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El Salvador Right-Wing Extremism
Background
The death squads that became active in the late 1970s had
their historical roots in El Salvador's three security forces,
which often functioned as a law unto themselves. Each security
service had its own special unit charged with assassinating
suspected "subversives." The PH's intelligence section, the S-2,
in particular was persistently linked to the political killings
and kidnappings that became commonplace in the 1970s and early
1980s. Immediately after being appointed PH director general in
1984, Golcher disbanded the S-2 unit. Within six months, he had
replaced it with a new forty-member police force trained by the
PN in intelligence work.
The extreme right responded to the left-wing terrorism of the
1970s and the growing militancy of the popular (or mass)
organizations in a violent fashion. Paramilitary forces--first
Orden, later civil defense--supplemented the military
establishment. Ultra-rightists within the military, security
forces, and oligarchy also organized death squads to eliminate
leftist activists and sympathizers and to deter popular support
through intimidation. Analysts generally agreed that right-wing
death squads--often composed of active-duty military or security
force personnel operating with the complicity of some senior
officers of the armed forces--were responsible for thousands of
murders in the 1970s and 1980s. At the same time, the regime's
security forces themselves became increasingly violent.
Orden supplied recruits for the notorious White Hand (Mano
Blanca), the death squad that Medrano organized in the late
1970s. Medrano's protege, D'Aubuisson, reportedly helped organize
the White Warriors Union (Union de Guerreros Blancos--UGB), a
group of death squads that emerged in early 1977 and became known
for their terrorism against the Jesuit community working in El
Salvador. Some military officers, particularly in the GN,
privately supported and facilitated death squad killings during
the Romero regime. The UGB reportedly was associated with the
GN's intelligence branch (the G-2).
Extreme rightist political factions viewed the death squads
as legitimate "counterterrorists" against the leftist guerrillas,
and they did in fact do serious damage to the FMLN's urban base
by 1982. In 1983, however, the death squads were used to
challenge directly the influence of the United States in El
Salvador. They forced at least one American journalist out of the
country, threatened a prominent labor leader supported by the
United States embassy, and even threatened to assassinate United
States ambassador Thomas Pickering. Other death squad victims
included bureaucrats and office workers, labor organizers,
professionals, politicians, priests, and even soldiers.
Right-wing terrorism crested during the 1980-82 period. At
the peak of the violence in late 1980, the monthly toll of
politically motivated murders ran between 700 and 800. In the
most publicized political assassination of this period, suspected
rightists shot Archbishop Romero--an outspoken advocate of
dialogue with the popular organizations and a critic of military
repression--while he was saying mass on March 24, 1980
(see The Role of Religion
, ch. 2). An extreme right-wing group calling
itself the Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez Brigade claimed
responsibility for several assassinations of Christian democratic
and Marxist leaders in San Salvador in 1980. Four churchwomen
from the United States were murdered in December 1980. Several
army officers were linked to the submachine gun killings of two
land reform advisers of the American Institute for Free Labor
Development (AIFLD) in San Salvador's Sheraton Hotel on January
3, 1981, an act that was carried out by two GN corporals. After
the cut-off of United States aid over the murders of the
churchwomen, the Christian Democrats in the government were able
to remove from command positions several key ultra-rightists,
including Carranza, the deputy minister of defense and public
security.
Data as of November 1988
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