Nayib Bukele - Alan Naim - Michael Moore TV - John Pilger - Noam Chomsky - John Silber - Dan Quayle - George Shultz - Reverend Santiago - Amy Martin & Chris Hedges - Secret Wars Uncovered TV - Street Gangs of El Salvador TV - World’s Biggest Gangs TV - Inside the Gangster Code TV - Ross Kemp TV - World Economic Forum online - Stacy Herbert -
The plan is simple. As the world fall into tyranny, we’ll create a haven for freedom. Nayib Bukele
Serious investigation of the Salvadoran murders leads directly to Washington’s doorstep. Alan Naim
1977: US backs military leaders of El Salvador. 70,000 Salvadoreans and 4 American nuns killed. Michael Moore, Bowling for Columbine, 2002
Delete Vietnam and write in El Salvador and the stories seem almost identical. Like the politicians then, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, the politicians now, Haig and Reagan, see the world in the same arrogant simplistic terms, speaking of dominoes as if nations are mere blocks of wood, not societies riven with their own differences and animosities. Today as before honest men pay with their careers. The American ambassador to El Salvador Robert White has said that the war in that country is caused by social injustice, and the real terrorists are the regime backed by Mr Reagan and Mr Haig, and backed of course by the British government. John Pilger, Heroes! ITV 1980
This is a death squad in action in El Salvador. Actually, it’s the National Police, many of whom were trained at the School of the Americas. Here, on the step of San Salvador Cathedral, they’re gunning down mourners who were attending the funeral of Archbishop Romero, who was murdered as he said mass on March 23rd 1980. John Pilger, The War on Democracy, ITV 2007
El Salvador, of course, declared no cease-fire. On the contrary, when the FMLN declared a unilateral cease-fire as a gesture of good faith during the peace talks they had initiated a few weeks earlier, the Salvadorian military responded by launching operations into most of the guerrilla base areas and stepping up arrests of union activists and other repression. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
Throughout the decade, and well after ‘democracy’ was established, the Salvadoran Church and human rights groups continued to describe how the security forces of the ‘fledgling democracy’ with the full knowledge and cooperation of their US sponsors, imposed upon Salvadoran society a regime of ‘terror and panic, a result of the persistent violation of basic human rights’, marked by ‘collective intimidation and generalized fear, on the one hand, and on the other the internalized acceptance of the terror because of the daily and frequent use of violent means’. ibid.
Fifteen specialists in counterinsurgency were sent to El Salvador from the US Army School of Special Forces. From the start, the Battalion was engaged in the murder of large numbers of civilians. ibid.
In December 1981, the Battalion took part in an operation in which hundreds of civilians were killed in an orgy of murder, rape, and burning – over 1000, according to the Church legal aid office. Later it was involved in the bombing of villages and the murder of hundreds of civilians by shooting, drowning, and other methods, the vast majority being women, children, and the elderly. This has been the systematic pattern of special warfare in El Salvador since the first major military operation in May 1980, when six hundred civilians were murdered and mutilated at the Rio Sumpul. ibid.
The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights alleged in a letter to Defense Secretary Cheney that the killers of the Jesuits were trained by US Special Forces up to three days before the assassinations. ibid.
1989: An elite Salvadorean battalion, who are fresh from renewed training in the John F Kennedy School of Special Warfare in North Carolina, invaded the Jesuit University in El Salvador and brutally murdered six leading Latin-American intellectuals. Noam Chomsky, lecture Rickman Godlee Lecture 2011, ‘Contours of Global Order’, Youtube 1.39.23
During that period around 70,000 people were killed in El Salvador overwhelmingly by the US armed and trained forces. ibid.
Now, if we had the slightest concern with democracy, which we do not in our foreign affairs and never have, we would turn to countries where we have influence like El Salvador. Now in El Salvador they don’t call the Archbishop bad names; what they do is murder him. They don’t censor the press; they wipe the press out. They sent the army in to blow up the Church radio station. Noam Chomsky, Ten O’Clock News WGBH Public TV 1985
cf.
You are a systematic liar. These things did not happen in the context in which you suggest at all. John Silber, president Boston University
El Salvador is a democracy so it’s not surprising that there are many voices to be heard here. Yet in my conversations with Salvadorans ... I have heard a single voice. Dan Quayle
The results are something all Americans can be proud of. George Shultz
People are not just killed by death squads in El Salvador – they are decapitated and then their heads are placed on pikes and used to dot the landscape. Men are not just disembowled by the Salvadoran Treasury Police; their severed genitalia are stuffed into their mouths. Salvadoran women are not just raped by the National Guard, their wombs are cut from their bodies and used to cover their faces. It is not enough to kill children; they are dragged over barbed wire until the flesh falls from their bones while parents are forced to watch ... The aesthetics of terror in El Salvador is religion. Reverend Santiago
Half of the population in El Salvador at the time was landless … people living in tremendous deprivation. Abby Martin, The Empire Files with Chris Hedges: ‘War, Propaganda and the Enemy Within’, Youtube 2015
1932 El Salvador: an army of peasants and indigenous people rise up against the ruling classes: they want a socialist society. El Salvador’s president, Maximiliano Martinez, suppresses this rebellion … In six days they [army] kill tens of thousands of people. Secret Wars Uncovered s1e7: Cold War in Central America, History 2020
By 1977 El Salvador has seen right-wing governments replaced by military juntas. ibid.
1982: Left-wing rebels fight against the ruling military junta. ibid.
Rival gangs 18 [th Street] and MS-13 are at war for control of the city. Gang conflict is blamed in one of the highest murder rates in the world. Thousands of gang members have been locked up. But out on the streets there is no shortage of teenage recruits. Street Gangs of El Salvador, Vice 2015
Many of the younger gang members have grown up without their parents. ibid.
Many of 18’s leaders are in jail. ibid.
The ongoing war between 18 and MS-13 claims several lives a week. ibid.
Two rival gangs the 18 and MS-13 ... have divided El Salvador into control zones. They deal drugs and weapons and charge any kind of business for protection. The clash between the 18 and MS-13 over the control of this market has acquired the proportions of a non-declared war. World’s Biggest Gangs: El Salvador
Their reach stretches throughout central America, the US and as far as Europe. It’s estimated between both gangs there are 140,000 members worldwide. ibid.
Gang members have developed elaborate systems of hand signals. ibid.
In 1979 civil war broke out in El Salvador. An alliance of left-wing guerrilla fighters known as the FMLN confronted the army of the country’s extreme right US-backed government. ibid.
The war ended in 1992: seventy-five thousand people dead, eight thousand missing and one million displaced. The FMLN became a political party and the country continued to be governed by the right. No-one was ever punished for the crimes committed during the war. ibid.
Black Shadow members are primarily police and military personnel. ibid.
I’m in El Salvador and I want to meet the leaders of one of the world's most feared gangs: the 18th Street. Inside the Gangster Code, Discovery 2013
El Salvador has the second highest homicide rate in the world. ibid.
No-one has ever escaped ... security is tight. But the authorities don't control what goes on inside ... About 700 18th Street inmates. ibid.
‘We’re gangsters. We know we’re crazy. We pledge our life to the gang.’ ibid.
One of the world’s most feared gangs – the 18th Street ... For decades the 18th have waged war with MS-13. Inside the Gangsters' Code: 18th Street
It is estimated there are 70,000 gang members in El Salvador. 7,000 are currently in prison. ibid.
‘Without loyalty the gang is nothing.’ ibid. Sharkey