Thursday, May 30, 2013

U.S. MILITARY INTERVENTION IN LATIN AMERICA

CHRONOLOGY:
The following is a chronology of interventions and creation of U.S. military bases that have been made in various countries of Latin America. As well, year by year, idéa gives the magnitude of the imperialist policy through the use of military force, not only to annex territories but also partners, accomplices to their plans of domination.

- 1823: The Monroe Doctrine states that Latin America is considered "sphere of influence" for the United States.

- 1846: United States wages a war against Mexico, which eventually is forced to cede northern neighbor half its territory, including today's powerful and wealthy U.S. states of Texas and California.

- 1854: The American Navy bombards and destroys the Nicaraguan port of San Juan del Norte. The attack occurred after an officer attempted to tax the American millionaire yacht Cornelius Vanderbilt, who had led his ship to that port. The bombing paved the way for William Walker.

- 1855: The American adventurer William Walker, operating in the interest of bankers Morgan and Garrison, invades Nicaragua and proclaimed himself president. During his two years in office also invade the neighboring countries of El Salvador and Honduras, also proclaimed head of state in both countries. Walker restored slavery in the territories under its occupation.

- 1898: The United States declares war on Spain at the time that had almost defeated Cuban independence to colonial military force. American troops occupied the island of Cuba, the Patriots know and Spain was forced to cede to the United States territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines and Hawaii.

- 1901: The U.S. occupation forces do include in the Constitution of the new Republic of Cuba the infamous Platt Amendment, whereby the United States arrogated to itself the right to intervene in Cuban affairs whenever deemed appropriate. Cuba also was forced to lease in perpetuity of a piece of the country for the use of the U.S. Navy: The Guantanamo Naval Base.

- 1903: The United States "stimulates" the segregation of Panama, then part of Colombia, and acquires rights to the Panama Canal. Years later, former President Theodore Roosevelt, the Panama-Real-secreting say: "I took the Canal Zone as Congress debated." Colombia had subsequently paid the ridiculous sum of $ 25 million in compensation.

- 1904: Panama is promulgated in the Constitution. It has a section that includes the U.S. military intervention when Washington deemed necessary. Immediately you start building the Panama Canal. Later, the United States will fill the area military bases and in 1946 founded the notorious School of the Americas, by whose classrooms will almost all Latin American dictators.

- 1904: The U.S. Marines landed in the Dominican Republic to quell an armed opponent. A year later, regarding intervention in that country, President Theodore Roosevelt declared that the United States would be "policeman" of the Caribbean.

- 1906: The U.S. investments in Cuba, which in 1885 accounted for 50 million pesos, reached the figure of 200 million. In August of that year an insurrection broke out against President Estrada Palma puppet, who requested U.S. military intervention. The Americans landed and appointed as auditor to William Taft.

- 1907: Dominican Republic: United States got the Dominican government granted him the collection of customs revenues, status would be maintained for 33 consecutive years.

- 1908: U.S. troops involved in Panama. In the next decade will fourfold.

- 1910: The US Marines occupy Nicaragua to support the regime of Adolfo Díaz.

- 1911: Mexico: To "protect" American citizens, President William Taft ordered the displacement of 20 000 troops to the southern border eight warships off the coast of California.

- 1912: U.S. Marines invade Nicaragua and started an occupation that would remain almost continuously until 1933. That same year (1912) the President Taft declares "No day is distant when three stars and three stripes at three equidistant points delimit our territory: one at the North Pole, another at the Panama Canal and the third at the Pole South. indeed the whole hemisphere will be ours under our racial superiority, as has become our morally."

- 1914: The U.S. Navy bombarded the port city of Veracruz, an attack apparently motivated by the arrest of U.S. soldiers in Tampico. The Mexican government apologizes, but President Woodrow Wilson ordered that the armed attack on Veracruz. One hundred Mexican soldiers, several cadets from the Naval Academy and civic groups resist heroically. There are 300 dead. The occupants remain for several months.

- 1915: The Marines occupy Haiti to "restore order". It establishes a protectorate and remained until 1934. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, reporting on the situation in Haiti said: "Imagine this: blacks speaking French"

- 1916: Marines occupy the Dominican Republic and remain there until 1924

- 1918: In Panama the Marines occupy the province of Chiriqui, to "maintain public order".

- 1924: The U.S. Marines invade Honduras to "mediate" a civil war. A Honduran military assumes the provisional government. Honduras ranks first worldwide in the export of bananas, but the gains are for the United Fruit Company.

- 1925: U.S. Army troops occupy Panama City to end a strike and maintain order.

- 1926: United States decides to create in Nicaragua National Guard. Augusto Cesar Sandino aims to create a people's army to fight the foreign occupiers.

- 1927: In Nicaragua a captain of American marines Sandino urges to surrender. The rebel says, "I want a free country or die." United States then made the first aerial bombardment in Latin America. It attacks the village El Ocotal. 300 Nicaraguans killed by bombs and machine guns .

- 1930: In the Dominican Republic begins the dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, a soldier emerged from the National Guard, encouraged and trained by the United States.

- 1933: Nicaragua and the United States abandoned the country leaves the control Anastasio Somoza and the National Guard.

- 1934: In Nicaragua is killed Cesar Augusto Sandino, who had laid down their arms. The murder was ordered by Somoza, with the complicity of U.S. Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane.

