected seven
different leaders, finally settling in September 1965 on Héctor García Godoy as a
provisional president. García Godoy, who served as Bosch's foreign minister,
would serve until national elections could be held in mid-1966. Bosch returned to
the Dominican Republic in late September 1965. The United States wanted Bosch
to run for president so as to provide legitimacy to the upcoming elections.
Some scholars hold that the turn of events in the Dominican Republic from
September 1965 through the elections of June 1966 demonstrate that President
CHAPTER 5 * No More Cubas—The Kennedy and Johnson Doctrines 103
Johnson tried to salvage a decent outcome from the intervention that now embar-
rassed him. One scholar coined the fatuous term “gunboat democracy" to justify
Johnson's intervention. Analytical historians have described a "largely fair presi-
dential contest" in 1966 that saw Balaguer achieve a smashing electoral victory
over Bosch and a third candidate. These historians uphold General Bruce Palmer's
account of his mission to the island nation. Palmer, who commanded the occupy-
ing forces, claimed that U.S. military and international observers oversaw a “truly
honest election."* When Cold War issues were at risk, the United States was no
more willing to allow a free and open election in Latin America than were Kremlin
authorities inclined to permit Poles, Hungarians, or Czechs to choose their own
destinies
Prior to the outbreak of civil war, U.S officials had identified Joaquin Balaguer
as the U.S. man for the Dominican Republic, On 26 April 1965, barely two days
into the crisis, President Johnson accepted Thomas Mann's recommendation that
Balaguer would give the United States the government that it wanted in the island
nation.” Balaguer, a prolific poet, novelist, and essayist, was a sycophant of Rafael
Trujillo, having served the dictator in figure-head capacities, He penned El pens-
amiento vivo de Trujillo (1955) (The Living Thought of Trujillo). The expression
"God and Trujillo" appeared in his works. Balaguer, a person of European heri-
tage, criticized racial intermarriage in his writings. The Dominican Republic was
a diverse, multiracial society. A life-long bachelor (1906-2002), Balaguer lived
with his six sisters.
According to the announced results of the 1 June 1966 elections, Balaguer
won 57 percent of the votes, whereas Bosch garnered only 39 percent. In 1962
Bosch had won 60 percent of the vote in the presidential election. Historians have
tried to explain Bosch's poor showing. Fearful of his personal safety, Bosch did
not campaign effectively in 1966, Some Dominican voters may have also yearned
for stability after the five tumultuous years that followed the assassination of
Trujillo, Dominicans knew that the United States wanted Balaguer to win and
anticipated that substantial U.S. aid would follow. During the 1960s, the Domin-
ican Republic received more than $400 million in Alliance for Progress funds,
the fourth highest amount in Latin America. This was remarkable generosity to a
small country with a population of 3.5 million." Most of this money arrived in
the post-1965 period. President Balaguer used U.S. aid for job-creating public
works projects.
‘The Johnson administration’s campaign for Balaguer went beyond foreign
aid. President Johnson would have nothing of democracy in the Dominican Re-
public, Richard Helms, the acting director of the CIA, informed colleagues that
the president repeatedly told him and CIA Director John McCone that the candi-
date favored by the United States would win the Dominican election. Helms added:
"The President's statements were unequivocal. He wants to win the election, and he
expects for the Agency to arrange for this to happen.” The U.S. embassy in Santo
Domingo coordinated with the committee in Washington that oversaw covert
interventions, the “303 Committee,” spending “substantial” sums of money on the
104 THE KILLING ZONE
Balaguer campaign, constantly polling the electorate, and increasing the covert
electoral aid whenever Bosch appeared to be gaining popular support.” Washington
also brazenly ordered its embassies to assure skeptical Latin Americans that “there
is no basis for suspicion [that the] election may be rigged.”°
Despite its plea of innocence, the United States probably engaged in whole-
sale vote rigging in the Dominican Republic. As late as 28 April 1966, a National
Intelligence Estimate on the Dominican Republic noted that “we believe the elec-
tion will be close” and "we cannot predict the outcome with any confidence."
Eric Thomas Chester, a political activist and author, has identified dubious elec-
toral practices and decisions that favored Balaguer. The voter turnout for the 1966
election was remarkably 30 percent higher than in the 1962 presidential election.
Almost 1.4 million Dominicans allegedly voted in 1966, 80 percent of the eligible
electorate. Chester confessed that he could not find the proverbial “smoking gun”
to prove that the United States stuffed ballot boxes.“
Chester could have strengthened his case about the Dominican Republic by
observing that the United States was in the business of vote rigging in other parts
of the Western Hemisphere during the 1960s. In British Guiana (Guyana), for
example, the United States took extraordinary steps to ensure that its candidate,
Forbes Burnham, the leader of Afro-Guyanese, won elections and kept Cheddi
Jagan and his Indo-Guyanese supporters from power. Like Presidents Jacobo
Arbenzand Juan Bosch, Jagan fell under the rubric of being either a Communist,
soft on communism, or oblivious to the Communist menace. In 1968, the U.S.
ambassador in Georgetown worked with the 303 Committee and Prime Minister
Burnham in drawing up fictitious lists of absentee voters in Guyana and showing
great imagination in creating voter lists of Guyanese allegedly living abroad in
the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. Two horses grazing on a
vacant lot in Manchester, England, became Guyanese citizens and supporters of
Prime Minister Burnham in the 1968 election.
President Balaguer dominated Dominican political life for three decades,
holding the presidency for twenty-two years (1966-1978, 1986-1996). He fulfilled
President Johnson's wish for a moderate dictator who kept his country quiet and
who reliably backed U.S. foreign policy initiatives. Although not as savage as
Rafael Trujillo, Balaguer was a ruthless caudillo who used carrots and sticks to
stay in power. With U.S. economic assistance and access to the U.S. sugar market
and by opening the country’s sugar interests and tourist industry to the U.S. con-
glomerate Gulf and Western, Balaguer generated enough new income from 1966
to 1978 to give his nation economic growth although not economic development
or social justice. In September 1969, a National Intelligence Estimate noted that
“maldistribution of the country’s wealth and limited opportunities for personal
advancement,” combined with unchecked population growth, led to high rates of
unemployment and underemployment, expanding city slums, and large numbers
of landless peasants.“ Balaguer ruled on behalf of the traditional oligarchy, the
military, and light-skinned Dominicans. From 1966 to 1978, Balaguer sanctioned
political murders by the military and terrorist groups. An especially notorious
CHAPTER 5 * No More Cubas—The Kennedy and Johnson Doctrines 105
death squad, La Banda (“The Gang"), had ties to the military and police. Perhaps
three thousand political leftists were assassinated.“ From the U.S perspective,
the imperatives of the Cold War demanded hard choices. As President Kennedy
framed the issue, better a Trujillo than a Castro.
BRAZIL
US. policies toward the Dominican Republic highlighted the core concerns of
the United States in Latin America during the Cold War. But developments in
the small, impoverished island nation did not reverberate throughout Latin
America. Brazil, however, wielded significant influence in the region. In the
name of anticommunism, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations encour-
aged the Brazilian military to seize power from a constitutional government.
Generals ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985, giving their nation impressive, albeit
uneven, economic growth, with industrialization and economic diversification.
‘The generals and admirals also directed harsh political repression and gross vio-
lations of basic human rights. Military men throughout South America admired
the “Brazilian miracle.” By the mid-1970s, generals dominated South America.
‘They claimed they could give their nations the political stability and technologi-
cal sophistication that would allow their economies to grow and flourish. These
military rulers also conducted savage wars against political leftists and those
who defended the rule of law.
Both the Kennedy and the Johnson administrations considered a healthy re-
lationship with Brazil essential to winning the Cold War in Latin America and
maintaining the U.S. sphere of influence in the region. Brazil had experienced
tumultuous economic times from 1956 to 1961 under President Kubitschek.
Beyond building Brasilia, Kubitschek had fostered industrialization, creating a
motor vehicle industry, increasing electrical generation, and expanding the na-
tion's highways. “Fifty years of progress in five” had been his motto. But Kubitschek
had fostered economic growth by borrowing international capital and through
deficit financing. Price inflation had ensued, with prices rising by 35 percent a
year. The Brazilian also had not solved the country’s regional economic disparity.
Growth took place in the south and central parts of the country. Brazilians were
migrating from impoverished hinterlands to the great cities of Rio de Janeiro and
Sao Paulo. The Northeast, where one-third of the population resided, had lan-
guished. Some of the poorest people in Latin America lived in states such as
Bahia and Pernambuco. Both Brazilian elites and U.S. officials feared growing
radicalism in the northeast. In promoting the Alliance for Progress, Kubitschek
hoped that Brazil would receive the money it needed to continue development.
At the beginning of the 1960s, U.S. officials accepted Kubitschek’s sense of
urgency. As State Department planners noted, “If U.S. policy fails in Brazil, it will
become extremely difficult to achieve success elsewhere in Latin America.” Presi-
dent Kennedy agreed, adding that “Latin America is critical to [the] West,” and
“Brazil is [the] key country in Latin America.” Thomas Mann informed President
106 THE KILLING ZONE
Johnson that “Brazil is the keystone of our interests on the continent of South
America." The U.S. dilemma was that it did not trust Kubitschek's presidential
successors, Jânio Quadros (1961) and João Goulart (1961-1964). Both Brazilian
presidents supported the Alliance for Progress. But the Kennedy administration
condemned these constitutional leaders because Brazil refused to break diplo-
matic relations with Cuba and because it established commercial ties with the
Soviet Union. Presidents Quadros and Goulart also tolerated domestic leftists.
In the early 1960s, the democratic leaders of the southern cone countries—
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay—rejected the U.S. threat assessment of
“Castro/communism.” Castro ruled a small island country of impoverished sugar
workers thousands of miles away from the glittering metropolises of Buenos
Aires, Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, and Santiago. Southern cone leaders stood
firmly on the principle of nonintervention and argued that sanctions against
Cuba “would only serve to push it irrevocably into [the] hands of the Sino-Soviet
bloc.” These leaders further worried that a Cold War confrontation with Cuba
would exacerbate political tensions in their countries, exciting extremists on both
sides of the political spectrum. As President Goulart once put it, Castro had
become a “dramatic symbol of revolutionary aspirations of underprivileged
masses throughout Latin America.” If the United States was patient, the Castro
regime would “deteriorate under its own weight.” But the United States would do
a great disservice by agitating the Cuban problem because "Latin American
masses are instinctive[ly] on [the] side of tiny Cuba whenever it [is] menaced by
[the] colossus of the North."
The Kennedy administration dismissed such analyses, believing that South
Americans were naive about the Communist threat. The administration also dis-
counted other Brazilian facts. Brazil supported the United States during the Cuban
missile crisis, and President Goulart proposed solutions to the crisis. Brazilians
pointed out that there had been no known case of a Brazilian training in Cuba for
subversive activities. To be sure, Brazil established relations with the Soviet Union
in 1961, permitted the Soviets to stage a trade fair in Rio de Janeiro in 1962, and
signed a commercial agreement in April 1963. Brazilian leaders defended these
new ties by citing public opinion polls, which showed strong popular support for
an independent foreign policy. Brazilians had long dreamed that their country,
given its size and great natural resources, should play a leading role on the inter-
national stage. Brazilians did not think that an expanded international role would
come at the expense of the traditional friendship it enjoyed with the United States.
In any case, Brazil had hardly become tied to the Soviet bloc. Soviet-Brazilian
trade grew from 5 million to 66 million rubles between 1959 and 1963. But that
commerce represented only 3 percent of Brazil’s trade. The balance of trade fa-
vored Brazil because the Soviets offered goods of poor quality.
‘The Kennedy administration first tried to modify Brazil’s international be-
havior by offering bright carrots. In March 1961, it proffered the new Quadros
administration a $100 million gift to help it import capital goods and then asked
for Brazilian support for the impending Bay of Pigs invasion. As outgoing
CHAPTER 5 * No More Cubas—The Kennedy and Johnson Doctrines 107
ambassador to Brazil John Moors Cabot recalled, “It was obvious it was just a
bribe. I mean that's what it amounted to. And Quadros, with increasing irrita-
tion, said no:™ In May 1961, President Kennedy made his pitch. Meeting with the
Brazilian finance minister, Kennedy observed that the United States had just
agreed with the International Monetary Fund to give Brazil $335 million in cred-
its. The president then lectured the Brazilian. In negotiating the loan, the United
States “had completely avoided mention of political factors,” but the Brazilians
had to understand that “the United States was interested in the Castro regime
because it is a weapon used by international communism in an effort to take over
additional Latin American countries.” Kennedy lamented that it would be im-
possible to drive Cuba out of the OAS unless the major Latin American nations
agreed “on the basic analysis of the situation.” Quadros again refused to change
Brazil's independent foreign policy, and he further irritated the United States by
hosting Che Guevara and awarding him Brazil’s Order of the Southern Cross.
On 25 August 1961, Quadros unexpectedly resigned and his vice president,
Joao Goulart, eventually succeeded to the presidency. A career politician, Goulart
had served as vice president to President Kubitschek and as a minister of labor. A
fiery speaker and populist, Goulart identified himself with the nation’s powerless.
He had various ties to leftist groups, including the Brazilian Communist Party.
Brazilian conservatives, including military officers, distrusted Goulart and ini-
tially tried to block his ascension to power. Goulart took office on 2 September
1961, after the Brazilian Congress passed a constitutional amendment curbing
the powers of the presidency. He regained full presidential powers in January
1963, however, as the result of a plebiscite.
The Kennedy administration shared the Brazilian military's suspicion of Presi-
dent Goulart, interpreting his political maneuvers through a Cold War prism.
Goulart sustained that suspicion by maintaining President Quadros's independent
foreign policy and refusing to break relations with Cuba. He exasperated U.S. offi-
cials with his fickle and inconstant fiscal and monetary policies that swallowed up
the substantial U.S. aid, which amounted to more than $700 million between 1961
and 1963. Inflation spun out of control, with prices rising more than 90 percent in
1964. Other sins included expropriating the U.S. telecommunications giant, Inter-
national Telephone and Telegraph, arousing labor and student groups with inflam-
matory speeches, and appointing cabinet ministers with politically radical
sentiments. He also called for higher prices for primary products, implicitly sug-
gesting that better terms of trade, not the Alliance for Progress, would generate the
economic growth that Latin America needed. In short, an irresponsible President
Goulart seemingly opposed all U.S. objectives in Latin America and, at best, was
indifferent to the international Communist conspiracy. The new U.S. ambassador
in Brasilia, Lincoln Gordon, predicted that Goulart intended to stay in power
beyond his term and “take Brazil into the Communist camp.”
Kennedy administration officials had available to them other analyses of
President Goulart's intentions. Juscelino Kubitschek twice met with President
Kennedy, assuring him that Goulart was not a Marxist, that he supported the
108 THE KILLING ZONE
Alliance for Progress, and that Goulart had a "genuine liking" for Kennedy. Goulart
himself tried to reassure Kennedy when he visited the White House in April
1962. Goulart considered his audience with Kennedy the crowning moment of
his presidency. CIA analysts also presented nuanced views of Goulart. They dis-
counted the view that Goulart had a radical agenda for Brazil. The CIA essen-
tially saw Goulart as an "opportunist" who was intent on preserving political
power. Other administration officials argued that Goulart had to ally with polit-
ical leftists because he accurately feared that conservatives, including military
generals, plotted against him. These discerning interpretations of Brazilian pol-
itics failed to persuade the administration to abandon its Cold War verities. As
President Kennedy remarked, the situation in Brazil “worried him more than
that in Cuba.”*!
THE QUIET INTERVENTION
Scholars have detailed how the United States destabilized the Goulart government.
One scholar dubbed the covert campaign “the quiet intervention.” In December
1962, President Kennedy dispatched his brother, the attorney general, to Brazil to
confront Goulart over his “putting those leftists and Communists in positions of
power.” Although the three-hour meeting ended inconclusively, Robert Kennedy
decided that the United States could not trust the Brazilian president. Beyond rep-
rimanding Goulart, the administration manipulated the Brazilian political scene.
In 1962 the CIA spent $5 million funding the campaigns of candidates for fifteen
federal Senate seats, eight state governorships, two hundred fifty federal deputy
seats, and some six hundred seats for state legislatures. The CIA, working through
US. labor unions, also covertly funded Brazilian trade union groups, encouraging
them to organize strikes and demonstrations against Goulart. The U.S. unions
coordinated their intervention with the U.S. embassy and the Brazilian military.
‘The CIA had first developed the tactic of “controlled penetration” of associations
like labor groups in Guatemala in 1954 and was simultaneously using the tactic in
British Guiana to destabilize Prime Minister Cheddi Jagan’s government. The
Kennedy administrations anti-Goulart campaign included undermining the
cherished Alliance for Progress. The administration funneled Alliance funds to
conservative state governors, like Carlos Lacerda of Guanabara (encompassing
Rio de Janeiro), who were friendly to the United States and hostile to Goulart.
These governors had records of ignoring the needs of the Brazilian poor. In con-
trast, the United States limited economic aid to the state of Pernambuco and its
desperately poor city of Recife because the governor of Pernambuco was a political
ally of President Goulart.
‘The Kennedy administration also tasked two study groups with exploring
ways to strengthen U.S, ties with the Brazilian military to prepare for a “more
friendly alternative regime.” The administration reached out directly to Brazilian
generals when, in 1962, it dispatched Colonel Vernon Walters to Brazil as a mili-
tary attaché in the U.S. embassy. Walters, who was fluent in Portuguese, had
CHAPTER 5 * No More Cubas—The Kennedy and Johnson Doctrines 109
served with Brazilian officers during World War II, when Brazil sent an expe-
ditionary force to fight in Italy. As Walters later recalled, somebody "high in the
administration" briefed him that President Kennedy would not be averse to
seeing Goulart overthrown and replaced by an anti-Communist who supported
U.S. international policies. Walters's circumspect language belied the extent of
his activities in Brazil. He developed a social relationship with General Humberto
de Alencar Castello Branco, who would lead the military conspiracy against
Goulart. Walters was told of the military's plans in minute detail and passed the
intelligence on to Ambassador Gordon and then to the White House. Walters
also relayed the Brazilian military's request for logistical support from the United
States. After receiving the requests, Walters would tell his Brazilian friends that
he "had no authority to discuss such matters." The play acting of Walters al-
lowed Ambassador Gordon and officials in Washington to offer "plausible deni-
als" that they had encouraged the Brazilian military to strike.
On 2 April 1964, Brazilian generals and admirals disposed of Goulart. The
new Johnson administration had prepositioned war matériel and readied a U.S.
naval task force for duty of the coast of Brazil, in case the military men encoun-
tered resistance to the destruction of the Brazilian democracy. As President
Johnson noted to aides, “I think we ought to do everything that we need to do."
In an apparent reference to Goulart, President Johnson added that “we just can't.
take this one.” The administration granted diplomatic recognition to the new
interim government eighteen hours after its installation. Whereas the overthrow
of Goulart came about early in the Johnson presidency, it was the fulfillment of.
President Kennedy's policy. The Johnson administration continued the policy
of funneling Alliance money to conservatives, Immediately after the overthrow of
Goulart, it granted Brazil an emergency $50 million loan. Overall, the Brazilian
generals secured $1.2 billion in Alliance funds from 1964 to 1969, despite ignor-
ing Alliance objectives of democracy and social justice. The new U.S. ambas-
sador, John W. Tuthill, reported in June 1967 that the generals “have failed so far
to comply with important (Alliance for Progress] goals.” Tuthill found it “inex-
cusable" that the generals had not developed an economic program.
Brazil's international behavior assuaged concerns about its abandonment of
the Alliance for Progress. General Castello Branco severed relations with Cuba
and provided President Johnson with diplomatic cover by sending Brazilian sol-
diers in 1965 to serve in an OAS peacekeeping force in the Dominican Republic.
‘The generals, however, continued to pursue the nationalistic goal of an independ-
ent foreign policy. They rejected U.S. requests to send troops to Vietnam. Brazil
also continued to trade with the Soviet Union.
THE BRAZILIAN “MIRACLE”
Scholars have emphasized that whereas the United States urged the Brazilian mili-
tary to strike against President Goulart, the generals and admirals pursued their
own agendas. The Brazilian military had traditionally exercised a “moderating”
10 THE KILLING ZONE
role in Brazilian constitutional history. They had intervened to resolve clashes be-
tween civilian politicians, held power briefly, and then returned to the barracks.
But Brazilian officers increasingly disdained the political class, became alarmed
about inflation, and shared the view that Brazil had a great but unfulfilled destiny.
They also judged themselves as superior Brazilians because they had attended pro-
fessional military academies and studied in war colleges abroad, especially in the
United States. They believed that their patriotism and scientific training gave them
the honesty and ability to choose and oversee politically neutral social scientists
and engineers who would transform the Brazilian economy. With the help of
ample U.S. financial assistance, the military governments first attacked inflation
through stringent budgetary and fiscal measures. Once inflation rates fell to a man-
ageable 20 to 25 percent in the late 1960s, the military rulers and the technocrats
launched massive public works projects—a hydroelectric dam near the Paraguayan
border, a trans-Amazonian highway, and nuclear power projects. They also as-
sisted wealthy landowners to diversify into crops such as soybeans and oranges,
breaking the nation's dependence on exports of coffee and sugar. Between 1968
and 1974, the Brazilian economy, “the Brazilian miracle,” grew at an impressive
annual rate of 11 percent. The benefits of this growth went primarily to upper-
middle and upper-income groups. Brazil also became dependent on international
borrowing.
Although military officers thought themselves above politics, they were arch-
conservatives, resisting changes in Brazil's hierarchical social structure and de-
nouncing cultural pluralism. Change equated with “communism.” President
Goulart's proposal to enfranchise illiterate people threatened social stability. The
military rulers and their minions shaved the heads of, imprisoned for months,
and then forced into exile the great, innovative recording artists Caetano Veloso
and Gilberto Gil because they loathed their new musical movement, Tropical-
ismo, which fused Brazilian pop with rock and roll and avant garde music.
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who challenged classical economic theory with his
“dependency,” or dependencia, school of economic interpretation, lost his teach-
ing position at the Universidade de São Paulo. Professor Cardoso would later
become president of Brazil (1995-2003). The generals found women's rights,
feminism, and even birth control and oral contraceptives politically and sexually
deviant. Female activists, who were denounced as putas communistas (“Com-
munist whores”), were subjected to appalling abuses—torture and rape—at the
hands of the Brazilian military and police. The torturers reveled while delivering
electrical shocks to the sexual organs of female university students.
In the name of order, progress, and anticommunism, the generals and admi-
rals gave Brazilians two decades of savage rule. In December 1968, General
Arturo da Costa e Silva, who succeeded General Castello Branco, issued Institu-
tional Act (No. 5), which abolished Congress and transformed Brazil into a mili-
tary dictatorship. Criticism of the government became a national security issue
subject to military justice. The dismantling of the Brazilian constitution polar-
ized politics in the country. Strikes, demonstrations, bombings, terrorism, and
CHAPTER 5 + No More Cubas—The Kennedy and Johnson Doctrines 111
urban guerrilla warfare broke out. The generals responded brutally, murdering
and torturing opponents. Between 1964 and 1971, perhaps three thousand
Brazilians were murdered by the military and police. In one notorious incident,
in March 1968, the military violently broke up a demonstration by university
students in Rio de Janeiro protesting the poor quality of food in student cafete-
rias. Some fifty thousand people took part in the funeral procession for the stu-
dent ofhumble origin that the military killed in the raid. The military commander
of the city responded that the army must treat the student protestors like “an
enemy attacking the fatherland’s territory and threatening the nation's basic in-
stitutions."* Student complaints about cafeteria food had become a national se-
curity issue for the Brazilian regime.
Scholars have argued that the radical left, inspired by the Cuban Revolution,
provoked military repression in Brazil and throughout the southern cone coun-
tries of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay by resorting to violence. Those who make
such points have their historical chronology out of order.** Brazil did not have an
armed insurrectionary movement before 1969. The Brazilian Communist Party
thought violence a suicidal option. Resistance and violence came in response to
the military regime's crushing of the labor unions and its raiding of universities.
The number of Brazilian combatants was small, probably less than five hundred,
and by 1974 the regime had liquidated its armed enemy.” Neither Castro's Cuba
nor the Soviet Union bears responsibility for the mass murders that characterized
the national histories of the southern cone countries in the late 1960s and 1970s.
Brazilian generals, not Fidel Castro, can take credit and blame for the hor-
rors that gripped South America in the 1970s. The Brazilian military's seizure of
power helped create an ironic “domino effect” in South America. By the mid-
1970s, generals ruled throughout the continent. The Brazilian alliance between
the military and technocrats seemed an appealing model to Latin American con-
servatives. Generals in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and elsewhere adopted the
Brazilian brand, abolishing democracy, smashing “Communists,” and promising
economic growth. As early as 1966, U.S. diplomats in Buenos Aires reported that
the Argentine military identified with the Brazilian military regime, believing
that they shared “the identical spirit of renovation, of anti-communism, anti-
corruption, anti-inefficiency and of unreserved support for pro-Western for
policy.” The Argentine generals also took note that the United States continued to.
lavish financial assistance on the Brazil’s military rulers.“ The Brazilians did
more than lead by example. Brazilian military, police, and death squad leaders
worked with the Uruguayan police, teaching them antiterrorist tactics. Brazil's
neighbors would take the violence to a new level. By the mid-1970s, Uruguay had
the most political prisoners per capita of any nation in the world. In Argentina,
the generals and their minions may have murdered as many as thirty thousand
‘Argentines in what was labeled “the dirty war" (la guerra sucia).
As these gross violations of basic human rights unfolded, U.S. officials reacted
with disappointment. Within a month after the attack on Goulart, Ambassador
Gordon confessed “to considerable dismay” to learn that the generals he embraced
112 THE KILLING ZONE
displayed reactionary colors. One of their first acts had been to cancel for ten years
the political rights of President Kubitschek. In 1965, Robert Kennedy, now a sen-
ator from New York, complained about the U.S. friendship with Brazil. The year
before, Attorney General Kennedy had expressed satisfaction with the overthrow
of Goulart, noting that "Brazil would have gone Communist.” As the repression
mounted, Washington comforted itself with the fantasy that Brazilians could not
be expected to conform to the standards of Western civilization. Under the sig-
nature of Secretary of State Dean Rusk, one State Department officer told the
embassy in Brasilia that "we realize that Brazil’s needs and performance cannot
be measured against North American or northwest European standards of con-
stitutional democracy, nor even easily expressed in Anglo-Saxon terms,” Such
a grotesque assessment represented a complete repudiation of the promise of the
Alliance for Progress.
USS. officials engaged in self-delusion when they expressed shock and horror
over Brazil's political evolution. The United States had participated in the mili-
tary's seizure of power and provided $1.2 billion in economic assistance there-
after. The United States also trained the forces of repression. Between 1962 and
1974, the United States operated the Office of Public Safety (OPS), a police train-
ing program. The OPS provided $337 million in training, equipment, and advi-
sors to Third World police. In Brazil, the OPS spent $10 million and trained one
hundred thousand police. U.S. legislators disbanded OPS in 1974 in response to
public outrage that followed revelations that the agency had assisted police units
that tortured and murdered. President Kennedy had authorized the program,
arguing that Latin America needed internal security to achieve the economic de-
velopment goals enumerated in the Alliance for Progress. Police training was
linked to the U.S. effort to orient the Latin American military away from hemi-
spheric defense and toward counterinsurgency. The program's public goal was to
reduce crime in Latin America by teaching police how to act in a legal, rational,
and professional manner.
Analysts of OPS argue that the program contributed to authoritarianism,
violence, and militarism in Latin America. The OPS “internationalized” U.S. na-
tional security concerns, turning the U.S. fear of international communism into
the obsession of Latin American security forces. OPS trainers also encouraged the
bureaucratic innovation of placing military men in charge of police units, thereby,
in one scholar's words, "militarizing the police and inculcating a war model of
social control
Brazilian police officers took courses, many of them at the Inter-
national Police Academy in Washington, on subjects such as “prisons as schools
for terrorists” and “subversive manipulation and domestic intelligence.” The OPS
also offered a course in a border town in Texas for Latin American police on
manufacturing and using explosives. Brazilian authorities contemplated blowing
up gas lines in Rio de Janeiro, which would have caused mass casualties, and then
blaming the tragedy on political leftists. U.S. officials always denied that they
encouraged Latin American police to torture and murder. But one OPS advisor,
Dan Mitrione, helped Brazilians organize a militarized police “shock unit" of
CHAPTER 5 * No More Cubas—The Kennedy and Johnson Doctrines 113
men more than six feet tall who patrolled at night in Rio's poor neighborhoods or
favelas and practiced a “shoot-to-kill” policy. (Mitrione would subsequently work
for the OPS in Uruguay and be murdered by leftists. Mitrione became the subject
of the famous film State of Siege [1972] by Costa-Gavras). OPS officers in Brazil
reported favorably about Operacào Bandeirantes, a joint military-police operation
established in 1969 in Sao Paulo that perpetrated murder and torture, Critics com-
pared Operacio Bandeirantes, both in structure and in purpose, to the Phoenix
Program, the U.S. assassination program in South Vietnam that eliminated more
than twenty-six thousand suspected Viet Cong. Theodore Brown headed the
Phoenix Program immediately after concluding his tenure as director of the OPS
program in Brazil.®*
The United States did not need to teach Brazilians torture tactics. Brazilian
police had long tortured criminal suspects, using a technique known as pau de
arara or “the parrot's perch.” The victim was suspended upside-down and naked on
a horizontal pole and subjected to beatings and electrical shocks. Dilma Rousseff
(2011- ), the future president of Brazil, was repeatedly subjected to such horrors be-
tween 1970 and 1973, her years in jail asa political prisoner. Minions of the military
regime developed the geladeira or refrigerator, a five-foot-square windowless cu-
bicle equipped with loudspeakers, strobe lights, and heating and cooling units.
Inside the geladeira, political prisoners were subjected to high-technology attacks
on their senses. Brazilian security forces also proved adept at spreading fear and
terror throughout society. Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, the Archbishop of São
Paulo, regularly received in the archdiocesan office twenty to fifty people every
week, all trying to discover the whereabouts of their apprehended relatives. In one
case, a young woman informed Cardinal Arns that she found her husband's wed-
ding ring left on her doorstep. She was uncertain whether this meant he was dead
or whether she should continue searching for him. Cardinal Arns had no answer
for her. He understood that the pain was unimaginable for those who saw their
loved ones disappear behind prison bars, without being able to guess what hap-
pened to them, As he wrote, for the young wife “deep darkness covers the earth, as
it did when Jesus died." U.S. officials and OPS and CIA officers associated with
security forces that tortured individuals and terrorized Brazilian society. They did
not ask hard questions about the “deep darkness” and frequently denied in public
testimony that security forces violated basic human rights. The United States had
succeeded in exporting its Cold War concerns to Brazil and elsewhere in Latin
América, with appalling consequences.
MEXICO—THE SECRET ALLY
Mexico seemingly represented the one defeat the United States suffered in its
campaign to isolate Fidel Castro's Cuba. Mexico was the only Latin American
country that preserved economic and diplomatic ties with Cuba throughout the
Cold War. It also conducted political and economic relations with the Soviet
Union. But Mexico's independent stance toward Cuba and the Soviet Union
114 THE KILLING ZONE
obscured as much as it revealed. Mexico secretly supported the U.S. war against
Communist Cuba.
Political stability and economic expansion characterized Mexico during the
period from 1945 to 1968. The Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional
Revolutionary Party), popularly known as the "PRI," controlled political life. The
PRI traced its roots back to key figures in the Mexican Revolution and claimed to
represent the nation's revolutionary heritage. Employing patronage, bribery, and
strong-arm methods, it overwhelmingly won elections at the local, state, and na-
tional levels. Adolfo López Mateos (1958-1964) captured the presidency, for ex-
ample, with 90 percent of the vote. Neither López Mateos nor any other Mexican
president could succeed himself. Under the Mexican Constitution of 1917,
a president served one six-year term. The protocols of the PRI mandated that the
president consult with party officials and then choose, or “tap,” his successor. As
such, López Mateos nominated his successor, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz (1964-1970),
who, of course, easily won the presidential contest.
Protests by Mexican citizens against this constitutional, albeit undemocratic,
system were muted because the PRI produced stunning economic growth in the
postwar period. Between 1946 and 1958, the country's economy doubled in size.
In the 1960s, economic growth rates often hit an impressive 6 percent a year. PRI
leaders changed the direction of Mexico's political economy. Under President
Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940), the government had emphasized economic na-
tionalism and social justice, expropriating foreign-owned properties, redistribut-
ing land, and enhancing the rights of workers. Starting during World War II,
Mexico focused on economic growth and industrialization as the way to conquer
poverty. It spent money on transportation and communication systems, invested
in higher education, and welcomed foreign investment and trade back into the
country. Major U.S. corporations, like the Ford Motor Company, established fac-
tories, and commercial enterprises, like Sears Roebuck, opened stores throughout
the country. The government also invested in tourism, building seaside resorts
like Acapulco and promoting archaeological research and preservation. In 1947,
President Harry Truman highlighted the tourist outreach, visiting the awesome
Temples of the Sun and Moon in the ancient city of Teotihuacán.
By the 1960s, Mexico's economic progress was tangible. Mexico City had
been transformed into a glittering metropolis. The city's subway system, which
opened in 1969, was a technological marvel. The architecture and artistry at the
National University of Mexico dazzled Mexicans and tourists. The nation became
self-sufficient in the production of iron, steel, and petroleum. The middle class
grew substantially. However, economic growth had not resolved all problems.
Perhaps 50 percent of the population, especially those residing in rural areas, still
lived in poverty. The problems of poverty and economic inequality were com-
pounded by Mexico’s population explosion. The population grew from 22 million
in 1945 to a staggering 87 million by 1990.
During this period of economic growth, ties between the United States and
Mexico thickened. Because the two countries shared a nearly two thousand
CHAPTER 5 * No More Cubas—The Kennedy and Johnson Doctrines 115
mile-long border, U.S. relations with Mexico were distinctive. Officials negoti-
ated on issues such as border-crossing procedures, the water quality of the Rio
Grande and Colorado rivers, and the construction of dams, such as the Amistad
Dam on the Texas-Mexico border. The Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
resolved to Mexico's satisfaction the Chamizal controversy. The Rio Grande, as it
flowed between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, had shifted its bed in 1864, leaving a
small part of what was once Mexico within U.S. borders. In 1964, in a grand cere-
mony attended by President López Mateos, President Johnson transferred several
hundred acres of land, Chamizal, back to Mexico.
U.S-Mexican economic relations took on significance during the postwar
period. Mexico was in the process of tying its economy to the United States, Trade
amounted to nearly $3 billion in 1970, when it had reached only about $350 mil-
lion in 1945. Direct investments in Mexico grew from the wartime amount of
$286 million to $1.8 billion by 1970. President Johnson and his man on Latin
America, Thomas Mann, spoke approvingly of Mexico's turn to industrial capi-
talism. As Johnson put it to President López Mateos, "he had heard from American
businessmen in Mexico that they were very pleased with the treatment they had
received from the present Mexican administration.” Mann judged President Díaz
Ordaz to be even more sympathetic to international capitalism than his prede-
cessor. The Export-Import Bank began, in 1966, to loan money to the Mexico's
national oil company, the very company constructed out of the U.S. oil companies
that President Cárdenas had expropriated in 1938. Visiting the LBJ Ranch in the
Hill country of Texas in November 1964, President-elect Díaz Ordaz surprised
President Johnson and his advisors when he suggested that the countries sign a
bilateral trade agreement that would guarantee a market in the United States for
Mexico's agricultural and mineral exports." The Mexican leader was advocating
what would become the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994.
Immigration also deepened ties between the two neighbors. In 1900, "His-
panics” or “Latinos,” people of Latin American ancestry, represented less than
1 percent of the U.S. population. In 1942, as a wartime exigency, the United States.
and Mexico signed a guest worker program, popularly known as the bracero pro-
gram, to allow Mexican nationals to work in U.S. agriculture and other manual-
labor jobs. Between 1942and 1964, when the bracero program lapsed, approximately
4.5 million people were registered as entering the United States to work. (Many
workers would have crossed the border numerous times.) Some guest workers ob-
tained long-term work permits or visas, whereas some decided to stay in the United
States without documentation. U.S. immigration officers responded to border
crossings by conducting deportation campaigns under ugly rubrics such as Oper-
ation Wetback (1954). By 1950, about 3 percent of the U.S. population was listed as
Hispanic. In 1965, President Johnson signed immigration reform legislation, the
Hart-Celler Act, which repealed the National Origins Act of 1924. The new legis-
lation sharply raised the total number of people who would be permitted to immi-
grate to the United States and abolished the discriminatory quotas that had favored
Northern and Western Europeans. The 1980 U.S. census disclosed that 6 percent of
116 THE KILLING ZONE
the population was Hispanic. Mexicans and Mexican Americans comprised about
65 percent of this Latino population.
Mexico's thickening ties with the United States made it likely that Mexico
would implicitly support the Cold War initiatives of the United States. U.S. offi-
cials understood that Mexico was an anti-Communist country. The government
persecuted members of the Mexican Communist Party and other radicals. It put
the famous artist, David Alfaro Siqueiros, in jail on charges of sedition or “social
dissolution.” Siqueiros had done the spectacular murals that graced the National
University in Mexico City. President Diaz Ordaz told President Johnson that he
favored cultural exchanges but that he “would exclude painters, since in Mexico,
because of a certain snobbish approach, many painters were Communists, and he
would not want to send them to the U.S."* In October 1962, Mexico denounced
the Soviet Union at the United Nations for placing missiles in Cuba. Thereafter,
Mexico led the movement to make Latin America a “nuclear-free zone.” Mexico
also did not think much of Soviet technology. Díaz Ordaz informed President
Johnson "that Mexico was extremely unhappy about the Soviet [oil drilling]
equipment which is far inferior to the latest U.S. equipment and even to some
equipment that Mexico has."
To be sure, the United States would have preferred that Mexico join in the
isolation of Castro's Cuba. Both the Eisenhower and the Kennedy administra-
tions warned Mexico that Cuba was a den of subversion that threatened the entire
hemisphere. Mexican leaders, like López Mateos, fended off the U.S. pressure,
arguing that revolution could not be exported and that socioeconomic develop-
ment, as planned for in the Alliance for Progress, was the best antidote to com-
munism in Latin America.” The Mexican presidents also patiently explained the
realities of political life in Mexico. They feared that aggrieved peasants, workers,
and students would use the Cuban Revolution as a rallying cry and form a new
political movement under the leadership of former President Cardenas that
would challenge the hegemony of the PRI. The party's embrace of industrial cap-
italism and economic engagement with the United States seemed to many polit-
ical leftists a repudiation of the ideals and promises of the Mexican Revolution.
As historian Renata Keller,'a student of Mexican-Cuban relations, has aptly put it,
Mexico designed a "foreign policy for domestic consumption.” Mexico would main-
tain relations with Cuba and offer rhetorical support for the Cuban Revolution.”
But Mexico would also stay on its course of creating a middle-class, consumer-
oriented society under the tutelage of the PRI.
President Johnson and his advisors grasped the advantages of the Mexican
approach to Cuba. Having a Latin American embassy in Havana proved beneficial
to the United States. The Mexican embassy readily shared intelligence information
with the United States about domestic developments in Cuba. Indeed, in the late
1960s, Mexico helped a CIA agent infiltrate its embassy in Havana. The agent,
Humberto Carrillo Colén, operated under Mexican diplomatic cover until the
‘Cuban security services identified him in 1969 as a CIA spy.” CIA agents also op-
erated freely in Mexico, spying on Cubans. CIA agents had sources throughout the
CHAPTER 5
No More Cubas—The Kennedy and Johnson Doctrines 117
Mexican government and security services, including with Secretary of the Inter-
ior Luis Echeverría Alvarez, who subsequently served as president (1970-1976).
‘The United States repaid Mexico for its cooperation on Cuba. Throughout
1968, student groups assembled and protested the graft, corruption, and lack of
democracy in a modernizing Mexico. These demonstrations erupted even as
Mexico was marking its emergence as an advanced nation by hosting the Summer
Olympic Games in Mexico City. On 2 October 1968, Mexican police and mili-
tary, under the general direction of Secretary of the Interior Echeverría, opened
fire on about five thousand demonstrators who had assembled in the Plaza de las
‘Tres Culturas in the District of Tlatelolco in Mexico City. Although the casualty
figures remain in dispute, probably several hundred young people were killed or
wounded. The government predictably blamed foreign students and international
Communists for precipitating the tragedy. The CIA correctly concluded, how-
ever, “that the student demonstrations were sparked by domestic politics, not
masterminded by the Cubans or Soviets.” Nonetheless, the Johnson adminis-
tration repeated the official Mexican analysis of the massacre and voiced no
public criticism of Mexico. In the words of Covey Oliver, the assistant secretary
President-elect Gustavo Diaz Ordaz and President Lyndon Johnson meet at the Johnson
ranch in the Hill country of Texas in November 1964, Both presidents are wearing LBJ-style
cowboy hats. Johnson, who fancied himself an expert on Mexico, perceived Diaz Ordaz as
a stout anti-Communist. The Mexican leader surprised U.S. officials when he suggested
that the countries should negotiate a bilateral trade treaty. (O. J. Rapp/Lyndon Baines
Johnson Library)
118 THE KILLING ZONE
of state for Latin America, the United States had to “avoid any indication” that
the United States doubted Mexico's “ability to control the situation.”” The mas-
sacre at Tlatelolco had, however, undermined the credibility of the PRI in Mexico.
From a Cold War perspective, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations
waged a successful foreign policy with Latin America. At the beginning of the
1960s, President Kennedy had dubbed Latin America the "the most dangerous
area in the world." But by the end of the decade, the region was secure and stable
and remained within the U.S. sphere of influence. Fidel Castro's Cuba had been
contained, Che Guevara was dead, there were no "second or third Cubas," and
the Soviet Union continued to have minimal influence in the Western Hemi-
sphere. The Kennedy and Johnson doctrines had triumphed, Both Democratic
presidents had talked, however, about winning the Cold War by building demo-
cratic, progressive societies in Latin America through the Alliance for Progress.
Instead, the democratic administrations invaded countries, destabilized consti-
tutional governments, and rigged elections. The two administrations sacrificed
noble visions of a prosperous, free, and socially just hemisphere for the short-
term security that anti-Communist, right-wing dictators could provide. Their
successors, the duo of Richard Nixon and his close advisor, Henry Kissinger,
would extend and expand that dubious legacy.
CHAPTER 6
^
Military Dictators— Cold War Allies
'he decade of the 1970s turned into a gruesome time for civic-minded Latin
Americans, especially in the southern cone countries of Argentina, Brazil,
Chile, and Uruguay. Military dictators conducted a vicious war against political
leftists and anyone else who stood for democracy and respect for basic human
rights. In the name of anticommunism and social order, uniformed military
units and their colleagues in death squads butchered tens of thousands of South
Americans. So appalling was the political repression in South America that inter-
national observers compared it to life in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The United
States aided and abetted the criminal behavior of Latin America's military rulers.
President Richard M. Nixon and his faithful aide, Henry A. Kissinger, believed
that military dictatorship was in the best interests of Latin Americans. Military
dictators could also be counted on to respect the Cold War concerns of the United
States. Nixon and Kissinger cultivated the Latin American military, providing
diplomatic and material support to the military authoritarians and rationalizing
and excusing their murderous behavior. The U.S. leaders also took credit for de-
stroying the constitutional regime of Salvador Allende in Chile. In the Nixon-
Kissinger view of the world, creating a stable relationship with the Soviet Union
and a global balance of power entailed keeping Latin Americans in their place—
under military rule.
THE LOW PROFILE
Richard M. Nixon, the man and the president, poses conceptual difficulties for
both scholars and U.S. citizens. In the period from 1946 to 1952, as a congressman
and senator, Nixon had been a reckless anti-Communist, closely tied to the ex-
tremist wing of the Republican Party associated with Senator Joseph McCarthy.
‘Nixon presumably matured as vice president and learned from his electoral de-
feats in 1960 and 1962, as well as from years of study, travel, and consulting in
119
120 THE KILLING ZONE
international affairs. By the late 1960s, political pundits spoke of the “new Nixon,”
poised, confident, a world statesman. In the 1968 presidential race, he ran a gentle
campaign, pledging to bring U.S. citizens “together again.” He had a plan for
peace in Vietnam. As president, he had significant, even momentous, accom-
plishments in the international arena. He wound down Lyndon Johnson's war in
Vietnam, withdrawing the last U.S. troops in 1973. He also struck big deals with
the two Communist superpowers. Traveling to Beijing in early 1972, he estab-
lished U.S. contacts with the People’s Republic of China, He journeyed to Moscow,
signed a major nuclear arms treaty, and preached the virtues of détente with the
Soviet Union. The president spoke of working for “a generation of peace.” Nixon
further anticipated the changing nature of international relations, calling atten-
tion to the onset of globalization. In 1971, in a speech to news media executives,
he foresaw the end ofa bipolar world revolving around the Soviet-American con-
frontation and the emergence of a multipolar world led by the United States, the
Soviet Union, China, Japan, and Western Europe. As Nixon prophesied, “these
are the five that will determine the economic future and, because economic
power will be the key to other kinds of power, the future of the world in other
ways in the last third of the twentieth century."
Although appreciating Nixon's perception of the patterns of international
history, U.S. citizens were dismayed to learn that their president still retained the
duplicitous, spiteful tendencies that had characterized the “old Nixon.” In the
domestic sphere, Nixon and his aides preached the virtues of “positive polariza-
tion,” turning regions and citizens against one another, especially on the issue of
racial relations. Nixon ended the war in Vietnam, but it took him five wasteful
years, causing needless Asian and U.S. casualties. He also secretly expanded the
war into Cambodia, causing irreparable harm to that poor, helpless nation. True
to their “realist” conception of international relations and the balance of power,
Nixon and Kissinger “tilted” toward Pakistan during the Indo-Pakistani War
(1971). They perceived the government in Islamabad as a traditional U.S. ally and
a check on the power of the Soviet Union. International analysts strongly dis-
agreed, judging that India deserved praise for intervening to rescue the people
of East Pakistan (Bangladesh) from the genocidal policies perpetrated by the
Pakistani government. Nixon would resign the presidency in disgrace in 1974,
when it became apparent that he had committed “high crimes and misdemeanors”
in the “Watergate” scandal. Nixon was condemned by his own voice because he
had taped many conversations in the Oval Office. Nixon had ordered the taping,
believing they would provide a historical record of great deeds for future genera-
tions to admire. The "Nixon tapes” revealed, however, a man who used scurrilous
language and indulged in shocking ethnic and racial slurs. In 1971 in a discus-
sion with ambassador to Iran Douglas MacArthur II, for example, Nixon made
the despicable assertion that “those Africans, you know, are only 50 to 75 years
from out of the trees, some of them." On the tapes, Nixon proved himself to be
petty, mean, and vindictive—the same man who had been tagged “tricky Dick”
in his 1950 senatorial campaign.
CHAPTER 6 * Military Dictators—Cold War Allies 121
In his attitude and policies toward Latin America, Nixon displayed the same
contradictory, paradoxical behavior that epitomized his career in other areas of
domestic and international life. By the time he took office in January 1969, Nixon
had visited most Latin American countries. As vice president, he had toured
Central America and the Caribbean in 1955 and South America in 1958, He had
embraced and toasted Fulgencio Batista in Havana and nearly lost his life when a
mob in Caracas attacked his limousine in May 1958. Nixon seemed to take a
philosophical attitude toward his frightening experience in Venezuela. Dispatch-
ing presidential aide Robert Finch on a goodwill trip to South America in 1971,
Nixon joked, "what I had in mind is to make it sort of like my '58 trip, except
without the rocks." In 1967, preparing for his presidential run, Nixon visited
Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. In Argentina, he praised the military
government and declared that "United States-style democracy won't work here.
I wish it would.”
‘As president, Nixon pledged a new approach toward Latin America. The
Alliance for Progress had failed, leaving Latin Americans embittered. Latin
Americans further denounced the economic relationship between Latin America
and the developed world. In May 1969, in the “Consensus of Viña del Mar,” Latin
American nations called. "for a fairer international division of labor that will
favor the rapid economic and social development of the developing countries,
instead of impeding it as has been the case hitherto.” Latin Americans demanded
changes in the lending and trading practices of the United States. Two weeks after
taking office, Nixon ordered that “a broad study be prepared reviewing our over-
all policy toward Latin America.” Henry Kissinger, the new head of the NSC,
was ordered to lead the review. Nixon also sent Governor Nelson Rockefeller of
New York on a fact-finding tour of the region.* Rockefeller had worked in the
State Department on Latin American affairs during World War II.
Kissinger, who admitted he knew little about Latin America, conducted the
NSC review like a professor in a graduate seminar, asking big, probing questions
about the nature of the “special relationship” between the United States and Latin
America, He admitted that “the principals were more concerned with other areas
of the world” but that the president wanted “specific answers concerning our
goals in Latin America.” The discussants admitted the United States had acted
in a “paternalistic” fashion toward the region; the Alliance for Progress had not
been an alliance. The National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) No. 15 of
July 1969 took seriously Latin American concerns about aid and trade. The
United States should loosen restrictions on how foreign aid could be spent and
give special preferences to imports from developing regions like Latin America.
Governor Rockefeller's report, which was submitted in August 1969, gave similar
recommendations. Both the NSC study and the Rockefeller Report focused on
foreign economic policy rather than on security issues. Intelligence analysts tes-
tified that neither the Soviet Union nor Cuba had launched any new initiatives in
the region. The apocalyptic language that had characterized policy papers on
inter-American relations during the Kennedy-Johnson years was missing. Henry
122 THE KILLING ZONE
Kissinger thought the United States should concentrate on encouraging long-
term economic development and "foster a Latin American system of indepen-
dent, self-reliant states.” Kissinger told President Nixon that he rejected the option
of focusing on cultivating anti-Communist friends. To be sure, the study con-
tinued to see Latin America as part of the U.S. sphere of influence, asserting that.
“we would feel, as a nation, that our power had been greatly diminished in the
world were Latin America to slip out of our orbit —and so would other nations."
Nonetheless, one veteran State Department officer noted that "we constructed
and articulated a conceptual framework for Latin American policy which was
(I believe) realistic and reasonable—even historic." The officer, Viron P. Vaky,
hada reputation for being critical of U.S. policies, having denounced the U.S. role
in human rights abuses in Guatemala in the mid-1960s.
President Nixon incorporated ideas from NSSM 15 and the Rockefeller
Report in his one major address on Latin America given to the Inter-American
Press Club on 31 October 1969. Nixon had told the NSC that "the U.S. govern-
ment should avoid doing too much in Latin America, and must recognize it could
not control the region, but could influence it." In his speech, Nixon chided John
Kennedy and his cherished Alliance for Progress, observing that the United
States had “pursued the illusion that we alone could remake continents" and that
“we have sometimes imagined that we knew what was best for everyone else.” At
times, he said, the United States had been guilty of “overweening confidence in
the rightness of our own prescriptions.” Nixon pleased Latin Americans by stat-
ing that his administration would seek “a more mature partnership in which all
voices are heard and none is predominant.” Nixon promised to consider the aid
and trade issues that rose at the conference at Viña del Mar and assured the audi-
ence that the United States would now permit Latin Americans to spend U.S.
foreign aid throughout the region, not just in the United States. In line with his
tone of restraint, Nixon pledged not to interfere in the internal politics of Latin
American nations. The United States preferred democracy, but “we must deal
realistically with governments in the inter-American system as they are?
President Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s rhetorical promises of cooperation
and mutual respect toward Latin America were belied by their public acts and
private thoughts. The Nixon administration made little effort to persuade Con-
gress to fulfill Nixon's promises to continue aid, “untie” foreign aid, and reduce
tariff and nontariff barriers against Latin American exports to the United States.
