Salvadoran troops heading to Iraq remember U.S. help in the 1980s

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Miami Herald

Salvadoran troops heading to Iraq remember U.S. help in the 1980s
El Salvador continues to send troops to Iraq, mindful of how U.S. aid helped train and equip its armed forces during a civil war in the 1980s
Posted on Sun, Oct. 21, 2007

By NANCY SAN MARTIN
[email protected]

~snip~
El Salvador, the size of Massachusetts and with about 6.9 million people, is the only other Western Hemisphere country that remains part of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq since Nicaragua, Honduras and the Dominican Republic pulled out in 2004.

Over the summer, U.S. military officials offered a rare glimpse into what it takes to prepare the Salvadoran military for work in Iraq, where there have been more than 4,000 coalition deaths since the war began.

The soldiers said they are prepared for their mission to help reconstruct Iraq despite the risks.

''My obligation is to be where I'm needed,'' said Army physician Humberto Hernández, 39, who was part of the medical support unit. ``Of course I'm a little nervous, but just slightly. I feel I have a duty to the military and my people.''
(snip)

During the 1980s, El Salvador was the largest recipient of U.S. aid in Latin America. The United States spent about $6 billion to train and equip the Salvadoran military as it held off leftist guerrillas in a civil war that left 75,000 dead and the economy in shambles. A peace accord, signed in 1992, allowed former rebels to form a political party and participate in elections.




Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/top_stories/story/278442.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. El Mozote Massacre, only one of MANY by US trained forces in El Salvador.

January/February 1993 | Contents
THE MOZOTE MASSACRE

It was the reporters' word against the government's

by Mike Hoyt
Hoyt is associate editor of CJR.

EL MOZOTE, El Salvadore, Oct. 20 -- In a small rectangular plot among the overgrown ruins of a village here, a team of forensic archeologists has opened a window on El Salvador's nightmarish past. . . . Nearly 11 years after American-trained soldiers were said to have torn through El Mozote and surrounding hamlets on a rampage in which at least 794 people were killed, the bones have emerged as stark evidence that the claims of peasant survivors and the reporters of a couple of American journalists were true.

So begins Tim Golden's October 22 New York Times story, which describes the unearthing of skeletons by forensic experts working in what was once a collection of rural villages in northern El Salvador. A similar article, by Douglas Farah, appeared the same day in The Washington Post. Reporters from both papers had been the only journalists to report on the 1981 massacre, and both Raymond Bonner of the Times and Alma Guillermoprieto of the Post paid a price for their coverage, which drew immediate fire from Reagan administration officials and others on the political right. To Bonner and Guillermoprieto, and to photojournalist Susan Meiselas, who traveled to El Mozote with Bonner back in 1981, the belated confirmation of what they knew to be true was both welcome and disturbing, bringing back strong memories of the grisly scene they came upon at the end of a long walk through Morazan province, a guerrilla stronghold.

It was shortly before Christmas in 1981 that soldiers from the elite American-trained Atlacatl Battalion conducted a search-and-destroy operation around El Mozote. A few days after they entered the area, the guerrillas' clandestine radio station began to broadcast reports of a massacre of civilians in the area. Reporters started pushing the guerrillas, officially called the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, for proof. "There wasn't a reporter there who didn't want to go in with them," Bonner recalls.
(snip)

In his story for the Times, Bonner reported seeing "the charred skulls and bones of dozens of bodies buried under burned-out roofs, beams, and shattered tiles," and more bodies along the trail leading into the village and at the edge of a nearby cornfield, including bodies of women and children.
(snip)

The numbers the local peasants were reporting were staggering. They gave Bonner a list of 733 names, mostly children, women, and old people, who they said had been murdered by government soldiers. The lead paragraph of his January 27 article read: "From interviews with people who live in this small mountain village and surrounding hamlets, it is clear that a massacre of major proportions occurred here last month," and the piece went on to cite a great deal of circumstantial evidence tying the killings to the army.

Guillermoprieto's lead was slightly more cautious: "Several hundred civilians, including women and children, were taken from their homes in and around this village and killed by Salvadoran Army troops during a December offensive against leftist guerrillas, according to three survivors who say they witnessed the alleged massacres."





Citizens carrying the remains of their loved
ones for reburial after the massacre at El Mozote.



A relative of one of the El Mozote victims holding a candle during the reburial ceremony in the new village plaza. Twenty years after the massacre of El Mozote, the act of finally burying the dead is very important in El Salvador as it is in other countries where such events took place. One 18-year-old woman explained how it felt not knowing where loved ones are buried: "One doesn't know where to put the flowers."

Many more images:
http://images.google.com/images?q=El+Mozote+massacre&svnum=10&um=1&hl=en&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-37,GGLD:en&start=20&sa=N&ndsp=20

[Judi Lynn]

2. You, of course, remember the "Salvador option!"

From The Times
January 10, 2005

El Salvador-style 'death squads' to be deployed by US against Iraq militants
From Roland Watson in Washington

THE Pentagon is considering forming hit squads of Kurdish and Shia fighters to target leaders of the Iraqi insurgency in a strategic shift borrowed from the American struggle against left-wing guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago.
Under the so-called “El Salvador option”, Iraqi and American forces would be sent to kill or kidnap insurgency leaders, even in Syria, where some are thought to shelter.
(snip)

Hit squads would be controversial and would probably be kept secret.

The experience of the so-called “death squads” in Central America remains raw for many even now and helped to sully the image of the United States in the region.

Then, the Reagan Administration funded and trained teams of nationalist forces to neutralise Salvadorean rebel leaders and sympathisers. Supporters credit the policy with calming the insurgency, although it left a bitter legacy and stirred anti-American sentiment.

John Negroponte, the US Ambassador in Baghdad, had a front-row seat at the time as Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85.

Death squads were a brutal feature of Latin American politics of the time. In Argentina in the 1970s and Guatemala in the 1980s, soldiers wore uniform by day but used unmarked cars by night to kidnap and kill those hostile to the regime or their suspected sympathisers.

More:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article410491.ece

[Judi Lynn]

3. El Salvador's Anti-Terrorism Law Draws Criticism

El Salvador's Anti-Terrorism Law Draws Criticism
by Lourdes Garcia-Navarro

Day to Day, October 11, 2007 · The government of El Salvador has come under fire from human rights organizations since it passed an anti-terrorism law modeled on the U.S. Patriot Act.

Fourteen activists who were protesting plans to privatize the national water company are being tried under the new law.

The government alleges that some of them threw stones at public officials — which is now punishable as a terror crime under a law that does not clearly define what a terrorist is. Human rights groups and other critics say the law's real aim is to stifle dissent.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15185094

[Mongrelkoi]

4. Time for school.

I suppose all of that work by the "School of the America's" Graduates did some good or bad or had influences in a very rightish sort of way.