I personally count the Banana’s massacre, which resulted in an estimated 2000 protesters dead. While the shooting was made by Colombian soldiers instead of US soldiers, it was a direct result of the US Goverment’s threat of invading Colombia if the protest done by United Fruit Company workers was not inmediately put to a stop.
EDIT: I think the above comment is a misleading. A better description of the massacre is that it was done to serve US economical interests, aided by US’s military pressure (like US officials asking US army forces to send a warship into the zone) and a possible risk of invasion from US into Colombia’s mainland. I also think a possibly more accurate number of protestors dead is ~1500. I do stand on the opinion that the massacre was a direct consequence of US Government, simply perpetrated by Colombian soldiers.
U.S. officials in Colombia and United Fruit representatives portrayed the workers’ strike as “communist” with a “subversive tendency” in telegrams to Frank B. Kellogg, the United States Secretary of State.[3] The Colombian government was also compelled to work for the interests of the company, considering they could cut off trade of Colombian bananas with significant markets such as the United States and Europe.[4]
General Carlos Cortés Vargas, who commanded the troops during the massacre, took responsibility for 47 casualties. In reality, the exact number of casualties has never been confirmed. Herrera Soto, co-author of a comprehensive and detailed study of the 1928 strike, has put together various estimates given by contemporaries and historians, ranging from 47 to as high as 2,000. According to Congressman Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, the killed strikers were thrown into the sea.[1] Other sources claim that the bodies were buried in mass graves.[2]
Two thousand was the extreme high estimate for the dead by the Colombian government but do you have a source for the ‘it was a direct result of the US Goverment’s threat of invading Colombia if the protest done by United Fruit Company workers was not inmediately put to a stop’ because all I can find is that Colombia’s bananas could no longer be exported?
Note that some estimates also put the number on 5000. This letter to the US Goverment from the Colombian embassy puts the number, sourced from the United Fruit Company, in the 1000+ range. Jorge Eliécer Gaitán also puts the number in the thousands. I think ~1500 sounds like a reasonable estimate. (unrelated trivia fact: Gaitán is an incredibly important character in Colombia history, as he was murdered when running for president, which turned Bogotá into a complete chaos/warzone in 1948, in something called the Bogotazo).
do you have a source for the ‘it was a direct result of the US Goverment’s threat of invading Colombia if the protest done by United Fruit Company workers was not inmediately put to a stop’ because all I can find is that Colombia’s bananas could no longer be exported?
[…] The clashes between the United Fruit Company and the army on one side and the workers on the other, over the breaking of the strike on December 3 and 4, gave General Carlos Cortés Vargas yet another justification for repression. In his memoirs of the strike, he states that he became convinced that if public order was not restored immediately, the U.S. government would send Marines. Rumors of U.S. warships were rife.[…]
This letter from an US counsul in Santa Marta also asks the US Goverment for warship support, which support Cortés Vargas story. I also found the following letters, which show US offered “unofficial support” to the Company. This article says that Carlos Cortés got reinforcements from the center of the country, as to minimize the sympathy that the protestors would receive from the soldiers; IMO, this indicates the hard tackle down was not simply an irresponsible act from Cortés who wrongly guessed US had intentions to land marine soldiers, but it shows it was a clear coordinated effort from the Colombian Goverment.
I do regret the use of the word “inmediately” and 2000 number from my comment. Will edit my previous comment to amend that.
Yeah, plenty of massacres abroad where the US is at least partially responsible for, but basically none at home. Makes me wonder why?
I suspect generally the US doesn’t do massacres because they don’t need to be afraid of regime change. Their internal propaganda is incredibly strong. We’ve recently seen how foreign agitation propaganda (Russian online trolls, but also Bin-laden’s destabilization strategy) completely changed the political landscape. And even in today’s times of extreme crisis we still see not an inkling of any kind of revolution or regime change on the horizon. Since there is no real threat, there is no overreaction to a threat response, unlike in countries that are actively and publicly being targeted for regime change.
Maybe this will change after the 2026 midterms, but I doubt it.
The US is also very proactive and skilled when it comes to infiltrating and dispersing any groups that could become threats to their state power.
And the mainstream media can spin protests however the government wants to - but only as long as there is no massacre.
Basically there are no massacres because protests are harmless and it would be counter productive, unlike protests in other countries.
Internally, on your own soil, you do have few famous ones I can name from memory like Tulsa and Orangeburg, and I am too disgusted to even try to google it and find more.
To be fair (so I don’t shit on USA only in this message), I can name 1 French massacre from the 60s against Algerian protesters and it was over 200 dead.
I don’t think we had any more in the EU, but I’m willing to be schooled.
Not a lot of domestic mass casualty events in modern times, especially with death tolls above 200. That’s true. But there are some truly horrific ones in more turbulent times in US history, particularly when the US was a younger country and cops didn’thave riot dispersal gear/less-lethal ammo. You have to remember that China as it exists today didn’t really exist until 1949 at the end of the civil war.
In the US there’s lots of historic ones. Many of which happened closer to our civil war (in the following decades) - wounded knee, atlanta race riots, tulsa massacre, etc. Hundreds died in all those and were extremely fucked up.