‘The United States sharply reduced economic assistance to the region; aid to Latin
America in 1971, for example, was $463 million, 50 percent less than a typical
year in the 1960s. Conditions were still tied to development assistance. Aid re-
cipients were not permitted to spend their grants in Western Europe or Japan,
although those areas might sell the desired capital goods and sophisticated
‘equipment at a favorable price. Washington also imposed new tariff restrictions,
such as a 10 percent surcharge on all imports in late 1971. Viron Vaky lamented
to Kissinger that the United States was reneging on its promises of a “mature
ip” because “most of our government does not believe or accept it, or
CHAPTER 6 * Military Dictators—Cold War Allies 123
does not understand it." Vaky added that "most people have an unconscious per-
ception of Latin Americans as ‘lesser breeds’ as long as that is our visceral reflex
we cannot have a satisfactory relationship in this day and age"? Presidential
counselor Finch returned in early 1972 from his tour of South America and wrote
to Nixon that the United States lacked a "coherent plan" for Latin America. The
"lower profile" had left the United States nearly invisible in the region."
‘The dearth of progress in inter-American relations in the 1970s flowed di-
rectly from the attitudes of two U.S. foreign policy principals—Kissinger and
Nixon. Kissinger’s unfamiliarity with Latin American thought, society, and cul-
ture arose from his judgment that the region weighed little in his treasured
balance-of power theory of international relations. But Kissinger's lack of exper-
tise also arose from his contempt for Latin Americans. He rejected the offer, from
a childhood friend who became an official at the Inter-American Development
Bank, to provide information on Latin America with the snide response: "If
I need any information on Latin America, I'll look it up in the Almanac." In July
1969, he lectured the Chilean foreign minister, Gabriel Valdés, on Latin America's
role in history. Since 1964, the United States had worked closely with Minister
Valdés's ruling Christian Democratic government. As Kissinger interpreted his-
tory, “nothing important can come from the South. History has never been pro-
duced in the South. The axis of history starts in Moscow, goes to Bonn, crosses
over to Washington, and then goes to Tokyo. What happens in the South is of no
importance.” Kissinger dreaded listening to speeches by Latin Americans, derid-
ing Latin American officials as “a bunch of gassers.”?
Kissinger's arrogant comments about Latin Americans were restrained com-
pared to those of his boss. When alone with his enablers, like presidential aides
H. R. Haldeman, General Alexander Haig, Attorney General John Mitchell, Sec-
retary of the Treasury John Connally, and Kissinger, Nixon voiced contempt
about all things Latin American. Like Kissinger, he dismissed the region's geopo-
litical importance. “Latin America doesn't matter,” he exclaimed in 1971. “People
don't give a damn about Latin America." Nixon added: “The only thing that mat-
tersis Japan, China, Russia, and Europe.” Kissinger informed the NSC in August
1971 that Nixon was uninterested in attending a discussion about U.S. policy
toward Latin America. The president disliked giving economic aid to Latin
America's needy, labeling Alliance for Progress programs to build homes as “wel-
fare handouts.” Nixon also could not be bothered to pay a presidential visit to the
region. He further considered it “too goddamn dangerous” for him to travel there.
Instead, he dispatched Rockefeller, Finch, and Connally to Latin America to
engage in “hand-holding,” Connally also was instructed to dwell on the presi-
dent's accomplishments with China and the Soviet Union in 1972. As Nixon
observed, consulting with Latin American heads of state was salutary because "it
builds them up to let them feel that we are interested in their views."
In President Richard Nixon's worldview, international order and stability re-
quired Latin Americans staying in their place. When he read reports of Roman
Catholic priests organizing the poor in Latin America, he ordered the CIA to
124 THE KILLING ZONE
study the issue. The Church, influenced by the teachings of the beloved Pope
John XXIII (1958-1963), the liturgical reforms of Vatican II (1962-1965), and the
conference of Latin American bishops in Medellín (1968) had become active in
social and economic issues. The Church in Latin America expressed “a preferen-
tial option for the poor” and taught that hunger and poverty were not God’s will.
Nixon, who called himself “the strongest pro-Catholic who is not Catholic,”
labeled these developments “the deterioration of the attitude of the Catholic
Church.” He calculated that one-third of Latin American Catholics were now
“Marxists.” Military governments were best for Latin Americans; they could not
“afford the luxury of democracy.” All “Latin” countries—Spain, Italy, and Latin
American nations—needed “strong leadership.” President Nixon instructed
Robert Finch to call on military governments in Argentina and Brazil and “don’t
worry about whether they're dictators or not, because, there, the only friends we've
got are the dictators.” Nixon ordered the government to sell advanced U.S. weapon
systems, like jet fighters, to military governments. The president reacted negatively
when he heard that Assistant Secretary of State Charles Meyer advised Anastasio
Somoza Debayle (1967-1979) that he needed to liberalize his regime in Nicaragua
to avoid the fate of his father, who had been assassinated in 1956. The Somoza
family had operated Nicaragua like a family hacienda since 1936 and had permit-
ted the CIA to use Nicaragua as a training ground during the Cold War. Nixon
responded to Meyer's injunction: “Well, then frankly, I don't want him to liberalize
his regime; I hope he keeps it like it is.” Nixon’s buddy, Secretary of the Treasury
Connally, backed his boss, noting “My God, I would hope so. He's the only friend
we've got down there.” The Secretary of the Treasury had become a confidant of
Nixon on Latin America, because Connally, in Nixon's words, “believes that, as far
as American public opinion is concerned, the American people are just aching for
us to kick somebody in the ass, and that he wants us to do it.””
Compared to other U.S. presidents during the Cold War, Richard Nixon's
embrace of military dictators was unabashed. Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy,
and Lyndon Johnson had destabilized constitutional governments in Latin
America and seen them replaced with military rulers. But Nixon's predecessors
had never gone so far as to insist that Latin Americans were incapable of func-
tioning in democratic societies. In 1955, President Eisenhower rejected Secretary
of the Treasury George Humphrey's argument that the United States “should
back strong men in Latin American governments,” because “whenever a dictator
is replaced, Communists gained.” Eisenhower pointed out to subordinates that
he “firmly believe(d] that if power lies with the people, then there will be no ag-
gressive war.” "In the long run,” therefore, “the United States must back democra-
cies.” President Kennedy always listed a "decent, democratic regime" as his
vision for Latin American nations. President Johnson admitted to himself that he
had acted unwisely in ordering the invasion of the Dominican Republic. Nixon,
however, was not troubled by self-doubts when it came to dictatorship in Latin
‘America. As he observed to the NSC, he would not repeat the mistake he felt
certain that the United States had made when it abandoned Fulgencio Batista, the
HARVARD
CHAPTER 6 * Military Dictators—Cold War Allies 125
dictator of Cuba." In his scorn for Latin American civilization, President Nixon
was reiterating the condescending, patronizing views expressed by officials such as
George Kennan, Dean Acheson, George Humphrey, Thomas Mann, John Connally,
and Henry Kissinger.
BONDING WITH BRAZIL
President Nixon discovered one group of Latin Americans he admired—the mili-
tary rulers of Brazil. At the end of 1968, as he prepared to take control of the NSC,
Henry Kissinger had received a forceful memorandum from General Vernon
Walters on Brazil. Walters, who had served as the U.S. liaison with the Brazilian
military conspirators in 1964, was now a senior defense attaché in France. Walters
called on the incoming administration to favor Brazil because of its potential to
be a major power. Walters dismissed concerns about Institutional Act No. 5, the
abolition of the Brazilian congress and the imposition of a military dictatorship,
asserting that “there is no harsh repression in Brazil and the President (General
Artur da Costa e Silva] has stated that he neither desires nor will he tolerate a
dictatorship.” Walters' friends in the Brazilian army assured him that they did
not want to govern the country. But Walters did not believe that Brazil was ready
for a civilian, democratic government. The military government was “friendly
and cooperative,” whereas the regime's opponents “are largely hostile to the
United States.” Walters concluded his memorandum with an apocalyptic Cold
War warning: “If Brazil were to be lost it would not be another Cuba. It would be
another China."
The new Nixon administration took Walters's memorandum seriously be-
cause it reinforced its own views on Latin America and because of the General's
vnique standing among Cold Warriors. An arch-conservative Roman Catholic
who was fluent in many languages, Walters was on friendly terms with Richard
Nixon. Walters was with Vice President Nixon when he was attacked in Caracas
in 1958, He translated for Nixon, as well as for presidents Truman and Eisenhower.
While on duty in Paris, Walters helped arrange secret meetings between Henry
Kissinger and North Vietnamese representatives to discuss the war in Vietnam.
Nixon rewarded Walters by appointing him the deputy director of the CIA
(1972-1976). According to Director of the CIA Richard Helms, “Nixon thought
of General Walters as his man in CIA and the only man who could be trusted to
carry out his orders."! Walters had no doubts about waging Cold War in Latin
America, On 3 November 1970, shortly after Salvador Allende assumed the
Chilean presidency, he wrote to the White House that “we are engaged in a mortal
struggle to determine the shape of the future of the world, There is no acceptable
alternative to holding Latin America. We simply cannot afford to lose it.” Presi-
dent Nixon wrote on the margins of Walters's memorandum, expressing agree-
ment with the general’s judgment.”
In 1969, President Nixon directed the NSC to undertake a broad-ranging
review of U.S. policy toward Brazil. He approved arms sales, technical assistance,
126 THE KILLING ZONE
food aid, and program loans for the Brazilian regime, rejecting worries in the
NSC and State Department that "close identification with the Médici regime will
alienate other sectors of Brazilian society which in the longer term may be more
important to [the] achievement of a constructive U.S.- Brazilian relationship."^
After Allende came to power, Nixon intensified contacts with President Emilio
Garrastazá Médici (1969-1974), the most repressive of Brazil's ruling generals.
Nixon instructed William Rountree, the U.S. ambassador to Brazil, “to assure that
the Brazilian Government and the Brazilian military do not get the impression that
we are looking down our noses at them because of their form of government.” In
December 1971, Nixon hosted Médici in Washington and held two lengthy meet-
ings. General Walters translated the conversations and joined the discussions.
President Nixon did not raise issues of torture, press censorship, and gross violations
of human rights in Brazil with his guest. He did inquire about President Médici's
popularity. General Walters assured President Nixon that Médici’s appearance at
public events like soccer games evoked enthusiasm among spectators. Médici called
General Walters “a living witness” to the “1964 Brazilian Revolution."* Nixon and
the Brazilian leader enjoyed each other's company. Henry Kissinger reported that
his boss had been “extremely pleased” with the discussions. General Walters re-
ported that Nixon instructed him to tell President Médici that “with only very few
chiefs of state had he developed so quickly a close relationshi
Presidents Nixon and Médici agreed on two fundamental points—that
countries needed “stability” for economic growth and that there should be a re-
lentless war against communism in the hemisphere. Nixon assured the Brazilian
that the U.S. initiatives with China and the Soviet Union did not imply any
change in U.S. hostility toward Fidel Castro. Nixon and Médici discussed Brazil’s
overt and covert aid to Bolivian dictator Hugo Banzer Suárez (1971-1978) and
Uruguay's strongman, Juan Maria Bordaberry Arocena (1972-1976). Brazil had
covertly aided Bordaberry's election in 1971. Nixon knew of the intervention in
Uruguay but was unaware albeit “very happy” to hear of Brazil’s role in Bolivia,
Nixon further observed that “there were many things that Brazil as a South
American country could do that the U.S. could not.” Nixon subsequently boasted
to Prime Minister Edward Heath of the United Kingdom that “the Brazilians
helped rig the Uruguayan election.” He remarked to Secretary of State William
Rogers that he wished Médici “was running the whole continent,” So pleased was
Nixon with Brazil’s anti-Communist policies that he and Médici agreed to com-
municate outside of normal diplomatic channels. Henry Kissinger would speak
for Nixon, and Médici would rely on Foreign Minister Gibson Barbosa and on
Colonel Manso Netto for “extremely private and delicate matters.””
“Private and delicate matters" included attacking Salvador Allende's Chile.
Responding to Nixon's questions, President Médici assured Nixon that Allende
would suffer the fate of President João Goulart and that the Chilean military was
capable of overthrowing Allende. The Brazilians were exchanging officers with
the Chileans to work toward that end. Nixon told Médici that the United States
could not take direction from the Brazilians but that it was “very important” that
CHAPTER 6 © Military Dictators—Cold War Allies 127
Brazil and the United States worked together on Chile. Nixon promised that "if
money were required or other discreet aid, we might be able to make it available,”
although “this should be held in the greatest confidence.” ‘The two presidents
agreed, in Nixon's words, that “we must try and prevent new Allendes and Castros
and try where possible to reverse these trends.” Nixon ended the discussion by
pointedly informing President Médici that he would recall General Walters from
Paris and appoint him to be the deputy director of the CIA. Médici observed that
Walters “would help the President on many of his problems, especially those in
Latin America.”
CHILE
As highlighted in the Nixon-Médici colloquy, President Nixon and his advisors
became consumed by what they perceived as a mortal threat to U.S. interests in
Latin America and to the international balance of power—the election of a self-
proclaimed Marxist, Salvador Allende Gossens, to the Chilean presidency in
November 1970. The Nixon administration first tried to prevent Allende from
assuming office. The administration thereafter worked to undermine the Chilean
economy and create the preconditions for a military golpe de estado. Richard
Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s death wish for the Allende government came true
on 11 September 1973, when the Chilean military, led by General Augusto
Pinochet Ugarte, attacked the constitutional government and overthrew it. Presi-
dent Allende died that day. General Pinochet (1973-1990) subjected Chileans to
seventeen years of ferocious military rule, The U.S. intervention in Chile during
the Nixon years was not, however, an isolated event but part of a longer and larger
process of discouraging Chileans and other Latin Americans from voting for
political leftists.
Chileans considered themselves citizens of a unique Latin American country.
‘The country is peculiar geographically, stretching 2,630 miles along the Pacific
Coast but averaging only 100 miles in width. Chile is an isolated, confined country,
with frozen wastelands and Tierra del Fuego in the south, the awesome Atacama
Desert in the north, the ocean to the west, and the imposing Andes mountain
chain, the cordillera, to the east. Most Chileans, 9.3 million in 1970, lived in the
center of the country in an area stretching less than 300 miles. Chileans cele-
brated their history. Chileans had maintained, except for brief interruptions, a
constitutional system since 1833, with the gradual enfranchisement of all adults.
Chileans perceived themselves as living in an urbane, literate society that took
art, literature, and political philosophy seriously. Chileans also took pride in
noting that they had generally avoided the violent confrontations that had
marred their neighbors’ histories. Like the advanced European societies, Chile
developed a twentieth-century social welfare state, especially under the leader-
ship of President Arturo Alessandri Palma (1920-1925).
‘The present and the future did not seem as fortuitous to Chileans because
the country had grave social and economic problems. Chile saw its population
128 THE KILLING ZONE
double between 1930 and 1960, and it added an additional 1.6 million people in
the 1960s. Food production did not keep up with population growth, and Chile
became a net importer of food. Inefficiencies and injustices in the agricultural
sector of the economy accounted for this poor performance. Seven percent of
landowners controlled 80 percent of the land and often did not put their land to
productive use. Most of Chile's four hundred thousand rural families were land-
less. The rural poor migrated to the outskirts of urban centers such as Santiago,
dwelling in shantytowns, known locally as callampas, or "mushrooms." Perhaps
25 percent of Chile's burgeoning population lived in absolute poverty.
Global economic developments compounded Chile's problems. The country
depended on the sale of copper for 60 percent its foreign earnings. Copper prices
had generally fallen in the post-World War II period, although prices spiked up
briefly in the mid-1960s because of U.S. demand for copper engendered by the
war in Vietnam. U.S. companies, Anaconda and Kennecott, produced Chilean
copper for the world market. The U.S. companies processed the copper in the
United States, depriving Chile of the added value, Although copper extraction
represented 11 percent of the economy, the copper industry generated only seven-
teen thousand jobs for Chileans. With the economy barely growing from the
1950s on, Chilean authorities responded with monetary expansion, foreign bor-
rowing, and deficit financing. Annual inflation rates of 30 to 40 percent flowed
from those decisions. Then, in 1960, Chile suffered a destructive earthquake in
the Puerto Montt region that created more than $200 million in damages.
Economic instability had the effect of dividing the Chilean polity roughly
into thirds. Wealthier Chileans voted for traditional political parties like the con-
servatives, liberals, and radicals. Chilean conservatives trusted in the solutions of
the past, relying on foreign investment and trade to generate the funds for the
social welfare system. In the middle stood a new party, the Christian Democrats,
who emulated the Christian Democratic movement in West Germany and Italy.
‘The Christian Democrats believed in evolutionary change, emphasizing land,
tax, and educational reforms within a Christian framework. Communists and
socialists, led by Allende in the Frente de Accién Popular (Popular Action Front),
or FRAP, offered Marxist solutions for Chilean problems. Allende favored the
nationalization of the copper industry and the redistribution of land. After 1959,
the FRAP would cheer for the Cuban Revolution. In the presidential election of
1958, Allende nearly won, finishing only 3 percent, or about thirty-four thousand
votes, behind the conservative choice, Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez, the son of the
former president. Eduardo Frei Montalva, the leader of the Christian Democrats,
finished third. Alessandri won only 31.6 percent of the vote, but became presi-
dent because the Chilean legislature customarily ratified the election of the presi-
dential candidate who secured a plurality of votes.
The Kennedy administration hoped to make Chile a “showcase” for the
Alliance for Progress. During the 1960s, Chile received $743 million in Alliance
money, the third highest amount in Latin America. Chile also had access to an
annual line of credit of $200 to $300 million from U.S. commercial banks. But
CHAPTER 6 + Military Dictators—Cold War Allies 129
Kennedy and his advisors grew frustrated with the conservative Alessandri, call-
ing Chileans the “poorest performers" in the region. Alessandri declined to take
significant steps to curb Chile's inflationary pressures, and he failed to develop a
comprehensive plan for socioeconomic reform. By 1962-1963, the Kennedy ad-
ministration had decided to cast its lot with Eduardo Frei and the Christian Demo-
crats in the presidential elections scheduled for September 1964. Frei pledged to
carry out the type of land and social reform envisioned in the Charter of Punta
del Este. The Kennedy administration accepted Frei's proposed "Chileanization" of
the copper industry. Chile would purchase part ownership of the companies;
the companies, in turn, would be expected to use the proceeds of the sale to in-
crease production and establish processing and fabricating facilities in Chile.
Chile would thereby increase export earnings, and workers would find new em-
ployment opportunities. President Kennedy hoped to visit Chile in 1964 because
he wanted to have “maximum possible impact” on the presidential election.
‘The United States directly intervened in the Chilean election. Between 1962
and 1964, the CIA spent $4 million on polling, posters, and radio and television
advertisements for the Christian Democrats, The money was also used to organize
student, labor, and women's groups and peasants and dwellers in the callampas.
On a per capita basis, the CIA spent more money on the 24 million registered
Chilean voters than did Lyndon Johnson and his opponent, Senator Barry
Goldwater (R-AZ), in the 1964 U.S. presidential election. In the 1960s, the CIA
became practiced at campaigning, helping run covert campaigns in Brazil, Bolivia,
British Guiana, and the Dominican Republic. U.S. spending on public projects in
Chile exceeded the covert campaign. ‘The U.S. embassy in Santiago approved
"impact projects” for electorally significant areas. The embassy distributed small
loans and grants, usually less than $500,000, to purchase and equip a mobile
health unit in a poor area or to repair a school building. Total spending on these
impact projects amounted to $30 million in 1963 alone. U.S. officials in Chile also
carried out a propaganda campaign—flags, lapel pins, films, photo exhibits, comic
books—to ensure that Chileans understood that the Alliance for Progress aided
poor Chileans."' U.S. officials identified the Christian Democrats with the Alli-
ance. Frei and his party welcomed the covert and overt role of the United States.
In May 1964, Frei joshed with embassy officials about the money, “expressing 'un-
usual optimism’ concerning his electoral prospects—although he ‘jokingly ob-
served that his selfish interests should lead him to paint a bleaker picture to US
authorities for obvious reasons: "**
The United States not only wanted to boost Eduardo. Frei, the Christian
Democrats, and the Alliance for Progress, but also aimed to derail the campaign
of Allende and the FRAP. The Kennedy and Johnson administrations accepted
the judgment of Ambassador Charles Colé that FRAP would end democratic
government in Chile and “would be so dangerous for U.S. interests in Chile and
in all Latin America that U.S. policy should be to strive to prevent it” Cold War
verities overcame qualms about the irony of defending democracy by manipulat-
ing democracy through secret funding. In July 1964, the executive secretary of
130 THE KILLING ZONE
the 303 Committee, the group that oversaw covert operations, summarized the
thinking: "We can't afford to lose this one, so I don't think there should be econ-
omy shaving in this instance. We assume the Commies are pouring in dough,
we have no proofs. They must assume we are pouring in dough, they have no proofs.
Let's pour it on and in." Like other Communist parties in the region, the Chilean
Communists received an annual subsidy, $275,000 in 1965, from Moscow. Salvador
Allende also accepted cash from Soviet agents. These amounts were minuscule
compared to the U.S. effort in Chile.”
‘The CIA weakened the democratic process in Chile by urging citizens to view
political opponents as mortal enemies. The agency launched a “Scare Campaign,”
depicting via films, leaflets, and wall painting images of Soviet tanks and Cuban
firing squads. It also disseminated “disinformation” and “black propaganda,”
planting false stories in an attempt to turn Chilean socialists and Communists
against one another. The CIA proved especially effective in warning female voters
that Chilean leftists wanted to destroy the traditional family and deprive women
of their roles as mothers and wives. In analyzing the electoral returns of 1958,
agents had noticed that Allende had run poorly among women, winning only
22 percent of the women's vote. The “gendered propaganda" of the Scare Campaign
warned that, if Allende won, women would be forced into heavy labor. The Com-
munists, as alleged in radio broadcasts by Juana Castro, the estranged sister of the
Cuban dictator, would also send children to communal camps in Eastern European
countries. So intent were U.S. officials on ensuring that Chilean women voted that
the U.S. embassy recommended establishing “baby-sitting pools” on election day.
‘The USS. effort produced solid results. The women’s vote rose from the previous
high of 35 percent to 46.5 percent of the total vote. Candidate Frei garnered the sup-
port of 62.8 percent of women voters.”
‘The embassy and the CIA celebrated the Christian Democrat’s landslide
victory in September 1964. Frei took 56 percent of the vote, whereas Allende won
39 percent, and Julio Duran of the Radical Party earned only 5 percent. The CIA
had constantly polled the electorate, and their last polls predicted the final result.”
Frei had been aided by the decision of conservative Chileans to vote for him and
not Duran. Although badly defeated, Allende and the FRAP could take some
solace from the election in which they had been badly outspent by the Christian
Democrats, the U.S. embassy, and the CIA. Allende had increased his share of the
electorate from 5 percent in 1952 to 28 percent in 1958 to 39 percent in 1964.
‘The United States had made a good bet in placing its money on the Christian
Democrats. President Frei (1964-1970) kept his promise to work for the Chilean
poor, building four hundred thousand low-cost homes and resettling twenty-
seven thousand families on their own farms. He also had some success taming
Chile's inflationary fires, lowering the annual inflation rate from 80 percent in
1964 to 17 percent in 1966. But Frei did not reach all goals. He had hoped to
resettle one hundred thousand families on farms. His “Chileanization” scheme
did not produce as much copper or as many new jobs as planned. Between 1966
and 1970, the economy grew only at a 1.3 percent annual rate, well below the
CHAPTER 6 * Military Dictators—Cold War Allies 131
2.5 percent target rate of the Alliance for Progress. Frei's relations with the United
States also grew strained, although the Christian Democrats received an add-
itional $525,000 in covert funding from the CIA. President Frei irritated the
Johnson administration by denouncing the U.S. invasion of the Dominican
Republic and by establishing diplomatic and trade relations with the Soviet Union.
He also grew frustrated by the often unwelcome fiscal and monetary advice that
he received from Washington and the U.S. embassy.” He published a stinging
critique, "The Alliance That Lost Its Way" (1967), in the establishment journal
Foreign Affairs. Like other Latin American leaders, Frei came to believe that better
terms of trade were essential for the region’s economic development.
THE 1970 ELECTION
Under the Chilean constitution, President Frei was barred from immediate re-
election. Chile had become a politically polarized society, with signs of political
aggression. In October 1969 General Roberto Viaux Marambio led a small mili-
tary insurrection against the Frei government. General Viaux demanded the res-
ignation of the Chilean commander in chief and a pay raise for the army. The
insurrection ended when the government agreed to study the general’s demands.
A violent leftist group, the Movimiento Izquierida Revolucionaria (MIR), carried
out kidnappings, bank robberies, and land seizures in the name of immediate revo-
lution. The MIR counted three thousand Chileans as members, with about two
hundred of them engaged in violence. The economy continued to stagnate with
inflation at 35 percent and the country having a staggering public external debt
of $2 billion. Nonetheless, Chileans, true to their traditions and self-perceptions,
voted peacefully on 4 September 1970 for their next president.
‘The 1970 election was a reprise of the 1958 election, with three major candi-
dates. Former president Alessandri ran again, appealing to conservative Chileans
who disliked the reforms pursued by the Christian Democrats. Radomiro Tomic
Romero led the Christian Democrats. Tomic pushed the Christian Democrats to
the political left, promising the nationalization of the copper industry and exten-
sive land and labor reforms. Salvador Allende led a new coalition of the Socialists,
Communists, and four smaller parties in the Unidad Popular (Popular Unity).
Allende also promised to nationalize major industries and to create a socialist
society in Chile through the parliamentary process. The election evoked interest
in the country, with 2.9 million Chileans voting, 83 percent of registered voters.
In this election, Allende won a narrow plurality, with 36.6 percent of the vote.
Alessandri finished second with 35.3, and Tomic trailed with 28 percent. With no
candidate securing a majority, the Chilean congress would have the constitutional
duty to choose the president on 24 October 1970. Salvador Allende would presum-
ably assume the presidency on 4 November, because Tomic and Christian Demo-
cratic legislators were expected to vote for Allende. Chile remained calm during the.
weeks between the popular and legislative vote. CIA officers in Washington la-
mented that Chile was a “placid lake" and that there was "very little mass feeling
Digt
HARVARD UNIVERSIT
132 THE KILLING ZONE
within Chile that the election of Allende was necessarily an evil.” Allende became
president when 153 of the 200 eligible legislators voted for him on 24 October.
‘The other forty-seven voted for Alessandri, abstained, or were absent.
‘The electoral results of 4 September sent President Richard Nixon into a
frenzy. Henry Kissinger would later recount that Nixon “was beside himself” and
desperate to do “something, anything that would reverse the previous neglect."
Ambassador to Chile Edward Korry remembered being startled upon entering
the Oval Office on October 13. Nixon was striking his fist against his open palm
and swearing “that son of a bitch, that son of a bitch." Nixon noticed Korry's per-
plexed expression and explained: "Not you, Mr. Ambassador. It's that son of a
bitch Allende. We are going to smash him.™® The United States had acted inef-
fectually during the 1970 Chilean presidential campaign but thereafter, between
5 September 1970 and 11 September 1973, President Nixon and Henry Kissinger
worked relentlessly to fulfill Nixon’s oath to “smash” Salvador Allende. Scholars
have an excellent understanding of the U.S. intervention in Chile. In 1975, the U.S.
Congress, led by Senator Frank Church (D-ID), released two major studies, Covert
Action in Chile, 1963-1973 and Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Lead-
ers. In the post-Vietnam and post-Watergate era, Senator Church and his col-
leagues responded to public alarm about the U.S. complicity with the repressive
regime of General Augusto Pinochet. The continuing concern about U.S. ties to
General Pinochet prompted the Bill Clinton administration to release twenty-four
thousand documents in the “Chile Declassification Project” in 1999-2000. And in
2014, the Historical Office of the State Department released a compilation of doc-
uments on U.S. policies toward Chile from January 1969 through September
1973." Although many documents remain classified and some documents are
heavily censored or “redacted,” the course and conduct of U.S. policy toward
Chile, like the U.S. intervention in Guatemala in 1954, are readily evident.
Both the U.S. embassy in Santiago and the 40 Committee, the newly re-
named committee that oversaw covert operations, found Chile's 1970 electoral
choices unpalatable. Ambassador Korry wished President Frei could continue in
office. Tomic of the Christian Democrats seemed too far to the political left, and
Alessandri had been a lackluster president between 1958 and 1964. The embassy
initially assumed that Alessandri would win the election by a small margin. The
40 Committee authorized $425,000 in covert spending, one-tenth of the 1964
expenditure, to be used in a “spoiling” campaign against the Allende coalition.
As the election approached, U.S. officials in Santiago and Washington realized
they had misjudged Chile's political milieu. By June 1970, Ambassador Korry
asked the 40 Committee to allocate $250,000 to a contingency slush fund to bribe
Chilean congressmen not to certify an Allende victory. The 40 Committee also
authorized CIA contacts with the Chilean legislators and military officers to dis-
cuss extraconstitutional measures they would support if Allende received a plur-
ality of the vote. These preliminary discussions provided the basis for the CIA's
plan of action between 4 September and 24 October, dubbed Track I and Track II
under the code name Project FUBELT.?
CHAPTER 6 * Military Dictators—Cold War Allies 133
On 15 September 1970, President Nixon launched his war against Allende,
when he raged at Richard Helms, the director of the CLA. Helm's famous hand-
written notes read:
+ 1 in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile!
+ worth spending
+ not concerned risks involved
* no involvement of embassy
+ $10,000,000 available, more if necessary
+ full-time job—best men we have
+ game plan
+ make economy scream
48 hours for plan of action
Helms would later testify that “if I ever carried a marshal's baton in my knapsack
out of the Oval Office, it was that day." The next day, Helms appointed Thomas
Karamessines, the deputy director of planning, to assume responsibility for
FUBELT. David Atlee Phillips would be chief of the task force in Washington. In
1954, Phillips had directed the CIA's “Voice of Liberation” in Guatemala.
Although President Nixon had placed the government in a crisis mode, not
everyone in the U.S. government feared that an Allende presidency threatened
the national security of the United States. In 1969-1970, intelligence assessments
of an Allende victory did not point to international peril. NSSM 97, for example,
found that the United States had no vital interests in Chile and that the global
balance of power would not be significantly altered by an Allende victory. The
Soviet Union had again subsidized the Chilean Communist Party but had stayed
publicly neutral during the presidential campaign. Chile was also about as far
away from the Soviet Union as it could possibly be. Allende and his coalition
would be unable to run roughshod over Chileans because Chile was a pluralistic
society with independent centers of power—the security forces, the Christian
Democrats, elements of organized labor, the Chilean Congress, and the Catholic
Church. As one State Department officer noted, “to equate an Allende victory
with ‘a Castro-type dictatorship’ assigns insufficient weight to Chile's profound
differences from Cuba.” Ambassador Korry added in January 1970, Chile “is one
of the calmer and more decent places on the face of the earth; its democracy like
our own, has an extraordinary resilience.”
‘The principal foreign policy makers rejected arguments that Chile or the
United States could survive an Allende presidency. At a 40 Committee meeting
on 8 September 1970, Henry Kissinger and Attorney General Mitchell seconded
CIA Director Helms's “personal observation” that a President Allende would de-
stroy Chile's pluralistic system and “quickly neutralize the military and police
after which there will be no effective rallying point for opposition against him.”
Kissinger would often declare that “there'll never be another free election in
Chile." A Marxist Chile might also ally itself with the Soviet Union and join Cuba
in sponsoring subversion in Latin America, But President Nixon and Kissinger
134 THE KILLING ZONE
interpreted Allende’s election principally within symbolic terms, because as
Kissinger once jibed: “Chile was a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica.”
Allende's election threatened the credibility of the United States in the region
and throughout the world. Kissinger warned senior advisers that “we risk giving
the appearance of weakness or of indifference to the establishment of a Marxist
government in the Hemisphere.” A new version of the domino theory would de-
velop if political radicals were permitted to grasp power via democratic means.
Allende’s election would encourage Communists in France or Italy to believe that
there was a peaceful road to power. Kissinger warned that “the imitative spread
of similar phenomena [Allende's election] elsewhere would in turn significantly
affect the world balance and our own position in it.” President Nixon drew
similar conclusions. In 1971, he ordered CIA Director Helms to develop “a tough
program, ask for plenty of money to do the job” to influence elections in Italy.
As Nixon saw it, “Italy is a Latin country.” The president further warned Helms:
“I don't want to let this get screwed up like Chile."
Nixon and Kissinger found that the Chilean constitutional system could not
be readily undermined, Track I was a convoluted scheme to prevent the Chilean
congress from certifying Allende’s election. It involved bribing Chilean legisla-
tors and enlisting President Frei, former president Alessandri, and the Chilean
military in a bewildering series of political and constitutional gambits. Chilean
politicians refused, however, to buy into the scheme. Track II aimed at a golpe de
estado, with the Chilean military seizing power. Between 5 and 20 October 1970,
the CIA made twenty-one contacts with Chilean military and police officers. The
agency provided gas grenades, machine guns, and $50,000 to conspirators. CIA
agents also worked to create “a coup climate,” a sense of political crisis and con-
frontation, by spreading propaganda, waging “psychological warfare,” and en-
couraging U.S. businesses to stop spending in Chile. The administration also
tried to destabilize the Chilean economy by deferring international loans and
asking commercial banks to deny credit.“ Track II collapsed, however, with the
shooting on 22 October 1970 and subsequent death of General René Schneider,
the commander in chief of the Chilean army. Military conspirators attacked
General Schneider, who defended the Chilean constitution and refused to sup-
port a golpe. It was Chile’s first political assassination in 130 years. General
Schneider's shooting outraged Chileans. Two days after the shooting, Allende
received more than 75 percent of the congressional vote.
Nixon and Kissinger denied responsibility for General Schneider's assassi-
nation. On 15 October, Kissinger had ordered the CIA to cancel contacts with
General Roberto Viaux, the principal conspirator, because he questioned the
general’s ability to carry out a golpe. But in his 15 October order, Kissinger told
General Viaux to preserve his assets for future operations and ordered the CIA to
continue "working clandestinely and secretly to maintain the capability for
Agency operations against Allende in the future.” Two days previously, Nixon
told Karamessines, the director of FUBELT, that "it was absolutely essential that
the election of Mr. Allende to the presidency be thwarted.” Between 15 October
CHAPTER 6 + Military Dictators—Cold War Allies 135
and 22 October, CIA agents in Chile continued contact with military conspir-
ators. After the shooting of General Schneider, the CIA' chief of station in
Santiago ventured that the military now had an opportunity to carry out a golpe.
In Washington, David Phillips responded by congratulating CIA agents in Chile
“of guiding Chileans to [a] point today where a military solution is at least an
option for them." The question of U.S. responsibility for General Schneider's
death can be related to a previous presidential entanglement with assassination.
President John Kennedy did not order the murder on 1 November 1963 of Presi-
dent Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, But Kennedy accepted responsibility for
initiating a course of events in August 1963 that led to Diem’s assassination.
Nixon did not share Kennedy’s conviction that a president must be accountable
for his decisions. Nixon abjured responsibility for the general’s death. He sent a
perverse letter to President Frei, calling the attack on Schneider “a repugnant
event” and “a stain on the pages of contemporary history.”
PRESIDENT SALVADOR ALLENDE
Dr. Salvador Allende Gossens (1908-1973) had been active in Chilean parliamen-
tary politics since the 1930s, having served in both houses of the Chilean legislature
and as minister of health from 1938 to 1942. In the late 1960s, he was also president
of the Chilean Senate, A medical doctor by training, Allende came from a privil-
eged background. His father was a doctor and social reformer. His son adopted
both his father's profession and his interest in social change, cofounding Chile's
Socialist Party in 1933. The 1970 presidential campaign represented Allende's
fourth run for the presidency. Allende implicitly accepted the concept of Chilean
exceptionalism or “la via Chilena" (“the Chilean way"). For almost four decades,
Allende, an energetic, tireless politician, made the case that Chile could construct a
socialist paradise through constitutional processes and legislative enactments.
Chile did not need to follow the revolutionary path of the Soviet Union, China, or
Cuba. As a Marxist, Allende blamed international capitalism for leaving Chile a
poor, dependent society and nation. Allende also denounced “imperialism,” by
which he meant the domination of the international system by European colonial-
ists and the United States over the past centuries. Allende was a friend of Fidel
Castro and spoke warmly about Cuba's progress in health, education, and social
welfare. The Chilean denounced the U.S. intervention in Guatemala, the Bay of Pigs
invasion, the invasion of the Dominican Republic, and the war in Vietnam. But,
unlike Castro, he also found fault with the foreign policies of Socialist countries. He
denounced Soviet atrocities in Budapest in 1956 and the invasion of Prague in 1968.
Allende argued that Chile should pursue an independent, nonaligned foreign
policy. He supported President Frei's opening to the Soviet Union, and, as president,
Allende established relations with Cuba and China. He also called for proper rela-
tions with the United States. On 4 November 1970, he passed a note to a State De-
partment official attending his inauguration, President Allende pledged that Chile
would never allow its soil to be used by a power hostile to the United States."
136 THE KILLING ZONE
Allende's electoral mandate and political strength could be interpreted in
various ways. Counting the votes for Tomic of the Christian Democrats, more
than 60 percent of Chileans had voted for significant socioeconomic change. By
1970, Chileans agreed that control of copper production by U.S. mining compa-
nies should end. On the other hand, Tomic advocated more change than most
Christian Democrats supported. Allende also did not have mastery of his own
coalition. Many Socialists considered Allende too moderate and too wedded to
parliamentary principles, The MIR interpreted the 1970 election as a mandate for
revolution and accelerated the process of encouraging land seizures among rural
folk. The Chilean Communists, the conservative members of the coalition, pre-
ferred an incremental approach to change. This faith in gradualism reflected the
traditional approach of Communist parties in Latin America and the views of
Moscow. Although political life in Chile became confrontational in Allende's
Chile, conflict did not erode Unidad Popular’s electoral base. In 1971, the coali-
tion garnered 49 percent of the vote in local elections and 43 percent of the vote
in March 1973 in congressional elections, adding two Senate seats and six seats in
the Chamber of Deputies. Unidad Popular did not, however, win enough seats to
control the legislature. After the March elections, it held 20 of the 50 seats in the
Senate and 63 of 150 seats in the lower house.
During his three years in office, President Allende transformed the Chilean
economy via constitutional means. He froze prices, raised minimum wages, and
subsidized the prices of staples like milk, giving a quick boost to the living stan-
dards of the urban working classes. Fulfilling the national consensus, he nation-
alized the copper industry. His government also nationalized the coal and steel
industries, the majority of banks, and other firms and businesses. The nearly
$1 billion in U.S. direct investment in Chile disappeared. Supporters on the po-
litical left often forced the government's hand by occupying management offices
until expropriation was announced. The government directed additional re-
sources to health, education, and welfare and saw the continued decline in infant
mortality rates and the increase in the number of young people attending school
that had begun during President Frei's years in office. Huge, boisterous crowds
often assembled in support of Allende's march to socialism.
Strikes and furious demonstrations also arose in opposition to Allende's
agenda. Propertied and conservative Chileans feared that Allende's ultimate goal
was to turn Chile into a Communist country based on either the Soviet or the
Cuban model. Chileans would lose their freedom of speech, the right of assembly,
and their Catholic religion. Women and mothers were certain that Unidad Popu-
lar planned to destroy the Chilean family. A regular feature of Chilean life became
theatrical demonstrations led by women banging pots and pans with metal
spoons in protest of government policies. These fears of oppression were highly
exaggerated because every individual in Chile, from the extreme right to the ex-
treme left on the political spectrum, was free to speak, shout, or write his or her
hysterical version of events from 1970 to 1973. To be sure, political violence and
terrorist acts led to the death of one hundred Chileans. But right-wing extremists
HARVARD
CHAPTER 6 + Military Dictators—Cold War Allies 137
bore responsibility for the mayhem. The Allende government and its supporters
remained peaceful and worked within the framework of democracy."
Predictions that Allende would align Chile with the Communist camp also
proved inaccurate. Chile conducted normal diplomatic relations with Cuba and
China. Castro came and stayed in Chile for a month in late 1971. In late 1972,
President Allende traveled to Moscow, seeking economic aid. But these gestures
hardly signified that Chile had allied with the Communists. Allende did not
allow Cubans to use Chile as a base for revolution, and he ignored Castro's un-
solicited advice to ignore constitutional procedures and arm workers. He also
repudiated the schemes of the Cuban embassy in Santiago to arm Chilean leftists.
Moscow pursued détente with the United States. It was not interested in challeng-
ing the United States in its sphere of influence because it wanted recognition of
its suzerainty over Eastern Europe. The big prize would come with the Helsinki
Accords (1975), with the West tacitly conceding both the Soviet domination of
Eastern Europe and the permanent division of Germany. Soviet leaders disap-
pointed Allende, declining to rescue Chile from its economic morass with a sub-
stantial foreign aid package.
President Salvador Allende visits a mining settlement in Chile in 1972. Although many
of his economic policies may have been unfeasible, Allende dedicated his presidency
to uplifting the conditions ofthe working class and poor of Chile. (Camera Press/Christian
Belpaire/Redux Pictures)
138 THE KILLING ZONE
White-collar and skilled workers, the constituency of the Christian Demo-
crats, had legitimate anxieties over Unidad Popular mismanagement of the
Chilean economy, however. The government expanded consumption without a
matching increase in production. Goods became scarce; hoarding ensued. In-
vestment in Chilean enterprises dried up. Chile scared off international investors
with their nationalization policies. Chile refused to compensate the U.S-owned
copper companies, alleging that they had earned excess profits over the century.
Fearing the future loss of their holdings, Chilean entrepreneurs and landowners
stopped innovating and investing. Agricultural production fell 22 percent in
1972-1973. Government bureaucrats proved inept at managing the new national-
ized industries. The government spent wildly, albeit with the good intention of
aiding the poor, and then printed money to cover the excessive spending. Price
inflation predictably ensued, with inflation hitting perhaps 500 percent in 1973.
The Chilean currency, the escudo, became nearly worthless. Officially, the escudo
was pegged to the dollar at a ratio of 46 to 1. On the black market, the dollar was
worth 280 to 300 escudos. Chile did not have the money to service its inter-
national debts and in November 1971 suspended payments, including payments
on the $1.4 billion it owed to U.S. creditors. Strikes by merchants, shopkeepers,
and truckers further disrupted economic activity, A strike by truckers in August
1973 paralyzed the Chilean economy."
NIXON AGAINST ALLENDE
Chileans on their own created the preconditions for a political confrontation, or
what the CIA called a "coup climate.” But between 4 November 1970 and 11 Sep-
tember 1973, the Richard Nixon administration employed the covert schemes,
tricks, and deceptions that had been previously used in Guatemala, Cuba, Brazil,
British Guiana, and the Dominican Republic to generate political warfare and
economic chaos in Chile. The failure of Operation FUBELT and the tragic death
of General Schneider had not chastened the administration. Richard Nixon and
Henry Kissinger celebrated the death of Salvador Allende even as the Nixon
presidency collapsed under the weight of the high crimes and misdemeanors
known as “Watergate.”
Within a few days after Allende’s inauguration, the president and his na-
tional security adviser set both U.S. public and covert policy toward Chile.
Nixon's loathing of Allende was reinforced by the stern memorandum about
Chile's threat to Western interests he received from his friend, General Vernon
Walters. After a lengthy NSC meeting on Chile, the president issued National
Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM) 93 on 9 November 1970. The United
States would take a “correct but cool” policy toward Allende. Public hostility
toward Allende would provide the Chilean leader with an opportunity to rally
domestic and international support. Although being diplomatic in speech, the
administration vowed “to maximize pressures on the Allende government to
prevent its consolidation and limit its ability to implement policies contrary to
CHAPTER 6 * Military Dictators—Cold War Allies 139
US. and hemispheric interests.” The directive also called on the United States
to cultivate "friendly military leaders" in the hemisphere, especially those in
Argentina and Brazil. The directive was informed by the harsh talk at the NSC
Meeting. Both Secretary of State William P. Rogers and Secretary of Defense
Melvin Laird agreed that “we have to do everything we can to hurt him [Allende]
and bring him down." The president indulged himself in one of his typical out-
bursts, emphasizing that "no impression should be permitted in Latin America
that they can get away with this, that it is safe to go this way. All over the world it
is too much the fashion to kick us around." Nixon said he was unconcerned about
how democratic countries in Latin America would react to U.S. policies. The
"game" was to keep the military leaders of Argentina and Brazil closely aligned to
the United States.“ Prior to the NSC meeting, Kissinger had prepared Nixon,
warning that Allende's election "poses for us one of the most serious challenges
ever faced in this hemisphere" and that "your decision as to what to do about it
may be the most historic and difficult foreign affairs decision you will have to
make this year.” With his characteristic disdain for Latin Americans, Kissinger
rationalized Nixon's war against Allende with the view that “I don't see why we
have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible.”
As called for in NSDM 93, the United States conducted economic warfare
against Chile. U.S. economic aid, which had been $260 million in 1967, amounted
to only $74 million in 1972. Chileans could not obtain spare parts for their U.S.-
made autos, trucks, and machinery because the Export-Import Bank denied
commercial loans and credits to Chile. The United States also used its influence
at the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and
the World Bank to deny loans to Chile. The Inter-American Development Bank
provided Chile with $46 million in loans in 1970 but only $2 million during the
Allende presidency.” The United States defended its policies by pointing out that
Chile expropriated foreign properties without compensation and that it suspended
payments on international loans. But the policy was the fulfillment of Nixon's
injunction to CIA Director Helms to make the Chilean economy “scream.”
The CIA admitted to spending $7 million in Chile between 1970 and 1973,
although the agency probably funneled additional funds into the country through
third parties. President Nixon personally approved support, which amounted to
more than $1 million, to the conservative newspaper, El Mercurio. Nixon was a
friend of the Chilean publisher and media mogul Agustin Edwards. The news-
paper and Edwards's radio and television stations crusaded against Allende and,
by 1972-1973, increasingly suggested that the Chilean military overthrow the
government. As it did during the 1960s, the CIA also funded opposition parties,
both conservative parties and the Christian Democrats. The Nixon administra-
tion justified the spending because it told itself that Allende would destroy demo-
cratic freedoms in Chile. In April 1971, in the president's hideaway office in the
Executive Office Building, Henry Kissinger opined to Nixon that Allende would
follow the “German strategy” of Adolf Hitler of gradually eliminating dissent
to create a “fascist” state. Two months later, speaking in the Oval Office of the
140 THE KILLING ZONE
White House, Kissinger and Nixon took turns denouncing Allende, with the
president demanding “harder line" on Chile. Kissinger agreed, claiming that the
Chilean president was gaining control over the press and police and isolating
the military. He predicted that there would “never be another free election in
Chile." In fact, elections took place in 1971 and 1973, Allende remained true to his
parliamentary convictions, and Chileans published and shouted their opinions.
CIA money went to business groups and trade associations and to a right-
wing paramilitary group, Paz y Libertad (Peace and Liberty), that perpetrated
terrorism. The CIA probably did not directly organize and fund major confronta-
tions, like the trucker's strike, but funded groups that supported the strikers. As
a congressional investigative committee found, the CIA understood that “the
interconnections among the CIA-supported political parties, the various mili-
tant trade associations (gremios) and paramilitary groups prone to terrorism and
violent disruption were many.” The American Institute for Free Labor Develop-
ment (AIFLD) operated in Chile and brought anti-Allende union officials to
Washington for training. The AIFLD was an arm of the major U.S. trade union,
the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations,
and received substantial funding from CIA front organizations. The AIFLD
played a major role in fomenting strikes and violent demonstrations against
Prime Minister Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana between 1962 and 1964. As in
British Guiana, the CIA worked to create a “coup climate” in Chile or, in Melvin
Laird’s words, “to bring him [Allende] down.”
‘The Chilean congressional elections of March 1973, which increased the po-
litical strength of Unidad Popular, prompted new thinking and plotting both in
Chile and in Washington. Allende's political opponents had planned to impeach
Allende and remove him from office if they gained control of two-thirds of the
legislative seats. They now questioned whether they could defeat Unidad Popular
in the 1976 presidential elections. Nixon administration officials were also disap-
pointed by the results of Chile's congressional elections. The Latin American sec-
tion of the State Department and the new ambassador to Santiago, Nathaniel
Davis, hoped for a Track I-style political solution, defeating Unidad Popular in
1976, pethaps with a repeat of the 1964 covert intervention in the electoral pro-
cess, Nixon, Kissinger, and the CIA had never, however, given up on Track II—a
military overthrow of the government. Although it eliminated economic assis-
tance to Chile, the administration maintained military aid and military equip-
ment sales, providing more than $33 million between 1971 and 1973, a more than
40 percent increase over the previous three years. More than six hundred junior
officers and noncommissioned officers attended the U.S. Army’s “School of the
Americas” in Panama. The CIA funded an anti-Allende newsletter for military
officers. It also kept in close contact with high-ranking Chilean officers, report-
ing, for example, in August 1971 that General Augusto Pinochet had kept his
political thoughts to himself at a dinner party. In September 1972, a CIA source
within the Pinochet camp reported that the general now believed that “Allende
must be forced to step down or be eliminated.” While in the Panama Canal Zone
CHAPTER 6 * Military Dictators—Cold War Allies 141
to negotiate the purchase of U.S. tanks, General Pinochet was told by U.S. mili-
tary officers that the “U.S. will support coup against Allende ‘with whatever means
necessary’ when time comes.”
The details of the U.S. involvement in the Chilean military's attack on Presi-
dent Allende have become evident in the twenty-first century, as official docu-
ments have been declassified. Under General Pinochet's command, the Chilean
military seized the government on 11 September 1973. Warplanes bombed and
strafed the presidential palace, La Moneda, pinpointing Allende’s offices. After
making a dramatic radio broadcast and reaffirming his faith in the Chilean
people, President Allende committed suicide. The Nixon administration pro-
duced records demonstrating that the embassy and CIA officers were ordered
during the summer of 1973 not to discuss a golpe with Chilean officers. The CIA,
however, monitored the plotting and knew an attack was imminent. Moreover,
on 20 August, Kissinger approved a plan to transfer an additional $1 million to
anti-Allende groups. The covert spending would be used to generate further
political instability and economic chaos in Chile and would serve as an obvious
encouragement to the Chilean military to strike. As CIA Director William Colby
noted to Kissinger on 25 August, CIA agents in Santiago were not directly help-
ing the Chilean military to plan an attack, but “realistically, of course, a coup
could result from increased opposition pressure on the Allende government.”
In the immediate days after the 11 September 1973 golpe, Nixon administra-
tion officials met repeatedly on Chile, discussing how they could manage public
discussion of the U.S. role. They also engaged in grubby talk about Salvador
Allende's death. Kissinger informed President Nixon that Allende was drunk
on the fateful day. CIA Director Colby labeled Allende a “boozer” who had ten
drinks by morning and was “loaded” by noon. In fact, Allende's last radio address
is treasured today by Chileans for its dignity. One official suggested Allende
killed himself so as to achieve martyrdom. Kissinger retorted that “losers don't
become martyrs in Latin America,” Kissinger also joked that the death of Allende
and the destruction of Chilean constitutionalism were untimely because they had
complicated his nomination hearings to be secretary of state.
In their memoirs, both Nixon and Kissinger claimed that the overthrow
of Allende was a Chilean affair. A telephone conversation between Nixon and
Kissinger on 16 September 1973, five days after President Allende's death, casts
doubt on their respective claims of innocence. Henry Kissinger had sought to
block the release of that conversation and others for more than thirty years. After
first discussing his plan to attend a Washington Redskins football game, Kissinger
celebrated the end of the Allende government, complaining that the media did not
share his joy over what had happened in Chile. Perhaps thinking about the covert
interventions in Iran and Guatemala, Kissinger added, “in the Eisenhower period
we would be heroes.” Nixon responded: “Well we didn't, as you know—our hand
doesn't show on this one though.” “We didn’t do it,” Kissinger declared, “I mean
we helped them—created the conditions as great as possible.” Nixon agreed: “That
is right. And that is the way it is going to be played."
M2 THE KILLING ZONE
Whether Allende's policies alone would have ultimately led to his ouster can
be debated but cannot be answered, The United States had contributed to polit-
ical polarization in Chile in the 1960s and helped destabilize the country in the
Allende years. Whether the murderous Pinochet regime could have lasted from
1973 to 1990, without the initial backing of the Nixon and Gerald R. Ford admin-
istrations, is also an issue of critical historical importance.*
PINOCHET AND HIS FRIENDS
The Nixon administration wasted little time in signaling its support for the end
of constitutional rule in Chile. On September 13, in a cable from the White House
Situation Room, the embassy in Santiago was instructed “to make clear its desire
to cooperate with the military junta and to assist in any appropriate way.” On
the next day, the administration advised the Chileans to dispatch a delegation to
the United Nations to defend the golpe from mounting international criticism.
