In December of 1981, the inhabitants of a small Salvadoran hamlet, named El Mozote, were systematically exterminated by the Atlacatl battalion, a U.S. trained counterinsurgency force. The Atlacatl battalion was one of the first US military trained units in El Salvador. From the beginning, Monterrosa, their U.S. Special Forces trained commander, worked to give his new force what he liked to call “a mystique.”
According to one reporter, the men of the Atlacatl celebrated their graduation from training by collecting all the dead animals they could find off the roads -- dogs, vultures, anything – and boiled them together into a bloody soup. They chugged it down. Then they stood at rigid attention and sang, full-throated, the unit's theme song, "Somos Guerreros":
We are warriors!
Warriors all!
We are going forth to kill
A mountain of terrorists
Only, they mistook at least 733 civilians as ‘terrorists’ on December 10, 1981. And they slaughtered them all.
Articles about the massacres initially appeared in the New York Times and Washington Post, thanks, primarily to the testimony of one of the survivors, an El Salvadoran woman named Rufina Amaya. She explained that she had escaped in the confusion of the initial round up of civilians and hidden in a tree.
Soon the killing started.
It began with decapitation, but that was hard work, so the soldiers rounded up the women into a house and filed the men out into the forest.
Rufina told the reporters that the soldiers killed her husband, her nine-year-old son, and her three daughters, aged five, three, and eight months.
According to New Yorker writer, Mark Danner,
“No fewer than ten American advisers were working with the Atlacatl Battalion at the time.”
Tune in for our Next Hidden History when the Reagan administration attempts to suppress news of the massacre, attacking the reports to prevent a cut off of military aide to El Salvador.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Sunday, August 31, 2008
El Mozote, Part 2
[Mp3 link coming soon]
What you were just listening to was a sound collage from the Deconstructionist site built on fragments of testimony from the survivors of the massacre at El Mozote that occurred nearly 26 years ago on December 10, 1981.
Amaya Rufina and a few other surviving peasants gave NY Times reporter, Raymond Bonner a list of 733 names, mostly children, women, and old people, who had been massacred.
But The Reagan administration didn’t want to hear it.
At the time, Thomas Enders, then assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, attacked the reports of the massacre before a congressional committee reviewing aid to El Salvador. He said that although there had been a firefight between the army and the guerrillas in the area, "no evidence could be found to confirm that government forces systematically massacred civilians." President Reagan accordingly certified that the Salvadorans were "making a concerted and significant effort" to end "the indiscriminate torture and murder of its citizens." Continued aide to El Salvador was approved.
The Washington Post reporter, Alma Guillermoprieto (Jewlermoprieto) denies this, saying "The fact is that evidence for the massacre existed from the day those stories appeared in the newspapers. Two journalists from two leading newspaper, traveling independently of each other, provided the same evidence. There were photographic documents, credible sources."
Finally, on October 22, 1992, over ten years after the incident, a report providing forensic evidence of the massacre was published. Alma was in New York City, when she read the story. "I was in the supermarket," she says, "and I started crying. I never in all my reporting career came face to face with so much evil, and I just felt the pain all over again."
What you were just listening to was a sound collage from the Deconstructionist site built on fragments of testimony from the survivors of the massacre at El Mozote that occurred nearly 26 years ago on December 10, 1981.
Amaya Rufina and a few other surviving peasants gave NY Times reporter, Raymond Bonner a list of 733 names, mostly children, women, and old people, who had been massacred.
But The Reagan administration didn’t want to hear it.
At the time, Thomas Enders, then assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, attacked the reports of the massacre before a congressional committee reviewing aid to El Salvador. He said that although there had been a firefight between the army and the guerrillas in the area, "no evidence could be found to confirm that government forces systematically massacred civilians." President Reagan accordingly certified that the Salvadorans were "making a concerted and significant effort" to end "the indiscriminate torture and murder of its citizens." Continued aide to El Salvador was approved.
