Reagan Administration Knew of Guatemalan Atrocities, Documents Reveal
by: PA Staff Writers
March 21 2009
3-20-09, 12:42 am
Upon entering office in 1981, Ronald Reagan overturned a Carter administration embargo against the military dictatorships that governed Guatemala with terror and violence. Reagan then side-stepped Congress and changed rules overseeing foreign aid and handed the dictators millions in military aid.
In December 1982, Reagan met with Efrain Ríos Montt, who had just seized power along with a junta of military officers, and described him as 'totally dedicated to democracy.' Reagan dismissed reports that his regime ruthlessly violated human rights as a 'bum rap.' Reagan continued to back successive dictators in that country.
Reagan's support for Rios and the country's subsequent dictators made human rights another casualty in his ideologically motivated Cold War against the Soviet Union, which Reagan insisted was backing the military regime's political opposition.
Over the course of the past several years, declassified documents from CIA and other US government sources revealed that Reagan's claims were lies and that the US government knew that the right-wing Guatemalan dictatorships systemically massacred political opponents. International and US sanctions against the right-wing Guatemalan dictators had been justified.
Newly declassified documents from the US State Department compiled and publicized this week by the National Security Archive gave further credence to claims that the Reagan administration understood and tried to hide the truth about the Guatemalan regime's human rights atrocities. While attempting to blame guerilla groups that fought the military dictatorship for the bulk of the violence, a State Department report in February of 1984 noted, 'Government security services have employed assassination to eliminate persons suspected of involvement with the guerrillas or who are otherwise left-wing in orientation.'
More:
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/reagan-administration-knew-of-guatemalan-atrocities-documents-reveal/
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