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“In 1954 the CIA engineered a coup that turned Guatemala into a hell on earth. It’s been kept that way ever since, with regular US intervention and support...”

— Noam Chomsky

$  American flag - swastika and stripes - symbol of American state terrorism. American terrorism is international terrorism.  $

Making Guatemala
a Killing Field


From What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky

There was one place in Central America that did get some US media coverage before the Sandinista revolution, and that was Guatemala. In 1944, a revolution there overthrew a vicious tyrant, leading to the establishment of a democratic government that basically modeled itself on Roosevelt’s New Deal. In the ten-year democratic interlude that followed, there were the beginnings of successful independent economic development.

That caused virtual hysteria in Washington. Eisenhower and Dulles warned that the “self-defense and self-preservation” of the United States was at stake unless the virus was exterminated. US intelligence reports were very candid about the dangers posed by capitalist democracy in Guatemala.

A CIA memorandum of 1952 described the situation in Guatemala as “adverse to US interests” because of the “Communist influence...based on militant advocacy of social reforms and nationalistic policies.” The memo warned that Guatemala “has recently stepped-up substantially its support of Communist and anti-American activities in other Central American countries.” One prime example cited was an alleged gift of $300,000 to José Figueres.

As mentioned above, José Figueres was the founder of Costa Rican democracy and a leading democratic figure in Central America. Although he cooperated enthusiastically with the CIA, had called the United States “the standard-bearer of our cause” and was regarded by the US ambassador to Costa Rica as “the best advertising agency that the United Fruit Company could find in Latin America,” Figueres had an independent streak and was therefore not considered as reliable as Somoza or other gangsters in our employ.

In the political rhetoric of the United States, this made him possibly a “Communist.” So if Guatemala gave him money to help him win an election, that showed Guatemala supported Communists.

Worse yet, the same CIA memorandum continued, the “radical and nationalist policies” of the democratic capitalist government, including the “persecution of foreign economic interests, especially the United Fruit Company,” had gained “the support or acquiescence of almost all Guatemalans.” The government was proceeding “to mobilize the hitherto politically inert peasantry” while undermining the power of large landholders.

Furthermore, the 1944 revolution had aroused “a strong national movement to free Guatemala from the military dictatorship, social backwardness, and ’economic colonialism’ which had been the pattern of the past,” and “inspired the loyalty and conformed to the self-interest of most politically conscious Guatemalans.” Things became still worse after a successful land reform began to threaten “stability” in neighboring countries where suffering people did not fail to take notice.

In short, the situation was pretty awful. So the CIA carried out a successful coup. Guatemala was turned into the slaughterhouse it remains today, with regular US intervention whenever things threaten to get out of line.

By the late 1970s, atrocities were again mounting beyond the terrible norm, eliciting verbal protests. And yet, contrary to what many people believe, military aid to Guatemala continued at virtually the same level under the Carter “human rights” administration. Our allies have been enlisted in the cause as well — notably Israel, which is regarded as a “strategic asset” in part because of its success in guiding state terrorism.

Under Reagan, support for near-genocide in Guatemala became positively ecstatic. The most extreme of the Guatemalan Hitlers we’ve backed there, Rios Montt, was lauded by Reagan as a man totally dedicated to democracy. In the early 1980s, Washington’s friends slaughtered tens of thousands of Guatemalans, mostly Indians in the highlands, with countless others tortured and raped. Large regions were decimated.

In 1988, a newly opened Guatemalan newspaper called La Epoca was blown up by government terrorists. At the time, the media here were very much exercised over the fact that the US-funded journal in Nicaragua, La Prensa, which was openly calling for the overthrow of the government and supporting the US-run terrorist army, had been forced to miss a couple of issues due to a shortage of newsprint. That led to a torrent of outrage and abuse, in the Washington Post and elsewhere, about Sandinista totalitarianism.

