AMERICAN CAPITALISM BEGAN TO FAIL IN ABOUT 1973------Episode 16

AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA IN THE EARLY REAGAN YEARS

    In March 1981, the CIA informed Vice President Bush that D'Aubuisson , the "principal henchmen for wealthy landlords," was running "the right-wing death squads that have murdered several thousand suspected leftists and leftist sympathizers during the past year." Three American Maryknoll nuns and a Catholic layperson who had been involved in humanitarian relief work had been raped and slaughtered shortly before Reagan's inauguration. UN ambassador-designate Jeane Kirkpatrick insisted, "the nuns are not just nuns" but FMLN "political activists." Secretary of State Alexander Haig called them "pistol-packing nuns" and suggested to a congressional committee that "perhaps the vehicle the nuns were riding in may have tried to run a roadblock." 

   One atrocity particularly stands out. U.S.--trained and armed Salvadoran troops slaughtered the 767 inhabitants of the village of El Mozote in late 1981. The victims, including 358 children under age 13, were stabbed, decapitated, and machine-gunned. Girls and women were raped. When New York Times correspondent Raymond Bonner tried to expose what had occurred, the Wall Street Journal and other pro-Reagan newspapers assaulted Bonner's credibility. The Times buckled under pressure and pulled Bonner out of El Salvadore. Administration officials helped cover up the massacre. Conditions worsened. In late 1982, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs reported that El Salvadore, along with Guatemala, had the worst record of human rights abuses in Latin America : "Decapitation, torture, disemboweling, disappearances and other forms of cruel punishment were reported to be norms of paramilitary behavior sanctioned by the Salvadoran government." However, Elliot Abrams, assistant secretary of state for human rights, testified that the reports of death-squad involvement were "not credible." 

   George Herbert Walker Bush had trouble sympathizing with the suffering of the people in the United States' backyard. Before Pope John Paul II visited Central America, Bush said he couldn't understand how Catholic clergy could reconcile their religious beliefs with Marxist philosophy and tactics and support the insurgents. Reverend Theodore Hesburgh, president of Notre Dame, tried to explain that poverty and social injustice could easily lead priests to supporting Marxists or anyone else challenging status quo. "Maybe it makes me a right-wing extremist," Bush replied, "but I'm puzzled. I just don't understand it." 

   U. S. economic and military aid grew steadily during these years, spurred by the 1984 Kissinger Commission on Central America. Senator Jesse Helms was the point man for this effort in Congress. Administration officials deliberately concealed U.S. government documents implicating the Salvadoran National Police, the National Guard, and the Treasury Police so that congressional funding would continue. Under Carter and Reagan, Congress funneled nearly $6 billion to the tiny country, making it the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, per capita, in the world. Meanwhile, the death squads continued to cleave a path, of destruction. The death toll reached 70,000 . Approximately half a million Salvadorans tried to escape the violence by migrating to the United States in the 1980s, but most were turned back. In 1984, U.S. immigration officials admitted approximately one in forty Salvadoran asylum seekers, while almost all of the anti-Communist applicants fleeing Nicaragua were welcomed. 

   In 1980, Commentary magazine, the United States' leading neoconservative journal, published a series of essays decrying what conservatives called the Vietnam Syndrome"---the revulsion against the Vietnam War that made Americans squeamish about using force to resolve international conflicts. Reagan agreed : "For too long, we have lived with the 'Vietnam Syndrome' . . . Over and over they told us for nearly 10 years that we were the aggressors bent on imperialistic conquests . . . It is time we recognized that ours was, in truth, a noble cause . . . We dishonor the memory of 50,000 young Americans who died in that cause when we give way to feelings of guilt."