James G
Squadron vice admiral
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Post by James G on Mar 28, 2018 22:54:45 GMT
(89)
June 1983:
June saw many Mexicans lose their jobs. There were those laid off from the financial industry and the connecting commercial support sectors affected by those first lay-offs. These were some of the best-paying jobs in Mexico, all concentrated in Mexico City. Elsewhere in the country, many reasonably well-paid construction jobs in the oil infrastructure and transportation building sectors (the latter including those new roads going north) were laid off too. They were paid until the end of the month but let go at once. The latter were non-unionized workers, easier to get rid of. Find work elsewhere, they were told, for construction work was temporarily cancelled for now on orders from the government. At that point, the Peso still had much of its domestic value and food could be bought and rent paid. There were protests from unionized workers in the same labour industries though when they were told that starting from next month, their wages would be cut by half. Again, that decision came from Mexico City without any consideration of the affects it would have. García Paniagua was acting without thinking. He was making decisions without looking at the consequences beyond the here and now. Another one of those decisions was his chosen approach when it came to dealing with the foreign banks and their loans that they had called in. With no help coming from abroad – the United States had refused to help like they had done back in 1976: Treasury Secretary Birch Bayh said no because he knew what had happened back in ’76 with that bailout wasted & stolen –, the Mexican president told those banks that there would be a suspension of payments on the debt for the time being and when Mexico was able to, it would again service the debt as it was before. That wasn’t what had been demanded from abroad though. Even if the banks were willing to do anything like what García Paniagua said he was going to do, there was no chance of that. Debt interest payments would always be wanted in US Dollars and none were available now nor in the foreseeable future. But the banks weren’t willing to listen. From Mexico City came more of those allegations that the bankers were working together in one giant conspiracy against the Mexican people.
The president was defending the nation. These attacks from abroad would stop, he declared to his people. But they didn’t. Others wanted American currency that Mexico didn’t have access to as well. The country was a major importer of food from aboard. Wastage on a grand scale and also illegal ‘land reform’ – peasants stealing farmland –, the latter which had happened under López Portillo without the former president doing anything to stop that, had made Mexico dependent upon foreign sources of basic foodstuffs for its people and animals. No dollars, no food. Those exporters had watched as Mexico’s economy collapsed and started asking for immediate payment-on-delivery, not payment-later. When the first payments weren’t made, word got out. Other suppliers wouldn’t send food to Mexico if it wasn’t going to be paid for. Like the bankers, those food suppliers were international concerns and paid attention to the Mexican president. News which was coming out of the office of García Paniagua (some true, some not) concerned them gravely. The president was acting as if he was in control but he wasn’t. He was firing staff and others were resigning. The rest of the government was having similar problems with chaos seemingly everywhere. Sending goods to Mexico at this time when it looked like it wasn’t going to be paid for wasn’t a good idea. The food deliveries started to dry up. Mexican people needed to eat like they needed jobs but both were being taken away from them. García Paniagua made a big speech towards the end of the month where he again trotted out the patriotic slogans and made allegations about foreign conspiracies. He was nationalizing Mexican banks. He said that Mexico would recover. He said he had a plan to fix the problem. The president kept on talking, saying a lot, but nothing was being done to reverse what had already happened and stop what was coming.
Quite ironically, when García Paniagua had spoken of international conspiracies against Mexico’s economy, some of what he had said was true. Part of what was going on, especially through June and long after the initial events had happened, was one of those which actually took place. KGB Chairman Chebrikov set into motion an operation to do further damage to the Mexican economy. He didn’t have approval from Andropov – who was getting increasingly ill; why bother him, this was what he would have done – nor the rest of the Politburo yet he did what he did believing that once he later told them, after it worked as he was sure it would, they would understand that it was necessary and crown him as the next general secretary when Andropov departed from this world. A fool he was with that, a deluded fool, but not with his financial scheme. Those KGB bank accounts in the BBCI bank’s Latin American division along with elsewhere in the world such as Austria and Switzerland. These were made use of to buy up Mexican debt and then sell it onwards to those who would really turn the screws on Mexico more than big commercial banking institutions. The KGB operating fund would make a profit too. It was just a matter of certain people buying then selling. Those involved in the transactions weren’t Soviet nationals and nor were many KGB operatives: bankers worked for the Soviet Union without knowing it and without seeing the bigger picture either. There was commission to be made and what did they care if Mexico was being fed to the sharks. One of those bankers, an Austrian citizen working for a private Swiss bank, had long been siphoning off small amounts from the accounts he controlled: a little here, a little there. These were used for arms sales by what he thought were Middle Eastern interests. He spent a lot of the money on fast cars, exotic women and party drugs. He was suddenly given access to a ton of money. Greed hit him when the temptation came. He stole what wasn’t his, transferring six million US Dollars out of a business account with a holding company in Switzerland off to another in Italy and then sending it further onwards. The money eventually arrived in French Polynesia. The banker set off after it, abandoning his job and exciting life in Switzerland. The KGB would chase him to the end of the earth for stealing from them even without knowing it was them he took that money from. All told though, it was a drop in the ocean when it came to the amount involved in the KGB’s Mexican operation… but still, he would get his punishment.
What was Chebrikov up to? He was doing what Andropov wanted and strengthening Soviet security by making sure that the United States would have a long-term problem in Latin America to focus on for the future. Since Ford had let Nicaragua and then Guatemala fall, and despite the relations he had in public with Kennedy, Andropov had been having this occur. The Cubans were the main front man in the operation, doing what they did for their own ends. It was all a careful strategy helped too by circumstance. However, Andropov was too ill to control day to-to-day operations anymore. Chebrikov had known about his illness long before he nor anyone else did and was eager to replace him. He oversaw the work of his First Chief Directorate head in the form of Kryuchkov who was intimately involved though had told Kryuchkov that the Politburo knew and approved. Assuming that the ambitious younger man wouldn’t eventually confirm that was another one of Chebrikov’s mistakes which would come to bite him in the behind in the end. That aside, the Mexican debt buy-up and sell-on made that profit and saddled Mexico with difficult creditors. Chebrikov saw further Mexican economic disasters as a good thing elsewhere too besides hurting American interests. Those newly-elected Greens in West Germany were making sure that further nuclear power development there was to be cancelled and talks (just talks) started on a future with tidal & wind power… while in the meantime Soviet oil and gas would be bought. Mexican oil was going to be out of the picture for some time coming, all making Soviet oil more sought after by the West because of shortages elsewhere.
