By Mer Fagliano
Two years into the presidency of Donald Trump, this world has seen several instances of insanity, idiocity, corruption, sexism and racism. His stupidity has ranged from the repeal of environmental protections and withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, to the denunciation and repeal of the Iran Deal. His insanity has been proven by his persistent support for world leaders who have committed crimes directly affecting his country and citizens. The two most famous examples of this are him standing by: Putin at the Helsinki summit, against the US’s investigative team’s report; and Prince Mohammed bin Salman from Saudi Arabia, who has been linked to the murder of Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.
For racism and sexism, the question is not “what has he done?” but rather “where to start?” The Muslim Ban, denying travelers and refugees from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen, entrance to the United States. His repeated denigrations of women’s bodies as ugly and fat. His #BuildAWall hashtag and decision to not only send more troops to the Mexican-American border but allow them to fire tear gas at the migrants, affecting innocent families and children. What else? The Hollywood Access tape and the “grab ‘em by the p****” statement. And, of course, claiming that African countries are “sh*tholes.”
Despite how horrendous all this is, and how much of a bigot Trump proves to be, I must say the same thing I have been saying to my friends since it became clear that he was going to be a main candidate in the 2016 election: it could be much much worse. Speaking for the Latin American region, we must recognize that we have had some insane, racist and sexist leaders who did not only favour certain positions, but supported them with real, consequential, many times violent, actions. We have had leaders who: shot foreigners; kidnapped, tortured and murdered political dissidents; raped minors; provided asylum to war criminals; engaged in persistent suppression of the freedom of speech; and were impeached on the basis of insanity.
My point with this article is to illustrate the experiences of a neighboring region to the American public. Trump is terrible at seemingly everything, and it is difficult to name one positive thing about him. But, he, today, does not stand accused of the things I mentioned before. Let me show you what Latin America has endured and maybe, that will give you some hope.
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Rafael “El Jefe” Trujillo
Trujillo is one of those Trump-like figures that, if you had to describe the wrongs he commited, you would not know where to start. El Jefe climbed to the top of the Dominican government through the 1930 military coup that removed Horacio Vásquez from power. Even though he was not, officially, the president throughout the whole era, he remained in de facto control of the government through puppet officials until his assassination in 1960. He misused state power to hold control of land, airlines, trading monopolies and sugarcane producers, and enrich his family. In addition, he was known to get involved in multiple affairs, most with young women who were forced to attend balls at the executive palace. In fact, he was killed on his way back from a late night visiting one of his mistresses. His regime is made worse, initially, by the accusation that he engaged in the raping of minors during his early years of his military training.
However grim this image might be, that was not the end of his administration. Like many others in the continent, Trujillo and his subordinates repeatedly tortured and executed political dissidents. From the beginning of his rise to power, secret police forces hunted down supporters for the opposing candidate. Reportedly, most of these assassinations were staged as accidents and suicides to allow for deniability. Of course, this included censorship of the press. Attempting to place himself even higher, he passed an executive order that forced churches to hang a sign stating “God in the sky, Trujillo on the land” [“Dios en el cielo, Trujillo en la tierra”]. The crusade to eliminate all forms of dissidence extended to an assassination attempt of the president of Venezuela, Rómulo Betancourt, in 1960. Trujillo was triggered by the knowledge that Betancourt had sponsored a plot to overthrow him. This event marks the beginning of condemnation from the international community, especially by the Organization of American States.
What didn’t get the same level of international unrest? His attitudes against the Haitian community. Standing in the all-time anti-Haitian sentiments in the Dominican Republic, Trujillo (in the same way in which Trump opposes the Latino community) hosted attacks against Haiti. After reports of some Haitians stealing cattle and crops in the northwest border between the two countries, the Trujillato massacred innocent Haitians in the DR. Some sources have put the estimated casualty numbers above 20,000 civilians. As a form of compensation, he offered U$D 525,000 in total (U$D 16.25 per person).
