Saint Ron never mentioned those baby skulls...

[JHB]

Another reminder of the "conservative movement"'s "glory days", when the revered St. Ronald was Saving The World From Communism:

consortiumnews.com

Reagan & the Salvadoran Baby Skulls

By Robert Parry
January 30, 2007

Ronald Reagan’s many admirers may find this idea offensive, but – given a new report by the Washington Post – it might be fitting to have a display at Reagan National Airport to show how Salvadoran baby skulls were used as candle holders and good luck charms. Perhaps the presentation could contain skeletal remains of Guatemalans and Nicaraguans, too. It might be modeled after skeletons on display in Cambodia from the slaughters by the Khmer Rouge. After all, it was President Reagan – more than any other person – who justified and facilitated the barbarity that raged through Central America in the 1980s, claiming the lives of tens of thousands of peasants, clergy and students, men, women and children.

Reagan portrayed the bloody conflicts as a necessary front in the Cold War, but the Central American violence was always more about entrenched ruling elites determined to retain their privileges against impoverished peasants, including descendants of the region’s Maya Indians, seeking social, political and economic reforms. One of the most notorious acts of brutality occurred in December 1981 in and around the Salvadoran town of El Mozote. The government’s Atlacatl Battalion – freshly trained and newly armed thanks to Reagan’s hard-line policies – systematically slaughtered hundreds of men, women and children.

When the atrocity was revealed by reporters at the New York Times and the Washington Post, the Reagan administration showed off its new strategy of “perception management,” denying the facts and challenging the integrity of the journalists. Because of that P.R. offensive, the reality about the El Mozote massacre remained in doubt for almost a decade until the war ended and a United Nations forensic team dug up hundreds of skeletons, including many little ones of children.

Now the Washington Post has added a new grisly detail. Several months after the massacre, the Salvadoran army returned to the scene and collected the skulls of some El Mozote children as novelty items, the Post reported. “They worked well as candle holders,” recalled one of the soldiers, Jose Wilfredo Salgado, “and better as good luck charms.”
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Full article at:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2007/012907.html


And, of course, thanks to that PR offensive, more Americans were outraged by Nancy's astrologer than by what our nation's government was supporting. Anytime anyone asks "Why do they hate us?", it's not "for our freedoms", it's for this kind of barbarity.

[Ian David]

1. Why don't those brown people make their own countries better instead of sneaking into ours?

Oh, yeah.

Because every time they try to make their country better, OUR country kills them.

[Delphinus]

2. Thank you for finding this.

I didn't realize the spin machine was in effect that far back - the Reagan administration showed off its new strategy of "perception management," denying the facts and challenging the integrity of the journalists.

I'll bet this story is just one of hundreds of lies and cover-ups. Truth is a rare commodity these days. Governments=corruption.

[JHB]

3. It goes back farther than that, but...

...yes, this was sort of the "dawn of the current era" of the "conservative" smear & spin apparatus.

But you're off the mark on another count: the formulation isn't "governments=corruption". It's "power+secrecy=corruption", whether its inside or outside of government.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. The spin machine has always been in effect, but the Reaganites cranked

it up to unprecedented levels.

Raymond Bonner, the reporter who broke the El Salvador massacre stories, was called home by the NY Times (under pressure from the White House) and reassigned to the business pages. He was replaced by someone more amenable to "Western diplomatic sources" (which always really meant U.S. embassy handouts, according to another reporter who worked there.)

[bobthedrummer]

7. Fwiw, a thread from a year ago "Reality vs. Perception Management: The Tinfoil Controversy"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x71919

[Benhurst]

5. Recommended #4

[knitter4democracy]

6. And Sr. Dorothy Kazel and the other three churchwomen

Americans all, beaten, raped, murdered, and left in a ditch by men trained at the School of the Americas. Just because they were helping the poor and making sure people had food to eat and a voice to be heard.

May Al Haig, Reagan, and all those involved in mucking up Central America and killing people for some stupid reason burn in hell.

[porphyrian]

8. Yeah, Saint my ass. I'm still pissed the bastard lost his mind...

...before he could be held accountable for his crimes.

[bobthedrummer]

9. JHB, here's a crosspost from Editorials and Other Articles that leads

off with the same Robert Parry article and has some other related hyperlinks.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x260030

[formercia]

10. Part of the problem was tradition.

It was a tradition in the Spanish Colonies that squatters could 'occupy' fallow land with an annual payment of a few grains of corn to the landowner. When land became valuable, such as in the areas surrounding urban areas, the ruling families had to find a way to remove the occupants. At first, their hired thugs tried to intimidate but it had limited effect. They turned to their 'friends' in the US government for help. Arms and training produced the Death Squads and when the squatters tried to defend themselves, they were branded as Marxist rebels and the escalation was on.

We know how that turned out.