The same old assasins
Proceso
646: C'The Some Old Assassins' an something resembling normal politics be substituted for the violent clash of arms? That is the aim of the Arias plan in Central America. But the transition...
...the ones who murdered hundreds of teachers, union members, and members of cooperatives...
...Is that freedom of expression...
...once it does so...
...to seek out and prosecute those who made the killing of defenseless civilians a way of making money and showing patriotism...
...and thus is defenseless, it is then slaughtered by the armed forces with impunity...
...In El Salvador, "space" for opposition political activities, previously limited to the right, has haltingly increased during the last year for the left as well...
...the ones who murdered the leaders of the Democratic Revolutionary Front...
...No, more than sixty thousand murders have taught us...
...After being the object of international protest, he was released on September 9. Opposition rallies have been tolerated more recently, although restrictions on the media remain...
...But hadn't we been told that human rights are respected now in El Salvador...
...The only prescient statement the president could have made would have been an admission of how terribly impotent he is...
...In Nicaragua police broke up opposition demonstrations on the weekend after the Arias accords were signed and arrested the human-rights activist Lino Hernandez...
...And, true, there is more public protest against those who are mainly responsible for the problems we are suffering...
...The government and the security forces and the judiciary here cannot guarantee anything, for the simple reason that, when it conies to punishing political crimes, their power is minimal...
...But the deliberately brazen slaying of the Salvadoran human-rights activist Herbert Anaya on October 26 should remind the U.S...
...because wishing for something is different from actually being able to do it...
...But no...
...The shadow which already hovers over Colombia is now beginning to hover over El Salvador: a guerrilla force is invited to lay down its arms and enter politics...
...Hernandez was sentenced to thirty days for "disturbing the peace...
...But the transition is daunting...
...The same old assassins: the ones who murdered Archbishop Romero and the ten other priests...
...What does it matter since, days later, he was murdered for expressing those views...
...Haven't they been saying that the political wing of the opposition forces could now return to the country and function, and thus show the military wing that armed struggle is no longer necessary...
...All the claims President Duarte made during his just concluded trip abroad now stand annulled by this murder of one brave and modest defender of human rights...
...THE EDITORS ¥hey have murdered Herbert Anaya, the president of the nongovernmental human rights commission...
...But it seems . . . that the death squads have not been disarmed, and that their members—these "heavily armed men in civilian clothes"—continue to walk among us...
...that questions about democracy cannot be limited to Nicaragua...
...the ones who murdered thousands of peasants...
...True, fewer people are being murdered now...
...The October 28 issue of Proceso, a weekly publication of the Jesuits' University of Central America, published "The Same Old Assassins, an editorial cri de coeur, which, somewhat abridged, follows...
...Or the trap of a "democracy*' which has no real strength or foundation...
...What does it matter that Anaya was able to denounce, on television, the lies that human rights are now respected in El Salvador...
...which group the assassins belong to and which group contains the next candidates for martyrdom...
...The killings . . . have continued and will continue precisely because this government has failed...
...This time they won't come at us with the argument they used when Archbishop Romero was murdered, that the left had done the killing in order to exacerbate tensions...
...Who killed him...
...Is that freedom of the press...
...The same old assassins...
...There's no use discussing what the Duarte government would like to do...
Vol. 114 • November 1987 • No. 20