The Washington Post reporter, Alma Guillermoprieto (Jewlermoprieto) denies this, saying "The fact is that evidence for the massacre existed from the day those stories appeared in the newspapers. Two journalists from two leading newspaper, traveling independently of each other, provided the same evidence. There were photographic documents, credible sources."
Finally, on October 22, 1992, over ten years after the incident, a report providing forensic evidence of the massacre was published. Alma was in New York City, when she read the story. "I was in the supermarket," she says, "and I started crying. I never in all my reporting career came face to face with so much evil, and I just felt the pain all over again."
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Rachel Carson
When Rachel Carson published her ground breaking work on the dangers of pesticides in 1962, Silent Spring, she was accused of being an “hysterical woman”, a fanatic follower of the “cult of nature” and a “communist”. What could engender such shrill verdicts from some of the most powerful media outlets in the world?
She had shed a glaring light onto a pervasive feature of industrial life that was as deadly as it was profitable: the manufacturing of chemicals to control the natural environment.
After world war II, these chemical poisons, derivatives of chemical warfare, were manufactured by powerful pertro-chemical industries like Monsanto and Montrose.
According to John Robbins, “Monsanto tried to destroy [Carson]. They mounted a tremendous advertising campaign to discredit her and invalidate her work. They wanted to ruin her in every possible way they could."
Carson was undeterred. In Silent Spring, she wrote "We allow the chemical death rain to fall as though there were no alternative, whereas in fact there are many, and our ingenuity could soon discover many more if given opportunity."
Carson's underlying philosophy was that humans are interdependent with nature. She argued that industrial activity was causing permanent damage to the Earth's ecosystems.
Ten years later, in 1972, DDT, one of the most dangerous pesticides from that post-war era, was finally banned, largely a result of Carson’s ground breaking work. Yet many poisons as dangerous or even more insidious are still used today.
Carson died in 1964, paradoxically from cancer that she fought, even as her ground breaking work was being published. Many say that she is the true mother of the modern environmental movement today.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Cinco de Mayo
Outside of being a great holiday, Cinco de Mayo celebrates the defeat of Napoleon’s army at the Batalla de Puebla in Mexico on the Fifth of May, 1862.
Although commonly believed to celebrate the Independence of Mexico, the battle was actually fought because Napoleon III wanted to install his relative, Archduke Maximilian of Austria, as ruler of Mexico. Using Mexico’s war debt as an excuse, France invaded the country.
Napoleon’s army landed at the gulf coast of Mexico along the state of Veracruz and began to march toward Mexico City. But on May 5th, 5,000 ill-equipped Mestizo and Zapotec Indians under the leadership of Mexican General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguin managed to defeat the French army at the height of its power. It was a glorious victory that served as a unifying moment for Mexican nationalism.
Although celebrated today, the battle was, unfortunately not a turning point. Napoleon III returned to Mexico a year later with 30,000 more troops. The French were eventually able take over Mexico City and install Maximilian, a Hapsburg, as the ruler of Mexico.
Maximilian’s rule was short lived. By 1867 a resupplied Mexican army was able to finally defeat the French and Maximlian was summarily executed.
His bullet riddled shirt is kept on public display in a museum in Mexico City.
Tune in for our Next Hidden History when we discuss the revolutionary efforts of another famous Mexican, Caesar Chavez.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
KKK Part 2
The original Ku Klux Klan was disbanded in 1869, but loosely formed groups of Klansmen continued to operate throughout much of the South. Following a government crackdown many of these groups withered away. That is, until 1915 when a wave of nativism, helped along by D.W. Griffith’s brilliant and deeply racist movie, Birth of a Nation, saw America’s first terrorist organization, reborne.
The KKK was officially reincarnated in 1915 by Atlanta businessman William J. Simmons. Simmons was a preacher and Freemason, who was a member of dozen of fraternal groups and two churches. The day before thanksgiving in 1915, Simmons and 15 members of the Knights of Mary Phagan who had been instrumental in the lynching of Leo Frank, lit a cross on Stone Mountain, Georgia. Simmons called for this new program of the Klan to be "100% Americanism.", using terminology that might sound familiar to today’s anti-immigration movements.
