Lessons From El Salvador

To quote what Richard Boyle said in the documentary about the making of Oliver Stone’s Salvador:  “When you get the truth out, things happen, you know, good things, hopefully.  And I think that was my main motivation, never to make money.  If I wanted to make money, I would have stayed working for the Networks, being controlled by them, and write and do the crap they wanted, do the stand-ups from the roof [like] reporters who went down there, we made fun of Pauline Axelrod, any number of journalists go down there, they never leave the hotel, they do the stand-ups on the roof, closest to combat they ever get is ordering a lobster sandwich.” (Richard Doyle, photo/journalist in El Salvador, 1980-81) 

          To quote Ambassador White, in the same documentary:  “One journalist actually went out and got the story, and reported the story, went, for example, to El Mozote where the massacre, where a huge massacre took place, of 800 people, innocent civilians, mostly women and children.  And the United States government simply lied about it.  Now what happened, he [Boyle] was taken off from El Salvador and put on the New York City beat, and then left the newspaper [and obviously went back to El Salvador].”   (Ambassador White, U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador under President Jimmy Carter)

          Richard Boyle enlightens us further on the power of the camera and photo/journalist:  “When I was a kid I would look at pictures, remember that picture of a baby in Nanking, that’s burnt and crying?  That picture had more impact than thousands of articles about the Japanese atrocities in China.  A picture can be very powerful.  And I think that’s what kind of led me to be a photo/journalist.  If you get that one, if you can get that one picture that will sum something up, tell the viewer what’s going on, make the world aware.”  Boyle goes on to say about the film Salvador, “We showed more in the film Salvador than in all the documentaries I’ve made, all the news reports I’ve written, all the “60-Minutes” reports on El Salvador, all the stuff the media’s put out about El Salvador.  I think that film did more to tell people what really was going on, even though it was a feature film, than all the rest of the stuff put out for years and years and years and years.  And people told me that in Congress.” (Richard Boyle)

          Ambassador White said, “Certainly, the last scene is typical of what happened to many Salvadoran refugees.  This is another shameful action on the part of the United States.  We knew perfectly well it was the people we were backing that would terrorize these campesinos, and they had no choice but to flee.  It was either flee or be killed.  And here they were legitimate political refugees.  The problem for the Reagan Administration is that they were refugees from the violence that we were sponsoring.  And it took a long time to get that policy changed.  I would believe that films such as Salvador played a role in getting that changed, because I think around 1986 or -7 they started a policy of paroling people in.”  (Ambassador White)  Ambassador White, wrapping up what he had to say about El Salvador, and the movie Salvador said this, “As the film turned out, I thought it was really quite good.  I thought that Oliver Stone captured the sort of foreboding sense of evil that hung over El Salvador in every part.  I thought it captured the total arbitrariness and kind of kill-crazy atmosphere of the place.  And the fear, and the legitimate fear of the campesinos and the poor people of the city, you know, that they just simply could be killed at any time.  We spent probably 6 billion to 7 billion dollars, we killed 75,000 people, many of them who died horribly through torture.  We drove a million refugees to the United States.  And all this to try in vain to defeat a revolutionary force that was ready to negotiate in 1981.  Now if anyone can make sense out of that, from the point of view of the United States national interest, I would like to hear it.”  (Ambassador Robert White, emphasis mine throughout) 

          The following was stated at the end of this documentary for the film Salvador, “Ambassador Robert White was asked by Secretary of State Alexander Haig to submit a report confirming that the El Salvadoran government was thoroughly investigating the murder of the American nuns.  Since the government was responsible for the murders, this would have been an illusion, and he refused.  He was immediately fired, thus forced to retire from the Foreign Service after a distinguished career.  In 1986, Oliver Stone received the Academy Award nominations for both Salvador and Platoon.  The monumental success of Platoon eclipsed the small but growing appreciation for Salvador.  While raw and direct compared to Oliver Stone’s later films, Salvador is considered by many to be one of the most compelling films in recent memory.  Its vitality and illuminations increase with time.”  (This documentary following the movie was produced, written and directed by Charles Kiseyak)  Be sure to purchase Salvador, SPECIAL EDITION, starring James Woods, Jim Belushi, Michael Murphy and John Savage, directed by Oliver Stone. 

So Why Was It So Important For The United States to Defeat Communism in Latin America?

