Michael Parenti

The CIA's biggest asset in recruiting the Meo tribes into an army to fight against the anti-imperialist, anticapitalist Pathet Lao was its ability to transport the Meo's big cash crop of opium out of remote villages onto major markets via Air America, a CIA-operated airline.

In Mexico in 1988, the popular left candidate Cuauhtemoc Cárdenas, with a decisive lead in the opinion polls, had the election stolen from him. The government confiscated all the ballots and refused to release the voting results for days. Opposition counters were barred from the tallying.

In January 1992, the FMLN liberation guerrilla force signed a peace accord with the government and two years later elections were held with the Left participating for the first time. The U.S.-backed, ultra-rightist ARENA government party won in a campaign marked by manipulation, fraud, intimidation, and violence.

With fifty times more money than the FMLN, ARENA waged a media campaign that played on the fears of a population traumatized by twelve years of war, suggesting that the FMNL would abolish religion and murder the elderly. At least thirty-two FMLN members, mostly candidates and prominent campaign workers, were assassinated during the campaign. Some 300,000 people were denied voter registration cards. Another estimated 320,000 were denied access to the polls even when they showed up with cards, their names having been mysteriously omitted from the voting lists. Meanwhile thousands of deceased, whose names were still on the rolls – including ARENA's late leader Roberto D'Aubuisson and the late president José Napoleón Duarte – miraculously managed to vote.

Election-day bus service was concentrated in zones where ARENA supporters predominated, while voters in FMLN areas were often without means of getting to the polls. Many strong FMLN areas were subjected to military harassment and intimidation during the voting period. ARENA officials controlled the electoral tribunals and invariably handed down rulings that favored their party, turning away some 74,000 voter applicants who could not meet the exacting documentation required. Reminiscent of Mexico, computer vote tallies were delayed for days and failed to match those arrived at by hand. Technicians from opposition parties were expelled from the central computer room on election night.

Even with all the abuses, the FMLN won 25 percent of the seats. One wonders how the Left would have done in an honest contest. Despite all the fraud and intimidation, El Salvador was declared a ”democracy” by U.S. political leaders and media. Similar showcase elections have been in the Dominican Republic after the U.S. invasion, the Phillipines under Marcos, Grenada after the U.S.

invasion, and a variety of other countries.

Aristide would be allowed to finish the last months of his term – but for a substantial price. He was strongarmed into accepting a World Bank agreement that included a shift of some presidential powers to the conservative Haitian parliment, a massive privatization of the public sector and a cut in public employment by one-half, a reduction of regulations and taxes on U.S. corporations investing in Haiti, increased subsidies for exports and private corporations, and a lowering of import duties. World Bank representatives admitted that these measures would hurt the Haitian poor but benefit the ”enlightened business investors.”

According to the World Bank itself, the number of Haitians who live in absolute poverty rose from 48 percent in 1976 to 81 percent in 1985, indicating a serious spread of malnutrition, disease, and illiteracy.