But the question of coercive threats should clearly be raised in all cases where this is a
potential
problem.
Manufacturing Consent - Chomsky
2.
Freedom of the press.
In ? 1 Salvador, the only substantial newspapers critical of the govern- ment, La Cronica del Pueblo and El Independiente-neither by any means radical papers-were closed in July 1980 and January 1981, re- spectively, the firSt because its top editor and two employees were murdered and mutilated by the security forces, the second because the army arrested its personnel and destroyed its plant. The church paper and radio station were repeatedly shut down by bombing attacks, No paper or station representing the principal opposition has been able to operate except clandestinely. Over thirty journalists have been mur- dered in ? 1 Salvador since the revolutionary junta took power, An intensified campaign against the press occurred just prior to the 1982 election. On March 10, a death list of thirty-five journalists was cir- culated by a "death squad," and on March 18 the mutilated bodies of four Dutch journalists were rel:overed. 27 None of the murders of jour- nalists in El Salvador was ever "solved"-they were essentially murders
carried out under the auspices of the state.
In Guatemala, forty-eight journalists were murdered between 1978
and 1985,28 and many others have been kidnapped and threatened. These -killings, kidnappings, and threats have been a primary means of control of the media. As in EI Salvador, nobody has yet been ap- prehended and tried for any of these crimes, which must be viewed as
I
?
98 M A N U F A C T U R IN G C O N S E N T
murders carried out by the state or with state approval. There are no papers or radio or television stations in Guatemala that express the views of the rebels or the majority Indian population or the lower classes in general. "At most, the variants reflect shades of strictly con- servative thinking. "29 Given the extreme climate of fear, and threats for stepping out of line, even the conservative press is cautious and engages in continuous self-censorship. All the central topics that should be debated in this terrorized society are carefully avoided. 30
In Nicaragua, once again, there have been no reported deaths of journalists by state terrorists, nor even threats of personal violence. In 1984, the majority of the fifty-odd radio stations were privately owned, and some of them provided their own news programs; four other inde- pendent producers supplied radio news programs without prior censor- ship. Foreign radio and television from commercial and U. S. propaganda sources broadcasting from Costa Rica, Honduras, and else- where were of growing importance in 1984. 31 Two of the three newspa- pers were privately owned, one supportive of the government but critical of specific programs and actions, the other violently hostile. The latter, La Prensa, which represented the small, ultraconservative mi- nority and supported the contras and a foreign-sponsored invasion of the country, was allowed to operate throughout the 1984 election, al- though it was censored. The censorship still allowed the paper to publish manifestos of opposition groups and a pastoral letter critical of the regime. No comparable paper has been allowed to exist above- ground, even briefly, in El Salvador and Guatemala.
There is no doubt that the media in Nicaragua have been under government constraint, with censorship and periodic emergency con- trols that seriously encroached on freedom of the press. 32 It should be noted, however, that Nicaragua is under foreign attack and in a state of serious warfare. John S. Nichols points out that under the U. S. Espionage Act of 1917, over one hundred publications were banned from the mails, and hundreds of people were jailed for allegedly inter- fering with military recruitment. Furthermore,
Given that the United States was a relatively mature and homoge- nous political system during World War I and was not particularly threatened by the fighting, the range of public discussion tolerated in Nicaragua during the first five years of the revolution was remarkable. Despite assertions by President Reagan, IAPA, and others that the control of the Nicaraguan media was virtually totalitarian, the diversity of ownership and opinion was unusual for a Third World country, particularly one at war. 33
LEGITIMIZING VERSUS MEANINGLESS THIRD WORLD ELECTIONS 99
Our conclusion is that the condition of freedom of the press necessary for a free election was clearly absent in El Salvador and Guatemala, and that it was partially met in Nicaragua.
3. 2. 3. Freedom of organization of intermediate groups.
Perhaps the most important fact about EI Salvador in the two years prior to the election of March 1982 was the decimation of popular and private organizations that could pose any kind of challenge to the army and oligarchy. As we noted in chapter 2, this was the main thrust of policy of the revolutionary junta from late 1979 onward, and thousands of leaders were murdered and numerous organizations were destroyed or driven underground. The teachers' union was decimated by several hundred murders; the university was occupied, looted, and closed down by the army; organized student and professional groups were destroyed by arrests and killings, and even the peasant union sponsored by the AFL-CIO (i. e. , supporters of the regime) had some one hundred of its organizers and leaders murdered between October 1979 and the elec- tion of March 1982. 34
In Guatemala, too, intermediate organizations such as peasant and trade unions, teacher and student groups, and professional organiza- tions have been regularly attacked by the armed forces since 1954. The process of demobilization of institutions threatening the dominant elites culminated in the early 1980s, when by government proclamation "illicit association" was made punishable by law. All groups "which follow, or are subordinated to, any totalitarian system of ideology" (evidently an exception is made of the Guatemalan armed forces and the national-security ideology) are illicit. Only the armed forces deter- mine when illicitness occurs. If General Mejia Victores finds the GAM mothers to be agents of subversion, they may be killed (see chapter 2). Unions, peasant groups, student and professional organizations have
J grown up periodically in Guatemala, only to be crushed by systematic murder as soon as their demands were pressed with any vigor. The 1984-85 elections followed the greatest era of mass murder in modern Guatemalan history-under the regimes of Lucas Garcia, Rios Montt, and Mejia Victores. Union membership in 1985 was below its 1950 level, and other u,rban groups were decimated or inactive; the peasant major- ity was totally demobilized and under the tight control and surveillance of the military.
100 M ANUF ACTURIlI\G CONSENT
In Nicaragua, again the contrast with the two U. S. clients is marked. Under Sandinista management there was a spurt in union and peasant organization. A deliberate attempt was made to mobilize the population to participate in decision-making at the local level and to interact with higher-level leaders. Oxfam compliments the Nicaraguan government highly for this etfort, as we pointed out earlier.
There is legitimate debate over the extent to which the grass-roots and other organizations sponsored by the ruling FSLN are indepen- dent, and whether they might not be a vehicle for both state propaganda and coercion. Oxfam America and its parent organization in London clearly find them constructive. Luis Hector Serra contends that the grass-roots organizations are relatively autonomous, and that their close relationship to the leadership ofthe FSLN "did not obstruct their capacity to express the concerns of their members at the locallevel. "3~ He concludes that the popular organizations were "profoundly demo- cratic" in their effects of involving the populace in decision-making and educating them on the possibilities of participation in public life. 36 The difference with the organization of the Guatemalan peasantry in "poles of development," where the essence of the organization was, quite openly, military control by terror and enforced nonparticipation, is quite dramatic, whatever one's general assessment of the FSLN popu- lar organizations may be.
We conclude that on the third basic condition for a free election, El Salvador and Guatemala did not qualify in the years 1984-85; Nicara- gua did, at least to a significant degree. 37
3. . 2. 4. Freedom to organize parties, field candidates, and campaign for office
No party of the left could organize and present candidates in the 1982 and 1984 elections in El Salvador. The Democratic Front (FDR) had been quickly driven underground. Five of its top leaders were seized in EI Salvador in November 1980 by official and paramilitary forces, and were tortured, mutilated, and killed. A year before the March 1982 election, the army published a list of 138 "traitors," which included virtually all politicians of the left and left-center. Colonel Gutierrez, a powerful member of the junta, had stated forcefully that the FDR could not participate in the election because it was a "front" for the guerrillas. The invitation to the FDR and the FMLN to lay down their arms and
LEGITIMIZll'G VERSUS MEANINGLESS THIRD WORLD ELECTlOl'S 101
compete in the election was thus fraudulent, a fact confirmed by the admission of the U. S. embassy that the FDR could not safely campaign in El Salvador, with the accompanying suggestion that they might do so by means of videotapes sent in from outside the country's bordersp8 Subsequently, even Duarte, the preferred candidate of the United States, was unable to campaign outside San Salvador in 1982 for fear of murder, and scores of Christian Democratic politicans were killed in the years 1980-84. 39 In short, not only radical but even pro-U. S. , mildly reformist parties could not escape decimation by political mur- der during those years.
It should also be emphasized that no party could organize and run candidates in EI Salvador that put high priority on terminating the war by negotiations with the rebels. What makes this especially important is that reporters and observers were unanimous in 1982 that the main thing the public wanted out of the election was peace. The propaganda formula for getting out the vote in 1982 was "ballots versus bullets," with the implication that ballots were a possible route to a reduction in the use of bullets. If, in fact, no peace candidate was eligible to run, the election was a fraud for this reason alone.
Defenders of these elections have argued that there was a substantial difference between the candidates, especially between D'Aubuisson and Duarte, so that VOters had a meaningful choice. 4o But D'Aubuisson and Duarte did not disagree on the central issue of interest to the Salvado- ran people-whether to fight to win, or to strive for a negotiated settle- ment with the rebels. Both were members of the war party, with only tactical differences. Although Duarte made occasional demagogic claims that he would talk with the rebels and bring about peace, he never spelled out a peace-making agenda, never went beyond suggest- ing "dialogue" (as opposed to "negotiations," which imply the possibil- ity of substantive concessions), and never departed from the position that the rebels should lay down their arms and participate in the new "democracy" that Duarte and the army had established.
Duarte joined the junta at a moment of severe crisis in March 1980, when all the progressive civilians had left and immediately after the murder of the Christian Democratic attorney-general, Mario Zamora, by the newly prospering death squads. It was clear that the army and affiliated death squads had embarked on a policy of large-scale massa- c? re. Duarte provided the fig leaf and apologetics that the army needed for the second mata;nza. 41 We believe that Duarte never would have received U. S. support and protection, and could not have survived in El Salvador, unless he had made it dear that he was in basic accord with the aims of the U. S. administration and the Salvadoran army. From
IOZ MANUFACTURING CONSENT
1980 onward, Duarte always accepted fully the pursuit of a military solution and no compromise with "the subversives" (a phrase that Duarte uses continually. just as do the army and death-squad leaders). As Raymond Bonner points out,
The repression in 1980 reached a magnitude surpassed only by the [first} malanza and was far worse than anything imagined under General Romero. . . . By the end of the year the number [mur- dered] had reached at least 9,000. Every day mutilated bodies, missing arms or heads, were found: behind shopping centers; stuffed in burlap bags and left 00 dusty rural roads; hurled over cliffs into ravines. 42
And through all of this, Duarte not only provided the facade of "re- form," he regularly complimeoted the army for its Joyal service. In a letter published in the Miami Herald on November 9. 1981, Duarte wrote that
The armed forces are waging a heroic battle against a cruel and pitiless enemy supported by great resources of ideological aggres- sion. This goes parallel with armed aggression. . . . This would be one more prey in the conquest plan in the Central Ameri- can region that Moscow has designed to pursue. Immediately after that its greatest reward would be the North American na- tion. . . .
