The Latin American Cold War; Revolutionaries and Power Struggles.

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The Cold War began in 1945 in Europe and it was caused by the competition and differences of Western Democracy and Soviet Communism.  These ideas would come into conflict around the world in the Cold War. Many people may know about Cuba during the Cold War in America but they do not know about the events in my homeland of El Salvador.  El Salvador after 1945 was under control of military government without political party because they made it only for the moment of elections. This kind of government continued under control of  the army.

In the 1980s military rule in El Salvador controlled the elections. Elections were not democratic.  Today things are different.    In the 1980s Jose Napoleon Duarte Fuentes was a corrupt President of El Salvador. He abused power in the worst years of the Civil War in El Salvador because the FMLN (Actual political party on charge of the Presidency of El Salvador with Salvador Sanchez Ceren) started to move groups of people to attack the main power (The Government) because they feel the people with more power or more money take advantage to all benefits in the country and they can’t do it as them, so  the people decided to finish with this Duarte dictatorship and put somebody of them to help the most poor people asa a kind of Robin Hood who gives back to the poor by taking power from the rich.  This type of thinking was caused by ideas of socialism and communism spreading through Latin America.

Also the effects of the Cold War in other countries affected El Salvador because this group “FMLN” or the party of the people socialist movement was receiving help from the East Bloc (Soviet Union) to eliminate the current government of Duarte.  El Salvador became a chess board of the global Cold War.  Image result for Cold War Chess Board

The El Pueblo movements to joined to the FMLN and fought with the government. The people’s liberation movement was supported by the Soviet money and weapons but the government of El Salvador was supported by the United States.  That’s how this worst years of the Civil War of El Salvador started.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_El_Salvador 

Below is a video documentary showing the violence and murder of the civil war years.  The “Left” is seen as socialist communist liberals or the FMLN and the “Right” is the conservative power of the corrupt government supported by the United States because it was seen as fighting “communism”.

 

“The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality”  – Che Guevera

Che Guevara was a revolutionary man for the American people and also for the countries in Africa and Asia that he visited.  Although he is considered a big revolutionary of Cuba he is from Argentina. He studied and he promoted his messages too. He spread his ideas of socialism and encouraged revolutionaries but he was an enemy of the west.

On the morning of October 8, they encircled the area with two battalions numbering 1,800 soldiers and advanced into the ravine triggering a battle where Guevara was wounded and taken prisoner while leading a detachment with Simeón Cuba Sarabia. Che biographer Jon Lee Anderson reports Bolivian Sergeant Bernardino Huanca’s account: that as the Bolivian Rangers approached, a twice-wounded Guevara, his gun rendered useless, threw up his arms in surrender and shouted to the soldiers: “Do not shoot! I am Che Guevara and I am worth more to you alive than dead to his judgment Guevara was tied up and taken to a dilapidated mud schoolhouse in the nearby village of La Higuera on the evening of October 8. For the next half day, Guevara refused to be interrogated by Bolivian officers and only spoke quietly to Bolivian soldiers. One of those Bolivian soldiers, a helicopter pilot named Jaime Nino de Guzman, describes Che as looking “dreadful”. According to Guzman, Guevara was shot through the right calf, his hair was matted with dirt, his clothes were shredded, and his feet were covered in rough leather sheaths, you can see photos of this in the next links I’m going to share to you:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CheExec9B.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CheExec19.jpg. 

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/professional-revolutionary-che-guevara-is-executed-in-bolivia

He went to El Salvador in 1954 and we can read this in this fragment translated by School Ernesto “Che” Guevara

“Ernesto “Che” Guevara

Visited the ruins of Tazumal, in April 1954.

“ALWAYS BE CAPABLE OF FEELING IN THE DEEPEST,
ANY injustice done against anyone,
ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.
IT IS THE BEST QUALITY IN A REVOLUTIONARY”

http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMHHNK_Ernesto_Che_Guevara_Chalchuapa_El_Salvador

For me he was a strong imperfect but educated man who wanted to defend his thoughts against the history of power.

 

We know the term Cold War is the event after the WWII where two sides (East and West) made by the Soviet Union and Unite States of America.  One way to summarize these events are that one side wants one form of government (democratic capitalism) and the other one wants a different one run by Communism and almost always a dictatorship.  The so called democracy of El Salvador was just an anti-communist dictatorship but it was still supported by the West.  The “super powers” of West and Eat ( USA and USSR ) maintain the distance to each other because they don’t want to provoke the next war with weapons to destroy the Earth (Nuclear Bomb).  Instead they fight “proxy wars” like in Korea, Vietnam, and even El Salvador.  One perfect example of the communist threat in Latin America is Cuba.  Another place in Latin America where communism still exists today is Venezuela.  The Cold War had bad affects on both sides because it supported bad governments that were not good for the people.

 

https://study.com/academy/lesson/events-in-latin-america-during-the-cold-war.html

One of the most important events in Latin America during the period of the Cold War is the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The Soviet Union in Cuba sent nuclear missiles to restrict the United States for some invasion of they want to do it, but this just provoke more and more fear on this nation and the other one’s like El Salvador, but talking specially about the missile all this happen because United States tried and failed to invade Cuba with rebel exiles and destroy the Communist Government there, but the Soviet Union decided stop this to avoid losing their country against capitalism of United States.  With the help of the Castro government of Cuba the Soviet Union make true the missile and Cuba and also makes feel fear the citizens of USA.  With all these events the president in charge in that moment (John F Kennedy) decided make an offer to Soviet Union to remove the missile in Cuban and they going to remove the missiles in Turkey.

 

Spy photo taken by US Airplane over Cuba shows Soviet missiles

 

http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cuban-missile-crisis

In brief, this period of the Cold War was a fear time to each nation to start the next World War but it was sadness for the poor countries involved by the power of these big nations as United States or the Soviet Union, and I think it’s not necessary to repeat periods like that in our history as nation or in the world.  We always need to look for the humanity on both sides of a power struggle.