Sins of the U.S. Empire Part 2 -Guatemala
First Steps
As I mentioned in Part 1 I received a very whitewashed version of U.S. history, leaving out the horrors that the U.S. inflicted on the Native Americans, or at best glossing over them, and replacing the atrocities with the story of Thanksgiving. They played up the gold rush rather than discuss the details of the Trail of Tears, and subsequent poverty and depression that persist through to this day on reservations.
But after those initial atrocities the U.S. in more modern times has learned it’s lesson, and doesn’t treat indigenous people that badly, right? We may still basically ignore what’s going on with reservations, but those massacres that were perpetrated, were done by less civilized, earlier Americans. The U.S. isn’t about causing another Trail of Tears, we’re about spreading Freedom and Democracy! We’d never do something as horrible as that again, not in rather modern times…would we?
Guatemala
Let’s rewind back to 1944 and go down south of Mexico to Guatemala. While the U.S was involved in WW2, Guatemala was having a revolution. They had been under the control of a dictator named Jorge Ubico, but the revolution removed him from office and Guatemala had their first democratically elected president Juan Jose Arevalo (Yay democracy! The U.S. must love this right?). He…
