AHC: Latin American PLO

[MerryPrankster]

The United States for decades has been unduly influential in its neighboring countries, including overthrowing insufficiently-friendly governments and causing all sorts of problems due to its consumption or and militarized policies against narcotics. This has obviously not made the United States very popular in the region.

Your challenge is to have this lead to some analogue to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) or even al-Qaeda targeting U.S. interests and personnel (including civilians) both abroad and in the Continental United States itself.

Begin!

 

[overoceans]

I think one problem with your PLO comparison is that Palestine is occupied directly by the metropolitan power(Israel), and hence the PLO spends most of its time and energy battling that country.

Whereas the US hasn't really occupied countries in Latin America for some time now, but rather exerts its influence via proxy armies(eg. the contras), client dictatorships(eg. Pinochet) etc, with only the occsassioal direct invasion(eg. Panama). Thus, the US itself is usually not targetted by the local resistance movements, but rather lets its proxies take the wrath.

As for Al Qaeda, it seems to me that a distinguishing thing about the group(assuming it really exists, which is another debate) is its religious, as opposed to ethnic or class, identity, ie. it takes its stance on any issue depending on what side Sunni Muslims are on.

Boston Irish might have sent money to the IRA, but didn't really bother supporting the FLQ in Quebec, even though the FLQ also claimed to be fighting on behalf of a Catholic population. But Al Qaeda(again, assuming it's a real thing) seems willing to take up the cause of any Sunni population claiming oppression from the infidels, and will even on occassion align with imperial powers, if those powers happen to be fighting the enemies of the Sunni(hence, ISIS fighters being on the same side as American-backed militias against the Alawite Assads).

So, to get a Latin American Al Qaeda going...

Maybe find a way to fuse populist economics and anti-colonialist analysis, on the one hand, with right-wing millenarian Catholicism on the other. The resulting group would glorify the devout peasantry, villify the land-owning aristocracy and secular-ish military governments as heretical, and stage miitary campaigns against the latter two, AND their American benefactors.

Basically, Oscar Romero meets Bill O'Donohue, with a bit of homicidal mania thrown into the mix. Unlike the Latin American leftists of OTL, this group would eschew contact with left-wingers in the British Caribbean(buncha damned prots) and people like Fidel Castro and the Sandinistas(for obvious reasons). They might even strike up the occassional ad hoc alliance with the US against the infidel Comunists.

Thelogically, the group would be heavy on the Marianism. All Mary, All The Time.

 

[Spare Change]

The organization would need some sort of concrete goal that they can rally behind, like the destruction of Israel (PLO) or the restoration of Muslim greatness (you know who).

Unlike in Vietnam or Iraq, American arms were no longer propping up a government that couldn't stand by itself without American support, although there have been times the government of Columbia and Peru (Shining Path) did draw heavily from American aid. Pinochet (Chile) and the others were more than capable of taking care of themselves.

1) In real life, the closest was the Puerto Rican Indepence Movement that did spawn an anti-US terrorists movement. The problem here being that the US was happy to give Puerto Rico independence referendums and the Puerto Ricans have refused to leave their present arrangement! Many in Puerto Rico actually want to join the US as the 51st state. One can write a timeline where Puerto Rican independence is a much more divisive issue and the United States in response to some act of terrorism passes some ham-handed law which actually increases support for the terrorists

2) POD: The Shining Path gets close to victory in the late 80s.

Intervention in the Peruvian civil war becomes a partisan issue in the 1988 US Presidential Election. Bush wins, and despite anti-war protesters, gives serious military aid to Peru stopping its fall to Guzman and the Shining Path. However support for the war is brittle at home. Strong memories of Vietnam remain (even the first Gulf War was incredibly contraversial during this period). Latin Marxists believe a revolution is coming to all of Latin America if they can just force the Yanquis out!

In this enviroment the SALO (South American Liberation Organization) forms. Its actual Spanish acronym is OSL -Organización Sudamericana de Liberación, but as most of its announcements are in English to the US press, the SALO name sticks. It is made up of old Marxists radicals and left wing students, many studying in the United States or even Americans of Chicano heritage. They model themselves after the PLO and stage some spectacular acts of terror. They downplay their Marxist roots and stress liberation from the (non-Latino) US.

Like the PLO, they achieve a large measure of success. By killing hundreds of Americans especially in the spectatular 6-Flags hostage taking/massacres they raise awareness for the plight of the abused peasant. Although the FBI manages to roll up several networks of the SALO, they garner signifigant left wing support for the Shining Path's fight against evil land owners and corporate oppression. Of course everybody on the American left condems the killings and hijackings, but the uncomfortable question remains - who would be talking and marching about Peru, in support of the Shining Path, without the SALO?

When Clinton comes to office he shows he is not a wimp by supporting Bush's efforts in Somalia. However, despite the many military victories, he is against spending American blood and treasure to prop up the government of Peru which has been tarred in the papers with unsympathetic press coverage.

Clinton winds down support and makes the Peruvian government enter into negoitations with the Shining Path. After much resistance, with the Peruvians claiming the whole time that Shining Path has more in common with Pol Pot than with Robin Hood or with Ho Chi Minh, the Peruvians finally relent.

----


Today on August 13th 2014 is the 20th anniversary of the start of the talks, so there is a lot of news stories about Peru in the "e-papers". Talks have dragged on for years, but what has happened is a de-facto partition of Peru. Despite being inspired by Mao, China has little to do with the Guzman and his marxist narco-state in the Peruvian interior.

SALO collapsed in the 90s, the revolution having failed to occur. Many of the SALO die-hards flocked to Chavez's Venezuela (but tellingly few tried to make there lives under the Shining Path in the mountains of Peru.)

Thus the rise and fall of SALO.

 

[overoceans]

(continuation of my previous post)

Oh, and their propaganda would contain lots of stuff about Masonic plots. If they started operations in the USA proper, they might target Masonic buildings, their soldiers not being sophisticated enough to distinguish between the rubber-chicken scarfing local businessmen who frequent American lodges, and the Voltaire-spouting anti-clerical intellectuals back home.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Your Shining Path scenario is really interesting. Good job.

By Six Flags, do you mean one of these?

If so, oh dear. I've visited the Georgia one repeatedly and worked at an affiliated water park one summer.

 

[Spare Change]

Your Shining Path scenario is really interesting. Good job.

By Six Flags, do you mean one of these?

If so, oh dear. I've visited the Georgia one repeatedly and worked at an affiliated water park one summer.

Yes, that is eactly what I was talking about. With its large crowds and mild security it would be the place to try some spectacular act of terror. If you tried something like that in a big city there would be a SWAT team responding within the hour. There are no big city SWAT teams hanging out at 6-Flags (unless they were there as tourists for a morale building day!)

There are several other reasons I would choose a 6-Flags for my evil scheme, having to do with escape and the difficulty authorites would have in the complex, but I think I will stop now before the FBI drags me away!