The money from the Mexican operation which was earned as profit – less that money shot off to the South Pacific – was then used elsewhere in Latin America. BCCI was again involved in being the go-to bank for operations in the region where arms were bought and sold to be funneled to the fighting taking place in El Salvador and Honduras. Both Cuba and Nicaragua had their own things going on with more visible actions while the KGB acted from behind the scenes sending weapons to those fighting the governments in San Salvador and Tegucigalpa. Argentina and Venezuela had recently stepped away from the fight in El Salvador, leaving Chile alone to help Romero’s regime; Honduras was friendless. Everything with what Chebrikov was up to was all inter-connected. It was all for his own personal gain as well. When Andropov was gone, he intended to take his place and that would come after his victory in Central America… he was sure of that. In the meantime, if there needed to be tens of thousands of deaths and economic collapses of several nations, then so be it. The chase for power was intoxicating for Chebrikov.
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Post by lukedalton on Mar 28, 2018 23:53:46 GMT
I'm not sure yet on how that will all go with European waters. It needs more thinking. The Soviets will want to frighten but not have Western Europe fight them. The war is one of economics in the end and that will play into how they act, bluster aside. I have plans for the US reaction to Mexico affecting NATO but also confrontations brewing elsewhere in the world. Add in some 'events' and the plan is that with recent history, decisions are made for the here and now rather than the future. Things will change in the end. That map is only for the start, not the whole conflict. The problem with frighten Western Europe is that you do too well your job...East Germany will be overrun by Leopard MBT; from the economic part, well the URSS, even if they don't want admit in pubblic, are already heavily dependent on europe money, so they can't be to aggressive towards economic warfare unless they want cripple their own economy. Plus i don't see the French being frightened so easily and frankly the entire eastern block resources will be occupied with USA and China (and the other theatres) that will be obvious for anyone that they don't have anything to spare for being too military aggressive against the EEC...that Ireland it's a member and an official neutral nation too, while attacking Norway, UK and Portugal and expecting nobody in the continent do anything it's a very stretch but still plausible as it can work it out as the absence of formal tie and the NATO collapse making the treaty null and void (and as i said...make it official) so we can have a situation like Ukraine with the EU trying the diplomatic and economic response with his allies. Ireland as said it's a member and even neutral, attacking her mean that Moscow loudly said to the world that neutrality for her mean nothing and anything is game. In general while the rest of Europe will be frightened by the situation, they will not shaking in their boots and let be bullied easily; Moscow will be forced for the time being to use a very diplomatic approach and the carrot more than the stick Edit: regarding stopping nuclear developement in West Germany, well ironically it will mean buy more energy from France and her nuclear plants and very soon it will be apparent that the Green will be forced to do as OTL and reverse their politics, at least in the short terms, due to the general geopolitical situation (as in OTL they were forced to postpone the closure of the nuclears plant in Germany after the pubblic announcement due to the rising of the oil price...and here the situation will be similar, and the Green are in a coalition; sure they will protest but the more probable result will be a division of the party between moderate and hardline) |
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Mar 29, 2018 19:06:27 GMT
(89)June 1983: June saw many Mexicans lose their jobs. There were those laid off from the financial industry and the connecting commercial support sectors affected by those first lay-offs. These were some of the best-paying jobs in Mexico, all concentrated in Mexico City. Elsewhere in the country, many reasonably well-paid construction jobs in the oil infrastructure and transportation building sectors (the latter including those new roads going north) were laid off too. They were paid until the end of the month but let go at once. The latter were non-unionized workers, easier to get rid of. Find work elsewhere, they were told, for construction work was temporarily cancelled for now on orders from the government. At that point, the Peso still had much of its domestic value and food could be bought and rent paid. There were protests from unionized workers in the same labour industries though when they were told that starting from next month, their wages would be cut by half. Again, that decision came from Mexico City without any consideration of the affects it would have. García Paniagua was acting without thinking. He was making decisions without looking at the consequences beyond the here and now. Another one of those decisions was his chosen approach when it came to dealing with the foreign banks and their loans that they had called in. With no help coming from abroad – the United States had refused to help like they had done back in 1976: Treasury Secretary Birch Bayh said no because he knew what had happened back in ’76 with that bailout wasted & stolen –, the Mexican president told those banks that there would be a suspension of payments on the debt for the time being and when Mexico was able to, it would again service the debt as it was before. That wasn’t what had been demanded from abroad though. Even if the banks were willing to do anything like what García Paniagua said he was going to do, there was no chance of that. Debt interest payments would always be wanted in US Dollars and none were available now nor in the foreseeable future. But the banks weren’t willing to listen. From Mexico City came more of those allegations that the bankers were working together in one giant conspiracy against the Mexican people. The president was defending the nation. These attacks from abroad would stop, he declared to his people. But they didn’t. Others wanted American currency that Mexico didn’t have access to as well. The country was a major importer of food from aboard. Wastage on a grand scale and also illegal ‘land reform’ – peasants stealing farmland –, the latter which had happened under López Portillo without the former president doing anything to stop that, had made Mexico dependent upon foreign sources of basic foodstuffs for its people and animals. No dollars, no food. Those exporters had watched as Mexico’s economy collapsed and started asking for immediate payment-on-delivery, not payment-later. When the first payments weren’t made, word got out. Other suppliers wouldn’t send food to Mexico if it wasn’t going to be paid for. Like the bankers, those food suppliers were international concerns and paid attention to the Mexican president. News which was coming out of the office of García Paniagua (some true, some not) concerned them gravely. The president was acting as if he was in control but he