In brief, the Salvadoran public was never offered the option that the press itself acknowledged the voters craved.
In Guatemala. as in El Salvador, no parties of the left participated in the 1984 election for a constituent assembly, and only one crippled party made a tentative but wholly ineffectual foray in the 1985 presiden- tial election. 43 The main guerrilla movements were, of course, outside the electoral orbit. Their leaders would have been killed if ap- prehended, but they would not have participated anyway without a drastic alteration in basic social and electoral conditions. " Even a centrist party like the Christian Democrats had suffered scores of mur- ders in the years 1980-83, and the current president of Guatemala, the Christian Democrat Vinicio Cerezo, survived three known assassina- tion attempts. No seriously left party could have qualified in 1984-85 under the laws of "illicit association" mentioned earlier.
The peasant majority was not represented or spoken for by any candidate. The Guatemalan Human Rights Commission, an organiza-
I
LEGITUHZING VERSUS MEANINGLESS THIRD WORLD ELECTIONS 103
tion not able to function within Guatemala, has pointed out that na- tional political parties that speak for major groups like the working class or indigenous people "do not exist and . . . as a result, these sectors are institutionally excluded from the political system. "45 Americas Watch states that one of the civil-patrol system's functions is "to provide vigilance and control of the local population, preventing any form of independent political organization. "46 This exclusion of the peasantry from any political opportunity was reflected in two ways in the 1984-85 elections. One was that in registering for the election, only 3 percent of the electorate signed up as members of political parties. Another, more compelling, is that no candidate in the election urged land reform, although this was one of the two central issues in Guatemala (the other being unconstrained army murder, also not an issue in the election, given the understanding on all sides that the army will remain the ruling force, whoever gains office).
As with Duarte in ? 1 Salvador, the presence of Vinicio Cerezo as a candidate, and as the eventual winner in the 1985 election, raises the question of whether, despite the constraints on the left, Cerezo did not really offer a significant option to the voting public. Cerezo differen- tiated himself from his electoral rivals, especially toward the end of the campaign and the runoff, by expressing compassion for the masses and a determination to make changes in the human-rights picture and mass poverty. He occasionally mentioned the need for structural reform, although he was not specific and stressed that the first requirement was to reestablish civilian control. He was quite clear, however, that if he were elected, his power would be nominal at first and would have to be enlarged while he was in office:
The election will not bring automatic transfer of real power to the president. There will be a handover offormal power. What are my chances of consolidating that power? Fifty-fifty,47
During the election campaign, Cerezo never straightforwardly ad- dressed the question of land reform, and news reports in Guatemala suggested that he had promised the landowners' lobby that land reform was not on his agenda. 48 Similarly, he did not promise any legal action against those who had murdered thousands, nor did he say that he would dismantle the counterinsurgency state. There would seem to have been at least a tacit understanding between Cerezo and the mili- tary that he would protect them against prosecution and preserve their power and relative autonomy; in fact, he could not do otherwise and survive. 49 In the year and a half that has elapsed since he took office,
I04 M A NUF A CTURING CONSE"-T
Cerezo has made no meaningful move toward land reform, has sup- ported the army vigorously against any accounting, and has made no move to dismantle the civil patrols, the development poles, and other features of institutionalized terror. 50 The human-rights situation in Guatemala "remains terrible,"5I although improved (but partly because higher rates of killing are no longer deemed beneficial). The poor, for whom he expressed so much compassion during the electoral campaign, have suffered further losses in real income, as Cerezo's "reforms" have accommodated the demands of the army and oligarchy. He is on very poor terms with the Mutual Support Group. Thus, the postelection pattern shows that Cerezo, in part by prior agreement but more deci- sively by structural constraints, has been entirely unable to serve his mass constituency. In the 1984-85 elect;? :m, Cerezo gave the Guatema- lan people an opportunity to vote for a man of seeming goodwill and good intentions, but one unable to respond to democratic demands opposed by the real rulers of the state.
In Nicaragua, in 1984, the spectrum of candidates was much wider than in EI Salvador, Guatemala, or, for that matter, the United States. 52 The Conservative Democratic party and the Independent Liberal party both issued strong calls for respect for private property, reduced gov- ernment control of the economy, elimination of press and other con- trols, and a foreign policy of greater nonalignment and accommodation. Both were able to denounce the Sandinistas for the war and to call for depoliticization of the army and negotiations with the contras. Arturo Cruz, after lengthy negotiations with representatives of the govern- ment, chose not to run in the 1984 election. But this was a voluntary act of Cruz (albeit under heavy U. S. pressure),53 in contrast with the position of the left in El Salvador and Guatemala, and was not based
on physical threats to his person or limits on his access to the popu- lace. 54
The FSLN had a strong advantage over the opposition parties as the party in power, defending the country from foreign attack and having mobilized the population for their own projects of development. The LASA group felt that much of the incumbency advantage of the FSLN was characteristic of governments everywhere, and concluded:
It seems clear tha. t the FSLN took substantial advantage of its incumbent position and, in some ways, abused it. However, the abuses of incumbency do not appear to have been systematic; and neither the nature of the abuses n? )r their frequency was such as to cripple the opposition parties' ,,~mpaigns or to cast doubt on
LEGITIMIZING VERSUS MEANINGLESS THlRD WORLD ELECTIONS IOS
the fundamental validity of the electoral process. . . . Generally speaking, in this campaign the FSLN did little more to take ad- vantage of its incumbency than incumbent parties everywhere (including the United States) routinely do, and considerably less than ruling parties in other Latin American countries traditionally have done. 55
We would conclude that the ability of candidates to qualify and run, and the range of options, was substantially greater in Nicaragua than in El Salvador and Guatemala. Furthermore. as all major political groups of the left were off the ballot by threat of violence in the latter two cases. those elections fail to meet still another basic electoral condi. tion.
3. 2. 5. Absence of state terror and a ~limate of fear
During the years 1980-84 the death squads worked freely in ? 1 Salva- dor. in close coordination with tbe army and security forces. Tbe average rate of killings of civilians in the thirty months prior to the 1982 election was approximately seven hundred per month. Many of these victims were raped, tortured, and mutilated. All of this was done with complete impunity, and only the murder of four American women elicited-by dint of congressional pressure-any kind of legal action. Even William Doherty of the American Institute for Free Labor Devel- opment-a longtime supporter of U. S. policy in El Salvador-asserted before a congressional committee that there was nO system of justice operative in that country. while Leonel Gomez, a former land-reform official in E1 Salvador. told the same committee a bit later that state
terror had put the population in a state of <<fearful passivity. "56
In Guatemala, too, the endemic fear based on years of unconstrained and continuing army violence was a dominant fact of national life.
According to Americas Watch, writing in early 1985,
Torture, killings, and disappearances continue at an extraordinary rate, and millions of peasants remain under the strict scrutiny and control of the government through the use of civil patrols and "model villages! ' Guatemala remains, in short, a nation of prison- ers. 57
106 MANUFACTURING CONSENT ,
The law group described Guatemala in 1985 as "a country where the greater part of the people live in permanent fear. "s8
In the case of Nicaragua, we repeat the central fact that differentiates it from the U. S. client states: in 1984 its government was not murdering civilians. 59 The main fear of ordinary citizens in Nicaragua was of violence by the contras and the United States.
Our conclusion is that the fifth condition for a free election was met in Nicaragua, but not in EI Salvador and Guatemala. And our overall finding is that neither Et Salvador nor Guatemala met any of the five basic conditions of a free election, whereas Nicaragua met some of them well, others to a lesser extent.
3. 3. THE COERCION PACKAGES IN EL SALVADOR, GUATEMALA, AND NICARAGUA
As we noted, in the U. S. government's sponsored elections, voter turn- out is interpreted as public support for the election and its sponsors. In disapproved elections (here, Nicaragua), this frame is abandoned, and voter turnout is either ignored or declared meaningless because of limited options or coercive threats by the authorities.
But the question of coercive threats should clearly be raised in all cases where this is a potential problem. As we have just described, the elections in ? 1 Salva- dor were held under conditions of military rule where mass killings of "subversives" had taken place and a climate of fear had been estab- lished. I f the government then sponsors an election and the local mili- tary authorities urge people to vote, a significant part ofthe vote should be assumed to be a result of built-in coercion. A propaganda model would anticipate that the U. S. mass media make no such assumption, and they did not.
In El Salvador in 1982 and 1984, voting was also required by law. The law stipulated that failure to vote was to be penalized by a specific monetary assessment, and it also called on local authorities to check out whether voters did in fact vote. This could be done because at the time of voting one's identification card (ID, ddula) was stamped, acknowl- edging the casting of a vote. Anybody stopped by the army and police would have to show the ID card, which would quickly indicate whether the individual had carried out his or her patriotic duty. Just prior to the March 1982 election, Minister of Defense Garcia warned the popula- tion in the San Salvador newspapers that the failure to vote would be
LEGITIMIZI~G VERSUS MEANINGLESS THUD WORLD ELECTIONS 107
regarded as an act of treason. And in the 1984 election, "Advertising by the government and military prior to the elections stressed the obliga- tion to vote rather than the freedom to vote. "60 Given the climate of fear, the voting requirement, the ID stamp, the army warning, and the army record in handling "traitors," it is evident that the coercive ele- ment in generating turnout in Salvadoran elections has been large. This is supported by queries made by independent observers on the reasons why Salvadorans voted. 61
In Guatemala, as in ? 1 Salvador, voting was required by law; nonvot- ers were subject to a fine of five quetzales ($1. 25). Also, as in El Salvador, newspaper ads sponsored by the army assened that it was treasonous to fail to vote or to vote null or blank. 62 The law group reported that "many" people expressed fears that nonvoting would subject them to reprisals, and after the military threats in the week before the election there was "a widespread belief that failure to vote would be punishable by more than the five-quetzal fine stipulated by law. "63
In Nicaragua, while registration was obligatory, voting was not re- quired by law. Voter-registration cards presented on election day were retained by election officials, so that the failure to vote as evidenced by the lack of a validated voter credential could not be used as the basis of reprisals. 64 Most of the voters appeared to LASA observers to be voting under no coercive threat-they did not have to vote by law; they were urged to vote but not threatened with the designation of "traitors" for not voting; there were no obvious means of identifying nonvoters; and the government did not kill dissidents, in contrast to the normal practice in El Salvador and Guatemala.
