A matter of western civilisation: transnational support for the Salvadoran counterrevolution, 1979–1982

Abstract

This article considers how transnational right-wing networks contributed to the origins of El Salvador's civil conflict (1980–1992) using research from the archives, scholarship, media, and popular histories of the United States, El Salvador, Mexico, and Guatemala. Salvadoran counterrevolutionaries used material resources, training, and advice procured from foreign sympathisers to develop a political-paramilitary organisation that undermined socioeconomic and political reforms through violence and intimidation, before transforming that organisation into a formal political party capable of participating in the democratisation process. Additionally, these networks facilitated right-wing Salvadoran contributions to debates in the United States over the direction of US policy in El Salvador at the beginning of the Ronald Reagan administration.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Kit Crawford, Irene Olivares, and Terumi Rafferty-Osaki for their research assistance, and Lauren Bell, Max Paul Friedman, Eric Hershberg, and Elizabeth Weiland for their editorial advice. This work was supported by American University, the Tinker Foundation through the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, and The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Greg Grandin and Gilbert M. Joseph, eds., A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence During Latin America's Long Cold War (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); Martin Durham and Margaret Power, eds., New Perspectives on the Transnational Right (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

² Ignacio Martín-Baró, “El llamado de la extrema derecha”, Estudios Centroamericanos 37, no. 403–404 (June 1982): 453–66.

³ Jeffery M. Paige, Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); Héctor Lindo-Fuentes and Erik Ching, Modernising Minds in El Salvador: Education Reform and the Cold War, 1960–1980 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2012).

⁴ See for example Yolanda Baires Martínez, “Orígienes y formación del partido ARENA (1979–1982)”, in Centro América entre democracia y desorganisación, ed. Gilles Bataillon (Guatemala: FLASCO, 1994), 29–50.

⁵ Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. LeGrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore, eds., Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998).

⁶ On military regime lobbying, see Lars Schoultz, Human Rights and United States Policy Toward Latin America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 48–65.

⁷ On the development of El Salvador's post-colonial agro-export economy, see Aldo A. Lauria-Santiago, An Agrarian Republic: Commercial Agriculture and the Politics of Peasant Communities in El Salvador, 1823–1914 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999).

⁸ On this first revolutionary period, see Jeffrey L. Gould and Aldo A. Lauria-Santiago, To Rise in Darkness: Revolution, Repression, and Memory in El Salvador, 1920–1932 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).

⁹ On the economic elite and policymaking, see Kenneth Lance Johnson, “Between Revolution and Democracy: Business Elites and the State in El Salvador During the 1980s”, (PhD diss., Tulane University, 1993), 62–71.

¹⁰ Williams and Walter, “The New Armed Forces of the Revolutionary Government”, chap. 3 in Militarisation and Demilitarisation in El Salvador's Transition to Democracy (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997).

¹¹ Lindo-Fuentes and Ching, Modernising Minds in El Salvador, 71–88. On the division between agrarian and agro-industrial elite factions, see Enrique Baloyra, El Salvador in Transition (University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1982), 22–32. On the democratic opening, see Paul Almeida, Waves of Protest (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 71–79.

¹² Carlos Acevedo, “The Historical Background to the Conflict”, in Economic Policy for Building Peace: The Lessons of El Salvador, ed. James K. Boyce (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996), 24–28.

¹³ Almeida, “The State Giveth and the State Taketh Away (Again), 1972–81”, chap. 4 in Waves of Protest.

¹⁴ Johnson, “Between Revolution and Democracy”, 151–54.

¹⁵ Right-wing opposition parties never won more than four seats in the legislature or 12.2% of the votes for president. Dieter Nohlen, ed., Elections in the Americas: A Data Handbook, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), Figure 2.8–2.9.

¹⁶ ANEP was founded a decade earlier as an alternative to the dominant agro-export peak associations, but had incorporated many of its representatives by 1976. Una historia emprendedora: 40 años de la Asociación Nacional de la Empresa Privada (San Salvador, El Salvador: ANEP, 2006), 17–20; Jorge Sariego M. and Hernán González M., Investigación evaluativa del proyecto de la Union Comunal Salvadoreña (Informe Final) (San Salvador, El Salvador: Instituto Interamericano de Ciencias Agricolas, 1977), 150

¹⁷ Stephen Webre, Jose´ Napoleo´n Duarte and the Christian Democratic Party in Salvadoran Politics, 1960–1972 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), 195; William Deane Stanley, The Protection Racket State: Elite Politics, Military Extortion, and Civil War in El Salvador (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1996), 104–05.