A few days later, the United States responded favorably to a Chilean request for one
thousand flares and one thousand steel helmets for soldiers to be used in combat
operations against the military regime's domestic opponents. On 24 September,
the United States extended diplomatic recognition to the Pinochet regime. The
administration waited two weeks to resume relations because Kissinger believed
the United States had made a public relations mistake in 1964, when it immedi-
ately recognized the military government in Brazil. As the 13 September cable
noted, “it is best initially to avoid too much public identification between us."
Once relations were restored, the administration shipped the economic lar-
gesse to Chile that had been denied the Allende government. In October and
November 1973, it granted Chile $48 million in commodity credits to purchase
wheat and corn. Between 1974 and 1976, Chile received $132 million in Food for
Peace (P.L. 480) grants. Kissinger proudly informed the Chilean foreign minister
that his nation received more than two-thirds of the total food assistance for
Latin America. Chile accounted for only 3 percent of the region's population.
Chile also received $30 million in U.S. economic assistance for housing. Presi-
dent Nixon had once labeled housing assistance “welfare.” The rest of Latin
America received only $4 million in housing aid. Loans and credits also flowed
from international lending agencies. During its first three years, the military gov-
ernment received $238 million in loans from the Inter-American Development
Bank, whereas the Allende government had received only $11.6 million. The
Chilean military went on a buying spree, ordering $100 million in new equip-
ment and spare parts. Chile emerged as the fifth largest customer in the world for
US. military hardware. In 1974-1975, nearly nine hundred Chileans trained at
the School of the Americas in Panama.“
The United States embraced Pinochet's Chile even as the military dictator
plunged the nation into a netherworld. In the immediate aftermath of the golpe,
the regime arrested fifty thousand Chileans. Thousands were impounded in
the National Stadium, where soldiers carried out summary executions. Before
CHAPTER 6 * Military Dictators—Cold War Allies 143
murdering Víctor Jara, the famous folksinger and guitarist, soldiers broke the
bones in his hands. Jara's bullet-ridden body was dumped in the street on the
outskirts of Santiago. High government officials, like Foreign Minister Orlando
Letelier, were carted off to Dawson Island in the extreme south of the country in
the frigid, windy Straits of Magellan. The political prisoners lived in squalor and
were forced into hard labor. A hideous fate also awaited the perhaps five thou-
sand Chileans who entered the Villa Grimaldi detention center, a walled estate
on the outskirts of Santiago. One detainee, Gladys Diaz, a radio broadcaster and
member of MIR, survived Villa Grimaldi and later recounted her ordeal. She
and her husband were forced to watch each other being tortured. Her husband
was later taken away and “disappeared.” She was subjected to electrical shocks
and drugs, and her head was plunged into toilet water in a technique known as
“the submarine.” A karate expert beat her up and broke her hip. Díaz was also
made to witness two murders—one a beating by chains, the other by shooting.
One notorious torturer defended allegations he was also a rapist by observing
that he found his female victims, covered with dirt and urine and with blood
running down their legs, unappealing. In fact, female detainees testified to being
subjected to “gang rapes” by Chilean security forces. The future president of
Chile, Michelle Bachelet, and her mother also suffered abuse at Villa Grimaldi.
Bachelet's father, Air Force General Alberto Bachelet, a constitutionalist and sup-
porter of Allende, had previously died in detention after torture." Chilean fact-
finding commissions would later charge the regime with 3,197 recorded murders.
Some 36,000 Chileans testified to their torture or the torture of a family member.
More than 200,000 Chileans, 2 percent of the population, went into exile in more
than one hundred countries. Chileans spread out because they knew the regime
would try to hunt them down and kill them, Scholars judge that the official find-
ings are too conservative. Credible political detention estimates are 150,000 to
200,000 people, with more than 100,000 Chileans suffering torture while in the
custody of state agents.“
General Pinochet and his minions claimed they were fighting World War III,
saving Western civilization and Christianity from Marxist barbarians. At first,
the military junta had assured Chileans that there would be neither victims
nor vanquished, and the military's mission was to “salvage” the country. The
Christian Democrats, for example, initially supported the golpe. But by October
1973, General Pinochet portrayed himself as Chiles messiah. ‘The attack on
Allende had been God’s work, and Pinochet committed himself to the “heroic
struggle" to carry out a “moral cleansing” in order “to extirpate the root of evil
from Chile.” In March 1974, the regime issued an official rationale, a “Declar-
ation of Principles,” which proclaimed that ‘Chile was an anti-Marxist country.
‘The armed forces would stay in power indefinitely, until Chile's military leaders
had redefined the Chilean mentality. Marxism and the doctrine of class struggle
had to be replaced in the Chilean mind with fealty to conservative Catholicism,
class harmony, and Chilean nationalism. The regime abolished all political insti-
tutions other than the courts. So profound was the regime's contempt for the
M4 THE KILLING ZONE
trappings of liberal democracy—freedom of speech, freedom of association,
elections—that it prohibited private groups, including professional associations,
mothers’ centers, and sports clubs, from holding elections for officers.
Rejecting la via chilena model, Pinochet adopted violent methods of change.
After seizing power, the regime, in a process labeled the “Caravan of Death,”
dispatched military death squads to provincial towns and executed local officials
whose crime had been that they held office during the Allende years. The regime
wanted to spread the anti-Marxist fervor, sow terror among the country folk, and
find out which local military commanders were willing to obey Santiago's orders
and commit atrocities. Pinochet's economic philosophy was to return Chile to
nineteenth-century laissez-faire capitalism with limited government expendi-
tures. Knowing that the living standards of the poor would fall, the regime peri-
odically ordered soldiers to surround callampas, conduct searches of homes for
weapons and subversive literature, and arrest males. The release of male prison-
ers would depend on the proper deportment of families and neighbors. The
regime also permitted landowners to repossess their land and seek vengeance
against campesinos who had received land titles from previous governments. In
commanding the restructuring of Chilean thought, society, and culture, General
Pinochet presented himself as a selfless servant of the people who was concerned
only about the advancement of the nation. In fact, along with being a tyrant and
a murderer, he was a thief. Investigations would subsequently reveal that he
had hidden $28 million in foreign bank accounts.”
General Pinochet also directed state-sponsored international terrorism. He
appointed Colonel Manuel Contreras to head a new secret police organization
known by the acronym DINA. Colonel Contreras and his DINA brutes carried
out the torture and murder of Chileans in places like Villa Grimaldi. Contreras
reported directly to General Pinochet. Pinochet publicly denied that government
agents tortured, but he reportedly confessed to two religious leaders that “you
have to torture them, because without it they don't sing. Torture is necessary to
extirpate communism.”” Contreras and DINA also extended the terror to other
countries. In September 1974, DINA agents assassinated General Carlos Prats
and his wife with a car bomb attack. Prats was thrown out of the car and died
instantly. The general's wife was trapped in the burning car and was carbonized.
General Prats, who was living quietly in exile in Buenos Aires, had been the com-
mander in chief of Chile's armed forces. Like General Schneider, General Prats
had been loyal to the Chilean constitution and refused to participate in the over-
throw of President Allende. General Pinochet and military supporters had forced
General Prats to resign in the months before the 11 September 1973 attack on
La Moneda.
Colonel Contreras extended his campaign of international terror when, in
November 1975, he met in Santiago with security chiefs from military govern-
ments in Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, and Paraguay to exchange information
on Marxists and to collaborate in assassinating them. Many Chilean leftists, for
example, had initially sought refuge in Argentina. The project earned the code
CHAPTER 6 * Military Dictators—Cold War Allies 145
name "Operation Condor,” after the national bird of Chile. Brazil joined the ter-
rorist network the next year. Operation Condor claimed prominent victims.
DINA worked with Argentines to capture and secrete back to Chile MIR leaders
for torture and execution, Bernardo Leighton, a Christian Democratic leader,
was shot in the back of the head in Rome. Leighton's wife was left paralyzed by
a bullet that hit her in the spine.” Subjected to international criticism, Chile
had released prominent political prisoners from Dawson Island. One, Orlando
Letelier, fled to Washington and lobbied U.S. legislators to oppose Pinochet.
In September 1976, DINA agents triggered a remote-control bomb that killed
Letelier and his assistant, Ronni Moffitt, and wounded her husband. Letelier's
legs were blown off. Ronni Moffitt had her carotid artery and windpipe severed
by shrapnel, She drowned in her own blood. Minister Letelier and the Moffitts
were traveling by car in an area known in Washington as “Embassy Row."
Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and their secretary of state,
Henry Kissinger, accepted the Pinochet regime's barbaric behavior with equa-
nimity. Cold War imperatives triumphed over a defense of human rights. On
1 October 1973, at a staff meeting, Kissinger ruled: “I think we should under-
stand our policy—that however unpleasant they act, this government is better for
us than Allende was.” When confronted by CIA and State Department analyses
of atrocities perpetrated by the Pinochet regime, Kissinger denied the reports,
informing U.S. legislators that he doubted whether Chile was a country that
engaged in a consistent pattern of gross violations of human rights. Kissinger
challenged aides, like Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs
William D. Rogers, asking: “Is this government worse than the Allende govern-
ment? Is human rights more severely threatened by this government than
Allende?” Rogers, a good friend of Kissinger’s, answered "yes" to both questions,
adding that Allende had not closed down opposition parties or destroyed oppo-
sition newspapers. Kissinger ridiculed colleagues who raised human rights issues,
explaining to the Chilean foreign minister that "the State Department is made up
of people who have a vocation in the ministry. Because there are not enough
churches for them, they went into the Department of State.” Secretary of State
Kissinger further belittled Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) for proposing
legislation to cut off economic and military aid to Chile.” In 2008, President
Michelle Bachelet would confer on Senator Kennedy the Order to the Merit of
Chile Award, Chile' highest civilian award, for his efforts to restore democracy
and respect for human rights.
The mounting criticism of his love affair with Pinochet's Chile seemingly
persuaded Kissinger to defend human rights principles. He delivered an impres-
sive exposition of human rights at an OAS meeting in Santiago in June 1976.
Kissinger highlighted this speech in his memoirs and also observed that he raised
human rights issues in his 8 June 1976 meeting with General Pinochet in his
presidential office. The declassified memorandum of the conversation does not
sustain Kissinger’s memory of his meeting with Pinochet. The speech was in-
tended to pacify critics in the United States. Kissinger assured Pinochet that “the
M6 THE KILLING ZONE
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gathers with a happy General Augusto Pinochet and
others in June 1976 in Santiago, Chile. Kissinger would later claim that he raised human
rights issues with the Chilean dictator. The declassified memorandum of their conversation
reveals, however, that the secretary of state focused on congratulating Pinochet on
overthrowing “a government which was going Communist.” The Richard Nixon and Gerald
Ford administrations provided critical help to General Pinochet in the immediate years
after the overthrow of Salvador Allende. (© File Photo/Reuters/Corbis)
speech is not aimed at Chile.” He commiserated with the general, noting “my
evaluation is that you are a victim of all left-wing groups around the world and
that your greatest sin was that you overthrew a government which was going
Communist.” He asked Pinochet to make a gesture in the human rights field but
qualified that request with the assurance that “none of this is said with the hope
of undermining your government. I want you to succeed and I want to retain the
possibility of aid.” Pinochet claimed that Chile had reduced the political prisoner
population to four hundred inmates, But he also denounced the criticism he re-
ceived from Christian Democrats and Orlando Letelier's access to the U.S. Con-
gress. Kissinger responded that he had not spoken with any Christian Democrat
in years.” Three months later, DINA agents assassinated Letelier.
Hypocrisy also characterized covert dealings with Chile. The Nixon admin-
istration cut off funding for the Christian Democrats after giving them a sever-
ance payment of $50,000 in June 1974, For twelve years, the United States had
covertly funded the Christian Democrats on the premise that the United States
CHAPTER 6 + Military Dictators—Cold War Allies 147
needed to preserve competitive political discourse in Chile. Pinochet's military
regime outlawed political parties. The administration also gave El Mercurio and
the media empire of Augustin Edwards a final payment of $176,000. El Mercurio
went from being an anti-Allende organ to serving as the regime's mouthpiece,
publishing lies and disinformation on the assassinations of political figures.
Chilean officials claimed that political leftists killed one another in internecine
warfare
Nixon and Kissinger had alleged that Salvador Allende would turn Chile into
a base for international subversion. With Operation Condor, General Pinochet
and Colonel Contreras conspired to make Chile and the southern cone a home
for international terrorists. In 1976, U.S. officials learned that Operation Condor
had an assassination component. The CIA had good sources in the region. CIA
Deputy Director Walters also had often conferred with Colonel Contreras in
Santiago and Washington. After lengthy internal debate within the State Depart-
ment, on 23 August 1976 Secretary Kissinger authorized U.S. ambassadors to
approach heads of state in the Condor countries and register the U.S. view
that assassination "would create a most serious moral and political problem."
Ambassador to Chile David Popper responded that General Pinochet would be
insulted if Popper implied that Pinochet had been connected with assassination
plots. Popper asked for further guidance. The ambassador did not receive new
instructions until after Letelier’s assassination. State Department officials de-
cided that the "Condor scheme" had not been activated. In October, Ambassador
Popper had an aide approach Colonel Contreras, who predictably denied Chilean
involvement in the Letelier assassination." Latin American Communists had not
attacked the United States. Instead, Cold War allies, the military dictators of the
southern cone, had perpetrated the worst case of international terrorism on U.S.
soil prior to the dreadful attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
on 11 September 2001.
ANOTHER MILITARY DOMINO
The U.S. approach to the Chilean military regime would be replicated with
Argentina, where generals who had run the country from 1966 to 1973 seized
power again in March 1976. For ten years Argentina had been torn by violence,
with military repression, urban guerrillas, a leftist revolutionary movement, and
Peronists demanding the return to power of the old caudillo, Juan Perón, who
had been overthrown and exiled by the military in 1955. The restoration of Perón
and his wife, Isabel Martínez de Perón (1973-1976), to power only contributed
to political violence and economic chaos. Between 1969 and 1973, the Nixon ad-
ministration had helped the Argentine military rulers, offering economic advice
and aid and developing back-channel communications with them. President
Nixon believed, of course, that Latin America’s future lay with Argentina and
Brazil under military rule.” Kissinger enthusiastically welcomed the Argentine
military's return to power, under the leadership of General Jorge Rafael Videla
Di
HARVARD UNIVERS
148 THE KILLING ZONE
(1976-1981). While in Santiago, Kissinger met with Argentine foreign minister
César Augusto Guzzetti on 10 June 1976, two days after conferring with Pinochet
in his presidential office. Kissinger told the Argentine that the United States
sympathized with Argentina's fight against internal subversion and terrorism.
Kissinger further observed: “We are aware you are in a difficult period. It is a
curious time, when political, criminal, and terrorist activities tend to merge
without any clear separation. We understand you must establish authority.” The
secretary of state sanctioned state terrorism, noting "if there are things that have.
to be done, you should do them quickly. But you should quickly get back to
normal procedures." Kissinger met with Guzzetti a second time in Washington
in October 1976. The foreign minister returned to Buenos Aires “euphoric” be-
cause he inferred that the Ford administration's “overriding concern was not
human rights but rather that the Government of Argentina ‘get it over quickly.”
“Getting it over quickly” signified the wholesale slaughter of Argentines. In the
judgment of the U.S. ambassador in Buenos Aires, Robert C. Hill, “Kissinger gave
the Argentines the green light.” Hill protested the mounting atrocities and pro-
vided Washington with explicit accounts of what was happening in Argentina.
For his humanity, Ambassador Hill merited a rebuke for contesting, in Kissinger's
words, “my policy.”
Employing the same perverted reasoning of Brazil’s Médici and Chile's
Pinochet, General Videla vowed to save Western civilization and Christianity by
cleansing Argentine society of subversives and their sympathizers. A year before
seizing power, the general declared that “if the Argentine situation demands it,
all necessary persons must die to achieve the security of the country.” General
Videla labeled his campaign the “National Reorganization Process,” or simply el
Proceso. Argentine military leaders spoke of killing fifty thousand people. They
managed to murder perhaps thirty thousand in la guerra sucia.® In Buenos
Aires, security personnel in civilian clothes would snatch people off the streets
and stuff them into unmarked Ford Falcons. A hood, la capucha, would be placed
over the victim's head. The kidnapped would be immediately transported to
Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA) or Navy School of Mechanics, a set of
handsome buildings on the 8100 block of Avenida del Libertador, one of the city's
grandest boulevards. Within thirty minutes of arrival, the prisoners would be
subjected to torture, which included beatings and electric shocks. Women were.
raped. The torture took place in the basement of a building, where on the upper.
floors military officers socialized and slept. After suffering weeks of torture, the
prisoners would typically be administered a sedative and transported to helicop-
ters and airplanes. In mid-air, they would then be thrown alive into the Río de la
Plata or the South Atlantic Ocean. Of the five thousand Argentines who were
spirited into ESMA, only one hundred fifty lived to recount the horror.
Analysts of la guerra sucia have noted that a disproportionate number of
those arrested, tortured, and murdered were Argentine Jews." The regime's anti-
Semitism did not seem to register with Secretary Kissinger, whose family had fled
Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Indeed, in 1978, Kissinger, now out of office, visited
HARVARD
CHAPTER 6 + Military Dictators—Cold War Allies 149
Themain building of the Naval Mechanical School campus (ESMA) located on a prominent
boulevard in Buenos Aires. Residential neighborhoods surround the campus. In an adjoining
building, five thousand Argentines were tortured, with only one hundred fifty surviving to
recount the horror. Photographs are not permitted of the torture rooms because those areas
are classified as material evidence for ongoing criminal trials. (Stephen G. Rabe)
the Peruvian locker room with General Videla before a World Cup game between
Argentina and Peru. The national stadium, where World Cup games were held in
Buenos Aires, stood blocks away from ESMA.**
Fighting the Cold War and maintaining the balance of power commanded a
higher value than promoting respect for human rights. Between 1969 and 1976,
the U.S. presidential administrations also ridiculed the idea that Latin Americans
could build orderly societies based on democratic values. The United States had
successfully waged Cold War in the region. The United States maintained its
sphere of influence, and the region’s anti-Communist military leaders aligned
themselves with the United States. Latin American citizens, however, had paid
a brutal price fora winning US. policy.
CHAPTER 7
»
Cold War Horrors— Central America
'he last ten years of the Cold War, from 1979 to 1989, proved a dreadful time
for Latin Americans, especially for citizens in the Central American coun-
tries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. In the name of anticommunism,
military units allied with right-wing death squads imitated the tactics of their
ideological brethren in the southern cone, slaughtering perhaps three hundred
thousand Central Americans. The ghastly violence prompted Gabriel García
Márquez to direct his Nobel Prize speech in December 1982 to the "sorrow and
beauty" of Latin America. The renowned novelist from Colombia, author of
Cien años de soledad (1967) (One Hundred Years of Solitude), spoke of the agony
of his region. Hundreds of thousands of Chileans and Uruguayans had fled
their once peaceful countries. Imprisoned Argentine women gave birth and
then had their babies stolen from them by security forces. The "diabolic dicta-
tor" of Guatemala was attacking indigenous Mayans, "carrying out, in God's
name, the first Latin American ethnocide of our time." Because they had tried
to change Latin America's poverty and injustice, "nearly two hundred thousand.
men and women have died throughout the continent, and over one hundred
thousand have lost their lives in three small and ill-fated countries of Central
America: Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala." It would be, Garcia Márquez
reminded, as if the United States had lost 1.6 million people in four years.
In his remarkable address in Stockholm, Sweden, Garcia Márquez did not
charge other nations with responsibility for Latin America's suffering. However,
he rejected the idea that "violence and pain" was the natural condition of the.
region. Latin Americans were not the children of Cain. The Colombian asked,
“Why think that the social justice sought by progressive Europeans for their own.
countries cannot also be a goal for Latin America, with different methods for dis-
similar conditions?” Unfortunately for Latin Americans, yearnings for social
justice became enveloped by Cold War fears. In the 1980s, during the presidency
of Ronald Reagan, the United States aided and abetted the violence that García.
Márquez deplored. The United States signaled support for Efraín Rios Montt, the
150
CHAPTER 7 * Cold War Horrors—Central America 151
“diabolical dictator" of Guatemala, poured $1 billion dollars of military aid into
El Salvador, and underwrote a civil war in Nicaragua. The death and destruction
that García Márquez deplored in 1982 multiplied and spread during the 19805.
Unspeakable atrocities became commonplace in Central America.
JIMMY CARTER AND HUMAN RIGHTS
The year 1979 marked a turning point in the history of Central America. The
domestic political warfare that had waxed and waned in Guatemala since 1954
entered a new, extraordinarily violent phase. In tiny El Salvador, a military dictator
fell, but government repression accelerated with a thousand Salvadorans being mur-
dered each month. In Nicaragua, the last member of the Somoza dynasty, Anastasio
Somoza Debayle (1967-1979), fled the country after years of civil war. Somoza's
flight did not, however, usher in a period of peace and prosperity for Nicaragua. Op-
ponents of the new revolutionary regime in Nicaragua would launch a brutal coun-
terrevolution. That Central America would become the last major battleground of
the Cold War in Latin America during the presidency of Jimmy Carter seemed
ironic and tragic. Carter had taken office in January 1977 pledging a new approach
toward Latin America that was not based on Cold War policies.
By the mid-1970s, the consensus that had informed U.S. public opinion
about the Cold War had broken down. U.S. citizens began to challenge the prem-
ises of the Truman Doctrine and NSC 68/2. The key Cold War documents of the
late 1940s had posited that the Soviet Union was bent on world domination
through the subversive methods of the international Communist movement. The
U.S. debacle in Vietnam had posed the question of whether the United States
could or should defeat every manifestation of communism. Citizens began to
argue that there were limits to U.S. power. The U.S. experience in Vietnam also
raised questions about the “domino theory” of Communist expansionism. The
presidential lying associated with the war in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal
also caused citizens to wonder whether they could trust their government. Richard
Nixon's opening to the People's Republic of China and his policy of détente with
the Soviet Union further suggested that the leading Communist nations were
great powers, not revolutionary powers. China and the Soviet Union presumably
wanted to maximize their power within the existing international system rather
than overthrow the international order.
In regard to Latin America, debate about Cold War policies had been muted
for three decades. Most U.S. citizens were unaware of covert interventions in
countries such as Brazil, British Guiana, and Guatemala. After 1960, Fidel Castro
evoked little sympathy in the United States, And the burgeoning Cuban exile
‘community in Florida and New Jersey opposed any dialogue with Castro’s Cuba.
To be sure, Senator J. William Fulbright (D-AK), the chair of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, denounced President Lyndon Johnson's decision to invade
the Dominican Republic in 1965. But Fulbright’s condemnation of the “arrogance
of power” was perceived within the senator's critique of Johnson's military
152 THE KILLING ZONE
buildup in Vietnam. The overthrow of Salvador Allende and the subsequent re-
pression in Chile, however, evoked dismay within the United States. U.S. citizens
who were conversant with international affairs understood that General Augusto
Pinochet had subjected a model country to violence and pain. Emboldened by
the loss of presidential credibility brought about by Vietnam and Watergate,
congressional committees revealed that the United States had covertly inter-
vened in Chile and hatched assassination plots in Latin America. Senator Edward M.
Kennedy and Representative Donald M. Fraser (D-MN) led congressional efforts
to restrict economic and military aid to Latin American countries that abused
their citizens. In 1974, Congress abolished the OPS, the police training program
established during the John F. Kennedy presidency. In the new post-Vietnam and
Watergate atmosphere, citizens learned that U.S. police trainers had advised
Brazilian and Uruguayan police and security forces who had tortured and mur-
dered.? Legislators also called on the State Department to appoint foreign-service
officers who would focus on human rights issues.
Perhaps the key reason for the rise of critical inquiry in the mid-1970s about
Cold War polices in Latin America was the growing realization that foes of the
United States posed no threats to U.S. national security. The Soviet Union had
never expressed much interest in the region, and after 1962 it flatly opposed
Cuban adventures. The Soviets had received recognition of their sphere of influ-
ence in Eastern Europe in the Helsinki Accords (1975) and tacitly conceded the
U.S. sphere in Latin America. Fidel Castro talked about rather than fomented
revolution in Latin America. Castro focused on aiding liberation movements in
Africa. Che Guevara had been dead for years. Right-wing military tyrants, not
political leftists, dominated the region. Within the context of international devel-
‘opments in the 1970s, U.S. support for blood-thirsty military regimes in South
America struck many U.S. citizens as both short sighted and immoral. Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger’s argument that the ruling generals in Argentina, Chile,
Brazil, and Uruguay deserved U.S. sympathy and support appalled citizens.
Jimmy Carter, the former governor of Georgia, became the champion of
those who called for a human rights dimension to U.S. foreign policy. Carter,
who took his Christian faith seriously, understood that he could gain political
advantage by lambasting U.S. support for dictators. In the second presidential
debate with President Gerald R. Ford, Carter referred to Chile eight different
times. Carter asserted in the presidential campaign that “our commitment to
human rights must be absolute.” In his inaugural address, President Carter de-
clared, “Because we are free, we can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom
elsewhere. Our moral sense dictates a clear-cut preference for those societies
which share with us an abiding respect for individual human rights.” Commem-
orating the thirtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(1948) by the United Nations, Carter asserted that “human rights is the soul of
our foreign policy." Carter put substance into his words by appointing Patricia
Derian to head the State Department's new Bureau of Human Rights and Human
Affairs. Derian, a person of conviction and courage, was a Democrat and civil
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CHAPTER 7 * Cold War Horrors— Central America 153
rights activist from Mississippi who had successfully desegregated her party's
political delegations.
The Carter administration focused on human rights abuses in the countries
of the southern cone, especially Argentina. Thousands of Argentines had been
executed or had disappeared, becoming los desaparecidos (the disappeared), in the
six months before Carter's inauguration. General Jorge Videla and his military
colleagues seemed to have taken to heart Secretary of State Kissinger’s advice that
“if there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly.” The atroc-
ities committed by Argentine security forces reached new levels of human deg-
radation. Headless and handless torsos washed up on Argentine beaches. A
mother received the body of her daughter with rats sewn up inside her vagina. In
1976, Ambassador Robert C. Hill, a conservative career foreign-service officer,
had lodged more than thirty protests about human rights violations with the
Argentine government, Military thugs, traveling in their Ford Falcons, were even
snatching U.S. citizens, including Elida Messina, a member of the Fulbright
Commission in Buenos Aires. Ambassador Hill was undercut, however, by his
boss, Henry Kissinger.*
Even before receiving her senatorial confirmation, Derian journeyed to
Buenos Aires to confront Argentina's military rulers. In August 1977, Derian
returned to Buenos Aires, went to the ESMA, and bluntly told Admiral Emilio
Eduardo Massera, a leader of the military junta, that Argentines were being tor-
tured “in the bottom floor of this building.” The administration also authorized a
foreign-service officer, F. Allan “Tex” Harris, to meet with relatives of los desapa-
recidos and compile files on their cases. In 1977, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo
began to march silently in front of the presidential palace, the Casa Rosada, to
bear witness to their missing children. In Montevideo, the new U.S. ambassador,
Lawrence Pezzullo, evoked “enormous hostility" from the Uruguayan military for
pushing a human rights and democratic agenda. Pezzullo’s predecessor, Ambas-
sador Ernest Siracusa, as described by Derian, was “great pals with leading people
in the dictatorship.” As a sign of disapproval, the Carter administration also cut
economic and military aid to the southern cone countries, and, in one high-
profile decision in 1978, the administration opposed a $270 million Export-
Import Bank loan to Argentina to construct turbines for a hydroelectric plant.*
Scholars who have examined the efficacy of Carter’s human rights policy be-
lieve it had a significant impact in southern South America. U.S. pressure did not
topple any of the military regimes, But measured in quantitative terms, violations
of human rights declined. In Uruguay, the number of political prisoners dropped
from as many as 5,000 in 1977 to fewer than 2,500 in 1979. General Pinochet's
regime murdered or disappeared fewer Chileans between 1977 and 1980 than in
any other four-year period between 1973 and 1990, Both murders and disappear-
ances declined somewhat in Argentina's la guerra sucia. Prominent Argentines,
like newspaper publisher Jacobo Timerman, credited President Carter and Patricia
Derian for saving their lives. Military regimes undoubtedly pursued their own
agendas during the Carter presidency. But U.S. pressure may have strengthened
D UNIVERSIT
154 THE KILLING ZONE
the hands of officers within military circles who favored the reduction of vio-
lence and the return to civic life.“ Latin American democrats appreciated U.S.
officials who defended democracy and human rights. In 1983, Argentina restored.
democracy, and President Carter and Derian were guests of honor at the inau-
guration of President Raál Alfonsin (1983-1989). Derian would later testify in
Argentina at the trial of a military officer accused of human rights abuses. In
2006, Argentina awarded Derian with its highest award for foreign personages.
In 2008, Senator Kennedy would receive a similar award from President Michelle
Bachelet of Chile.
Although it could point to progress, the Carter administration applied its
human rights policies inconsistently in Latin America, especially after 1979. The
policy met resistance from powerful institutions and people. Some career foreign-
service officers questioned whether traditional friends like Argentina should be
judged harshly. Allan Harris reaped criticism from his superiors and almost lost
his job for his vigorous work with the relatives of the missing. (Much later, the
American Foreign Service Organization, a union of foreign-service officers,
named a special award after Harris for officers who engaged in creative dissent.)
Patricia Derian encountered difficulties in scheduling meetings to discuss
human rights issues with her superiors in the State Department. Political con-
servatives ridiculed the policy of criticizing anti-Communist dictators. Henry
Kissinger conspicuously appeared with General Videla at a World Cup fútbol
match in Argentina in 1978 and thereafter held a news conference and criticized
the Carter administration for not understanding that human rights had to be
sacrificed in a war against terrorism. U.S. businessmen complained that sanc-
tions hurt trade and investment in Argentina. President Carter also found that
relations with Argentina and Chile were complex. The president hosted generals
Videla and Pinochet in Washington in 1977 because he wanted united Latin
American support for the Panama Canal treaties, which returned the Canal
Zone to Panama. In a response to a journalist's question, Carter repudiated his
own campaign charges. As president, he had discovered the lack of "any evi-
dence that the U.S. was involved in the overthrow of the Allende government
in Chile.”
As they had repeatedly throughout the Cold War, international develop-
ments outside of Latin America shaped U.S. policies toward the region. President
Carter had significant international accomplishments—the Panama Canal Treaties
(1977-1978) and the Camp David Accords (1978) leading to peace between Israel
and Egypt. In his postpresidential years, Carter worked tirelessly for peace and
human rights and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. But during the last
two years of his presidency, 1979-1980, Carter lost control of events and his
presidency. Political instability in the Persian Gulf region disrupted oil supplies,
leading to a more than 300 percent increase in gasoline prices in the United
States. Price inflation and an economic recession followed. ‘The long-time U.S.
client in Iran, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1941-1979), fled the country in the
face of a popular uprising led by Muslim religious fundamentalists. Angry over
CHAPTER 7 * Cold War Horrors—Central America 155
past U.S. support for the repressive Shah, Iranian activists stormed the U.S. em-
bassy in Teheran in November 1979 and made hostages of embassy personnel. A
U.S. military rescue effort in 1980 failed miserably, feeding popular perceptions
that the nation and President Carter were weak and impotent. A month after the
Iranian hostage crisis began, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Soviet
leaders had made a disastrous decision that would undermine the Soviet Union
and the Communist system both at home and abroad. But in the context of other
developments, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan reverberated throughout the
US. political system. The era of détente between the United States and the Soviet
Union was over. Many U.S. citizens now believed that they had overreacted to the
lessons of Vietnam and Watergate. The United States had to pursue a bold,
aggressive foreign policy because the Soviet Union was still bent on world domi-
nation. Backing anti-Communist regimes and dictators was a safer choice than
promoting democracy and human rights. The world of NSC 68/2 and the Kennan
Corollary would return with the defeat of Carter and the election of Ronald
Reagan in November 1980.
CENTRAL AMERICAN EARTHQUAKES
Developments in Central America in the late 1970s fueled the renewed Cold War
hysteria in the United States. Pre-Columbian people in Middle America called
themselves “the sons of the shaking earth,” referring to the natural disasters—
earthquakes, volcanoes, and tropical storms—that often beset the region. Indeed,
devastating earthquakes struck Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, in 1972; the
outskirts of Guatemala City, Guatemala, in 1976; and San Salvador, the capital of
El Salvador, in 1982 and again in 1986. But earthquakes were not merely geologi-
cal phenomena for Central Americans in the 1970s and 19805. The political and
social systems of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua erupted as revolution,
civil war, and barbarity rocked the region.
Central America’s Cold War upheavals grew out of poverty, social inequali-
ties, and political repression. Meanness, injustice, and dictatorship had long
characterized life in the small countries of Central America. Central Americans
had periodically risen in rebellion against their lot—the nationalist movement of
Augusto Sandino (1927-1933), the peasant uprising in El Salvador in 1932, the
Guatemalan Revolution of 1944. But life seemed to become intolerable in the
1970s for many Central Americans. Measured by growth in gross national prod-
ucts, Central American nations had done well in the period from 1961 to 1975.
Alliance for Progress economic aid had spurred economic growth. Nicaragua,
for example, had been a success story of the Alliance, with a 4 percent annual
growth rate in the 1960s. Economic growth helped diversify societies, creating a
small professional class of lawyers, doctors, and teachers, small business people,
and urban industrial workers. As planners for the Alliance for Progress hoped,
these middle-sector people, like José Napoleón Duarte, the mayor of San Salvador,
would ultimately demand popular political participation. But the advancement
Di
HARVARD UNIV
156 THE KILLING ZONE
of middle-sector groups had to be measured against the growing agony of Central
America’s campesinos, the majority of the population. The region's power-
brokers, such as the Somoza family of Nicaragua and the few hundred intermar-
ried families that dominated El Salvador, popularly known as Los Catorce (the
Fourteen), seized on economic opportunities to transform Central American
agriculture. They challenged the land titles of campesinos, consolidated land-
holdings, and developed export products such as cotton and cattle. A few thou-
sand Salvadorans owned 60 percent of the farmland. Landlessness increased
and production of food for domestic consumption declined. In 1960, 12 percent
of Salvador families were landless; by 1971, the number of landless had risen to
41 percent of families. Los Catorce also controlled the banking system and manu-
facturing in El Salvador. Fifty percent of Nicaragua's population survived on
a per capita income of less than $100. On the other hand, the Somoza family
amassed a wealth of more than $300 million. A family member, Luis Manuel
Debayle, known popularly as Tio Luz (“Uncle Light”), directed the national
power and light company that sold electricity to the burgeoning cattle ranches
and cotton plantations." By the early 1970s, 1.4 percent of landowners controlled
41 percent of the land in Nicaragua.
Population growth intensified the region’s problems. With an annual growth
rate of 3 percent, the region's population doubled every twenty to twenty-five years.
‘The six Central American nations—Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras,
Nicaragua, and Panama—had a combined population of 9.2 million people in 1950.
Fifty years later, Central America's population has increased by 400 percent to
37.2 million people. Minuscule El Salvador saw its population rise from 1.9 million
in 1950 to 5.2 million in 1990. This increase occurred even as seventy-five thousand
Salvadorans perished during the political violence of the 1980s and another five
hundred thousand fled the country. In the midst of earthquakes, revolution, and
civil war, Nicaragua's population increased from 3 million in 1975 to 5.1 million in
1990. Increases in life expectancy accounted for most population growth, as inter-
national bodies, like the World Health Organization, conquered diseases that had
historically ravaged humankind. The triumph of science and medicine com-
pounded the problems of Central America’s poor who lived in unfair and unjust
societies like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. These nations were filled with
young people who found neither work nor hope.
External actors and influences exacerbated tensions within Central America.
‘The communications revolution—film, transistor radios, television—helped create
among Central Americans a desire for a better life. President John F. Kennedy
and the Alliance for Progress had fed those aspirations by encouraging Central
Americans to believe that poverty and despair were not their preordained lot in
life. But, because the Kennedy and Johnson administrations worked with Central
America’s elites, the Alliance ended up frustrating Central Americans who yearned
for social justice. The president's counterinsurgency programs further strength-
ened the region’s repressive forces. President Somoza was a graduate of the U.S.
HARVARD
CHAPTER 7 + Cold War Horrors—Central America 157
Military Academy at West Point. Somoza, whose base of power was control over
the National Guard, sent over one hundred of his high-ranking officers to take
counterinsurgency courses, like “Counter-Resistance” and “Irregular Warfare,” at
the School of the Americas in the Canal Zone between 1961 and 1978. Somoza also
ordered cadets enrolled in Nicaragua's military academy to spend their final year of
officer training at the School of Americas? Nicaraguan and other Central American
officers trained against the threat of Cuban-inspired communism, The Cuban Revo-
lution continued to be a potent symbol to Central America's poor because it had
measurably improved the health, education, and welfare of the Cuban population.
By the 1970s, Cuba could boast of life expectancy, infant mortality, and literacy rates
that approached those of wealthy nations. Fidel Castro provided advice and guid-
ance to Central Americans who wanted to emulate Cuba's successes.
‘The Roman Catholic Church played a unique role in Central America and
throughout Latin America during its time of upheaval. The clergy embraced the
ideas and reforms inherent in the ideas of Pope John XXIII, Vatican II, and the
1968 conference of Latin American bishops in Medellin. The Medellin confer-
ence had denounced both capitalism and communism as equal affronts to
human dignity and placed blame for hunger and misery on the rich and power-
ful. Cardinal Paulo Evarista Arns, the archbishop of São Paulo, for example,
resisted military tyranny in Brazil and upheld the philosophy of a “preferential
option for the poor.” Not all Latin American clergy had transformed them-
selves, however, into the servants of the poor and oppressed. In Argentina,
priests ministered to and consoled military authorities who tortured and mur-
dered during la guerra sucia. Cardinal Juan Carlos Aramburu, the archbishop
of Buenos Aires, publicly denied that there were disappeared people in Argentina.
In Central America, however, priests actively organized the rural poor to demand
social justice. The archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Arnulfo Romero, was
largely apolitical, but he became outspoken in condemning government violence
and vigilantism, Right-wing extremists assassinated the saintly Archbishop
Romero while he celebrated mass in a small chapel on 24 March 1980. In a homily
he delivered the day before his death, the archbishop called for the end of official
oppression, noting that “no soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the
law of God.” Other priests identified with revolution. The renowned poet and
Jesuit priest, Ernesto Cardenal, served as minister of culture in Nicaragua from
1979 to 1988. Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann served as foreign affairs minister in
Nicaragua's revolutionary government, Father d'Escoto had been ordained in
the Maryknoll missionary congregation in the United States. Foreign missionar-
ies, including U.S. clergy, encouraged the poor to be politically active in Central
America. In one notorious incident, in December 1980, a Salvadoran death
squad tortured, raped, and murdered four female missionaries from the United
States. U.S. missionaries received active support from Catholics back home
who organized in the 1980s in opposition to U.S. support for rightist groups in
Central America."
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158 THE KILLING ZONE
REVOLUTION IN NICARAGUA
Nicaragua's revolution preoccupied the United States during the last decade of
the Cold War. Anastasio “Tachito” Somoza Debayle proved the greediest and
most brutal of the Somoza clan that had controlled Nicaraguan life since the
1930s. Somoza assumed power on 1 May 1967, shortly before the death of his
elder brother Luis. During their four-decade-long domination of the country, the
Somoza family occasionally paid lip service to constitutional procedures, per-
mitting puppets to occupy the presidential office. But they secured their power by
commanding the National Guard. The Somozas also kept their nation bound to
the United States by trumpeting their anticommunism. They permitted the CIA
to use the country as a staging ground for attacks on Guatemala and Cuba and
dutifully supported U.S. positions at international fora like the United Nations.
Tachito Somoza's reign of tyranny left domestic and international observers
gasping. The family controlled a plasma bank that exported the blood of poor
Nicaraguans who gave their blood in return for money. The Somozas literally
sold the blood of their own people! Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, the publisher of
the Nicaraguan newspaper, La Prensa, the only significant opposition paper in
Nicaragua, exposed this appalling state of affairs. In January 1978, Somoza's
henchmen assassinated Chamorro, riddling his body with shotgun blasts.
It took Nicaraguans almost seven years to overthrow Somoza. The beginning
of the end started with an earthquake that destroyed the capital city of Managua
0n 23 December 1972, leaving perhaps ten thousand dead. The international com-
munity and private groups rushed aid to Nicaragua. Schoolchildren in the United
States donated their money. The great Latino baseball player, Roberto Clemente of
the Pittsburgh Pirates, died helping Nicaraguans. Clemente's overloaded plane,
carrying emergency relief supplies, crashed off the coast of Puerto Rico. Clemente
had boarded the flight because he had learned that the supplies he had sent on
three previous flights had not reached the earthquake survivors. Somoza and his
sycophants had stolen the supplies. Nicaragua received $32 million in emergency
aid; the Somoza clan stole half of the aid. Instead of providing public safety to the
devastated Managua, National Guard soldiers looted the city.
Public disgust with Somoza's response to the natural disaster accrued among
groups working to overthrow him. Since the early 1960s, insurgents had fought,
with little success, against the Somozas. The National Guard, equipped and
trained by the United States, had easily routed them. The principal insurgent
organization was the Frente Sandinista de Liberacién Nacional or Sandinista
National Liberation Front. The Sandinistas admired the Cuban Revolution and
took advice and arms from Cuba. In the 1970s, other insurgent groups consoli-
dated with the Sandinistas. Civilian opponents of Somoza, including Violeta
Barrios de Chamorro, the widow of the slain newspaper publisher, joined the
Sandinista movement. The Sandinistas gained international fame by conducting
a series of kidnappings of government officials and then releasing them. But the
key to their growing strength was the utter depravity of the Somoza regime.
CHAPTER 7 + Cold War Horrors—Central America 159
International audiences witnessed in living color the execution of a newsman
from the U.S. television network, ABC. A Nicaraguan soldier forced the corres-
pondent to the ground and put an M-16 rifle to his head and shot him. Somoza
and his National Guard waged war against Nicaragua, destroying villages and
bombarding cities. Between 1977 and 1979, forty thousand to fifty thousand
Nicaraguans, of a population of 2.9 million, had died, virtually all at the hands
of the National Guard. Somoza left his impoverished country in total ruins.
Managua was still rubble. Somoza fled the country in July 1979, heading to
Paraguay, which was ruled by fellow dictator Alfredo Stroessner. The next year
Somoza was assassinated in Asunción by a commando team of political left-
ists. They shot a rocket-propelled grenade into Somoza's unarmored Mercedes,
killing him instantly.
After fleeing the country, Somoza blamed the international Communist
movement for his downfall. In truth, it was a mass indigenous movement that
toppled Somoza. ‘The Sandinista leadership had ties to Cuba. But neither the
Soviet Union nor the Nicaraguan Communist Party played any role in Somoza's
overthrow. As Salvadoran Communist leader Shafik Jorge Handal observed,
“Latin America has had two great revolutions, those of Cuba and Nicaragua, in
neither of which did Communists take the lead.”* What outside assistance the
Sandinistas received came from Latin American neighbors, like Costa Rica,
Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela, who deplored Somoza's ruthlessness. In 1979,
the Andean Pact nations—Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela—
recognized the Sandinistas as “legitimate combatants,” granting the Sandinistas
equivalent legal status to the Somoza regime.
Somoza also blamed President Jimmy Carter, who he smeared as a “Com-
munist,” for his downfall.” Unlike presidents going back to Franklin Roosevelt,
Carter had not fawned over the Somoza clan. But Carter was not a Communist,
nor was he naive about international communism. Totalitarians of the left were
as prone to violate human rights as were Latin American military dictators of
South America, In a 1980 letter to Pope John Paul II (1978-2005), Carter noted
that Central America's extreme left wanted to destroy the existing order and
“replace it with a Marxist one which promises to be equally repressive and totali-
tarian.”" The Carter administration hoped for a moderate solution to Nicaragua's
civil war, not wanting its choices to be limited to either Somoza or the Sandinistas.
The administration suspected the political leanings of key Sandinista leaders like
Daniel Ortega Saavedra and Tomás Borge. As an NSC member noted in August
1978, “the United States needed to get in front of events and assemble a coalition
government” to replace Somoza; otherwise, “the situation would polarize even
further, increasing the probability of a Marxist victory.” The Carter administra-
tion found, however, that it could not direct the course of events in Nicaragua.
Somoza fought to keep power, and Nicaraguans and the international community
rejected a solution that would leave a reconstructed and reformed National
Guard in charge of the country.
160 THE KILLING ZONE
In accepting the Sandinista victory, the Carter administration chose not to
resort to the interventionist policies pursued by previous Cold War administra-
tions. The administration's actions could be readily compared, for example, to
US. policies toward another small nation ruled by a long-time dictator. The
Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations had aided and abetted assassins when
Rafael Trujillo refused to leave the Dominican Republic. President Kennedy
thereafter deployed U.S. air and sea power to bring about the coalitional govern-
ment that the United States wanted, President Johnson dispatched U.S. marines
into the Dominican Republic to forestall what he perceived as a Communist
takeover of the government. President Carter, however, kept his commitment to
human rights and the nonintervention principles of the OAS charter. He denied
that international communism fomented revolution in Nicaragua, noting at a
news conference that it was “a mistake for Americans to assume or to claim that
every time an evolutionary change takes place, or even an abrupt change takes
place in this hemisphere, that somehow it's the result of secret, massive Cuban
intervention."5 The administration reported to Congress that the Sandinistas
were "an authentic Nicaraguan phenomenon" and that "the Sandinista movement
represents a societal consensus that radical change was needed in Nicaragua."
Shortly after Somoza fled, the new U.S. ambassador, Lawrence Pezzullo, arrived
in Managua with a planeload of food and medical supplies and President Carter’s
personal expression of goodwill. Carter also secured a $75 million package of
economic aid for Nicaragua from Congress. The administration professed that
the United States had erred in 1959-1960 in not developing a cooperative rela-
tionship with Cuba. To be sure, Carter hedged his bets on the Sandinistas. He
authorized covert spending, perhaps $1 million, to aid anti-Sandinista labor,
press, and political organizations.”
THE SANDINISTAS
‘The Carter administration's judgment that the Sandinista movement was “an au-
thentic Nicaraguan phenomenon” proved largely accurate both in its origins and
in its subsequent evolution. The Sandinistas held power between 1979 and 1990,
winning a big electoral victory in 1984 and suffering an election loss in 1990. Pol-
itically moderate members of the ruling coalition, like Violeta Chamorro and
Edén Pastora, a courageous guerrilla fighter popularly known as Commandante
' Cero (Commander Zero), left the coalition, protesting the direction of the revo-
lution. The ruling Sandinistas, headed by Daniel Ortega, consisted of a motley
collection of political leftists—progressives, socialists, intellectual Marxists, and
doctrinaire Communists. Ortega, who officially became president in 1984, and
his supporters did not, however, attempt to transform Nicaragua into a Marxist-
Leninist state or a facsimile of Castro's Cuba. Thomas C. Wright, a distinguished
scholar of Latin American political history, has characterized the Nicaraguan
Revolution as having an identity of its own. As Wright summarized, “led by
Marxists, it was an anti-imperialist but capitalist revolution anchored in support
CHAPTER 7 * Cold War Horrors—Central America 161
of the lower and middle classes.” Nicaragua seemed to be evolving the way
Mexico did after its revolution in 1910.
The Sandinistas substantially enlarged the role of the state in the economy,
nationalizing the banks and confiscating the extensive holdings of the Somoza
clan, which included land, factories, the national airline, construction firms, and
real estate. The state sector rose from 15 percent of the economy under Anastasio
Somoza to 45 percent by the mid-1980s. For the state to play a large role in the
economy was normal throughout Latin America. In agriculture, the Sandinistas,
responding to pressure from campesinos who wanted to farm individual plots,
altered their plans to foster state agricultural cooperatives. The Sandinistas per-
mitted both domestic and international investors to operate in Nicaragua. The
Sandinistas ruled during a time when Communists around the world, like Deng
Xiaoping (1978-1987) in China and Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-1991) in the Soviet
Union, recognized the shortcomings of Communist economic theories. Even
Fidel Castro advised the Sandinistas not to emulate the Cuban Revolution and
allow a role for private entrepreneurs.”
The Sandinistas compiled a mixed record on issues of civil liberties and
human rights. Immediately after taking power, they carried out five hundred to
a thousand summary executions but thereafter abolished capital punishment.
They dismantled the National Guard and built an enlarged military loyal to the
Sandinista movement. The armed forces’ new title was the “Sandinista People's
Army.” In creating a new military organization tied to revolution, the Sandinistas
emulated what Castro and his followers had done after coming to power in 1959.
Like the Cubans, the Sandinistas also established neighborhood “defense com-
mittees" to exercise “revolutionary vigilance,” which was a euphemism for spying
on neighbors. The Sandinistas borrowed a progressive human rights policy from
the Cubans, launching health and literacy campaigns in the countryside. ‘The
Sandinistas claimed that they reduced illiteracy from 40 percent of the popula-
tion to 13 percent in a decade. While improving the health and education of the
poor, the Sandinistas needlessly harassed English-speaking blacks and indige-
nous people, especially the Moskito Indians, who resided along Nicaragua's
Atlantic coastline. They also foolishly quarreled with and insulted Pope John
Paul II, who visited Nicaragua. The pontiff preached that clergy should not
engage in politics, although he reaffirmed his church's “preferential option for
the poor.” Despite the bombast and harassment of opponents by the Sandinistas,
Nicaragua exhibited a pluralistic political system during the 1980s. Twenty-one
political parties registered in the country, and numerous newspapers, maga-
zines, and radio stations criticized the Sandinistas. International observers pro-
nounced the 1984 national elections, in which 75 percent of registered voters
participated, to be fair. Nicaragua under the Sandinistas resembled Mexico at
mid-twentieth century—a country with a mixed economy, individual free-
doms, and one political party that dominated the country. The allegation by U.S.
officials that Sandinista Nicaragua was a “totalitarian” country like Commu-
nist East Germany was fatuous.”
162 THE KILLING ZONE
The Sandinistas pledged to pursue a nonaligned foreign policy that respected
the sovereignty of other nations. In fact, between 1979 and 1981, they meddled in
El Salvador, aiding Salvadoran leftists. Nicaragua was also one of the few coun-
tries in the world that did not annually denounce the Soviet Union at the United
‘Nations for its invasion of Afghanistan. The Sandinistas consulted closely with
Fidel Castro. Cuban doctors and teachers came to Nicaragua to help with the
health and literacy campaigns. Nicaragua also received significant economic and
technical help from Western European countries. The Sandinistas opened com-
mercial contacts with the Soviet bloc. Economic and military ties with Com-
munist countries deepened once the United States decided to attack Nicaragua.
Nicaragua's historic economic dependence on the United States ended in the 1980s.
But the relationship was severed by the U.S. decision to destroy the Nicaraguan
economy?
RONALD REAGAN AND CENTRAL AMERICA
President Ronald Reagan waged violent Cold War in Central America. Reagan
and his foreign policy team saw the world in apocalyptic terms. The Soviet Union
was the “evil empire,” fomenting turmoil and conflict throughout the world. As
Reagan once famously asserted, “the Soviet Union underlies all the unrest that is
going on. If they weren't engaged in this game of dominoes, there wouldn't be any
hot spots in the world,” Still following its blueprint for world domination, the
Soviets had taken advantage of the post-Vietnam malaise of the United States to
extend its reach to Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe,
Angola, Mozambique, Grenada, Suriname, and Nicaragua. The Soviets backed
their new influence with awesome military power, building a modern navy and
rapidly expanding their nuclear forces. Reagan and his advisors warned that the
Soviets had attained a "first-strike" capability. The Soviets allegedly could launch
a nuclear strike against the United States, destroy U.S. nuclear forces in place,
and “win” a nuclear war, To save itself and Western civilization, the United States
needed to return to the prescriptions of NSC 68/2. The Reagan administration
developed a five-year, $1.6 trillion spending plan to expand the U.S. naval forces
and develop new intercontinental ballistic missiles. The president also pro-
nounced his “Reagan Doctrine,” promising to aid “freedom-fighters” around the
world who resisted Communist subversion. The administration expanded the
program developed by the Carter administration to assist Afghans who fought
against the Soviet invaders.
