Hillary Clinton Didn’t Start the Violence the U.S. has Inflicted on Latin America
Between 1898 and 1934 the United States Marine Corps fought several small-scale wars in the Caribbean that are now collectively known as the “Banana Wars.” The Marine Corps was searching for a mission in a complicated time between the end of the Age of Sail and the great amphibious operations of World War II. So they latched on to Latin American intervention, generally on behalf of the United Fruit Company and often as little more than a glorified collections agency.
In 1946 the US Army founded the School of the Americas, where United States troops and CIA operatives trained Latin American nationals in fighting Communist insurgencies. Under the guise of the School of the Americas the United states fomented rebellion and propped up dictators all throughout Latin America. One of their most successful partners was Manuel Noriega, who rose to the position of military dictator of Panama before being removed from power by the United States military due to his involvement with the Medellin Cartel.
The biggest scandal of the Reagan Presidency was the Iran-Contra Affair. Key administration officials sold American weapons to Iran in order to give money to the anti-Communist rebels trying to take down the Sandinista government. This was done to circumvent a Congressional ban on supplying money to the contras.
In 2000 the School of the Americas was relocated to Fort Benning, Georgia and rebranded the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Last week the Democratic Party added a plank to their platform calling for the closure of the WHISC. This was added to the platform because of Bernie Sanders’ influence on the Democratic Party’s politics.
One of the attacks I’m now seeing leveled against Hillary Clinton is that we can’t vote for her because she was horrible to Latin America during her time as Secretary of State. The United States of America has always been horrible to its neighbors to the south. It seems odd that we’re only acknowledging it now that Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee and a whole lot of people think that calling her “Killary” and pretending that American imperialism started in 2008 is a principled stance.
It also seems odd that this is one of the things that’s called for by people who want to vote for their principles and refuse to acknowledge that if they don’t vote for Hillary Clinton they are effectively casting a vote for Donald Trump. Donald Trump began his campaign by claiming all Mexicans are rapists. He leads a party that is just fine with treating any and all Latin Americans as drug runners and criminals.
Reflexive anti-Hillary rhetoric from the ideologically pure will not only not make things better for Central and South America, it will actively make things worse and take away the best chance we have to close down the worst cancer the United States has inflicted on our neighbors to the south. Politics are complicated. Change is incremental. The United States has a long, sad history of visiting violence on Central and South America. It won’t change overnight, but the only party that has offered a step in the right direction is the Democratic Party.
