1
00:00:02,759 --> 00:00:11,200
Speaker 1: What burning down my entire West Coast. I'm Robert Evans.

2
00:00:11,240 --> 00:00:15,720
Speaker 1: This is Behind the Bastards, the only podcast recorded in

3
00:00:15,760 --> 00:00:19,920
Speaker 1: the midst of a haze of disaster smoke, uh and

4
00:00:20,239 --> 00:00:25,040
Speaker 1: human misery. Um, talking about something that also generated a

5
00:00:25,079 --> 00:00:28,400
Speaker 1: lot of horrible smoke and human misery, The School of

6
00:00:28,400 --> 00:00:31,280
Speaker 1: the Americas. This is part two of our special series

7
00:00:31,800 --> 00:00:36,879
Speaker 1: on the US just just fucking around in Latin America

8
00:00:36,920 --> 00:00:39,840
Speaker 1: getting a lot of people killed. And my guest as

9
00:00:39,880 --> 00:00:44,440
Speaker 1: all well as within part one is Joel Monique. Joel,

10
00:00:44,680 --> 00:00:50,919
Speaker 1: you are a podcast producer. Uh and uh you are

11
00:00:50,960 --> 00:00:58,040
Speaker 1: also the Are you the president? I'm not of of myself. Yes, okay,

12
00:00:58,040 --> 00:01:00,680
Speaker 1: you're there, but not of the United States? No, not,

13
00:01:00,880 --> 00:01:06,199
Speaker 1: thank god? No, okay, okay, I would. This is good

14
00:01:06,200 --> 00:01:08,720
Speaker 1: to know because I was going to actually be very

15
00:01:08,760 --> 00:01:12,440
Speaker 1: angry at you about the wildfire response, but apparently you

16
00:01:12,520 --> 00:01:16,080
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with that. Um, so I guess, I'll,

17
00:01:16,120 --> 00:01:19,680
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess we're cool. Um. Sorry, I forgot

18
00:01:19,959 --> 00:01:22,240
Speaker 1: who the president was briefly, and since you were on

19
00:01:22,280 --> 00:01:29,080
Speaker 1: my computer culture critic, that's a kind of president in

20
00:01:29,080 --> 00:01:33,759
Speaker 1: a way, aren't we all the president of critiquing culture? Yes,

21
00:01:34,160 --> 00:01:38,959
Speaker 1: wasn't that what Gamergate was about basically was it I

22
00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:45,560
Speaker 1: don't know about a lot of things. So which happened? Yeah, okay,

23
00:01:46,640 --> 00:01:50,400
Speaker 1: uh so Joel, how are you? We're doing this normally

24
00:01:50,440 --> 00:01:52,640
Speaker 1: we do both parts of a two part episode in

25
00:01:52,680 --> 00:01:55,800
Speaker 1: the same day. We took a little breather, took a

26
00:01:55,800 --> 00:01:59,880
Speaker 1: little breather, and then the entire country caught on fire. Yes,

27
00:02:00,840 --> 00:02:03,120
Speaker 1: so I don't know, how are you? How are you

28
00:02:03,440 --> 00:02:07,920
Speaker 1: holding up? I'm not yet on fire and counting my

29
00:02:07,960 --> 00:02:13,160
Speaker 1: blessings and oh god, I'm actually really glad we took

30
00:02:13,360 --> 00:02:17,000
Speaker 1: I'm trying to encourage more people to like allow themselves

31
00:02:17,040 --> 00:02:18,880
Speaker 1: space to breathe in a very serious way, Like I

32
00:02:18,880 --> 00:02:20,800
Speaker 1: feel like before this we had all of this culture

33
00:02:21,720 --> 00:02:25,160
Speaker 1: surrounding like self care and also but like, guys, seriously,

34
00:02:25,240 --> 00:02:27,000
Speaker 1: there was ever a time to like take a nap

35
00:02:27,280 --> 00:02:30,000
Speaker 1: every once in a while and to like say no,

36
00:02:30,160 --> 00:02:32,680
Speaker 1: you can't do that. Thing, which is something I'm really

37
00:02:32,880 --> 00:02:35,919
Speaker 1: trying to work on now is absolutely it's so chaotic.

38
00:02:35,960 --> 00:02:38,160
Speaker 1: This is easily the most chaos most of us have

39
00:02:38,240 --> 00:02:42,000
Speaker 1: ever experienced in our lives. Ever. Um, you can you

40
00:02:42,040 --> 00:02:44,520
Speaker 1: can rest at times now? All the time you have

41
00:02:44,600 --> 00:02:46,519
Speaker 1: we have, say vigilant there's a lot to take care of,

42
00:02:46,919 --> 00:02:49,959
Speaker 1: but my God, please like just allow yourself in space.

43
00:02:50,160 --> 00:02:54,560
Speaker 1: So with that, I am not crying today yet, so

44
00:02:54,800 --> 00:02:59,560
Speaker 1: I feel good to keep going, keep learning, hopefully make

45
00:02:59,600 --> 00:03:02,320
Speaker 1: some pause to change in the near future. Well that's

46
00:03:02,320 --> 00:03:06,080
Speaker 1: a good way to look at things. Um, let's let's

47
00:03:06,080 --> 00:03:10,280
Speaker 1: pivot directly from that to talking about unbelievable war crimes

48
00:03:10,440 --> 00:03:14,720
Speaker 1: committed on behalf of us interests in parts of the

49
00:03:14,760 --> 00:03:17,639
Speaker 1: world that are very close to our country and and

50
00:03:17,680 --> 00:03:22,960
Speaker 1: we're crying again. Yeah, let's let's do it behind the

51
00:03:22,960 --> 00:03:26,440
Speaker 1: bastards does best and let everybody know that the world's

52
00:03:28,160 --> 00:03:31,079
Speaker 1: more funcked up than they thought it was. It is

53
00:03:31,160 --> 00:03:33,280
Speaker 1: kind of comforting, you know. I think a lot of

54
00:03:33,280 --> 00:03:35,240
Speaker 1: people who I think there are a lot of people

55
00:03:35,280 --> 00:03:39,680
Speaker 1: who have lived pretty comfortable existences because we've we've we've

56
00:03:39,680 --> 00:03:41,920
Speaker 1: all sort of come up and our had our childhoods

57
00:03:41,960 --> 00:03:45,080
Speaker 1: in this period of relative calm that's unusual in human

58
00:03:45,120 --> 00:03:51,320
Speaker 1: history and also was very geographically isolated. The calm was localized, right, Um,

59
00:03:51,360 --> 00:03:53,880
Speaker 1: And hearing stories like this makes you understand that like

60
00:03:54,000 --> 00:03:58,280
Speaker 1: this chaos and like uncertainty and fear that we're feeling

61
00:03:58,320 --> 00:04:01,920
Speaker 1: this like this, like gnawing terror that like death squads

62
00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:04,120
Speaker 1: might start coming in the night, that like the state

63
00:04:04,200 --> 00:04:06,680
Speaker 1: might send security forces out to murder you. This like

64
00:04:06,760 --> 00:04:10,920
Speaker 1: thing that's new to most Americans. Uh is what we've

65
00:04:10,920 --> 00:04:14,120
Speaker 1: been doing to a bunch of people for decades. And uh,

66
00:04:14,480 --> 00:04:18,720
Speaker 1: let's let's yeah, let's so that's important to understand. So yes, yes,

67
00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:21,880
Speaker 1: there's a reason we have been deserved and disrupted. And

68
00:04:22,320 --> 00:04:25,320
Speaker 1: I feel like, at the very least, hopefully now we

69
00:04:25,360 --> 00:04:30,560
Speaker 1: can have better empathy and you're like thoughtful action. Yeah,

70
00:04:30,600 --> 00:04:33,080
Speaker 1: and we can understand the patterns that we're about to

71
00:04:33,080 --> 00:04:36,640
Speaker 1: see replicated in our own country and attempt to disrupt them. Perhaps.

72
00:04:37,720 --> 00:04:41,200
Speaker 1: So in December of nineteen eight one, dozens of El

73
00:04:41,240 --> 00:04:44,440
Speaker 1: Salvador and graduates of the School of the America's converged

74
00:04:44,560 --> 00:04:47,679
Speaker 1: on El Mazotte, a tiny village in the northern hills

75
00:04:47,680 --> 00:04:51,320
Speaker 1: of the Morazon Province. Now Morizon was a stronghold of

76
00:04:51,360 --> 00:04:54,599
Speaker 1: for the Feri Bundo Martine National Liberation Front or f

77
00:04:54,920 --> 00:04:58,440
Speaker 1: l m N, a leftist militant group resisting El Salvador's

78
00:04:58,480 --> 00:05:01,920
Speaker 1: far right government, which was of course enthusiastically backed by

79
00:05:01,960 --> 00:05:05,720
Speaker 1: the Reagan administration. Now, the US had been admitting increasing

80
00:05:05,800 --> 00:05:08,280
Speaker 1: numbers of El Salvadoran soldiers into the School of the

81
00:05:08,320 --> 00:05:11,280
Speaker 1: Americas for years as this conflict heat it up, so

82
00:05:11,360 --> 00:05:14,960
Speaker 1: like leftist militants start gaining you know, power and sort

83
00:05:14,960 --> 00:05:17,880
Speaker 1: of the hill areas and like fighting the government, and

84
00:05:17,920 --> 00:05:20,400
Speaker 1: we start just just taking more and more of these

85
00:05:20,400 --> 00:05:22,680
Speaker 1: guys into the s o A, which is generally the strategy.

86
00:05:22,720 --> 00:05:25,640
Speaker 1: You see the government sees our government sees left wing

87
00:05:25,680 --> 00:05:27,920
Speaker 1: activism sort of picking up in a country, and they

88
00:05:27,920 --> 00:05:32,560
Speaker 1: start propagandizing and brainwashing more of that nation's soldiers in

89
00:05:32,600 --> 00:05:36,080
Speaker 1: the School of the Americas. So once Reagan took office,

90
00:05:36,120 --> 00:05:39,360
Speaker 1: he started sending in Special Forces advisers to help out

91
00:05:39,360 --> 00:05:43,960
Speaker 1: in that neighborly way that only special Forces can. Elmazote

92
00:05:44,080 --> 00:05:47,560
Speaker 1: was one of several small villages suspective hosting rebel fighters,

93
00:05:47,880 --> 00:05:49,839
Speaker 1: acting as their u S trainers had taught them. The

94
00:05:49,880 --> 00:05:54,159
Speaker 1: soldiers of Al Salvador's Elite Ulcado Battalion started their operations

95
00:05:54,160 --> 00:05:56,919
Speaker 1: by pounding the outlying portions of several towns flat with

96
00:05:56,920 --> 00:06:00,560
Speaker 1: a multi hour artillery barrage. Then grant, yeah, it's just

97
00:06:00,600 --> 00:06:03,559
Speaker 1: what you do. Then ground troops moved in on December tenth,

98
00:06:03,640 --> 00:06:07,320
Speaker 1: securing Almazote and ordering all residents out into the town square.

99
00:06:07,880 --> 00:06:09,520
Speaker 1: By the way, as a pro tip, since this might

100
00:06:09,520 --> 00:06:11,560
Speaker 1: be useful for everybody, if you find yourself in the

101
00:06:11,600 --> 00:06:15,400
Speaker 1: middle of like a genocide or a government crackdown that

102
00:06:15,480 --> 00:06:18,200
Speaker 1: involves death squads, and somebody tells you to gather in

103
00:06:18,200 --> 00:06:21,320
Speaker 1: the town square, don't gather in the town square. It

104
00:06:21,480 --> 00:06:25,400
Speaker 1: never ends. Well, that's like the top place for massacring

105
00:06:25,480 --> 00:06:28,600
Speaker 1: people is the town square. Avoid the town square if

106
00:06:28,640 --> 00:06:32,120
Speaker 1: things go real bad in your country. So anyway, the

107
00:06:32,200 --> 00:06:35,160
Speaker 1: US trained soldiers of that Lakato battalion separated the men

108
00:06:35,160 --> 00:06:37,359
Speaker 1: in Almazote from the women, which is, you know, another

109
00:06:37,400 --> 00:06:40,159
Speaker 1: bad sign. They also separated out all of the children

110
00:06:40,200 --> 00:06:42,080
Speaker 1: and forced them into a small building next to the

111
00:06:42,160 --> 00:06:44,920
Speaker 1: village church. The soldiers spent the rest of the day

112
00:06:44,960 --> 00:06:48,719
Speaker 1: executing every single person in Almazote. They killed the children last,

113
00:06:49,000 --> 00:06:51,160
Speaker 1: perhaps because they needed to psych themselves up for such

114
00:06:51,200 --> 00:06:53,600
Speaker 1: a gruesome task. Rather than look at what they were

115
00:06:53,640 --> 00:06:55,400
Speaker 1: doing and look into the eyes of these little kids,

116
00:06:55,440 --> 00:06:57,760
Speaker 1: the soldiers just fired into the building where the town's

117
00:06:57,800 --> 00:07:00,320
Speaker 1: children were held. Then they set it on fire before

118
00:07:00,320 --> 00:07:03,640
Speaker 1: they left. Years later, that building was excavated, revealing the

119
00:07:03,640 --> 00:07:06,320
Speaker 1: remains of at least a hundred and forty three victims inside.

120
00:07:06,440 --> 00:07:12,760
Speaker 1: The average age was six. After wiping Christ, Jesus Christ,

121
00:07:13,000 --> 00:07:19,600
Speaker 1: what the how? Wow? Yeah, children, it's amazing. And this

122
00:07:19,680 --> 00:07:22,480
Speaker 1: is specifically the battalion of the El Salvadoran Army that

123
00:07:22,560 --> 00:07:25,280
Speaker 1: was that is trained and armed by the United States.

124
00:07:25,880 --> 00:07:28,000
Speaker 1: Um like these guys were all trained by active due

125
00:07:28,040 --> 00:07:30,760
Speaker 1: to US soldiers in how to do this like they

126
00:07:30,760 --> 00:07:33,320
Speaker 1: were not. This isn't just some foreign country where people

127
00:07:33,360 --> 00:07:35,880
Speaker 1: did a horrible thing because of some dictator. These are

128
00:07:35,880 --> 00:07:39,320
Speaker 1: the guys we trained, using that training to, among other things,

129
00:07:39,320 --> 00:07:41,480
Speaker 1: shoot a hundred and forty three children to death in

130
00:07:41,480 --> 00:07:44,480
Speaker 1: a building outside of a Catholic church. So after wiping

131
00:07:44,520 --> 00:07:47,040
Speaker 1: almostote off the map, the men of the Applicatto Battalion

132
00:07:47,040 --> 00:07:49,320
Speaker 1: and their US advisors headed to the nearby town of

133
00:07:49,400 --> 00:07:52,320
Speaker 1: Laoya to repeat the process. We know what happened thanks

134
00:07:52,320 --> 00:07:54,800
Speaker 1: to the stories of a handful of lucky survivors. One

135
00:07:54,840 --> 00:07:57,480
Speaker 1: of them, Rosario Lopez, was just fast enough to get

136
00:07:57,480 --> 00:08:00,240
Speaker 1: out of town with her husband and three children. Ario

137
00:08:00,320 --> 00:08:02,200
Speaker 1: hit up on a hill while twenty four of her

138
00:08:02,240 --> 00:08:06,280
Speaker 1: family members were massacred, including her parents, two sisters, seventeen

139
00:08:06,320 --> 00:08:11,040
Speaker 1: nieces and nephews. So yeah, her husband Jose later recalled

140
00:08:11,080 --> 00:08:13,480
Speaker 1: to a journalist. I heard the commotion the prayers from

141
00:08:13,520 --> 00:08:15,320
Speaker 1: where I was hiding up in the mountain. It was

142
00:08:15,360 --> 00:08:17,120
Speaker 1: shooting at a bunch of kids, and some of them

143
00:08:17,160 --> 00:08:21,080
Speaker 1: cried and others had stopped. Now, Jose Rosario and their

144
00:08:21,160 --> 00:08:23,720
Speaker 1: children had on that mountain for five days until Jose

145
00:08:23,920 --> 00:08:27,120
Speaker 1: finally felt brave enough to descend and check for survivors.

146
00:08:27,160 --> 00:08:29,520
Speaker 1: The first body he found was one of his wife's sisters.

147
00:08:29,640 --> 00:08:32,800
Speaker 1: She had clearly been raped before being executed. Further in,

148
00:08:32,880 --> 00:08:35,040
Speaker 1: he saw the bodies of the town's children stacked in

149
00:08:35,080 --> 00:08:37,720
Speaker 1: a pile, their faces too damaged by fire and decay

150
00:08:37,800 --> 00:08:40,400
Speaker 1: for him to recognize. He and a few other days

151
00:08:40,440 --> 00:08:43,880
Speaker 1: survivors did what they could to bury their bones. Altogether,

152
00:08:43,960 --> 00:08:46,080
Speaker 1: the brave men of the at Licatto Battalion killed at

153
00:08:46,120 --> 00:08:48,600
Speaker 1: least nine hundred and seventy eight people in just a

154
00:08:48,600 --> 00:08:52,120
Speaker 1: couple of days. Nearly half of their victims were under

155
00:08:52,160 --> 00:08:55,600
Speaker 1: the age of twelve. Years later, one survivor would report

156
00:08:55,640 --> 00:08:58,360
Speaker 1: hearing an officer threatened to murder one soldier who expressed

157
00:08:58,360 --> 00:09:02,280
Speaker 1: an unwillingness to shoot children. Now, as far as we know,

158
00:09:02,320 --> 00:09:04,600
Speaker 1: I don't believe any US troops were present during the

159
00:09:04,600 --> 00:09:07,160
Speaker 1: Elmazote massacre, but the killing was done by soldiers who

160
00:09:07,160 --> 00:09:09,880
Speaker 1: had again been trained by US Special Forces uh and

161
00:09:09,920 --> 00:09:12,560
Speaker 1: it was under the command of officers who'd all graduated

162
00:09:12,559 --> 00:09:15,000
Speaker 1: from the School of the America's Those little boys and

163
00:09:15,040 --> 00:09:17,840
Speaker 1: girls were also gunned down by US made M sixteen

164
00:09:17,840 --> 00:09:20,240
Speaker 1: assault rifles, which had been given to El Salvador as

165
00:09:20,280 --> 00:09:22,479
Speaker 1: part of the one million dollars a day in military

166
00:09:22,520 --> 00:09:25,839
Speaker 1: aid that the Reagan administration sent into the country. When

167
00:09:25,920 --> 00:09:28,520
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan took office, Latin America was in the grip

168
00:09:28,559 --> 00:09:31,679
Speaker 1: of yet another wave of revolutions. The Sandinistas had overthrown

169
00:09:31,720 --> 00:09:34,320
Speaker 1: the dictator of Nicaragua in nineteen seventy nine, and by

170
00:09:34,320 --> 00:09:36,240
Speaker 1: the time Ronnie was sworn in on a bible made

171
00:09:36,240 --> 00:09:38,880
Speaker 1: of jelly beans, left wing guerrilla movements in Guatemala and

172
00:09:38,880 --> 00:09:41,120
Speaker 1: El Salvador looked like they might be on the verge

173
00:09:41,120 --> 00:09:43,360
Speaker 1: of victory. Two. And I'm gonna quote here from an

174
00:09:43,400 --> 00:09:46,920
Speaker 1: article in the Intercept in retrospect, it's clear that these

175
00:09:46,920 --> 00:09:50,280
Speaker 1: were inevitable revolutions. The title of one history of the period,

176
00:09:50,640 --> 00:09:54,280
Speaker 1: tiny cruel white oligarchs had ruled over indigenous peasants across

177
00:09:54,320 --> 00:09:56,880
Speaker 1: the region for hundreds of years, and sooner or later

178
00:09:57,200 --> 00:09:59,880
Speaker 1: the dam was going to break. But to the Reaganites,

179
00:10:00,040 --> 00:10:02,680
Speaker 1: this was all the work of the international communist conspiracy

180
00:10:02,760 --> 00:10:05,560
Speaker 1: headquartered in Moscow and had to be crushed by any

181
00:10:05,559 --> 00:10:09,640
Speaker 1: means necessary. Now, the article I just quoted from the

182
00:10:09,640 --> 00:10:12,320
Speaker 1: intercept was written by John Schwarz, a journalist I quite

183
00:10:12,360 --> 00:10:15,040
Speaker 1: respect he wrote that article this very year in partial

184
00:10:15,080 --> 00:10:17,720
Speaker 1: response to some new developments in the decades old quest

