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| Mexico: Under pressure from the US, Mexican National Guard attack economic refugees. Source |
Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. War is a Racket, Major General Smedley Butler.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. War is a Racket, Major General Smedley Butler.
The capitalist mass media
uses language very carefully, especially when it is reporting on events. During
a transportation strike, a TV reporter once asked a member of the
inconvenienced public how it felt to be “held
hostage” by the striking workers. That’s not biased is it?
The US Predator in Chief has
waged a successful war against immigrants and undocumented workers who he and
other xenophobes call “illegals”. Despite there being 500,000 undocumented
workers from Europe in the US, the focus has been on workers from Mexico and
Central America. Trump will be intensifying his assault on people from this
region as the election draws closer. Immigrants from below our southern border are
almost always people of color which is a bonus, as they can be attacked on the
basis of nationality and color. These economic refugees face all sorts of
personal attacks. Trump and right wing politicians have called them criminals,
murderers, a cover for Islamic terrorism and so on.
The economic crisis brought
on by the coronavirus pandemic is having a devastating affect on these
immigrants from the south. The 2 million immigrants from Guatemala working in
the US sent about $10.5 billion home in 2019 equal to about 13% of the nation’s
gross domestic product. According to Bloomberg BusinessWeek , * transfers to Guatemala fell 9.7% last month and
for El Salvador, “….remittances, which
account for roughly 21% of GDP, dropped 10.7%...”
This money means life and
death for the families these immigrants have left behind, “My mother counted on that money, and now I’m not able to support her,”,
one woman from Guatemala working in New York City tells Business Week. Her mother and son are dependent on it.
“It’s
frustrating….”, she says, “….You have goals, and you want to save as much
as you can, because with the immigration situation you never know when they are
going to say ‘bye-bye,’ and then you’re left with nothing.”
Michael Bloomberg who was a
candidate for the US presidency for a minute or two owns BusinessWeek. In a
100-day campaign to get the Democratic nomination he spent $900 million. He spent $466 million in February alone. To
put this in perspective, the International Monetary Fund, the global capitalist
institution that demands austerity and forces neo-liberal economic policies on
countries in crisis through its Structural Adjustment Programs, has approved
$389 million in emergency aid for El Salvador and $143 million for Honduras.
When
we read or hear about Central American countries like El Salvador and Guatemala
in the US capitalist mass media, it is not a pretty picture. Many people from
this region flee north to escape the instability and violence in their
countries and the US government is spending billions of dollars building a wall
to keep them out. Trump, this degenerate piece of human filth, an accident of
history who has risen to the top of the putrid US, body politic, has threatened
Guatemala with sanctions, remittance fees and cutting off the meager aid the US
provides to this tiny country if it doesn’t do more to stop economic refugees
from heading north. In other words, the US government wants this tiny poverty
stricken country to bear the burden of the poverty that is a direct product of
US imperialism’s role in the region.
Business
Week ignores this history when it reports on the conditions that exist in this
region. The mass dailies always do. “Low
wages, poverty, and gang violence have forced millions of Central Americans to
migrate to the U.S.”, Business Week writes. This is the normal narrative
when it comes to Central America and the countries in what US capitalism
considers its own backyard.
But
why are these countries poor? Why the
violence? Why are people willing to risk life and limb and leave their families
to come north?
Much like European colonialism considered
Africa its own backyard, US capitalism has the same view of Mexico, Central and
South America. US capitalism has plundered these regions, has assassinated
leaders or overthrown or undermined any government that threatened the
interests of US capitalism’s profits in the region.
Guatemala
In 1954, a CIA sponsored coup
overthrew Guatemala’s democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz on
behalf of the United Fruit Co. and other big landowners. Arbenz had
introduced land reforms that threatened the domination of the United Fruit
Company over Guatemalan society. Only 2% of landowners owned 72% of the arable
land, much of it unused. United fruit alone held 600,000 acres of mostly
unused land. The Guatemalan colonel that the CIA selected to replace
Arbenz immediately outlawed hundreds of trade unions and returned more than 1.5
million acres to United fruit Co.
Similar situations occurred throughout
Central and South America as rebellions against the domination of U.S.
corporations over society were suppressed by the U.S. government and its
stooges. It is important for us to understand this aspect of the
migration north of working class people; particularly the indigenous population
that was viciously persecuted by U.S. sponsored regimes.
