Changes
/* History */ Historical background info about Civil war from 80-92, with section on US role.
In 1821, El Salvador and the other Central American provinces declared their independence from Spain. When these provinces were joined with Mexico in early 1822, El Salvador resisted, insisting on autonomy for the Central American countries. In 1823, the United Provinces of Central America was formed of the five Central American states under Gen. Manuel Jose Arce. When this federation was dissolved in 1838, El Salvador became an independent republic. El Salvador's early history as an independent state--as with others in Central America--was marked by frequent revolutions; not until the period 1900-30 was relative stability achieved. Following a deterioration in the country's democratic institutions in the 1970s a period of civil war followed from 1980-1992. More than 75,000 people are estimated to have died in the conflict. In January 1992, after prolonged negotiations, the opposing sides signed peace accords which ended the war, brought the military under civilian control, and allowed the former guerillas to form a legitimate political party and participate in elections.
===El Salvador (1980-92)===
==== Background of Civil War ====
The [[Salvadoran Civil War]] was predominantly fought between the government of [[El Salvador]] and guerrilla groups between [[1980]] and [[1992]]. The US accused the [[Sandinistas]] in Nicaragua, who took power in 1979, of arming and training the guerrillas.<ref>"[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1079/is_v86/ai_4549750 Nicaragua's role in revolutionary internationalism - statement by Vernon A. Walters] ''US Department of State Bulletin'', October, 1986</ref>
In retrospective assessments, human rights organizations and truth commissions have echoed the claim that the majority of the violence was attributable to government forces.<ref>El Salvador’s Decade of Terror, Americas Watch, Human Rights Watch Books, Yale University Press, 1991</ref><ref>El Salvador: `Death Squads' — A Government Strategy. New York: Amnesty International, 1988. </ref><ref>From Madness to Hope: the 12-year war in El Salvador:
Report of the Commission on the Truth for El Salvador, [http://www.usip.org/library/tc/doc/reports/el_salvador/tc_es_03151993_toc.html] </ref>A report of an Amnesty International investigative mission made public in 1984 stated that "many of the 40,000 people killed in the preceding five years had been murdered by government forces who openly dumped mutilated corpses in an apparent effort to terrorize the population."<ref>Amnesty International Annual Report, 1985</ref> In all, there were more than 70,000 deaths, some involving gross human rights violations, and more than a quarter of the population were turned into refugees or displaced persons before a UN-brokered peace deal was signed in 1992.<ref>El Salvador’s Decade of Terror, Americas Watch, [[Human Rights Watch]] Books, Yale University Press, 1991, 107</ref><ref> Sunday, 24 March, 2002, U.S. role in Salvador's brutal war, BBC News [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1891145.stm] </ref>
While peasants were primarily victimized, the killing of civilians extended to clergy, church workers, political activists, journalists, union members, health workers, students, teachers, and human rights monitors.<ref>El Salvador’s Decade of Terror, Americas Watch, Human Rights Watch Books, Yale University Press, 1991, p.vii</ref>The state terror took several forms. Salvadoran security forces, including army battalions, members of the National Guard, and the Treasury Police, performed numerous clearance operations, killing indiscriminately, and perpetrating many massacres and massive human rights violations in the process.<ref>McClintock, Mchael, The American Connection: State Terror and Popular Resistance in El Salvador, Zed Books, p.308</ref><ref>El Salvador’s Decade of Terror, Americas Watch, Human Rights Watch Books, Yale University Press, 1991, 47</ref>
[[Death squads]] worked in conjunction with Salvadoran Security services to eliminate opponents, leftist rebels, and their supporters.<ref>Martin, Gus, Understanding Terrorism: Challenges, Perspectives and Issues, Sage Publications, 2003,p.110.
