LAHASA.org
"The right of the people to inform themselves freely"
Latin American Historical Awareness Society of the Americas
Mission
To address the need for a comprehensive knowledge base of Latin American history for all Americans to share.
The institutionalization of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947 played an abhorrent role in determining the fate of the Caribbean, Central and South America. The overthrow of Guatemala marked a dramatic and insidious shift within the United States Government and Wall Street, serving as a catalyst for the issues now present throughout Latin America.
Since 1954, the United States has undermined the national independence and sovereignty of Guatemala. The struggle of indigenous groups facing the pressures of religious persecution and conversion, ethnic genocide, and modern day segregation continues.
Operation PBFORTUNE (renamed PBSUCCESS) served as a United States blueprint for Latin America; the sponsorship of brutal dictatorships, the taking over of economic life by United States corporations, diversion of the economy to export crops, repression of the general population, poverty and exploitation of indigenous peoples, and retention of military bases to control any attempt for national independence.
The Central Intelligence Agency was key to ensuring Latin America lost it's right to self determination. Tyranny and oppression is as much an issue now as it was 100 years ago. The corrupt practices of government, "Big Business", and the struggle for human rights continues to this day.
Although the international community has taken great responsibility and care in the preservation effort, most of the work has been censored to the American public.
Books have gone untranslated or are skewed to conformity; media records are meticulously edited or inaccessible to the masses, and public documents have been omitted for social discourse.
Future generations have the right to be familiarized with American history- the great civilizations of the Aztec, the Maya, and the Inca, the brutal realities of the Columbian Exchange, as well as the economic turmoil of the Industrial Age.
That which has been made "readily available" after decades of secrecy is craftily sterilized and disorganized losing much of its value in transparency.
More recent works deliberately maintain the communist angle as a permanent mark on Latin America; yet it is the CIA that's exposed time and time again. It is the focus of Latin American journalists, writers, poets, and artists who have risked or lost their lives to often cite and record the activities of the CIA.
Former agents have openly denounced the CIA. Senate hearings have exposed CIA complicity in numerous scandals- from assassination to mafia connections to drug smuggling- spanning decades. The evidence is monumentally one sided, yet unknown to the majority of the American public.
Our purpose is to preserve, archive, and chronicle the untold history of the United States in Latin America to the full extent possible for all to see. Our intent is to look beyond borders as morality and humanity pushes into the 21st century.
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Because these unlawful and illegal acts have been committed at and by the highest legal powers in the United States and never properly addressed, there is no appeal from them except to the conscience and condemnation of the American people. We owe it to ourselves to be familiar with our national past and defend human rights and liberties against corrupt institutions. We owe it to future generations to have the clarity of knowledge to address the issues of justice and equality in a globalized society.