Free Custom «Political violence» Essay Paper

In Guatemala, during the armed confrontation, the nation’s concept of ‘internal enemy,’ intrinsic to the National Security Doctrine, increasingly became comprehensive. At the same time, the policy became the raison d’être of Military and the State Policies for many decades. The CEH discovered through its investigations one of the most overwhelming effects of this principle: state forces and the related paramilitary groups were accountable for ninety three percent of the violations that were documented by the CEH, including nine two percent of the subjective executions and ninety one percent of forced disappearances. The victims included children, women and men of all social classes: politicians, workers, church members, peasants, professionals, academics and students; in terms of ethnicity, Mayans were the majority or the most affected.

In Chile, the concept of ‘internal enemy’ was also evident during the 1970s, whereby the CIA had a successful story when it was hard to choose the leader who had won the elections. The contest was between the then administrator, Eduardo Frei and Allende, who was a Marxist leader and also enjoyed the backing of the socialists and the communists (Burggraff, 78). Although both the houses of the Chilean Congress were capable of deciding the winner in a run-off election where no candidate had won the total majority, by long-standing tradition, the candidate who garnered the most votes was automatically the president. However, the Nixon administration never wanted a Marxist administration, thus wanted to prevent Allende’s election by all means. In this connection, there were two strategies in place to win this battle. The first one was to re-instate the outgoing president, Eduardo Frei, and the second was to organize a coup in which could see Allende who had ascended to power overthrown. Unfortunately, all these plots never succeeded, all the countrymen together with the military rallied behind Allende and this gave him enough support to stay in power.

 

Type of service

Type of assignment

Title of your paper *

Academic level

Pages

Timeframe

Spacing

Currency

  Order now

In El Salvador, a big gap between the rich and the poor provided the conditions for the development of social movements that pressed for economic reforms. The closing down of political space by the government and their military supporters and extreme suppression against the democratic unions and reformers, community and student leaders, limited considerably the possibility of starving off revolution by reforming the system. Nevertheless, the growth of ‘popular organizing’ during the late 1960s and the 1970s, with a vital role played by the base communities that were organized by the lay leaders, nuns and Catholic priests, and the formation of the guerilla organizations from the 1970 increased challenges to the government. However, as the challenges, both armed and political- increased, the government responded with increased suppression- targeted death squad killings and the first massacres (Adams, 54). The opposition was never defeated by the repression, but pushed more opponents toward the direction of the forces of revolution, while undermining the credibility of the administration internationally.

President Clinton apologized for the involvement of the United States of America in the Guatemala's thirty six-year old war, stating that Washington was wrong in supporting the security forces of Guatemala in a ruthless counterinsurgency campaign that saw several thousands of civilians being slaughtered (Charles, pA1). Francisco Lorenza, a deputy of the National Assembly criticized a less blunt admission by Clinton role in the war. He mainly blamed the left and right without clearly accepting the responsibility of America as a sponsor of the war.

There was not particular crime that led to the prisoners being arrested. It was just all about the repression from the tyrannical administration. They were asked questions in a language that they could not understood and when they failed to answer, that is when they got the ruthless beating and torture.