U.S. military aid fuels Salvador war, repression
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The deepening repression unleashed by the death-squad regime in El Salvador and the courageous military offensive led by the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) have demonstrated to the world that only massive U.S. military aid keeps the ARENA Party government of Alfredo Cristiani in power.
The long-hidden horror of everyday life in El Salvador under a succession of U.S.-supported regimes is finally coming to the attention of the broad public in this country. The Nov. 21 New York Times, for example, reports:
"In a cycle that continues, the right struck back against the rebels and anyone it perceives as sympathizing with the left, killing almost anyone who dared organize or even criticize. Studies by human-rights groups in the mid-1980s estimated that by then rightist death squads, which often killed as many as 200 people a week, had slaughtered 40,000."
Today this estimate has grown to 80,000. In the mid-1980s, the death squads operated "unofficially" but with impunity under the Christian Democratic regime of José Napoleón Duarte. Their mentor was ARENA's founder, Colonel Roberto d'Aubuisson, whom former U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador Robert White described as a "pathological killer."
Today, Alfredo Cristiani is ARENA's top official and El Salvador's president by virtue of the gunpoint elections that President Bush insists were "certified" as legitimate.
Cristiani's party recently sponsored a new (continued on page 8, in “Outrage sweeps U.S. over mass killings by Salvadoran gov't NO MORE US AID to EL SALVADOR”)