The Reagan administration gave notice that the Soviet Union’s grand design
included subverting Latin America, the traditional alliance partner of the United
States. “The Americas are under attack,” bellowed the Committee of Santa Fe, five
men who belonged to a conservative think tank, the Council for Inter-American
Security. The committee's 1980 report claimed that Latin America was being
penetrated by Soviet power, with the Caribbean rim and basin “spotted with
Soviet surrogates and ringed with socialist states.” The United States needed to
CHAPTER 7 * Cold War Horrors—Central America 163
dominate the region so it would be free to contest Soviet adventurism in Europe,
Asia, and Africa. The committee further advised that the United States needed to
show restraint in promoting internal reforms in Latin America." President
Carter had endangered U.S. national security by pushing human rights issues on
the military dictators of South America. Members of the Committee of Santa Fe
would join the Reagan foreign policy team.
The paramount intellectual proponent of an aggressive policy in Latin
America was Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Reagan's ambassador to the United Nations.
Kirkpatrick had caught Reagan's attention with her 1979 essay, “Dictatorships
and Double Standards." She had denounced the Carter administration's aban-
donment of traditional U.S. allies like the Shah of Iran and Anastasio Somoza.
USS. opposition to authoritarian rulers had inevitably led to totalitarian regimes
like Islamic fundamentalists in Iran and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Kirkpatrick
theorized that traditional, right-wing authoritarian regimes presented the possi-
bility of evolving into open, democratic societies, but that leftist totalitarian gov-
ernments like the Communists would always be closed, repressive, and a threat
to the United States. Kirkpatrick's theories were not grounded on an analysis of
modern history, Even as she penned her essay, the People’s Republic of China was
transforming its socioeconomic system and drawing closer to the United States.
Kirkpatrick also echoed the views of George Kennan, Edward Miller, Thomas
Mann, and the Committee of Santa Fe in questioning whether Latin Americans
could create humane societies. In a 1980 essay, she suggested that “traditionalist
death squads” were rooted in El Salvador’ political culture and could help trans-
form brute violence into legitimate authority. Kirkpatrick was especially fond of
Argentina's military rulers and la guerra sucia. She advised that Central Americans
could learn valuable lessons on internal security from military regimes in the south-
ern cone? Her boss agreed with that assessment. In 1979, Reagan had glossed
over the wholesale slaughter of Argentines, asserting: “Today, Argentina is at
peace, the terrorist threat nearly eliminated, In the process of bringing stability
to a terrorized nation of twenty-five million, a small number were caught in the
crossfire, among them a few innocents.” The first Latin American head of state
that Reagan hosted in Washington was General Roberto Viola, the “president-
designate" of Argentina's military regime. An Argentine court would subsequently
sentence General Viola to seventeen years in prison for human rights violations
during his presidency. Even after he left the presidency, Ronald Reagan continued
to refer to human rights violations during the dirty war as “rumors.”
Analysts of Reagan’s presidency argue that the overblown rhetoric should
not be taken seriously because Reagan pursued a prudent, cautious foreign policy
when it came to contesting the Soviet Union and communism. For example,
when the Soviets demanded that Polish Communist authorities crush the trade
union movement, Solidarnosc (Solidarity), led by Lech Walesa, Reagan advised
citizens to light candles to show support for Walesa and his comrades. Like
President Dwight Eisenhower during the Hungarian uprising of 1956, Reagan
and his advisors understood that a military confrontation with the Soviet Union
HARVARD UNIVERSIT
164 THE KILLING ZONE
Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane J. Kirkpatrick (1981-1985) converses with
President Ronald Reagan. Kirkpatrick significantly influenced the president's Latin
American policies She opposed applying human rights standards to Latin America's
military dictators, defended the Argentine military's war against political leftists, and
backed the overthrow of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. (Ronald Reagan Library)
over its empire in Eastern Europe would have catastrophic consequences. Reagan's
first secretary of state, Alexander M. Haig Jr., a former close advisor to Richard
Nixon, ordered the U.S. military to develop plans for an invasion of Cuba. Haig
told Reagan at a NSC meeting that "you just give me the word and I'll turn that
island into a fucking parking lot.” President Reagan demurred, however, because
an invasion of Cuba would violate the 1962 accord that President John Kennedy
struck with Nikita Khrushchev. The United States promised not to invade the
island if the Soviets removed their ballistic missiles from Cuba.
Restraint did not, however, characterize the Reagan administration's policy
toward Central America. The administration was eager for domestic and inter-
national reasons for a victory over what it perceived as the international Com-
munist movement. President Reagan “wanted to send a message to others in the
world that there was a new management in the White House.” The president told
a U.S. audience that U.S. strength and integrity had to “be taken seriously—by
friends and potential foes alike." Reagan's director of the CIA, William J. Casey,
offered that “I'm looking fora place to start rolling back the Communist empire.”
Central America presented the perfect opportunity. Given the global balance of
power and the historic domination of Central America, the United States could
act with impunity in the area. The region was also small and close. Secretary Haig
CHAPTER 7 * Cold War Horrors—Central America 165
advised: "Mr. President, this is one you can win.” Defeating leftist guerrilla
movements in El Salvador and Guatemala and overthrowing the Sandinistas in
Nicaragua would wash away the bitter memories of failure in Vietnam. It would
restore U.S. self-confidence, kicking away the so-called "Vietnam Syndrome."
Reasserting U.S. hegemony in the traditional sphere of influence would also
redeem U.S. global credibility. Elliot Abrams, who served as assistant secretary of
state for inter-American affairs from 1985 to 1989, admitted that the United
States had no significant tangible interests in Central America. It was a matter of
international perception. Abrams asked, “If people see that the Americans are
not going to move against the Sandinistas in their own backyard, what will they
do ten thousand miles away?””
In persuading the U.S. public to tend to its “backyard,” the Reagan adminis-
tration resorted to rhetoric not heard since the heyday of the Red Scare in the late
1940s and early 1950s. President Reagan resorted to the shop-worn “domino
theory,” predicting that Marxist victories in Nicaragua and El Salvador would
lead to the dominos toppling both south and north—to South America and to
Mexico. Secretary Haig testified to Congress that he would not label Soviet perfidy
with the domino theory. The Soviets had “a priority target list, a hit list if you will,
for the ultimate takeover of Central America.” In a speech in 1983 to a joint ses-
sion of Congress reminiscent of President Harry Truman's dramatic address in
1947 asking for emergency assistance for Greece and Turkey (Truman Doctrine),
President Reagan proclaimed that "the national security of all the Americas is at
stake in Central America" because “if we cannot defend ourselves there, we cannot
expect to prevail elsewhere.”
A willful ignorance about Latin America informed the Reagan administra-
tion’s decision to shed the blood of Central Americans. On 1 December 1982,
President Reagan memorably toasted “the people of Bolivia” at a state dinner. The
problem was that Reagan was in Brasilia, not La Paz. It took a rare talent to con-
fuse the futuristic capital of Brazil, set on a plateau in the interior of the country,
with the ancient Bolivian capital situated at eleven thousand feet in the Andes
Mountains. Reagan’s gaffe was symptomatic of the administration's approach to
the region. Ideological correctness meant more than professional competence,
Elliot Abrams wanted “to be the first guy to reverse a Communist revolution.””
Reagan's assistant secretaries for inter-American affairs, like Abrams and Thomas
O. Enders, had no professional experience in Latin America, and Enders did not
speak Spanish. Unfamiliarity with Latin America also characterized the people
that Reagan appointed to be his ambassadors to Central America. Secretary Haig
purged veteran foreign-service officers like Robert E. White (El Salvador) and
Lawrence Pezzullo (Nicaragua), who argued for policies based on negotiations.
President Reagan appointed Anthony C. E. Quainton to be his ambassador to
Nicaragua. Quainton had never served in Latin America and spoke no Spanish.
As one State Department officer noted, “It isn’t embarrassing that the Secretary
of State doesn't know anything about Central America. And it is only moder-
ately embarrassing that the assistant secretary doesn’t know very much. But it is
166 THE KILLING ZONE
very bad when the deputy assistant secretaries and even the office directors
know so little." Central Americans would pay a bloody price for this lack of
knowledge.
WAR AGAINST THE SANDINISTAS
President Reagan attacked Nicaragua during his eight-year presidency. The
standard administration line about the Sandinistas was that they were Marxist-
Leninists who were dedicated to creating a totalitarian society at home and
serving as surrogates for the Soviets and the Cubans abroad. Negotiations
would be pointless because the Sandinistas had enlisted in the campaign to sub-
vert the United States and its allies. The Reagan administration made it clear
from the outset that it would never release the $75 million in economic aid. Ini-
tially, the administration charged that they were withholding the aid because the
Sandinistas funneled arms to leftists in El Salvador. In February 1981, the admin-
istration released a “White Paper,” Communist Interference in El Salvador, which
purportedly provided proof of a Sandinista conspiracy. Journalists demonstrated,
however, that the documentary evidence offered was dubious and that Salvadoran
leftists seemed to be armed with weapons manufactured in the United States. In
any case, by mid-1981, State Department officials conceded that the arms flow to
El Salvador had stopped.” President Reagan and his closest advisors gradually
dropped that issue and began to insist that the United States would negotiate
with the Sandinistas only after they "restored" democracy. Many failed to see the
logic in that argument because in the previous decades Nicaragua had experi-
enced not democracy but tyranny under the Somoza family. The administration
usually denied that it was trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan government, But
in 1985 the blunt, relentless reporter Sam Donaldson of ABC News asked Reagan
whether it was U.S. policy “to remove” the Sandinistas at a presidential news
conference, Reagan answered, “Well, remove in the sense of its present structure,
in which it is a Communist totalitarian state, and it is not a government chosen
by the people.” Pressed further to refine his circumlocutious answer, Reagan ad-
mitted that he wanted the Sandinistas to cry “Uncle” and that “you can say that
we're trying to oust the Sandinistas by what we're saying.”
Athis 21 February 1985 news conference, President Reagan confirmed what
he had previously endorsed. In November 1981, Reagan approved National Secur-
ity Decision Document (NSDD) No. 17, which authorized the CIA to organize a
military force of Nicaraguans to overthrow the Sandinistas. The Nicaraguan
exiles came to be known as the “contras” (for contra revolucionario, the Spanish
for “counterrevolutionary”). The contras assembled and trained in Honduras
under the direction of Colonel Gustavo Alvarez Martínez, the commander of the
National Police Academy and a virulent anti-Communist. Argentine military
officers trained the contras until the collapse of the military dictatorship in
Argentina in 1982-1983. The ubiquitous general Vernon Walters, who enjoyed
the company of Latin America's military tyrants, had journeyed to Buenos Aires
CHAPTER 7 * Cold War Horrors—Central America 167
on behalf of the Reagan administration to facilitate Argentina’s cooperation.
Colonel Alvarez had also attended the military academy in Argentina. The initial
contra force of five hundred would grow to more than ten thousand through the
1980s. The senior military command of the contras was composed of former of-
ficers of the Somoza National Guard and was led by Colonel Enrique Bermúdez.”
The Reagan administration's contra scheme resembled the PBSUCCESS oper-
ation against Guatemala in 1954. This was not, however, a covert operation. The
content of NSDD 17 was disclosed to journalists in 1982. Throughout the 1980s,
officers in the national security bureaucracy—the State and Defense Departments
and the CIA—leaked Reagan administration decisions about Nicaragua to the
press because they judged the decisions to be both unwise and violations of both
U.S. and international law.
‘The contras waged their form of “dirty war” against the Sandinistas and
Nicaraguan citizens. The Reagan administration initially justified NSDD 17 by
claiming that the mission of the contras was to interdict the arms flow to El
Salvador. But the contras did not capture arms bound for El Salvador and did not
coordinate operations with Salvadoran security forces. The Reagan administra-
tion later dubbed the contras “freedom fighters,” which was an ironic sobriquet
fora military command that had a history of brutalizing Nicaraguans during the
Somoza years. Indeed, murder, torture, rape, pillage, and burning became the
modus operandi of the contras. Throughout the 1980s, the contras invaded
Nicaragua. The contras were unsuccessful in holding territory or towns and
suffered severe defeats when they engaged Sandinista regular forces. Whatever
Nicaraguans thought of the Sandinistas, they opposed restoration of the savage
rule they associated with the National Guard. The contras focused on attacking
farms and villages and executing civilian public officials—mayors, justices of the
peace, literacy volunteers, and nurses and doctors. The contra soldiers became
infamous for kidnapping teenagers, dragooning the boys into the military and
abusing the girls for their sexual pleasure. In 1985, Newsweek magazine pub-
lished gruesome photos that depicted a man accused of being an informer forced
by a contra patrol to dig his own grave with bare hands and lie down in it. The
contras then slit his throat, When President Reagan was asked about the photo by
Speaker of the House Thomas “Tip” O'Neill, he responded that the incident had
been faked. Reagan consistently excoriated reports by international agencies of
horrors in Nicaragua by labeling them "so-called atrocities.”
The United States aided and abetted the contras. Replaying the “make the
Chilean economy scream” gambit, the Reagan administration successfully pres-
sured commercial banks and international banks, like the World Bank and the
Inter-American Development Bank, to deny Nicaragua credit. In 1985, the admin-
istration imposed a trade embargo on Nicaragua, much as the Eisenhower and
Kennedy administrations had done to Cuba. The Nicaraguan economy went into
depression and inflation soared out of control, hitting 33,000 percent in 1988. U.S.
officials predictably blamed Sandinista mismanagement of the economy for the
economic chaos. The administration also pressured nonmilitant, anti-Sandinista
168 THE KILLING ZONE
politicians not to participate in the 1984 elections. The administration wanted to
defend its propaganda that Nicaragua was a totalitarian society.”
The Reagan administration also broke domestic and international laws in its
campaign to destroy Nicaragua. In 1983-1984, U.S. commandos and contract
agents of the CIA of Latin American heritage, known as “Unilaterally Controlled
Latino Assets,” or UCLAS, blew up oil storage tanks. The attack at a storage facility
at the port of Corinto caused the loss of more than 3 million gallons of fuel. More
than one hundred people were injured, and twenty thousand had to be evacuated
from Corinto. The UCLAS also participated in the mining of Nicaragua's har-
bors. In early 1984, ships from Japan, Panama, Liberia, the Netherlands, and the
Soviet Union were damaged by mines.” Nicaragua filed a complaint about U.S.
aggression with the International Court of Justice commonly known as the
“World Court,” the judicial organ of the United Nations. The Reagan administra-
tion chose to walk out of the court, denying its jurisdiction. As exemplified by the
ideas of President Woodrow Wilson, the United States had historically been a
strong proponent of international law and justice. In 1986, the World Court
found the United States guilty on fifteen counts of illegally using force against
Nicaragua and ordered Washington to pay $370 million in damages to Nicaragua.
Other violations of international law by the United States and its contra allies
included distributing a Freedom Fighter's Manual, a cartoon-format handbook
for carrying out small acts of sabotage against the Nicaraguan government.
Useful sabotage tactics included stuffing up toilet bowls, leaving the lights on to
waste electricity, and building small incendiary bombs. The World Court also
took note of a CIA manual for the contras, Psychological Operations in Guerrilla
Warfare. Dubbed the “murder manual” after it was leaked to the press, it advised
the contras to assassinate, or “neutralize” in CIA lingo, judges, police officers,
and security officials after the local populations had been gathered “to take part
in the act and formulate accusations against the oppressor.”*”
In addition to flaunting international law, the Reagan administration ignored
public sentiments and violated the U.S. constitution. As measured in public opin-
ion polls, U.S. citizens opposed President Reagan's wars in Central America. Citi-
zens worried about sinking into another Vietnam-like quagmire. The mining of
Nicaragua's waters and the shunting of the World Court embarrassed those who
believed that the United States, as a world leader, had a responsibility to defend
international law. U.S. citizens further thought it laughable the implication that
impoverished, often barefoot Central Americans would invade the United States
and spread communism throughout the homeland. Instead, citizens worried that
warfare would lead the dispossessed of Central America to leave their countries
and try to immigrate to the United States. An award-winning film, El Norte
(1983), portrayed the horrific journey of two indigenous Guatemalans, a brother
and sister, who flee violence in Guatemala and make their way to Los Angeles. By
the mid-1980s, thirty thousand Central Americans were entering the United
States each year. In the latter part of the twentieth century, 1.1 million Central
Americans came to the United States.”
CHAPTER 7 * Cold War Horrors— Central America 169
Reflecting popular anxieties about President Reagan's policies, Congress
passed a series of laws in the 1980s that prohibited the administration from
using public funds to finance an overthrow of the Sandinista government.
Known as the “Boland amendments,” the laws were sponsored by Representative
Edward P. Boland (D-MA), the chair of the House Select Committee on Intelli-
gence. At times, the Reagan administration beat back restrictions, securing, for
example, $100 million from Congress in 1986 for the contras. Faced with public
and congressional opposition to its policies, the administration sought money
for the contras in devious and illegal ways. The administration transformed
Honduras into a U.S. military base and transferred military aid for that country
to the contras. Honduras received an astounding $450 million in U.S. military
aid in the 1980s. Administration officials asked wealthy, right-wing U.S. citizens
to contribute to the contra cause. They also raised $45 million in cash in 1984—
1985 from conservative allies—Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Taiwan. CIA director
William Casey proposed asking racist South Africa for financial help. The CIA.
worked with General Manuel Antonio Noriega (1983-1989), the strongman of
Panama and a narcotrafficker. Noriega, who had been on the CIA payroll for two
decades, provided planes and pilots from his drug smuggling operations to
move contra arms.” The Reagan administration also funded the contras by sur-
reptitiously selling arms to Iran and using the proceeds of the sales for the con-
tras. This scheme, which violated the Boland amendment, erupted into the
"Iran-contra scandal.” A special U.S. prosecutor subsequently indicted fourteen
administration officials, including Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, for
violating U.S. statutes. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs
Abrams pleaded guilty to two counts of misleading Congress. In 1986, Abrams
had testified that he was unaware of secret U.S. efforts to aid the contras.
‘The most compelling argument that the Reagan administration had to offer
in defending its claim that the Sandinista government threatened the national
security of the United States was that the Soviet Union became a major arms sup-
plier to Nicaragua. The Soviet Union's relationship with Nicaragua was initially
tentative. It provided Nicaragua with World War II-era tanks and East German
trucks that frequently broke down. As the contra war intensified, the military
relationship between the Sandinistas and the Soviet Union deepened, with the
Soviets providing up to $300 million a year in military aid, which included armed
helicopters, in the mid-1980s. The Sandinistas built a forty thousand-strong
army that usually defeated the contras in pitched battles. The Soviet’s support of
Nicaragua, which also included substantial economic aid and shipments of oil,
represented the only case, other than Cuba, in which the Soviet Union played a
prominent role in Latin America during the Cold War. The Soviets, did not, for
example, supply leftist guerrillas in either El Salvador or Guatemala.“ Nonetheless,
the Reagan administration screamed that military alliance proved that the
Soviets intended to use Nicaragua as a base for Communist expansion and that
they might replay the Cuban missile crisis, deploying offensive weapons systems
in Nicaragua that would imperil the United States.
HARVA
170 THE KILLING ZONE
Analysts of Soviet foreign policy in Latin America have dismissed the idea.
that the Soviets had a "blueprint" in the 1980s for the domination of Latin America.
Soviet leaders perceived aid to Nicaragua as a way of countering U.S. aid to the
Afghan resistance movement. The United States violated the Soviet’s sphere of
influence, and the Soviets responded in kind. The Soviets refused to give President
Daniel Ortega, who frequently traveled to Moscow, a security guarantee. A Soviet
official privately admitted: “If the Americans invaded Nicaragua, what would we
dot What could we do? Nothing.” The Soviets pointed out that they were providing
weapons to help Nicaragua defend itself from invasion. They permitted the
Reagan administration to define what “offensive” weapons were, declining to
supply Nicaragua with Soviet MIG fighters. The Soviets never contemplated
placing nuclear-tipped missiles on Nicaraguan soil. The Soviets kept to the spirit
of the Kennedy-Khrushchev agreement that ended the Cuban missile crisis.
Nicaragua remained under attack through the 1980s. During the decade,
Latin American nations both condemned the U.S. intervention and tried to find
a solution to the violence. Whereas the Reagan administration publicly supported
peace efforts by nations such as Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela, it privately
opposed and ridiculed the Latin Americans. Central Americans, led by President
Oscar Arias Sánchez (1986-1990, 2006-2010) of Costa Rica, gradually convinced
Nicaraguans to accept a negotiated settlement confirmed by a new election. Presi-
dent Arias, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, was aided by international
developments. The Cold War ended, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev curtailed
Soviet international commitments, and the pragmatic George H. W. Bush re-
placed Ronald Reagan as president in 1989. Belying Jeane Kirkpatrick's depiction
of them as totalitarians, the Sandinistas agreed to an election in 1990. The Bush
administration covertly and openly funded an opposition coalition led by Violeta
Barrios de Chamorro. In 1989-1990, the CIA spent $11 million on Nicaraguan
political groups. The National Endowment for Democracy, an agency funded by
the U.S. Congress, provided an additional $11 million for opposition groups. The
combined U.S. spending in Nicaragua was the equivalent of spending $1.6 billion
on a U.S. election. Unsurprisingly, war-weary, exhausted Nicaraguans voted
for Chamorro and the end to U.S. military intervention in their country. The
Sandinista leadership accepted the results of the election. At the urging of former
president Carter, who served as an international observer to the election, Presi-
dent Ortega made a gracious concession speech.
‘The actions that flowed from NSDD 17 of 1981 destroyed Nicaragua. Forty-
three thousand Nicaraguans perished during the contra war, and the economy
declined by 50 percent. On a per capita basis, the death toll in Nicaragua was
higher than in all U.S wars, including the Civil War, combined.? This death and
destruction followed the appalling suffering that had taken place during the 1970's
uprising to overthrow Somoza and the Managua earthquake of 1972. Ronald
Reagan had not succeeded in overthrowing the Sandinistas, forcing them to cry
“Uncle.” President Reagan had managed, however, to demolish Nicaragua.
CHAPTER 7 + Cold War Horrors—Central America 171
DEATH IN EL SALVADOR
The Reagan administration, with the tacit backing of the U.S. Congress, also fos-
tered madness, mayhem, and murder in tiny El Salvador. Injustice and repression.
had long characterized life in Latin America’s smallest and most densely popu-
lated nation. In 1932, General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez (1931-1944)
directed La Matanza ("The Slaughter") of perhaps thirty thousand Salvadoran
peasants, mainly indigenous people, who protested their hard lives working on
coffee plantations. Included among the dead was Augustin Farabundo Martí, the
Communist leader of the insurrection. Los Catorce, the elite network of families
who dominated life in the country, thereafter were content to let military officers
run the country while they exercised private power and privilege. The country
was the land of “oligarchs and officers.” The economic growth that Salvador ex-
perienced in the 1960s and 1970s helped undermine the traditional social struc-
ture. Professionals, merchants, laborers, and students formed associations and
unions as ways of expressing their interests and demands. Urban groups rallied
around José Napoleón Duarte, the mayor of San Salvador and a founder of the
Christian Democratic Party. Calling for evolutionary change and reform, Duarte
and his running mate, Guillermo Ungo, won the 1972 presidential election,
but the military carried out massive voter fraud and blocked Duarte from assum-
ing the presidency. In the countryside, desperate, landless peasants also orga-
nized. They were aided by Catholic priests, nuns, and lay workers who encouraged
campesinos to pray together, organize, and discuss rural issues in Christian base
communities or comunidades de base. El Salvador's rulers responded to the
growing political activity with a new version of La Matanza, Paramilitary groups
and death squads murdered citizens who organized peasants, workers, and stu-
dents. Murder and torture became especially commonplace during the regime of
General Carlos Humberto Romero (1977-1979). His “Law for the Defense and
Guarantee of Public Order" made it a crime to criticize the government.
The Kennedy administration had cultivated change in El Salvador in myriad
ways. President Kennedy’s call for freedom and social justice had inspired people
like Duarte. The Alliance for Progress generated economic growth, and the Kennedy
administration encouraged a Central American Common Market to spur trade
and development. Salvador's elite had taken advantage of the export opportu-
nities by expanding commercial agriculture and driving peasants off the land. The
Kennedy administration had also enhanced the ability of the military rulers to
control the population. The administration's ahti-Communist policies included
having the CIA and U.S. Special Forces help General José Alberto Medrano, the
commander of the National Guard, develop counterinsurgency organizations. In
particular, Medrano founded ORDEN, a national network of government in-
formers and paramilitary groups, and ANESESAL, a centralized intelligence unit
that coordinated the work of security forces. It was, in one scholar's words, a
system of “enforcement terrorism." One of General Medrano's protégés was Major
172 THE KILLING ZONE
Roberto D'Aubuisson, who was popularly known as “Blowtorch Bob” for his favorite
method of interrogation. U.S. Ambassador Robert White characterized D'Aubuisson
as “pathological killer.” Major D'Aubuisson became a leading figure in the right-
g party, Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA). ARENA, in Ambassador
White's words, was “a violent fascist party modeled after the Nazis“
Appalled by the mounting violence and alarmed about a growing, armed
leftist insurgency, the Carter administration applauded the overthrow of the
Romero regime on 15 October 1979. A junta consisting of two colonels and three
civilians took power. In 1980, José Napoleón Duarte returned from exile and
joined the junta. The administration pushed the junta to enact agrarian reform
and to nationalize banking as a way of breaking the power of Los Catorce. The
administration hoped that by backing Christian Democrats and social democrats
it could isolate the extremists on the political left and right. The administration
wanted to prevent a second Sandinista-style victory in Central America; it was
certain that the ghastly repression of the military, paramilitary groups, and death
squads would force the people into the hands of Communists. Reform to prevent
radicalism had been a recurring Cold War policy of the United States. The Kennedy
and Johnson administrations had been stout supporters, for example, of the
Christian Democrats in Chile in the 1960s.
‘The Carter administration's plans bore little fruit because political violence
intensified in El Salvador in 1980. ‘The colonels decided to coalesce behind their
reactionary superior officers, and civilians in the junta exercised no control over
security forces. Perhaps 8,000 people were murdered, including 184 government
officials who tried to carry out agrarian reform. A right-wing death squad assas-
sinated Attorney General Mario Zamora, who tried to bring Christian Demo-
crats and the political left together. Roberto D’Aubuisson orchestrated the murder
of Archbishop Romero in his cathedral. The oligarchs and officers also closely
observed the 1980 presidential election, hoping for a Ronald Reagan victory and
the end of being hectored about “human rights.” Wild celebrations greeted the
news of Reagan's smashing electoral triumph in posh neighborhoods throughout
Central America. Salvadoran conservatives interpreted Reagan’s victory as a
license to kill. On 27 November 1980, armed men wearing military-issue combat
boots interrupted a meeting of the leaders of the Revolutionary Democratic
Front, a broad coalition of left-wing civilian parties, and seized five leaders. The
tortured and mutilated bodies of the politicians were found the next day dumped
along a road outside San Salvador. In December, security forces murdered the
four female missionaries from the United States. In early January 1981, in a
restaurant in Salvador's Sheraton Hotel, soldiers murdered two U.S. citizens who
worked for the AIFLD. The AIFLD, an arm of the American Federation of Labor
and Congress of Industrial Organizations, had worked with the CIA since the
1960s to promote anti-Communist labor and peasant organizations throughout
Latin America. Salvador's rulers opposed any organization or association that
empowered common people.“
CHAPTER 7 * Cold War Horrors—Central America 173
Salvador's murderous criminals correctly predicted the new presidential ad-
ministration’s reaction to the horrors, Ronald Reagan observed that Salvador elites
could not be expected to enact reforms in the middle of a civil war. The president
also often suggested that guerrillas masquerading as rightists were responsible for
most killings. Jeane Kirkpatrick defamed the murdered churchwomen, saying that
“the nuns were not just nuns.” She alleged that they were political activists who
defended armed leftist insurgents. In fact, the churchwomen were Christian ser-
vants of the poor, doing religious and social welfare work. Secretary of State Haig
joked about their death in congressional testimony and even suggested that they
fired on security forces. Haig later modified his testimony about “pistol-packing
nuns.“ The administration's new ambassador in El Salvador, Deane Hinton, was
a tough anti-Communist who dutifully denied that security forces perpetrated
atrocities. Hinton was photographed giving an abrazo to Lt. Colonel Domingo
Monterrosa, the commander of the notorious Atlacatl Battalion that carried out
massacres of peasants. But living amid Salvador's madness affected Ambassador
Hinton, In October 1982 he delivered a powerful speech to the American Chamber
of Commerce in San Salvador. The ambassador's speech was well attended by the
oligarchy of El Salvador. Hinton pointed out that thirty thousand people had been
“murdered, not killed in battle, murdered!" The ambassador asked: “Is it any
wonder that much of the world is predisposed to believe the worst of a system
which never brings to justice either those who perpetrate these acts or those who
order them?” Ambassador Hinton earned a rebuke for his candor from the Reagan
administration and was subsequently forced to resign.”
‘The Reagan administration argued that Cold War imperatives justified ig-
noring mass murder. Secretary Haig said in February 1981 that “our problem
with El Salvador is external intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign
nation in this hemisphere, nothing more, nothing less." The Sandinistas, the
Cubans, and the Soviets were allegedly sponsoring revolution in EI Salvador as
part of the master plan for world domination. As President Reagan pithily noted,
"it is time the people of the United States realize that under the domino theory,
we're the last domino." El Salvador indeed had a formidable guerrilla army that
numbered six thousand or more in the 1980s. In 1980, various armed leftist
groups created a central organization, the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liber-
ación Nacional (FMLN), named after the peasant leader of 1932. Many FMLN
leaders were Marxist-Leninists who admired the Cuban revolution. But allied to
the FMLN were nonviolent, non-Communist politicians from the Revolutionary
Democratic Front, including Guillermo Ungo, the erstwhile ally of Duarte, and
Rubén Zamora, the brother of the assassinated attorney general. In El Salvador,
to question what happened to a disappeared relative was to be characterized as a
“terrorist.” Advocating land reform or asserting the right to join a union in El
Salvador earned a citizen the title of “Communist.”
The Reagan administration's basic policy in El Salvador was to achieve a
military victory over the guerrillas by building a powerful anti-Communist
174 THE KILLING ZONE
army. In March 1981, President Reagan approved $25 million in military aid. The
$25 million represented more than the aggregate total that the United States had
granted to El Salvador's military during the Cold War, from 1946 to 1980. But the
$25 million was only a down payment on what the Reagan administration in-
tended for El Salvador. In the 1980s, El Salvador's military received approxi-
mately $1 billion in military aid from the United States. El Salvador had joined
Israel as the major recipient of U.S. military aid. El Salvador's military grew from
ten thousand to fifty thousand. Officers and men trained at U.S. war schools. The
military was equipped with the latest military technology, including A-37
“Dragonfly” jet aircraft for bombing and AC-47 helicopter gunships for combat
air support. The AC-47 helicopter, dubbed “Puff the Magic Dragon” during the
Vietnam War, could fire eighteen thousand rounds per minute.” Despite its
strength and firepower, El Salvador's military was unable to rout the armed in-
surgents. The guerrilla army of the FMLN was still intact in 1991.
Warfare exacted a costly toll on the people of El Salvador. At least seventy-
five thousand citizens perished between 1979 and 1991. More than five hundred
thousand Salvadorans fled the country, and another five hundred thousand were
internally displaced. This death and suffering happened in a country of only
5 million people. There were battlefield deaths between the warring armies, and
helpless citizens were caught in the crossfire. But the vast majority of the deaths,
perhaps fifty thousand of them, came at the hands of the military and paramili-
tary groups and death squads associated with the military. To be sure, the FMLN
committed atrocities. In 1985, for example, guerrillas Killed off-duty U.S. ma-
rines sitting at an open-air café in San Salvador's Zona Rosa area and then sprayed
the surrounding crowd with automatic fire. Urban commandos also kidnapped
José Napoleón Duarte's daughter. But a UN "Truth Commission" reported in
1993 that El Salvador's security forces committed 85 percent of the assassinations
and murders, whereas the UN commission attributed approximately 5 percent of
the violence to the FMLN.” The UN report affirmed what international and do-
mestic agencies, like Amnesty International and the Archdiocese of San Salvador,
had been reporting throughout the 1980s. ‘The Reagan administration argued
that U.S. military aid, training, and influence would have the effect of curbing
gross violations of human rights. One of the organizers of death squads, however,
was Colonel Nicolás Carranza, the commander of the notorious Treasury Police
and an ally of Roberto D'Aubuisson. U.S. diplomats referred to him as “fascist”
and “the Gestapo.” Colonel Carranza received $90,000 annually from the CIA to
provide intelligence on the political left."
‘The distinguished essayist and novelist Joan Didion wrote a short account,
Salvador, after spending two harrowing weeks in the country in 1982. She opened
by observing that “terror is the given of the place.” Words such as “hallucinatory,”
“nightmare,” and “horror movie” conveyed her reaction to what she saw and ex-
perienced. “The dead and pieces of the dead” turned up every day in vacant lots,
in the garbage thrown down ravines, in public restrooms, in bus stations. Didion
wrote in striking, haunting language that a visitor acquired a “special kind of
practical information” about El Salvador. One learned “that vultures go first for
CHAPTER 7 * Cold War Horrors— Central America 175
the soft tissue, for the eyes, the exposed genitalia, the open mouth." One also
learned that flesh deteriorated more rapidly than hair and “that a skull sur-
rounded by a perfect corona of hair is a not uncommon sight in the body dumps.”
El Salvador's murderers favored mutilating or decapitating their victims. They
wanted to limit the forensic evidence, and they wanted to heighten the terror for
the living by leaving the victims unidentifiable. Their instruments of torture and
death included tools used in slaughterhouses. El Salvador's security forces also
made political points with their violence. As Didion noted, “one learns that an
open mouth can be used to make a specific point, can be stuffed with something
emblematic; stuffed, say with a penis, or, if the point has to do with a land title,
stuffed with some of the dirt in question.”
The vast majority of the slaughtered lived in the countryside. The death
squads worked for the land-owning oligarchy, and the military wanted to terror-
ize campesinos to keep them from succoring the armed insurgents. The worst
massacre took place in the remote village of El Mozote on 11 December 1981. The
Atlacatl Battalion under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Monterrosa mas-
sacred more than 800 villagers. The Atlacatl Battalion, trained and equipped
by the United States, was the pride of the U.S: military mission in El Salvador.
Colonel Monterrosa had graduated from the School of the Americas in Panama.
El Mozote was largely made up of apolitical evangelical Christians. The soldiers
raped the young women and then murdered everyone. Among the dead were
195 children under the age of twelve. Soldiers tossed babies into the air and
caught them on their bayonets. The soldiers wearied of hacking people to death
and turned to their weapons. The shell casings left behind carried the stamp of a
manufacturer in Lake City, Missouri. One resident, Rufina Amaya Marquez, es-
caped, hiding behind trees. She witnessed the decapitation of her husband and
heard her son Cristino, nine, scream: "Mama, they're killing me. They've killed
my sister. They're going to kill me.” Rufina Amaya lost 4 children that day, in-
cluding María Isabel, eight months.”
‘The Reagan administration predictably denied the massacre at El Mozote.
Ambassador Hinton and his staff used deceptive language in their reporting to
Washington, neither explicitly confirming nor denying the massacre. Elliot
Abrams, who headed the State Department's Human Rights section in the early
1980s, testified to a congressional committee that reports of a massacre were “not
credible" and denounced the FMLN for publicizing the incident. U.S. officials were
taking their cue from the president. In a televised address to the nation in 1984,
Reagan asserted that violent security forces were “not part of the government.” Ad-
ministration officials privately conceded that government forces murdered and
tortured. But they reasoned that the worst disaster that could befall human rights
in El Salvador was a Communist victory. Defending El Salvador's government
commanded the highest priority. As Abrams noted, "whatever you think of us
from a human-rights point of view, what you think of us from a security point of
view is determinative.” The oligarchs and officers grasped Abramss insight,
boasting to Joan Didion that the United States would never abandon them. As
Didion put it, "anti-communism was seen as the bait the United States would
176 THE KILLING ZONE
always take.” The Atlacatl Battalion remained unreformed and unrepentant. In
1989, the battalion's soldiers executed six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her
daughter on the campus of La Universidad Centroamericana in San Salvador,
‘The USS. public never approved of U.S. policy in El Salvador. But the Reagan
administration showed greater political skill selling the war in El Salvador than the
one in Nicaragua to U.S. legislators. U.S. officials marketed elections and José
Napoleón Duarte. In 1982 and 1984, the CIA funneled a total $4 million dollars in
El Salvador to facilitate first an election for a constituent assembly and then the
presidency. The covert money went to the Christian Democrats. The AIFLD gave
$1 million in public money to unions that backed the Christian Democrats. The
State Department footed the $10.5 million bill to pay for the presidential election.
The administration’s strategy was to persuade Congress that support for the gov-
ernment of El Salvador was support for democracy. The administration also wanted.
to put Duarte and reform-minded Christian Democrats in power and keep ARENA
and especially Robert D'Aubuisson out of power. To the administration's dismay,
ARENA won the majority of the votes in the 1982 elections, and D'Aubuisson
became the leader of the constituent assembly. In 1984, however, Duarte won the
presidency, defeating D’Aubuisson, and in 1985 the Christian Democrats gained
control over El Salvador's legislature. Infuriated by the U.S. intervention, D'Aubuisson.
contemplated assassinating the U.S. ambassador in San Salvador."
U.S. legislators found President Duarte (1984-1989), who often traveled to
Washington, a compelling figure. He was a courageous anti-Communist who fa-
vored land reform and social progress for El Salvador. He continued to function
during the last year of his presidency although he had terminal liver cancer, dying
in 1990. President Duarte brought back help for his country from Washington. In
addition to the $1 billion in military aid, El Salvador received $2.6 billion in eco-
nomic aid during the 1980s. El Salvador ranked with Israel and Egypt as the largest
recipients of U.S. economic assistance. U.S. legislators bought the democracy and
reform arguments and the administration's dubious, periodic reports on human
rights progress in El Salvador. Legislators also feared being branded with the hoary
accusation of being “soft on communism.” As Clement Zablocki (D-W1), the chair
of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, admitted, “I certainly don’t want to be
accused of losing El Salvador by voting against more aid."
The Reagan administration's marketing of democracy in El Salvador was
filled with contradictions. Democracy demands more than elections. Democracy
entails majority rule, respect for minority rights, peaceful transfers of power, and
the promotion of a civic life, including freedom of speech and assembly. The pol-
itical left did not participate in elections because they justifiably feared being
murdered if they campaigned openly. Impressive numbers of citizens partici-
pated in the 1982 and 1984 elections. But, as Joan Didion pointed out, a citizen's
identity card indicated whether they had voted. El Salvador's security forces “en-
couraged” citizens to vote, knowing that high voter participation would lead to
increased U.S. military aid.” President Duarte wielded little power once in office.
ARENA politicians managed to gut land reform efforts, and security forces con-
tinued to terrorize campesinos who received titles to land. Security forces ignored
CHAPTER 7 + Cold War Horrors—Central America 177
President Duarte, even assassinating mayors who were Christian Democrats. The
Reagan administration wanted President Duarte to exercise control over the
military. The massive U.S. military aid program and the U.S. insistence on de-
feating the armed left inevitably reinforced the armed forces’ dominant role in
the nation’s life. The Christian Democrats also disappointed citizens. The colos-
sal amount of money that the United States poured into El Salvador provided
politicians with unending opportunities for graft and corruption. ARENA re-
gained control of the legislature in 1988, and in 1989 ARENA’s Alfredo Cristiani
(1989-1994) won the presidency.
As in Nicaragua, the war in El Salvador came to an unexpected end. The
same international developments—the end of the Cold War, the Bush adminis-
tration's pragmatism, the peace efforts of Costa Rica's President Arias—that
facilitated the end of the war in Nicaragua played a similar role in El Salvador.
Both the security forces and the armed left also gradually came to the conclusion
that neither could defeat the other. The country could hardly take any more war-
fare. Beyond the human costs, the tiny country's ecosystem was collapsing.
Ninety-four percent of the original forests, 80 percent of natural vegetation, and
77 percent of the arable soil had been damaged.” The United Nations, led by the
outgoing secretary-general, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (1981-1991), a Peruvian, bro-
kered an agreement. On 16 January 1992 in Mexico City, President Cristiani and
the FMLN signed a peace accord to lay down arms and curb abuses. ‘The FMLN
received recognition as a legitimate political organization. A contingent of U.N.
peacekeepers moved into El Salvador to oversee the peace. Throughout the 1980s,
the Reagan administration opposed negotiations with the political left. It discour-
aged President Duarte's efforts to open a dialogue with the FMLN. Negotiations,
not war, brought about peace in El Salvador and Nicaragua.
GENOCIDE IN GUATEMALA
The Reagan administration assisted the slaughter of the Mayan people. The pol-
itical violence that had characterized life in Guatemala since the CIA interven-
tion in 1954 took a gruesome turn in the 1980s under the regimes of General
Romeo Lucas García (1978-1982) and especially General Efraín Ríos Montt
(1982-1983). Almost eighteen thousand Guatemalans were murdered in 1982
alone. During his eighteen months in office, Ríos Montt oversaw the slaughter of
perhaps eighty thousand Guatemalans. Various fact-finding and truth commis-
sions reported in the late 1990s that of the more than two hundred thousand
people who perished in political violence in the period from 1954 to 1996, more
than 80 percent were indigenous people. As in the cases of political violence in
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, and elsewhere during the Cold War, state
security forces or paramilitary groups associated with government leaders per-
petrated most of the violence. The UN Truth Commission for Guatemala, which
interviewed eleven thousand people, established that the political right bore
responsibility for 93 percent of the deaths. ‘The armed left caused 3 percent of
the deaths.”
Di
HARVARD UNIVERS
178 THE KILLING ZONE
‘The Guatemalan armed forces decided to attack guerrilla forces, which num-
bered approximately six thousand, by eradicating Mayan villages and communities
suspected of supporting guerrillas. The code name adopted for the ghastly policy
was Operación Sofia. The Guatemalan military carried out massacres in 626 locales,
including extermination campaigns in nearly 600 rural Mayan communities. In
the words of the Truth Commission, state agents "committed acts of genocide
against groups of Mayan people." These conclusions were consistent with the clas-
sified reports that CIA agents were submitting to Washington. A secret CIA cable
sent from Guatemala in February 1982 reported, for example, that the Guatemalan
army was burning Mayan villages to the ground although "the army has yet to en-
counter any major guerrilla force in the area." Guatemalan security forces employed
the same terror tactics—rape, torture, body mutilation— favored by the military in
El Salvador. Historian Virginia Garrard-Burnett has written an erudite and compel-
ling account of Guatemala's suffering, She was a graduate student in Guatemala in the
early 1980s and encountered scenes of horror. Garrard-Burnett explained that she
was reluctant to engage in "the pornography of violence,” transforming sympa-
thetic readers into voyeurs. Nonetheless, by way of illustration, Garrard-Burnett
wrote of “a young mother's realization that the warm sensation down her back is the
life's blood of her infant shot dead in its blanket; a seven-year old girl, watching her
parents die as she herself is raped by soldiers,” and “the screams of an entire congre-
gation as they are burned alive in their church."
The 1980s seemed a propitious time to launch an offensive against the Mayan
and political leftists. Guatemala's elites resented the human rights policies of the
Carter administration. The administration had suspended military aid and per-
mitted only humanitarian economic assistance. Guatemalans celebrated Ronald
Reagan's election, and two Guatemalan businessmen, who had donated $2 million
to the Reagan campaign, met with the president-elect in December 1980 and de-
nounced the human rights policies of President Carter. In a meeting in May 1981
with the Guatemalan foreign minister, Deputy Secretary of State William Clark, a
confidant of the president, gave a sympathetic hearing to the Guatemalan request
to be permitted “to do their own thing,” The administration was unsuccessful in
persuading Congress to resume military and economic aid. But it arranged for the
sale of “nonlethal” equipment to Guatemala. For example, it licensed the sale
of twenty-five unarmed Bell helicopters worth $25 million. Once they arrived
in Guatemala, the helicopters were outfitted with weapons and used for mili-
tary purposes. The Reagan administration also encouraged Israel to assist the
Guatemalan military, and the Israelis built a munitions factory in the country.”
‘The Reagan administration initially blamed the political left for the violence.
‘As the carnage mounted, however, administration officials adopted a “wait-and-
see” policy toward the Guatemalan government. They hoped that the Guatemalan
military waged war successfully, but did not want the United States associated with
the abuses. Robert L. Jacobs, a State Department officer who served in the Bureau of
Human Rights, blithely observed in October 1981 that “recent history is replete with
examples where repression has been ‘successful’ in exorcising guerrilla threats to a
regime's survival.” Jacobs pointed to the recent “successful” repression in Argentina
CHAPTER 7 * Cold War Horrors—Central America 179
and Uruguay. Although not in favor of wholesale murder, Jacobs did not go so far as
to recommend that the United States publicly condemn a policy that was tanta-
mount to genocide. Not all U.S. officials were as sanguine about the slaughter of
indigenous people. In January 1982, a political officer in the embassy in Guatemala.
City, Raymond J. González, protested that his government "should avoid condoning
these illegal acts by its silence,” adding "we become silent partners in the barbarous
and criminal deeds of this government if we do not speak out.” Ambassador
Frederic L. Chapin accepted that González's protest of administration policy was a
“cry of conscience.” But the imperatives of the Cold War prevented the United States
the “luxury” of protesting abuses of human rights.
‘The person most singularly responsible for the terror that engulfed Guatemala
in the early 1980s was General/President Rios Montt. The Guatemalan had studied
counterinsurgency strategies and tactics and irregular warfare at U.S. war schools
in the Panama Canal Zone and at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina, He was a born-
again Pentecostal, who had converted to evangelical Protestantism in 1977. Per-
haps 30 percent of the country's population was Protestant by the early 1980s. Ríos
Montt took a dim view of the social activism of Catholics that emerged from the
Medellin conclave of bishops in 1968. Military officers warned Catholic priests to
avoid organizing the poor and “do the same as the [evangélico] preachers who only
talk about God.” Such warnings carried the threat of death. In a moment of rare
candor, Ambassador Chapin characterized Rios Montt as an unstable religious
zealot. In April and May 1982, the ambassador informed Washington that Rios
Montt “believes that he came to the presidency of the junta by the will of God” and
that he had a “divine mission” to bring about “a profound change in Guatemalan
society" What especially alarmed the ambassador was that Rios Montt's religious
fanaticism was married to an “authoritarianism he learned in his long military
career and which earned him a reputation as a martinet."*
President Reagan, however, had no doubts about Guatemala or its leader.
He met Rios Montt in Honduras in December 1982. He publicly praised the
Guatemalan, calling him a man of “great personal integrity and commitment”
whose country was “confronting a brutal challenge from guerrillas armed and
supported by others outside of Guatemala.” In a session with journalists, Reagan
added that Ríos Montt was dedicated to democracy and had received a “bum rap”
from critics. The president indicated that he favored restoring military aid to
Guatemala. The pleased Guatemalan leader joshed with the journalists, denying
he was pursuing a “scorched-earth” policy. Instead, he directed a “scorched
Communists” campaign. Even as the two presidents spoke, Guatemalan com-
mandos, members of the Kabil special operations force, were making their way
into the community of Las Dos Eres. ‘The Guatemalan army had prepared the
Kabiles for savagery with training methods of extreme cruelty. The training in-
cluded killing animals and then eating them raw and drinking their blood to
demonstrate courage. The commandos murdered 162 people in Las Dos Eres,
including 67 children. The commandos confessed to the Truth Commission that
they had killed the younger children by grabbing hold of their legs and swinging
them so their heads smashed against a wall.” As Kathryn Sikkink, a scholar of
180 THEKILLING ZONE
Ronald Reagan rubs shoulders with his new friend, Efraín Rios Montt of Guatemala. The
two presidents met in Honduras in December 1982. After their meeting, Reagan defended
Rios Montt to the U.S. press. The Guatemalan leader oversaw the deaths of tens of
thousands of Guatemalans during his brief presidency. In May 2013, a Guatemalan court
convicted former President Ríos Montt of genocide and crimes against humanity and
sentenced him to eighty years in prison. Ronald Reagan Library)
human rights, noted, President Reagan's endorsement of Ríos Montt “was a gratu-
itous, thoughtless gesture made fora man guilty of mass murder of his population."
Sikkink used “thoughtless” in the “manner suggested by Hannah Arendt, implying
incapacity to tell right from wrong,” Arendt had developed her political theories
through the study of totalitarian societies and monsters like Adolf Eichmann, the
Nazi officer who organized the extermination of European Jewry.
Four years after Gabriel Garcia Marquez delivered his memorable Nobel
Prize address, Carlos Fuentes, another notable Latin American author, wrote
about his region's suffering. The great Mexican novelist, the author of La Muerte
de Artemio Cruz (The Death of Artemio Cruz) (1962), had lived for many years in
the United States and admired its democratic achievements and cultural values.
But Fuentes deplored the “arrogant and violent” policies of the United States in
Latin America, Fuentes understood there was a Cold War. The spectacle of de-
struction, however, served only symbolic politics. Central Americans did not
threaten U.S. national security, Reaffirming his love for U.S. society, Fuentes em-
phasized that “we will not confuse the United States and the Soviet Union, or
indeed accept their moral equivalence.” The Soviets pursued “coherent” policies
because they pursued “empire” both at home and abroad. ‘The United States, on
the other hand, “by acting like the Russians in its sphere of influence, becomes
profoundly incoherent and hypocritical.”*
Pd
Aftermath
La America and the United States have reacted in different ways to the end
of the Cold War. For Latin Americans, coming to terms with the meaning of
the Cold War has been an ongoing process that has stretched into the twenty-first
century. Latin Americans have established commissions to establish the facts of
what happened to their societies during the forty-five-year confrontation between
the United States and the Soviet Union. For more than two decades, Latin Americans
have been looking to locate their dead and find their missing children. Latin
Americans have also gradually concluded that they must prosecute the perpetrators
of evil if they are to achieve peace and closure in their societies. “Nunca Más"
("Never Again") has become a rallying cry in the region. The breaching of the
Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union in
the summer of 1991 have not, however, prompted a similar pattern of reflection
and soul-searching in the United States. The joy and satisfaction over the new-
found freedom of Eastern Europeans, the unification of Germany, and the
breakup of the Soviet Union have superseded any qualms about the hurt and pain
inflicted upon Cold War bystanders. U.S. officials have issued scattered apologies
for Cold War decisions that destroyed the lives of Latin Americans. But no agency
of the U.S. government has conducted a systematic assessment of the U.S. role in
Latin America during the Cold War. The United States also continued to pursue
an atavistic Cold War policy—hostility toward Fidel Castro and the Cuban
Revolution, However reluctantly, agencies like the CIA have gradually and in-
completely complied with scholarly demands to release the documentary record
on Cold War policies toward Latin America. The release of records has not, how-
ever, prompted a public discussion about the past. Discussion of the U.S. war in
Latin America is largely confined to the scholarly community.
181
182 AFTERMATH
LATIN AMERICA AND COLD WAR HISTORY
Argentina, the home of la guerra sucia, has led the way in historical inquiry. The
generals and admirals who had murdered thirty thousand Argentines left office
in disgrace after the military debacle that was the war to liberate the Malvinas
(Falkland Islands). In April 1982, Argentina's armed forces seized the Malvinas,
which had been a possession of the United Kingdom for 150 years. General
Leopoldo Galtieri, the head of the latest military junta, ordered the action to ful-
fill long-held patriotic yearnings to restore Argentine sovereignty over the islands
in the windy, cold South Atlantic. The military junta also hoped to distract the
public from the military’s mismanagement of the Argentine economy and the
mounting protests over the dirty war. The United Kingdom, led by Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher, reacted in fury to Argentine aggression. Using combined air
and sea power, British forces reasserted control over the islands in June 1982.
