John Bushnell, of the State Department, stated before a House appropri...
Citations (1)
- Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media whole source · open book
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.17 This statement was a knowing lie,18 contradicted by all independent evidence coming out of El Salvador and refuted by Archbishop Romero on an almost daily basis.19 In his letter to Carter sent on February 17, 1980, the archbishop pointed out that aid to the junta had resulted in increasing repressive violence by the government, “amassing a total dead and wounded far higher than in the previous military regimes.” And Romero explained to Carter that the idea that the junta was reformist was a myth, that “neither the junta nor the Christian Democrats govern the country,” but, rather, power is in the hands of the army, serving itself and the oligarchy.20 What gave Bushnell’s statement a certain credibility was the fact that there had been a “reformist coup” by young army officers in October 1979, and liberals and progressives entered the early junta.
chapter: 2 Worthy and Unworthy Victims