Then there’s more modern ones like the LA race riots in 1992 which killed like 60+ people minimum. Detroit race riots in the 1960s with a death toll of ~50 iirc. Like 40 people died in the BLM protests just a few years ago. Fatalities are largely lower due to cops using less-lethal weaponry.
It’s a different historical and tech context. I’d say they aren’t directly comparable. But yeah the US gov’t hasn’t killed 200-500 protesters in a single event within the last 100 years afaik.
Refresh my memory when was the last time the us government killed two hundred to five hundred protesters?
Tulsa?
I personally count the Banana’s massacre, which resulted in an estimated 2000 protesters dead. While the shooting was made by Colombian soldiers instead of US soldiers, it was a direct result of the US Goverment’s threat of invading Colombia if the protest done by United Fruit Company workers was not inmediately put to a stop.
EDIT: I think the above comment is a misleading. A better description of the massacre is that it was done to serve US economical interests, aided by US’s military pressure (like US officials asking US army forces to send a warship into the zone) and a possible risk of invasion from US into Colombia’s mainland. I also think a possibly more accurate number of protestors dead is ~1500. I do stand on the opinion that the massacre was a direct consequence of US Government, simply perpetrated by Colombian soldiers.
Banana Massacre
Two thousand was the extreme high estimate for the dead by the Colombian government but do you have a source for the ‘it was a direct result of the US Goverment’s threat of invading Colombia if the protest done by United Fruit Company workers was not inmediately put to a stop’ because all I can find is that Colombia’s bananas could no longer be exported?
Note that some estimates also put the number on 5000. This letter to the US Goverment from the Colombian embassy puts the number, sourced from the United Fruit Company, in the 1000+ range. Jorge Eliécer Gaitán also puts the number in the thousands. I think ~1500 sounds like a reasonable estimate. (unrelated trivia fact: Gaitán is an incredibly important character in Colombia history, as he was murdered when running for president, which turned Bogotá into a complete chaos/warzone in 1948, in something called the Bogotazo).
Wikipedia in Spanish has the following (translated):
This letter from an US counsul in Santa Marta also asks the US Goverment for warship support, which support Cortés Vargas story. I also found the following letters, which show US offered “unofficial support” to the Company. This article says that Carlos Cortés got reinforcements from the center of the country, as to minimize the sympathy that the protestors would receive from the soldiers; IMO, this indicates the hard tackle down was not simply an irresponsible act from Cortés who wrongly guessed US had intentions to land marine soldiers, but it shows it was a clear coordinated effort from the Colombian Goverment.
I do regret the use of the word “inmediately” and 2000 number from my comment. Will edit my previous comment to amend that.
Yeah, plenty of massacres abroad where the US is at least partially responsible for, but basically none at home. Makes me wonder why?
I suspect generally the US doesn’t do massacres because they don’t need to be afraid of regime change. Their internal propaganda is incredibly strong. We’ve recently seen how foreign agitation propaganda (Russian online trolls, but also Bin-laden’s destabilization strategy) completely changed the political landscape. And even in today’s times of extreme crisis we still see not an inkling of any kind of revolution or regime change on the horizon. Since there is no real threat, there is no overreaction to a threat response, unlike in countries that are actively and publicly being targeted for regime change.
Maybe this will change after the 2026 midterms, but I doubt it.
The US is also very proactive and skilled when it comes to infiltrating and dispersing any groups that could become threats to their state power.
And the mainstream media can spin protests however the government wants to - but only as long as there is no massacre.
Basically there are no massacres because protests are harmless and it would be counter productive, unlike protests in other countries.
You fuckers do that mostly overseas and call it “that school was definitely an evil lair full of satan and aids”
Here you have a full wikipedia page of them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Massacres_committed_by_the_United_States
It is by no means full.
Internally, on your own soil, you do have few famous ones I can name from memory like Tulsa and Orangeburg, and I am too disgusted to even try to google it and find more.
To be fair (so I don’t shit on USA only in this message), I can name 1 French massacre from the 60s against Algerian protesters and it was over 200 dead.
I don’t think we had any more in the EU, but I’m willing to be schooled.
Two things can be bad at the same time.
Which last time?
Last time typically means the previous time it happened.
Not a lot of domestic mass casualty events in modern times, especially with death tolls above 200. That’s true. But there are some truly horrific ones in more turbulent times in US history, particularly when the US was a younger country and cops didn’thave riot dispersal gear/less-lethal ammo. You have to remember that China as it exists today didn’t really exist until 1949 at the end of the civil war.
In the US there’s lots of historic ones. Many of which happened closer to our civil war (in the following decades) - wounded knee, atlanta race riots, tulsa massacre, etc. Hundreds died in all those and were extremely fucked up.
Then there’s more modern ones like the LA race riots in 1992 which killed like 60+ people minimum. Detroit race riots in the 1960s with a death toll of ~50 iirc. Like 40 people died in the BLM protests just a few years ago. Fatalities are largely lower due to cops using less-lethal weaponry.
It’s a different historical and tech context. I’d say they aren’t directly comparable. But yeah the US gov’t hasn’t killed 200-500 protesters in a single event within the last 100 years afaik.
Yet.