Reflections...

There are many aspects of U.S. foreign policy that leave me dumbfounded. I have only begun to learn about these things, but my reading on Guatemala’s history has revealed things about my own country that leave me baffled and outraged. I knew that Guatemala suffered a civil war that lasted almost 40 years and ended (ostensibly) in 1996. I didn’t realize, however, the extent of the U.S.’s role in starting and escalating that war.

Guatemala paid attention to all our rhetoric about democracy and freedom during WWII, and in 1952 the people organized and voted to elect a president--who, it seems, made significant changes to improve the lives of the poor. Then, because of our own economic and political interests, the C.I.A. led a coup that overthrew Guatemala’s only democratically elected leader in 1954. We installed a militaristic government, and thus began the country’s long descent into fear, chaos, and violence. We gave the Guatemalan government loads of money, up to a million dollars a week in the 1980s, which it used to massacre its own people.

That event was far from unique. The C.I.A. did the same thing in 1953 in Iran: led a coup to oust a democratically elected leader and installed a harsh dictator. In Chile 1973, the C.I.A. overthrew the democratically elected Salvador Allende and put in his place the tyrannical Pinochet. Saddam Hussein was trained and backed by us. Venezuela’s Chavez was one of our guys (though we have since tried to overthrow him). Jason told me about Rafael Trujillo, a brutal dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic for thirty years, and who was supported by the U.S. Our Secretary of State at the time said of him, “He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he is our son-of-a-bitch.”

We certainly aren’t the only superpower to do such things. The kicker, though, is that we do them while cloaked in the rhetoric of “human rights.” We present ourselves as a beneficent model for the rest of the world, propagating “freedom” and “democracy,” rescuing others from “evil” regimes. At least Russia, China, England, and Rome were forthright about their imperial interests. From what I can see, they didn’t disguise them as attempts to save other countries from themselves. Who even has any idea what China wants with Tibet?? :)

The implications take me down some sobering paths. Our glowing rhetoric hides, confuses, minimizes, dismisses. Our grand euphemisms serve as the ultimate insult, even violence. I think they keep many Americans, myself included, far too comfortable, apathetic, and self-superior.

What do we do with such knowledge? In my current job, I’ve worked primarily with recent immigrants. They are people whose suffering we have caused (to what extent, who can say?), who then flee to our country in search of a better life, where they meet a great deal of discrimination and tightening laws. We’re like a batterer, who beats his wife and then tells her it’s her fault. The greatest abuse is refusing to acknowledge her reality.

What will we do? I feel an urgency to learn what I can, to listen and observe, to offer myself somewhere. I believe in the positive power of education, of analysis and criticism, of outrage, of little daily efforts and the hope of large-scale ones. We have the resources and knowledge to drastically impact others’ lives in positive ways. As one of my favorite professors once said, we have opportunities everywhere to grow our perspectives, to have the courage to be challenged, humbled, and offended—to change and be changed.