No More Learning

65. Bonner, Weakness and Deceit, p. 80.
66. Larry Rohter, "Salvador Defense Lawyer Charges Cover-Up in Slaying of
U. S. Nuns," New York Times, May 6, 1985.
67. In the same month that Hinton was asserting with assurance that the low-level guardsmen were acting on their own, internal State Department memos were stating that "Reading the documents provoked several questions which we think should have occurred to an investigator whose real aim was to determine who committed the crime" (quoted in Update, p. 31).
68. Quoted in Update, pp. 30-31.
69. On the Tyler investigation, see Bonner, Weakness and Deceit, pp. 78-80. 70. Stephen Kinzer, "Ex-Aide in Salvador Accuses Colleagues on Death Squads," New York Times, March 3, 1984?
71. Carrigan, Salvador Witness, p. 265.
72. See Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Biller Fruit (New York: Doubleday, 1982), pp. 32-47, 54-63.
73. Virtually all independent observers were of the view that land reform was also highly desirable for both equity and efficiency. See, especially, Jose M. Aybar de Soto, Dependency and Intervention: The Case of Guatemala in I954 (Boulder: Westview, 1978), chapter 6.
74. Ibid. See also Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982).
75. See Blanche Wiesen Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower (New York: Dou- bleday, 1981), p. 222.
76. Piero Gleijeses, "Guatemala: Crisis and Response," in Richard B. Fagen and Olga Pellicer, The Future of Central America: Policy Choices for the U. S. and Mexico (Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 1983), p. 188.
77. Ibid. , pp. 191-92.
78. Ibid. , p. 192.
79. U. S. officials have often pressed for purely formal democratic reforms and reductions in rates of murder, but they have consistently supported and helped organize theframework that eroded the democratic reforms and increased rates of murder. In Guatemala (and elsewhere), the reasons for the regular backing of antidemocratic institutions have been the fear of the left and the chronic hostility of U. S. officials and businessmen to popular organizations (unions, peasant organizations, mass political parties), for both economic and political reasons. Thus the periodic support for liberalforms has been rendered nuga- tory by the systematic bolstering up of institutions that regularly undermine the substance of liberalism. As Lars Schoultz points out, the function of "mili- tary authoritarianism," beginning with the U. S. -backed Brazilian coup of1964 and widely prevalent in Latin America and elsewhere within the U. S. sphere of influence, has been "to destroy permanently a perceived threat to the existing structure of socioeconomic privilege by eliminating the participation of the numerical majority, . . . " (Human Rights and United States Policy toward
Latin America [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981], p. 7). We may let them "participate," however, with elections held after extended periods of military pacification and the dismantling of popular organizations. See chap- ter 3.
80. See "Counterrevolution and the 'Shakedown States,' " in Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism (Boston: South End Press, 1979), pp. 61-66.
81. From 1977, Guatemala turned for aid to Israel, which has provided similar services regularly for the U. S. government. For details, see Bishara Bahbah, Israel and Latin America: The Military Connection (New York: St. Martin's, 1986); Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, The Israeli Connection (New York: Pantheon, 1987); and Jane Hunter, Israeli Foreign Policy (Boston: South End Press, 1987). On the continued flow of arms from the United States to Guatemala during the Carter years, see Lars Schoultz, "Guatemala," in Martin Diskin, ed. , Trouble in our Backyard (New York: Pantheon, 1983), pp. 187ff.
82. Piero Gleijeses estimates that "the Guatemalan army has killed close to 100,000" since 1979 ("The Reagan Doctrine and Latin America," Current History [December 1986]).
83. See, for example, Amnesty International, Guatemala: A Government Pro- gram of Political Murder (London: AI, 1981); Parliamentary Human Rights Group, "Bitter and Cruel . . . ," Report of a Mission to Guatemala by the
354 NOTES TO PAGES 73-80
NOTES TO PAGES 81-89 355
British Parliamentary Human Rights Group, October 1984; Americas Watch, Civil Patrols in Guatemala (New York: AW, 1986).
84. Amnesty International, Guatemala: Massive Extrajudicial Executions in Rural Areas under the Government of General Efrain R? os Monu, October II, 1982.
8S. According to State Department testimony ofJuly 20, 1981, "We need to try a new, constructive policy approach to Guatemala . . . " (quoted in Americas Watch, Guatemala Revisited: How the Reagan Administration Finds "Improve- ments" in Human Rights in Guatemala [New York: AW, 1985], p. 4).
