The Unworthy Seventy-Two Excerpted from chapter 2 of "Manufacturing Consent" by Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky. "Manufacturing Consent" is published by Pantheon Books, New York. Help support the work of Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky by purchasing this book. -------------------------- part 1 ------------------------------ "A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused in enemy states as *worthy* victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be *unworthy*." According to this model, Jerzy Popieluszko, a Polish priest murdered by the Polish police in 1984 "...will be a worthy victim, whereas priests murdered in our client states in Latin America will be unworthy [of media attention]." The title of this series, "The Unworthy Seventy-Two," refers to 72 victims of state terror in the U.S. client states of Guatemala and El Salvador. The adjective "unworthy" signifies that they were deemed unworthy of serious media attention in the United States. The coverage of the Popieluszko murder "...constitutes a major episode of news management and propaganda... the intensity of coverage assured that its [New York Times] readers would know who Popieluszko was, that he had been murdered, and that this sordid violence had occurred in a Communist state. By contrast, the public would not have seen mention of the names of Father Augusto Ramirez Monasterio, father superior of the Franciscan order in Guatemala, murdered in November 1983, or Father Miguel Angel Montufar, a Guatemalan priest who disappeared in the same month that Popieluszko was killed in Poland, or literally dozens of other religious murder victims in the Latin American provinces." "In fact, *none* of the extremely prominent victims of murder in Latin America, including Archbishop Romero and the four American church-women, received anywhere near the attention accorded Popieluszko." "Almost every murder of the Latin American victims was carried out by official or paramilitary forces in crimes that were never investigated or prosecuted under law, and were on occasion even subject to active official cover-ups." The exception to these absences of official investigations was in El Salvador, where in the case of the four murdered American women there was "...sufficient pressure to force some kind of investigation and legal process." However, even in the case of the four murdered American women, "...this legal process was barely noted by the mass media." Contrasting press coverage of the Popieluszko murder with press coverage of the murders of the "unworthy seventy-two," one sees a distinct contrast in the quality and quantity of coverage. For example, why did the media fail to note the awkward fact that "...state murders were being carried out on a daily basis without any investigations or trials of the murderers in a number of countries within the U.S. sphere of influence called 'fledgling democracies.'" ---------------------------------------------------------------- Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman "Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well." End part 1 The Unworthy Seventy-Two Excerpted from chapter 2 of "Manufacturing Consent" by Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky. "Manufacturing Consent" is published by Pantheon Books, New York. Help support the work of Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky by purchasing this book. **************************************************************** * * * "A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused * * in enemy states as *worthy* victims, whereas those treated * * with equal or greater severity by its own government or * * clients will be *unworthy*." According to this model, Jerzy * * Popieluszko, a Polish priest murdered by the Polish police * * in 1984 "...will be a worthy victim, whereas priests * * murdered in our client states in Latin America will be * * unworthy [of media attention]." * * * * The title of this series, "The Unworthy Seventy-Two," refers * * to 72 victims of state terror in the U.S. client states of * * Guatemala and El Salvador. The adjective "unworthy" * * signifies that they were deemed unworthy of serious media * * attention in the United States. * * * **************************************************************** -------------------------- part 2 ------------------------------ -=- A "Worthy" Victim -=- "Jerzy Popieluszko was an activist priest and a strong supporter of the Solidarity movement in Poland. In an effort to eliminate or intimidate him, members of the Polish secret police abducted him on October 19, 1984. He was beaten, bound, and gagged, and eventually thrown into a reservoir. His body was found several days later... [The] level of attention given to the case in the United States was very great. The quality of coverage was also extremely well designed to score political points and contrasts sharply with the quality of coverage of unworthy victims." The state murder of Father Popieluszko by the Polish secret police was presented by the U.S. media "...in such a way as to generate the maximum emotional impact on readers. The [murder] ... was vicious and deserved the presentation it received. The acts against the unworthy victims were also vicious, but they were treated very differently." -=- Father Rutilio Grande -=- "The murder of