A Voice for the Voiceless

The White House doubled down on its “administrative error” and illegal deportation of 29-year-old Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The Wall Street Journal admitted Garcia “has never been charged with a crime.” In addition, there were “a series of (judicial) orders—including from the Supreme Court—to facilitate his return.” Instead, the White House denied Garcia his due process and called him a member of MS-13. Our president sided with “the coolest dictator in the world,” Nayib Bukele. Trump and Bukele have the “best relationship.” Students of US history know Washington has a long and ugly past of supporting dictatorships in El Salvador.
Eduardo Galeano wrote El Salvador was “a little country owned by a handful of oligarchical families.” That changed when “A peasant rising in the Izalco region in 1932 quickly spread throughout western El Salvador.” A declassified State Department secret document titled “NIE–80–54” explained that peasant uprisings were dangerous. “Ruling elements have been faced by steadily increasing demands for social, economic, and political change.” The State Department wanted to end the mass mobilization. The oppressed people have “been effectively contained by strongly entrenched authoritarian regimes.” “The ‘dictators’ present themselves as guarantors of stability and order and of cooperation with the United States.” Since the 1930s, the US government has supported a series of authoritarian regimes in El Salvador.
The Washington Post reported, “By the 1960s, both Green Beret and CIA officers were in El Salvador organizing paramilitary groups that would, in the following decades, mature into death squads.” Washington trained and armed the Atlacatl. The LA Times called the Atlacatl “the largest and oldest of El Salvador’s elite U.S.-trained,” units. The Atlacatl “officers trained at Ft. Bragg, N.C.”
The Times wrote, “the Atlacatl Battalion has been responsible for a string of massacres of peasants, most notably the killing of some 500 peasants in the village of El Mozote in… 1981.” The Times continued, “American aid to the Salvadoran Government war effort was to last another decade after El Mozote: it took… the murder of six Jesuit priests in 1989 by troops from the Atlacatl to persuade Washington to back peace talks.”
The US-trained and US-armed death squads were responsible for various massacres in El Salvador: at the Lempa River, at Rio Sumpul, at Copapayo, and Chalatenango. Throughout the 1980s, Washington provided over $1 billion in military aid. Taxpayer money supplied helicopters, jet fighters, artillery, and munitions. The Nation reported Washington had an “active role in funding and encouraging El Salvador’s dirty war.” From 1980 to 1992, the U.S.-backed dirty war in El Salvador killed 75,000 civilians.
Archbishop Oscar Romero wrote a letter to President Carter a month before his assassination. Romero said US aid to the military junta would “sharpen the injustice and repression against the organizations of the people.” President Carter ignored the “voice for the voiceless” and increased military aid to the junta. In his last sermon, Archbishop Romero said, “I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression.” Stop the repression of immigrants. Bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia home.

Anton Porcari

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