The US military set up a miniature Fort Bragg in the Peruvian jungle and proceeded to wipe out several guerrilla groups, which had arisen in response to the deep-seated poverty of the Peruvian masses.

Dominican Republic, 1963-65

In February 1963, Juan Bosch took office as the first democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic since 1924. Here at last was John F. Kennedys liberal anti-communist, to counter the charge that the US supported only military dictatorships. Boschs government was to be the long-sought showcase of democracy that would put the lie to Fidel Castro. He was given the grand treatment in Washington shortly before he took office.

To Washingtons dismay, however, Bosch was true to his beliefs.

He called for land reform; low-rent housing; modest nationalization of business; foreign investment provided it was not excessively exploitative of the country and other policies making up the program of any liberal Third World leader serious about social change. He was likewise serious about the thing called civil liberties: communists, or those labeled as such, were not to be persecuted unless they actually violated the law.

A number of American officials and congressmen expressed their discomfort with Boschs plans, as well as his stance of independence from the United States. Land reform and nationaliza-tion are always touchy issues in Washington, the stuff that creep-ing socialism is made of. In several quarters of the US press Bosch was red-baited.

In September, the military boots marched. Bosch was out. The United States, which could discourage a military coup in Latin America with a frown, did nothing. (The most recent demonstra-tion of this was in Ecuador in January 2000, where a military coup was rescinded almost immediately after a few calls from Washington officials.)20

Nineteen months later, April 1965, a widespread popular revolt broke out, which promised to put the exiled Bosch back into power. The United States sent in 23,000 troops to help crush it.

Cuba, 1959 to present

The motto of the CIA: Proudly overthrowing Fidel Castro since 1959. 21

Castro came to power at the beginning of 1959. As early as March 10, a US National Security Council meeting included on its agenda the feasibility of bringing another government to power in Cuba . There followed 40 years of terrorist attacks, bombings, full-scale mili-tary invasion, sanctions, embargoes, isolation, assassinations...Cuba had

carried out The Unforgivable Revolution, a very serious threat of setting a good example in Latin America.

The saddest part of this is that the world will never know what kind of society Cuba could have produced if left alone, if not constantly under the gun and the threat of invasion, if allowed to relax its control at home. The idealism, the vision, the talent, the internationalism were all there. But well never know. And that of course has been the idea.

The Cuban government, its critics claim, sees the CIA behind every problem. In actuality, the CIA is behind only half of the problems. The problem is, the Cuban government cant tell which half.

Indonesia, 1965

A complex series of events, involving a supposed coup attempt, a counter-coup, and perhaps a counter-counter-coup, with American fingerprints apparent at various points, resulted in the ouster from power of Sukarno and his replacement by General Suharto and the Indonesian military, which was very closely tied to the US military. The massacre that then began immediately-of communists, communist sympathizers, suspected communists, suspected communist sympathizers and none of the above-was called by the New York Times one of the most savage mass slayings of modern political history . The estimates of the number killed in the course of a few years begin at half a million and go above a million.

It was later learned that the US embassy had compiled lists of communists , from top echelons down to village cadres, as many as 5,000 names, and turned them over to the army, which then hunted those persons down and killed them. The Americans would then check off the names of those who had been killed or captured. It really was a big help to the army, said one US diplomat. They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands. But thats not all bad. Theres a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.

Ghana, 1966

When Kwame Nkrumah tried to lessen his countrys dependence on the West by strengthening economic and military ties to the Soviet Union, China and East Germany, he effectively sealed his fate. A CIA-backed military coup sent the African leader into exile, from which he never returned. A CIA document, declassified in 1977, revealed that the Agency was in close contact with the military plotters and had been reporting to Washington for a year on the militarys plans to oust Nkrumah; the last such report was the day before the coup. There is no indication that the CIA ever informed Nkrumah of any of these plots.22

Uruguay, 1969-72

The 1960s was the era of the Tupamaros, perhaps the cleverest, most resourceful, most sophisticated, least violent, Robin-Hood-like urban guerrillas the world has ever seen. They were too good to be allowed to endure. A team of American experts arrived, to supply the police with all the arms, vehicles, communications gear, etc. they needed, to train them in assassination and explosives techniques, to teach methods of interrogation cum torture, to set up an intelligence service cum death squad. It was all-out war against the Tupamaros and any suspected sympathizers. The Tupamaros lost.

In 1998, Eladio Moll, a retired Uruguayan Navy rear admiral and former intelligence chief, testifying before a commission of the Uruguayan Chamber of Deputies, stated that during Uruguays dirty war (1972-1983), orders came from the United States concerning captive Tupamaros. The guidance that was sent from the U.S., said Moll, was that what had to be done with the captured guerrillas was to get information, and that afterwards they didnt deserve to live. 23

Chile, 1964-73

Salvador Allende was the worst possible scenario for the Washington power elite, who could imagine only one thing worse than a Marxist in power-an elected Marxist in power, one who honored the constitu-tion, and became increasingly popular. This shook the very foundation stones upon which the anti-communist tower was built: the doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that communists can take power only through force and deception, that they can retain that power only through terrorizing and brainwashing the population.

After sabotaging Allendes electoral endeavor in 1964, and failing to do so in 1970, despite their best efforts, the CIA and the rest of the American foreign policy machine left no stone unturned in their attempt to destabilize the Allende government over the next three years, paying particular attention to undermining the economy and building up military hostility. Finally, in September 1973, the military, under General Pinochet, overthrew the government, Allende dying in the process.

Thus it was that they closed the country to the outside world for a week, while the tanks rolled and the soldiers broke down doors; the stadiums rang with the sounds of execution and the bodies piled up along the streets and floated in the river; the torture centers opened for business, dogs trained to sexually molest female prisoners were set loose; the subversive books were thrown to the bonfires; soldiers slit the trouser legs of women, shouting that In Chile women wear dresses! ; the poor returned to their natural state; and the men of the world in Washington and in the halls of international finance opened up their checkbooks. In the end, more than 3,000 had been executed, thousands more had disappeared, tens of thousands tortured.24