Today in Labor History June 19, 1985: Gunmen opened fire on an outdoor restaurant in San Salvador’s upscale Zona Rosa, killing 13, including four U.S. Marines and two U.S. businessmen. A broadcast by Radio Venceremos, the FMLN’s pirate radio station, said: "If U.S. Army members and CIA agents died in San Salvador, it was because they came to attack our people. No one had summoned them; they died as a result of the interventionist policy carried out by President Reagan, whose intervention grows day by day. Reagan will have to assume full responsibility for his deeds." I was in El Salvador in 1993 and some of the bullet holes were still visible from the Zona Rosa attack. And, even though peace had been officially declared at this point, there were still sporadic death squad murder occurring, even while I was there. I remember going to a peace march in San Salvador that was patrolled by armed United Nations monitors. Buses had driven in from every corner of the country, displaying banners of the department or town from where they came, as well as others demanding an end to governmental impunity and assassinations.
Mark Danner wrote a really horrifying, but excellent article in the New Yorker, 1993, about the dirty war the Salvadoran government had waged against its own people. It includes the story of how guerillas pretended to allow the Radio Venceremos transmitter to get captured by the ruthless Colonel Monterosa, when in reality they had packed it full of explosive to destroy the colonel. You can read it here: http://markdanner.com/1993/12/06/the-truth-of-el-mozote/
Today in Labor History June 14, 2006: Mexican state police attacked 50,000 striking teachers occupying streets Zocalo of Oaxaca. No one died on this date, but over one hundred teachers were hospitalized. It led to mass protests and the occupation of Oaxaca city, led by the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO). Overall, the protests lasted seven months and at least 17 people were killed. The Mexican government used death squads and summary executions, and was accused of violating the Geneva Conventions.
*Police murders of striking United Fruit workers at New Orleans port June 11, 1913
*CIA orchestrated coup in Guatemala, 1954, leading to decades of Genocide against Mayan people, all on behalf of United Fruit
*Death squad murders in Columbia, on behalf of Chiquita (which used to be called United Fruit)
Today in Labor History June 1, 1981: Two Filipino longshore labor organizers, Domingo & Viernes, were assassinated in Seattle, Washington on orders of U.S.-backed dictator Ferdinand Marcos. In 1986, as a result of ongoing protests, President Ronald Reagan told Marcos to “cut and cut cleanly.” That evening, Marcos and his wife Imelda fled to Hawaii aboard a U.S. air force plane, after 20 years of rule, with an entourage of 90 people (mostly servants), with 22 crates of cash valued at $717 million, 300 crates of jewelry of unknown value, $4 million worth of unset precious gems, $200,000 in gold bullion, $1 million in Philippine pesos and deposit slips for $124 million in banks in the Cayman Islands. Plus, countless crates of shoes. The Marcos hold the Guinness record for the largest ever theft from a government. Today, their son, Bong Bong Marcos, rules over the Philippines, with Sara Duterte as his vice-president, daughter of the brutal previous president, Rodrigo Duterte, who has been linked to the death-squad murders of over 1,400 alleged drug dealers and street children.
Today in Labor History May 14, 1980: Salvadoran and Honduran soldiers gunned down 600 Salvadoran refugees as they tried to cross the Sumpul River from El Salvador. Soldiers from El Salvador’s notorious ORDEN paramilitary also bludgeoned people with gun butts and gored them with machetes and military knives. They also threw babies and children into the air and decapitated them with machetes. A Honduran priest who visited the site said that there were so many vultures picking at the bodies in the river that it looked like a black carpet. Typhoid cases broke out in villages down river because of the large quantity of rotting corpses. And bones from the victims could still be seen a year later.
Today in Labor History March 23, 1980: Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador gave a speech appealing to the men of the Salvadoran armed forces to stop killing Salvadoran civilians. The next day, they assassinated him, too.
Today in Labor History March 12, 1967: Suharto took power from Sukarno in Indonesia. He ruled Indonesia as an authoritarian, kleptocratic dictator for 31 years, and is widely considered one of the most brutal and corrupt dictators of the 20th century. During that time, he amassed a fortune worth $38 billion. Suharto rose to power under Sukarno during the 1965-1966 genocide. During that ostensibly anti-Communist purge, Suharto’s troops murdered 1-3 million communists, labor activists, peasants and ethnic minorities. During that genocide, he received support military and economic from both the U.S. and the U.K. In 1974, the Suharto regime, with approval of U.S. president Gerald Ford, invaded East Timor, killing over 200,000 Timorese. Another 75,000-200,000 died from starvation and disease. The current Indonesian government is considering awarding him the posthumous honor of National Hero.
"An estimated 90,000 Kenyans were slaughtered in the Kikuyu uprising while just over a thousand were hanged on a portable gibbet. Some 160,000 were detained in internment camps where torture was routine.
"One of Britain’s victims was US President Barack Obama’s paternal grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, who was arrested in 1949, and tortured by having pins inserted under his fingernails."
Kitson brought to Belfast his experiences in Kenya, fighting the Kikuyu Land and Freedom Army (exotically dubbed the “Mau Mau” by the British) in the early 1950s where he honed a practice of using “turned” or “converted” rebels into “counter-gangs”.
Today in Labor History February 4, 1981: Death squads killed 68 campesinos in the massacre of Chimaltenango, Guatemala. The massacre was one of many massacres making up the Guatemalan genocide. 200,000 Guatemalans died in the genocide. 93% of them were killed by government forces and death squads. 83% of the victims were Maya.