Hello, friends. I'm privileged today to have Alan Nairn as a guest. Alan Nairn is
one of our great truth-telling journalists. He has received many awards. He
began working with Ralph Nader, and gave us an amazing book, "The Reign,”
about the Educational Testing Service, or ”the corporation that makes up
minds." This was 35 years ago. He identified the horrors of too much testing
and the fact that testing doesn't identify imagination or creativity.
He also investigated the death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala, and I
believe he saved the life of one of our great journalists, Amy Goodman. He was
badly beaten with M16 rifles at the site of the Santa Cruz Massacre. His reports
are unique, and extremely helpful for all of us. He received, together with Amy
Goodman, the Robert F Kennedy Memorial First Prize for International Radio for
their reporting on East Timor. He also won the 1994 George Polk Award.
Welcome, Alan.
Allan: Thank you, Blase. Good to be with you.
Blase: Well, it's been quite a while since we last spoke. Now you had a suicide
bomber attack in Jakarta, right? At Starbucks?
Allan: Yes, a couple of days ago there was an attack claimed by ISIS, and
apparently two civilians were killed, and about five of the attackers were
killed.
Blase: We're talking about the world's most populous Muslim country. What was
the impact, the response?
Allan: Well, it was interesting. I was in Indonesia when it happened, and the
response was more from the public and the press. The response was less
hysterical and more mature than the response of the American press and public
to terrorist attacks. People have not gone crazy about it. The press is not
agitating about it 24 hours a day. But, as in the US, the security agencies are
trying to use it as an excuse to increase their power. There's an intelligence
service called Bim in Indonesia, a kind of combined equivalent of the FBI and
CIA, and they, in the wake of this attack, are now demanding the power of
arrest and detention. It would be especially alarming if they get it, because
BIM itself is a state terrorist, just as ISIS is a non-state terrorist. BIM was
implicated a number of years ago in the assassination of Indonesia's leading
human rights activists, Monheir,who died vomiting to death on a plane after
her had been slipped a massive dose of arsnick. Things like these ISIS attacks
are really a godsend to the secret police around the world. It gives them a
chance to try to do more spying, catch more people and kill more without
pressure from the public.
Blase: Mosquitos kill two million people a year. I think they should be
categorized terrorists. That would be helpful, would it not?
Allan: Maybe then some money could be allocated to fighting malaria and
dengue. Blase: You know, Allan, you have in West Papua a resistance people who are
utterly amazing. I don't know if the populatipon knows much about what
they're doing. It's called a secret story on the western half of the island of New
Guinea. It's a place occupied by the Indonesian military since 1963, and
apparently they've evolved a non-violent struggle for national liberation. Would
you care to say something about that? Allan: What happened in Papua is remarkable in many ways. In the early 60s,
Papua was essentially attacked both politically and militarily by the combined
forces - and I think this may be unique in world history in terms of the
imbalance of forces - on the one side you had the people of West Papua, and
on the other side you had the armed forces of Indonesia plus the government of
the United States and the Soviet Union who were working at the height of the
Cold War with Indonesia and you have the United Nations all working together
to take over West Papua. Papua had been a Dutch colony, as had all of the
areas that later became Indonesia. But at this point int he early 60s, the US
was trying to push the Dutch out of West Papua, and the Soviet Union, for their
own reasons, partly because they had some sympathies with the existing
government of Sukarno in Indonesia. They decided they would back the
Indonesian army. So you had Indonesian and Soviet military personell going into
Papua with US backing, using US weaponry. It was an invasion. And
conincidentally Obama's step father was a soldier who was part of the
invasion. The invasion was then ratified by what all historians now regard as a fake
referendum which they called the Act of Free Choice. It was was a referendum
by a few notable locals who were hand-picked by the Indonesian military, and
the UN rubberstamped this and declared that West Papua had legally become a
part of Indonesia. And to this day, that is still the legal status of West Papua.
It's considered to a province, actually cut up into several provinces, that are
legally part of Indonesia. It is under de facto military occupation, and the local
population has never accepted this takeover by Indonesia. Indonesia is much
larger; it's the forth largest country in the world. The tactics of repression, of
spying, torture, mass killing of civilians, that were used in East Timor, where
the Indonesian military killed a third of the population, and in Ache where
there were many massacres, were applied in more recent years in 'West Papua.
