United States and Civil Wars in Central America

United States and Civil Wars in Central America.

Beginning in the 1970s, the central American countries of Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have been in a nearly constant state of social, cultural, and ethnic conflict. The U.S. had significant influence in Latin America, including training some of the most notorious dictators at the infamous School of the Americas, also known as the “School of Coups.”

For six decades, some 65,000 soldiers, dictators, assassins, and mass murderers counted themselves alumni of the school that was first created in Panama in 1946 to prevent the spread of communism in the Western hemisphere. The alumnus of this school included Roberto D’Aubuisson, a death squad leader who murdered thousands and gained the sadistic nickname of “Blowtorch Bob” for his methods of torture. Colonel Domingo Monterrosa, the first commander of the ATLACATL — an elite paramilitary unit trained and equipped by advisors from the United States — also attended the school and was later fingered for directing the El Mozote Massacre, the bloodiest slaying of guerrilla sympathizers in the entire civil war. In Nicaragua, the United States supported the 46-year long dictatorship of the Somoza family which finally fell to the followers of a murdered peasant farmer named Augusto Sandino (Sandinistas) in 1979 after decades of civil war. The United States backed the Salvadoran military government with training, arms, and funding for decades against the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, which killed between 75,000 and 90,000 civilians, mostly rural indigenous farmers. In Guatemala, the US’ Central Intelligence agency supported a military coup against President Jacobo Arbenz in the mid-1950s, igniting a 35-year civil war ensued between mostly indigent Mayan peasants and western backed civil-military governments

friendly to Wash DC. An estimated 200,000 Guatemalans were killed during the war, including at least 40,000 persons who "disappeared". 92% of civilian executions were carried out by government forces. The UN-sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) documented 42,275 victims of human rights violations and acts of violence from 7,338 testimonies. 83% of the victims were Maya and 17% Ladino. 91% of victims were killed in  1978 through 1984, 81% in 1981 through 1983, with 48% of deaths occurring in 1982 alone. In its final report in 1999, the CEH concluded that a genocide had taken place at the hands of the Armed Forces of Guatemala, and that US training of the officer corps in counterinsurgency techniques "had a significant bearing on human rights violations during the armed confrontation", but that the US was not directly responsible for any genocidal acts. The Guatemalan military officer that the US had supported, Rios Montt, was convicted of genocide and sentenced to 80 years in prison. The ongoing civil wars spread to Honduras, which led to constant coups and military dictatorships that employed extraordinarily violent suppression of the population. The CIA backed Honduran Army’s death squad Battalion 3-16 led the suppression effort though mass murder, torture, and disappearances  of anyone accused of dissidence.