wasn’t. He was firing staff and others were resigning. The rest of the government was having similar problems with chaos seemingly everywhere. Sending goods to Mexico at this time when it looked like it wasn’t going to be paid for wasn’t a good idea. The food deliveries started to dry up. Mexican people needed to eat like they needed jobs but both were being taken away from them. García Paniagua made a big speech towards the end of the month where he again trotted out the patriotic slogans and made allegations abut foreign conspiracies. He was nationalizing Mexican banks. He said that Mexico would recover. He said he had a plan to fix the problem. The president kept on talking, saying a lot, but nothing was being done to reverse what had already happened and stop what was coming. Quite ironically, when García Paniagua had spoken of international conspiracies against Mexico’s economy, some of what he had said was true. Part of what was going on, especially through June and long after the initial events had happened, was one of those which actually took place. KGB Chairman Chebrikov set into motion an operation to do further damage to the Mexican economy. He didn’t have approval from Andropov – who was getting increasingly ill; why bother him, this was what he would have done – nor the rest of the Politburo yet he did what he did believing that once he later told them, after it worked as he was sure it would, they would understand that it was necessary and crown him as the next general secretary when Andropov departed from this world. A fool he was with that, a deluded fool, but not with his financial scheme. Those KGB bank accounts in the BBCI bank’s Latin American division along with elsewhere in the world such as Austria and Switzerland. These were made use of to buy up Mexican debt and then sell it onwards to those who would really turn the screws on Mexico more than big commercial banking institutions. The KGB operating fund would make a profit too. It was just a matter of certain people buying then selling. Those involved in the transactions weren’t Soviet nationals and nor were many KGB operatives: bankers worked for the Soviet Union without knowing it and without seeing the bigger picture either. There was commission to be made and what did they care if Mexico was being fed to the sharks. One of those bankers, an Austrian citizen working for a private Swiss bank, had long been siphoning off small amounts from the accounts he controlled: a little here, a little there. These were used for arms sales by what he thought were Middle Eastern interests. He spent a lot of the money on fast cars, exotic women and party drugs. He was suddenly given access to a ton of money. Greed hit him when the temptation came. He stole what wasn’t his, transferring six million US Dollars out of a business account with a holding company in Switzerland off to another in Italy and then sending it further onwards. The money eventually arrived in French Polynesia. The banker set off after it, abandoning his job and exciting life in Switzerland. The KGB would chase him to the end of the earth for stealing from them even without knowing it was them he took that money from. All told though, it was a drop in the ocean when it came to the amount involved in the KGB’s Mexican operation… but still, he would get his punishment. What was Chebrikov up to? He was doing what Andropov wanted and strengthening Soviet security by making sure that the United States would have a long-term problem in Latin America to focus on for the future. Since Ford had let Nicaragua and then Guatemala fall, and despite the relations he had in public with Kennedy, Andropov had been having this occur. The Cubans were the main front man in the operation, doing what they did for their own ends. It was all a careful strategy helped too by circumstance. However, Andropov was too ill to control day to-to-day operations anymore. Chebrikov had known about his illness long before he nor anyone else did and was eager to replace him. He oversaw the work of his First Chief Directorate head in the form of Kryuchkov who was intimately involved though had told Kryuchkov that the Politburo knew and approved. Assuming that the ambitious younger man wouldn’t eventually confirm that was another one of Chebrikov’s mistakes which would come to bite him in the behind in the end. That aside, the Mexican debt buy-up and sell-on made that profit and saddled Mexico with difficult creditors. Chebrikov saw further Mexican economic disasters as a good thing elsewhere too besides hurting American interests. Those newly-elected Greens in West Germany were making sure that further nuclear power development there was to be cancelled and talks (just talks) started on a future with tidal & wind power… while in the meantime Soviet oil and gas would be bought. Mexican oil was going to be out of the picture for some time coming, all making Soviet oil more sought after by the West because of shortages elsewhere. The money from the Mexican operation which was earned as profit – less that money shot off to the South Pacific – was then used elsewhere in Latin America. BCCI was again involved in being the go-to bank for operations in the region where arms were bought and sold to be funneled to the fighting taking place in El Salvador and Honduras. Both Cuba and Nicaragua had their own things going on with more visible actions while the KGB acted from behind the scenes sending weapons to those fighting the governments in San Salvador and Tegucigalpa. Argentina and Venezuela had recently stepped away from the fight in El Salvador, leaving Chile alone to help Romero’s regime; Honduras was friendless. Everything with what Chebrikov was up to was all inter-connected. It was all for his own personal gain as well. When Andropov was gone, he intended to take his place and that would come after his victory in Central America… he was sure of that. In the meantime, if there needed to be tens of thousands of deaths and economic collapses of several nations, then so be it. The chase for power was intoxicating for Chebrikov. And Mexico is sliding down step by step. |
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
Posts: 7,608
Likes: 8,833
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Post by James G on Mar 29, 2018 19:08:56 GMT