one of the seventy-two, Father Rutilio Grande, was an important landmark in the escalation of violence in El Salvador... Rutilio Grande was shot to death, along with a teenager and a seventy-two-year-old peasant, while on his way to Mass on March 12, 1977." Archbishop Oscar Arnolfo Romero "...wrote to the president of El Salvador, Arturo Armando Molina, urging a thorough investigation, which was promised. A week later, the church having established that it was probably police bullets that had killed the three victims, Romero wrote a harsher letter to Molina..." Still the government did nothing. "With continued inaction, Romero threatened to refuse church participation in any official government event unless the murders were investigated and the killers brought to justice." There was still almost no response from the Salvadoran government. The bodies had not been exhumed. The bullets used in the murders were still in the graves. Archbishop Romero and the clergy "... finally decided to take dramatic action: temporary school closings, and implementation of the previously mentioned threat to refuse to support the government and other power groups on official occasions." "This entire package of murder and church response was hardly lacking in drama and newsworthiness. Yet murder, the confrontation of the desperate church with a repressive state, and the dramatic acts carried out to try to mobilize support in its self-defense were subject to a virtual blackout in the U.S. mass media... This [lack of media coverage] was important in allowing the terror to go on unimpeded." ---------------------------------------------------------------- Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman "Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well." End part 2 The Unworthy Seventy-Two Excerpted from chapter 2 of "Manufacturing Consent" by Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky. "Manufacturing Consent" is published by Pantheon Books, New York. Help support the work of Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky by purchasing this book. **************************************************************** * * * "A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused * * in enemy states as *worthy* victims, whereas those treated * * with equal or greater severity by its own government or * * clients will be *unworthy*." According to this model, Jerzy * * Popieluszko, a Polish priest murdered by the Polish police * * in 1984 "...will be a worthy victim, whereas priests * * murdered in our client states in Latin America will be * * unworthy [of media attention]." * * * * The title of this series, "The Unworthy Seventy-Two," refers * * to 72 victims of state terror in the U.S. client states of * * Guatemala and El Salvador. The adjective "unworthy" * * signifies that they were deemed unworthy of serious media * * attention in the United States. * * * **************************************************************** -------------------------- part 3 ------------------------------ -=- Archbishop Oscar Romero -=- At the time of his murder, Archbishop Oscar Romero "...had become the foremost and most outspoken critic of the policy of repression by murder being carried out by the U.S.-supported military government. In his last sermon, he appealed to members of the army and security forces to refuse to kill their Salvadoran brethren, a call that enraged the officer corps trying to build a lower-class military that was willing to kill freely." A few weeks before his murder, Romero "...had written a forceful letter to President Jimmy Carter opposing the imminent granting of U.S. aid to the junta as destructive of Salvadoran interests. The Carter administration had been so disturbed by Romero's opposition to its policies that it had secretly lobbied the pope to curb the archbishop." Romero's opposition to U.S. policy in El Salvador qualified him for the status of "unworthy victim," i.e. unworthy of serious media attention in the United States. The U.S. media's news coverage of the archbishop's murder and its follow-up reached "...new levels of dishonesty and propaganda service in their coverage of this and related events." +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + + + From the New York Times, March 25, 1980: + + + + Archbishop Romero was killed by a sniper who got out of a red + + car, apparently stood just inside the door of the Chapel of + + the Divine Providence Hospital, fired a single shot at the + + prelate and fled. The bullet struck the archbishop in the + + heart, according to a doctor at the hospital where the + + prelate was taken. [There was no arrest or trial] + + + +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The U.S. media has tried to paint a picture of El Salvador as having a centrist government with the killing being done by extremists of the right and the left. It has tended to rely heavily on official U.S. sources for its information. One of these official sources, John Bushnell, of the State Department, "...stated before a house appropriations committee that 'there is some misperception by those who follow the press that the government is itself repressive in El Salvador,' when in fact the violence is 'from the extreme right and the extreme left' and 'the smallest part' of the killings come from the army and security forces. This statement was a knowing