Column: Our Life and Times
April, 1999
Central America after Mitch and Clinton
by Kevin A. Barry and Mary Holmes
President Bill Clinton traveled to Central America March 8-11 prepared to
demonstrate his official concern for the tens of thousands of people
suffering hunger, disease, homelessness and unemployment in the aftermath
of Hurricane Mitch.
Overshadowing Clinton's trip is the "unnatural" disaster of decades of U.S.
government support for military regimes and their death squads. The last
U.S. president to visit Central America was Ronald Reagan in 1982, who came
to lavish praise and money on the contras.
The results of U.S. policy in Central America were summarized for one
country, Guatemala, when the independent Commission for Historical
Clarification issued a report in February, condemning the state for
torture, kidnappings and executions of nearly all the 200,000 people killed
since the anti-left war began in the 1960s.
The report was blunt in confirming the "open" secret of U.S.-CIA support of
successive military dictatorships. It was equally direct in calling the
military campaign in the countryside "genocide," the "aggressive, racist
and extremely cruel nature" of which "resulted in the massive extermination
of defenseless Mayan communities." The charge of genocide is not covered by
the various amnesties which have been passed to shield the military.
The report also concluded that U.S. government sponsorship and protection
of U.S. companies "exercised pressure to maintain the country's archaic and
unjust socio-economic structure."
Clinton did acknowlege U.S. responsibility for propping up the military in
Guatemala and El Salvador, using Honduras as one big U.S. military base,
and funding the contras in Nicaragua by characterizing past U.S. covert and
open aid and comfort to the military butchers as a "mistake." In El
Salvador, at the height of war, the U.S. was funnelling $400 million a
year; now it is down to $34 million.
Clinton's talk of a new "springtime of renewal" in U.S.-Central America
relations sounded hollow in light of the pressing needs of the people. A
huge portion of agribusiness has been wiped out for the near term, from
coffee in Nicaragua, to bananas in Guatemala and Honduras. Over 40,000
rural workers and their families depend on the banana industry alone in
Honduras. The large U.S. growers, Chiquita and Standard Fruit (Dole), are
already rebuilding, and a great part of foreign aid funding is to be spent
directly on the infrastructure so these foreign capitalists can get back on
their exploitative feet.
It's also clear that capital, especially in the export sphere, is
relentless in resisting the growing labor struggles in Central America, on
the plantations and in the maquiladoras. Union activists in Honduras, who
have waged a bitter decade-long struggle against Chiquita and Standard
Fruit, say that the growers are using the disaster of Mitch, when most
banana workers don't have jobs and the power to strike, to change work
rules, adding more jobs onto each laborer. They fear that when the next
harvest comes in, there will be far fewer workers.
In February, the clothing manufacturer Phillips-Van Heusen closed its
Guatemala City factory-the only unionized shop of the some 200
export-oriented apparel factories there. Workers had struggled to improve
wages and working consdition for six years and finally won a union contract
in 1997.
The Clinton administration did not leave behind any substantive promises
for the Central American governments which are clamoring for long-term debt
relief and entry into a NAFTAesque market arrangement with the U.S.
Instead, it is still intent on deporting the thousands of Mitch refugees
who took matters into their own hands by heading north.
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