Cold War - So Hemisphere Focus

8/2/2019 Cold War - So Hemisphere Focus

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Contemporary History The Americas Dr. J. Cspedes

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COLD WAR & THE AMERICAS

FOCUS: SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE & CARRIBEAN

CUBA 26th of July Movement topples Fulgencio Batista (denied arms by theEisenhower administration) in January 1959. Castro denies that he is a communist. US intelligence/Eisenhower at first unsure if Castro is a communist. January 1961: Expropriation of land by Cuban government accelerated.

Censorship implemented. Opponents are sent to firing squads. Eisenhowersevers relations with the Cuban government.

April 1961, JFK mounted an unsuccessful CIA-organized invasion of the island atPlaya Girn in the Bay of Pigs.

Castro openly embracing Marxism-Leninism, and the Soviet Union pledged toprovide support.

Kennedy continues covert ops: Cuban Project/Operation Mongoose (OperationMongoose was a secret program of propaganda, psychological warfare, andsabotage against Cuba to remove the communists from power).

The USSR placed multiple nuclear missiles in Cuba, sparking heated tensionwith the Americans and leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, where full-scale nuclear war threatened.

Cuba instrumental in subversive movements in the Americas and Africa.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC April 1965 Operation Power Pack: LBJ lands 22,000 troops in the DR for a one-

year occupation citing the threat of the emergence of a Cuban-style revolution inLatin America via Juan Bosch.

In 1966 DR elections, conservative Joaqun Balaguer wins. The PRD's activistswere violently harassed by the Dominican police and armed forces.

CHILE 1970: Socialist Party candidate Salvador Allende (Popular Unity) narrowly wins

election becoming the first democratically elected Marxist president in theAmericas.

Allende heads coalition of leftists in 3 way race. Ties w/Cuba, nationalization ofindustries and collectivization cause severe recession.

Anti-Allende protest groups grow which are also funded by Nixon/CIA. Chilean Supreme Court opposes Allende and the Chamber of Deputies formally

asks the military to restore rule of law on August 22, 1973. On September 11, General Augusto Pinochet carries out coup and becomes

dictator. Leftist opponents were killed or detained in internment camps under the

Direccin de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA).


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OPERATION CONDOR Implemented officially 1975: Employed by dictators in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia,

Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay to terminate socialist/communist influence byleftist opposition movements through assassination and intelligence operations.

Ecuador and Peru joining later in more peripheral roles Many but not all opposition Soviet/Cuban supported The US/CIA served in a supervisory capacity. Manuel Contreras, chief of DINA

(the Chilean secret police), in Santiago de Chile, officially created the PlanCondor.

Cooperation between hemispheric security services existed previously: XthConference of American Armies (Caracas, September 3, 1973), BrazilianGeneral Breno Borges Fortes, proposed to "extend the exchange of information"between various services.

Additionally in March 1974, representatives of the police forces of Chile, Uruguayand Bolivia met with Alberto Villar, deputy chief of the Argentine Federal Police

and co-founder of the Triple A death squad, to implement cooperation guidelinesin order to destroy the "subversive" threat represented by the presence ofthousands of political exiles in Argentina.

ARGENTINA 1976-1983: the Dirty War (Guerra Sucia) a period of state-sponsored violence

against left-wing activists, trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists andPeronists guerrillas or sympathizers.

Esp. the Montoneros (leftist Peronist group) and People's Revolutionary Army(ERP) guerillas.

Estimates of killed or "disappeared" 9,000 to 30,000. Carried out primarily by military dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla's (part of

Operation Condor) until the return to civilian rule in 1983. Origins of the Dirty War can be traced back to either the Bombing of Plaza de

Mayo (1955), the Trelew massacre of 1972 (leftist prisoners executed in a fakedprison escape), the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (1973) and Isabel Martnezde Pern's "annihilation decrees" against leftist guerrillas during OperativoIndependencia (1975).

NICARAGUA 1979: The Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberacin

Nacional, FSLN) ousts the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle's with helpprovided by Cuba clandestinely.

The FSLN governed from 1979 until 1990, and tried to remake Nicaragua alongsocialistic lines.

The Sandinistas are opposed by the Contras, an umbrella of various anti-communist groups. g the July 1979 overthrow of dictatorship.

The Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) emerged as by far the largest of Contragroups


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All Contra groups are separate & possessing different political aims US worked to maintain unity among the Contra groups. In June 1985 most of the groups reorganized as the United Nicaraguan

Opposition (UNO), under the leadership of Adolfo Calero, Arturo Cruz and

Alfonso Robelo, all originally supporters of the anti-Somoza revolution. 1987: Virtually all Contra organizations are united as the Nicaraguan Resistance. The Contras received both overt and covert financial and military support from

the US/Reagan/CIA. US Congress wished to distance itself from the Contras andwithdrew all overt support.

Some rebels disliked the term Contras, feeling that it implied a desire torestore the old order, and referred to themselves as commandos. Peasantsympathizers called the rebels los primos("the cousins").

The revolution played a substantial role in foreign policy for Nicaragua, CentralAmerica and the Americas. The revolutionary conflict also marked one of themost important proxy wars in the Cold War.

Mediation by other Central American governments under Costa Rican leadershipled to the Sapoa Accord ceasefire of March 23, 1988, which, along withadditional agreements in February and August 1989, provided for the Contras'disarmament and reintegration into Nicaraguan society and politics.

February 25, 1990: internationally-monitored election. Violeta Chamorro, aformer Sandinista ally who turned into a vocal opponent and widow of murderedanti-Somoza journalist Pedro Joaqun Chamorro Cardenal, defeated Sandinistaleader Daniel Ortega by a huge margin and became President with the backingof the center-right UNO.

