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

Free World Vignettes
As torture increased, Reagan offered his ritual Presidential
Certification (July 1983) describing the progress of the government in
ending torture and other human rights abuses, accepted by a supine
Congress and public opinion fairly generally. Two years later the
Salvadoran Commission of Human Rights stated that “Torture in El
Salvador has become customary as a method of work, considered
natural and necessary by those who practice it.” 57
An Americas Watch report, based on interviews in January 1985,
records the testimony of refugees who fled well after President Duarte’s
theoretical “strict rules about aerial bombardment” were announced in
September 1984 in response to protests by human rights groups. They
fled, they say, because “people can’t stand so much bombing.” “The
task of these people is to destroy,” one said. The soldiers “set the
mountains on fire” to drive people out of the hills, where they destroy
villages and fields. “They kill anyone they find,” the refugees report. Not
even chickens or pigs escape as the scorched earth policies devastate
crops and livestock and habitations, along with trapped civilians.
Colonel Sigifredo Ochoa, who has many massacres to his credit and is
much admired here for his prowess, told a reporter in January 1985
that he had established 12 free-fire zones in Chalatenango, where “Air
strikes and artillery bombardments now are being carried out
indiscriminately.” “Without a civilian base of support, the guerrillas are
nothing but outlaws,” he explained.
Ochoa refused to permit the International Red Cross to provide
humanitarian services and banned medical services throughout the
province, also blocking entry of food provided by the Catholic relief
agency Caritas. “His troops usually do not engage in combat with
rebels,” Chris Norton reports, “but Roman Catholic Church sources say
he dislodged some 1,400 civilian rebel supporters, who fled to
Honduran refugee camps between September and November [1984].”
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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