Brothers John Foster and Allen Dulles

By Guillermo Alvarado

We are almost at the end of October and we are closer to the virtual Summit on Democracy, Human Rights and the Fight against Terrorism, called by the President of the United States, Joseph Biden, for December 9 and 10 and which, as of today, has not been suspended.

On the website of the Department of Homeland Security of the Government of Spain, there is a brief note on this event, where it says that it will be an opportunity to demonstrate the capacity of democracy to "recognize its weaknesses and imperfections and face them in an open and transparent manner".

It is in this spirit that we arrive at the eleventh edition of these notes, which could serve the White House to explain to its allies and servants how, since the very birth of the United States, that country has been dedicated to violating rights and freedoms and instilling terror in a large part of the planet.

Let me paraphrase the Hungarian-born, British-born writer Arthur Koestler to say that the drums of war are the most persistent sound throughout the history of the northern power.

After the two universal slaughters of the 20th century, the second half of that century is rich in these regrettable events in Latin America and the Caribbean, under the cloak of the cold war and the national security doctrine.

Washington did not let the weapons cool down and in 1954 culminated a project financed, organized and directed from that city to put an end to the democratic government of Jacobo Árbenz and assassinate the spring of freedom born ten years earlier in Guatemala, land of eternal tyranny.

The pretext was to guarantee the properties of the United Fruit Company, supposed victim of an agrarian reform program that in reality did not affect the interests of the fruit company, of ungrateful memories.

Two of the main shareholders of this transnational company were the brothers John Foster and Allen Dulles, the first of them Secretary of State and the second director of the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, in those years.

The US intervention opened the doors to a long and bloody internal armed conflict in the Central American country that cost the lives of more than 250,000 people, some 50,000 are still missing and more than 400 towns and villages were wiped off the map, along with their inhabitants.

With the direct support of Washington and its main gendarme, Israel, a coldly planned and executed genocide was committed against the indigenous population, who were victims of such atrocities that their perpetrators would make any German Nazi officer pale with envy.

I hope that with "openness and transparency", Biden will explain to his guests the linkage of "his" democracy to these crimes.