The Truth of El Mozote

[ulysses]

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Danner/1993/truthelmoz01.html

For eleven years, Rufina Amaya Márquez had served the world as the most eloquent witness of what had happened at El Mozote, but though she had told her story again and again, much of the world had refused to believe her. In the polarized and brutal world of wartime El Salvador, the newspapers and radio stations simply ignored what Rufina had to say, as they habitually ignored unpalatable accounts of how the government was prosecuting the war against the leftist rebels.

In the United States, however, Rufina's account of what had happened at El Mozote appeared on the front pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times, at the very moment when members of Congress were bitterly debating whether they should cut off aid to a Salvadoran regime so desperate that it had apparently resorted to the most savage methods of war. El Mozote seemed to epitomize those methods, and in Washington the story heralded what became perhaps the classic debate of the late Cold War: between those who argued that, given the geopolitical stakes in Central America, the United States had no choice but to go on supporting a "friendly" regime, however disreputable it might seem, because the alternative -- the possibility of another Communist victory in the region -- was clearly worse, and those who insisted that the country must be willing to wash its hands of what had become a morally corrupting struggle. Rufina's story came to Washington just when the country's paramount Cold War national-security concerns were clashing -- as loudly and unambiguously as they ever would during four decades -- with its professed high-minded respect for human rights.

In the United States, the free press was not to be denied: El Mozote was reported; Rufina's story was told; the angry debate in Congress intensified. But then the Republican Administration, burdened as it was with the heavy duties of national security, denied that any credible evidence existed that a massacre had taken place; and the Democratic Congress, after denouncing, yet again, the murderous abuses of the Salvadoran regime, in the end accepted the Administration's "certification" that its ally was nonetheless making a "significant effort to comply with internationally recognized human rights." The flow of aid went on, and soon increased.

This seems to be a useful repost every so often. Much, much more at the link.

[roody]

1. I met several torture survivors in Columbus last weekend.

Also relatives of disappeared persons.

[ulysses]

2. what we did there is all but forgotten here.

And that's sad.

[Octafish]

3. The War Party doesn't care about human rights, gives the green light to Death Squads everywhere.

In El Mozote, DUer Dirk39 put it succinctly:

Reagan Was the Butcher of My People

Anticommunism -- cough, unfettered greed -- is all that counts.



Remains of a child, El Mozote

There are so many examples of mass-murder in the name of Free Enterprise that it makes it easier to understand why it seems so few give a damn. Great post and article, ulysses. Filled with truth and the memories of those who scream to us to do something about it -- to save others from their fate.

[roody]

4. k

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Not only that: the Reagan administration demanded that Raymond Bonner

the reporter who broke the story for the New York Times, be transferred off foreign correspondent duty. And the New York Times complied.

It seems that the Reaganites had a weapon that no journalistic bigwigs could stand up to. If you offended them and refused to back down, they denied you "access." They would refuse to answer your questions in press conferences, refuse to be interviewed by you, refuse to appear on your network's programs.

At least that was the story I got from a former NPR reporter.

In addition, this story illustrates why so many of us share long-standing frustrations with the Democratic Party and loathe the DLC. It was the DLCers who were the most active advocates of supporting Reagan's murderous policies in Central America.