On the other hand, the destruction of La Epoca aroused no interest whatsoever and was not reported here, although it was well-known to US journalists. Naturally the US media couldn’t be expected to notice that US-funded security forces had silenced the one, tiny independent voice that had tried, a few weeks earlier, to speak up in Guatemala.

A year later, a journalist from La Epoca, Julio Godoy, who had fled after the bombing, went back to Guatemala for a brief visit. When he returned to the US, he contrasted the situation in Central America with that in Eastern Europe. Eastern Europeans are “luckier than Central Americans,” Godoy wrote, because

“while the Moscow-imposed government in Prague would degrade and humiliate reformers, the Washington-made government in Guatemala would kill them. It still does, in a virtual genocide that has taken more than 150,000 victims [in what Amnesty International calls] “a government program of political murder.”

The press either conforms or, as in the case of La Epoca, disappears.

“One is tempted to believe,” Godoy continued, “that some people in the White House worship Aztec gods — with the offering of Central American blood.”

And he quoted a Western European diplomat who said:

“As long as the Americans don’t change their attitude towards the region, there’s no space here for the truth or for hope.”




Related pages


The Crucifixion of El Salvador
From What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky


Teaching Nicaragua a lesson
From What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky


The Invasion of Panama
From What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky


America: the Ultimate Terrorist


Chronology of U.S. Terrorism and Genocide of the Central American, South American & Caribbean peoples


Free online book from Common Courage Press:
Colombia: The Genocidal Democracy
by Javier Giraldo


Inside American State Terrorism: A Soldier Speaks
by Stan Goff


Bibliography:
Cuban Liberation: Castro, Che Guevara and Jose Marti




About the Author


Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky is a major figure in twentieth-century linguistics. He has taught since 1955 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he became a full professor at the age of 32. His 1957 work Syntactic Structures revolutionized the field of linguistics, fundamentally changing the current understanding of language and mind. In 1976 he was appointed Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT. Currently he is also the Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics.

Chomsky has received honorary degrees from the University of London, University of Chicago, Georgetown University and Cambridge University. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. His work in linguistics, which has been internationally acclaimed, has earned Chomsky the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association, the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences and the Helmholtz Medal.

Born in Philadelphia on December 7, 1928, Chomsky became politically conscious at a very young age, writing his first political article, on the fight against fascism in Spain, when he was only ten years old.

Chomsky has written many books on contemporary issues and is an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy and corporate power. His political talks have been heard, typically by standing-room only audiences, all over the country and the globe.

In a saner world, his tireless efforts to promote justice would have long since won him the Nobel Peace Prize. But no, the committee prefers to give it to sleazy war-criminals like Henry Kissinger.



Books by Noam Chomsky




Audio books:



Other works:




Related sites


Guatemala: Memory of Silence
Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification
Conclusions and Recommendations
http://hrdata.aaas.org/ceh/report/english/toc.html



US government responsible for genocide and terror in Guatemala
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/feb1999/guat-f27.shtml



Guerillas in Guatemala
http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~delacova/guatemala-rev.htm



What Uncle Sam Really Wants
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/sam/sam-contents.html

Zmag.org provides the complete text of the book.


The Noam Chomsky Archive
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/index.cfm



School of the Americas Watch
http://www.soaw.org/index.html

The United States Army “School of the Americas,” in Fort Benning, Georgia, teaches its students how to torture human beings.

Graduates of the U.S. Army School of the Americas have been responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America.

Among the SOA’s nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia.

Lower-level SOA graduates have participated in human rights abuses that include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the torture of countless people throughout Central and South America and the El Mozote Massacre of 900 human beings.



The US Army School of Assassins
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/soa/

Exposes the dirty deeds of the U.S. Army School of “the Americas” (Assassins) throughout Latin America. Special sections on Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Grenada, Colombia, Panama, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

Guatemala: how we continue the genocide of indigenous peoples, in the name of big business
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/soa/guatemala.htm



Writings by Peace Activist S. Brian Willson
http://www.brianwillson.com/

Brian Willson is a courageous Vietnam vet who was wounded in combat — but not during the Vietnam Genocide. He was fighting a war of conscience. In 1987 a military train at a U.S. Navy munitions base intentionally ran over him and severed his legs as he and two other veterans sat on the tracks to block it. The train was carrying weapons to be used in America’s ongoing holocaust of innocent civilian people in Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador.

