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The bishops of Latin America, in our meeting in Puebla,
publicly recognized "the legitimate right
to self-determination by our peoples,
which permits them to organize as they wish,
set their own historical direction,
and participate in a new international order."
Oscar Romero, letter to President Carter, January 17, 1980Each week I go about the country
listening to the cries of the people,
their pain from so much crime,
and the ignominy of so much violence.
Each week I ask the Lord to give me the right words
to console, to denounce, to call for repentance.
Oscar Romero, March 24, 1980If the United States significantly escalates
its intervention on Central America,
I pledge to join with others
in acts of legal protest and civil disobedience
as conscience leads me.
Pledge of Resistance, 1984We are not worth more; they are not worth less.
S. Brian WillsonLet us then combat war with peace.
Let us combat totalitarianism with the power of democracy.
United in ideals and principles,
joined by dialogue and democracy,
we can and will bring hostilities to an end.
We must give peace a chance.
Oscar Arias to the US Congress, September 22, 1987Peace is a process which never ends.
It is the result of innumerable decisions
made by many persons in many lands.
It is an attitude, a way of life,
a way of solving problems and of resolving conflicts.
It cannot be forced on the smallest nation,
nor can it be imposed by the largest.
It can neither ignore our differences
nor overlook our common interests.
It requires us to work and live together.
Oscar Arias, The Art of Peace 115I have no doubt at all that one day
the School of the Americas which has caused so much
suffering and death to our sisters and brothers abroad
and has been a theft from the poor here at home, will close.
We will speak from prison, your honor.
We will speak from our cells.
The truth cannot be silenced, it can't be chained.
Roy Bourgeois
In 1821 Central America abolished slavery and followed the
example of
Mexico's Agustin Iturbide and declared its independence
from Spain,
and the next year they became a part of his Mexican
empire.
When Iturbide was overthrown in 1823,
the United Provinces
of Central America declared their independence.
That year United
States president James Monroe proclaimed the paternalistic policy
toward Latin America that became known as the Monroe Doctrine
in order to warn Europeans not to intervene anymore in the western
hemisphere.
During the California gold rush in 1850 US businessmen
began financing a railroad
across
the isthmus of Panama; it was
completed after five years and was protected by US troops.
Also
in 1855 adventurer William Walker declared himself president of
Nicaragua
so that the United States could secure rights to a canal;
he reestablished slavery in Nicaragua and was recognized by the
US.
Two years later shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt helped
the US invade Nicaragua
to overthrow Walker with assistance from
Costa Ricans at Rivas.
The United States intervened in Nicaragua four times between
1894 and 1899.
After another intervention in 1910, the US Marines
occupied Nicaragua for the next quarter century.
A rebellion led
by the mystical Augusto Sandino, a theosophist, in 1927
was not
quelled until 1934, when he was treacherously murdered
by order
of Anastasio Somoza Garcia after he had dinner with him.
Somoza
established the National Guard, and his family ruled Nicaragua
until 1979.
El Salvador became an independent nation in 1838, and in 1886
the communal lands
were privatized as an oligarchy of mostly coffee
growers
called "the fourteen families" dominated the
country for the next 45 years.
As the Depression devastated the
coffee market, the Communist Party of El Salvador (CPS)
won many
municipal elections in 1931; but Minister of War
General Maximiliano
Hernandez Martinez refused to accept the results.
The Congress
elected the reformer Arturo Araujo; but amid Communist agitation
Farabundo Marti led a CPS revolt with Indian peasants;
this was
quickly defeated by the army, and in 1932 Marti and CPS leaders
were
publicly executed as about 30,000 peasants were massacred
in the infamous la matanza.
General Martinez took dictatorial
power that delayed industrialization.
Labor unions were illegal
until Martinez was persuaded to resign
by the United States in
1944 during a sit-down strike, though military rule continued.
The Partido Revolutionario de Unificacion Democratica (PRUD)
was founded
in 1948 by Oscar Osorio, who became President in 1950,
when El Salvador got a new constitution and began industrializing.
The elections of 1956 were fixed by the
government party (PRUD)
of Lt. Col. Jose Maria Lemus.
In 1961 in response to the Cuban revolution the anti-communist
Organizacion Democratica Nacionalista (ORDEN) was founded
in El Salvador by General Jose Alberto Medrano.
Vatican II of
Pope John XXIII influenced Latin America when the bishops met
at Medellin, Columbia in 1968 and were inspired to dedicate
themselves
to alleviating injustice and oppression.
A Theology of Liberation
by Gustavo Gutierrez inspired many priests
to become active in
social and political reforms.
In 1969 after Salvadorans in Honduras
were mistreated, the "Soccer War" broke out
and lasted
four days; about 25,000 impoverished peasants were
pushed back
into El Salvador, and the border was closed.
Throughout the 1970s
in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala civil wars developed
in reaction to government repression and right-wing death
squads
under General Medrano and others.
San Salvador mayor Joseph Napoleon
Duarte was apparently elected President in 1972,
but Col. Arturo
Molina of the PRUD, renamed as the
Partido de Conciliacion
Nacional (PCN), was chosen by the Assembly instead.
After
an attempted revolt by reformist officers failed,
Duarte was arrested,
tortured, and exiled.
The United Fruit Company had been in Guatemala for a half century
when Jacobo Arbenz was elected President in 1950 to succeed peacefully
Juan Jose Arévalo, who had been democratically elected
in 1944.
Arbenz implemented agrarian reform, but the United Fruit
Company complained that
they were only compensated for their 234,000
acres according to
the fraudulent value they had reported on their
tax forms.
In 1954 mercenaries trained by the US Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA)
at military bases in Honduras and Nicaragua, supported
by four US fighter planes,
overthrew Arbenz and put Col. Carlos
Castillo Armas
of the National Liberation Movement (MLN) in power.
Thousands of people were killed as land was returned to previous
owners,
taxes on interest and dividends to foreign investors were
abolished,
and all unions were disbanded.
After President Armas
was assassinated in 1957, riots resulted
in the military taking
control; a conservative was elected the next year.
United States
Special Forces began intervening in Guatemala in 1966,
and in
the next seven years right-wing death squads killed about 30,000
people.
In 1974 a right-wing candidate seemed to have stolen the
election from General Rios Montt.
When President Jimmy Carter attached human rights requirements
to US aid in 1977,
Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil, and Argentina
refused to accept it;
the next year the US banned arms sales to
Guatemala.
In 1982 General Rios Montt took power, and the World
Council of Churches
reported that the government had killed more
than 9,000 people in five months.
Under President Ronald Reagan
in 1983 the US
resumed shipping military supplies to Guatemala.
Many changes of government occurred in the next few years,
and
the Church continued to complain of human rights abuses.
The United Fruit Company was also dominant in Honduras,
which
was invaded by US troops in 1923.
The United States let the United
Fruit Company take control
and rule by a dictator from 1932 to
1948.
An army coup in 1963 was led by Col. Oswaldo Lopez in 1963,
who ruled until he was overthrown in 1975 when a scandal exposed
that
United Brands had paid an official $1.25 million and then
saved $7.5 million in taxes.
After Nicaragua's Somoza fell in
1979,
President Carter strengthened relations with Honduras.
In February 1977 another fraudulent election made General Carlos
Humberto Romero
president of El Salvador as more than two hundred
peaceful protesters were killed;
the Catholic Church boycotted
his inauguration.
In June the White Warriors' Union accused Catholics
in El Salvador of promoting
Communism and threatened to kill all
the Jesuits in the country,
distributing leaflets inciting, "Be
a Patriot! Kill a Priest!"
Since several priests had already
been assassinated by death squads,
the US warned President Romero;
the US Congress began
holding hearings on religious persecution
in El Salvador.
Over the next few months the Romero government
was condemned
for human rights
violations by reports from Amnesty
International, the International Commission of Jurists,
the Organization
of American States (OAS), and the US State Department.
The Legal
Aid office of Archbishop Oscar Romero found tha
727 people had
been killed by death squads in 1978 and 1979.
On October 15, 1979
General Humberto Romero's government
was overthrown by a coup
of young officers.
They formed a ruling junta, and a few weeks
later the Carter administration
announced that it would send "nonlethal"
military aid to El Salvador.