Some Contra elements and disgruntled Sandinistas would return briefly to armedopposition in the 1990s, but these groups were subsequently persuaded todisarm.

JAMAICA 1972: Jamaica began pursuing closer relations with the Cuban government as a

result of Michael Manley's election (in a speech he said, "All anti-imperialistsknow that the balance of forces in the world shifted irrevocably in 1917 whenthere was a movement and a man in the October Revolution, and Lenin was theman."

Manley saw Cuba and the Cuban model as having much to offer both Jamaicaand the world).

The United States' covert response included financing Manley's politicalopponents, the instigation of mutiny in the Jamaican army, and the fitting out of aprivate mercernary army against the Manley government.

Violence ensued and grew in January 1976 in anticipation of elections. A State of Emergency was declared by Manley's party the PNP in June and 500

people, including some prominent members of the JLP, were detained, withoutcharges, in a specially created prison at the Up-Park Camp militaryheadquarters.


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Violence continued to blight political life in the 1970s. Gangs armed by bothparties fought for control of urban constituencies.

In the 1980 elections, Seaga's JLP won and he became Prime Minister.

GUATEMALA 1954: CIA-backed military coup ousted the left-wing President Jacobo Arbenz

Guzmn. The new government, a military junta headed by Carlos Castillo Armas, returned

nationalized American property, set up a National Committee of Defense AgainstCommunism, and decreed a Preventive Penal Law Against Communism at therequest of the United States.

GUIANA 1953: In British Guiana, the leftist People's Progressive Party (PPP) candidate

Cheddi Jagan won the position of chief minister in a colonially-administeredelection, but was quickly forced to resign from power after Britain's suspension ofthe still-dependent nation's constitution.

EL SALVADOR 1980-1992: A civil war fought primarily between the government and a coalition

of four leftist groups and one communist group known as the Farabundo MartNational Liberation Front (FMLN).

Subversive activity started when the guerrilla forces were small and did not havemilitary training. This changed over time.

Approximately 75,000 people were killed in the war. The Salvadoran Civil war was fought in the context of the global Cold War, with

the United States backing the right wing military Salvadoran government. TheUnited States is reputed to have poured some 5 billion dollars into the war.

January 16, 1992: president Alfredo Cristiani and the guerrillas represented bythe commanders of the five guerrilla groups such as Shafick Handal, JoaquinVillalobos, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, Francisco Jovel and Eduardo Sanchosigned the Peace Agreements ending a 12-years civil war in the ChapultepecCastle in Mexico.

PERU 1980-1997: The Tpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, a Marxist revolutionary

group led by Vctor Polay Campos (comrade "Rolando") until his incarcerationand by Nstor Cerpa Cartolini (comrade "Evaristo") until his death in 1997.

The MRTA took its name from the last indigenous leader of the Inca people. The first action by the MRTA occurred on 31 May 1982, when its members

robbed a bank in La Victoria, Lima.


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Peru's counterterrorist program diminished the group's ability to carry out terroristattacks, and the MRTA suffered from infighting as well as violent clashes withMaoist rival Shining Path

In December 1996, fourteen MRTA members occupied the Japanese

Ambassador's residence in Lima, holding 72 hostages for more than four months. Under orders from then-President Alberto Fujimori, armed forces stormed the

residence in April 1997, rescuing all but one of the remaining hostages and killingall fourteen MRTA militants.

Fujimori was publicly acclaimed for the decisive action, but the affair was latertainted by subsequent revelations that at least three, and perhaps as many aseight, of the MRTistas were summarily executed after surendering.

Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso in Spanish) is a Maoist insurgent guerrillaorganization also in Peru.

The Shining Path believed in imposing a dictatorship of the proletariat, inducingcultural revolution, and eventually sparking world revolution.

It was widely condemned for its brutality against peasants, trade unionorganizers, popularly elected officials and the general civilian population.

Since the capture of its leader Abimael Guzmn in 1992, the Shining Path hasonly been sporadically active.

Some factions of Shining Path have reinvented themselves as cocaine-smugglers.

COLOMBIA The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia People's Army (Spanish:

Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia Ejrcito del Pueblo), alsoknown by the acronym of FARC or FARC-EP, is a Marxist-Leninist revolutionaryguerrilla organization based in Colombia.

FARC-EP has proclaimed itself to be a revolutionary agrarian, anti-imperialistMarxist-Leninist organization represent the rural poor.

It funds itself principally through ransom kidnappings, taxation, and the illegaldrug trade.

FARC-EP remains the largest and oldest insurgent group in the Americas. According to Colombian Armed Forces Commander Admiral dgar Cely, FARC-

EP had a total of 18,000 members in 2010, with an estimated 9,000 of thosebeing armed combatants and the remaining 9,000 made up of plainclothes militiawho provide intelligence or logistical support.

They have been weakened and retreated to mountainous regions sincePresident lvaro Uribe took office in 2002. In 2011, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos claimed FARC-EP may have

less than 8,000 members. In 2007 FARC-EP Commander Ral Reyes claimed that their force consisted of

18,000 guerrillas.


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The largest concentrations of FARC-EP guerrillas are believed to be locatedthroughout the southeastern parts of Colombia's 193,000 square miles of jungleand in the plains at the base of the Andean mountains.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez publicly rejected their classification as

"terrorists" in January 2008, considering them to be "real armies", and called onthe Colombian and other governments to recognize the guerrillas as a"belligerent force", arguing that this would then oblige them to renouncekidnappings and terror acts, and respect the Geneva Conventions.

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Cold War - So Hemisphere Focus