Even Margaret Thatcher didn't like President Reagan

I typically try to understand what President Ronald Reagan was thinking when teaching Latin American politics and US-Latin American relations even if I disagree with the course of action he and his administration chose to pursue. But then there's this:

On the face of it, [Margaret] Thatcher’s relations with Reagan were more cordial, but she had no illusions about him. Her first foreign secretary was Lord Carrington, with whom she was talking over a drink one evening. As the conversation turned to the American president, Thatcher looked at Carrington, tapped the side of her skull, and said: “Peter, there’s nothing there.”

When the Falklands war broke out, relations for a time were very strained. One of the soi-disant intellectuals in the Reagan administration was the neoconservative Jeane Kirkpatrick, who wanted to keep on good terms with General Galtieri and his gang of murderers in Buenos Aires, and dined at the Argentinian embassy on the night of the invasion. The British ambassador in Washington, Sir Nicholas Henderson, said that it was as if he had joined the Iranians for tea on the day that the Americans were taken hostage in Tehran.

What Thatcher’s detractors on the left might try to grasp is that she was far less servile in her dealings with Washington than Tony Blair. In particular, she was highly critical of American policy (or lack of it) in the Middle East, insisting that there would never be peace until justice was done to the Palestinians.

By 1989 Reagan had left the White House, and the following year Mrs T was defenestrated from Downing Street. Not long after that, “Nico” Henderson was talking to Tony Benn, and said: “If I reported to you what Mrs Thatcher really thought about President Reagan, it would damage Anglo-American relations

 Better to say nothing.

Links around El Salvador

PBS News Hour has a few short videos on violence in Central America. The first one is on Who’s to blame for El Salvador’s gang violence? Brian Epstein has a piece that accompanies the video on Producer’s Notebook: A look at life inside the violent gangs of El Salvador. There is also a brief video on gang violence in Honduras and Guatemala.

Alberto Arce explains In a land of brutal violence, Salvador's women and girls are targeted for rape and murder.

David Gagne has El Salvador Squashes Talk of Dialogue With Gangs. There will be no dialogue with gangs. It's fine not to negotiate but avoiding all dialogue might be more dangerous which might be why the government might support dialogue between the Church and gangs and the pastoral work of the Church as long as the relationship does not involve negotiations of any sort. Sounds like we should expect more confusion and possibly arrests such as that of Padre Tono unless everybody gets on the same page. 

Julio Rank Wright writes on Dinamismo en los Partidos Políticos de El Salvador for Americas Quarterly. Julio looks briefly at the challenge of El Salvador's political parties in attaining internal democracy and transparency, and reaching new sectors in an increasingly urban and young country.

1997 San Salvador mayoral debate including Hector Silva

Hector Silva and Mario Valiente

Hector Silva writes about The Stalled Money Laundering Case against El Salvador's 'Chepe Diablo'. Hector's dad is in the photo above. Hector and the other candidates for may of San Salvador entertained the international election observers in 1997. Hector and Mario spoke in English while the third candidate (PDC maybe) felt a little awkward as he participated in Spanish.

Declassified documents from Argentina detail the strong links between the country's military junta and the government of El Salvador in 1979 when Jorge Videla was in power in Argentina and Carlos Humberto Romero in El Salvador. President Romero wanted help with Archbishop Oscar Romero while Argentina wanted diplomatic support.

Less than four months to legislative and municipal elections.

Nicaragua's First Billionaire

Bloomberg has the background on Carlos Pellas, Nicaragua's First Billionaire Is Country's Sugar King.

Today, privately held Grupo Pellas runs four sugar mills, produces ethanol and provides the raw material for Pellas’s Flor de Cana brand of rum. The group controls more than 20 companies, with stakes in media, distribution, insurance, citrus, health care and auto dealerships. It boasts $1.5 billion in annual sales -- equal to 13 percent of Nicaragua’s gross domestic product -- and employs some 18,000 people. Carlos, 61, the major shareholder, is Nicaragua’s first billionaire, with an estimated fortune of $1.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Being skeptical of businessmen who make their money off sugar and who are able to amass a fortune under Somoza, the Sandinistas, Chamorro, Alemán, Bolaños, and Ortega again, I wish the author had dug just a bit deeper.

You can read the author's August article on Guatemala's first billionaire Mario Lopez Estrada here.

Who's next?