In January 1980 a struggle for power resulted in the civilians
resigning
as the right-wing General Jose Guillermo Garcia gained
the upper hand,
though Christian Democrats joined his junta.
In
February the banks of El Salvador were nationalized,
and land
reform was decreed; but death-squad killings escalated.
On the
17th Archbishop Oscar Romero wrote a letter to President Carter
warning him,
Your government’s contribution,
instead of favoring the cause of justice and peace in El Salvador,
will surely increase injustice here and sharpen the repression
that has been unleashed against the people’s organizations
fighting to defend their most fundamental rights.1
The archbishop explained that neither the junta nor the Christian
Democrats
were governing the country, because the armed forces
had the political power
and used it unscrupulously to repress
the people and defend the oligarchy.
Therefore Romero asked Carter
to prohibit all military aid to El Salvador
and not let the US
intervene in any way so that the people's organizations
could
resolve the crisis, and he cited the statement by the bishops
of
Latin America recognizing the right of self-determination of
their peoples.
After Attorney General Mario Zamora sued Roberto D'Aubuisson
for libel
for having accused him of collaborating with guerrillas,
Zamora was assassinated.
D'Aubuisson was generally recognized
as a leader of
ORDEN death squads in the 1970s under General Medrano.
After the October 1979 coup Major D'Aubuisson had been forced
out of the army;
but he began accusing "Communist traitors"
on television so that troops would kill them.
After Zamora's death,
many Christian Democrats withdrew from the government
in protest
and formed a new party called the Popular Social Christian Movement;
but on March 9 the Christian Democrat Jose Napoleon Duarte joined
the ruling junta.
In his last sermon the day before he was assassinated while
saying mass
on March 24, 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero made this
dramatic plea,
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.2
About 30,000 people attended Romero's funeral; gunshots and
explosions caused panic,
resulting in the death of thirty and
injuries to hundreds.
Three days after Romero's death USAID granted
$13 million to El Salvador,
and on April first the US House Appropriations
Committee
approved $5.7 million in military aid.
That month the Frente Democratico Revolucionario (FDR) formed in El Salvador
as the political party allied with the rebels.
On May 7, 1980 the progressive Col. Adolfo Majano discovered
a plot
by the extreme right led by D'Aubuisson, who was arrested
with 23 others.
One week later six hundred Salvadoran peasants
fleeing into Honduras
were massacred at the Rio Sumpul by troops
from both El Salvador and Honduras.
After right-wing supporters
chanted "Communist" outside the
home of US ambassador
Robert White, D'Aubuisson was released.
On June 26 soldiers stormed
the National University
and killed fifty as the government closed
the university.
In October the Salvadoran army killed 3,000 peasants
in Morazan,
and more US military advisors secretly arrived in
El Salvador.
Five rebel groups joined together to form the
Frente
Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional (FMLN).
After Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States in 1980,
he assured Salvadoran business leaders that he would resume military
aid.
Six FDR leaders in San Salvador were kidnapped, tortured,
and murdered.
On December 4 the bodies of Maryknoll sisters Ita
Ford and Maura Clarke,
Ursuline sister Dorothy Kazel, and missionary
Jean Donovan were found
near
the airport after they had been raped
and murdered by soldiers of the National Guard.
The next day President
Carter suspended aid to El Salvador.
After the third junta disbanded
as Duarte became provisional
President of El Salvador, Carter
restored economic aid.
On January 5, 1981 three agrarian reform
advisors,
two from the United States, were shot to death in San
Salvador.
Concerned that President-elect Reagan would intervene,
the FMLN tried to launch
a final offensive before he took office;
but the popular organizations had been
so devastated by the death
squads that a general strike failed.
On January 14 Carter's National
Security Council
approved $5.9 million in lethal aid to El Salvador.
The capable and outspoken US ambassador to El Salvador, Robert
White,
was fired by the new Secretary of State Alexander Haig
within a week after Reagan's inauguration.
In February the Reagan
administration issued a White Paper claiming that
Salvadoran guerrillas
were receiving arms and training from Cuba and Nicaragua;
they
proposed $25 million in additional military aid to El Salvador
with 26 more advisors.
On March 9 Reagan signed a Presidential
finding authorizing CIA covert operations
to support the government
of El Salvador with $19.5 million,
ostensibly to interdict arms
supplies coming from Nicaragua and Honduras.
By June the US press had refuted virtually
every point of the White Paper.
In January 1982 the US began training Salvadoran troops at
Fort Bragg and Fort Benning.
To keep aid going to El Salvador
the Reagan administration
had to certify that it was making progress
on human rights.
This finding was immediately refuted in the press
by numerous human rights organizations.
The Salvadoran Communal
Union (UCS) complained that at least
ninety officials of peasant
organizations had been killed in 1981.
Amnesty International reported
human rights violations on a "massive scale."
The American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Americas Watch argued there wer
hundreds of politically motivated murders, torture, and mutilation
by paramilitary forces.
The Washington Post and the New
York Times
reported extensively on the El Mozote massacre.
Relatives of the four murdered churchwomen complained that the
Salvadoran
government had covered up the case and had not tried
anyone for their murders.
Dozens of those in the US Congress were
so appalled that
they sponsored a resolution to declare the certification
null and void.
A Newsweek poll found that 89% of those
familiar with US policy said
that the United States should not
send troops to El Salvador.
Roberto D'Aubuisson had founded the Nationalist Republican
Alliance (ARENA)
that drew policies from the 1980 platform of
the US Republican Party.
The US ambassador Deane Hinton warned
that a victory by the right-wing
ARENA party in the upcoming election
could be a disaster;
so the CIA spent two million dollars to help
the Christian Democrats.
In the March 1982 election about 85%
of El Salvador's eligible voters cast ballots.
The Christian Democrats
won 24 of the sixty seats in the Assembly; but the rest
were taken
by five rightist parties with ARENA getting 19 seats and the PCN
fourteen.
Ambassador Hinton persuaded the parties not to challenge
the election results
nor block agrarian reform and warned them
that
if they elected D'Aubuisson president, US aid may stop.
Despite
opposition by ARENA, the Christian Democrat Alvaro Magaña
was elected President, though D'Aubuisson became the leader of
the
Constituent Assembly, which in May suspended the agrarian
reform.
In July 1982 the Reagan administration had to certify El Salvador's
human rights record
again and argued that the 1,573 political
murders in the first half of the year were less
than the year
before, though the number was more than the previous six months.
In October leaders of the FDR and FMLN offered to negotiate without
preconditions by
sending a letter that was delivered to President
Magaña by Archbishop Rivera y Damas.
That month Ambassador
Hinton warned the US-Salvadoran Chamber of Commerce
that the "Mafia"
that was murdering innocent civilians, and Americans must be stopped.
After guerrilla commandos destroyed most of the Salvadoran air
force
at the Ilopango air base in late January 1983, President
Reagan used his emergency
powers to send $55 million in military
aid to El Salvador without congressional approval.
In January 1983 President Reagan issued his third certification
of human rights progress
in El Salvador, and on April 27 he spoke
to a joint session of Congress urging them
to support his anti-Communist
effort in Central America, arguing,
"The national security
of all the Americas is at stake in Central America."3
In
late May assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs
Thomas Ender
and Ambassador Hinton were both replaced for
trying
to get the Salvadorans to stop human rights violations.
In June
a hundred US military advisers began training Salvadoran troops
in Honduras.
In July, Reagan certified El Salvador's human rights
record again even though
no one had been brought to trial for
the deaths of the churchwomen or the agrarian workers,
and in
November the President vetoed a bill that
would have continued
the certification requirements.
On October 25, 1983 US Marines
and Army Rangers invaded the Caribbean island
of Grenada, where
a military coup led by the Marxist deputy prime minister
Bernard
Coard had taken power on October 13;
that government and resisting
Cuban workers were removed
as Reagan argued that US medical students
had to be protected.
For the fiscal year of 1984 the US Congress gave the Reagan
administration
a third less military aid for El Salvador than
they requested,
but the $64.8 million was still more than twice
that of the previous year.
On December 11 Vice President George
Bush visited President Magaña
but in a toast warned him,
"Your cause is being undermined by the murderous violence
of reactionary minorities,"4 and he denounced the "cowardly
death squads."
On March 25, 1984 Salvadorans voted for president, and a runoff
was scheduled
for May between Christian Democrat Duarte and D'Aubuisson
of ARENA.