185
00:10:17,760 --> 00:10:20,439
Speaker 1: to hold some of the perpetrators of elma Zotte accountable

186
00:10:20,440 --> 00:10:23,400
Speaker 1: for their crimes. But John's greater purpose was to highlight

187
00:10:23,440 --> 00:10:26,600
Speaker 1: how similar many of the tactics the Reagan administration used

188
00:10:26,600 --> 00:10:29,600
Speaker 1: to cover up its complicity and foreign massacres are two

189
00:10:29,600 --> 00:10:32,760
Speaker 1: tactics being used right now by the Trump administration. And

190
00:10:32,800 --> 00:10:35,400
Speaker 1: considering the number of armed Trump supporters talking about mass

191
00:10:35,440 --> 00:10:39,240
Speaker 1: murdering their political foes, like within five minutes of my house, uh,

192
00:10:39,320 --> 00:10:42,920
Speaker 1: you can see why it's relevant. Uh So this is

193
00:10:42,960 --> 00:10:45,040
Speaker 1: really important to talk about for more reasons than just

194
00:10:45,160 --> 00:10:48,760
Speaker 1: understanding a historic crime. This has bearing on what's going

195
00:10:48,800 --> 00:10:50,480
Speaker 1: to happen to a lot of people listening to this

196
00:10:50,520 --> 00:10:53,120
Speaker 1: podcast in the future. If things go as bad as

197
00:10:53,160 --> 00:10:56,720
Speaker 1: they could go, so Elmazotte was never supposed to become

198
00:10:56,760 --> 00:11:00,120
Speaker 1: public knowledge the Reagan administration when this happened. The An

199
00:11:00,120 --> 00:11:02,680
Speaker 1: administration was in the process of trying to sell Congress

200
00:11:02,720 --> 00:11:06,120
Speaker 1: on a partnership with the Salvadoran government, and one requirement

201
00:11:06,160 --> 00:11:08,360
Speaker 1: that Congress had put forward was that the President would

202
00:11:08,360 --> 00:11:12,000
Speaker 1: have to certify by January twenty nine, nine two, that

203
00:11:12,080 --> 00:11:15,960
Speaker 1: El Salvador was quote making a concerted and significant effort

204
00:11:15,960 --> 00:11:20,400
Speaker 1: to comply with internationally recognized human rights. Now, if he couldn't,

205
00:11:20,520 --> 00:11:23,280
Speaker 1: all u s A del Salvador a million dollars a

206
00:11:23,320 --> 00:11:25,760
Speaker 1: day and guns and other baby killing tools would be

207
00:11:25,800 --> 00:11:28,600
Speaker 1: cut off. So there were high stakes here. Now. The

208
00:11:28,640 --> 00:11:31,800
Speaker 1: Reagan administration was very unhappy when they started hearing the

209
00:11:31,800 --> 00:11:34,840
Speaker 1: first reports from Almazote, not because of the thousand people

210
00:11:34,840 --> 00:11:36,640
Speaker 1: who had been killed, but because this was bad for

211
00:11:36,679 --> 00:11:39,360
Speaker 1: them politically. It was going to be providing yeah feed

212
00:11:39,360 --> 00:11:42,400
Speaker 1: for the Democrats. So the first move that they took

213
00:11:42,480 --> 00:11:44,560
Speaker 1: was to write off the rumors of the massacre as

214
00:11:44,600 --> 00:11:48,440
Speaker 1: a trick by left wing guerrillas. But then on January

215
00:11:48,880 --> 00:11:52,160
Speaker 1: nine two, two days before congress is deadline, the New

216
00:11:52,240 --> 00:11:55,079
Speaker 1: York Times in the Washington Post both published front page

217
00:11:55,120 --> 00:11:58,240
Speaker 1: stories about the massacre. Writing in the intercept, John de

218
00:11:58,320 --> 00:12:02,559
Speaker 1: tales what happened next. Thomas Enders, a career diplomat who

219
00:12:02,600 --> 00:12:04,720
Speaker 1: at the time was Assistant Secretary of State for inter

220
00:12:04,840 --> 00:12:08,560
Speaker 1: American Affairs, later said that Elmazotte, if true, might have

221
00:12:08,600 --> 00:12:11,400
Speaker 1: destroyed the entire effort in El Salvador. What to do?

222
00:12:11,840 --> 00:12:14,800
Speaker 1: The answer had been articulated by Richard Nixon years earlier,

223
00:12:14,920 --> 00:12:17,640
Speaker 1: as was born out by Nixon's direct experience during Watergate,

224
00:12:17,760 --> 00:12:22,040
Speaker 1: few things are more dangerous to conservative priorities than good journalism. Therefore,

225
00:12:22,080 --> 00:12:24,480
Speaker 1: as a top Nixon aid later recalled, Nixon believed that

226
00:12:24,520 --> 00:12:27,920
Speaker 1: it was necessary to fight the press through the nutcutters,

227
00:12:27,960 --> 00:12:31,160
Speaker 1: as the president called them, forcing our own news make

228
00:12:31,200 --> 00:12:34,520
Speaker 1: a brutal, vicious attack on the opposition. That's what Nixon said,

229
00:12:34,559 --> 00:12:37,400
Speaker 1: Fight the president through the nutcutters, forcing our own news,

230
00:12:37,400 --> 00:12:40,800
Speaker 1: make a brutal attack on the opposition. So the pushback

231
00:12:40,880 --> 00:12:43,560
Speaker 1: began with congressional testimony by Enders. There's no reason to

232
00:12:43,600 --> 00:12:46,920
Speaker 1: confirm that government forces systematically massacred civilians, he told a

233
00:12:46,920 --> 00:12:50,240
Speaker 1: House subcommittee. What about the number of victims? Bonner's article

234
00:12:50,280 --> 00:12:52,280
Speaker 1: had mentioned a list of seven hundred and thirty three

235
00:12:52,280 --> 00:12:55,160
Speaker 1: compiled by villagers as well as Italian of nine twenty

236
00:12:55,200 --> 00:12:58,240
Speaker 1: six from a human rights organization, Elliot Abrams, whod just

237
00:12:58,280 --> 00:13:00,720
Speaker 1: taken off as a six assistant set Terry of State

238
00:13:00,720 --> 00:13:03,600
Speaker 1: for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, and formed the Senate

239
00:13:03,679 --> 00:13:06,280
Speaker 1: that the numbers, first of all, were not credible. Our

240
00:13:06,320 --> 00:13:08,920
Speaker 1: information was that there were only three people in the canton.

241
00:13:09,280 --> 00:13:12,280
Speaker 1: This was clear conscious deceit on part of Abram's. Both

242
00:13:12,280 --> 00:13:14,560
Speaker 1: the Times and Post articles had written that the massacre

243
00:13:14,600 --> 00:13:17,959
Speaker 1: had taken place in several locations. Then came the assault

244
00:13:17,960 --> 00:13:21,080
Speaker 1: from the administration's outside allies. On February tenth, The Wall

245
00:13:21,120 --> 00:13:24,240
Speaker 1: Street Journal ran a lengthy editorial titled the Media's War.

246
00:13:24,600 --> 00:13:28,120
Speaker 1: Americans were badly confused about the situation in El Salvador

247
00:13:28,200 --> 00:13:30,920
Speaker 1: thanks to the US press. Almazote was not a massacre,

248
00:13:30,960 --> 00:13:36,480
Speaker 1: the journal wrote, but a quote unquote massacre. What what

249
00:13:37,520 --> 00:13:42,600
Speaker 1: unquote massacre? Yeah? Yeah. On the one hand, the number

250
00:13:42,600 --> 00:13:44,920
Speaker 1: of dead had been obviously exaggerated, and on the other

251
00:13:45,000 --> 00:13:47,040
Speaker 1: maybe the killing had been carried out by rebels dressed

252
00:13:47,040 --> 00:13:50,000
Speaker 1: in government uniforms. Bonner was credulous, a reporter out on

253
00:13:50,000 --> 00:13:52,280
Speaker 1: a limb and like reporters in Vietnam a sucker for

254
00:13:52,400 --> 00:13:55,840
Speaker 1: communist sources. One of the editorials authors appeared on PBS

255
00:13:55,880 --> 00:13:59,120
Speaker 1: to proclaim that obviously Ray Bonner has a political orientation,

256
00:13:59,640 --> 00:14:04,199
Speaker 1: so there's a lot that's that that's going on here. Um,

257
00:14:04,240 --> 00:14:06,560
Speaker 1: but it's all very familiar. So first of all, what

258
00:14:06,640 --> 00:14:09,160
Speaker 1: you see is Abram's getting up there and throwing out

259
00:14:09,160 --> 00:14:12,160
Speaker 1: a bunch of lies at once. Uh. Number one, like

260
00:14:12,520 --> 00:14:14,959
Speaker 1: throwing out a sound by like Elzote is not a massacre.

261
00:14:14,960 --> 00:14:17,640
Speaker 1: It's a quote unquote massacre. Uh. The number of dead

262
00:14:17,679 --> 00:14:20,360
Speaker 1: have been exaggerated. Oh and maybe they were also killed

263
00:14:20,400 --> 00:14:22,880
Speaker 1: by rebels dressed as soldiers. There's no evidence for any

264
00:14:22,920 --> 00:14:25,120
Speaker 1: of this. He's just throwing out a bunch of claims

265
00:14:25,120 --> 00:14:27,360
Speaker 1: that then have to be dealt with and like responded

266
00:14:27,400 --> 00:14:30,400
Speaker 1: to by the Times and by the Washington Post. And

267
00:14:30,440 --> 00:14:33,480
Speaker 1: it helps to drum up this idea that there's debate

268
00:14:33,640 --> 00:14:36,520
Speaker 1: over whether or not anybody was killed, and that allows

269
00:14:36,560 --> 00:14:39,040
Speaker 1: Americans to kind of shut their ears to it. And

270
00:14:39,080 --> 00:14:41,240
Speaker 1: it works. This is the same thing the Trump administration

271
00:14:41,280 --> 00:14:45,040
Speaker 1: does now. It always works. It works extremely well. Um.

272
00:14:45,080 --> 00:14:46,920
Speaker 1: And of course he starts to attack. This is one

273
00:14:46,920 --> 00:14:50,200
Speaker 1: of the reasons why I'm less concerned these days about

274
00:14:50,240 --> 00:14:53,120
Speaker 1: pretending to not have a bias as a reporter, because

275
00:14:53,280 --> 00:14:55,800
Speaker 1: Bonner here is doing as much as he possibly can.

276
00:14:55,920 --> 00:14:59,600
Speaker 1: He's he's a very good traditional reporter doing very good

277
00:14:59,600 --> 00:15:03,560
Speaker 1: tradition reporting, and he gets called a communist basically, because

278
00:15:03,600 --> 00:15:06,000
Speaker 1: that's what they do. It doesn't matter what you say,

279
00:15:06,040 --> 00:15:08,640
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how biased you are or aren't, They're

280
00:15:08,640 --> 00:15:10,600
Speaker 1: going to call you a communist if you're reporting on

281
00:15:10,680 --> 00:15:15,680
Speaker 1: things that are bad to them. So yeah, Accuracy in Media,

282
00:15:15,720 --> 00:15:19,120
Speaker 1: which was a conservative media criticism organization, went further, declaring

283
00:15:19,160 --> 00:15:22,560
Speaker 1: Bonner was raging a propaganda war favoring the Marxist guerrillas

284
00:15:22,600 --> 00:15:27,200
Speaker 1: in El Salvador Um. So yeah, it worked. Bonner was

285
00:15:27,240 --> 00:15:29,400
Speaker 1: pulled out of Central America by the Times and sent

286
00:15:29,440 --> 00:15:34,880
Speaker 1: back to New York for more training in journalism. Yeah. Yeah,

287
00:15:34,960 --> 00:15:37,640
Speaker 1: the Times did what they do. It's the It's the

288
00:15:37,680 --> 00:15:40,440
Speaker 1: New York Times, right. They're always going to they're always

289
00:15:40,440 --> 00:15:42,800
Speaker 1: going to publish that first good story, and they're always

290
00:15:42,840 --> 00:15:44,760
Speaker 1: going to back away and run a bunch of op

291
00:15:44,880 --> 00:15:48,600
Speaker 1: eds with wing nuts claiming that that story was bullshit

292
00:15:48,720 --> 00:15:51,280
Speaker 1: because they're scared of being seen as taking a stance

293
00:15:51,280 --> 00:15:56,080
Speaker 1: on anything. That's how it's gonna be. Yeah, that's how

294
00:15:56,080 --> 00:15:58,160
Speaker 1: it That's how it was in the thirties too. Yeah,

295
00:15:58,200 --> 00:16:01,280
Speaker 1: you know, that's just the way it goes at all

296
00:16:03,440 --> 00:16:08,680
Speaker 1: papers being reliant on advertising dollars. It's really I mean,

297
00:16:08,680 --> 00:16:12,800
Speaker 1: we've already seen it destroy like most like solid sources

298
00:16:12,800 --> 00:16:16,320
Speaker 1: of internet journalism, and the papers have been fighting it

299
00:16:16,400 --> 00:16:20,400
Speaker 1: for so long. Like at the local level particularly, we've

300
00:16:20,400 --> 00:16:22,840
Speaker 1: seen a lot of like good local journalism. But this

301
00:16:22,920 --> 00:16:26,360
Speaker 1: idea that companies that are like oh god, to keep

302
00:16:26,440 --> 00:16:29,440
Speaker 1: selling and being willing to print just the most ridiculous

303
00:16:29,440 --> 00:16:33,360
Speaker 1: ship or good ship and then like retracting it and

304
00:16:33,720 --> 00:16:36,520
Speaker 1: disrespecting their reporters who they must have a relationship with,

305
00:16:36,640 --> 00:16:40,560
Speaker 1: they must know like this person's ability and their skills.

306
00:16:40,600 --> 00:16:43,840
Speaker 1: Like it's such a pr move and so not about

307
00:16:43,960 --> 00:16:47,800
Speaker 1: like the core ethics of journalism. It's astounding. It's astounding

308
00:16:47,840 --> 00:16:50,440
Speaker 1: that it's allowed to permeate like this. It's not great,

309
00:16:51,080 --> 00:16:56,320
Speaker 1: not very good. So yeah, the disinformation campaign worked, at

310
00:16:56,360 --> 00:16:59,560
Speaker 1: least in the immediate term. Uh yeah. Bonder gets pulled out,

311
00:17:00,080 --> 00:17:02,160
Speaker 1: sent back to New York for training, and other reporters

312
00:17:02,240 --> 00:17:04,720
Speaker 1: learned from his example. It was dangerous to report on

313
00:17:04,760 --> 00:17:07,120
Speaker 1: any story that might be seen as sympathetic to left

314
00:17:07,119 --> 00:17:10,720
Speaker 1: wing militants in Latin America. Meanwhile, the right wing militants

315
00:17:10,720 --> 00:17:13,600
Speaker 1: who controlled El Salvador continued to receive US aid. Their

316
00:17:13,600 --> 00:17:16,080
Speaker 1: soldiers continued to attend the School of the America's in

317
00:17:16,160 --> 00:17:17,880
Speaker 1: order to learn how to be the best desk ones

318
00:17:17,920 --> 00:17:20,520
Speaker 1: they could be. By the time the violence was all over,

319
00:17:20,520 --> 00:17:23,919
Speaker 1: they'd killed more than seventy five thousands El Salvadorans, the

320
00:17:23,960 --> 00:17:27,119
Speaker 1: per capita equivalent of five million Americans, So this is

321
00:17:27,160 --> 00:17:30,399
Speaker 1: a huge chunk of the country. The government was responsible

322
00:17:30,400 --> 00:17:33,200
Speaker 1: for eighty five percent of these deaths. Now, the good

323
00:17:33,240 --> 00:17:35,919
Speaker 1: news is that at present a number of culprits have

324
00:17:36,119 --> 00:17:38,640
Speaker 1: finally been stripped of their immunity. There was a law

325
00:17:38,720 --> 00:17:41,200
Speaker 1: for a while that basically was trying to make peace

326
00:17:41,240 --> 00:17:43,440
Speaker 1: between the two sides and said that like, nobody gets

327
00:17:43,440 --> 00:17:46,359
Speaker 1: punished for their war crimes. But that got partly at

328
00:17:46,400 --> 00:17:48,399
Speaker 1: least reversed. And so some of these guys are in

329
00:17:48,400 --> 00:17:51,120
Speaker 1: the process and these these these court cases are going

330
00:17:51,119 --> 00:17:54,080
Speaker 1: on right now, right and there's even there's been requests made.

331
00:17:54,119 --> 00:17:58,240
Speaker 1: The Obama administration released some evidence uh and declassified some

332
00:17:58,320 --> 00:18:00,959
Speaker 1: files to allow the court case is to proceed. They

333
00:18:01,040 --> 00:18:03,760
Speaker 1: made request of the Trump administration that obviously haven't been

334
00:18:04,080 --> 00:18:08,679
Speaker 1: um listened to, in part because uh, the U S mility.

335
00:18:08,800 --> 00:18:11,840
Speaker 1: Like while some of the El Salvadoran military leaders who

336
00:18:11,840 --> 00:18:15,480
Speaker 1: helped make Elmazote happen have been punished, the Americans who

337
00:18:15,480 --> 00:18:18,679
Speaker 1: were responsible never did. In fact, Elliot Abrams went on

338
00:18:18,720 --> 00:18:21,520
Speaker 1: to become part of George W. Bush's National Security Council.

339
00:18:21,600 --> 00:18:26,640
Speaker 1: In today he's Trump's Special Representative for Venezuela. Um So,

340
00:18:26,800 --> 00:18:30,720
Speaker 1: speaking of nightmarish, unforgivable crimes against humanity committed at the

341
00:18:30,720 --> 00:18:34,880
Speaker 1: behest of Republicans, you want to talk about Guatemala. WHOA,

342
00:18:35,680 --> 00:18:40,400
Speaker 1: let's get into it. Yeah, I'm a big Guatemala fan.

343
00:18:40,840 --> 00:18:45,480
Speaker 1: It's great country. It's a beautiful country. Yeah. Yeah, it's

344
00:18:45,520 --> 00:18:48,879
Speaker 1: been horrible to it. We've been real bad to it,

345
00:18:49,240 --> 00:18:51,640
Speaker 1: real bad to it. Um it's one of the most

346
00:18:51,640 --> 00:18:55,439
Speaker 1: beautiful places I've ever been in my life. Um I

347
00:18:55,000 --> 00:18:57,800
Speaker 1: I ran across a T shirt over there that was like,

348
00:18:57,880 --> 00:18:59,280
Speaker 1: I think the thing written on it was something like

349
00:18:59,320 --> 00:19:03,720
Speaker 1: Guatemala is like how nature exaggerates or how nature puts

350
00:19:03,720 --> 00:19:06,359
Speaker 1: in an exclamation point. And if you go to places

351
00:19:06,400 --> 00:19:08,680
Speaker 1: like La La Lan, you really feel that because it's

352
00:19:08,680 --> 00:19:12,040
Speaker 1: this like lan is one of the deepest lakes in

353
00:19:12,240 --> 00:19:16,400
Speaker 1: Central America. Um, and it's just surrounded by a ring

354
00:19:16,440 --> 00:19:18,880
Speaker 1: of volcanoes. Like look a look at pictures of this place.

355
00:19:18,880 --> 00:19:22,720
Speaker 1: It's absolutely astonishing. Um. And when I was there at

356
00:19:22,800 --> 00:19:25,439
Speaker 1: least um, Like, one of the things people would tell

357
00:19:25,520 --> 00:19:27,600
Speaker 1: us is that, like the military is not allowed in

358
00:19:27,680 --> 00:19:30,399
Speaker 1: here anymore, Like we don't let them in because of

359
00:19:30,440 --> 00:19:34,119
Speaker 1: some of the things we're about to talk about. Um, wait,

360
00:19:34,160 --> 00:19:39,400
Speaker 1: can you how do you keep the military out? Uh?

361
00:19:39,440 --> 00:19:41,119
Speaker 1: You know, I think it's I think it was just

362
00:19:41,160 --> 00:19:43,439
Speaker 1: sort of a matter of like after a lot of

363
00:19:43,440 --> 00:19:47,000
Speaker 1: the massacres, they kind of pulled out of certain areas

364
00:19:47,000 --> 00:19:48,879
Speaker 1: where they've been killing the Maya, and they were like,

365
00:19:48,960 --> 00:19:50,720
Speaker 1: there's kind of like I don't know, I got we

366
00:19:50,800 --> 00:19:52,439
Speaker 1: got stopped on the road a couple of times by

367
00:19:52,480 --> 00:19:55,080
Speaker 1: just sort of groups of men with m sixteens and

368
00:19:55,720 --> 00:19:59,640
Speaker 1: not wearing uniforms really but operating what we're clearly checkpoint.

