El Salvador

From American Gulag

[edit] The Massacre at El Mozote

Classroom Notes Compiled by Glenn Frankel

It’s about the size of Massachusetts. Population in 1980 was maybe 4.5 million. The Spanish had arrived in 1524. A classic top-down social structure: Big coffee plantations dominated the economy and contributed to huge gaps between wealthy land owners and peasant population. Agustin Farabundo Marti led the first insurrection of the rural poor in 1932. The army responded by killing 30,000 people, targeting those who wore traditional dress or spoke indigenous languages. For the next half century every president was a military officer, and the military dominated the country.

As opposition groups grew stronger, so did official repression. "Death squads" began kidnapping and assassinating so-called subversives. Antigovernment demonstrators were fired upon by the military. Leftist guerrilla groups, dedicated to radical change and backed by Fidel Castro’s Cuba, mounted a challenge to the military. They stepped up their operations--assassinations, kidnappings, and bombings--as a form of self-defense, as retaliation against government forces, and as part of a larger strategy of insurrection to create a Nicaragua-style overthrow. There were moderates on both sides---but as is often the case in a state of war, their voices and their attempts to assert control were usually drowned out by more radical and more violent actors. This was going on all over Central America: Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Pananma. Only Costa Rica was spared.

A coup in October 1979 ousted a right-wing government and established a new military junta, and these generals joined forces with Jose Napoleon Duarte, leader of the moderate Christian Democratic Party. Duarte led a provisional government that tried to project a more moderate image. It instituted a land reform program and nationalized the banks and the marketing of coffee and sugar. Most important, perhaps, Duarte pledged to end human rights abuses by the military and affiliated death squads. This was music to the ears of the Carter administration. The US government was backing the army and the rulers with economic and military aid, but at the same time pushing for political moderation, land reform and an end to political violence.

The generals used Duarte and the moderates as front men in the new government but the death squads continued a campaign of terror against armed and civilian opponents alike. The most infamous death squad assassination occurred when the Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, was gunned down in 1980 after having publicly urged the U.S. government to cut off military support to the government.

Romero's death helped spark a full scale civil war. The leftist opposition united and in October 1980, five anti-government organizations formed a major military resistance known as the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front, the FMLN.

The FMLN's first major military offensive was launched on January 10, 1981. The FMLN established operational control over two chunks of rural El Salvador. Government bombing and repression in the countryside killed thousands. Priests and nuns were among those targeted. The Army was conducting a dirty war---up to 800 killed per month, wiping out enemies---not just guerrillas but alleged sympathizers, dissidents. The fiction that this was done by right-wing vigilantes, when actually it was the army itself. And the guerrillas were killing soldiers, policemen and government sympathizers.

Now it’s one thing to slaughter fellow Salvadorans. But in December 1980, near the very end of Carter’s administration, soldiers raped and murdered four American churchwomen considered sympathetic to the FMLN.

Carter briefly cut off aid. But when Ronald Regan took office in January 1981 the emphasis switched from human rights concerns to fighting communism and preventing the same kind of leftist takeover that had occurred in Cuba and in neighboring Nicaragua. Reagan substantially increased both military and economic aid.

So the civil war raged on, fueled by US aid to the army. The government harshly repressed dissent, 75,000 people were killed, and the war dragged on for nearly another decade.

Remember: We’re back in the Cold War era and the Salvadoran government wrapped itself in the mantle of anti-communism. Jeane Kirkpatrick covers this ground in her essay---they’re despots but essentially they’re our despots. They were defending western values against the communist hordes. And the FMLN cast itself as the pro-Castro, Soviet-backed allies. The Cold War was almost like a basketball pickup game. The United States would find some small basketball court in an obscure neighborhood, pick a bunch of local guys as a team, declare they were ready to play and sure enough, a team from the other side would show up.

As Kirkpatrick’s essay points out, Reagan came to power following two rather sobering foreign events. Do you recall what they were? The ayatollahs had taken power in Iran from the Shah, a longtime loyal American ally; and the left-wing Sandinistas in Nicaragua had overthrown the American-backed President Somoza. In each case, Kirkpatrick alleged, the Carter administration not only failed to prevent this undesired outcome, it had actively but inadvertently collaborated in the replacement of purported moderate autocrats friendly to American interests with hostile autocrats who were extremist.

