Did the Dutch Really Buy Manhattan for $24?

Legend tells us that on May 4, 1626 Peter Minuit, Director General of the Dutch West India Company’s colony of New Netherlands, brought trunks full of trinkets with which to buy the island of Manhattan from the local Indian tribe. The value of the trinkets was 60 Dutch guilders or about $24. This story has been told and retold. And why not? Paying $24 where land is currently valued at $2,011 PER SQUARE FOOT is quite the story. Unfortunately, that is not exactly what went down that day in May.

We don’t even know if the date is correct. The only primary source document currently in existence is a letter by Dutch merchant Pieter Schage dated November 5, 1626.  It was sent to the directors of the West India Company. In it, he writes, “They have purchased the Island of Manhattes from the savages for the value of 60 guilders.”  That is all we have. In other words, we don’t even know what was worth the 60 guilders. Food? Beads? We don’t know.

New Netherlands governor Peter Minuit via biography.com 

The $24 amount is also not true. Well, it may have been at one point…back in 1846. It was in that year that a New York historian did the conversion. Nobody ever thought to account for inflation when retelling the story in the 21st century. The best part of the story, however, is not how much was spent on the deal or what was used as payment. The best part is that the Dutch bought the island from the wrong tribe.

The Dutch bought the island of Manhattan from the Brooklyn-based Canarsee tribe. The island actually belonged to the Wappinger Confederacy. To be fair the Canarsee did use Manhattan from time to time to fish and relax. It is also unclear if the Canarsee meant to sell the land or merely lease it. The notion of property rights was alien to the native populations of the Americas. It is most likely they assumed the price, which to be fair was low even back then, was for use of the land. 

One last note: the Wappinger Confederacy did not take all this lying down. They contested the sale and were paid (the actual amount is lost to history) for the island. So the Dutch actually paid for Manhattan twice and they didn’t even keep it. After the Second Anglo-Dutch War they gave it up to retain control of their colony in South America—Suriname.

How the CIA Took Down a Democratically Elected Leader For the Good of Bananas

Every 90 minutes someone is murdered in Guatemala. The country is riddled with drug and gang related violence. Millions have fled to the United States. It is believed that about 2 million are here illegally, but the central government in Guatemala City does not actually know the exact amount. Violence is nothing new to this tiny country in Central America. A brutal civil war was fought here from 1960 to 1996 (yes, a THIRTY SIX year civil war) that killed close to 200,000 people. 

The root causes of the civil war are plenty: The feudal caste system inherited from the Spanish way back in the 1800s. The lack of education for a vast majority of the population (well at least the mestizo and native populations). And, of course, the CIA backed coup that overthrew the democratically leader of the county back in 1954. As I stressed in my article, "Why DO they hate us? Here are 7 Pretty Good Reasons," the United States is NOT the sole reason for the ills of this world. Far from it. However, just like in the Muslim world, we certainly had a hand in creating said ills. A pretty big hand.  

To be sure, Guatemala had problems long before the CIA made things worse. From independence to 1944, the country was ruled by dictator after dictator. By 1944, 2% of the population owned 70% percent of Guatemala’s arable land. In that year, however, the county managed to hold free and fair elections. In 1951, Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was elected president. Guzman implemented many far-reaching liberal reforms. The biggest reform? Radical redistribution of land.  And this is where things started to go downhill.

Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzman and his wife. 

Under previous governments, the United Fruit Company (today’s Chiquita Banana) had acquired 42% of Guatemala’s land. They were also granted exemption from all taxes and duties on both imports and exports. Although the Arbenz administration compensated United Fruit for their land, this was not enough for the company. They were convinced more land would be taken and they would go bankrupt. Something had to be done. They hired the PR guru Edward Bernays. By the time he was through, the American public thought the United Fruit Company was the victim. The company also lobbied the Truman, and Eisenhower administration to topple the now re-fashioned communist Arbenz. It did not take much convincing. Guatemalan elites had already been working hard in persuading the United States that Arbenz was no good. United Fruit just finished the job.