lie, contradicted by all independent evidence coming out of El Salvador and refuted by Archbishop Romero [before his murder] on an almost daily basis." Even though this official source was clearly in error, the U.S. mass media "...followed the Bushnell formula virtually without deviation: there was a 'civil war between extreme right and leftist groups' (New York Times, Feb. 25, 1980); the 'seemingly well meaning but weak junta' was engaging in reforms but was unable to check the terror (Time, Apr. 7, 1980)." And the Salvadoran government has continued to be "moderate" and "centrist" up to today [according to the U.S. media]. "At Archbishop Romero's funeral, on March 30, 1980, where many thousands gathered to pay tribute, bomb explosions and gunfire killed some forty people and injured hundreds more. The version of the event provided by U.S. Ambassador Robert White and the Salvadoran government was that 'armed terrorists of the ultra left sowed panic among the masses and did all they could to provoke the security forces into returning fire. But the discipline of the armed forces held." "However, a mimeographed statement on March 30, signed by twenty- two church leaders present at the funeral, claimed that the panic had been started by a bomb thrown from the national palace, followed by machine-gun and other shots coming from its second floor. This account was suppressed... and was never mentioned in the New York Times." ---------------------------------------------------------------- Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman "Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well." End part 3 The Unworthy Seventy-Two Excerpted from chapter 2 of "Manufacturing Consent" by Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky. "Manufacturing Consent" is published by Pantheon Books, New York. Help support the work of Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky by purchasing this book. **************************************************************** * * * "A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused * * in enemy states as *worthy* victims, whereas those treated * * with equal or greater severity by its own government or * * clients will be *unworthy*." According to this model, Jerzy * * Popieluszko, a Polish priest murdered by the Polish police * * in 1984 "...will be a worthy victim, whereas priests * * murdered in our client states in Latin America will be * * unworthy [of media attention]." * * * * The title of this series, "The Unworthy Seventy-Two," refers * * to 72 victims of state terror in the U.S. client states of * * Guatemala and El Salvador. The adjective "unworthy" * * signifies that they were deemed unworthy of serious media * * attention in the United States. * * * **************************************************************** -------------------------- part 4 ------------------------------ -=- Archbishop Oscar Romero -=- (continued) "The assassins of Archbishop Romero were never 'officially' discovered or prosecuted, and he joined the ranks of the tens of thousands of other Salvadorans murdered without justice being done." Subsequent to the murder of Archbishop Romero, "...a great deal of evidence became available showing that Roberto D'Aubuisson was at the center of a conspiracy to murder Romero. On the basis of numerous interviews with Arena party activists and U.S. officials, and examination of State Department cables, investigative reporters Craig Pyes and Laurie Becklund claimed in 1983 that D'Aubuisson had planned the assassination with a group of active-duty military officers, who drew straws for the honor of carrying out the murder." There was "...substantial evidence concerning the identity of Romero's murderers, and there were significant links of the murders to the highest officials of the Salvadoran military establishment." The accumulating evidence of high-level involvement in the murder was not given significant attention by the U.S. media. "It was back-page material at best, treated matter-of-factly and never put in a framework of indignation and outrage by the use of emotive language or by asking allies of Romero to comment on the evidence, and it never elicited strident demands for justice. To this day one will find no mention of the fact that the effective rulers of this 'fledgling democracy' are military officers who were closely associated with D'Aubuisson and his cabal and may well have been implicated in the assassination." Consistently, the U.S. media has adopted the "...central myth contrived by the government, and contrived its reporting and interpretation to its basic premises: the 'moderate government' that we support is plagued by the terrorism of the extremists of the left and right, and is unable to bring it under control. The U.S. government and the media understood very well that the violence was overwhelmingly the responsibility of both the U.S.