Kirkpatrick said that the American effort to impose liberalization and human rights standards on these governments, which were confronted with violent internal rebellions, had actually assisted the radicals in coming to power. She was scathing in her denunciation. She argued that societies took decades, if not centuries, to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits to be successful democracies. Interesting that we’ve come to agree with her on Iraq. That the Carter administration had consistently overestimated the strength of opposition moderates and underestimated the strength and intransigence of the radicals.

Kirkpatrick had a rationale for supporting right-wing despots. Can anyone describe what Kirkpatrick was saying? Her claim was that traditional, right-wing autocrats generally tolerated social inequities, brutality and poverty while revolutionary autocracies created them. Even though they favored the affluent few and maintained the vast majority in poverty, they worshipped traditional gods, and as she put it, they did not disturb the habitual rhythms of work and leisure. The miseries of traditional life were familiar and therefore bearable.

By contrast, radical communist regimes like the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia or the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Iran could be murderous, lethal and trigger hordes of refugees and were also inimical to US interests. Thus the autocratic right-wing despots were preferable to left-wing radical communist despots.

This was the ideology that the Reagan administration brought to office. Mrs. Kirkpatrick became the US ambassador to the United Nations. The Reagan administration was all about choosing sides, and it chose the Salvadoran army, with such a long history of repression and political murder, along with Duarte, its moderate civilian ally. But at the same time, it’s got a problem back in Washington. Do you know what that problem was? El Salvador’s human rights record. This was the beginning of the human rights age and Congress had passed a law. The administration had to continually stave off a Democratic-led Congress questioning the human rights record.

As Mark Danner puts it, Cold War national security concerns clashed with respect for human rights---and the press got caught in the middle.

Then came El Mozote.

In the Morazan district in the northern mountains, villages were considered to “belong” either to the government or the rebels. No one was allowed to remain neutral, to go about their business undisturbed.

El Mozote was a Protestant evangelical stronghold, not identified with the guerrillas. Just four miles south the People’s Revolutionary Army was lying in wait for the army. But the guerrillas also had trouble rallying peasants. A January 1981 a rebel final offensive had failed to gain support. Many people just wanted to be left alone. In Dec. 1981 4,000 troops moved into northern Morazan in a campaign known as “hammer and anvil.”

The army had been able to “decapitate” the left in the cities where they were unarmed. In the countryside it was much harder. Reagan had doubled economic aid and added 33 percent to military aid. The bulk was economic.

The soldiers had US training, especially the elite Atlactatl Battalion, trained by US Special Forces.

Killing zones, no prisoners taken because that would be treating them as soldiers, and the notion of draining the pond. Communism as a cancer or contagion that had to be cut out. You don’t just kill the guerrilla, you kill his entire family.

In the northern villages they had death lists. But by the time they got to El Mozote, no list. The obvious solution? Kill everyone. First the men, then the women, then the children. Rufina Marquez was the sole witness.

Dec 11, 1981.

The soldiers leave, the guerrillas move in, some of the villagers return from the hills to find hundreds of corpses. They make contact with Socorro Juridico, the human rights org. of the Archbishopric. Roberto Cuellar calls the human rights office of the National Council of Churches in New York. Socorro had two reps who had gotten to El Mozote.

What are the two things that William Wipfler does?? He sends a telegram to US Amb. Deane Hinton, but he does something else: he leaves a message for Ray Bonner of the NY Times Mexico City bureau.

Radio Venceremos starts rebroadcasting Dec. 24 and immediately begins reports of the massacre. In late December the FMLN gets in touch with Bonner and approves his longstanding request to travel to the guerrilla-held territory. Meanwhile the guerrillas come across Rufina, half-starved, nearly naked. The sole eyewitness. Her account is broadcast on Venceremos.

By now the focus has shifted to Washington. At the end of December Reagan had signed a bill requiring him to certify that the Salvadoran government was making a significant effort to comply with human rights. The administration was very cynical about this requirement: it was Congress’s way of washing its hands. Elliott Abrams: they didn’t want to cut off aid and be held responsible for a left wing victory. At the same time, “They agreed to fund the war while at the same time reserving the right to call us Fascists.”

It’s fair to say the administration looked at this as an obstacle to be gamed and overcome, not as a genuine process.

