The Central American country of Guatemala fought a bloody civil war for over 36 years. The

The civil patrols allowed the government to exploit the civilians further and also allow the government to utilize the civilians by controlling them and oppressing. The civil patrols created a numerous amount human rights violations imposed by the government. Genocide was committed according to United Nations. Many Maya groups are still try to get their case for exhumation and genocide. Mayas have been victims of a great injustice and are still suffering the aftermath of the violence that

A very important element which influenced the shift in Guatemala's inflexible stance was the fact that Britain, backed by the 1960 U.N. Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples, has made it clear that whether or not Guatemala was ready to recognize Belize, Belize would become independent.  Belize gained independence from Britain and joined the UN under protests from Guatemala.” (Sylvestre, 1997)

The author of this book is Juan Jose Arevalo and he was a professor of philosophy who became Guatemala’s first democratically elected president in 1944. He was elected after a popular uprising against the United States, backed by Dictator Jorge Ubico, which began the Guatemalan Revolution. He stayed in office until 1951 and had survived 15 coup attempts. During his presidency he had passed several social reform policies that included an increase in minimum wage and a series of literacy programs. He also directed and ministered the drafting of a new constitution in 1945. Arevalo focused much on the need of advancement with individuals and communities. After he was exiled as being a university professor he went back to Guatemala to help the new post-Ubico government, focusing on the areas of social security and drafting of a new constitution. He developed the term “spiritual socialism”, in which he defined his political philosophy as. The philosophy was pointed towards the moral development of Guatemalans with the intent to liberate man psychologically. Arevalo strongly believed that this theoretical doctrine was vital to the making of a progressive and peaceful Guatemalan society. He felt in order to create an ideal society it was necessary to allow the citizens the freedom to pursue their own opinions, property, and way of life. He proclaimed that protecting the freewill of the citizens creates more support for governmental institutions, which in turn ensures the security of

Also, the growing presence of the Soviets and Cuba in Nicaragua escalated the cold war and in order to ‘draw the line” the Reagan administration “doubled economic aid for El Salvador to a hundred and forty four million dollars” (pg 40). According to Danner, “the priorities of American Policy in El Salvador had become unmistakable” (pg 41).Second, The American government was “opposed to dispatching American combat forces to Central America” (pg 22) and in order to prevent another Nicaragua, Congress agreed to “reform” the Salvadoran Army by financing, training and arming its troops to fight the FMLN. As Danner notes, “the Americans had stepped forward to fund the war, but were unwilling to fight it”. Third, the Monterrosa led Atlacatl led batallion through American funding descended in El Mozote with “the latest M-16’s, M-60 machines guns, 90 millimeter recoilless rifles, and 60- and 81 millimeter mortars”(pg 39) and with a list of names massacred an entire village because “communism was cancer”(pg 49). The U.S. government was clearly responsible for the Massacre at El Mozote because without the funding, supporting, and training of El Salvador troops the war would have been tilted in the guerillas favor as they had managed to hold the disorganized army in certain areas. In contrast to neighboring departments El Mozote and its inhabitants of born-again Christians did not fit in as guerilla sympathizers. In fact, the training at American hands

In 1980 El Salvador’s civil war officially began. Thousands of people were kidnapped and killed. Church workers were abducted, raped and killed, yet again the peace talks did not begin until 1984 and the Peace Accords of El Salvador was not signed until 1992. Between those twelve years 75,000 people died as a result of the civil war and most of these people were completely innocent.

For twelve years (1980-1992), El Salvador suffered this brutal civil war and saw some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin American history. The government refused to attend peace talks by the FMLN and the FMLN refused to participate in elections knowing it results would be rigged. The military tried to kill all suspected rebels and the FMLN damaged anything that supported the government’s economy. Throughout the war there was so much human rights violations such as subjecting civilians to torture, forced disappearance, extrajudicial killing, mutilation, mass rape, massacres, summary executions, landmines and indiscriminate bombing. As the result, by the end of the civil war about 75,000 people were killed, sadly most of which were civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time. The intensity of military repression and constant fear provoked massive northern migration to the United States. By the mid-1980s almost one-fifth of the Salvadoran population was living in the United

