Salvadoran People

A Mass will be celebrated Sunday in the name of the people of El Salvador, where hundreds were killed this month during some of the most violent fighting in that country's long-running civil war. Father Jaime Soto, vicar for the Latino community in the Diocese of Orange, will preside over the noon Mass at St. Joseph Church, 727 Minter St.

Re "Nasty turn in El Salvador," editorial, March 13 Thanks for exposing Republican attempts to intervene in El Salvador's presidential elections. Perhaps House Republicans were feeling threatened by evidence that the new administration has respected the right of Salvadorans to choose their own president. A group of Democratic representatives led by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) issued a letter to President Obama asking him to commit to U.S. neutrality in El Salvador's elections. The State Department issued a public statement that said: "The U.S. government will respect the will of the Salvadoran people and will seek to work constructively with whoever wins that election."

Thank you for Kenneth Freed's excellent article ("El Salvador's Land Reform Plan Plants Seeds of Conflict, Despair," Part I, June 25). In the last nine years, our government has spent over $4 billion in El Salvador. Seventy thousand lives have been lost in that country's war. And yet, the fundamental problems facing the Salvadoran people have barely been addressed. Chief among them, as Freed points out, is the glaring inequality between the wealthy landowners and the impoverished peasant population.

Re "An incomplete monument in El Salvador," July 28 The Monument to Memory and Truth powerfully displays 30,000 names -- fewer than half of the civilian victims of the Salvadoran civil war. The Times notes that the monument describes the homicides and other forms of violence committed by the government against its people but not the "excesses committed by rebels." The U.N.-sponsored Commission on the Truth for El Salvador issued a report that shows the vast majority of the murders, disappearances, rapes and other violence and terror imposed on civilians were in fact committed by the armed forces and government-sponsored death squads.

Thank you for your very timely and accurate editorial on continued military aid for El Salvador ("Congress: Don't Fall for It," Sept. 25). Unfortunately, neither you nor Congress has taken a strong enough position. The war is not only, as you say, "ugly and unwinnable"--but totally immoral. You condemn the military as having "too much political clout" when, in fact, it has total control of the politics of the country. There is only one way to force the military to negotiate honestly with the FMLN and to respect the human rights of the Salvadoran people, and that is to discontinue all, not just half, of the proposed $85 million in aid. Until Congress stops supporting the Salvadoran military, congressional hands will be stained with the blood of the Salvadoran people.

Re "Nasty turn in El Salvador," editorial, March 13 Thanks for exposing Republican attempts to intervene in El Salvador's presidential elections. Perhaps House Republicans were feeling threatened by evidence that the new administration has respected the right of Salvadorans to choose their own president. A group of Democratic representatives led by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) issued a letter to President Obama asking him to commit to U.S. neutrality in El Salvador's elections. The State Department issued a public statement that said: "The U.S. government will respect the will of the Salvadoran people and will seek to work constructively with whoever wins that election."

Re "An incomplete monument in El Salvador," July 28 The Monument to Memory and Truth powerfully displays 30,000 names -- fewer than half of the civilian victims of the Salvadoran civil war. The Times notes that the monument describes the homicides and other forms of violence committed by the government against its people but not the "excesses committed by rebels." The U.N.-sponsored Commission on the Truth for El Salvador issued a report that shows the vast majority of the murders, disappearances, rapes and other violence and terror imposed on civilians were in fact committed by the armed forces and government-sponsored death squads.

Amen, amen and amen again to Morris Blackman's column ("U.S. Claims of Success in El Salvador Ignore Reality," Opinion, Oct. 2). During Central American Independence Week in El Salvador, military and police groups violently broke up several peaceful demonstrations that were petitioning the government. The issues were ending arbitrary arrests and assassinations, and releasing payroll and earthquake repair funds for the university. Many arrested during those demonstrations and labor office break-ins have not been released and have disappeared.