369
00:19:59,680 --> 00:20:01,760
Speaker 1: I don't like, it was very unclear to me. I'm

370
00:20:01,800 --> 00:20:07,560
Speaker 1: not like guatemal In politics is extremely complicated. But yeah, yeah,

371
00:20:07,720 --> 00:20:12,040
Speaker 1: so Robert, you want to know what isn't extremely complicated?

372
00:20:13,720 --> 00:20:22,600
Speaker 1: The products and services that support this podcast. Word alright,

373
00:20:22,720 --> 00:20:28,040
Speaker 1: we're back, so back in nineteen fifty four, Like, Guatemala

374
00:20:28,119 --> 00:20:31,040
Speaker 1: is great, hard not to love it. Um. The problem

375
00:20:31,080 --> 00:20:33,520
Speaker 1: is that in nineteen fifty four, the United Fruit Company

376
00:20:33,600 --> 00:20:37,200
Speaker 1: was also in love with Guatemala UM, particularly they're they're

377
00:20:37,200 --> 00:20:42,040
Speaker 1: wonderful bananas. Now. Unfortunately, the democratically elected leader of Guatemala

378
00:20:42,040 --> 00:20:44,639
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty four was a dude named Jacobo Arbez

379
00:20:44,680 --> 00:20:47,120
Speaker 1: who didn't like that a foreign country owned a large

380
00:20:47,200 --> 00:20:50,240
Speaker 1: chunk of the Guatemalan economy. Because these fruit companies owned

381
00:20:50,320 --> 00:20:53,359
Speaker 1: huge amounts of Guatemalan land that had been sold to

382
00:20:53,400 --> 00:20:58,520
Speaker 1: them basically by corrupt like ali arcs in Guatemala who

383
00:20:58,560 --> 00:21:02,760
Speaker 1: had stolen it from indigenous people um, and then sold

384
00:21:02,760 --> 00:21:05,159
Speaker 1: it to US corporations for a fraction of what it

385
00:21:05,240 --> 00:21:08,879
Speaker 1: was actually worked, which allowed these corporations to basically enslave

386
00:21:08,920 --> 00:21:12,320
Speaker 1: Guatemalan workers. And it was horrible. It sounds like the

387
00:21:12,320 --> 00:21:16,040
Speaker 1: typical chain of command. Yes, indigenous people to oligarch to

388
00:21:16,280 --> 00:21:20,879
Speaker 1: United States. Yeah, and so our Beds comes to power

389
00:21:20,920 --> 00:21:23,080
Speaker 1: and he's like, I'm going to nationalize all this ship, right,

390
00:21:23,080 --> 00:21:25,320
Speaker 1: Like I'm gonna make all this ship. Everybody's like, I'm

391
00:21:25,320 --> 00:21:27,840
Speaker 1: going to take this land that was sold illegally to

392
00:21:27,880 --> 00:21:30,840
Speaker 1: these U S corporations, and I'm going to redistribute it

393
00:21:30,880 --> 00:21:33,480
Speaker 1: to the peasants um and we're going to like try

394
00:21:33,480 --> 00:21:36,880
Speaker 1: to undo the damage that the start of globalization has

395
00:21:36,920 --> 00:21:41,160
Speaker 1: done to Guatemala. Beautiful dream, A beautiful dream. You may

396
00:21:41,200 --> 00:21:43,520
Speaker 1: recognize this is not all that different from what was

397
00:21:43,520 --> 00:21:45,679
Speaker 1: happening over in Chile with Saladora end A at a

398
00:21:45,680 --> 00:21:50,119
Speaker 1: pretty similar time. Um. So yeah, our bez comes to power,

399
00:21:50,200 --> 00:21:53,240
Speaker 1: he promises to do this, and United Fruit, who owns

400
00:21:53,280 --> 00:21:56,560
Speaker 1: this land, goes to the CIA and it's like, guys,

401
00:21:57,680 --> 00:22:01,400
Speaker 1: you gotta do something about this. He's gonna take away

402
00:22:01,400 --> 00:22:05,119
Speaker 1: our banana land. And so the CIA is like, don't worry, bro,

403
00:22:05,240 --> 00:22:07,720
Speaker 1: we got you. And then they pick up their US

404
00:22:07,760 --> 00:22:10,560
Speaker 1: trained Guatemalan soldiers who would all like all these guys

405
00:22:10,600 --> 00:22:12,600
Speaker 1: who've gone to the s o A and who were

406
00:22:12,640 --> 00:22:15,480
Speaker 1: already inculcated, and like, yeah, I wanna I want to

407
00:22:15,600 --> 00:22:20,080
Speaker 1: personally get wealthy, um by being a corrupt oligarch. And

408
00:22:20,160 --> 00:22:22,440
Speaker 1: if all I have to do is murdersome indigenous people

409
00:22:22,520 --> 00:22:25,320
Speaker 1: and Marxists and whatnot, that sounds great to me. I

410
00:22:25,359 --> 00:22:27,800
Speaker 1: hate those people anyway, because that's partly what I've been

411
00:22:27,840 --> 00:22:29,679
Speaker 1: trained to do in the School of the America. So

412
00:22:29,960 --> 00:22:32,840
Speaker 1: they overthrow your Cobo r best Um and this winds

413
00:22:32,920 --> 00:22:35,959
Speaker 1: up sparking a civil war in Guatemala. And that happens

414
00:22:35,960 --> 00:22:38,040
Speaker 1: in a lot of countries too, But in Guatemala, that

415
00:22:38,160 --> 00:22:41,000
Speaker 1: fucking war just does not end. It goes on for

416
00:22:41,160 --> 00:22:45,080
Speaker 1: thirty six goddamn years. Yeah, it is, it is. They

417
00:22:45,080 --> 00:22:48,680
Speaker 1: are just it is horrible in Guatemala. You can't exaggerate

418
00:22:49,080 --> 00:22:53,160
Speaker 1: how much this completely fux society in that country, because

419
00:22:53,160 --> 00:22:56,280
Speaker 1: it's just it's a generation and a half of of

420
00:22:56,440 --> 00:22:59,760
Speaker 1: more or less constant sometimes low level sometimes you know.

421
00:23:00,520 --> 00:23:04,199
Speaker 1: But but like war Um in the military junta that

422
00:23:04,240 --> 00:23:06,520
Speaker 1: came to power didn't just hate Marxists, they hated again

423
00:23:06,560 --> 00:23:09,280
Speaker 1: the local indigenous people who were descendants of the Maya

424
00:23:09,840 --> 00:23:13,119
Speaker 1: um and the like. The these kind of local Maya

425
00:23:13,280 --> 00:23:16,040
Speaker 1: groups were seen as being allies of the Marxist guerrillas

426
00:23:16,040 --> 00:23:18,920
Speaker 1: in the hill Uh, and eventually the Guatemalan state, which

427
00:23:18,920 --> 00:23:22,119
Speaker 1: was overwhelmingly run by military officers trained by the US,

428
00:23:22,200 --> 00:23:25,000
Speaker 1: decided the only way to fight this insurgency was to

429
00:23:25,080 --> 00:23:29,159
Speaker 1: destroy the indigenous villages that gave it shelter. Over thirty

430
00:23:29,200 --> 00:23:31,879
Speaker 1: six long years of war, US trained forces killed as

431
00:23:31,920 --> 00:23:35,800
Speaker 1: many as two hundred thousand people, many of whom were Maya.

432
00:23:36,240 --> 00:23:38,560
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote here from the Los Angeles Times

433
00:23:38,600 --> 00:23:41,320
Speaker 1: reporting on sort of how this all shook out. A

434
00:23:41,400 --> 00:23:44,240
Speaker 1: report by a United Nations backed truth commission after the

435
00:23:44,240 --> 00:23:47,080
Speaker 1: thirty six years Civil war formally ended in nineteen nine six,

436
00:23:47,119 --> 00:23:50,399
Speaker 1: found that security forces had inflicted multiple acts of savagery

437
00:23:50,440 --> 00:23:54,919
Speaker 1: and genocide against Maya communities. The campaign included bombing villages

438
00:23:54,960 --> 00:23:59,560
Speaker 1: and attacking fleeing residents, impaling victims, burning people alive, severing limbs,

439
00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:02,200
Speaker 1: throwing children the pits filled with bodies and killing them,

440
00:24:02,400 --> 00:24:05,760
Speaker 1: disemboweling civilians, and slashing open the wounds of pregnant women.

441
00:24:06,160 --> 00:24:08,520
Speaker 1: Which let's think right now to the story that just

442
00:24:08,560 --> 00:24:11,760
Speaker 1: broke today of the United States government giving forced hist

443
00:24:11,880 --> 00:24:14,280
Speaker 1: ectomes to women who are in to migrant women who

444
00:24:14,280 --> 00:24:17,919
Speaker 1: are in our custody at camps on the border, just

445
00:24:18,040 --> 00:24:20,399
Speaker 1: the fancier version of what they were doing. Uh. The

446
00:24:20,480 --> 00:24:22,680
Speaker 1: goal is the same to stop certain groups of people

447
00:24:22,680 --> 00:24:26,480
Speaker 1: from having children. So the massacres, the scorch deirth operations,

448
00:24:26,520 --> 00:24:30,040
Speaker 1: forced disappearances, and executions of Mayan authorities, leaders and spiritual

449
00:24:30,040 --> 00:24:32,159
Speaker 1: guides were not only an attempt to destroy the social

450
00:24:32,160 --> 00:24:34,439
Speaker 1: base of the guerrillas, but above all, to destroy the

451
00:24:34,480 --> 00:24:38,359
Speaker 1: cultural values that ensured cohesion and collective action in Mayan communities.

452
00:24:38,560 --> 00:24:42,560
Speaker 1: The Commission for Historical Clarification said the Guatemalan government was

453
00:24:42,760 --> 00:24:45,800
Speaker 1: responsible for more than ninety percent of deaths, disappearances, and

454
00:24:45,840 --> 00:24:48,760
Speaker 1: other human rights violations during the war. The Commission said,

455
00:24:49,000 --> 00:24:52,440
Speaker 1: the state deliberately exaggerated a limited insurgent threat to justify

456
00:24:52,520 --> 00:24:56,439
Speaker 1: large scale repression. The Commission found and again, what that

457
00:24:56,520 --> 00:24:59,720
Speaker 1: what that quote from the Commission for Historical Clarification is saying,

458
00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:02,639
Speaker 1: is that the Guatemalan government with the US, is backing

459
00:25:02,640 --> 00:25:06,200
Speaker 1: committed genocide. That's what genocide is, an attempt to destroy

460
00:25:06,240 --> 00:25:09,720
Speaker 1: a culture. So in the nineteen seventies, which is kind

461
00:25:09,720 --> 00:25:11,879
Speaker 1: of in the middle of this whole war, President Jimmy

462
00:25:11,880 --> 00:25:13,960
Speaker 1: Carter attempted to put a halt to the violence, and

463
00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:16,440
Speaker 1: he did this by banning all military aid to Guatemala

464
00:25:16,480 --> 00:25:18,399
Speaker 1: in order to force the government to take action on

465
00:25:18,440 --> 00:25:21,439
Speaker 1: its horrible human rights record. Now, this was in general

466
00:25:21,440 --> 00:25:24,280
Speaker 1: another period, Like I said, we're left wing insurgencies were

467
00:25:24,280 --> 00:25:27,439
Speaker 1: starting to gain ground in Latin America, and Carter's decision

468
00:25:27,520 --> 00:25:31,240
Speaker 1: infuriated the American right wing. In nineteen eighty two, a

469
00:25:31,320 --> 00:25:34,679
Speaker 1: three man military and took headed by evangelical preacher and

470
00:25:34,720 --> 00:25:38,320
Speaker 1: School of America's graduate, General Efrain Rios Mont, took power

471
00:25:38,359 --> 00:25:41,359
Speaker 1: in Guatemala. Now, Rio's Mont had been one of the

472
00:25:41,359 --> 00:25:44,879
Speaker 1: School of America's first students, graduating back in nineteen fifty

473
00:25:44,880 --> 00:25:46,879
Speaker 1: one when the school was just three years old, and

474
00:25:46,920 --> 00:25:49,800
Speaker 1: when he finally took power, the Reagan administration was happy

475
00:25:49,800 --> 00:25:51,800
Speaker 1: to know they had a steadfast ally they could trust

476
00:25:51,800 --> 00:25:53,800
Speaker 1: to think the right way about things. And Rio's Mont

477
00:25:54,000 --> 00:25:56,359
Speaker 1: is a very interesting guy because again he's in the

478
00:25:56,400 --> 00:25:59,080
Speaker 1: military in nineteen seventies six. He comes under the influence

479
00:25:59,080 --> 00:26:01,800
Speaker 1: of a bunch of America and evangelical preachers and he

480
00:26:01,880 --> 00:26:04,760
Speaker 1: converts and becomes and like takes a break from being

481
00:26:04,760 --> 00:26:07,280
Speaker 1: in the military to be like a radio preacher and stuff.

482
00:26:07,320 --> 00:26:10,080
Speaker 1: Like he's like Jerry Folwell, but he's also a general

483
00:26:10,600 --> 00:26:15,360
Speaker 1: um and he is a hard core like religious conservative,

484
00:26:15,600 --> 00:26:18,600
Speaker 1: very much in mind with the American right wing. So

485
00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:21,280
Speaker 1: Rio's Mont under his like, you know, again, the war

486
00:26:21,359 --> 00:26:23,080
Speaker 1: had been going on for a while, but under Rio

487
00:26:23,119 --> 00:26:26,800
Speaker 1: s Mont it, it escalates to a new stage of horror.

488
00:26:27,080 --> 00:26:32,080
Speaker 1: And in objective terms, um yeah. Before we get onto

489
00:26:32,080 --> 00:26:33,960
Speaker 1: objective terms, I want to read a couple of different

490
00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:37,160
Speaker 1: quotes from survivors of the horror that Rios Mont put out.

491
00:26:37,160 --> 00:26:39,960
Speaker 1: And this is from an article in h in a

492
00:26:40,080 --> 00:26:45,959
Speaker 1: c l a Um called Rios Mont the evangelist so uh.

493
00:26:45,960 --> 00:26:51,040
Speaker 1: An unnamed survivor from Aguacotton, Huetenango, the military came to

494
00:26:51,080 --> 00:26:53,320
Speaker 1: burn whole families out, to burn their houses, and not

495
00:26:53,440 --> 00:26:55,760
Speaker 1: just their houses, but the people themselves. They burned men,

496
00:26:56,040 --> 00:26:59,040
Speaker 1: women and children who died in flames, incinerated. It caused

497
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:01,680
Speaker 1: us terror, It caused this a lot of fear. Another

498
00:27:01,720 --> 00:27:04,920
Speaker 1: unnamed survivor from Robin al Baja Vera pause. The military

499
00:27:04,960 --> 00:27:07,520
Speaker 1: officials raped the women who were twelve and thirteen years old.

500
00:27:07,600 --> 00:27:09,720
Speaker 1: The girls couldn't do anything because there were so many

501
00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:12,320
Speaker 1: soldiers lining up to take their turn. First they raped

502
00:27:12,359 --> 00:27:16,080
Speaker 1: them and then they killed them. Another unnamed survivor from

503
00:27:16,119 --> 00:27:18,399
Speaker 1: the same town. The children were kicked to death. The

504
00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:22,520
Speaker 1: children shouted and shouted and then they were silent. So

505
00:27:22,560 --> 00:27:31,440
Speaker 1: that's Rio's Mont, whoa uh trying sorry, trying to um

506
00:27:31,520 --> 00:27:35,159
Speaker 1: kicking a person to death is such a laborious task,

507
00:27:35,920 --> 00:27:41,600
Speaker 1: like it can't be done quickly, and as we you know,

508
00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:45,320
Speaker 1: you spoke earlier about like soldiers not being allowed really

509
00:27:45,359 --> 00:27:49,800
Speaker 1: to back out otherwise potentially suffering the same fate. That's

510
00:27:49,920 --> 00:27:52,720
Speaker 1: so much psychological damage done, not just to the victims,

511
00:27:52,720 --> 00:28:01,920
Speaker 1: but also to the people actively participating in these murder Yeah, yeah, yeah,

512
00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:04,000
Speaker 1: what a human toll. I mean, it's one of those

513
00:28:04,000 --> 00:28:06,520
Speaker 1: things you actually you read about things like the Nazi

514
00:28:06,600 --> 00:28:10,000
Speaker 1: genocides and not just not like the constant like the

515
00:28:10,040 --> 00:28:12,000
Speaker 1: one of the things people don't understand about the Holocaust

516
00:28:12,080 --> 00:28:14,440
Speaker 1: is that the concentration camps were not plan a. The

517
00:28:14,520 --> 00:28:17,320
Speaker 1: concentration camps were in part a result of the fact

518
00:28:17,640 --> 00:28:22,080
Speaker 1: that the German high command learned during the course of

519
00:28:22,520 --> 00:28:27,800
Speaker 1: executing genocides that their soldiers couldn't survive massacurring civilians. There

520
00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:30,440
Speaker 1: was a particular massacre called body Yard where they shot

521
00:28:30,520 --> 00:28:33,120
Speaker 1: like thirty thousand people to death in a single day,

522
00:28:33,680 --> 00:28:37,160
Speaker 1: and it just destroyed a lot of these soldiers. Which

523
00:28:37,200 --> 00:28:39,360
Speaker 1: is not to like not saying like these Nazis need sympathy,

524
00:28:39,400 --> 00:28:42,600
Speaker 1: but like human beings can't do that, most of them,

525
00:28:42,880 --> 00:28:45,840
Speaker 1: and so people men were shooting themselves and drinking themselves

526
00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:47,280
Speaker 1: to death. And one of the reasons why the camps

527
00:28:47,280 --> 00:28:49,920
Speaker 1: got built is because there was this understanding by the

528
00:28:50,040 --> 00:28:53,600
Speaker 1: high command that like, oh shit, we can't like we're

529
00:28:53,640 --> 00:28:57,840
Speaker 1: we're going to be suffering like casualties we can't afford

530
00:28:57,840 --> 00:28:59,760
Speaker 1: in order to carry out these genocides. We need to

531
00:28:59,800 --> 00:29:03,000
Speaker 1: find a way to do them while exposing the minimum

532
00:29:03,080 --> 00:29:07,960
Speaker 1: number of soldiers to the savagery that's necessary in them. UM. Anyway,

533
00:29:08,040 --> 00:29:13,080
Speaker 1: speaking line distinction is just that's why you do it.

534
00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:17,080
Speaker 1: And it's also why you really need to have a

535
00:29:17,120 --> 00:29:19,640
Speaker 1: religious justification for what you're doing, because it makes it

536
00:29:19,680 --> 00:29:21,880
Speaker 1: easier to convince people that they're doing the right thing

537
00:29:21,920 --> 00:29:25,400
Speaker 1: by killing these godless communists. Speaking of that, Ronald Reagan

538
00:29:25,480 --> 00:29:28,400
Speaker 1: won the presidency in nineteen eighty by flipping the evangelical

539
00:29:28,480 --> 00:29:30,920
Speaker 1: vote away from the Democrats who had helped elect Carter

540
00:29:30,960 --> 00:29:33,880
Speaker 1: a little bit earlier. UM and two of his big backers.

541
00:29:34,040 --> 00:29:36,320
Speaker 1: Of Reagan's big backers where of course, Jerry Fallwell and

542
00:29:36,360 --> 00:29:38,880
Speaker 1: Pat Robertson, we talked about this in our Fallwell episode.

543
00:29:39,360 --> 00:29:42,560
Speaker 1: Carl Rio's mont was friends with Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson.

544
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:45,760
Speaker 1: They were great buddies. He considered them spiritual advisors, and

545
00:29:45,800 --> 00:29:49,240
Speaker 1: Reagan developed a friendship with Rio's Mont. In nineteen eighty two,

546
00:29:49,280 --> 00:29:51,480
Speaker 1: while all of this kicking children to death thing stuff

547
00:29:51,520 --> 00:29:54,840
Speaker 1: was going on, Reagan traveled to Guatemala and basically said

548
00:29:54,880 --> 00:29:58,080
Speaker 1: that all of the stories of genocide there were lies

549
00:29:58,160 --> 00:30:01,440
Speaker 1: and that Rio's Mont was totally dedicated the democracy in Guatemala.

