From: delval@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Alvaro del Val)
Subject: Re: El Salvador: Death Squads Escalate
Organization: Stanford University CSLI
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 07:50:12 GMT

In article <1992Aug10.180615.2587@oracle.us.oracle.com> mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman) writes:
>In article <9208100603.AA07430@poly.math.cornell.edu> harelb@MATH.CORNELL.EDU (Harel Barzilai) writes:
>>[From PeaceNet's reg.elsalvador via misc.activism.progressive ]
...
>
>>Urgent Action                                     August 6, 1992 
>
>>                Death Squads Escalate "Dirty War" 
>
>>     A series of unsolved killings, many of them carried out in 
>>characteristic death squad fashion, are threatening to undermine El 
>>Salvador's peace process. [...]
>
>>*  On July 31, an employee of the telecommunications company ANTEL 
>>was shot in the capital. 
>
>>[More Killings]
>
>>*  Ads from clandestine right wing groups continue to appear in the 
>>press.  A July 27 ad charged that the Truth Commission and the Ad 
>>Hoc Commission were created to destroy the Army, and added that the 
>>peace accords have no legal validity because they are not the law 
>>of the republic. 
>
>Does anyone else find the inclusion of right wing ads in a list of
>murders revealing?  Apparently right wing ads are just as bad as
>killing activists, eh Harel?  But if the people you support get
>control of El Salvador they'll end all that, won't they?  Free speech?
>Who needs it?
>-- 
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>I am not an official Oracle spokesman.  I speak for myself and no one else.

How tempting it always is to quote out of context, right? First, the
post does not say that such ads should be forbidden. Second, all you
can legitimately infer from the post is that the poster supports the
peace process in El Salvador. This is not the same as supporting, as
you seem to believe, a leftist dictatorship (if it were, you would be
hard pressed to explain why the UN has tried to foster this process);
in fact, many latin american guerrillas have abandoned their old
marxist-leninist orthodoxy after the demise of soviet communism
(Indeed, that's one of the main reasons why peace processes have now a
chance.) Third, in the current climate in El Salvador, the ads are
probably not too far away from incitation to violence, something which
is *not* protected speech in many democratic countries, but let's
leave that aside. The main point is that the poster mentions these ads
as part of a right wing campaign "aimed at creating a climate of fear"
in order to sabotage the peace process and protect army officials from
investigations into human right abuses which have been documented by
many independent human rights organizations. There is no question that
mentioning the ads is relevant in order to establish this. Let me
quote from the original post:

>>     A series of unsolved killings, many of them carried out in 
>> characteristic death squad fashion, are threatening to undermine El 
>> Salvador's peace process.  The murders are aimed at creating a 
>> climate of fear.  Threats against opposition activists have also 
>> contributed to the atmosphere of insecurity. 

...

>>     The recent killings form an alarming pattern of escalating 
>>violence, waged by right wing sectors in the Army and the 
>>government who oppose peace.  The violence comes as the Ad Hoc 
>>Commission and the Truth Commission, two bodies created through the 
>>peace accords, are investigating Army officers' human rights 
>>records.  Clearly, many officers stand to be implicated by the 
>>commissions' work, and the violence may be an effort to disrupt the 
>>process before investigations can be completed.  
  
...
  
>>     The "dirty war" in El Salvador is clearly intended to pressure 
>>the government not to comply with the accords, as well as to 
>>intimidate those who are actively working for peace. 
...

If you don't understand that those ads can be an integral part of such
a campaign and that they can be very intimidating, perhaps it would
help you to think of an analogous (hypothetical) situation in which
renegade officers from the old soviet army engaged in a similar
campaign in an attempt to go back to their old order and prevent
investigations on human rights abuses. It is not a matter of left vs.
right (a distinction which by now is pretty blurred anyway).

The only thing that is "revealing" (to use your words) in this thread
is that you have too many cold war ghosts hanging around your closet.

Alvaro

PS. Incidentally, and in case you think my reply is evidence of some
extreme-left sympathies and activism, I don't usually read IPS's posts;
that would take me too much time. It was only seeing a reply to one of
them (not a very usual sight) that prompted my curiosity.