- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- ©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=616537
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