The United States of America still hasn’t admitted to the holocaust it was responsible for creating in Latin America (although President Obama has been apologizing to some of these nations privately, much to his credit).  We defeated the Nazis in Europe only to emulate them in Latin America.  Some will say “So what’s the big deal?  That was history, it’s in the past.”  The Big Deal is that nasty things like this tend to be re-perpetrated by the perpetrators, especially when there are big profits to be made, unless they are exposed for what they did, and in a sense, still doing, although through different methods.  And by the way, who are the real perpetrators?  Is it the “death-squads”, or the governments that created them, or the CIA that trained and backed them up?  No, you’ve got to go deeper down the Rabbit Hole.  Keep that question in mind.  But for those who think this is all in the past, realize, Latin America is still very vulnerable as long as the truth remains buried from view.  Good photo/journalists like Boyle (and Eduardo Galeano) did their best to expose this stuff, but without enough continuing exposure, the kind of exposure we gave the German people about Nazi atrocities after the fall of Nazi Germany, it’ll just keep happening.  One of my adoptive daughters was remarking that cell-phone cameras kind of prevent the open roving “death-squads” from occurring anymore, so we don’t have to worry about this happening anymore, or the “CIA/BlackOps” which was responsible for it all.  So she was telling me I should move on, and get my head out of the history books.  Oh really?  She hasn’t gone deep enough down the Rabbit Hole.  It is the “latifundio (plantation) system” which operates throughout Latin America which keeps the vast majority of Latin American people in virtual slavery through their paying of “starvation wages.”  These “latifundios” grow and export such major commodities as sugar, coffee, cotton, bananas, and cacao (chocolate) which keep most of Latin American workers earning starvation wages, and these latifundios have the direct support of U.S. big business concerns, in some cases are directly owned by them, which keep US-business-friendly governments in power, which keep the “Latifundio system” going.  So the virtual slavery most Latin Americans are in due to the oppressive Latifundio system, continues to create a strong need and desire for relief and change within the general populace.  This in the past has contributed heavily to the creation of revolutionary land-reform movements (going all the way back to Jose Artigas, Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa).  In the 20^th century these revolutionary movements were often backed by local communists, and many of these were benign at first.  Are we beginning to see who the real perpetrators are yet?  Nothing really has changed in Latin America, if you look hard enough under the surface.  The Latifundios still exist, backed by, and sometimes directly owned by US Big Business.  The Monster has changed its outward appearance, but it is still alive and well in Latin America.  From the mid-1950s to the early 1990s communist land-reform movements sprang up all over Latin America, and these promised genuine land-reforms to the peasants, but these land-reformers threatened US-American Big Business concerns “south of the border.”  The “death-squads” helped protect these “Nazi-type US/CIA-BlackOps” installed governments, and protected them from “the Communist threat,” which was not a real threat to real social justice in Latin America.  In Latin America the real threat communist pro-land-reform movements posed was a direct threat to US big business, and nothing more.  A Communist takeover never really posed a threat inside the US, where communism could never survive against the American free-enterprise system and genuine democracy.  So can CIA/BlackOps still pose a threat in Latin America?  You bet it can, via clandestine operations to maintain and install pro-US/Big Business governments throughout Latin America, as it always has.  It just has to be more subtle in how it does this, yes, no more “death-squads” operating out in the open for all those cell-phone totting citizens.  So who are the perpetrators?  I think you know by now.  Why are my two articles, “America—The Modern Romans” and “Why Poverty & Starvation in Latin America” so important?  I think Richard Boyle has answered that question pretty nicely when he said, “When you get the truth out, things happen, good things, hopefully.”  The two articles make a lot of this clear.  The first one is titled “America—The Modern Romans” listed on the left-hand nav bar of my website, about ¾ the way down.  Just under it is another article titled “Why Poverty & Starvation in Latin America?” which explains the Latifundio system.  Eduardo Galeano, in his monumental work “Open Veins of Latin America” fully documents how Latin America has been in virtual slavery through “starvation wages” due to the Latifundio-plantation system, and fully documents how it got going, and how it morphed into what it is today, still active, where a select few wealthy land-owners own most of the land in Latin America in the form of these immense Latifundio-plantations.  I highly recommend his book.  The link to my first article is at: http://www.unityinchrist.com/topical%20studies/America-ModernRomans1.htm

I also highly recommend the purchase of Oliver Stone’s movie Salvador, (SPECIAL EDITION) starring James Woods, Jim Belushi and John Savage.  It’s easily available on http://www.amazon.com.  Included in the DVD is Oliver Stone’s documentary about this event and the making of the movie on location in El Salvador and Mexico, and this contains interviews with Richard Boyle and Ambassador White.  The movie and documentary is a classic documented account of US foreign policy run-amuck in El Salvador, with most of the grizzly facts hidden from the American public.  It also shows you what real photo/journalists are all about, and it’s not the money. 