¹⁸ Martín-Baró, “La llamado de la extreme derecha”, 454–56.

¹⁹ Lindo-Fuentes and Ching, Modernising Minds in El Salvador, 223–24. The left-wing opposition denounced the First Project as insignificant and anti-revolutionary.

²⁰ Agricultores de Oriente, “Sabía ud?”, El Diario de Hoy, 8 August 1976; FARO, “¡¡¡Las tierras de la region oriental no estan en venta!!!,” El Diario de Hoy, 26 August 1976; ANEP, “¿Tiende la historia a repetirse? La reforma agraria de Arbenz la transformación agraria de Molina”, El Diario de Hoy, 9–11 September 1976.

²¹ Robert H. Holden, “El Salvador: A Democracy of Violence”, chap. 4 in Armies Without Nations: Public Violence and State Formation in Central America, 1821–1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

²² Michael McClintock, The American Connection, Volume I: State Terror and Resistance in El Salvador, (London: Zed Books, 1985), 204–09, 216–20; Allan Nairn, “Behind the Death Squads,” Progressive, May 1984.

²³ Ariel C. Armony, “Producing and Exporting State Terror: The Case of Argentina”, in When State Kill: Latin America, the US, and the Technologies of Terror, ed. Cecilia Menjívar and Néstor Rodríguez (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 310–14., including US Special Forces Forces, support from foreign advisors in country and foreign training abroad. the Salvadoran press

²⁴ Almeida, Waves of Protest, 150–53; Greg Grandin, Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 96–99.

²⁵ “Comunicado FALANGE dice eliminará a los comunistas”, La Prensa Gráfica, 8 August 1975; McClintock, The American Connection, Volume I, 174–76.

²⁶ “¿Por que ponen bombas?”, Estudios Centroamericanos 31, no. 338 (December 1976): 731.

²⁷ US CIA, “Controlling Rightwing Terrorism”, February 1985, folder “El Salvador-Death Squads”, box 132, Oliver L. North Files, Ronald Reagan Library (RRL); Embassy San Salvador (ESS) to Department of State (DOS), Telegram 01921, 26 April 1977, 1977SANSA01921, Central Foreign Policy File (CFPF), 1973–77/Electronic Telegram (ET), Record Group (RG) 59, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) [retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (AAD), 31 March 2014].

²⁸ ESS to DOS, Telegram 03859, 17 August 1977, 1977SANSA03859, CFPF, 1973–77/ET, RG59, NARA [retrieved from AAD, 31 March 2014]; Stanley, The Protection Racket State, 117–18.

²⁹ See for example ANEP, “Planteamiento al gobierno de la republica; la tragica realided que se vive en El Salvador”, El Diario de Hoy, 16 November 1977; Stanley, The Protection Racket State, 114.

³⁰ Agrupación Central Pro Defensa de la Libertad, “Muchas gracias presidente Mister Carter, muchas gracias señor presidente Romero”, El Diario de Hoy, 16 November 1977; “Carta del Frente Femenino Salvadoreño al Secretario Todman”, El Diario de Hoy, 22 November 1977.

³¹ Stanley, The Protection Racket State, 114–118.

³² US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), “Biographic Sketch: Roberto D'Aubuisson Ariette”, November 1980, folder “El Salvador”, box 30, Executive Secretariat, NSC: Country File, RRL.

³³ Craig Pyes, “Right Builds Itself in Mirror Image of Left for Civil War”, Albuquerque Journal, 18 December 1983; Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, Inside the League: The Shocking Expose of How Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986), 190–91, 214. For documentary evidence of collaboration between ORDEN and Taiwan, see US Defence Attaché Office San Salvador, “[Awarding of “Orden de La Nube y La Bandera, en el Grado de Gran Cordon” to High-Ranking Salvadoran Military Officials]”, 8 March 1978, file 00449, El Salvador: The Making of US Policy, 1977–84 (ES), National Security Archive (NSA) [retrieved from nsarchive.chadwyck.com (DNSA), 10 February 2012].

³⁴ US DIA, “Biographic Sketch”; ARENA, “Historia del Mayor Roberto D'Aubuisson,” www.arena.org.sv/partido/historia [accessed 24 January 2015]. On the national intelligence service, see McClintock, The American Connection, Volume 1, 218–20. D'Aubuisson was later identified as a UGB death squad member. US CIA, “Controlling Rightwing Terrorism”.

³⁵ Williams and Walter, Militarisation and Demilitarisation in El Salvador's Transition to Democracy, 93–103.

