Green Berets in El Salvador
Frank Smyth interviews Greg Walker, an ex-adviser in El Salvador who says that senior U.S. officials covered up the combat role of U.S. advisers and hid a pattern of human rights violations by the Salvadoran army.
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Official Sources, Western Diplomats and Other Voices from the Mission
/in Columbia Journalism Review/by Frank SmythOn the post-cold war era, ethnic rivalry may have replaced ideology as the most likely cause of conflict, but while all else changes one journalistic habit picked up during the past four decades will, in all likelihood, persist — the habit of relying heavily on the mission, as the U.S. embassy is known, for assessments and information. In an increasingly unfamiliar world, in fact, the temptation to do so will be even stronger…
Guatemala’s Gross National Products: Cocadollars, Repression, and Disinformation
/in Covert Action Quarterly/by Frank SmythIn the early 1980s, leftist guerrillas in Guatemala blew up bridges, ambushed army convoys, and attacked military outposts. A decade later, the fighting in Guatemala’s civil war is winding down. Combat between the government and the guerrillas now occurs in only a few departments and only a few times each year. But political violence, almost […]
Salvadoran Rebels Anticipated Soviet Fall, Shifted Tack
/in The Christian Science Monitor/by Frank SmythEL SALVADOR’S leftist guerrilla movement began moving away from Marxism-Leninism several years before the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, they and independent analysts say. Since the FMLN was already…
Guatemalan Army Crushes Land Protest
/in The Christian Science Monitor/by Frank SmythSan Jorge la Laguna — Security forces have ignored the exhortations of Roman Catholic Church officials and other mediators in a local land dispute here and violently put down a two-week-old indigenous peasant occupation of disputed land. Mediators were still hoping to find a peaceful resolution when military riot police attacked on Saturday.
Guatemalan Murder Probe Beset by Irregularities
/in The Christian Science Monitor/by Frank SmythHER short stature and soft voice were deceiving. Among Guatemala’s highland Indians she was a legend. Among her colleagues in North America and Europe she was a rising academic star. An ethnic Chinese Guatemalan, Myrna Elizabeth Mack Chang had become one of Latin America’s most eminent anthropologists. Her research focused on Guatemala’s nearly 1 million indigenous refugees…
In El Salvador, Both Sides Say That New Year Pact Will End Long Civil War
/in The Christian Science Monitor/by Frank SmythTHE signing of a conditional agreement at the United Nations in New York to end El Salvador’s 12-year civil war is irreversible and likely to be respected, longtime activists on both sides of this embittered conflict say. Although there is still fear that violence by ultra-rightist groups opposed to the accords may escalate in the coming months…