Jails.

Editor,

Guatemala was the first to fall, in 1954, to a CIA orchestrated coup after Mohammad Mossadegh was toppled in Iran by the CIA in 1953.

Jacobo Árbenz's crimes as democratically elected president of Guatemala in 1954? Land reform, health clinics, literacy programs, agricultural production for domestic consumption instead of for export by multinational corporations. The usual story in Central America. Lots of murder. In El Salvador, too, when it fell into U.S.-brokered chaos in 1980, at the hands of right-wing death squads. "Freedom fighters" in Ronald Reagan's immortal words with reference to the Contras, who did America's dirty work in Nicaragua.

Most recently we have an American-recognized military coup in Honduras, which opened the door for a drug transit turf war -- the sort of thing that inevitably accompanies right-wing dictatorships -- resulting in thousands more civilian deaths.

Between NAFTA and other so-called "free trade" treaties, whose raison d'etre is no-lose deals for transnational speculators, and American "anti-communism" wars on peasants enjoying a glimmer of dignity under the protection of empathetic, popular leaders, the USA has wrought such suffering and destruction in Central America it is only fitting that its architects feel no compunction about letting 7-year-olds fleeing for their lives rot and die in jails.

Re: "Innocents at the Border" (6/17/2014)