Chickens, Coming Home To Roost

GUATEMALA IS A POOR COUNTRY today in large part because of United States foreign policy. That foreign policy, in essence, consists of making the world safe for American corporate investment and exploitation. The pattern has repeated itself many times. For precise descriptions of specific examples of American corporate involvement in poor countries, consult the writings of Noam Chomsky, or Joseph Stiglitz. In 1954 Guatemala elected a socialistic populist president, Jacobo Arbenz, who came to power promising to instigate land reforms, to break up the huge estates of the ultra wealthy, and to distribute land among the peasants to provide them an opportunity to earn a decent living. Twas unacceptable to the United States, which always prefers the corporate concentrated wealth approach because it is governed by the corporate wealthy, and which never met a socialist foreign leader it thought worthy or remaining in power. The United States of Avarice prefers the right wing, pro capitalistic sort of strong man ruler in poor countries. They tend to be amenable to American corporate involvement in their countries. The United fruit Company wanted the farmland of Guatemala for itself, so, in a joint operation with the CIA, corporate America overthrew Arbenz, ended his land reforms, and paved the way for the production of wealth and its distribution, directly into the hands of the wealthy corporate elite. Guatemala has been impoverished ever since. Not only is it hardly surprising that Guatemalans would seek new opportunity in the United States, it is, in a very real sense, appropriate. The same is true with every other country south of the Rio Grande; they have all been victimized by American corporate sponsored military and economic aggression and greed. The United States made its intention known very early; in 1823, with the Monroe doctrine. We decided early on that we wanted central and south American to be our plaything, and no one else's. So here comes the caravan, inching closer, evidently dwindling in numbers as it moves northward, serving as a political tool for America's far nationalistic right, who act as if the desperate people walking north are nothing but animals, or scum. The far right can now act like real bad asses, with Trump leading the hatred, as usual. Africa and Latin America are producing the people that places like Europe and the United States need to continue functioning, but the conservatives are too busy trying to prove that they aren't racists to even notice. Immigrants do not take other people's jobs; they create new wealth and jobs, but, again, who has time to notice facts when busy ramping up hatred against imaginary threats?