Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0126/01262.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 46KB | 702 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01262}
$Pretitle{350}
$Title{El Salvador
Chapter 5E.   Threats to Internal Security}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Donald E. Jacobson and David B. Ehrenthal}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{fmln
military
forces
united
guerrilla
army
salvador
death
groups
government}
$Date{1988}
$Log{}
Country:     El Salvador
Book:        El Salvador, A Country Study
Author:      Donald E. Jacobson and David B. Ehrenthal
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1988

Chapter 5E.   Threats to Internal Security

     In the final quarter of 1988, El Salvador continued to suffer the effects
of a nine-year-old insurgency by the FMLN, whose 6,000 to 8,000 armed
combatants--a figure reduced by attrition and desertion from the estimated
12,000 guerrillas in the field in 1984--received varying degrees of support
from Nicaragua, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. By most estimates, more than
63,000 people, or about 1.2 percent of the nation's total population, had died
in political violence since 1979, victims of either leftist guerrillas, the
military, or right-wing death squads. At the same time, 25 to 30 percent of
the population had been displaced or had fled the country as a result of the
conflict. Tutela Legal (Legal Aid--the human rights monitoring office of the
archdiocese of San Salvador) and other human rights groups claimed that the
rightist death squads had murdered more than 40,000 Salvadorans by 1985.
During the Duarte government, military and right-wing death squad activity
declined significantly, partially as a result of United States threats to
withhold economic and military assistance.

     In January 1987, constitutional rights were restored when the state of
siege, instituted in 1980 and regularly renewed since that date, was allowed
to lapse. Extraordinary legislation governing the prosecution of persons
suspected of involvement with the insurgency (Decree 50) expired several weeks
later. Although the military was concerned that the failure to renew these
security decrees would adversely affect their ability to conduct the war, it
complied nonetheless by reinstating due process procedures as set forth in the
Constitution. The security forces followed presidential orders not to take
coercive action to halt a series of violent demonstrations and strikes by
guerrilla urban front groups, whose members vandalized and destroyed public
and private property, in the May to August period of 1987.

     Under the general amnesty law of November 1987, passed by the Legislative
Assembly in an effort to comply with the Central American Peace Agreement, the
government released about 470 suspected or convicted insurgents--including
some involved in several major terrorist incidents--along with a few former
military personnel involved in death squad murders. The amnesty covered
"politically related crimes" and all common crimes committed in a group of
more than twenty persons. It specifically excluded, however, the crime of
kidnapping, the 1980 murder of Archbishop Romero, and the period after October
22, 1987. Interpreted broadly, the amnesty could prevent charges from being
filed for massacres by the military and killings by the death squads and could
require the release of soldiers convicted of human rights abuses. Both the
left and the right criticized the law; the left objected to an effective
pardon for thousands of death squad assassinations, and the far right
condemned pardons for acts of terrorism and sabotage.

     The government's leniency did little to alleviate political violence,
however. The capital city was exposed almost daily to leftist-sponsored
demonstrations, strikes, and economic sabotage, as well as bombings. According
to the United States Department of State, in the first quarter of 1988 the
capital suffered 213 incidents of sabotage against its telecommunications and
electrical systems, as well as 49 acts of economic sabotage and 138 strikes or
demonstrations.

Right-Wing Extremism

Background

     The death squads that became active in the late 1970s had their
historical roots in El Salvador's three security forces, which often
functioned as a law unto themselves. Each security service had its own special
unit charged with assassinating suspected "subversives." The PH's intelligence
section, the S-2, in particular was persistently linked to the political
killings and kidnappings that became commonplace in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Immediately after being appointed PH director general in 1984, Golcher
disbanded the S-2 unit. Within six months, he had replaced it with a new
forty-member police force trained by the PN in intelligence work.

     The extreme right responded to the left-wing terrorism of the 1970s and
the growing militancy of the popular (or mass) organizations in a violent
fashion. Paramilitary forces--first Orden, later civil defense--supplemented
the military establishment. Ultra-rightists within the military, security
forces, and oligarchy also organized death squads to eliminate leftist
activists and sympathizers and to deter popular support through intimidation.
Analysts generally agreed that right-wing death squads--often composed of
active-duty military or security force personnel operating with the complicity
of some senior officers of the armed forces--were responsible for thousands of
murders in the 1970s and 1980s. At the same time, the regime's security forces
themselves became increasingly violent.

     Orden supplied recruits for the notorious White Hand (Mano Blanca), the
death squad that Medrano organized in the late 1970s. Medrano's protege,
D'Aubuisson, reportedly helped organize the White Warriors Union (Union de
Guerreros Blancos--UGB), a group of death squads that emerged in early 1977
and became known for their terrorism against the Jesuit community working in
El Salvador. Some military officers, particularly in the GN, privately
supported and facilitated death squad killings during the Romero regime. The
UGB reportedly was associated with the GN's intelligence branch (the G-2).

     Extreme rightist political factions viewed the death squads as legitimate
"counterterrorists" against the leftist guerrillas, and they did in fact do
serious damage to the FMLN's urban base by 1982. In 1983, however, the death
squads were used to challenge directly the influence of the United States in
El Salvador. They forced at least one American journalist out of the country,
threatened a prominent labor leader supported by the United States embassy,
and even threatened to assassinate United States ambassador Thomas Pickering.
Other death squad victims included bureaucrats and office workers, labor
organizers, professionals, politicians, priests, and even soldiers.

     Right-wing terrorism crested during the 1980-82 period. At the peak of
the violence in late 1980, the monthly toll of politically motivated murders
ran between 700 and 800. In the most publicized political assassination of
this period, suspected rightists shot Archbishop Romero--an outspoken advocate
of dialogue with the popular organizations and a critic of military
repression-- while he was saying mass on March 24, 1980 (see The Role of
Religion, ch. 2). An extreme right-wing group calling itself the Maximiliano
Hernandez Martinez Brigade claimed responsibility for several assassinations
of Christian democratic and Marxist leaders in San Salvador in 1980. Four
churchwomen from the United States were murdered in December 1980. Several
army officers were linked to the submachine gun killings of two land reform
advisers of the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) in San
Salvador's Sheraton Hotel on January 3, 1981, an act that was carried out by
two GN corporals. After the cut-off of United States aid over the murders of
the churchwomen, the Christian Democrats in the government were able to remove
from command positions several key ultra- rightists, including Carranza, the
deputy minister of defense and public security.

Curbing the Death Squads

     In Decem