I was just talking about how studying Latin American history with focus on the border has deeply informed all of my alarm about the disinformation that has overwhelmed us. I believe the phrase I used was "careening toward 'guerra sucia' territory." We're already taking kids.
The term "banana republic" was popularized during the Guatemalan civil war, which happened after a USA-led propaganda campaign destabilized its democratically elected lefty government at the behest of the United Fruit Company/Chiquita. Edward Bernays was the mastermind behind it.
The term had already been around for a while, but I think that's how it really entered the lexicon: Because of foreign meddling with corrosive disinformation and propaganda campaigns that destabilized a left-leaning government and plunged Guatemala into a bloody civil war.
All because United/Chiquita was afraid that a left-leaning government would make all those private lands they were using to grow bananas into public ones, as they had promised. Anyhoo, doesn't feel so good to be on the other side of a foreign disinfo campaign, does it?
I wrote about this with a ton of citations here: damemagazine.com/2019/11/18/how…
Entre las moscas sanguinarias
la Frutera desembarca,
arrasando el café y las frutas,
en sus barcos que deslizaron
como bandejas el tesoro
de nuestras tierras sumergidas.....
la Frutera desembarca,
arrasando el café y las frutas,
en sus barcos que deslizaron
como bandejas el tesoro
de nuestras tierras sumergidas.....
Whoops. forgot to link to that poem: dean.faculty.writing.ucsb.edu/Upload501B-Fal…
Anyway, as a postconflict/humanitarian beat reporter on the U.S.-Mexico border, you really learn a lot about the aftermaths of these wars in ways that you cannot even imagine if you have not seen it yourself or spoken to people who were caught up in it...
...and I threw myself into debunking in 2016 with all the experience and savvy I had gained from all those years in Mexico (and elsewhere, but mostly Mexico) because I wanted to prevent still more people from having to experience these horrors. Hence my work; my speaking out;
my confrontational behavior; and eventually, now, my sadness and despair at what we have already lost and what we will continue to lose, should we continue down the path we are barreling down.