³⁶ David Ernesto Panamá Sandoval, Los guerreros de la libertad, (Andover, MA: Versal Books, 2005), 41, 44, 59.

³⁷ Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 82–85.

³⁸ Michael McClintock, The American Connection, Volume II: State Terror and Resistance in Guatemala (London: Zed Books, 1985), 66–69, 85–90; Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre, 86–88, 91–94.

³⁹ Victor Perera, “Guatemala: Always La Violencia”, New York Times, 13 June 1971; Leslie Bethell, ed., Central America Since Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 143.

⁴⁰ Craig Pyes, “D'Aubuisson's Fledgling Party Finds a Mentor in Guatemala”, Albuquerque Journal, 18 December 1983.

⁴¹ ESS to DOS, Telegram 07382, 27 December 1979, ES00337, NSA [retrieved from DNSA, 10 January 2011]; ARENA, “Historia del Mayor Roberto D'Aubuisson”. The Frente Femenino Salvadoreño, which supported FAN, was another holdover from the FARO-ANEP period.

⁴² ESS to DOS, Telegram 00331, 14 January 1980, ES00331, NSA [retrieved from DNSA, 10 January 2011]. ANEP's president told the US ambassador that the PDC's confrontational stance vis-à-vis the private sector was strengthening the radical members of ANEP who preferred a purely military or military/private sector government. ESS to DOS, Telegram 00651, 29 January 1980, ES00651, NSA [retrieved from DNSA, 10 January 2011].

⁴³ FAN, “El verdadero pueblo salvadoreño informa a su patria y al mundo entero”, El Diario de Hoy, 24 December 1979. FAN, “Comunicado del Frente Amplio Nacional FAN al pueblo salvadoreño”, El Diario de Hoy, 2 February 1980.

⁴⁴ “Historia del terrorism desde 1932 hace militar”, El Diario de Hoy, 21 January 1980; Nairn, “Behind the Death Squads”.

⁴⁵ Nairn, “Behind the Death Squads”; ESS to DOS, Telegram 09533, 15 December 1981, file 00730, El Salvador: War, Peace, and Human Rights, 1980–1994 (EL), NSA [retrieved from DNSA, 9 February 2011].

⁴⁶ Almeida, Waves of Protest, 169–71. On D'Aubuisson's ties to the assassinations of Zamora and Romero, see The Commission on the Truth for El Salvador, From Madness to Hope: The 12-Year War in El Salvador (New York: United Nations, 1993), 118–33; Carlos Dada, “How We Killed Archbishop Romero”, El Faro, 25 March 2010, www.elfaro.net/es/201003/noticias/1416/.

⁴⁷ US CIA, “El Salvador: The Right Wing”, 25 March 1981, EL00060, NSA [retrieved from DNSA, 9 February 2011]; US CIA, [Allegations by Santivanez], 1 October 1986, EL00211, NSA [retrieved from DNSA, 21 November 2011]; Christopher Dickey, With the Contras: A Reporter in the Wilds of Nicaragua (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), 87–88.

⁴⁸ Robert Millspaugh to J. Mark Dion, “Possible Leads on Rightist Terrorist Activities”, 11 December 1980, EL00689, NSA [retrieved from DNSA, 1 January 2011]; United Nations, “Report of the Joint Group for the Investigation of Illegal Armed Groups with Political Motivation in El Salvador”, 28 July 1994, EL01384, NSA [retrieved from DNSA, 3 February 2011].

⁴⁹ CIA National Foreign Assessment Center, “Rightist Terrorism in El Salvador”, 15 February 1980, EL00027, NSA [retrieved from DNSA, 12 January 2011]; Dickey, With the Contras, 87; Craig Pyes, “Death Squad Democracy”, Washington Post, 17 April 1994.

⁵⁰ Mónica Naymich López Macedonio, “Historia de una colaboracio´n anticomunista transnacional: Los Tecos de la Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara y el gobierno de Cheng Kai-Shek a principios de los años setentas”, Contemporánea 1, no. 1 (2010).

