Thanks, Ronnie

Here's a selection from a well-written article on Reagan's shameful legacy in Latin America. There's a link to the full article at the bottom:

"Then there's El Salvador and Guatemala, where tens of thousands of innocent civilians -- mostly Mayan indigenas -- were systematically slaughtered by roaming death squads, many of whom were armed by Washington during the 1980s and trained at the infamous School of the Americas in Fort Benning, GA.

In 1999 the United Nations determined that the Guatemalan massacres were not just a side note to the country's 36-year civil war and constituted "genocide." As Weisbrot reports, "these massacres reached their peak under the rule of Mr. Reagan's ally, the Guatemalan General Rios Montt."

The United States Congress actually stopped funding the right-wing Guatemalan government's bloody drive to intimidate its rural Indians into submission during the early 80's. But Reagan personally flew to Guatemala City to meet with Montt and pledge his continued economic support, albeit through other, more clandestine channels, on the very day that the Guatemalan military wiped out an entire village in the western highlands and reportedly swung infant children against brick walls to smash their heads, writes Daniel Wilkinson in his excellent, yet sobering book Silence on the Mountain."

Thanks, Ronnie, For The Debacle In Latin America
—By Jacob Wheeler, Utne.com