It is true that Arbenz’s supporters in the Guatemalan congress included the Communist Party. They were far from the majority, however. To date, there has been no evidence that Arbenz himself was a communist. He was more of a European-style democratic socialist. Ironically, Arbenz’s land reform program was less generous than the one suggested by the Reagan administration in El Salvador decades later.

The United Fruit Company in Guatemala in the 1920s. 

Emboldened by their great success in overthrowing the Iranian government the previous year, the CIA figured they wouldn’t have any trouble doing the same in Guatemala. They didn’t. Operation PBSUCCESS was authorized by President Eisenhower in August 1953. $2.7 million budget was set aside for "psychological warfare and political action" and "subversion." If this didn’t work, the CIA had a backup plan: just assassinate Arbenz. It never came to because the psychological warfare worked. The author Tim Weiner writes:

“For four weeks, starting on May Day 1954, the CIA had been waging psychological warfare in Guatemala through a pirate radio station called the Voice of Liberation, run by a CIA contract officer, an amateur actor and skilled dramatist named David Atlee Phillips. In a tremendous stroke of luck, the Guatemalan state radio station went off the air in mid-May for a scheduled replacement of its antenna. Phillips snuggled up to its frequency, where listeners looking for the state broadcasts found Radio CIA. Unrest turned to hysteria among the populace as the rebel station sent out shortwave reports of imaginary uprisings and defections and plots to poison wells and conscript children.”

A few weeks later Arbenz and his top aides fled the country. Declassified documents actually criticized the coup plotters for their shoddy planning. The documents also noted that the coup triggered ferocious international protests against the United States. Nicholas Cullather, a CIA historian, states "Castillo Armas' [the man who the CIA put in Arbenz’s place] new regime proved embarrassingly inept. Its repressive and corrupt policies soon polarized Guatemala and provoked a renewed civil conflict."

The iconic Che Guevara picture...he was inspired by what he saw in Guatemala. 

Castillo Armas’ regime stopped the land reforms, rescinded the constitution, and outlawed political parties and labor unions. This, in turn, galvanized the opposition. By 1960, there was an all-out guerrilla war in Guatemala. The civil war would rage for over 35 years. Close to 200,000 are thought to have died during the conflict. It was not until 1997, when the documents were declassified, that the CIA admitted its key role in the Arbenz coup. In 2011, over fifty years after the events took place, democratically elected President Alvaro Colom publicly apologized to the Arbenz family for the coup:

“That day changed Guatemala and we have not recuperated from it yet,” he said. “It was a crime to Guatemalan society and it was an act of aggression to a government starting its democratic spring.”

The Arbenz family has asked the United States for a similar apology. It has yet to come. To our credit we did apologize for what happened after. President Bill Clinton officially expressed regret for the role the US played in backing a brutal counter-terrorism campaign that caused the deaths of thousands of civilians in Guatemala's civil war. Oh, as an interesting side. A young Argentine by the name of Che Guevera happened to be in Guatemala to witness the coup. After what he saw, he was quoted as saying. “I lost my path to reason [after that].”  

Here's Why So Many Nail Salons Are Owned By Vietnamese Women

Most people familiar with Tippi Hedren are Hitchcock aficionados. She first gained fame as the star of the film The Birds. If you haven't heard of her, you may have heard of her daughter...a certain Melanie Griffith. Interestingly, the group of people who know Hedren the best, however, don't idolize her for her striking good looks or acting ability. No, to a large group of Vietnamese Americans, she is revered for making the American dream come true. The fact that many, many nail salons are owned and operated by Vietnamese Americans is no secret. The Mexican American comedian Angela Johnson does a whole bit on the topic. Joking aside, however, how did this immigrant group come to totally dominate an industry? And why is an American actress credited by this immigrant group as helping them do it? 

Hedren in Marnie with Sean Connery 

Shortly after the fall of Saigon (modern-day Ho Chi Minh City), Hedren visited a Vietnamese refugee camp outside of Sacramento. She wanted to find something these women (many of them married to formerly high ranking South Vietnamese military officials) could do to earn a living. She noticed that all the women kept admiring her manicured nails. She immediately had her manicurist flown in to teach the women the ways of the manicure. Most manicurists today are in some way, shape, or form connected to these original group of women. 