⁵¹ The earliest Salvadoran participants in the WACL include Juan Rosales y Rosales, identified by the FBI as a prominent right-wing lawyer. [WACL/APACL membership, 1967–70?], Kyril Drenikoff paper (KD), box 55, folder 6, Hoover Institution (HI); US FBI, “Unknown Subjects: Furnishing Funds and Weapons to Salvadoran Death Squads in El Salvador”, 15 May 1984, EL01374, NSA [retrieved from DNSA, 15 November 2011]. Francisco José Guerrero, a prominent PCN politico, is listed as a Salvadoran delegate for the 1972 WACL conference. “List of Delegates and Observers Participating in the VI Conference of the World Anticommunist League (WACL), and the IV Conference of the World Youth Anticommunist League (WYACL)”, 1972, KD box 56, folder 2, HI. Far right politician Alex Salaverría contributed to FEMACO's monthly publication. Alex Alfonso Salaverria Lagos, “El comunismo en El Salvador”, Réplica, September 1971.

⁵² “Prof. Adolfo Cuellar: Assassinated by Communists in El Salvador”, Réplica, January 1980.

⁵³ “Cartercommunism!”, Réplica, May 1977.

⁵⁴ “Mario Sandoval Alarco´n Demands: Actions and Facts”, Réplica, May 1979.

⁵⁵ UPI, “Salvadorean Denies Plotting Coup, Calls US a Meddler”, 17 May 1980; Pyes, “D'Aubuisson's Fledgling Party Finds a Mentor in Guatemala”; Panamá Sandoval, Los guerreros de la libertad, 78–79. Panamá Sandoval describes this trip as a diplomatic mission, but D'Aubuisson claimed at the time to have received “ideological and material support.”

⁵⁶ Panamá Sandoval, Los guerreros de la libertad, 101–07; Ariel Armony, Argentina, the United States, and the Anti-Communist Crusade in Central America, 1977–1984 (Athens, OH: Center for International Studies, 1997) 162. According to Panamá Sandoval, the group travelled to Colombia, Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina.

⁵⁷ Craig Pyes, “‘The Doctor’ Prescribes Torture for the Hesitant”, Albuquerque Journal, 20 December 1983; Craig Pyes, “Private General”, The New Republic, 30 September 1985; Armony, Argentina, the United States, and the Anti-Communist Crusade in Central America, 87; ESS to DOS, “Avila Case,” Telegram 03664, 23 March 1985, EL00867, NSA [retrieved from DNSA, 2 February 2011]. D'Aubuisson told Pyes that he made contact with Argentine trainers at the 1980 CAL conference. Armony credits Panamá Sandoval's Guatemalan cousin for bringing the Argentines to El Salvador as early as 1979. A trusted US embassy source reported that Argentine General Roberto Eduardo Viola sent trainers to work with D'Aubuisson's group in mid-1980.

⁵⁸ John Soares, Jr., “Strategy, Ideology, and Human Rights: Jimmy Carter Confronts the Left in Central America, 1979–1981”, Journal of Cold War Studies 8, no. 4 (Fall 2006): 83–89.

⁵⁹ CIA, “El Salvador: Possible Coup”, 23 February 1980, RecNo 85, box 4, NSA; ESS to DOS, Telegram 01375, 24 February 1980, ES00460, NSA [retrieved from DNSA, 27 November 2010]; Stanley, The Protection Racket State, 190–91.

⁶⁰ ESS to DOS, Telegram 01358, 23 February 1980, EL00661, NSA [retrieved from DNSA, 9 February 2011]; ESS to DOS, Telegram 06185, 6 March 1980, ES00490, NSA [retrieved from DNSA, 10 January 2011].

⁶¹ Thomas D. Schoonover, “A US Dilemma: Economic Opportunity and Anti-Americanism in El Salvador, 1901–1911”, chap. 9 in The United States in Central America, 1860–1911: Episodes of Social Imperialism & Imperial Rivalry in the World System (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991); Philip F. Dur, “US Diplomacy and the Salvadorean Revolution of 1931”, Journal of Latin American Studies 30, no. 1 (February 1998).

⁶² “EE.UU. apoya al comunismo en El Salvador para crear caos que justifique su intervencio´n, afirma el FAN”, Prensa Libre, 11 March 1980. D'Aubuisson appeared alongside MNS/FAN leader Alfredo Mena Lagos, Carlos Raubusch of ANEP, Elena de Avila of the Frente Femenino Salvadoreño, former politician Alex Salaverría, cotton magnate Juan Wright, and a representative of Salvadoran farm pilots.

⁶³ Beth Nissen, “US Shocks Businessmen in El Salvador By Accusing Them of Funding Violence”, The Wall Street Journal, 1 April 1980.

⁶⁴ ESS to DOS, Telegram 03268, 8 May 1980, ES00613, NSA [retrieved from DNSA, 12 January 2011].

⁶⁵ Joseph G. Peschek, Policy-Planning Organisations: Elite Agendas and America's Rightward Turn (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1987), 24–26.

