No More Learning

A propaganda model would anticipate mass-media support of the state perspective and agenda. That is, the favored elections will be found to legitimize, no matter what the facts; the disfavored election will be found deficient, farcical, and failing to legitimize-again, irre- spective of facts. What makes this another strong test of a propaganda model is that the Salvadoran and Guatemalan elections of 1982 and
1984-85 were held under conditions of severe, ongoing state terror against the civilian population, whereas in Nicaragua this was not the case. To find the former elections legitimizing and the Nicaraguan election a farce, the media would have had to use different standards of evaluation in the two sets of cases, and, more specifically) it would have been necessary for them to avoid discussing state terror and other basic electoral conditions in the Salvadoran and Guatemalan elections. As we will see, the media fulfilled these requirements and met the needs of the state to a remarkable degree.
In order to demonstrate the applicability of a propaganda model in these cases, we will first describe the eJecrjon-propaganda framework that the U. S. government tried to foist on the media; we will then review the basic electoral conditions under which elections were held in the three countries; and finally, we will examine how the U. S. mass media treated each of the three elections.
3. 1. ELECTION-PROPAGANDA FRAMEWORKS
The U. S. government has employed a number of devices in its spon- sored elections to put them in a favorable light_ It has also had an identifiable agenda of issues that it wants stressed, as well as others it wants ignored or downplayed. Central to demonstration-election man? agement has been the manipulation of symbols and agenda to give the favored election a positive image. The sponsor government tries to associate the election with the happy word "democracy" and the mili- tary regime it backs with support of the elections (and hence democ- racy). It emphasizes what a wonderful thing it is to be able to hold any election at all under conditions of internal conflict, and it makes it
LEGITIMIZllI:G VERSUS MEA:. <ISGLESS THIRD WORLD ELECTIONS 89
appear a moral triumph that the army has agreed to support the election (albeit reluctantly) and abide by its results.
The refusal of the rebel opposition to participate in the election is portrayed as a rejection of democracy and proof of its antidemocratic tendencies, although the very plan of the election involves the rebels' exclusion from the ballot. 2 The sponsor government also seizes upon any rebel statements urging nonparticipation or threatening to disrupt the election. These are used to transform the election into a dramatic struggle between, on the one side, the "born-again" democratic army and people struggling to vote for "peace," and, on the other, the rebels opposing democracy, peace, and the right to vote. Thus the dramatic denouement of the election is voter turnout, which measures the ability of the forces of democracy and peace (the army) to overcome rebel threats.
Official observers are dispatched to the election scene to assure its public-relations success. Nominally, their role is to see that the election is "fair. " Their real function, however, is to provide the appearance of fairness by focusing on the government's agenda and by channeling press attention to a reliable source. 3 They testify to fairness on the basis of long lines, smiling faces, no beatings in their presence, and the assurances and enthusiasm of U. S. and client-state officials. 4 But these superficialities are entirely consistent with a staged fraud. Fairness depends on fundamental conditions established in advance, which are virtually impossible to ascertain under the brief, guided-tour conditions
of official observers. Furthermore, official observers in sponsored elec- tions rarely ask the relevant questions. 5 They are able to perform their public-relations function because the government chooses observers who are reliable supporters of its aims and publicizes their role, and the press gives them respectful anention. 6
"Off the agenda" for the government in its own sponsored elections are all of the basic parameters that make an election meaningful or meaningless prior to the election-day proceedings. These include: (I) freedom of speech and assembly; (2) freedom of the press; (3) freedom to organize and maintain intermediate economic, social, and political groups (unions, peasant organizations, political clubs, student and teacher associations, etc. ); (4) freedom to form political parties, orga- nize members, put forward candidates, and campaign without fear of extreme violence; and (5) the absence of state terror and a climate of fear among the public. Also off the agenda is the election-day "coercion package" that may explain turnout in terms other than devotion to the army and its plans, including any legal requirement to vote, and explicit or implicit threats for not voting. Other issues that must be downplayed
90 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
in conforming to the government propaganda format are the U. S. gov- ernment's role in organizing and funding the election, the internal propaganda campaign waged to get out the vote, outright fraud, and the constraints on and threats to journalists covering the election.
