Let’s start with the fact that what we don’t know keeps on hurting us.

Mary Jo McConahay’s The Tango War fills an important gap in U.S. awareness of World War II history. Beginning in the thirties, both the Allied and Axis powers were well aware of the need to control not just the hearts and minds but also the resources of Latin America. The region’s oil, rubber, and industrial diamonds were necessary to feed the war machines of the so-called civilized nations. The fight was often dirty: residents were captured to exchange for U.S. prisoners of war and rival spy networks shadowed each other across the continent. At all times it was a Tango War, in which each side closely shadowed the other’s steps.

We’ll hear about the Mexican Revolution; about U.S. oil barons choosing Nazism over Mexican sovereignty; about Henry Ford’s anti-semitism and his hubris laid bare in the failure of his Fordlandia rubber plantation; about political kidnapping, or trade bait, by the U.S. State Department called “Quiet Passages; about Walt Disney and Orson Welles as proposed propagandists! And we’ll end with the fact that Catholic Bishops helped Nazis escape arrest because their response against Communism meant supporting Christian Fascists.

These are some of the undeniable complications that lock so many people into actions that make them agents of suffering at the behest of wealth and power as it seeks global resource domination. Business interests often trump all other considerations and are often claimed to stand outside of morality.

SEGMENT ONE
In our first segment we’ll discover how Big Oil contributed to the reaction against the Mexican Revolution and its historic Constitution as it worked to undermine Mexican sovereignty in order protect profits. This Revolution, one you likely have not heard of if you’ve been educated in the United States, has been characterized as one of the greatest upheavals of the 20th century, resulting in an important program of social reform.

SEGMENT TWO
In this segment Big Oil is outmaneuvered by Little Oil in the person of William Rhodes Davis, resulting in Mexico being forced to sell it’s primary national resource to the Germans…thanks to a little help from Fred Koch, John Birch Society co-founder and father of Charles and David Koch.

SEGMENT THREE
In this segment we’ll hear more about Brazil’s rubber resources through the story of Henry Ford’s failed rubber plantation Fordlandia…but he had high hopes; and we’ll find out how a law from 1798 was used to justify political kidnapping by the Roosevelt Administration during World War II.

SEGMENT FOUR
For our final segment we’ll talk about propaganda…and the Good Neighbor Program. Nelson Rockefeller’s Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs sent Goodwill Ambassadors like filmmakers Walt Disney and Orson Welles to Latin America to share the cultural “goodwill” of the US towards its Southern Neighbors. Can you guess which of these movie directors proved a disappointment to the Masters of War?

GUEST
Mary Jo McConahay is an award-winning reporter who covered the wars in Central America and economics in the Middle East. She has traveled in seventy countries and has been fascinated by the history of World War II since childhood, when she listened to the stories of her father, a veteran U.S. Navy officer. She covers Latin America as an independent journalist. Her previous books include Maya Roads: One Woman’s Journey Among the People of the Rainforest and Ricochet: Two Women War Reporters and a Friendship Under Fire.

MUSIC
The Rudolfo Biagi Orchestra
“Cielo” with singer Andres Falgas
“Cicatrices” with singer Andres Falgas
“Humillación” with singer Jorge Ortiz
“Te Odio” with singer Alberto Lago

Enric Madriguera and His Orchestra
“Aqualero do Brasil”

CREDITS
Producer & Host: Doug Storm
Executive Producer: Wes Martin

Much has been made in the media of a culture war taking places in America today, and since Christian Conservatives see their ?traditional values? in danger of being erased by countless waves of immigrants, gays, and liberals, they have been pushing their own agenda of intolerance and closed-mindedness even harder. This is may be a war for mankind?s eternal souls, but their battle plan also extends to devoutly secular areas such as the media, the courtroom, the classroom, and the bedroom. In his new book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Chris Hedges documents the complex and often quite modern methods used by the Religious Right to promote their extremist and racist ideology under the guise of populist and patriotic rhetoric. Michael Jones interviews author Chris Hedges on Voices of Our World.