Remembering the resistance to US intervention in Latin America

Transcript

It’s the 1980s.

The United States is wreaking havoc in Central America. Backing authoritarian dictatorships. Fueling massacres and violence. And in the case of Nicaragua it’s funding, training, and organizing the Contras, a paramilitary organization created to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government.

The Sandinistas were a revolutionary group that had overthrown the US-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979, ending the Somoza family’s grip on the country that had lasted for more than 40 years. They promised revolutionary change. Health and education. 

But the United States would not have it. The US government was spending billions in its interventionist policies across Central America, in the name of fighting so-called communism. $9.5 billion, just in 1985 alone, according to one estimate at the time.

US military support and money spent on bloody authoritarian dictatorships and groups like the Contras. Support and funds to fuel terror raids, civilian deaths, disappearances, massacres, and human rights abuses. 

Historian Alex Aviña:

“This is one of the darkest, if not the darkest, period of Latin American history when it comes to genocide, political violence and just mass death. And Ronald Reagan was behind a lot of it.”

But people pushed back across Central America. And they also responded in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of people marched on the streets against US intervention in the region. It would become the Central American solidarity movement.

As many as 80,000 people in the United States signed a Pledge of Resistance, promising to commit civil disobedience if the US invaded Nicaragua. And people were already putting their bodies on the line against the US support for the Contras. There were hunger strikes. Others blocked weapons shipments. Many went to jail. Vietnam veteran Brian Wilson lost both legs while participating in a non-violent protest on the railroad tracks outside of a US weapons depot in California. The train ran him over.

“We found out later that the train crew that day had been ordered not to stop the train, which was an unprecedented… basically an illegal order.”

That’s him, speaking to Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! in 2011 after the release of his memoir, “Blood on the Tracks.”

“This is what happens to people all over the world, who obstruct the Yankee mad train that’s trying to repress people who wanna have self-determination. It was just another part of US policy coming home to me viscerally. 

“The day I woke up, 9,000 people showed up at the tracks and ripped up 300 feet of the tracks and stacked up the railroad ties in a very interesting sculpture. And from that day on, for 28 consecutive months, there was a permanent occupation on the tracks of sometimes 200 people with tents, blocking every train and every truck. 2,100 people were arrested. Three people had their arms broken by the police.” 

The solidarity movement grew to be huge in the United States.

“It’s easy to forget because you haven’t lived it, but I think it was very, very present. And it was like something that, like in local council meetings there were debates about the Sandinista Revolution and United States foreign policy.”

Historian Eline van Ommen:

“This was something that student unions talked about. There were posters everywhere… more left-leaning city councils, established relationships with Nicaraguan towns. It was kind of an alternative foreign policy route.”

Some people even traveled to Nicaragua to put their lives on the line.

Historian Alex Aviña:

“Often, other Americans would go down there and serve as human shields to protect. They thought that if you have foreigners on the border areas that the Contras wouldn’t attack the population, the Nicaraguense population there, because foreigners were around.”

The Contras still wreaked havoc. Killed and shot Americans acting in solidarity on the ground. But people continued to fight. Including lawmakers, who pushed back, passing amendments limiting US assistance to the Contras. Reagan turned to the covert and illegal Iran-Contra deal to fund the Contras. That scandal would break in 1986, tanking Reagan’s approval. 

Still, people marched. Voices in the United States standing up to US intervention. Standing in solidarity with Central America. Standing and demanding that people and countries abroad be allowed to decide their own destiny without the intervening hand of the United States… fueling violence abroad, carrying out attacks and threatening invasion in foreign countries just across the Caribbean. 

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Hi, folks. Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox. 

I really wanted to share this story today, as the Trump administration carries out ongoing deadly strikes on boats across the Caribbean and Pacific. And increasingly threatens military action in Venezuela.

These are dark times. We can not forget the long history of people standing up across the United States in solidarity with countries abroad. When they are under attack by US foreign policy and intervention.

Marches are planned for this Saturday across the United States against Washington’s military threats against Venezuela.

This resistance and solidarity is more important than ever today. 

My podcast Under the Shadow takes a deep look at the role of the United States in Central America, and in particular, in the 1980s. Episode 10 of that series looks at the US in Nicaragua and also the resistance and solidarity that I talked about today in this episode.

I’ll add links in the show notes. 

Folks, if you have not heard, I have more incredible news. You might remember that Stories of Resistance recently won a Gold Signal award for best history podcast. Well it has also won a Gold Anthem Award in the category of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. We are honored.

This is episode 79 of Stories of Resistance. If you don’t already subscribe to the show you can follow the links in the show notes. Stories of Resistance is produced by The Real News. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. And please, if you like what we do, rate us, leave a comment or a review, and help us spread the word.

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.