Do You Ever Wonder Why

conditions in Central America are so bad that people are sending their children to the US? Mahablog has a couple of articles that seem to go together. This one by A. W. Gaffney reaches back into history:

But why is the region so underdeveloped, why is poverty so entrenched, and why has the colonial legacy of inequality proven so resistant to social and political change? Though the situation is admittedly complex, the dismal state of affairs in Central America is in no small part the result of the failure of social democratic and left-of-center governments to maintain power and enact socioeconomic change; this failure, in turn, is sadly (in part) the consequence of the ironic “success” of U.S. foreign policy.

His first example is Guatemala:

As it did elsewhere, the legacy of the colonial and postcolonial era meant massive inequalities in land ownership in Guatemala, with large numbers of dispossessed peasants condemned to lives of severe poverty. This status quo was maintained in the 1930s and ’40s by the U.S.-supported dictator Jorge Ubico, but it was challenged following his overthrow in 1944, particularly after the election of Jacobo Árbenz in 1951. “All the riches of Guatemala,” Árbenz announced at his inauguration, “are not as important as the life, the freedom, the dignity, the health and the happiness of the most humble of its people.” And he delivered: In seeking to take Guatemala out of feudalism, Árbenz redistributed lands of the United Fruit Company (with full compensation) to landless peasants.

Perhaps unsurprisingly – in the context of the reductionist zero-sum politics of the Cold War – Árbenz was soon deemed a communist threat; however strong his democratic credentials and however nonexistent Soviet involvement might be, his days were numbered.

In Operation PBSUCCESS, the CIA achieved the overthrow of Árbenz by destabilizing the Guatemalan economy, engaging in various innovative forms of psychological warfare and ultimately orchestrating an invasion of the country from Honduras in 1954. Following his overthrow, a military dictatorship was installed, and variably supported, for decades. But this status quo could only be maintained with violence and authoritarianism; insurgency would follow, while inequality and social deprivation would remain largely untouched.

I suppose it's not so surprising that the teabaggers became such a force in American politics -- this has always been a fairly conservative country, and more than a little paranoid: to see a democratically elected government in a tiny Central American country as a threat strikes me as more than a little out there. And let's face it: there's a strain in this country that finds violence and authoritarianism very appealing -- have you noticed your local police department lately?

I recommend Gaffney's whole article. It's pretty shocking.

Maha leads off with this editorial from NYT; like her, I think it's the best summary of the mess Republicans have made of immigration reform that I've seen.

The House speaker, John Boehner, tried on Thursday to pass a bill dealing with the crisis of migrant children at the Texas border — a harsh bill to deport the children more quickly to their violent home countries in Central America, and to add more layers of border enforcement. But it wasn’t harsh enough to suit the Tea Party, and it was pulled for lack of votes. The hapless House leadership had to drag members back from the start of a five-week vacation to try again on Friday.

The revised legislation sought to appease the hard-liners, who were insisting on swiftly expelling migrant children but also intent on killing the Obama administration’s program to halt the deportations of young immigrants known as Dreamers. Tea Party members believe, delusionally, that the program, called DACA, has some connection to the recent surge of child migrants, who would never qualify for it. On Friday night, the House passed a bill that dragged immigration reform so far to the right that it would never become law.

As Congress takes the rest of the summer off, there may be no two happier House Republicans than Steve King and Michele Bachmann, charter members of the “hell no” caucus that resolutely blocks all efforts at sensible immigration reform.

When you can't hope to pass a law that doesn't please the likes of Michele Bachmann and Steve King, you are in serious trouble. And Ted Cruz is doing somersaults.

What I find most worrisome is that people actually voted for these assholes.

In the meantime, we still have a humanitarian crisis to deal with, and the Republicans are doing what they do best: not dealing with it. It doesn't help that patent lies like the "luxury resorts for illegal immigrants" mantra are freely circulating on the right, notwithstanding the fact that they've been debunked any number of times.

I know I'm preaching to the choir, but can't we get rid of these morons?