During the congressional recess in April, President
Reagan invoked
his emergency powers to send $32 million in military
aid to El Salvador.
Meanwhile the CIA spent $2.1 million covertly
to back Duarte,
using the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a
Venezuelan Institute,
and the US Agency for International Development
(USAID).
D'Aubuisson's friend Jesse Helms learned of it and complained
on the Senate floor,
and death threats were made against US ambassador
Thomas Pickering.
Duarte won the election and promised to end
the death squads,
implement reform, and negotiate peace with the
guerrillas.
This was enough to persuade the US House of Representatives
to vote 212-208 to resume military aid.
After a Salvadoran jury
convicted five former National Guardsmen
of killing the four church
women,
Congress was more willing to pass aid for El Salvador.
The Reagan administration managed to compile $196,600,000 for
the war
in El Salvador in 1984, and $123,250,000 was authorized
for 1985.
In March 1988 the ARENA party won control of El Salvador's
National Assembly.
Peace-loving senators Mark Hatfield and Tom
Harkin tried to hold back
half of El Salvador's military aid for
six months so that
they would negotiate an end to the war; but
their amendment was stopped in committee
after dying Duarte sent
a message from Walter Reed Hospital.
ARENA candidate Alfredo Christiani
was elected president in March 1989.
In November the guerrillas
launched a major offensive
but could not get the support they
wanted in the capital San Salvador.
The military reacted to this
by sending out death-squads against journalists, clerics,
relief
workers, and intellectuals, murdering six Jesuit priests
and two
women at the Central American University on November 16.
The US
Congress responded to these developments
by cutting the military
aid for 1990 in half.
In the 1980s the US had given El Salvador
nearly $4 billion in overt aid.
In April 1990 representatives
of the FMLN and the El Salvador government
met at Geneva under
the auspices of the United
Nations.
The next month the US House adopted the Moakly-Murtha
amendment
that cut military aid in half again unless the FMLN
refused to negotiate
or got weapons from abroad or murdered civilians.
In July an important accord on human rights was reached
by the
FMLN and the El Salvador government.
After a US helicopter was shot down in January 1991,
the Bush
administration restored the extra military aid.
In October the
FMLN agreed to disarm when they were promised major reforms
in
the government and economic improvements such as land reform.
Finally at the very end of UN Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar's
term
on the last day of 1991, a peace agreement was made.
The United Nations Observer
Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL) successfully
monitored the peace
accord and supervised elections in 1994.
The UN also mediated
an end to 36 years of civil war in Guatemala in 1996.
Altogether
the low-intensity wars of the 1980s had killed more than 200,000 people
in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala, resulting
in more than two million refugees.
Anastasio Somoza was elected President of Nicaragua in 1967,
succeeding his late brother Luis Somoza.
Four years later Congress
dissolved itself and
transferred its constitutional authority
to Somoza.
After the 1972 earthquake Somoza declared martial law
that lasted until 1977.
That year the Frente Sandinista de
Liberacion Nacional (FSLN),
which had been founded after the
Cuban revolution in 1961 by
Carlos Fonseca, Tomas Borge, and Silvio
Moraga began a major offensive.
The Somoza government was criticized
by La Prenza editor Pedro Joaquin Chamorro,
but he was
assassinated on January 10, 1978.
FSLN insurrections spread in
Nicaraguan provinces and closed in on Managua.
In November the
United States blocked $65 million in loans from the
International
Monetary Fund (IMF) because Somoza refused mediation;
but in May
1979 they released the money.
On June 20 captured ABC reporter
Bill Stewart was shot in the head
by a National Guard soldier
while his crew filmed from a van.
The US called for a meeting
of the Organization of American States (OAS),
and Secretary of
State Cyrus Vance urged a peacekeeping force.
The FSLN got most
of its weapons from Venezuela and Panama,
as Cuba restrained itself
to keep the US from opposing the revolution.
On July 17, 1979
President Somoza fled to Miami.
Two days later an unusual combination of Marxist guerrillas
and conservative businessmen
took power in Managua, declaring
the Government of National Reconstruction
and promising a mixed
economy,
political pluralism, and a non-aligned foreign policy.
Although the National Directorate was led by the moderate brothers
Daniel and Humberto Ortega, the private sector opposed the Sandinistas' emphasis on
social welfare with free education and health care, taxes on the wealthy, and agrarian reform.
The US contributed
about $20 million in relief aid
to feed and house those displaced
by the civil war.
In February 1980 the US Congress appropriated
$75 million in humanitarian aid
for Nicaragua along with $5 million
in military aid for its neighbors.
In September, President Carter
certified that Nicaragua
was not harboring terrorists nor supporting
them in other countries.
Carter's moderate policy was designed
to avoid the past mistakes with Cuba
that had pushed Castro toward
the Communists.
In April 1981 the Reagan administration canceled the $118 million
in US aid to Nicaragua
that Carter had obtained, and the President
approved CIA director Bill Casey's plan
to back anti-Sandinista
insurgents based in Honduras.
On November 16 Reagan approved $19.95
million to support these contra rebels.
Without US assistance
the Nicaraguans turned to others for help.
The Soviet Union provided
20,000 tons of wheat; Libya loaned them $100 million;
and Cuba
sent $64 million in technical aid.
In February 1982 Mexican president
Jose Lopez Portillo gave a speech in Nicaragua
and offered to
mediate to help release the "three knots of tension"
involving the
United States and Nicaragua, the US and Cuba, and
the El Salvador civil war.
Many in the US Congress welcomed his
assistance, and to mollify the public
the Reagan administration
reluctantly promised to cooperate.
After anti-Sandinista Contras
destroyed two major bridges
on the border between
Nicaragua
and
Honduras in March,
the Sandinistas declared a state of emergency
on March 15.
In December 1982 US Representative Tom Harkin proposed
an amendment
that would prohibit US assistance to any group
"carrying
out military activities in or against Nicaragua."5
Edward
Boland then offered a substitute with language acceptable to the
Republicans,
prohibiting funds "for the purpose of overthrowing
the government of Nicaragua,"6
which passed the House 411-0.
Yet the number of Contras the US was supporting increased
from
less than 2,000 in August 1982 to 7,000 by the following May.
Thirty-seven members of the House wrote to President Reagan complaining
that the Boland amendment was being violated, and on July 28,
1983
the House voted 228-195 to end covert operations against
Nicaragua.
Throughout the second half of 1983 the US military conducted
extensive exercises
in the western Caribbean to intimidate Nicaragua,
Salvadoran rebels, and Cuba.
In September the Contras sabotaged
Nicaragua's only coastal oil terminal,
and the next month they
attacked oil storage facilities.
The House voted again 227-194
in the annual intelligence authorization to ban spending
on covert
operations against Nicaragua, and in November they passed a resolution
in support of negotiations by the Contadora process mediated by
Mexico, Venezuela,
Colombia, and Panama; but the conference committee
added $24 million dollars for the Contras for the next fiscal
year.
Without telling the oversight committees, the National Security
Council (NSC)
increased the authorized strength of the Contras
to 18,000.
Early in 1984 the CIA used a ship off Nicaragua's coast to
help Latin American
commandos lay mines in three Nicaraguan harbors;
but the Senate Intelligence
committee was not fully informed until
March 27 after Dutch, Panamanian,
and Soviet ships were damaged,
and Nicaraguan fishermen were killed.
Then a Liberian tanker and
a Japanese ship were damaged,
and speedboats with machine guns
and explosives attacked the Corinto harbor.
By overwhelming votes
both houses of Congress
voted to condemn the mining, 84-12 in
the Senate.
On May 24 the House voted 241-177 to prohibit aid
to the Contras.
Since the Reagan administration could not get money from Congress
for the Contras, they looked for other ways.
On June 25 at a meeting
with President Reagan, Vice President Bush, CIA Director Casey,
National Security Advisor McFarlane, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff Vessey,
Secretary of State Schultz, and Secretary of
Defense Weinberger,
they discussed getting military support for
the Contras from other countries.
Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia
had already offered a million dollars a month.
Casey had got $10
million in arms that Israel had captured
from the Palestinian
Liberation Organization (PLO), though he had denied this
when
he testified before the House Intelligence Committee.
