Word: guatemala
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...tenuous case can be made that the Administration is taking a harder line on human rights excesses in El Salvador. But the White House's recent attempts to sell aims to the rightist regime in Guatemala and destabilize the leftist government in Nicaragua are telling signs of the President's dangerous mindset...
...Administration has been flirting with the Guatemala regime ever since General Efrain Rios Montt took power in a coup last spring. Reagan wants to end a four-year freeze on arms sales to that country imposed by then-President Carter because of serious human rights violations...
...done nothing to deserve the trust such a change in U.S. policy would indicate. New elections, promised by the Guatemalan leader, are still unsure, and terrorism--particularly from rightist death squads--continues to plague the country. Reagan's desire--announced during his trip--to send more guns to Guatemala would only make the situation worse...
...Steven Solarz (D-N.Y.), a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee said a change in policy by the Administration would make "a mockery of our pretensions to support the cause of human rights in Central America when we provide military assistance to a government like the one in Guatemala, whose security forces are responsible for the massacre of literally thousands of their own people." Unfortunately, Reagan can restore aid without Congressional approval, However, the Administration would have to periodically report to Congress on human rights conditions in Guatemala, as it currently does for El Salvador...
Hatfield understands what most of his GOP colleagues do not: that the Administration is getting a warped view of reality by looking at Guatemala--and for that matter the rest of Latin America--through an East-West prism. Most of Guatemala's problems have nothing to do with the U.S.-Soviet conflict, but are simply the result of decades of social, political and economic inequities. Of course the Soviets and their Cuban allies have taken advantage of the turmoil in Latin America, but only because the U.S. has made it easy for them to do so. By stopping the chaos...