How Similar Can We Make US Influence Over The Americas To The USSR Over E.Europe

The Flip Sides Of The Same Coin!

Levels of oppression against ordinary citizens in Latin America by CIA backed governments and CIA trained death squads never quite made the headlines in the West that the Soviet Unions messing did in the East European countries under its 'guidance', but was it just as bad ultimately? I strongly suspect so!
 
I just recently visited the main Stasi remand prison for political prisoners in Berlin and got an in depth tour of it and was told of the torture that the prisoners endured prior to their confessions. In reality, I find it hard to believe that similar gross violations of human rights were not taking place right through out Latin America under Yankee direction!
 

loughery111

Banned
Before you ask questions like this, it's generally a good idea to do enough research to find out whether or not it will actually be alternate history or not... :p

I suspect that the US hand, especially in the past few decades, fell a bit (a lot) more lightly than the Soviet, and has all but faded from the scene over the last two decades, but I'm not sure of that, nor am I sure of how to change it so that it was as bad.
 
How similar do you want it?

Let's take the period 1968-1988, i.e. from the crushing of the Prague Spring to the point where Gorby feels confident enough to loosen things up. If you were a good little middle-class Eastern European you might join the Party, turn up to a couple of meetings a year for form's sake, keep your nose clean and your head down, and aspire to being allowed to buy your very own Trabant/Skoda/FSO/Moskvich. Even rent an apartment with a bedroom for each of your family if you really made it big. OK, you'd prefer a Merc and somewhere with a pool, but hey, you know what the deal is. Compare and contrast with US-run or US-resisting Central America over the same period. You aspire to not being caught in the crossfire.
 
I just recently visited the main Stasi remand prison for political prisoners in Berlin and got an in depth tour of it and was told of the torture that the prisoners endured prior to their confessions. In reality, I find it hard to believe that similar gross violations of human rights were not taking place right through out Latin America under Yankee direction!

It depends who you were. If you're a rich landwoner, or your father was a rich businessman, and you weren't interested in politics at all, you'd probably live far better in Latin America than in Eastern Europen, with greater personal freedom, even under the worst dictatorships (nothing was granted, of course, as even a few of these people were hijacked and killed only for their money).

But if you had any liberal political inclinations and manifested them publicly during the dictatorships of the South Cone, or if you had any problem with the despots in power in Central America (or they family or friends) think would get very bad for yourself. In the worst periods, under the worst dictatorships, you might have been hijacked, tortured and killed, and your body wouldn't have been delivered to your family. Of course, this was only in the worst period: in Argentina it happened from 1976-80; by 1982 there were practically no more "disapearences".

To sum up, yes, things were really bad in here, but only for briefs periods, and depending on who you were.
 
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