Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

Patterns of Intervention
5. The System Applied: Torturing El Salvador
5.1 Carter’s War
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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eturning to El Salvador, in 1972 an election took place in which
José Napoleón Duarte and Guillermo Ungo were the apparent
victors, though the military candidate “won” through blatant
fraud and intervention by two loyal US clients, Nicaragua and
Guatemala. Interest here was slight. Duarte came to Washington but
“found that no one cared much about the reign of terror and political
repression in El Salvador.” The press was unconcerned, and apart from
Edward Kennedy and Tom Harkin, no one in Congress would even see
him. 39 R
Another electoral fraud in 1977 also aroused little interest here.
Terror, torture, starvation and semi-slave labor continued in the normal
manner of US Third World dependencies. This recent history illustrates
the traditional US contempt for democracy and the cynicism of the
current flurry of interest in “elections” and “democracy” as a cover for
state terror.
Two developments did, however, begin to cause concern by the late
1970s. The fall of Somoza in 1979 aroused fears in Washington that
the brutal dictator of El Salvador might be overthrown, leading to loss of
US control there as well. The second and still more threatening
development was the growth of “popular organizations” in the 1970s:
Bible study groups that became self-help groups under Church
sponsorship, peasant organizations, unions and the like. There was a
fearsome prospect that El Salvador might move towards meaningful
democracy with opportunities for real popular participation in the
political process. This was the “near-anarchy,” memory of which still