Word: salvadoran
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Duarte explained his plan to have a "national dialogue" with all Salvadoran factions, including the leftist insurgents. But such talks, he vowed, would never cede a share of governing power ("the piece of cake") to the revolutionaries. He said he would continue El Salvador's ambitious but teetering land-reform program (see WORLD). Perhaps most significant in terms of U.S. support, Duarte said he would establish commissions to investigate the thousands of political murders committed by the extreme right. "I have the will," he said. "I have the guts to do it, to stop the death squads...
...hours before the House approved military aid, the most infamous Salvadoran death squad triggermen were convicted of murder. After a nonstop 20-hour trial, a jury of Salvadoran civilians found five former national guardsmen guilty of killing four American women in 1980. Three of the victims were Roman Catholic nuns. The provincial courtroom had a musky, Gabriel Garcia Márquez air. Through swinging saloon doors came and went a family selling sandwiches and coffee to spectators. A group of onlookers stood tiptoe on a junked car just outside-until the rotted car roof gave way. The crowd laughed; when...
...outcome was just, but the killers' commanders have not been charged. Moreover, the proceeding was a show trial, conducted for the benefit of Americans: no death squad member has yet been convicted of murdering a Salvadoran. Last year Congress made a $19 million chunk of Salvadoran aid contingent on a verdict in the nuns' case. Said New York Democratic Congressman Ted Weiss: "It's a $19 million verdict. The military knew it would lose it unless there was a trial...
Indeed, Weiss and other liberals argued for placing similar conditions on the Salvadoran aid approved last week. The concern in the White House, on the other hand, was whether Duarte's socialist tendencies might lead him to provoke El Salvador's landed oligarchy and their allies in the military. During an Oval Office chat, Duarte reassured Reagan that he was not hostile to private enterprise...
Duarte was evasive when asked about the CIA-financed contra attacks against the Sandinista regime of Nicaragua; he is ambivalent on the issue. The Reagan Administration claims it has funded the contras mainly for El Salvador's sake, to help cut the Salvadoran rebels' supply lines. Most Democrats in Congress, however, believe U.S. sponsorship of the insurgency is wrong, more trouble than it is worth, or both. Just an hour after the House approved the Salvadoran arms money, it voted to pinch off all funding for the contras...