- backed security forces, which were, and remain, the real power in the country, and the paramilitary network they created to terrorize the population. But this truth was inexpressible. To this day the media maintain the central myth of earlier years, long after having conceded quietly that it was a complete fabrication." ---------------------------------------------------------------- Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman "Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well." End part 4 The Unworthy Seventy-Two Excerpted from chapter 2 of "Manufacturing Consent" by Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky. "Manufacturing Consent" is published by Pantheon Books, New York. Help support the work of Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky by purchasing this book. **************************************************************** * * * "A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused * * in enemy states as *worthy* victims, whereas those treated * * with equal or greater severity by its own government or * * clients will be *unworthy*." According to this model, Jerzy * * Popieluszko, a Polish priest murdered by the Polish police * * in 1984 "...will be a worthy victim, whereas priests * * murdered in our client states in Latin America will be * * unworthy [of media attention]." * * * * The title of this series, "The Unworthy Seventy-Two," refers * * to 72 victims of state terror in the U.S. client states of * * Guatemala and El Salvador. The adjective "unworthy" * * signifies that they were deemed unworthy of serious media * * attention in the United States. * * * **************************************************************** -------------------------- part 5 ------------------------------ -=- Murder of the Four U.S. Churchwomen -=- ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + + + Witnesses who found the grave said it was about five feet + + deep. One woman had been shot in the face, another in the + + breast. Two of the women were found with their blood-stained + + underpants around their ankles (Dec. 5, 1980). + + + ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ "On December 2, 1980, four U.S. churchwomen working in El Salvador -- Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, and Dorothy Kazel -- were seized, raped, and murdered by members of the Salvadoran National Guard. This crime was extremely inconvenient to the Carter administration, which was supporting the Salvadoran junta as an alleged 'reformist' government and trying to convince the public and Congress that that government was worthy of aid." "A commission headed by William P. Rogers was quickly sent to El Salvador to inquire into the facts... The commission reported that it had 'no evidence suggesting that any senior Salvadoran authorities were implicated in the murders themselves,' but there is no indication that it ascertained this by any route beyond asking the authorities whether they were involved... [The commission] proposed no independent investigation, merely urging the Salvadoran junta to pursue the case vigorously. It noted that the junta promised that the truth 'would be pursued wherever it led anywhere in the country at any level.'" "With the arrival of the Reagan administration, the already badly compromised concern to find the culprits diminished further...[The new Secretary of State] Alexander Haig stated before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that the evidence 'led one to believe' that the four women were killed trying to run a roadblock -- a shameless lie that was soon acknowledged as such by the State Department." The Reagan ambassador to the U.N., Jeane Kirkpatrick suggested that "...the four women were political activists for the 'Frente' -- as with Haig's statement, an outright lie..." "The difference between the murder of the four women and the thousands of others uninvestigated and unresolved in El Salvador was that the families of these victims were Americans and pressed the case, eventually succeeding in getting Congress to focus on these particular murders..." -=- Details -=- When the bodies of these four churchwomen were found this news merited only a back-page item in the *Times*. The "...accounts of the violence done to the four murdered women were very succinct, omitted many details, and were not repeated after the initial disclosures. No attempt was made to reconstruct the scene with its agony and brutal violence." For example, consider the *Time* account: [After giving the names of the victims] "Two of the women had been raped before being shot in the back of the head." Contrast the above succinct account with the Raymond Bonner's account from "Weakness and Deceit" [note: I am unable to determine if this is a book or a magazine article]: " In the crude grave, stacked on top of each other were " " the bodies of four women. The first hauled out of the " " hole was Jean Donovan, twenty-seven years old, a lay " " missionary from Cleveland. Her face had been blown " " away by a high calibre bullet that had been fired into " " the back of her head. Her pants were unzipped; her " " underwear twisted around her ankles. When area peasants " " found her, she was nude from the waist down. They had " " tried to replace the garments before burial. Then came " " Dorothy Kazel, a forty-year-old Ursuline nun also from " " Cleveland. At the bottom of the pit were Maryknoll nuns " " Ita Ford, forty, and Maura Clarke, forty-nine, both " " from New York. All the women had been executed at close " " range. The peasants who found the women said that one " " had her underpants stuffed in her mouth; another's had " " been tied over her eyes. All had been raped. " "We may note the failure of *Time* and the *New York Times* to mention the bruises... the failure to mention the destruction of Jean Donovan's