During the 1970’s more and more protests and uprisings in the capital and the southwest part of the nation became very frequent, and overtime, very violent. The Peace Pledge Union expressed a dramatic and detailed example of the violent acts that the military of Guatemala practiced on Indian natives in search of subversives,

El Salvador is a small and beautiful country in Central America bordered by Honduras, Guatemala, and the Pacific Ocean. During recent years, violence and poverty have plagued the country due to over-population and class struggles. “The civil war in El Salvador began in 1980 to 1992 due to discontent with social inequalities, a poor economy, and the repressive measures of dictatorship” (Wiarda, p. 213). There remains conflict between the rich and the poor, this has existed for more than a century and is still a big problem.

Born in Blood and Fire text describe and explain Chasteen’s perceptions on the effect that important invents that occurred in Latin America had during the Cold War. Chasteen’s visions of the period were precise and outstanding. First Chasteen’s ideas reflect how during the Cold War Latin American governments started turning into a military rule with the United Sates as an ally and founder of their army. He explains how countries started revolutionary movements in order to fight for nationalism. Marxist ideologies and communist revolutionary guerrillas rose as well as anticommunist governments. Chasteen’s argues how during the Cold War period there was a constant increase of civil right abuses from the government’s army who impose their power with violence and brutality. Chasteen’s ideas are reflected and confirmed in the Guatemala Reader documents by describing specific events that occurred in Guatemala during the Cold War period. The Guatemala Reader goes beyond Chasteen’s ideas by giving detailed documents and historical facts of the social injustices that people had to go through every day. Born in Blood and Fire texts and the Guatemala Reader documents show the rise of civil wars and a period of political struggle in Latin America during the Cold War.

The Spanish civil war is often seen as a fundamental divide between right and left- the first major struggle between Fascism and Communism. The Spanish civil war started distinctly as a Spanish civil war born out of Spanish disputes, but it was soon to take on an international character. The military situations were practically equal to both sides before the foreign intervention. However, after Germany, Italy, and USSR intervened the situation changed dramatically.

In the book The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War, author Greg Grandin traces Guatemala’s evolutionary period from the late 19th century to the early 1980s. What he dubs as ‘the last colonial massacre,’ the Panzós Massacre of 1978 was the mass murder by the Guatamalan army of 35 Q’echi-Mayan men, women and children who had gathered in the town square demanding democractic representation, land reform and higher wages. Outrage over this massacre led many Guatemalan peasants to join the communist Guerilla Army of the Poor (EGP) which prompted violence and repression by the US backed right-wing government. Grandin’s thesis is that Cold War terror unleashed or excused by the United States, weakened the advancement of democracy

During the 1980s the government of Guatemala decided to carry out systematic killings of Mayan Indians who they believed were working towards a communist-controlled state. The

Further, in the text “CIA and Guatemala Assassination Proposals,” it is revealed that the CIA “developed a major propaganda campaign” that, “included sending wooden coffins, hangmans’ nooses, and phony bombs to selected individuals” (“CIA and Guatemala”) in Guatemala. This use of terror and psychological warfare was intended to horrify Guatemalan civilians and politicians prior to executing the actual coup. It is clear that American foreign policy was quite dangerous in correlation with Guatemala and exhibited a masculine attitude. In relation to de Beauvoir, American foreign policy can be compared to “the great advantage enjoyed by the boy” in which “his mode of existence in relations to others leads him to assert his subjective freedom” (de

Colombia is a Latin American country located in South America that has been ravaged by violence, starvation, and large-scale inequality between higher and lower classes. The chaos in Colombia has been between rebel forces and the government and has lasted for over fifty years. These rebel forces have fought to achieve their Liberalist lead goals of overthrowing the current democratic government of Colombia and replacing it with a communist government. La Violencia was the main contributor to the conflict between the resistance fighters of Colombia and the Colombian government that has brought on violence and terror from the violent actions between the Liberal and Conservative parties in the 1950’s. , which has directly brought on the violence and terror from the guerrilla groups.

In addition to Guatemala, one may look at U.S. support for a score of other regimes in the region to recognize that the United States consistently crushed the “little ones,” cuddled dictators,