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

The Fifth Freedom
dictators supported by the United States, Martinez had won notoriety by
presiding over the 1932 Matanza (“massacre”), a slaughter of some 10-
30,000 peasants while US and Canadian naval vessels stood offshore
and US Marines were alerted in Nicaragua. “It was found unnecessary
for the United States forces and British forces to land,” US Chief of
Naval Operations Admiral William V. Pratt testified before Congress, “as
the Salvadoran Government had the situation in hand.” Martinez was
granted informal recognition at once on grounds of his success in
“having put down the recent disorders” (State Department), with full
recognition following in 1934 in defiance of an agreement with the
Central American states that military dictators were not to be recognized
without free elections; the latter condition was presumably satisfied the
next year when Martinez was elected, unopposed, after having
eliminated or suppressed any political opposition. Martinez maintained
his rule until 1944 with bloody repression and corruption while openly
siding with European and Japanese fascism through the 1930s—and, in
limited ways, introducing some social reforms in the style of his fascist
models. Thus a government housing program constructed 3000 houses
from 1932 to 1942 while the population of San Salvador alone
increased by 80,000, and 0.25% of the population received land
(including squatters, required to pay for the land on which they lived or
be expelled) in a land reform program. There was little support for the
1944 coup attempt by labor, the peasantry or the urban poor, who had
been traumatized by the Matanza. 2
All of this was during the peak years of the Good Neighbor policy,
which was to replace the earlier rampant US military interventionism. Its
exalted rhetoric concealed something rather different. The lessons taught
once again by these events have been learned and relearned throughout
Central America, and not only there, for many years. US rhetoric is often
noble and inspiring, while operative policy in the real world follows its
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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