Military Industrial Complex hurts Central American

Countries
Luis Diaz and Geral Acevedo

Many people believe that civil wars are caused by one country, but in reality, other countries
often provoke a war to gain a profit. This is known as the military industrial complex and it
played a huge role during the cold war. The cold war conflict between socialists and capitalists
led waves of Central American refugees to seek asylum in the United States. For example, El
Salvador had a civil war between socialist rebels and a capitalist government. To prevent the
spread of communism and to feed the military industrial complex, the United States gave $4
billion in aid to El Salvador’s government. 70% of the aid was designated for military use. To
put this in perspective, this is $2.8 billion dollars used for soldiers who were also trained in
America to execute brutal violent repression against their own people. As a result, over 2 million
Salvadorans immigrated to the United States, seeking asylum.

In order to get a further understanding of how

El Salvador’s civil war had an effect on its
people, we conducted two anonymous
interviews on December 2, 2018. Interviewee
A is a 52 year old woman who experienced
the civil war first hand. Interviewee B is a 24
year old man who experienced the effects after
the civil war. Interviewee A explains how the
peace in her country became a living hell at
the age of 14. She describes how the guerilla’s were evil because they had children become
soldiers, so that they can have an upperhand in the war. In addition, she got post traumatic stress
disorder from the civil war. Therefore, she decided that she didn’t want to live in a country full
of violence and moved to the United States. When she came to this country she worked in a
factory because she couldn’t get another job because she hadn’t had an education and roughly 20
years later she still lives in poverty, but knows that it is better than living in a country full of
violence. Furthermore, Interviewee B emphasized how, after the civil war, gangs became a part
of his life. Because the government had a weak and poor infrastructure, it became easy for these
people to become corrupt. El Salvador is still a violent country, but this provides a further glance
about how the military industrial complex had an impact on countries in central america.

Many American citizens believe that

immigrants come to the U.S to take
jobs from people and cause trouble.
Furthermore, there was an economic
effect due to immigration. Many of
the immigrants were used as cheap
“unskilled” labor. In fact, according
to the statistics found in the ​New
​ ebsite, studies
American Economy w
indicate that undocumented immigrants aren’t displacing U.S. born workers. As seen in the
picture above, there are 244,459 agricultural workers that are undocumented immigrants but
make up the 36.1% of share workers. How ​undocumented immigrants help contribute to the
economy is by them being accounted for 50% of all hired field and crop workers, making them
essential to the success and continued viability of American farms. This shows a positive result
towards undocumented immigrants instead of being portrayed as terrible people and people
looking to steal job.

To conclude, people have portrayed undocumented immigrants as people wanting to cause

trouble and stealing job from others but that isn’t true. As you have read, the Cold War resulted
to Central Americans emigrating to the U.S to seek for asylum. Undocumented immigrants
pursued jobs that many American citizens weren’t to interested in. They have filled most of those
jobs and that shows that they are willing to work wherever they have the opportunity to work at.
What would America be like if undocumented people never did the work they have done for the
past years? Would today’s economy be in serious trouble?