John Koster’s racist and ignorant analysis of the current Central American migrant caravan is despicable and undeserving of The Herald’s ink (“John Koster wonders who cares about ‘The Caravan of Crap,” The Herald, Nov. 14).
The current migration of families is a direct result of U. S. foreign policy towards Central America that started in 1954. In that year the Guatemalan coup d’etat was a covert operation by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. It disposed of the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz and installed the military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas.
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan supported the military dictatorship of El Salvador in its 12-year civil war against the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front. Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated by the military dictatorship while celebrating mass because of his call to the military to stop killing their people.
He also supported the Guatemalan Mayan genocide of more than a quarter-million Mayans. It was also referred to as the Silent Holocaust between1981-83.
In 2009, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was instrumental in a military coup ousting the democratically elected President Manuel Celaya of Honduras and installation of anti-democratic presidency of Juan Orlando Hernandez with a neo-liberal model that deepened economic dependency on the U. S.
This is not a “caravan of crap” rather an exodus created by hunger and death. It is consistent with the Exodus of Jews from slavery in Egypt and the exodus of nlack people from slavery in the U.S. dreaming of freedom who sang the famous hymn “Let My People Go.”
We are all implicated in one way or another in this caravan’s walk towards freedom and security.
Juan Peralez
Unidos of Snohomish County
Lynnwood
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