WEBVTT - Part Two: The Deadliest School in History 0:00:02.759 --> 0:00:11.200 What burning down my entire West Coast. I'm Robert Evans. 0:00:11.240 --> 0:00:15.720 This is Behind the Bastards, the only podcast recorded in 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:19.920 the midst of a haze of disaster smoke, uh and 0:00:20.239 --> 0:00:25.040 human misery. Um, talking about something that also generated a 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:28.400 lot of horrible smoke and human misery, The School of 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:31.280 the Americas. This is part two of our special series 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:36.879 on the US just just fucking around in Latin America 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:39.840 getting a lot of people killed. And my guest as 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:44.440 all well as within part one is Joel Monique. Joel, 0:00:44.680 --> 0:00:50.919 you are a podcast producer. Uh and uh you are 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:58.040 also the Are you the president? I'm not of of myself. Yes, okay, 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:00.680 you're there, but not of the United States? No, not, 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:06.199 thank god? No, okay, okay, I would. This is good 0:01:06.200 --> 0:01:08.720 to know because I was going to actually be very 0:01:08.760 --> 0:01:12.440 angry at you about the wildfire response, but apparently you 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:16.080 had nothing to do with that. Um, so I guess, I'll, 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:19.680 I guess, I guess we're cool. Um. Sorry, I forgot 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:22.240 who the president was briefly, and since you were on 0:01:22.280 --> 0:01:29.080 my computer culture critic, that's a kind of president in 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:33.759 a way, aren't we all the president of critiquing culture? Yes, 0:01:34.160 --> 0:01:38.959 wasn't that what Gamergate was about basically was it I 0:01:39.000 --> 0:01:45.560 don't know about a lot of things. So which happened? Yeah, okay, 0:01:46.640 --> 0:01:50.400 uh so Joel, how are you? We're doing this normally 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:52.640 we do both parts of a two part episode in 0:01:52.680 --> 0:01:55.800 the same day. We took a little breather, took a 0:01:55.800 --> 0:01:59.880 little breather, and then the entire country caught on fire. Yes, 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:03.120 so I don't know, how are you? How are you 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:07.920 holding up? I'm not yet on fire and counting my 0:02:07.960 --> 0:02:13.160 blessings and oh god, I'm actually really glad we took 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:17.000 I'm trying to encourage more people to like allow themselves 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:18.880 space to breathe in a very serious way, Like I 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:20.800 feel like before this we had all of this culture 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:25.160 surrounding like self care and also but like, guys, seriously, 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:27.000 there was ever a time to like take a nap 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:30.000 every once in a while and to like say no, 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:32.680 you can't do that. Thing, which is something I'm really 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:35.919 trying to work on now is absolutely it's so chaotic. 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:38.160 This is easily the most chaos most of us have 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:42.000 ever experienced in our lives. Ever. Um, you can you 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:44.520 can rest at times now? All the time you have 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:46.519 we have, say vigilant there's a lot to take care of, 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:49.959 but my God, please like just allow yourself in space. 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:54.560 So with that, I am not crying today yet, so 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:59.560 I feel good to keep going, keep learning, hopefully make 0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:02.320 some pause to change in the near future. Well that's 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:06.080 a good way to look at things. Um, let's let's 0:03:06.080 --> 0:03:10.280 pivot directly from that to talking about unbelievable war crimes 0:03:10.440 --> 0:03:14.720 committed on behalf of us interests in parts of the 0:03:14.760 --> 0:03:17.639 world that are very close to our country and and 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:22.960 we're crying again. Yeah, let's let's do it behind the 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:26.440 bastards does best and let everybody know that the world's 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:31.079 more funcked up than they thought it was. It is 0:03:31.160 --> 0:03:33.280 kind of comforting, you know. I think a lot of 0:03:33.280 --> 0:03:35.240 people who I think there are a lot of people 0:03:35.280 --> 0:03:39.680 who have lived pretty comfortable existences because we've we've we've 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:41.920 all sort of come up and our had our childhoods 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:45.080 in this period of relative calm that's unusual in human 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:51.320 history and also was very geographically isolated. The