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

Patterns of Intervention
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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ever had.” It no doubt was the best government for US investment,
which rapidly increased along with profits repatriated to the US. The
economy also grew in a widely heralded “economic miracle,” but as
President Médici commented in 1970: “The economy is doing fine, but
the people aren’t.” The income of the majority dropped in relative terms,
and for a substantial proportion, in absolute terms as well. Food
consumption decreased for the poor and public health seriously
deteriorated. In São Paolo, the most prosperous city of Brazil, 52% of
the population was classified as suffering from malnutrition in 1970, up
ten percent since the “victory of freedom,” while the rate of infant
mortality increased 45% between 1960 and 1973. Elsewhere, the story
is still worse. 192
In Rio de Janeiro, desperate people, including teen-agers, advertise
their kidneys and corneas for sale in an attempt to survive. Others sell
their blood; Red Cross officials think that Brazil has become the world’s
leading blood exporter, with the value perhaps reaching $.5 billion
annually. The sellers are the poor, often suffering disease and
malnutrition. There are no sanitary facilities or medical attention, no
check on how much blood a victim has sold. Some sell blood until they
die, with almost no blood left according to doctors. 193 There have been
similar reports from elsewhere in Latin America, including Nicaragua,
until the new regime put an end to the practice—yet another of those
cases of interference with Free Enterprise that so enrage “true
democrats.”
Much the same is true of Guatemala, where the overthrow of the
reformist democracy was hailed by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
as “a new and glorious chapter” in the “already great traditions of the
American states.” Four years later, in 1958, he declared on Pan
American day: