The media’s reporting of political polls has become a synthetic substitute for actual journalism. However, for the moment let us suppose that the polls are correct and Hispanic-American voters are mostly supporting Hillary Clinton for president. This could raise a simple and important question; why are so many Hispanic voters supporting a Hillary bid for president? It has been argued that Hillary is for immigration reform, raising working conditions for Hispanics and to her credit has denounced the repugnant xenophobic antics of Donald Trump. However, when one examines Hillary Clinton’s record one can see that she has not been an advocate or friend of Hispanic people around the globe.
Not unlike many other boarders, the US-Mexican border was established by imperial conquest, when in the early 19th century the United States invaded and conquered half of Mexico. From the end of the Mexican-American war until very recently the boarder has been fairly undefended. In 1994 the boarder became militarized by the Clinton Administration. Attorney General Janet Reno implemented “Operation Gate Keeper,” in order to curtail the flow of illegal immigration from Tijuana into San Diego. This wall is not a hypothetically proposed Donald Trump wall, it is an actual Clinton wall built and fortified. The militarization of the boarder was undoubtedly the administration response to the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was implemented the same year as “Operation Gate Keeper.” The Clinton administration must have projected that NAFTA was going to have devastating effects for Mexico and these adverse derivations would increase illegal immigration. Over time the wages in Mexico have dropped, hundreds of thousand driven off the land and Mexican agriculture has been greatly diminished. As Mexicans farmers fled their home county in order to pursue their farming jobs, now in highly subsidized highly protectionist USA, the new comers were greeted by a militarized boarder and a considerably xenophobia population. Hillary Clinton supported NAFTA with fervor, up until the moment she decided to run for president. As the First Lady became Senator Clinton she had complete adoration for NAFTA, so much in fact she became a proud advocate for the Bush administration’s Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). The CAFTA deal has created slave labor shops, drove people of their land and privatized public services in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic. It is no surprise that these are the very countries where illegal immigrants mostly derive.
The United States’ megalomaniacal imperial and terrorist activities in Central American date back to the late 19th century known as the “Banana Wars.” Continuing this proud American tradition, in 2009 a coup d’etat occurred in Honduras. President Manuel Zalaya was illegally thrown out of office, orchestrated by the Supreme Court and the Honduran Military. Some of Zaleya’s major crimes included trying to raise the minimum wage and the consideration of aligning Honduras with the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA). As the Organization of American States and most major European powers condemned the illegal coup the U.S was seemingly tacit on the state of affairs in Honduras, which is unlike the U.S. as it is often the culprit of coups in Latin America. Later revelations from WikiLeaks revealed that Hillary Clinton’s State Department was actually in full collusion and understanding of the overthrow. Before being murdered, Honduran activist, Berta Cáceres singled out Hillary Clinton by simply quoting Hillary’s book “Hard Choices,” where Hillary recognized that the State Department would not permit Zelaya to return to Honduras as President. Cáceres warned that “barbary” would follow the coup, causing more Central American children to flee their homes. As the crises of unaccompanied refugee children worsened, with this contributing event, Secretary Clinton was one of the officials in the Obama Administration calling for the deportation of migrant children coming into the United States.
To add insult to injury Hillary Clinton was a vocal supporter of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Latin American signatures included Mexico, Peru and Chile with hopes of integrating Brazil and Argentina. As labor standards, wage inequality, destruction of the environment and increased medicine costs have become more apparent in the text of the TPP, candidate Hilary Clinton opposed the deal. This condemnation was almost immediately after she called the deal the “Gold Standard,” in a recent television interview showing absolute support of the deal. The effects of TPP will be the same as NAFTA and CAFTA, the wealthy elites will benefit and the working class people will lose jobs, be thrown off their land and seek refuge most likely in the United States.
While Bernie Sanders was still the Mayor of Burlington, Vermont he was fervently opposing the criminal actions of Ronald Regan and his perpetuation of the civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador. While the Reagan’s White House was training killers at Fort Benning, in order to kill Jesuit Priest in El Salvador and sell weapons to Iran in order to fund Contras in Nicaragua, Bernie was holding public forums trying to shed light on the criminal activities of the United States government. Central America’s democracies and civil societies have essentially been destroyed by the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s. Not soon after the gangs and violence flooded in and the trade deals passed in the 2000s. Today the children of Central America are fleeing and seeking refuge in the country that destroyed their homelands, only to be received with a militarized boarder and a once Secretary of State calling for their deportations. This is only a sketch of a laundry list bad decisions of Hilary Clinton, a Student of Henry Kissinger, the man who when remarking on Chilean democracy stated, “The issue is much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.” This statement was made right after the CIA helped install a fascist killer, Augusto Pinochet, destroying Chilean democracy for decades. An old Spanish proverb states, “Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres.” Hillary Clinton is not a friend of Hispanics and does not deserve our votes.
