Letters
LETTERS to the Editor Allan Nairn and The Guatemala Connection9 Allan Nairn's article, "The Guatemala Connection" (May issue), illustrates a brand of contentious "reporting" which neither...
...The substitution of patriotism for family, community, and friendship keeps the population fragmented, impotent, and "safe...
...A shop steward who talks about universal proletarian class interests isn't likely to get anywhere, but one who cites the American tradition of resisting injustice has a powerful tool at hand...
...Instead it warrants the support of well-meaning democrats and the benefit of serious reporting...
...Although private companies are free to apply for licenses, most requests in recent years have been turned down, in accord with Administration restraint...
...Especially pernicious are charges of "un-American" and "dupes of communism" leveled at opponents of Star Wars or of aid to so-called freedom fighters...
...Department of State Washington, D.C...
...While this is no doubt true, I hope he does not mean to imply that the American business flier has taken to ordering the Hughes M-D-the "light-combat" model proposed for sale to Guatemala—and equipping it with Gatling guns and TOW missiles...
...Patriotism does not necessarily equate with nationalist militarism...
...Dave Gutknecht seems to believe that the members of a co-op are empowered simply by having invested capital in the business...
...The true patriot certainly loves his native land but critically examines its government's policies and opposes those he perceives to be wrong...
...Incidentally, patriotism and nationalism have been major forces for only two centuries, not two millennia, contrary to Rothschild's claim that "patriotism is to blame for most of the violent, crude, and sanguinary events of this century and many centuries past...
...O Patriots: An Exchange The dialogue between John Buell and Matthew Rothschild ("O Patriots," July issue) was important and deserves careful attention...
...On the one hand, John Buell, whose conclusions I reject, was comprehensive and congenial...
...In 1984, after the murders of three U.S...
...Any emotion can be used for good or bad ends...
...Melton's letter is yet another sad indication that Guatemala's forces of democracy will have to look elsewhere for support in their struggle for justice and survival...
...And despite its mild internal de-murral, the State Department neither informed Congress of the transaction nor made any attempt to have the tanks returned...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...
...Carrie Rothburd Madison, Wisconsin Correction Asentence I did not write crept into my review of Women: A World Report (Books, August issue), and it needs correction...
...Kopyt says he remembers Nairn, who identified himself as an "entrepreneur" who could arrange arms sales to Guatemala for the company...
...The members of the committee on principles of the International Cooperative Association, who reformulated the principles in 1966, recognized that a co-op must provide more than goods or services and patronage refunds...
...But empowering its members and improving society are possible only if the cooperative is well-managed...
...The patriotic mentality allows folk to love America while ignoring the screams of someone being stabbed outside their door...
...Melton says the U.S...
...David Troup San Francisco, California Patriotism is not and cannot be a positive force...
...We also think the struggling democracy deserves better than The Progressive's article...
...Try being a civil-liberties advocate, a union organizer, or a community activist without invoking the rhetoric of patriotism...
...I just assumed from the way they were talking they were going to put guns on all of them...
...Also, Mass Transit Systems president Leon Kopyt denies any such dealings...
...In 1983, fresh from a series of highland sweeps that destroyed 440 villages and killed tens of thousands of peasants, General Rios Montt was embraced by President Reagan, who declared that he was getting "a bum rap" on human rights...
...policy...
...they're all great countries, as Milton Mayer said...
...reporters, citing the State Department's Guatemala desk as his source...
...The basic theme of Nairn's article is that "while Congress slept" the Reagan Administration was "presiding over" weapons deliveries "contrary to Congress's express intent...
...The Sandinistas deserve praise for "a government that has turned to the poor majority for participation and support and is trying to feed, house, and educate its people," and "human rights have improved dramatically," he assured the reader...
...The author buttresses his case on U.S...
...distributors...
...In fact, Nairn was a reporter for us, working on assignment...
...But then so are France, Britain, Norway, Kenya, Argentina, the Soviet Union, Australia—you name them...
...Perhaps, in the end, the true patriot subordinates his regard for his native land to a higher concern for Planet Earth, the native land of all humanity...
...2. The author claims that in 1982 Guatemalan military pilots learned to mount machine guns on aircraft at Bell Helicopter in Texas...