These Vietnamese refugees revolutionized the nail industry. Before they came along, most women could not afford the $50 (in 1970s dollars) it costs to get your nails done. The Vietnamese nail salons, by contrast, charged anywhere from $10 to $20. Today, over 50% of nail salons are owned by Vietnamese Americans. In California the percentage is over 75. Not bad for a group of refugees who came here with next to nothing. 

How Hungry American Military Wives Invented Nachos...Sort Of

It was this month, 73 years ago that nachos were invented in the border city of Piedras Niegras, Mexico. Although invented in Mexico, nachos are not Mexican food. They – like fajitas, chimichangas, and ground beef enchiladas – are American inventions. Not to say that Mexicans didn't have a hand in creating said culinary gems. However, most were invented by Mexican restaurateurs in the southwestern United States to please the "Gringo palette."  

So how did three American women sort of invent nachos? In 1943, a group of American military wives, whose husbands were stationed in Eagle Pass, Texas, did what everyone does in American border towns: crossed the border to the Mexican sister city. When they got to the Victory Restaurant, the restaurant's cook was nowhere to be found. Well, the maitre d’, Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya, was not about to turn away potential clients. So he looked around the kitchen, and as you might have guessed, he got some tortillas, cheese (real cheese, not the kind we are used to now...more on that later), and jalapeños together and BAM! Nachos Especiales were born. 

Now, you would think that, as the inventor of one of the most popular foods in America, Mr. Anaya would have become quiet rich. Well, you'd be wrong. He never capitalized on the success of his invention. By the 1960s he saw how successful his creation had become, and he and his son tried to take legal action and claim ownership of the recipe. Lawyers informed the pair that the statute of limitations had run out on the matter. 

And what about the cheese? Frank Liberto, an Italian-American owner of concession stands did not want his customers to stand in line waiting for their nachos. So he concocted a secret recipe for the orang-y, gooey, nacho cheese we see today. So secret was his concoction, in fact, in 1983 a man was arrested for trying to buy Liberto’s formula. Little known fact: according the FDA, the cheese used on nachos today is not actually cheese. 

That Time When Two Countries Went to War Over a Soccer Match

Fútbol, soccer, the Beautiful Game. Often, political rivalries are played out on the field, like between the United Kingdom and Argentina at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico; it was Argentina's chance to avenge its defeat at the hands of the Brits in the Falklands War. When Iran and the United States played each other for the first time since the Hostage Crisis at the 1998 World Cup in France, thatgame went off without a hitch. But the same did not hold true when El Salvador played Honduras in a three game qualifying series. 

Honduras won the first game (in Honduras). Then El Salvador won the second game (in El Salvador). When El Salvador won the third game in Mexico, all hell broke loose. Literally.

El Salvador was and is one of the most densely populated countries in the Americas. Honduras, in comparison, was and is sparsely populated. By the end of the 1960s, over 300,000 Salvadorians were living and working (often illegally) in Honduras. The dilemma posed by these immigrants, many of whom cultivated previously unproductive land, was addressed through a series of bilateral agreements between the two Central American nations. The last of these agreements, conveniently, expired in 1969. 

To make matters worse, the government in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, initiated land reform that effectively kicked Salvadorians off the land. Thousands fled back to El Salvador. Then, El Salvador started claiming the land that had previously been held by its citizens in Honduras as El Salvador's. It was in this climate that the two countries met on the soccer field to determine who would qualify for the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. 

The first game was played in Tegucigalpa. Hondurans made sure their rival team did not have a good night's rest by creating as much noise as possible outside their hotel rooms. El Salvador lost. Then the media in San Salvador started reporting that a young woman, so distraught after the loss, had shot herself in the heart. El Nacional wrote, "The young girl could not bear to see her fatherland brought to its knees." She was given a televised funeral and the President himself walked behind her casket. By the time the Honduran team got to San Salvador to play the second game, tensions were at an all-time high. At the game, which El Salvador won, the Honduran flag was not flown during the opening ceremony. In it place, Salvadorian officials placed a rag. 