Another jssue off the government agenda js the purpose of the elec- tion. If its role is to influence the home population, spelling this out might arouse suspicions concerning its authenticity. In the case of the Vietnam election of 1967 and the EI Salvador elections of 1982 and 1984, the purpose of the elections was not merely to placate the home public but also to mislead them on the ends sought. In both instances it was intimated that an election would contribute to a peaceable resolution to the conflict, whereas the intent was to clear the ground for intensified warfare. Nobody who proposed a peace option could appear as a seri- ous candidate in Vietnam in 1967,7 and as we describe below, there was no peace candidate at all in El Salvador in either 1982 or 1984, although the polls and reporters kept saying that peace was the primary concern of the electorate. This highlights both the fraudulence of these elections and the urgency that the intentions of the sponsor be kept under wraps.
In elections held in disfavored or enemy states, the U. S. government agenda is turned upside down. Elections are no longer equated with democracy, and U. S. officials no longer marvel at the election being held under adverse conditions. They do not commend the army for supporting the election and agreeing to abide by the results. On the contrary, the leverage the dominant party obtains by control of and support by the army is put forward in this case as compromising the integrity of the election. Rebel disruption is no longer proof that the opposition rejects democracy, and turnout is no longer the dramatic denouement of the struggle between a democratic army and its rebel opposition. Now the stress is on the hidden motives of the sponsors of the election, who are trying to legitimize themselves by this tricky device of a so-called election.
Most important, the agenda of factors relevant to appraising an election is altered. From the stress on the superficial-long lines and smiling faces of voters, the simple mechanics of election-day balloting, and the personalities of the candidates-attention is now shifted to the basic parameters that were off the agenda in the sponsored election. As noted by Secretary of State Shultz, "The important thing is that if there is to be an electoral process, it be observed not only at the moment when people vote, but in all the preliminary aspects that make an election meaningful. " Spelling this out further, Shultz mentioned explicitly that for elections to be meaningful, "rival political groups" must be allowed "to form themselves and have access to people, to have the right of
,
LEGITIMIZING VERSUS MEANINGLESS THIRD WORLD ELECTIO:-;S 91
assembly, to have access to the media. "8 These remarks were made apropos of the 1984 Nicaraguan election. No congresspersons or media commentators raised any question about whether these criteria should perhaps be applied to the Salvadoran or Guatemalan ejections sched- uled during the same year.
In brief, the government used a well-nigh perfect system of Orwel- lian doublethink: forgetting a criterion "that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, . _. draw[ing] it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed. "9 It even acknowledges this fact: a senior U. S. official told members of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) observing the Nicaraguan election:
The United States is not obliged to apply the same standard of judgment to a country whose government is avowedly hostile to the U. s. as for a country like El Salvador, where it is not. These people [the Sandinistas] could bring about a situation in Central America which could pose a threat to U. S. security. That allows us to change our yardstick. to
But while a government may employ a blatant double standard, media which adhere to minimal standards of objectivity and are not them- selves part of a propaganda system would apply a single standard. Did the mass media of the United States follow a single standard in dealing with the elections in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, or did they follow their government's agenda in order to put the Salvadoran and Guatemalan elections in a favorable light and to denigrate the one held in Nicaragua?
3. 2. BASIC ELECTORAL CONDITIONS IN EL SALVADOR, GUATEMALA, AND NICARAGUA, 1982-85
All three of these countries, in which elections were held in the years 1982-85, were in the midst of serious conflict: Nicaragua was being subjected to regular border incursions by the U. S. -organized and sup- plied contras. ? 1 Salvador was in the midst of a combination civil conflict and externally (U. S. ) organized and funded counterinsurgency war. Guatemala, as we noted earlier, had evolved into a counterinsur-
92 MASUFACTURING CONSENT
gency state, with permanent warfare to keep the majority of Indians and other peasants in their place, and violent repression was structured into the heart of the political system.