...He said he was disturbed about what I had said about the laser-sight shipments, and the State Department would investigate the matter right away...
...Government to Guatemala since 1977...
...His claim that the Administration approved only $38,000 in lethal aid is off by a factor of 1,000...
...Dave Gutknecht Editor Cooperative Grocer Cambridge, Massachusetts The author replies: While it is true that the six cooperative principles do not specify a management structure, some structures are more compatible than others with principle number two, which specifies that "affairs should be administered by persons elected or appointed in a manner agreed to by the members [who] should enjoy equal rights of voting and participating in decisions affecting their societies...
...Patriotism is simply the human yearning for solidarity with one's neighbors...
...However, co-ops need not be direct democracies...
...Guatemalan air force pilots I interviewed spoke highly of their hands-on U.S...
...Patriotism becomes a pain in the posterior and a peril to humanity when it transmogrifies into jingoism, or what Buell and Rothschild call nationalism...
...Neither does it include the Administration's equally substantial program of covert aid to the Guatemalan military, including the shipment of $36 million worth of M-41 tanks, the CIA's provision of rifles for General Rios Montt's civil patrols, or the current supply of laser-beam rifle sights...
...However, the Administration's philosophy recognizes and rewards improvement, and sales licensing approval has increased commensurate with democratization and human-rights improvement in Guatemala...
...In recent years, thousands of food co-op members and workers, and still more potential members and workers, saw an endless variety of collectives being invented and tried...
...For example, a much greater value of such sales was approved in the last two years of the Carter Presidency than during the first four years of the Reagan Administration— $908,000 under President Carter versus $38,000 under President Reagan...
...The song speaks of patriotism as a joy not won at the expense of others...
...Ownership without control does not empower, and control without participation is impossible...
...On July 10, he went on television to denounce me and my colleague Jean-Marie Simon for our New Republic article and said we might be expelled from the country...
...I would remind Rothschild of the Marxist scheme of base-superstructure...
...Both writers should be applauded for bringing this matter to the surface so thoughtfully...
...But if there's not enough owner equity to balance what's owed to the creditors, there won't be a business...
...all that is lacking is imagination and will...
...The notion of co-opting I triotism is as futile—and as immoral—as the notion of co-opting racism...
...It allows people to feel like "good Americans" while remaining ignorant of their next-door-neighbor's name...
...Collective forms of organization may incorporate a general manager or assign zones of responsibility to workers...
...In fact, however—as Kopyt may remember and the State Department could have learned by calling me—our interview was recorded on tape...
...Government was unaware of the tank shipment—the largest military delivery to a Guatemalan port in more than a decade^until after the fact...
...In April, after I gave a talk on Guatemala at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., I was approached by Lynn Schiveley, a State Department Guatemala desk officer...
...Melton's story about Leon Kopyt of Mass Transit Systems Corporation, the Philadelphia company that supplies laser-aimed rifle sights to Guatemala, is equally absurd and inadvertently revealing about State Department methods...
...The "essence" of cooperatives, to focus on Rothburd's central confusion, is ownership, not this or that type of management or lack thereof...
...This was precisely the point of my Nicaragua article, which Melton so hopelessly distorts: That it is best to be blunt about the pros and cons of any regime—especially one that is under attack from a powerful and determined enemy...
...It seems from Melton's letter that the State Department investigation got no further than a call to Kopyt, who, according to Melton, said I had posed as a fellow arms dealer eager to cut a deal with Guatemala...
...The [ "choppers are capable of destroying tanks (which Guatemalan guerrillas do not have)," he says...
...Patriotism must go before John Buell's vision of "a new kind of domestic politics" can be realized...
...While it is understandable that Bell Helicopter officials now deny that they trained the Guatemalans in how to mount machine guns, pilots and instructors involved in the course tell a different story...
...According to these administrators, the company offers transition courses for pilots and maintenance information, not weapons training...
...it must change the way people think and interact...
...company, Mass Transit Systems Corporation, has supplied laser rifle sights to Guatemala, Nairn claims...
...I told Kopyt that I was a reporter, and he commented that he LETTERS to the Editor was not accustomed to calls from journalists...
...Rothburd insists that "democratic management [is] the essence of co-ops," though the six internationally recognized co-op principles do not attempt to specify appropriate management structures...