There is a small armed resistance to the Indonesian forces, various groups that
are not well coordinated, the OPM, the Free Papua Movement, but they are a
tiny force in military terms.
Blase: Jason McCloud has a book here that tries to give an insider's story of
West Papua. And he gives the testimony of the people in beautiful prose. "On
that mountain slope, there used to be villages. They were destroyed by the
military. On that open field, our old men were forced to burn the bodies because they were considered 'primitive.'" It's not a well-known situation,
right? And then you have the fires going also.
Allan: First of all, the reference to the mountain in West Papua is very
important because one of the reasons that the political struggle for
independence in West Papua is so difficult now is precised because West Papua
is so rich in natural resources. It's the home of some of the world's largest gold
and copper mines, which are run by Freeport MacMoran, a US company based
out of New Orleans. Decades ago the company made a deal with then dictator of Indonesia Suharto
under which they paid extensive bribes to Suharto and his family and the
Indonesian military, particularly the US trained special forces known as
Colpasas. And in exchange, they got the right to strip the mountains of West
Papua of minerals. And if you fly over West Papua - I went there a couple of
years ago - you see that some of the rivers have turned colors never seen in
nature. The pollution exterminates any possibility of life in these rivers and
even though billions and billions of dollars worth if gold and copper have been
extracted, the local communities around the mine get almost nothing for it.
And to this day, Freeport MacMoran keeps getting its licenses renewed by
spreading money around to the politicians. In fact, just a few weeks ago one of the leading politicians in Indonesia was
forced to resign because he was implicated in a bribery scandal involving
Freeport MacMoran. He had a few months earlier been in the headlines when
he was visiting the United States. He and another leading politician of
Indonesia - the right hand man of General Provolo, and Indonesian officer who
was the son-in-law of the old dictator Suharto and who also has the dual
distinction of being the officer most implicated in massacres and most
personally involved in torture and also the officer most heavily trained by the
United States. They appeared at a rally at Trump Tower alongside Donald
Trump. This was shortly after Trump had launched his campaign, and at that
time he was getting some criticism from the American press for his racist
attacks against Mexicans and immigrants. So told his campaign people to "find
some foreigners." So these two Indonesian politicians, one involved in the
Freeport bribery scandal and one who is the right hand man of the general, and
there they were posing alongside Donald Trump. So it's out of this kind of
corruption and US-backed politics that Papua has been stripped of its gold and
copper.
It's of a piece with the burning of the forests. Indonesia has a massive palm oil
industry where lands and forests and jungle lands are cleared, cut away and a
certain variety of palm tree is planted. This variety of tree produces palms that
are suitable for squeezing to extract oil. The oil is very valuable, worth much
more per barrel than petroleum oil, and is used in all sorts of products around
the world. But in order to clear the land for these plantations, the original
ecosystem has to be cut down. And the easiest and most economical way to do
this is to set it on fire. That is also the case with certain other types of
farming, especially plantation farming. So every year, in the latter months,
there are thousands upon thousands of deliberately set forest fires that occur
in Indonesian, especially in the western part of the country on the island of
Sumatra. Massive amounts of smoke are generated from these fires. IN fact,
this year, the fires were the most intense in a very long time, and they actually
produced on some days more carbon dioxide that the entire economy of Japan
on those days. And it's said that the overall amount of carbon pollution that
was thrown into the atmosphere by those fires this year exceeded the amount
of carbon pollution produced by the entire US economy.
Blase: Are there efforts being made to stop the fires?
Allan: There was some effort by the government, by local firefighters. But it's
almost impossible because they are so big. Every year there's a cycle of burning
and then the rains arrive and put the fires out. Blase: We're talking about peat burning, right?
