... "Just kill them" was the response to the questions "What should be done about the poor?" in a poll for elite(?) urban children in El Salvador in the 1980s. I can't remember if I read that in Noam Chomsky's Deterring Democracy or maybe it is in the book of writings by Ignacio Martin-Baro, and Ignacio Ellacuria?? It seems important now that the current USA regime is kidnapping people and sending them to a mass "concentration camp" prison in El Salvador: CECOT...

> ... in El Salvador. After the harsh repression of nonviolent activities, "the masses were with the guerrillas" by early 1980 in the judgment of José Napoleón Duarte, the U.S.-imposed figurehead. To bar the threat of nationalism responsive to popular demands and pressures, it was therefore necessary to resort to a "war of extermination and genocide against a defenseless civilian population," to borrow the terms of Archbishop Romero's successor a few months after the assassination. Meanwhile Duarte praised the army for its "valiant service alongside the people against subversion" as he was sworn in as civilian president of the military junta to provide a cover for active U.S. engagement in the slaughter, and thus to become a respected figure in Western circles.59

The broader framework was sketched by Father Ignacio Mart�n-Baró, one of the Jesuit priests assassinated in November 1989 and a noted Salvadoran social psychologist, in a talk he delivered in California on "The Psychological Consequences of Political Terrorism," a few months before he was murdered.60 He stressed several relevant points. First, the most significant form of terrorism, by a large measure, is state terrorism, that is, "terrorizing the whole population through systematic actions carried out by the forces of the state." Second, such terrorism is an essential part of a "government-imposed sociopolitical project" designed for the needs of the privileged. To implement it, the whole population must be "terrorized by an internalized fear."

Mart�n-Baró only alludes to a third point, which is the most important one for a Western audience: the sociopolitical project and the state terrorism that helps implement it are not specific to El Salvador, but are common features of the Third World domains of the United States, for reasons deeply rooted in Western culture, institutions, and policy planning, and fully in accord with the values of enlightened opinion. These crucial factors explain much more than the fate of El Salvador.

In the same talk, Mart�n-Baró referred to the "massive campaign of political terrorism" in El Salvador a decade ago, conducted with U.S. backing and initiative. He noted further that "since 1984, with the coming of so-called democratic government in El Salvador under Duarte, things seemed to change a bit," but in reality "things did not change. What changed was that the terrorized population was reduced to only two options: to go to the mountains and join the ranks of the rebels, or to comply -- at least openly -- with the programs imposed by the government." The killings then reduced in scale, a development that occasioned much self-praise here for our benign influence. The reason for the decline, he observes, is that "there was less need for extraordinary events, because people were so terrorized, so paralyzed."

znetwork.org/wp-content/upload…

#IgnacioMartinBaro #NoamChomsky #LiberationPsychology #ElSalvador