people in Guatemala are rising up against their corrupt ruling class. in order to understand what's going on there now, one has to know what went on before, particularly the history of US imperialist interventions. here's a thread with a brief overview, starting at the beginning:

the CIA overthrew the democratically elected and popular leader arbenz in 1954 through a "terror campaign", and installed a far right regime which engaged in systematic genocidal slaughter of primarily the indigenous mayan population. all to advance the interests of corporations

as chomsky notes, under the reagan administration the US explicitly aided and abetted the far right regime's genocide of the mayan population. in 1982 alone tens of thousands were slaughtered. guess who else joined the genocidal campaign? the genocidal apartheid state of israel

since the 1954 CIA coup installing the genocidal fascist regime in Guatemala, 200.000 men, women and children have been slaughtered. this what chomsky rightly calls "nazi style terror" was replicated across central america, as he discusses in relation to el salvador here:

the first clips in the thread are from john pilger's excellent documentary "the war on democracy: latin america", which provides a more comprehensive overview of US imperialism in central and south america. you can watch it in full here:

given this history, one can better understand and appreciate the fury of the Guatemalan people, and why they are now rising up against their corrupt rulers as they tried to implement neoliberal austerity. may we learn from them and do the same! https://twitter.com/Sandra_Cuffe/status/1330247549953912832

I also highly recommend reading eduardo galeano's "open veins of latin america", which provides a detailed historical overview of imperialism in latin america: http://library.uniteddiversity.coop/More_Books_and_Reports/Open_Veins_of_Latin_America.pdf

and greg grandin's work, the historian who appears in the first clips: https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/4380144/mod_resource/content/1/__The_Last_Colonial_Massacre__Latin_America_in_the_Cold_War__Updated_Edition.pdf

also worthwhile to note that che guevara was in Guatemala at the time of the coup, and saw his fellow activists arrested, exiled, tortured and murdered. this convinced him that a peaceful path to socialism was impossible, and imperialism was a beast that had to be slain

the communist painter diego rivera made this painting in commemoration of the fascist coup. castillo armas, the fascist coup leader, is depicted shaking hands with US secretary of state john dulles, with his CIA director brother behind him, as he holds a bomb w/ eisenhower's face

and just to show how the struggle against imperialism and capitalism and for socialism is international in nature, based on solidarity, see this thread on malcolm x's historic meeting with fidel castro and the letter he received from che https://twitter.com/zei_squirrel/status/1260610755545743362