86. Quoted in Americas Watch, Guatemala Revisited, p. S.
87. See Amnesty International, Guatemala: A Government Program of Political Murder, p. 8.
88. Americas Watch, Guatemala Revisited, p. 6.
89. State Department 1984 Human Rights Country Report, quoted in Ameri- cas Watch, Guatemala Revisited, p. IS.
90. Guatemala: A Government Program of Political Murder, p. S.
91. While this is true almost without exception for news articles, there were perhaps a dozen Op-Ed columns in the New York Times and the Washington Post, and some letters, in the period 1980-86, that criticized Guatemalan state terrorism; some of these were harshly critical of U. S. policy.
92. A few of the opinion pieces cited in the previous note did discuss the U. S. role.
93. "Requiem for a Missionary," August 10, 1981.
94. The documents include the following four put out by Amnesty Interna- tional: Guatemala: A Government Program of Political Murder, February 1981; "Disappearances": A Workbook, 1981; Guatemala: Massive Extrajudicial Execu- tions in Rural Areas under the Government of General Efrain Rios Manu, Oc- tober 1982; "Disappearances" in Guatemala under the Government of General Oscar Humberto Mej? a V? ctores, March 1985. We also included six studies by Americas Watch: Human Rights in Guatemala: No Neutrals Allowed, Novem- ber 1982; Guatemala Revisited: How the Reagan Administration Finds "Im- provements" in Human Rights in Guatemala, September 1985; Liule Hope: Human Rights in Guatemala, January I984-January I98S, February 1985; Guatemala: The Group for Mutual Support, 1985; Civil Patrols in Guatemala, August 1986; Human Rights in Guatemala during President Cerezo's First Year, 1987.
9S. This letter is reproduced in Americas Watch, Human Rights in Guatem. ala: No Neutrals Allowed, November 1982.
96. For a full discussion of the last of these murders, that of Marianela Garcia Villas, on March IS, 1983, see Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, Demon- stration Elections: U. S. -Staged Elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El Salvador (Boston: South End Press, 1984), pp. x-xi.
97. Quoted in Americas Watch, Guatemala: The Group for Mutual Support,. I984-I98S, p. 2 (hereafter, AW, Mutual Support).
98. Council on Hemispheric Affairs, News and Analysis, April 26, 1986, p. 222. 99. McClintock, American Connection, vol. 2, p. 83.
100. AW, Mutual Support, p. 3.
101. "Bitter and Cruel," British Parliamentary Human Rights Group, October 1984.
102. AW, Mutual Support, p. 8.
103. Ibid. , p. 7.
104. An open letter of November 15, 1984, quoted in AW, Mutual Support,
P? 24?
lOS. AW, Mutual Support, pp. 24-2S.
106. Ibid. , p. 36. This was, of course, a complete fabrication. What Mejia
Victores is referring to is an investigative body that he established, manned
and that, predictably, gave the government a clean bill of health.
107. Ibid. , p. 38.
108. Ibid. , p. 41.
109? Two very terse exceptions should be noted: On April 13, an article on the case mentions that Gomez was tortured; and one on April 19 notes that his tongue was cut out. No details whatsoever were provided about the murders of Godoy de Cuevas and her brother and son.
I10. Aswewillseeinthenextchapter,thenewciviliangovernmentdidnothing to stem the army assault on the civilian population; but as we might also expect, the optimism of the press on the promise of the new civilian adminis- tration was not followed up with reports on what actually happened.
III. As we pointed out earlier, the U. S. press entirely ignored the administra- tion's refusal to allow one of the EI Salvador "Mothers of the Disappeared" to come to speak in the United States. See note 10, above.
lI2. This press release was featured in an "Urgent Action" memo of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA, dated October 3, 1986.
Chapter 3: Legitimizing versus Meaningless Third World Elections
I. See Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, Demonstration Elections: U. S. - Staged Elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El Salvador (Boston: South End Press, 1984), passim.
2. In the case of the Salvadoran elections of 1982 and 1984, the government relied on the media to play down not only this plan, but also the fact that the rebels were driven into rebellion by decades of refusal of the army to allow any democratic option, and that the rebels could not have participated in the election anyway because they would run heavy risks of being murdered-the five leaders of the political opposition in EI Salvador were tortured, murdered, and mutilated in San Salvador in November 1980.
3.
As we pointed out in chapter I, the government and other power groups try to monopolize media attention not only by flooding the media with their own propaganda, but also by providing authentic and reliable "experts" to validate this propaganda.
4. For a model illustration of observer bias and foolishness, see appendix I on the findings of a U. S. official-observer team at the Guatemalan election ofJuly I, 1984.
