I recently watched Tucker Carlson’s interview with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. In this unprecedented visit to the Central American nation, Carlson seems to be on a quest to discover the root causes of these migrant waves fleeing north from Central America. Funny to note that 70% of these migrants are from Honduras, currently under the control of U.S.-supported dictator and puppet, Juan Orlando Hernandez.
I never watched Fox News until I saw several YouTube video segments of the Tucker Carlson Show interviewing Jimmy Dore and the Folks at the Grayzone, and finally seeing a large news show getting it right. Unlike many of his colleagues on that channel, Tucker lately has been getting particular topics right so, I thought it would be instructive to watch and listen to his commentary on the perennial “Crisis at the Border“.
It’s no mystery that Tucker and his viewers would rather have seen a different outcome to the 2020 Presidential Election. That is a given, and I expected a certain criticism of President Biden in that show to be forthcoming, and even a certain lingering ignorance as to the real causes of the ongoing “migrant crisis“. But when I saw Tucker taking time to go to El Salvador to cover the story and speak to President Bukele, I thought, Oh boy he is talking to the wrong guy, a neoliberal U.S. puppet at best. And just like that, like in a bad movie script, Tucker jumped from one neoliberal bubble full of lies, into another one controlled by the same actors, and the same lies.
What continues to amaze me is the complete ignorance of, or perhaps it’s selective amnesia, and utter denial of that region’s history, the complicity and culpability of and by the illegal corporate occupation and takeover of these countries of the golden triangle. Our country has caused so much suffering and misery in Central America that we now get to see the subsequent blowback with the current migration “crisis” at our border.
I was a young college student growing up in the late 1970s during the Nixon era, and witnessed the surge of humanism, of the Vietnam street protests. I remember until this day the lies told by the press, lies that were perpetuated by all subsequent administrations ever since and persist to this day. Those lies were the basis for what followed next, for the conduct that precipitated our involvement in that conflict, and we now, like Vietnam, have collective amnesia about the causes for the “border crisis” and continue reporting as if it were an isolated Central American conflict.
I remember 1980 as vividly now as then, when so much happened 40 years ago, when Tucker was about 10 years old, the year Archbishop Romero was assassinated. Indeed, I was older then and therefore can give Tucker a pass for now, but journalists like him need to make an effort and get caught up on the history of Central America if we want to continue talking about immigration. It’s imperative that journalists and the public finally know the facts of what happened then, to understand that the same history persists until this very day.
The ignorance of the American public regarding their country’s role in the suffering and misery of these kind-hearted, wonderful people is appalling!
That’s the backstory and context for this post.
Tucker’s YouTube Videos:
Tucker Carlson tears into Biden’s immigration policy live from El Salvador
President of El Salvador talks immigration crisis with Tucker Carlson
My reply to Tucker’s YouTube videos:
When you get the chance, Tucker, Google where the term “Banana Republic” came from (you’ll find the Chiquita banana corp, formerly known as the United Fruit Company, as a big player). Look up “El Mozote”, the massacre carried out by US-Trained Salvadoran death squads in 1981, trained at the same place now that used to be called the “School of the Americas” at Fort Benning, Georgia. Look up the assassination by these same US-Trained Salvadoran death squads of Archbishop Oscar Romero on March 24, 1980 (I remember it well) while he said mass in a small chapel at Hospital de la Divina Providencia. He has now been canonized a Saint of the Catholic Church by Pope Francis: (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/13/world/europe/oscar-arnulfo-romero-saint-canonization.html). This happened under the watchful eye (and tacit approval) of the Reagan Administration.
You should look up Manuel Zelaya, the democratically elected and widely popular president of Honduras who was deposed in 2009 by a coup orchestrated by the Barack Obama administration with the guidance and support of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, resulting in the eventual imposition of the current repressive dictator Juan Orlando Hernandez, whose brother, living in the US, is being investigated for drug trafficking.
Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are US-Puppet states whose entire populations have been languishing for decades under the dictates of Washington. Spain left the region 500 years ago, and yes, they were a colonial power then whose influence and culture have persisted to the present day but they are NOT the cause of the current humanitarian crisis in those 3 countries – the blame for the current crisis falls squarely on the shoulders of the US and their greedy, expansionist corporations like the Multi-national Chiquita banana corp, formerly known as the United Fruit Company. This corporation’s operations in Guatemala ( https://lisalandcooper.com/cia-black-ops-chiquita-banana-connection ) destroyed that country to the point where, functionally, it is a failed state with no gainful employment for the general population available – one of the main causes of the current migrant crisis.
I enjoy your programs and more often than not agree with you, but not here.