The Rio Sumpul Massacre
On March 7, 1980, two weeks before the assassination, a state of siege had been instituted in El Salvador, and the war against the peasentry and the Church began in force with continued US support and involvement. The first major attack was
a big massacre at the Rio Sumpul, a coordinated military operation of the Honduran and Salvadoran armies in which at least 300 people were butchered. Infants were cut to pieces with machetes, and women were tortured and drowned. Pieces of bodies were found in the river for days afterwards. There were church observers, so the information came out immediately, but the mainstream US media didn't think it was worth reporting.
Peasants were the main victims of this war, along with labor organizers, students, priests or anyone suspected of working for the interests of the people. As a result approximately 35,000 refugees, mostly women and children, had been living on the Honduran border in conditions of poverty, starvation and disease, as reported by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
These people were attempting to escape the regular raids of the Salvadorian army and the government's paramilitaries, ORDEN. The latter would cross the border to attack the refugee camps, which had formed out of the population attempting to escape domestic state-terror.
The UN Truth Commission report on El Salvador concluded that:
QuoteOn 14 May 1980, units of Military Detachment No. 1, the National Guard and the paramilitary Organización Nacional Democrática (ORDEN) deliberately killed at least 300 non-combatants, including women and children, who were trying to flee to Honduras across the Sumpul river beside the hamlet of Las Aradas, Department of Chalatenango. The massacre was made possible by the cooperation of the Honduran armed forces, who prevented the Salvadorian villagers from landing on the other side.
After visiting these border regions in January 1981 on a fact-finding mission, a
U.S. congressional delegation submitted a report to Congress. The report provided extensive documentation of the U.S.-backed Salvadorian death squads systematic atrocities against its civilian population, noting that:
QuoteThe refugees describe what appears to be a systematic campaign conducted by the security forces of El Salvador to deny any rural base for guerrilla operations in the north.
By terrorizing and depopulating villages in the region they have sought to isolate the guerrillas and create problems of logistics and food supply... The Salvadorean method of 'drying up the ocean' involves, according to those who have fled from its violence, a combination of murder, torture, rape, the burning of crops in order to create starvation conditions, and a program of general terrorism and harassment.
The report then presents some sample interviews in which refugees describe the bombing and burning of villages by the army, mass murder of fleeing civilians, shooting of defenseless peasants from helicopters, and extraordinary brutality (e.g.: mutilation; decapitation):
QuoteShe personally saw children around the age of eight being raped, and then they would take their bayonets and make mincemeat of them. With their guns they would shoot at their faces. 'She said, "Even going to the mountainside, No, they haven't done any of those kinds of things, but the Army would cut people up and put soap and coffee in their stomachs as a mocking. They would slit the stomach of a pregnant woman and take the child out, as if they were taking were taking eggs out of an iguana. That is what I saw.
With regard to the guerrillas,
refugees report: QuoteWe don't complain about them at all, they haven't done any of those kind of things, it's the military that is doing this. Only the military. The popular organization isn't doing any of this.
As for the military: QuoteThey were killing everybody. They were looking for people to kill - that's what they were doing.
The report concludes that:
QuoteThe United States should suspend military sales, training and assistance to the security forces of El Salvador on the grounds that those forces are operating independent of responsible civilian control, and are conducting a systematic campaign of terrorism directed against segments of their own population.
In fact, the government is effectively under right-wing military control, the reformist officers having been driven out of the junta.
The U.N. Truth Commission report concluded that:
QuoteSalvadoran exiles living in Miami helped administer death squad activities between 1980 and 1983, with apparently little attention from the U.S. government. Such use of American territory for acts of terrorism abroad should be investigated and never allowed to be repeated.
Unfortunately, the Salvadoran military junta and death squads were also
in receipt of a:QuoteCarter program of support for repression and massacre in El Salvador, while attempting to exploit the tragedy, in the manner of earlier years, for the purposes of their domestic programs of militarization and alms for the wealthy.
The New York Times has further recorded the aftermath of the U.S. operation, noting that:
Quotebecause the United States armed and financed the army whose brutality sent them into exile, few Salvadoreans were able to obtain the refugee status granted to Cubans, Vietnamese, Kuwaitis, and other nationalities at various times. The conflict lasted from 1979 until 1992, during which more than 70,000 people were killed in El Salvador, most of them by the American-backed army and the death squads it in turn supported, thus forcing many people here to flee to the United States where they have often been denied asylum.