El Salvador
Supported by El Salvadore's Catholic Church a movement toward democracy developed in the late 60's and 70's that gave El Salvadorians some hope for a better future. But the more this movement developed the more repressive the oligarchy and its military dictatorship became. A civil war erupted in 1979 after an army coup aborted the results of a democratic election. During the next two years right wing death squads supported by the U.S. hunted down any dissidents; more than 8,000 trade unionists were murdered or abducted during this period. Siding with the El Salvadorian oligarchy, the U.S. government provided them with $3.7bn in aid from 1981-89, 70% of this money was for weapons and war assistance. Such was the terror in El Salvador that thousands of people fled north to the U.S. to escape death ands torture. **
Supported by El Salvadore's Catholic Church a movement toward democracy developed in the late 60's and 70's that gave El Salvadorians some hope for a better future. But the more this movement developed the more repressive the oligarchy and its military dictatorship became. A civil war erupted in 1979 after an army coup aborted the results of a democratic election. During the next two years right wing death squads supported by the U.S. hunted down any dissidents; more than 8,000 trade unionists were murdered or abducted during this period. Siding with the El Salvadorian oligarchy, the U.S. government provided them with $3.7bn in aid from 1981-89, 70% of this money was for weapons and war assistance. Such was the terror in El Salvador that thousands of people fled north to the U.S. to escape death ands torture. **
People do not leave their country, their communities and their homes because they reject their culture. People will risk life and death to feed their children and offer them a future. The poverty and the social crises in US capitalism’s “backyard” have roots in the predatory colonial policies over centuries; first with European colonialism and then US imperialism. Firstly, these nation states, just like those in Africa, were created from without by the occupying capitalist powers to serve their economic interests.
They never developed organically from within like the nation states of Europe. Tribal communities were corralled in to a geographical area whose borders meant nothing to them. It is not unlike the enclosure of common land in England.
There is at this juncture a real national consciousness as most people feel El Salvadorian, Guatemalan or Honduran but their economies are completely dominated by US imperialism and, despite being referred to as developing or emerging economies, will do neither.
It is not in the interests of global capitalism to explain its own history to the masses of the population. Here in the US, as in all capitalist countries, the history of the working class and our struggle to build unions and improve working conditions is not taught in a serious way. The conditions savaging minority communities cannot be understood without having a materialist understanding of the world and how capitalism works.
Poverty will never be eradicated by capitalism it is an integral part of it. Black American’s totally excluded from society for centuries or Native American’s shuttled off in to reservations can never overcome the legacy of this history within the framework of capitalism.
If we do not understand how society works and the developments that brought us this far, we can fall prey to racist or nationalist ideology, that these nations are in the state they are in because of their ethnic composition or religious views. This is the purpose of Trump’s wall mania. This excuse was used to explain the economic backwardness of Ireland for centuries up until the 1960’s, not the occupation of the country by English/British capitalism for centuries using it as a source of cheap labor and food.
The present pandemic and the abject failure of the so-called free market’s response has changed the world. Here in the US, Trump and co. will increase the xenophobic attacks, continue to blame foreigners, socialists, the US worker, China, for the crisis. But lessons will be learned from this experience. Governments are not going to have such an easy time of it passing the costs of this bailout of capitalism, the second time in a decade, on to the backs of workers, the middle class and the poor. There are going to be some major class battles up ahead.
Workers can win these battles. But we can’t win them within the confines of the nation state. International solidarity and action across borders is the answer. Collective control over the economic life of society is the answer. The immigrants, undocumented or not, that Trump is blaming for capitalism’s failures play a valuable role in the day to day working of US society; they are among the most exploited section of the US working class. They do not leave their homeland voluntarily; they are economic refugees, victims of global capitalism just as we all are. Uniting with them in their struggle to improve their material well being and conditions at home is what will save them from the horrors they face trying to escape north and the super exploitation they face if they make it to their destination.
The solution to this madness of the market is not capitalist globalization, it is socialist globalization
** Sources on Guatemala and El Salvador from, Harvest
or Empire: A History of Latinos in America by Juan Gonzalez
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