Maravi

(SOAW) Background on U.S. Military Involvement in Nicaragua

Background on U.S. Military Involvement in Nicaragua
U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua Oliver Garza welcomes U.S. soldiers on 'humanitarian mission' in Nicaragua.

In the 1970s, Anastasio Somoza, Jr., carried human rights abuses to new levels as protests increased following his appropriation of most of the aid for victims of the 1972 Managua earthquake. The Sandinista Front for National Liberation, founded in the '60s, was gaining support among the populace and anyone suspected of giving support to its struggle was captured, tortured and often killed.

The Carter Administration policy of conditioning military aid on observance of internationally recognized standards of human rights put the Somoza regime into a fury. Military officials were quoted in the government media as saying "We are only putting into practice what we learned at the School of the Americas and now they call that human rights violations!"

From 1977 to 1979, there were almost continuous local uprisings of citizens in towns around the country as well as attacks on military posts by the guerrillas of the Sandinista Front. After these uprisings, the populations were brutally repressed with SOA-style counter-insurgency tactics. But at long last, after a six-week period of all-out war, the dictatorship was overthrown and on July 19, 1979, a revolutionary government established.

SOA Grads as “Contras”

The revolutionary government opened schools in the most remote villages for children previously abandoned to illiteracy; agricultural cooperatives and state farms were set up with health clinics on each one of them. And from March to August of 1980, the country threw itself into the literacy crusade in which 100,000 literate Nicaraguans taught 500,000 of their illiterate brothers and sisters to read.

However, in November of 1980, the voters of the United States elected President Ronald Reagan on a platform that promised the overthrow of the "Marxist Sandinistas of Nicaragua." And within a month of Reagan's taking office, counter-revolutionary forces, formed from the remnants of the Somozas' old National Guard were training in Florida in open violation of the Neutrality Act of 1789.

Soon the "guardias" trained and armed by the United States, with the new name of counter-revolutionaries or "contras" were crossing the border from camps in Honduras into Nicaragua, wreaking havoc on the population. Health clinics and cooperatives were blown up, civilians were tortured and killed. President Reagan said, "I'm a contra, too," and when Congress forbade official government assistance to them, he set up the complex underground support network run from the White House basement which was revealed to the world in the Iran-Contra scandal of 1986-7.

U.S. Military Role Resumes

In 1990, weary of war and hyper-inflation, the Nicaraguan electorate voted the Sandinista Party out of office. Conservative Violeta Chamorro became President. The Army and the Police dropped the word "Sandinista" from their names, but, except for a new corps of riot police, retained some vestiges of "Sandinismo."

U.S. troops returned to Nicaragua in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch in late 1998. Some Nicaraguans, remembering the U.S. military's role in training and arming the contras, opposed their presence. Others, such as the Sandinista farmers and ranchers organization UNAG, worked with them to build schools and clinics. Many observers worry that the troops are part of a deeper game to advance the domination of Central America and its natural resources.

In 2000, U.S. troops provided medical attention, built two clinics and a school, dug several wells and improved roads and other infrastructure. In 2001, U.S. Ambassador Garza declared that the Nicaraguan military had moved away from its identification with the Sandinistas and now represented "all of Nicaraguan society." Nicaragua, he said, "has taken steps to .… depoliticize its armed forces." Nicaragua's Defense Minister Jose Adan Guerra announced that 3,600 U.S. Army Reservists under the U.S. Army Southern Command would begin arriving in the country early in 2002 to carry out a range of "socially useful projects." These troops are stationed in and around Juigalpa and Santo Tomas in Chontales, and in Bluefields in the South Atlantic Autonomous Region, conveniently located close to the proposed route of the huge freight railroad/deep water ports/maquiladora complex designed to link Nicaragua's Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

The treaty between the United States and Nicaragua to combat drug trafficking went into effect late in October 2001 and it marked the first U.S. support for Nicaragua's military since the 1970’s. U.S. training for Nicaraguan officers at the School of the Americas started again in 2001 under Nicaraguan president Bolaños.

In 2006, former Nicaraguan Sandinista president Daniel Ortega was voted back into power. As a result, Nicaragua - along with Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador - is now being cited by the U.S. Southern Command (that’s the Pentagon’s Latin America squad so to speak) as a special security concern in Latin America, because of its "radical populism."

One needs to only spend about a half hour on the streets of Nicaragua to wonder what the U.S. army could possibly fear from this very poor and very tiny country. What is important to note, however, is that in very real terms, Nicaragua is being targeted by the U.S. precisely for not falling into step of embracing the model of free market, un-tethered capitalism that it demands of its neighbors. Its outspoken criticism of the School of the Americas and U.S. policies are not brushed off lightly.

Labels: AFRICOM, CIA, NEOLIBERALISM, NICARAGUA, SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS

posted by MrK @ 4:40 PM