In sum, Nicaragua did not have a potent coercion package at work to help get out the vote-as did the Salvadoran and Guatemalan gov- ernments.
3. 4. EL SALVADOR: HOW THE U. S. MEDIA TRANSFORMED A "DERANGED KILLING MACHINE" INTO THE
PROTECTOR OF AN INCIPIENT DEMOCRACY
In reporting on the 1982 Salvadoran election, the U. S. mass media closely followed the government agenda. The personalities of the can- didates, the long lines waiting to vote, alleged rebel disruption, and
L
lo8 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
"tumout" were heavily featured. 6s As Jack Spence pointed out, "every media outlet, particularly the networks, cast the election-day story in a framework of voting in the midst of extensive guerrilla violence at polling places. "66 Warren Hoge and Richard Meislin, of the New York Times, repeated day after day that the rebels were threatening disrup- tion, Hoge asserting that "The elections have taken on a significance beyond their outcome because leftist guerrillas mounted a campaign to disrupt them and discourage voters from going to the polls. "67 This is a precise statement of the government's propaganda frame. But Hoge and Meislin never once cited a rebel source vowing disruption, and nobody else did, either. On election day no voters were killed or polling stations attacked, and the general level of rebel military activity was below average. In short, the disruption claims were falsifications of both plans and election-day results, but as they fit the patriotic agenda they were given prominence, repeated frequently, and used to establish the
contest between the forces of good and evil. 68 At the election-day dose, Dan Rather exclaimed, "A triumph! A million people to the polls. " Rather did not regard it as a triumph that the Sandinistas got 700,000 people to the polls-a higher proportion of the population, and without a voting requirement. The propaganda frame of the government gave turnout high importance in the Salvadoran election but none in the Nicaraguan election, and Rather followed like a good lap dog.
Neither Rather nor any other media analyst on or before March 30, 1982, noted that voting was required by law in E1 Salvador, and nQt Qne mentioned the warning by the defense minister, General Guillermo Garcia, in the San Salvador newspapers that nonvoting was treaso- nous. 69 The basic parameters were entirely off the media agenda. The destruction of La CTonica and El Independiente and the murder of twenty-six journalists prior to the election were unmentioned in dis- cussing the election's quality and meaning. 70 The army and its allies had been killing civilians on a massive scale in ? 1 Salvador, for many months before (and into) March 1982. Would this not create a climate of fear and, in conjunction with a state of siege, somewhat encumber free debate and free choice? The point was rarely even hinted at in the mass media.
Could candidates run freely and campaign without fear of murder? Could the rebels qualify and run? After all, if it was a civil war, the rebels were clearly the "main opposition. " Again, the mass media played dumb. They pretended that this exclusion was not important, or that it represented a willful boycott by the rebels rather than a refusal based on conditions unfavorable to a (ree election and a blatantly
t<
LEGITIMIZING VERSUS MEANISGLESS THIRD WORLD ELECTIO:,,>'S 101}
stacked deCk. Neither the March 1981 death list nor the Gutierrez statement that the FDR would not be permitted to run were mentioned by the mass media in our sample. They never once suggested that the election plan was to create an electoral environment of extreme coer- cion and bias in which the rebels could not run, and then use this for the dramatic game of disruption and triumphant turnout. That the military agreed to the election because it couldn't lose was never sug- gested by these media.
The role of the army was summarized by Warren Hoge in the New York Times:
Is the military playing any role in the election? Members of the military are not allowed to vote, and the armed forces are pledged to protect voters from violence and to respect the outcome of the contest. 7 1
We may note that the army's mass killing of civilians and systematic destruction and demobilization of virtually all popular organizations in El Salvador over the preceding thirty months, which bears on what Secretary of State Shultz referred to as the "preliminary aspects that make an election mean something," is not part of the army's "role" for Hoge and the Times. Roge repeats the Salvadoran army's pledge, not only taking it at face value, hut never suggesting that it (and the election itself) was meaningless in a terror state where the "main opposition" was off the ballot and only the war parties were able to field candidates. In the propaganda framework, the security forces of client states "pro- tect elections";72 only those of enemy states interfere with the freedom of its citizens to vote without constraint.
As noted earlier, observers and reporters in El Salvador all agreed that the populace was most eager for an end to the war, and government propaganda even stressed that voting was an important vehicle to tbat end-the public was urged to substitute "ballots for bullets. " But no peace party was on the Salvadoran baUot. And after the election was over, the war went on, and the death squads continued to flourish. This is in accordance with the hypothesis that the real purpose of the elec- tion was to placate the home population of the United States and render them willing to fund more war and terror. It is a poor fit to the hypothe- sis that the people of EI Salvador had a free choice. An honest press would point up the failure of the election to substitute "ballots for bullets. " The mass media of the United States did nOt raise the issue.
Nor did the experience of 1982 and its aftermath affect the media's
110 M A lI;UF A CTURll'G CONSENT
willingness to follow the patriotic agenda once again in 1984. We will return to this below in a statistical comparison of the New York Times's coverage of the Salvadoran and Nicaraguan elections.
3. 5. "FIRST STEP: GUATEMALA OPTS FOR MODERATION""
The U. S. government was less deeply involved in the Guatemalan elections of 1984 and 1985 than it was in those held in El Salvador, but, as we saw in chapter 2, the Reagan administration went to great pains to put a favorable gloss on the murderous regimes of Lucas Garcia, Rios Monu, and Mejia Victores, and to attempt to reintegrate them fully into the free-world alliance. 74 It encouraged the 1984-85 elections, provided advisory and financial support for election management, and gave pub- lic-relations assistance and sent official observers to help put the elec- tion in a favorable light. There was little effort made to disguise the fact that the purpose of the election, from the standpoint of the Reagan administration and the ruling army, was to alter the international "image" of Guatemala in order to facilitate aid and loans.
With the administration supporting the new look, but without the intensity of commitment and propaganda backup brought to bear in El Salvador, and given the steady stream of reports of ongoing mass murder in Guatemala, a propaganda model would anticipate a media response that put the Guatemalan elections in a favorable light, but with qualifications. There was, in fact, far less coverage than of the Salvadoran election; what there was had a little more "balance," but the apologetic framework was still overwhelmingly dominant.
A telling manifestation of bias was the media's ready acceptance of the Guatemalan elections as meaningful, even though they were admit- tedly for image-malting, in a context of long-standing army rule and massacre, and despite new institutional arrangements in the country- side-the massive relocations of the population,. the "model villages," and the civil-defense patrols-that were, on their face, incompatible with a free election. In an enemy state where an election was held under comparable conditions, it would be designated a meaningless public- relations exercise. 75 In the case of Guatemala, however, the civil patrols and ongoing massacres were rarely mentioned, sources that addressed these matters were ignored, and the overall tone of the news was cautiously hopeful and optimistic. It was the consensus that the 1984
I
election for a constituent assembly was "encouraging" and an impor- tant first step, and that the 1985 presidential election <<ended [emphasis added] more than 30 years of military domination" (Newsweek, Jan. 17, 1986). Dan Rather, on CBS News, reported that Cerezo became Guatemala's "first civilian leader after thirty years of almost uninter- rupted military rule" (Dec. 9, 1985). This is ambiguous, but the implica- tion, directly asserted by Newsweek, is that Cerezo, not the army, rules. Julio Mendez Montenegro was a civilian president from 1966 to 1970, but he did not rule, and he was eventually discredited by the fact that he presided over a huge escalation of army violence. Given the earlier experience, the fact that the generals had made it clear that the civilian
government was "a project" of the military,76 and Cerezo's own ex- pressed reservations about his power, objective news reporting would have been careful about an alleged ending of military rule.
As in the case of EI Salvador, the murderous rule of the Guatemalan generals did not delegitimize them for the U. S. mass media nor suggest any possible justice to the rebel cause. Time noted (Feb. 27, 1984) that a leftist insurgency "poses a permanent challenge to the regime," but it did not inquire into the roots of this insurgency or suggest that its leaders constituted a "main opposition" whose ability to run would be an "acid test" of election integrity (as they pronounced in Nicaragua). Time also did not observe that the regime poses a permanent challenge to the survival of its population. The mass murders of the Guatemalan
state were even semi-justified by the unquestioned need to quell insur- gents-"Much ofthe killing," says Time, "is linked to Mejia's success against the insurgents. " The phrase "linked to" is an apologetic euphe- mism to obscure the fact that Mejia's "success" was based on the mass murder of men, women, and children in literally hundreds of destroyed villages. 17 Mejia has a "mixed record," with the mass murder offset by "improvements in some important areas" (the State Department, quoted by Time). Mejia, says Time, "won support because he has kept the promises he made after seizing power. " Time never explains how it determined that Mejia "won support," or from whom, other than the U. S. State Department. Was the press then free to speak out? Did a system of justice come into being?