The El Salvador team ahead of the World Cup play-off against Honduras in Mexico via home.bt.com

With the threat of all violence at the last game (it was to the best of three) a very real possibility, FIFA officials decided to hold the third game in Mexico City. 5,000 Mexican police officers kept both sides fairly under control. El Salvador went on to win the Mexico City game. Hours later, El Salvador severed all diplomatic ties with its northern neighbor. A mere two weeks later, the Salvadorian air force dropped bombs on Tegucigalpa.  

La guerra del fútbol was obviously not fought over simply over soccer. But the games were used as incredible and very effective propaganda tools. The war lasted one hundred hours. Blocked by a US arms embargo from directly purchasing weapons, both sides had to buy outdated military equipment from World War II. This war was the last time the world saw fighters armed with pistols dueling one another.

After the Organization of American States brokered a cease-fire, between 1,000 to 2,000 people were dead. 100,000 more were displaced. A formal peace treaty was not signed until 1980. Although the war only lasted four days, the consequences for El Salvador were immense. Thousands of Salvadorians could no longer return to Honduras, straining an already fragile economy. Discontent spread, and just ten years later the country plunged into a twelve-year civil war that left 75,000 dead. 

The Rise and Fall of Nauru, the Country that Got Rich Off Poop

From above the speck of sand that is the sovereign country of Nauru looks derelict, desolate, and abandoned. Although not abandoned, the third smallest independent nation in the world is certainly derelict and desolate. The island has one paved road that encircles the tiny atoll like a racetrack. Its people are the worlds most obese and some of the sickest. At one point, desperate to raise revenue, it tried to become a tax haven. It became a tax haven alright---for terrorists, money launderers, and other unsavory characters. Discarding this idea, they offered to become a detention center for would be immigrants to Australia. 



The irony and tragedy of all of this is that the people of Nauru were once the richest in the world. Well sort of, per capital income was such that, on paper anyway, every Nauruan was well off. Throughout the 1980s, the government spend lavishly. People who had never left the island started chartering flights to Australia, Japan, Hawaii, and various European capitals. Housing was free. You want to study something we cannot offer in Nauru? No problem. Hundreds (the country today only has 10,400 people) of young people were sent to the best schools in Australia...free of charge. Luxury cars were imported to drive around that one road. Where did all this wealth come from? It came from, no joke, bird poop. Partly anyway. Thousands of years worth of bird droppings mixed with the soil in such a way it created one of the richest phosphate deposits anywhere in the world. What is phosphate used for? Fertilizer. No matter how you look at it, Nauru was rich because of poop. The island was literally stripped of the resource first by Germans, then by Australians, then by the Japanese, then by the Australians again, and finally Nauruans themselves. Because it was evident the resource would one day be depleted, the government set up a trust to ensure financial stability in the future. It didn't. Successive governments allowed themselves to be duped into dubious ventures. One of the most talked about was the millions of dollars put into a musical about Leonardo Da Vinci. The musical flopped. When the phosphates did run out, the trust was not as large as it had been and was in fact losing money. Now the island is bankrupt and, as mentioned before, has become Australia's detention camp for refugees...and now you know the gist. 

Why DO we celebrate Cinco de Mayo?

By now, hopefully, most Americans know that the 16th of September and NOT May 5th is Mexican Independence Day. So what exactly happened on this day and why do we celebrate in the United States? Cinco de Mayo commemorates the victory of the outnumbered and outgunned Mexican army over the French Imperial Army at the Battle of Puebla. Emperor Napoleon III of France (not THE Napoleon) needed a military victory to quell discontent at home, so when the administration of Benito Juárez suspended European debt payments France (along with Spain and Britain) invaded. The Mexican contingency was led by Ignacio Zaragoza, born in what was then Mexican-ruled Goliad, Texas. News of the battle and the role of Zaragoza, "the native son," arrived in Texas as early as 1867 when performers like Onofre Cárdenas from San Ignacio, Texas, sang ballads about both. It was not until the Chicano movement of the 1960s that Cinco de Mayo became widely celebrated in the United States, however. Although the day is technically about the Battle of Puebla, it became a day to celebrate Mexican-American identity. Oh, and the Battle of Puebla only temporarily stopped the French invasion. The French eventually occupied Mexico for three years and installed an Austrian Archduke as Emperor Maximilian of Mexico...and now you know the gist.