Allan: There are a couple of kinds of fire. Some on in regular forests, some on
peat land. Both types of fire matter. The peat is especially concentrated with
carbon in the soil, so it has an especially devastating environment effect when
those lands burn. It's been found in recent years that the majority of the
acreage is deliberately set to fire in this way. And small farmers use the
technique too, but most of it is done by plantations. The government that has
been in office for a year and a half now in Indonesia does seem to have some
actual interest in trying to crack down on these companies. They really haven't
had the power to do so, because the private sector is so strong and has so many
members of the bureaucracy. Thousands of people wind up in the hospitals
with serious respiratory conditions, many children and old people die. It did
great damage to the world environment.
Blase: You know, we have heroes there in West Papua, and we have the mines,
and we have the mining, and we have a similarity in a situation many of
thousands of miles away, in Guatemala, where we now have a heroic response
to an oppressive government that has been in power since 1954. I know that
you're very much in tough with the fact that they have a Nuremberg style
process going on in Guatemala now that personally I'm very envious of - we
might be able to use it in the US as well, because you have the mining interests
and the oppressive military - my goodness, you'd think you were in West Papua
or East Timor, but it's Guatemala, right?
Allan: There are some similarities, yes. In fact, during the last year I've been
spending much of my time in both places. I may be the only person in the world
who's been doing that, because the two countries are very far apart and don't
have that much direct connection. But both Guatemala and Indonesia have
deeply corrupt political systems, the populous has suffered massacres by
absolutely bloodthirsty militaries that use the same specific tactics that are
being made famous by the ISIS videos. Beheadings, cutting people open. But in
Guatemala, the local justice system for various complex reasons has been able
to - and I should add, the militaries in both countries were build up and backed
by the US during the worst of their atrocities - but in Guatemala now, the local
justice system, under intense popular pressure, have been making some
historic breakthroughs.
In 2013, the local courts put on trial the former dictator of Guatemala, General
Efrain Rios Montt, and convicted him of genocide for leading the massacres in
the North West Highlands against the indigenous Mayan population. And
recently, about two weeks ago, the local prosecutors did a series of raids on
morning around the country where they arrested 18 of most notorious generals
and colonels who had been involved in other aspect of mass murder against
civilians. The people they hauled in were like a who's who of the worst killers.
One of them was General Benedito Lucas Garcia, the former army chief of
staff. He was the brother of the dictator who preceded Rios Montt in power,
and General Benedito Garcia developed the tactic of the army sweeping into
mountain villages and systematically massacring the population and
establishing civil patrols, which were local militias under military control that
were used to terrorize the local. And Benidito developed that, and his brother
the dictator General Romeo, who died a number of years ago, really began the
rural massacres during 1981 and into the early part of 1982. And then in the
spring of 82, when Rioss Montt took power in a military coup, he made those
massacres systematic. And it was those massacres that later got Rioss Montt
convicted of genocide and sentence to 80 years. And that tactic of the rural
squeeze that produced those massacres were developed jointly by General
Benedito and the US military attache in Guatemala, Colonel George Baynes. He
told me this. I was in Guatemala at the time while this was going on, and he
said very proudly that he "worked hand in glove with Benedicto Lopez Garcia."
He said, "I'd follow that son of a bitch anywhere." They were colleagues. They
jointly developed the tactic, and then as the villages were taken over and after
the massacres, sometimes Baynes would come and visit them. And I ran into
him a number of times in the Northwest Highlands as these massacres were
going on. So General Bendicto was one of those arrested. Another was General
Gordillos, who was a member of the Rioss Montt junta.
Another person arrested, very interestingly, Colonel Maldonado. He was the
right hand man of Jimmy Morales, who was the incoming president of
Guatemala. Morales just took office four days ago. He's the new incoming
president, and he had been swept into power by a political party called the
SCN, which is dominated by the worst, the most extreme of the retired military
officers. And Obayo Maldonado was the organizer of this group. And he was
among those arrested the other day by the Guatemala attorney general. And
also, a series of intelligence chiefs like General Cayehas and others who were
in their day the most feared individuals in Guatemala. And now they are all
going to be standing trial. Blase: So what we're talking about is the ISIS of its day - the tactics that the
world would not finally start understanding because of ISIS videos - beheadings,
crucifictyions, slavery, gang rape, mass slaughter of civilians - ISIS brags about
this, well the Guatemalan army and US advisors carried out the same crimes,
concealed it, but they were doing and using the same tactics, and I certainly
recall a hearing about the same Abu Grahib tactics in Guatemala while I lived
there. This is a repetition. And we see this report from SOA Watch that 12 of
the 18 former military arrested in Guatemala are SOA graduates. Last week,
eighteen former military officials were arrested on charges of genocide and
crimes against humanity in one of the largest mass arrests of military officers
Latin America has ever seen. Twelve of them were trained at the SOA. The
arrests happened one week before the January 14th inauguration of newly
elected President Jimmy Morales. Now, he's very much tied up with the
Guatemalan military, is he not?