In chapter 2 we summarized Americas Watch's demonstration that the Reagan administration made serial adjustments in its apologetics for each successive Guatemalan terrorist general, with a laggeti tacit ac- knowledgment that it had previously been lying. This has no influence whatsoever on Time's treatment of State Department pronouncements as authentic truth-the standard from which other claims may be eval- uated. Thus Time says that "Americas Watch, a controversial group
LEGITIMIZING VERSUS MEANINGLESS THIRD WORLD ELECTIONS III
II2 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
that is often accused of being too sympathetic to the left, called ~ Guatemala 'a nation of prisoners. ' " Time doesn't independently evalu-
ate the quality of sources-the State Department is unchallenged be-
cause it expounds the official and patriotic truth. Americas Watch is ~ denigrated (and only rarely cited, even with a dismissing put-down) because it challenges official propaganda. Pravda could hardly be more , subservient to state demands than Time in its coverage of demonstra-
tion elections. 78 _ The mass media's sourcing on the Guatemalan election was confined almost entirely to U. S. officials and official observers, the most promi-
nent Guatemalan political candidates, and generals. Spokespersons for
the insurgents-what in Nicaragua would be labeled the "main opposi- tion"-the smaller parties, spokespersons for popular organizations,
the churches, human-rights groups, and ordinary citizens, were essen-
tially ignored by the media. Time, Newsweek and CBS News almost
never talked to ordinary citizens or spokespersons for the insurgents. Stephen Kinzer, in the Times, had only one citation to a rebel source
in several dozen articles on Guatemala during the election periods, although on election day in 1984 he did speak with a number of ordinary citizens (who gave a much less optimistic view than Kinzer's usual
sources).
The restricted menu of media sources flows from and reinforces the
media's propensity to adopt a patriotic agenda. U. S. government offi- cials and observers are always optimistic and hopeful in their state- ments about sponsored elections. The leading contestant politicians are also moderately optimistic, as they have a good chance of acquiring at least nominal power. They do, however, express occasional doubts about whether the army will relinquish power. This allows the election drama to assume a slightly different character from that in EI Salvador, where it was the democratic army "protecting the election" versus the undemocratic rebels who refused to lay down their arms and partici- pate. In Guatemala, the frame was: Will the generals keep their promise to stay in the barracks? The triumph is that they do stay in the bar- racks-a civilian president takes office and now "rules. " The media then quickly drop the subject, so that whether the army really does relinquish power to the civilian leaders is never checked out (just as the "peace" sought by the populace in El Salvador was never considered in retrospect). In Poland, in January 1947, and Nicaragua, in 1984, and in enemy states generally, the focus was on the substance of power, and the extent to which that power shaped the electoral results in advance, as by limiting the ability of important constituencies to run for office and compete effectively. Not so for Guatemala.
LEGITIMIZING VERSUS MEANlllOGLESS THIRD WORLD ELECTIONS 1I3
If the mass media had enlarged their sources, fundamental condi- tions would have assumed greater prominence. For example, before both the July I, 1984, and December 1985 elections in Guatemala, the Guatemala Bishops' Conference issued pastoral statements that sug- gested in no uncertain terms and with detailed arguments that condi- tions in the country were incompatible with a free election. Its pastoral letter ofJune 8, 1984, focused on the civil-defense patrols as "suscepti- ble to manipulation," and it discussed the disappearances, "insatiable corruption," and the fact that sociopolitical structures are "not capable of promoting the welfare of the whole society. "79 Stephen Kinzer men- tioned this report in a Times news article of July 22, 1984, but his reference is made afler the election of JUly I, and Kinzer did not use it to frame the discussion of electoral conditions and to arrive at an assessment of the quality of the election. Furthermore, his summary of the twenty-seven-page report, that it "denounced torture, electoral
fraud, concentration of wealth and 'massacres of entire families,''' ignores the quite specific critique of the conditions bearing on an elec- tion. Time mentioned this pastoral letter briefly; Newsweek and CBS News never mentioned it.
In connection with the 1985 election, the bishops put forth another powerful statement, once again questioning whether an election can be meaningful in "a situation close to slavery and desperation. "80 They point out that the civil-defense patrols, the "ideology of national secu- rity," and hunger and impoverishment are not conducive to serious elections:
In order that the longed-for results be obtained, there must be not only the freedom at the moment of casting one's vote, but also a whole series of particular social, political and economic conditions which are, unfortunately, not happening in Guatemala. In effect there still persist in Guatemala harsh violence, lack of respect for human rights and the breaking of basic laws. It is a fact that any citizen pressured, terrorized or threatened is not fully able to exercise his/her right to vote or to be elected conscientiously.
This letter was not mentioned in the major media or anywhere else, to our knowledge, although the bishops are conservative, credible, and one of the few organized bodies in Guatemala not crushed by state terror.
There were other dissenting voices in Guatemala-politicians of the lesser parties, union officials, human-rights groups, lawyers, and ju- rists-who spoke out occasionally on the limits to free electoral condi-
II4 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
tions in Guatemala. And there were events of note that threw a power- fullight on the subject. Most of these were blacked out in the U. S. mass media. For example,81 on July 4. 1984, the Guatemalan Human, Rights Commission issued a statement in Mexico saying that the election's meaning should be viewed in the context of three important facts: namely, that the requirements for a meaningful election stipulated by the United Nations in a March 14 statement had not been met; that the left had been excluded from participation in the election; and that 115 persons had been murdered or disappeared in the thirty days prior to the election ofJuly I. This statement, and the facts cited by the commis- sion, were ignored in the U. S. press.
Consider also the following facts: On May 3, General Oscar Mejia Victores removed Ricardo Sagastume Vidaure from his position as president of the judiciary and the supreme court. On April II, the judiciary had issued writs of habeas corpus on behalf of 157 kidnapped individuals, and Sagastume had protested to Mejia Victores over the difficulty in proceeding against military abuses. On May 4, Acisco Valladares Molina, head of the Populist party, noted that Sagastume had been "fired like a simple subordinate. " On May 8, a communique from the Guatemalan bar association stated that in Guatemala there is no rule of law, as demonstrated by the constant violation of human rights and uncontrolled exercise of arbitrary power. By May 8, at least sixteen judicary officials, including supreme court and court of appeals magistrates, had resigned in protest at Sagustume's removal.
Stephen Kinzer never discussed any of these events, or their mean- ing, in the Times, nor did any of his colleagues elsewhere in the mass media. This is in accord with our hypothesis that in elections held in client states, fundamental electoral conditions, such as the presence or absence of the rule of law, are off the agenda. The point applies to other relevant structural conditions. Thus, while Kinzer occasionally men- tioned the civil-defense patrols, he never described them and their operations in any detail or tied them in with other institutional struc- tures of control, and he failed to relate them in a systematic way to army power. The numerous reports on these coercive institutions and their terrorist role by Amnesty International, Americas Watch, and the Brit- ish Parliamentary Human Rights Group were almost never cited by Kinzer in providing facts relevant to the Guatemalan elections. Al- though the constituent assembly elected in 1984 produced a new consti- tution, K. inzer never once discussed the nature of this instrument, which validated the special army role and structural constraints on freedom of the press.
LEGITIMIZING VERSUS MEANINGLESS THIRD WORLD ELECTIONS 115
Kinzer was reporting news in a way that fit the Times's editorial position and the U. S. government agenda. The Times editorial frame was that "The military, in power for most of 31 years, has honored its promise to permit the free election of a civilian president. "82 Kinzer's news articles of the same period convey the same message--one oft. hem is entitled "After 30 Years Democracy Gets a Chance in Guatemala" (Nov. 10, 1985)-whic. h accurately summarizes the contents, although they contain an undercurrent of reserved final judgment. That central message was false, however, if the basic conditions of a free election were not met, if the army's power remained unimpaired, and if these were confirmed in a written constitution that allows the army freedom from the rule of law and a license to kill without constraint from the nominal "democracy. "83 Kinzer could only convey this false message by ignoring the Sagastume case, the institutional arrangements of the counterinsurgency state, the ongoing murders, and the omnipresent fear-i. e. , the basic conditions of a free election-and by laying stress instead on expressions of hope, orderliness of the election processes, and army promises-i. e. , the government's propaganda agenda in a demonstration election.
In what must be one of the low points of his journalistic career, in an article of December 27, 1985 ("Guatemala Vote Heartens Nicaragua Parties"), Kinzer even implies that the Guatemala election establishes an electoral model for Nicaragua. He describes a Cerezo visit to Nicara- gua, in which Kinzer features the encouragement Cerezo gives to the dissident parties that perhaps the power of the Sandinistas can be broken by patience (implying that Cerezo had broken the power of the army in Guatemala and was in full command). The article closes with a quote from an opposition figure: "Ortega is now the last President in Central America who wears a military uniform, and the contrast is going to be evident. " Nowhere in the article does Kinzer point out that army power can not be read from whether the head of state wears a uniform, or that the rule of the army in Guatemala has not yet been overcome. He does not refer to the fact that the Guatemalan army has killed tens of thousands of ordinary civilians. Nor does he show any recognition of the fact that the election held in Nicaragua was much
more open than that held in Guatemala. On the contrary, this is a fact that the media, including the New York Times, explicitly and consis- tently deny, in accordance with state imperatives.
As in the case of El Salvador, the U. S. mass media never suggested that the exclusion of the Guatemalan insurgent groups rendered the Guatemalan election meaningless. Kinzer several times mentioned with
u6 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
extreme brevity that the left was off the ballot, but he never asked anybody to discuss the meaning of this in terms of the options available to the various segments of society. As coauthor of an important book on this topic, Kinzer is well aware of the facts. 84 The vast majority of Guatemalans are very poor, and they have been entirely excluded from political participation or representation since 1954. The insurgency grew out of the parlous condition and exploitation of that mass, and the absence of any possibility of a democratic process to alleviate injustice and misery. The ruling army had allowed only parties to run and civilians to hold office who agreed, tacitly or explicitly, to keep off the policy agenda all maners of central concern to the impoverished major- ity. There is no way to measure the strength of popular support for the insurgents, but in light of the fact that they espouse programs well oriented to the interests of the general population and have been able to maintain an insurgency without significant external aid, and that the army response has been a war against virtually the entire rural popula-
tion, the rebel claim to be a "main opposition" would appear to be stronger than that of Arturo Cruz and his upper-class Nicaraguan associates. And if the rebels---or any candidates who would threaten the army and oligarchy in ways appealing to the majority---eannot qualify in a Guatemalan election, is it not essentially fraudulent? This was strongly suggested in both 1984 and 1985 by the Guatemalan Bishops' Conference, but this respectable source, in contrast with Arturo Cruz and Robert Leiken, is blacked out. As with EI Salvador, the election was not evaluated, either in advance or in retrospect, on the basis of whether or not the fundamental requirements of a free election were met. For the U. S. government, the insurgents were not a main opposition, Guatemalan state terror was merely a public-relations inconvenience, and the elections were fair. The mass media's treatment of the Guatemalan election reflected well this government propaganda agenda.