In response to "History Has Vindicated Elliott Abrams," Column Right, Nov. 17: In his transparent attempt to sanitize the reputation of Elliott Abrams, the best George Weigel can do is give us reactionary rhetoric for substance and misinformation for fact. For all his effort to canonize Abrams as defender of the poor in El Salvador, Weigel's contribution only serves to remind those of us who have actually accompanied the Salvadoran people in their struggle for peace and justice that Abrams and company are almost single-handedly responsible for the 12-year, $6-billion, Reagan-Bush human rights disaster there.

Don W. Lewis made a number of misleading assertions in his column "U.S. Military Assistance to El Salvador Negates Benefits of Economic Aid" (Op-Ed Page, May 16). Lewis stated that "in November, 1987, the foreign policy caucus of Congress reported that U.S. aid to El Salvador had exceeded that country's own national budget." The Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus to which he referred reported no such thing; such information, however, was contained in a report by three caucus members to the 130-member group.

In response to "History Has Vindicated Elliott Abrams," Column Right, Nov. 17: In his transparent attempt to sanitize the reputation of Elliott Abrams, the best George Weigel can do is give us reactionary rhetoric for substance and misinformation for fact. For all his effort to canonize Abrams as defender of the poor in El Salvador, Weigel's contribution only serves to remind those of us who have actually accompanied the Salvadoran people in their struggle for peace and justice that Abrams and company are almost single-handedly responsible for the 12-year, $6-billion, Reagan-Bush human rights disaster there.

Why did Kenneth Freed travel all the way to Perquin, or as he so dramatically puts it, to "the capital of a liberated zone" in El Salvador, in order to interview Fathers Rogelio Ponseele and Esteban Velazquez? He could have written his sensational "The Cross and the Gun" (World Report, Oct. 9) by simply staying in his hotel room and reading Paul Sigmund's "Liberation Theology at the Crossroads," which he quotes so freely. Rather than focus in any significant way on the ministry of these two men, it seems that Freed simply wanted to experience the local color of being in a war zone, watching the priests speak from under an FMLN banner in the town square, and asking himself if the young guerrillas present ". . . would fully understand all the arguments of liberation theology."

Thank you for your very timely and accurate editorial on continued military aid for El Salvador ("Congress: Don't Fall for It," Sept. 25). Unfortunately, neither you nor Congress has taken a strong enough position. The war is not only, as you say, "ugly and unwinnable"--but totally immoral. You condemn the military as having "too much political clout" when, in fact, it has total control of the politics of the country. There is only one way to force the military to negotiate honestly with the FMLN and to respect the human rights of the Salvadoran people, and that is to discontinue all, not just half, of the proposed $85 million in aid. Until Congress stops supporting the Salvadoran military, congressional hands will be stained with the blood of the Salvadoran people.

A Mass will be celebrated Sunday in the name of the people of El Salvador, where hundreds were killed this month during some of the most violent fighting in that country's long-running civil war. Father Jaime Soto, vicar for the Latino community in the Diocese of Orange, will preside over the noon Mass at St. Joseph Church, 727 Minter St.

Recently, ex-President Ronald Reagan speaking in the Guildhall of London's financial district said, "You can't massacre an idea. You cannot run tanks over hope. You cannot riddle a people's yearning with bullets." He was referring, of course, to the slaughter of the students and workers in China who demonstrated against social injustice and demanded more freedoms. If the people in Central and South America could speak to him they would cry out, "Yes you can, Mr. Reagan! Have you forgotten Nicaragua?"

Amen, amen and amen again to Morris Blackman's column ("U.S. Claims of Success in El Salvador Ignore Reality," Opinion, Oct. 2). During Central American Independence Week in El Salvador, military and police groups violently broke up several peaceful demonstrations that were petitioning the government. The issues were ending arbitrary arrests and assassinations, and releasing payroll and earthquake repair funds for the university. Many arrested during those demonstrations and labor office break-ins have not been released and have disappeared.