BUSINESS AS USUAL T HE ESSENCE OF OBJECTIVE JOURNALISM is its supposed impartiality. Though experienced journalists are well aware that politicians often set them up to undercut political enemies, even the most cynical members of the U.S press corps in Central America still tend to believe in their own neutrality. So thought Jer- emy Bigwood until last October when he received a check from the State Department. Bigwood is a news photographer based in El Salvador whose striking pho- tos of guerrillas and their sympathizers have appeared in numerous magazines, including Report on the Americas. It seems that for some time the State Department’s Graphics Service has been regularly visiting his New York agency, Gamma-Liaison, and buying up to 20 rolls a week of his pictures. Bill Gifford of The Village Voice learned that State buys inordinate amounts of photos of El Salvador from most of the major New York agencies. An official at the State Department’s Central America desk told Gifford that the photos are sent on to the U.S. embassies in the region. “I’m sure it’s going to intelligence,” an official of the Embassy in San Salvador told the Voice. “Copies of these pictures could easily get into the hands of the local police, or the army, or the private militia.” (“Pri- vate militia”: the State Department’s Euphemism Serv- ice must be as busy as the Graphics Service.) Purchasing vast quantities of photos of regions in crisis, which is entirely legal, has apparently been a standard practice of the State Department for at least a decade. While all photographers know that their pub- lished work is available to the government’s intelligence services, few recognize that every shot they take may end up in the death squads’ files. T HIS REMINDER OF THE SORDID NATURE of business as usual in U.S. foreign policy may be helpful in understanding the Bush Administration’s sup- posed “lack of direction” on Central America. Bush is boxed in between the Right’s insistence on using Cen- tral America to rally the faithful and beat up on liberals, and the failure, from the Administration’s standpoint, of policy-making via such “public debate.” The more Reagan and the Right used the region’s crisis to achieve other ends-regarding both domestic politics and broader foreign policy goals-the greater were the re- strictions on the government’s capacity to resolve the crisis in its favor. But Secretary of State James Baker made his name as an astute manipulator, and his team is filled not with fringe right-wing outsiders anxious to use foreign affairs to defeat domestic enemies, but with mainstream right- wing insiders like Bush himself, intent on getting the job done of ensuring U.S. hegemony in the region. The “lack of direction” is actually a careful extrication of Central America policy from any sort of public debate, so that the professional destabilizers and counterinsur- gency operatives who did so much to further Bush’s career will have a freer hand to do their dirty work. The contra aid deal struck by Secretary Baker with Congress in March serves this purpose well. There will likely be no public debate on Nicaragua policy for nearly a year, and thus no public scrutiny of U.S. efforts to undermine the revolution. Except for a few mavericks, the Republican and Democratic majorities in Congress make willing partners; they too want off the contra hook. And they all know that the manipulation of the crisis by Reagan, and the broad public opposition to the contra war that it provoked, posed long-term threats to the smooth administration of the Empire. President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica understands this. He fervently praised the aid deal, even though it contra- dicts the agreement to disband the contras he himself worked out with his Central American colleagues. Arias, whose opposition to Reagan policy grew more out of the strong-arm tactics Reagan used in Costa Rica than out of strict principles of non-intervention, knows that turning the region’s crisis into a political football makes any resolution problematic, and thus spells instability even for the Central American bourgeoisie. E L SALVADOR IS ADMITTEDLY MORE DIF- ficult to keep off the front pages, as the failure of U.S. policy there is more apparent. But the Administra- tion’s strategy of silence-it’s not news unless we say it is-will certainly be helped along by the “give Cristiani a chance” movement which seems to hold sway in Congress, and which promises to hold together the bi- partisan consensus for war. Arias must hope that Bush is seeking to quiet public clamor in order to outflank the Right and negotiate a set- tlement. But the return to business-as-usual hardly im- plies peace. Should Bush continue to be successful in lowering the profile of the U.S. war against Nicaragua and match Reagan’s achievement of silencing debate on El Salvador, he will likely be more effective in counter- ing revolution than Reagan and the contras ever were. They say a dog that barks won’t bite. Watch out for dogs that don’t bark.
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