face; the suppression of the degrading and degraded use of the nuns' underwear; the failure to give the account of the peasants who found the bodies. These and other details given by Bonner and suppressed by *Time* and the *New York Times* (and also *Newsweek* and CBS News) add emotional force and poignancy to the scene." ---------------------------------------------------------------- Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman "Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well." End part 5 The Unworthy Seventy-Two Excerpted from chapter 2 of "Manufacturing Consent" by Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky. "Manufacturing Consent" is published by Pantheon Books, New York. Help support the work of Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky by purchasing this book. **************************************************************** * * * "A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused * * in enemy states as *worthy* victims, whereas those treated * * with equal or greater severity by its own government or * * clients will be *unworthy*." According to this model, Jerzy * * Popieluszko, a Polish priest murdered by the Polish police * * in 1984 "...will be a worthy victim, whereas priests * * murdered in our client states in Latin America will be * * unworthy [of media attention]." * * * * The title of this series, "The Unworthy Seventy-Two," refers * * to 72 victims of state terror in the U.S. client states of * * Guatemala and El Salvador. The adjective "unworthy" * * signifies that they were deemed unworthy of serious media * * attention in the United States. * * * **************************************************************** -------------------------- part 6 ------------------------------ -=- Murder of the Four U.S. Churchwomen -=- (continued) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + + + Witnesses who found the grave said it was about five feet + + deep. One woman had been shot in the face, another in the + + breast. Two of the women were found with their blood-stained + + underpants around their ankles (Dec. 5, 1980). + + + ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The press largely ignored or suppressed the funerals in the United States of these four American churchwomen. The *New York Times* "...gave a tiny, back-page, UPI account of the memorial service for Sister Dorothy Kazel." Ambassador Kirkpatrick rationalized the United State's indirect complicity in these murders by indicating that the victims may have been asking for it. As Newsweek observed (Dec. 15, 1980), "The violence in El Salvador is likely to focus with increasing ferocity on the Roman Catholic Church. Many priests and nuns advocate reform, and some of them are militant leftists. Such sentiments mean trouble, even for moderate members of the clergy." The Newsweek article nowhere mentions that it was the U.S.-backed government which initiated and carried out the bulk of the murdering. In the case of the killing of these four women "...the media found it extremely difficult to locate Salvadoran government involvement in the murders, even with evidence staring them in the face. Their investigatory zeal was modest, and they were happy to follow the leads of ('Trust me') Duarte and U.S. officials as the case unfolded. They played dumb." "Gradually, so much evidence seeped out to show that the women had been murdered by members of the National Guard that the involvement of government forces could no longer be evaded. A two-part process of 'damage limitation' ensued, expounded by Salvadoran and U.S. officials and faithfully reflected in the media." "The most important goal of the immediate damage-containment process was to stifle any serious investigation of the responsibility of the officials of the Salvadoran government. The Salvadoran strategy was foot-dragging from beginning to end... [There was] little doubt that the responsibility for the crime went high. The U.S. official strategy... was to get the low-level killers tried and convicted -- necessary to vindicate the system of justice in El Salvador, at least to the extent of keeping the dollars flowing from Congress -- while protecting the 'reformers' at the top." The U.S. government "...engaged in a systematic cover-up -- of both the Salvadoran cover-up and the facts of the case. The U.S. mass media, while briefly noting the Salvadoran stonewalling, failed to call attention to the equally important lies and suppressions of their own government. As we have pointed out, both the Carter and Reagan administrations put protection of its client above the quest for justice for four U.S. citizens murdered by agents of that government." "A second form of official U.S. participation in the cover-up was a refusal to make public information on the Salvadoran investigation and evidence uncovered by the United States itself. The Rogers report was released belatedly, in a version that edited out the original report's statement about the sad state of the Salvadoran system of justice... [A later report] was kept under wraps for a long time, again apparently because it had some serious criticism of the Salvadoran judicial process that would have interfered with Reagan administration plans to claim progress..." "The families of the victims and their attorneys regularly found the U.S. government unwilling to release