Augusto Pinochet Ugarte
Pinochet, was the violent dictator of Chile from 1973-1990. Similar to Trujillo, Pinochet came to power through a military coup against the socialist government of Salvador Allende, and remained president despite the result of the 1988 plebiscite. Whenever South Americans hear the words “dictatorship” in the context of the 70s and 80s they know things are about to get heavy. Despite resulting in an overall positive economy, Pinochet’s dictatorship is remembered as one of the most brutal times in Chilean history. His less repressive policies include the censorship of the press and the dissolution of congress, political parties and the military junta, which was in charge of decision making during the regime. His justification: since democracy had brought socialism to Chile, the country should avoid it. As part of his fight against the left, he purged the universities from faculty members who were associated with that ideology.
In order to stay in power, the Chilean dictator engaged in a continent-wide strategy called Operación Cóndor, a coordinated agreement between some dictators in the 70s and 80s aiming at the elimination of the opposition. Countries would identify each others’ dissidents locally, kidnap and smuggle them across the border for torture by their respective governments. Between this and Operación Colombo, thousands of people disappeared, were tortured or killed.
Since that time, several soldiers and survivors have narrated their experiences. At a Chilean radio, an anonymous caller admitted to having executed at least 18 people. He recounted taking the people to the dessert, shooting them in the head and blowing up their bodies with dynamite. Another soldier claimed his squad had bathed two teenagers with gasoline and set them on fire. The teenagers’ families attempted to get justice for their murder, but Pinochet covered it up. Lelia Perez, a victim of Pinochet’s security service, survived to tell her story. She had been taken to several detention places, one of them in Villa Grimaldi. During her time there, she was heavily tortured by the staff members, who would organize group tortures and take turns to electrocute people in front of other detainees awaiting their turn. She also reported instances of waterboarding, suffocation, upside-down hanging and more. One of the most shocking reports described the holding of prisoners’ heads in buckets of human urine and excrement.
Pinochet died in 2006 without having faced any type of repercussion for the crimes against humanity committed by him and his team. He was detained in London in 1998 under an extradition requested by the Spanish government for the torture of Spanish citizens. However, in 2000, the British court ruled he was physically unfit to stand trial and allowed him to return to Chile. Sometime after his return, the Chilean government dropped his right for immunity and formally accused him of murder and torture. Once again, he escaped trial by claiming mental incapabilities. In 2004, his case went to trial again, for 9 kidnappings and 1 homicide as part of Operación Cóndor, after medical experts attested that his dementia was not serious enough to exempt him from trial. In 2005, more accusations arose for illegal financial dealings and the disappearance and execution of at least 119 dissidents, whose bodies were found in Argentina. He died before the court reached a verdict. The National Commission of Political Imprisonment and Torture declared 35,000 cases of torture during his regime. The government’s human rights program has estimated that 1,373 military members have faced trials, out of which only 344 have been convicted, most under non-jail forms of punishment.
Anastasio Somoza Debayle
This Nicaraguan “President” ruled from 1967 to 1979 and was the last one of a family-based dictatorship. His reign was covered under the perception of democracy by hosting rigged elections in which the major parties were banned from participating. Never during his government was he able to avoid controversy. During his first term, he was accused of corruption and nepotism. Beyond that, he had several conflicts with the Liberal Party, the opposition. His second term, beginning in 1974, was characterized by the opposition of the Sandinistas, a guerrilla group who battled the National Guard. During these years, even though both sides delivered death, the official government went overboard. First, he declared a state of siege, under which he was able to justify the censorship of the press. There have been suggestions of his involvement in the murder of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, a newspaper editor who also happened to be the prominent leader of the opposition.
The last Debayle was also known for his violent tendencies. The newspaper El País, covered a story in 1980 telling the rumors of his order to destroy the city of Leon. According to the rumors, Debayle was upset about the murder of his father, the first dictator of the chain, and wanted to take revenge on the city where the assassination had taken place. In addition, the Comisión Interamericana de los Derechos Humanos has declared the government of Nicaragua, during this time, responsible for the excessive and disproportionate repression of the insurgent movements. The report focuses on the deaths, human right abuses, arbitrary detentions and other forms of violence against the population. This was mainly done through the Operación Limpieza, carried out by the National Guard. In its raids, the army would go into cities suspected of hosting guerrilleros and purge as many suspects as possibles. The attacks killed numerous innocent people who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. One civilian, who hid behind a trash can during a raid, narrates that she was able to see how soldiers cut open her mother’s chest with a bayonet, cut his brother-in-law’s testicles and placed them in his mouth.