Unfortunately, The Birth of a Nation became a recruiting tool for the revived Klan which grew large in part as a result of the popularity DW Griffith’s movie work. Griffith had put his considerable technical talent into the service of a deeply racist book entitled “The Clansmen.”
According to the author of the Clansman, a black is "a thick-lipped, flat nosed, spindle-shanked Negro, exuding his nauseous animal odor."
As a result of following such a book, the underlying assumptions of Griffith’s movie were spectacularly racist, as was the movie itself. Despite this, it was great financial success. When adjusted for inflation, it was one of the top grossing movies of all time. In fact. Woodrow Wilson as sitting president endorsed the movie, writing: "It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true."
His endorsement greatly helped Griffith to defend the movie against legal attack by the NAACP. And the endorsement certainly helped to legitimate the newest version of the Klan, which claimed some 5 million adherents by 1925. Nativist to the core, this new Klan not only opposed black equality but was also anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant.
Tune in for our Next Hidden History, when one of the most recent variations of the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans, loses everything they own to Beulah Mae Donald, the mother of one of their murder victims.
The KKK was officially reincarnated in 1915 by Atlanta businessman William J. Simmons. Simmons was a preacher and Freemason, who was a member of dozen of fraternal groups and two churches. The day before thanksgiving in 1915, Simmons and 15 members of the Knights of Mary Phagan who had been instrumental in the lynching of Leo Frank, lit a cross on Stone Mountain, Georgia. Simmons called for this new program of the Klan to be "100% Americanism.", using terminology that might sound familiar to today’s anti-immigration movements.
Unfortunately, The Birth of a Nation became a recruiting tool for the revived Klan which grew large in part as a result of the popularity DW Griffith’s movie work. Griffith had put his considerable technical talent into the service of a deeply racist book entitled “The Clansmen.”
According to the author of the Clansman, a black is "a thick-lipped, flat nosed, spindle-shanked Negro, exuding his nauseous animal odor."
As a result of following such a book, the underlying assumptions of Griffith’s movie were spectacularly racist, as was the movie itself. Despite this, it was great financial success. When adjusted for inflation, it was one of the top grossing movies of all time. In fact. Woodrow Wilson as sitting president endorsed the movie, writing: "It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true."
His endorsement greatly helped Griffith to defend the movie against legal attack by the NAACP. And the endorsement certainly helped to legitimate the newest version of the Klan, which claimed some 5 million adherents by 1925. Nativist to the core, this new Klan not only opposed black equality but was also anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant.
Tune in for our Next Hidden History, when one of the most recent variations of the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans, loses everything they own to Beulah Mae Donald, the mother of one of their murder victims.
KKK, Part 1
Since 9/11, the word terrorism has been all the rage. You can’t watch an hour of television without hearing the term, but it might be instructive to consider America’s very first terrorist organization. Most folks would recognize its name, even though it’s been officially disbanded since 1987: the Ku Klux Klan- America’s very first terrorist organization.
The Ku Klux Klan, or KKK sometimes described as the “Invisible Empire”, was instrumental in the murder and intimidation of hundreds of thousands of afro Americans. And later, after its second incarnation, the intimidation of Jews, Catholics and immigrants throughout the nation.
The first Klan was founded in 1866 by veterans of the Confederate Army in Pulaski, Tennessee, as quasi-fraternal organization. They established whimisical names for their organization roles, like the Grand Cyclops or Grand Magi and held initiation ceremonies and ritual pledges. One of their fun activities taken up initially as a distraction was riding their horses in the middle of the night, outfitted in white sheets and ridiculously spiked pyramid type hats; presumably representing the ghost of the confederate dead.
But soon their “night riding” turned into hazing and frightening blacks and northern business men. Whippings were used first, but within months there were bloody clashes between Klansmen and blacks, Northerners who had come South, or Southern unionists.
