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

Free World Vignettes
dead bodies.” Estimates are uncertain, because the atrocities in the rural
areas generally go unreported, as in El Salvador. The remnants of the
terrorized population are removed to “model villages,” the British report
continues, where the system, ‘‘implanted by means of terror,” is
“designed also to sow terror.’’ Conditions there, including the forced
“civilian patrols” into which virtually the entire male population is pressganged,
“can be compared to slavery.” Apart from the slaughter, eviction
of peasants to make way for agro-export crops is bound to increase the
already dramatic levels of severe malnutrition. The planned elections
seem “more designed for the consumption of US Congress and world
opinion than for the Guatemalan people.” 69
The “model villages” are inspired by the strategic hamlet program
applied by the United States in the early stages of its direct attack
against South Vietnam, when an attempt was made to drive several
million people into areas where they could be “protected” from the
guerrillas who, the aggressors conceded, they were willingly supporting.
The basic concept was expressed in a USAID report of 1963: 70
The ultimate target is the human mind. It may be ‘changed,’ it
may be rendered impotent for expression or it may be
extinguished, but it still remains the critical target.
This was during the “hearts and minds” period of the US war against
the rural population in South Vietnam, later to be modified in favor of
mass murder, as more efficient, given the resources of the US military
forces. The Guatemalan army with its Israeli advisers is regarded as
better suited to the task than the US client forces in South Vietnam,
hence capable of applying these ideas more effectively. As the London
Economist noted in 1983, “with the help of Israeli advisers,
[Guatemala] has succeeded where a similar campaign in neighbouring
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
52