calm was localized, right, Um, 0:03:51.360 --> 0:03:53.880 And hearing stories like this makes you understand that like 0:03:54.000 --> 0:03:58.280 this chaos and like uncertainty and fear that we're feeling 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:01.920 this like this, like gnawing terror that like death squads 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:04.120 might start coming in the night, that like the state 0:04:04.200 --> 0:04:06.680 might send security forces out to murder you. This like 0:04:06.760 --> 0:04:10.920 thing that's new to most Americans. Uh is what we've 0:04:10.920 --> 0:04:14.120 been doing to a bunch of people for decades. And uh, 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:18.720 let's let's yeah, let's so that's important to understand. So yes, yes, 0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:21.880 there's a reason we have been deserved and disrupted. And 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:25.320 I feel like, at the very least, hopefully now we 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:30.560 can have better empathy and you're like thoughtful action. Yeah, 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:33.080 and we can understand the patterns that we're about to 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:36.640 see replicated in our own country and attempt to disrupt them. Perhaps. 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:41.200 So in December of nineteen eight one, dozens of El 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:44.440 Salvador and graduates of the School of the America's converged 0:04:44.560 --> 0:04:47.679 on El Mazotte, a tiny village in the northern hills 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:51.320 of the Morazon Province. Now Morizon was a stronghold of 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:54.599 for the Feri Bundo Martine National Liberation Front or f 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:58.440 l m N, a leftist militant group resisting El Salvador's 0:04:58.480 --> 0:05:01.920 far right government, which was of course enthusiastically backed by 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:05.720 the Reagan administration. Now, the US had been admitting increasing 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:08.280 numbers of El Salvadoran soldiers into the School of the 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:11.280 Americas for years as this conflict heat it up, so 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:14.960 like leftist militants start gaining you know, power and sort 0:05:14.960 --> 0:05:17.880 of the hill areas and like fighting the government, and 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:20.400 we start just just taking more and more of these 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:22.680 guys into the s o A, which is generally the strategy. 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:25.640 You see the government sees our government sees left wing 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:27.920 activism sort of picking up in a country, and they 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:32.560 start propagandizing and brainwashing more of that nation's soldiers in 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:36.080 the School of the Americas. So once Reagan took office, 0:05:36.120 --> 0:05:39.360 he started sending in Special Forces advisers to help out 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:43.960 in that neighborly way that only special Forces can. Elmazote 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:47.560 was one of several small villages suspective hosting rebel fighters, 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:49.839 acting as their u S trainers had taught them. The 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:54.159 soldiers of Al Salvador's Elite Ulcado Battalion started their operations 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:56.919 by pounding the outlying portions of several towns flat with 0:05:56.920 --> 0:06:00.560 a multi hour artillery barrage. Then grant, yeah, it's just 0:06:00.600 --> 0:06:03.559 what you do. Then ground troops moved in on December tenth, 0:06:03.640 --> 0:06:07.320 securing Almazote and ordering all residents out into the town square. 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:09.520 By the way, as a pro tip, since this might 0:06:09.520 --> 0:06:11.560 be useful for everybody, if you find yourself in the 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:15.400 middle of like a genocide or a government crackdown that 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:18.200 involves death squads, and somebody tells you to gather in 0:06:18.200 --> 0:06:21.320 the town square, don't gather in the town square. It 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:25.400 never ends. Well, that's like the top place for massacring 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:28.600 people is the town square. Avoid the town square if 0:06:28.640 --> 0:06:32.120 things go real bad in your country. So anyway, the 0:06:32.200 --> 0:06:35.160 US trained soldiers of that Lakato battalion separated the men 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:37.359 in Almazote from the women, which is, you know, another 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:40.159 bad sign. They also separated out all of the children 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:42.080 and forced them into a small building next to the 0:06:42.160 --> 0:06:44.920 village church. The soldiers spent the rest of the day 0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:48.719 executing every single person in Almazote. They killed the children last, 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:51.160 perhaps because they needed to psych themselves up for such 0:06:51.200 --> 0:06:53.600 a gruesome task. Rather than look at what they were 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:55.400 doing and look into the eyes of these little kids, 0:06:55.440 --> 0:06:57.760 the soldiers just fired into the building where the town's 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:00.320 children were held. Then they set it on fire before 0:07:00.320 --> 0:07:03.640 they left. Years later, that building was excavated, revealing the 0:07:03.640 --> 0:07:06.320 remains of at least a hundred and forty three victims inside. 