In 1870 a Grand Jury reported that: " The Klan is inflicting summary vengeance on the colored citizens by breaking into their houses at the dead of night, dragging them from their beds, torturing them in the most inhuman manner, and in many instances murdering them."
As the Klan’s reputation spread, so did calls for their removal. Their Imperial Wizard, an ex-Confederate General, Nathan Forrest officially disbanded the Klan in January of 1869
But, as the Southern Poverty Law Center noted, “their terror had proven very effective at keeping black voters away from the polls. Some black officeholders were hanged and many more were brutally beaten. The result was a system of segregation which was the law of the land for more than 80 years afterwards:” Jim Crowe.
The Klan had done its work well.
Tune in for our next Hidden History about the revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s thanks to DW Griffith’s film, Birth of a Nation-- when America’s first terrorist organization rides again.
The Ku Klux Klan, or KKK sometimes described as the “Invisible Empire”, was instrumental in the murder and intimidation of hundreds of thousands of afro Americans. And later, after its second incarnation, the intimidation of Jews, Catholics and immigrants throughout the nation.
The first Klan was founded in 1866 by veterans of the Confederate Army in Pulaski, Tennessee, as quasi-fraternal organization. They established whimisical names for their organization roles, like the Grand Cyclops or Grand Magi and held initiation ceremonies and ritual pledges. One of their fun activities taken up initially as a distraction was riding their horses in the middle of the night, outfitted in white sheets and ridiculously spiked pyramid type hats; presumably representing the ghost of the confederate dead.
But soon their “night riding” turned into hazing and frightening blacks and northern business men. Whippings were used first, but within months there were bloody clashes between Klansmen and blacks, Northerners who had come South, or Southern unionists.
In 1870 a Grand Jury reported that: " The Klan is inflicting summary vengeance on the colored citizens by breaking into their houses at the dead of night, dragging them from their beds, torturing them in the most inhuman manner, and in many instances murdering them."
As the Klan’s reputation spread, so did calls for their removal. Their Imperial Wizard, an ex-Confederate General, Nathan Forrest officially disbanded the Klan in January of 1869
But, as the Southern Poverty Law Center noted, “their terror had proven very effective at keeping black voters away from the polls. Some black officeholders were hanged and many more were brutally beaten. The result was a system of segregation which was the law of the land for more than 80 years afterwards:” Jim Crowe.
The Klan had done its work well.
Tune in for our next Hidden History about the revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s thanks to DW Griffith’s film, Birth of a Nation-- when America’s first terrorist organization rides again.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Caesar Chavez
No one better caught the soul of the migrants moving into California during the 1930s than John Steinbeck:
"And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange."
"In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy,” he wrote “growing heavy for the vintage."
Caesar Chavez was one of those souls. In 1938, at the height of the Great Depression, Chavez and his family packed their belongings and headed to California in search of work. In California, the Chavez family became part of the migrant community, traveling from farm to farm to pick fruits and vegetables during the harvest. It was a lesson that Chavez learned well. After years of tough labor, Chavez joined a group called the Community Service Organization (CSO) and traveled throughout California, making speeches in support of workers' rights. That was his first step in becoming the most vocal advocate for Farmer’s rights in the world.
Four years later, Chavez left CSO to form what would become the United Farm Workers unions. Under the auspices of the UFW, Chavez struck against grape farmers for better wages
According to the University of California, “From the beginning, the UFW adhered to the principals of non-violence practiced by Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King. The 1965 strikers took a pledge of non-violence and Cesar conducted a 25 day fast in 1968 to reaffirm the UFW's commitment to non-violence. Senator Robert F. Kennedy called Cesar "one of the heroic figures of our time." Like other UFW officers and staff, Caesar received subsistence pay that never topped $5,000 a year.
Cesar Chavez passed away on April 23, 1993, at the age of 66. More than 40,000 people participated in his funeral. He was laid to rest at La Paz in a rose garden at the foot of the hill he often climbed -- to watch the sun rise.
Tune in for our Next Hidden History when we discuss the revolutionary efforts of another famous American, Rachel Carson.
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