British forces thrashed the Argentine armed forces, with a nuclear-powered
British submarine torpedoing the World War II-vintage Argentine cruiser
General Belgrano, sending more than three hundred sailors to their death. General
Galtieri had hoped for the tacit support of the Ronald Reagan administration in
the war, calculating that the administration appreciated Argentina's training of
anti-Communist forces in El Salvador and Nicaragua. The United States, how-
ever, ultimately stuck by its NATO ally and partner in World War I and II. Presi-
dent Reagan, advised by his UN Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, pleaded with
‘Thatcher in a midnight telephone call of 31 May 1982 not to humiliate the Argentines
and to negotiate a shared Argentine British role for the Malvinas. The prime minis-
ter brusquely rejected Reagan's proposals, saying “she was sure the president would
act in the same way if Alaska had been similarly threatened.” Sir Nicolas Henderson,
the British Ambassador in Washington, was even more hard edged than his prime
minister when he assessed Ambassador Kirkpatrick, the military dictatorship’s best
friend in the Reagan administration. He characterized her as “more fool than
fascist” and one who was "tactless, wrong-headed, ineffective and a dubious tribute
to the academic profession."
Devastated by the embarrassing defeat and the military casualties, the
Argentine public turned in fury against the junta, Galtieri resigned and was re-
placed by a caretaker general who promised elections. Argentina's anti-Communist
military leaders had demonstrated to the world that their leadership skills and
competence were limited to torturing and murdering defenseless civilians. In
1983, Argentines elected Raúl Alfonsin (1983-1989) of the Radical Party as presi-
dent. Alfonsín had upheld human rights and opposed military rule. Since the
election of Alfonsin, Argentines have been able to maintain a constitutional
system and civilian rule.
President Alfonsin named a Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de
Personas (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons), or CONADEP,
to establish the truth about state terrorism in Argentina. In 1984, CONADEP,
which was chaired by the renowned novelist and scientist Ernesto Sabato, issued
Aftermath 183
its “report from hell,” Nunca Más. The report documented 340 secret detention
centers and 8,960 "disappeared" persons. The report further concluded that the
number of disappeared was substantially higher than 8,960. Nunca Más opened
with an allusion to the destruction of European Jewry, noting that “many of the
events described in this report will be hard to believe. This is because the men
and women of our nation have only heard of such horror in reports from distant
places.” CONADEP also indicted the military's anti-Communist rationales, their
national security doctrines, labeling them "totalitarian." Nunca Más became an
instant best-seller in Argentina. When it was republished in the mid-1990s in
weekly installments, it sold two hundred thousand copies a week. Nunca Más
served as an inspiration to other crusaders for human rights throughout Latin
America. Chile, El Salvador, and Guatemala would issue similar reports in the
1990s on atrocities during the Cold War." In Brazil, the Archdiocese of São Paulo,
under the brave leadership of Cardinal Paulo Evarista Arns, published in 1985 its
report on state-sponsored torture and murder in Brasil: Nunca Mais (Brazil:
Never Again). Nunca Mais was based on a purloined copy of the Supreme Military
Tribunal’s archive, which contained documents and photos produced by military
courts against political prisoners.‘ As Argentines began the search for the desapa-
recidos in mass graves, they developed forensic skills in exhuming and identify-
ing bodies. Argentine anthropologists thereafter assisted other nations in Latin
America in recovering and identifying remains, Argentine scientists worked, for
example, in establishing that a massacre occurred in El Mozote in El Salvador.
President Alfonsin also paid homage to his friend and supporter, former president
Jimmy Carter, by insisting that human rights issues be integrated into Argentine
foreign policy.
President Alfonsín authorized the prosecution of junta members (six generals
and three admirals) who tyrannized Argentina from 1976 to 1982. The military
leaders were unrepentant, with Admiral Emilio Massera claiming he had fought a
"just war" against terrorism. The chief prosecutor labeled the military leaders
"criminals" who ordered the murder and torture of innocent civilians. A panel of
judges in a federal appellate court found five of the junta members guilty and
sentenced them to prison. General Jorge Videla and Admiral Massera received life
sentences. Three of the four acquitted subsequently received prison sentences
from military courts. Argentines, including the mothers and grandmothers of
Plaza de Mayo, thereafter called for the prosecution of the military subordinates
who had kidnapped, murdered, and tortured. Facing an increasingly mutinous
and disloyal military, President Alfonsin decided to accept punto final (end point)
and “due obedience” laws that would sharply curtail prosecutions. The due obedi-
ence law exempted military personnel below the rank of colonel from prosecution.
"The Argentine president reasoned that he had to prevent another military golpe
and safeguard Argentine constitutionalism. Arguing that Argentina needed to
move forward and focus on economic development, President Carlos Saúl Menem
(1989-1999), Alfonsin’s successor, pardoned the convicted officers and those who
had been indicted. Impunity had seemingly triumphed over justice in Argentina.
184 AFTERMATH
Domestic and international developments combined to lead Argentines from
the late 19905 on to once again reassess their Cold War past. Argentines were left
aghast, when, on 9 March 1995, Captain Adolfo Scilingo confessed on a popular
television news show that he had participated in two of the weekly "death flights,"
dumping thirty living but drugged desaparecidos into the South Atlantic. A sixty-
five-year-old man, a sixteen-year-old boy, and two pregnant women in their early
twenties were among the victims that Scilingo shoved out of the airplane. The
articulate Scilingo, who was now conscience stricken, appeared handsome, edu-
cated, socially adept, and, wearing a suit by Christian Dior, well groomed. Less
visually appealing on television, but equally horrifying, was the torturer Julio
Simón, known as "Julián the Turk." Simón, who attached a big swastika to his
watch chain, was an opera fanatic and would listen to operatic music before com-
mencing his torture sessions. He favored pushing sticks up the victim's anuses
while shocking them with 220 volts of electricity, Speaking directly to the camera,
the unrepentant Simón said, “the norm was to kill everyone, and anyone kid-
napped was tortured.” He defended himself, asserting that he was fighting “ter-
rorist hordes” and that “torture is eternal" and an “essential part of the human
being.” Such revelations, dubbed “the Scilingo effect,” helped push Argentines
into action. A new organization, the children of the murdered and disappeared,
joined with the Plaza de Mayo women to agitate for justice. Jurists also challenged
the constitutionality of pardons and legal immunities, citing such issues as the
stolen children and the legal concept of habeas corpus.
‘The Argentines received support in their quest for justice from the inter-
national legal community. Growing out of memories of the Holocaust, the prin-
ciples of the Nuremburg trials, the adoption of the UN Declaration of Human
Rights, and continued atrocities in places such as East Pakistan (Bangladesh),
Cambodia, Guatemala, Uganda, Bosnia, and Rwanda, international lawyers and
global leaders began to argue that there was “universal jurisdiction” for crimes
against humanity. Belgium adopted a law in 1993 giving its legal system jurisdic-
tion over war crimes anywhere in the world. Italian and Spanish jurists initiated
extradition proceedings against Latin American military officers, charging that
they had killed European nationals in countries such as Argentina, Chile, and
Uruguay. Spanish judge Baltazar Garzón electrified the international legal com-
munity when in 1998 he demanded the arrest and extradition to Spain of General
Augusto Pinochet of Chile on crimes of murder, torture, and genocide.’ In 2005,
Judge Garzón imposed a lengthy sentence on Captain Scilingo, who was residing
in Spain, for the thirty murders he helped commit in the 1970s.
In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Argentine jurists pursued the
criminals who waged la guerra sucia. In 2001, an Argentine federal judge ruled
the punto final and due obedience laws unconstitutional, reasoning that they
violated both Argentine and international law. The disappearance of persons was
judged a crime against humanity and could not be amnestied. The court's
judgment, which was upheld by Argentina's Supreme Court in 2005, received
political support from President Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and his successor
Aftermath 185
and wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007- ). The government decreed that
the torture center that was ESMA in Buenos Aires would be transformed into a
space for memory and the defense of human rights.
Both the prominent and the unpublicized perpetrators of murder and torture
in Argentina faced justice. In 2002, General Galtieri was again indicted and put
under house arrest; he died a few months later of a heart attack. In 2006, Julián the
Turk received a twenty-five-year sentence for the torture of a disabled couple and
the theft of their child. In 2008, Luciano Benjamín Menédez, the military com-
mander who oversaw the notorious La Perla detention center in the city of Córdoba,
received a life sentence for the kidnapping, torture, and murder of four political
activists, In April 2010, an Argentine court convicted Reynaldo Bignone, a retired
general and Argentina's last dictator (1982-1983), for the kidnapping, torture, and
murder of fifty-six people. Bignone, who was eighty-two, received a twenty-five-
year sentence. In late 2011, Bignone received an additional fifteen-year sentence for
setting up in 1976 a secret torture center inside a hospital, where doctors and nurses
were abused, In 2013, the military dictator, General Jorge Rafael Videla (1976-1981),
died in the Marcos Paz Prison in Buenos Aires. In 2010, General Videla received a
life sentence for the murder of thirty-one political prisoners.
Human rights activists also celebrated the life sentence handed down in 2007
to the Reverend Christian von Wernich, a Roman Catholic priest. Father von
Wernich was present at torture sessions, helping extract confessions while at the
same time offering consoling words to family members seeking their loved ones
who had been kidnapped. The conviction forced both lay people and religious
people to confront the Church’s complicity in Argentina's sordid past." Argentine
religious leaders had not publicly opposed oppression, as they had in Brazil, Chile,
and El Salvador. One notable exception, however, had been Enrique Angelelli, the
bishop of La Rioja, Argentina's poorest province. In August 1976, Bishop Angelelli,
who defended the rights of the poor, died in an automobile crash, which military
authorities described as an accident. Angelelli’s parishioners kept his memory
alive for decades, praising him as a “martyr.” In July 2014, a court in the city of La
Rioja found two former senior military officers guilty of murder and sentenced
them to life in prison. The military dictatorship had orchestrated the bishop's
death, forcing his car off the road on a deserted highway?
In August 2006, to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of Monseñor
Angelelli’s martyrdom, Argentina’s leading prelate, Cardinal Jorge Mario
Bergoglio, delivered a homily in the Cathedral of La Rioja that endorsed the
Christian nature of Angelelli's defense of the oppressed." In March 2013, the
College of Cardinals in Rome elevated Bergoglio to the papacy. The new pope,
who was from the Jesuit religious order, became the first pope to have been born
in Latin America. He took the name of Francis I or Papa Francesco. Allegations
almost immediately appeared that, as the Jesuit Provincial Superior for Argentina
in the 1970s, Bergoglio had not done all he could either to protect two Jesuit sub-
ordinates from torture or to protest the murderous ways of the military rulers.
He also had declined, from 2005 to 2011, when he served as head of the Argentine
186 AF
MATH
Conference of Bishops, to issue an apology for his Church's actions during la
guerra sucia." Whatever the merits of the allegations, Pope Francis I has joined
in the movement to rectify Cold War injustices. He lifted the hold on the beatifi-
cation of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. Conservative leaders in the
Church had blocked the beatification process, which can lead to sainthood, of
Romero, who was assassinated in 1980. Pope Francis praised Romero as “a man
of God.” The pope's ruling suggested that martyrdom be extended not just to
those who died for their faith but also to those killed because they were doing
God’s work. In a generous gesture, Francis also restored to the priesthood Miguel
d'Escoto Brockmann, The Nicaraguan had been suspended from the priesthood
by Pope John Paul II because he was an official in the Sandinista government. The
elderly d'Escoto wanted to celebrate Mass before he died.'*
International jurists also contributed to the movement for justice. Italian
courts have an ongoing investigation of Operation Condor, the international ter-
rorist network organized by Chile. In 1990, a jury in France convicted in absentia
Navy captain Alfredo Astiz for the disappearance of two French nuns. The nuns,
Alice Doman and Leonie Duquet, had been working with Argentine groups, in-
cluding the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, in trying to learn about the fate of the
disappeared. Captain Astiz, who was known as the “Angel of Death” for his
youthful appearance, blonde hair, and ruthlessness, had infiltrated the peace
groups, claiming that he had a brother who had also disappeared. He used the
pseudonym of “Gustavo Niño.” In fact, Astiz led Task Force 3.2.2, which operated
out of ESMA. On 8 December 1977, acting on intelligence gathered by Astiz,
military thugs abducted thirteen of the Mothers, including Azucena Villaflor de
Vicenti, the founder of the group. They and the French nuns were tortured and
then tossed into the South Atlantic. Their mutilated bodies eventually washed
ashore. It was decades before the body of Villaflor de Vicenti could be positively
identified. In late 2009, Argentine jurists began the process of putting Captain
Astiz on trial for murder and subsequently convicted Astiz to life imprisonment
for crimes against humanity on 26 October 2011. On that day, the court sentenced
eleven other former military and police officials to life in prison for crimes com-
mitted during la guerra sucia.
‘The reunification of the perhaps five hundred kidnapped children with their
grandparents has been a wrenching process for the victims. These were the chil-
dren born in prison to abducted mothers who were subsequently murdered by
the Argentine military. The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo had identified,
by mid-2014, 114 of the children, some of whom have integrated with their legit-
imate families and others of whom continue to live with the parents who raised
them. Heartrending stories abound about the stolen children. Victoria Montene-
gro discovered that the man she worshipped and once considered her father,
Lieutenant Colonel Hernán Tetzlaff, had murdered her parents and stolen
her. Journalist Roger Cohen of the New York Times and International Herald
Tribune told another depressing story. In 1987, he identified twin boys living
with an Argentine couple in Paraguay. Cohen’s investigation and genetic
HARVARD
Aftermath 187
testing confirmed that Samuel Miara, a police officer, and his wife Beatriz were
not the birth parents of the boys. Paraguay extradited the couple to Argentina,
and the man was convicted of kidnapping and sent to jail in 1995. Revisiting the
story in 2008, Cohen found that his good deed had not led to joy. Mistakes had
been made in identifying the birth parents. The boys, now thirty, had been left
confused and unhappy by the process. Cohen could not find the twins, and they
refused to talk to journalists. One boy reportedly carried a photo of his birth
mother, whereas the other was inseparable from the woman who raised him. As
Cohen noted, “the justice I had helped deliver had consisted, for them, of one
broken home after another.” Cohen asked himself whether the truth he had
delivered to the twins was worth it. He answered: “For the dead, and Argentina,
I say yes. For the twins, I don’t know.” Noting that some stories “are your actual
responsibility,” Cohen returned to Buenos Aires in 2014 and met with one of the
twins, Gonzalo Reggiardo Tolosa, who with his brother Matías had recently tes-
tified in a trial of former army officers. He found Gonzalo still traumatized. His
birth father’s left hand had been found in a pile of bones outside the city of La
Plata. Still, Gonzalo could not complete the grieving process and accept that he
was an orphan.
Joy did accompany other family reunions, however. In 2014, Ignacio Hurban,
an accomplished pianist and composer, who was raised in the city of Olavarría,
decided to give a sample of his DNA to the national database established by the
Grandmothers, las Abuelas, of the Plaza de Mayo. Hurban had been raised by a
couple who farmed. Asan infant, he had been given to the couple by an influential
landowner who had ties to the Argentine military. The DNA test revealed that
Hurban was the grandson of Estela de Carlotto, the president of the Grandmothers
and a widely known symbol of the struggle for justice for the victims of la guerra
sucia. Hurban's birth mother, Laura Carlotto, was killed with a shot in the head
shortly after giving birth in a military hospital in August 1978. She had been
allowed to hold her baby, who she named Guido after the birth father, for only
five hours. The birth father was also murdered by the military. In an unusual step,
military authorities turned over Laura's remains to her mother, although they
vainly tried to cover up the pregnancy by shooting Laura in the stomach. The
DNA match and the subsequent reunion of Estela with her grandson created a
sense of euphoria throughout Argentina. At a news conference in early August
2014, Estela de Carlotto, who was eighty-three years old, announced “this great
joy that life has brought me,” but she also emphasized that “now we need to keep
looking for the rest of the missing.”
Chile's movement from impunity to justice followed a path similar to Argentina's.
The ruthless General Pinochet dominated political life in Chile until 1998, long
after the Cold War had ended. Under mounting domestic and international pres-
sure, Pinochet had agreed to hold a plebiscite in 1988, giving Chileans a choice on
whether they wanted a continuation of one-man rule. The Reagan administration
had surprisingly urged Pinochet to schedule a plebiscite. State Department officers
wanted the administration to appear ideologically consistent—favoring elections
188 AFTERMATH
in both Pinochet's Chile and the Sandinista's Nicaragua. Moreover, beginning
in 1987, Democrats had regained control of Congress and were increasingly in-
clined to impose sanctions on Chile. The administration's newfound enthusi-
asm for democracy and human rights did not include President Reagan. The
president informed an astonished George Shultz, the secretary of state, that
"Pinochet saved Chile from communism; we should have him here on a state
visit.” The administration, through the National Endowment for Democracy,
sent $1.6 billion to Chile to underwrite the costs of the plebiscite.” Chile's left and
center political parties united in a political alliance known as the Concertación
and urged Chileans to vote “no.” ‘The “no” vote triumphed by a decisive 55 to
43 percent. Pinochet agreed to relinquish the presidency, but he maintained
substantial control. In 1978, he had declared a general amnesty for uniformed
personnel. His constitution granted him the power to stay as commander in chief
of the armed forces until 1998. ‘The constitution also provided for nonelected
senators, who were Pinochet's acolytes, to take seats in the Chilean legislature. In
1990, the glowering Pinochet draped the presidential sash over Patricio Aylwin of
the Christian Democrats. After twenty-seven years of military rule, Chile had
returned to free elections and constitutional processes.
President Aylwin (1990-1994) and his successor, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle
(1994-2000), the son of the former president, moved cautiously on human rights
issues. The legacy of fear, a longing for social peace, and a desire for economic
growth all hampered legal discoveries and the issuing of indictments. Aylwin
appointed a National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation headed by a
veteran politician from the Radical Party, Raúl Rettig. The Rettig Commission
lacked subpoena power. It was authorized only to investigate deaths at the hands
of state agents. It could not name perpetrators of crimes, and it could not investi-
gate cases of arbitrary detention or of people who had been tortured but not mur-
dered. Despite the restraints, the Rettig Commission provided a notable service
to Chileans with its 1991 report. It documented more than two thousand deaths
and disappearances. Subsequent investigations raised the death toll to more than
three thousand. The commission rejected the Pinochet fantasy that the country
had been at war after the overthrow of Salvador Allende and demonstrated that
most of the dead were unarmed civilians, not armed guerrillas, Even as the com-
mission took testimony, its work was aided by the discovery in June 1990 of a
mass grave in Pisagua, a port city in northern Chile. Chileans gasped as they
looked at the mummified faces of the disappeared on television and in newspaper
photographs. General Pinochet denounced the Rettig Commission as a “sewer”
and boasted that the armed forces took pride in saving the country from terrorism
and international communism. ‘The government thereafter provided compensa-
tion to the families of the executed and disappeared but did not challenge the
1978 amnesty law." The only prominent Chilean officer prosecuted was Manuel
Contreras of DINA, who had overseen Operation Condor and the assassination
of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit in Washington in 1976. Pinochet had ex-
empted that crime from his 1978 amnesty law, bowing to pressure from the
Aftermath 189
Jimmy Carter administration. Contreras received only a light sentence for his
crime, however.
After 1998, Chileans began to engage directly with the past. General Pinochet
stepped down as military commander, twenty-five years after he seized power,
and took his seat in the legislature as “a senator for life.” The audacious action
infuriated the families of the victims and the hundreds of thousands of Chileans
who had been arbitrarily detained or tortured. As a senator, Pinochet would also
preserve his impunity. In September 1998, the cocky general traveled to London
for a back operation. While there, he had tea with his friend and fellow conserva-
tive, Lady Margaret Thatcher, stayed in a ritzy hotel, and shopped at Harrods, the
upscale department store. Spain's Judge Garzón seized the moment. Armed with
the extradition treaty that existed between Spain and the United Kingdom,
Garzón issued a warrant for Pinochet's arrest. On 16 October 1998, British au-
thorities arrested Pinochet, and he was kept under house arrest for the next
sixteen months as the Spanish, British, and Chileans wrangled over the legal and
jurisdictional issues. The British Foreign Office eventually shipped Pinochet
home, ruling that he lacked the mental capacities to stand trial, Pinochet feigned
illness, including dementia. But the once terrorized Chileans realized that their
emperor no longer wore clothes. General Augusto Pinochet had become an epic
international embarrassment.”
After 2000, Pinochet would constantly find himself barraged with criminal
cases and would lose his legal immunity and his senatorial seat. Chileans’ fury
mounted when they learned that Pinochet and his henchmen had stashed cash in
banks around the world. Pinochet's secret bank accounts amounted to $28 million.
As one scholar observed, Pinochet now appeared to erstwhile supporters
“more like an old fashioned corrupt Caribbean-style dictator than the savior of
Chile"? Claiming their client's ill health, lawyers kept Pinochet out of a Chilean
jail. The dictator died in late 2006 at the age of ninety-one. Pinochet's military
colleagues were not as fortunate. A Chilean judge, Juan Guzmán, successfully
argued that the amnesty law did not exempt from prosecution those who had
disappeared Chileans, because, under a writ of habeas corpus, the lack of a body
meant that the kidnapping was an ongoing crime. Latin America's military dic-
tatorships and death squads had thought they were clever when they disappeared
victims or disfigured bodies beyond recognition. They were confident that they
would never be prosecuted because evidence no longer existed. By the end of
2006, more than one hundred Chileans, including numerous generals, had been
convicted of disappearing Chileans. Manuel Contreras of Operation Condor re-
ceived a life sentence in 2008 for the assassination of General Carlos Prats and his
wife. In late 2012, A Chilean judge charged eight retired military officers for the
murder of folk singer Victor Jara. And, in mid-2014, a Chilean judge ruled that
US. military intelligence services officers in Chile, particularly Naval captain
Roy E. Davis, had aided and abetted the Chilean military in capturing two U.S.
citizens living in Chile, Charles Horman, a journalist and filmmaker, and Frank
‘Teruggi, an antiwar activist. The Chilean military murdered the two men in the
190 AFTERMATH
National Stadium shortly after the golpe of 11 September 1973. Horman and
Teruggi were the subjects of the award-winning film Missing (1982), directed by
Costa-Gavras and starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek.”
Beyond prosecuting its criminals, Chile took a variety of other measures to
come to terms with its ghastly past. President Ricardo Lagos Escobar (2000-2006),
Chile’s first socialist president since Allende, appointed a new commission, known
as the Valech Commission, to listen to those who had been tortured. More than
thirty-six thousand Chileans came forward to provide evidence of torture. The
commission also identified more than one thousand detention and torture cen-
ters.” The most notorious torture center, Villa Grimaldi, was transformed into a
memorial for Pinochet's victims. Both President Bachelet and her mother had
been tortured at Villa Grimaldi. Chileans also renamed another place of torture,
the National Stadium, the Estadio Victor Jara, after the murdered folksinger. And
Chile erected a statue of Salvador Allende in the Plaza de la Constitución, near the
presidential plaza, La Moneda. The statue carried the inscription of Allende's last
public statement: “I have faith in Chile and her destiny.” President Allende might
think that faith was justified if he knew that his daughter, Isabel Allende Busi,
served as the president of Chile's Chamber of Deputies.
As demonstrated in the cases of Argentina's missing children, the restoration
of law and justice cannot erase the suffering that comes from memory. In 1980, the
American Psychiatric Association defined “Post-traumatic stress disorder” as a
legitimate disease. At the time, it was popularly known in the United States as
“Vietnam syndrome.” The psychiatrists were responding to the mental traumas
experienced by U.S. veterans who had served in the horror that was the Vietnam
War. Latin Americans also suffered from their Cold War. Steve Stern, a renowned
scholar of Latin American history, has published remarkable interviews with
Chileans of all political perspectives about their memories of the Pinochet era.
Professor Stern conducted one interview, called the “memory tomb of the unknown
soldier,” with a frightened man, on the shoulder of a noisy highway outside of
Santiago in the late 1990s. The man, who was given the pseudonym of Cristián,
worried that General Pinochet, still the commander in chief, would overhear what
he had to say. Cristián broke down as he told his story. Cristián, from a working-
class family, had been conscripted into the Chilean army as a teenager. In the
weeks after the overthrow of Allende, his unit carried out terroristic break-ins and
sweeps, known as allanamientos, of shantytown neighborhoods. In one home,
Cristián's lieutenant smashed the butt of his rifle against the jaw of a small child
who was petrified and wailing. When the mother responded, the lieutenant ordered
another conscript to shoot the mother. Cristian's compañero, another conscript
known as “Larita,” refused to carry out the murder. The lieutenant took out his
pistol and shot Larita in the head. Cristián was consumed by doubt and guilt over
what he should have done. As one who became a father, he grieved for the child.
His nightmares were filled with the vivid splattering of Larita's brains.
‘The truth commissions in Argentina, Chile, and El Salvador documented
atrocities and assigned responsibility for the carnage to the anti-Communist
Aftermath 191
agents of the state. Analysts have noted, however, that these commissions avoided
an extensive discussion of the political and social context in which the violence
took place. Fears of another military golpe imposed caution on the fact finders.
The multivolume study, Guatemala: Memory of Silence (1999), compiled by the
Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification, broke from that circum-
spect approach. International pressure brought an end to the country’s civil war
in 1996. The United Nations designed the structure and composition of the
Guatemalan commission. Beyond attributing to state security forces more than
90 percent of Guatemala's two hundred thousand deaths, Memory of Silence ex-
plicitly repudiated “the theory of the two demons.” The dead were not “collateral
damage,” having been caught in the crossfire between two warring armies.
Agents of the state had targeted people because they were union leaders, rural
organizers, and student activists who protested repression in Guatemala and
wanted freedom and social justice. The military regimes also perpetrated racist,
genocidal policies against the Mayan. The United States bore responsibility for
the violence that swept over Guatemala for four decades. As the report noted,
after the overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954, “there was a rapid reduc-
tion in the opportunity for political expression.” A “fundamentalist anticommu-
nism” thereafter inspired legislation that “consolidated the restrictive and
exclusionary nature of the political system." The Cold War policies of the United
States received an enthusiastic welcome from elites and right-wing political
groups in Guatemala. The United States backed military regimes and directed its
military assistance "towards reinforcing the national intelligence apparatus and
for training the officer corps in counterinsurgency techniques, key factors which
had significant bearing on human rights violations during the armed confronta-
tion." Indeed, the United States fostered "criminal counterinsurgency” with its
anti-Soviet strategy in Latin America. The report further observed that Cuba had
provided "political, logistical, instructional, and training support" to Guatemalan
insurgents. But the report added that those sectors of the left imbued with Marxist
ideology that adopted “the Cuban perspective of armed struggle” did so “in the
context of an increasingly repressive State.”
Releasing historical analyses that interpret violence within a political and
social context does not guarantee the pursuit of justice. President Alvaro Arzü,
sitting next to his military commanders, showed no emotion as the head com-
missioner, Dr. Christian Tomushat of Germany, presented the report to a packed
audience in Guatemala's National Theatre on 25 February 1999. President Arzá
declined to step to the podium to accept Memory of Silence. A year before, the
archdiocese of Guatemala City, led by Bishop Juan José Gerardi, released its four-
volume study, Guatemala: Nunca Más (1998), which recounted the military's
atrocities against the Guatemalan people.’* A few days after the release of the
report, assailants bludgeoned to death Bishop Gerardi. The bishop’s face was so
disfigured that his corpse could be identified only by his episcopal ring.
Guatemala has not initiated a campaign to identify and prosecute its mur-
derers and terrorists, although it did convict three mid-level military officers for
192 AFTERMATH
the murder of Bishop Gerardi, and in 2012 a Guatemalan court issued a life sen-
tence (6,060 years) to a soldier for his role in the massacre of 201 Mayan in the
village of Dos Erres in 1982. The convicted soldier’s commander in chief, Efraín
Ríos Montt, is still not in jail for overseeing the destruction of Mayan communi-
ties. But the former president and general no longer breathes with impunity, In
1999, Rigoberta Menchú, the Guatemalan human rights activist and indigenous
leader who received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1992, filed charges of genocide
against Ríos Montt in a Spanish court. The Spanish Constitutional Court ruled
in 2005 that it could try those accused of crimes against humanity, even if the
victims were not Spanish. A Spanish judge subsequently issued an international
warrant for the arrest of Ríos Montt. Guatemala refused, however, to extradite
the former president. Facing both international and domestic pressure, Guatemala
finally put the old dictator on trial in 2013. The testimony was horrifying, with
one man recounting how the military killed his wife and two children, slash-
ing his young son's face with a machete and smashing his toddler's head.
A Guatemalan tribunal, on 10 May 2013, found Ríos Montt guilty of genocide
and crimes against humanity and sentenced him to eighty years in prison, But
within two weeks, Guatemala's Constitutional Court overturned the conviction
on a technicality, The nation’s conservative oligarchy and business elite had vehe-
mently opposed the trial. Ríos Montt may be retried in the future.
Other Latin American countries have not fully confronted their Cold War
past. Uruguay's truth commission documented 164 disappearances between
1973 and 1984 during the military dictatorship. But responding to political and
military pressure, the commission declined to say that the practice of disappearing
people was official policy. In the 1980s, Uruguayans approved, both legislatively
and via a plebiscite, amnesties for the military and leftist guerrillas. The amnesty
applied only to crimes committed in Uruguay. Uruguayan authorities have pros-
ecuted officers who participated in Operation Condor, such as General Gregorio
Alvarez (1981-1985), Uruguay's last dictator, who received a twenty-five-year
sentence on 22 October 2009 for involvement in thirty-seven homicides and
human rights violations. In July 2011, dictator Juan Marfa Bordaberry (1972-1976)
died under house arrest, having previously received a thirty-year sentence for
human rights crimes. And in May 2013, General Miguel Dalmao received a
twenty-eight-year sentence for the murder in 1974 of a young literature professor,
Nibia Sabalsagaray, who was a Communist.
Despite the prosecutions, Uruguayans remain deeply conflicted about the
Cold War past. In 1994, they transformed the Punta Carretas prison that housed
political dissidents into a stylish shopping mall. But in 2007 they opened a Museo
de la Memoria that details the years of state terrorism in Uruguay. Meaningfully,
the museum was once the home of General Máximo Santos (1882-1886), an au-
thoritarian president.” The voting habits of Uruguayans also revealed ambivalence.
On 19 October 2009, Uruguay's Supreme Court declared the amnesty law for the
military unconstitutional in reference to a specific case. But a week later, in a national
election, voters again declined to overrule the amnesty laws via a constitutional
Aftermath 193
The Punta Carretas Shopping Mall in Montevideo, Uruguay, accompanied by a Sheraton
Hotel, a "McCafé," and, of course, the English word "shopping." The mall, which opened in
1994, was reconstructed out of the infamous Punta Carretas prison, where political
dissidents were tortured and imprisoned. Critics have suggested that Uruguayans tried to
bury the violent Cold War past with globalized consumerism. (Stephen G. Rabe)
amendment. In that same election, the leading vote getter for the presidency was
José Mujica of the leftist Broad Front coalition. Now aged and plump, Mujica, a
founder of the Tupamaros armed guerrilla movement, spent fourteen years in
military prison, often under subhuman conditions. Mujica won the runoff elec-
tion in November and took office, as president, on 1 March 2010. President Mujica
proved no radical in office, earning world renown for his unassuming ways,
casual attire, and frugal lifestyle. He earned the nickname of “the world’s poorest.
president.”
South America’s most influential nation, Brazil, had not, as of mid-2014, of-
ficially assessed the era of military dictatorship (1964-1985). The study Nunca
Mais, produced by the archdiocese of Sao Paulo, remains the most comprehen-
sive assessment of murder and torture in Brazil. The military amnesty law of 1979
has not been repealed or declared unconstitutional by Brazilian courts, although
in 2010 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica judged the
amnesty invalid. Brazilian authorities did not investigate deaths, disappearances,
or torture during the military dictatorship. Brazil has shown remarkable eco-
nomic growth in the twenty-first century, and Brazil has become a leading voice
in global economic affairs, especially under the leadership of the working-class
hero, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011), known popularly as “Lula.”
During Lul’s presidency, Brazilians seemed intent on focusing on their bright
194 AFTERMATH
future and not debating the dismal past of dictatorship. President Lula disap-
pointed Brazil's human rights community by not establishing a truth commission
to establish responsibility for military-era crimes. The able Brazilian leader was
aware of the past. His minister of culture was Gilberto Gil, the internationally
renowned recording artist who was forced into exile by the Brazilian military. The
president's chief of staff was Dilma Rousseff, who had been tortured during her
three years in prison in the 1970s. On 31 October 2010, Brazilian citizens elected
Dilma Rousseff to the presidency of Brazil. In 2012, President Rousseff (2011- )
established a truth commission to investigate human rights abuses perpetrated
by the military dictators. The commission is scheduled to report its findings
before the end of 2014.
APOLOGIES
Noteworthy apologies emanated from Latin America’s historical thinking. In
February 2009, the president of Guatemala, Alvaro Colom (2008-2012), apolo-
gized to Cuba on behalf of his country for having allowed the CIA to train Cuban
exiles in Guatemala for the invasion of the Bay of Pigs. In 2011, President Colom
apologized to the son of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán for the “great crime”
that was the CIA-sponsored overthrow of the constitutional presidency. In trib-
ute to the deposed leader, Colom renamed a main highway after President Arbenz.
In 2012, President Mauricio Funes of El Salvador acknowledged the government's
responsibility for the massacre of 936 civilians in the village of El Mozote. He
characterized the counterinsurgency operation by the Atlacatl Battalion "the big-
gest massacre of civilians in the contemporary history of Latin America." Presi-
dent Funes also apologized for the assassination of Archbishop Romero and
asked for forgiveness from the relatives of the estimated 12,000 people who disap-
peared during the 1980s civil conflict, which left 75,000 dead.*
In 2010, the aged Fidel Castro criticized himself for being too aggressive in
the Cuban missile crisis, when he urged the Soviet Union to attack the United
States with nuclear missiles. He also admitted that the Communist economic
model no longer worked. In the post-Cold War era, Cuba, bereft of the political
and economic support of the Soviet Union, had become an internationally insig-
nificant country, where nostalgia reigned. In 1997, on the thirtieth anniversary of
his death, the body of Ernesto Che Guevara was “discovered” buried under the
runway at the airfield in Valle Grande, Bolivia. Bolivian authorities delivered
Che's remains to Cubans, who transported the remains back to Cuba. After a
grand ceremony extolling Che's virtues, the Cubans returned the body to the
earth in Santa Clara, Troops commanded by Che had liberated the Cuban city in
late 1958. Che had passed on to become an international symbol of romantic
revolution. He was further associated with the optimistic times of the 1950s and
1960s. Forgotten was the pathetic, foolish mission that led to Che's death in Bolivia.
Yearnings for the symbolic Che were highlighted by the release of two feature
films about Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), with the Mexican heartthrob,
Aftermath 195
Gael García Bernal, and the four-hour epic, Che (2008), starring Benicio Del
Toro. Web sites marketed Che memorabilia. T-shirts adorned with Che's visage
were especially popular.”
Latin Americans were not the only people issuing apologies for the Cold War
in the Western Hemisphere. In 1990, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., the famous his-
torian and former aide to President John Kennedy, apologized in a public forum
to the Guyanese leader, Cheddi Jagan, for the U.S. covert intervention in British
Guiana (Guyana) in the 1960s. In Schlesinger’s words, his beloved president had
inflicted “a grave injustice" on Jagan. During the early 1960s, the United States
had sponsored strikes and riots to destabilize the popularly elected government
of Jagan. The United States feared that Jagan admired the Cuban Revolution. The
ensuing political violence in the British colony took on ugly, racial tones, with
Afro-Guyanese attacking Indo-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese retaliating, The
Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson administrations also demanded that United
Kingdom force Prime Minister Jagan from power before granting the colony
independence. In both 1964 and 1968, the CIA helped rig elections to ensure
Jagan’s defeat. The U.S. man in Georgetown, Prime Minister Forbes Burnham
(1964-1985), an Afro-Guyanese leader, was a racist demagogue who persecuted
the Indo-Guyanese majority, pilfered public funds, and reduced the country to
absolute misery with his bizarre economic schemes. In 1992, Jagan finally had
the free election that had been denied him for decades. But it took extreme pres-
sure from the State Department and especially the redoubtable Jimmy Carter,
who oversaw the election, to force Burnham's political party to accept Jagan's
victory. In one of the great ironies in the history of U.S. foreign relations, U.S.
citizens helped put Cheddi Jagan and his party in power thirty years after Secretary
of State Dean Rusk had declared that "it is not possible for us to put up with an
independent British Guiana under Jagan.” Prime Minister Jagan conducted
friendly relations with the United States, but his administration was short lived,
with Jagan dying of a heart attack in 1997 while seeking medical treatment at the
Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, DC. Guyana has preserved a demo-
cratic tradition but has been unable to escape its desperate poverty or surmount
the racial tensions and hostilities between people of Indian and African heritages
that were inflamed by the Cold War intervention.
President Bill Clinton apologized for another Cold War intervention. In
1999, during a visit to Guatemala, after the release of Memory of Silence, Clinton
observed that it was “imperative” that he address the report. In frank language,
Clinton said: “For the United States, it is important that I state clearly that sup-
port for military forces or intelligence units which engage in violent and wide-
spread repression of the kind described in the report was wrong, and the United
States must not repeat that mistake.” Secretary of State Colin Powell also suggested
that there were Cold War activities that did not bring credit to the United States.
In 2003, Secretary Powell addressed the U.S. role in the overthrow of Salvador
Allende, noting “it is not a part of American history that we are proud of.” The
Chilean government of President Ricardo Lagos responded that it was pleased
196 AFTERMATH
that the United States "now considers it was an error" to have supported the mili-
tary golpe that overthrew President Allende.”
Although it did not issue an apology, the George H. W. Bush administration
addressed another violation of international law perpetrated by the United States
in its war in Latin America. In 1991, the administration struck an agreement
with the new government of Violeta Chamorro to withdraw Nicaragua's suit
against the United States in the International Court of Justice. The original 1984
finding of $370 million in damages for violating Nicaragua's sovereignty had bal-
looned to $17 billion with accrued interest and associated damage claims. On
12 September 1991, President Chamorro withdrew the suit. Two weeks later, the
United States forgave $260 million in loans to Nicaragua. The settlement implied
that the United States recognized that the 1984 judgment had legal meaning.
THE UNITED STATES AND COLD WAR HISTORY
Sporadic expressions of regret about the U.S. role in Latin America in the Cold
War did not inspire demands for investigations and accountability. In the realm
of public discourse, joy and satisfaction over the demise of the Soviet Union and
the liberation of Eastern Europe crowded out thoughts about the dear prices that
Latin Americans paid during the Cold War. Happy reenactments of the breach-
ing of the Berlin Wall, as took place on 9 November 2009, the twentieth anniver-
sary, sent the message that the West had acted nobly and bravely in confronting
the Soviet Union and communism. Photographs of Chancellor Angela Merkel of
Germany, Lech Walesa of Poland, and Mikhail Gorbachev of the former Soviet
Union together in an undivided Berlin in a united Germany delivered the mes-
sage that the Cold War was a “good war.” Cold War regrets seemed to be saved for
USS. veterans of the Vietnam War for not having received honor in their time and
for their ongoing struggles to come to terms with their wartime memories of
death and destruction.
Only the continuing presence of Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon's sidekick,
caused some to think about U.S. actions in Latin America. Kissinger enjoyed
a position as a sage and thoughtful commentator on international affairs, who
was consulted by influential journalists and asked to appear on high-toned
public affairs television programs. But the iconoclastic public intellectual, the
late Christopher Hitchens, called for Kissinger to face war crimes trials for his
decisions and policies, including his involvement in the assassination of General
René Schneider of Chile." Hitchens had a unique, multinational perspective. He
was born in the United Kingdom and retained his British citizenship, but he lived
in the United States and became a U.S. citizen, Kissinger has also faced calls from
international jurists in Argentina and Chile to testify about his involvement with
Operation Condor and the overthrow of Salvador Allende. Kissinger, through his
lawyers, issued the vague response that he wished to “contribute what he can
from his memory of those distant events.” In his memoirs, Kissinger went to
great lengths to absolve himself of responsibility for horrors in South America,
‘Aftermath 197
Kissinger has also faced some trouble abroad. In 2001 a French judge sent police
officers to Kissinger's hotel in Paris to serve him with a request to answer ques-
tions about U.S. involvement in the Chilean golpe. French citizens had disap-
peared during the Pinochet era. Kissinger refused to respond to the subpoena,
referred the matter to the Department of State, and flew on to Italy."
One U.S. casualty of the Cold War in Latin America was the infamous School
of Americas. By 2000, the school had trained more than sixty thousand members
of the Latin American military. An analysis of the Truth Commission for El
Salvador report demonstrated that 75 percent of the military officers cited for
involvement in major massacres in El Salvador had trained at the School of
Americas, Other criminals who had studied at the school included Leopoldo
Galtieri of Argentina and Efrain Rios Montt of Guatemala. Roman Catholic
peace activists, who opposed U.S. policies in Central America in the 1980s, had
consistently called for the closing of the facility. In the 1990s, Representative
Joseph Kennedy (D-MA), the son of the former attorney general and the nephew
of President Kennedy, took up their cause, Representative Kennedy pressured the
US. military to declassify training manuals used at the school. The manuals
referred to tactics of false imprisonment, abuse of prisoners, torture, and the
“neutralization” or assassination of suspects. The Department of Defense discon-
tinued the use of the manuals in 1996, Kennedy and his successors annually
attempted to cut off funds for the school, finally succeeding in 1999. The Clinton
administration closed the School of the Americas in 2000, but reopened it in
January 2001 as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. The
new school, located at Ft. Benning in Georgia, claimed that it emphasized de-
mocracy and human rights to its military enrollees from Latin America.”
‘The United States has given haphazard assistance to the hunt for murderers
and torturers who have fled their countries. In 2007, the human rights commu-
nity hailed the arrest in the Washington, DC, area and subsequent extradition to
Argentina of Ernesto Guillermo Barreiro. Major Barreiro was the chief interro-
gator at the La Perla detention center in Córdoba. He fled to the United States in
2004, when President Kirchner revived prosecutions of war criminals. U.S. au-
thorities arrested the Argentine fugitive on immigration charges. The U.S. Justice
Department during the Barack Obama administration (2009- ) has been some-
what more forthcoming on human rights issues, extraditing alleged criminals to
El Salvador and Guatemala. In August 2013, a court in Boston sentenced Colonel
Inocente Orlando Montano to twenty-one months in prison for immigration
violations. Colonel Montano, who had hidden in the United States for ten years,
was named in the UN Truth Commission Report as a participant in the plot that
killed six Jesuit priests at the University of Central America in San Salvador in
1989. Because five of the priests were Spanish citizens, Spain has requested the.
extradition of Montano. In April 2014, a judge in Miami ordered the deportation
of General José Guillermo García to El Salvador. Judge Michael C. Horn ruled
that he found “clear and convincing evidence” that General Garcia, who served
as El Salvador's defense minister (1979-1983), played a role in numerous violent
198 AFTERMATH
incidents, including the murder of three U.S. nuns and a lay worker in 1980.
García, who has lived in the United States since 1990, immediately appealed his
deportation.”
The U.S. legal system failed, however, to convict Luis Posada Carriles, a
Cuban exile and former CIA asset who is wanted in Cuba and Venezuela on
charges of masterminding the destruction of a Cuban airliner in flight in 1976,
killing more than seventy people. Twenty-four members of Cuba's national
fencing team, as well as a Guyanese child, died in the explosion. Posada, who
trained in explosives and sabotage at the School of the Americas in the 1960s, has
denied involvement in the destruction of Cubana Airlines Flight 455, but he has
tacitly admitted that he organized terrorist attacks on tourist facilities in Cuba in
1997 that killed and injured European tourists. Beyond fomenting violence
against Cuba, Posada worked with the CIA in the 1980s assisting the contras
of Nicaragua. Two men who confessed to planting explosives on Cubana Flight
455 have testified that they worked for Posada. Documentary evidence has also
tied Posada to terrorism. Posada has lived freely in Miami since 2007, where he
has support among anti-Castro exiles. In 2007, a federal judge in El Paso, Texas,
dismissed immigration charges against Posada for illegally entering the United
States in 2005. In April 2009, the Justice Department filed eleven new charges
against Posada in federal court in El Paso, alleging he lied about the 1997 bomb-
ings and had committed immigration fraud. In 2011, a jury found the elderly
Posada not guilty ofall charges, although jurors heard tape recordings of Posada
discussing his role in the 1997 bombings in Cuba.”
Luis Posada's ability to preserve his impunity pointed to the continuing Cold
War between the United States and Cuba. The U.S. policy of hostility toward
Castro's Cuba had barely changed between 1989 and 2014, although Fidel Castro
no longer dominated Cuba. In mid-2006, Castro had become seriously ill and
transferred leadership to his brother, Raúl, in 2008. Under President Raúl Castro,
‘Cuba has expanded foreign trade, promoted tourism, and welcomed foreign in-
vestment. Cuba's economic ties with Canada, for example, have grown steadily,
and eight hundred thousand Canadian tourists visit Cuba annually. The new
government has also released some political prisoners, although Cuba remains a
‘one-party Communist state that harasses political dissidents. The Obama ad-
ministration's only meaningful reaction to change in Cuba has been to relax
travel restrictions to Cuba for U.S. citizens. Public opinion polls demonstrated
that U.S. citizens believed the nonrecognition policy and the trade embargo were
anachronistic, and U.S. exporters, especially farmers, were eager to sell their
goods in Cuba. A poll released in February 2014 by the Atlantic Council, a prom-
inent Washington research institution, demonstrated that 56 percent of U.S.
citizens favored a restoration of diplomatic ties and the end to the trade embargo.
Support for change was especially strong among people of Latin American
ancestry, Latinos, who comprised 17 percent of the U.S. population."
U.S. political leaders constantly worried, however, about the reaction of
Cuban Americans to a détente with Cuba. Political conservatives also had fond
Aftermath 199
memories of the Cold War and did not mind seeing it continue. In 1996, the U.S.
Congress tightened the trade embargo against Cuba with the Helms-Burton Act.
In 1999-2000, U.S. citizens engaged in a hysterical debate over whether little
Elian González should be returned tö his father and communism in Cuba. The
child had been found clinging to an inner tube off the coast of Ft. Lauderdale,
Florida. Elián's mother had tried to escape Cuba, but she and ten others drowned
when their boat capsized, The Clinton administration followed international and
domestic law and returned the boy to his father. The intensity of the issue among
Cuban Americans was such, however, that the Justice Department had to send
armed officers to retrieve the boy. An uncle, who had moved to the United States,
had become a hero among Cuban Americans when he refused to obey a court order
and relinquish Elian. The little boy was left terrified by the confrontation.
‘The international community judged U.S. policy toward Cuba to be indefen-
sible. An annual ritual at the United Nations was for the General Assembly to
condemn the United States for its trade embargo against Cuba. The vote has been
taken for twenty-two consecutive years. The vote on the nonbinding resolution in
October 2013 had a typical result, with 188 nations in support, 2 opposed, and
3 South Pacific islands abstaining. The United States could usually count on only
Israel's support on this issue. In refusing to normalize relations with Cuba, the
United States can fall back on a new feature of the OAS. In 1992, the OAS un-
equivocally committed to democracy, permitting members by a two-thirds vote
to suspend from the OAS any regime that overthrew a democratic government.
OAS members, however, had diplomatic and economic relations with Cuba and
joined in the UN vote condemning the United States.
Whereas the Cold War persisted with Cuba, the United States abandoned its
Cold War concerns about Central America. El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and
Nicaragua, the last theaters of the Cold War, were devastated countries. As mea-
sured on the 2013 UN Human Development Index of 187 countries, El Salvador
ranked 107th, Honduras ranked 120th, Nicaragua ranked 129th, and Guatemala
ranked 133rd. The three counties had low per capita incomes and miserable records
on the provision of health care and education to their people. Once the Cold War
was over, the United States stopped focusing on the region. U.S. economic aid to
Central America fell from $1.2 billion in 1985 to $167 million in 1996. The three
countries depend on money sent home, remesas, from Central Americans who had
migrated to the United States. An estimated 25 percent of El Salvador's population
lived in the United States in 2014, and remesas accounted for 18 percent of the
country's gross domestic product.” The U.S. prescription for Central Americas
economic health became trade, not aid. The United States has opened the U.S.
market through the Central American Free ‘Trade Agreement (CAFTA) (2005). The
Dominican Republic, another impoverished country in which the United States
waged Cold War, joined CAFTA.
It became apparent in 2014 that expanded trade opportunities for Central
Americans had not resolved the region’s crushing problems. Tens of thousands of
mothers and children from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras turned
200 AFTERMATH
themselves in to U.S. immigration authorities at the Texas-Mexico border. They
asked for asylum. Some of the children were as young as eight years of age and
had made the arduous trek from Central America through Mexico on their own.
US. political pundits emphasized that the Central American children fled pov-
erty and violence fueled by gangs and narcotraffickers. Indeed, gangs like MS-13
(Mara Salvatrucha) and M-18 (18th Street) terrorized Salvadorans and Guatemalans.
Many gang leaders had learned their nefarious trade in the United States. Young
men migrated to the United States during the Cold War, associated with gangs in
US. cities like Los Angeles, developed criminal records, and were subsequently
deported back to their home countries. But such Central American gangs flour-
ished in a culture of violence that the United States had helped create during the
Cold War by bolstering military dictatorships and their associated death squads.
Discourse among politicians and pundits rarely, however, placed the migration
crisis within a historical context.
Central America produced another of the many ironies of Cold War history.
Daniel Ortega of the Sandinistas was elected president of Nicaragua in late 2006
and reelected in 2011. Under President Ortega, Nicaragua has been relatively
peaceful and safe compared to its neighbors. The nation’s lovely colonial city of
The three women presidents of the southern cone—Cristina Kirchner of Argentina,
Michelle Bachelet of Chile, and Dilma Rousseff of Brazil—attend President Bachelet’s
second inauguration in Santiago in March 2014. The three democratically elected
presidents present afar different image to the world than the military dictators who
dominated South America in the 1970s and 1980s. (6 Eliseo Fernandez/Reuters/Corbis)
Aftermath 201
Granada has become a favorite tourist destination for U.S. citizens. Nicaraguan
children do not show up at U.S. borders, albeit impoverished Nicaraguans migrate
to Costa Rica for work. In 2009 the voters of El Salvador elected Mauricio Funes
(2009-2014) of the FMLN to the presidency. The victory ended the rightist ARENA's
two-decade-long domination of El Salvador's political life. Funes, a television
journalist, had not fought with the FMLN in El Salvador's civil war. His brother,
however, had been killed by the military. In 2014, in a close election, voters selected
‘Salvador Sanchez Cerén as president. Sanchez Cerén had fought with the FMLN,
adopting the pseudonym Commander Leonel Gonzalez. In 2014, there were five
Latin American presidents—Michele Bachelet, José Mujica, Daniel Ortega, Dilma
Rousseff, and Salvador Sánchez Cerén—who had belonged to groups and move-
ments that the United States tried to destroy during the Cold War. US. relations
with Bachelet's Chile and Mujica’s Uruguay were especially strong.
One person who failed to notice that the United States no longer cared about
the Cold War in Central America was General Manuel Antonio Noriega (1983-1989),
the despot of Panama. A month after the toppling of the Berlin Wall, President
George H. W. Bush ordered U.S. troops into Panama to overthrow Noriega, seize
him, and put him on trial in the United States. He was subsequently convicted in
April 1992 of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering and was in-
carcerated in a U.S. federal penitentiary until 2010. The United States thereafter
extradited Noriega to France, where he received, in July 2010, a seven-year
sentence for laundering drug money. Noriega, who trained at the School of the
Americas, had been on the CIA payroll for two decades. He provided intelligence
and aided the U.S. war against the Sandinistas. Under the spell of anticommu-
nism, U.S. officials had overlooked the Panamanian’s unlovely features—his
ordering the murder of political opponents, his involvement in the international
narcotics trade, and his perverted fondness for very young girls. Compared to the
military murderers who had ruled Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay and the
military butchers of El Salvador and Guatemala, General Noriega was, however, a
minor tyrant. Human rights groups held Panamanian security forces responsible
for twenty-two summary executions under Noriega’s command between 1983
and 1988.* But the Cold War was over. The military intervention into Panama in
December 1989 smacked of a return to the era of the Roosevelt Corollary. The
United States was exercising “international police power” in the region. The
United States vetoed a UN Security Council resolution deploring the invasion,
although the General Assembly condemned the action. The United States was on
the losing side of a 20-1 condemnation at the OAS.