Schultz
and the White House chief of staff Jim Baker warned that such
solicitations
could be an "impeachable offense," and
Reagan demanded secrecy, warning,
"If such a story gets out,
we'll all be hanging by our thumbs in front of the White House."7
Within days of Congress voting to end all funding for the Contras,
more than $20 million was sent by Saudis into Contra bank accounts.
The Contadora nations were mediating peace talks at Manzanillo,
and in September 1984 Nicaragua surprised many by agreeing to
the proposed treaty
that would ban foreign military bases, training,
and exercises;
it meant that US advisers would have to leave Honduras
and El Salvador,
and the Cuban advisers would have to leave Nicaragua.
Reagan's diplomats found ways to delay the treaty, irritating
Mexico.
In October the Associated Press reported that a CIA murder
manual called
Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare
had been sent to Contras,
urging them to hire criminals to provoke
violence at large urban demonstrations
to cause deaths and make
martyrs.
They also advised them to "neutralize" (assassinate)
judges,
police, security officials, and Sandinista leaders.
On
November 2 Nicaragua held elections,
and the Sandinistas won about
two-thirds of the votes.
Two days later Reagan won re-election
with 59% of the popular vote.
After Reagan's large electoral victory in 1984, his administration
imposed
an economic embargo against Nicaragua on May 1, 1985.
The next month Congress approved $27 million for the Contras
but
only in overt and nonlethal aid.
However, a year later Congress
authorized $100 million, including $70 million
in military aid
for the Nicaraguan Contras to be administered by the CIA.
Meanwhile
during the restricted period from 1985 to 1986 Lt. Col. Oliver
North,
working for the National Security Council (NSC), had secretly
raised $34 million
from other countries and $2.7 million
from wealthy citizens as covert aid for the Contras,
using an
offshore enterprise managed by former general Richard Secord.
By March 1985 the secret arms were flowing into Honduras.
North
thanked Guatemala for its help by promising military aid,
and
Salvadoran president Duarte let them use the Ilopango air base
for logistics.
Panama's General Noriega had been working for the
CIA for two decades
and allowed them to use Panama for training
camps and
his drug-smuggling planes
for transporting the arms
(and drugs to pay for them).
China sent surface-to-air missiles
through Guatemala,
and Taiwan donated two million dollars.
In
1986 the US secretly sold arms to Iran for a profit of $16.1 million,
of which $3.8 million was spent for the Contras' war.
As early as 1985 the Central American Crisis Monitoring Team
of the
Institute for Policy Studies had published the pamphlet In Contempt of Congress,
quoting official statements of
Reagan officials with the counterevidence
showing that they were
lies, deceptions, and distortions.
Former New York assistant attorney
general Reed Brody documented with
145 sworn affidavits 28 cases
of human rights violations by the Contras.
Columnist Charles Krauthammer
dubbed American support
for anti-communist revolutions the Reagan
Doctrine.
Neither the United States nor El Salvador ever brought
their allegations
against Nicaragua to the Organization of American
States or the United Nations.
Yet Article 51 of the UN Charter
requires any nation claiming the right of self-defense
to lodge
a formal complaint in the Security Council.
The Reagan administration
was apparently unwilling
to have its actions scrutinized by international
law.
On June 25, 1986 the House passed Reagan's $100 million in
aid for the Contras,
and the next day the World Court announced
that it had found the United States
guilty of fifteen violations
against international law for arming the Contras,
attacking Nicaragua,
mining their harbors, embargoing their trade, and violating their
airspace.
The US Government had withdrawn from the World Court
and ignored its judgment.
On October 5, 1986 the Sandinista army shot down a plane
carrying
10,000 pounds of ammunition and supplies for the Contras.
The
surviving crew member was the American Eugene Hasenfus,
and evidence
indicated it was a CIA operation.
CIA Central America Task Force
chief Alan Fiers lied to the
House Intelligence Committee about
it and was later convicted for that.
His boss, CIA deputy director
of operations Clair George, had instructed him to lie,
and in
1992 George was also found guilty of making false statements to
Congress.
In November the press revealed that the Reagan administration
had sold arms to Iran in order to get US hostages in Lebanon released.
The Justice Department found a memo by North planning to use $12
million
from the arms sale to purchase supplies for the Nicaraguan
resistance forces.
Attorney General Edwin Meese warned President
Reagan
that he could be impeached if he tried to cover it up;
over the objection of CIA director Casey, both held
a news conference
to admit the "Iran-Contra" scandal.
They announced that
National Security Advisor John Poindexter
and his assistant Oliver
North were both dismissed.
After a congressional investigation
involving extensive public hearings that were televised,
on November
18, 1987 the Iran-Contra committees reported that
they found "secrecy,
deception, and disdain for the law."8
Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright and President Reagan announced
a proposal
for a cease-fire on August 5, 1987, but two days later
the presidents of all five
Central American nations signed the
Arias peace accord in Guatemala.
Wright liked this peace plan,
but Reagan considered it "fatally flawed,"
because it
would allow Soviet aid to the Sandinistas to continue.
In January
1988 the Sandinistas ended their state of emergency, allowed exiles
to return,
released some political prisoners, and agreed to negotiate
directly with the Contra rebels.
In February the US House of Representatives
rejected the entire Contra aid package.
In March the Sandinistas
met with the Contras at Sapoas
on the Costa Rica border and signed
a sixty-day cease-fire.
Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev suspended
their military aid to Nicaragua
at the end of 1988 and urged the
Sandinistas to hold a fair election.
In February 1989 the five Central American presidents met in
El Salvador
and planned the voluntary demobilization, repatriation,
and relocation of the Nicaraguan Contras and their families.
In
a meeting at Tela, Honduras in August the Central American leaders
agreed
not to allow insurgent forces in their territories, and
an international commission
to verify this was created, making
it difficult for the
Contras to operate out of Honduras and Costa
Rica.
During the 1980s the US had given the Contras $350 million
to fight the Sandinistas.
During the administration of George
H. W. Bush the effort was shifted to influencing
the next election in
Nicaragua through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED),
which contributed $11.6 million to the opposition.
The CIA found
$6 million to help the opposing coalition and even gave
$600,000
to former Contra leaders for the election campaign.
This paid
off when Violeta Chamorro defeated
Daniel Ortega 55% to 41% on
February 25, 1990.
During the campaign Ortega complained that
his country
was facing an election with a gun pointed at its head
because
the Bush administration threatened that a Sandinista victory
would mean more war.
Nonetheless the Sandinistas accepted the
election results and became the opposition party.
The Contra war,
financed and supplied by the US, had caused $15 billion damage
in Nicaragua and killed about 30,000 people,
not counting those
who died from hunger and disease.
In the summer of 1980 the US Border Patrol discovered that
about half of 27 illegal Salvadoran immigrants had died of thirst
and exposure;
the survivors were taken in by churches in Tucson.
The following May the Quaker philosopher and goat rancher Jim Corbett
tried to get
a Salvadoran hitchhiker he had met released but learned
that he had already been deported.
Jim and his wife Pat borrowed
$4,500 to bail out four Salvadoran women and a baby,
and they
learned about the violence in El Salvador that people were fleeing.
Corbett went to Los Angeles and argued with the US Immigration
and
Naturalization Service (INS) that Salvadoran refugees should
not be deported.
He wrote five hundred letters to Quaker meetings,
asking for donations to pay bail for refugees.
By June, Corbett
and the Manzo Area Council had raised $150,000;
but the INS raised
the bails from $250 to $1,000 and then to $3,000.
Normally refugees,
who would likely be persecuted if they were returned to their
countries,
are allowed to stay in the United States; but under
the Reagan administration policy
even Salvadorans with marks of
torture on their bodies were deported.
Statistics later showed
that from 1983 to 1986 only 2.6% of Salvadorans
and only 0.9%
of Guatemalans requesting asylum were approved.
When the INS demanded $9,000 bail for three Salvadoran refugees
that
Corbett had
turned in on June 26, 1981, he protested they
were forcing him to go outside the law.
Corbett's father was a
lawyer and had taught him about the Nuremberg trials.
So Corbett
organized a refugee support group and began a smuggling operation
in the tradition of the Quaker underground railroad for fleeing
slaves before the Civil War
or of those who had helped Jews escape
from the Nazis.
By July another $175,000 was donated to free the
remaining 115 Salvadorans
from the detention center, and in August,
Corbett was making
one or two trips a day smuggling undocumented
refugees.
