The Hagiography Continues

As I always make a point of saying, I like the Oxbloggers, I really do. We don't always see eye-to-eye on everything, but I appreciate their interest in the world and their thoughtfulness. I have to take issue with some of the things David Adesnik wrote in this post and this part in particular:

While Reagan often found it hard to acknowledge the human rights violations committed by democratic forces, his “crusade for freedom” ultimately brought both human rights and democracy to the suffering citizens of Nicaragua and El Salvador.

Well at least he didn't mention Guatemala. Reagan visited Guatemala in 1982 and met with then dictator, Efraín Rios Montt, praaised his rule and said that he was getting a "bum rap" on the subject of human rights. Here's a post I did with a graph that shows the murders having spiked significantly under Rios Montt. Some bum rap.

As for Nicaragua, I'll let the response of Carlos Chamorro, the son of Violeta Chamorro whose election to the presidency ended Sandinista rule in Nicaragua, speak for itself:

In Nicaragua, Reagan's financial and military support for anti-government rebels "caused a lot of damage in our country, a lot of suffering, a lot of death and destruction," said Carlos Chamorro, a journalist and political analyst, whose mother, Violeta Chamorro, became president in elections in 1990 that ended the rule of the Marxist-led Sandinistas.

"There might be a group that was supported by Reagan that may have a different memory of him. But I have the impression that a majority of the people will associate him with the war and with the destruction," Chamorro said. The U.S.-backed war killed at least 20,000 people.

Reagan made the following comment at a Mississippi Republican Party fundraising dinner in 1983:

We must not listen to those who would disarm our friends and allow Central America to be turned into a string of anti-American Marxist dictatorships. The result could be a tidal wave of refugees. And this time, they'll be "feet people" and not "boat people" swarming into our country, seeking a safe haven from Communist repression to our south. We cannot permit the Soviet-Cuban-Nicaraguan axis to take over Central America.

Ignoring the offensive term "feet people," there were a number of refugees fleeing Central America for the US, but they were fleeing the brutal civil wars that the Reagan administration helped support, most overtly in El Salvador and Nicaragua and somewhat less so in Guatemala. In addition to a significant number of refugees, the asylum decisions made by the INS upon the advice of the Reagan State Department Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs showed a clear pattern of discrimination to the point where a class of Salvadoran and Guatemalan plaintiffs was certified in a class action suit and the government settled by agreeing to review the asylum claims and stopping the deportations of these refugees.

The other thing that bothers me about what David wrote was the rather soft view towards Reagan's finding it "hard to acknowledge the human rights violations committed by democratic forces." What bothers me about it is the methods that Reagan and his staff went about to hide the truth. Consider the El Mozote Massacre and the extraordinary lengths to which they went to discredit the firsthand views of the massacre site by Raymond Bonner of the New York Times and Alma Guillermoprieto, then of The Washington Post and then smear their reputations. As it turns out of course, Bonner and Guillermoprieto repored things correctly. I will never forget Alexander Haig alleging that the four Maryknoll nuns and the lay worker raped and murdered by the Salvadoran military were running a roadblock. The net result of all this was that the Truth Commission mandated after peace finally came to the country attributed more than 90% of the more than 70,000 people killed to the military.

I was alos bothered by the short shrift that David gave to Oscar Arias Sánchez, the former president of Costa Rica who won the Nobel Peace Prize for developing the peace plan that actually brought peace to Central America. I'll close with this paragraph from his Nobel acceptance speech:

I know well you share what we say to all members of the international community, and particularly to those in the East and the West, with far greater power and resources than my small nation could never hope to possess, I say to them, with the utmost urgency: let Central Americans decide the future of Central America. Leave the interpretation and implementation of our peace plan to us. Support the efforts for peace instead of the forces of war in our region. Send our people ploughshares instead of swords, pruning hooks instead of spears. If they, for their own purposes, cannot refrain from amassing the weapons of war, then, in the name of God, at least they should leave us in peace.

Indeed.

Comments

[Nell Lancaster]

Thank you, Randy. I could not possibly respond so civilly to the startling assertion from David Adesnik that Reagan's “crusade for freedom” ultimately brought both human rights and democracy to the suffering citizens of Nicaragua and El Salvador.

In my head is another reply, from a speech by Febe Velasquez, a union organizer who addressed the huge May Day 1986 demonstration that signaled the rebirth of the Salvadoran popular movement after the slaughter of the early 1980s. She was denouncing the actions of the Duarte government, which was routinely referred to in the U.S. press as an "emerging democracy" run by "plucky reformers." Bodies of union supporters were still turning up every week in trash bins, said Febe. "Y eso... eso es su democracia."

The festival of democracy continued on its way; Febe was killed by a bomb exploding in her union hall several years later.

[Glenn]

Interesting stuff, Randy. All these events were going on while I was a child, and its not exactly the kind of material they teach in elementary school.

[Joel]

I think those of us who worked to actively oppose Reagan's actions in these countries are the ones who deserve the credit. We made it impossible for him to keep dictators in power.

And he does not deserve credit for democracy in Nicaragua. That goes to the Sandinistas who, when they lost an election, stepped down gracefully.