Abdala Bucaram
Moving away from the violence and into simple insanity, let me tell you the story of Bucaram, Ecuador’s president from 1996-1997. A former professional athlete, Bucaram competed in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. In 1984, he was elected mayor of Guayaquil, where he was accused of extortion for demanding money and harassing those who refused to pay “donations.” After his term as mayor, he received a warrant for his arrest rooted in his criticism of the army. Seeking asylum in Panama, he was arrested for cocaine possession. In 1996, he ran for the presidency under the nickname “El Loco” (The Madman). During the campaign, Bucaram travelled around the country with his rock band, impersonating Elvis Presley before his speeches. His social welfare program plans, especially those for housing constructions, and his attacks on businessmen, earned him the support of the poor Ecuadorian majority.
In 1996, he won by 54.5% of the votes. As president, he appointed friends and family members to cabinet positions and was accused of mishandling public funds. Six months after assuming office, the National Congress removed him, deeming him mentally incompetent to govern. During his last month as president, the Supreme Court charged him and four members of his cabinet with corruption, embezzlement, nepotism and influence-peddling in relation to the misuse of $88 million in a government securities fund. Before leaving Ecuador, he stuffed bags with $3 million in cash and took them. Reportedly, $26 million disappeared from the Central Bank in his last week in office.
Despite all the corruption, misuse and appropriation of funds, Bucaram is not famously known for that. His memory is formed by his country-wide tour singing rock tunes and his lunch with Lorena Bobbitt, a singer who was the godmother of his goddaughter. Mrs. Bobbitt became famous after a scandalous claim that she had cut off her husband’s penis in 1993.
Juan Domingo Peron
Here, things get very tricky. Being from Argentina, I know first-hand what a controversial figure Perón is. On one side, he has been, is, and forever will be supported by a large part of the population. Even though he was introduced into the executive branch as the head of the National Labour Department through a military coup, the policies he put forward earned him the love of the workforce. Despite of what his opposition might say, Perón created the support measures and increased the political participation of an abandoned socio-political class. This support was such that, after his incarceration, the masses conglomerated to fight for his liberation and voted him to power. He was president from 1946-1955 (double-term) and from 1973-1974, when he died and his wife, and VP, Isabél Perón took power. I write this section knowing that his presence in this list may offend some people.
However, unlike the journalists he helped censored, I have a free medium that allows me to criticize this figure. Juan Domingo Perón’s economic and political programs rattled the oppositional press. During his time, he did not stop at calling newspapers the enemy of the people, like Trump. Between the expropriation of La Prensa and the withholding of government funding, he directly censored the journalists who moved against him. Whenever that was not enough, his followers took charge through threats and acts of violence. There have been reports of supporters shooting through the window of the editor of La Prensa, the leading anti-Peronist newspaper. The General Confederation of Workers, formed by Perón, asked for government action against organs of mass media that had become “agents of provocation and lies” and had been catalogued as “enemies of the working class,” i.e. Clarín. His supporters bombed and fired at the offices of Clarín with machine guns in 1973.
Although the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A) has commited assassinations, tortures and detentions in his name, that is not what I will focus on. Perón did something that not all other leaders did: he invited war criminals into the country. During the last years and after WWII, Perón secretly ordered officers to create escape routes, or “ratlines”, in ports in Spain and Italy to allow SS officers and Nazi party members to escape from Europe. He also suggested employing some in the Argentine military. Argentina was one of the countries with most hidden Nazi officers, with some numbers going up to 5000. Adolf Eichmann, famous for orchestrating the transport of European Jews to concentration camps, was found and kidnapped in Argentina by Israeli secret service officers in 1960. Juan Perón was more than a martyr for the working class, he was the savior of numerous Nazi war criminals.
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This article is not meant to suggest that Americans should stop complaining about Trump. They should not. All of the people in this list, and others, are the reason why criticism should continue and strengthen. America is lucky that Trump does not have the brains, guts, or support to do the things that others did. Part of that is because the opposition still has the strength and means to carry on its fight. To any Americans reading this, do not let him become one more in this list. Keep fighting for his words to just be words, and for his actions to be overturned by democracy.
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