- 1941: In Panama President Arias was deposed by a military coup led by Ricardo Adolfo de la Guardia, who first consulted his plan with U.S. Ambassador. The Secretary of War Henry Stimson commented: "This was a great relief for us because Arias had been very problematic and very pro-Nazi"

- 1946: United States opened in Panama the notorious School of the Americas, for the military training of the hemisphere. There he formed the main protagonists of the military dictatorships in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Central America and other countries.

- 1947: United States begins to gradually impose American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (Rio Treaty).

- 1952: In Cuba, with the consent and pleasure of the U.S. government, General Fulgencio Batista's ouster occurs Carlos Prio and inaugurates a bloody tyranny.

- 1954: The CIA orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. A Guatemalan poet described the Arbenz government as "years of spring in a country of eternal tyranny." Followed almost 40 years of violence and repression that led to the policy of "scorched earth" of the 80s. Over 150 000 people were killed.

- 1956: In Nicaragua the poet Rigoberto Lopez Perez kills the dictator Anastasio Somoza, who had 20 years in power with U.S. support. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had defined it: "It is a bastard, but he's our son of a bitch". His son Anastasio Somoza Debayle tyrannical dynasty lasted for several years.

- 1960: President Eisenhower authorized the implementation of large-scale covert action to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro, who had come to power in January 1959 and immediately began a work of extraordinary scope revolutionary social and popular support. Covert actions included the assassination of Cuban leader striping the counterrevolutionary and sabotage of the main sectors of the island's economy.

- 1961: mercenary forces recruited, organized, financed and directed by the United States invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs (Playa Giron). In less than 72 hours are defeated in what was the first major military defeat of U.S. imperialism in Latin America.

The CIA coup against the elected president of Ecuador J. M Velazco Ibarra, who had shown too friendly with Cuba.

- 1964: Brazilian President Joao Goulart, who intended to carry out a land reform and nationalization of oil, is the victim of a coup supported and promoted by the United States.

- 1965: United States sent thousands of troops to the Dominican Republic to suppress a movement trying to restore power to the previously ousted democratically elected progressive President Juan Bosch.

- 1966: U.S. sends arms, advisors and Green Berets to Guatemala, to implement a counterinsurgency campaign call. In a State Department report acknowledged that "to eliminate a few hundred guerillas will be killed perhaps 10,000 Guatemalan peasants."

- 1967: A group of Green Berets were sent to Bolivia to help find and kill Ernesto Che Guevara.

- 1968: CIA organized a paramilitary force regarded as the precursor of the dark "Death Squads".

- 1971: The Washington Post confirms that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had tried several times to assassinate the Cuban Revolution leader Fidel Castro. Years later, and to the extent that the secret documents were declassified CIA has known that attempts are dozens and plans hundreds.

- 1973: The military took power in Uruguay, supported by the United States. The subsequent repression reach very high prison population figures for political reasons.

A coup instigated and organized by the United States overthrew the elected government of President Salvador Allende in Chile, and is installed in power General Augusto Pinochet who led a bloody and long tyranny.

- 1976: Takes power a military dictatorship in Argentina. Years later were declassified in America nearly 5000 secret documents that revealed the close collaboration and support given from the highest levels of power in Washington to the Argentine military, responsible for the deaths of at least 30,000 Argentines, a large proportion of them young students and workers. Recently, the U.S. State Department has declassified documents directly involving the former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and other senior U.S. officials for crimes committed by Argentina's dictatorship, which launched a campaign of murder, torture and "disappearances" after assume power. Kissinger was involved in the operations of Plan Condor, a cooperation network to capture and execute political opponents in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia.

- 1980: United States massively increases military assistance to El Salvador who face FMLN guerrillas. The death squads proliferated, Archbishop Romero was assassinated by
right-wing terrorists; 35 000 civilians are killed between 1978 and the rape and murder of four nuns by gunmen from the military makes the American government suspend military aid for a month.

- 1981: The Reagan administration started the war of the "contra" to destroy the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

The CIA advances in the organization of the "Contras" in Nicaragua. They had begun the previous year with a group of 60 former Somoza guards. Four years later come to be grouped in the "against" almost 12 000 former guards. Of the 48 most important military leaders of "against", 46 had been officers of the National Guard. United States also advanced in the economic war against Nicaragua and pressure from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Mines are laid to block Nicargua's ports

Gen. Omar Torrijos, president of Panama, dies in a plane crash. Since then there has been a suspicion that the CIA had to do with the disaster, due to Torrijos patriotic nationalism and friendly relations with Cuba held its government.

- 1983: the invasion of five thousand Marines United States to the tiny Caribbean island of Granada. Yankee troops came shortly after a conspiracy was ousted Maurice Bishop, a leftist and nationalist leader.

- 1989: United States invades Panama to arrest his former protégé, Manuel Noriega. The operation left no less than 3000 civilian casualties.

- 1990: United States intervenes massively in the electoral process in Nicaragua through covert actions and public. Washington openly consolidated opposition coalition, although such practices are illegal under U.S. law.

- 2000: As part of the "War on Drugs", the United States launched the Plan Colombia, a program of massive civilian and military aid to a country that may have the worst human rights record in the hemisphere. U.S. Funding for this Plan is 1 300 million, of which 83 percent goes to military spending. After Plan Colombia has been subsumed in the "War on Terror".

- 2002: The U.S. supported and financed the elements that organized the failed coup of April 11 in Venezuela.

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