</ref> The squads were a means by which members of the armed forces were able to avoid accountability. Typically dressing in plainclothes and using vehicles with smoke-tinted windows and numberless license plates, terror tactics included publishing death lists of future victims, delivering empty coffins to the doorsteps of future victims and sending potential victims invitations to their own funeral.<ref> El Salvador’s Decade of Terror, Americas Watch, Human Rights Watch Books, Yale University Press, 1991, 21 </ref> Cynthia Arnson, a long-time writer on Latin America for Human Rights Watch, argues that “the objective of death squad terror seemed not only elimination of opponents, but also, through torture and the gruesome disfiguration of bodies, the terrorization of the population.”<ref>Arnson, Cynthia J. Window on the Past: A Declassified History of Death Squads in El Salvador in “Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability”, Campbell and Brenner, eds,86</ref>
In the mid-1980s state terror in El Salvador increasingly took the form of indiscriminate air forces bombing, the planting of mines and harassment of national and international medical personnel- “all indicate that although death rates attributable to death squads have declined in El Salvador since 1983, non-combatant victims of the civil war have increased dramatically.<ref> Lopez, George A.- Terrorism in Latin America in “The Politics of Terrorism”, Michael Stohl, ed.</ref>
The rebels also committed human rights violations. It was considered legitimate to physically eliminate people who were labelled military targets, traitors or "orejas" (informers), and even political opponents. The murders of mayors, right-wing intellectuals, public officials and judges are examples of this mentality.[http://www.usip.org/library/tc/doc/reports/el_salvador/tc_es_03151993_casesA.html]
The [[FMLN]], one guerrilla groups, was also accused of human rights violations, using terrorist tactics such as kidnappings, arson, and bombings to destabilize the regime.[http://www.tkb.org/Group.jsp?groupID=228] It is now one of the two major political parties of the country.
==== US involvement ====
The United States has been accused by scholars and human rights organizations of complicity in support of State Terrorism in the country of El Salvador, in a conflict characterized by rampant [[human rights]] abuses and [[political terror]].<ref>Arnson, Cynthia J. Window on the Past: A Declassified History of Death Squads in El Salvador in “Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability”, Campbell and Brenner, eds, 85</ref> In his analysis of the U.N. Truth Commission's Report on El Salvador, Prof. Frederick Garneau argued for significant culpability on the part of United States governments.
{{quote|As is usually the case with truth commissions, the one for El Salvador did not focus on Washington's support for the government. .. That terror was committed in El Salvador is not disputed. Those who doubt this should reread the above and realize that an estimated 75,000 were killed in this small country in the period 1980 to 1991. The truth commission found that the terrorism that was committed in the country was overwhelmingly governmental terrorism, committed by the Salvadoran army, the National Guard, and their death squads and affiliated agencies. They were responsible for 95 percent of the deaths, the guerrillas for only five percent. These were the same institutions that were the concern and the favorites of Washington—receiving its indoctrination and training and profiting from its largess. El Salvador received six billion dollars in aid from Washington in the period 1979 to 1992. This subsidy to the tiny country during the government repression and terrorism came to average out at $100,000 for each member of its armed forces. This subsidy allowed the government to pay for the terrorist activities committed by the security forces. By virtue of this largess and the military training, notably in counterinsurgency warfare, Washington emerges in this chapter as an accessory before and during the fact. By covering up for San Salvador after it had committed terror, Washington was an accessory after the fact. It gave diplomatic support to state terrorism.|Frederick H. Gareau|<ref>Frederick H. Gareau, State Terrorism and the United States : From Counterinsurgency to the War on Terrorism / (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2004) 41</ref>}}
The episode of the war responsible for the single largest civilian death toll occurred on December 11, 1981, when the U.S.-trained elite [[Atlacatl Battalion]] of the Salvadoran army killed approximately nine hundred men, women, and children in and around the village of [[El Mozote Massacre|El Mozote]]. Human rights violations included decapitation, raping young girls before killing them, and massacring men, women, and children in separate groups with U.S.-supplied M-16 rifles.<ref>Menjivar and Rodriquez, State Terror in the U.S.-Latin American Interstate Regime in “When States Kill: Latin America, the U.S., and Technologies of Terror”, Menjivar and Rodriguez, eds. University of Texas Press, 2004</ref> A report compiled by the villagers found that more half of the victims were under fourteen.<ref>Leogrande, William M. Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992, University of North Carolina Press,155</ref> It is reputed to be the worst such atrocity in modern [[Latin America]]n history,{{Fact|date=March 2008}} but when news emerged of the massacre, the [[Ronald Reagan|Reagan]] administration in the [[United States]] dismissed it as [[Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front|FMLN]] propaganda.<ref>{{cite book|title=Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America |first=Jeffery M. |last=Paige |page=345 |year=1997 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=0-67413649-7}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=El Salvador: The Massacre at El Mozote : the Need to Remember |author=Americas Watch Committee |year=1992 |publisher=Americas Watch |page=15}}</ref>