Corbett asked Presbyterian pastor John Fife for help
in placing all these Central Americans.
Fife suggested to his
congregation that they provide a sanctuary in their church,
and
in January 1982 by secret ballot they approved 59-2.
By the time
of their public declaration on March 24 five churches in the
San
Francisco bay area and three others were declaring sanctuary also.
The INS publicly scoffed at the idea, but secretly
they sent a
paid informant to infiltrate the movement.
In August 1982 national coordination was taken over by the
Chicago Religious Task Force on Central America (CRTF).
They distributed
30,000 manuals on how to provide sanctuary,
and the movement spread
across the country;
150 churches and synagogues had become sanctuaries
by the middle of 1984.
In January 1985 Corbett, Fife, and fourteen
others in Arizona
were indicted, publicizing the movement.
The
number increased to 250, and even the city of Los Angeles
and
the state of New Mexico declared themselves sanctuaries.
The Sanctuary
movement reached its height in 1987 when four hundred
faith-based
communities were taking in political refugees from Central America.
Charles Clements, a former Air Force pilot who had been put
in a psychiatric hospital
for refusing to fly more bombing missions
in Vietnam,
became a physician and spent a year treating the campesinos
and witnessing
the horrendous war in El Salvador, starting in
March 1982.
He saw jets and helicopter gunships, supplied by the
US, strafe defenseless peasants.
Others he treated had been tortured
or suffered from attacks
using napalm, gasoline bombs, and white
phosphorus rockets.
On March 23, 1984 two hundred people went to see Vermont Senator
Robert Stafford
at his office in Winooski to express their opposition
to funding the Contra war
and to ask him to hold a public meeting.
When he refused, many stayed; three days later
44 protesters were
arrested for trespassing.
In the trial refugees told of their
experience in the war zones
of Central America, and experts testified.
The judge charged the jurors that a significant State interest
would have to be proved
to override the defendants right to petition
their government for redress of grievances,
and he allowed the
defense of necessity - that in an emergency a minor law may be
violated
in order to prevent a greater harm.
The jury found all 26 defendants
not guilty.
In April 1983 the ex-Maryknoll nun Gail Phares of the
Carolina
Interfaith Task Force on Central America (CITCA) organized a group
of 33 people to travel to El Porvenir by Nicaragua's Honduran
border
that was under attack by the Contras.
They observed that
the Contras stopped shooting because of their presence.
Jeff Boyer
suggested that US citizens could hold vigils in the war zones.
By July, Action for Peace in Nicaragua had 153 volunteers from
forty states.
The second delegation prayed to be forgiven for
the killings their government was funding,
and the Nicaraguans
began to respond, "You are forgiven."9
More delegations
traveled to Nicaragua, observed the villages that were assaulted
by the Contras, and reported back to their churches and friends
in the United States.
Soon all the major religious peace groups
and churches were supporting
Witness for Peace by publicizing
the issue, raising money, and sending delegations.
Over the next
few years about two hundred long-term delegates and four thousand
short-term delegates traveled to Nicaragua as part of
Witness
for Peace in order to diminish the violence there.
The Reagan administration used various dirty tricks to try
to destroy the Central American peace movement.
In June 1983 the
US State Department officially discouraged travel to Nicaragua
and closed all six Nicaraguan consulates in the United States.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Customs
began harassing
citizens traveling to Nicaragua.
The FBI also tried to intimidate
activists by investigating them in their homes.
When President
Reagan declared a state of national emergency in May 1985,
US
landing rights for Nicaragua's airline were revoked.
The Internal
Revenue Service (IRS) audited many activists, and organizers found
that their phones often made funny noises because of surveillance.
An activist once made a call and heard a recording of a previous
call.
The government also tampered with and interfered with people's
mail.
As early as 1981 the FBI had begun to spy on the
Committee
in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES),
and later
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests revealed that it had
become
a major surveillance operation by 1985, spinning off into
178 separate investigations
involving all 59 FBI field offices
probing 1,330 organizations.
These operations were supposed to
have been closed down in 1985,
but many believe information was
still gathered.
In 1987 the important testimony of FBI agent Frank
Varelli was sabotaged
by altering his previous lie detector results
and reports
to make it look like he was lying to a congressional
committee.
A propaganda campaign by the government tried to associate
peace activists
with Communism or terrorism, and critical journalists
and professors were intimidated.
In August 1985 a Contra kidnapping
of a Witness for Peace delegation was
falsely
leaked as if it
were planned by Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega to help his
cause.
This disinformation caused reporters to doubt whether the
story was newsworthy.
In the 1980s more than 140 break-ins into
the offices,
churches, and homes of peace activists were documented.
Often money and valuable equipment was left while
documents, records,
and photos were ransacked.
In 1987 an American Friends Service
Committee (AFSC) coordinator in Pasadena
had boxes of documents
stolen from her car;
but expensive clothes and jewelry were left
behind.
In all these 140 cases only one time was any suspect ever
identified or arrested.
In Los Angeles death threats by death-squads
were often made
against Salvadoran and Guatemalan activists.
In
1984 the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) designed the
Rex 84
contingency plan to suspend the US Constitution, declare
martial law,
and detain thousands of people as threats to national
security
after the President declared a state of domestic national
emergency.
During the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings this plan
was
not allowed to be discussed in open session.
During a gathering of peace and justice activists at the Kirkridge
Retreat Center
in Pennsylvania in November 1983 Jim Wallis and
Jim Rice of Sojourners magazine
drafted a "Promise
of Resistance" that was revised and signed by 33 activists,
vowing that if the US invaded Nicaragua, they would go there unarmed
as a loving barrier.
They sent copies of the statement to members
of Congress,
President Reagan, the Defense Department, and the
CIA.
In the August 1984 issue of Sojourners the idea was
altered
to
occupy congressional offices and was called a "Pledge
of Resistance."
In Berkeley theology student Ken Butigan was working for Witness
for Peace
and was inspired by the original "Promise."
He began circulating a document called
"A Commitment to Stop
the Killing in Central America."
David Hartsough of the AFSC
in San Francisco liked the idea
and got Butigan $50 a week and
an office to work on it.
He revised slightly the Sojourners
pledge and persuaded the
Committee in Solidarity with the People
of El Salvador (CISPES) to gather signatures.
On October 9, 1984
outside the Federal Building in San Francisco 700 people
signed the pledge in the first hour as two hundred people
spoke
why they were willing to risk going to jail.
A week later Butigan
attended a Sojourners meeting
in Washington and urged a
decentralized campaign.
The language was changed so that any major
military escalation in Central America
would lead to protests
and civil disobedience.
Butigan then compiled a Pledge of Resistance
handbook called
Basta! No Mandate for War, drawing upon
the affinity group structure and
consensus processes of the anti-nuclear
movement and the handbooks
used by the Livermore Action Group
(LAG).
By December 42,352 had signed, half of them pledging civil
disobedience.
In May 1985 the US Congress voted against aid to the Contras,
but the Reagan administration imposed a trade embargo on Nicaragua.
Activists were divided whether to act.
The national organization
chose to wait; but in Boston 2,600 protested,
and 559 were arrested
for occupying the Federal Building.
In San Francisco 3,000 demonstrated,
and six hundred were arrested.
Nationwide more than 2,000 had
been arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience.
A month later
Congress passed $27 million for the Contras.
This time the national
organization acted with demonstrations
in more than 200
cities as more than 1,200 protesters were arrested.
By September
70,000 had signed the Pledge of Resistance.
In 1986 during four votes over Contra aid, demonstrations took
place
in a thousand places, and another two thousand people were
arrested.
When National Guard troops were sent to Honduras the
next year,
demonstrators protested at a hundred congressional
offices.
A hundred thousand people marched for peace and justice
in Central America
in Washington at the April Mobilization,
and
567 were arrested for protesting at CIA headquarters.
At the Pentagon
in 1988 five hundred protesters committed civil disobedience,
but only 240 of them were arrested.
In the fall of 1989 there
were seven hundred protests around the country
because of increases
in military aid to El Salvador.
2,440 protesters risked arrest,
and 1,452 of them were taken into custody.
On March 24, 1990 during
a Washington snowstorm 580 people were arrested
for demonstrating
in front of the White House,
the largest number for any single
pledge action.
