Talk:Efraín Ríos Montt/Archive 1

Wow. I'm just finding out that the Supreme Court has reveresed its decision. I'm going to have to rewrite this article in light of the breaking news. 172 09:23 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Just made numerous small changes...

...In an attempt to establish some type of NPOV for this article. It's probably hopeless though, as the entire article seems to be written by a Montt-hater with an axe to grind. In tone, and in what it chooses to reveal about it's subject it is obviously biased. There is so much anti-Montt, anti-Reagan, anti-Cold War, anti-Rightist slant that I'm surprised this is eve being presented as a fact-based encyclopedic article. Especially troubling was the author's presentation of unproven leftist propoganda against the School of the Americas as if it was hard fact. I have fixed that by removing all mention of the SOTA that follows the sentence stating the (fact) that Montt was educated there.

See 'ya later.

-Anti-Commie.

What changes would make this article NPOV? ffirehorse 03:13, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• • • • • Besides the removal of the highly POV comment about the School of the Americas "torture, murder, assassinations, etc" (which, as well as being highly disputed to begin with, is irrelevant to the article at hand), I amended a few loaded paragraphs which stated the authors seeming opinion that Montt's victims consisted almost entirely of "Poor, downtrodden peasant" types who were caught in his reactionary, repressive net. It should be reflected in an NPOV article that while some political factions believe this to be true, others (including Montt himself) maintain that the majority of the army violence during his tenure was aimed squarely at factions of the Guatemalan population who were aiding and abetting the rise of Communist terrorism in Guatemala, or against those civilians and rebel soldiers (peasant or otherwise) who were attempting to establish a communist or socialist government alike to the Sandanistas or the Cubans.

Whether the harsh tactics of Montt were justified in light of increasingly dangerous and radical communist activity, or were simply vicious attacks on "dissidents" of the regime is not a matter for this article to decide.

  Instead, we must strive to keep this Encyclopedia (which is, in reality, only a catelogue of facts and information) from obtaining a noticible political bias on it's subjects. Even to his harshest critics, Montt is not Hitler or Stalin. He has a massive base of support nearly equal to that of his detractors. We must, therefore, present both sides of the story on Montt.  

Somebody has taken it upon themselves to supply the left-wing take on Montt. I have balanced it by supplying the right-wing viewpoint to follow the author's bias.

-ANTI-COMMUNIST

• • Will the biased turd who keeps reverting my changes stop before I alert a moderator? We'll see. I added nothing more than what was necessary to balance the strong left-wing bias of the author of the article. I will do it again.

-ANTI-COMMUNIST.

NPOV questions

Anti-Commie, I have no doubt of your sincerity, but you need to stop name-calling {like "biased turd"). That's not how we do things here.

Some of your changes were good, but some feel that most of your changes left the text much more POV than it had been before. That's why it was reverted -- I'm sure no one intended to be rude to you. It would be best to talk about specific changes here. For instance, you added "allegedly" to "Ríos Montt seized power in a coup d'état that was quietly backed by the CIA and the Reagan administration." Do you really doubt that the CIA backed the coup? You took out info about the School of the Americas. Do you think the school really didn't do those things? Let's discuss. Quadell (talk) 22:55, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)

This anon is clearly a vandal with no perspective on what makes a proper encyclopedia article and no understanding of Central American history. His edits are clearly uninformed, ungrammatical, and slanted. Apart from his/her removal of straightforward, factual content, noted above by Quadell, note the following additions:

While some have claimed that Montt was responsible during his term for the murders of many Peasants and innocents, others have stated that Montt was justified in his attacks upon the revolutionary leftist groups of Guatemala because of their commitment to the Soviet Union and it's dictatorial, economically-ruinous socialist ideals.

It should be noted that at no time during Montt's reign was the nation of Guatemala at peace from the frequent attacks on the structure of it's society by Marxist communist guerrillas. Montt's supporters often claim that his repressive tactics were often necessary because of these hostile circmstances.

Wikipedia is not a dumping ground for crap. If people want to write opinionated rants, they can join an online blog or chatroom; but we cannot allow them to make Wikipedia into their playground. 172

• • • Well, I'd say that phrases like "dumping ground for crap" are clearly indicitive of your OPINION. I hope you aren't writing your articles like that. After all, if you are editing this article with the preconceived notion that the claims of Montt supporters aren't as valid as that of his opponents, then it is YOU who is blatantly violating the NPOV of this article.

Yes, I was a little rude earlier, and I apologize for it. I am, however, frustrated by the appearance of a very anti-Montt, anti-anti-communist, and anti-American slant in an article that is supposed to be as neutral as possible. I am simply trying to supply the side of a right-wing Montt supporter to balance the opinion pieces already listed in the article from left-wing detractors (Amnesty International, political opponents, and liberal authors are all credited in the article.)

Also, yes, it is VERY POV to state as fact those accusations against the School of the Americas. While those atrocious things have been alleged by critics for many years, it has never been proven by a reasonable doubt by a non-partisan array of sources that the SOTA was ever involved in the activity stated.

By removing the accusations from this article, I have helped to balance it by removing one of the more partisan attacks in the article.

Also, it should be noted that there is a very real dispute over what, if any, involvement Reagan's Administration had in Montt's rise to power, with even Reagan and Weinberger disputing the accusations. To list it as a fact is far too POV.

You guys should remenber that, despite the name, I am not trying to shift this piece at all but to balance it politically. I have not removed any of your (quite valid) statements on Montt's documented crimes; rather I have added material that will present a legitimate side of Montt (his supporters, his reasoning) that has so far been COMPLETELY NEGLECTED by contributors. It is not NPOV to use one-sided info to paint Montt as a monster without printing the other side of the story. Ask yourselves if it is truly fair to represent only leftist opinions in this supposedly unbiased article? Why is your slant more valid than mine?

ANTI-COMMUNIST