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Security in the courtroom was in the hands of a special Judicial Protection Unit, formed and trained in Glencoe, Alabama; the jurors were driven to the courtroom in the morning and returned to their homes after the verdict in bullet-proof American embassy vehicles; meals and camp beds were provided by the embassy so that if necessary the jurors and the staff of the court could sleep overnight within the protection of the guarded courthouse; and when the electricity failed, just as the prosecution began to make its presentation, light was restored by means of hurricane lamps delivered by embassy staff.71

The stakes were U.S. dollars. Congress had frozen $19.4 million pending the favorable outcome of the case. Within twenty-four hours of the decision, the State Department, announcing that justice had been done, released the money to the charge of Minister of Defense Vides Casanova, who had been head of the National Guard on December 4, 1980, when the murders took place, whose first cousin, according to Colonel Santivánez, had given the direct order to kill, and who had so effectively protected his cousin and stalled the prosecution of underlings for three-and-a-half years.

In conformity with the predictions of a propaganda model, the mass media failed entirely to capture the quality of this scene—the American omnipresence, the courtroom security, the failure of the defense to press the responsibility of the higher authorities, the role of Vides Casanova, the literal money transaction for justice in this single case, which dragged on for three-and-a-half years. Newsweek found the result a “remarkable achievement,” in an article entitled “A Defeat for a Death Squad” (June 4, 1984), despite the fact that it was the National Guard that killed the women. The article does stress the difficulties in bringing and winning the case, and the possibility of a cover-up of higher-level personnel, but it does not use this information to point up the nature of the system being supported by the United States. It also closes out the discussion with reference to the Tyler report discounting high-level involvement, without quoting the report’s acknowledgment of “some evidence supporting the involvement of higher-ups” or mentioning the report’s admission of the limits of its information. No reference is made to Santivánez or the Dinges report: Newsweek sticks to an official source, and misreads it.

2.5. TWENTY-THREE RELIGIOUS VICTIMS IN

GUATEMALA, 1980–85

The modern history of Guatemala was decisively shaped by the U.S.-organized invasion and overthrow of the democratically elected regime of Jacobo Arbenz in June 1954. Since that time, while Guatemala has remained securely within the U.S. sphere of influence, badly needed economic and social reforms were put off the agenda indefinitely, political democracy was stifled, and state terror was institutionalized and reached catastrophic levels in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Given the client status of Guatemala and the fact that the antidemocratic counter-revolution served important elite interests, a propaganda model suggests that its victims will be “unworthy,” which should be reflected in both the quantity and quality of media attention. Furthermore, whereas victimization in Soviet client states like Poland and Czechoslovakia is regularly traced back to the Soviet occupations, a propaganda model would predict that the U.S. media will not explain the contemporary Guatemalan environment of state terror as a natural product of the U.S. intervention in 1954 (and thereafter). On the contrary, we would expect the United States to be portrayed as a benevolent and concerned by-stander, trying its very best to curb abuses of right and left extremists.

Before looking at the media’s handling of Guatemala, however, let us step back for a brief review of the crucial period 1945–54 and its sequel to set the stage for an examination of the media’s role in the 1980s. Arbenz and his predecessor, Juan Arévalo, led the first democratic system in Guatemalan