In 1966 S. Brian Willson went to Air Force officer training
school;
but while being trained for combat at Fort Benning,
he
refused to stab a dummy one hundred times, yelling, "Kill!"
Nonetheless he was deployed in March 1969 to Vietnam,
where he was asked to make reports on bombed villages.
Later he
was haunted by the faces of the dead women and children he had
seen.
After criticizing the bombings and civilian deaths, he was
transferred to Louisiana.
He completed law school and became the
director of the
Vietnam Veterans Outreach Center in his native
Massachusetts.
In January 1986 he traveled to Nicaragua to see
if the Contras
were "freedom fighters" as President
Reagan claimed.
When he saw the corpses of their civilian victims,
he wept.
He became sick of what he called the demonic American
Way Of Life (AWOL),
and he stopped paying federal income tax.
On the steps of the Capitol in Washington, Brian and three other
veterans
fasted from September 1, 1986 to October 17.
Senator
Warren Rudman compared the fasting veterans
to the terrorists
holding hostages in Beirut.
FBI agent John C. Ryan refused to
investigate a group that was "totally nonviolent,"
and
he was fired after more than twenty years of service.
Willson organized Veterans Peace Action Teams and returned
to Nicaragua.
His team of nine veterans walked 73 miles on a dangerous
road, where in
October 1986 eleven persons had been killed and
twelve lost legs because of land mines.
Willson learned that during
the Vietnam War demonstrators had blocked trains
carrying
troops
from the Concord Naval Weapons Station (CNWS) at Port Chicago
east of Berkeley.
Concerned that 230 Salvadoran villages had been
bombed or
strafed from the air in 1986, he organized a protest
campaign on the tracks.
He wrote a letter to the CNWS, and on
June 10 demonstrators began blocking trains
and trucks carrying
munitions from CNWS across
the public road to Port Chicago for
shipment.
Willson, Duncan Murphy, and Rev. David Duncombe decided
to begin another forty-day
water fast on September 1 and also
planned to stay on
the tracks to block every train unless they
were arrested.
On August 21 Willson sent a letter to the CNWS
commander with copies to the Sheriff,
the Police Department, the
Highway Patrol, and to several politicians,
stating their intention
not to move for an approaching train.
On September 1 Brian took another note to CNWS and made a speech
in which he said,
"You can't move these munitions without
moving my body or destroying my body."10
The speed limit
for the train crossing the road there was five miles per hour;
but the video of the event revealed that the train was traveling
17 miles per hour
and did not slow down until after Willson had
been run over.
Duncombe was kneeling and was able to move at the
last moment;
Murphy was kneeling and leaped up and grabbed ahold
of the train;
but Willson was sitting and was not able to get
out of the way.
One leg was severed, and the other was so badly
mangled that it had to be amputated;
a large hole in his skull
was opened, and part of his brain was damaged.
His wife Holly
Rauen, whom he had married nine days before,
managed to stop the
bleeding, and Brian eventually recovered.
Later it was learned
that the Navy had ordered the train not to stop,
because they
were afraid the protesters would try to board the train.
The train
engineers actually sued Willson for psychological stress they
suffered;
but he counter-sued and won the case.
No jurisdiction
was willing to bring criminal charges against the Navy for this
atrocity.
After this horrendous incident the Nuremberg Actions
protest
continued as more people joined.
For the next five years the vigil
at the tracks was constant,
and almost every train was blocked,
resulting in 1,700 arrests.
For a while the sheriffs tried to
remove people by using pain holds;
but after David Hartsough and
David Wylie suffered broken arms, this tactic was abandoned.
For
more information on this Nuremberg Actions campaign
see "My
Efforts for World Peace" in the appendix.
Costa Rica has a long history of liberalism and education.
General Tomas Guardia did take over the country in 1870
and ruled
it as president for twelve years, and in 1877 he promulgated a
liberal
"Law of Individual Rights" that protected freedom
of religion, speech, and the press.
Public education was greatly
expanded when he made
primary education free and obligatory for
both sexes.
In 1889 President Bernard Soto allowed an honest election
and was persuaded
by demonstrators to let the opposition party
take office after they won.
Rafael Angel Calderon came to power as a representative of
the upper class in 1940,
and he formed an alliance with Catholics
and Communists
to form the United Social Christian Party.
In his
four years he brought about major social and economic reforms,
letting cultivators claim unused land, making taxes progressive,
establishing a minimum wage,
providing unemployment compensation,
and codifying workers' rights.
However, World War II caused economic
hardship and inflation.
In 1948 a disputed election erupted into
civil war and brought Jose Figueres
(known as Costa Rica's national
hero "Don Pepe") to power.
He ruled as the president
of the Founding Junta of the Second Republic
for eighteen months,
disbanding the army and
nationalizing the banks and insurance
companies.
The 1949 constitution promoted even more public education
and made it compulsory to age 14.
He was opposed by Nicaragua's
Somoza, who became his bitter enemy.
Figueres founded the National
Liberation Party and was twice elected President,
governing Costa
Rica 1953-1957 and 1970-1974.
The welfare state of Costa Rica reached a crisis in 1980
when
its debt became the largest per person in the world.
Sandinistas
had used Costa Rica as a base for attacking the Somoza regime,
and in 1979 about 50,000 Nicaraguans took refuge in Costa Rica.
Also tens of thousands of Salvadorans fled the civil war
in their
country by settling in Costa Rica.
In the early 1980s Contras
led by disgruntled Sandinista Eden Pastora operated from there.
The Reagan administration's proxy war against the Sandinistas
also secretly sent
$9.6 million in military aid to Costa Rica,
giving their Civil and Rural Guard
4,000 M-16 rifles, 200 M-79
grenade launchers, and 120 M-60 machine guns.
Reagan propaganda
was gladly accepted by Costa Rica's three daily newspapers,
and
US military advisors arrived in 1985.
Roads in northern Costa
Rica were paved,
and helicopters and four small planes were purchased
for the Civil Guard.
Soldier of Fortune magazine recruited
mercenaries to join the Contras.
Former Sandinista "Commander Zero" Eden Pastora led
the
Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE) in Costa Rica;
but
he refused to be dominated by the Somacista Contras in the northern
Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) operating from Honduras,
and
he resisted CIA pressure to unite with them.
On May 30, 1984 Pastora
held a press conference at La Penca at which
a powerful bomb killed
three journalists and five Contras,
wounding 26 others including
journalist Tony Avirgan.
Costa Rican security officers and US
officials immediately blamed the Sandinistas
for trying to assassinate
Pastora, who eventually withdrew
completely from the Contra effort
in May 1986.
However, an investigation by Avirgan and Martha Honey
indicated that this was
a cover-up for a CIA operation that was
connected to
John Hull, who owned a ranch in Costa Rica.
They
got information from a Carlos, who explained that Hull's ranch
was used for trafficking in arms, cocaine, and marijuana.
Avirgan
and Honey published their findings and were sued for libel by
John Hull,
and they won the case in a Costa Rica court.
The most remarkable thing about Costa Rica is that it survived
amid these Central American
wars with little or no army, relying
since 1947 on the Rio Mutual Defense Treaty.
On February 2, 1986
Oscar Arias was the first peace candidate
to be elected president
of Costa Rica, and on the day of his inauguration
he quietly ordered
US ambassador Lewis Tambs to shut down the Santa Elena airstrip
that had been used to supply the Contras in Costa Rica.
Arias
fired its administrator, Col. Jose Montero, and ordered Security
Minister
Hernan Garron to have a Civil Guard patrol the airstrip
to prevent its being used.
However, in June his orders were secretly
countermanded as Garron
and Vice Minister Rogelio Castro removed
the guards and only ordered occasional patrols.
In July the government
of Nicaragua sued Honduras and Costa Rica in the World Court.
Unlike the US and Honduras, the government of
Costa Rica accepted
the jurisdiction of the World Court.
Tambs persuaded Arias not
to publicize his stationing of the guards
on the Santa Elena base
on September 8, the day they impounded 77 drums
of aviation fuel
and put them on the runway to prevent use of the airstrip.
Speaking
to the United Nations General Assembly on September 24
President
Arias expressed his concern about Nicaragua's
"totalitarian
regime of Marxist ideology," but the next day Minister Garron
announced that the covert air strip used by the Contras had been
closed.
