Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

Patterns of Intervention
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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arrested in a Catholic retreat center by armed police. The police raid was
based on an alleged tip that rifles and bazookas were stored there, but
the police conceded that they had found no weapons, “although they did
confiscate most of the union files.” Union leaders charged that they were
forced to sign written confessions after a week of interrogation,
sometimes beatings. None was charged with a crime; the official
accusation was that they were planning to “present demands to
management for higher wages and benefits and promoting strikes, which
destabilize the economy.” A US official stated that the Embassy had
“followed the arrests closely and was satisfied that the correct
procedures were followed.” The union attacked had never held a
meeting under its own name, “fearing arrest or death-squad attacks”; in
1980-81, some 8200 union members were murdered, wounded or
disappeared, according to an estimate by one labor group. Salvadoran
law requires yearly meetings of unions to elect leaders, while another
law bans such meetings as illegal “except with police permission, which
is seldom granted.” The arrests in this case were part of a general
government crackdown on unions in preparation for the much-praised
March 25 elections; or as the press preferred: “The police action came
despite government promises to loosen restrictions on political freedom
in preparation for” the elections. 32 Such preparations then went
unnoticed in the general ecstasy over the democratic renewal in El
Salvador a few weeks later.