3.
In ? 1 Salvador, the only substantial newspapers critical of the govern- ment, La Cronica del Pueblo and El Independiente-neither by any means radical papers-were closed in July 1980 and January 1981, re- spectively, the firSt because its top editor and two employees were murdered and mutilated by the security forces, the second because the army arrested its personnel and destroyed its plant. The church paper and radio station were repeatedly shut down by bombing attacks, No paper or station representing the principal opposition has been able to operate except clandestinely. Over thirty journalists have been mur- dered in ? 1 Salvador since the revolutionary junta took power, An intensified campaign against the press occurred just prior to the 1982 election. On March 10, a death list of thirty-five journalists was cir- culated by a "death squad," and on March 18 the mutilated bodies of four Dutch journalists were rel:overed. 27 None of the murders of jour- nalists in El Salvador was ever "solved"-they were essentially murders
carried out under the auspices of the state.
In Guatemala, forty-eight journalists were murdered between 1978
and 1985,28 and many others have been kidnapped and threatened. These -killings, kidnappings, and threats have been a primary means of control of the media. As in EI Salvador, nobody has yet been ap- prehended and tried for any of these crimes, which must be viewed as
I
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98 M A N U F A C T U R IN G C O N S E N T
murders carried out by the state or with state approval. There are no papers or radio or television stations in Guatemala that express the views of the rebels or the majority Indian population or the lower classes in general. "At most, the variants reflect shades of strictly con- servative thinking. "29 Given the extreme climate of fear, and threats for stepping out of line, even the conservative press is cautious and engages in continuous self-censorship. All the central topics that should be debated in this terrorized society are carefully avoided. 30
In Nicaragua, once again, there have been no reported deaths of journalists by state terrorists, nor even threats of personal violence. In 1984, the majority of the fifty-odd radio stations were privately owned, and some of them provided their own news programs; four other inde- pendent producers supplied radio news programs without prior censor- ship. Foreign radio and television from commercial and U. S. propaganda sources broadcasting from Costa Rica, Honduras, and else- where were of growing importance in 1984. 31 Two of the three newspa- pers were privately owned, one supportive of the government but critical of specific programs and actions, the other violently hostile. The latter, La Prensa, which represented the small, ultraconservative mi- nority and supported the contras and a foreign-sponsored invasion of the country, was allowed to operate throughout the 1984 election, al- though it was censored. The censorship still allowed the paper to publish manifestos of opposition groups and a pastoral letter critical of the regime. No comparable paper has been allowed to exist above- ground, even briefly, in El Salvador and Guatemala.
There is no doubt that the media in Nicaragua have been under government constraint, with censorship and periodic emergency con- trols that seriously encroached on freedom of the press. 32 It should be noted, however, that Nicaragua is under foreign attack and in a state of serious warfare. John S. Nichols points out that under the U. S. Espionage Act of 1917, over one hundred publications were banned from the mails, and hundreds of people were jailed for allegedly inter- fering with military recruitment. Furthermore,
Given that the United States was a relatively mature and homoge- nous political system during World War I and was not particularly threatened by the fighting, the range of public discussion tolerated in Nicaragua during the first five years of the revolution was remarkable. Despite assertions by President Reagan, IAPA, and others that the control of the Nicaraguan media was virtually totalitarian, the diversity of ownership and opinion was unusual for a Third World country, particularly one at war. 33
LEGITIMIZING VERSUS MEANINGLESS THIRD WORLD ELECTIONS 99
Our conclusion is that the condition of freedom of the press necessary for a free election was clearly absent in El Salvador and Guatemala, and that it was partially met in Nicaragua.
3. 2. 3. Freedom of organization of intermediate groups.
Perhaps the most important fact about EI Salvador in the two years prior to the election of March 1982 was the decimation of popular and private organizations that could pose any kind of challenge to the army and oligarchy. As we noted in chapter 2, this was the main thrust of policy of the revolutionary junta from late 1979 onward, and thousands of leaders were murdered and numerous organizations were destroyed or driven underground. The teachers' union was decimated by several hundred murders; the university was occupied, looted, and closed down by the army; organized student and professional groups were destroyed by arrests and killings, and even the peasant union sponsored by the AFL-CIO (i. e. , supporters of the regime) had some one hundred of its organizers and leaders murdered between October 1979 and the elec- tion of March 1982. 34
In Guatemala, too, intermediate organizations such as peasant and trade unions, teacher and student groups, and professional organiza- tions have been regularly attacked by the armed forces since 1954. The process of demobilization of institutions threatening the dominant elites culminated in the early 1980s, when by government proclamation "illicit association" was made punishable by law. All groups "which follow, or are subordinated to, any totalitarian system of ideology" (evidently an exception is made of the Guatemalan armed forces and the national-security ideology) are illicit. Only the armed forces deter- mine when illicitness occurs. If General Mejia Victores finds the GAM mothers to be agents of subversion, they may be killed (see chapter 2). Unions, peasant groups, student and professional organizations have
J grown up periodically in Guatemala, only to be crushed by systematic murder as soon as their demands were pressed with any vigor. The 1984-85 elections followed the greatest era of mass murder in modern Guatemalan history-under the regimes of Lucas Garcia, Rios Montt, and Mejia Victores. Union membership in 1985 was below its 1950 level, and other u,rban groups were decimated or inactive; the peasant major- ity was totally demobilized and under the tight control and surveillance of the military.
100 M ANUF ACTURIlI\G CONSENT
In Nicaragua, again the contrast with the two U. S. clients is marked. Under Sandinista management there was a spurt in union and peasant organization. A deliberate attempt was made to mobilize the population to participate in decision-making at the local level and to interact with higher-level leaders. Oxfam compliments the Nicaraguan government highly for this etfort, as we pointed out earlier.
There is legitimate debate over the extent to which the grass-roots and other organizations sponsored by the ruling FSLN are indepen- dent, and whether they might not be a vehicle for both state propaganda and coercion. Oxfam America and its parent organization in London clearly find them constructive. Luis Hector Serra contends that the grass-roots organizations are relatively autonomous, and that their close relationship to the leadership ofthe FSLN "did not obstruct their capacity to express the concerns of their members at the locallevel. "3~ He concludes that the popular organizations were "profoundly demo- cratic" in their effects of involving the populace in decision-making and educating them on the possibilities of participation in public life. 36 The difference with the organization of the Guatemalan peasantry in "poles of development," where the essence of the organization was, quite openly, military control by terror and enforced nonparticipation, is quite dramatic, whatever one's general assessment of the FSLN popu- lar organizations may be.
We conclude that on the third basic condition for a free election, El Salvador and Guatemala did not qualify in the years 1984-85; Nicara- gua did, at least to a significant degree. 37
3. . 2. 4. Freedom to organize parties, field candidates, and campaign for office
No party of the left could organize and present candidates in the 1982 and 1984 elections in El Salvador. The Democratic Front (FDR) had been quickly driven underground. Five of its top leaders were seized in EI Salvador in November 1980 by official and paramilitary forces, and were tortured, mutilated, and killed. A year before the March 1982 election, the army published a list of 138 "traitors," which included virtually all politicians of the left and left-center. Colonel Gutierrez, a powerful member of the junta, had stated forcefully that the FDR could not participate in the election because it was a "front" for the guerrillas. The invitation to the FDR and the FMLN to lay down their arms and
LEGITIMIZll'G VERSUS MEANINGLESS THIRD WORLD ELECTlOl'S 101
compete in the election was thus fraudulent, a fact confirmed by the admission of the U. S. embassy that the FDR could not safely campaign in El Salvador, with the accompanying suggestion that they might do so by means of videotapes sent in from outside the country's bordersp8 Subsequently, even Duarte, the preferred candidate of the United States, was unable to campaign outside San Salvador in 1982 for fear of murder, and scores of Christian Democratic politicans were killed in the years 1980-84. 39 In short, not only radical but even pro-U. S. , mildly reformist parties could not escape decimation by political mur- der during those years.
It should also be emphasized that no party could organize and run candidates in EI Salvador that put high priority on terminating the war by negotiations with the rebels. What makes this especially important is that reporters and observers were unanimous in 1982 that the main thing the public wanted out of the election was peace. The propaganda formula for getting out the vote in 1982 was "ballots versus bullets," with the implication that ballots were a possible route to a reduction in the use of bullets. If, in fact, no peace candidate was eligible to run, the election was a fraud for this reason alone.
Defenders of these elections have argued that there was a substantial difference between the candidates, especially between D'Aubuisson and Duarte, so that VOters had a meaningful choice. 4o But D'Aubuisson and Duarte did not disagree on the central issue of interest to the Salvado- ran people-whether to fight to win, or to strive for a negotiated settle- ment with the rebels. Both were members of the war party, with only tactical differences. Although Duarte made occasional demagogic claims that he would talk with the rebels and bring about peace, he never spelled out a peace-making agenda, never went beyond suggest- ing "dialogue" (as opposed to "negotiations," which imply the possibil- ity of substantive concessions), and never departed from the position that the rebels should lay down their arms and participate in the new "democracy" that Duarte and the army had established.
Duarte joined the junta at a moment of severe crisis in March 1980, when all the progressive civilians had left and immediately after the murder of the Christian Democratic attorney-general, Mario Zamora, by the newly prospering death squads. It was clear that the army and affiliated death squads had embarked on a policy of large-scale massa- c? re. Duarte provided the fig leaf and apologetics that the army needed for the second mata;nza. 41 We believe that Duarte never would have received U. S. support and protection, and could not have survived in El Salvador, unless he had made it dear that he was in basic accord with the aims of the U. S. administration and the Salvadoran army. From
IOZ MANUFACTURING CONSENT
1980 onward, Duarte always accepted fully the pursuit of a military solution and no compromise with "the subversives" (a phrase that Duarte uses continually. just as do the army and death-squad leaders). As Raymond Bonner points out,
The repression in 1980 reached a magnitude surpassed only by the [first} malanza and was far worse than anything imagined under General Romero. . . . By the end of the year the number [mur- dered] had reached at least 9,000. Every day mutilated bodies, missing arms or heads, were found: behind shopping centers; stuffed in burlap bags and left 00 dusty rural roads; hurled over cliffs into ravines. 42
And through all of this, Duarte not only provided the facade of "re- form," he regularly complimeoted the army for its Joyal service. In a letter published in the Miami Herald on November 9. 1981, Duarte wrote that
The armed forces are waging a heroic battle against a cruel and pitiless enemy supported by great resources of ideological aggres- sion. This goes parallel with armed aggression. . . . This would be one more prey in the conquest plan in the Central Ameri- can region that Moscow has designed to pursue. Immediately after that its greatest reward would be the North American na- tion. . . .
