THE NEW IMMIGRANTS
Bernstein, Dennis
The New Immigrants Salvadorans with military or Death Squad backgrounds are entering the United States in increasing numbers. "This year, 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the male refugees coming...
...This year, 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the male refugees coming through the office are from the armed services, National Guard, and Treasury Police," says Patrick Hughes, an immigration attorney in Laredo, Texas...
...Most of these immigrants are not talking about their experiences, and some may be continuing to practice terror in this country...
...But Francisco Javier Rodriguez Amaya speaks candidly about his days as a member of the Death Squads in El Salvador and a member of the elite...
...Rodriguez and his superiors first attempted to bribe their prisoners into answering questions...
...American-trained Atlacatl Battalion...
...Interrogations were dropped, and Rodriguez was instructed to begin to kidnap and kill entire families...
...He said he was warned that if he refused to cooperate he would himself be suspected of being a guerrilla...
...In 1982, the method changed...
...We used various methods," said Rodriguez...
...Other soldiers raped the victims, who eventually had their throats slit and were shot...
...He says he knew he had to leave because some of the survivors of the families he had abducted had already "looked for me at my house...
...We would carry them outside the town to a clandestine cemetary called Botadero located west of San Salvador," he said...
...He guided his prisoners to a window-less room, specially constructed in 1980 for torture interrogations...
...This represents a 50 per cent increase over two years ago...
...The U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion," says the human-rights group, Americas Watch, "has been involved in a lot of the worst human-rights abuses in El Salvador...
...The Americans did not train Rodriguez in torture techniques, he says, but the Atlacatl Battalion has a reputation for brutality...
...The twenty-seven-year-old Salvadoran was forcibly inducted into the armed forces in 1980, according to an affidavit taken August 13 by Proyecto Adelante, a refugee legal-aid center in Dallas...
...Rodriguez continued his Death Squad activities until 1983, when he was recruited for training in the United States, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina...
...Rodriguez followed the orders...
...The Colonel, Jesus Vargas, gave us orders to interrogate them and then to execute them...
...Dennis Bernstein...
...We captured the three and brought them back alive to headquarters" in a Toyota van with a non-military registration, he said...
...Rodriguez and his colleagues, dressed as drunkards with sunglasses and torn clothes, moved in on their targets...
...After a month of combat, Rodriguez said he returned to his headquarters at Destacamiento Militar Numero 5 Cojutepeque, where he was trained as a Death Squad member and sent out on his first mission: the abduction and torture of three "suspicious" people...
...We would rip off the finger nails, killing them bit by bit...
...Rodriguez finally left the military and fled to the United States...
...Electrical shocks, cutting off pieces of flesh, stabbing them in the eyes with a sharply pointed knife...
...Then the attacks began...
...He returned to El Salvador as a member of the U.S.-trained special Atlacatl Battalion and remained in the Salvadoran military until 1984...
Vol. 51 • October 1987 • No. 10
