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2. "Popping Off" Sandinistas and Cacos: Police Training in Occupied Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua
- University of Massachusetts Press
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Chapter 2 "Popping Off" Sandinistas and Cacos Police Training in Occupied Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua Who are We? We are Tigers! What do Tigers eat? Blood! Whose Blood? The Blood of the People! - Nicaraguan Guardia chant, 19705 It seems funny as hell to me, every once in a while some misguided fool up in the States, who knows nothing of the trouble here sets up a howl over a few black bandits being knocked off. - LEWIS B. "CHESTY" PULLER, 1921, letter to fellow marine John Pullen I know of no inhumane action and crimes greater than those committed by the u.s.against the defenseless peoples of Latin America through its legally authorized agents and representatives. - H. H. KNOWLES, former minister of Nicaragua, early 1930s In 1917, two years after the marines landed in Haiti to protect American business interests there, General Smedley D. Butler, one of the most decorated marines in American history, was sent to Haiti to create a police Gendarmerie that would serve the same purpose. Much like his counterparts in the Philippines , where he had spent a year battling nationalist forces in Cavite, Butler and his men sought to mold the force in the leatherneck image. He declared in his autobiography that "with shoes and buttons shining and hats cocked over one eye, they strutted with a swagger and basked in the admiring glances of strapping Negro women:" In reality, the Gendarmerie committed numerous atrocities in suppressing the resistance of the rebels known as Cacos (for the type of clothing worn by peasants in the northern mountains), as Haiti under U.S. occupation was turned into a laboratory for the development of new policing technologies and methods of coercion. Butler acknowledged years later while barnstorming around the United States that he had been a "high-class muscle 37 man for big business and the bankers" and that men under his command "were made to regard murder as the order ofthe day. . .. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all ofkilling or being killed:" US. foreign policy in Latin America during the early twentieth century was guided by the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which asserted that the United States had the right to function as a police power to "protect" nations in the hemisphere from encroachment by European powers. A main impetus was the desire to secure a stable investment climate and access to the Panama Canal. In 1905, Secretary ofState Elihu Root argued that the United States' trading partners needed professional police forces that could "repress subversive disorder and preserve the public peace:" Dana G. Munro, US. charge d'affaires in Nicaragua and minister to Haiti, commented: The establishment of non-partisan constabularies in the Caribbean states was one of the chief objectives of our policy. ... The old armies were or seemed to be one of the principal causes of disorder and financial disorganization. They consumed most of the government's revenue, chiefly in graft, and they gave nothing but disorder and oppression in return. We thought that a disciplined force, trained by Americans, would do away with the petty local oppression that was responsible for much of the disorder that occurred and would be an important step towards better financial administration and economic progress generally.4 These remarks suggest the importance attributed to police training programs in engendering stability, economic development, and more efficient government administration. They also display a confidence in the ability of Americans to remake foreign societies and solve deeply rooted social problems without considering cultural barriers, the political context, or local reaction. In practice, the American-trained constabularies evolved into instruments of repression and vehicles for the rise ofdictators who upheld American regional interests. Police training in turn laid an important foundation for Cold War-era programs that were similarly designed to suppress radical nationalist movements threatening US. power. Progeny of FOR and Smedley Butler: The Haitian Gendarmerie and the u.s. Occupation, 1915-1934 Since the 1804 revolution overthrowing French domination, the United States had hoped to incorporate Haiti into the American orbit and tame the country's radical and defiant spirit. In July 1915, the Wilson administration invaded under the pretext of restoring stability after several coups d'etat. American corporations took control of the banking system, and the marines blocked Dr. Rosalvo Bobo, an "idealist" and "dreamer" known for treating the poor without charge, from taking power. In his place, they inserted Philip Sudre Duartiginave, whom...