Word: salvadoreans
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Salvadorean government flatly dismisses the charges. So does the U.S. State Department and Embassy in El Salvador. "Maybe it happened," Donald Mathis of the State Department's Central America bureau says, "but I'm skeptical. I suspect the report is a fabrication of the left." He added that one couldn't trust "ignorant peasants" and that the witnesses were related to guerrillas...
Mathis also quoted the El Salvadorean government's assertions that no cave existed named "La Pintada," nor could any cave in El Salvador hold 1500 persons. If they had read the report's updates more carefully, they would have learned that many of the victims were gunned down before they were able to seek temporary refuge in a series of caves named "La Sentada...
There is also some discrepancy between Mathis's and Dion's accounts of the U.S. role in the El Salvadorean government's "investigation." Dion said the U.S. was involved. Mathis stated it wasn't, for "the U.S. government can't do an investigation unless the El Salvadoreans ask us to. We just can't do in El Salvador what we want...
...reliable are these reports from nuns and human rights organizations? Are they really, as Mathis claims, "probably the creation of people trying to discredit the El Salvadorean government"? Most of these groups and individuals are non-partisan and far from leftist. They are simply concerned with violations of human life and rights, and the more outspoken members are often persecuted by security forces for their disclosures and condemnations...
JAMES HARNEY, an editor of Overview Latin America, says the El Salvadorean government "tries to cover up these embarrassing incidents as best it can." Regarding the March 27 massacre, Anne Nelson states that American church people doing relief work in El Salvador verify that "something" happened that day. However, she won't reveal their names and organization in order to protect them. Sister Jeanne Gallo also suspects something may have happened on the 27th. "The numbers may be exaggerated, but then again, you are dealing with illiterate peasants who often can't count," she says...