Guatemala and United Fruit: US Policy Blunder
SUMMARY: Overview taken from Michael Reid’s Forgotten Continent on the US toppling of Guatemala’s elected government in 1954.
Guatemala is the saddest country in Latin America. The beauty of its verdant highlands dotted with whitewashed colonial towns, its shimmering lakes overlooked by soaring volcanoes and its Mayan ruins half buried in rainforest cannot conceal the ancestral oppression of its indigenous majority. It has had an elected civilian government since 1986. But a guerrilla war lasting almost three decades was settled only in 1996. It cost some 200,000 lives; most of the victims were Mayan Indians killed by the army. The war continues to cast a dark shadow. Guatemala’s democrats must struggle against what some have called poderes fácticos – shadowy networks linking corrupt former army officers and organized criminal gangs of drug traffickers and money launderers. In many ways, these networks are the real power in the country. They appeared to flourish under Alfonso Portillo, the country’s president from 2000 to 2005, who fled to Mexico on leaving office and faced charges of stealing $16 million of public money. Under Oscar Berger, a reforming liberal elected in 2004, a new effort began to cut Guatemala’s army down to size and to liberate democracy from military tutelage.
The CIA snuffs out the Guatemalan spring
And yet Guatemala might have developed into a far more robust democracy much earlier. That it did not do so is in large part the fault of the United States: more than anywhere else in Latin America, Guatemala is a victim of American intervention. In 1954, the Eisenhower administration organized a coup to topple the democratic, reformist government of Jacobo Arbenz, which the American president alleged to be a possible ‘communist outpost on this continent’. … Read more
My Rice Rant
SUMMARY: I explain why rice sucks.
A Facebook update from November 2009:
I’m spending 6 weeks in the States and I’m not eating one grain of rice the whole time!
My January 13 tweet (twitter.com/colinpost):
Life in Latin America is a daily struggle to minimize my consumption of rice.
Rice has no taste. Rice is nutritionally worthless. Rice is filler crap, the most abused filler crap in the world. … Read more
Contributed Story: Revolution in China?
SUMMARY: An American expat in China discusses the political climate there and his opinion on the prospect of revolution. If Expat Chronicles wasn’t censored in China before, it surely is now. And I could care less.
You often hear in Western media that China’s government is immoral and oppressive, and you’re led to believe that at any minute the people will revolt to produce something resembling a modern democracy. I can barely speak Chinese (much less read it), so I’m no expert on Chinese culture or politics. But I’ve lived in China for almost two years now. This is my American perspective on Chinese culture and the prospect of revolution.
Revolution is a long shot. In Hong Kong I was studying for a Master’s degree in economics. None of my classmates seemed to have strong political views. Most took up economics because their parents told them to, or because they thought it would lead to a well paying job, or just for the prestige conferred by higher education – any subject would do.
Sin Nombre: Relevant, Intense, Heart-Wrenching
SUMMARY: I review Sin Nombre, the best film I’ve seen in a long time about a Mexican gang member trying to escape his past and help an innocent Honduran girl safely enter the United States. Themes discussed include MS-13, immigration and human rights, love, and more.
I wasn’t going to include this post on this blog (only my other blog), but WordPress.com apparently doesn’t allow embedding YouTube videos so I’m posting it here as well because I spent a lot of time finding those fucking videos!
Sin Nombre is the best film I’ve seen in a long time. It’s also the first Spanish-language movie I watched without subtitles. They weren’t available at the pirated DVD market where I bought the disc. Fortunately I had no trouble understanding. … Read more
Recession: An American Experience
SUMMARY: I describe what seemed different to me about my first time living in America since the global recession / credit crisis.
The subprime mortgage meltdown started around 2007, the last year I lived in the States. At the time, newspapers and economists believed the risk was contained to only subprime or the domestic house market. Since then we’ve seen big banks fail, investments plummet, and trillions of public dollars injected into banks around the world. We’ve learned about collaterized debt obligations (CDO), credit-default swaps (CDS), and a slew of other culprits in what amounts to the steepest recession since the Great Depression.
I wasn’t around during the Great Depression; I only have the impression I got from American textbooks. My impression was that it was depression, a miserable time that spanned over ten years. Similar to that impression, my feel for the current economic stumble was limited to what I’d read in newspapers and among economists (In Peru, GDP growth still hasn’t dipped into the negative). This work holiday was the first time living in America during the biggest recession of my lifetime. Things were noticeably different, some in unexpected ways.
Contributed Story: Instability in Tijuana
SUMMARY: Luis from Borrowed Flesh describes a day in Tijuana, one of the more violent cities in Mexico, which US officials have stated runs the risk of becoming a “failed state.”
An old man draped in filthy rags blinked in the unrelenting Mexican sun. His creased face was the color of a brown paper bag and he sported a dingy yellow cowboy hat. Out of tired rheumy eyes, he watched three white Ford trucks – Tijuana paddy wagons – hurtling down a broad street kicking up dust. Several police clung to the sides as they raced by – dark eyes filled with fear and hatred, faces covered in black masks. One stared back at the old man, fingering his shiny black AK-47. The old man stood glaring in apathy.
Seconds later and blocks away, gunfire and a rumbling explosion erupted. Five more trucks careened past, followed by monstrous paramilitary vehicles while the street teemed with pedestrians casually going about their affairs. … Read more
Contributed Story: Good Try in Germany
SUMMARY: Two Americans studying in Germany try to get over on a Kraut. They came just short of the prize but undoubtedly improved the local attitude toward Americans.
Despite the utter squareness of the other students in our study abroad program, KT and I had some adventures in Deutschland. While they were practicing verb conjugations in our slumlord-governed apartments, we were buying drugs from the Turks in the park and smuggling mushrooms from the Netherlands.
After 5 weeks of studying German and drinking brown liquor, it was time to go. An opportunity to hit the road and see what excitement the rest of Europe had to offer. After hitting up our favorite happy-hour, we wheeled our collective 120 lbs. of luggage to the train station to take the 10:26 from Berlin to Munich. … Read more