Allan: Yes, he is. Jimmy Morales is an interesting political case. Last year,
culminating in August, there was essentially a running popular uprising in
Guatemala where people were taking to the streets with mass demonstrations
demanding the resignation of the president, both the president and vice
president of the country at that time. The president was General Perez Molina,
and the Vice President Roxanana Baldeti. Both Baldeti and Perez Molina were
in the course of last year indicted for corruption, and they were actually forced
out of office. In August and September, I was in Guatemala and there was a
very dramatic series of events. Massive demonstrations in front of the National
Palace. The National Palace, which was once the nerve center for the military
intelligence service and the Archivo, which was an intelligence service, which
jointly coordinated the old system of assassination and disappearances, and
now in front of this building which used to be a terror center, hundreds of
thousands of people turned out to demand the ouster of Perez Molina. He had
himself implemented a policy of massacres begun by Garcia and continued by
Rioss Montt, and Molina had implemented as an officer in the Chio region, and
after facing indictment from the attorney general and a special prosecutor
sponsored by the attorney general and the United Nations, Perez Molina
resigned. He was arrested soon after. And he is currently in prison, and he will
be brought up on trial for corruption charges in the coming months. IN the
wake of this, as it happened, the calendar was such that a presidential election
was due to take place just a short time after these massive demonstrations had
succeeded in bringing down a general who was the president of the country,
and the one candidate who emerged as the victor was Jimmy Morales, a TV
comedian who sometimes performed in blackface on TV. He boasted that he
had zero experience in politics, and it was precisely because of this - the fact
that he had never been a politician - that he won. There were no serious
alternatives that anyone could vote for. Anyone who had money and a chance
of winning who was not corrupt. People thought, yes, Jimmy Morales is probably a thief, but he hasn't stolen
yet, unlike the other politicians who were candidates, so we'll go with the new
guy. People realized it was a bitter choice. He came to office surrounded by
the old military officers, but now a number of those key officers have been
arrested in a very brave move by the attorney general. And just in the past few
days, there been the opening presentation of evidence in court by the attorney
general's office and by human rights groups. Under Guatemalan law, civilians
can bring forward felony charges, criminal felony charges, if they present a
case that the attorney general feels is valid, and they can then join in a kind of
adjunct prosecutors working alongside the state prosecutors. That's what's
happening in this case. Groups representing survivors of the terror are working
with the attorney general to present evidence. And in the initial presentation
of evidence, they flashed up on the screen in the courtroom photos of the
exhumations of the mass graves that had been discovered at one particular
military base in a place called Coban. More than 559 skeletons have been
exhumed, and these skeletons clearly include massive numbers of civilians who
were executed there on the base. 22 of those skeletons are infants. Babies
were slaughtered and dumped into these mass graves. Many of the skeletons
had their hands still bound together behind their backs, ankles bound. Some of
them were still blindfolded. In some cases, they could tell from the skeletal
remains that the victims had been tortured before they were executed, and in
the initial presentation of evidence, there were some former military people
who testified and essentially confessed. They were acting as protected
witnesses, but they stated that the military committed torture and gang rapes
upon these civilians who were brought in from the surrounding villages before
they were executed and dumped into these mass graves. And it's the officers
who ran these bases during the time of the atrocities who constitute part of
the group that have been arrested and remanded for trial. Another case behind the arrest of these officers is the case of a kidnapping of a
young man named Keson who was 15 years old at the time. The army burst into
his house wielding machine guns, grabbed him, taped his mouth, threw a bag
over his head and dragged him away. He was never seen again. The reason they
raided his house was that they had been holding his older sister as a captive at
the army base. She had been arrested for distributing leaflets criticizing the
army and they had seized her and they had been torturing and gang raping her
at the base, but she had managed to escape. One reason she escaped was that
they gave her no food. So she became so thin that she was able to escape
through the bars of her cell. They couldn't find her, so as a reprisal they took
him, and he was never seen again. So it's in connection with that crime that
some of these arrests are being made as well. And all of this evidence is now
being brought forward before the public in Guatemala. It's really a stunning
achievement on the part of very brave local prosecutors and the even braver
survivors of these atrocities who filed the complaints and are coming forward
as witnesses. Imagine if we could do this in the United States.
