The United States was not only waging a war against the people of Vietnam. The government had also been complicit in the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 and the murder of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo in 1961. But another global phenomenon had emerged at the same time: third world people were fighting back, refusing to accede to oppression and, in many cases, seemed to be winning their battles—China in 1949, Cuba in 1959, Algeria in 1962.