‘The sharp reduction in economic aid to Central America and the military
invasion of Panama further indicated that there would not be much official
thinking or regret about the Cold War in Latin America. In the public realm,
debates over the issue of access to the documentary record have been the U.S.
equivalent of a truth commission. Scholars have made progress on the opening
the official record. In 2003, the Historical Office of the State Department released
a volume in its Foreign Relations of the United States series on the U.S. intervention
202 AFTERMATH
in Guatemala. This represented a redress of an appalling incident in the history
of an esteemed series. In 1983, the Historical Office published a volume on Latin
‘America, 1952-1954, which included a section on U.S. policy toward Guatemala.
‘The documents did not demonstrate, however, that the United States had intervened
in Guatemala. The Reagan administration had sharply restricted what the public
could read about the nation's foreign policy past." Scholars responded with both
critical commentaries and legislative lobbying. ‘The National Security Archive
based at George Washington University became a relentless advocate for declas-
sifying documents on the Cold War in Latin America." The Clinton administra-
tion proved especially amenable to opening the record, authorizing major
declassifications of records on U.S. policies toward El Salvador, Guatemala, and
Honduras. In 1999, the administration, in response to the mounting international
furor over General Pinochet, produced the Chile Declassification Project. The
project yielded more than twenty thousand documents on U.S. policies toward
Chile from 1973 to 1990. The CIA has been recalcitrant in releasing documents.
But in 2007, it disclosed the “Family Jewels,” documents on top-secret operations,
including the CLA’s collaboration with the Mafia in plots to kill Castro. In 2009,
the Historical Office released in electronic form a volume on U.S. relations with
Latin America during the first administration of Richard Nixon. The electronic
volume generated international publicity because it demonstrated that President
Nixon had asked Brazil's military government to enlist in the war against Salvador
Allende. Isabel Allende called on Brazil to open archives that might shed light on
any role it played in the overthrow of her father.
U.S. and Latin American citizens have not, however, gained complete access
to the documentary record. The new electronic volume on Latin America did not
offer documents on the Nixon administration's attitude toward military govern-
ments in Bolivia and Uruguay. In 2011, Republicans in the House of Represen-
tatives blocked a move by Democrats to release U.S. intelligence files on the
Argentine military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983. Argentine human rights
activists argued that the secret documents might help them identify people stolen
as babies by the military junta. In mid-2014, however, Vice President Joseph
Biden personally delivered to President Rousseff forty-three State Department
documents that reported on torture techniques used by Brazilian security forces
from 1967 to 1977. Rousseff turned the documents over to the Brazilian Truth
Commission.**
FINAL THOUGHTS
Explanations for the astonishing collapse of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe
and the demise of the Soviet Union and the international Communist movement
were largely Eurocentric. Scholars agreed that the power of the West brought
down the Soviet Union, They differed on whether to emphasize “hard” or “soft”
power. One group focused on the military pressure that the United States brought
Aftermath 203
to bear on the Soviets. Harry Truman and his advisors adopted the strategy of a
"military power second to none" in NSC 68/2 and subsequent presidents, like
John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, intensified the pressure with massive expan-
sions of U.S. nuclear and conventional forces. The Soviets ended up bankrupting
their economy and society trying to match U.S. military power and lost their grip
on their empire. Other analysts argued that the West undermined the Soviet system
through its technology, its culture, and its ideas. Exchanges between the West and
the East intensified after the Helsinki Accords of 1975. Leaders like Willy Brandt,
the mayor of West Berlin, argued that tensions would be defused if Western citizens
interacted on a daily basis with their counterparts in Communist countries. Russians
and Eastern Europeans came to realize that their societies and lives were backward
and boring. Mikhail Gorbachev had little choice but to make a useless effort to
reform a tired, worn-out system that had no possibility of competing with the
vibrant West. The Soviet system imploded both at home and abroad.
‘The competing explanations for the events of 1989 made no mention of the
Cold War in Latin America. Intervening in Guatemala, encouraging the Brazilian
military to seize power, rigging elections in British Guiana and the Dominican
Republic, and teaching the latest methods of torture to the military and police of
Latin America did not weaken the Soviet Union and lead to the liberation of Eastern
Europeans. The Cuban missile crisis represented the one critical event in U.S.~
Soviet relations during the region’s Cold War. The confrontation would not have
taken place, however, had the United States not waged war against Castro's Cuba
in the preceding three years. A counterfactual argument can presumably be made
that if the United States had not allied itself with reactionary groups, then Latin
America would have turned leftward and the power and status of the Soviet Union.
would have been enhanced. The Cold War would have endured. The Soviet Union
would still be with us. Eastern Europeans would still be slaves. This argument
assumes that the power of the Soviet Union was infinite and that it could direct
the course of history. Such reasoning also falsely equates revolutionary nationalism,
Marxism, socialism, and communism with the Soviet Union, Implicit in such rea-
soning is also the patronizing, condescending assumption that left-leaning Latin
Americans in power would be capable of making only once choice—an alliance
with the Soviet Union, Latin Americans have always béen motivated by their
unique national identities, their culture, their religion, and their sense of their
region's place in history.
‘The United States waged Cold War in Latin America because it judged that
communism in the region, however loosely and broadly defined, threatened U.S.
national security, impeded the U.S. ability to act elsewhere, and would incite a
nasty domestic political debate at home. The U.S. war in Latin America had sym-
bolic elements. The United States also practiced sphere-of-influence politics in
the international arena, Latin America was in the backyard of the United States.
‘The United States had the power to act with impunity. Since the late nineteenth
century, inter-American relations have fulfilled the well-known reflection of
204 AFTERMATH
Thucydides on international relations—large nations do what they wish, whereas
small nations accept what they must.
Realpolitik alone cannot explain, much less justify, what happened in Latin
America during the Cold War. The horrors that beset big countries like Argentina
and little ones like El Salvador have left scholars of international affairs aghast.
‘The United States undermined constitutional systems, overthrew popularly
elected governments, rigged elections, and supplied, trained, coddled, and ex-
cused barbarians who tortured, kidnapped, murdered, and disappeared Latin
Americans. The United States allied with groups and individuals who stole
babies. U.S. officials rationalized this criminal behavior because they had a pro-
found contempt for Latin American thought, society, and culture. Disdain for
the people and the region ran through George Kennan right through to Jeane
Kirkpatrick and Ronald Reagan. President Jimmy Carter and a few thoughtful
diplomatic officials, such as F. Allan “Tex” Harris and Viron Vaky of the State
Department, rose above the ethnocentrism and racism. But officers in the State
The white head scarf of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo has become a symbol of the
movement for international human rights. (Stephen G. Rabe)
Aftermath 205
Department, the CIA, and the U.S. military adopted the prejudices of their supe-
riors in the White House and the national security bureaucracy.
To be sure, Latin American reactionaries, not U.S. officials, usually inflicted
the hurt and pain on union organizers, student leaders, advocates for the dis-
abled, and campesinos. But scholars can exhaust themselves attempting to parse
out the domestic and foreign dimensions of the violence and terror." The report
Guatemala: Memory of Silence reasoned cogently when it found that the anti-
‘Communist philosophies and policies of the United States “fell on fertile ground
in Guatemala” and throughout Latin America. Through its Cold War words and
actions, the United States sent clear signals to Latin American authorities of what
they had to do to defeat communism and protect the United States. Armed
groups in Latin America received those signals and resorted to political terror to
preserve and protect their own power and the elite socioeconomic groups that
they served. Put another way, Latin American conservatives developed their own
anti-Communist and national security issues. These doctrines coincided with
the perspectives of the powerful officials who resided in Washington.“
Only small numbers of U.S. citizens are aware of the dimensions of the Cold
War that the United States waged in Latin America. The charitable organization
Physicians for Human Rights, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has
worked with Pro Búsqueda de Niñas y Niños Desaparecidos, the association that
reunited Suzanne Marie Berghaus with her birth parents in El Salvador. The phy-
sicians arranged DNA testing to help identify children who were adopted in the
United States but had relatives living in El Salvador. The DNA testing has helped
confirm the identities of more than three hundred children. The good doctors
and Estela de Carlotto, the intrepid Argentine grandmother who found Guido,
her murdered daughter's son, have been doing their part in fulfilling the insight
of Milan Kundera, the novelist who fled Communist Czechoslovakia, that "the
struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."
Notes
ABBREVIATIONS
In addition to abbreviations used in the text, the following abbreviations appear
in the endnotes.
6.
DSB Department of State Bull
FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States
JFK. John F. Kennedy
LBJ Lyndon Baines Johnson
PPP Public Papers of the President
INTRODUCTION
Melvyn P. Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and
the Cold War (New York: Hill & Wang, 2007).
Marc Lacey, “A Daughter Stolen in Wartime Returns to El Salvador,” New York
Times, 5 April 2007.
Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
Aide to Dulles, quoted in Stephen G. Rabe, The Road to OPEC: United States Rela-
tions with Venezuela, 1919-1976 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982), 126.
Vaky to Assistant Secretary of State Covey T. Oliver, "Guatemala and Counter-terror,”
29 March 1968, FRUS, 1964-1968 31: South and Central America; Mexico (Washington,
DC: Government Printing Office, 2004), 237-41; Ambassador Mein to Oliver,
27 February 1969, ibid, 227-34,
Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2004), 94-101.
Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser, eds., In from the Cold: Latin America's New
Encounter with the Cold War (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); Max Paul
Friedman, "Retiring the Puppets, Bringing Latin America Back In: Recent Scholarship
207
208 NOTES
on United States-Latin American Relations,” Diplomatic History 27 (November 2003):
621-36.
. Reagan administration official, quoted in Thomas Carothers, In the Name of Democ-
racy: U.S. Policy toward Latin America in the Reagan Years (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1991), 59. For defenses of the “two demons” thesis, see Jorge Casta-
Beda, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the Cold War (New York:
Knopf, 1993), 5, 51-112; David Stoll, Between Two Armies in the Ixil Towns of Guate-
mala (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Hal Brands, Latin America's
Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 126-28.
9. Jeffrey L. Gould, “Solidarity under Siege: The Latin American Left, 1968,” American
Historical Review 114 (April 2009): 348-75; Carlota McCallister, “A Headlong Rush
into the Future: Violence and Revolution in a Guatemalan Indigenous Village,” in
A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during Latin
America’s Long Cold War, Greg Grandin and Gilbert M. Joseph, eds. (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2010), 276-308; J. Patrice McSherry, Predatory States: Oper-
ation Condor and Covert War in Latin America (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield,
2005), 27-28; Tina Rosenberg, Children of Cain: Violence and the Violent in Latin
America (New York: William Morrow, 1991), 17-19, 112-17; Videla quoted in Elias E.
Lopez, “Jorge Rafael Videla, Jailed Argentine Military Leader, Dies at 87,” New York
Times, 18 May 2013, D8.
10. Deputy Chief of Mission in Chile, Joseph John Jova, to Assistant Secretary of State
Thomas C. Mann, 5 May 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968 31: South and Central America;
Mexico: 568, fn 3.
11. Mark Danner, The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War (New York:
Vintage Books, 1993).
12. 4 December 1982, PPP: Ronald Reagan, 1982 II: 1562-66.
13. Alan McPherson, Intimate Ties, Bitter Struggles: The United States and Latin America
since 1945 (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006).
14. Michael Grow, U.S. Presidents and Latin American Interventions: Pursuing Regime
Change in the Cold War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008), xiii.
CHAPTER 1
1. Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2007), 396-97.
2. James William Park, Latin American Underdevelopment: A History of Perspectives in
the United States (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), 7-62.
3. Letter of Adams, 28 April 1823, in Robert H. Holden and Eric Zolov, eds., Latin
America and the United States: A Documentary History (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2000), 7-11.
4. The Sentinel: Newsletter of SunAmerica Securities, 28 February 1994, 1-2.
5. Rabe, Road to OPEC, 7-8.
6. Louis A. Pérez Jr., The War of 1898: The United States and Cuba in History and Histo-
riography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 1-22, 80.
7. Wood quoted in Lars Schoultz, Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy
toward Latin America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 151.
3. David F. Healy, Drive to Hegemony: The United States in the Caribbean, 1898-1917
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), 106-09.
VARD UNIVERSIT’ HARVARD UNIVERSIT)
10.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
Notes 209
Tony Smith, The Pattern of Imperialism: The United States, Great Britain, and the
Late-Industrializing World since 1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press,
19181), 6-7; Norman Etherington, Theories of Imperialism: War, Conquest, and Capi-
tal (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1984), 278-80.
Walter LaFeber, “The Evolution of the Monroe Doctrine from Monroe to Reagan,”
in Redefining the Past: Essays in Diplomatic History in Honor of William Appleman
Williams, ed. Lloyd C. Gardner (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1986),
139-40.
|. Walter LaFeber, The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective, updated ed.
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 23-70.
. Root quoted in Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central
America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 37.
Stimson quoted in Hans Schmidt, The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 231.
. Rabe, Road to OPEC, 9-13.
Lester D. Langley, The Banana Wars: An Inner History of American Empire, 1900-1934
(Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1983), 34-42.
Louis A. Pérez Jr., “Intervention, Hegemony, and Dependency: The United States in
the Circum-Caribbean, 1898-1980,” Pacific Historical Review 51 (May 1982): 181.
Root, quoted in LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, 36.
For statistics see Rabe, Road to OPEC, 193-95.
Wilson speech, 27 October 1913, in Holden and Zolov, Latin America and the United
States, 110-12.
- Schmidt, United States Occupation of Haiti, 82-206; Alan McPherson, The Invaded:
How Latin Americans and Their Allies Fought and Ended U.S. Occupations (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 59-67, 113-56.
USS. officials quoted in Langley, Banana Wars, 123-37. For U.S. paternalism and
racism in Haiti, see Mary A. Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Cul-
ture of Imperialism, 1915-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2001), 124-81.
Bruce J. Calder, The Impact of Intervention: The Dominican Republic during the US.
Occupation of 1916-1924 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984), 49-62; Eric Paul
Rooda, The Dictator Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy and the Trujillo Regime in
the Dominican Republic, 1930-1945 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998),
21-22,
Rabe, Road to OPEC, 22-42.
Robert N. Seidel, “American Reformers Abroad: The Kemmerer Missions in South
America, 1923-1931,” and Barry Eichengreen, “House Calls of the Money Doctor:
‘The Kemmerer Missions to Latin America, 1917-1931,” both in Money Doctors, For-
eign Debts, and Economic Reforms in Latin America from the 1890s to the Present, ed.
Paul W. Drake (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1994), 86-132.
Louis A. Pérez Jr. Cuba under the Platt Amendment, 1902-1934 (Pittsburgh: Univer-
sity of Pittsburgh Press, 1986), 301-32; Raymond H. Pulley, “The United States and
the Trujillo Dictatorship, 1933-1940: The High Price of Caribbean Stability,” Carib-
bean Studies 5 (October 1965): 22-31.
Michael J. Francis, The Limits of Hegemony: United States Relations with Argentina
and Chile during World War II (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
1977), 102-44.
UNIVERS RVARD UNIV
210 NOTES
27. Max Paul Friedman, Nazis and Good Neighbors: The United States Campaign against
the Germans of Latin America in World War II (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2003), 3-10.
28. Leslie Bethell and Ian Roxborough, “Introduction,” in Latin American between the
Second World War and the Cold War, 1944-1948, ed. Leslie Bethell and lan Roxborough
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1-11.
29. Harold Molineu, U.S, Policy toward Latin America (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1986), 13-15.
30. Santos quoted in Bradley Lynn Coleman, Colombia and the United States: The Making
of an Inter-American Alliance (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2008), 11.
31. Bryce Wood, The Dismantling of the Good Neighbor Policy (Austin: University of
‘Texas Press, 1985), ix-xiv.
CHAPTER 2
1. George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1925-1950 (New York: Bantam Books, 1967), 502-10.
2. Memorandum by the Counselor of the Department of State (George Kennan) to the
Secretary of State, 29 March 1950, FRUS, 1950 2: United Nations; The Western He
sphere (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1976): 598-624.
- Roger R. Trask, "George F. Kennan's Report on Latin America (1950); Diplomatic
History 2 (Summer 1978): 307-12.
4. Jane Mayer, “The Big Idea: A Doctrine Passes,” The New Yorker, 14 and 21 October
2002, 70; Tim Weiner and Barbara Crossette, "George Kennan Dies at 101: Leading
Strategist of Cold War,” New York Times, 18 March 2005.
5. LaFeber, "Evolution of the Monroe Doctrine,” 139-40; Gaddis Smith, The Last Years
of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945-1993 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1994), 68-72.
6. Leslie Bethell and Ian Roxborough, “The Impact of the Cold War on Latin America,”
in Origins of the Cold War: An International History, 2nd ed., ed. Melvyn P. Leffler
and David S. Painter (New York: Routledge, 2005), 299-303.
7. Thomas M. Leonard, "Central America: On the Periphery,” in Latin America during
World War II, ed. Thomas M. Leonard and John F. Bratzel (Lanham, MD: Rowman
& Littlefield, 2007), 36-53.
3. Joseph Smith, "Brazil: Benefits of Cooperation,” in Leonard and Bratzel, Latin America
during World War II, 154-59.
9. Coleman, Colombia and the United States, 38.
10. Bethell and Roxborough, “Impact of the Cold War,” 299-316.
11. Smith, Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 51-52.
12. Truman, quoted in ibid, 67; Robert L. Beisner, Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War
(New York: Oxford, 2006), 568.
13. Stephen G. Rabe, “The Elusive Conference: United States Economic Relations with
Latin America, 1945-1952,” Diplomatic History 2 (Summer 1978): 279-94.
14. Stephen G. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommu-
nism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 15-17.
15. Stanley Hilton, “The United States, Brazil, and the Cold War: End of the Special
Relationship,” Journal of American History 68 (December 1981): 604.
16. Wood, Dismantling of the Good Neighbor Policy, 136; Roger R. Trask, “The Impact of the
Cold War on United States-Latin American Relations, 1945-1949," Diplomatic History
1 (Summer 1977): 271-84; Bethell and Roxborough, “Impact of the Cold War,” 307-15.
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17
29.
30.
Notes 211
Greg Grandin, "Off the Beach: The United States, Latin America, and the Cold War,"
in A Companion to Post-1945 America, ed. Jean-Christophe Agnew and Roy Rosenzweig
(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), 431-34.
Thomas E. Skidmore, “Studying the History of Latin America: A Case of Hemi-
spheric Convergence,” Latin American Research Review 33, No. 1 (1998): 113.
Rabe, Road to OPEC, 94-116.
NSC 16, in paper prepared by Policy Planning Staff (PPS-26), 22 March 1948, FRUS,
1948 9: The Western Hemisphere (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office,
1972): 196; NSC 7, quoted in Trask, "Impact of the Cold War,” 280.
. Paper prepared by Policy Planning Staff (PPS-26), 22 March 1948, FRUS, 1948 9:
194-201.
Bethell and Roxborough, “Impact of the Cold War,” 304-05; Skidmore, "Studying
the History of Latin America,” 119.
Beisner, Dean Acheson, 569-72; memorandum by Miller to Halle, 7 November 1950,
FRUS 19502:625-28;" Y" (Louis Halle), “On a Certain Impatience with Latin America,”
Foreign Affairs 28 (July 1950): 565-79.
Miller quoted in Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America, 20-21.
Miller, "Non-Intervention and Collective Responsibility in the Americas,” DSB 22
(15 May 1950): 768-70.
Stephen G. Rabe, "The Johnson Doctrine Presidential Studies Quarterly 36 (March
2006): 48-58. ]
Stephen G. Rabe, "Inter-American Military Cooperation, 1944-1951," World Affairs
137 (Fall 1974): 132-49.
j. Report by National Security Council to President, NSC 56/2, 18 May 1950, FRUS,
1950 1: National Security Affairs; Foreign Economic Policy (Washington, DC: Gov-
‘ernment Printing Office, 1977): 628-37.
Brazilian foreign minister quoted in Hilton, "United States, Brazil, and the Cold
War,” 609.
Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America, 6.
CHAPTER 3
Grandin, Last Colonial Massacre, 32.
Grow, US. Presidents and Latin American Interventions, 2.
Jason M. Colby, The Business of Empire: United Fruit, Race, and U.S. Expansion in
Central America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), 79-145.
Memorandum from King to Frank Wisner of the CIA, 11 January 1952, FRUS,
1952-1954, Guatemala (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2003), 2-4;
CIA to CIA Station, 26 January 1952, ibid, 6.
Patterson, quoted in Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign
Policy of Intervention (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982), 102.
Nick Cullather, Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in
Guatemala, 1952-1954 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 22-26.
Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America, 44-46.
Memorandum from Western Hemisphere Division of CIA to Wisner, 9 July 1952,
FRUS, 1952-1954, Guatemala, 20-22.
‘Memorandum from Western Hemisphere Division of CIA to Richard Helms of the
CIA, with attachment, 17 March 1952, ibid, 13-16.
HARVARD UNIV
212 NOTES
10. Telegram from CIA Station to CIA, 12 September 1952, ibid, 26-27; memorandum
on Trujillo from Jacob R. Seekford, CIA, to King, 18 September 1952, ibid, 27.
11. Beisner, Dean Acheson, 576-84.
12. Memorandum of CIA meeting with Miller and Mann, 8 October 1952, FRUS,
1952-1954, Guatemala, 31.
13. Miller quoted in CIA memorandum for record, 8 October 1952, ibid, 33-35.
M4. CIA report, 8 October 1952, ibid, 29-307
15. Beisner, Dean Acheson, 584-86. ]
16. CIA memorandum, Seekford to King, 28 October 1952, FRUS, 1952-1954, Guatemala,
46-47; CIA report, 1 December 1952, ibid, 50-55; Cullather, Secret History, 27-33.
17. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America, 31-32.
18. Ibid, 32-33.
19. Memorandum for record by Dulles, 8 March 1953, FRUS, 1952-1954, Guatemala,
79-80.
20. Halle to Robert Bowie, Director of Policy Planning Staff, 28 May 1954; FRUS, 1952-
1954 4: The American Republics (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office,
1983): 1139-49; draft policy paper prepared in Bureau of Inter-American Affairs,
19 August 1953, ibid, 1083.
21. Memorandum for record by Dulles, 8 March 1953, FRUS, 1952-1954, Guatemala,
79-80; CIA memorandum for record on briefing of Ambassador Peurifoy, 1 Septem-
ber 1953, ibid, 93-94, .
22. Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American
Coup in Guatemala (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1983), 106-07, 203.
23. State Department intelligence report, 5 March 1953, FRUS, 1952-1954, Guatemala,
70-78; Dulles quoted in Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America, 58.
24. State Department intelligence report, 1 January 1953, FRUS, 1952-1954, Guatemala,
56-66; paper prepared in PBSUCCESS headquarters on “Communism -in Central
America,” 21 April 1954, ibid, 239-43.
25. CIA to CIA station in Guatemala, 30 June 1954, ibid, 408-09; Cullather, Secret His-
tory, 106-07.
26. Peurifoy to State Department, 17 December 1953, FRUS, 1952-1954 4: 1091-93.
27. Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States,
1944-1954 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 137-48.
28. Cullather, Secret History, 77-82.
29. Dulles quoted in Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America, 57.
30. Edward T. Brett, The U.S. Catholic Press on Central America: From Cold War Anti-
communism to Social Justice (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre,Dame Press,
2003), 16-20; E. Howard Hunt, American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Water-
‘gate, and Beyond (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2007), 70-84.
31. Memorandum for record on weekly PBSUCCESS meeting, 9 Maich.1954, FRUS,
1952-1954, Guatemala, 214-17; paper prepared in PBSUCCESS headquarters, un-
dated, ibid, 274-76; telegram from PBSUCCESS headquarters to CIA station in
Guatemala, 30 January 1954, ibid, 177-79.
32. Cullather, Secret History, 57-62.
33. PBSUCCESS headquarters to CIA, 19 February 1954, FRUS, 1952-1954, Guatemala,
196-97; CIA station to PBSUCCESS headquarters, 11 May 1954, ibid, 280.
VARD UNIVERSIT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
35.
36.
37.
Notes 213
PBSUCCESS headquarters to CIA, 31 January 1954, ibid, 183-84; CIA memoran-
dum for record on Calligeris (Castillo Armas), 14 May 1954, ibid, 282-85.
Memorandum for record by King of CIA, 11 September 1953, 102-09, ibid; Ambas-
sador Peurifoy to Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs John Moors
Cabot, 28 December 1953, ibid, 159-61.
Wisner of CIA to Helms of CIA, 19 November 1953, ibid, 144-46; Wisner of CIA to
CIA Director Dulles, 24 April 1954, ibid, 251-60.
Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Doubleday, 2007),
93-104; Max Holland, "Private Sources of U.S. Foreign Policy: William Pawley and
the 1954 Coup d'Etat in Guatemala,” Journal of Cold War Studies 7 (Fall 2005):
58-63.
. Cullather, Secret History, 95-104; Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America, 56.
Ibid, 60-61.
Stephen G. Rabe, “The Johnson (Eisenhower?) Doctrine for Latin America,” Diplo-
‘matic History 9 (Winter 1985): 94-100; Schoultz, That Infernal Little Cuban Republic,
55-57; Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America, 39-40.
. Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 108-09.
Mark T. Hove, “The Arbenz Factor: Salvador Allende, U.S.-Chilean Relations, and the
1954 USS. Intervention in Guatemala,” Diplomatic History 31 (September 2007
Ibid, 658-63.
. Paul J. Dosal, Commandante Che: Guerilla Soldier, Commander, and Strategist,
1956-1967 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 23-43.
- Grandin, Last Colonial Massacre, 66.
Note for the files, “Disposal List,” 1 June 1954, FRUS, 1952-1954, Guatemala, 302;
Cullather, Secret History, 137-42; Grandin, Last Colonial Massacre, 66-69.
Ibid, 66.
Jim Handy, Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict and Agrarian Reform in
Guatemala, 1944-1954 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 192-207;
Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America, 61.
Stephen M. Streeter, Managing the Counterrevolution: The United States and Guate-
mala, 1954-1961 (Athens, OH: University of Ohio Press, 2000), 137.
Phillips quoted in Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America, 62.
. Immerman, CIA in Guatemala, 201; the conclusion and recommendations of the
report can be found in Daniel Rothenberg, ed., Memory of Silence: The Guatemalan
Truth Commission Report (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 177-216.
. Streeter, Managing the Counterrevolution, 210-38.
Stephen G: Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts
Communist Revolution in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1999), 71-77.
Ibid, 76; Rothenberg, Memory of Silence, 182.
Grandin, Last Colonial Massacre, 97-102.
Mary Jane Treacy, “Killing the Queen: The Display and Disappearance of Rogelia
Cruz," Latin American Literary Review 29 (January-June 2001): 40-51.
Grandin, Last Colonial Massacre, 99.
. Gleijeses quoted in “Afterword: The Culture of Fear,” in Cullather, Secret History,
HARVARD UNIV
214 NOTES
CHAPTER 4
Paul J. Dosal, Comandante Che, 1-22; Thomas C. Wright, Latin America in the Era of
the Cuban Revolution, revised ed. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), 16-18.
2. Ramón Eduardo Ruiz, Cuba: The Making of a Revolution (New York: Norton, 1970),
133-40; Samuel Farber, The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 63-68.
Castro quoted in Schoultz, That Infernal Little Cuban Republic, 82.
Farber, Origins of the Cuban Revolution, 7-22.
Schoultz, That Infernal Little Cuban Republic, 121-24.
Farber, Origins of the Cuban Revolution, 63.
Ibid, 142-54.
Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America, 171.
James G. Blight and Philip Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba's Struggle with the
Superpowers after the Missile Crisis (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007),
73-146; Dosal, Comandante Che, 182-89; Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 135-41.
10. Rabe, Road to OPEC, 139-54; Stephen G. Rabe, “The Caribbean Triangle: Betan-
court, Castro, and Trujillo and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1958-1963,” Diplomatic History
20 (Winter 1996): 55-78.
11. Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 5-222, 373-79; Blight and Brenner, Sad and Lumi-
nous Days, 104-05.
12. Blight and Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days, 73-119.
13. Ibid, 129-45; National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), “Prospects for Argentina,” 9 June
1965, FRUS, 1964-1968 31: 293-95; editorial note on President Johnson's conversa-
tion with Kosygin and subsequent Johnson conversation with President Eisenhower,
25 June 1967, ibid, 146; Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 135-41.
14. Wright, Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution, 29-36.
15. ‘Thomas G. Paterson, Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the
Cuban Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 195-237.
16. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America, 127-29; Jeffrey J. Safford, "The Nixon-Castro
Meeting of 19 April 1959,” Diplomatic History 4 (Fall 1980): 425-31.
17. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America, 129-30; Schoultz, That Infernal Little Cuban
Republic, 116-17.
18. CIA memorandum, “Johnny Roselli,” not dated, pp. 12-16, and Howard J. Osborn,
Director of Security, to CIA Director, “Johnny Roselli,” 19 November 1970,
pp. 44-48, both in CIA "Family Jewels" Project on Freedom of Information Act,
http;//www.oia.cia.gov.
19. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America, 170-71.
20. Schoultz, That Infernal Little Cuban Republic, 146-48.
21. CIA papers on Cuba prepared by Bissell, 17 February 1961, 11 March 1961, and
15 March 1961, all in FRUS, 1961-1963 10: Cuba, 1961-1962 (Washington, DC: Gov-
ernment Printing Office, 1997): 102-09, 137-42, 145-48.
22. Schlesinger to the president, 5 April 1961 and 10 April 1961, ibid, 186-89, 196-203;
Howard Jones, The Bay of Pigs (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 65.
23. Memorandum prepared in CIA to General Maxwell D. Taylor on report of Colonel
Hawkins prepared on 13 April 1961, 26 April 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963 10: 221-22.
24. Scholutz, That Infernal Little Cuba Republic, 148; Jones, Bay of Pigs, 72-74.
25. Peter Kornbluh, ed., Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of
Cuba (New York: Free Press, 1998), 10-12.
een an ey
RSIT HARVARD UNIVERSIT)
26.
27
28.
29.
30.
3L
32.
33.
34.
35.
37.
5s
aL
42.
43.
Notes 215
Actions and notes of 483rd meeting of NSC, 5 May 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963 10: 476-83;
Robert Kennedy, quoted in memorandum from Helms of CIA to CIA Director John
McCone, 19 January 1962, ibid, 719-20; Don Bohning, The Castro Obsession: U.S.
Covert Operations against Cuba, 1959-1965 (Washington, DC: Potomac Books,
2006), 79-85.
Interagency Task Force on Cuba, paper for NSC, 4 May 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963 10:
459-75.
Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 32.
Memorandum from Sherman Kent, Chair of the Board of National Estimates, to CIA
Director Dulles, 3 November 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963 10: 668-72; “The Cuba Project,”
program review by Lansdale, 18 January 1962, ibid, 710-18; Blight and Brenner, Sad
and Luminous Days, 17.
Anna Kasten Nelson, “Operation Northwoods and the Covert War against Cuba,
1961-1963,” Cuban Studies 32 (2002): 145-54. For Robert Kennedy’s scheme to attack
Guantánamo, see memorandum of discussion in Secretary of State Dean Rusk's
office, 21 August 1962, FRUS, 1961-1963 10: 947-49.
Jones, Bay of Pigs, 5, 12, 49.
‘Memorandum of record for Robert Kennedy on CIA briefing, 14 May 1962, FRUS,
1961-1963 10: 807-09; memorandum for record prepared by Thomas A. Parrott, assis-
tant to General Maxwell Taylor, on president's interest in Castro's removal, 5 October
1961, ibid, 659-60; Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr, Robert Kennedy and His Times (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1978), 498; Helms, quoted in Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 187.
Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (Boston: Little, Brown, 1997), 268-93.
Kennedy quoted in Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes:
Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Belknap
Press of Harvard University, 1997), 107; McNamara, quoted in Blight and Brenner,
Sad and Luminous Days, 17; Schoultz, That Infernal Little Cuban Republic, 186.
A concise account of the confrontation is given in Don Munton and David Welch,
‘The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Concise History, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2011).
Blight and Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days, 73-119.
Stephen G. Rabe, "After the Missiles of October: John F. Kennedy and Cuba, November
1962 to November 1963,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 30 (December 2000): 714-26.
Memorandum for record of White House meeting on Cuba, 19 June 1963, FRUS,
1961-1963 11: Cuban Missile Crisis and Aftermath (Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office, 1996): 837-38; CIA memorandum of record of meeting of 12 November
1963 to review Cuban program, FRUS, 1961-1963, Microfiche Supplement, 10-12:
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1998): 718.
Rabe, “After the Missiles of October,” 722-23. See also Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 23.
Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 207-09; Kennedy speech in DSB 49 (9 December 1963):
900-04; Hersh, Dark Side of Camelot, 440. Hersh’s assertion about the intention of
Kennedy’s speech is supported by documentary record in memorandum of meeting
with President Johnson, 19 December 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963 11: 904-09.
Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 (Boston: Little, Brown,
2003), 709; Rabe, “After the Missiles of October,” 723-24.
Johnson quoted in Schoultz, That Infernal Little Cuban Republic, 214.
Editorial note on Secretary Rusk's meetings with European ambassadors, 15 September
1964, FRUS, 1964-1968 32: Dominican Republic; Cuba; Haiti; Guyana (Washington,
HARVARD UNIV
216 NOTES
DC: Government Printing Office, 2005): 684; memorandum of conversation between
Undersecretary of State George Ball and British ambassador David Ormsby Gore,
7 February 1964, ibid, 577; White House meeting with British prime minister, 12 February
1964, ibid, 594-97,
44. Memorandum of meeting with President Johnson, 19 December 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963
11: 904-09,
45. Johnson quoted in editorial note on meeting between Johnson and CIA Director
John McCone, 27 December 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963 11: 911, and in Bohning, Castro
Obsession, 177.
46. Telephone conversation between Johnson and Assistant Secretary of State Mann,
11 June 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968 32: 658-60; Mann to Secretary of State Rusk, 14 July
1964, ibid, 734-36. See also Jonathan C. Brown, “Counterrevolution in the Caribbean:
‘The CIA and Cuban Commandos in the 1960s,” in Beyond the Eagle's Shadow: New
Histories of Latin America’s Cold War, eds. Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Mark Atwood
Lawrence, and Julio E. Moreno (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013),
103-28.
47. Dosal, Comandante Che, 188-94.
48. Ibid, 209, 264; Wright, Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution, 80-87.
49. Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 130-31
50. Memorandum by Richard Helms, CIA Director, on "Capture and Execution of Ernesto
"Che Guevara,” 11 October 1967, FRUS, 1964-1968 31: 381-82 with footnotes; Dosal,
‘Comandante Che, 277-303.
51. Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 135-39; NIE, "The Potential for Revolution in Latin
America,” 28 March 1968, FRUS, 1964-1968 31: 170-72.
52. Blight and Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days, 141-45.
CHAPTER 5
1. DSB 44 (3 April 1961): 471-74.
2. Jeffrey F. Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy: The Alliance for Progress in Latin
America (New York: Routledge, 2007), 11-27, 205-23.
3. DSB 44 (3 April 1961): 471-74.
4. Memorandum of conversation between Kennedy and Prime Minister Harold
Macmillan, 30 June 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963 12: American Republics (Washington,
DC: Government Printing Office, 1996): 607-09,
5. Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 22-23.
6. Bevan Sewall, “A Perfect (Free-Market) World? Economics, the Eisenhower Admin-
istration, and the Soviet Economic Offensive in Latin America,” Diplomatic History
32 (November 2008): 841-68; Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy, 11-27; Rabe, Most
Dangerous Area, 9-33,
7. William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New Yor
487-88.
3. Lincoln Gordon, “US-Brazilian Reprise,” Journal of Inter-American Studies and
World Affairs 32 (Summer 1990): 168.
9. Kennedy quoted in "Report on Berlin Crisis,” 25 July 1961, PPP: JFK, 1961, 441-45;
Rusk quoted in Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 21.
10. Memorandum of conversation between Rusk and Argentine diplomat
1962, FRUS, 1961-1963 12: American Republics: 292-94.
Norton, 2003),
18 January
D UNIVERSIT HARVARD UNIVERSIT
1L
12.
B.
M.
15.
16.
v7.
38.
Notes 217
Kennedy quoted in Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 19-20.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 773.
Michael E. Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and "Nation
Building” in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000),
1-108,
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., "The Alliance for Progress: A Retrospective; in Ronald G.
Hellman and H. Jon Rosenbaum, eds, Latin America: The Search for a New Interna-
tional Role (New York, Halsted Press, 1975), 57-92.
Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 17
Kennedy speech in Miami, 18 November 1963, DSB 49 (9 December 1963): 900-04.
Robert Packenham, Liberal America and the Third World: Political Development
Ideas and Social Science (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 34-35,
59-75, 111-60; Tony Smith, America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide
Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1994), 18, 217-27.
. Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 148-72; Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy, 40-41.
Rabe, Road to OPEC, 139-67.
Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 162-64; Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy, 51.
James F. Siekmeier, “A Sacrificial Llama? The Expulsion of the Peace Corps from
Bolivia in 1971,” Pacific Historical Review 69 (February 2000): 65-87.
. Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 164-67.
Stephen G. Rabe, U.S. Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 124-38.
Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 34-40.
. Schlesinger, Thousand Days, 769.
Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 41-48.
Ibid, 47; telephone conversation between Johnson and Mann, 27 April 1965, FRUS,
1964-1968 32: 63-66; Alan McPherson, “Misled by Himself: What the Johnson Tapes.
Reveal about the Dominican Intervention of 1965,” Latin American Research Review
38, No. 2 (2003): 130, 133.
. Memorandum of meeting between State Department and CIA officials, 14 April
1965, FRUS, 1964-1968 32: 57-58.
McPherson, “Misled by Himself; 141-44.
Johnson, address to nation, 2 May 1965, PPP: LBJ, 1965, 469-75.
- Randall B. Woods, “Conflicted Hegemon: LBJ and the Dominican Republic,” Diplo-
matic History 32 (November 2008): 749-66,
. Ibid, 753; McPherson, "Misled by Himself,” 137.
Rabe, "The Johnson Doctrine," 48-58.
. Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy, 138; McPherson, "Misled by Himself,” 136.
Valenti’s notes of meeting in White House Cabinet Room, 30 April 1965, FRUS,
1964-1968 32: 100-02.
Russell Crandall, Gunboat Democracy: U.S. Interventions in the Dominican Republic,
Grenada, and Panama (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 35-103; General
Bruce Palmer Jr. Intervention in the Caribbean: The Dominican Crisis of 1965
(Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1989), 133-34.
McPherson, "Misled by Himself.” 136.
Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy, 123-47.
HARVARD UNIVE!
218 NOTES
39. Editorial note on U.S. covert program in Dominican Republic in 1966, FRUS,
1964-1968 32: 357-58; memorandum from Helms to Desmond Fitzgerald of CIA,
29 December 1965, ibid, 358-62; memorandum prepared for the 303 Committee,
11 January 1966, ibid, 368-71.
40. Circular telegram from State Department to embassies in American Republics,
11 May 1966, ibid, 412-13.
AL. National Intelligence Estimate on Dominican Republic, 28 April 1966, ibid, 398-99.
42. Eric Thomas Chester, Rag-Tags, Scum, Riff-Raff, and Commies: The U.S. Intervention in
the Dominican Republic, 1965-1966 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001) 283-89.
43. Memorandums prepared for the 303 Committee, 17 March 1967 and 5 June 1968, FRUS,
1964-1968 32: 930-35, 951-54; Rabe, U.S. Intervention in British Guiana, 139-62.
44. National Intelligence Estimate, 25 September 1969, FRUS, 1969-1976 E-10: Docu-
ments on the American Republics, 1969-1972 (Washington, DC: Government Print-
ing Office, 2009): document 271. Volume available at http://www.history.state.gov/
historicaldocuments/frus1969-76vel0/.
45. Chester, Rag-Tags, 272-78.
46. State Department paper, "Guidelines of U.S. Policy and Operations, Brazil,” 7 February
1963, FRUS, 1961-1963 12: 488-90; Kennedy conversation with Brazilian Foreign
Minister, 13 March 1963, ibid, 500-03; Mann quoted in Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign
Policy, 118.
47. Ambassador Lincoln Gordon to State Department on conversation with President
Goulart, 21 October 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963 12: 448-50.
48. Cabot quoted in Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 65.
49. Memorandum of conversation between Kennedy and Brazilian finance minister,
15 May 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963 12: 435-36.
50. Ambassador Gordon's views in W. Michael Weis, Cold Warriors and Coups d'Etat:
Brazilian-American Relations, 1945-1964 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1993), 149-66.
51. Memorandum of conversation between Kennedy and Kubitschek, 13 December
1962, FRUS, 1961-1963 12: American Republics: 117-25; Rabe, Most Dangerous Area,
67-68.
52. Jan Knippers Black, United State Penetration of Brazil (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press), 1977; Ruth Leacock, Requiem for Revolution: The United States
and Brazil, 1961-1969 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1990); Phyllis R. Parker,
Brazil and the Quiet Intervention, 1964 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979);
Weis, Cold Warriors and Coups d'Etat; Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy, 110-11.
53. Parker, Quiet Intervention, 62-63.
54. President Johnson's telephone conversation with George Ball and Thomas Mann,
31 March 1964, canbe accessed through the web sitehttp://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/
NSAEBB/NSAEBBII8/.
55. Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy, 117-20.
56. Virginia Langland, "Birth Control Pills and Molotov Cocktails: Reading Sex and
Revolution in 1968 Brazil,” in In from the Cold, eds. Joseph and Spenser, 308-49.
57. Gould, “Solidarity under Siege,” 358.
58. Ibid, 348-75.
59. Thomas E. Skidmore, Brazil: Five Centuries of Change (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1999), 164-66.
RSIT HARVARD UNIVERSIT
61.
63.
65.
75.
Notes 219
Embassy in Argentina to State Department, 8 June 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968 31:
303-05.
Jeffrey J. Ryan, “Turning on Their Masters: State Terrorism and Unlearning Democ-
racy in Uruguay,” in When States Kill: Latin America, the U.S., and Technologies of
Terror, ed. Cecilia Menjivar and Néstor Rodriguez (Austin: University of Texas Press,
2005), 278-301.
State Department to Embassy in Brazil, 25 December 1968, FRUS, 1964-1968 31:
534-37; Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 70.
Martha K. Huggins, Political Policing: The United States and Latin America (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 99-204; Jeremy Kuzmarov, Modernizing Repres-
sion: Police Training and Nation-Building in the American Century (Amherst: Uni-
versity of Massachusetts Press, 2012), 208-31; Gould, "Solidarity under Siege,” 372.
Huggins, Political Policing, 166- jon Romero, “Leader's Torture in ‘70s Stirs
Ghosts in Brazil,” New York Times, 5 August 2012, Al.
Joan Dassin, ed., Torture in Brazil: A Report by the Archdiocese of São Paulo, Trans-
lated by Jaime Wright (New York: Vintage Books, 1986), xxv-xxvi.
Memorandum of conversation between presidents Johnson and López Mateos,
21 February 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968 31: South and Central America; Mexico, 735-36.
For trade and investment statistics, see Rabe, Road to OPEC, 193-95.
7. Memorandum of conversation between President Johnson and President-elect Diaz
Ordaz, 13 November 1964, ibid, 745.
i. Memorandum of conversation between presidents Johnson and Diaz Ordaz, 14 April
1966, ibid, 754.
Ibid, 755.
Memorandum of conversation between presidents Kennedy and López Mateos,
29 June 1962, FRUS, 1961-1963 12: American Republics, 312-14.
|. Renata Keller, "A Foreign Policy for Domestic Consumption: Mexico's Lukewarm
Defense of Castro, 1959-1969,” Latin American Research Review 47, No. 2: 100-19.
. Ibid, 113-17.
. Kate Doyle, "Double Dealing: Mexico's Foreign Policy toward Cuba,” National Secu-
rity Archive Electronic Briefing Book, 2 March 2003 (http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/
NSAEBB/NSAEBB83/).
Information memorandum from Special Presidential Assistant Rostow to President
Johnson, 5 October 1968, FRUS, 1964-1968 31: South and Central America; Mexico, 767.
Oliver to acting secretary of state, 3 October 1968, in Kate Doyle, "The Tlatelolco
Massacre: U.S. Documents on Mexico and the Events of 1968," National Security
Archive Electronic Briefing Book, 10 October 2003 (http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/
NSAEBB/NSAEBB99/),
CHAPTER 6
Remarks to news media executives, Kansas City, Missouri, 6 July 1971, PPP: Richard
Nixon, 1971.
Conversation between Nixon, MacArthur, and General Alexander Haig, 8 April
1971, FRUS, 1969-1976 B-4: Documents on Iran and Iraq, 1969-1972 (Washington,
DC: Government Printing Office, 2006): document 122.
Nixon conversation with Finch, 30 September 1971, FRUS, 1969-1976 E-10: document 50.
UNIVERSIT HARVARD UNIV
220 NOTES
4. Robert Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (New York: HarperCollins,
2007), 227.
5. National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 15, 3 February 1969, FRUS,
1969-1976 E-10: document 1.
6. Nelson Rockefeller, The Rockefeller Report on the Americas (Chicago: Quadrangle
Books, 1969).
7. Study prepared in response to NSSM 15, 5 July 1969, FRUS, 1969-1976 E-10: docu-
ment 4; minutes of NSC Review Group meeting, 9 October 1969, ibid, document 12;
minutes of NSC meeting, 15 October 1969, ibid, document 14.
8. Vaky to Kissinger, 1 January 1970, ibid, document 21.
9. 31 October 1969 address, DSB (17 November 1969), 409-14.
10. Vaky to Kissinger, 1 January 1970, FRUS, 1969-1976 E-10: document 21; Taffet,
Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy, 185-94.
11. Memorandum from Finch to Nixon, undated but January 1971, FRUS, 1969-1976
E-10: document 52.
12. Dallek, Kissinger and Nixon, 228-29; Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kiss-
inger in the Nixon White House (New York: Summit Books, 1983), 263; Mark Atwood
Lawrence, “History from Below: The United States and Latin America in the Nixon
Years,” in Nixon in the World: American Foreign Relations, 1969-1977, ed. Fredrik
Logevall and Andrew Preston (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 269-77.
13. Ibid, 269.
14. Nixon handwritten note on Kissinger memorandum to Nixon on economic aid to
Latin America, 7 May 1969, FRUS, 1969-1976 E-10: document 2; conversation be-
tween Nixon and Finch, 30 September 1971, ibid, document 50; Nixon to Connally,
6 June 1972, ibid, document 53.
15. Conversation between Nixon, Kissinger, Haldeman, Haig, and CIA Director Richard
Helms, 5 March 1971, ibid, document 36.
16. Conversation between Nixon and Finch, 30 September 1971, ibid, document 50,
17. Conversation between Nixon, Kissinger, and Connally, 11 June 1971, ibid, document 43.
18. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America, 85-86.
19. Minutes of NSC meeting, 15 October 1969, FRUS, 1969-1976 E-10: document 14.
20. Walters to Kissinger, undated but December 1968, ibid, document 116.
21. Kristian Gustafson, Hostile Intent: U.S. Covert Operations in Chile, 1964-1974
(Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2007), 222-24; Jonathan Haslam, The Nixon Ad-
‘ministration and the Death of Allende's Chile: A Case of Assisted Suicide (London:
Verso, 2005), 219.
22. Walters to Kissinger, 3 November 1970, FRUS, 1969-1976 E-10: document 30.
23. Official quoted is Viron Vaky in his covering memorandum contained in Ki
to Nixon, 15 April 1970, ibid, document 127.
24. Memorandum of meeting between Nixon and Rountree, 14 December 1970, ibid,
document 134.
25. Memorandum of meeting between Nixon and Brazilian president, 7 December 1971,
ibid, document 141.
26. Memorandum of meeting between NSC and Brazilian president, 8 December 1971,
ibid, document 141; Walters to Kissinger, undated but December 1971, ibid, docu-
ment 144,
27. Memorandum of discussions between Nixon and Brazilian president, 9 December
1971, ibid, document 143. On Nixon's comment to Prime Minister Heath, see editorial
ger
VARD UN
LES
Notes 221
notes to memorandum from CIA Acting Director Robert E. Cushman Jr. to Kissinger,
29 December 1971, ibid, document 145.
. Memorandum of discussions between Nixon and Brazilian president, 9 December
1971, FRUS, 1969-1976 E-10: document 143.
Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy, 67-75.
. Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 109-16.
. Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy, 76-77.
. Joseph John Jova, U.S. embassy in Santiago, to Assistant Secretary Mann on conver-
sations with Frei, 5 May 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968 31: 568-70.
Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 114-15.
Editorial note on memorandum by Peter Jessup of 303 Committee to NSC advisor
Bundy, 23 July 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968 31: 582-83.
. Haslam, Nixon Administration and the Death of Chile, 13-14.
. Margaret Power, "The Engendering of Anticommunism and Fear in Chile's 1964
Presidential Election,” Diplomatic History 32 (November 2008): 931-53.
CIA memorandum, "Chilean Election Forecast,” 1 September 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968
31: 589-91.
. Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy, 81-93.
CIA headquarters to station in Santiago, 27 September 1970, in Petér Kornbluh, The
Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (New York: The
New Press, 2003), 50-56.
Grow, U.S. Presidents and Latin American Interventions, 93, 98.
|. Kornbluh, Pinochet File, xvi-xvii; FRUS, 1969-1976 21: Chile, 1969-1973 (https://
history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frusI969-76v21/).
Gustafson, Hostile Intent, 88-105.
Handwritten notes by Helms on meeting with Nixon, 15 September 1970, repro-
duced in Kornbluh, Pinochet File, 36.
- Gustafson, Hostile Intent, 102; Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, 231-32.
Minutes of 40 Committee meeting, 8 September 1970, in Kornbluh, Pinochet File, 45;
conversation between Nixon and Kissinger, 11 June 1971, FRUS, 1969-1976 E-10:
document 42.
Lawrence, “History from Below,” 277; Haslam, Nixon Administration and the Death
of Allende's Chile, 55-56.
7. Conversation between Nixon and CIA Director Helms, 5 March 1971, FRUS, 1969-1976
E-10: document 36,
Kornbluh, Pinochet File, 11-22.
. Ibid, 22-35.
Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, 236-38.
- Gustafson, Hostile Intent, 140.
Peter Winn, “The Furies of the Andes: Violence and Terror in the Chilean Revolution
and Counterrevolution,” in A Century of Revolution, ed. Grandin and Joseph, 239-75.
. Tanya Harmer, Allende's Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (Chapel Hill: Uni-
versity of North Carolina Press, 2011), 195-99, 233-39; Nicola Miller, Soviet Rela-
tions with Latin America, 1959-1987 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1989), 127-47.
Haslam, Nixon Administration and the Death of Allende's Chile, 79-157.
Memorandum of conversation of NSC meeting, 6 November 1970, and National Security
Decision Memorandum 93, 9 November 1970, both in Kornbluh, Pinochet File, 116-23.
HARVARD UNIV
222 NOTES
56. Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, 239; Lawrence, “History from Below,” 277.
57. U.S. Congress, Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with
Respect to Intelligence Activities, Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973, 94th Congress,
Ist session (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1975), 33-35; Kornbluh,
Pinochet File, 84.
58. Kissinger quoted in Anand Toprani and Richard A. Moss, “Filling the Three-Year
Gap: Nixon, Allende, and the White House Tapes, 1971-73,” unpublished paper, 2010
(in author's possession). The conversations took place in Nixon’s hideaway office in
the Executive Office Building on 6 April 1971 (Conversation No. 245-6) and in the
Oval Office on 11 June 1971 (Conversation 517-4).
59. Senate Select Committee, Covert Action in Chile, 31; Haslam, Nixon Administration
and the Death of Allende's Chile, 122-57, 130, 141, 193; Rabe, U.S. Intervention in British
Guiana, 101, 113, 149-50.
60. CIA reports on Pinochet, 6 August 1971 and 27 September 1972, both in Kornbluh,
Pinochet File, 134-37; Senate Select Committee, Covert Action in Chile, 34; Lesley Gill,
‘The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 79-80.
61, Memorandum from Executive Secretary of the 40 Committee, Rob Roy Ratliff, to
ger, 10 August 1973, with 20 August approval by Kissinger, FRUS, 1969-1976
21: Chile, 1969-1973, 886-87; Colby to Kissinger, 25 August 1973, ibid. See also
Haslam, Nixon Administration and the Death of Allende's Chile, 169-70, 182, 219.