Despite the common feature of ongoing conflict, however, electoral conditions were far more favorable in Nicaragua than in El Salvador and Guatemala, for several reasons. First, and crucially important, in the latter countries, at the time of the elections the army was still engaged in mass slaughter ofthe civilian population, with the toll in the tens of thousands in each country and the killing often carried out with extreme sadism. Nothing remotely similar was true in Nicaragua. These facts, which are not controversial among people with a minimal concern for reality, immediately establish a fundamental distinction with regard to the electoral climate. In countries that are being subject to the terror of a rampaging murder machine, supported or run by a foreign power, electoral conditions are fatally compromised in advance, a point that the media would recognize at once if we were considering the sphere of influence of some official enemy. ll
A further-and related-distinction was that the ruling Sandinista government was a popular government, which strove to serve majority needs and could therefore afford to allow greater freedom ofspeech and organization. The LASA report on the Nicaraguan election notes that their program "implies redistribution of access to wealth and public services. The state will use its power to guarantee fulfillment of the basic needs of the majority population. " The "logic of the majority," the report continues, also implies the involvement of "very large num- bers of people in the decisions that affect their lives. "12 Qualified ob- servers conclude that the Nicaraguan government pursued this logic, although this fact is excluded from the free press. After citing the World Bank's observation that "Governrnents . . . vary greatly in the commitment of their political leadership to improving the condition of the people and encouraging their active participation in the develop- ment process," Dianna Melrose, of the charitable development agency Oxfam, states that "From Oxfam's experience of working in seventy-six developing countries, Nicaragua was to prove exceptional in the
strength of that Government commitment. "13 The Salvadoran and Guatemalan governments, by contrast, were ruled by elites that had been struggling desperately for decades to avoid the very kinds of reforms the Sandinistas were implementing. Extreme repression was the longstanding method of control of the majority in EI Salvador and Guatemala, with vigorous and unceasing U. S. support. The aim of this repression was to keep the populace apathetic and to destroy popular organizations that might lay the basis for meaningful democracy. The
LEGITlMIZl~G VERSUS MEANINGLESS THIRD WORLD ELECTIONS 93
Sandinistas were engaged in mobilizing the majority and involving them in political life, which they could afford to do because their programs were intended to serve the general population.
A third factor affecting electoral conditions was that in El Salvador and Guatemala the conflict was internal, and violence against the ma- jority was integral to the struggle. In Nicaragua, the conflict was one involving an externally sponsored aggression that had very limited internal support. The Sandinistas could appeal to nationalist senti- ments, easily mobilized against Yankee-organized terrorism. The Sal- vadoran and Guatemalan governments could hardly do the same-the Salvadoran government especially had to contend with a negative na- tionalist reaction to obvious foreign (i. e. , U. S. ) domination and manipu- lation of its affairs, a fact that reached the level of absurdity when Duarte, visiting Washington in the fall of 1987, made himself an object of ridicule throughout Latin America by promptly kissing the American flag. While the Sandinistas did increasingly crack down on internal supporters of the contras as the conflict intensified, by the standards the United States usually applies to this region dissenters were dealt with remarkably benignly in Nicaragua. 14 In El Salvador and Guatemala, the ruling elites could not afford such toleration, and repression by large- scale terror had long been institutionalized in these states.
A fourth factor making for a more benign electoral environment in Nicaragua, paradoxically, was U. S. hostility and the power ofits propa- ganda machine. Every arrest or act of harassment in Nicaragua was publicized and transformed into evidence of the sinister quality of the Sandinista government in the free press of the United States. Mean- while, as we described in chapter 2, the Guatemalan and Salvadoran regimes could indulge in torture, rape, mutilation, and murder on a daily and massive basis without invoking remotely proportional atten- tion, indignation, or inferences about the quality of these regimes. In the context, the Nicaraguan government was under intense pressure to toe the mark, whereas the U. S. satellites were free to murder at will without serious political cost.