His autobiography is heartfelt, utterly unself-pitying and very instructive, particularly his experiences from Vietnam onward. Brian Willson’s writing is extremely valuable, being from a deeply intelligent and genuinely moral man who has witnessed firsthand the horrors of American state terrorism around the world.

From the site:

“THIS SITE CONTAINS essays describing the incredible historic pattern of U.S. arrogance, ethnocentrism, violence and lawlessness in domestic and global affairs, and the severe danger this pattern poses for the future health of Homo sapiens and Mother Earth. Other essays discuss revolutionary, nonviolent alternative approaches based on the principle of radical relational mutuality. This is a term increasingly used by physicists, mathematicians and cosmologists to describe the nature of the omnicentric*, ever-unfolding universe. Every being, every aspect of life energy in the cosmos, is intrinsically interconnected with and affects every other being and aspect of life energy at every moment.”

*everything is at the center of the cosmos at every moment



WSWS : News & Analysis : South & Central America
http://www.wsws.org/sections/category/news/americas.shtml




Bibliography


Guatemalan Army Waged Genocide, New Report Finds
by Mireya Navarro
New York Times, February 26, 1999

Article in the NY Times described “torture, kidnapping and execution of thousands of civilians” — most of them Mayan Indians — a campaign to which the U.S. government contributed “money and training.”


What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky


Body of Secrets:
Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency
by James Bamford

In 1962, U.S. military leaders had a top-secret plan for committing terrorist attacks on Americans in Miami and Washington D.C., while blaming Cuba. Codenamed “Operation Northwoods”, the plan was intended to provide the propaganda necessary to create popular support for an invasion of Cuba.


The Culture of Terrorism
by Noam Chomsky


I Was Never Alone:
A Prison Diary from El Salvador
by Nidia Diaz


Colombia:
The Genocidal Democracy
by Javier Giraldo


The Real Terror Network:
Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda
by Edward S. Herman


The Fire This Time:
U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf
by Ramsey Clark


Desert Slaughter:
The Imperialist War Against Iraq
by the Workers League


Western State Terrorism
Alexander George, editor; essays by Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, Gerry O’Sullivan and others


Terrorizing the Neighborhood:
American Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era
by Noam Chomsky
Pressure Drop Press, 1991


Pirates and Emperors, Old and New:
International Terrorism in the Real World
by Noam Chomsky


Rogue State:
A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
by William Blum


Killing Hope:
U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since WWII
by William Blum


The Beast Reawakens
by Martin A. Lee


Blackshirts and Reds:
Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
by Michael Parenti


A People’s History of the United States:
1492 — Present
by Howard Zinn


Cuban Liberation:
Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Jose Marti
(bibliography)


Living Like the Saints:
A Novel of Nicaragua
by Liston Pope Jr.


Dying For Growth:
Global Inequality and the Health of the Poor
Edited by Jim Yong Kim, Joyce V. Millen, Alec Irwin and John Gershman


Eyes of the Heart:
Seeking a path for the poor in the age of globalization
by Jean-Bertrand Aristide


Against Empire
by Michael Parenti


War At Home:
Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It
by Brian Glick


The Sword and the Dollar:
Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race
by Michael Parenti


Manufacturing Consent:
The Political Economy of the Mass Media
by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky


Inventing Reality:
The Politics of News Media
by Michael Parenti


War, Lies & Videotape:
How media monopoly stifles truth
edited by Lenora Foerstel; multiple authors




HOME • Chronology of Terror • Bibliographies • Valuable Websites

ACTION • Solutions • Candles in the darkness • About This Site

NEWS • Revealing Quotes 1 2 3 4 • Letters • SEARCH • SITE MAP