During my many reporting trips to El Salvador, I learned what can happen under a thuggish regime that will not tolerate peaceful dissent. A jocular guerrilla leader who fought the Salvadoran dictatorship along with hundreds of other FMLN members told me that he wished he had not been driven to engage in combat.
For many years, he told me, opponents peacefully protested only to meet with savage government violence. The leader, who used the pseudonym Benito Juarez, said he and thousands of others like him were committed to toppling the government by any means possible.
Are Americans willing to endure the gradual destruction of the nation, in which people live like this?
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 