(89)June 1983: June saw many Mexicans lose their jobs. There were those laid off from the financial industry and the connecting commercial support sectors affected by those first lay-offs. These were some of the best-paying jobs in Mexico, all concentrated in Mexico City. Elsewhere in the country, many reasonably well-paid construction jobs in the oil infrastructure and transportation building sectors (the latter including those new roads going north) were laid off too. They were paid until the end of the month but let go at once. The latter were non-unionized workers, easier to get rid of. Find work elsewhere, they were told, for construction work was temporarily cancelled for now on orders from the government. At that point, the Peso still had much of its domestic value and food could be bought and rent paid. There were protests from unionized workers in the same labour industries though when they were told that starting from next month, their wages would be cut by half. Again, that decision came from Mexico City without any consideration of the affects it would have. García Paniagua was acting without thinking. He was making decisions without looking at the consequences beyond the here and now. Another one of those decisions was his chosen approach when it came to dealing with the foreign banks and their loans that they had called in. With no help coming from abroad – the United States had refused to help like they had done back in 1976: Treasury Secretary Birch Bayh said no because he knew what had happened back in ’76 with that bailout wasted & stolen –, the Mexican president told those banks that there would be a suspension of payments on the debt for the time being and when Mexico was able to, it would again service the debt as it was before. That wasn’t what had been demanded from abroad though. Even if the banks were willing to do anything like what García Paniagua said he was going to do, there was no chance of that. Debt interest payments would always be wanted in US Dollars and none were available now nor in the foreseeable future. But the banks weren’t willing to listen. From Mexico City came more of those allegations that the bankers were working together in one giant conspiracy against the Mexican people. The president was defending the nation. These attacks from abroad would stop, he declared to his people. But they didn’t. Others wanted American currency that Mexico didn’t have access to as well. The country was a major importer of food from aboard. Wastage on a grand scale and also illegal ‘land reform’ – peasants stealing farmland –, the latter which had happened under López Portillo without the former president doing anything to stop that, had made Mexico dependent upon foreign sources of basic foodstuffs for its people and animals. No dollars, no food. Those exporters had watched as Mexico’s economy collapsed and started asking for immediate payment-on-delivery, not payment-later. When the first payments weren’t made, word got out. Other suppliers wouldn’t send food to Mexico if it wasn’t going to be paid for. Like the bankers, those food suppliers were international concerns and paid attention to the Mexican president. News which was coming out of the office of García Paniagua (some true, some not) concerned them gravely. The president was acting as if he was in control but he wasn’t. He was firing staff and others were resigning. The rest of the government was having similar problems with chaos seemingly everywhere. Sending goods to Mexico at this time when it looked like it wasn’t going to be paid for wasn’t a good idea. The food deliveries started to dry up. Mexican people needed to eat like they needed jobs but both were being taken away from them. García Paniagua made a big speech towards the end of the month where he again trotted out the patriotic slogans and made allegations abut foreign conspiracies. He was nationalizing Mexican banks. He said that Mexico would recover. He said he had a plan to fix the problem. The president kept on talking, saying a lot, but nothing was being done to reverse what had already happened and stop what was coming. Quite ironically, when García Paniagua had spoken of international conspiracies against Mexico’s economy, some of what he had said was true. Part of what was going on, especially through June and long after the initial events had happened, was one of those which actually took place. KGB Chairman Chebrikov set into motion an operation to do further damage to the Mexican economy. He didn’t have approval from Andropov – who was getting increasingly ill; why bother him, this was what he would have done – nor the rest of the Politburo yet he did what he did believing that once he later told them, after it worked as he was sure it would, they would understand that it was necessary and crown him as the next general secretary when Andropov departed from this world. A fool he was with that, a deluded fool, but not with his financial scheme. Those KGB bank accounts in the BBCI bank’s Latin American division along with elsewhere in the world such as Austria and Switzerland. These were made use of to buy up Mexican debt and then sell it onwards to those who would really turn the screws on Mexico more than big commercial banking institutions. The KGB operating fund would make a profit too. It was just a matter of certain people buying then selling. Those involved in the transactions weren’t Soviet nationals and nor were many KGB operatives: bankers worked for the Soviet Union without knowing it and without seeing the bigger picture either. There was commission to be made and what did they care if Mexico was being fed to the sharks. One of those bankers, an Austrian citizen working for a private Swiss bank, had long been siphoning off small amounts from the accounts he controlled: a little here, a little there. These were used for arms sales by what he thought were Middle Eastern interests. He spent a lot of the money on fast cars, exotic women and party drugs. He was suddenly given access to a ton of money. Greed hit him when the temptation came. He stole what wasn’t his, transferring six million US Dollars out of a business account with a holding company in Switzerland off to another in Italy and then sending it further onwards. The money eventually arrived in French Polynesia. The banker set off after it, abandoning his job and exciting life in Switzerland. The KGB would chase him to the end of the earth for stealing from them even without knowing it was them he took that money from. All told though, it was a drop in the ocean when it came to the amount involved in the KGB’s Mexican operation… but still, he would get his punishment. What was Chebrikov up to? He was doing what Andropov wanted and strengthening Soviet security by making sure that the United States would have a long-term problem in Latin America to focus on for the future. Since Ford had let Nicaragua and then Guatemala fall, and despite the relations he had in public with Kennedy, Andropov had been having this occur. The Cubans were the main front man in the operation, doing what they did for their own ends. It was all a careful strategy helped too by circumstance. However, Andropov was too ill to control day to-to-day operations anymore. Chebrikov had known about his illness long before he nor anyone else did and was eager to replace him. He oversaw the work of his First Chief Directorate head in the form of Kryuchkov who was intimately involved though had told Kryuchkov that the Politburo knew and approved. Assuming that the ambitious younger man wouldn’t eventually confirm that was another one of Chebrikov’s mistakes which would come to bite him in the behind in the end. That aside, the Mexican debt buy-up and sell-on made that profit and saddled Mexico with difficult creditors. Chebrikov saw further Mexican economic disasters as a good thing elsewhere too besides hurting American interests. Those newly-elected Greens in West Germany were making sure that further nuclear power development there was to be cancelled and talks (just talks) started on a future with tidal & wind power… while in the meantime Soviet oil and gas would be bought. Mexican oil was going to be out of the picture for some time coming, all making Soviet oil more sought after by the West because of shortages elsewhere. The money from the Mexican operation which was earned as profit – less that money shot off to the South Pacific – was then used elsewhere in Latin America. BCCI was again involved in being the go-to bank for operations in the region where arms were bought and sold to be funneled to the fighting taking place in El Salvador and Honduras. Both Cuba and Nicaragua had their own things going on with more visible actions while the KGB acted from behind the scenes sending weapons to those fighting the governments in San Salvador and Tegucigalpa. Argentina and Venezuela had recently stepped away from the fight in El Salvador, leaving Chile alone to help Romero’s regime; Honduras was friendless. Everything with what Chebrikov was up to was all inter-connected. It was all for his own personal gain as well. When Andropov was gone, he intended to take his place and that would come after his victory in Central America… he was sure of that. In the meantime, if there needed to be tens of thousands of deaths and economic collapses of several nations, then so be it. The chase for power was intoxicating for Chebrikov. And Mexico is sliding down step by step. It will be. There will be the start of violence soon enough. Confused and not coordinated, but the start. |
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James G
Squadron vice admiral
Posts: 7,608
Likes: 8,833
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Post by James G on Mar 29, 2018 19:09:33 GMT
(90)
July 1983:
Kennedy was in the Middle East where he made visits to Israel, Jordan and then Egypt. He came on a mission of peace with the first two visits made ahead of a summit long arranged in Egypt. This had been something which he had been long working on and not one of his often flights of fancy in foreign affairs. The president’s reputation as a friend of Israel was well-known but he had put the effort in to trying to get the Egyptians and the Jordanians to understand that he came as an honest deal-breaker regardless. It was peace which he was trying to bring to the region, a long-term one which while it would never settle all of the issues, would help settle some. Ambitious it was and something which had caused him problems back home with the Jewish Lobby in the United States, but Kennedy was able to use his credentials as an established friend of Israel to silence much of that. Prime Minister Begin, King Hussein and President Sadat met in Port Said with Kennedy at the beginning of the month. Security was tight with threats to the summit and the participants regarded as high. They talked among themselves and with the other secondary participants at the summit with the intention of thrashing out a deal. The main priorities were to have the Sinai returned to Egyptian control and an Israeli-Jordanian understanding on the West Bank. Other regional matters involving each of the countries were discussed as well though ranging from Lebanon, the role of Syria in a peaceful regional future, Iraq and across to Libya. One of those external participants was Gromyko with the Soviet foreign minister representing his country’s interests in the region away from matters directly at-hand when it came to Israeli-Egyptian and Israeli-Jordanian matters. Mondale had come with Kennedy to Egypt and he met with Gromyko where they made another one of their later-to-be-infamous informal deals. This one concerned Syria and how the Soviet Union would make sure that Syria stayed out of Lebanon; Mondale agreed that the United States would work towards having Israel keep out of the same small country. This was a private deal and one where, once again, the United States came away from an agreement with the Soviet Union feeling as if it had gotten more than it had given away. Vienna and East Berlin had shown this happen before and now Port Said would join that list. Kennedy and his secretary of state really seemed to have a good understanding of how to strike deals with the Soviets and get good ones too: there was no sigh in any previous agreement of Soviet duplicity and none was expected with the Lebanon issue. During that side talk, Mondale had diplomatically enquired after the health of the Soviet general secretary. Andropov was in good health, he was told, just busy with affairs of state; he sent his good wishes to President Kennedy. Well that was one big fat stinking lie, wasn’t it?
The main talks came away with success too. It took some time and Kennedy ended up staying an extra day in Egypt but he achieved something worthwhile. Begin and Sadat struck a deal on the eventual Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai. Israel’s long military occupation would end; the settlements would go too. The end result would be a demilitarization of the Sinai leaving the peninsula free of Egyptian and Israeli soldiers. The intention was to get a UN force in afterwards to monitor the ground too. Begin and King Hussein couldn’t get to an agreement on the West Bank but they had fruitful talks, talks which would recommence again in the coming months with Kennedy inviting them both to the United States to talk there. There was a press event with cautious handshakes and Kennedy in the middle of it all. From elsewhere in the region, neighbouring hostile countries, there came screams of outrage. Iraq and Libya condemned the Port Said Summit where King Hussein had ‘betrayed the Palestinian people’ and Sadat had ‘betrayed the Arab people’. Aggression from these two countries had been talked about at the summit, especially the still ongoing illegal occupation of Kuwait by Iraq, but nothing had come of that.
Kennedy went home afterwards, aiming to bask in the glory when he returned to Washington. He had been briefed before he went to the Middle East and when there about the continuing dire situation Mexico was in along with increases in the fighting with both the Salvadoran and Honduran civil wars. He was informed too about arms shipments recently tracked, now not just guns anymore but tanks and MiGs being transferred from Cuba to Guatemala and Nicaragua as the Cubans got newer weapons of their own from the Soviets. This was all serious and Kennedy took it all aboard. The Cubans were building armies for their puppets but all Kennedy and his advisers dismissed that as being a money sink for them. What would a motorised rifle division or a tank regiment do in Central America? At the same time, it was just more of the same as before. Latin America was a headache to Kennedy and one which he had sworn off getting involved throughout his presidency. This was breeding ground for his domestic opponents, who whined about the supposed threat those socialist nations posed and how he ignored it, but Kennedy knew best. What were the Cubans and their puppets going to do? Invade Mexico? He was focused on the bigger picture, sorting that problem at the cause anyway. The weapons, the money and the ultimate motivation for problems in Latin America came from the Soviet Union. It was with the Soviets who he focused his attention on with relations with them improving all of the time, hence the latest agreement on Lebanon being another small step. Mexico’s financial problems were explained to him but neither he nor anyone else could see what was coming next: this month, the following months and next year. If someone could see the future and tried to convince anyone of that, they would be locked up with the key taken away!
