Latin America's Dirty Wars - a false equivalency?

The Economist had a not so great piece arguing that the Latin American “Dirty war” memorials should not be used to rewrite the past. Otto, Lillie, Steven and Colin all have good responses to the misinformed Economist article. I sympathize with The Economist's article but it's a mistake to look for balance where there is none.

The authoritarian right in Latin America (Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, etc.) carried out brutality on a scale that was disproportionate to anything that the authoritarian left has executed (Nicaragua, Cuba). I think that there has been a tendency to romanticize the revolutionary left, failure to investigate their human rights violations, and excuse/justify their crimes when uncovered. However, one needs to be careful with any false equivalency.

A friend and I were discussing some of the crimes of the FMLN last week in Berlin. We discussed Mayo Sibrian. He seems to have been responsible for hundreds of deaths of civilians and FMLN in the mid-1980s. However, when speaking with FMLN sympathizers, I was also told that the deaths were more in the dozens and was the work of a drunk commander one weekend. I don't know. The terror carried out by Sibrian seems to have been carried out over a much longer time period and to have involved many more than dozens.

The killings were also known at the time. According to some documentation and interviews, internacionalistas and other guerrillas knew about the massacres. They even spoke to the FPL about the allegations. The FPL, including its commander Salvador Sanchez Ceren, didn't seem to care and didn't bother to investigate.

The FMLN also engaged in forced recruitment, including youth, and the killings of mayors. The recruits and the mayors were both civilians. However, when I wrote that in my 2010 article on violence during the Salvadoran civil war, a reviewer kept trying to downplay the events. It was only the ERP that was engaged in forced recruitment, not the entire organization and it was only for a little while before they realized their mistake. It was again, an attempt to downplay the violence committed by the FMLN. The ERP, on the other hand, complained that they were the political-military organization that was most truthful about the crimes that they committed during the war. The other organizations were not as upfront and therefore did not look as bad in the country's truth commission.

Finally, the truth commission covers 1980-1991 which is convenient to the insurgents. The war started with the failure of the October 15, 1979 coup and the March 24, 1980 murder of Oscar Romero. It started after the fraudulent 1972 and 1977 elections. However, the guerrillas had already formed in the early 1970s. Some even traveled to Guatemala in the 1960s to engage in guerrillas warfare training (two even died fighting in Guatemala). They then carried out kidnappings, assassinations, and bank robberies during the 1970s. However, by marking the beginning of the war in 1979 and 1980, it does overlook a lot of what happened during the years before the outbreak of large-scale violence. It also explains why the Salvadoran right gets upset when the latter dates are used to explain the outbreak of the war. Many of them had been targeted prior to the official start of the war.    

In Guatemala, there have been documented massacres by the guerrillas, including one where a local commander was recently found guilty in a Guatemalan court. In interviews I've carried out with former guerrillas, two mentioned that their biggest regret was the way that they and their comrades treated people within their ranks. Revolutionary justice was carried out against guerrillas who gave away the group's position or somehow else endangered the political-military organization. There was little tolerance.

In Nicaragua, they Sandinistas led a broad-based coalition against the Somoza regime. However, while not entirely the Sandinistas' fault, they alienated pro-democratic (at least in the formal liberal sense) members of their coalition early on during the revolutionary government. They also alienated one of their key supporters during the downfall of Somoza - Costa Rica. They criticized their democratic ally as being a lackey of the US. I wouldn't say that makes them equally authoritarian to the region's right, not even close, as The Economist article would lead one to conclude.

Of course the guerrillas carried out violence against those within their own ranks, against the civilian population, and against government officials - acts that fall outside the rules of war. We have not paid enough attention to documenting, understanding, or explaining how and/or why the violence occurred. It's not clear that any of the revolutionary coalitions that did not come to power would have ruled in a democratic, human rights friendly fashion. Their behavior during the war leads me to think that they would not have ruled in a very heavy-handed fashion. Well, maybe except for the Shining Path and/or FARC.  

However, that's a far cry from drawing any false equivalency between the left and the right when it comes to their behavior in Latin America during the Cold War.