0:07:06.440 --> 0:07:12.760 The average age was six. After wiping Christ, Jesus Christ, 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:19.600 what the how? Wow? Yeah, children, it's amazing. And this 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:22.480 is specifically the battalion of the El Salvadoran Army that 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:25.280 was that is trained and armed by the United States. 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:28.000 Um like these guys were all trained by active due 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:30.760 to US soldiers in how to do this like they 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:33.320 were not. This isn't just some foreign country where people 0:07:33.360 --> 0:07:35.880 did a horrible thing because of some dictator. These are 0:07:35.880 --> 0:07:39.320 the guys we trained, using that training to, among other things, 0:07:39.320 --> 0:07:41.480 shoot a hundred and forty three children to death in 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:44.480 a building outside of a Catholic church. So after wiping 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:47.040 almostote off the map, the men of the Applicatto Battalion 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:49.320 and their US advisors headed to the nearby town of 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:52.320 Laoya to repeat the process. We know what happened thanks 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:54.800 to the stories of a handful of lucky survivors. One 0:07:54.840 --> 0:07:57.480 of them, Rosario Lopez, was just fast enough to get 0:07:57.480 --> 0:08:00.240 out of town with her husband and three children. Ario 0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:02.200 hit up on a hill while twenty four of her 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:06.280 family members were massacred, including her parents, two sisters, seventeen 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:11.040 nieces and nephews. So yeah, her husband Jose later recalled 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:13.480 to a journalist. I heard the commotion the prayers from 0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:15.320 where I was hiding up in the mountain. It was 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:17.120 shooting at a bunch of kids, and some of them 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:21.080 cried and others had stopped. Now, Jose Rosario and their 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:23.720 children had on that mountain for five days until Jose 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:27.120 finally felt brave enough to descend and check for survivors. 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:29.520 The first body he found was one of his wife's sisters. 0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:32.800 She had clearly been raped before being executed. Further in, 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:35.040 he saw the bodies of the town's children stacked in 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:37.720 a pile, their faces too damaged by fire and decay 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:40.400 for him to recognize. He and a few other days 0:08:40.440 --> 0:08:43.880 survivors did what they could to bury their bones. Altogether, 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:46.080 the brave men of the at Licatto Battalion killed at 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:48.600 least nine hundred and seventy eight people in just a 0:08:48.600 --> 0:08:52.120 couple of days. Nearly half of their victims were under 0:08:52.160 --> 0:08:55.600 the age of twelve. Years later, one survivor would report 0:08:55.640 --> 0:08:58.360 hearing an officer threatened to murder one soldier who expressed 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:02.280 an unwillingness to shoot children. Now, as far as we know, 0:09:02.320 --> 0:09:04.600 I don't believe any US troops were present during the 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:07.160 Elmazote massacre, but the killing was done by soldiers who 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:09.880 had again been trained by US Special Forces uh and 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:12.560 it was under the command of officers who'd all graduated 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:15.000 from the School of the America's Those little boys and 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:17.840 girls were also gunned down by US made M sixteen 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:20.240 assault rifles, which had been given to El Salvador as 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:22.479 part of the one million dollars a day in military 0:09:22.520 --> 0:09:25.839 aid that the Reagan administration sent into the country. When 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:28.520 Ronald Reagan took office, Latin America was in the grip 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:31.679 of yet another wave of revolutions. The Sandinistas had overthrown 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:34.320 the dictator of Nicaragua in nineteen seventy