12 The Other Press

MIT's leading linguist and one of the United States' most vocal dissi-
dents speaks out in this revealing interview

November 16, 1993

Source: The McGill Daily, McGill University
by Wayne Hiltz

MONTREAL (CUP) — Noam
Chomsky has been described as one of
the United States’ leading dissidents. For
over 25 years, this linguist has been
perhaps the most outspoken critic of US
foreign policy in the Third World.

During the 1980s, he turned his
biting analysis to US interventions in
Central America, denouncing the US-
financed contra war against the Sandinista
government in Nicaragua and US support
for brutal Salvadoran and Guatemalan
military regimes against popular and
revolutionary movements.

With the present United States
involvement in the UN-imposed em-
bargo against Haiti and the concomitant
potential for another US occupation
(Haiti was invaded by the United States in
1915 on the pretext of protecting US
citizens and American interests in the
region) this interview could not be
timelier.

Q: Has there been much change in US.
policy towards Latin America under the
Clinton administration?

Chomsky: Well, of course there’s a
change. The U.S. won a pretty big victory in
Central America so it’s no longer necessary
to crush and destroy popular forces by
terror. They've mostly been subdued and the
US. did succeed in imposing what it
wanted.

A former State Department official
under Reagan, Thomas Carruthers, points
out that the US was strongly opposed to
democracy throughout the whole region —

all of Latin America. There’s a negative
correlation between Usd influence and

democracy. Namely, where US influence was
least in the Southern Cone, there was a
movement towards democracy which the
Reagan administration in fact opposed,
though it sort of went along with it.

Where the US interests were stronger,
like in Central America, there was a sharp
regression. While there was a move towards
a formal facade of democracy which
Carruthers points out correctly was a top-
down kind of democratic change which
maintained in control the traditional elites
with whom the U.S. has always worked and
who will turn the region into a kind of
assembly plant for US corporations and a
resource center.

And that was pretty much achieved,
mainly by terror.

Q: Turning to Haiti, has it been the
case that the fears of a left-wing president
have led to less than shining support for a
Haitian democrat?