Salvador massacre figure found in U.S.

[Judi Lynn]

Oct. 25, 2006, 11:23PM
Salvador massacre figure found in U.S.

By PETER PRENGAMAN Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — A former army officer from El Salvador who was convicted of taking part in the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests and two other people during that country's civil war was arrested in the United States and faces deportation, authorities said Wednesday.

Federal agents, acting on a tip, arrested Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos, 43, on Oct. 18 at a motel near the University of California, Los Angeles. He illegally entered the country in January 2005, according to a statement from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
(snip)
Guevara Cerritos was a sub-lieutenant with the Salvadoran army's counterinsurgency Atlacatl Battalion, which fought the leftist group FMLN during that country's bloody civil war, which ended in 1992. against the FMLN, a leftist guerrilla group.

He and eight other officers and soldiers were convicted of involvement in the 1989 killing of six priests, their cook and her teenage daughter at a university in the capital city of El Salvador.
(snip/...)

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4288645.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He's listed in Notorious Salvadoran School of the Americas Graduates:
http://www.derechos.org/soa/elsal-not.html



Every November, on the anniversary of the massacre
of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador, hundreds gather
in front of Fort Benning to protest the school that
trained their killers. (©SOA Watch, 1996)



As it happened, November 16, 1989:

6 PRIESTS, 2 OTHERS SLAIN IN SAN SALVADOR
FIGHTING INTENSIFIES FOR CONTROL OF CAPITAL

By Lee Hockstader and Douglas Farah Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, November 17, 1989 ; Page A01

SAN SALVADOR, NOV. 16 -- SAN SALVADOR, NOV. 16 -- Six prominent Jesuit priests, including the rector and vice rector of El Salvador's most prestigious university, were killed early today along with two other persons at the house where they slept in the capital.

The priests were the most prominent victims of Salvadoran violence since 1980, when eight leftist politicians were gunned down by the military, three American nuns and a lay worker were shot dead and archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero was assassinated as he said mass.

Today's execution-style slayings, which may have been preceded by torture, took place as the government armed forces unleashed heavy air and artillery attacks on strongholds established by leftist guerrillas in the massive offensive they launched last Saturday.
(snip)

http://www.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/WPnov16.html

[Vexatious Ape]

1. I wish the general public

could understand how we sponsor terrorism with our tax dollars.

[burrowowl]

2. The U$ of A was responsible!

and my Father (working for ICAO at the time) was asked to to say that a Maryknoll priest's plane carrying medicine to Guatemalean Tribes crashed due to engine failure, when there were bullet holes all over the plane. My Father said that some big bullets were the cause of the crash, not engine failure.
And people still think RayGun and Bu$h I are nice people.
At least 200,000 Guatemalean Indians dead because of IRAN/CONTRA!

[Judi Lynn]

3. You have been made VERY aware of US history in Latin America.....

Glad your father survived that attack.

Everything I've read about what happened in Guatemala is a nightmare. Wouldn't it figure that Guatemala's President Efraín Ríos Montt just happened to turn out to be a nutjob Fundamentalist, a good pal of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who encouraged him, just like Ronald Reagan and company, while he soaked the earth of his country in the blood of helpless citizens.

It's some very ugly people here who won't stir their fat asses long enough to start finding out the history behind these unholy bloodbaths, and waste everyone's time trying to contradict people who do know.

[Judi Lynn]

4. LA Times: Janitor’s secret past: a death squad

Janitor’s secret past: a death squad
A former Salvadoran army officer convicted of killing priests is arrested in L.A. as a human rights violator.
By Hector Becerra, Times Staff Writer
October 26, 2006

Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos was a decorated, American-trained officer in the Salvadoran army.

But for the last year, the 43-year-old toiled as a janitor at a West Los Angeles-area motel, a man with a secret who was always looking over his shoulder, his girlfriend said.

His clandestine existence came to an end Wednesday, when federal authorities announced that they had arrested him as an illegal immigrant who was a human rights violator.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said Guevara Cerritos was one of nine Salvadoran officers and soldiers implicated in one of the most notorious massacres in El Salvador's history: the 1989 death squad murders of six Jesuit priests whom some in the army viewed as subversives.
(snip/...)

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-salvador26oct26,1,3486406.story?track=rss

[formercia]

5. I met some of his fellow soldiers

in 1981. Looking them in the eye was like looking into a black hole. They all had that killer stare. Creepy.

[bananas]

6. Can we get two more votes and put this on the greatest page?

A lot of people are still unaware of this.