nine, and by 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:36.240 the time Ronnie was sworn in on a bible made 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:38.880 of jelly beans, left wing guerrilla movements in Guatemala and 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:41.120 El Salvador looked like they might be on the verge 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:43.360 of victory. Two. And I'm gonna quote here from an 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:46.920 article in the Intercept in retrospect, it's clear that these 0:09:46.920 --> 0:09:50.280 were inevitable revolutions. The title of one history of the period, 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:54.280 tiny cruel white oligarchs had ruled over indigenous peasants across 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:56.880 the region for hundreds of years, and sooner or later 0:09:57.200 --> 0:09:59.880 the dam was going to break. But to the Reaganites, 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:02.680 this was all the work of the international communist conspiracy 0:10:02.760 --> 0:10:05.560 headquartered in Moscow and had to be crushed by any 0:10:05.559 --> 0:10:09.640 means necessary. Now, the article I just quoted from the 0:10:09.640 --> 0:10:12.320 intercept was written by John Schwarz, a journalist I quite 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:15.040 respect he wrote that article this very year in partial 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:17.720 response to some new developments in the decades old quest 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:20.439 to hold some of the perpetrators of elma Zotte accountable 0:10:20.440 --> 0:10:23.400 for their crimes. But John's greater purpose was to highlight 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:26.600 how similar many of the tactics the Reagan administration used 0:10:26.600 --> 0:10:29.600 to cover up its complicity and foreign massacres are two 0:10:29.600 --> 0:10:32.760 tactics being used right now by the Trump administration. And 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:35.400 considering the number of armed Trump supporters talking about mass 0:10:35.440 --> 0:10:39.240 murdering their political foes, like within five minutes of my house, uh, 0:10:39.320 --> 0:10:42.920 you can see why it's relevant. Uh So this is 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:45.040 really important to talk about for more reasons than just 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:48.760 understanding a historic crime. This has bearing on what's going 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:50.480 to happen to a lot of people listening to this 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:53.120 podcast in the future. If things go as bad as 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:56.720 they could go, so Elmazotte was never supposed to become 0:10:56.760 --> 0:11:00.120 public knowledge the Reagan administration when this happened. The An 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:02.680 administration was in the process of trying to sell Congress 0:11:02.720 --> 0:11:06.120 on a partnership with the Salvadoran government, and one requirement 0:11:06.160 --> 0:11:08.360 that Congress had put forward was that the President would 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:12.000 have to certify by January twenty nine, nine two, that 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:15.960 El Salvador was quote making a concerted and significant effort 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:20.400 to comply with internationally recognized human rights. Now, if he couldn't, 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:23.280 all u s A del Salvador a million dollars a 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:25.760 day and guns and other baby killing tools would be 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:28.600 cut off. So there were high stakes here. Now. The 0:11:28.640 --> 0:11:31.800 Reagan administration was very unhappy when they started hearing the 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:34.840 first reports from Almazote, not because of the thousand people 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:36.640 who had been killed, but because this was bad for 0:11:36.679 --> 0:11:39.360 them politically. It was going to be providing yeah feed 0:11:39.360 --> 0:11:42.400 for the Democrats. So the first move that they took 0:11:42.480 --> 0:11:44.560 was to write off the rumors of the massacre as 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:48.440 a trick by left wing guerrillas. But then on January 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:52.160 nine two, two days before congress is deadline, the New 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:55.079 York Times in the Washington Post both published front page 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:58.240 stories about the massacre. Writing in the intercept, John de 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:02.559 tales what happened next. Thomas Enders, a career diplomat who 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:04.720 at the time was Assistant Secretary of State for inter 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:08.560 American Affairs, later said that Elmazotte, if true, might have 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:11.400 destroyed the entire effort in El Salvador. What to do? 0:12:11.840 --> 0:12:14.800 The answer had been articulated by Richard Nixon years earlier, 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:17.640 as was born out by Nixon's direct experience during Watergate, 0:12:17.760 --> 0:12:22.040 few things are more dangerous to conservative priorities than good journalism. Therefore, 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:24.480 