Was it a human rights struggle? The Reagan people argued that if the leftists won, they’d be as violent and savage as the army, perhaps even worse.

El Mozote massacre, if confirmed, could wreck the game. So the administration and the Salvadoran government set out to counterattack. The battalion had at least 10 American advisors. They must have known.

Meanwhile, the reporters arrive.

Alan Riding, the Central America bureau chief, was under death threat and didn’t go to El Salvador. Instead the Times man on the scene was Ray Bonner. Ray was an unusual choice. He was 38, a lawyer, three years as a Marine, including a stint in Vietnam. He had worked as a litigator for a Ralph Nader group. Got tired of his job and decided to become a foreign correspondent. He didn’t go to journalism school, just picked up and moved to Latin America. He worked as a stringer for the Washington Post and Newsweek before he got a two-week trial with the Times. In El Salvador, he covered some of the early atrocities and in January 1981 they offered him a fulltime job. But he was attached to the Metro staff. He was only in Central America on a sort of extended temporary assignment. The administration was painting a counter-narrative of atrocities and death squad killings. The press was the enemy. Ray was the most aggressive, respected by his colleagues but loathed by the embassy. In January 1982 he filed a piece from Mexico City reporting the claims of a self-declared defector from the army that a torture session had been witnessed and condoned by a group of US advisors. Other reporters tried to follow up on the piece but couldn’t confirm it.

The war had moved from the capital to the countryside making it much harder to cover.

Ray Bonner and a freelance photographer, Susan Meiselas, start walking in on Jan. 3. Alma Guillermoprieto follows a few days later. Alma wasn’t a staff member, but a stringer. Now what difference does that make?

Hike all night, rest during the day. Cranky guerrillas, constant threat of ambush. On Jan. 6 they reach El Mozote. They meet and interview Rufina. They get a list of 700 names. They take photos on the outskirts, they see bodies. But they never go into the middle of town. And Susan doesn’t take endless photos of dead bodies. Why not?? Because the bodies are hard to get to, but also because the journalists don’t even dream that their account will be challenged.

Ray is leaving just as Alma arrives. She speaks to Rufina but also finds two other eyewitnesses to a separate massacre in neighboring La Joya.

Alma knows Ray has a head start so what does she do? She scribbles out the story in her notebook, hides them in a plastic film canister, persuades a courier to take it to a town and deliver it to a colleague who phones it in to the Post.

On Jan. 26 the Times runs Ray’s first piece “With Salvador Rebels in Combat Zone.” But the Times, in its wisdom had held back his massacre piece for further editing. Ray was on the Metro staff, Alma was just a stringer. The Post doesn’t hesitate: it publishes her massacre piece the next day along with Susan’s photos, and it’s a bomshell. The Times see this HOW???, and gets Ray’s piece into its late editions that same night. Six weeks after the massacre, the two major newspapers have weighed in on their front pages.

Now let’s go back for a minute and look at the two stories themselves. Remember I told you this is a writing workshop among other things. I want to back and look at how they were written because they provide some interesting clues.

The next day, when the stories run, President Reagan certified that the government was complying with human rights.

Okay, first version, perhaps a few civilians had been caught in a cross fire. The embassy dispatches a political attaché and a military advisor. They don’t get to eyewitnesses. They’re escorted by the army, which refuses to take them to El Mozote. It’s too dangerous. But they interview enough refugees from the area that they realize something bad has happened. But no direct proof. This is our trained ally, keep in mind.

Washington had its own version. Blame the guerrillas for not evacuating civilians from the area. Todd Greentree reports what he saw, not what was said. The journalists were biased left wingers. The area was a guerrilla stronghold. These peasants may have been killed by the rebels. It was all a pack of lies, enemy propaganda.

Back in Washington, the administration argued that while there were still many abuses, the situation was improving, the government was making progress. They embraced the principle of human rights but argued over the facts. Amnesty International, Americas Watch weighed in with reports challenging the administration. Assistant Secretary Thomas Enders goes to Capitol Hill and attacks these organizations, and says local human rights groups are leftist sympathizers.

He says there is no evidence to confirm the massacre. The numbers are way inflated.

It was propaganda that posed a threat to the aid program.

