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

Patterns of Intervention
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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claimed that killings declined after he became junta president in
December 1980; in fact, they increased, as all sources agree. 66
The unions are also “infiltrated and used at the altar of war and
destabilization,” Duarte announced after he sent his troops to a hospital
where workers were on strike, one of 25 hospitals and clinics raided by
the police in an effort to dislodge strikers; the chief government
spokesman said the action was warranted on the basis of rulings by the
civilian and military courts that the strike was illegal and “subversive.”
Duarte stated that virtually all of the strikes “are by the unions managed
by the Communists” who are not interested in reasonable settlements.” 67
In fact, consumer buying power has decreased over 50% during the past
five years while huge sums flow abroad and the oligarchy retains or
enhances its privileges, and “diplomats, political observers, and union
leaders say” that the strike resurgence “reflects widespread worker
dissatisfaction with the government’s economic policies, which have
accelerated the steady decline of the standard of living.” But as Duarte
has learned, it is easier, and more effective with his Northern boss, to
blame it on the Communists, while sending SWAT teams to carry out a
“commando raid against unarmed nurses and doctors occupying a
hospital but continuing to handle emergency cases,” firing the entire
strike leadership of the water utility union, and otherwise providing
sufficient hints to people who well recall the terror against labor
unleashed a few years before by the government for which Duarte
provided a fig-leaf. 68
Not surprisingly, Duarte’s regime has been harshly anti-labor. The
head of the 70,000 member industrial and civil service union states that
some unions continue to operate underground and union membership is
static because of the murders of union activists over the past 5 years,
and that there will be no justice in El Salvador “so long as the army
remains unreformed.” “The muchachos in the mountains want peace,”