Programmed to Chill

note from the archivist:

Jimmy did not write episode notes for the remaining episodes

artwork by Robert Voyvodic (@rvoy__) based on Cuny's NGO maps for Thai concentration camps

Songs:

Go Back, You Fool by Faron Young

Forget the Past by Faron Young

False Flag by Massive Attack

note from the archivist:

Jimmy did not write episode notes for the approximately 46 remaining episodes

artwork by Robert Voyvodic (@rvoy__) based on Cuny's NGO maps for Thai concentration camps

Songs:

I Hear You Talkin’ by Faron Young

Live Fast, Love hard, Die Young by Faron Young

Face to the Wall by Faron Young

[originally published on Patreon March 22, 2024]

This is the fifteenth and last installment in the UFC/Banana/Guatemala series.

Rodolfo and I finish discussing the film La Llorona. We get into some of the more spiritual themes of the film. We sincerepost and share our thoughts on spirituality more generally. This leads to a discussion of family ghost stories, and we each share one. 

Songs:

La Llorona by Gaby Moreno

Ghost Party by Messer Chups

[originally published on Patreon March 21, 2024]

Diving deeply into the claims made in the film La Llorona, I examine the question of Guatemala's oil industry in the wake of the 1954 coup and onwards, especially during La Violencia. As it turns out, most of the story deals with a company named Basic Resources International SA, or BRISA. 

BRISA was owned by Sir James Goldsmith, a very curious man from a curious family. A corporate raider, far-right donor, and backer of private military contractor companies. I discuss the relationship between conservation movements a...

[originally published on Patreon March 20, 2024]

I am joined by Rodolfo (from the Bolaño series) to discuss the 2019 Guatemalan film La Llorona, which features a lightly fictionalized account of a Montt stand-in and deals with the psychic and spiritual fallout from La Violencia. We discuss about half of the film's plot which led us to one of the throwaway lines in the film - the question of Guatemalan mineral rights. 

Songs:

Lonely Surf Guitar by the Safaris

Surfin’ Todd by the Burzums

[originally published on Patreon March 19, 2024]

I pick back up with Efraín Ríos Montt's pacification plan known as Victoria 82, informally known as Fusiles y Frijoles, or Rifles and Beans. Montt established secret courts, a scorched-earth military campaign and utilized counterinsurgency troops.

I share my personal experience with survivors of these incidents. I also read from a work of fiction, Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Moya which more eloquently captures what it is like to be confronted by these stories. Then, I read an extended passage from a truth and re...

[originally published on Patreon March 18, 2024]

A brief parenthetical before continuing with the story of the Guatemalan genocide, I decided to do an episode just for me (and the like three other Mormon listeners) about the Mormon church in Guatemala, though I think this will still be instructive. 

The history begins with a Mormon named John Forres O’Donnal who was hired to the US Department of Agriculture’s new agency, the Office of Rubber Plant Investigations and sent to Guatemala and more or less developed Guatemala's rubber industry for US st...

[originally published on March 17, 2024]

Efraín Ríos Montt's presidency was the nadir of Guatemala's 36-year civil war, and the worst period of violence - la violencia - took place during it. I begin by discussing his upbringing, class background, and early career as a Guatemalan military officer. He was trained at the School of the Americas (now WHINSEC) in Georgia as well as at Fort Bragg (now Fort Liberty) in North Carolina as well as the Italian War College and Fort Gulick (aka the School of the Assassins) in the Panama Canal Zone.

...

[originally published on Patreon March 16, 2024]

By 1970, the literal former head of a death squad was running Guatemala - Colonel Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio. He took the death squad model to the next level, and disappearances skyrocketed. In 1972, the survivors of FAR formed the EGP (Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres, or the Guerrilla Army of the Poor) and shifted from foquismo to a protracted people's war model of insurgency.

I discuss the Catholic church's complicated legacy in Guatemala on both sides of the political spectrum. I discuss Liberation Theology, the Melville Affair, a...

[originally published on Patreon March 15, 2024]

Most stories of the 1954 coup end shortly thereafter. We continue with Guatemala barreling right into the Guatemalan Civil War. I start with the Justice Department's antitrust case against United Fruit Company in the immediate aftermath of the 1954 coup. 

From there, I go into the curious case of Carlos Manuel Pellecer, a "communist firebrand" who was causing problems for the Arbenz government. Before the coup, I found declassified CIA documents showing Pellecer's seance to contact the ghost of Josef Stalin. In the wake of the coup, it eventually b...