550
00:30:01,680 --> 00:30:04,720
Speaker 1: He said, frankly, I'm inclined to believe that Rio's Mont

551
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:13,160
Speaker 1: has been getting a bum wrap. Yeah, easy to do.

552
00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:18,440
Speaker 1: I guess when your agenda is being achieved. Yeah, overlook

553
00:30:18,560 --> 00:30:21,360
Speaker 1: kicking babies to death. Yeah, well, it's just some babies.

554
00:30:22,120 --> 00:30:26,040
Speaker 1: Reagan also said that Rio's Mont had great personal integrity. Um. Yeah,

555
00:30:26,040 --> 00:30:28,840
Speaker 1: and he blamed the media. Uh. In nineteen eighty three,

556
00:30:28,880 --> 00:30:31,680
Speaker 1: he lifted the arms embargo on Guatemala, flooding the country

557
00:30:31,760 --> 00:30:35,959
Speaker 1: with helicopter parts that the government needed to continue its genocide.

558
00:30:36,080 --> 00:30:39,120
Speaker 1: During his first year in power, Rios Monts soldiers massacred

559
00:30:39,120 --> 00:30:42,520
Speaker 1: more than ten thousand civilians. Four villages were wiped off

560
00:30:42,560 --> 00:30:46,160
Speaker 1: the face of the earth. Uh. Yeah. Years later, a

561
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:48,840
Speaker 1: Reconciliation Commission report would find that U s A during

562
00:30:48,840 --> 00:30:51,280
Speaker 1: this period had a quote significant bearing on human rights

563
00:30:51,360 --> 00:30:55,560
Speaker 1: violations during the armed confrontation. Now, typing that out excise

564
00:30:55,600 --> 00:30:57,560
Speaker 1: as a major part of the story. Because the crimes

565
00:30:57,560 --> 00:31:00,240
Speaker 1: committed by the Guatemalan government weren't just enabled by US

566
00:31:00,280 --> 00:31:02,720
Speaker 1: weaponry and carried out by soldiers trained by the Army.

567
00:31:03,000 --> 00:31:05,720
Speaker 1: Acts of torture and even genocide were regularly carried out

568
00:31:05,760 --> 00:31:08,600
Speaker 1: with the help of active duty American soldiers. And this

569
00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:11,560
Speaker 1: brings me to the story of Sister Diana Ortiz. She

570
00:31:11,680 --> 00:31:14,840
Speaker 1: was a us Ursulin nun in n She traveled to

571
00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:17,840
Speaker 1: Guatemala to teach little kids how to read. Unfortunately, the

572
00:31:17,840 --> 00:31:21,040
Speaker 1: Guatemalan government was somewhat distrustful of the Catholic Church for

573
00:31:21,080 --> 00:31:23,520
Speaker 1: reasons will discuss a little later. The church is part

574
00:31:23,520 --> 00:31:25,160
Speaker 1: of its mission to help the poor, often wound up

575
00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:27,840
Speaker 1: sending its people into the same impoverished communities that were

576
00:31:27,880 --> 00:31:31,040
Speaker 1: such hotbeds from Marxist guerrillas. So the government caught sister

577
00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:33,960
Speaker 1: Ortiz as she was traveling to an isolated rural community

578
00:31:34,000 --> 00:31:37,480
Speaker 1: to deliver necessary aid. She was kidnapped, repeatedly raped, and

579
00:31:37,520 --> 00:31:40,840
Speaker 1: burned with cigarettes while she was tortured for information. Now,

580
00:31:41,040 --> 00:31:44,480
Speaker 1: thousands of other Guatemalan women found themselves in similar situations,

581
00:31:44,520 --> 00:31:46,120
Speaker 1: and we didn't hear from most of them because most

582
00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:49,120
Speaker 1: of them died or were too terrified of the consequences

583
00:31:49,120 --> 00:31:51,959
Speaker 1: of talking to ever come out. But sister Ortiz managed

584
00:31:52,000 --> 00:31:54,480
Speaker 1: to survive an escape, and she was eventually able to

585
00:31:54,520 --> 00:31:57,440
Speaker 1: report on the details of her ordeal, particularly the fact

586
00:31:57,480 --> 00:32:00,000
Speaker 1: that her torture sessions had been directed by an amor

587
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:02,760
Speaker 1: arikan man. He gave the orders while a knife was

588
00:32:02,800 --> 00:32:05,400
Speaker 1: forced into her hand and she was made to stab

589
00:32:05,440 --> 00:32:10,560
Speaker 1: another woman's body. Um. Yeah. Years later, she would write.

590
00:32:11,120 --> 00:32:13,720
Speaker 1: So often it is assumed that torture is conducted for

591
00:32:13,760 --> 00:32:16,840
Speaker 1: the purpose of gaining information. It is much more often

592
00:32:16,880 --> 00:32:21,120
Speaker 1: intended to threaten populations into silence and submission. What I

593
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:24,160
Speaker 1: was to endure was a message, a warning to others

594
00:32:24,480 --> 00:32:27,680
Speaker 1: not to oppose, to remain silent, and to yield to

595
00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:31,400
Speaker 1: power without question. And Guatemala, the Catholic Church sought to

596
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:34,200
Speaker 1: walk in company with the suffering poor. I was to

597
00:32:34,240 --> 00:32:36,680
Speaker 1: be a message board upon which those in power would

598
00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:39,280
Speaker 1: write a warning to the Church to cease its opposition

599
00:32:39,400 --> 00:32:41,720
Speaker 1: or be prepared to face the full force of the state.

600
00:32:43,520 --> 00:32:46,040
Speaker 1: Something for everybody to keep in mind as the coming

601
00:32:46,080 --> 00:32:51,280
Speaker 1: months come. That's what torture is. That's what police violence is.

602
00:32:51,320 --> 00:32:53,440
Speaker 1: It's what happens in the streets of Portland when a

603
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:56,360
Speaker 1: police officer punches a seventeen year old in the face

604
00:32:56,720 --> 00:32:59,520
Speaker 1: before macing them at point blank range. It's the same,

605
00:32:59,680 --> 00:33:04,120
Speaker 1: I Dia. You forced them into silence by causing them

606
00:33:04,160 --> 00:33:11,120
Speaker 1: pain and terror. Cool stuff, good, good things. Deep. Yeah.

607
00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:13,480
Speaker 1: So while we're talking about the Catholic Church and the

608
00:33:13,520 --> 00:33:16,800
Speaker 1: School of America's graduates, we should return to El Salvador

609
00:33:16,880 --> 00:33:19,760
Speaker 1: and the story of a brave Catholic priest named Oscar Romero.

610
00:33:20,240 --> 00:33:22,240
Speaker 1: Oscar was a leftist part of a wing of the

611
00:33:22,360 --> 00:33:25,880
Speaker 1: established Catholic Church that was particularly prominent in Latin America.

612
00:33:26,320 --> 00:33:28,280
Speaker 1: The pope at the time, John Paul the Second, and

613
00:33:28,280 --> 00:33:30,880
Speaker 1: most of the leadership in Rome were much more conservative,

614
00:33:30,920 --> 00:33:34,440
Speaker 1: and Romero preached something that's called liberation theology, which is

615
00:33:34,480 --> 00:33:37,280
Speaker 1: a controversial shouldn't be controversial, but it is with especially

616
00:33:37,320 --> 00:33:40,160
Speaker 1: within the Catholic Church. It was a controversial interpretation of

617
00:33:40,160 --> 00:33:43,000
Speaker 1: the Gospel that stressed justice for the poor and freedom

618
00:33:43,040 --> 00:33:46,400
Speaker 1: for the oppressed. So the leadership actually, like in Rome,

619
00:33:46,480 --> 00:33:48,479
Speaker 1: a lot of the leadership of the Catholic Church considered

620
00:33:48,560 --> 00:33:51,760
Speaker 1: Romero to basically be a terrorist. But this is you know,

621
00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:54,040
Speaker 1: it's one of those things when we talk about the

622
00:33:54,080 --> 00:33:56,320
Speaker 1: Catholic Church in Guatemala, and there's some other places in

623
00:33:56,360 --> 00:33:58,800
Speaker 1: Latin America where they fulfill a similar role. This is

624
00:33:58,840 --> 00:34:01,320
Speaker 1: kind of why our current pope is the dude that

625
00:34:01,360 --> 00:34:03,720
Speaker 1: he is. He comes from this sort of tradition. There's

626
00:34:03,760 --> 00:34:07,120
Speaker 1: a lot of very leftist Catholic priests and nuns and

627
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:10,520
Speaker 1: stuff within Latin America um and it's it's it's very

628
00:34:10,560 --> 00:34:14,799
Speaker 1: tight into all of this and it's yeah, and he's

629
00:34:14,840 --> 00:34:17,000
Speaker 1: also a Jesuit and that is not too like. It's

630
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:19,759
Speaker 1: one of those things we should like. The Catholic Church

631
00:34:20,200 --> 00:34:23,720
Speaker 1: horrible organization, and I think is broadly the or leadership

632
00:34:23,800 --> 00:34:25,760
Speaker 1: is broadly on the wrong side of this at the time.

633
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:27,920
Speaker 1: But you also have to acknowledge that, like a lot

634
00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:31,480
Speaker 1: of the great heroes in this period were Catholic clergy

635
00:34:31,760 --> 00:34:34,840
Speaker 1: um who were put their bodies on the line because

636
00:34:34,840 --> 00:34:37,520
Speaker 1: they knew that if they were killed, people would pay attention.

637
00:34:38,280 --> 00:34:41,520
Speaker 1: It's wait, so they thought that he was a terrorist

638
00:34:42,120 --> 00:34:47,280
Speaker 1: because he wanted justice for the poor. Yeah, he wanted

639
00:34:47,280 --> 00:34:49,440
Speaker 1: actual justice for the poor and not just alms for

640
00:34:49,480 --> 00:34:53,160
Speaker 1: the poor, like liberation. Theologians were more on the side

641
00:34:53,160 --> 00:34:55,160
Speaker 1: of like, well, the poor need to take back their

642
00:34:55,160 --> 00:35:00,920
Speaker 1: fucking land that's been stolen from them. Um like breaking. Okay, listen,

643
00:35:00,960 --> 00:35:02,560
Speaker 1: the only way that's gonna happen if they started breaking

644
00:35:02,600 --> 00:35:04,960
Speaker 1: some commandments, y'all. And I know for a fact you

645
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:07,920
Speaker 1: don't like that. You get really testy when people get

646
00:35:07,960 --> 00:35:11,279
Speaker 1: out here and start killing. So, I mean, you know,

647
00:35:11,360 --> 00:35:14,800
Speaker 1: the one time Jesus was physically aggressive in the entire

648
00:35:14,840 --> 00:35:18,480
Speaker 1: Bible is when he needed to funk up some rich bankers.

649
00:35:19,400 --> 00:35:23,279
Speaker 1: So I think I think people like Oscar Omero might

650
00:35:23,360 --> 00:35:26,200
Speaker 1: say that Jesus is lesson for us is to funk

651
00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:30,880
Speaker 1: up some rich bankers. Jesus, where is this Jesus and

652
00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:35,919
Speaker 1: my Catholic Sunday schools? Not that we we I don't

653
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:38,600
Speaker 1: want to. You have to when you talk about like

654
00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:40,560
Speaker 1: the church and this, you have to number one, give

655
00:35:40,600 --> 00:35:44,000
Speaker 1: proper credit to heroes like Oscar Omero without pretending that

656
00:35:44,040 --> 00:35:47,000
Speaker 1: like the broad swath of the Catholic Church supported what

657
00:35:47,040 --> 00:35:49,320
Speaker 1: he was doing. But what he was doing was very heroic.

658
00:35:49,360 --> 00:35:51,840
Speaker 1: So he goes into these places and he's he's preaching

659
00:35:51,880 --> 00:35:56,680
Speaker 1: actively against these death squads that are uh killing the

660
00:35:56,680 --> 00:35:58,640
Speaker 1: ship out of people. So he's he starts to he's

661
00:35:58,640 --> 00:36:02,440
Speaker 1: speaking up like at the time in nineteen seventy nine, Um,

662
00:36:02,480 --> 00:36:06,080
Speaker 1: the government of El Salvador is like kind of broadly

663
00:36:06,160 --> 00:36:10,040
Speaker 1: left wing. But there's this because of how the most

664
00:36:10,080 --> 00:36:13,000
Speaker 1: recent election with like nineteen seventy nine, this government comes

665
00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:16,120
Speaker 1: to power and the right wing gets furious, um, and

666
00:36:16,200 --> 00:36:18,520
Speaker 1: it sort of coalesces behind This graduate of the School

667
00:36:18,560 --> 00:36:21,760
Speaker 1: of the America is named Roberto Dubuson, and Dobbuson starts

668
00:36:21,840 --> 00:36:24,480
Speaker 1: organizing death squads with the funding of a bunch of

669
00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:28,480
Speaker 1: rich like landowners and and like corporate magnates, um, and

670
00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:31,759
Speaker 1: they start murdering left wing activists and basically anybody who

671
00:36:31,840 --> 00:36:33,480
Speaker 1: speaks up on the left is a way to kind

672
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:36,040
Speaker 1: of pave the road for the return to power of

673
00:36:36,080 --> 00:36:38,319
Speaker 1: the right in Al Salvador. So, in the wake of

674
00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:41,759
Speaker 1: a bunch of executions, Oscar Romero, this Catholic priest takes

675
00:36:41,800 --> 00:36:43,960
Speaker 1: to the radio and delivers a speech where he begs

676
00:36:43,960 --> 00:36:47,840
Speaker 1: Al Salvadoran soldiers to refuse orders to kill. He tells them,

677
00:36:47,880 --> 00:36:49,560
Speaker 1: in the name of God, in the name of this

678
00:36:49,640 --> 00:36:52,919
Speaker 1: suffering people whose cries rise to heaven. More loudly each day.

679
00:36:52,960 --> 00:36:55,200
Speaker 1: I implore you, I beg you, I order you, in

680
00:36:55,239 --> 00:36:59,239
Speaker 1: the name of God, stop the repression. So the very

681
00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:01,799
Speaker 1: next day, while he gave another speech, gunman under the

682
00:37:01,800 --> 00:37:04,839
Speaker 1: command of Roberto Darbison entered his church and shot him dead.

683
00:37:04,920 --> 00:37:07,600
Speaker 1: And the whole assassination was caught on tape. And I'm

684
00:37:07,600 --> 00:37:10,520
Speaker 1: gonna play an exerpt from that now because I really

685
00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:13,279
Speaker 1: do think that Americans ought to hear it because we

686
00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:15,839
Speaker 1: paid for it, right, all the guns, the guns these

687
00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:18,759
Speaker 1: guys had, We gave them, the training that that Davison had,

688
00:37:19,280 --> 00:37:22,960
Speaker 1: we provided, so people should hear what it sounded like

689
00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:49,880
Speaker 1: when it was used. The the sound that the people

690
00:37:49,960 --> 00:37:52,520
Speaker 1: make in the wake of that, the screaming from inside

691
00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:58,840
Speaker 1: the church is um, like that's that's the sound of imperialism,

692
00:37:58,840 --> 00:38:01,480
Speaker 1: and it's distilled and who its purest form, like that's

693
00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:06,000
Speaker 1: the sound of the American empire. Uh, and and what

694
00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:08,799
Speaker 1: it does to the human soul, Like that's screaming, the

695
00:38:08,880 --> 00:38:11,640
Speaker 1: distortion and like the fear and the and the and

696
00:38:11,760 --> 00:38:15,480
Speaker 1: the pain. Um. It's important to listen to that. I

697
00:38:15,520 --> 00:38:21,359
Speaker 1: think i've as I can listen. I don't know if

698
00:38:21,440 --> 00:38:24,960
Speaker 1: you've ever listened to the slate tape narratives, you know

699
00:38:24,960 --> 00:38:29,560
Speaker 1: what those are. So in the nineteen thirties, late twenties,

700
00:38:29,640 --> 00:38:33,080
Speaker 1: as we're able to start recording like audio, a group

701
00:38:33,120 --> 00:38:35,719
Speaker 1: of folks decided that they need to record all of

702
00:38:35,760 --> 00:38:40,480
Speaker 1: the last like living slaves in America, Yes, to hear

703
00:38:40,560 --> 00:38:46,000
Speaker 1: the story. Yeah yeah, And like ever since, like I

704
00:38:46,080 --> 00:38:49,000
Speaker 1: listened to most of them. There aren't that many because

705
00:38:49,360 --> 00:38:51,600
Speaker 1: the quality of audio equipment and recording at the time

706
00:38:51,680 --> 00:38:53,400
Speaker 1: wasn't great, So we lost a couple of the tapes,

707
00:38:53,440 --> 00:38:57,080
Speaker 1: and they preserved and digitize what they can. But like

708
00:38:57,160 --> 00:38:59,239
Speaker 1: ever since, like really taking and listen to those and

709
00:38:59,360 --> 00:39:02,200
Speaker 1: understanding not just the connection to the past but to

710
00:39:02,239 --> 00:39:04,760
Speaker 1: the present, and like in the way words are formed

711
00:39:04,800 --> 00:39:07,080
Speaker 1: and the way certain sounds had our ears, Like I

712
00:39:07,600 --> 00:39:11,720
Speaker 1: believe firmly in the preservation of atrocity in the hopes

713
00:39:11,840 --> 00:39:14,239
Speaker 1: that people actually listen to it and take that in

714
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:18,920
Speaker 1: and you can't hear anguished screams like that, understand the

715
00:39:18,920 --> 00:39:21,920
Speaker 1: similarities between what happened there and what's currently happening in

716
00:39:21,960 --> 00:39:26,000
Speaker 1: our own backyards and not immediately feel called to action.

717
00:39:27,000 --> 00:39:34,840
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yep, yeah. So uh Dobison, who again is

718
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:37,239
Speaker 1: the guy who's organizing these death squads, the ones that

719
00:39:37,320 --> 00:39:40,960
Speaker 1: kill um Romero. Uh and several supporters were caught on

720
00:39:40,960 --> 00:39:43,200
Speaker 1: a farm shortly thereafter with the cash of guns and

721
00:39:43,200 --> 00:39:46,160
Speaker 1: other equipment that tied them to the killing, but authorities

722
00:39:46,200 --> 00:39:49,320
Speaker 1: received so many death threats from Dobbison's far right supporters

723
00:39:49,400 --> 00:39:52,600
Speaker 1: that he was released very quickly. His political allies took

724
00:39:52,640 --> 00:39:56,480
Speaker 1: power soon after. Dobison became a celebrated figure among the

725
00:39:56,480 --> 00:39:59,400
Speaker 1: global right wing and even in the United States. In

726
00:39:59,520 --> 00:40:04,320
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, several US Republican political advocacy organizations invited

727
00:40:04,400 --> 00:40:07,279
Speaker 1: Dobison to Washington, d c. To attend a dinner held

728
00:40:07,280 --> 00:40:10,720
Speaker 1: in his honor. He was praised for his continuing efforts

729
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:13,160
Speaker 1: for freedom in the face of communist aggression, which is

730
00:40:13,200 --> 00:40:17,200
Speaker 1: an inspiration to freedom loving people everywhere. No one has

731
00:40:17,200 --> 00:40:19,319
Speaker 1: ever been brought to justice for Romero's murder. This is

732
00:40:19,360 --> 00:40:21,600
Speaker 1: largely due to the fact that Dobison died early. I mean,

733
00:40:21,640 --> 00:40:24,280
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons. Um he didn't. He didn't

734
00:40:24,280 --> 00:40:26,080
Speaker 1: live very long. He got like cancer or some ship.

