The tropical jungle, dense with massive tree canopies, palm fronds, mango trees, red coffee berries, tangled vines and creeping ferns against the morning sun explodes like a massive jade from the land. The early morn- ing fog casts the gem in a gauzy film, like an ephemeral phantom that flees when the Maya sun rises. Through the winding roads of the tropics to the highlands of Guatemala, shep- herds, dressed in their red and blue trajes (clothing specific to their region) tend their sheep. Small fires coil in vertical rings and roosters rouse the sleep. It is hard to imagine that in 1982, plus or minus a few years, Todos Santos, a village in the clouds, was torched to the ground by U.S.-trained paramilitary, who also massacred thousands of indigenous men, …show more content…
Slain victims of the dirty little war weep for their dead children; they cry of starvation and disease; they howl for the pregnant mothers whose babies were cut out of their bellies; they wail when the bullets were shot out of U.S. helicopters; they bawl as they bleed to death from their severed limbs by the cold blooded killers. In the morning the trees drip with tears where their families were hanged. Unfortunately many men and women flee Guatemala despite the peace accord that was signed in 1996. Under the Freedom of Information Act, the CIA released documents of its covert operations during the Cold War. According to the CIA report titled Sterilizing a “Red Infection,” David M. Barret readily admits the United States’ clandestine complicity in the civil war resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. During the Cold War, the CIA and the U.S. government gained tremendous currency by selling fear that Guate- mala was a rising communist country. Both John Dulles, former Secretary of State, and Allen Dulles, former Director of the CIA, played pivotal roles in the overthrow of the Guatemalan government. Allen Dulles was a shareholder in The United Fruit