The American Connection, Volume Two: State Terror and Popular Resistance in Guatemala

These two volumes (Vol.1 published under a separate ISBN) draw extensively on previously restricted United States government documents to reveal the part played by the U.S. in initiating counter-insurgency and new strategies of state terror in Central America. With the Reagan Administration's determination to continue financing and supporting the war in El Salvador as well as its destabilization of Nicaragua, Michael McClintock's work is essential for understanding these interventions. Focusing in particular on El Salvador and Guatemala, the author traces the history of these countries' brutal state security apparatuses from their origins in Spanish colonial times, through their continual suppression of the peasant rebellions provoked by their highly distorted class structures and landownership patterns. He demonstrates, with impeccable documentation, how the U.S.'s preference for supporting the status quo as a bulwark against what it perceives as a Communist threat, and its consequent refusal to tolerate social reform, have not only accelerated these conflicts and converted the civilian population into the enemy, but inextricably have enmeshed the U.S. itself in more and more direct ways. The relevance of Michael McClintock's analysis of U.S. support and military and intelligence assistance for repressive and reactionary regimes goes well beyond Central America, and extends to all those areas of the Third World where the U.S. has chosen to defend its interests in ways that ultimately excite violent popular opposition and carry a heavy cost in terms of the violation of human rights.