#17 The History of US-Central American Relations w/ Carlos Aleman
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 629 Ratings
🗓️ 3 August 2016
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
During a recent trip to Nashville, Dr. Carlos Aleman caught up with Ben and Bob for a great discussion about the history of Nicaragua and US relations with Central America in the 20th Century. Carlos' expertise on this topic is both personal and professional; he was born in Nicaragua in 1979, immigrated to San Francisco, CA as a child, and earned his PhD in Latin American history from Michigan State University in 2012. In his interview, Carlos explains the history of Nicaraguan politics, the role the country played in the Iran-Contra scandal, and the ways these larger events affected his own road from Grenada, Nicaragua to Birmingham, Alabama, where he is currently an Assistant Professor of History at Samford University.
The conversation also covers a variety of other topics, from Nashville-born William Walker who invaded Nicaragua, and proclaimed himself President of the country in the 1850s, to the state of immigration policy today.
Recorded August 20th, 2016 in Nashville, TN w/ Bob via Skype from North Carolina.
For more on The Road to Now, check out our website: http://www.theroadtonow.com/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Coming up, on the road to now. |
| 0:04.8 | My mom was 16 years old when she had me, right? |
| 0:07.0 | She's a kid in this war. |
| 0:09.2 | She tells stories of having to cross the street and wave a white handkerchief so that the |
| 0:14.1 | firing of bullets would stop on either war and they would let people cross. |
| 0:17.4 | Because this is a real war. |
| 0:19.3 | People are living their everyday life. |
| 0:20.6 | You still have to go to work. |
| 0:21.7 | You still have to survive. And so there's these kind of arrangements made so that civil society can |
| 0:25.8 | proceed even in the midst of war. So you have millions and millions in aid to these governments in |
| 0:31.7 | Guatemala and El Salvador and to the contras. And Congress finally says this is enough. We are going to |
| 0:37.3 | cut aid. |
| 0:38.3 | And so Reagan is desperate, what his administration is, to figure out a way to fund both the wars in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. |
| 0:48.0 | So what they come up with is this scheme, is maybe a strong word, right? |
| 0:53.4 | But this plan to fund the Central |
| 0:56.9 | American Wars by selling guns to Iranians and then when using that that money to |
| 1:02.6 | fund these wars. In my family you have both Somosistas and Sandinistas right and so |
| 1:09.3 | you have people I, this war tore families |
| 1:11.5 | and country apart in a variety of ways. |
| 1:14.5 | And so your view of Reagan is really informed |
| 1:17.7 | by which side of the war you fought on. |
| 1:19.6 | And then in many ways, |
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