[NOLADEM]

7. KICK

[Octafish]

8. Murderers, friends of Reagan and Bush Sr.

Bush Jr. continues the tradition on a larger scale.

The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup

Reagan Lives...in Calgary

By WAYNE SAUNDERS
CounterPunch Weekend Edition
June 12 / 13, 2004

EXCERPT...

In any case, Reagan was all about war -- the wrong ones that is. He bungled his way in and out of Lebanon, and then waged a war of distraction in Grenada. He was misdirected into Lybia, and by way of delusion, he unleashed the Star Wars "missile defence" juggernaut.

But the worst of his wars, was by far, the one he waged by proxy in Central America. The media darling and "teflon president" spent billions of US taxes dollars creating, training and equipping rightwing armies and fascist elements throughout the Central American isthmus. This led to the death, torture and rape of tens of thousands of civilians. These are the teachers, farmers, doctors, students, nurses, and children of El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala that Reagan's supporters are willfully ignorant of, or choose to forget.

One wonders: how many amongst the 200,000 Americans who paid their resects to him, (because he made them "feel good"), have ever heard of El Salvador's Atlactl Battalion? This was the first Salvadoran unit to receive US training after Reagan came into office. In December, 1981, after receiving their marching orders from US advisors, they went on murderous rampage through Morazan province, slaughtering hundreds of peasants, mostly women, children and the elderly. Thanks to the efforts of freelance journalist, Ray Bonner, the story made the front page of the New York Times, directly contradicting Reagan's formal certification to Congress the following day that El Salvador was "achieiving substantial control over elements of its own armed forces." Bonner's article and subsequent others, greatly angered the Reagan administration. He was promptly replaced in August, 1982. 75 % of all US aid to El Salvador went directly to the military, with the predictable staggering results.

In the name of "strengthening democracy" atrocities throughout the region reached horrifying levels in the 1980s, rivaling Sadam Hussein's torture state at its macabre worst (Reagan's tilt towards Iraq is another chapter altogether). I recall sitting in class in 1983 and hearing my History Professor, (a man who was advising NATO on arms control issues), say that it's no wonder that certain people despised Reagan and the foreign policy of the United States. The US administration was staunchly supporting the closest thing to Hitler that Guatemala had yet experienced. General Rioss Mont, whom Reagan lauded as a great democrat was committing genocide against the indigenous people in the highlands.

Meanwhile from US bases in Honduras, CIA-backed Contra terrorists murdered upwards of 40,000 civilians in the US funded aggression against the Sandinista government. Reagan labeled these thugs as the moral equivalent to America's founding fathers. "I'm a Contra too", he exclaimed.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/saunders06132004.html

Bush Jr. is a NAZI, too.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

16. For reasons I can't elaborate (due to promises of confidentiality)

I know that everything the Left said about U.S. Forces in El Salvador was true, and then some.

And even while it was going on, most Americans thought that "granolas" and "peaceniks" were making a lot of fuss over nothing when it came to Central America. Even worse was the widespread jubilation after the invasion of Grenada.

[Octafish]

17. Invasion after the terrorists Reagan was dealing with blew up Marines barracks.

As payment of the "October Surprise" deal, Israel began selling Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. Iran needed them to fight Iraq. The US would then replenish Israel's supply and turn a blind eye to the deals.

From Old DU:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=810&forum=DCForumID12&archive=yes

[sofa king]

9. So W cut him loose, eh?

Must have been short on his horse quota.

[Canuckistanian]

10. He was probably hiding out in Negroponte's basement

At least the Salvadorans know not to let the US interfere in their politics again.

[malaise]

19. Bingo

You'd be surprised how many of these thugs and murderers get visas for work done.

[knitter4democracy]

11. Now if we could get Al Haig.

May their memories be ever blessed, ever eternal, and may God reserve a special place in hell for all those involved with these murders and the murders of the four churchwomen (especially Sr. Dorothy Kazel, who taught at Beaumont, where I taught later) and the murder of Bishop Romero.

[hedgehog]

28. Yeah , but what about those pedophile priests, huh? And don't you

know that the Catholic Church is the richest institution on earth? (Sarcasm)

I thought I'd get in early with the two comments that turn up any time the Catholic Church gets mentioned, just to get them over with.

[Joe Chi Minh]

12. The lack of any sense of honour or dignity characterises these

far-right types so clearly.