...they pioneered many natural-foods and consumer-protection practices because they are based on member ownership...
...Allan Nairn Washington, D.C...
...Government) of Hughes model 500 helicopters...
...the $537,000 in IMET (International Military Education and Training) funds sought for fiscal years 1983 and 1985, or the $37.5 million in Economic Support Fund payments (unrestricted security assistance money, which can be used to free funds for military programs) granted in fiscal years 1983, 1985, and 1986...
...It must have a political mission...
...As a veteran of World War II and the Korean conflict, I have credentials as a patriot that are, I believe, as good as those of most Americans, including the Administration's flag-wavers...
...Sure, I'm glad that I was born in the United States, and I understand Buell's point about people having a natural pride in their native land...
...Uncharacteristic of the genre, however, this piece merits a reply—because of its malicious political nature, its erroneous content, and the outrageousness of its charges...
...Richard H. Melton Director Office of Central American and Panamanian Affairs U.S...
...that these are a "part of a pattern of ofF-stage transactions carried on behind the back of Congress" in an "ongoing, surreptitious, at-times-illegal effort to bolster Guatemala's repressive capabilities...
...military aid to Guatemala with three false charges: 1. Nairn charges that the U.S...
...Carol Polsgrove Oakland, California The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...Kopyt says he refused the offer...
...but skies are everywhere as blue as mine...
...Melton's attempts to impugn my integrity are bizarre, to say the least...
...Robert B. Hall Lakewood, Colorado The word love is often used loosely and sloppily, and never more so than by those who profess to love a country...
...Government will no longer support an institution that rules by death and fear...
...Kopyt stated three times that he was shipping laser sights to the Guatemalan government—a claim I was able to confirm with Guatemalan officers, Mass Transit company documents, and Western intelligence officials...
...Specifically, they should promote alternatives to patriotism, seeking out what is humane and constructive in shared class, neighborhood, or ethnic background, and building community and camaraderie thereupon and not upon membership in the United States of America...
...LETTERS to the Editor Allan Nairn and The Guatemala Connection9 Allan Nairn's article, "The Guatemala Connection" (May issue), illustrates a brand of contentious "reporting" which neither recognizes nor promotes Guatemala's nascent democracy...
...Dale Chock Seattle, Washington The debate on patriotism reminds me of the simple and beautiful "Finlandia," also called "Song of Peace": "This is my home, a country where my heart is...
...Editor's Note: In a letter to Melton, Associate Editor Jefferson Morley of The New Republic wrote, "I must correct your rather reckless imputation that Allan Nairn is a 'journalistic imposter' who misled State Department officials by claiming to be a reporter for The New Republic...
...General Hector Gra-majo, the army's chief of staff, repeated the tale to local and U.S...
...Until you apologize to Nairn for your silly insinuation that he was falsely posing as a TNR contributor, I suggest that you refrain from criticizing his altogether more reliable reporting...
...Melton's expressed enthusiasm for the "new Guatemalan government, chosen in a truly free election" must make ironic reading for Ven-icio Cerezo, Guatemala's new civilian president...
...President Cerezo has good intentions, but he stated from the outset that he would not attempt social reforms "because the army would not allow it...
...Many stores closed...
...For example, the United States didn't steal northern Mexico out of belief in "Manifest Destiny," but embraced that ideology in order to justify its greed...
...However, he said, one must weigh the abuses "against their great accomplishments and grisly alternatives...
...We did not sell these vehicles, and we were not aware of their diversion from Belgium until after the fact...
...With all its faults, America is a great country...
...The United States could play a constructive role in Guatemala by repudiating the army's violent past, denouncing its continued atrocities, and making it clear that the U.S...
...In fact, Reagan policy has been much more stringent than that of the previous Administration, with a higher percentage of application denials and deferrals, and more restrictions on commercial sales of equipment considered potentially lethal...
...This July, while in Guatemala researching another story, I learned that the State Department had passed its fabricated story of my posing as an arms dealer on to the Guatemalan army high command...
...it is a sham perpetuated by the state to keep people ignorant of their own government's nefarious doings...
...One Bell instructor told Mark Thompson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, December 15, 1982, that the Guatemalans "asked me where they should mount the guns...
