Ricardo Chavira Chicano

For decades, the United States backed brutal anti-commnist dictators in El Salvador. The rise of the Castro government combined with the creation of a homegrown leftist insurgency, pushed Washington to go all out in its support of the Salvadoran regime. The expressed fear was that El Salvador would become another Cuba.

Substantial American aid and the direct involvement of U.S. military advisors bolstered the Salvadoran government. For more than a decade, at any given time there were a combined total of at least 100 advisors and CIA officials. There’s reason to believe that there were many more who came into the country on temporary duty. They were to only advise and assist the Salvadoran military and government. In fact, they stage managed the war and likely engaged in combat. El Salvador and the United States for more than 10 years wanted no part of a negotiated settlement, instead favoring an armed defeat of the rebels.

This posture prolonged the war and set in motion the mass exodus of Salvadorans bound for the United States. After the war ended, the nation slipped into a criminal nightmare, while Washington walked away from the mess.

Here is an excerpt from my book, We Were Always Here. It recounts an anecdote that happened while was in El Salvador as Time correspondent.

Returning to San Salvador after a day of reporting, I had harrowing encounter, one of many I would experience in Central America. My rental car broke down, stranding me in the countryside. I flagged down one of the pick-up trucks that served as rural public transportation.

When we came to an army checkpoint, a soldier ordered us passengers and the driver out to present national identity cards. I told the soldier I did not have a card and was about to show him my US passport. He angrily pointed his rifle at my stomach.

“Get over there with the rest of them,” he said, motioning to a slope on the side of the highway.

There were about five men, face down with their thumbs tied together behind their backs. One craned his neck to look at me. He appeared terrified. The soldier ordered me to lie face down with the other men.

I was sure that if I joined the men on the ground, I would be arrested and possibly tortured and killed. I told the soldier I was an American, and that was why I did not have a card. However, I did have a military-issued card identifying me as a journalist and my passport to show. I explained the documents, and he let me get back in the truck.

Between 1984 and 1986, when I often reported on El Salvador, I would learn that the Salvadoran Army’s intelligence officials and soldiers comprised the death squads.

Non-military vigilantes were a tiny minority.

The American and Salvadoran governments skillfully promoted the notion that death squads were shadowy vigilantes or just committed garden-variety acts of violence that had nothing to do with politics. Despite my best efforts to shape the narrative, the Time story repeated this misleading version.

In reality, American military advisers and CIA agents posted to El Salvador to help direct the war were complicit in the death squad activity. The death squads were nothing more than an extension of CIA policy and Salvadoran military intelligence, making them an integral element of the nation’s counterinsurgency strategy.

This was to be expected. After all, the American counterinsurgency operations had long included the use of death squads.

 In Vietnam, the CIA coordinated the Phoenix Program, an assassination campaign aimed at destroying the Viet Cong’s civilian support structure. It was in effect from 1965 to 1972 and resulted in the assassination of between 26,000 and 41,000 suspected supporters.

Officially, 55 American military advisers were deployed to Salvadoran military bases. From there, they primarily directed the war. The advisers were allowed to carry weapons but were not to engage in combat. The FMLN, however, charged that the advisers routinely fought alongside Salvadoran troops. In addition to the advisers, some 50 additional American soldiers supported the government’s efforts to defeat the rebels.

During the war, Washington lavished some $4 billion in aid, most of it military. The American embassy held military briefings for journalists, usually conducted by Army Colonel James Steele, the head of US military advisers.

He had served in Vietnam and was a counterinsurgency expert who would train Iraqi paramilitary forces years later. One day before a briefing, I encountered him in an embassy bathroom.

He griped that it was hard getting Salvadoran troops to fight effectively. I asked him to explain. Steele said that earlier that day, he had visited an army outpost. Soldiers told him they had murdered several guerrilla prisoners. I thought the killings had upset him. But he said, “The morons didn’t even interrogate them first.”