S? "The observer delegation's mission was a simple one: to assess the fairness, honesty and propriety of the voting, the counting of ballots and the reporting
entirely by government personnel, including the deputy minister of defense . . '
356 NOTES TO P AGES 89-94
NOTES TO P AGES 94-101 357
of final results in the Salvadoran elections" (Senator Nancy Kassenbaum,
Report of the U. S. Official Observer Mission to the El Salvador Constituent Assembly Elections ofMarch 28, I982, Report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 97th Cong. , 2d sess. , p. 2. This agenda does not include considera- tion of any of the basic framework conditions-like free speech and the absence of state terror-that determine in advance whether an election can be meaningful. See the text below.
6. The New York Times even allowed the right-wing Freedom House observers to dominate its reports on the election staged by Ian Smith in Rhodesia in 1979 (articles of April 22 and May II, 1979). Although a brutal civil war raged and the rebel black groups were off the ballot, Freedom House found the election fair. In a rerun held a year later under British government auspices, the black candidate sponsored by Ian Smith who had received 65 percent in the "fair" election got only 8 percent of the vote, whereas the previously excluded black rebels received a commanding majority. Freedom House found the second election doubtful! See Herman and Brodhead, Demonstration Elections, appen- dix I, "Freedom House Observers in Zimbabwe Rhodesia and EI Salvador. " 7. Herman and Brodhead, Demonstration Elections, pp. 71-72.
8. Philip Taubman, "Shultz Criticizes Nicaragua Delay," New York Times, February 6, 1984; Security and Development Assistance, Hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 98th Cong. , 2d sess. , February 22, 1984, p. 83?
9. George Orwell, I984 (New York: Signet, 1950), p. 163.
10. "The Electoral Process in Nicaragua: Domestic and International Influ- ences," Report of the LASA Delegation to Observe the Nicaraguan General Election of November 4, 1984, Latin American Studies Association (Nov. 19, 1984), p. 32 (hereafter, LASA, Report).
II. The U. S. media quite properly condemned in advance the January 1947 elections held in Poland, under Soviet control and with security forces omni- present in the country, although not killing on anywhere near the scale seen in EI Salvador and Guatemala, 1979-87. See Herman and Brodhead, Demon- stration Elections, pp. 173-80.
12. LASA, Report, p. 5.
13. Nicaragua: The Threat of a Good Example? (Oxford: Oxfam, 1986), p. 14. Oxfam's U. S. affiliate also has warm words for the Sandinista effort, stating that
Among the four countries in the region where Oxfam works [Guatemala, EI Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua], only in Nicaragua has a sub- stantial effort been made to address inequities in land ownership and to extend health, educational, and agricultural services to poor peasant families. (Oxfam America Special Report: Central America, Fall 1985).
14. See below, under "Free speech and assembly" (p. 93) and "Freedom of the press" (p. 97).
15. See Herman and Brodhead, Demonstration Elections, pp. 119-20.
16. See Amnesty International, Guatemala: A Government Program of Political Murder (London: AI, 1981); Michael McClintock, The American Connection, vol. 2 (London: Zed, 1985).
17. UN General Assembly, Report ofthe Economic and Social Council: Situation
of Human Rights in Guatemala, November 13, 1985, p. 15. On Viscount Col- ville's apologetics, see Americas Watch, Colville for the Defense: A Critique of the Reports of the U. N. Special Rapporteur for Guatemala (February 1986). 18. Guatemala Human Rights Commission, "Report for the 39th General As- sembly of the United Nations on the Human Rights Situation in Guatemala" (New York, 1984), p. 18 (Hereafter, HRC, Report).
19. Ibid. , p. 23.
20. "Bitter and Cruel . . . ," Report of a Mission to Guatemala by the British Parliamentary Human Rights Group, October 1984, p. 21.
21. Bishop Maurice Taylor and Bishop James O'Brien, "Brief Report on Visit to Guatemala," October 27-November 3, 1984, quoted in Americas Watch, Little Hope: Human Rights in Guatemala, January I984-I985 (New York: AW, 1985), p. 25?
22. InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights, Civil and Legal Rights in Guatemala (1985), p. 156. Development Poles are organizational units estab- lished by the army, nominally to foster "development," actually mere conve- nient units for control and surveillance.
23. International Human Rights Law Group, The I985 Guatemalan Elections: Will the Military Relinquish Power? (Washington: December 1985), p. 56 (here- after, IHRLG, Report).