In October 1986 CIA director Casey flew to San Jose,
but Arias
refused to meet with him in secret.
When Arias went to Washington
to meet with President Reagan in December,
he made sure many people
were present when he met with Casey.
Arias urged peaceful solutions,
especially in Nicaragua and was promised
that $40 million in frozen
USAID would be released for Costa Rica.
At San Jose in February
1987 he presented his peace proposal to the presidents
of Guatemala,
El Salvador, and Honduras, calling for cease-fires,
suspending
outside military aid to guerrillas, amnesty for political prisoners,
free elections, and negotiations between governments and unarmed
opposition forces.
The next month the US Senate voted 97-1 to
support the Arias plan.
In July, Arias announced that the Santa
Elena property would become part of the
Santa Rosa National Park
to protect the largest dry tropical forest in Central America.
In August 1987 at Esquipulas in Guatemala all five Central American
presidents signed
the peace accord that called for verification
by the
United Nations and the Organization of American States.
They agreed to implement by November cease-fires, democratization,
stopping aid to the Contras and other insurgents, and removal
of the Contra bases from Honduras and Costa Rica.
They planned
to meet in January to certify this implementation.
President Reagan
denounced this Central American Peace Plan as "fatally flawed."
The USAID funds for Costa Rica had been stopped since the peace
process
began in February 1987, but by threatening a scandal
Democrats
led by Senator John Kerry got the aid resumed.
The government
of Nicaragua withdrew its suit
against Costa Rica and lifted its
press restrictions.
On September 22 Arias addressed the US Congress, informing
them that
he would not let the US dehumanize the Costa Rican economy
because of
foreign creditors' demands and saying,
"The new
economic organization must be based on equity and security.
No
economy based on greed and intimidation can ever be established
in Costa Rica in the name of efficiency."11
Arias announced
that schoolchildren would compete to design a new uniform
to replace
the camouflage fatigues donated by the US.
He commended the United
States on the bicentennial of its Constitution,
and he quoted
John Kennedy's words during his visit to Costa Rica in 1963,
Today the principles of nonintervention
and the peaceful resolution of disputes
have been so firmly imbedded in our tradition
that the heroic democracy in which we meet today
can pursue its national goals
without an armed force to guard its frontiers.12
Arias concluded his speech by suggesting that they could overcome
war
and totalitarianism with peace and the power of democracy.
In October 1987 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
When the five Central American presidents met again at San
Jose on January 15, 1988,
they found that most of the agreements
had been implemented except that
Honduras had not closed down
the Contra camps in its territory.
Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega announced
not only the end of its six-year-old state of emergency
but also
cease-fire talks with the Contras, freeing the remaining
3,200
political prisoners, and the scheduling of municipal elections.
In an article in the New York Times Ortega wrote that Nicaragua
was ready to negotiate
limiting armed forces, removing foreign
military advisors, and banning foreign military bases.
Arias also
announced in January that all Contra leaders living in Costa Rica
must renounce the armed struggle or leave.
On March 23 OAS Secretary
General Jolo Baena Soares presided at Sapoa
on the Costa Rican
border for the signing of the
cease-fire agreement between Nicaragua
and the Contras.
In 1988 Arias complained that the United States
was secretly funding
private-sector organizations in order to
subvert Costa Rica's government institutions.
The Central Bank
had to pay a market interest on loans that was currently 21 percent.
Economic Support Funds (ESF) paid for by US and Costa Rican taxpayers
were being used to finance private companies that threatened government
agencies.
Arias solved this problem by withdrawing from the
Agency
for International Development (AID) programs.
Without even having
an army or navy Costa Rica had survived the war years
relatively
unscathed and had led the region to a peaceful solution
despite
the hostile interference from the United States in its fear of
Communism.
In the spring of 1984 Christic Institute attorney Daniel Sheehan
became concerned
about plans by the Reagan administration to lock
up 400,000 Central American immigrants
as part of a "State
of Domestic National Emergency" if US troops invaded Central
America.
Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey asked Daniel Sheehan to
bring a lawsuit under the
Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organization
Act (RICO),
and he publicized the elaborate story of how a secret
team of ex-military and
CIA operatives illegally arranged for
the Contras to receive weapons,
smuggled cocaine, and plotted
to murder Pastora at the La Penca news conference.
Sheehan carefully
avoided including any current government employees
so that the
resources of the US Justice Department would not be used against
him.
The suit charged 29 people with criminal misconduct including
John Hull, Tom Posey,
Robert Owen, Theodore Shackley, Thomas Clines,
Richard Secord, Edwin Wilson,
Albert Hakim, Rafael Quintero, Adolfo
Calero, and John Singlaub.
In June 1988, Judge James Lawrence King dismissed the suit
before it even went to trial
for lack of evidence on the alleged
bomber Amac Galil;
yet King had not allowed them to present that
evidence.
Then Judge King ordered Daniel Sheehan and plaintiffs
Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey to pay a million dollars for frivolous
litigation.
When they appealed to the 11th Circuit Court, a liberal
judge on that court,
Robert S. Vance, was murdered by a pipe bomb
in the mail.
Another bomb was found in the 11th Circuit clerk's
office and was defused,
but a third bomb killed a civil rights
attorney.
11th Circuit Judge J. L. Edmundson was being protected
by US Marshals,
because Vance's murder was unsolved, and a shot
shattered a window in his limousine.
The 11th Circuit Court denied
the appeal,
and the US Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
In 1996 reporter Gary Webb retold the whole story in his three-part
series "Dark Alliance"
in the San Jose Mercury News,
emphasizing how this criminal conspiracy
hat was intent on supplying
wars had also greatly contributed to the crack epidemic
of the
1980s by importing so much cocaine.
During the 1987 Iran-Contra
hearings in Congress a man had been arrested
for unfurling a banner
saying "Ask about cocaine;"
for this effort to raise
public awareness he was imprisoned for more than a year.
Yet most
of the criminals in the Iran-Contra conspiracy that subverted
American foreign policy never spent any time in prison,
because
they were pardoned by President Bush or, as in the case of North
and Poindexter,
had their cases overturned because Congress had
given them immunity.
US troops intervened in Panama three times between 1865 and
1873.
The US Congress in 1902 authorized buying a strip of land
in Panama from Columbia
for
a canal, and the next year US gunboats
helped "secessionists" break away from Columbia.
The
United States then signed a treaty with these Panamanians and
used troops
while they built the canal that opened in 1914.
President
Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 proclaimed his corollary to the Monroe
Doctrine -
that the United States would be an "international
police force" in Central America.
US troops intervened in
Panama in 1918 during elections,
in 1921 because of a border conflict
with Costa Rica,
and in 1925 because of a rent strike in Panama
City.
From 1930 to 1945 the government of Panama prohibited labor
organizing.
During World War II the US built many more military
bases in Panama.
In 1953 the US established the Panamanian National
Guard
that was based on Anastasio Somoza's Nicaraguan National
Guard.
A controversy over whether Panamanian flags could be flown
in the Canal Zone
erupted into riots in 1964, and 21 people were
killed.
In 1968 the elected president was deposed when Col. Omar
Torrijos took power
as the commander-in-chief of the defense forces.
A new constitution in 1972 gave Torrijos extraordinary power,
which he used to bring about some social reforms.
In 1977 US President Jimmy Carter completed negotiation of
a new Panama Canal treaty
that would give Panama control of the
canal on the last day of 1999.
In 1981 Torrijos died in a mysterious
plane crash, which was called an accident;
but because Ronald
Reagan had vociferously opposed the new canal treaty,
some suspected
the CIA.
In 1983 General Manuel Noriega became commander
of the
Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF).
Noriega had been working for
the CIA for more than twenty years
and claimed that he was paid
$10 million for this.
He had been trained at the School of the
Americas and was head of military intelligence.
The next year
Nicolas Ardito-Barletta won a narrow victory in an election
considered
fraudulent; US Secretary of State George Schultz attended his
inauguration.
In 1985 the former health vice minister, Dr. Hugo
Spadafora was assassinated
after visiting Costa Rica; the military
was accused, and Ardito-Barletta resigned.
Noriega appointed the
industrialist Eric Arturo Delvalle president.
In 1986 many newspapers
in the United States accused Noriega of drug trafficking.
