Rep McGovern calls on US to take responsibility for its role in Central American upheaval

Congressman Jim McGovern reflects on he and Congressman Joe Moakley's work on El Salvador in the Huffington Post with El Salvador Still Deserves Justice. Moakley was the US Congressman who was tasked with conducting the US Congress' investigation into the murders at the UCA in 1989 and the subsequent cover-up. McGovern was his congressional aide who then staffed the investigation into the murders.

The U.S. has never acknowledged any responsibility for the many assassinations, massacres, disappearances and repression perpetrated by the Salvadoran military and security forces against an innocent and unarmed civilian population. With the "re-branded" WHINSEC, the Pentagon pretends that the past doesn't exist. But even the WHINSEC can't escape the past, having invited Salvadoran military officers to be guest instructors even though they were named in the U.N. Truth Commission Report as responsible for murders and other human rights abuses. The WHINSEC began to classify the names of all its students and foreign faculty members in 2006 so as to avoid any further embarrassment. The House voted twice to restore the names to public domain, and this requirement was signed into law. But the Pentagon refuses, citing national security concerns. The matter is being settled in the courts.

Those who lost family and loved ones at the hands of U.S.-trained militaries have not forgotten the role the U.S., the SOA, and even the WHINSEC has played. At the time of the 20th anniversary of the Jesuit murders, the Government of El Salvador awarded its highest honors posthumously to the six Jesuits and two women. Then-President Mauricio Funes publicly apologized for the role of the State in the murders and asked forgiveness of the priests' and women's surviving family members. It was an extraordinary act of accountability and reconciliation.

Throughout Latin America -- in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador and elsewhere -- nations are struggling to document the truth of their turbulent and violent past and promote reconciliation. I await the day when the United States will recognize its own responsibility for the suffering and sorrow of so many families throughout Latin America, including El Salvador, ask forgiveness, and as an act of reconciliation, close the WHINSEC.

I met McGovern and Moakley in El Salvador in 1997. Moakley had been invited by the Central American University (UCA) to come receive an award for his work on behalf of the people of El Salvador. I don't remember much of the event except that he received a standing ovation - that's really all I need to remember. Father Kevin Burke of Santa Clara University (editor or co-editor of Ignacio Ellacuría: Essays on History, Liberation, and Salvation (2013), Love that Produces Hope: The Thought of Ignacio Ellacuría (2006), Pedro Arrupe: Essential Writings (2004) and The Ground Beneath the Cross: The Theology of Ignacio Ellacuría (2000)) was also there that night but I didn't meet him personally until last month's event at Marquette.

As far as I know, the closest the US has come to recognizing its responsibility for much of the violence came in 1999 when President Bill Clinton visited the region. Most of the that coverage was on his "non-apology" in Guatemala where he said that

"United States... support for military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread repression... was wrong."

He did so shortly after the UN's Commission for Historical Clarification released its findings. However, Bill Clinton also spoke earlier that day in San Salvador where he addressed the country's legislatures.

Earlier today, in El Salvador, the President told regional legislative leaders that it was time to put the bitter ideological struggles of the past behind them and begin to address their gaping social and economic inequalities.

In an address to the National Assembly of El Salvador today, Mr. Clinton obliquely acknowledged the United States' role in the wars that bloodied the region. But in that address, he stopped short of apologizing for American support for murderous military regimes that fostered long reigns of repression.

American backing for right-wing Governments in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua and covert actions against leftist guerrillas created ''bitter divisions'' in the United States, Mr. Clinton said. But with every nation in Central America now under democratic rule, he said, the United States will try provide the financial and moral assistance to enhance political and economic development.

''We are determined to remember the past,'' Mr. Clinton said, ''but never repeat it.''

In the US, President Clinton was condemned by the right for making any apology whatsoever while he was also condemned by the left for not really apologizing at all. The same held true on the right in Central America. I would assume on the left as well but I don't remember having read any coverage of their response.

I think President Clinton's statements were an important step in recognizing the US recognizing its complicity in the violence (perhaps the arrests of war criminals in the US could be read as another). However, President Mauricio Funes' apology on behalf of the Salvadoran State, it would be more meaningful if it came directly from those who were in office at the time of the violence (see here).