OPINION
Ending Complicity In
Salvador's Destruction
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36
Friday, January 16, 1987
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
A Michigan witness views the horrors, and
the U.S. role in perpetuating the problems
RUDY SIMONS
Special to The Jewish News
T
ake a pencil. Draw a
circle with a radius of
51.3 miles. Within that
small space lies the entire na-
tional territory of El Salvador.
Into that one tiny country
United States taxpayers have
poured over $2 billion during
the present administration in
Washington. More is
scheduled for delivery in 1987.
That is the equivalent of about
$500 for every man, woman
and child still alive there, now
that over one million Salvado-
rans have fled the terror and
tens of thousands have been
killed by that country's mili-
tary forces and its clandestine
agents of terror.
Had those billions been
spent to improve the lot of the
citizens of El Salvador we
would have reason to be proud
of our own government policy.
Sadly, the overwhelming pre-
ponderance of that "aid" has
been directed against the huge
majority of the population in
the form of bombs and bom-
bers, guns and bullets, helicop-
ters and intelligence data, and
military training, much of it
within our own borders. Al-
most none of our largesse has
found its way to the be-
leaguered people who have
managed to survive.
These are among the many
things I and 174 other North
American men and women
learned during our brief stay in
San Salvador as delegates to a
late-November 1986 confer-
ence called: "In Search of
Peace: U.S.-El Salvador." We
met with about 300 Salvado-
rans on the campus of the Uni-
versity of Central America
(Catholic) in the capital city.
My companion during the
journey was Dr. Charles
Rooney, a Detroit psychologist.
We had gone to the conference
under the combined auspices of
the Michigan Interfaith Com-
mittee on Central American
Human Rights (MICAH), New
Jewish Agenda/Detroit Chap-
ter, the Michigan Coalition for
Human Rights (MCHR), Gray
Panthers-Metro North, and
the Justice and Peace Office of
the Catholic Archdiocese of
Detroit.
We heard many reports of
bombing, kidnapping, assassi-
nation, disappearance and
Rudy Simons is a Bloomfield
Hills businessman who chairs
the steering committee of the
Michigan Interfaith.
Committee on Central
American Human Rights. In
1984, he visited Nicaragua
twice – as part of a Witness for
Peace delegation and to
deliver medical supplies to
Ocotal after a contra attack.
overall repression from the lips
of men and women who were
themselves the victims of such
government-sponsored ac-
tivity since at least 1979. We
were also personal witnesses to
the ongoing depredations of
the earthquake that shattered
San Salvador on Oct. 10, 1986.
We saw tens (perhaps hun-
dreds) of thousands of earth-
quake victims still living in
lean-to shacks in the streets of
the capital. We heard, time and
time again, testimony from
those who are suffering the
consequences, that the bomb-
ings in the countryside con-
tinue to rain death on civilian
populations day and night. We
learned that kidnappings,
political imprisonments, tor-
ture and assassinations re-
main the order of the day. We
were told repeatedly that the
lot of the people of the country
has not improved under the
government of the U.S.-
sponsored president, Napoleon
Duarte.
"Things are not better under
the president you (the U.S.)
have chosen for us. They are
worse." We heard uniformly,
"The government is not giving
us the earthquake relief
supplies that were sent to us
from around the world."
Dr. Rooney and I were fortu-
nate to arrange a 90-minute
private meeting with the polit-
ical officer of the U.S. Embassy
in San Salvador following the
peace conference. During our
exclusive interview, in the face
of all that we had already seen
and heard, that gentleman told
us that the Duarte government
has done an excellent job of dis-
tributing all of the earthquake
relief. It simply, he said, did
not make an effort to take cre-
dit for the job it had done. The
embassy officer declared, "The
earthquake emergency is
over."
When we told him that we
had heard from many internal
refugees that the bombing in
the countryside continues day
and night, he told us that
everybody with whom we had
spoken had been "coached" by
representatives of the enemy
to tell us such falsehoods —
even though the refugee camp
in which these people live is
funded and administered by
the Salvadoran Catholic
Church.
When we told him the stories
of death and destruction we
heard from various leaders Of
human rights associations,
labor unions, mothers' groups
and earthquake relief organ-
izations, he told us that they,
too, were merely enemy agents
and were not to be believed.
Yet, both Dr. Rooney and I re-
main convinced of the sincerity
of the scores of people with
whom we spoke directly. (Dr.
Rooney speaks Spanish; I do
Continued on Page 38
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