as a top Nixon aid later recalled, Nixon believed that 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:27.920 it was necessary to fight the press through the nutcutters, 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:31.160 as the president called them, forcing our own news make 0:12:31.200 --> 0:12:34.520 a brutal, vicious attack on the opposition. That's what Nixon said, 0:12:34.559 --> 0:12:37.400 Fight the president through the nutcutters, forcing our own news, 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:40.800 make a brutal attack on the opposition. So the pushback 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:43.560 began with congressional testimony by Enders. There's no reason to 0:12:43.600 --> 0:12:46.920 confirm that government forces systematically massacred civilians, he told a 0:12:46.920 --> 0:12:50.240 House subcommittee. What about the number of victims? Bonner's article 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:52.280 had mentioned a list of seven hundred and thirty three 0:12:52.280 --> 0:12:55.160 compiled by villagers as well as Italian of nine twenty 0:12:55.200 --> 0:12:58.240 six from a human rights organization, Elliot Abrams, whod just 0:12:58.280 --> 0:13:00.720 taken off as a six assistant set Terry of State 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:03.600 for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, and formed the Senate 0:13:03.679 --> 0:13:06.280 that the numbers, first of all, were not credible. Our 0:13:06.320 --> 0:13:08.920 information was that there were only three people in the canton. 0:13:09.280 --> 0:13:12.280 This was clear conscious deceit on part of Abram's. Both 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:14.560 the Times and Post articles had written that the massacre 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:17.959 had taken place in several locations. Then came the assault 0:13:17.960 --> 0:13:21.080 from the administration's outside allies. On February tenth, The Wall 0:13:21.120 --> 0:13:24.240 Street Journal ran a lengthy editorial titled the Media's War. 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:28.120 Americans were badly confused about the situation in El Salvador 0:13:28.200 --> 0:13:30.920 thanks to the US press. Almazote was not a massacre, 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:36.480 the journal wrote, but a quote unquote massacre. What what 0:13:37.520 --> 0:13:42.600 unquote massacre? Yeah? Yeah. On the one hand, the number 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:44.920 of dead had been obviously exaggerated, and on the other 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:47.040 maybe the killing had been carried out by rebels dressed 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:50.000 in government uniforms. Bonner was credulous, a reporter out on 0:13:50.000 --> 0:13:52.280 a limb and like reporters in Vietnam a sucker for 0:13:52.400 --> 0:13:55.840 communist sources. One of the editorials authors appeared on PBS 0:13:55.880 --> 0:13:59.120 to proclaim that obviously Ray Bonner has a political orientation, 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:04.199 so there's a lot that's that that's going on here. Um, 0:14:04.240 --> 0:14:06.560 but it's all very familiar. So first of all, what 0:14:06.640 --> 0:14:09.160 you see is Abram's getting up there and throwing out 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:12.160 a bunch of lies at once. Uh. Number one, like 0:14:12.520 --> 0:14:14.959 throwing out a sound by like Elzote is not a massacre. 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:17.640 It's a quote unquote massacre. Uh. The number of dead 0:14:17.679 --> 0:14:20.360 have been exaggerated. Oh and maybe they were also killed 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:22.880 by rebels dressed as soldiers. There's no evidence for any 0:14:22.920 --> 0:14:25.120 of this. He's just throwing out a bunch of claims 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:27.360 that then have to be dealt with and like responded 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:30.400 to by the Times and by the Washington Post. And 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:33.480 it helps to drum up this idea that there's debate 0:14:33.640 --> 0:14:36.520 over whether or not anybody was killed, and that allows 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:39.040 Americans to kind of shut their ears to it. And 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:41.240 it works. This is the same thing the Trump administration 0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:45.040 does now. It always works. It works extremely well. Um. 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:46.920 And of course he starts to attack. This is one 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:50.200 of the reasons why I'm less concerned these days about 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:53.120 pretending to not have a bias as a reporter, because 0:14:53.280 --> 0:14:55.800 Bonner here is doing as much as he possibly can. 