El Salvador has been plagued by brutal governmental lawlessness for most of its history, and Washington was unstinting in its support. Decades of murderous military dictatorships and a 12-year civil war reflect this special breed of terrorism.
Nayib Bukele, the tint nation’s president, is the current embodiment of this wickedness. Faced with extreme gang violence, Bukele decided to fight fire with fire–and more.
He had the 40,000-inmate Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) built. Operating in an Orwellian “state of exception,” many constitutional rights have been wiped away. These include the right to legal representation or even knowing the reason for an arrest.
Trump renewed the traditional United States-El Salvador iron fist collaboration. Dub Venezuelans terrorists and CECOT becomes their perfect home. True, they are undocumented immigrants, and many have committed crimes, but nothing approaching terrorism.
This excerpt from my book We Were Always Here recounts one of my encounters with government monsters. It happened when I was a Time correspondent.
I was already tense that day in May 1984 when several Salvadoran soldiers leveled their assault rifles at Time photo grapher Matthew Naythons and me. We had traveled to Metalio in Sonsonate Department to report on death squads. A source said that an army death squad was terrorizing the seaside town. They occupied a stone house. Naythons was driving our rented car. As we neared the house, I asked him to slow down. He did not, and so the soldiers rushed from behind a wall, leveling their assault rifles and shouting for us to stop and get out of the car.
“Fucking Matthew!” I muttered.
Once I had satisfied the soldiers that we were journalists, not guerrillas, they showed us into the house. Here is a portion of the June 1984 story I helped report for Time:
He seems the very model of military rectitude. Sitting straight as a dagger behind his steel desk, hands clasped in front of him and mustache neatly trimmed, Sergeant José Antonio Rivas explains that he is the “maximum authority” in Metalio, a Salvadoran seaside village of 6,000. Several members of his ten-man army unit listen, fingering their weapons, as Rivas boasts that Metalio remains untouched by his country’s cyclones of violence. “This is a very peaceful place,” he says with a smile, his gold-capped teeth glinting in the light. “We treat the civilian population well, so we, in turn, are well treated. I am friends with everyone. Ask people. They will tell you.”
What the people tell is a far different story. According to some Metalio residents, Rivas, and his crew make up one of the country’s dreaded death squads, responsible for more than 200 killings during the past four years.
The terror comes not just from the horrible ways in which people die but from the utter randomness of who is killed. Motives can range from suspicion of “subversion” to jealousy over a girlfriend to settling a grudge to no reason at all. Fear has bullied Metalio into an eerily subdued place of whispers and furtive glances. “Rivas and his men are animals… no, worse,” says a young man softly. “I wish I could tell them what I really think of them, but that would be like asking for a death sentence.”
Confronted with the accusation, Rivas moves uneasily in his chair. “I have not touched anyone,” he says. He insists that not a single homicide has occurred during his four years at Metalio. Glancing at his men, Rivas adds, “We are all clean. We have not harmed anyone.”
Many of the death squad victims were routinely scattered on the beach. As I took my leave, Rivas invited me to take a beach stroll with him.
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 