Leftists, socialists, communists, labor unionists, indigenous citizens, doctors, priests, teachers, students, LGBTQ-- protesters all-- subject to interrogations, torture, and executions, paid in full by US citizens in a war against "communism". In the 1930s, in Central America, like in the Jim Crow era in the US mainland, the suspected became the majority to be hunted down and killed.
Returning to Blitzer, he describes a Central America from the 1930s through to the 1970s as a collection of countries seen by the US "through the totalizing prisms of the Cold War". Today, however, what was "fear of the spread of leftism" has "morphed into a fear of the spread of people". And why not? As a black American, I think of those predictions of a United States, in which the minority, in terms of race, collectively becomes the majority.
It's not surprising to recognize in the rise of white supremacist groups in the US a shared fear of immigrants from Central America, Mexico, Haiti. As Blitzer notes, "under Trump, the government delivered the most brutal consequence imaginable, but migrants were undeterred". Staying home wasn't an option. They had to attempt to cross the US border. But we remember the screaming babies snatched from the arms of horrified parents!
Within the US borders, business is as usual. The fear of black Americans continues with right-wing leaders sprouting racist comments about the people who toiled four hundreds of years as enslaved labor in cotton fields to produce the world's wealthiest nation. Let's not forget the effort to erase the painful history of slavery. To erase even how black Americans first arrived in the US! Banning books written by or about black people or slavery or Jim Crow and prohibiting any discussion of race isn't enough to see a US that is, one day, with a population of non-whites in the majority.
Who will control the narrative --well, that's another matter!
In an undemocratic society, indigenous people lost their lives and land, enslaved blacks were denied freedom. In an undemocratic society, the economically poor classes of workers contributed to the wealth of corporations where CEOs receive bonuses that many poor workers will never see in a lifetime of slaving away on the job. According to the Economic Policy Institute, "in 2022 CEOs made 344 times more" (Truthout) than the average healthcare worker, public school teacher, bus driver, warehouse stocker, fast-food worker.
Think of what one CEO's salary could do for just one or two workers in this country or elsewhere. What if the US invests in humanity and not in manufacturing weapons to support warring factions, dancing to the jingle of the cash register? Think of single-payer healthcare, free college tuition, affordable and safe housing for seniors, free day care! Thinking of funding for scientist to think of alternatives other than drilling for fossil fuels!
The crisis in America is, for me, as old as that foundation in the violence of white supremacy. Think of the millions of indigenous on this land from tip of Canada to the tip of South America. Any ideology, such as that contested one called democracy, and any policies resulting from this ideology will represent a crisis to those who believe only in white supremacy. Blitzer may not go so far as to state this, but I will. Because back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I joined the movement, SCLC's Operation Breadbasket in Chicago, I thought enough of us would stand with our ancestors and living allies and ward off the threat of white supremacy. Hadn't the US participated in the fight against fascism in Europe?
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