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Mar 29, 2018 19:11:14 GMT
And Mexico is sliding down step by step. It will be. There will be the start of violence soon enough. Confused and not coordinated, but the start. A 2nd Mexican revolution, this is going to be a mess, especially if the Soviets are getting involved, and they always do if it is a revolution. |
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James G
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Post by James G on Mar 29, 2018 20:21:12 GMT
It will be. There will be the start of violence soon enough. Confused and not coordinated, but the start. A 2nd Mexican revolution, this is going to be a mess, especially if the Soviets are getting involved, and they always do if it is a revolution. That is what they always did. It will be proxies sent in first. The revolution will be - like the 'best' of them always are - multi-sided and complicated. |
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Mar 29, 2018 20:22:10 GMT
A 2nd Mexican revolution, this is going to be a mess, especially if the Soviets are getting involved, and they always do if it is a revolution. That is what they always did. It will be proxies sent in first. The revolution will be - like the 'best' of them always are - multi-sided and complicated. Just like the first Mexican revolution, i wonder if the United States will get involved. |
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Post by James G on Mar 30, 2018 21:13:56 GMT
Picked up a bug at work and can't write today. Plenty of ideas noted down. Mexican Revolution starts tomorrow (hopefully) and like all revolutions, it won't start that way with those involved having no idea of where everything will eventually go.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Mar 30, 2018 21:18:59 GMT
Picked up a bug at work and can't write today. Plenty of ideas noted down. Mexican Revolution starts tomorrow (hopefully) and like all revolutions, it won't start that way with those involved having no idea of where everything will eventually go. Well just take it easy, it is important that you are healthy enough to keep pushing out updates. |
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Mar 31, 2018 9:27:49 GMT
Picked up a bug at work and can't write today. Plenty of ideas noted down. Mexican Revolution starts tomorrow (hopefully) and like all revolutions, it won't start that way with those involved having no idea of where everything will eventually go. Well just take it easy, it is important that you are healthy enough to keep pushing out updates. Agree with Lordroel. Keep well, both for continued updates and even more importantly your own health. |
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James G
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Post by James G on Mar 31, 2018 17:20:29 GMT
Picked up a bug at work and can't write today. Plenty of ideas noted down. Mexican Revolution starts tomorrow (hopefully) and like all revolutions, it won't start that way with those involved having no idea of where everything will eventually go. Well just take it easy, it is important that you are healthy enough to keep pushing out updates. Agree with Lordroel. Keep well, both for continued updates and even more importantly your own health. Thanks for you kind words. Up on my feet and then sat down to write. |
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Post by James G on Mar 31, 2018 17:21:09 GMT
(91)
July 1983:
Among the core group of remaining Sandinistas, those who had fought the long fight and were still alive in post-revolutionary Nicaragua, there was a Mexican national named Victor Manuel Tirado López. Tirado López was a committed communist and someone to whom the Mexican government was unfriendly towards. Only last year, pushed by the DGI and against the objections of Borge, the Ortega brothers had sent him up to his native land using a different identity. His trip had been to assess the political situation there. Upon his return, Tirado López had told the Ortegas that there had been no real change in Mexico. The country was in no way ready for a revolution nor armed conflict to push Mexico towards one. He had only reinforced his own opinion in what he had seen, but that still didn’t mean that he didn’t return with the truth. Mexico wasn’t fertile ground for anything like what had happened in Nicaragua & Guatemala in previous years and what was occurring now in El Salvador & Honduras. Only a fool would think otherwise. The economic situation wasn’t desperate for the poor and the government wasn’t overtly oppressive. Mexico’s leaders showed no sign of turning the people against them. None of the factors which created the civil wars in Central America were apparent up in Mexico. He would like his native land to see justice, freedom and everything else that communism could bring, but that wasn’t to be. It was just impossible. The report from Tirado López which was sent onto the Cubans was read by the KGB too; the feeling in Moscow was that any sign of serious trouble in Mexico would rain down fire and fury from across the Rio Grande too. It would be a country too far, Andropov had said, and a serious geo-political error. The beliefs of Andropov and the observations from Tirado López would stand in stark contrast to what was about to happen. Andropov would be pushing up daisies before the end to that story came while Tirado López himself would be in Mexico City ruling over a nation up in arms. That was in the future though, the short-term future yes, but not what was going on right now.
The economic crisis started to bite home hard across Mexico. The problems moved from the (destroyed) financial centre down to the workers, especially those in the cities and big towns to where so many Mexicans in recent years had moved to find work. The lay-offs continued and the price of food skyrocketed. From the government, when criticism in the media started to get too strong, blaming not just President García Paniagua but the PRI party as a whole for decades of foolishness, there came a crackdown there with newspapers, radio and television muzzled. Big announcements were made that things were going to be fixed. None of that stopped the protests which took place from those made unemployed and with families to feed. It didn’t stop the strikes by government workers (directly or indirectly employed) about the coming lay-offs and the immediate wages cuts to them too. There was rioting in places which came with the protests and the strikes and things got out of hand in a few instances. The police, national and local forces, were ineffective in following orders coming straight from the top to put a stop to those. They were in the same position as those whose heads which they were supposed to bash: caught up in this economic crisis which was now affecting all Mexicans. Mexico City was gripped by a massive riot which spun out of control and spread from the slums to the very centre of the capital city. García Paniagua decided that the only thing to do was to call upon the military where the police had failed. The Mexican Army had well-trained and numerous military police detachments and they brought and end to that riot with García Paniagua pleased at the results… he pretended that he didn’t hear the casualty numbers because he was more focused on parts of the city burning. Where elsewhere there was trouble too with rioting, coming from protests which seemed to fast lose all sense of purpose – it was about jobs and food but became an orgy of destruction –, the president decided that only military force would be effective. He saw the resignation of several of his ministers in response to this fateful decision but firmly believed he was doing what was best for Mexico. How could foreign capital and investment be persuaded to return to Mexico if the country was alight?
The Mexican Army was small but in the absence of a serious foreign threat to the country nor any worldwide commitments, that size was long deemed suitable for Mexico. The majority of the professional and mobile units of the army, including most of the military police units, were based around Mexico City though able to deploy nationwide from there. The brigades of infantry were always designed to reinforce smaller, local units in times of trouble: such was the military deployment structure in the country. This had recently been done with the army’s brigade of paratroopers joining another two of infantry in going down to Chiapas and the Guatemalan border area and staying there to work with locally-based forces to enforce order in that southern region. Further units from around the capital, including almost all of the military police detachments, were now deployed in presidential orders nationwide as rioting continued throughout the country. Murders and deliberate arson had taken place across cities such as Chihuahua, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Juarez and Puebla. Reliable military units from the Mexico City area, joined by local forces, would move in to put an end to this. Orders from the government were just the same as those which had been issued in the capital: civilians were to be detained and the violence ended, there was to be no unnecessary shooting of the people. As had been the case in Mexico City, that was all fine in theory but not in practice. Soldiers carrying live weaponry sent into unfamiliar areas where there is chaos and enraged population never mix well.