⁶⁶ Mark J. Osiel, “Constructing Subversion in Argentina's Dirty War”, Representations 75, no. 1 (2001): 119–20.

⁶⁷ See for example Ricardo Fuentes Castellanos, “La ‘Trilateral Commission’ y el comunismo”, El Diario de Hoy, 17 October 1979; Rafael Rodríguez, “CAL Report”, WACL Bulletin 14, no. 2 (September 1980): 46–47, 49.

⁶⁸ ESS to DOS, Telegram 03677, 26 May 1980, RecNo 44, Box 14, NSA.

⁶⁹ Laurie Becklund, “Death Squads: Deadly ‘Other War’”, Los Angeles Times, 18 December 1983.

⁷⁰ ESS to DOS, Telegram 03087, 2 May 1980, EL00667, NSA [retrieved from DNSA, 12 January 2011]; ESS to DOS, Telegram 03677, NSA; CIA, “Arrest of Rightist Coup Plotters”, 8 May 1980, EL00031, NSA [retrieved from DNSA, 27 November 2010].

⁷¹ Williams and Walter, Militarisation and Demilitarisation in El Salvador's Transition to Democracy, 105–11.

⁷² Baloyra, El Salvador in Transition, 114–16; William M. LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977–1992 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 62–63.

⁷³ Natasha Zaretsky, “Restraint or Retreat? The Debate over the Panama Canal Treaties and US Nationalism after Vietnam”, Diplomatic History 35, no. 3 (June 2011): 535–62.

⁷⁴ “How CIS Battles the Left on Central America”, Human Events, 23 July 1988. On the American Chilean Council, see Schoutlz, Human Rights and United States Policy Toward Latin America, 56–57.

⁷⁵ Docksai's positions noted in Ronald Docksai to CIS Executive Board, “Proposed By-Laws Changes”, 19 November 1979, Council for Inter-American Security Records (CISR), box 9, HI; ACWF, [pamphlet], 1976, Hall Hoeg (HH) 2032, MS 76.49–1, Brown University (BU).

⁷⁶ [IAS pamphlet], August 1977, CISR, box 6, HI; [IAS pamphlet], August 1979, CISR, box 6, HI; [Press release on IAS 1981], CIS Records, box 2, HI; “Inter-American Symposium—1981”, 26 May 1981, CISR, box 6, HI.

⁷⁷ De Sola attended the 1977 conference with far right columnist Ricardo Fuentes Castellanos, and in 1979 was joined by Juan Maldonado, executive director of ANEP (1980–86); Sidney Mazzini Villaenta, El Salvador's representative at the Organisation of American States; and Mauricio Gonzalez Dubon, an embassy counsellor in the United States. [IAS 1977 schedule], August 1977, CISR, box 6, HI; [IAS 1979 names list], August 1979, CISR, box 6, HI. On de Sola, see Paige, Coffee and Power, 18–19, 208–10.

⁷⁸ Orlando de Sola and Claudia de Sola, interview by Tommie Sue Montgomery, 17 January 1980, Colleción de Tommie Sue Montgomery, CIDAI; US CIA, “Controlling Rightwing Terrorism.”

⁷⁹ L. Francis Bouchey to CIS Executive Board, “Fundraising Initiatives”, 18 November 1979, CISR, box 9, HI; “Current Publications Price List”, Spring 1981, CISR, box 9, HI.

⁸⁰ Virginia Prewett, Washington's Instant Socialism in El Salvador (Washington, DC: Council for Inter-American Security, 1981).

⁸¹ Committee of Santa Fe, A New Inter-American Policy for the Eighties, ed. Lewis Tambs (Washington, DC: The Council, 1980). David Jordan and Lewis Tambs became US ambassadors in Latin America, Gordon Sumner became a special advisor to the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, and Roger Fontaine sat on the National Security Council as a Latin American expert.

⁸² [CAWG description], Winter 1981–82, CISR, box 2, HI; “Central America Speakers Bureau”, 1981, CISR, box 2, HI. On DiGiovanni's background, see Cleto DiGiovanni, Jr. and Mose L. Harvey, Crisis in Central America: Facts, Arguments, Importance, Dangers, Ramifications (Washington, DC: Advanced International Studies Institute, 1982). Information on Blatchford's firms found at United States Department of Justice (DOJ), “FARA Reports to Congress” [1979–83], www.fara.gov/annualrpts_;25844archive.html, [accessed 14 September 2012].