Blase: That is exactly what I would like to see happen. We're so happy to have
you with us today. Nothing that you are talking about was unknown to the
United States. You were with Charlie Rose back in 95 explaining the role of the
CIA death squads in which we were immediately and directly involved, and by
we I mean the United States, and you were interviewed alongside Elliott
Abrams, and you exposed many times his role in this. It is time for us to imitate
the heroism of the Guatemalan people. That was a place that you couldn't even
use the word peace without having a problem. These brave people are standing
up to one of the most vicious military situations in the world that has reigned
there since 1954. We're just so concerned...you mention that Elliot Abrams is a
fitting subject for a Nuremberg style inquiry. He stated correctly that
democrats would have to be in the dock with him?
Allan: Yes, it was very interesting. Abrams and I were both on the Charlie Rose
show along with Senator Robert Torcelli. And the topic of the show was the
Guatemalan military because at that time, this was in 95, stories had recently
come out about the case of Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, who was married to
Jennifer Harbury, who was disappeared and is presumed dead. The information
that had come out led to information about other executions carried out by G2,
the military intelligence service. So on the show we were discussing the
Guatemalan military and I detailed some of the atrocities, and I said that
people like Elliot Abrams, who was really the main political strategist behind
the Reagan administration policy in Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras and El
Salvador, backing the mass killing of civilians. I said Abrams should be brought
up before a Nuremberg style tribunal. And his first response was to say, well
this was bipartisan policy, it wasn't just us the Republicans. The Democratic
congress went along with it. I said, you're absolutely right about that, and
democrats would have to be in the dock along with you. And he laughed and
said that's an insane idea. This guy is calling for putting on trial everyone who
is in government during the Cold War. And I said, you have to apply the law
impartially. You have to enforce the murder laws impartially. And anyone,
regardless of their position, even if they held high posts of state, if they were
accessories or accomplices to murder, or they helped others who committed
murder, they should be put on trial for that. And I cited the principle of then
president George Bush, who said if you give a gun to a terrorist, if you aid a
terrorist, you are a terrorist. Well, I agree with that principle, and it means
that US officials can and should be charged. We have not reached the state of
political civilization that Guatemala has. I was in Guatemala during the Rios
Montt trial, in fact I was initially called by the prosecutors to be a witness
against Rios Montt. At the last moment I was kept off the stand by then
president General Perez Molina because he was afraid I would implicate him as
well.
Blase: He's in prison right now. Allan: Yes, and I was in the courtroom during the final stages of the trial and
remember thinking to myself, trying to imagine to myself - my God, there's Rios
Montt sitting in the dock, can I imagine something like this happening in the
United States, a trial in Texas where George Bush is in the dock for the invasion
of Iraq.
Blase: It has to happen. Allan: Or Obama for drone attacks. I just didn't have the imagination because it
is just politically inconceivable in the United States. Doing it with their own
domestic courts. The Nuremberg trials were carried out by US and other
occupation authorities after they had defeated Nazi Germany in a war. But this
was not an international tribunal, this was a local court - and it grew out of
what is a very corrupt local judicial and prosecutorial system. But a few honest
individuals managed to work themselves into the system as judges and
prosecutors, and they, empowered and emboldened by a mass movement,
found it possible to demand justice. It's an example for the world. And to get
back to the case of Guatemala and Indonesia, I often cite the case of
Guatemala when I talk about what the Guatemalans were able to do.