735
00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:29,839
Speaker 1: The Catholic Church did, however, canonize Oscar Omero in two

736
00:40:29,880 --> 00:40:33,440
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, turning him into a proper saint, So you know,

737
00:40:34,880 --> 00:40:37,640
Speaker 1: that's good. He'd been. He had been um treated as

738
00:40:37,640 --> 00:40:40,080
Speaker 1: a saint and considered a saint by people in El

739
00:40:40,120 --> 00:40:42,719
Speaker 1: Salvador for decades by this point. By the way, like

740
00:40:42,800 --> 00:40:45,600
Speaker 1: he was, he was immediately canonized by the people who

741
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:48,600
Speaker 1: lived there um, But it took the church some time

742
00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:51,600
Speaker 1: to catch up. So Sister Ortiz, who did survive her

743
00:40:51,719 --> 00:40:55,720
Speaker 1: ordeal um, is not a saint yet, but more progress

744
00:40:55,760 --> 00:40:58,279
Speaker 1: has been made in bringing her assailants to justice. The

745
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:01,520
Speaker 1: man who orchestrated Guatemala torture program in the late nineteen

746
00:41:01,560 --> 00:41:05,480
Speaker 1: eighties was Defense Minister General Hector Granmaho. He was trained,

747
00:41:05,520 --> 00:41:07,560
Speaker 1: of course, at the School of the Americas. I feel

748
00:41:07,600 --> 00:41:09,440
Speaker 1: like I'm becoming a bit of a broken record, but

749
00:41:09,480 --> 00:41:12,520
Speaker 1: all of these guys went there. Um. In nineteen eighty one,

750
00:41:12,560 --> 00:41:15,000
Speaker 1: a U. S Court found Grandmaho responsible for the rape

751
00:41:15,040 --> 00:41:17,359
Speaker 1: and torture of Sister Diana and ordered him to pay

752
00:41:17,400 --> 00:41:22,560
Speaker 1: forty seven point five million dollars in damages. Now that's interesting,

753
00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:25,239
Speaker 1: and it may seem wild that, like you could, a

754
00:41:25,280 --> 00:41:28,160
Speaker 1: government employee and a government salary might have forty seven

755
00:41:28,480 --> 00:41:31,560
Speaker 1: eight million dollars to hand over. This was not so

756
00:41:31,640 --> 00:41:34,280
Speaker 1: unusual for ambitious graduates of the School of the Americas.

757
00:41:34,560 --> 00:41:36,560
Speaker 1: That was part of the point of going to the

758
00:41:36,600 --> 00:41:38,600
Speaker 1: School of the Americas. And I'm gonna quote now from

759
00:41:38,680 --> 00:41:42,440
Speaker 1: Leslie Gill's book. In Guatemala, for example, the outcome of

760
00:41:42,480 --> 00:41:45,160
Speaker 1: the thirty five year old Civil War was a shift

761
00:41:45,200 --> 00:41:48,279
Speaker 1: in the balance of power that created a new landowning

762
00:41:48,280 --> 00:41:53,280
Speaker 1: elite among military officers. Income polarization increased in the nineteen eighties.

763
00:41:53,480 --> 00:41:55,759
Speaker 1: The portion of national wealth controlled by the poorest ten

764
00:41:55,800 --> 00:41:58,360
Speaker 1: percent of the population dropped from two point four percent

765
00:41:58,440 --> 00:42:01,400
Speaker 1: to point five percent, while the richest ten percent expanded

766
00:42:01,440 --> 00:42:04,480
Speaker 1: their share from forty percent to forty six point six percent.

767
00:42:05,480 --> 00:42:08,839
Speaker 1: Super familiar. That does sound super familiar, and it ties

768
00:42:08,880 --> 00:42:10,719
Speaker 1: into a number of things. This is just always the

769
00:42:10,719 --> 00:42:13,520
Speaker 1: truth with state with state security forces. People ask, like,

770
00:42:13,520 --> 00:42:17,400
Speaker 1: why the police are being so unbelievably violent to just

771
00:42:17,480 --> 00:42:20,200
Speaker 1: like random reporters filming them and stuff people not breaking

772
00:42:20,280 --> 00:42:24,120
Speaker 1: any law. It's because, more than anything, their ability to

773
00:42:24,239 --> 00:42:27,120
Speaker 1: continue to have a comfortable income. They make a ton

774
00:42:27,160 --> 00:42:31,400
Speaker 1: of money. Cops make way so much fucking money. Yeah,

775
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:34,560
Speaker 1: they're there, and they're they're only making more and more.

776
00:42:34,600 --> 00:42:37,640
Speaker 1: They keep getting raises. Their ability to like it's what

777
00:42:37,680 --> 00:42:39,800
Speaker 1: they found with the guy who killed George Floyd, that

778
00:42:39,840 --> 00:42:41,680
Speaker 1: he had like this whole second house that he was

779
00:42:41,719 --> 00:42:45,880
Speaker 1: not paying taxes legally on in Florida. Like, this is

780
00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:48,799
Speaker 1: what happens. This is how security for why they do

781
00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:51,839
Speaker 1: what they do. It's because they get paid to do it.

782
00:42:51,840 --> 00:42:56,160
Speaker 1: It's because they're elevated. Yeah, they're elevated into the oligarchic

783
00:42:56,320 --> 00:42:59,440
Speaker 1: class in order to maintain and preserve it. And this

784
00:42:59,520 --> 00:43:02,680
Speaker 1: happens very nakedly in Guatemala. That's what the School of

785
00:43:02,719 --> 00:43:09,560
Speaker 1: America's is for. Um, if you have it's very nakedly here.

786
00:43:10,680 --> 00:43:14,160
Speaker 1: I am floored. Well, and it's like I think what's

787
00:43:14,200 --> 00:43:19,040
Speaker 1: most frustrating is the fact that like it's partially it's

788
00:43:19,080 --> 00:43:21,719
Speaker 1: just the blatancy this idea that like we see all

789
00:43:21,760 --> 00:43:26,120
Speaker 1: these cops were clearly just not of the neighborhood, um

790
00:43:26,920 --> 00:43:33,400
Speaker 1: and literally invading it, destroying not just you know, innocent people,

791
00:43:33,520 --> 00:43:36,359
Speaker 1: put a ton of children along the way, wrecking their

792
00:43:36,480 --> 00:43:42,760
Speaker 1: entire lives. It's like, yeah, I just commend an applaud

793
00:43:42,880 --> 00:43:46,719
Speaker 1: like specifically, like that none to be able to voice

794
00:43:46,719 --> 00:43:50,640
Speaker 1: what happened to her, Like I can't imagine the challenge

795
00:43:50,640 --> 00:43:52,919
Speaker 1: of sharing. That's not just sharing that story, but then

796
00:43:54,040 --> 00:43:56,640
Speaker 1: of course those people are looking at ways that they

797
00:43:56,640 --> 00:43:58,959
Speaker 1: can get to you. Of course her life is still

798
00:43:58,960 --> 00:44:04,280
Speaker 1: in danger. Um I can't. Yeah, it's it's overwhelming, Robbert,

799
00:44:04,320 --> 00:44:09,759
Speaker 1: but it's necessaries, like trying to process all of it,

800
00:44:09,800 --> 00:44:13,200
Speaker 1: trying to understand. Tony Morrison has this really great quote

801
00:44:13,200 --> 00:44:15,400
Speaker 1: that I feel like I've used in like just everything,

802
00:44:15,440 --> 00:44:17,160
Speaker 1: but it's been just at the forefront of my mind,

803
00:44:17,239 --> 00:44:21,040
Speaker 1: which is like in times of crisis, like lean into

804
00:44:21,080 --> 00:44:23,680
Speaker 1: what you do rightly, like whatever it is, don't let

805
00:44:23,719 --> 00:44:28,399
Speaker 1: yourself be distracted by outside things because your way through

806
00:44:28,440 --> 00:44:32,000
Speaker 1: it's through like your talent, and it's I have been

807
00:44:32,000 --> 00:44:34,480
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to use my talents in

808
00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:37,200
Speaker 1: what is clearly a time that requires everyone to use

809
00:44:37,239 --> 00:44:40,960
Speaker 1: their voice articulately, to be very practiced and specific in

810
00:44:41,000 --> 00:44:45,080
Speaker 1: our actions so that we don't like falter further into

811
00:44:45,400 --> 00:44:50,280
Speaker 1: that reality because that ship is just that is crazy. Yeah,

812
00:44:50,360 --> 00:44:55,440
Speaker 1: it's not killing somebody preaching mass like how like especially

813
00:44:55,440 --> 00:44:58,360
Speaker 1: if their whole you know, motivation is like they're godless.

814
00:44:58,640 --> 00:45:00,920
Speaker 1: You walk into a godless p worst church and kill

815
00:45:00,960 --> 00:45:05,520
Speaker 1: their spiritual leader like I don't, I don't, I but

816
00:45:05,560 --> 00:45:07,440
Speaker 1: I also know that it's not impossible. I know that

817
00:45:07,480 --> 00:45:10,560
Speaker 1: it's happened so so many times. It's touched every continent

818
00:45:10,600 --> 00:45:13,239
Speaker 1: at some point. So as far moved as I am

819
00:45:13,239 --> 00:45:15,920
Speaker 1: from it, I'm aware of how present that action is,

820
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:20,080
Speaker 1: that that reaching that level is not it's not impossible

821
00:45:21,840 --> 00:45:25,719
Speaker 1: so much. In nineteen eighty four, the School of the

822
00:45:25,760 --> 00:45:30,160
Speaker 1: America's left Panama UM. It was re established in Columbus

823
00:45:30,200 --> 00:45:33,279
Speaker 1: at a Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia. UM. I think

824
00:45:33,280 --> 00:45:35,560
Speaker 1: I said Columbus, Ohio in the first episode, will we'll

825
00:45:35,560 --> 00:45:38,040
Speaker 1: fix that, But it was Columbus, Georgia. There's two Columbi,

826
00:45:38,560 --> 00:45:40,839
Speaker 1: so yeah, they move it to Georgia outside of four

827
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:43,400
Speaker 1: or in Fort Benning, UM, which is a location that

828
00:45:43,480 --> 00:45:46,960
Speaker 1: like not only like one of the things that this

829
00:45:47,040 --> 00:45:49,040
Speaker 1: did that actually moving the School of the Americas to

830
00:45:49,080 --> 00:45:51,680
Speaker 1: the United States did, was it allowed it to provide

831
00:45:51,719 --> 00:45:54,520
Speaker 1: its foreign students with an even deeper appreciation and understanding

832
00:45:54,520 --> 00:45:57,080
Speaker 1: of US culture. We talked about in the last episode

833
00:45:57,120 --> 00:45:59,640
Speaker 1: how um new School of the America's students, who were

834
00:45:59,640 --> 00:46:01,319
Speaker 1: generally there for about a year if they were taking

835
00:46:01,320 --> 00:46:03,040
Speaker 1: the full course, like one of the first things they

836
00:46:03,040 --> 00:46:05,080
Speaker 1: would all try to do is go buy American trucks

837
00:46:05,160 --> 00:46:06,719
Speaker 1: so that they could take them back home with them.

838
00:46:06,800 --> 00:46:10,560
Speaker 1: Is like a status symbol, now, um, and I I

839
00:46:10,760 --> 00:46:13,120
Speaker 1: find I told you we're going to hear from a

840
00:46:13,520 --> 00:46:15,759
Speaker 1: student who went there. And this This is a guy,

841
00:46:15,800 --> 00:46:18,839
Speaker 1: a Bolivian named Juan Ricardo, who was interviewed by Leslie Gill.

842
00:46:18,920 --> 00:46:21,759
Speaker 1: And he's a retired lieutenant colonel in the Bolivian Army.

843
00:46:21,800 --> 00:46:23,879
Speaker 1: And he wound up being a major source for Leslie's book,

844
00:46:24,120 --> 00:46:26,000
Speaker 1: in part due to the fact that, by more or

845
00:46:26,080 --> 00:46:28,160
Speaker 1: less accident, he wound up being kind of a pretty

846
00:46:28,239 --> 00:46:30,279
Speaker 1: left wing dude who still went through all of this

847
00:46:30,360 --> 00:46:33,719
Speaker 1: like far right pro USA indoctrination, so he he understood

848
00:46:34,120 --> 00:46:36,600
Speaker 1: what was happening to his fellow soldiers, like and he's

849
00:46:36,640 --> 00:46:38,719
Speaker 1: he's able to kind of speak very lucidly on it,

850
00:46:38,760 --> 00:46:41,799
Speaker 1: which I I appreciate quite a lot, now, Um. His

851
00:46:41,880 --> 00:46:45,000
Speaker 1: introduction to American military culture came before he ever traveled

852
00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:46,920
Speaker 1: to the United States or the School of the America's.

853
00:46:47,080 --> 00:46:49,279
Speaker 1: When he was new to the military, he was taught

854
00:46:49,280 --> 00:46:51,640
Speaker 1: by a number of instructors who themselves had been trained

855
00:46:51,680 --> 00:46:54,000
Speaker 1: at the School of the America's and they came back

856
00:46:54,040 --> 00:46:55,919
Speaker 1: with the lessons they had learned and even came back

857
00:46:55,920 --> 00:46:58,600
Speaker 1: with printed teaching materials from the U. S. Military, and

858
00:46:58,640 --> 00:47:00,960
Speaker 1: a lot of those lessons that these guys who've just

859
00:47:01,040 --> 00:47:03,120
Speaker 1: been trained by the US brought back to Bolivia to

860
00:47:03,160 --> 00:47:05,919
Speaker 1: give to their fellow soldiers involved torturing the ship out

861
00:47:05,920 --> 00:47:09,040
Speaker 1: of people. One Ricardo later claimed that he was taught quote,

862
00:47:09,200 --> 00:47:11,040
Speaker 1: how to tie up prisoners of war and how to

863
00:47:11,040 --> 00:47:13,399
Speaker 1: torture them techniques that you have to utilize in order

864
00:47:13,440 --> 00:47:16,200
Speaker 1: to get them to make declarations. For example, you don't

865
00:47:16,280 --> 00:47:18,640
Speaker 1: let them sleep, and then you get results. Other knowledge

866
00:47:18,640 --> 00:47:20,120
Speaker 1: that they brought from the School of the Americas. I

867
00:47:20,160 --> 00:47:23,279
Speaker 1: remember very well it was axiomatic among the rangers, the U. S.

868
00:47:23,360 --> 00:47:25,919
Speaker 1: Army rangers that taught the soldiers who were teaching him

869
00:47:26,080 --> 00:47:28,959
Speaker 1: that a dead subversive was better than a prisoner. Having

870
00:47:29,000 --> 00:47:32,239
Speaker 1: a prisoner interfered with the subsequent operations. Thus it's better

871
00:47:32,280 --> 00:47:37,879
Speaker 1: that he is four meters underground than to have him alive. Um. Yeah,

872
00:47:38,040 --> 00:47:41,520
Speaker 1: I was trying to picture, like between when we last

873
00:47:41,520 --> 00:47:44,799
Speaker 1: spoke in today, like what are these classes like? And

874
00:47:45,400 --> 00:47:49,160
Speaker 1: silly me, I was envisioning like very subtly, like like oh,

875
00:47:49,200 --> 00:47:51,000
Speaker 1: you know, this is how you would maybe have to

876
00:47:51,040 --> 00:47:52,879
Speaker 1: tie with somebody who like, you know, in the same

877
00:47:52,880 --> 00:47:54,880
Speaker 1: way that they feel like often, like we've seen with

878
00:47:54,920 --> 00:47:57,560
Speaker 1: cop training courses, the more we learn about those, the

879
00:47:57,640 --> 00:48:00,360
Speaker 1: more it's it doesn't seem so insidious, right, It's not

880
00:48:00,440 --> 00:48:03,000
Speaker 1: so directed. It's like, oh, this is how you pull

881
00:48:03,239 --> 00:48:05,120
Speaker 1: your gun, and it's like a two second course and

882
00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:08,080
Speaker 1: you're like, well, that's not enough information. Um So, of

883
00:48:08,120 --> 00:48:10,560
Speaker 1: course we have like a lot of you know, misfires

884
00:48:10,600 --> 00:48:13,680
Speaker 1: and people that are actually accidentally shooting other police officers

885
00:48:13,680 --> 00:48:16,480
Speaker 1: and things like that. Uh, it sounds like this was

886
00:48:16,520 --> 00:48:19,520
Speaker 1: like torture one oh one, welcome, here we go getting

887
00:48:19,520 --> 00:48:23,719
Speaker 1: started by the way, shoot your prisoners, Yeah, makes if

888
00:48:23,719 --> 00:48:27,359
Speaker 1: they're dead even better, no problem. Yeah, all right. So,

889
00:48:27,520 --> 00:48:34,480
Speaker 1: well you think about executing prisoners in violation of international law,

890
00:48:34,760 --> 00:48:37,279
Speaker 1: you should think about something else that violates international law.

891
00:48:37,440 --> 00:48:46,600
Speaker 1: The products and services that support this podcast. We're back

892
00:48:46,960 --> 00:48:50,640
Speaker 1: and I've been informed by UH Corporate that um our

893
00:48:51,239 --> 00:48:54,479
Speaker 1: our sponsors do not violate international law. They in fact

894
00:48:54,560 --> 00:48:59,080
Speaker 1: comply with international law. I apologize for the for the error.

895
00:48:59,120 --> 00:49:01,120
Speaker 1: It's you can see how the mistake. It's a binary

896
00:49:01,200 --> 00:49:02,759
Speaker 1: so it's easy to make, you know, get the wrong

897
00:49:02,800 --> 00:49:05,879
Speaker 1: one of those two we do. We do apologize here.

898
00:49:06,440 --> 00:49:09,120
Speaker 1: So yeah, in case you weren't a big war crimes

899
00:49:09,160 --> 00:49:12,960
Speaker 1: buff um, it is a war crime to execute prisoners. Um.

900
00:49:13,160 --> 00:49:15,760
Speaker 1: In fact, everything one Ricardo says about what they taught

901
00:49:15,800 --> 00:49:19,920
Speaker 1: about counter insurgency, these US trained officers who trained him

902
00:49:20,040 --> 00:49:23,120
Speaker 1: um is war crimes, are war crimes. Would would be

903
00:49:23,200 --> 00:49:25,640
Speaker 1: war crimes were they done, and in fact they were.

904
00:49:26,080 --> 00:49:28,720
Speaker 1: Now you might question how reliable a source One Ricardo

905
00:49:28,800 --> 00:49:30,200
Speaker 1: is and whether or not we can trust him, because

906
00:49:30,200 --> 00:49:32,600
Speaker 1: he's one guy, you know, with the with the clear

907
00:49:32,640 --> 00:49:36,680
Speaker 1: political ideology, making very bold claims about things the United

908
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:38,960
Speaker 1: States did. Um. And there's a number of ways I

909
00:49:38,960 --> 00:49:41,400
Speaker 1: could back up his his stories. Number one would be

910
00:49:41,400 --> 00:49:45,279
Speaker 1: just reciting dozens of other anecdotes of people who were

911
00:49:45,320 --> 00:49:48,759
Speaker 1: tortured and said U S soldiers were there, or who

912
00:49:48,800 --> 00:49:51,160
Speaker 1: were tortured by soldiers trained by America. But the fastest

913
00:49:51,160 --> 00:49:53,320
Speaker 1: way to back up what Wan told Leslie Gill is

914
00:49:53,360 --> 00:49:56,879
Speaker 1: just to cite the Pentagon's own published teaching materials see.

