Welcome To A Town
Called Terror
The Place Where America Is Mobilising For The Ultimate Showdown
By Jason Oddy
The Independent - UK
3-6-5
The Chiricahua high desert is a remote, unchanging place. Tucked into
the southwestern corner of New Mexico at an altitude of 4,500ft, it is
a land of scrubby bushes, cacti, lizards and rattlesnakes. As you head
south along Highway 146, only the Animas Mountains to the west and the
Hatchet range in the rear-view mirror cut across the horizon of this
unrelieved expanse of hard, ash-brown earth. Occasionally a dwelling
or an incongruous vineyard or a fenced-in herd of longhorn cattle
flashes by. But together with the thin ribbon of the road, these are
the only vestiges of man in this vast, parched wilderness.
An hour out from the nearest town, a left turn at a lonely crossroads
steers you still deeper into the desert. Which makes it all the more
surprising when a few miles further along, a sizeable cluster of trees
appears. In the sun, their unduly green leaves shimmer like a mirage;
close up it transpires that far from being an illusion they are very
much part of Playas, a suburban idyll of well-watered municipal lawns
and exiled temperate flora landed squarely in this improbable,
far-flung spot.
Built from scratch in the early 1970s by the mining giant Phelps
Dodge, Playas was conceived as a Levittown of its time. Workers from
the nearby smelter, a behemoth producing 800,000 tonnes of copper a
year, lived here. And aside from the 259 houses, 25 apartments,
supermarket, medical centre, post office and fire station, the company
also provided tennis courts, a six-lane bowling alley, swimming pool,
rodeo ring and no fewer than three baseball diamonds in its
paternalistic stab at founding a blue-collar Utopia. Things went well
for a quarter of a century. But when in 1999 a downturn in the price
of copper led to the closure of the smelter, overnight this bustling,
thousand-strong community found itself transformed into a ghost town.
If to date Playas' brief history has mirrored the rise and fall of US
industrial might, then from December this fallow outpost is set to
become the nation's crystal ball. For after five years during which
its remaining 50-odd inhabitants have witnessed nothing more dramatic
than broom weed and turpentine slowly reclaiming the asphalt, the town
is being converted into a laboratory for America's War on Terror.
Two months ago, New Mexico Tech, an engineering college with a long
history of military research, bought the entire place from Phelps
Dodge for $5m (£2.6m). The deal was the culmination of an 18-month
campaign to establish a "real-world training centre" that would
complement the college's existing anti-terrorist training programme.
Created in the wake of the Oklahoma bombing a decade ago, and tripled
in size after September 11, the programme will soon find its
apotheosis in the desert with a series of simulated anthrax attacks,
suicide bombs and water-supply poisonings, the whole show funded by
the Department of Homeland Security to the tune of $30m (£15.7m) a
year.
The idea of such goings on - even though pretend - would be enough to
rouse the most dormant nimbyism. But to a defunct town in a depressed
region, the college's promise to spend between $3m and $5m here over
the next 12 months alone is impossible to decline. Tommy Townsend,
manager of a skeleton crew at the mothballed smelter and a resident of
Playas and its environs for the past 28 years, sees New Mexico Tech's
involvement as an entirely positive move. "I don't have a problem with
them using it to help the War on Terror," he says. "I don't think
they're going to do anything that is hazardous to our health."
With government contracts already in place to train border guards,
policemen, firemen, emergency medical workers, not to mention FBI and
Department of Justice agents from all over the country, the new owners
project that their scheme will generate around 200 local jobs. For the
time being the last residents are being encouraged to stay on, and
will be given the option to act as paid extras in some of the various
disasters that are being planned for their town.
All this might seem like an odd sort of renaissance. Yet given that
from Hollywood and Disneyland to Fox News and WMD sightings, America's
taste for bewitching itself with make-believe is long established,
this latest addition to the simulation industry might be the shape of
things to come. Reality has been consigned to something you see on
television, while real life is a zone reserved for acting out your
fantasies. Properly managed, such games of smoke and mirrors are
potentially extremely lucrative.
Ever since the War on Terror was invoked by President Bush, this
notion has been milked to maximum effect by the US administration.
Spun into a many-headed hydra, it helped make the case for the
invasion * of Iraq while simultaneously permitting an erosion of civil
liberties back home. As a doom-laden, bellicose mantra it has worked
its magic, and nowhere more so than with the mainstream media who have
instinctively understood the power of endlessly and unquestioningly
repeating such an irresistible incantation.
Even though the War on Terror may now have become the background hum
of everyday life in America, none of the parties with vested interests
has let up in its efforts to keep the nation on its toes. For just as
the Bush administration has maintained an elevated or high terror
alert unceasingly since they devised their colour-coded warning scheme
more than two years ago, so the plethora of press releases and news
stories surrounding New Mexico Tech's takeover of Playas all come down
to one crucial word.
Anyone wanting a slice of the Department of Homeland Security's
multi-billion-dollar budget knows that they must summon up that evil
genie "terror". And just like the businessman who has to keep faith in
consumer confidence or in rising stock prices, they must believe in
their bogeyman too.
Van Romero, New Mexico Tech's vice president * of research and
development, and a driving force behind the reinvention of Playas,
understands that in the same way that Bush needs people like him who
are prepared to join the administration in talking up the threat to
the nation, so he needs Bush too, if only to keep the college's
balance sheet in good health. "I certainly see his re-election as a
very positive event," he declared a fortnight after the incumbent was
returned to the White House. "The current administration has done an
excellent job to increase funding."
Romero, who at present is in talks with the US military about using
his suburban oasis to train soldiers in door-to-door combat, has also
been sending out feelers to Hollywood. In truth, with America's
commingling of fact and fiction gone so far, Playas the film set would
be little different from Playas the training ground. For unlike the
real disaster of the mass layoff that struck the town, the spectacular
disasters now being planned will all be fake. And while the explosions
and assaults that Tommy Townsend and his fellow residents must look
forward to will ostensibly be meant to make the homeland safer, their
real purpose will be to keep an already hypnotised public teetering on
the edge of their seats.
©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=616537
"Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one,some bigger than others"
.
|