This mix saw massacres take place. None of it was intentional. It was preventable though. The soldiers should never have been sent on such missions. Many of them lost their lives too, killed by the mob when they were dragged away from their comrades during urban conflict. The worse of the violence came in Guadalajara and Puebla where things really got out of hand. In addition, when the soldiers came under attack and responded with reasonable force to maintain law and order (the official line), there was some interference from the local police in several instances where shots might or might not have been fired at the soldiers from those who also had weapons but refused to use them against their fellow civilians. Details on that were fuzzy, a lot had been going on. Overall though, the Mexican Army had fought against the people. The anger in response, by those who knew their history of oppressive governments in the past especially, was widespread throughout the country. García Paniagua refused to listen to the pleas from others in his broken and demoralised government to pull the soldiers back. He alone commanded the Mexican Army. He declared a state of emergency and vowed to put down what he deemed ‘insurrection’. He would save Mexico, from itself if necessary. A senior Mexican Army officer, a man known as el coronel (the colonel) despite now being a general officer – he’d long been legendary in that former rank –, put a stop to that madness. He put a bullet in the head of García Paniagua.
El coronel took power in Mexico for what was supposed to be a short period. He would restore order and punish those responsible for what had recently gone on. When he addressed the Mexican people on television, dressed in his full military regalia and surrounded by his fellow generals, the country’s supposed interim leader promised justice. There would be food, there would be jobs and there would be no more violence. Elections would be coming soon as well, fair ones at that. Cynics at home and abroad asked themselves whether any military cabal which had taken power forcefully from a civilian government had ever willingly and fast handed power back to civilians before. There was a promise from el coronel that such a thing was to happen though… once the mess created in the past few months had been sorted out.
The image of a general taking powering in a violent coup d’état, where the country’s civilian president had been killed, didn’t go over very well up in Washington. Latin America was full of military governments and none of them were personally liked by Kennedy. The president was informed by Mondale – who spoke with el coronel when Kennedy refused to on a point of principle – that Mexico’s new leader was appealing to the United States for help. What help did he want? Financial help, lots of it. Like García Paniagua before him, el coronel was begging for money from the American taxpayer. Hell, no. Kennedy was opposed to such an idea on more than just principle: he knew that the American people wouldn’t stand for that. Images on the evening news and reports in the big newspapers had come of the violence in Mexico where soldiers had reported killed hundreds, maybe thousands. The fact that a general had now seized power by killing a civilian president to put a stop to his soldiers killing civilians didn’t play well at all. Kennedy wasn’t going to do it. Next November and his re-election was still some time away, but he was no dummy on an issue like this. He saw it coming back to haunt him next year. Mexico could sort this issue out for themselves. It was an internal Mexican affair. He had been briefed that there was no foreign interference in what had gone on in Mexico and it was all a problem of the Mexican’s own making. The country could and would have to deal with its own mess. There would be no bailout from Washington and no help in other areas until civilian rule, legitimate civilian rule at that, was restored in Mexico City. Kennedy also had other more important matters on his mind following is return from the peace deal he had been behind in the Middle East. Now was the time to deal with a real United States reaction to the ongoing and verified Soviet troop withdrawals from Eastern Europe. The time was coming to respond to that good faith shown by Moscow with good faith coming in return from the Kennedy Administration. He knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but Kennedy believed he was ready for the backlash from those who didn’t see the big picture like he did.
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Mar 31, 2018 17:35:23 GMT
Oh dear, that sounds like two disaster's in one. Probably can't save Mexico by this stage but he's not going to even make an attempt. At the same time he's going to make unilateral withdrawals of US forces from Europe, which isn't going to go down well there either. I think this is where things start to really fall apart for NATO.  |
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Post by lordroel on Mar 31, 2018 17:39:49 GMT
(91)July 1983: Among the core group of remaining Sandinistas, those who had fought the long fight and were still alive in post-revolutionary Nicaragua, there was a Mexican national named Victor Manuel Tirado López. Tirado López was a committed communist and someone to whom the Mexican government was unfriendly towards. Only last year, pushed by the DGI and against the objections of Borge, the Ortega brothers had sent him up to his native land using a different identity. His trip had been to assess the political situation there. Upon his return, Tirado López had told the Ortegas that there had been no real change in Mexico. The country was in no way ready for a revolution nor armed conflict to push Mexico towards one. He had only reinforced his own opinion in what he had seen, but that still didn’t mean that he didn’t return with the truth. Mexico wasn’t fertile ground for anything like what had happened in Nicaragua & Guatemala in previous years and what was occurring now in El Salvador & Honduras. Only a fool would think otherwise. The economic situation wasn’t desperate for the poor and the government wasn’t overtly oppressive. Mexico’s leaders showed no sign of turning the people against them. None of the factors which created the civil wars in Central America were apparent up in Mexico. He would like his native land to see justice, freedom and everything else that communism could bring, but that wasn’t to be. It was just impossible. The report from Tirado López which was sent onto the Cubans was read by the KGB too; the feeling in Moscow was that any sign of serious trouble in Mexico would rain down fire and fury from across the Rio Grande too. It would be a country too far, Andropov had said, and a serious geo-political error. The beliefs of Andropov and the observations from Tirado López would stand in stark contrast to what was about to happen. Andropov would be pushing up daisies before the end to that story came while Tirado López himself would be in Mexico City ruling over a nation up in arms. That was in the future though, the short-term future yes, but not what was going on right now. The economic crisis started to bite home hard across Mexico. The problems moved from the (destroyed) financial centre down to the workers, especially those in the cities and big towns to where so many Mexicans in recent years had moved to find work. The lay-offs continued and the price of food skyrocketed. From the government, when criticism in the media started to get too strong, blaming not just President García Paniagua but the PRI party as a whole for decades of foolishness, there came a crackdown there with newspapers, radio and television muzzled. Big announcements were made that things were going to be fixed. None of that stopped the protests which took place from those made unemployed