"Death Squads" assault L.A. antiwar activists

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Women celebrate suffrage victory Aug. 26 is designated as Women's Suffrage Day. On this day in 1920, the 19th Amendment was passed, which gave women in the United States the right to vote. That victory came about after 50 years of struggle by The leadership of the suffragist movement, however, made an understandable mistake. They thought that all that was necessary to advance women's rights was to be able to elect decent representatives who would But once they won the vote, they saw it wasn't that wave of feminism crashed into the dead end of a dominated by two sexist, racist, capitalist parties.

In the 1960s, a new wave of feminism erupted. Once again women took to the streets in the fight for reproductive rights, for the Equal Rights Amendment, and for full equality in education and on the job.

Abortion was legalized in 1973. Affirmative action programs were won, opening the door, a little, for women and Blacks to hold jobs formerly But now, all of these victories are in danger.

The women's movement, headed largely by careerists, is bound hand and foot to the same two capitalist parties responsible for our oppression. Unless we break with this dead-end policy and return to the streets in the hundreds of thousands, women will suffer more defeats.—S. W.

2 SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 1987 The notorious "Death Squads" that have terrorized union, peasant, student, and human-rights activists in El Salvador for years have apparently made their appearance in Los Angeles.

Death threats have been received by a Catholic priest and over 20 solidarity activists, most of them Salvadoran exiles. Many have been targets of vandalism and harassment over the last three months.

The most serious incident occurred when a Salvadoran woman was kidnapped at knifepoint on the evening of July 7 as she left a meeting organized by the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES).

The woman, named Yanira, was found by police five hours later under a bridge. Badly women.

address their concerns. monopolized by white men. beaten, suffering from repeated sexual assaults with a wooden object, and with razor cuts on her body and tongue, she was rushed to the hospital. She is now recovering from the terrorizing ordeal.

During the five-hour assault, the iwo Salvadoran assailants repeatedly threatened her and other exiles and CISPES supporters because "you are members of the FMLN" and "everyone in CISPES is a communist."

Ten days later, on July 17, a Guatemalan women, Ana María López, was kidnapped while on her way to a meeting at the First simple. The first political system Unitarian Church in Los Angeles. López said that her abductors interrogated her at gunpoint and warned her not to continue working with Salvadoran refugees. She was finally released about five hours later in Pomona, Calif.

Another Los Angeles activist, Marta Alicia Rivera, an exiled leader of the Salvadoran teachers' union (ANDES), recently received a letter stating in Spanish: "You are a traitor to the fatherland, you will die along with your comrades."

On July 17, the Rev. Luis Olivares, pastor of Los Angeles' largest Latino parish, disclosed that he too had received a death threat. The letter to the Rev. Olivares was signed "E.M.," the intials of El Salvador's Escuadrón de la Muerte (Squadron of Death).

Repression in El Salvador The violence in Los Angeles follows on the heels of increased repression in El Salvador. On two occasions in July, government police and army troops fired into peaceful demonstrations of workers demanding higher pay and benefits.

Kathy Suitor, a Los Angeles CISPES staff member who, like all other staff members, has had her car recently vandalized, told Socialist Action that "the popular movement in El Salvador is growing, with the situation becoming more desperate for a government which is becoming increasingly isolated."

The attacks have received widespread media attention. Under this pressure, the FBI announced on July 17 that it was looking into the incidents. But CISPES continues to demand a full public investigation, which could uncover the connection between these death-squad attacks and U.S. support regime.

Tax-deductible donations can be sent to the Southern California Interfaith Taskforce on Central America (SCITCA), 1010 S. Flower, Sth floor, Los Angeles, CA 90015. For more information, call (213) 265-3303.

Messages demanding an investigation can be sent to Rep. Don Edwards, chair, Congressional Sub-committee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, 2307 Rayburn Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515.

AcTion Closing date: July 25, 1987 Editor: ALAN BENJAMIN Asst. Editor: MICHAEL SCHREIBER Staff: Paul Colvin, Suzanne Forsyth, May May Gong, David Kirschner, Hayden Perry, Joe Ryan, Carole Seligman, Kwame M.A. Somburu, Sylvia Weinstein.

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