U.S. Wants Former Salvadoran Ally to Face Justice in 1989 Massacre
U.S. Wants Former Salvadoran Ally to Face Justice in 1989 Massacre by Jonathan M. Katz, New York Times
Early in the morning on Nov. 16, 1989, soldiers from an elite battalion of the Salvadoran Army walked into the religious center of a Jesuit university and killed everyone they found inside.
The murders — of six priests, their housekeeper and her daughter — broke the stupor of a world inured to the constant blood baths of El Salvador’s civil war from 1979 to 1992, hastening the end of American support for the military regime and clearing the way for a peace accord.
Twenty-six years later, the United States government, which spent more than $4 billion in assistance to El Salvador’s military during the conflict — including training the Atlacatl Battalion, which massacred the Jesuits — is now working to bring some of the officers it once partnered with to justice.
This quiet shift, taking place in hidden discussions and nearly empty courtrooms, is a sign of how much has and has not changed since the end of the Cold War. Championed by human rights advocates and condemned by critics who say it amounts to selling out old allies, the move speaks to the ever-complicated relationship between American foreign policy and human rights around the world…