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Terror and Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 1956–1970
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
Extract
Most of the extraordinary waves of terror which have swept many Latin American societies since 1970 have occurred in guerrilla-based insurgencies or even civil wars. Because of the massive body counts produced during these confrontations between revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries based in or linked with a government, human rights organizations have issued a long series of reports about terror—especially that which has been carried out by incumbent regimes and death squads—and which has been supplemented by the exposés of the guerrillas themselves. Amnesty International, the Human Rights group in the Organization of American States (OAS), and Americas Watch have been the major international actors documenting the wave of terror. Many independent national groups, such as El Salvador's “Socorro Juridico” and other human rights organizations linked with church bodies have undertaken that more perilous task at home.
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- The Politics of Terror
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- Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1990
References
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100 Gilly, Adolfo, “The Guerrilla Movement in Guatemala I,” Monthly Review, 17 (05 1965), 24–25;Google ScholarMunson, , Zacapa, 194–5;Google ScholarSchump, , Las Guerrillas en América Latina, 55;Google ScholarShort, A. P., “Conversations with the Guatemalan Delegates in Cuba,” Monthly Review, 18 (02 1967), 37.Google Scholar
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102 See Wickham-Crowley, , “Guerrilla Governments,” 492–3Google Scholar for more details on all but the final case; for some evidence that Sendero Luminoso's support in the Andes has fallen because they failed to protect the peasantry, see McClintock, , “Peru's Sendero Luminoso Rebellion,” 90.Google Scholar
103 For information by Amnesty International (A.I.) on a variety of cases, see their The Republic of Nicaragua (Nottingham, England: The Russell Press, 1977);Google Scholar a capsule summary is in “Guatemala: A Government Program of Political Murder,” in Guatemala in Rebellion: Unfinished History, Fried, Jonathanet al., eds. (N.Y.: Grove, 1983), 139–45;Google Scholar and a summary of their findings for the early period under Montt, Ríos, in Latin America Weekly Report (London), 15 10 1982, 11;Google Scholar for Guatemala in 1983, see as well the summary of the Americas Watch findings, in “Extermination in Guatemala,” New York Review of Books, 30:9 (2 06 1983), 13–16;Google Scholar two summaries of A.I.'s reports on Peru and El Salvador appear in, respectively, Latin America Weekly Report, 23 09 1983, 10;Google Scholar and Latin America Political Report (London; same periodical), 21 03 1980, 12.Google Scholar Independent church authorities also criticized and documented government terror as well, especially in Nicaragua and El Salvador. For more detail on government terror, mostly from left-wing sources, see, for Nicaragua: Tijerino, Doris, Inside the Nicaraguan Revolution, As Told to Margaret Randall (Vancouver: New Star, 1978), 165–75;Google ScholarLatin America Political Report, 29 June 1979, 194–6;Google ScholarNew York Times, 2 March 1977, Section 2, p. 1.Google Scholar For Guatemala, see Black, Georgeet al., Garrison Guatemala (New York: Monthly Review, 1984), 94–97;Google Scholar Concerned Scholars, Guatemala, Guatemala: Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win (San Francisco, Calif.: Solidarity, 1982), 67–72;Google Scholar and Proceso (Mexico City), no. 412 (24 09 1984), 40–43,Google Scholar for an extensive list of massacres and body counts. For El Salvador, see Navarro, Vicente, “Genocide in El Salvador,” Monthly Review, 32:11 (04 1981), 1–16;CrossRefGoogle Scholar on reports of U.S. government backing for terror, see Nairn, Allan, “Behind the Death Squads,” The Progressive, 48:5 (05 1984), 20–29,Google Scholar and Christian, Shirley, “El Salvador's Divided Military,” Atlantic Monthly, 251:6 (06 1983), 50–60Google Scholar on the military and civilian links to terror. For Peru, see McClintock, Cynthia, “Sendero Luminoso: Peru's Maoist Guerrillas,” Problems of Communism, 32:5 (09–10 1983), 30–32.Google Scholar
104 Guerrilla terror also has expanded in scope, with the insurgents using far more kidnapping, extortion, bank robbery, attacks on economic and utility targets, and interdictions of road traffic than in the past. All of these have occurred in El Salvador, at least a few in other locales. On Sendero's terror in Peru, with the estimated civilian deaths well into the thousands, see McClintock, , “Sendero Luminoso,” 19, 32;Google ScholarMario, Vargas Llosa, “Inquest in the Andes,” New York Times Magazine, 31 07 1983, 18–23et passim (which also documents government terror)Google Scholar; (Latin America) Weekly Report, 18 January 1985, 10;Google Scholar and 13 January 1984, 10–11. Widespread agreement on the Sendero's wave of terror is not shared in the literature on El Salvador, where left-wing scholars routinely deny such features. For suggestive evidence, including references to the guerrillas' self-recorded killings of thousands of civilians, see Kemble, Penn, “The Liberal Test in El Salvador,” The New Republic, 14 03 1981, 18–19;Google ScholarMcColm, R. Bruce, El Salvador: Peaceful Revolution or Armed Struggle? (New York: Freedom House, 1982), 23–24, 43;Google ScholarFalcoff, Mark and Robert, Royal, eds., Crisis and Opportunity: U.S. Policy in Central America and the Caribbean (Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1984), 199–200, 269;Google ScholarEnglebert, Michel G. (Interviewer), “Flight: Six Salvadorans Who Took Leave of the War,” The Progressive, 47:3 (03 1983), 38–43, including victims of both sidesGoogle Scholar; and (Latin America) Weekly Report, 16 03 1984, 1;Google Scholar for a more general view, see Zaid, Gabriel, “Enemy Colleagues: A Reading of the Salvadoran Tragedy,” Dissent (Winter 1982), 13–40.Google Scholar
105 This is clearest in Guatemala and El Salvador; in the former, the government under General Efraín Ríos Montt (1982–83) legitimated terror by the army (not the death squads) against civilians as justifiable attacks on “subversives”; for a typical defense (that is, by minimization and justification) of the terror by the guerrillas in El Salvador, see Berryman, “Another View of El Salvador,” and Zaid's critique, in “Gabriel Zaid Replies.”
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