Former Salvadoran defense minister faces deportation
from U.S. for role in killings, torture
A former Salvadoran defense minister faces
deportation after a U.S. judge in Miami found that atrocities committed by
troops under his command were not fully investigated, much less prosecuted.
Those atrocities include the killings of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero,
four U.S. churchwomen, and more than 1,000 peasants at El Mozote, the worst
massacre of civilians in contemporary Latin American history.
In a lengthy 66-page ruling that covers several years
of the country's bloody history, Immigration Judge Michael C. Horn found Feb.
26 that former Gen. Jose Guillermo Garcia protected death squads and
"assisted or otherwise participated in" torture and assassinations
during his tenure as defense minister from October 1979 to April 1983.
The decision was released April 11 as the result of
a New York Times Freedom of Information Act request.
The judge concluded that as the head of the armed
forces and the most powerful person in the country, Garcia took no measures to
stop the atrocities that he "knew or should have known" were being
committed, given that "dead bodies bearing signs of torture were heaped in
piles on the streets of the capital city, along well-traveled highways, in
shopping centers, and in parking lots of prestigious hotels. Tortured corpses,
some beheaded, some dismembered, were left to decay in the Playon Body Dump,
accessible only with the consent of the military."
Garcia, 80, is appealing the decision. He has been
living in Miami since 1989 after he claimed he feared for his life and was
granted asylum.
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The ruling is a detailed and scathing indictment of
Garcia, but it doesn't convey the extent of the massive involvement of the
United States in the training, arming and advising of Garcia's military.
While the ruling does describe Garcia's military
training, it fails to mention his graduation from the U.S. Army's School of the
Americas (SOA), then based in Panama. The school was moved in 1984 to Fort
Benning, Ga., and in 2000, the Pentagon renamed it the Western Hemisphere
Institute for Security Cooperation.
A recipient of the U.S. Legion of Merit Award,
Garcia once argued that he was only carrying out an anti-communist campaign
with Washington's blessing.
The judge concluded, however, that Garcia allowed
the Salvadoran military "to prey upon defenseless civilians under the
guise of fighting a war against communist subversives" by creating
"an atmosphere of impunity in which members of the armed forces would not
be investigated, prosecuted, sanctioned, or discharged for atrocities visited
upon civilians."
The magnitude of the killings and the torture by the
military, coupled with Garcia's failure to try to stop or seriously investigate
them, led the court to conclude that the atrocities formed part of Garcia's
"deliberate military policy."
The court ruled that Garcia "assisted or
otherwise participated in" 14 assassinations, six specific massacres, and
the torture of three specific individuals in addition to the torture and
killings of countless civilians by forces under his command.
The court found that during Garcia's tenure as
minister of defense, the military was behind 59 massacres, at least 1,800
killings of civilians, 920 disappearances and the torture of 580 people.
Homeland Security Department lawyers initiated the
proceedings against Garcia in 2009 under a 2004 law aimed at denying asylum to
terrorists. The evidence was based in part on the landmark 1993 U.N. Truth
Commission report, U.S. State Department documents and diplomatic cables, and
testimony by Robert White, the former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador.
The court notes that Garcia plotted with others to
overthrow Gen. Carlos Humberto Romero, another SOA graduate, in October 1979, a
coup carried out by a group of young reformist military officers.
But what is not suggested is the view of Cornell
University historian Walter LaFeber in Inevitable Revolutions:
The Jimmy Carter administration had encouraged the coup in the months after
Anastasio Somoza Debayle was toppled in neighboring Nicaragua in July 1979.
The court does note that while Garcia was not a
reformist, he gained reformists' backing to become defense minister in part by
highlighting his connections to United States officials, but the court never
spells out what those connections were.
As defense minister, the court said, Garcia gained
"operational control of the armed forces and became, in effect, the power
behind the throne."
He not only refused to pursue an investigation of
Romero's assassination, but two months later, the court noted, Garcia freed 11
hardliners who had been arrested by troops loyal to a reformist military
officer on the junta as they plotted "an elaborate death squad operation
aimed at bringing about 'total war.' " One of the seized documents was a
notebook containing the payments and plans to assassinate Romero.
Among the conspirators Garcia released were Maj.
Domingo Monterrosa, who a year later would command the troops that slaughtered
the village of El Mozote, and Maj. Roberto D'Aubuisson, the organizer of the
death squad that killed the archbishop and whom Garcia secretly kept on the
payroll even though he had been cashiered from the military for his involvement
in the 1979 coup.
Garcia's actions, the court found, resulted in
"advancing the violent activities of this group of officers and Major
D'Aubuisson by sending the message that they would be protected from
investigation and prosecution."
"What followed was a period of mass state
terror in which torture, murder, and disappearance threatened the entire
population," the court concluded. The 11 officers "went on to commit
vile acts, including: organization and participation in death squads; torture;
the Sheraton Hotel murders; the assassinations of the four American
churchwomen; the FDR murders; the El Mozote massacre; and the Las Hojas and
Agua Santa massacre and cover-up."