...Taylor is British, and Greer is an Australian native transplanted in Britain...
...that Guatemala continues to receive a steady flow of "underground" shipments from U.S...
...My country's skies are bluer than the ocean...
...But members who do not have an opportunity to participate report feeling and exercising little control or ownership, and they do not believe those in charge are responsive to their needs and outlook...
...Kurt R. Thornbladh New Hudson, Michigan The exchange on the prospects for a "left-wing patriotism" was dreadfully unbalanced...
...Only four years ago, the U.S...
...I gave him a copy of my article in The Progressive, told him how to reach Kopyt, and asked him to call me if he had any questions...
...Politico-economic rivalry causes most wars...
...Though the deal may indeed have been news to certain members of the State Department—as I noted in my article, an April 23, 1982, State Department telegram called the deal "unauthorized"—it was no surprise to the Pentagon and CIA officials who approved it...
...Government helped steal the election from Cerezo's Christian Democratic coalition and ratified the fraudulent victory of General Lucas's hand-picked successor—an event detailed in my article and one Melton does not even bother to deny...
...There are no laser-aimed rifle sights in the Guatemalan army...
...The true patriot does not feel it necessary to wave the flag or wear a replica of it on his lapel...
...Although there has never been a prohibition on commercial transactions to supply material that is properly licensed, the current Administration has—contrary to Nairn's charges—required licensing of all such private commercial transactions...
...The assets of a business, without which it cannot exist, belong to the owners and the creditors...
...by private firms and local governments...
...Congress has known of all licenses the Administration planned to approve through consultation with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...
...Government arranged for ten tanks, of a 1950s vintage, to be illegally delivered to Guatemala in a "byzantine underground transaction approved by Washington...
...Although the anti-Guatemala stance manifest in Nairn's article is being rendered obsolete by the new democracy, he must be given recognition as a sort of Ferdinand Waldo Demara ("the Great Imposter") of political reportage: The author reportedly told the Mass Transit Company's president that he was an "entrepreneur" for arms deals...
...She flatly asserts that all hierarchy is undemocratic and assures us that "an endless variety of collective structures waits to be invented and tried...
...Taking care of its own housing, health, and transportation needs is the kind of thing a community does naturally if it isn't blinded by patriotic glare...
...I would remind Buell that leftist militants ("activists" to those with sensitive ears) must keep a general alert against encouraging evil...
...My article about Guatemala for The New Republic came out two weeks before Melton wrote his letter to The Progressive and had already been the subject of several State Department meetings...
...Neither Germaine Greer nor Debbie Taylor is an American, as the editorial insertion states...
...But administrators at Bell advise that Guatemalan pilots did not learn such techniques...
...A GAO study of the matter concluded that the transaction—initiated by a private Belgian company-was labeled illegal in a subsequent State Department inquiry...
...Nairn fails to note that the four-to-six passenger Hughes aircraft, developed in 1968, are normally used for ferrying paymasters into remote rural areas or for evacuating the injured, and that the "500" is used extensively in the United States by private firms and local governments...
...Elsewhere in his article, Nairn is critical of a "proposed" sale (actually a licensing request was not approved by the U.S...
...His point about The New Republic is especially curious...
...This does not include the $10 million in Foreign Military Sales credits which the Administration requested for fiscal years 1984, 1985, and 1986...
...It is used as an instrument of control...
...A retail cooperative is not a workplace union, nor is it a political party, nor is it more than one potential component of a movement for social transformation...
...Lois Remple Pueblo, Colorado Co-ops Co-opted Carrie Rothburd's article on food co-ops ("Co-opted," May issue) is remarkable for the author's stubborn refusal to recognize why her personal view of how these co-ops should operate is no longer workable...
...We are supposed to believe that the act of hiring a general manager means that "co-ops become instruments of their own elite rather than a means of empowering their members and improving society...
...training and said they left Texas early to rush immediately into rural operations...
...If Guatemala is to make any progress in loosening the hold of three decades of army domination, it will have to count on support from foreign journalists and politicians who speak frankly about the facts of army terror and the realities of U.S...
...Schiveley was very friendly and asked about Mass Transit, which I had mentioned in my talk...