Blase: Alan, as we go now from West Papua and Guatemala, and Elliot Abrams
who became the key figure in US Central American policy during the time of
the slaughter, and became a top advisor to Bush Junior - we see the
identification by you of Colonel Steele, who worked alongside the Salvadoran
death squads, and now we're making a complete circle of the globe, and Steele
being brought to Iraq to set up the Shiite militia operations that went out and
targeted the Sunnis in Iraq. This was under General Patreus, I mean we're
circling the globe here. (laughing)
Allan: Yes, it is remarkable. The basic issue is that the US for many decades
has had a policy of being willing to kill civilians. When the US does that in
overseas operations, US generals and presidents do not have to fear
prosecution. They can get away with it. So they have done this in dozens upon
dozens of countries, and it often involves the same personnel, moving them
around. In Guatemala, for example, the operations we've been talking about
that involve ISIS like atrocities - there were crucifixions and beheadings in the
Mayan highlands carried out by the US-backed Guatemalan Army - at that time
in Guatemala, the top officers, many trained at the School of the Americas,
along with US military advisors like Colonel Jessie Garcia, who I interviewed,
who was training the Guatemalan military, said he was training them in tactics
including how to destroy villages. The CIA was working systematically with the
G2, the Guatemalan military intelligence services, to coordinate the
assassinations and disappearances. And many of the officers on trial today in
Guatemala are precisely those powerful officers, leaders of the G2. The CIA
actually had North American CIA personnel working inside the G2. They built a
new office that was used as a torture center for the G2 in Guatemala City.
They carried the top leaders of the G2 on the CIA payroll. In fact, one of those
G2 leaders who was carried on the CIA payroll was Perez Molina, who had been
involved in the Rios Montt massacres and was ousted in the uprising last year
and who is now sitting in prison. At the highest level, figures like Ronald Reagan would come down and
personally lend their support during the massacres. He met Rioss Montt and at
a press conference in Honduras, he praised Rios Montt as a man of integrity and
said he was getting a bum rap on human rights. So this was a multi-faceted
program of US support for the terror in Guatemala. And the same thing was
going on in El Salvador. A number of years ago in the Progressive I did an
investigation about how the Salvadoran death squad apparatus had been
created by the US starting back in the 60s. I interviewed the Salvadoran
general who was regarded as the Godfather of the death squads, General
Monazno, and he described in 13 hours of interviews how he had been brought
over to Vietnam by the US Green Berets to observe the US tactics in Vietnam,
and he showed me a plaque that he had been presented with by them. He later
was brought into the Oval Office and presented a sliver medal for exceptionally
meritorious service, given to him by President Lyndon Johnson. Then he went
back to El Salvador to set up the Salvadoran death squad apparatus working
with US Special Forces, CIA and some State Department personnel.
One of the US figures involved in supporting this death squad apparatus was
Colonel James Steele, who was involved in these operations in the 80s in El
Salvador, and after George Bush's invasion of Iraq, he turned up in Iraq during
the time of General Petreus, and he was a liaison to the Iraqi Interior Ministry,
where they set up these Shiite militias which would operation out of the
Interior Ministry and would target Sunnis. When news of this new tactic - and
this was done at the same time that Patreus was walling off parts of Baghdad
on a sectarian basis, literally building walls between neighborhoods - when this
tactic first emerged, Newsweek Magazine ran a piece quoting Pentagon
officials calling it the "El Salvador Option." Meaning that they were using the
old Salvador death squad policy in Iraq.
And it's important to know that while this was going on in Iraq, Maliki, who was
the president of Iraq, was essentially being handled personally by US President
George Bush. Bush would personally video conference with Maliki quite
frequently and on a level of detail that is very rare for a US president. He
would confer with Maliki and instruct him, and it's now generally accepted in
establishment Washington by politicians of both parties that it was the policies
of Maliki - the extreme Shiite sectarianism and persecution of the Sunnis, the
massacres against Sunni protestors, that gave rise to ISIS. It was one of the key
factors in giving rise to ISIS, and ISIS is - as Al Queda was before it - a
phenomenon which is in a way an historical exception. The US operations of
killing civilians, first in Afghanistan and then Iraq, created conditions that gave
rise to these organizations, and even though the US was not intentionally
supporting anti-US forces, that's what they became.