Imagine Reagan believing that invading a tiny little island, such as Grenada, to defeat a tiny little rag-tag band of Communists, would restore American honour and self-esteem, after the debacle of Vietnam!!!! He probably even thought it would boost America's status in the eyes of an incredulous world! There really is no lower limit below which these people can sink.

In the UK, one newspaper persuaded a young South African girl, Zola Budd, to adopt British nationality... so that she could win us a gold medal in the Olympics! In the event, I think an American girl who won the race.

The humour is too broad and pathetic to bring the merest glimmer of a smile to your face, isn't it?

[thingfisher]

13. KICK!

This is a story that should never be allowed to fade from memory. Of course it is just part of the larger story of the American Empre at work, is it not?
I found it interesting that not long after Negroponte was dispatched to Iraq Iraqi citizens began showing up executed. Same shit different country!

I see a pattern here at work. America is always meddling in other countries fighting some bogey man and 'establishing' democracy but only leaves a legacy of murder and destruction and destabilization in its wake. Perhaps this is what is intended? Such a strategy usually puts a strong puppet government subject to US policies in power with the possibility that eventually civil dissatisfaction will necesstate further intervention (and arms sales, etc.) at some point in the future.

Meanwhile the US gets its way and keeps a troublesome region in subjugation. The cost of Empire.

[eppur_se_muova]

14. OMG!! Immigration actually caught a TERRORIST !!

Too bad he was one of ours.

[al bupp]

15. K & R for the victims of Salvadorian Fascists

Thanks for posting this reminder.

[EFerrari]

18. Who knew there were so many "leftist guerrillas" in El Salvador?

They all looked like people to me. :sarcasm:

[MountainMamma]

20. Finally the light begins to shine on the real culprits

in El Salvador and Nicaragua of the 80's. Been there many times during the 80's and somehow there was never a connect between what we were being told and what was really happening down there. By use of trigger words like Guerrillas and leftists we were lead to believe that we had to support these bad forces. In actuality the Guerrillas in Salvador were the muchachos, the party of the people/poor- probably 98% of Salvadoreans would fall into this area. We of course supported the rich 2% from whom came the death squads etc......and then of course in Nicaragua we used the Contras to fight the Sandinista whom we considered leftists. Did you know that feeding the poor, clothing the naked and giving shelter to the homeless is considered Communist in Central America? Now there was another trigger word. Now we shelter here in the United States in places like Florida and especially Miami and in California those real terrorists of the 80's who committed those atrocious crimes against their own people. Why are we so upset about the Mexicans?

[EFerrari]

21. El Salvador is the perfect illustration of the hegemony of

the oppressed. People like my uncle unself-consciously adopt the viewpoint of their oppressors and hand it forward to those unfortunates around them. They also live in walled compounds because they need to take security measures to protect themselves from the madness of hunger in this new, "humanitarian" century.

When ARENA was fixing D'Abusson's election, my uncle was here recovering from heart surgery. They called him twice a day to strategize. It was all I could do not to give him another heart attack by calling him out or by answering the phone myself and screaming at them. I don't know if I could be so restrained today. Age has a way of peeling away superfluous nicety.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. I think those of us who lived in the Twin Cities had better information

than most people, because we were all shocked when Somoza's men killed NBC(?) correspondent Bill Stewart at a checkpoint, as his cameraman filmed the scene. Some of you older DUers may remember the horrific scene, played on network news, of him being forced to lie face down in the road and being shot execution style. Before going to the national network, Bill Stewart had been a popular anchorman on one of the Twin Cities stations, so suddenly the atrocities seemed personal.

When I was living in the area in the early 1980s, the anti-intervention groups were very active, with lots of groups, especially those based in the liberal Catholic and Protestant churches, going down to see the situation for themselves.

[stepnw1f]

23. And They Were Right Wingers

Reagan's buddies...

[Judi Lynn]

24. Posting snip from the murdered Bishop Romero's last sermon,

given the day before he was assassinated:

~snip~
Amnesty International issued a press release in which it described the repression of the peasants, especially in the area of Chalatenango. The week's events confirm this report in spite of the fact the government denies it. As I entered the church, I was given a cable that says, "Amnesty International confirmed today that in El Salvador human rights are violated to extremes that have not been seen in other countries." That is what Patricio Fuentes (spokesman for the urgent action section for Central America in Swedish Amnesty International) said at a press conference in Managua, Nicaragua.

Fuentes confirmed that, during two weeks of investigations he carried out in El Salvador, he was able to establish that there had been eighty-three political assassinations between 10 and 14 March. He pointed out that Amnesty International recently condemned the government of El Salvador, alleging that it was responsible for six hundred political assassinations. The Salvadorean government defended itself against the charges, arguing that Amnesty International based its condemnation on unproved assumptions.

