Who Created the Immigration Crisis?
The unintended consequences of military coups, kidnapping, torture, suppression, assassinations, and covert ops.
It was an overcast morning in Washington, DC, on September 21, 1976, as former Chilean Minister of Defense Orlando Letelier was heading to work at the Institute of Policy Studies, less than a mile from the White House.
As he rounded Sheridan Circle, a bomb placed beneath his vehicle exploded, killing Letelier and his assistant, Ronni Moffitt.
The shocking assassination would ultimately prove to be instrumental in exposing the Condor Project, a secret transnational campaign carried out by right-wing military dictatorships in South America during the 1970s and 1980s.
The Condor Project was named after the Andean Condor on Chile's coat of arms. It symbolized a network of South American dictatorships soaring high above the Andes like ruthless predators.
Condor resulted in horrific human rights violations, including the systematic kidnapping, imprisonment, torture, and assassination of tens of thousands of political dissidents, journalists, academics, activists, and their families across Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
Behind it all, providing financing, intelligence, and training, was the CIA.
Two years before Condor was formed, the CIA backed the 1973 coup that overthrew and murdered Salvador Allende, the democratically elected leader of Chile, and helped put military dictator Augusto Pinochet in power.
Pinochet’s rule was marked by the widespread persecution, mass arrests, torture, and extrajudicial killings that would come to characterize the Condor Project.
Orlando Letelier, who had served in the Allende administration, had become a highly vocal critic of Pinochet once he fled to the United States. The assassination had been designed to silence him. Instead, it brought everything to light.
So why was the United States, which portrays itself as the preeminent beacon of freedom and democracy in the world, up to its neck in support of brutal dictatorships?
To support and enrich multinational corporate interests.
Since the British began colonizing the New World and established the first permanent settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, they were obsessed with accruing great personal wealth by plundering the resources of what they viewed as an "unexploited frontier."
With the introduction of slavery in 1619, they had a virtually free and fully controlled labor force to work cotton and tobacco plantations, harvest timber, and mine natural resources.
Thus, they established the foundation for what would later become known as Corporate America.
By the late 19th century, powerful industrialists like J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller amassed immense wealth by creating monopolies in oil, finance, and transportation. Lacking the benefits of slavery, these "captains of industry” manipulated America’s political and economic systems to ensure the majority of citizens were kept in poverty and would work for minimal compensation. Even children as young as five toiled in unregulated mines, factories, and farms.
These American Oligarchs did everything in their power to destroy organized labor movements, using threats, intimidation, and violence while condemning them as socialist and communist. They also turned to South and Latin America, where, with the covert help of the CIA, they could install “strongmen,” exploit cheap labor, plunder resources, and avoid regulation.
The displacement of communities, loss of traditional livelihoods, and dictatorial violence forced millions of desperate people in Latin America and South America to flee their homelands. Most came to the United States, where low-paying jobs in agricultural fields, construction, factories, and service industries provided far better lives than the abject poverty, danger, and turmoil they faced at home.
In effect, American foreign policy and the CIA created the immigration crisis, which Donald Trump subsequently used to enrage his base and catapult himself into the White House.
More than 50,000 migrants have been detained over the past few months by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Last Saturday in Santa Ana, masked ICE agents chased down Narciso Barranco, a 48-year-old undocumented landscaper working outside a pancake house, pinned him to the ground with guns drawn, and pummeled him in the head as they handcuffed him.
Mr. Barranco has lived in the U.S. for decades.
His oldest son, Alejandro, served in the Marines for four years and is now a veteran.
Barranco’s two younger sons are active-duty Marines.
As I write, their father remains in custody.
Resources:
Orlando Letelier: Murdered in central Washington, DC ~ BBC
The Allende Years and the Pinochet Coup, 1969–1973 ~ Office of the Historian
Operation Condor ~ The National Security Archive
Father Of Marines Battered By Immigration Agents In Shocking Viral Video ~ Huffington Post
Child Labor in America: History, Policy, and Legislative Issues ~ Congressional Research Services
3,000-Strong Migrant Caravan Begins Walking Toward US–Mexico Border ~ NTD
From “Operation Ajax” to the "Bunker Buster” ~ Perspectives
Enemies of the State ~ Perspectives
They Are Human Beings… ~ Perspectives
Betraying Our Afghan Allies ~ Perspectives
It's a sad state of affairs. Thanks for documenting.