So in these cases, US terror had consequences that ended up hurting the US to
some extent. But most US terror operations over the years, like those in
Central America or Haiti or Southern Africa or many other places, usually have
no negative consequences for the US. Blase: Look at all these years of ISIS-style behavior in El Salvador, Guatemala,
Honduras. Refugees have been coming here called, of course, "undocumented
aliens" or "Illegals." They are refugees, they've come here, they've done the
work, they've not cost us a penny, they've been a great addition to the US
economy in every way. And they are incredible people who have come here and
been abused and are being thrown out of the country by these horrible raids
that are going on now. And we see the gangs imitating the policies of the
militaries of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras. If you want to know where they
found those policies, we have a continuing civil war situation, and now we are
sending the victims back to the place where they were victimized. This is an
absolutely unacceptable situation that is taking place as we speak.
Allan: It's true - one of the things that's especially remarkable and really struck
me when I was in Guatemala during the early eighties during the height of the
terror - and a number of times during the 90s - I was away from Guatemala for
a very long time. I returned in 2013 for the Rios Montt trial and then again last
year for the uprising against Perez Molina. I was struck by the fact that this
time around we were seeing Guatemala - almost everyone you would run into
on the street and in the countryside would mention that either they themselves
had gone looking for work in the US or they had relatives who were there in the
United States who had either gone because they could not find survivable jobs
in Guatemala or because the situation of crimes and social breakdown was so
bad, it was pervasive. And part of that problem comes, as you mention,
because of the gangs that sprung up. There are really two prongs to that. One
are the drug trafficking operations, and the other are the higher level drug
export operations that smuggle the drugs up through Central American
countries and Mexico into the United States, where the big consumer demand
is. The other is the street gangs, lower level street gangs. And the background
of both these criminal operations is really remarkable. A lot of the drug
smuggling operations grew out of the military in the 1980s, and in particular
one unit of the Guatemalan Army known as the Caybiles, the unit the General
Perez Molina and other of the most notorious officers came out of. The
Caybiles were involved with the US Green Berets, and Caybiles special forces
officers, after the end of direct military operations, many of them went into
the drug trade. And one of the strongest initial drug operations, known as the
Zerca, had operations both in Guatemala and in Mexico, were directly set up by
many of the key members of the old Guatemalan Caybiles and former members
of the Mexican military who had also been trained by the US. They also had key
roles in setting up the big drug cartel operations. And then on the street gang
level, the street gangs that are today such a menace in Guatemala and
especially in El Salvador, a menace to to the local population, many of them
originated from the US - the children of young refugee families, many in Los
Angeles, who then went back to El Salvador and Guatemala and got drawn into
the drug enterprises of the old military people. One gang in particular is a huge
force in El Salvador and even extends into Guatemala today.
One of the most interesting cases and most significant examples of gang
operations in Guatemala today involved military officers, some of whom are
currently in prison, implicated in the assassination of Archbishop Hiraldi. He
was a Guatemalan bishop who presided over the truth commission. He issued a
report documenting massacres by the Guatemalan Army. And four days after
issuing the report, he was assassinated. One of the officers who was jailed
eventually for that crime is now said to be by the establishment press in
Guatemala and also by the country's leading politicians, is running a lot of
these Guatemalan gang operations out of prison. On the phone, he's running
gang operations and the gangs go out and particularly target the public bus line
and demand that the bus drivers give them payoffs. And if they don't, they
assassinate them on the spot. Just a few weeks ago the bus drivers went on
strike - and there's actually an association of the widows of bus drivers because
of this awful practice.
Blase: I'm so sorry to say we're running out of time. Allan: These are the conditions that the people are facing.
Blase: Friend, I've been speaking with Allan Nairn. In 1993 Nairn and Amy
Goodman received the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial First Prize for
International Radio award for their reporting on East Timor. In 1994, Nairn
won the George Polk Award for Journalism for Magazine Reporting. Also in
1994, Nairn received the James Aronson Award for Social Justice
Journalism for his writing on Haiti for The Nation magazine.
Thank you so much Allan, and I hope to speak with you again very soon.