62. See documents 347 to 366, 11-25 September 193, FRUS, 1969-1976 21: Chile, 1969-1973,
897-946.
63. Transcript of telephone conversation between Nixon and Kissinger, 16 September, 1973,
FRUS, 1969-1976 21: Chile, 1969-1973, 923-24; Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, 511-12
64. Ibid, 515.
65. Kornbluh, Pinochet File, 201-03.
66. Ibid, 203-6; Gill, School of the Americas, 79-80.
67. Thomas C. Wright, State Terrorism in Latin America: Chile, Argentina, and Interna-
tional Human Rights (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 65-66, 213; Luz
Arce, The Inferno: A Story of Terror and Survival in Chile. Translated by Stacey Alba
Skar (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), 38-40. Mary Helen Spooner,
Soldiers in a Narrow Land: The Pinochet Regime in Chile (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1999), 49-82.
68. Brian Loveman and Elizabeth Lira, "Truth, Justice, Reconciliation, and Impunity as
Historical Themes: Chile, 1814-2006," Radical History 97 (Winter 2007): 61-70;
Steve J. Stern, Remembering Pinochet's Chile: On the Eve of London, 1998 (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2004), xxi, 158-61.
69. Wright, State Terrorism, 59-61; Wright, Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revo-
lution, 158.
70. Wright, State Terrorism, 60-65; Jonathan Kandell, “Augusto Pinochet, 91, Dictator
Who Ruled by Terror in Chile Dies,” New York Times, 11 December 2006, 1, 27.
7L. Wright, State Terrorism, 66.
72. John Dinges, The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to
Three Continents (New York: New Press, 2004), 10-125.
73. John Dinges and Saul Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1980), 207-27.
74. Kornbluh, Pinochet File, 201-33.
VARD UNIVERSIT’
75.
76.
7.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
10.
n.
Notes 223
Memorandum of conversation between Kissinger and Pinochet, 8 June 1976, in ibid,
256-65.
Ibid, 207-16; Wright, State Terrorism, 71-72.
Dinges, Condor Years, 184-98; McSherry, Predatory States, 107-08.
Memorandum from Haig to President Nixon on financial assistance for Argentina,
14 July 1971, FRUS, 1969-1976 E-10: document 69; back-channel message from
Ambassador John Davis Lodge to State Department, 31 August 1971, ibid, document 72.
William Michael Schmidli, The Fate of Freedom Elsewhere: Human Rights and U.S.
Cold War Policy toward Argentina (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013),
45-55; Ambassador Hill quoted in ibid, 83; memorandum of conversation between
per and Guzzetti, 10 June 1976, in Southern Cone Documentation Project of
the National Security Archive, Washington, DC, http://www.gwu.edu/-nsarchiv/
NSAEBB/NSAEBB133/index.htm/; Dinges, Condor Years, 199-206.
Schmidli, Fate of Freedom, 50.
Wright, State Terrorism, 99-118; Jacobo Timerman, Prisoner without a Name, Cell
without a Number, translated by Tony Talbot (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 2002).
For an account of Argentina during the World Cup of 1978, see Wright Thompson.
“While the World Watched,” ESPN The Magazine, 9 June 2014, http://espn.go.com/
espn/feature/story/ /id/11036214/while-world-watched-world-cup-brings-back-
memories-argentina-dirty-war/.
CHAPTER 7
Nobel Lecture, "The Solitude of Latin America," by Gabriel García Márquez,
8 December 1982, available at http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/
laureates/1982/marquez-lecture.html.
Lars Schoultz, Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 179-80.
Ibid, 113-15; David F. Schmitz and Vanessa Walker, “Jimmy Carter and the Foreign
Policy of Human Rights: The Development of a Post-Cold War Foreign Policy,” Dip-
lomatic History 28 (January 2004): 113-43.
Kathryn Sikkink, Mixed Signals: U.S. Human Rights Policy and Latin America
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 106-22.
Sikkink, Mixed Signals, 122-47; Schoultz, Human Rights, 172, 214-15; Derian quoted
in Schmidli, Fate of Freedom, 117-18.
Wright, State Terrorism, 118-25; Sikkink, Mixed Signals, 80-105, 121-47; Schoultz,
Human Rights, 363; Schmidli, Fate of Freedom, 152-55; Timerman, Prisoner without
a Name.
Schoultz, Human Rights, 112, 116-17; Sikkink, Mixed Signals, 132-34.
William H. Durham, Scarcity and Survival in Central America: Ecological Origins of the
Soccer War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1979), 21-62, 159-73; Robert G.
Williams, Export Agriculture and the Crisis in Central America (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1986), 77, 99, 155-65; Rabe, Most Dangerous Area, 157-60.
Gill, School of the Americas, 75-78.
Wright, State Terrorism, 117-18.
LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, 219-26, 250-52; Brett, The U.S. Catholic Press on
Central America, 35-122.
UNIVERSIT
224 NOTES
12. Cole Blasier, The Giant's Rival: The USSR and Latin America, rev. ed. (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987), 140.
13. Anastasio Somoza, as told to Jack Cox, Nicaragua Betrayed (Boston: Western
Islands, 1980).
14. Letter to Pope John Paul II, quoted in John A. Soares Jr., “Strategy, Ideology, and
Human Rights: Jimmy Carter Confronts the Left in Central America, 1979-1981,”
Journal of Cold War Studies 8 (Fall 2006): 66.
15. Robert A. Pastor, Condemned to Repetition: The United States and Nicaragua (Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 79.
16. News conference, 25 July 1979, PPP: Jimmy Carter, 1979, 1307.
17. Soares, “Strategy, Ideology, and Human Rights,” 71-77, 89-91; Schmitz and Walker,
“Jimmy Carter and the Foreign Policy of Human Rights,” 141-43.
18. Wright, Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution, 183.
19. Ibid, 180-83; Laura J. Enriquez, Harvesting Change: Labor and Agrarian Reform
in Nicaragua, 1979-1990 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991),
83-120; Pastor, Condemned to Repetition, 6.
20. llja A. Luciak, "Democracy and Revolution in Nicaragua,” in Understanding the Cen-
tral American Crisis: Sources of Conflict, U.S. Policy, and Options for Peace, ed. Kenneth
M. Coleman and George C. Herring (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1991), 77-107;
Wright, Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution, 177-83.
21. Blasier, The Giant's Rival, 144-53; Nicola Miller, Soviet Relations with Latin America,
188-216; K. Cheasty Anderson, “Doctors within Borders: Cuban Medical Diplomacy
to Sandinista Nicaragua, 1979-1990," in Beyond the Eagles Shadow, eds. Garrard-
Burnett, Lawrence, and Moreno, 200-25.
22. The Committee of Santa Fe, A New Inter-American Policy for the Eighties (Washington:
Council for Inter-American Security, 1980), 52-53.
23. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and Reason in
Politics (New York: American Enterprise Institute and Simon & Schuster, 1982),
23-52; William M. LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central
America, 1977-1992 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 291.
24. Sikkink, Mixed Signals, 152-55; LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 292.
25. Schoultz, That Infernal Little Cuban Republic, 366-69.
26. Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 266-67;
Grow, U.S. Presidents and Latin American Interventions, 125.
27. LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 283; Grow, U.S. Presidents and Latin American
Interventions, 125-28.
28. PPP: Ronald Reagan, 1983, 605-07.
29. LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 444.
30. Ibid, 77-80.
31. Carothers, In the Name of Democracy, 82-84; LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 86-88,
106-09.
32. PPP: Ronald Reagan, 1985 I: 200; Carothers, In the Name of Democracy, 97-98.
33. LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 116, 143-46; Ariel C. Armony, "Transnationalizing
the Dirty War: Argentina in Central America.” in In from the Cold, ed. Joseph and
Spenser, 134-68.
34. "Execution in the Jungle,” Newsweek, 29 April, 1985; LeoGrande, Our Own Back-
yard, 413-16.
35. LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 429-31, 442, 449.
VARD UNIVERSIT HARVARD UNIVERSIT
36.
37.
39.
40.
P
a2.
43
44.
Notes 225
Bob Woodward, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987 (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1987), 281-81, 320-38.
For excerpts of the Freedom Fighter's Manual and the International Court of Justice's
ruling, see Holden and Zolov, eds., Latin America and the United States, 297-303;
LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 363-64.
Jennifer H. Lundquist and Douglas Massey, "Politics or Economics? International
igration during the Nicaraguan Contra War,” Journal of Latin American Studies 37
(February 2005): 29-53.
LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 391-93. For data on U.S. military and economic aid
to Central America, see John A. Booth, “Central America and the United States:
Cycles of Containment and Response,” in United States Policy in Latin America: A
Decade of Crisis and Challenge, ed. John D. Martz (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1995), 191-92.
Blasier, The Giant's Rival, 143.
Miller, Soviet Relations with Latin America, 188-216.
Robert A. Pastor, “George Bush and Latin America: The Pragmatic Style and the
Regionalist Option,” in Eagle in a New World: American Grand Strategy in the Post-
Cold War Era, ed. Kenneth A. Oye, Robert J. Lieber, and Donald Rothchild (New
York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992), 361-71; Carothers, In the Name of Democ-
racy, 92-95; LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 560-61.
Carothers, In the Name of Democracy, 107.
Greg Grandin, Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States and the Rise of
the New Imperialism (New York: Holt, 2007), 95-96, 103; Aldo A. Lauria-Santiago,
“The Culture and Politics of State Terror and Repression in El Salvador,” in When
States Kill, ed. Menjivar and Rodriguez, 97.
- LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 38-71, 166-67.
Ibid, 63-64; Carothers, In the Name of Democracy, 22, 266 n. 9.
LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 178-80, 195.
Carothers, In the Name of Democracy, 16; LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 47.
Booth, "Central America and the United States,” 191-92, 200-01; LeoGrande, Our
Own Backyard, 265-66.
Report of the UN Truth Commission on El Salvador, 1 April 1993; http://www.usip
„org/sites/default/files/file/ElSalvador-Report.pdf.
LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 234.
Joan Didion, Salvador (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), 13-19; Lauria-Santiago,
"Culture and Politics of State Terror,” 98-100.
- Danner, Massacre at El Mozote, 3-84.
Ibid, 110-39.
- Didion, Salvador, 95.
Carothers, In the Name of Democracy, 30-43; LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 160,
249-50.
215.
Didion, Salvador, 90-95,
McPherson, Intimate Ties, Bitter Struggles, 101.
Rothenberg, Memory of Silence, 179, 235-38.
l. M. Gabriela Torres, “Bloody Deeds/Hechos Sangrientos: Reading Guatemala’s Record of
Political Violence in Cadaver Reports,” in When States Kill, ed. Menjivar and Rodriguez,
143-69; Daniel Wilkinson, Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal, and
by
UNIVE!
226 NOTES
Forgetting in Guatemala (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), 210, 310, 327-28; Daniel
Jonah Goldhagen, Worse than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault
‘on Humanity (New York: Public Affairs, 2009), 179, 181, 336-37, 431, 469-70.
62. Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit: Guatemala under
General Efraín Rios Montt, 1982-1983 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010),
ix-xv, 9, 91-97.
63. Sikkink, Mixed Signals, 159-61; Carothers, In the Name of Democracy, 61-63; Wilkinson,
Silence on the Mountain, 328; Jacobs quoted in his 5 October 1981 memorandum,
“Guatemala: What Next?” Memorandum can be found as Document 18 on the National
Security Archives web site on the “Guatemalan Military: What the U.S. Files Reveal,”
Volume 2, Documents: http:/www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB32/vol2.html/.
64. Sikkink, Mixed Signals, 164.
65. Garrard-Burnett, Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit, 53-84, 140, 153-54.
66. 4 December 1982, PPP: Ronald Reagan, 1982 II: 1562-66; Wilkinson, Silence on the
Mountain, 327.
67. Ibid, 327-28; Rothenberg, Memory of Silence, 50-52.
68. Sikkink, Mixed Signals, 168.
69. Carlos Fuentes, "Land of Jekyll and Hyde,” The Nation 242 (22 March 1986):
334-37.
AFTERMATH
1. John Burns, “Papers Show Rare Friction for Thatcher and Reagan,” New York Times,
29 December 2012, A4.
2. Foran English translation, see Nunca Más: The Report of the National Commission of
the Disappeared, with an introduction by Ronald Dworkin (New York: Farrar Straus
& Giroux, 1986).
3. Fora critical review of the reports, see Greg Grandin, "The Instruction of a Great
Catastrophe: Truth Commissions, National History, and State Formation in Argentina,
Chile, and Guatemala,” American Historical Review 110 (February 2005): 46-67.
4. Dassin, ed., Torture in Brazil, ix-ixx.
5. Wright, State Terrorism, 141-51; Danner, Massacre at El Mozote, 155-61.
6. Marguerite Feitlowitz, A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 79-81, 193-255; Wright, State Terrorism,
151-69.
7. Silvia Borzutzky, "The Politics of Impunity: The Cold War, State Terror, Trauma,
Trials and Reparations in Argentina and Chile,” Latin America Research Review 42
(February 2007): 167-85.
8. New York Times, 17 September 2007, A4; ibid, 10 October 2007, A5; Feitlowitz, Lexicon
of Terror, 219-23.
9. Renata Keller, “The Martydom of Monseñor Angelelli: The Popular Creation of Martyrs in
‘Twentieth-Century Argentina,” Journal of Religion and Society 12 (2010): 1-21; "Argentina:
2 Ex-Military Officers Sentenced in Death of Bishop,” New York Times, 5 July 2014, A9.
10. Keller, "Martydom of Monseñor Angelelli,” 18.
11. Fora discussion of allegations against Father Bergoglio, see James Carroll, “Who Am
1 to Judge? The Pope's Remarkable Year,” The New Yorker, 23 and 30 December 2013,
84-86; Simon Romero and William Neuman, “Starting a Papacy, amid Echoes of a
"Dirty War,” New York Times, 18 March 2013, Al.
HARVARD UNIVERSIT)
12.
1.
M.
15.
16.
17.
p
30.
3L
Notes 227
Gene Paulmbo and Damien Cave, "An Obstacle to Honoring an Archbishop Is
Removed,” ibid, 20 August 2014, A10; Francis Robles, "Vatican Ends Suspension of
Nicaraguan Priest,” ibid, 6 August 2014, A5.
Schmidli, Fate of Freedom, 134-36; Alexei Barrionuevo, "Argentina: 12 Given Life
Sentences for Crimes during Dictatorship,” New York Times, 28 October 2011, A13.
Alexei Barrionuevo, "Daughter of ‘Dirty War; Raised by Man Who Killed Her
Parents,” ibid, 9 October 2011, Al.
Roger Cohen, "Lost Children, Lost Truths,” ibid, 13 January 2008; Cohen, “Left
Hand among Bones,” ibid, 11 March 2014, A21.
"Grandmothers President Recovers Grandson Taken Away under Dictatorship,” Buenos
Aires Herald, 5 August 2014; "DNA Test Ends Mystery of Argentina's Dirty War,” Inter-
national New York Times, 5 August 2014. A feature film about Estela de Carlotto, Verdades
verdaderas, la vida de Estela (Real Truths: The Life of Estela), had been released in 2011.
Carothers, In the Name of Democracy, 150-63; Morris Morley and Chris McGillon,
"Soldiering on: The Reagan Administration and Redemocratisation in Chile, 1983-
1986,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 25 (January 2006): 1-22.
Loveman and Lira, "Truth, Justice, Reconciliation, and Impunity as Historical
Themes," 61-64.
Naomi Roht-Arriaza, The Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human
Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 32-96.
Wright, State Terrorism, 212.
“Chile's Leader Attacks Amnesty for Pinochet-Era Crimes,” New York Times, 24 De-
cember 2006, A3; “Chilean Court Rules U.S. Had Role in Murders,” ibid, 1 July 2014,
AS; Antonius C. G. M. Robben, "State Terror in the Netherworld: Disappearance and
Reburial in Argentina,” in Death, Mourning and Burial: A Cross-Cultural Reader, ed.
Antonius C. G. M. Robben (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 134-48.
- Loveman and Lira, “Truth, Justice, Reconciliation,” 66-68.
Stern, Remembering Pinochet's Chile, 134-42.
Rothenberg, Memory of Silence, 179-94; Elizabeth Oglesby, “Educating Citizens in
Postwar Guatemala: Historical Memory, Genocide, and the Culture of Peace,” Radi-
cal History Review 97 (Winter 2007): 77-98.
For Bishop Gerardi's murder, see Francisco Goldman, The Art of Political Murder:
Who Killed the Bishop? (New York: Grove Press, 2008).
Elisabeth Malkin, “In Testimony, Guatemalans Give Account of Suffering.” New York
Times, 15 April 2013, A9. For Rigoberta Menchii’s famous account of her life and the terror
in Guatemala, see I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, edited and in-
troduced by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, translated by Ann Wright (London: Verso: 1984).
Eugenio Di Stefano, “From Shopping Malls to Memory Museums: Reconciling the
Recent Past in the Uruguayan Neoliberal State,” Dissidences: Hispanic Journal of
Theory and Criticism 4: Issue 8, Article 8,
Elisabeth Malkin, “An Apology for a Guatemalan Coup.” New York Times, 20 October
2011; “El Salvador President Apologizes for 1981 Massacre,” ibid, 16 January 2012.
"Cuba: A Communist Economic Model Loses a Stalwart Defender,” ibid, 9 September
2010, A8; Wright, Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution, 187.
Rabe, U.S. Intervention in British Guiana, 75-173.
Clinton quoted in Sikkink, Mixed Signals, 181; David Scott Palmer, U.S. Relations
with Latin America during the Clinton Years (Gainesville: University Press of Florida,
2006), 30; Powell quoted in New York Times, 25 February 2003, A10.
228 NOTES
32. Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of Henry Kissinger (London: Verso, 2001).
33. Larry Rohter, “A Door Opens for Legal Actions in Chilean Coup, Kissinger Is
Numbered among the Hunted,” New York Times, 28 March 2002, A10.
34. Sikkink, Mixed Signals, 202-05.
35. Karla Zabludovsky, “Salvadoran Linked to Killing to Serve Time in U.S. Prison,”
New York Times, 28 August 2013, A10; Julia Preston, “Salvadoran General Accused
in Killings Should Be Deported, Miami Judge Says,” ibid, 13 April 2014, A13.
36. Dan Frosch, “Castro Opponent Said to Have Told of Role in Attacks,” ibid, 17 March
2011, A21; Daniel P. Erikson, The Cuba Wars: Fidel Castro, the United States, and the
Next Revolution (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008), 176-83.
37. Peter McKenna and John M. Kirk, "Does the Canada-Cuba Relationship Offer Any
Lessons for Washington?" in Soraya M. Castro Mariño and Ronald W. Pruessen,
eds, Fifty Years of Revolution: Perspectives on Cuba, the United Sates, and the World
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012), 90-116; Rick Gladstone, "Majority of
Americans Favor Ties with Cuba, Poll Finds," New York Times, 11 February 2014, A4.
38. Schoultz, That Infernal Little Cuban Republic, 419-567; Erikson, Cuba Wars, 27-53.
39. Human Development Index: http://hdr.undp.org/en/2013-report/; Alan McPherson,
Intimate Ties, Bitter Struggles, 110.
40. Julia Preston, "Snakes and Thorny Brush, and Children at the Border Alone,” New
York Times, 26 June 2014, A14; Stephanie McNulty, “U.S. Helped Create Crisis along
Border,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 31 July 2014, http://www-philly.com/philly/opinion/
inquirer/20140731, U, S. helped. create. crisis along border.html/. Deborah T.
Levenson, Adios Niño: The Gangs of Guatemala City and the Politics of Death
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013).
4L. John Dinges, Our Man in Panama: The Shrewd Rise and Brutal Fall of Manuel
Noriega (New York: Random House, 1991); Sikkink, Mixed Signals, 183-84; David
Jolly, "Erench Court Sentences Noriega to 7 Years,” New York Times, 8 July 2010, A12.
42. Stephen G. Rabe, “The U.S. Intervention in Guatemala: The Documentary Record,”
Diplomatic History 28 (November 2004): 785-90.
43. ‘Thomas S. Blanton, “Recovering the Memory of the Cold War: Forensic History and
Latin America,” in In from the Cold, ed. Joseph and Spencer, 47-73.
44. CIA “Family Jewels” Project on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) web site: http://
wwwfoia.cia gov.
45. “Memos Show Nixon's Bid to Enlist Brazil in Coup,” New York Times, 17 August
2009, A7; ibid, 19 August 2009, A9.
46. Peter Kornbluh, ed., "Brazil: Torture Techniques Revealed in Declassified U.S. Docu-
ments,” National Security Archive Briefing Book No, 478, 8 July 2014, http://www?
-gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB478/.
47. Gilbert M. Joseph, “What We Know and Should Know: Bringing Latin America More
Meaningfully into Cold War Studies,” in In from the Cold War, ed. Joseph and Spenser,
3-46.
48. Rothenberg, Memory of Silence, 182. See also Borzutzky, “Politics of Impunity,” 184;
Sikkink, Mixed Signals, 204; Cecilia Menjívar and Néstor Rodríguez, "State Terror in
the U.S.-Latin American Interstate Regime,” in When States Kill, ed. Menjívar and
Rodriguez, 3-22.
49. The Physicians for Human Rights have a web site: http://physiciansforhumanrights.org).
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>
Recommendations for Further
Reading and Research
First, if you are interested in pursuing any of the topics or issues raised in my study on
U.S. policies toward Latin America during the Cold War, you can contact me by either
writing or sending me an e-mail inquiry. I do not consider this an imposition. It is my job.
Stephen G. Rabe.
Ashbel Smith Chair in History
MSJO 31
University of Texas at Dallas
800 West Campbell Road
Richardson, TX 75080
USA
E-mail: rabe@utdallas.edu
I have included here a select list of recommendations for further reading. I have chosen
what I consider the freshest and most accessible and compelling books. I have not in:
cluded articles, although you can find many articles cited in the footnotes. On the as-
sumption that most readers of The Killing Zone are relatively new to the fields of U.S.
foreign relations, inter-American relations, and Latin American history, I have limited
the citations to secondary sources and to books in English. After offering sections on
"Bibliographic Guides and General Interpretations” and then "Cold War History,” I list
and comment on works by the chapter sequence in the book.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC GUIDES AND
GENERAL INTERPRETATIONS
In order of date of publication, the following bibliographies, documentary collections,
and encyclopedias introduce one to the vast literature on U.S. foreign relations and inter-
American relations.
Robert L. Beisner, ed. American Foreign Relations since 1600: A Guide to the Literature.
2nd ed. 2 vols. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2003. This great bibliography has been
updated since 2006. Your library may have access to the updated online version.
229
230 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER READING AND RESEARCH
See also:
Alan McPherson. Encyclopedia of U.S. Military Interventions in Latin America. 2 vols.
Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2013.
Timothy J. Lynch, ed. The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Military and Diplomatic His-
tory. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Robert Holden and Eric Zolov, eds. Latin America and the United States: A Documentary
History. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Bruce W. Jentleson and Thomas G. Paterson, eds. Encyclopedia of U.S, Foreign Relations.
4 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Beyond providing factual information, textbooks and surveys can be excellent sources
for bibliographic advice. The following textbooks are by scholars whose primary training
isin Latin American studies.
‘Thomas E. Skidmore, Peter H. Smith, and James N. Green. Modern Latin America. 8th ed.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Peter H. Smith. Talons of the Eagle: The United States, Latin America, and the World.
Ath ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Brian Loveman. American Foreign Policy and the Western Hemisphere since 1776. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
Thomas F. O'Brien. Making the Americas: The United States and Latin America from the
Age of Revolutions to the Era of Globalization. Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 2007.
Lars Schoultz. Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy toward Latin America.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
‘These textbook and survey authors received their training primarily in the field of U.S.
foreign relations or U.S. foreign policy.
Lester D. Langley. America and the Americas: The United States in the Western Hemi-
sphere. 2nd ed. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2010.
Kyle Longley. In the Eagle's Shadow: The United States and Latin America. 2nd ed. Wheel-
ing, IL: Harlan Davidson, 2009.
Mark T. Gilderhus. The Second Century: U.S.-Latin American Relations since 1889.
Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2000.
Walter LaFeber. Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America. 2nd rev. ed.
New York: Norton, 1993.
‘Thomas M. Leonard. Central America and the United States: The Search for Stability.
Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1991.
Major journals review books and note articles recently published in the field of U.S.
relations with Latin America, One should consult the Hispanic American Historical
Review, the Journal of Latin American Studies, the Latin American Research Review, the
Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs, the American Historical Review, and
the Journal of American History, among others.
‘The leading journal for historians of U.S. foreign relations is Diplomatic History. Many
of the books reviewed and articles published in Diplomatic History are debated on the
H-DIPLO web site (https:/networks.h-net.org/h-diplo/).
RSIT HARVARD UNIVERSIT)
Recommendations for Further Reading and Research 231
‘An especially valuable source for documentary material on the U.S. role in Latin
America is the National Security Archive, which is based at George Washington Uni-
versity. Senior analysts, like Kate Doyle and Peter Kornbluh, have done extraordinary
work in expanding public access to U.S. government information and documents. The
web site has an excellent search engine and can be accessed at http://www2.gwu.edu/
~nsarchiv/.
COLD WAR HISTORY
‘The literature on the history of the Soviet-American confrontation, the Cold War, is vast.
Thave been influenced by the following overviews, which ask hard questions about poli-
cies pursued by both sides.
Walter LaFeber. America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2006. 10th ed. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 2006.
Melvyn P. Leffler. For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the
Cold War. New York: Hill & Wang, 2008.
Odd Arne Westad. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of the
Cold War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
The following books provide overviews of U.S. policies toward Latin America and de-
velopments in Latin America during the Cold War from a variety of perspectives.
ia Garrard-Burnett, Mark Atwood Lawrence, and Julio E. Moreno, eds. Beyond the
Eagle's Shadow: New Histories of Latin America's Cold War. Albuquerque: University
of New Mexico Press, 2013.
Greg Grandin and Gilbert M. Joseph, eds. A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Coun-
terinsurgent Violence during Latin America's Cold War. Durham, NC: Duke Univer-
sity Press, 2010.
Michael Grow. U.S. Presidents and Latin American Interventions: Pursuing Regime
Change in the Cold War, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008.
Gil Joseph and Daniela Spenser, eds. In from the Cold: Latin America’s New Encounter
with the Cold War. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.
Gaddis Smith. The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945-1993. New York: Hill & Wang,
1994.
"Thomas C. Wright. Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution. Rev. ed. New York:
Praeger, 2000.
CHAPTER 1: ROOTS OF COLD WAR INTERVENTIONS
‘This chapter explores four major topics: U.S. attitudes toward Latin Americans in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the course, conduct, and impact of U.S. inter-
ventions in the Caribbean and Central America; the development of the Good Neighbor
policy; and wartime developments. Books that enlightened me on perceptions of Latin
American thought, society, and culture by U.S. citizens and policy makers include those
listed below.
232 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER READING AND RESEARCH
Michael H. Hunt. Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987.
John J. Johnson. Latin America in Caricature. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980.
James William Park. Latin American Underdevelopment: A History of Perspectives in the
United States. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995.
Historians have been very busy over the past decades probing the meaning of U.S. in-
terventions in Latin America during the first part of the twentieth century. A good place
to start would be with the following books.
Bruce J. Calder. The Impact of Intervention: The Dominican Republic during the U.S. Oc-
cupation, 1916-1924. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984,
Jason M. Colby. The Business of Empire: United Fruit, Race, and U.S. Expansion in Central
America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011.
Paul W. Drake, ed. Money Doctors, Foreign Debts, and Economic Reforms in Latin America
from the 1890s to the Present. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1994.
Michel Gobat. Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua under U.S. Imperial Rule.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.
David F. Healy. Drive to Hegemony: The United States in the Caribbean, 1898-1917. Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.
Walter LaFeber. The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective. Updated ed. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Lester D. Langley. The Banana Wars: An Inner History of American Empire, 1900-1934.
Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1983.
Alan McPherson. The Invaded: How Latin Americans and Their Allies Fought and Ended
USS. Occupations. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Louis A. Pérez Jr. Cuba under the Platt Amendment, 1902-1934. Pittsburgh, PA: Univer-
sity of Pittsburgh Press, 1986.
Louis A. Pérez Jr. The War of 1898: The United States and Cuba in History and Historiog-
raphy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
Stephen G. Rabe. The Road to OPEC: United States Relations with Venezuela, 1919-1976.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982.
Mary A. Renda. Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of Imperialism, 1915-
1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
Hans Schmidt. The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934. New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press, 1995.
On the Good Neighbor policy and the policy of nonintervention, the following books
would be a good place to start. Bryce Woods wrote the classic study.
Fredrick B. Pike. FDR's Good Neighbor Policy: Sixty Years of Generally Gentle Chaos.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.
Eric Paul Rooda. The Dictator Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy and the Trujillo Regime
in the Dominican Republic, 1930-1945. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998.
Bryce Wood. The Making of the Good Neighbor Policy. New York: Norton, 1961.
During World War II, the United States developed a global perspective and altered its
view of the significance of relations with Latin America and other Western Hemisphere
VARD UNIVERSIT’ HARVARD UNIVERSIT)
Recommendations for Further Reading and Research 233
nations, Major political and socioeconomic changes marked Latin America during
the war.
Leslie Bethell and Ian Roxborough, eds. Latin American between the Second World War
and the Cold War, 1944-1948. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Gisela Cramer and Ursula Prutsch, eds. Américas unidas! Nelson A. Rockefeller Office of
Inter-American Affairs (1940-46). Madrid: Iberoamericana; Frankfurt: Vervuert,
2012.
Max Paul Friedman. Nazis and Good Neighbors: The United States Campaign against the
Germans of Latin America in World War II. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
"Ihomas M. Leonard and James F. Bratzel, eds. Latin America during World War 1I.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.
Harvey R. Neptune. Caliban and the Yankees: Trinidad and the United States Occupation.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
Antonio Pedro Tota. The Seduction of Brazil: The Americanization of Brazil during World
War II. Translated by Lorena B. Ellis. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010.
CHAPTER 2: THE KENNAN COROLLARY
‘There has not been a comprehensive work on U.S. relations with Latin America during the
early Cold War and the Harry S. Truman administration. Many of the authors already
listed— Gaddis Smith, Leslie Bethell, and lan Roxborough, for example—cover the period.
Bradley Lynn Coleman. Colombia and the United States: The Making of an Inter-American
Alliance. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2008.
Glenn J. Dorn. The Truman Administration and Bolivia: Making the World Safe for Liberal
Constitutional Oligarchy. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press,
Steven Schwartzberg. Democracy and U.S. Policy in Latin America during the Truman
Years. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2003.
CHAPTER 3: GUATEMALA—THE MOTHER
OF INTERVENTIONS
Students, the educated public, and scholars have available to them a very complete record
ofthe U.S. intervention in Guatemala. Over time, the records of the intervention in Guatemala.
were declassified by various agencies of the U.S. government.
Nick Cullather. Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala,
1952-1954. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.
jeses. Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States,
1944-1954. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
Richard H. Immerman. The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1982.
Stephen Schlesinger, Stephen Kinzer, and John H. Coatsworth. Bitter Fruit: The Untold
Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. Rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2005,
HARVARD UNIV
234 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER READING AND RESEARCH
It is also necessary to analyze the U.S. intervention in Guatemala from a Guatemalan
perspective and to explore what happened to Guatemala after the overthrow of the con-
stitutional government.
Greg Grandin. The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 2004.
Jim Handy. Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict and Agrarian Reform in Guate-
mala, 1944-1954, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
Stephen M. Streeter. Managing the Counterrevolution: The United States and Guatemala,
1954-1961. Athens, OH: University of Ohio Press, 2000.
President Eisenhower's approach to Latin American nations other than Guatemala can
be pursued in the works listed below.
hael D. Gambone, Eisenhower, Somoza, and the Cold War in Nicaragua, 1953-1961.
Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997.
Stephen G. Rabe. Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.
James F. Siekmeier. The Bolivian Revolution and the United States, 1952 to the Present.
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011.
After the overthrow of President Arbenz, U.S. investigators searched in vain for con-
nections between Guatemalan leftists and the Soviet Union. Scholars who have analyzed
the Soviet Union's policies in Latin America have noted that the Soviet Union played a
minimal role in the region other than its alliance with Fidel Castro's Cuba.
Cole Blasier. The Giant's Rival: The USSR and Latin America. Rev. ed. Pittsburgh, PA: Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh Press, 1987.
Nicola Miller. Soviet Relations with Latin America, 1959-1987. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1989.
Ilya Prizel. Latin America through Soviet Eyes: The Evolution of Soviet Perceptions
during the Brezhnev Era, 1964-1982. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1990.
CHAPTER 4: WAR AGAINST CUBA
U.S. officials and citizens have been obsessed with Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolu-
tion for more than fifty years. The literature on Cuba and its leader is predictably volu-
minous. The books listed below are a good place start on the origins of the Cuban
Revolution.
Samuel Farber. The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2006.
Ramón Eduardo Ruiz. Cuba: The Making of a Revolution. New York: Norton, 1970.
Hugh Thomas. Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
Kt is difficult to find a balanced study of Fidel Castro, The studies by Quirk and Szulc are
quite critical of the Cuban revolutionary. The interviews conducted by Lockwood, Coltman,
and Ramonet are favorable toward Castro.
Recommendations for Further Reading and Research 235
Robert E. Quirk. Fidel Castro. New York: Norton, 1993.
Tad Szulc. Fidel: A Critical Portrait. New York: Morrow, 1986.
Lee Lockwood. Castro's Cuba, Cuba's Fidel. New York: Vintage, 1969.
Leycester Coltman. The Real Fidel Castro. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005.
Fidel Castro and Ignacio Ramonet. My Life: A Spoken Autobiography. New York, Scribner,
2008.
Compared to studies on Fidel Castro, biographies on Ernesto “Che” Guevara are more
nuanced and analytical.
Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. New York: Grove Press, 1997.
Jorge C. Castañeda. Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara, Translated by Marina
Castañeda. New York: Knopf, 1997.
Paul J. Dosal, Commandante Che: Guerrilla Soldier, Commander, and Strategist, 1956-1967.
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003.
Revolutionary Cuba allied with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But Cuba's re-
lationship with the Communist superpower was often strained.
James G. Blight and Philip Brenner. Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba's Struggle with the
Superpowers after the Missile Crisis. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.
Piero Gleijeses. Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
On the perpetual U.S. war against revolutionary Cuba, the best place to start is with
Lars Schoultz's massive history. I thereafter list major works in the order of key events:
‘opposition to Castro in the 1950s; the Bay of Pigs; Operation Mongoose; the Cuban missile
crisis; the hunt for Che Guevara; and post-1960s relations.
Lars Schoultz. That Infernal Little Cuban Republic: The United States and the Cuban Revo-
lution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
‘Thomas G. Paterson. Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban
Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Peter Kornbluh, ed. Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of
Cuba. New York: New Press, 1998.
Howard Jones. Bay of Pigs. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Don Bohning. The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations against Cuba, 1959-1965.
Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006.
Alexsandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali. “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro,
and Kennedy, 1958-1964. New York: Norton, 1997.
Don Munton and David Welch. The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Concise History. 2nd ed. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Henry Ryan Butterfield. The Fall of Che Guevara: A Story of Soldiers, Spies, and Diplo-
mats. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Soraya M. Castro Mariño and Ronald W. Pruessen, eds. Fifty Years of Revolution: Perspectives
on Cuba, the United States, and the World. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2012.
HARVARD UNIVERS
236 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER READING AND RESEARCH
CHAPTER 5: NO MORE CUBAS—THE KENNEDY
AND JOHNSON DOCTRINES
‘The John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson administrations wanted to fight radicalism,
communism, and the Cuban Revolution through development and “modernization.” The
grand economic aid program, the Alliance for Progress, the “Marshall Plan for Latin
America,” failed, however, to achieve U.S. goals in the region. The Alliance for Progress is
analyzed in the following works.
‘Thomas C. Field Jr. From Development to Dictatorship: Bolivia and the Alliance for Prog-
ress in the Kennedy Era. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014.
Michael E. Latham. Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and "Nation
Building" in the Kennedy Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
Robert Packenham. Liberal America and the Third World: Political Development Ideas
and Social Science. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973.
Stephen G. Rabe. The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Com-
munist Revolution in Latin America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carol
Press, 1999.
Jeffrey F. Taffet. Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy: The Alliance for Progress in Latin America.
New York: Routledge, 2007.
When modernization schemes failed to create sturdy, self-reliant, anti-Communist
states in Latin America, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations turned to covert in-
terventions and the training of Latin American military and police officers. Before exam-
ining the U.S. covert interventions in British Guiana and Brazil and the invasion of the
Dominican Republic, a student might want to examine books about the CIA and military
and police training. Agee was former CIA operative who turned against the agency and
went into exile in Cuba,
Philip Agee. Inside the Company: CIA Diary. New York: Stonehill, 1975.
Tim Weiner. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. New York: Doubleday, 2007.
Lesley Gill. The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the
Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.
Martha K. Huggins. Political Policing: The United States and Latin America. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 1998.
At present, my book is the only study that focuses on the U.S. intervention in British
Guiana. Colin Palmer, a distinguished historian of the Caribbean, has written a new
analysis of Cheddi Jagan.
Stephen G. Rabe, U.S. Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
Colin Palmer. The Politics of Power: Cheddi Jagan, Great Britain, the United States, and the
Struggle for British Guiana. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
Four authors have provided an excellent understanding of the “quiet” U.S. intervention
in Brazil from 1962 to 1964. Before perusing these studies, one might investigate Thomas
Skidmore' fine account of Brazilian history. Green analyzes the transnational opposition
to the military dictatorship.
Recommendations for Further Reading and Research 237
Thomas E. Skidmore. Brazil: Five Centuries of Change. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2009.
Jan Knippers Black. United States Penetration of Brazil. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1977.
Ruth Leacock. Requiem for Revolution: The United States and Brazil, 1961-1969. Kent,
OH: Kent State University Press, 1990.
Phyllis R. Parker. Brazil and the Quiet Intervention. Austin: University of Texas Press,
1979,
W. Michael Weis. Cold Warriors and Coups d'Etat: Brazilian-American Relations,
1946-1964. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993.
James N. Green. We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictator-
ship in the United States. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
‘The scholarly community still lacks an analysis of the U.S. invasion of the Dominican
Republic that incorporates recently declassified material and new methodologies in the
history of U.S. foreign relations. The studies by Gleijeses and Lowenthal are dated but
useful, although Gleijeses has updated (2012) his study in a Spanish-language publica-
tion. Chester offers intriguing insights.
Piero Gleijeses. The Dominican Crisis: The 1965 Constitutionalist Revolt and American
Intervention. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.
Abraham F. Lowenthal. The Dominican Intervention. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1972.
Eric Thomas Chester, Rag-Tags, Scum, Riff-Raff, and Commies: The U.S. Intervention in
the Dominican Republic, 1965-1966. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001.
For U.S. Relations with Mexico, Niblo covers the early Cold War, whereas O'Neill.
serves as a representative analysis of the contemporary period. Keller and White explore
Mexico's ambivalent policies toward revolutionary Cuba.
Stephen R. Niblo. War, Diplomacy and Development: The United States and Mexico,
1938-1954. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1995.
Shannon K. O'Neill. Two Nations Indivisible: Mexico, the United States, and the Road
Ahead. New York: Oxford University Press.
Renata Keller. Mexico's Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican
Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Christopher M. White. Creating a Third World: Mexico, Cuba, and the United States
during the Castro Era. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007.
CHAPTER 6: MILITARY DICTATORS—
COLD WAR ALLIES
No historian has yet produced a comprehensive study of the Latin American policy of the
Richard M. Nixon administration. A student might consult general histories of Nixon's
foreign policy. The edited work by Logevall and Preston contains an essay by Mark Law-
rence on Nixon and Latin America.
Robert Dallek. Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.
238 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER READING AND RESEARCH
Jussi M. Hanhimaki. Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Fredrik Logevall and Andrew Preston, eds. Nixon in the World: American Foreign Rela-
tions, 1969-1977, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Before investigating the U.S. intervention in Chile and U.S. relations with the Argentine.
tary, it would be best to gain some insight into Chilean and Argentine history.
Brian Loveman. Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001.
Luis Alberto Romero. A History of Argentina in the Twentieth Century. University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002.
The US. intervention in Chile is the one case study of the Nixon administration's
policy toward Latin America that is well documented. President Bill Clinton ordered
the declassification of more than twenty thousand documents on U.S. policy toward
Chile. These documents are available via the Internet. See http://foia.state.gov/Search/
Collections.aspx. Kornbluh's book reprints many of these documents. Harmer's study is
a model of scholarship.
Tanya Harmer. Allende's Chile and the Inter-American Cold War. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2011.
Jonathan Haslam. The Nixon Administration and the Death of Allende's Chile: A Case of
Assisted Suicide. London: Verso, 2005.
Peter Kornbluh. The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier of Atrocity and Accountability.
New York: New Press, 2003.
General Augusto Pinochet and other South American military dictators spread murder
and terror throughout the continent and sponsored international terrorism through Op-
eration Condor. Thomas Wright's book is especially compelling in detailing the atrocities
ordered by the military dictators.
John Dinges, The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three
Continents. New York: New Press, 2004.
John Dinges and Saul Landau. Assassination on Embassy Row. New York: Pantheon
Books, 1980.
J. Patrice McSherry. Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.
‘Thomas C. Wright. State Terrorism in Latin America: Chile, Argentina, and International
Human Rights. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.
Survivors of the horrors of torture, rape, and degradation in countries such as Argentina,
Brazil, and Chile have written about their grim experiences.
Munii Actis et al. That Inferno: Conversations of Five Women Survivors of an Argentine
Torture Camp. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2006.
Luz Arce. The Inferno: A Story of Terror and Survival in Chile. Translated by Stacey Alba
Skar. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.
VARD UNIVERSIT’ HARVARD UNIVERSIT)
Recommendations for Further Reading and Research 239
Lina Penna Sattamini, A Mother's Cry: A Memoir of Politics, Prison, and Torture under the
Brazilian Military Dictatorship. Edited and with an Introduction by James N. Green.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012.
Jacobo Timerman. Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number. Translated by Tony
Talbot. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.
CHAPTER 7: COLD WAR HORRORS—
CENTRAL AMERICA
Chapter 7 first surveys the human rights initiatives of President Jimmy Carter and then
analyzes the Ronald Reagan administration’s war against political leftists in Nicaragua,
El Salvador, and Guatemala, The studies by Schoultz, Sikkink, and Schmidli on Carter's
policies are outstanding. Pastor, who served on the National Security Council, provides a
detached view of Carter's policies in Central America.
Lars Schoultz. Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981.
Kathryn Sikkink. Mixed Signals: U.S. Human Rights Policy and Latin America. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2004.
William Michael Schmidli. The Fate of Freedom Elsewhere: Human Rights and US. Cold
War Policy toward Argentina. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013.
Robert A. Pastor. Condemned to Repetition: The United States and Nicaragua. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton: University Press, 1987.
Gaining insight into the people and culture of Central America is an essential first task
before embarking on an investigation of U.S. policies in the region between 1979 and 1989.
John A. Booth, Christine J. Wade, and Thomas W. Walker. Understanding Central America:
Global Forces, Rebellion, and Change. 6th ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2014.
Ralph Lee Wooward Jr. Central America: A Nation Divided. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999.
Historian Thomas Leonard once calculated that, from 1979 to 1992, more than nine
hundred books appeared purporting to explain the Central American crisis. A student.
might begin with the aforementioned surveys by LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions (1993);
and Leonard, Central America and the United States (1991). Three studies on the Reagan
administration's approach are listed. LeoGrande’s massive tome is the best and most
comprehensive history of the policy debates that erupted within the United States during
the Central American crisis. Peace expertly outlines the transnational movement that
arose in opposition to the U.S. wars in Central America.
‘Thomas Carothers. In the Name of Democracy: U.S. Policy toward Latin America in the
Reagan Years. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
Greg Grandin. Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the
New Imperialism. New York: Holt, 2007.
William M. LeoGrande. Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America,
1977-1992. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
HARVARD UNIV
240 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER READING AND RESEARCH
Roger Peace. A Call to Conscience: The Anti-Contra War Campaign. Amherst: University
of Massachusetts Press, 2012.
‘The following books convey some of the horrors that Central Americans were subjected
to in the 1980s. Garrard-Burnett’s account of the terror in Guatemala is an outstanding
scholarly work.
Mark Danner. The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War. New York: Vintage
Books, 1994.
Joan Didion. Salvador. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983.
Virginia Garrard-Burnett. Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit: Guatemala under General
Efrain Rios Montt. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Cecilia Menjivar and Néstor Rodriguez, eds. When States Kill: Latin America, the U.S.
and Technologies of Terror. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.
AFTERMATH
In the post-Cold War period, governments, international agencies, and nongovernmen-
tal organizations like the Roman Catholic Church have produced compelling, credible
reports and documentary histories on the ghastly violations of human rights in countries
such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Some of these reports, or at
least their conclusions, can be read in English in book form or on the Internet.
Archdiocese of Sào Paulo, Torture in Brazil. Translated by Jaime Wright. Edited and with
an Introduction by Joan Dassin. New York: Vintage Books, 1986.
Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional, Guatemala. From Silence to Memory: Revela-
tions of the AHPN. With a Foreword by Carlos Aguirre and a Preface by Kate Doyle.
Eugene: University of Oregon Libraries, 2013.
Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared. Nunca Más. With an Introduction
by Ronald Dworkin. New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1986.
Commission on the Truth for El Salvador. From Madness to Hope: The Twelve Year War in
EI Salvador, 1993. (http://www.usip.org/files/file/ElSalvador-Report pdf?)
Daniel Rothenberg, ed. Memory of Silence: The Guatemalan Truth Commission Report.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Scholars and journalists have also been interviewing the victims of the Cold War and
those who perpetrated the atrocities. Goldhagen, a renowned scholar on the destruction
of European Jewry, interprets what happened in countries such as Argentina and Guatemala
within the context of the atrocities committed by the Nazis. Lazzara's interviews with Luz
Acre are searing. Arce collaborated with the Pinochet regime after being subjected to
unspeakable torture and rape by the regime’s military thugs. Steve Sterns's work on
memory in Chile after Pinochet is truly amazing and vital.
Marguerite Feitlowitz. A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998,
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing
Assault on Humanity. New York: Public Affairs, 2009.
VARD UNI
Recommendations for Further Reading and Research 241
Michael J. Lazzara, Luz Arce and Pinochet's Chil
lence. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Matilde Mellibovsky. Circle of Love over Death: Testimonies of the Mothers of the Plaza de
Mayo. Translated by Marie and Matthew Poser. Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press,
1997.
Tina Rosenberg. Children of Cain: Violence and the Violent in Latin America. New York:
William Morrow, 1991.
Steve J. Stern. Reckoning with Pinochet: The Memory Question in Democratic Chile,
1989-2006. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
Testimony in the Aftermath of State Vio-
UNIVERSITY HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Index
ABC, 159
Abrams, Elliot, 165, 169, 175
Acción Democrática, 17, 30
Acheson, Dean, xxxi, 24, 28, 32, 34, 42,
71,125
Adams, John Quincy, 2, 24
Afghanistan, 155, 162, 170
Africa, Cuba and, 65-66
Agency for International Development,
US, 91
n reform, 39, 46, 63. See also land
reform
n Institute for Free.
Labor Development
Alea, Tomás Gutiérrez, 68
Alekseev, Alexsandr, 64
Alessandri Palma, Arturo, 127
Alessandri Rodriguez, Jorge, 128-29,
131-32, 134
Alfonsín, Raúl, 154, 182-83
Alianza Republicana Nacionalista
(ARENA), 172, 176, 177, 201
Alleged Assassination Plots Involving
Foreign Leaders, 132
Allende Busi, Isabel, 190, 202
Allende Gossens, Salvador, xxxv, xxxviii,
xl, xliii, 119, 137, 188, 190, 202
Arbenz defended by, 53
Castro, F., and, 135, 137
CIA Scare Campaign against, 130
death of, 127, 140-41
election of, 131-35
FRAP and, 128-30
Kissinger on, 140, 145.
Nixon and, 125-27, 133-34, 138-42, 147
Pinochet “moral cleansing" after, 143
presidency of, 135-38
Soviet support of, 130
U.S. reaction to overthrow of, 152, 154,
195-96
USS. relations with, 53
Alliance for Progress, 101, 116, 118
anticommunism undermining,
95-97, 108
as anti-revolutionary program, 68, 85
Brazil and, 105-9, 112
Chile and, 128-29
development and, 91-95
Dominican Republic and, 103
economic growth from, 155, 171
Eisenhower and, 88-89
failure of, 121-22
Johnson, L., and, 93, 95
Kennedy, J. F., and, xlii,
98, 122, 123, 156
Nixon criticism of, 122
Venezuela and, 93, 94
“The Alliance That Lost Its Way”
(Frei, E), 131
Alvarez, Gregorio, 192
Alvarez Martinez, Gustavo, 166-67
Amaya Marquez, Rufina, 175
American Chamber of Commerce, 173
American Federation of Labor, 55
13, 46, 86-95,
243
HARVARD UNIV
244 INDEX
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial
Organizations, 172
American Foreign Service
Organization, 154
American Institute for Free Labor
Development (AIFLD), 140, 172, 176
American Popular Revolutionary Alliance
(Aprista), 17
American Psychiatric Association, 190
AM/LASH, See Cubela Secades, Rolando
Amnesty International, 174
Anaconda, 128
ANESESAL, 171
Angelelli, Enrique (Bishop), 185
Angola, Cuban intervention in, 66
anticommunism, xxxiv, 1, 30-35, 44
Alliance for Progress undermined by,
95-97, 108
in Argentina, 111
in Brazil, 110-11, 126
development v., 95-97
in Guatemala, 191
Kennedy administration and, 96-97, 171
military oppression in name of, 119, 149
military seizures of power and, 111
in Nicaragua, 158
Nixon and, 119
antisemitism, 148
apologies, 194-96
Aprista. See American Popular
Revolutionary Alliance
Aramburu, Juan Carlos (Cardinal), 157
Arbenz Guzmán, Jacobo, 37, 47, 64, 69,
104, 194
Allende Gossens and, 53
CIA and overthrow of, 40-42, 44-45,
48-50, 51
‘communism and, 38, 45-46
Guatemala after overthrow of, 53-58
Guevara and, 53
land reform and, 40, 46
PGT and, 38
Archdiocese of Guatemala City, 191
Archdiocese of Sào Paolo, 183, 193
ARENA. See Alianza Republicana
Nacionalista
Arendt, Hannah, 180
Arévalo, Juan José, 17, 26, 30, 37, 38, 56,
57,96
Argentina
anticommunism in, 111
antisemitism in, 148
dirty war in, xxxiii, xxxiv, xxx
153, 157, 163, 182, 184, 186, 187
disappeared people in, 153, 183, 184, 186
historical inquiry in, 182-86
human rights and, 183, 197, 202
inger and, 148
military government in, 147-48
Nixon and, 147-48
Argentine Communist Party, 67
Argentine Conference of Bishops, 185-86
Arias Sánchez, Oscar, 170, 177
Army Caribbean School, U.S. See School
of the Americas
Arns, Paulo Evaristo (Cardinal), 113,
157, 183
Article 51,27
Arzú, Alvaro, 191
Asociación Pro-Bósqueda, xxxiv
Astiz, Alfredo, “Angel of Death,” 186
Atlacatl Battalion, xl, 173, 175, 176, 194
Atlantic Charter, 17
Atlantic Council, 198
Aylwin, Patricio, 188
m,
Bachelet, Alberto, 143
Bachelet, Michelle, xx
154, 190, 200, 201
Balaguer, Joaquin, 13, 100, 102-5
Ball, George, 99
banana republics, 12
La Banda, 105
Banzer Suárez, Hugo, 126
Barbosa, Gibson, 126
Barreiro, Ernesto Guillermo, 197
Barrientos Otufia, René, 80, 83
Batista, Fulgencio, 13, 16, 17, 18, 51, 51, 53,
59-63, 61, 69, 70, 93, 98, 121, 124
Bayard, Thomas F., 4
Bay of Pigs, xxxix, 42, 52, 55, 68-73, 74, 87,
97, 98, 106
Beisner, Robert L., 42
Belgium, 79
Bennett, W. Tapley, Jr., 100
Berghaus, Suzanne Marie, xxxiv, xxxv, xl,
xliii, 205
Bergoglio, Jorge Mario (Cardinal).
