Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

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September 1980:

The first part of the plan went perfectly. Half a dozen captains and majors in the Guatemalan Army entered the sleeping quarters of Ríos Montt in the early hours after his bodyguards had been dismissed. They shot him when he was woken up, hitting with at least fifty bullets. He was dead, really dead: they made sure of that. Next, the corpse of now former president of Guatemala was whisked out of the building, into a truck which then raced to a nearby airstrip. The remains of Ríos Montt were thrown in there and the light aircraft took off. Twenty minutes into the flight, high above the jungle, Ríos Montt’s body was pushed out of the cargo door after being stripped naked. That door was pulled shut and the aircraft returned to the airstrip. The two-man flight crew, like the truck driver, had no idea who they had gotten rid of. They had done tasks like this before and weren’t told whose body it was. The captains and majors said nothing on the identity of the corpse. They were too busy afterwards meeting with the representatives of whom was supposed to replace Ríos Montt. It was there with the second part of the plan that it all went wrong.

The Guatemalan Army had decided to turn leadership of the country over to the opposition. They had established contacts with a recently-formed coalition representing democrats, business, the unions and the Catholic Church. A handshake deal had been done with proper negotiations to follow before Ríos Montt was deposed. However, things outside their control had occurred with more extreme violence in Guatemala City and further massacres in the countryside. Worse (from their point of view), Ríos Montt had betrayed them all with his actions where he was killing their own and had humiliated the Guatemalan Army: the pullouts from El Salvador and Honduras had been a blow to their pride after Guatemala had recently become a regional power only to suddenly give that up. There was border spillover as well into those countries plus Mexico too (which Ríos Montt couldn’t have cared less about)… with that latter country enraged and possibly looking likely to start a war with Guatemala if it continued.

The military officers were nervous of their civilian contacts talking among themselves where they could be overheard by military intelligence spies. They acted with haste and hoped for the best. That was a mistake. The opposition group hadn’t been fully vetted, those who would have at once seen the glaring trap which the plotters were about to fall into weren’t in on the plot for fear that they would tell Ríos Montt. There had been several among the opposition representatives who weren’t only allied to the communist guerrillas in the EGP but their Cuban backers too. The army plotters handed over their country to their foremost enemy after they had been duped like the fools they were by those who couldn’t believe their luck.


As with so much of what had recently been going on in Guatemala, the exact sequence of events in late-September with the change of government was rather confusing to most people. Only a very few people knew everything, many knew some truth & some lies, while many more knew nothing at all. The fighting stopped though. The Guatemalan Army stayed in their barracks and the National Police were confided to their stations too. A new government was announced and they were supposed to be there to represent all people in Guatemala. Peace and stability would come. There would be no recriminations for all that had happened before. The people would be fed, educated, given medical attention if needed and gain housing as well. There would be freedom from oppression and freedom to have their voice heard.

Guatemala was now a utopia… and those who knew what a utopia was, knew that it never was that because it couldn’t exist. Guatemala had fallen to the communists after a serious error of judgement and without the final, bloody showdown that might have been expected. It would take most Guatemalans some time to realise that and it wasn’t something that could be changed afterwards.

The second domino in Central America had tumbled over. Others would follow in the coming years.

Exactly. Just like Nicaragua, revolutionary justice will come there.

So Somoza took his own life, doubt anybody will miss him.

But where will the domino stop.

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October 1980:

The race to the White House was in its final stages for the candidates left to replace Ford as president. There was election campaigning every day with public events, fundraising dinners and behind the scenes politicking. Kennedy and Reagan were dead tired and so were their campaign staffs plus the army of surrogate speakers they had working for their bid to be elected early next month. Everything was thrown at the race by both candidates to win more votes and that included many dirty tricks which were always denied in public and if admitted to in private, blamed on overeager junior staffers. Dirty tricks were a feature of the campaign with neither Kennedy caring much for Reagan nor Reagan having much regard for Kennedy either. It was personal, even more than political. They let their staffers spread lies in all sort of imaginative ways to influence the voters directly or indirectly. Money kept coming in as well. Presidential races were all about the cash flow. More was needed all of the time. Advertising needed to be bought, sometimes favours too. Democracy in action this was.