915
00:49:56,880 --> 00:50:00,000
Speaker 1: In nineteen six, the Clinton administration ordered the de classific

916
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:02,120
Speaker 1: caation of a number of training materials used at the

917
00:50:02,120 --> 00:50:05,040
Speaker 1: School of the America's This tranche of documents included a

918
00:50:05,080 --> 00:50:08,360
Speaker 1: Pentagon memo from nineteen nine two addressed to the Secretary

919
00:50:08,360 --> 00:50:10,799
Speaker 1: of Defense. It's written by Werner Michael, who was the

920
00:50:10,840 --> 00:50:15,120
Speaker 1: intelligence oversight assistant to the Sect Deaf, and Michael was,

921
00:50:15,440 --> 00:50:18,160
Speaker 1: you know, I think, assigned to look into this problem

922
00:50:18,200 --> 00:50:21,200
Speaker 1: once they started to be like Americans started to, you know,

923
00:50:21,600 --> 00:50:24,080
Speaker 1: complain about how the School of America's was a terrible thing,

924
00:50:24,120 --> 00:50:25,799
Speaker 1: and he was basically sent to like look into the

925
00:50:25,800 --> 00:50:28,799
Speaker 1: training material these guys were being given. And from what

926
00:50:28,840 --> 00:50:31,200
Speaker 1: I can tell reading this memo, he seems to be

927
00:50:31,960 --> 00:50:35,040
Speaker 1: it seems like he's kind of a decent, a relatively

928
00:50:35,160 --> 00:50:38,440
Speaker 1: decent person who wound up in this position of like

929
00:50:38,560 --> 00:50:41,400
Speaker 1: having to analyze a horrific war crime being committed by

930
00:50:41,520 --> 00:50:45,520
Speaker 1: his colleagues. Um, and it's it's it's a really interesting

931
00:50:45,520 --> 00:50:47,920
Speaker 1: read for that reason. Now, one of the things he

932
00:50:48,000 --> 00:50:51,200
Speaker 1: notes is that the manuals that he was reviewing, which

933
00:50:51,239 --> 00:50:54,680
Speaker 1: are like broadly Ford referred to as the torture manuals,

934
00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:58,319
Speaker 1: which were like the training documents starting in ninety nine,

935
00:50:58,800 --> 00:51:01,120
Speaker 1: um that they were not. They were all out of

936
00:51:01,160 --> 00:51:04,200
Speaker 1: compliance with US law and with international law. But the

937
00:51:04,239 --> 00:51:06,960
Speaker 1: reason nobody found out about it for years is that

938
00:51:07,000 --> 00:51:10,080
Speaker 1: they were only written in Spanish, so nobody reviewed them

939
00:51:10,080 --> 00:51:14,080
Speaker 1: in the entire Department of Defense. And it's the second

940
00:51:14,120 --> 00:51:18,279
Speaker 1: most spoken language in the country, that is faithfully. Yeah,

941
00:51:18,280 --> 00:51:21,000
Speaker 1: but why would we have anybody looking at that ship? Yeah,

942
00:51:21,200 --> 00:51:27,200
Speaker 1: it's amazing ignorance. Yeah, and I'm gonna quote from his

943
00:51:27,280 --> 00:51:31,080
Speaker 1: review now. An Army review dated February nine two, conducted

944
00:51:31,080 --> 00:51:33,960
Speaker 1: at our request, concluded that five of the seven manuals

945
00:51:34,000 --> 00:51:37,200
Speaker 1: contained language and statements and violation of legal, regulatory or

946
00:51:37,239 --> 00:51:41,799
Speaker 1: policy prohibitions. These manuals are Handling of Sources, revolutionary war

947
00:51:41,840 --> 00:51:45,480
Speaker 1: and communist ideology, Terrorism in the Urban, guerrilla interrogation, and

948
00:51:45,600 --> 00:51:49,080
Speaker 1: combat intelligence. To illustrate the manual handling of sources, in

949
00:51:49,120 --> 00:51:52,640
Speaker 1: depicting the recruitment and control of human intelligence sources, refers

950
00:51:52,680 --> 00:51:56,280
Speaker 1: to motivation by fear, payment of bounties for enemy dead beatings,

951
00:51:56,320 --> 00:52:00,239
Speaker 1: false imprisonment executions, and the use of truth serum. The

952
00:52:00,280 --> 00:52:05,840
Speaker 1: manual also discloses like, Okay, so it's either a like

953
00:52:05,920 --> 00:52:07,960
Speaker 1: it sounds like a manual for the mob or a

954
00:52:08,040 --> 00:52:12,160
Speaker 1: super villain. Yes, yes, but it was the Army's Department

955
00:52:12,200 --> 00:52:17,200
Speaker 1: of the Army's manual that was giving explicit illegal advice

956
00:52:17,360 --> 00:52:20,719
Speaker 1: to foreign soldiers. Now, this memo is the closest you're

957
00:52:20,719 --> 00:52:23,200
Speaker 1: going to get to an explicit condemnation by a member

958
00:52:23,200 --> 00:52:25,960
Speaker 1: of the Department of Defense of all of the genocide

959
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:28,280
Speaker 1: and rape and child murder they willfully trained and allowed

960
00:52:28,320 --> 00:52:32,600
Speaker 1: soldiers to commit. Um. It's it's interesting reading not just

961
00:52:32,640 --> 00:52:35,520
Speaker 1: as a historic document, that as kind of a sociological text,

962
00:52:35,560 --> 00:52:38,480
Speaker 1: because you can see in the guy writing this like

963
00:52:39,040 --> 00:52:42,840
Speaker 1: someone who appears to be a broadly honorable person starting

964
00:52:42,840 --> 00:52:45,480
Speaker 1: to realize that the organization he built his life around

965
00:52:45,480 --> 00:52:48,839
Speaker 1: has done something unforgivable. This passage, I think is particularly

966
00:52:48,960 --> 00:52:52,880
Speaker 1: enlightening in theory. The offending and improper material in the

967
00:52:52,920 --> 00:52:56,080
Speaker 1: manuals should have been discovered during the Army's existing review

968
00:52:56,080 --> 00:52:59,600
Speaker 1: and approval process. It is incredible that the use of

969
00:52:59,600 --> 00:53:02,400
Speaker 1: the less and Plans since nineteen eighty two and the

970
00:53:02,440 --> 00:53:06,000
Speaker 1: manual since nineteen eighties seven evaded the established system of

971
00:53:06,040 --> 00:53:09,600
Speaker 1: doctrinal controls. Nevertheless, we could find no evidence that this

972
00:53:09,719 --> 00:53:12,400
Speaker 1: was a deliberate and orchestrated attempt to violate d O

973
00:53:12,480 --> 00:53:19,919
Speaker 1: d N Army policies violates. But then how did it happen? Yeah, yeah,

974
00:53:20,000 --> 00:53:22,279
Speaker 1: it is incredible, Like that's the closest you're going to

975
00:53:22,360 --> 00:53:24,879
Speaker 1: get from an actual like company man to being like

976
00:53:25,080 --> 00:53:28,600
Speaker 1: something fucked happened here and very much sounds like, well,

977
00:53:28,600 --> 00:53:30,960
Speaker 1: it was written in Spanish, so we can't prove it. Yeah,

978
00:53:31,000 --> 00:53:33,080
Speaker 1: who could do? Who can Nobody can read Spanish in

979
00:53:33,120 --> 00:53:40,279
Speaker 1: America in the army. Oh my word. Yeah. So there

980
00:53:40,280 --> 00:53:43,920
Speaker 1: are one of the difficulties and kind of putting this

981
00:53:44,000 --> 00:53:46,799
Speaker 1: together for you, um, is that there's just so many

982
00:53:46,840 --> 00:53:48,800
Speaker 1: different war crimes and war criminals you can tie to

983
00:53:48,840 --> 00:53:50,920
Speaker 1: the School of the America's. We could have done like

984
00:53:51,040 --> 00:53:55,160
Speaker 1: four straight episodes or more just laying out Guatemala, right,

985
00:53:55,200 --> 00:53:57,320
Speaker 1: and what was done in Guatemala, and not even the

986
00:53:57,360 --> 00:53:59,279
Speaker 1: broader story of the Guatemalan Civil War, but like just

987
00:53:59,320 --> 00:54:01,040
Speaker 1: what School of him eric As graduates got up to

988
00:54:01,080 --> 00:54:02,680
Speaker 1: in Guatemal. We could have done the same thing, probably

989
00:54:02,680 --> 00:54:05,400
Speaker 1: without Salvador. We're not even going to talk about Operation

990
00:54:05,480 --> 00:54:08,920
Speaker 1: Condor in this episode, which was like it was, it

991
00:54:08,960 --> 00:54:11,080
Speaker 1: was an agreement between a bunch of Latin American government's.

992
00:54:11,080 --> 00:54:12,480
Speaker 1: The best way I could describe it as like if

993
00:54:12,480 --> 00:54:18,040
Speaker 1: the EU was just about killing left wing uh political organizers,

994
00:54:18,080 --> 00:54:20,120
Speaker 1: that that was kind of Operation Condor. We're not even

995
00:54:20,120 --> 00:54:22,960
Speaker 1: going to get into it, because there's there's there's I mean,

996
00:54:22,960 --> 00:54:25,120
Speaker 1: we've are this has been a very full set of

997
00:54:25,160 --> 00:54:27,560
Speaker 1: episodes already, and some of this stuff I want to

998
00:54:27,600 --> 00:54:29,799
Speaker 1: like cover at a later date. There's a lot to

999
00:54:29,840 --> 00:54:32,239
Speaker 1: go into because the the amount of factory that was

1000
00:54:32,280 --> 00:54:36,840
Speaker 1: perpetrated by the United States in Latin America for forever

1001
00:54:37,080 --> 00:54:40,480
Speaker 1: is just such a deep and complicated and a horrible story.

1002
00:54:41,080 --> 00:54:43,080
Speaker 1: But I think given the limited time we have, what's

1003
00:54:43,080 --> 00:54:45,480
Speaker 1: important to focus on next is the kind of men

1004
00:54:45,600 --> 00:54:48,000
Speaker 1: who were educated by the School of America's and how

1005
00:54:48,480 --> 00:54:50,960
Speaker 1: how the school changed them, and how the presence of

1006
00:54:51,000 --> 00:54:54,919
Speaker 1: putting such men back in their home countries could fundamentally

1007
00:54:55,000 --> 00:54:57,359
Speaker 1: to fundamental changes in the character of a nation. So

1008
00:54:58,239 --> 00:55:01,040
Speaker 1: more Bolivian soldiers were trained the School of the America's

1009
00:55:01,239 --> 00:55:04,279
Speaker 1: then were trained by any other foreign military establishment. As

1010
00:55:04,320 --> 00:55:06,360
Speaker 1: one of the poorest nations in Latin America, it was

1011
00:55:06,400 --> 00:55:09,000
Speaker 1: particularly at risk for a Marxist uprising, and so the

1012
00:55:09,080 --> 00:55:11,600
Speaker 1: US took precautions. Like I said, they would get worried

1013
00:55:11,600 --> 00:55:13,800
Speaker 1: about a country and they would start increasing the number

1014
00:55:13,840 --> 00:55:15,719
Speaker 1: of soldiers that they would invite to the School of

1015
00:55:15,719 --> 00:55:19,480
Speaker 1: the Americas. So they trained huge numbers of Bolivian officers

1016
00:55:19,520 --> 00:55:22,400
Speaker 1: and kind of introduced them to this cult of Americanism

1017
00:55:22,440 --> 00:55:24,720
Speaker 1: that they were. That's like what they did to everyone

1018
00:55:24,760 --> 00:55:27,960
Speaker 1: they invited in. And Leslie gil rights based on her

1019
00:55:28,239 --> 00:55:31,439
Speaker 1: interviews with Juan Ricardo, who is that Bolivian soldier who

1020
00:55:31,520 --> 00:55:34,719
Speaker 1: went to the School of the America's quote, the North

1021
00:55:34,760 --> 00:55:37,440
Speaker 1: Americans had everything, or so it seemed to the Bolivians.

1022
00:55:37,480 --> 00:55:39,880
Speaker 1: They enjoyed a level of comfort unheard of in Bolivia.

1023
00:55:39,960 --> 00:55:42,359
Speaker 1: If a soldier tore his uniform, the army provided him

1024
00:55:42,360 --> 00:55:44,200
Speaker 1: with a new one, and the amount of food served

1025
00:55:44,200 --> 00:55:46,440
Speaker 1: in the School of America's mess hall made the Bolivian's

1026
00:55:46,440 --> 00:55:49,080
Speaker 1: eyes bulge. The returning soldiers told us that you could

1027
00:55:49,080 --> 00:55:50,960
Speaker 1: eat like a beast at the School of the America's,

1028
00:55:51,040 --> 00:55:53,600
Speaker 1: laughed Juan Ricardo. The U. S. Army's high degree of

1029
00:55:53,600 --> 00:55:56,799
Speaker 1: specialization also impressed the Bolivians, whose military was not nearly

1030
00:55:56,840 --> 00:55:59,720
Speaker 1: as differentiated in terms of knowledge and skills of its members.

1031
00:56:00,040 --> 00:56:02,200
Speaker 1: To be a specialist implied that one was special in

1032
00:56:02,239 --> 00:56:04,200
Speaker 1: the ability to work with high tech weaponry or just

1033
00:56:04,280 --> 00:56:07,680
Speaker 1: modern weaponry. Set the North Americans apart from their Latin

1034
00:56:07,680 --> 00:56:12,360
Speaker 1: American peers and students. Technology, especially the esoteric knowledge that

1035
00:56:12,440 --> 00:56:15,560
Speaker 1: unlocked its power had a quasi magical appeal for the

1036
00:56:15,600 --> 00:56:18,480
Speaker 1: Bolivians and for many of these Latin Americans. U S.

1037
00:56:18,600 --> 00:56:21,800
Speaker 1: Army officers seemed to go everywhere in helicopters, a symbol

1038
00:56:21,840 --> 00:56:25,160
Speaker 1: of their power and superiority. The conclusion that they drew,

1039
00:56:25,239 --> 00:56:28,640
Speaker 1: according to Juan Ricardo, was that the Gringos made good allies.

1040
00:56:28,719 --> 00:56:30,440
Speaker 1: It was good to be on their side, and they

1041
00:56:30,440 --> 00:56:33,480
Speaker 1: would provide all the necessary support for the struggle against subversion.

1042
00:56:33,880 --> 00:56:36,279
Speaker 1: He paused, and then added, it's also better to have

1043
00:56:36,360 --> 00:56:39,480
Speaker 1: them as allies because they have a good intelligence system.

1044
00:56:39,520 --> 00:56:42,799
Speaker 1: So you can see part of what's happening here, like right,

1045
00:56:42,840 --> 00:56:44,840
Speaker 1: one of the reasons. One of the things that's that's

1046
00:56:44,880 --> 00:56:47,880
Speaker 1: a real hallmark of this period in right wing repression

1047
00:56:47,880 --> 00:56:52,760
Speaker 1: of the left is Pinochet throwing left wing militants from helicopters.

1048
00:56:53,160 --> 00:56:56,200
Speaker 1: Um helicopters which are the symbol of the United States,

1049
00:56:56,239 --> 00:56:58,440
Speaker 1: which are the symbol of modernity, which are the symbol

1050
00:56:58,480 --> 00:57:03,080
Speaker 1: of power. Right, these things aren't happening for for no reason,

1051
00:57:03,120 --> 00:57:07,000
Speaker 1: Like it's all it all ties in together. Um yeah,

1052
00:57:07,080 --> 00:57:09,600
Speaker 1: But also I think like about the idea of like

1053
00:57:09,760 --> 00:57:14,000
Speaker 1: just abundance again, it's just it's it's very cruel to

1054
00:57:14,040 --> 00:57:18,840
Speaker 1: offer people who have very little everything and then like

1055
00:57:19,160 --> 00:57:21,600
Speaker 1: expect them not to like fall in love with that

1056
00:57:21,720 --> 00:57:26,640
Speaker 1: comfort and the only and and there can be like

1057
00:57:26,720 --> 00:57:28,840
Speaker 1: you have to you have to convince these people what

1058
00:57:28,880 --> 00:57:30,040
Speaker 1: the school. One of the things that the the School of

1059
00:57:30,040 --> 00:57:33,320
Speaker 1: Americas is doing is it's drawing a border in the

1060
00:57:33,400 --> 00:57:36,600
Speaker 1: minds of these men between themselves and the rest of

1061
00:57:36,640 --> 00:57:39,840
Speaker 1: the country that they live in. And it's making their other,

1062
00:57:39,880 --> 00:57:43,520
Speaker 1: their fellow countrymen, these indigenous people, um, these these left

1063
00:57:43,520 --> 00:57:48,200
Speaker 1: wing you know, political organizers. It's making them into the

1064
00:57:48,280 --> 00:57:51,840
Speaker 1: other and again and into the thing that's that's separating

1065
00:57:51,840 --> 00:57:56,000
Speaker 1: you from abundance. You introduce these people to abundance, and

1066
00:57:56,040 --> 00:57:57,920
Speaker 1: then you tell them, these are the people who are

1067
00:57:57,960 --> 00:58:02,280
Speaker 1: stopping your country from being like this and yeah, and

1068
00:58:02,320 --> 00:58:04,600
Speaker 1: then they would turn them into the people who stopped

1069
00:58:04,600 --> 00:58:08,200
Speaker 1: them from their countrymen from having any kind of abundance. Yeah,

1070
00:58:08,200 --> 00:58:11,520
Speaker 1: who kicked children to death. Yeah, but some of them

1071
00:58:11,560 --> 00:58:14,200
Speaker 1: get rich, so that's good. Um. So one of the

1072
00:58:14,240 --> 00:58:16,600
Speaker 1: things I found really interesting in reading leslie Gill's book

1073
00:58:16,600 --> 00:58:19,680
Speaker 1: about this is that the kind of training the School

1074
00:58:19,720 --> 00:58:23,080
Speaker 1: of the America's cultivated and its students this like training

1075
00:58:23,120 --> 00:58:26,200
Speaker 1: them to be American um. It extended to what you

1076
00:58:26,280 --> 00:58:29,320
Speaker 1: might call the United States of America's number one pastime,

1077
00:58:29,920 --> 00:58:33,000
Speaker 1: which is, unfortunately the commodification of black bodies. And this

1078
00:58:33,080 --> 00:58:35,120
Speaker 1: is not going to be a super fun chunk to read,

1079
00:58:35,200 --> 00:58:38,280
Speaker 1: but let's do it here we go. S o A

1080
00:58:38,400 --> 00:58:41,600
Speaker 1: graduates cultivated images of themselves as manly men upon their

1081
00:58:41,600 --> 00:58:44,440
Speaker 1: return to Bolivia by regaling peers and academy students with

1082
00:58:44,480 --> 00:58:47,240
Speaker 1: accounts of their sexual exploits. Like a majority of their

1083
00:58:47,240 --> 00:58:49,760
Speaker 1: counterparts in the various armies of the America's many believe

1084
00:58:49,840 --> 00:58:52,280
Speaker 1: that access to the sexual services of local women was

1085
00:58:52,320 --> 00:58:55,040
Speaker 1: a basic right, and the Panama Canal zone was presented

1086
00:58:55,080 --> 00:58:57,640
Speaker 1: as a place where men could indulge their sexual fantasies

1087
00:58:57,640 --> 00:59:00,880
Speaker 1: and escape into allusions of men as men uh Pantoya,

1088
00:59:00,920 --> 00:59:03,080
Speaker 1: which is one of the other men that Leslie Gill interviews.

1089
00:59:03,080 --> 00:59:04,440
Speaker 1: One of the other guys who went to the school

1090
00:59:04,560 --> 00:59:07,440
Speaker 1: recalled that his instructors usually moved quickly from accounts of

1091
00:59:07,480 --> 00:59:10,360
Speaker 1: their professional experiences at the s o A to anecdotes

1092
00:59:10,360 --> 00:59:13,880
Speaker 1: about North American comfort, the prostitutes and how much they cost.

1093
00:59:14,240 --> 00:59:17,240
Speaker 1: Because of the enormous US military presence, sex workers from

1094
00:59:17,240 --> 00:59:20,800
Speaker 1: a variety of countries congregated in Panamanian cities. The brothels,

1095
00:59:20,840 --> 00:59:23,840
Speaker 1: explained Pantoya, complimented other aspects of life at the s

1096
00:59:23,880 --> 00:59:26,680
Speaker 1: o A. Cadets trained from Monday to Friday and Saturday

1097
00:59:26,720 --> 00:59:28,840
Speaker 1: and Sunday. They were free, they had money, so they

1098
00:59:28,880 --> 00:59:31,520
Speaker 1: went to the brothels that had black women. North Americans

1099
00:59:31,520 --> 00:59:34,240
Speaker 1: were there too, and everyone was equal. The Bolivians were

1100
00:59:34,240 --> 00:59:36,800
Speaker 1: fascinated with black women. There are none in Bolivia, and

1101
00:59:36,840 --> 00:59:38,800
Speaker 1: to make love with a black woman was supposedly an

1102
00:59:38,840 --> 00:59:42,000
Speaker 1: unforgettable experience, very exotic. It was the moment when the

1103
00:59:42,000 --> 00:59:46,280
Speaker 1: Obolivian military man had international contact. The aura of almost

1104
00:59:46,320 --> 00:59:50,600
Speaker 1: mystical transcendentalism that surrounded the Bolivian's accounts of sexual encounters

1105
00:59:50,600 --> 00:59:52,720
Speaker 1: with black women emerged from a belief that you could

1106
00:59:52,720 --> 00:59:56,760
Speaker 1: do things with foreigners, particularly members of subordinate racial groups,

1107
00:59:56,920 --> 00:59:59,120
Speaker 1: that you could not do at home. Part of the

1108
00:59:59,120 --> 01:00:01,560
Speaker 1: allure of going up rod was the opportunity to play

1109
01:00:01,560 --> 01:00:04,560
Speaker 1: out sexist and racist stereotypes away from the constraints of

1110
01:00:04,600 --> 01:00:08,560
Speaker 1: their own society. And Panama, single men had disposable income

1111
01:00:08,600 --> 01:00:11,320
Speaker 1: that was unencumbered by alternative claims that would shape its

1112
01:00:11,400 --> 01:00:13,640
Speaker 1: use in Bolivia, and this money gave them a feeling

1113
01:00:13,640 --> 01:00:16,360
Speaker 1: of power and strength. It also enabled them to enter

1114
01:00:16,400 --> 01:00:19,480
Speaker 1: a transnational world of power and pleasure that no one

1115
01:00:19,520 --> 01:00:22,680
Speaker 1: at home except for a select few new As these

1116
01:00:22,680 --> 01:00:25,280
Speaker 1: men lived the excitement of going abroad and took part

1117
01:00:25,280 --> 01:00:28,080
Speaker 1: in daily training exercises at the s o A, began

1118
01:00:28,120 --> 01:00:30,800
Speaker 1: to reflect on their own country in different ways. The

1119
01:00:30,920 --> 01:00:35,120
Speaker 1: s o A experience aggravated longstanding domestic hatreds of Indians

1120
01:00:35,160 --> 01:00:38,480
Speaker 1: and Communists, as officers struggled to separate themselves from their

1121
01:00:38,520 --> 01:00:41,960
Speaker 1: own modest origins and to explain the roots of Bolivian

1122
01:00:42,040 --> 01:00:48,640
Speaker 1: underdevelopment to themselves. I will never understand I some people

1123
01:00:48,880 --> 01:00:54,120
Speaker 1: think that um, black bodies are inherently magic beyond like

1124
01:00:54,680 --> 01:00:58,360
Speaker 1: the black cultures. Black women have co opted that to

1125
01:00:58,440 --> 01:01:02,480
Speaker 1: mean like you have val you essentially beyond what the

1126
01:01:02,520 --> 01:01:06,280
Speaker 1: world gives you, in the phrase quote unquote black girl magic.

