Word: salvadorans
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...first half of 1983. This year, the organization contends, the tide is still rising: 241 dead in January, 269 in February, 407 in March. Though State Department officials do not contest Tutela Legal's overall statistics, they point out that the group lumps together all civilian casualties, including Salvadoran civilians killed during combat. Says a State Department spokesman: "There are two distinct problems. There are people killed by the military and paramilitary forces in bombings and shellings. We can't verify that every bomb hits the right target, but this is very different from dragging people...
...battalions called Section 2 (S-2), specially trained soldiers who make their rounds dressed in civvies and often wearing wigs. They rely on town spies, or orejas (ears), to tell them of suspicious persons, who are then picked up for what is often a fatal interrogation. Says a Salvadoran who served in a battalion until last month: "It is not good to ask about them, because they will even kill other soldiers who they think are too curious...
...ties between the police forces and the death squads are rooted in Salvadoran history. Created in 1912, the national guard often acted as a private security force for the country's landowners, who helped to pay the salaries; when peasant uprisings got out of hand, the landlords organized bands of vigilantes to assist the guardsmen. In 1932, when Farabundo Marti, the father of El Salvador's revolutionary movement, led a revolt, paramilitary squads were sanctioned to aid the army in squashing the rebellion. The estimated toll: at least 10,000. The lines between official and illegal violence blurred...
Violence assumed the proportions of a national policy in the 1970s, when the government was besieged by the right and the left. ANSESAL, the Salvadoran national security agency, targeted victims, while ORDEN carried out the killings. Military and police intelligence officers were in touch with both groups, and occasionally they received assistance from right-wing political organizations alarmed by the rising level of anarchy. Out of this explosion of terror came a death squad trademark that is branded forever in the psyche of the nation: mano bianco, a pair of painted hands splattered across a door or wall announcing...
...region scarred by violence, El Salvador is the most blood-drenched country by far. Duarte's success in crushing the squads will hinge on how well he establishes his authority over the armed forces. No civilian in Salvadoran history has ever won control over the military, but Duarte's U.S. backing, from both the White House and Congress, gives him unprecedented clout. Duarte has promised to start rooting out the deadly henchmen by disbanding the treasury police, allegedly the most brutish of the security forces. Bringing the killers to justice, however, is another story. The saddest legacy...