The prototype of the El Salvadoran [[death squads]] was ORDEN, a paramilitary spy network that allegedly terrorized rural regions and which was founded by Col. Jose Alberto Medrano, a former agent on the CIA payroll. Medrano was awarded a silver medal in 1968 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, "in recognition of exceptionally meritorious service."<ref>Americas Watch Committee and American Civil Liberties Union, Report on Human Rights in El Salvador, January 26, 1982, p.183</ref><ref>Chomsky, Noam, Turning the Tide: The U.S. and Latin America, Black Rose Books, p.98</ref>
One of Medrano's proteges, [[Roberto D'Aubuisson]], a graduate of the Salvadoran military academy, was also trained at The [[School of the Americas]] and the International Police Academy in the suburbs of Washington D.C. <ref>Bonner, Raymond, Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador, New York Times Books,1984, p.308</ref> D'Aubuisson was founder of the [[Nationalist Republican Alliance]] (ARENA) whose public face was that of a rightist political party, but which allegedly also ran death squads secretly. In the spring of 1980, when D'Aubuisson was arrested for plotting against the administration of [[José Napoleón Duarte]], a mass of documents was found implicating him in numerous death squad activities, including detailed plans linked to the assassination of Archbishop [[Oscar Romero]]. The Reagan administration was accused of ignoring the evidence implicating D'Aubuisson.<ref>Bonner, Raymond, Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador, New York Times Books,1984, p.308</ref> Critics of this view argue that [[Roberto D'Aubuisson]]'s sole link to the SOA is that he had taken a course in Radio Operations long before El Salvador's civil war began.<ref>{{cite web|author=Paul Mulshine|title=The War in Central America Continues|url=http://web.archive.org/web/20021219221936/http:/216.247.220.66/archives/politics/watchwar.htm|accessdaymonth=6 November |accessyear=2007}}</ref>
El Salvador became the fourth largest recipient of U.S. aid, behind Israel, Egypt, and Turkey.<ref>Bonner, Raymond, Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador.</ref> In a joint 1982 report on human rights in El Salvador, The Americas Watch Committee and the ACLU place emphasis on U.S. military aid and training because it was "being provided to the same units alleged to be engaged in violations of human rights."<ref>Americas Watch Committee and American Civil Liberties Union, Report on Human Rights in El Salvador, January 26, 1982, p.179</ref> [[Human Rights First|The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights]] argued that because of the extensive provision of “funding, military equipment, training and military guidance” to the Salvadoran armed forces, as well as the fact that the U.S. “identified itself unreservedly” with the causes and conduct of the Salvador military, the U.S. “bears a heavy burden of responsibility”, and moreover argued that “there may be no place else where the United States is so directly responsible for the acts of a foreign government.”<ref>The Reagan Administration's Record on Human Rights in 1985, Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, The Watch Committees (Americas Watch, Asia Watch, Helsinki Watch), January 1986, p. 53)</ref>
Allegations also point to the role that U.S. administrators played in both protecting the responsible military leaders from legal accountability, and the Salvadoran regime from criticism, while simultaneously maintaining the flow of over one billion dollars of military aid. According to the UN Truth Commission report, over 75% of the serious acts of violence reported took place during the Reagan administration’s time in office.<ref> Doggan, Martha, Death Foretold: The Jesuit Murders in El Salvador, 170</ref> Cynthia Arnson argues that when the killing was at its height, “the Reagan administration downplayed the scale of abuse as well as the involvement of state actors.”<ref>Arnson, Cynthia J. Window on the Past: A Declassified History of Death Squads in El Salvador in “Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability”, Campbell and Brenner, eds, 88</ref> When Congress passed a law, unpopular with the Reagan administration, which placed conditions of assurances of human rights compliance and progress on agrarian reforms, the administration issued certification reports every six months that drew heavy criticism, particularly from human rights groups. The first certification report was submitted on January 28, 1982. On the eve of the reports The Washington Post and New York Times published feature articles by American investigative journalists describing massacres in early December of 1981 in and around the village of [[El Mozote]]. The massacres had been mainly perpetrated by the Atlacatl Battalion, the first "rapid response unit" to be trained in the U.S. The certification report was only six pages long. William Leogrande remarked that the report “contained little evidence to support the declaratory judgments that progress had been made in all of the areas required by law. The report refused to acknowledge any government complicity in human rights violations...Moreover the report flatly denied that the paramilitary death squads were linked to the government.”