Everyone Who is Gone is Here: Book Review

US funding and complicity in Central American disruption, crisis, and genocide

Written by Jonathan Blitzer and published this year, this book aims to take the US “border crisis” right back to the people who fueled it: the so called US government.

“[The US] had long treated [Central America] as its geopolitical laboratory. The CIA had overthrown the Guatemalan government in 1954 at the behest of an American corporation that, among other things, wanted bigger tax breaks abroad. Honduras had come to be known in the region as the USS Honduras, a de facto American military installation. For years, the US’s man in Nicaragua was a dictator.”

There is so much great information in this almost 500 page book, but as an honest review I feel that it could have been shorter and more concise. The personal stories added narrative, but maybe too much narrative to an already complicated and long history spanning many regions and I got lost sometimes. This review will highlight revelations I had into a more concise word count for those who aren’t able to read the whole book, and attempt to break my thoughts down into a few different countries impacted.

US corporation running Guatemala

“There were two powers running…