“My journey took me a little bit further down the Rabbit Hole than I had intended, and though I’ve dirtied my fluffy white tail, I have emerged enlightened.” Sherlock Holmes (the movie)

 

The Glavny Protivnik

 

Over a nice dinner with friends, I watched “Capitalism: A Love Story,” a documentary film by Michael Moore.  The Occupy Wall Street crowd later on was inspired to protest the horrendously evil banking practices exposed in this documentary, but sadly the Occupy Wall Street movement lacked real focus and direction, and the Wall Street crowd has always succeeded in buying off any political leaders who might restrict them, and ultimately gaining control of Congress and the WH, whether it be occupied by Democrat or Republican (except for JFK and FDR).  This is the same evil Big Business crowd that’s been responsible for what we did for 45 years in Latin America.  After Communism fell and Wall Street couldn’t use fighting “The Great Communist Threat” in Latin America as an excuse for holding Latin America in economic slavery any longer, this evil crowd turned on America itself (mid 1980s to present).  I think Michael Moore in this one instance has focused on this event, this turning of Wall Street’s focus from the rape of Latin America to that of doing the same thing on North American soil.  This shift of Wall Street’s focus took place in the mid 1980s under President Reagan, as Gorbachev was bringing Soviet Communism to an end.  And Wall Street, reading the handwriting on the wall about loosing it’s trumped up excuse for messing with Latin American governments in the interest of American Big Business (since Truman all the way through Reagan), shifted their evil focus homeward onto US soil.  Now apparently Moore has picked up where my research into the virtual slavery of Latin America left off.  The evil party, Wall Street and Big Business, has been the same from the early 1950s right up to now, it hasn’t changed regardless of whose been in office at the White House, they’ve just bought out everyone (with the exception of FDR and his VP Henry A. Wallace, and JFK, and when they couldn’t buy out JFK, they had him killed).  And ending the Cold War in 1963, as JFK and Nikita Khrushchev wanted to do, would have taken away their excuse for fighting the Communist threat in Latin America, and thus their control of Latin American governments, robbing them of their lucrative hold on Latin American resources.  My research has just had the dots connected from where it left off, bringing it up to the present.  It was an enlightening evening spent with friends, watching this documentary.  I’m a fiscal conservative, always have been, probably always will be.  But I do believe strongly in social justice and taking care of the poor, and I’m also an extreme history nut (my family knows this well).  What these guys have done, going all the way back (in recent history) to Truman, first in Latin America, and now here, is absolutely criminal.  Michael Moore has just laid out the facts clearly and honestly, just as Oliver Stone did in his series “The Untold History of the United States,” and as Eduardo Galeano did in his masterful work “Open Veins of Latin America.”  They all point to the what the Russians would call the Glavny Protivnik, the Main Enemy, and that is what Wall Street and Big Business in America has become since the early 1950s, starting under Truman---which has controlled almost all White House administrations, the CIA and our military objectives.  As a matter of fact, Oliver Stone called the CIA “Capitalism’s Invisible Army.”  So have we identified the Main Enemy of all those helpless Latin Americans yet? or the Main Enemy of all those helpless Americans who suffered under the rape of Wall Street, from the mid-1980s onward to the present?  It isn’t the CIA and their covert Ops, per se, they were merely Capitalism’s Invisible Army, it is Wall Street, Capitalism run wild, capitalism without proper governmental checks and balances.  In the Torah, the Old Testament’s first five books of the Bible, God had land-reform built in, so every family got a plot of land, which couldn’t be permanently sold off, as we’ve seen, it had to be returned to the family that owned it at the end of every 50 years, so no permanent accumulation of land by the rich could occur.  Also every 7^th year there was to be a cancellation of all debts, personal, private debt, across the board.  This would prevent a lot of what we’ve seen recently, as documented in Michael Moore’s documentary, and put safeguards on the poor, keeping capitalism and free enterprise in check.  Also, built into the Torah law of God, the laws of the land for ancient Israel, and for the future Millennial Kingdom of God, all lending with usury, interest, will end, so banking as we know it now will end.  Credit unions may exist, but loans would have to be without interest, maybe only charging nominal fees to pay for their employees.  Can you imagine what that would do for the poor?  No, people have no clue how proper government should work.  It would almost appear the Bible has taken the best elements out of each governmental system man has tried, and incorporated the into one form of government, God’s future government for mankind, but not run by mankind.  But it is really the reverse which has taken place.  In reality, mankind has borrowed elements out of the future governmental laws of the land contained in the Torah, and tried to make the governments we see extant.  But merely taking one part out of a whole system and trying to make a form of government out of it has not worked, as we have seen throughout history.  The world, in a sense, is waiting for the sons of God, and the government of God to take over, as Romans 8:19-22 expresses.