See Francis I
xxxiv, 143, 145,
UNIVE!
HARVARD
Berle, Adolf A., Jr., 26, 28
Berlin Wall, fall of, 181, 196, 201
Bermádez, Enrique, 167
Bernabé Linares, José, 55
Bernal, Gael García, 195
Betancourt, Rómulo, xxxiv, 65, 89, 93, 94
Bethell, Leslie, 27, 30
Biden, Joseph, 202
Bignone, Reynaldo, 185
birth control, 94
Bissell, Richard, 71, 73
black propaganda, 48, 50, 130
Boland, Edward P., 169
Boland amendments, 169
Bolivia
Brazil intervention in, 126
Guevara in, 65, 67, 80-84
Johnson, L. and, 83
US. chasing Guevara in, 83
Bolivian Communist Party, 81
Bolshevik Revolution, 67
Bordaberry, Juan Maria, 192
Bordaberry Arocena, Juan Maria, 126
Borge, Tomás, 159
Bosch, Juan, 98-100, 102-4
Brandenburg Gate, xxxii
Brandt, Willy, 203
Brasil: Nunca Mais (Brazil: Never Again)
(Archdiocese of São Paolo), 183, 193
Brazil, xxxviii
Alliance for Progress and, 105-9, 112
anticommunism in, 110-11, 126
Bolivia intervention by, 126
Castro, F., and, 107
Chile intervention and, 126-27
Cuba relations with, 106, 109
Guevara in, 107
human rights in, 110-12, 193
Johnson, L., and, 105, 106, 109
Kissinger and, 125-26
Kubitschek reform programs in, 105-6
military's role in history of, 109-11
Nixon and, 125-26
radical left in, 110
torture in, 113, 193
truth commissions in, 194, 202
Uruguay intervention by, 126
USS. destabilizing government of, 108-9
Brazilian Communist Party, 107, 111
Brazilian miracle, 109-14
Index 245
Brezhnev, Leonid, 67, 81, 84
Brigade 2506, 70, 72, 75
British Guiana, xxxviii, 104, 108
Broad Front coalition, 193
Brown, Theodore, 113
Bruce, David K. E., 42
Bryan, William Jennings, 12
Bundy, McGeorge, 75, 99, 102
Bureau of Human Rights and Human
Affairs, 152
Burnham, Forbes, xxxviii, xl, 104, 195
Bush, George H. W., 196, 201
Byrnes, James, 28
Caamaño Deñó, Francisco, 100
Cabot, John Moors, 107
CAFTA. See Central American Free Trade
Agreement
Calda, Milos, xxxii, xliii
Calligeris, John H. See Castillo Armas,
Carlos.
Camp David Accords, 154
Capone, Al, 70.
la capucha, 58
Caravan of Death, 144
Cardenal, Ernesto, 157
Cárdenas del Río, Lázaro, 114, 115
Cardoso, Fernando Enrique, 110
Carlotto, Estela, 187
Carlotto, Laura, 187
Carranza, Nicolás, 174
Carranza, Venustiano, 10
Carrillo Colón, Humberto, 116
Carter, Jimmy; xxxix, xliii, 178, 183,
188-89, 195, 204
El Salvador and, 172
human rights and, 151-55, 160
Nicaragua and, 170
Pinochet and, 153-54
Casey, William J., 164, 169
Castello Branco, Humberto de Alencar,
109, 110.
Castillo Armas, Carlos (RUFUS), 40-43,
48-51, 53-54, 54, 56
Castro, Cipriano, 6, 9-10
Castro, Fidel, xxxvi, xxxix, xlii, 24, 31, 46,
53, 56, 61, 81, 86, 91, 113, 126, 151,
152, 157, 181, 194, 198
agrarian reform by, 63
Allende Gossens and, 135, 137
246 INDEX
Castro, Fidel (Continued)
attitude towards U.S. of, 61-62
Brazil and, 107
CIA assassination efforts against,
69-70, 74-75, 78, 79, 202
communism and, 63-64
Cuban Missile Crisis and, 75-76
Cuban Revolution and, 59-64
Dominican Republic civil war and, 100
Eisenhower administration reaction to,
68-70
revolution promoted by, 64-65
Sandinistas and, 161-62
Soviet Union and, 66-67, 77, 84
Castro, Juana, 130.
Castro, Raúl, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 72, 198
Los Catorce, 156, 171, 172
Central America
gangs of, 200
as last battleground of Cold W.
Reagan and, 162-66
Roman Catholic Church and, 157
US. capitalist control in, 11-12
U.S. immigrants from, 199-200
Central American Common Market, 171
Central American Free Trade Agreement
(CAFTA), 199
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), xxxvi,
19,35
Arbenz Guzmán overthrow and, 40-42,
44-45, 48-50, 51
Bay of Pigs and, 69-72
black propaganda by, 48, 50, 130
Brazilian security forces and, 113
Castro, F., assassination efforts by,
69-70, 74-75, 78, 79, 202
Chile interventions by, 129, 140
contras and, 166-68
controlled penetration techniques
48, 52, 108
creation of, 41
Cuba sabotage program of, 77-78
disinformation campaigns by, 48, 130
Doolittle Commission report on, 52
election manipulation by, 97, 129
on Goulart, 108
Guatemala and, 38, 40-44, 48-53,
55-56, 69-70.
Johnson, L., and, 79-80
in Mexico, 116-17
r, 151
VARD UNI
RSIT
on MIR, 65
Noriega and, 169
Operation Mongoose and, 73-75
Panama and, 169
Sandinistas v., 166-68
Scare Campaign by, 130
“A Study in Assassination,” 54
Trujillo, R. L., assassination and, 97
Chamizal controversy, 115
Chamorro, Pedro Joaquín, 158
Chamorro, Violeta Barrios de, 158, 160,
170, 196
Chapin, Frederic L., 179
Che (film), 195
Chester, Eric Thomas, 104
Chile, xxviii
Allende Gossens elected in, 131-35
Allende Gossens presidency of, 135-38
Alliance for Progress and, 128-29
Brazil and intervention in, 126-27
CIA interventions in, 129, 140
coup climate in, 134, 138, 140
disappeared people in, 153, 188, 189
economic problems in, 138
human rights and, 145-46, 188
Johnson, L., and, 129
Kennedy, J. F., and, 128-29
Kissinger and, 127-29, 132, 138-42, 145
Law for the Permanent Defense of
Democracy, 32
National Commission on Truth and
Reconciliation in, 188
nationalism in, 143,
Nixon and, 132, 133, 134
Pinochet coup in, 140-41
Reagan and, 187-88
terrorism and, 144
torture in, 190
USS. intervention in, xxxiv, xxxv,
129, 132
Valech Commission in, 190
Chilean Communist Party, 32, 130, 131, 133
Chile Declassification Project, 132, 202
Church, Frank, 132
CIA. See Central Intelligence Agency
Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years
of Solitude) (García Márquez), 150.
civil rights legislation, 101
Clark, J. Reuben, 15
Clark, William, 178
HARVARD UNIVERSIT)
Clark Memorandum, 15
Clemente, Roberto, 158
Cleveland, Grover, 3-4, 20
Clinton, Bill, xxxv, 132, 195, 197, 199, 202
Cohen, Roger, 186-87
Cold War
Central America as last battleground
of, 151
colonialism and, 1
conservative/elitist groups exploiting, 11
end of, 181, 194
Finland in, xxxii
international police power and, 19-20
Latin America and history of, 182-94
‘Truman and policy framework for,
21-22
USS. and history of, 196-202
U.S. policies in, xxxi
Cole, Charles, 129
Colom, Alvaro, 194
Colombia, Panamanian independence
from, 5
colonialism
Cold War as continuation of, 1
interventionism and, 33
Columbian Exposition, 3
Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición
de Personas (National Commission
on the Disappearance of Persons/
CONADEP), 182-83
Commission for Historical Clarification,
56, 191, 195
Committee of Santa Fe, 163
communism. See also anticommunism;
Soviet Union; specific communist
parties
Arbenz and, 38, 45-46
Castro, F., and, 63-64
U.S. opposing in Latin America,
xxxvi-xxxvii
USS. studies of Guatemala and, 45
Communist Interference in El Salvador, 166
CONADEP. See Comisión Nacional sobre
la Desaparición de Personas.
Concertación, 188
Connally, John, 123, 124, 125
Consensus of Viña del Mar, 95
containment policy
framework of, 21
roots of, 22
by
UNIVERSIT)
Index 247
contras, 166-69, 198
Contreras, Manuel, 144, 147, 188-89
controlled penetration techniques, 48,
52,108
Corrigan, Frank, 17
Costa-Gavras, 113, 190
Council for Inter-American Security,
162-63
Council for the International Exchange
of Scholars (Fulbright Program),
xxxi-xxxii
Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973, 132
crimes against humanity, universal
jurisdiction for, 184
Cristiani, Alfredo, 177
Cruz Martinez, Rogelia, 58
Cuba
Adamson, 2
African missions by, 65-66
agrarian reform in, 63
Angola intervention by, 66
Arbenz visit to, 46
Brazil relations with, 106, 109
as center for Latin American radicals, 65
Eisenhower and, 64, 68-71, 74, 79
independence movement in, 4-5
Johnson, L., and, 64, 67-68, 78-80
Kennedy, J. F., and, 64, 68, 70-76
Mafia in, 62, 70, 202
Mexico and, 113-14, 116
Nixon and, 69
reform ambitions in, 62
Sandinistas and, 158
Soviet relations with, 66, 76
Soviet support of, xxxvi, 63-64
Soviet Union collapse and, 194
spreading revolution as anti-U.S.
tactic, 66
sugar production and, 62-64, 67, 77
as threat to U.S. security, 64-65
United Kingdom and, 79
U.S. business investments in, 61-62, 64
USS. control of trade with, 62-63
USS. interventions in, 10-11
U.S. non-invasion pledge to, 77, 164
USS. policies towards, 59, 198-99
as US. protectorate, 5
U.S. sabotage program against, 77-78
Cubana Airlines Flight 455, 198
Cuban Communist Party, 60-61, 63
HARVARD UNIV
248 INDEX
Cuban Missile Crisis, xl, 66, 75-76,
194, 203
Cuban Revolution, xxxvi, xxxviii, xlii, 53,
56, 59-64, 66-69, 79, 84, 86, 89, 110,
157,158, 161
Cubela Secades, Rolando (AM/LASH), 78
Czechoslovakia, 84
da Costa e Silva, Arturo, 110, 125
Dalmao, Miguel, 192
Daniels, Josephus, 17
D'Aubuisson, Roberto, “Blowtorch Bob,"
171-72, 174, 176
Davis, Nathaniel, 140.
Davis, Roy E., 189
death flights, 184
death squads, xxxix, 119
in Chile, 144
in Dominican Republic, 105
in El Salvador, 157, 163, 171, 172,
174,175
Debayle, Luis Manuel, "Tío Luz," 156
Decree 900 (Guatemala), 39-40, 45-47,
48, 54, 55
Del Toro, Benicio, 195
democracy movements, 17-18, 26-27
Deng Xiaoping, 161
Derian, Patricia, 152-54
de Rosas, Juan Manuel, 63
d'Escoto Brockmann, Miguel (Father),
157, 186
development
Alliance for Progress and, 91-95
anticommunism v., 31-32, 95-97
Diaz, Adolfo, 11
Diaz, Carlos Enrique, 50
Diaz, Gladys, 143
Diaz Ordaz, Gustavo, 114-17, 117
“Dictatorships and Double Standards”
(Kirkpatrick), 163
Didion, Joan, 174, 175, 176
Diem, Ngo Dinh, 135
Dillon, C. Douglas, 87, 89
Dillon, Read, 14
DINA, 144-46, 188.
dirty war (la guerra sucia), xxxiii, xxxiv,
xxxviii, 111, 148-49, 153, 157, 163,
182, 184, 186, 187
disappeared people, 58, 153, 182-83, 184,
186, 188, 189
dollar diplomacy, 12
Dominican Republic
Alliance for Progress and, 103
Balaguer election in, 102-5
Bosch presidency in, 98-100
civil war in, 100-102
death squads in, 105
Emergency Law of 1962, 99.
Johnson, L., and, 13, 33, 80, 99-102,
124, 151, 160
Kennedy, J. F. and, 13, 98-99
OAS peacekeeping in, 109
progressive interventionism and, 12
Trujillo, R. L., dictatorship in, xl, 13,
97-99
US. invasion of, xxxvii, xlii, 6, 12-13,
80, 97, 100-102, 124
domino theory, 151, 162, 165, 173
Donaldson, Sam, 166
Doolittle, Jimmy, 52
Doolittle Commission, 52
Dos Erres massacre, 192
Douglas-Home, Alec, 79
Dreier, John, 52 ]
Duarte, José Napoleón, 155, 171, 172, 173,
174, 176, 177
Dubcek, Alexander, 84
duck test, 39, 46
Dulles, Allen, 41, 43, 44, 51, 69, 70, 71
Dulles, John Foster, xxxvi, xxxvii, 44, 45,
47, 50, 52, 55
Durán, Julio, 130.
Duvalier, François, “Papa Doc,” xxxix
Echeverría Alvarez, Luis, 117
economic development assistance,
anticommunism and, 31-32, 95-97
Edwards, Agustin, 139, 147
Eichmann, Adolf, 180
Eisenhower, Dwight D., xl, 101, 102,
125,163
Alliance for Progress and, 88-89
anticommunism and, 33
anticommunist policies of, 33
Cuba and, 64, 68-71, 74, 79
election of, 35
Guatemala and, 36-37, 43-44, 47, 49,
50-52, 54, 55-56
Latin American policies of, 33, 35,
43,124
HARVARD UNIVERSIT)
Mexico and, 116
Trujillo, R. L., assassination and,
97-98, 160
Elbrick, Charles Burke, xxxviii:
El Mozote massacre, xl, 175, 183, 194
El Salvador, xxxiv, 46
Carter and, 172
death squads in, 157, 163, 171, 172,
174,175
Kennedy, J. F., and, 171
land reform proposals in, 173, 176
Law for the Defense and Guarantee
of Public Order, 171
peace agreement in, 177
political violence in, 171-77
population growth in, 156
Reagan and, 171-77
UN Truth Commission on, 174, 197
U.S. economic assistance to, 176
Emergency Law of 1962 (Dominican
Republic), 99
Enders, Thomas O., 165
Escalante, Aníbal, 67
ESMA. See Navy School of Mechanics
Eugenio Aramburu, Pedro, 90
European Recovery Program, 29
Export-Import Bank, 29, 115, 139, 153
Falklands Islands, 182
Farabundo Martí, Augustin, 171
FDR. See Revolutionary Democratic Front.
Figueres, José, “Pepe,” xxxix, 17, 89
Finch, Robert, 121, 123, 124
Finland, Cold War neutrality of, xxxii
Fitzgerald, Desmond, 79
FMLN. See Frente Farabundo Martí para.
la Liberación Nacional.
foco theory, 81
Food for Peace grants, 142
Ford, Gerald R., 142, 145, 146, 148, 152
Foreign Affairs (journal), 22, 126
Foreign Relations of the United States,
201-2
Fortas, Abe, 99-100, 101
Fortuny, José Manuel, 38, 46
40 Committee, 132
Four Freedoms, 17, 37
Francis I (Pope), 185-86
FRAP. See Frente de Acción Popular
Fraser, Donald M., 152
HARVARD UNIVERS
Index 249
Freedom Fighter's Manual, 168
Frei Montalva, Eduardo, xl, 52, 128-32,
134-36
Frei Ruiz-Tagle, Eduardo, 188
Frente de Acción Popular (Popular Action
Front/FRAP), 128-30
Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación
Nacional (FMLN), 173-75, 177, 201
Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional
(Sandinista National Liberation
Front), xxxvi, xxxvii, 158, 200
Castro, F., and, 161-62
CIA v., 166-68.
human rights and, 161
in Nicaraguan government, 166-68
Reagan v., 166-70
Soviet support of, xxxvi
Frondizi, Arturo, 89, 96, 97
FUBELT. See Project FUBELT
Fuentes, Carlos, 180
Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes, 56
Fulbright, J. William, 71, 151
Fulbright Commission, 153
Fulbright Program. See Council for the
International Exchange of Scholars
Funes, Mauricio, 194, 201
Gadea, Hilda, 53
Gallegos, Rómulo, 30
Galtieri, Leopoldo, 182, 185, 197
gangs, of Central America, 200
García, José Guillermo, 197-98
García, Romeo Lucas, 177
García Godoy, Héctor, 102
García Márquez, Gabriel, 150-51, 180
Garrard-Burnett, Virginia, 178
Garzón, Baltazar, 184, 189
geladeira, 113
Gerardi, Juan José, 191-92
Germany
Haiti and, 9
Mexico and, 10
Giancana, Sam, 70, 75
Gil, Gilberto, 110, 194
Gleijeses, Piero, xxxvi, 46, 58
The Global Cold War (Westad), 1
Goldwater, Barry, 129
Gémez, José Manuel, 11, 14
Gómez, Juan Vicente, 10
González, Elian, 199
D UNIVERSI
250 INDEX
González, Leonel, 201
González, Raymond J., 179
Good Neighbor policy, 15-18, 19, 27, 32,
33,42, 101
Goodwin, Richard, 73-74
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 161, 170, 196, 203
Gordon, Lincoln, 89, 90, 107, 109, 111
Goulart, João, 6, 96, 97, 106-12, 126
Greg, xxxvii, 30, 37, 53-54.
Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo
(las Abuelas), 183, 186, 187
Granma, 60, 61
Great Depression, 15, 101
Great Society, 95
Greece, 44
Greek-Turkish aid programs, 33
Green Berets, 83
Grew, Joseph, 30.
Grow, Michael, xli-xlii
Guantánamo Bay, 16, 61, 74, 79
Guatemala
agrarian reform in, 39, 46
anticommunism in, 191
Arbenz taking power in, 37
Bay of Pigs and, 55
CIA and, 38, 40-44, 48-53, 55-56,
69-70
Commission for Historical Clarification
in, 56, 191, 195, 205
Decree 900 by, 39-40, 45-47, 48, 54, 55
disappeared people in, 58
Eisenhower and, 36-37, 43-44, 47, 49,
50-52, 54, 55-56
elections in, 56
lite control of, 37
genocide in, 177-80, 192
Guevara in, 53,72
historical lessons of, 50-53
inequalities in, 37-38
Johnson, L., and, 56-57
Kennedy, J. F., and, 56-57
labor rights law in, 39
after overthrow of Arbenz, 53-58
paramilitary groups in, 56
Truman and, 37, 39-42
Truth Commission in, 56, 57, 177-78, 179
United Fruit Company and, 38-41
US. intervention in, xxxiv, xxxv,
xxxvii, 35, 36-37
US. military assistance to, 58
US. policy towards, 202
US. studies of communism and, 45
Guatemala: Memory of Silence
(Commission for Historical
Clarification), 191, 195, 205
Guatemalan Revolution of 1944, 155
Guatemala: Nunca Más (Archdiocese of
Guatemala City), 191
guest worker program (bracero), 115
Guevara, Ernesto "Che," 64, 118, 152
in Africa, 66
in Bolivia, 65, 67, 80-84
in Brazil, 107
Cuban Revolution and, 60, 63
death of, 80, 82, 83, 83
foco theory of, 81
in Guatemala, 53, 72
Kennedy, J. F., and, 73, 82
mythologizing of, 68, 194-95
Punta del Este Conference and, 89
revolution spread by, 64, 66
South America tour by, 53
tricontinental strategy of, 81
US. peace gesture from, 73, 76
Gutiérrez, Victor Manuel, 46, 58
Guyana, xxxvi, 195
Guzmán, Juan, 189
Guzzetti, César Augusto, 148
Haig, Alexander, 123, 164, 165, 173
Haiti
Germany and, 9
progressive interventionism and, 12
Haldeman, H. R., 123
Halle, Louis, 28, 32, 44
Handal, Shafik Jorge, 159
Harris, F. Allan, “Tex,” 153, 154, 204
Hart-Celler Act, 115
Hawkins, Jack, 72
Hawley-Smoot Tariff, 15
Hay-Paunceforte Treaty, 4
Healy, David F., 6
Heath, Edward, 126
Helms, Richard, 73, 75, 103, 125, 133,
134, 139
Helms-Burton Act, 199
Helsinki Accords, 137, 152, 203
Henderson, Nicolas, 182
Hernández Martínez, Maximiliano, 26, 171
Hersh, Seymour, 75
UNIVERSIT)
HARVARD
Herter, Christian, 69
Hill, Robert C., 148, 153
inton, Deane, 173, 175
“History Will Absolve Me" (Castro, F), 60.
Hitchens, Christopher, 196
Hitler, Adolf, 13, 139
Ho Chi Minh, 22
Holocaust, 184
Homestead Act (U.S), 39
Honduras, 169
Hoover, Herbert, 15
Horman, Charles, 189-90
Horn, Michael C., 197
Human Development Index, 199
human rights. See also Bureau of Human
Rights and Human Affairs; Inter-
American Court of Human Rights;
Physicians for Human Rights;
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Argentina and, 183, 197, 202
Brazil and, 110-12, 193
Carter and, 151-55, 160
Chile and, 145-46, 188
Sandinistas and, 161
U.S. and, 197-98
U.S. Congress pressure over, 151-52
Humphrey, George, 124, 125
Hunt, E. Howard, 48
Hurban, Ignacio, 187
Immerman, Richard H., 56
immigration policies, 115-16
imperialism, 7-8, 81
India, 120
Indo-Pakistani War, 120
Institutional Act No. 5 (Brazil), 110
Inter-American Court of Human
Rights, 193
Inter-American Development Bank, 89,
93, 123, 139, 142, 167
Inter-American Press Club, 122
inter-American trade, 15-16
International Court of Justice (World
Court), 168, 196
International Herald Tribune, 186
International Monetary Fund, 77, 107, 139
International Police Academy, 112
international police power, 18
Cold War and, 19-20
USS. exercising, 6, 9, 201
Index 251
International Telephone and Telegraph, 107
interventionism, 30-35
Tran, 120
U.S. intervention in, 36-37, 50-51, 52
Tran-contra scandal, 169
Jacobs, Robert L., 178-79
Jagan, Cheddi, xxxviii, 96, 96-97, 104,
108, 140, 195
Jara, Victor, 189, 190,
Jefferson, Thomas, 2, 40
John Paul II (Pope), 159, 161, 186
Johnson, Herschel, 29
Johnson, Lyndon B., xxxvi, xxx.
120, 152
Alliance for Progress and, 93, 95
Balaguer election and, 102-4
Bolivia and, 83
Brazil and, 105, 106, 109
Chamizal controversy and, 115
Chile and, 129
CIA Cuba operations and, 79-80
Cuba and, 64, 67-68, 78-80
Dominican Republic and, 13, 33, 80,
99-102, 124, 151, 160
Guantánamo Bay and, 79
Guatemala and, 56-57
Jagan and, 195
Latin America policies of, 86, 91-95, 97,
118, 124
Mexico and, 114-17, 117
policy goals of, 101-2
Roosevelt, T. intervention model used
by6
Johnson Doctrine, xlii, 33, 101, 102, 118
John XXIII (Pope), 124, 157
Jones, Howard, 74
Juantorena, Alberto, 68
1, xlii,
Kabiles, 179.
Karamessines, Thomas, 133, 134
Keller, Renata, 116
Kemmerer, Edwin Walter, 14-15
Kennan, George F, xxxi, xlii, 25, 125,
163,204
Johnson Doctrine and, 102
on Soviet foreign policy, 22
U.S. Latin American policy and, 22-25,
28, 29, 32, 43,99
Kennan Corollary, 25, 32, 33, 35, 37, 155
HARVARD UNIVERS
252 INDEX
Kennecott, 128
Kennedy, Edward M., 145, 152, 154
Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier, 87
Kennedy, John F., xxxi, xl, 42, 94, 96, 102,
195, 203
Alliance for Progress and, xlii, 13, 46,
86-95, 98, 122, 123, 156
anticommunism and, 96-97, 171
anticommunist pressure by, 96-97, 171
Bay of Pigs and, 70-73
Brazil and, 106, 107, 108
Castro, F. assassination schemes and,
74-75
Chileand, 128-29
Cuba and, 64, 68, 70-76
Cuban Missile Crisis and, 75-76
Cuba non-invasion pledge by, 77, 164
Cuban Revolution and, 89
Cuban sabotage program by, 77-78
death of, 95
Dominican Republic and, 13, 98-99
El Salvador and, 171
Guatemala and, 56-57
Guevara and, 73, 82
on Latin America, 118
Latin American approach of, 33, 90, 124
Mexico and, 115, 116
Operation Mongoose and, 73-75
OPS and, 152
Trujillo, R. L.
97-98, 160
Vietnam and, 135.
Kennedy, Joseph, 197
Kennedy, Robert F., xxxvi, 73, 74, 75, 80,
108,112
Kennedy Doctrine, xlii, 33, 102, 118
KGB, xxxii
Khrushchev, Nikita, 63, 66, 67, 75, 76, 77,
78,81, 89, 91, 164
King, J. C., 38, 41, 42, 44, 57, 69-70
Kirchner, Cristina Fernández de,
184-85, 200
Kirchner, Néstor, 184-85, 197
Kirkpatrick, Jeane J., 163, 164, 170, 173,
82, 204
Kissinger, Henry, 118
Allende Gossens and, 140, 145
Argentina and, 148
Brazil and, 125-26
calls for war crimes charges against, 196
issassination and,
VARD UNI
RSIT
Chile and, 127-29, 132, 138-42, 145
Latin America policies and, 121-23
military dictators and, 119, 152-54
Pakistan and, 120
Pinochet meeting with, 145-46, 146
Korean War, 33, 34, 43
Korry, Edward, 132, 133
Kosygin, Alexsei, 67, 84
Kubitschek, Juscelino, 88, 89, 105-8, 112
Kundera, Milan, 205
Lacerda, Carlos, 108
LaFeber, Walter, 8, 25
Lagos Escobar, Ricardo, 190, 195-96
Laird, Melvin, 139, 140
land reform, 40, 46, 94, 95, 173, 176
Lansdale, Edward G., 74
Lansing, Robert, 12
La Perla detention center, 185, 197
Latin America
Cold War history and, 182-94
Cuba as center for radicals of, 65
democracy movements in, 17-18,
26-27
early U.S. ambitions in, 2-3
Eisenhower's policies on, 33, 35, 43, 124
Johnson, L., policies towards, 86, 91-95,
97, 118, 124
Kennan and U.S. policies in, 22-25, 28,
29, 32, 43,99
Kennedy, J. F., approach to, 33, 90, 124
Kennedy, J. F. on, 118
Kissinger policies of, 121-23
Korean War and, 34
leftists in, 52
malnutrition in, 88
Nixon policies towards, 121-25
population growth in, 93-94
Soviet Union and Communist parties
in, 67
‘Truman policies towards, 27-35
United Nations and, 27
anti-Nazi efforts in, 17
attempts to reform, 12
.S. attitude towards, xxxvii
USS. destabilizing of, xxxv, 204
U.S. military aid to, 34
opposing communism in,
xxxvi-xxxvii
World War Il and, 16-17, 26, 28
HARVARD UNIVERSIT
Law for the Defense and Guarantee of
Public Order (El Salvador), 171
Law for the Permanent Defense of
Democracy (Chile), 32
Leighton, Bernardo, 145
Lemmon, Jack, 190
Lend-Lease program, 26
Leoni, Raúl, 93
Letelier, Orlando, 143, 145-47, 188
Lincoln, Abraham, 40, 51
The Lives of Others (Das Leben der
Anderen) (film), xxxii
Longan, John, 58
“Long Telegram” (Kennan), xxxi, 22
López Mateos, Adolfo, 114, 115, 116
Lula da Silva, Luiz Inácio, “Lula,” 193-94
MacArthur, Douglas, 39, 92
MacArthur, Douglas, Il, 120
Macmillan, Harold, 90
Mafia, 62, 70, 202
malnutrition, 88
Malvinas (Falkland Islands), 182
Mann, Thomas, 41, 42, 80, 99, 100, 102,
103, 105, 115, 125, 163
‘Mano Blanca, 56
Mao Zedong, 31
Mara, Cornelius J., 41
Marshall, George, xxxi, 28, 29
Marshall Plan, xxxi, 21, 34, 86, 91-93
Martin, John Barlow, 99
Martinez de Perón, Isabel, 147
Marxist-inspired nationalism, 31
Massera, Emilio, 183
La Matanza, 171
‘Matthews, Herbert, 60
McCarthy, Joseph, 31, 44, 119
‘McCarthyism, 38
McCone, John, 80, 103
McKinley, William, 4-5
‘McNamara, Robert, 75, 76, 80, 100
McPherson, Alan, xli
Medellín conference, 157
Médici, Emilio Garrastazú, 126-27, 148
Medrano, José Alberto, 171
Mein, John Gordon, xxxvii, xxxviii, 58
Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of
Underdevelopment) (film), 68
Menchú, Rigoberta, 192
Méndez Montenegro, Julio César, 57
Index 253
Menédez, Luciano Benjamin, 185
El Mercurio (newspaper), 139, 147
Merkel, Angela, 196
Messina, Elida, 153
Mexican Communist Party, 116
Mexican Constitution, 114
Mexican Revolution, 10, 95, 114, 16
Mexico, xxxv, xli
Chamizal controversy with, 115
CIA in, 116-17
constitution of, 114
Cuba and, 113-14, 116
economic growth of, 114-15
Eisenhower and, 116
Germany and, 10
Johnson, L. and, 114-17
Kennedy, J. F., and, 115, 116
Nicaragua and, 161
population growth in, 114
Soviet Union and, 113-14, 116
‘Truman and, 114
USS. bilateral trade treaty with, 115, 117
U.S. immigration policy and, 115-16
as US. secret ally, 113-19
Meyer, Charles, 124
Mikoyan, Anastas, 64
military aid, 34
military seizures of power, 111
Miller, Edward R., Jr., 32, 33, 34, 41, 42,
102, 163
Miller Doctrine, 33, 35, 41
MIR. See Movimiento de Izquiereda
Revolucionaria
Missing (film), 190
Mitchell, John, 123, 133
Mitrione, Dan, 112-13
Moffitt, Ronni, 145, 188
Moncada barracks, 60
Monje, Mario, 81
Monroe, James, 2
Monroe Doctrine, 1-2, 3-4, 6, 8, 9, 15, 19,
24, 25, 27, 33. See also Roosevelt
Corollary
Montano, Inocente Orlando, 197
Monterrosa, Domingo, 173, 175
Monzón, Elfego, 50
Moskito Indians, xxxviii, 161
Mossadeq, Mohammad, 37
Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, xxxiii, xxxiii,
xxxiv-xxxv, xliii, 183, 184, 186, 204
HARVARD UNIV
254 INDEX
The Motorcycle Diaries (film), 194-95
The Motorcycle Diaries (Guevara), 53
Movimiento de Izquiereda Revolucionaria
(Movement of the Revolutionary
Left/MIR), xxxviii, 65, 131, 136, 145
Moyers, Bill, 100
MR-13 Rebellion, 56
La Muerte de Artemio Cruz (The Death
of Artemio Cruz) (Fuentes), 180
Mujica, José, 193, 201
Museo de Memoria, 192
Museum of Occupation of Latvia, xxxii
Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 82
Nation (journal), 10
National Commission on Truth and
Reconciliation (Chile), 188
National Endowment for Democracy,
170, 188
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE),
84, 104
nationalism
Chilean, 143
Marxist-inspired, 31
Soviet Union v. xxxvi
National Origins Act, 115
National Security Act (U.S), 41
National Security Archive, 202
National Security Council Memorandum
7 (NSC 7), 30
National Security Council Memorandum
68/2 (NSC 68/2), xxxi, 21, 30, 34, 151,
155, 162, 203
National Security Council Memorandum,
144/1 (NSC 144/1), 43-44
National Security Decision Document 17
(NSDD 17), 166-67, 170
National Security Decision Memorandum
93 (NSDM 93), 138, 139
National Security Study Memorandum 97
(NSSM 97), 133
National Security Study Memorandum
No. 15 (NSSM 15), 121-22
NATO. See North Atlantic Treaty
Organization.
Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), 148,
149, 185, 186
Neruda, Pablo, 52
Netto, Manso, 126
New Deal, 17, 26, 37
NIVERSIT
Newsweek (magazine), 167
New York Times, 60, 186
Nicaragua, xxxiv, 151
anticommunism in, 158
Carter and, 170
earthquake of 1972 in, 155, 158, 170
economic growth in, 155, 161
Mexico and, 161
Nixon and, 124
population growth in, 156
revolution in, 158-60
Sandinistas in government of, 166-68
Soviet Union and, xxxvi, 168-69
US. interventions in, 11
US. trade embargo against, 167
Nicaraguan Communist Party, 159
NIE. See National Intelligence Estimate
Night of the Pencils, xxxix
Nitze, Paul, xxxi, 73
Nixon, Richard, 31, 51, 51, 101, 118, 196, 202
Allende Gossens and, 125-27, 133-34,
138-42, 147
anticommunism and, 119
Argentina and, 147-48
Brazil and, 125-26
Chile and, 132, 133, 134
Cuba and, 69
foreign policy accomplishments of,
120, 151
Latin America policies of, 121-25
new v. old, 119-20
Pinochet and, 145, 146
positive polarization strategy of, 120
Somoza Debayle and, 124
South America tour by, 88
Soviet-U.S. relations and, 120
Nixon tapes, 120
non-intervention principle, 33, 36, 42, 160
Noriega, Manuel Antonio, 169, 201
El Norte (film), 168.
North American Free Trade
Agreement, 115
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), xxxi, 21, 34
North Korea, 31
NSC 7. See National Security Council
Memorandum 7
NSC 56/2. See "United States Policy
Toward Inter-American Military
Cooperation"
UNIVE!
HARVARD
NSC 68/2. See National Security Council
Memorandum 68/2
NSC 144/1. See National Security Council
Memorandum 144/1
NSDD 17. See National Security Decision
Document 17
NSDM 93. See National Security Decision
Memorandum 93
NSSM 15. See National Security Study
Memorandum No. 15
NSSM 97, See National Security Study
Memorandum 97
Nunca Más (Sábato), 182-83
Nuremburg trials, 184
OAS. See Organization of American
States
Obama, Barack, 197, 198
OBAN. See Operacáo Bandeirantes
October Revolution, 37, 50, 55, 56
Odria, Manuel, 52
Office of Public Safety (OPS), 112-13, 152
Office of the Coordinator of Inter-
Official Story (La Historia Official) (film),
xxxiii
|, Venezuelan production of, 14, 16
Ojo por Ojo, 56
Oliver, Covey, 117-18
Olney, Richard, 3-4, 6
Olney Memorandum, 6-7
"On a Certain Impatience with Latin
America” (Halle), 32
O'Neill, Thomas, “Tip,” 167
“open door” policy, 6
Operacào Bandeirantes, 113
Operación Limpieza, 57-58
Operación Sofía, 178
Operation Condor, 145, 147, 186, 188, 189,
192, 196
Operation Mongoose, 73-75
Operation Northwoods, 74
Operation Pan America, 88
Operation Washtub, 49
Operation Wetback, 115
OPS. See Office of Public Safety
ORDEN, 171
Organization of American States (OAS),
15, 23, 27, 33, 41, 42, 52, 74, 78-79,
101, 102, 107, 109, 145, 160, 199, 201
Index 255
Ortega Saavedra, Daniel, 159, 160, 170,
200, 201
ORTSAC, 74
Pahlavi, Mohammad Reza (Shah), 154-55
Pakistan, 120
Palma, Tomás Estrada, 11
Panama
CIA working with, 169
independence from Colombia of, 5
U.S. and sovereignty of, 8-9
US. invasion of, 201
Panama Canal, 5-6, 7
Panama Canal Treaties of 1977-1978, 154
Panama Canal Treaty of 1904, 6
Panama Canal Zone, 8-9, 140-41, 157
Pan American Airways, 9
Pan-Americanism, 27
Pan American Union, 32
parrot's perch, 113
Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo (PGT),
38, 45, 46, 58
Partido Revolucionario Institucional
(Institutional Revolutionary Party),
114, 116, 118
Pastora, Edén, "Commandante Cero!
Commander Zero,” 160
Patterson, Richard C., Jr., 39,46
Paz y Libertad (Peace and Liberty), 140
PBFORTUNE, 40-41, 44
PBHISTORY, 45
PBSUCCESS, 43-47, 48, 52, 69, 167
Peace Corps, 94
El pensamiento vivo de Trujillo (The Living
Thought of Trujillo) (Balageur), 103
People's Republic of China, 31, 43,
120, 163
Peralta Azurdia, Enrique, 57
Pérez, Louis A. Jr. 11
Pérez, Rosendo, 54
Pérez de Cuéllar, Javier, 177
Pérez Jiménez, Marcos, 38, 52
Péron, Eva, 46
Perón, Juan, 28, 147
Pershing, John J. “Blackjack,” 10
Peurifoy, John E., 44, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50.
Pezzullo, Lawrence, 153, 160, 165
PGT. See Partido Guatemalteco del
Trabajo
Phillips, David Atlee, 55, 133, 135
HARVARD. UNIVERS
256 INDEX
Phoenix Program, 113
Physicians for Human Rights, 205
Pinochet Ugarte, Augusto, xxxiv, 152,
190, 202
Carter and, 153-54
death of, 189
Kissinger meeting with, 145-46, 146
“moral cleansing" campaign by, 143
Nixon and, 145, 146
Reagan and, 187-88
reign of, 142-47, 187-88
Rettig Commission on, 188
seizure of power by, 127, 140-41
Spanish arrest warrant for, 184, 189
USS. ties to, 132
Pius XII (Pope), 48
plantation systems, 37, 38
Platt Amendment, 5, 6, 10, 11, 15, 16, 61
Plaza de Mayo, xxxiii, xxxiii, xxxiv-xxxv,
xliii, 183, 184, 186, 187, 204
Poblete, José Liborio, xxxix
police training, 112, 152
Popper, David, 147
population
control, 94
growth, 93-94, 114, 156
Posada Carriles, Luis, 198
positive polarization, 120
post-traumatic stress disorder, 190
“The Potential for Revolution in Latin
America," 84
Powell, Colin, xxxv, 195
Prague Spring, 84
Prats, Carlos, 144, 189
Pravda (newspaper), 53, 61
La Prensa (newspaper), 158.
"Preventive and Penal Law against.
Communism" (Guatemala), 54
PRI. See Partido Revolucionario
Institucional.
Pro Búsqueda de Niñas y Niños
Desaparecidos, 205
“A Program of Covert Operation Against
the Castro Regime,” 69
progressive interventionism, 12
Project FUBELT, 132, 133, 134, 138
protective interventions, 32
Psychological Operations in Guerrilla
Warfare (CIA), 168
Puerto Rico, 5
UNIVERSITY
Punitive Expedition, 10
Punta Carretas prison, 192, 193
Punta Carretas Shopping Mall, 192, 193
Punta del Este Conference, 87, 89, 129
Quadros, Janio, 106, 107
Quainton, Anthony C. E., 165
Reagan, Ronald, xxxi, xxxvi, xxxviii, xl,
xliii, 150, 155, 203, 204
Central America and, 162-66
Chile and, 187-88
El Salvador and, 171-77
Guatemalan genocide and, 177-80
historical records limited by, 202
Kirkpatrick and, 163, 164
Malvinas war and, 182
Sandinistas v., 166-70
Soviet Union policies of, 24
Reagan Doctrine, 162
Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, 16
Reconstruction, 3
Reggiardo Tolosa, Gonzalo, 187
Reggiardo Tolosa, Matías, 187
Reid Cabral, Donald, 100
remesas, 199
Rettig, Raúl, 188
Rettig Commission, 188
Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR);
172, 173
Rio Conference, 29
Ríos Montt, Efrain, xl, 150, 177, 179-80,
180, 192, 197
Rio Treaty, 27
Rockefeller, Nelson, 17, 27, 28, 121, 123
Rockefeller Report, 121-22
Rodriguez, Felix, 83
Rogers, William, 126, 139, 145
Roman Catholic Church, 157
Romero, Carlos Humberto, 171, 172
Romero, Oscar Arnulfo (Archbishop), 157,
172, 186, 194
Roosevelt, Eleanor, 17
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 15-20, 18, 26, 27,
28, 37, 53, 101, 159.
Roosevelt, Theodore, xxxvii, 1, 5, 6, 7,
9-10, 11, 33
Roosevelt Corollary, 1-8, 19, 25, 33, 201
Root, Elihu, 9, 11
Roselli, John, 75
Rossell Arellano, Mariano, 48
Rostow, Walt W., 83, 90, 91
Rotary Club, 39
Rountree, William, 126
Rousseff, Dilma, 194, 200, 201, 202
Roxborough, Ian, 27, 30
Royal-Dutch Shell Oil Company, 14
RUFUS. See Castillo Armas, Carlos
Rusk, Dean, xxxvii, 57, 64, 79, 80, 89, 90,
99, 112, 195
Sabalsagaray, Nibia, 192
Sabato, Ernesto, 182-83
Salvador (Didion), 174
Sanchez, José Angel, 50
Sanchez Cerén, Salvador, 201
Sandinistas. See Frente Sandinista de
Liberacién Nacional
Sandino, Augusto César, 15, 155
San Martín, Ramón Grau, 16
Santos, Eduardo, 17, 19
Santos, Máximo, 192
Saúl Menem, Carlos, 183
Scare Campaign, 130
Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. 71, 75, 98, 195
Schneider, René, 134, 135, 138, 144, 196
Schoenfeld, Rudolf E., 44
School of the Americas, 82, 140, 142, 157,
175, 197, 198, 201
Scilingo, Adolfo, xxxiii, 184
Second Declaration of Havana, 65
The Shark and the Sardines (Arévalo), 57
Shelton, Ralph, “Pappy,” 83
Sikkink, Kathryn, 179-80
Simón, Julio, "Julián the Turk,” 184, 185
Siqueiros, David Alfaro, 116
Siracusa, Ernest, 153
Skidmore, Thomas E., 30
Smathers, George, 75
Smith, Gaddis, 25
Smith, Tony, 7
Smith, Walter Bedell, 41-42, 43, 44
Socarrás, Carlos Prio, 62
Social Progress Trust Fund, 68, 89
Solidarnosc (Solidarity), 163
Somoza Debayle, Anastasio, “Tachito,” 42,
51, 93, 161, 163
CIA Guatemala intervention supported
by, 40-41
Nixon and, 124
Index 257
overthrow of, 151, 158-60, 170
U.S. military training and, 156-57
Somoza Garcia, Anastasio, 13, 17, 18, 18,
26, 30, 38, 48, 51
CIA Guatemala intervention supported
by, 40-41
“The Sources of Soviet Conduct” (Kennan),
xxxi, 22, 25
South America
Guevara tour of, 53
Nixon tour of, 88
USS. influence in, 13-14
World War II and, 19
Soviet Union, xxxi-xxxii
Afghanistan invaded by, 155, 162
Castro, F. and, 66-67, 77, 84
collapse of, 181, 194, 202-3
Communist parties subsidized by,
130, 133
containment policy against, 21
Cuba and collapse of, 194
Cuban Missile Crisis and, 66, 75-76
Cuban relations with, 66, 76
Cuba supported by, xxxvi, 63-64
Czechoslovakia invaded by, 84
Finland invaded by, xxxii
Kennan on foreign policies of, 22
Latin American Communist parties
and, 67
Mexico and, 113-14, 116
nationalism v., xxxvi
Nicaragua and, xxxvi, 168-69
Nixon and U.S. relations with, 120
Reagan's policies towards, 24
Sandinistas supported by, xxxvi
"wars of national liberation strategy"
of, 89
Spacek, Sissy, 190.
Spain, Cuban independence from, 4-5
Spanish-American War. See War of 1898
Special Warfare School, 82
The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-
Communist Manifesto (Rostow), 91
Stalin, Josef, 13, 22, 31, 40
Stasi, xxxii
State of Siege (film), 113.
state-supported terrorism, 140, 148
Archdiocese of Sao Paolo report on, 183
Chile and, 144
by U.S., against Cuba, 68, 79
HARVARD UNIV
258 INDEX
Stern, Steve, 190
Stimson, Henry L., 9, 27
Stroessner, Alfredo, 159
“A Study in Assassination” (CIA), 54
sugar, 62-64, 67,77
Sugar Act, 63
Sullivan and Cromwell, 45
Taft, William Howard, 9, 12
Task Force 3.2.2, 186
terrorism. See state-supported terrorism
Teruggi, Frank, 189-90
Thatcher, Margaret, 182, 189
303 Committee, 103, 104, 129-30
Timerman, Jacobo, 153
Tlatelolco massacre, 117-18
Toledano, Vicente Lombardo, 31
‘Tomic Romero, Radomiro, 131, 132, 136
Tomushat, Christian, 191
torture, 58, 113, 143, 144, 148, 149, 183,
184, 185, 186, 190, 193
Tricontinental Conference, 65, 67, 84
Tropicalismo, 110
Trujillo, Ramfis, 98
Trujillo Molina, Rafael Leonidas, xl, 17,
18, 30-31, 38, 51, 60, 93, 103, 104
assassination of, 97-98, 160
CIA Guatemala intervention aided by,
40-41
rise of, 13
U.S. and, 97-99, 105
Truman, Harry S., xxxi, xxxvii, 165, 203
Cold War policy framework and, 21-22
Eastern Europe and, 43, 50
Guatemala and, 37, 39-42
Latin America policies of, 27-35
Marshall Plan and, 91, 92
Mexico and, 114
OAS and, 15, 27
Walters and, 125
Truman Doctrine, xxxi, 21, 22, 151, 165
truth commissions
in Brazil, 194, 202
in El Salvador, 174, 197
in Guatemala, 56, 57, 177-78, 179
UN report on, 197
in Uruguay, 192
Tupamaros, 193
Tuthill, John W., 109
26" of July Movement, 59, 60, 68
“twilight of the tyrants,” 89
Ubico y Castañeda, Jorge, 26, 37, 46, 55
UCLAS. See Unilaterally Controlled
Latino Assets
UN. See United Nations
Ungo, Guillermo, 171, 173
Unidad Popular (Popular Unity), 131, 136,
138, 140
Unilaterally Controlled Latino Assets
(UCLAS), 168
United Fruit Company, 8, 11-12, 54, 55
Dulles brothers and, 44-45
Guatemala and, 38-41
United Kingdom
Malvinas and, 182
USS. anti-Cuba pressure on, 79
United Nations (UN)
charter of, 27
Chile coup and, 142
Development Index by, 199
El Salvador peace agreement and, 177
Guatemala judiciary and, 191
International Court of Justice and, 168
Latin America and, 27
Truth Commission for El Salvador of,
174, 197
Truth Commission ‘for Guatemala of,
56, 57, 173, 177-78
Truth Commission Report, 197
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and, 152, 184
USS. Cuba policies condemned by, 199
United States (U.S.)
Allende Gossens overthrow reaction in,
152, 154, 195-96
Allende Gossens relations with, 53
anticommunist regimes supported by,
xxxiv
anti-Cuba pressure by, 78-79
anti-Nazi efforts by, 17
attitude towards Latin America.
of, xxxvii
Balageur election supported by, 102-5
Brazil government destabilized by,
108-9
capital markets of, 14
Castro, F., attitude towards, 61-62
HARVARD UNIVERSIT)
Central America controlled by
capitalists of, 11-12
Central American immigrants to,
199-200
Chamizal controversy and, 115
Chile intervention by, xxxiv, xxxv,
129,132
Civil War, 3
Cold War history and, 196-202
Cold War policies of, xxxi
‘communism in Latin America opposed
by, xxxvi-xxxvii
Congressional human rights pressure
in, 151-52
containment policy of, 21
counterinsurgency efforts of, 82
Cuba as protectorate of, 5
Cuba as threat to, 64-65
Cuban interventions by, 10-11
Cuban investments of business from,
61-62,64
Cuba non-invasion pledge by, 77, 164
Cuban trade controlled by, 62-63
Cuba policies of, 59, 198-99
Cuba sabotage program by, 77-78
Cuba spreading revolution to combat, 66
Dominican Republic invaded by, xxxvii,
xlii, 6, 12-13, 80, 97, 100-102, 124
El Salvador economic assistance
from, 171
Gómez, J. V. coup and, 10
Guatemala intervention by, xxxiv, xxxv,
xxxvii, 35, 36-37
Guatemala military assistance from, 58
Guatemalan communism studies by, 45
Guatemala policies of, 202
Guevara peace gesture to, 73, 76
Guevara's death and, 83
human rights and, 197-98
as imperial power, 8
international police power of, 6, 9, 201
intervention patterns of, 8-15
Iran intervention by, 36-37, 50-51, 52
Kennan and Latin American policy of,
22-25, 28, 29, 32, 43, 99
Latin American ambitions of, 2-3
Latin American governments
destabilized by, xxxv, 204
Latin American military aid from, 34
HARVARD UNIVERS
Index 259
Latin America reform efforts in, 12
Mexico as secret ally of, 113-19
Mexico bilateral trade treaty with,
115,117
Mexico immigration policy with,
115-16
National Security Act, 41
Nicaragua interventions by, 11
icaragua trade embargo by, 167
Nixon and Soviet relations with, 120
Panama invaded by, 201
Panamanian sovereignty and, 8-9
Pinochet ties to, 132
police training by, 112, 152
progressive interventionism by, 12
Somoza Debayle and military training
by, 156-57
South America influenced by, 13-14
state-supported terrorism by, 68, 79, 140
sugar market manipulation by, 77
Trujillo, R. L., and, 97-99, 105, 160
UN criticism of, 199
Venezuelan Boundary Crisis and, 1, 3-4
“United States Policy Toward Inter-
‘American Military Cooperation”
(NSC 56/2), 34
Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
152, 184
universal jurisdiction, 184
Uruguay
Brazil intervention in, 126
political prisoners in, 111
truth commission in, 192
USS. Agency for International
Development (USAID), 91
Vaky, Viron P, xxxvii, 122-23, 204
Valdés, Gabriel, 123
Valech Commission, 190
Valenti, Jack, 102
Vargas, Getúlio Dornelles, 26
Vatican II, 124, 157
Veloso, Caetano, 110
Venezuela, xxxviii
Alliance for Progress and, 93, 94
democracy in, 30
oil production in, 14, 16
Venezuelan Boundary Crisis, 1, 3-4
Venezuelan Communist Party, 65
260 INDEX
Viaux Marambio, Roberto, 131, 134
Videla, Jorge Rafael, 147-48, 149, 153, 154,
183, 185
Vietnam, 81, 113, 135
Vietnam Syndrome. See post-traumatic
stress disorder
Vietnam War, 93, 120, 125, 196
Vilanova de Arbenz, Marfa Christina,
40, 45, 46,47
Villa, Francisco "Pancho," 10
Villaflor de Vicenti, Azucena, 186
Villa Grimaldi, 143, 144, 190
Villarroel, Gualberto, 19
Viola, Roberto, 163
Voice of America, 87
von Sternberg, Hermann Speck, 6
von Wernich, Christian (Reverend), 185
La Voz de la Liberación, 48, 55
Walesa, Lech, 163, 196
Waller, Littleton W. T.,
Walters, Vernon, 108-:
166-67
War of 1898, 5.
The War of the Worlds (radio broadcast), 48
Watergate scandal, 120
Welles, Orson, 48
2
125-27, 138, 147,
Digit
VARD UNIVERSIT’
Welles, Sumner, 27, 28
Wessin y Wessin, Elias, 99, 100
Westad, Odd Arne, 1
Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation, 197
White, Robert E., 165, 172
White Papers, xxxvi
Wilson, Woodrow, xxxvii, 8, 10, 12, 13,
33,168
Wisner, Frank, 41, 44
Wood, Bryce, 19
Wood, Leonard, 5
World Bank, 93, 139, 167
World Court. See International Court of.
Justice
World Health Organization, 156
World War II
Latin American participation in, 16-17,
26,28
South America and, 19
Wright, Thomas C., 160-61
Ydígoras Fuentes, Miguel, 55, 56, 57
Zablocki, Clement, 176
Zamora, Mario, 172
Zamora, Rubén, 173
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ABDUT THE AUTHOR
ISBN 978-0-19-021625-2
AM