In brief, the Salvadoran public was never offered the option that the press itself acknowledged the voters craved.
In Guatemala. as in El Salvador, no parties of the left participated in the 1984 election for a constituent assembly, and only one crippled party made a tentative but wholly ineffectual foray in the 1985 presiden- tial election. 43 The main guerrilla movements were, of course, outside the electoral orbit. Their leaders would have been killed if ap- prehended, but they would not have participated anyway without a drastic alteration in basic social and electoral conditions. " Even a centrist party like the Christian Democrats had suffered scores of mur- ders in the years 1980-83, and the current president of Guatemala, the Christian Democrat Vinicio Cerezo, survived three known assassina- tion attempts. No seriously left party could have qualified in 1984-85 under the laws of "illicit association" mentioned earlier.
The peasant majority was not represented or spoken for by any candidate. The Guatemalan Human Rights Commission, an organiza-
I
LEGITUHZING VERSUS MEANINGLESS THIRD WORLD ELECTIONS 103
tion not able to function within Guatemala, has pointed out that na- tional political parties that speak for major groups like the working class or indigenous people "do not exist and . . . as a result, these sectors are institutionally excluded from the political system. "45 Americas Watch states that one of the civil-patrol system's functions is "to provide vigilance and control of the local population, preventing any form of independent political organization. "46 This exclusion of the peasantry from any political opportunity was reflected in two ways in the 1984-85 elections. One was that in registering for the election, only 3 percent of the electorate signed up as members of political parties. Another, more compelling, is that no candidate in the election urged land reform, although this was one of the two central issues in Guatemala (the other being unconstrained army murder, also not an issue in the election, given the understanding on all sides that the army will remain the ruling force, whoever gains office).
As with Duarte in ? 1 Salvador, the presence of Vinicio Cerezo as a candidate, and as the eventual winner in the 1985 election, raises the question of whether, despite the constraints on the left, Cerezo did not really offer a significant option to the voting public. Cerezo differen- tiated himself from his electoral rivals, especially toward the end of the campaign and the runoff, by expressing compassion for the masses and a determination to make changes in the human-rights picture and mass poverty. He occasionally mentioned the need for structural reform, although he was not specific and stressed that the first requirement was to reestablish civilian control. He was quite clear, however, that if he were elected, his power would be nominal at first and would have to be enlarged while he was in office:
The election will not bring automatic transfer of real power to the president. There will be a handover offormal power. What are my chances of consolidating that power? Fifty-fifty,47
During the election campaign, Cerezo never straightforwardly ad- dressed the question of land reform, and news reports in Guatemala suggested that he had promised the landowners' lobby that land reform was not on his agenda. 48 Similarly, he did not promise any legal action against those who had murdered thousands, nor did he say that he would dismantle the counterinsurgency state. There would seem to have been at least a tacit understanding between Cerezo and the mili- tary that he would protect them against prosecution and preserve their power and relative autonomy; in fact, he could not do otherwise and survive. 49 In the year and a half that has elapsed since he took office,
I04 M A NUF A CTURING CONSE"-T
Cerezo has made no meaningful move toward land reform, has sup- ported the army vigorously against any accounting, and has made no move to dismantle the civil patrols, the development poles, and other features of institutionalized terror. 50 The human-rights situation in Guatemala "remains terrible,"5I although improved (but partly because higher rates of killing are no longer deemed beneficial). The poor, for whom he expressed so much compassion during the electoral campaign, have suffered further losses in real income, as Cerezo's "reforms" have accommodated the demands of the army and oligarchy. He is on very poor terms with the Mutual Support Group. Thus, the postelection pattern shows that Cerezo, in part by prior agreement but more deci- sively by structural constraints, has been entirely unable to serve his mass constituency. In the 1984-85 elect;? :m, Cerezo gave the Guatema- lan people an opportunity to vote for a man of seeming goodwill and good intentions, but one unable to respond to democratic demands opposed by the real rulers of the state.
In Nicaragua, in 1984, the spectrum of candidates was much wider than in EI Salvador, Guatemala, or, for that matter, the United States. 52 The Conservative Democratic party and the Independent Liberal party both issued strong calls for respect for private property, reduced gov- ernment control of the economy, elimination of press and other con- trols, and a foreign policy of greater nonalignment and accommodation. Both were able to denounce the Sandinistas for the war and to call for depoliticization of the army and negotiations with the contras. Arturo Cruz, after lengthy negotiations with representatives of the govern- ment, chose not to run in the 1984 election. But this was a voluntary act of Cruz (albeit under heavy U. S. pressure),53 in contrast with the position of the left in El Salvador and Guatemala, and was not based
on physical threats to his person or limits on his access to the popu- lace. 54
The FSLN had a strong advantage over the opposition parties as the party in power, defending the country from foreign attack and having mobilized the population for their own projects of development. The LASA group felt that much of the incumbency advantage of the FSLN was characteristic of governments everywhere, and concluded:
It seems clear tha. t the FSLN took substantial advantage of its incumbent position and, in some ways, abused it. However, the abuses of incumbency do not appear to have been systematic; and neither the nature of the abuses n? )r their frequency was such as to cripple the opposition parties' ,,~mpaigns or to cast doubt on
LEGITIMIZING VERSUS MEANINGLESS THlRD WORLD ELECTIONS IOS
the fundamental validity of the electoral process. . . . Generally speaking, in this campaign the FSLN did little more to take ad- vantage of its incumbency than incumbent parties everywhere (including the United States) routinely do, and considerably less than ruling parties in other Latin American countries traditionally have done. 55
We would conclude that the ability of candidates to qualify and run, and the range of options, was substantially greater in Nicaragua than in El Salvador and Guatemala. Furthermore. as all major political groups of the left were off the ballot by threat of violence in the latter two cases. those elections fail to meet still another basic electoral condi. tion.
3. 2. 5. Absence of state terror and a ~limate of fear
During the years 1980-84 the death squads worked freely in ? 1 Salva- dor. in close coordination with tbe army and security forces. Tbe average rate of killings of civilians in the thirty months prior to the 1982 election was approximately seven hundred per month. Many of these victims were raped, tortured, and mutilated. All of this was done with complete impunity, and only the murder of four American women elicited-by dint of congressional pressure-any kind of legal action. Even William Doherty of the American Institute for Free Labor Devel- opment-a longtime supporter of U. S. policy in El Salvador-asserted before a congressional committee that there was nO system of justice operative in that country. while Leonel Gomez, a former land-reform official in E1 Salvador. told the same committee a bit later that state
terror had put the population in a state of <<fearful passivity. "56
In Guatemala, too, the endemic fear based on years of unconstrained and continuing army violence was a dominant fact of national life.
According to Americas Watch, writing in early 1985,
Torture, killings, and disappearances continue at an extraordinary rate, and millions of peasants remain under the strict scrutiny and control of the government through the use of civil patrols and "model villages! ' Guatemala remains, in short, a nation of prison- ers. 57
106 MANUFACTURING CONSENT ,
The law group described Guatemala in 1985 as "a country where the greater part of the people live in permanent fear. "s8
In the case of Nicaragua, we repeat the central fact that differentiates it from the U. S. client states: in 1984 its government was not murdering civilians. 59 The main fear of ordinary citizens in Nicaragua was of violence by the contras and the United States.
Our conclusion is that the fifth condition for a free election was met in Nicaragua, but not in EI Salvador and Guatemala. And our overall finding is that neither Et Salvador nor Guatemala met any of the five basic conditions of a free election, whereas Nicaragua met some of them well, others to a lesser extent.
3. 3. THE COERCION PACKAGES IN EL SALVADOR, GUATEMALA, AND NICARAGUA
As we noted, in the U. S. government's sponsored elections, voter turn- out is interpreted as public support for the election and its sponsors. In disapproved elections (here, Nicaragua), this frame is abandoned, and voter turnout is either ignored or declared meaningless because of limited options or coercive threats by the authorities.
But the question of coercive threats should clearly be raised in all cases where this is a potential problem. As we have just described, the elections in ? 1 Salva- dor were held under conditions of military rule where mass killings of "subversives" had taken place and a climate of fear had been estab- lished. I f the government then sponsors an election and the local mili- tary authorities urge people to vote, a significant part ofthe vote should be assumed to be a result of built-in coercion. A propaganda model would anticipate that the U. S. mass media make no such assumption, and they did not.
In El Salvador in 1982 and 1984, voting was also required by law. The law stipulated that failure to vote was to be penalized by a specific monetary assessment, and it also called on local authorities to check out whether voters did in fact vote. This could be done because at the time of voting one's identification card (ID, ddula) was stamped, acknowl- edging the casting of a vote. Anybody stopped by the army and police would have to show the ID card, which would quickly indicate whether the individual had carried out his or her patriotic duty. Just prior to the March 1982 election, Minister of Defense Garcia warned the popula- tion in the San Salvador newspapers that the failure to vote would be
LEGITIMIZI~G VERSUS MEANINGLESS THUD WORLD ELECTIONS 107
regarded as an act of treason. And in the 1984 election, "Advertising by the government and military prior to the elections stressed the obliga- tion to vote rather than the freedom to vote. "60 Given the climate of fear, the voting requirement, the ID stamp, the army warning, and the army record in handling "traitors," it is evident that the coercive ele- ment in generating turnout in Salvadoran elections has been large. This is supported by queries made by independent observers on the reasons why Salvadorans voted. 61
In Guatemala, as in ? 1 Salvador, voting was required by law; nonvot- ers were subject to a fine of five quetzales ($1. 25). Also, as in El Salvador, newspaper ads sponsored by the army assened that it was treasonous to fail to vote or to vote null or blank. 62 The law group reported that "many" people expressed fears that nonvoting would subject them to reprisals, and after the military threats in the week before the election there was "a widespread belief that failure to vote would be punishable by more than the five-quetzal fine stipulated by law. "63
In Nicaragua, while registration was obligatory, voting was not re- quired by law. Voter-registration cards presented on election day were retained by election officials, so that the failure to vote as evidenced by the lack of a validated voter credential could not be used as the basis of reprisals. 64 Most of the voters appeared to LASA observers to be voting under no coercive threat-they did not have to vote by law; they were urged to vote but not threatened with the designation of "traitors" for not voting; there were no obvious means of identifying nonvoters; and the government did not kill dissidents, in contrast to the normal practice in El Salvador and Guatemala.