information on the case." ---------------------------------------------------------------- Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman "Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well." End part 6 The Unworthy Seventy-Two Excerpted from chapter 2 of "Manufacturing Consent" by Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky. "Manufacturing Consent" is published by Pantheon Books, New York. Help support the work of Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky by purchasing this book. **************************************************************** * * * "A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused * * in enemy states as *worthy* victims, whereas those treated * * with equal or greater severity by its own government or * * clients will be *unworthy*." According to this model, Jerzy * * Popieluszko, a Polish priest murdered by the Polish police * * in 1984 "...will be a worthy victim, whereas priests * * murdered in our client states in Latin America will be * * unworthy [of media attention]." * * * * The title of this series, "The Unworthy Seventy-Two," refers * * to 72 victims of state terror in the U.S. client states of * * Guatemala and El Salvador. The adjective "unworthy" * * signifies that they were deemed unworthy of serious media * * attention in the United States. * * * **************************************************************** -------------------------- part 7 ------------------------------ -=- Guatemalan Victims -=- "The modern history of Guatemala was decisively shaped by the U.S.-organized invasion and overthrow of the democratically elected regime of Jacobo Arbenz in June 1954. Since that time, while Guatemala has remained securely within the U.S. sphere of influence, badly needed economic and social reforms were put off the agenda indefinitely, political democracy was stifled, and state terror was institutionalized and reached catastrophic levels in the late 1970s and early 1980s." The U.S. establishment overthrew the Arbenz government in 1954 because it "...found the pluralism and democracy of the years 1945-54 intolerable." Since that time "...not only has Guatemala gradually become a terrorist state rarely matched in the scale of systematic murder of civilians, but its terrorist proclivities have increased markedly at strategic moments of escalated U.S. intervention." "In 1966, a further small guerrilla movement brought the Green Berets and a major CI [Counter-Insurgency] war in which 10,000 people were killed in pursuit of three or four hundred guerrillas. It was at this point that the 'death squads' and 'disappearances' made their appearance in Guatemala. The United States brought in police training in the 1970s, which was followed by the further institutionalization of violence. The 'solution' to social problems in Guatemala, specifically attributable to the 1954 intervention and the form of U.S. assistance since that time, has been permanent state terror. With Guatemala, the United States invented the 'counterinsurgency state.'" [Although one might think that the Carter administration would have confronted and put a halt to U.S. support for this terrorist state, such is not the case.] Even during the Carter years "...relations with Guatemala were not hostile -- it was as if a child in the family were naughty and briefly put in the corner. Part of the reason for the willingness of the Carter government to provide no new arms supplies was that the bad boy was in no danger. In El Salvador in 1980, by contrast, where the Carter administration saw the possibility of a left-wing victory, support was quickly forthcoming to a right-wing terror regime." "During the Reagan years, the number of civilians murdered in Guatemala ran into the tens of thousands, and disappearances and mutilated bodies were a daily occurrence. Studies by Amnesty International (AI), Americas Watch (AW), and other human-rights monitors have documented a military machine run amok, with the indiscriminate killing of peasants (including vast numbers of women and children), the forcible relocation of hundreds of thousands of farmers and villagers into virtual concentration camps, and the enlistment of many hundreds of thousands in compulsory civil patrols." The lack of media interest in the Guatemalan victims of state terror can be explained by the "...U.S. role in originating and sustaining the Guatemalan counterinsurgency state, and the fact that that state is dedicated to blocking the growth of popular organizations (i.e. 'anti-Communist' in Orwellian rhetoric) and has a strong U.S. business presence..." In this U.S. client state "...the number of civilians murdered between 1978 and 1985 may have approached 100,000 [one-hundred thousand], with a style of killing reminiscent of Pol Pot. As AI [Amnesty International] pointed out in 1981:" " The bodies of the victims have been found piled up " " in ravines, dumped at roadsides or buried in mass " " graves. Thousands bore the scars of torture, and " " death had come to most by strangling with a " " garrotte, by being suffocated in rubber hoods or " " by being shot in the head. " [Where was the U.S. media's coverage of all this? Why is such great attention paid to Bosnia while Guatemala is unworthy of serious attention? For example,] "In the case of the murder in Guatemala of the American priest Rev. Stanley Rother, the *New York Times* reported on August 5, 1981, in a tiny back-page article, that three men had been arrested for questioning in the shooting. What was the outcome of the arrests? Were the arrested persons tried? Readers of the *Times* will never know..." "The holocaust years 1978-85 yielded a steady stream of documents by human-rights groups that provided dramatic evidence of a state terrorism in Guatemala approaching genocidal levels. Many of these documents had a huge potential for educating and arousing the public, but as a propaganda model would anticipate, they were treated in our media sample in a manner that minimized their informational value and capacity to create and mobilize public indignation." [For example,] "The spectacular AI [Amnesty International] report of 1981 on 'Disappearances: A Workbook,' describing a frightening development of state terrorism in the Nazi mold, was entirely ignored in our media sample..." ---------------------------------------------------------------- Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman "Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well." End part 7 The Unworthy Seventy-Two Excerpted from chapter 2 of "Manufacturing Consent" by Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky. "Manufacturing Consent" is published by Pantheon Books, New York. Help support the work of Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky by purchasing this book. **************************************************************** * * * "A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused * * in enemy states as *worthy* victims, whereas those treated * * with equal or greater severity by its own government or * * clients will be *unworthy*." According to this model, Jerzy * * Popieluszko, a Polish priest murdered by the Polish police * * in 1984 "...will be a worthy victim, whereas priests * * murdered in our client states in Latin America will be * * unworthy [of media attention]." * * * * The title of this series, "The Unworthy Seventy-Two," refers * * to 72 victims of state terror in the U.S. client states of * * Guatemala and El Salvador. The adjective "unworthy" * * signifies that they were deemed unworthy of serious media * * attention in the United States. * * * **************************************************************** -------------------------- part 8 ------------------------------ -=- Guatemalan Victims -=- (continued) "Human-rights monitoring and protective agencies have had a very difficult time organizing and surviving in the 'death-squad democracies' of El Salvador and Guatemala. Between October 1980 and March 1983, five officials of the Human Rights Commission of El Salvador were seized and murdered by the security forces." "Guatemala has been even more inhospitable to human-rights organizations than El Salvador. Guatemalan Archbishop Monsignor Prospero Penados del Barrio asserted in 1984 that 'It is impossible for a human rights office to exist in Guatemala at the present time.' 'Disappearances' as an institutional form began in Guatemala in the mid-1960s and eventually reached levels unique in the Western Hemisphere, with the total estimated to be some 40,000 [forty thousand]. Protest groups that have formed to seek information and legal redress have been consistently driven out of business by state-organized murder." "In this context of murder, fear, and the prior failure of all human-rights organizations, the Mutual Support Group, or GAM, was formed in June 1984. It was a product of the desperation felt by people seeking information on the whereabouts of disappeared relatives and willing to take serious risks to that end... The intention of the organizers of GAM was to seek strength by collective action, and to use it to gather data and seek redress by petition and publicity." "Thirty members of the newly organized GAM held a press conference in Guatemala City in June 1984, denouncing the disappearances and calling on the government 'to intervene immediately in order to find our loved ones.'... In October 1984 they [GAM] sponsored a march and mass for the disappeared at the cathedral [Metropolitan Cathedral] -- the first mass demonstration in Guatemala since May 1, 1980." "The organization [GAM] continued to grow, from the initial handful to 225 families in November 1984 and then to 1,300 in the spring of 1986. Most of the members were women, a large majority peasant women from the countryside. They were persistent. After initial petitions, requests, meetings, and marches, they began to make explicit accusations and 'publicly charge elements of the national security forces as directly responsible for the capture and subsequent disappearance of our family members.' They asked for an investigation, an accounting, and justice. They appealed to the constituent assembly and began regular protests in downtown Guatemala City, banging pots and pans and, on occasion, peacefully occupying buildings." But nothing was done in response to the GAM demands. Then, on March 30, 1985, "...GAM leader Hector Gomez Calito was seized, tortured, and murdered. (The six policemen who had come for him were themselves assassinated shortly after his death.) He had been burned with a blowtorch, on the stomach and elsewhere, and beaten on the face so severely that his lips were swollen and his teeth were broken; his tongue had been cut out. Then, on