24. Ibid. , p. 61.
25. LASA, Report, p. 27.
26. Ibid. , p. 25.
27. See further, Herman and Brodhead, Demonstration Elections, pp. 120-21. 28. "Journalists Killed and Disappeared since 1976," Committee to Protect
Journalists (December 1986), pp. 6-8.
29. Council on Hemispheric Affairs and the Newspaper Guild, "A Survey of Press Freedom in Latin America, 1984-85" (Washington: 1985), p. 38.
30. See IHRLG, Report, pp. 59-60.
31. Howard H. Frederick, "Electronic Penetration," in Thomas S. Walker, ed. , Reagan versus the Sandinistas (Boulder: Westview, 1987), pp. 123ff.
32. For a full account of media conditions, see John Spicer Nichols, "The Media," in Thomas S. Walker, ed. , Nicaragua: The First Five Years (New York: Praeger, 1985), pp. 183-99.
33. Ibid. , pp. 191-92. For comparison of media conditions in Nicaragua with those of the United States in wartime and its leading client state, Israel, see Noam Chomsky, "U. S. Polity and Society: The Lessons of Nicaragua," in Walker, ed. , Reagan versus the Sandinistas.
34. For a discussion of this decimation process and a tabulation of murders by group, see Herman and Brodhead, Demonstration Elections, pp. 121-26.
35? "The Grass Roots Organizations," in Walker, ed. , Nicaragua, p. 79.
36. Ibid. , p. 88.
37? It has often been observed by serious students of American democracy that the relative weakness of intermediate organizations (unions, political clubs, media not under corporate control, etc. ) is a severe impediment to meaningful political democracy in the United States-one reason, no doubt, why voter participation is so low and cynicism about its significance so high.
38. Raymond Bonner, Weakness and Deceit (New York: Times Books, 1984), PP? 278-79?
39. Herman and Brodhead, Demonstration Elections, pp. 122-24.
40. Enrique A. Baloyra, who argues that there was a real choice, says that people voted "primarily because they wanted to make use of this massive action to urge an end to violence and civil war. " But Baloyra nowhere discusses Duarte's and D'Aubuisson's views on a negotiated settlement of the war, which allows him to convey the erroneous impression that one of them supported a nonmilitary route to ending the violence and civil war (El Salvador in Transi- tion [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982], p. 175).
41. See Dennis Hans, "Duarte: The Man and the Myth," Covert Action Infor- mation Bulletin 26 (Summer 1986), pp. 42-47; Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide (Boston: South End Press, 1985), pp. 109ff.
42. Weakness and Deceit, p. 205.
43. The top leadership of the Social Democratic party had been murdered in
1980, and its remaining officials fled the country. Only a portion of this exiled leadership returned for the 1985 election.
44. The guerrilla position was that with the army having set up a national control system, military domination had been institutionalized and elections would have no meaning. See "Guerrillas' View of Elections: Army Will Hold Power Despite Polls," Latin America Weekry Report, October 25, 1985, p. II. 45? HRC, Report, p. 7.
46. Americas Watch, Civil Patrols in Guatemala (New York: AW, 1986), p. 2. 47. "EI Senor Presidente? " An interview of Cerezo by George Black in Octo- ber 1985, NACLA Report on the Americas (November-December 1985), p. 24. 48. "In a meeting several months ago with the ultra-rightist organization Amigos del Pais, which allegedly has strong death squad connections, PDCG deputies to the Constituent Assembly pledged that if the party came to power, they would ref~ain from agrarian and banking reforms, investigation into human rights abuses by the armed forces, and any interference in the coun- terinsurgency program" ("Guatemala Votes," Washington Report on the Hemi- sphere, Nov. 27, 1985). Stephen Kinzer also reports on a private meeting between Cerezo and right-wing landowners, in which "he said we all needed each other at this moment . . . " ("When a Landslide Is Not a Mandate," New York Times, Dec. 15, 1985).
49. Allen Nairn and Jean-Marie Simon, in their "The Bureaucracy of Death," New Republic, aune 30, 1986), describe the "tactical alliance" between Cerezo and the army, which protected them against any accountability for past ac- tions, in exchange for which the army would allow Cerezo to occupy office. 50. See "Cerezo Adapts to Counterinsurgency," Guatemala, Guatemala News and Information Bureau (May-June 1986).
51. American Watch, Human Rights in Guatemala during President Cerezo's First Year, February 1987. Cerezo argued for not prosecuting the military for old crimes on the ground that everyone wanted to start afresh. But Americas Watch points out that if terrible crimes of the past are exempt from the rule of law, it suggests that Cerezo doesn't have the power to stop further military crimes.