In sum, Nicaragua did not have a potent coercion package at work to help get out the vote-as did the Salvadoran and Guatemalan gov- ernments.
3. 4. EL SALVADOR: HOW THE U. S. MEDIA TRANSFORMED A "DERANGED KILLING MACHINE" INTO THE
PROTECTOR OF AN INCIPIENT DEMOCRACY
In reporting on the 1982 Salvadoran election, the U. S. mass media closely followed the government agenda. The personalities of the can- didates, the long lines waiting to vote, alleged rebel disruption, and
L
lo8 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
"tumout" were heavily featured. 6s As Jack Spence pointed out, "every media outlet, particularly the networks, cast the election-day story in a framework of voting in the midst of extensive guerrilla violence at polling places. "66 Warren Hoge and Richard Meislin, of the New York Times, repeated day after day that the rebels were threatening disrup- tion, Hoge asserting that "The elections have taken on a significance beyond their outcome because leftist guerrillas mounted a campaign to disrupt them and discourage voters from going to the polls. "67 This is a precise statement of the government's propaganda frame. But Hoge and Meislin never once cited a rebel source vowing disruption, and nobody else did, either. On election day no voters were killed or polling stations attacked, and the general level of rebel military activity was below average. In short, the disruption claims were falsifications of both plans and election-day results, but as they fit the patriotic agenda they were given prominence, repeated frequently, and used to establish the
contest between the forces of good and evil. 68 At the election-day dose, Dan Rather exclaimed, "A triumph! A million people to the polls. " Rather did not regard it as a triumph that the Sandinistas got 700,000 people to the polls-a higher proportion of the population, and without a voting requirement. The propaganda frame of the government gave turnout high importance in the Salvadoran election but none in the Nicaraguan election, and Rather followed like a good lap dog.
Neither Rather nor any other media analyst on or before March 30, 1982, noted that voting was required by law in E1 Salvador, and nQt Qne mentioned the warning by the defense minister, General Guillermo Garcia, in the San Salvador newspapers that nonvoting was treaso- nous. 69 The basic parameters were entirely off the media agenda. The destruction of La CTonica and El Independiente and the murder of twenty-six journalists prior to the election were unmentioned in dis- cussing the election's quality and meaning. 70 The army and its allies had been killing civilians on a massive scale in ? 1 Salvador, for many months before (and into) March 1982. Would this not create a climate of fear and, in conjunction with a state of siege, somewhat encumber free debate and free choice? The point was rarely even hinted at in the mass media.
Could candidates run freely and campaign without fear of murder? Could the rebels qualify and run? After all, if it was a civil war, the rebels were clearly the "main opposition. " Again, the mass media played dumb. They pretended that this exclusion was not important, or that it represented a willful boycott by the rebels rather than a refusal based on conditions unfavorable to a (ree election and a blatantly
t<
LEGITIMIZING VERSUS MEANISGLESS THIRD WORLD ELECTIO:,,>'S 101}
stacked deCk. Neither the March 1981 death list nor the Gutierrez statement that the FDR would not be permitted to run were mentioned by the mass media in our sample. They never once suggested that the election plan was to create an electoral environment of extreme coer- cion and bias in which the rebels could not run, and then use this for the dramatic game of disruption and triumphant turnout. That the military agreed to the election because it couldn't lose was never sug- gested by these media.
The role of the army was summarized by Warren Hoge in the New York Times:
Is the military playing any role in the election? Members of the military are not allowed to vote, and the armed forces are pledged to protect voters from violence and to respect the outcome of the contest. 7 1
We may note that the army's mass killing of civilians and systematic destruction and demobilization of virtually all popular organizations in El Salvador over the preceding thirty months, which bears on what Secretary of State Shultz referred to as the "preliminary aspects that make an election mean something," is not part of the army's "role" for Hoge and the Times. Roge repeats the Salvadoran army's pledge, not only taking it at face value, hut never suggesting that it (and the election itself) was meaningless in a terror state where the "main opposition" was off the ballot and only the war parties were able to field candidates. In the propaganda framework, the security forces of client states "pro- tect elections";72 only those of enemy states interfere with the freedom of its citizens to vote without constraint.
As noted earlier, observers and reporters in El Salvador all agreed that the populace was most eager for an end to the war, and government propaganda even stressed that voting was an important vehicle to tbat end-the public was urged to substitute "ballots for bullets. " But no peace party was on the Salvadoran baUot. And after the election was over, the war went on, and the death squads continued to flourish. This is in accordance with the hypothesis that the real purpose of the elec- tion was to placate the home population of the United States and render them willing to fund more war and terror. It is a poor fit to the hypothe- sis that the people of EI Salvador had a free choice. An honest press would point up the failure of the election to substitute "ballots for bullets. " The mass media of the United States did nOt raise the issue.
Nor did the experience of 1982 and its aftermath affect the media's
110 M A lI;UF A CTURll'G CONSENT
willingness to follow the patriotic agenda once again in 1984. We will return to this below in a statistical comparison of the New York Times's coverage of the Salvadoran and Nicaraguan elections.
3. 5. "FIRST STEP: GUATEMALA OPTS FOR MODERATION""
The U. S. government was less deeply involved in the Guatemalan elections of 1984 and 1985 than it was in those held in El Salvador, but, as we saw in chapter 2, the Reagan administration went to great pains to put a favorable gloss on the murderous regimes of Lucas Garcia, Rios Monu, and Mejia Victores, and to attempt to reintegrate them fully into the free-world alliance. 74 It encouraged the 1984-85 elections, provided advisory and financial support for election management, and gave pub- lic-relations assistance and sent official observers to help put the elec- tion in a favorable light. There was little effort made to disguise the fact that the purpose of the election, from the standpoint of the Reagan administration and the ruling army, was to alter the international "image" of Guatemala in order to facilitate aid and loans.
With the administration supporting the new look, but without the intensity of commitment and propaganda backup brought to bear in El Salvador, and given the steady stream of reports of ongoing mass murder in Guatemala, a propaganda model would anticipate a media response that put the Guatemalan elections in a favorable light, but with qualifications. There was, in fact, far less coverage than of the Salvadoran election; what there was had a little more "balance," but the apologetic framework was still overwhelmingly dominant.
A telling manifestation of bias was the media's ready acceptance of the Guatemalan elections as meaningful, even though they were admit- tedly for image-malting, in a context of long-standing army rule and massacre, and despite new institutional arrangements in the country- side-the massive relocations of the population,. the "model villages," and the civil-defense patrols-that were, on their face, incompatible with a free election. In an enemy state where an election was held under comparable conditions, it would be designated a meaningless public- relations exercise. 75 In the case of Guatemala, however, the civil patrols and ongoing massacres were rarely mentioned, sources that addressed these matters were ignored, and the overall tone of the news was cautiously hopeful and optimistic. It was the consensus that the 1984
I
election for a constituent assembly was "encouraging" and an impor- tant first step, and that the 1985 presidential election <<ended [emphasis added] more than 30 years of military domination" (Newsweek, Jan. 17, 1986). Dan Rather, on CBS News, reported that Cerezo became Guatemala's "first civilian leader after thirty years of almost uninter- rupted military rule" (Dec. 9, 1985). This is ambiguous, but the implica- tion, directly asserted by Newsweek, is that Cerezo, not the army, rules. Julio Mendez Montenegro was a civilian president from 1966 to 1970, but he did not rule, and he was eventually discredited by the fact that he presided over a huge escalation of army violence. Given the earlier experience, the fact that the generals had made it clear that the civilian
government was "a project" of the military,76 and Cerezo's own ex- pressed reservations about his power, objective news reporting would have been careful about an alleged ending of military rule.
As in the case of EI Salvador, the murderous rule of the Guatemalan generals did not delegitimize them for the U. S. mass media nor suggest any possible justice to the rebel cause. Time noted (Feb. 27, 1984) that a leftist insurgency "poses a permanent challenge to the regime," but it did not inquire into the roots of this insurgency or suggest that its leaders constituted a "main opposition" whose ability to run would be an "acid test" of election integrity (as they pronounced in Nicaragua). Time also did not observe that the regime poses a permanent challenge to the survival of its population. The mass murders of the Guatemalan
state were even semi-justified by the unquestioned need to quell insur- gents-"Much ofthe killing," says Time, "is linked to Mejia's success against the insurgents. " The phrase "linked to" is an apologetic euphe- mism to obscure the fact that Mejia's "success" was based on the mass murder of men, women, and children in literally hundreds of destroyed villages. 17 Mejia has a "mixed record," with the mass murder offset by "improvements in some important areas" (the State Department, quoted by Time). Mejia, says Time, "won support because he has kept the promises he made after seizing power. " Time never explains how it determined that Mejia "won support," or from whom, other than the U. S. State Department. Was the press then free to speak out? Did a system of justice come into being?