April 4, another leader of GAM, Maria Rosario Godoy de Cuevas, her twenty-one-year-old brother, and her two-year-old son were picked up, tortured, and murdered. Her breasts had bite marks and her underclothing was bloody; her two-year-old son had had his fingernails pulled out." "On grounds of newsworthiness, the murders of the two GAM leaders, along with the brother and the child of one of them, would seem to deserve high-order attention. Their bravery was exceptional; the villainy they were opposing was extraordinary; the justice of their cause was unassailable; and the crimes they suffered were more savage than those undergone by [the Polish priest] Popieluszko. Most important of all, these were crimes for which we bear considerable responsibility, since they were perpetrated by clients who depend on our support, so that exposure and pressure could have a significant effect in safeguarding human rights." "A propaganda model would anticipate that even these dramatic and horrifying murders would be treated in a low-key manner and quickly dropped by the mass media... [And, in fact, the] GAM murders couldn't even make 'the news' at *Time*, *Newsweek*, or CBS News. *The New York Times* never found these murders worthy of the front page or editorial comment, and we can see that the intensity of its coverage was slight." "In an attempt to gain support abroad, two of the remaining leaders of GAM, Nineth de Garcia and Herlindo Hideo de Aquino, traveled to Europe in March and April 1986... One of their most important messages was that killings and disappearances had not abated at all... and that the death squads had actually reappeared and were active in Guatemala City... [When Nineth de Garcia came directly from Europe to Chicago, she was harrassed by the U.S. government. As she went through customs in Chicago] officials of the Immigration and Naturalization Service searched, interrogated, and harassed her for two hours, one of the customs officials calling her a subversive and a Communist. They also seized literature she carried and threatened to deport her... This intimidation had its effect, and Nineth de Garcia flew directly to Guatemala." "When a press conference was held in Chicago by supporters of GAM to protest this outrage, the major media did not attend, and neither the press releases nor the follow-up letter from a congressional group signed by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan could break the silence. The convergence between Reagan administration policy toward Guatemala and media priorities was complete." ---------------------------------------------------------------- Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman "Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well." End part 8 The Unworthy Seventy-Two -------------------------- Epilogue ---------------------------- **************************************************************** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * **********************===>> photo <<===************************* Argentinian forensic anthropologist Mercedes Dorretti carefully excavates a skull Tuesday from what used to be the convent of the church at El Mozote 80 miles east of San Salvador. So far 37 human remains have been found at the site where officials are investigating the alleged 1981 massacre of at least 800 people. -=- Mass Killings Uncovered -=- Skulls, bones attest to massacre during Salvadoran civil war (Associated Press, October 22, 1992) El Mozote, El Salvador -- With trowels and brushes, archaeologists are laying bare the killing floor of a parish house-turned-charnel house where dozens of dirty skulls and a puzzle of children's bones attest to atrocity. The Legal Aid Office of the San Salvador archdiocese of the Roman Catholic church said in a report last year that the U.S.-trained Atlacatl counterinsurgency battalion killed about 1,000 peasant men, women and children in six hamlets over four days. Digging in this remote abandoned hamlet has produced proof of a December 1981 massacre that the U.S. government initially tried to deny and that local rightists still call a figment of subversive propaganda. Three women and one man are busy removing dirt from around bones. Some of the rib cages are tiny and delicate. Most of the skulls are small, mouths agape as if the boy or girl were frozen in an eternal scream. Several skulls are perforated by a jagged hole. Reporters who visited the zone in January 1982 saw bodies, spoke with residents and published stories lending credibility to reports of a massacre. The U.S. Embassy in San Salvador initially denied a massacre had taken place, a position Washington since has reversed. At the time, American aid to this Central American country was being challenged by Congress because of widespread human rights abuses by Salvadoran forces. Until now there has been no physical evidence. The church based its report on testimony from a handful of survivors and sketchy accounts from residents of nearby villages. In the polarized climate during 12 years of civil war, such testimony often was impugned as biased or politically motivated. El Mozote's location in the heart of the northeastern war front prevented gathering of forensic evidence. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman "Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well." End part 9 of 9 End of series