and with families to feed. It didn’t stop the strikes by government workers (directly or indirectly employed) about the coming lay-offs and the immediate wages cuts to them too. There was rioting in places which came with the protests and the strikes and things got out of hand in a few instances. The police, national and local forces, were ineffective in following orders coming straight from the top to put a stop to those. They were in the same position as those whose heads which they were supposed to bash: caught up in this economic crisis which was now affecting all Mexicans. Mexico City was gripped by a massive riot which spun out of control and spread from the slums to the very centre of the capital city. García Paniagua decided that the only thing to do was to call upon the military where the police had failed. The Mexican Army had well-trained and numerous military police detachments and they brought and end to that riot with García Paniagua pleased at the results… he pretended that he didn’t hear the casualty numbers because he was more focused on parts of the city burning. Where elsewhere there was trouble too with rioting, coming from protests which seemed to fast lose all sense of purpose – it was about jobs and food but became an orgy of destruction –, the president decided that only military force would be effective. He saw the resignation of several of his ministers in response to this fateful decision but firmly believed he was doing what was best for Mexico. How could foreign capital and investment be persuaded to return to Mexico if the country was alight? The Mexican Army was small but in the absence of a serious foreign threat to the country nor any worldwide commitments, that size was long deemed suitable for Mexico. The majority of the professional and mobile units of the army, including most of the military police units, were based around Mexico City though able to deploy nationwide from there. The brigades of infantry were always designed to reinforce smaller, local units in times of trouble: such was the military deployment structure in the country. This had recently been done with the army’s brigade of paratroopers joining another two of infantry in going down to Chiapas and the Guatemalan border area and staying there to work with locally-based forces to enforce order in that southern region. Further units from around the capital, including almost all of the military police detachments, were now deployed in presidential orders nationwide as rioting continued throughout the country. Murders and deliberate arson had taken place across cities such as Chihuahua, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Juarez and Puebla. Reliable military units from the Mexico City area, joined by local forces, would move in to put an end to this. Orders from the government were just the same as those which had been issued in the capital: civilians were to be detained and the violence ended, there was to be no unnecessary shooting of the people. As had been the case in Mexico City, that was all fine in theory but not in practice. Soldiers carrying live weaponry sent into unfamiliar areas where there is chaos and enraged population never mix well. This mix saw massacres take place. None of it was intentional. It was preventable though. The soldiers should never have been sent on such missions. Many of them lost their lives too, killed by the mob when they were dragged away from their comrades during urban conflict. The worse of the violence came in Guadalajara and Puebla where things really got out of hand. In addition, when the soldiers came under attack and responded with reasonable force to maintain law and order (the official line), there was some interference from the local police in several instances where shots might or might not have been fired at the soldiers from those who also had weapons but refused to use them against their fellow civilians. Details on that were fuzzy, a lot had been going on. Overall though, the Mexican Army had fought against the people. The anger in response, by those who knew their history of oppressive governments in the past especially, was widespread throughout the country. García Paniagua refused to listen to the pleas from others in his broken and demoralised government to pull the soldiers back. He alone commanded the Mexican Army. He declared a state of emergency and vowed to put down what he deemed ‘insurrection’. He would save Mexico, from itself if necessary. A senior Mexican Army officer, a man known as el coronel (the colonel) despite now being a general officer – he’d long been legendary in that former rank –, put a stop to that madness. He put a bullet in the head of García Paniagua. El coronel took power in Mexico for what was supposed to be a short period. He would restore order and punish those responsible for what had recently gone on. When he addressed the Mexican people on television, dressed in his full military regalia and surrounded by his fellow generals, the country’s supposed interim leader promised justice. There would be food, there would be jobs and there would be no more violence. Elections would be coming soon as well, fair ones at that. Cynics at home and abroad asked themselves whether any military cabal which had taken power forcefully from a civilian government had ever willingly and fast handed power back to civilians before. There was a promise from el coronel that such a thing was to happen though… once the mess created in the past few months had been sorted out. The image of a general taking powering in a violent coup d’état, where the country’s civilian president had been killed, didn’t go over very well up in Washington. Latin America was full of military governments and none of them were personally liked by Kennedy. The president was informed by Mondale – who spoke with el coronel when Kennedy refused to on a point of principle – that Mexico’s new leader was appealing to the United States for help. What help did he want? Financial help, lots of it. Like García Paniagua before him, el coronel was begging for money from the American taxpayer. Hell, no. Kennedy was opposed to such an idea on more than just principle: he knew that the American people wouldn’t stand for that. Images on the evening news and reports in the big newspapers had come of the violence in Mexico where soldiers had reported killed hundreds, maybe thousands. The fact that a general had now seized power by killing a civilian president to put a stop to his soldiers killing civilians didn’t play well at all. Kennedy wasn’t going to do it. Next November and his re-election was still some time away, but he was no dummy on an issue like this. He saw it coming back to haunt him next year. Mexico could sort this issue out for themselves. It was an internal Mexican affair. He had been briefed that there was no foreign interference in what had gone on in Mexico and it was all a problem of the Mexican’s own making. The country could and would have to deal with its own mess. There would be no bailout from Washington and no help in other areas until civilian rule, legitimate civilian rule at that, was restored in Mexico City. Kennedy also had other more important matters on his mind following is return from the peace deal he had been behind in the Middle East. Now was the time to deal with a real United States reaction to the ongoing and verified Soviet troop withdrawals from Eastern Europe. The time was coming to respond to that good faith shown by Moscow with good faith coming in return from the Kennedy Administration. He knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but Kennedy believed he was ready for the backlash from those who didn’t see the big picture like he did. I do hope this el coronel does not become like a certain other colonel we now. |
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