Murder in El Salvador

Goodwin’s piece should be required reading for every American, especially President Bush and Vice President Quayle.

In 1987, I was a member of a human rights fact-finding delegation that visited El Salvador’s new president just as he was emerging as the front man for Arena’s D’Aubuisson of death squad fame. Cristiani’s rhetoric sounds exactly the same today as it did then--even as the killing of Salvadoran civilians by the Arena-controlled army was escalating in almost direct proportion to its receipt of U.S. military aid.

What the American public does not know about the U.S. Administration’s rhetoric on Central America, and especially on El Salvador and Guatemala, is that for 90% of the population it translates as follows: “Peace” means war; “aid” means savagery, and “democracy” means death.

As Goodwin so aptly points out, thereby is “the innocence that protects our own freedom further eroded.”

DON W. LEWIS

San Marino