Not mentioned in the ruling was the fact that nine
of the 11 freed conspirators were SOA graduates, as were 10 of the 12 officers
cited by the Truth Commission for the massacre at El Mozote; the only officer
cited for the Rio Sumpul massacre; three of the five officers cited for the
murders of the churchwomen; two of the three cited for Romero's killing; and
the three officers cited for the Sheraton Hotel murders.
Nor is there any mention that Garcia was getting
U.S. military advisers and mixed messages from Washington. Romero had sent
President Jimmy Carter a letter asking him to cut off U.S. aid, but the Carter administration rebuffed him and right
after his assassination pushed through a $5.7 million military aid package to
El Salvador, conveying the clear message to Garcia that not even an
archbishop's death would reduce U.S. support.
Similarly, Carter kept the aid flowing after the
four churchwomen were killed, shutting it off only for a brief two-week period.
The court did note that White, the former U.S.
ambassador to El Salvador, was dismissed by the Ronald Reagan administration
after he refused to send a telegram to the State Department "asserting
that the Salvadoran military was making a good-faith effort to find and punish
the people who killed the four American churchwomen." But it does not
mention that Secretary of State Alexander Haig Jr. helped Garcia downplay the
churchwomen's murders by suggesting they were armed and ran a road block.
Nor did it mention that, like Garcia, the Reagan
administration dismissed reports of the massacre at El Mozote as "not
credible" and went on to certify that the Salvadoran junta was making a
"concerted and significant effort" to comply with international human
rights standards. At the same time, the Reagan administration encouraged the Salvadoran
military to adopt Low Intensity Warfare tactics that advocated using almost any
means necessary to achieve political ends.
Carlos Vides Casanova -- another Salvadoran defense
minister and recipient of the Legion of Merit award who faces deportation for
overseeing massive human rights violations, including torture and
assassinations -- has argued that his actions were supported and
funded by U.S. government officials.
White has said that Vides Casanova's actions are
indefensible, but "it would be useful for us to examine our own record
because it keeps coming back to haunt us."
Charges against Gen. Jose Guillermo Garcia:
Former Salvadoran defense minister Gen. Jose
Guillermo Garcia faces deportation after a Miami court ruling found Garcia
protected death squads and "assisted or otherwise participated in" 14
assassinations, six specific massacres, and the torture of three specific
individuals in addition to the torture and killings of countless civilians by
forces under his command, including:
·
The March 24, 1980, assassination of
Archbishop Oscar Romero, which Garcia failed to investigate, releasing officers
who had been arrested with incriminating documents;
·
The May 14, 1980, Rio Sumpul massacre
of approximately 600 civilians in which children and babies were thrown into
the air and slashed to death with machetes, which Garcia denied and never
investigated;
·
The May 29, 1980, San Francisco
Guajoyo Massacre in which 10 members of a cooperative and two agrarian reform
workers were shot at close range; Garcia made no effort to identify and punish
those responsible;
·
The Nov. 27, 1980, assassinations of
six leaders of the Frente Democratico Revolucionario (FDR), an umbrella group
for the unarmed civilian opposition, who were abducted from a Jesuit school and
mutilated by security forces. The court cites a U.S. government cable stating,
"Most military officers were highly pleased with the assassination ...
[and] believe that other leaders and members of the FDR should be eliminated in
a similar fashion ... [and that Garcia] supported this line of thinking."
·
The Dec. 2, 1980, murders of four U.S.
churchwomen, who had been raped and shot at close range. The court concluded
that Garcia made no serious effort to conduct an investigation;
·
The Jan. 3, 1981, assassinations of
three labor union leaders at the Sheraton Hotel, including two Americans.
Garcia, under pressure from the United States, ordered two investigations that
resulted in no action, even though the gunmen stated they were following orders
of National Guard commanders.
·
The April 7, 1981, Soyapango Massacre
in which at least 24 civilians were killed by Treasury Police, who were under
the command of Francisco Moran, a Garcia appointee. Under mounting U.S.
pressure, the Salvadoran government acknowledged the role of the security forces,
but Garcia refused to remove Moran.
·
The Dec. 10, 1981, El Mozote massacre
in which the Atlacatl Battalion systematically executed 1,000 villagers,
including more than 250 children under the age of 12. Garcia denied the
massacre, telling the U.S. ambassador it was a fairy tale and a pack of Marxist
lies, and he refused to order an investigation.
·
The Aug. 22, 1982, El Calabozo
massacre in which the Atlacatl Battalion machine-gunned more than 200 men,
women and children and threw acid on some of the bodies to dissolve them,
making an exact death toll impossible to confirm. The court found that Garcia
did not investigate this massacre, denying it ever occurred.
·
The Feb. 23, 1983, Las Hojas and Agana
Santa Massacre in which 16 civilians from a cooperative were shot at close
range, their arms tied behind their backs. Under pressure from the United
States, Garcia appointed a colonel to conduct an inquiry that the court found
to be a cover-up.
In sum, the court found that during Garcia's tenure
as minister of defense from October 1979 to April 1983, the military was behind
59 massacres, at least 1,800 killings of civilians, 920 disappearances, and the
torture of 580 people.
[Linda Cooper and James Hodge are the authors
of Disturbing the Peace: The Story of Father Roy Bourgeois and the
Movement to Close the School of Americas.]
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