Leftist candidate Mauricio Funes has claimed victory in El Salvador’s presidential election, in a historic vote that ends the 20-year rule of right-wing party ARENA.

• Leftist declares victory in El Salvador
• EL SALVADOR (casas de carton)
• United Fruit Historical Society – Chronology
• Operation PBSUCCESS

Holy Toledo, Batman! How is Uncle Sammy and his CIA gonna get all those Central and South American snakes back into the box and deal with the rest of the planet simultaneously!? The U.S. economy is singularly inclement with bailouts galore and China holding the purse strings. The Middle Eastern countries are hair-trigger toey and appear unreceptive to “God’s gift of Democracy”. The Ugly American empire is turning to caga before the eyes of the world and it’s not a good look.

Rome on the skids was never like this; hegemonic hiccoughs never so dyspeptic.

Remember, remember the eleventh of September
The CIA’s murderous plot
For families and friends of The Disappeared,
It will never be forgot.

The Good Shepherd Trailer

Footage of the US fighter/bombers destroying the presidential palace in Santiago, September 11, 1973.

• CIA Chile 1973

Democratically elected Salvador Allende and hundreds of his supporters were murdered on that day, thousands who resisted were later tortured and “disappeared”.  Pinochet’s fascist regime could not have maintained power after the coup without the the full co-operation of Holy Mother Church and her Secret Police, Opus Dei. 

Michelle_Bachelet supported Allende in his rise to the Presidency. She is a medical doctor, and a divorced mother of three.

The Kangaroo Connection …

On January 10, 1975, Michelle Bachelet and her mother were detained at their apartment by two DINA agents, who blindfolded them and drove them to Villa Grimaldi, a notorious secret detention center in Santiago, where they were separated and submitted to interrogation and torture. Some days later they were transferred to Cuatro Álamos (”Four Poplars”) detention centre, where they were held until the end of January. Later in 1975, due to sympathetic connections in the military, both were exiled to Australia, where Bachelet’s older brother Alberto had moved in 1969.

Meanwhile, Latin America swerves towards the left …

Latin America is swerving to the left, (former conquistadors Portugal and Spain have already done so) and a distinct backlash is already under way against the predominant trends of the last fifteen years: free market reforms, agreement with the U.S. on a number of issues and the consolidation of representative democracy. (movement of jah people).

• Venezuela (Chavez)
• Bolivia (Morales)
• Cuba (Castro)
• Brazil (Lula)
• Argentina (Kirchner)
• Uruguay (Vasquez)
• Chile (Bachelet)

Abstract

The multinational United Fruit Company has been considered the quintessential representative of American imperialism in Central America. Not only did the company enjoy enormous privileges in that region, but also counted on authoritarian governments in dealing with labor unrest. The literature assumes that United Fruit and the dictators were natural allies due to their opposition to organized unionism. This paper shows that this alliance could only survive as long as the multinational provided the dictators with economic stability for the country. However, when the multinational proved to be incapable of doing that, the dictators allied with the working class to confront the multinational and extract higher rents (or as in El Savador’s case, democratically elect a president, not necessarily a dictator who can tell the corporate exploiters to pay their fair share or vamoose).

http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/eclillbus/06-0115.htm

(thanks for your fire dog lake link at 925, ChrisB, after reading it, this thread self-collated)