The campaign saw televised debates between the presidential candidates, a trio of those events, as well as a separate one between their prospective vice presidents too. The first presidential debate was in September with the following two (plus the one for the vice presidency) being in October. It would come out a couple of years later that political operatives affiliated to the Reagan campaign managed to gain access to confidential information on Kennedy’s talking points before the second debate. The media would afterwards generally agree that Reagan won that debate after losing the first: he did seem rather quick off the mark with his counters to Kennedy’s points in the opinion of many. During the third debate, viewers at the time who weren’t armed with foreknowledge of what happened were treated to Reagan seeming to tie himself in knots when countering Kennedy and the senator informing the former governor that wasn’t what he had said. It was all very strange and was revealed in following years to have been a case of Reagan’s campaign getting false information ahead of the third debate and their candidate being flummoxed somewhat when Kennedy didn’t stay ‘on script’. The vice presidential debates between John Glenn and Howard Baker – running alongside Kennedy and Reagan respectively – were less interesting for the viewers and the history books too.

That issue aside, the debates focused on matters such as domestic policy, the economy and foreign affairs. Both Kennedy and Reagan were experienced politicians who knew how to look presidential and aimed to present that when at each stage. They traded barbs, yes, but there was also quite a bit of serious politics which went on where each set out their vision for the four or eight years they could be in office. Change was the theme of both men and neither was tied to the sitting president nor to any administration before them. They each promised to do what was the right thing for the American people and the country as a whole. There were big promises there that sounded great yet were really quite meaningless overall. When talking foreign policy, each candidate held some things back that they had already decided that they would do once in office yet weren’t ready to talk about that before they were elected. Both stated that they would stand up to Soviet aggression abroad, in the Middle East especially, and the two men also spoke about the situation in Central America as well. Reagan tried to push Kennedy into speaking openly of his opposition to nuclear weapons, especially the Ford Administration’s introduction of new nuclear missiles into Western Europe: this had been done throughout the campaign as it was an area identified as something which wouldn’t go over well with the voters if pushed in the right manner. He was unable to get Kennedy to go there though. More success was had by Kennedy in linking Reagan to ideas called extremist when combatting the spread of international communism, trying to make Reagan look like he wanted a return to the way the Cold War was fought in the Fifties. Still, Kennedy took heat on the issue of the Panama Canal though and the allegations about his desire to see that returned to Panama.

When the last debate was done, and the election finally soon to come, the polls were all over the place. It was neck-and-neck in one poll, another had Kennedy out ahead while another would say that Reagan was going to win a landslide. There were a lot of undecided voters. The campaign rolled onwards towards November 4th. Who would win?


Panama was mentioned late in the campaign because Torrijos came to the United States late in October. The Maximum Leader of the Panamanian Revolution – Torrijos was never de jure president though he was the de facto ruler of his country – went to the UN and also Washington too. This wasn’t an official state visit though there were those in the United States in position of influence with whom he met. The Reagan camp alleged that he met with Kennedy while in the country; Kennedy’s spokesman denied that at the time and Kennedy did himself during the debate where Reagan brought it up. Torrijos was only in the United States for one reason and one reason alone: the Panama Canal.

Panama was willing to negotiate but wanted what Torrijos claimed was rightfully its. No one was willing to give it to Panama, not while Torrijos held the overt power that he did. He had been told this before yet this time he listened. Upon leaving the country, his mind was made up that there was a better way to get control over the little strip of his nation held by Americans in colonial fashion than demanding it again and again as loud as possible. He would make changes – cosmetic ones but still changes – and negotiate with the Americans that way. Torrijos expected the next president (he favoured Kennedy over Reagan on this) to be fair and reasonable as long as he made the effort to give the Americans what they wanted with being able to pretend to see Panama as a democracy.

Who controls the Panama Canal in a global war will have a advantage.

Wait does there lay a great river to the North as James mention.