<ref>Leogrande, William M. Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992, University of North Carolina Press</ref> Leogrande further stated that "no independent human rights group agreed with the Reagan administration’s portrait of the situation."<ref> Leogrande, William M. Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992, University of North Carolina Press</ref> The Americas Watch Committee and American Civil Liberties Union jointly referred to the report as a "fraud."<ref> America Watch Committee and American Civil Liberties Union, Report on Human Rights in El Salvador, February 26,1982</ref> Subsequent reports by U.S. agencies on the human rights situation were met with similar incredulity and contempt. A review of the Department of State's 1983 report on human rights in El Salvador by Americas Watch, Helsinki Watch and the Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights concluded "all in all, this is a dreadful report."<ref>Americas Watch, Helsinki Watch, Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights, Review of the Department of State's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1983, March 1984</ref>The Reagan Administration's actions included vociferous denunciations of their critics. In a retrospective report entitled El Salvador's Decade of Terror: Human Rights Since the Assassination of Archbishop Romero, Human Rights Watch summarized the administration's behavior thusly, "during the Reagan years in particular, not only did the United States fail to press for improvements...but in an effort to maintain backing for U.S. policy, it misrepresented the record of the Salvadoran government and smeared critics who challenged that record. In so doing, the administration needlessly polarized the debate in the United States and did a grave injustice to the thousands of civilian victims of government terror in El Salvador."<ref>Americas Watch, El Salvador’s Decade of Terror, Human Rights Watch Books, Yale University Press, 1991, p. 119</ref>
The extensive role of military advisers in El Salvador has also been raised as suggestive of wider systemic abuses of ethical and legal norms. According to William Leogrande’s analysis “a great deal of the Reagan administration’s policy toward Salvador was considered on what former Senator Sam Irvin called ‘the windy side of the law’. The president used his emergency powers, even when there was no emergency, to send $80 million in military aid to El Salvador without congressional review.” The Reagan administration carried out circumventions and arbitrary re-definitions of laws stipulating the quantity and role of advisers <ref>Leogrande, William M. Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992, University of North Carolina Press,281</ref>.
US officials say that President Bush senior's policies set the stage for peace, turning El Salvador into a democratic success story.[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1891145.stm] There was substantial developmental aid during the Carter administration but very little military. The Reagan administration pressed for free elections. The Salvadoran right reluctantly joined this process after it became clear that the administration did not favor a conservative military coup.<ref>Library of Congress. Country Studies. El Salvador. Chapter 1 - Historical Setting [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/svtoc.html]</ref>
Defenders also justify military aid by claiming it was necessary for defending U.S. National Security Interests. The FMLN guerrillas military efforts, including terrorist acts committed by them, seriously threatened the Salvadoran government. This was deemed a threat to "national security." As president Reagan argued in his historic national television address in 1984, ''"San Salvador is closer to Houston, Texas than Houston is to Washington, D.C. Central America is America; it's at our doorstep. And it has become a stage for a bold attempt by the Soviet Union, Cuba and Nicaragua to install communism by force throughout the hemisphere,"''<ref>Regan Ronald, televised address to the nation, May 9, 1984 from El Salvador:Central America in the New Cold War, Gettleman, Lacefield, Menashe and Mermelstein, eds, Grove Press, New York</ref>. The U.S. State Department provided detailed evidence for the links between the FMLN, Nicaragua, Cuba and the Soviet Union in its White Paper,"The Communist Interference in El Salvador." The document argues that the U.S. chose the most viable middle path between the right and left extremes undermining the country. The U.S. supported the Duarte government which worked with "some success to deal with the serious political and economic problem that most concern the people of El Salvador."<ref>The U.S. State Department, White Paper: Communist Interference in El Salvador from El Salvador: Central America in the New Cold War, Gettleman, Lacefield, Menashe, Mermelstein, eds, Grove Press New York, p.323 </ref> Military aid and training given to Salvador eventually professionalized their armed forces and prevented the insurrection by guerrillas from succeeding. The death of many innocent civilians is regarded as regrettable but necessary for Salvadoran and American security, and future prosperity.{{Fact|date=March 2008}}