⁸³ Schoultz, Human Rights and United States Policy Toward Latin America, 58–64; Ian R. MacKenzie, “A “Distorted” Media View of Somoza's Nicaragua”, Washington Post, 22 November 1977.

⁸⁴ [IAS 1977 schedule]; “Central America Speakers Bureau”; DOJ, “Short Form Registration Statement for Ana O'Brien”, 9 September 1980, ES00774, NSA.

⁸⁵ DOJ, “FARA Reports to Congress.” ESFF membership derived from “Central America Speakers Bureau”; Alfonso Salaverria, Luis Escalante, and Orlando De Sola, “Letter to the Editor: The Well-Being of Salvadorans”, Washington Post, 17 April 1981; Dada, “How We Killed Archbishop Romero”.

⁸⁶ ESFF, “The Role of the Catholic Church in the Salvadorean Tragedy”, 1981, HH 4224, MS 76.46-4, BU; Alfredo Mena Lagos, “Letters to the Editor: El Salvador's Plight”, Washington Post, 19 July 1980; Margaret Hornblower, “The Exiles”, Washington Post, 22 March 1981.

⁸⁷ ESS to DOS, Telegram 00096, 6 January 1981, EL00695, NSA [retrieved from DNSA, 12 January 2011]; Dada, “How We Killed Archbishop Romero”.

⁸⁸ William A. Link, Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2008), 243–51.

⁸⁹ Jesse Helms, “A New Policy for Latin America”, Journal of Social and Political Affairs 1, no. 1 (January 1976).

⁹⁰ Grandin, Empire's Workshop, 71; “Republican Party Platform of 1980”, 18 July 1980, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25844.

⁹¹ LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 43.

⁹² US Congress, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, “Additional Views of Senator Jesse Helms from North Carolina”, in Nomination of Robert E. White (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1980): 3–10.

⁹³ Robert Pastor to Zbigniew Brzezinski, “El Salvador – Update”, 21 February 1980, EL01351, NSA. On Carbaugh, see Kathy Sawyer, “Two Helms Point Men: Locking Horns with the Liberals”, Washington Post, 27 November 1979.

⁹⁴ Baloyra, El Salvador in Transition, 108.

⁹⁵ Armony, Argentina, the United States, and the Anti-Communist Crusade in Central America, 163.

⁹⁶The Recent Presidential Elections in El Salvador: Hearings Before the Subcomms. on International Organisations and on Inter-American Affairs, 95^th Cong., 29–45 (testimony of Ernesto Rivas-Gallont).

⁹⁷Assessment of Conditions in Central America: Hearings Before the Subcomm. on Inter-American Affairs, 96^th Cong., 14–24, 30–38 (testimony of Mario Sulit and Ramsey Moore).

⁹⁸ Hoeffel, “Eclipse of the Oligarchs”.

⁹⁹US Policy Toward El Salvador: Hearings Before the Subcomm. on Inter-American Affairs, 97^th Cong., 183–89 (testimony of Manuel Enrique Hinds); Foreign Assistance and Related Programs Appropriations for 1982, Part 1: Hearings Before the Subcomm. on Foreign Operations and Related Agencies, 97^th Cong., 235–38, 369–90 (testimony of Manuel Enrique Hinds and Enrique Altamirano). On Reagan's policies, see LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 86–97, 126–27.

¹⁰⁰ Claudia M. Rosa, 30 años trabajando por El Salvador, 1981–2011: Historia política de ARENA (San Salvador: Alianza Republicana Nacionalista, 2011), 30–31. Founding members included MSN co-founder Ernesto Panamá Sandoval and FARO head Ulíses González.

¹⁰¹ Dennis Chase, “El Salvador, Argentina Strife Blocs”, Advertising Age, 5 July 1982.

¹⁰² Craig Pyes, “The New American Right Cooks Up a Hot Potato”, Albuquerque Journal, 22 December 1983.

¹⁰³ Martín-Baró, “El llamado de la extrema derecha”, 458–60.

¹⁰⁴ Rosa, 30 años trabajando por El Salvador, 35.

¹⁰⁵ “Deceased Members 1969–1997”, Mont Pelerin Society (MPS), folder 1, box 66, HI; [Membership directories 1978–1995], MPS, folder 1–3, box 67, HI.

¹⁰⁶ [IAS 1977 pamphlet]; [IAS 1979 pamphlet].

¹⁰⁷ LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 159–65.

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Aaron T. Bell

Aaron T. Bell is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at American University in Washington, DC. Email: [email protected]