Let us examine briefly how El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua compared in the individual categories of conditions of a free election, before we turn to the media treatment of these issues.
3. 2. 1. Free speech and assembly.
In El Salvador, the right to free speech and free assembly was legally suspended under a state-of-siege order of March 7, 1980. Decree No.
94 MANUPACTURI~G CONSENT
507 of December 3, 1980, essentially destroyed the judicial system, permitting the armed forces to hold citizens without charge or evidence for 180 days. Under these rulings, in the thirty months before the March 198~ election, and prior to the 1984 elections, many thousands of civil- ians were seized, imprisoned, tortured, raped, and murdered outside of legal processes for alleged "subversive" actions and thoughts. The state of siege was lifted in early 1982 solely for the six parties contesting the election, and it was lifted entirely ten days before the election for all Salvadorans-although, unfortunately, the citizenry was not informed of this fact until after the election was over and state-of-siege condi- tions were reimposed. IS The practice of exposing mutilated bodies for the edification of the citizenry became institutionalized in the early 1980s in EI Salvador. We described in chapter 2 the difficulty the U. S. government had in getting underlings jailed, tried, and convicted for the murder offour American citizens, even under intense U. S. pressure. The people ofEl Salvador had no protection whatsoever from the state terrorists, apart from that afforded by the guerrilla army in the regions under their control. The threat of extreme violence by the state against dissident speech was acute in El Salvador in 1982 and 1984, and was incompatible with a free election.
In Guatemala, similarly, during 1984 and 1985, and for many years before, the actions of the armed forces against alleged subversives was entirely outside the rule of law. Thousands were seized, tortured, and killed without warrant and without any individual right to hearing or trial. As in EI Salvador, mutilation and exposure of the tortured bodies became commonplace in the late 1970S and the 1980s. 16 The courts were dominated by the military, as the latter would simply not execute or obey a court order of which they disapproved, and the jUdges were not inclined to challenge the military for reasons of dependency or fear. Even Viscount Colville of Culross, the special rapporteur of the UN General Assembly who has been a notorious apologist for the Guatema- lan regime, after pointing out that over eighty members of the judiciary, court staff, and legal profession had been murdered in the early 1980s and that many others were threatened, says that "Such events make their mark and cannot quickly be mitigated. "17 Two illustrations of the lack of court autonomy may be noted here: in May 1983, Ricardo Sagastume Vidaure, then president of the supreme COUrt, was simply removed by military order for attempting to bring military personnel under the jurisdiction of the legal system. IS On July 19, 1984, Colonel Djalmi Dominguez, head of public relations for the army, told the newspaper Prensa Libre that the army wouldn't tolerate its members being taken to court on any chargesY~
LEGITIMIZING VERSUS MEA:';INGLESS THIRD WORLD ELECTlO:-lS 95
In the early 1980s, following the mass killings and village destruction of 1980-83, vast numbers of peasants were resettled in "model villages" and other places under army control, and over 800,000 males were made obligatory members of civil patrols with military functions under close army surveillance. According to the British parliamentary group that visited Guatemala in 1984, "The civilian patrol system is imple- mented by terror, and designed also to sow terror. . . . People who do anything out of the ordinary come under immediate suspicion and are taken by the patrols to the army's desracamienro. Interrogation will be done by the army, but the killing of murdered suspects [is] often by the civilian patrols. "2Q Bishops Taylor and O'Brien, representing the Roman Catholic Bishops' Conferences of Scotland and England-Wales respectively, reponed after their visit to Guatemala in 1984 that
The civilian population is under almost total control by a heavy army and police presence throughout the country, which we were able to observe. There is also a nationwide network ofcivil defense patrols, military commissioners and informers, and <<model vil- lages" serving in some cases as internment camps for the Indian population from the areas of conflict. Much of Guatemala resem- bles a country under military occupation. One of our informants summed up the situation by saying that the military had estab- lished a system of "structural control. "21
The InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights, following an on- site visit in May 1985, also found that freedom of speech and assembly did not exist in Guatemala:
The right of assembly and freedom of association, considered in Articles 15 and 16 of the American Convention, are also restricted and curtailed, because existing security measures in the Develop- ment Poles and the strict supervision of the Civil Defense Patrols inhibit residents from taking part in any social, ideological. cultu- ral or other assemblies or associations. All such meetings, when they do occur, are subject to surveillance, supervision and control by the authorities, so they do not enjoy the freedom implied by such rights. 22
Public demonstrations were permissible in Guatemala during the 1984-85 elections, with three days' advance notice and approval of the military authorities. In the Guatemalan context, however, this grant of rights was not meaningful. The delegation of the International Human
96 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
Rights Law Group and the Washington Office on Latin America noted that whatever the election guarantees,
the military and civil defense patrols and the climate of fear also made it difficult for many Guatemalans to organize and assemble. One local observer said that years of terror and oppression against local organizations had demobilized the whole rural population: "Four CUC [peasant league] members were killed in this village alone. Now it would be very difficult to organize any kind of group. " Civil patrols, police and army checkpoints on highways, and the need for travel permits for residents of the model villages impeded free movement. In the rural areas the civil patrols dis- couraged gatherings because people feared being reported. 23
It was noted by many observers of the Guatemalan elections that although the big issues in that country were land distribution and reform and human rights, no political candidates discussed or ad- vocated either land reform, or restructuring the military and forcing an accounting of tens of thousands of "disappearances. " One Christian Democratic adviser explained to the law group that "We Christian Democrats haven't raised such issues because this isn't the moment to start a confrontation with either the army or the private sector. "24
In short, despite the "momentary improvement in the conditions of free speech" that occurred during the election campaign, Guatemala did not meet the first condition ofa free election. The rural masses were under army discipline and traumatized by mass killings and the absence of any vestige of rule of law, and the candidates were unable to raise openly the fundamental issues of the society.
Free speech and rights of assembly were constrained in Nicaragua in 1984 by social pressures and threats and by a state of siege that had been terminated some six months prior to the November 1984 election. Very important differences existed, however, between the Nicaraguan constraints and those prevailing in El Salvador and Guatemala. Most important, in Nicaragua the army and police did not regularly seize alleged subversives, and torture and murder them. Mutilated bodies have not been put on public display as a part of the system of public education. What the law group called the "constant, overt political terror" in Guatemala, based on "numerous documented massacres of whole villages," and what the former Salvadoran official Leonel Gomez called the state of "fearful passivity" prevalent in EI Salvador, did not apply to Nicaragua. In Nicaragua, in 1984, dissidents were able to speak
LEGITIMIZING VERSUS MEANI:-IGLESS THiRD WORLD ELECTIONS 97
freely without fear of murder, and the LASA group noted that "Every member of our delegation was approached at least once by an irate citizen as we walked around Managua and other cities. Several of these encounters turned into hea:ted arguments between the individual who had approached us and passers-by who joined the discussion. . . . These people did not feel intimidated. "25
Freedom of assembly in Nicaragua was somewhat limited by harass- ment, but, once again, it was not ruled out by state terror, as was the case in EI Salvador and Guatemala. The LASA delegation examined in detail the charges of Sandinista harassment of opposition-group meetings and found them largely unfounded, concluding that the con- testing parties "were able to hold the vast majority of their rallies unimpeded by pro~FSLN demonstrations. . . . "26
Our conclusion is that the first basic condition of a free election was- partially met in Nicaragua, but was not met at all in El Salvador and Guatemala.
3. 2. 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.
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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.