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:59.600 He's he's a very good traditional reporter doing very good 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:03.560 tradition reporting, and he gets called a communist basically, because 0:15:03.600 --> 0:15:06.000 that's what they do. It doesn't matter what you say, 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:08.640 it doesn't matter how biased you are or aren't, They're 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:10.600 going to call you a communist if you're reporting on 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:15.680 things that are bad to them. So yeah, Accuracy in Media, 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:19.120 which was a conservative media criticism organization, went further, declaring 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:22.560 Bonner was raging a propaganda war favoring the Marxist guerrillas 0:15:22.600 --> 0:15:27.200 in El Salvador Um. So yeah, it worked. Bonner was 0:15:27.240 --> 0:15:29.400 pulled out of Central America by the Times and sent 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:34.880 back to New York for more training in journalism. Yeah. Yeah, 0:15:34.960 --> 0:15:37.640 the Times did what they do. It's the It's the 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:40.440 New York Times, right. They're always going to they're always 0:15:40.440 --> 0:15:42.800 going to publish that first good story, and they're always 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:44.760 going to back away and run a bunch of op 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:48.600 eds with wing nuts claiming that that story was bullshit 0:15:48.720 --> 0:15:51.280 because they're scared of being seen as taking a stance 0:15:51.280 --> 0:15:56.080 on anything. That's how it's gonna be. Yeah, that's how 0:15:56.080 --> 0:15:58.160 it That's how it was in the thirties too. Yeah, 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:01.280 you know, that's just the way it goes at all 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:08.680 papers being reliant on advertising dollars. It's really I mean, 0:16:08.680 --> 0:16:12.800 we've already seen it destroy like most like solid sources 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:16.320 of internet journalism, and the papers have been fighting it 0:16:16.400 --> 0:16:20.400 for so long. Like at the local level particularly, we've 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:22.840 seen a lot of like good local journalism. But this 0:16:22.920 --> 0:16:26.360 idea that companies that are like oh god, to keep 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:29.440 selling and being willing to print just the most ridiculous 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:33.360 ship or good ship and then like retracting it and 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:36.520 disrespecting their reporters who they must have a relationship with, 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:40.560 they must know like this person's ability and their skills. 0:16:40.600 --> 0:16:43.840 Like it's such a pr move and so not about 0:16:43.960 --> 0:16:47.800 like the core ethics of journalism. It's astounding. It's astounding 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:50.440 that it's allowed to permeate like this. It's not great, 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:56.320 not very good. So yeah, the disinformation campaign worked, at 0:16:56.360 --> 0:16:59.560 least in the immediate term. Uh yeah. Bonder gets pulled out, 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:02.160 sent back to New York for training, and other reporters 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:04.720 learned from his example. It was dangerous to report on 0:17:04.760 --> 0:17:07.120 any story that might be seen as sympathetic to left 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:10.720 wing militants in Latin America. Meanwhile, the right wing militants 0:17:10.720 --> 0:17:13.600 who controlled El Salvador continued to receive US aid. Their 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:16.080 soldiers continued to attend the School of the America's in 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:17.880 order to learn how to be the best desk ones 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:20.520 they could be. By the time the violence was all over, 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:23.919 they'd killed more than seventy five thousands El Salvadorans, the 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:27.119 per capita equivalent of five million Americans, So this is 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:30.399 a huge chunk of the country. The government was responsible 0:17:30.400 --> 0:17:33.200 for eighty five percent of these deaths. Now, the good 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:35.919 news is that at present a number of culprits have 0:17:36.119 --> 0:17:38.640 finally been stripped of their immunity. There was a law 0:17:38.720 --> 0:17:41.200 for a while that basically was trying to make peace 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:43.440 between the two sides and said that like, nobody gets 0:17:43.440 --> 0:17:46.359 punished for their war crimes. But that got partly at 0:17:46.400 --> 0:17:48.399 least reversed. And so some of these guys are in 0:17:48.400 --> 0:17:51.120 the process and these these these court cases are going 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:54.080 on right now, right and there's even there's been requests made. 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:58.240 The Obama administration released some evidence uh and declassified some 0:17:58.320 --> 0:18:00.959 files to allow the court case is to proceed. They 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:03.760 made request of the Trump administration that obviously haven't been 0:18:04.080 --> 0:18:08.679 um listened to, in part because uh, the U S mility. 0:18:08.800 --> 0:18:11.840 Like while some of the El Salvadoran military leaders who 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:15.480 helped make Elmazote happen have been punished, the Americans who 0:18:15.480 --> 0:18:18.679 were responsible never did. In fact, Elliot Abrams went on 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:21.520 to become part of George W. Bush's National Security Council. 