Now on Feb. 10 the Wall Street Journal jumps in with an editorial: “The Media’s War.” Danner analyzes this. It particularly attacks Bonner, not Alma. Also, it is written as if the reporters and the embassy diplomats had been to the same places, seen the same things and talked to the same people and merely drew different conclusions. “Obviously Ray Bonner has a political orientation” one of the WSJ editorial writers told McNeil Lehrer.

Rosenthal traveled to Salvador in March or April, met Bonner for the first time and also had lunch with the US Amb. Hinton, who was very unhappy with the coverage. Rosenthal said Hinton never mentioned Bonner by name. In the wake of the March 1982 election, which the State Department hailed as free and fair, Bonner wrote a piece questioning the fairness of the vote and later wrote another front-page piece saying the government’s land reform program was all but dead. Bonner was persona non grata at the embassy. Now why would this matter? He lacked experience. He had grown bigger than the story. The Times wasn’t interested in large personalities. His single-sourced torture piece didn’t fly. One reporter told CJR: “Ray allowed the outrage we all feel to boil over. He allowed his hate for the Salvadoran military to boil over. And he saw the left rather romantically.”

Bonner especially falls under attack and in August 1982 he gets a phone call telling him to report back to the Metro desk.

Abe Rosenthal insisted that he had in no way responded to pressure from the administration. Bonner needed more training and Abe also had reservations about Bonner’s left-wing sympathies. Bonner had made no particular effort to hide. Bonner took a leaver of absence and left the Times in 1984.

Now I knew Abe. He himself was an autocratic despot. He remade the NY Times as a modern, muscular aggressive paper that published The Pentagon Papers in 1971 in defiance of the government. But he was becoming increasingly conservative as he grew older. Bonner clearly drove him nuts. People got more cautious. Ray was replaced with Lydia Chavez, who had been with the business staff. The stories got quieter, tamer. The embassy became more accessible. A campaign of seduction rather than intimidation. According to CJR, issues of human rights abuses, land reform, faded. Now the issue became: can we win the war? More deferential, more pragmatic. The fervor had been drained. By 1983 the administration had succeeded in getting reporters to focus on good news stories. A natural tendency to rebalance the coverage. Especially on improvements in the army.

The Washington Post and others hung in there longer and harder. But the Times appeared to move away.

There was a clear winner: Congress more than doubled the military aid package in July 1982. State Department had gone from saying there was no direct evidence to confirm the massacre to there was no evidence to support the claims.

It took years to unearth the truth. The State Department acknowledge it in 1992. Mark Danner’s book is a landmark. The Wall Street Journal finally acknowledged a massacre had taken place but refused to admit the obvious. “Questions remain,” including “who were the true perpetrators of this awful crime?”

It’s only 10 years, after the civil war ends, that forensic researchers travel to El Mozote and discover the truth. Ray and Alma are vindicated.

[edit] Lessons learned

• Was Ray Bonner at fault?
• The Times backed down because of its institutional nature.
• Reporters need embassies in war zones.
• It’s possible to defy a junta but it’s very hard to stand up against the US government, even when you have the total support of your news organization. When you don’t have it, you’re in trouble.
• Eerie echoes of the modern era: The US government, faced with the existential threat of communism, countenances torture, kidnappings and large-scale murder. Just like the Bush administration cooperates with repressive regimes in the GWOT.
• Was this a human rights struggle? The Truth Commission received 22,000 complaints: Armed forces personnel were accused in almost 60 per cent of complaints, members of the security forces in approximately 25 per cent, members of military escorts and civil defense units in approximately 20 per cent, and members of the death squads in more than 10 per cent of cases. The complaints registered accused FMLN in approximately 5 per cent of cases.

• No one is allowed to remain neutral.
• Each side seeks to persuade the American press, or at least neutralize it.
• The pattern of denial and duplicity: First you deny it. Then you claim it’s not as bad as advertised. Then you blame the other side. Then you blame the victim. Finally, you blame the messenger.
• We’re going to revisit these themes and these questions over and over again.

[edit] Readings

• Jeane Kirkpatrick, “Dictators and Double Standards,” Commentary, Nov. 1979.
• Mark Danner. The Massacre at El Mozote. (Chapters 1, 5-7, Documents, pp. 183-201; 228-233; 256-262; 272-278)
• Michael Massing, “About-face on El Salvador,” Columbia Journalism Review, Nov/Dec 1983.