Fuentes said that Amnesty had established that in El Salvador human rights are violated to a worse degree than the repression in Chile after the coupe d'etat. The Salvadorean government also said that the six hundred dead were the result of armed confrontations between army troops and guerrillas. Fuentes said that during his stay u l El Salvador, he could see that the victims had been tortured before their deaths and mutilated afterward.

The spokesman of Amnesty International said that the victims' bodies characteristically appeared with the thumbs tied behind their backs. Corrosive liquids had been applied to the corpses to prevent identification of the victims by their relatives and to prevent international condemnation, the spokesman added. Nevertheless, the bodies were exhumed and the dead have been identified. Fuentes said that the repression carried out by the Salvadorean army was aimed at breaking the popular organizations through the assassination of their leaders in both town and country.

According to the spokesman of Amnesty International, at least three thousand five hundred peasants have fled from their homes to the capital to escape persecution. "We have complete lists in London and Sweden of young children and women who have been assassinated for being organized," Fuentes stated....

I would like to make a special appeal to the men of the army, and specifically to the ranks of the National Guard, the police and the military. Brothers, you come from our own people. You are killing your own brother peasants when any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God which says, "Thou shalt not kill." No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you recovered your consciences and obeyed your consciences rather than a sinful order. The church, the defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity, of the person, cannot remain silent before such an abomination. We want the government to face the fact that reforms are valueless if they are to be carried out at the cost of so much blood. In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression.

The church preaches your liberation just as we have studied it in just as we have studied it in the holy Bible today. It is a liberation that has, above all else, respect for the dignity of the person, hope for humanity's common good, and the transcendence that looks before all to God and only from God derives its hope and its strength.
(snip/)

http://www.haverford.edu/relg/faculty/amcguire/romero.html

[Judi Lynn]

25. Death Squads in El Salvador: A Pattern of U.S. Complicity

Death Squads in El Salvador:
A Pattern of U.S. Complicity
by David Kirsch
Covert Action Quarterly, Summer 1990


~snip~
Death Squad Members, Testimony
Cesar Vielman Joya Martinez, a soldier in the First Infantry Brigade's Department 2 (Intelligence), is the most recent Salvadoran to admit his involvement in death squad activity. At a November 1, 1989 press conference Joya Martinez stated that certain military units in Department 2 carried out "heavy interrogation" (a euphemism for torture) after which the victims were killed. The job of his unit was to execute people by strangulation, slitting their throats, or injecting them with poison. He admitted killing eight people and participating in many more executions. He stated that the Brigade Commander had sent written orders to carry out the killings and that the use of bullets was forbidden because they might be traced to the military.

Joya Martinez also claims that one of the U.S. advisers working with the First Brigade sat at a desk next to his and received "all the reports from our agents on clandestine captures, interrogations...but we did not provide them with reports on the executions. They did not want to hear of the actual killings." U.S. advisers authorized expenses for such extras as black glass on squad vans to allow executions to take place unobserved; provided $4,000 for the monthly budget; and conducted classes in recruiting informants and conducting intelligence reconnaissance.
(snip)

Various sources have reported the use of U.S.-manufactured torture equipment. Rene Hurtado, for example, explained, "There re some very sophisticated methods...of torture.. that looks like a radio, like a transformer; it s about 15 centimeters across, with connecting wires. It says General Electric on it...."

Many other documented accounts of brutality by U.S. trained and advised military units exist. Indeed, the elite Atlacatl Battalion has been implicated in several massacres over the past ten years and members of the battalion have been indicted for the November slayings of the six Jesuit priests and two women.

It is widely accepted, in the mainstream media and among human rights organizations, that the Salvadoran government is responsible for most of the 70,000 deaths which are the result of ten years of civil war. The debate, however, has dwelled on whether the death squads are strictly renegade military factions or a part of the larger apparatus. The evidence indicates that the death squads are simply components of the Salvadoran military. And that their activities are not only common knowledge to U.S. agencies, but that U.S. personnel have been integral in organizing these units and continue to support their dally functioning.
(snip/...)

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/deathsquads_ElSal.html

[redqueen]

26. :)

:kick:

[hedgehog]

27. This is why Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the CIA secret prisons

did not surprise or shock me. Of course, I had hopes that since Americans were directly involved in getting their hands bloody this time, that there would be more of a reaction.