...Melton points out that Hughes 500 helicopters are "used extensively in the U.S...
...Between 1981 and 1984, according to the General Accounting Office, the Administration approved sales of $40,281,000 worth of military aircraft (two jet transports and eight T-37 trainers), 518 military trucks worth $14,368,409, a shipment of combat helicopter parts worth $3,411,461, and at least $688,398 worth of miscellaneous items including shotguns, pistols, "pyrotechnics," helicopter armor, and spare parts for A-37 fighters...
...Try as it might, the State Department cannot rewrite history...
...3. A U.S...
...on the other hand, Matthew Rothschild, whose basic position I share, spewed a self-indulgent litany of spite and naivete...
...Some of these intelligence officials also verified from CIA records that Mass Transit had done CIA contract work since 1981...
...In a co-op structured around a general manager, democracy may be preserved by ensuring that the general manager is accountable to the membership or the board...
...The author replies: Faced with the unenviable task of explaining why the Reagan Administration has been backing an army that has killed perhaps 100,000 unarmed civilians since 1978, the State Department is reduced to falsifying the public record...
...As the Pentagon's own Congressional Presentation Document clearly states, the Guatemalan army needs helicopters to "improve the mobility of the armed forces...
...R. Hersted Portola, California Iagree, at least in part, with both John Buell and Matthew Rothschild...
...How can one compare the perverted patriotism of Hitler to the enlightened patriotism of Gandhi...
...Capital equity must supplement sweat equity, not substitute for it as in her too-neat phrase, because equity is the measure of ownership...
...AID employees and the disappearance of thousands of Guatemalans, Reagan rewarded General Mejia Victores with a shipment of military helicopter parts...
...Co-ops empower members by means of their ownership structure...
...This charge is absolutely without foundation...
...Nairn could have salvaged some credibility as an objective reporter had he only dusted off and modified another piece he authored— about another country...
...When Gutknecht states the essence of cooperatives is member-ownership, he also overlooks, cooperative principle number five, which states: "All cooperative societies should make provision for the education of members, officers, and employees, and of the general public on the principles and the techniques of cooperatives, both economic and democratic...
...Instead of attempting to justify the Administration's efforts to arm the regimes of Generals Lucas (1978-82), Rios Montt (1982-83), and Mejia Vic-tores (1983-86), Richard H. Melton simply denies that it did so in the first place...
...This ugly pseudopatriotism becomes evident in the unbridled jubilation over the Libya raid, the uncritical endorsement of the Administration's extravagant arms buildup, and the mindless nods of approval for Ronald Reagan's blather about "standing tall...
...In an April 20, 1985, apology for Nicaragua in The Nation, Nairn acknowledged that the Sandinista government had been responsible for the disappearance and death of civilians and the mistreatment of Indians, that "the revolution has antidemocratic aspects," and that there is censorship...
...For an objective view of the new Guatemala government, Nairn had merely to remove from his earlier apologia the references to the Sandinistas' negative practices and to plug in his list of positive attributes—with the addition, for Guatemala, of a government chosen in a truly free election...
...responsibility can be delegated, provided no hierarchical form of management places an individual or group in unchecked control of others...
...In 1981, as General Lucas's army declared war on unions and the church and gunned down Guatemala's civic leadership in the streets, the Reagan Administration's Congressional Presentation Document justified military aid as an effort "to support those in the government working toward political and economic reform...
...to the State Department's Guatemala desk officer he was a reporter for The New Republic, and he apparently convinced The Progressive that a position antithetic to the support of a popularly elected, democratic government, is somehow progressive...
...In fact, there has been no direct military assistance, or military equipment credits, by the U.S...
...Very little social improvement has resulted from these failures—unless we learn from them...
...The Administration strongly supports Guatemala's well-intentioned and substantial progress towards its human-rights goals...
...In the case of Guatemala, the country's slim hopes for civilian democracy are facing an enemy within—a Guatemalan army that continues to kill noncombatants and, by the estimate of Archbishop Prospero Penados, still wields 75 per cent of the power...
...This statement is totally false...
...Too often, American-style patriotism is a competitive force that seeks to find pride and satisfaction by beating someone else down...
Vol. 50 • September 1986 • No. 9