1127
01:01:06,400 --> 01:01:08,920
Speaker 1: This the idea that like we are transcendent and beautiful

1128
01:01:08,920 --> 01:01:10,960
Speaker 1: and worthwhile because our community has to do those things

1129
01:01:10,960 --> 01:01:14,040
Speaker 1: because very clearly no one else is going to And

1130
01:01:14,080 --> 01:01:18,040
Speaker 1: the idea that as we are, we as Americans are

1131
01:01:18,240 --> 01:01:23,800
Speaker 1: going into other countries and basically disrupting an entire culture uh,

1132
01:01:23,880 --> 01:01:28,200
Speaker 1: then bring those people back to America and further degrade

1133
01:01:28,640 --> 01:01:33,520
Speaker 1: black bodies. It is uh not surprising, uh and yet

1134
01:01:33,760 --> 01:01:39,480
Speaker 1: still still frustrating, still maddening. Still again just confusing at

1135
01:01:39,480 --> 01:01:42,520
Speaker 1: our ability to just shrug at human life and just

1136
01:01:42,560 --> 01:01:46,320
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, my life has more value than yours.

1137
01:01:46,400 --> 01:01:52,240
Speaker 1: I can't have such a hard time processing it. Yep. Yeah,

1138
01:01:52,240 --> 01:01:57,040
Speaker 1: there's a lot going on there. Um, yeah, there's a

1139
01:01:57,080 --> 01:01:59,720
Speaker 1: lot going on there. I find it interesting this this

1140
01:02:01,000 --> 01:02:04,880
Speaker 1: the way in which these guys are kind of being,

1141
01:02:06,680 --> 01:02:09,960
Speaker 1: the way in which they're being trained with abundance, right,

1142
01:02:10,040 --> 01:02:12,040
Speaker 1: and and how dangerous that is because when you read

1143
01:02:12,080 --> 01:02:13,760
Speaker 1: about when you read like, you'll hear a lot about

1144
01:02:13,760 --> 01:02:15,280
Speaker 1: the School of the America's on Twitter, and it will

1145
01:02:15,360 --> 01:02:17,680
Speaker 1: usually be because it's Twitter, you know, nobody. People don't

1146
01:02:17,720 --> 01:02:20,960
Speaker 1: have time for super detailed explorations of things. But it

1147
01:02:21,000 --> 01:02:23,600
Speaker 1: will generally be something like, oh, the America, the United

1148
01:02:23,640 --> 01:02:27,280
Speaker 1: States has the school where it trained assassins and murderers

1149
01:02:27,280 --> 01:02:28,840
Speaker 1: and stuff, and it was the School of the America's

1150
01:02:28,880 --> 01:02:30,560
Speaker 1: and it you know it, it led to all these

1151
01:02:30,600 --> 01:02:34,080
Speaker 1: revolutions and that's bad. And I think the reality, like

1152
01:02:34,120 --> 01:02:37,880
Speaker 1: I think the focus actually on the torture curriculum and

1153
01:02:37,880 --> 01:02:40,040
Speaker 1: stuff is kind of a mistake because I don't think

1154
01:02:40,080 --> 01:02:43,439
Speaker 1: that's the most insidious and dangerous thing that the school did.

1155
01:02:43,960 --> 01:02:46,240
Speaker 1: What what what we just talked about in that last passage,

1156
01:02:46,760 --> 01:02:51,760
Speaker 1: This um bringing bringing the men from these countries, these

1157
01:02:51,800 --> 01:02:54,920
Speaker 1: military officers into the world of white men in the

1158
01:02:55,040 --> 01:02:58,840
Speaker 1: United States, and what that means, and the accumulation of

1159
01:02:58,840 --> 01:03:02,160
Speaker 1: of not just the umulation of like physical goods, but

1160
01:03:02,240 --> 01:03:05,160
Speaker 1: the domination of the bodies of people who are are

1161
01:03:05,440 --> 01:03:07,960
Speaker 1: sort of of a lower racial cast than you or whatever,

1162
01:03:08,040 --> 01:03:10,160
Speaker 1: like all of this stuff that were brought into whiteness

1163
01:03:10,560 --> 01:03:12,720
Speaker 1: in a real way, and that's a huge part of

1164
01:03:12,720 --> 01:03:17,520
Speaker 1: what led to the massacres. I think that's fascinating. I think.

1165
01:03:17,720 --> 01:03:20,960
Speaker 1: I mean, there's this super good documentary on Netflix right

1166
01:03:20,960 --> 01:03:24,360
Speaker 1: now which sort of attempts and I say attempts because

1167
01:03:24,360 --> 01:03:27,360
Speaker 1: it's coming from a tech company that like produces the

1168
01:03:27,400 --> 01:03:30,880
Speaker 1: same standards of being as the tech companies. The documentary

1169
01:03:30,960 --> 01:03:35,120
Speaker 1: is meant to like critique, but it's the idea essentially

1170
01:03:35,160 --> 01:03:40,880
Speaker 1: is that like tech companies have designed themselves based off

1171
01:03:41,080 --> 01:03:46,280
Speaker 1: of your existence. Essentially, you become the product or your

1172
01:03:46,320 --> 01:03:51,720
Speaker 1: ability to change and adhere to a um corporations need

1173
01:03:51,760 --> 01:03:55,760
Speaker 1: to use your dollars like held on, I can explain

1174
01:03:55,800 --> 01:03:57,960
Speaker 1: this better, give me a second. It's the idea that

1175
01:03:58,000 --> 01:04:00,919
Speaker 1: you were the product, right, Like, because the Internet is free,

1176
01:04:01,240 --> 01:04:03,440
Speaker 1: someone has to pay in order to keep these tech

1177
01:04:03,440 --> 01:04:05,800
Speaker 1: companies running, and so they run on ad revenue and

1178
01:04:05,880 --> 01:04:07,600
Speaker 1: adds the goal of an AD is to get you

1179
01:04:07,600 --> 01:04:09,360
Speaker 1: to change your behavior so you use the product. The

1180
01:04:09,400 --> 01:04:12,960
Speaker 1: ad is advertising. And what a lot of the documentary

1181
01:04:13,000 --> 01:04:14,920
Speaker 1: has done just with interviews of people who created It's

1182
01:04:14,920 --> 01:04:17,000
Speaker 1: like the guy who created the endless scroll on Twitter

1183
01:04:17,200 --> 01:04:21,480
Speaker 1: is one of the interviewees, and there's like at one

1184
01:04:21,520 --> 01:04:25,040
Speaker 1: point the producers ask all these interviewees like do you

1185
01:04:25,120 --> 01:04:27,560
Speaker 1: let your children use social media? And all of them

1186
01:04:27,560 --> 01:04:30,600
Speaker 1: across the border like, well, no, because I can't stop

1187
01:04:30,680 --> 01:04:34,680
Speaker 1: myself from using this tool I created because it's based

1188
01:04:34,680 --> 01:04:37,680
Speaker 1: off of human behavior, and human behavior cannot change as

1189
01:04:37,720 --> 01:04:41,400
Speaker 1: fast as computer technology changes technology a crazy rate. It's

1190
01:04:41,440 --> 01:04:44,840
Speaker 1: like exponentially faster than any other thing that exists. It's

1191
01:04:44,920 --> 01:04:47,560
Speaker 1: just constantly changing, so it can learn us faster than

1192
01:04:47,600 --> 01:04:50,080
Speaker 1: we can learn and adapt to it. And I think

1193
01:04:50,320 --> 01:04:53,160
Speaker 1: probably the same thing is that play here, this idea

1194
01:04:53,240 --> 01:04:57,240
Speaker 1: of once you understand humans and their desires, and you

1195
01:04:57,280 --> 01:05:01,840
Speaker 1: find small ways to manipulate that. It's most people can't

1196
01:05:01,840 --> 01:05:06,120
Speaker 1: help but fall in line because that's just their human Like, Yeah,

1197
01:05:06,200 --> 01:05:08,640
Speaker 1: we're supposed to be out picking fucking berries. And if

1198
01:05:08,680 --> 01:05:13,200
Speaker 1: you can replicate that berry picking thing like you can,

1199
01:05:13,280 --> 01:05:15,560
Speaker 1: you can make us do anything, because we really want

1200
01:05:15,560 --> 01:05:19,640
Speaker 1: them motherfucking berries. Um. It's just that you know now

1201
01:05:20,040 --> 01:05:25,080
Speaker 1: now the berries are ford trucks and um prostitutes. Uh,

1202
01:05:25,080 --> 01:05:28,520
Speaker 1: but you know it's about accumulation, right, It's this this

1203
01:05:28,640 --> 01:05:32,000
Speaker 1: thing in our animal brains that we feel compelled to

1204
01:05:32,040 --> 01:05:36,000
Speaker 1: do for reasons that are we're at one point necessary

1205
01:05:36,280 --> 01:05:38,919
Speaker 1: and aren't anymore. But if you can, if you can

1206
01:05:38,960 --> 01:05:42,440
Speaker 1: trick that part of the brain, um, we'll keep looking

1207
01:05:42,440 --> 01:05:44,640
Speaker 1: for those got damn berries. Um. I don't know, I

1208
01:05:44,680 --> 01:05:48,080
Speaker 1: don't know how much that ties into this, but yeah,

1209
01:05:48,080 --> 01:05:50,320
Speaker 1: we'll tire into it. Because you have all the entire

1210
01:05:50,320 --> 01:05:52,520
Speaker 1: group of people who are willing to do, like commit

1211
01:05:52,600 --> 01:05:56,800
Speaker 1: human atrocities but for like the like, and and then

1212
01:05:56,920 --> 01:06:00,800
Speaker 1: the question becomes like obviously, like people have free will,

1213
01:06:00,840 --> 01:06:02,800
Speaker 1: and I don't want to say like, oh, America came

1214
01:06:02,840 --> 01:06:04,760
Speaker 1: in and change these people, and you know they were

1215
01:06:04,800 --> 01:06:07,640
Speaker 1: something unable to do anything about it. That's not you know,

1216
01:06:08,000 --> 01:06:11,720
Speaker 1: the intention of the conversation, but it's like how how

1217
01:06:11,960 --> 01:06:13,680
Speaker 1: I guess I'm always trying to put myself in a

1218
01:06:13,760 --> 01:06:16,040
Speaker 1: situation of like how would I react to a similar

1219
01:06:16,040 --> 01:06:19,080
Speaker 1: set of circumstances and the ease with which I could

1220
01:06:19,120 --> 01:06:23,919
Speaker 1: picture myself loved ones falling into these headspaces of like

1221
01:06:24,120 --> 01:06:26,000
Speaker 1: how dare these people keep me from the comfort I've

1222
01:06:26,000 --> 01:06:28,720
Speaker 1: experienced here? And I don't want to go backwards that

1223
01:06:28,920 --> 01:06:31,800
Speaker 1: that fear constantly going backwards. It just it seems so easy,

1224
01:06:31,920 --> 01:06:37,360
Speaker 1: so just far too easy to trip into that land. Yeah. Yeah,

1225
01:06:37,760 --> 01:06:40,840
Speaker 1: So this guy we've been talking about, Juan Ricardo UM

1226
01:06:40,920 --> 01:06:43,280
Speaker 1: later in his career, you know, he was initially trained

1227
01:06:43,320 --> 01:06:44,880
Speaker 1: by soldiers, had been trained at the s o A,

1228
01:06:44,960 --> 01:06:48,160
Speaker 1: but eventually he had the fortune to travel to Columbus

1229
01:06:48,160 --> 01:06:51,000
Speaker 1: and attend the School of the America's UM and in

1230
01:06:51,080 --> 01:06:54,280
Speaker 1: this next passage he recalls kind of the political education

1231
01:06:54,360 --> 01:06:57,640
Speaker 1: that he received when he got there. The sergeant said

1232
01:06:57,640 --> 01:06:59,880
Speaker 1: that all the communists in Latin America were trained in

1233
01:07:00,000 --> 01:07:02,080
Speaker 1: Cuba and that they hated their countries. Those of us

1234
01:07:02,080 --> 01:07:03,760
Speaker 1: who were at Fort Benning were going to become the

1235
01:07:03,840 --> 01:07:07,080
Speaker 1: leaders of our countries. We all had to unite against communism.

1236
01:07:07,120 --> 01:07:09,960
Speaker 1: I questioned the simplicity of all this. I was very imprudent.

1237
01:07:10,000 --> 01:07:12,760
Speaker 1: The sergeants just repeated what they learned from their own instructors.

1238
01:07:12,920 --> 01:07:14,920
Speaker 1: When I asked him to describe the course in more detail,

1239
01:07:15,000 --> 01:07:17,920
Speaker 1: this is Leslie gil writing. He continued, For example, there

1240
01:07:17,960 --> 01:07:20,200
Speaker 1: was a section of the course called civic action. It

1241
01:07:20,280 --> 01:07:22,560
Speaker 1: was one of the moments when the anti communist doctrine

1242
01:07:22,560 --> 01:07:24,640
Speaker 1: really came out. They taught you that when you enter

1243
01:07:24,640 --> 01:07:26,760
Speaker 1: a village and make contact with the population, you have

1244
01:07:26,840 --> 01:07:29,800
Speaker 1: to make sure there are no communists. They never said

1245
01:07:29,880 --> 01:07:32,360
Speaker 1: you never trust anybody. You never enter a home and

1246
01:07:32,400 --> 01:07:34,520
Speaker 1: accept a plate of food because a communist might have

1247
01:07:34,520 --> 01:07:36,800
Speaker 1: poisoned it. These people are not going to be free

1248
01:07:36,800 --> 01:07:39,560
Speaker 1: because of their Marxist indoctrination. I had an argument with

1249
01:07:39,600 --> 01:07:42,120
Speaker 1: one of the sergeants. I asked him to explain Marxist doctrine,

1250
01:07:42,160 --> 01:07:44,400
Speaker 1: but he couldn't, so I explained it to him. It

1251
01:07:44,480 --> 01:07:46,280
Speaker 1: was great. I had already taken a year of social

1252
01:07:46,280 --> 01:07:49,280
Speaker 1: science classes. As the university in Lapaz. The sergeants no

1253
01:07:49,400 --> 01:07:52,600
Speaker 1: only formulas. The objective is to homogenize the education of

1254
01:07:52,640 --> 01:07:55,560
Speaker 1: the school of the America's students. I mean, it's the

1255
01:07:55,600 --> 01:07:57,440
Speaker 1: same thing going on in a lot of ways in

1256
01:07:57,480 --> 01:07:59,360
Speaker 1: the heads of some of these people. Fucking setting up

1257
01:07:59,440 --> 01:08:01,920
Speaker 1: roadblocks near where I lived because they're scared of Antifa

1258
01:08:02,000 --> 01:08:05,400
Speaker 1: lighting forest fires. It's because they believe BLM. You know,

1259
01:08:05,400 --> 01:08:07,120
Speaker 1: they heard they heard someone talking about the Bureau of

1260
01:08:07,200 --> 01:08:09,440
Speaker 1: Land Management on a radio and they believe that BLM

1261
01:08:09,480 --> 01:08:12,640
Speaker 1: is a Marxist organization. And what who Marxists seek the

1262
01:08:12,720 --> 01:08:16,679
Speaker 1: destruction of their own countries? Because that's what these people,

1263
01:08:16,800 --> 01:08:20,120
Speaker 1: that's that's the propaganda. It's not it hasn't changed. It's

1264
01:08:20,200 --> 01:08:23,000
Speaker 1: just distributed differently. Like you had to have once upon

1265
01:08:23,040 --> 01:08:26,960
Speaker 1: a time. You needed this school to inculcate people, you know,

1266
01:08:27,000 --> 01:08:28,719
Speaker 1: and you had to do it in a very deliberate way.

1267
01:08:28,960 --> 01:08:31,679
Speaker 1: Now they get taught on Facebook and Twitter and it

1268
01:08:31,600 --> 01:08:35,400
Speaker 1: it it will lead to the same thing. It's like

1269
01:08:35,520 --> 01:08:38,040
Speaker 1: led to the same thing. I think, Yeah, it's starting to.

1270
01:08:38,520 --> 01:08:40,320
Speaker 1: It's starting to. You have a lot of Americans who

1271
01:08:40,360 --> 01:08:42,760
Speaker 1: are willing to murder large groups of other people because

1272
01:08:42,760 --> 01:08:45,479
Speaker 1: they vaguely think that they're Marxists. I mean, it was

1273
01:08:45,479 --> 01:08:47,280
Speaker 1: it two years ago. We had that kid walk right

1274
01:08:47,280 --> 01:08:50,080
Speaker 1: into a church and just assassinate people. He just prayed with,

1275
01:08:50,160 --> 01:08:51,680
Speaker 1: I mean it's oh no, that was years. That was

1276
01:08:52,600 --> 01:08:57,839
Speaker 1: Dylan Ruth. Yeah, time is a weird time, just not Yeah.

1277
01:08:58,520 --> 01:09:02,080
Speaker 1: It feels so yeah. Hearing all this, you won't be

1278
01:09:02,080 --> 01:09:05,080
Speaker 1: surprised that between nineteen seventy eight, UH in nineteen eighty,

1279
01:09:05,120 --> 01:09:08,240
Speaker 1: Bolivia held two general elections and went through five presidents,

1280
01:09:08,479 --> 01:09:11,280
Speaker 1: none of whom won an electoral victory. They endured four

1281
01:09:11,320 --> 01:09:14,760
Speaker 1: military coups UH, three of which succeeded, and it looks

1282
01:09:14,760 --> 01:09:16,639
Speaker 1: as if the nation is actually going through another one

1283
01:09:16,800 --> 01:09:19,439
Speaker 1: right now, with the overthrow of left wing president Evo

1284
01:09:19,479 --> 01:09:22,559
Speaker 1: Morales by the Bolivian military. It will not surprise you

1285
01:09:22,600 --> 01:09:25,280
Speaker 1: to know that a lot of the officers responsible for

1286
01:09:25,360 --> 01:09:27,920
Speaker 1: the the coup in Bolivia that happened started happening late

1287
01:09:28,040 --> 01:09:31,040
Speaker 1: last year is still kind of going on UM our

1288
01:09:31,200 --> 01:09:35,000
Speaker 1: School of the America's graduates. Now. By the later nineteen eighties,

1289
01:09:35,040 --> 01:09:36,880
Speaker 1: the Department of Defense was beginning to receive a lot

1290
01:09:36,960 --> 01:09:39,320
Speaker 1: of complaints about all the horrible crimes committed by s

1291
01:09:39,360 --> 01:09:43,479
Speaker 1: A graduates. In nineteen Yeah, in nineteen eighty nine, they

1292
01:09:43,479 --> 01:09:46,880
Speaker 1: started mandating that all school instructors take sixteen whole hours

1293
01:09:46,880 --> 01:09:50,759
Speaker 1: of human rights training UM, which didn't solve the problem.