That
year by seizing the ship and exposing the plot he foiled Oliver
North's scheme
to pretend to capture Communist arms on a ship
in the canal bound for the Sandinistas.
Col. Roberto Diaz Herrera had been second-in-command of the
PDF but was dismissed.
At a press conference in June 1987 he accused
Noriega of working with the CIA
to murder Torrijos, claiming Reagan
and Bush knew of this.
He accused Noriega of ordering the assassination
of Spadafora
because he was trying to expose corruption in the
Panama government.
Diaz Herrera also claimed that Noriega had
made millions in bribes by allowing drugs
to pass through Panama
and for providing false end-user certificates for shipped US arms.
Panama's government announced that it was stopping all payments
on its debts,
and rumors it was printing money led to bank withdrawals.
The US Senate suggested that Noriega resign and called for elections.
A rally was held on June 30 protesting US interference in Panamanian
affairs; a hundred
demonstrators marched to the US embassy and
did much damage to the building.
The United States suspended its
aid to Panama and demanded reparations.
The Panama government
apologized and paid the $106,000; yet US aid was not resumed.
On January 8, 1988 Jose Blandon, Panama's consul general in
New York City,
resigned and blamed Noriega for turning the Panamanian
government
into a "criminal empire" by selling passports,
visas, airport landing rights,
and allowing drug smugglers to
use Panama's airports and
banking system for payment of more than
$300 million.
In Miami and Tampa, Florida, US indictments against
General Noriega were unsealed
on February 4, charging him with
smuggling huge amounts of marijuana into the
United States in
1983 and 1984 and of selling ether and acetone for processing
cocaine.
In February President Delvalle met with the
US assistant
secretary of state Elliott Abrams in Miami.
Returning to Panama,
he told Noriega to step down; but the General refused.
Delvalle
played a tape for the Panamanian people on February 25
saying
he was "separating" Noriega for his trial;
but that
night Delvalle was removed by the Panamanian Assembly,
and he
went into hiding, still recognized as President by the US.
In May 1988 the Reagan administration was in the middle
of
complicated negotiations with Panama.
At that time George Bush
was facing a challenge by Democrat Michael Dukakis,
and with political
advice from James Baker he slighted the current Reagan approach
by announcing that he would never bargain with drug dealers.
In May 1989 Guillermo Endara was apparently elected president
of Panama
with about three-quarters of the votes,
but Noriega
declared the election fraudulent and nullified.
The OAS and the
Panamanian Assembly also declined to recognize Endara
because
the United States had contributed $10 million to his campaign.
On October 4 some officers asked Noriega to resign, and he refused
again.
Early in the morning on December 20, 1989 President George
Bush sent a force
of 26,000 from the US Army, Navy, and Air Force
to attack Panama.
The reasons given that American lives and the
Canal needed to be protected
have been dismissed, because no evidence
has been shown that they were in any danger.
The main reason was
to remove Noriega so that he could be tried in the United States.
Under international law this is hardly a valid reason for attacking
an entire country.
The United States claimed that they killed
only 324 or 516 Panamanians;
but others estimated the number of
civilians killed at between 1,000 and 5,000.
The
Panamanian Defense Forces were targeted, and their capability
was destroyed.
Although they had also served as police, the US
troops
did not take over law enforcement, resulting in looting
and chaos.
Endara and his two vice presidents were sworn in at
the US Southern Command
and moments later formally requested US
help in removing Noriega.
Many of Endara's political opponents
and union leaders were arrested.
The United States was in flagrant
violation of Article 19 of the OAS Charter which reads,
No state may use or encourage the use of coercive measures
of an economic or political character
in order to force the sovereign will of another state
and obtain from it advantages of any kind.13
The US invasion of Panama was condemned both by the
United
Nations General Assembly and by the Organization of American States.
Two weeks after the invasion, Noriega surrendered;
he was later
convicted of the drug crimes and was sentenced to forty years
in prison.
The patriotic propaganda of the US news media offered a stark
contrast
to the Oscar-winning documentary film, The Panama
Deception directed by Barbara Trent.
After demonizing Noriega,
the US media focused on the "Operation Just Cause"
as
a heroic victory, dwelling only on the few US deaths
while ignoring
how many Panamanians were killed.
The film shows a greater context
for the invasion and portrays the suffering
of the Panamanian
people as certain poor neighborhoods were devastated.
The film
also brought out the many political ramifications as the US punished
Panama
first economically and the military to make sure that
it would control the Canal
that was scheduled for a partial shift
in control in January 1990
and complete control by Panama in 2000.
By destroying the PDF and making sure there was a compliant regime,
the US made sure that its business interests would prevail.
Roy Bourgeois had been a Navy officer in Vietnam,
where he was wounded;
but after spending time with Vietnamese
orphans, he went to the seminary of the
Maryknoll Missionary Order
and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1972.
He worked as a missionary
in Bolivia for five years,
and he reported to Washington that
the government of Bolivia was torturing people.
He became especially
concerned about El Salvador because
two of the nuns murdered in
December 1980 were his friends.
He went to El Salvador and after
returning began to speak out.
He learned that the United States
was training 525 Salvadoran officers
at its School of the Americas
(SOA),
which had been transferred from Panama to Fort Benning,
Georgia.
In August 1983, dressed as military officers, Bourgeois
and two others entered the base
and from a pine tree played a
tape of Archbishop Romero's sermon
so that the Salvadorans could
hear it.
The three were arrested and sentenced to eighteen months
in prison.
After six Jesuit priests and two women were murdered in 1989
at San Salvador,
Bourgeois learned that they had been killed by
men who had been trained
at the School of the Americas, which
he began calling the School of the Assassins.
Roy and nine others
fasted on water at the gate to Fort Benning for 35 days.
On the
first anniversary of the Jesuit murders, Bourgeois and the two
Liteky brothers
went on the base to pour blood and leave photos
of the victims.
Research showed that officers were being trained
at SOA
before and after they committed atrocities in El Salvador.
In the spring of 1994 Bourgeois and others fasted for forty days
on the steps
of the Capitol in Washington to persuade Congress
to defund the School of the Americas.
Two years later a White
House Intelligence Oversight board admitted that for ten years
training manuals had instructed officers to use murder, torture,
and false imprisonment;
they were also taught to kidnap, blackmail,
and spy on nonviolent opponents.
That spring twelve protesters
were arrested for trespassing
and were sentenced from two to six
months.
Bringing signatures of a million people to close the school,
601 protesters were arrested
for entering the base on November
16, 1997; only 31 repeat offenders were indicted,
but 22, including
Bourgeois, spent six months in prison.
A documentary of Roy Bourgeois was televised by Public Broadcasting
(PBS) in 1998.
The next year the US House of Representatives voted
230-197 to delete the funds of SOA;
but the House-Senate conference
committee restored the funding.
In January 2001 the School of
the Americas was closed for one month and then reopened
under
the name Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation
(WHISC).
Nearly a hundred people were arrested for protesting
the school that year,
and 26 were sentenced to six months in prison.
Annual demonstrations in November 2002 and 2003 drew about 10,000
protesters
to Fort Benning each time; 95 people were arrested
in 2002, and 44 in 2003.
In 2004 an estimated 16,000 attended
the demonstration;
at least twenty people were arrested, plus
eleven people were detained
for the same cause at the federal
building in Sacramento, California.
As of 2005 the total time
served in prison by 171 demonstrators protesting SOA is 85 years.
1. "Letter to President Carter, February 17, 1980"
in Revolution in Central America,
p. 355.
2. Archbishop Oscar Romero: "The Last Sermon" in The
Central American Crisis Reader,
p. 377.
3. Quoted in Crossroads by Cynthia J. Arnson, p. 128.
4. Ibid., p. 143.
5. Quoted in Our Own Backyard by William M. LeoGrande,
p. 303.
6. Ibid., p. 304.
7. Quoted in Crossroads by Cynthia J. Arnson, p. 174.
8. Ibid., p. 220.
9. Quoted in Resisting Reagan by Christian Smith, p. 74.
10. "The Tracks," by Brian Willson, in Nonviolence
in America ed Staughton and Alice Lynd,
p. 465.
11. "Let's Give Peace a Chance" in The Costa Rica
Reader, p. 371.
12. Ibid., p. 374.
13. Quoted in The Panamanian Problem by Guillermo de St.
Malo A and Godfrey Harris,
p. 286.
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