In chapter 2 we summarized Americas Watch's demonstration that the Reagan administration made serial adjustments in its apologetics for each successive Guatemalan terrorist general, with a laggeti tacit ac- knowledgment that it had previously been lying. This has no influence whatsoever on Time's treatment of State Department pronouncements as authentic truth-the standard from which other claims may be eval- uated. Thus Time says that "Americas Watch, a controversial group
LEGITIMIZING VERSUS MEANINGLESS THIRD WORLD ELECTIONS III
II2 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
that is often accused of being too sympathetic to the left, called ~ Guatemala 'a nation of prisoners. ' " Time doesn't independently evalu-
ate the quality of sources-the State Department is unchallenged be-
cause it expounds the official and patriotic truth. Americas Watch is ~ denigrated (and only rarely cited, even with a dismissing put-down) because it challenges official propaganda. Pravda could hardly be more , subservient to state demands than Time in its coverage of demonstra-
tion elections. 78 _ The mass media's sourcing on the Guatemalan election was confined almost entirely to U. S. officials and official observers, the most promi-
nent Guatemalan political candidates, and generals. Spokespersons for
the insurgents-what in Nicaragua would be labeled the "main opposi- tion"-the smaller parties, spokespersons for popular organizations,
the churches, human-rights groups, and ordinary citizens, were essen-
tially ignored by the media. Time, Newsweek and CBS News almost
never talked to ordinary citizens or spokespersons for the insurgents. Stephen Kinzer, in the Times, had only one citation to a rebel source
in several dozen articles on Guatemala during the election periods, although on election day in 1984 he did speak with a number of ordinary citizens (who gave a much less optimistic view than Kinzer's usual
sources).
The restricted menu of media sources flows from and reinforces the
media's propensity to adopt a patriotic agenda. U. S. government offi- cials and observers are always optimistic and hopeful in their state- ments about sponsored elections. The leading contestant politicians are also moderately optimistic, as they have a good chance of acquiring at least nominal power. They do, however, express occasional doubts about whether the army will relinquish power. This allows the election drama to assume a slightly different character from that in EI Salvador, where it was the democratic army "protecting the election" versus the undemocratic rebels who refused to lay down their arms and partici- pate. In Guatemala, the frame was: Will the generals keep their promise to stay in the barracks? The triumph is that they do stay in the bar- racks-a civilian president takes office and now "rules. " The media then quickly drop the subject, so that whether the army really does relinquish power to the civilian leaders is never checked out (just as the "peace" sought by the populace in El Salvador was never considered in retrospect). In Poland, in January 1947, and Nicaragua, in 1984, and in enemy states generally, the focus was on the substance of power, and the extent to which that power shaped the electoral results in advance, as by limiting the ability of important constituencies to run for office and compete effectively. Not so for Guatemala.
LEGITIMIZING VERSUS MEANlllOGLESS THIRD WORLD ELECTIONS 1I3
If the mass media had enlarged their sources, fundamental condi- tions would have assumed greater prominence. For example, before both the July I, 1984, and December 1985 elections in Guatemala, the Guatemala Bishops' Conference issued pastoral statements that sug- gested in no uncertain terms and with detailed arguments that condi- tions in the country were incompatible with a free election. Its pastoral letter ofJune 8, 1984, focused on the civil-defense patrols as "suscepti- ble to manipulation," and it discussed the disappearances, "insatiable corruption," and the fact that sociopolitical structures are "not capable of promoting the welfare of the whole society. "79 Stephen Kinzer men- tioned this report in a Times news article of July 22, 1984, but his reference is made afler the election of JUly I, and Kinzer did not use it to frame the discussion of electoral conditions and to arrive at an assessment of the quality of the election. Furthermore, his summary of the twenty-seven-page report, that it "denounced torture, electoral
fraud, concentration of wealth and 'massacres of entire families,''' ignores the quite specific critique of the conditions bearing on an elec- tion. Time mentioned this pastoral letter briefly; Newsweek and CBS News never mentioned it.
In connection with the 1985 election, the bishops put forth another powerful statement, once again questioning whether an election can be meaningful in "a situation close to slavery and desperation. "80 They point out that the civil-defense patrols, the "ideology of national secu- rity," and hunger and impoverishment are not conducive to serious elections:
In order that the longed-for results be obtained, there must be not only the freedom at the moment of casting one's vote, but also a whole series of particular social, political and economic conditions which are, unfortunately, not happening in Guatemala. In effect there still persist in Guatemala harsh violence, lack of respect for human rights and the breaking of basic laws. It is a fact that any citizen pressured, terrorized or threatened is not fully able to exercise his/her right to vote or to be elected conscientiously.
This letter was not mentioned in the major media or anywhere else, to our knowledge, although the bishops are conservative, credible, and one of the few organized bodies in Guatemala not crushed by state terror.
There were other dissenting voices in Guatemala-politicians of the lesser parties, union officials, human-rights groups, lawyers, and ju- rists-who spoke out occasionally on the limits to free electoral condi-
II4 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
tions in Guatemala. And there were events of note that threw a power- fullight on the subject. Most of these were blacked out in the U. S. mass media. For example,81 on July 4. 1984, the Guatemalan Human, Rights Commission issued a statement in Mexico saying that the election's meaning should be viewed in the context of three important facts: namely, that the requirements for a meaningful election stipulated by the United Nations in a March 14 statement had not been met; that the left had been excluded from participation in the election; and that 115 persons had been murdered or disappeared in the thirty days prior to the election ofJuly I. This statement, and the facts cited by the commis- sion, were ignored in the U. S. press.
Consider also the following facts: On May 3, General Oscar Mejia Victores removed Ricardo Sagastume Vidaure from his position as president of the judiciary and the supreme court. On April II, the judiciary had issued writs of habeas corpus on behalf of 157 kidnapped individuals, and Sagastume had protested to Mejia Victores over the difficulty in proceeding against military abuses. On May 4, Acisco Valladares Molina, head of the Populist party, noted that Sagastume had been "fired like a simple subordinate. " On May 8, a communique from the Guatemalan bar association stated that in Guatemala there is no rule of law, as demonstrated by the constant violation of human rights and uncontrolled exercise of arbitrary power. By May 8, at least sixteen judicary officials, including supreme court and court of appeals magistrates, had resigned in protest at Sagustume's removal.
Stephen Kinzer never discussed any of these events, or their mean- ing, in the Times, nor did any of his colleagues elsewhere in the mass media. This is in accord with our hypothesis that in elections held in client states, fundamental electoral conditions, such as the presence or absence of the rule of law, are off the agenda. The point applies to other relevant structural conditions. Thus, while Kinzer occasionally men- tioned the civil-defense patrols, he never described them and their operations in any detail or tied them in with other institutional struc- tures of control, and he failed to relate them in a systematic way to army power. The numerous reports on these coercive institutions and their terrorist role by Amnesty International, Americas Watch, and the Brit- ish Parliamentary Human Rights Group were almost never cited by Kinzer in providing facts relevant to the Guatemalan elections. Al- though the constituent assembly elected in 1984 produced a new consti- tution, K. inzer never once discussed the nature of this instrument, which validated the special army role and structural constraints on freedom of the press.
LEGITIMIZING VERSUS MEANINGLESS THIRD WORLD ELECTIONS 115
Kinzer was reporting news in a way that fit the Times's editorial position and the U. S. government agenda. The Times editorial frame was that "The military, in power for most of 31 years, has honored its promise to permit the free election of a civilian president. "82 Kinzer's news articles of the same period convey the same message--one oft. hem is entitled "After 30 Years Democracy Gets a Chance in Guatemala" (Nov. 10, 1985)-whic. h accurately summarizes the contents, although they contain an undercurrent of reserved final judgment. That central message was false, however, if the basic conditions of a free election were not met, if the army's power remained unimpaired, and if these were confirmed in a written constitution that allows the army freedom from the rule of law and a license to kill without constraint from the nominal "democracy. "83 Kinzer could only convey this false message by ignoring the Sagastume case, the institutional arrangements of the counterinsurgency state, the ongoing murders, and the omnipresent fear-i. e. , the basic conditions of a free election-and by laying stress instead on expressions of hope, orderliness of the election processes, and army promises-i. e. , the government's propaganda agenda in a demonstration election.
In what must be one of the low points of his journalistic career, in an article of December 27, 1985 ("Guatemala Vote Heartens Nicaragua Parties"), Kinzer even implies that the Guatemala election establishes an electoral model for Nicaragua. He describes a Cerezo visit to Nicara- gua, in which Kinzer features the encouragement Cerezo gives to the dissident parties that perhaps the power of the Sandinistas can be broken by patience (implying that Cerezo had broken the power of the army in Guatemala and was in full command). The article closes with a quote from an opposition figure: "Ortega is now the last President in Central America who wears a military uniform, and the contrast is going to be evident. " Nowhere in the article does Kinzer point out that army power can not be read from whether the head of state wears a uniform, or that the rule of the army in Guatemala has not yet been overcome. He does not refer to the fact that the Guatemalan army has killed tens of thousands of ordinary civilians. Nor does he show any recognition of the fact that the election held in Nicaragua was much
more open than that held in Guatemala. On the contrary, this is a fact that the media, including the New York Times, explicitly and consis- tently deny, in accordance with state imperatives.
As in the case of El Salvador, the U. S. mass media never suggested that the exclusion of the Guatemalan insurgent groups rendered the Guatemalan election meaningless. Kinzer several times mentioned with
u6 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
extreme brevity that the left was off the ballot, but he never asked anybody to discuss the meaning of this in terms of the options available to the various segments of society. As coauthor of an important book on this topic, Kinzer is well aware of the facts. 84 The vast majority of Guatemalans are very poor, and they have been entirely excluded from political participation or representation since 1954. The insurgency grew out of the parlous condition and exploitation of that mass, and the absence of any possibility of a democratic process to alleviate injustice and misery. The ruling army had allowed only parties to run and civilians to hold office who agreed, tacitly or explicitly, to keep off the policy agenda all maners of central concern to the impoverished major- ity. There is no way to measure the strength of popular support for the insurgents, but in light of the fact that they espouse programs well oriented to the interests of the general population and have been able to maintain an insurgency without significant external aid, and that the army response has been a war against virtually the entire rural popula-
tion, the rebel claim to be a "main opposition" would appear to be stronger than that of Arturo Cruz and his upper-class Nicaraguan associates. And if the rebels---or any candidates who would threaten the army and oligarchy in ways appealing to the majority---eannot qualify in a Guatemalan election, is it not essentially fraudulent? This was strongly suggested in both 1984 and 1985 by the Guatemalan Bishops' Conference, but this respectable source, in contrast with Arturo Cruz and Robert Leiken, is blacked out. As with EI Salvador, the election was not evaluated, either in advance or in retrospect, on the basis of whether or not the fundamental requirements of a free election were met. For the U. S. government, the insurgents were not a main opposition, Guatemalan state terror was merely a public-relations inconvenience, and the elections were fair. The mass media's treatment of the Guatemalan election reflected well this government propaganda agenda.
3.