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:26.640 In today he's Trump's Special Representative for Venezuela. Um So, 0:18:26.800 --> 0:18:30.720 speaking of nightmarish, unforgivable crimes against humanity committed at the 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:34.880 behest of Republicans, you want to talk about Guatemala. WHOA, 0:18:35.680 --> 0:18:40.400 let's get into it. Yeah, I'm a big Guatemala fan. 0:18:40.840 --> 0:18:45.480 It's great country. It's a beautiful country. Yeah. Yeah, it's 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:48.879 been horrible to it. We've been real bad to it, 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:51.640 real bad to it. Um it's one of the most 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:55.439 beautiful places I've ever been in my life. Um I 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:57.800 I ran across a T shirt over there that was like, 0:18:57.880 --> 0:18:59.280 I think the thing written on it was something like 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:03.720 Guatemala is like how nature exaggerates or how nature puts 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:06.359 in an exclamation point. And if you go to places 0:19:06.400 --> 0:19:08.680 like La La Lan, you really feel that because it's 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:12.040 this like lan is one of the deepest lakes in 0:19:12.240 --> 0:19:16.400 Central America. Um, and it's just surrounded by a ring 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:18.880 of volcanoes. Like look a look at pictures of this place. 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:22.720 It's absolutely astonishing. Um. And when I was there at 0:19:22.800 --> 0:19:25.439 least um, Like, one of the things people would tell 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:27.600 us is that, like the military is not allowed in 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:30.399 here anymore, Like we don't let them in because of 0:19:30.440 --> 0:19:34.119 some of the things we're about to talk about. Um, wait, 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:39.400 can you how do you keep the military out? Uh? 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:41.119 You know, I think it's I think it was just 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:43.439 sort of a matter of like after a lot of 0:19:43.440 --> 0:19:47.000 the massacres, they kind of pulled out of certain areas 0:19:47.000 --> 0:19:48.879 where they've been killing the Maya, and they were like, 0:19:48.960 --> 0:19:50.720 there's kind of like I don't know, I got we 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:52.439 got stopped on the road a couple of times by 0:19:52.480 --> 0:19:55.080 just sort of groups of men with m sixteens and 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:59.640 not wearing uniforms really but operating what we're clearly checkpoint. 0:19:59.680 --> 0:20:01.760 I don't like, it was very unclear to me. I'm 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:07.560 not like guatemal In politics is extremely complicated. But yeah, yeah, 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:12.040 so Robert, you want to know what isn't extremely complicated? 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:22.600 The products and services that support this podcast. Word alright, 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:28.040 we're back, so back in nineteen fifty four, Like, Guatemala 0:20:28.119 --> 0:20:31.040 is great, hard not to love it. Um. The problem 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:33.520 is that in nineteen fifty four, the United Fruit Company 0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:37.200 was also in love with Guatemala UM, particularly they're they're 0:20:37.200 --> 0:20:42.040 wonderful bananas. Now. Unfortunately, the democratically elected leader of Guatemala 0:20:42.040 --> 0:20:44.639 in nineteen fifty four was a dude named Jacobo Arbez 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:47.120 who didn't like that a foreign country owned a large 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:50.240 chunk of the Guatemalan economy. Because these fruit companies owned 0:20:50.320 --> 0:20:53.359 huge amounts of Guatemalan land that had been sold to 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:58.520 them basically by corrupt like ali arcs in Guatemala who 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:02.760 had stolen it from indigenous people um, and then sold 0:21:02.760 --> 0:21:05.159 it to US corporations for a fraction of what it 0:21:05.240 --> 0:21:08.879 was actually worked, which allowed these corporations to basically enslave 0:21:08.920 --> 0:21:12.320 Guatemalan workers. And it was horrible. It sounds like the 0:21:12.320 --> 0:21:16.040 typical chain of command. Yes, indigenous people to oligarch to 0:21:16.280 --> 0:21:20.879 United States. Yeah, and so our Beds comes to power 0:21:20.920 --> 0:21:23.080 and he's like, I'm going to nationalize all this ship, right, 0:21:23.080 --> 0:21:25.320 Like I'm gonna make all this ship. Everybody's like, I'm 0:21:25.320 --> 0:21:27.840 going to take this land that was sold illegally to 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:30.840 these U S corporations, and I'm going to redistribute it 0:21:30.880 --> 0:21:33.480 to the peasants um and we're going to like try 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:36.880 to undo the damage that the start of globalization has 0:21:36.920 --> 0:21:41.160 done to Guatemala. Beautiful dream, A beautiful dream. You may 0:21:41.200 --> 0:21:43.520 recognize this is not all that different from what was 0:21:43.520 --> 0:21:45.679 happening over in Chile with Saladora end A at a 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:50.119 pretty similar time. Um. So yeah, our bez comes to power, 0:21:50.200 --> 0:21:53.240 he promises to do this, and United Fruit, who owns 0:21:53.280 --> 0:21:56.560 this land, goes to the CIA and it's like, guys, 0:21:57.680 --> 0:22:01.400