1294
01:09:50,800 --> 01:09:54,559
Speaker 1: Oddly enough, with the Cold War ended, the Pentagon rather

1295
01:09:54,600 --> 01:09:57,759
Speaker 1: seamlessly switched from funding anti communist death squads to funding

1296
01:09:57,760 --> 01:10:01,400
Speaker 1: anti narcotics efforts in places like Lumbia. The people s

1297
01:10:01,439 --> 01:10:03,880
Speaker 1: o A graduates murdered remained the same. They were still

1298
01:10:03,920 --> 01:10:08,040
Speaker 1: mostly left wing activists, indigenous people, you know, Marxist guerrillas,

1299
01:10:08,080 --> 01:10:11,080
Speaker 1: but like a lot of just like indigenous people, um

1300
01:10:11,080 --> 01:10:14,720
Speaker 1: more innocent local people who just might be sympathetic with

1301
01:10:14,760 --> 01:10:17,400
Speaker 1: a group of guerillas who were fighting the soldiers who

1302
01:10:17,439 --> 01:10:19,600
Speaker 1: kept murdering their family members, anybody else. That's who these

1303
01:10:19,840 --> 01:10:22,920
Speaker 1: groups were always killing. But the way they the victims

1304
01:10:22,920 --> 01:10:25,800
Speaker 1: were referred to change now. They weren't communists, they were

1305
01:10:25,880 --> 01:10:29,040
Speaker 1: narco guerrillas. And after Narco guerrillas, when the War on

1306
01:10:29,120 --> 01:10:33,400
Speaker 1: Terror started off, the victims started being called terrorists. Now.

1307
01:10:34,040 --> 01:10:36,559
Speaker 1: In response to a sizeable protest movement based near Fort

1308
01:10:36,600 --> 01:10:39,080
Speaker 1: Benning in two thousand, President Clinton made a big show

1309
01:10:39,120 --> 01:10:41,679
Speaker 1: of closing the School of the America's. It was reopened

1310
01:10:41,680 --> 01:10:44,959
Speaker 1: almost immediately under a new name, the Western Hemisphere Institute

1311
01:10:44,960 --> 01:10:50,519
Speaker 1: for Security Cooperation wine SEC. Now, Yeah, like when we

1312
01:10:50,600 --> 01:10:54,120
Speaker 1: ran out of America's. Yeah, it's different now, guys, we

1313
01:10:54,240 --> 01:10:59,240
Speaker 1: fixed it. They did rejigger. Their name is wine Sex.

1314
01:10:59,720 --> 01:11:05,880
Speaker 1: That's the acronym Wine. Second, I'm gonna call him Seck. Yeah.

1315
01:11:06,040 --> 01:11:08,720
Speaker 1: So they did have their curriculum rejiggered a bit to

1316
01:11:09,000 --> 01:11:12,080
Speaker 1: um appease the bleeding heart Democrats who were angry at

1317
01:11:12,080 --> 01:11:14,000
Speaker 1: all the murder um. There were new courses added in

1318
01:11:14,080 --> 01:11:16,240
Speaker 1: d mining and like the removal of minds, and like

1319
01:11:16,320 --> 01:11:19,400
Speaker 1: in human rights. Uh. And leslie Gill notes that like

1320
01:11:19,479 --> 01:11:22,080
Speaker 1: these were like the least attended courses at the school

1321
01:11:22,560 --> 01:11:25,840
Speaker 1: um and she was able to visit at this point

1322
01:11:25,920 --> 01:11:28,559
Speaker 1: once it got changed into Wine sec in the early aughts.

1323
01:11:28,680 --> 01:11:30,720
Speaker 1: Is part of this like full court pr press by

1324
01:11:30,720 --> 01:11:32,720
Speaker 1: the Pentagon to like deal with the fact that they

1325
01:11:32,760 --> 01:11:35,439
Speaker 1: had gotten a bad reputation, so they invited in a

1326
01:11:35,479 --> 01:11:37,800
Speaker 1: bunch of activists who campaign to shut down the School

1327
01:11:37,800 --> 01:11:39,600
Speaker 1: of the America's in order to like show them the

1328
01:11:39,640 --> 01:11:41,599
Speaker 1: new courses and like make the case that things had

1329
01:11:41,680 --> 01:11:43,600
Speaker 1: changed for the better. They invited in journalists, and of

1330
01:11:43,600 --> 01:11:46,479
Speaker 1: course they invited in leslie Gill. Now, as part of

1331
01:11:46,479 --> 01:11:48,360
Speaker 1: this pr blitz, Leslie got to meet with the head

1332
01:11:48,360 --> 01:11:51,120
Speaker 1: of the school, a general named Glenn Whitener. There's an

1333
01:11:51,120 --> 01:11:54,200
Speaker 1: American general. In one passage, she attempts to have him

1334
01:11:54,200 --> 01:11:56,960
Speaker 1: speak on the subject of the numerous massacres in war

1335
01:11:57,040 --> 01:12:00,240
Speaker 1: crimes committed by School of America's graduates. And I'm going

1336
01:12:00,320 --> 01:12:03,160
Speaker 1: to read this passage because his responses will sound very

1337
01:12:03,240 --> 01:12:06,479
Speaker 1: similar to anyone who's listened to a police press conference lately.

1338
01:12:08,960 --> 01:12:12,519
Speaker 1: Acknowledging that a few bad apples from Latin America had

1339
01:12:12,520 --> 01:12:15,200
Speaker 1: attended the School of the America's, Whitener insists that these

1340
01:12:15,240 --> 01:12:18,479
Speaker 1: individuals were never taught torture techniques and that their crimes

1341
01:12:18,520 --> 01:12:22,680
Speaker 1: represented the unconscionable acts of a few rogue actors, not

1342
01:12:22,800 --> 01:12:25,120
Speaker 1: the teachings of the s o A or the policies

1343
01:12:25,120 --> 01:12:28,800
Speaker 1: of terrorist states. He maintained that some graduates who stood

1344
01:12:28,840 --> 01:12:31,920
Speaker 1: accused of human rights violations had only taken short courses

1345
01:12:31,920 --> 01:12:34,880
Speaker 1: on benign topics such as auto maintenance, and had trained

1346
01:12:34,920 --> 01:12:37,519
Speaker 1: at the school years before their alleged crimes took place.

1347
01:12:37,800 --> 01:12:40,599
Speaker 1: It was unconscionable. He argued for critics to point fingers

1348
01:12:40,600 --> 01:12:42,720
Speaker 1: at the school and claimed that it caused these men

1349
01:12:42,800 --> 01:12:45,560
Speaker 1: to commit crimes. In a rationalization of the School of

1350
01:12:45,600 --> 01:12:48,280
Speaker 1: the America's that I would hear from others. Whitener pointed

1351
01:12:48,280 --> 01:12:50,720
Speaker 1: out that the UNI bomber went to Harvard. Does that mean,

1352
01:12:50,760 --> 01:12:53,559
Speaker 1: he asked rhetorically, that Harvard caused him to kill people?

1353
01:12:53,840 --> 01:12:56,519
Speaker 1: Does that mean that Harvard should be shut down? Whitener

1354
01:12:56,520 --> 01:12:58,400
Speaker 1: and others at the s o A thus did not

1355
01:12:58,520 --> 01:13:01,479
Speaker 1: deny the reality of human rights violations, but his argument

1356
01:13:01,520 --> 01:13:06,439
Speaker 1: treated a prominent university and a military school as comparable institutions. Harvard, however,

1357
01:13:06,720 --> 01:13:10,559
Speaker 1: did not teach combat skills to Latin American soldiers. Moreover,

1358
01:13:10,680 --> 01:13:13,759
Speaker 1: the United States government had used its military apparatus, including

1359
01:13:13,800 --> 01:13:16,240
Speaker 1: the s o A, to support Latin American armed forces

1360
01:13:16,240 --> 01:13:18,680
Speaker 1: with bad human rights records for decades. Yet if one

1361
01:13:18,680 --> 01:13:22,120
Speaker 1: objected to his confused logic, Widener dismissed the critique as

1362
01:13:22,160 --> 01:13:27,240
Speaker 1: anti military and thus unacceptable. Hey, can't be anti police.

1363
01:13:27,360 --> 01:13:31,040
Speaker 1: They protect you even if they don't. That's what they're doing.

1364
01:13:31,479 --> 01:13:33,640
Speaker 1: A lot going on here. That including the fact that

1365
01:13:33,680 --> 01:13:35,200
Speaker 1: he's like, well what about you know, UNI mom and

1366
01:13:35,240 --> 01:13:37,959
Speaker 1: went to Harvard? Why aren't people lingered hot and asshole?

1367
01:13:38,520 --> 01:13:43,240
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, sorry, go ahead, no, No, I

1368
01:13:43,680 --> 01:13:46,880
Speaker 1: like imagine being like, hey, we've found like eleven people

1369
01:13:46,880 --> 01:13:51,400
Speaker 1: have committed atrocities can't be our problem. The only like

1370
01:13:51,520 --> 01:13:54,080
Speaker 1: seeing response to me is to be like, let me

1371
01:13:54,160 --> 01:13:57,160
Speaker 1: investigate that, because that seems wildly out of step with

1372
01:13:57,200 --> 01:14:00,200
Speaker 1: what I thought my institution was trying to do. To

1373
01:14:00,320 --> 01:14:02,840
Speaker 1: say like, like, serial colors come from all over the place,

1374
01:14:02,920 --> 01:14:07,080
Speaker 1: but no other schools produced eleven that become dictators. Get

1375
01:14:07,080 --> 01:14:10,000
Speaker 1: your head out of your ass, and thousands of perpetrates.

1376
01:14:10,080 --> 01:14:12,439
Speaker 1: Thousands of perpetrators tied to the School of the Americas.

1377
01:14:12,479 --> 01:14:14,960
Speaker 1: Thousands of individual people who committed acts of murder in

1378
01:14:15,000 --> 01:14:16,919
Speaker 1: genocide can be tied to the School of the Americas.

1379
01:14:17,120 --> 01:14:20,719
Speaker 1: If Harvard, if a thousand Harvard graduates in the course

1380
01:14:20,760 --> 01:14:23,600
Speaker 1: of like twenty years had started male bombing campaigns and

1381
01:14:23,680 --> 01:14:26,519
Speaker 1: be like, there might be something wrong with Harvard's going

1382
01:14:27,240 --> 01:14:32,160
Speaker 1: we should look into Harvard. Um. Yeah, Like everyone would

1383
01:14:32,160 --> 01:14:34,080
Speaker 1: be saying that if there was this one school that

1384
01:14:34,240 --> 01:14:36,519
Speaker 1: kept making unibombers, we would all be like, what the

1385
01:14:36,560 --> 01:14:39,240
Speaker 1: funk is going on at Harvard? Somebody should look into

1386
01:14:39,240 --> 01:14:42,759
Speaker 1: this ship. Maybe we shouldn't have Harvard anymore. It seems

1387
01:14:42,800 --> 01:14:46,320
Speaker 1: like all it does is make unibombers. There's also no institution,

1388
01:14:46,360 --> 01:14:50,960
Speaker 1: particularly one that carries guns and oftentimes produces policies for

1389
01:14:51,120 --> 01:14:56,679
Speaker 1: major like countries, networks, individuals. Uh, that should be above

1390
01:14:56,760 --> 01:14:59,280
Speaker 1: scrutiny and the idea to say like, oh, that's anti

1391
01:14:59,360 --> 01:15:03,960
Speaker 1: military and just the most to me, that's that's the first, like,

1392
01:15:04,040 --> 01:15:07,759
Speaker 1: that's the loudest signal to me that we're in cult territory.

1393
01:15:07,760 --> 01:15:10,680
Speaker 1: In the same way that I firmly believe that the

1394
01:15:10,720 --> 01:15:13,200
Speaker 1: police are a form of occult, that these people have

1395
01:15:13,479 --> 01:15:16,800
Speaker 1: just bought into their uniform and this idea that they

1396
01:15:16,840 --> 01:15:19,960
Speaker 1: are a military for the country, which was not at

1397
01:15:19,960 --> 01:15:24,960
Speaker 1: all your intended purpose. I can't, I cannot yep. I

1398
01:15:25,040 --> 01:15:28,960
Speaker 1: hate it here. It's not great here. Uh, it's not

1399
01:15:29,000 --> 01:15:32,240
Speaker 1: great here. I don't love it. Um. You know what

1400
01:15:32,320 --> 01:15:38,400
Speaker 1: I do love, though, Joel, Raytheon. You know, one of

1401
01:15:38,400 --> 01:15:41,920
Speaker 1: the few bright spots in this dark world of imperialism

1402
01:15:41,920 --> 01:15:45,960
Speaker 1: and murder are the wonderful products of the Raytheon Corporation. Joel,

1403
01:15:46,360 --> 01:15:49,840
Speaker 1: have you ever thought I want to fire missiles via

1404
01:15:50,000 --> 01:15:54,840
Speaker 1: robot at groups of indistinct men in vehicles, but I

1405
01:15:54,920 --> 01:15:58,000
Speaker 1: don't want to accidentally blow up as many school buses.

1406
01:15:58,760 --> 01:16:02,960
Speaker 1: Is that a thought you've had? Uh? Not yet, Robert, Well,

1407
01:16:03,000 --> 01:16:07,080
Speaker 1: if you want to wage a brutal counterinsurgency campaign and

1408
01:16:07,200 --> 01:16:10,120
Speaker 1: blow up slightly few school buses. After blowing up quite

1409
01:16:10,120 --> 01:16:12,720
Speaker 1: a few school buses, you need the new r X

1410
01:16:12,720 --> 01:16:14,840
Speaker 1: for a knife missile from rape. Yes, Sophie, you do

1411
01:16:15,000 --> 01:16:17,080
Speaker 1: know that you don't need to do another advert. I

1412
01:16:17,160 --> 01:16:19,439
Speaker 1: was gonna let you finish, but because you were doing

1413
01:16:19,520 --> 01:16:22,880
Speaker 1: so well and you do, I'm just I this is

1414
01:16:22,960 --> 01:16:28,439
Speaker 1: we're beyond money. So the my enthusiasm for Raytheon's fine

1415
01:16:28,479 --> 01:16:30,760
Speaker 1: product line is not is not a is not a

1416
01:16:30,800 --> 01:16:36,160
Speaker 1: shallow capitalist, right, this is this is your love. Yeah,

1417
01:16:36,280 --> 01:16:40,240
Speaker 1: and the r X four is you know, like I said,

1418
01:16:40,240 --> 01:16:44,080
Speaker 1: there's no better way to murder the specific terrorists you

1419
01:16:44,120 --> 01:16:47,840
Speaker 1: want to murder without blowing up school buses as the

1420
01:16:48,000 --> 01:16:50,240
Speaker 1: r X four. If you're feeling like I've blown up

1421
01:16:50,240 --> 01:16:53,439
Speaker 1: too many school buses in Yemen, the r X four

1422
01:16:53,520 --> 01:16:57,760
Speaker 1: is the answer for you and for Yemen. How much

1423
01:16:57,840 --> 01:16:59,400
Speaker 1: is the r X four going to run me, Robert?

1424
01:17:00,360 --> 01:17:03,639
Speaker 1: Just enough to fund a couple of schools? Okay, that's

1425
01:17:03,720 --> 01:17:06,880
Speaker 1: reasonably we don't need any Yeah those schools that much?

1426
01:17:06,920 --> 01:17:09,759
Speaker 1: We gotta we gotta play anyway. Nobody needs schools. In fact,

1427
01:17:09,880 --> 01:17:13,599
Speaker 1: Target number two Yeah, yeah, shoots some shoots some nice

1428
01:17:13,760 --> 01:17:17,960
Speaker 1: knife missiles at the schools whatever fuck it? Raytheon anyway, Joel,

1429
01:17:18,439 --> 01:17:20,439
Speaker 1: you wanna how are you feeling at the end of

1430
01:17:20,479 --> 01:17:24,599
Speaker 1: all this? Um? At the end of this Uh informed, Robert.

1431
01:17:24,720 --> 01:17:29,960
Speaker 1: I feel informed and and better able to hopefully again

1432
01:17:30,120 --> 01:17:34,919
Speaker 1: just identify the patterns that we're seeing and be vocal

1433
01:17:35,000 --> 01:17:39,879
Speaker 1: in my opposition of them. It is um so upsetting

1434
01:17:40,040 --> 01:17:43,400
Speaker 1: to have lived in be a current member and party

1435
01:17:43,439 --> 01:17:48,000
Speaker 1: of a country that has committed such a chastity's um.

1436
01:17:48,040 --> 01:17:49,800
Speaker 1: I don't want these things to happen in the name

1437
01:17:49,800 --> 01:17:53,040
Speaker 1: of my country anymore. I really like so many aspects

1438
01:17:53,040 --> 01:17:57,120
Speaker 1: of being an American, so many Americans do I love. Uh,

1439
01:17:57,360 --> 01:18:02,200
Speaker 1: this cannot continue? Yeah, Well, today has been a fun episode.

1440
01:18:02,520 --> 01:18:05,120
Speaker 1: We all enjoyed things, we learned a lot. I think

1441
01:18:05,280 --> 01:18:10,880
Speaker 1: we're all bummed out now. So go do some push ups. Uh.

1442
01:18:11,040 --> 01:18:15,439
Speaker 1: Go scout out the roads around your house. Uh, in

1443
01:18:15,560 --> 01:18:18,519
Speaker 1: order to keep an eye on the right wing militias

1444
01:18:18,600 --> 01:18:20,760
Speaker 1: that that might try to set up death squads in

1445
01:18:20,800 --> 01:18:26,240
Speaker 1: your area. And more than anything, I don't know. I

1446
01:18:26,320 --> 01:18:29,040
Speaker 1: have nothing for you other than what I've given you. Uh,

1447
01:18:29,680 --> 01:18:35,439
Speaker 1: go go go make this not happen again. Yes, do

1448
01:18:35,479 --> 01:18:38,880
Speaker 1: you have any any plugs. No I have. I've never

1449
01:18:38,920 --> 01:18:42,240
Speaker 1: been on the internet before. I actually don't understand what's

1450
01:18:42,280 --> 01:18:44,439
Speaker 1: happening to me right now. I was woken up and

1451
01:18:44,560 --> 01:18:48,040
Speaker 1: dragged into a darkened room by masked men and told

1452
01:18:48,080 --> 01:18:50,920
Speaker 1: to read this script. So that was actually that was

1453
01:18:50,920 --> 01:18:55,000
Speaker 1: actually me and Anderson and uh, somehow with a funny

1454
01:18:55,200 --> 01:18:58,759
Speaker 1: voice changer, Well, I have nothing to plug that makes

1455
01:18:58,840 --> 01:19:04,640
Speaker 1: dog barks sound like scary men. Mm hmm, Well he

1456
01:19:04,680 --> 01:19:07,080
Speaker 1: means he sat. I right, okay on Twitter? And where

1457
01:19:07,080 --> 01:19:08,640
Speaker 1: I just a spot on Twitter and Instagram and we

1458
01:19:08,680 --> 01:19:12,760
Speaker 1: have a Teo public store, And well, did you do

1459
01:19:12,880 --> 01:19:16,320
Speaker 1: your plugs? I don't remember, I've blocked out. I didn't.

1460
01:19:17,160 --> 01:19:20,960
Speaker 1: I don't have anything to plug. But I do want

1461
01:19:21,000 --> 01:19:23,639
Speaker 1: to commend you, Robert, for doing some of the best

1462
01:19:23,680 --> 01:19:26,960
Speaker 1: work I have that's personally impacted my life. Like I

1463
01:19:27,200 --> 01:19:29,559
Speaker 1: don't know on a large scale what's happening with anything.

1464
01:19:29,680 --> 01:19:33,040
Speaker 1: It's like I said, chaos, but I mean it very

1465
01:19:33,120 --> 01:19:36,200
Speaker 1: legitimately when I say you've given me a space to

1466
01:19:36,240 --> 01:19:39,120
Speaker 1: be more educated and more informed. I am a product

1467
01:19:39,600 --> 01:19:41,680
Speaker 1: of the American school system and I need to be

1468
01:19:41,720 --> 01:19:57,040
Speaker 1: more informed. So yeah, thank you. Well, yeah, all right,

1469
01:19:57,080 --> 01:19:58,000
Speaker 1: we got it. Thank you,