Educational Media Reviews Online

From 1980-1992, the government of El Salvador was engaged in a civil war with leftist guerillas called the FMLN. The United States gave El Salvador six billion dollars in direct and indirect aid to help defeat the rebels because it felt a victory by the FMLN would mean a communist takeover of El Salvador. Despite many reports of atrocities committed by Salvadoran soldiers during the war, the presidential administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush continued to argue for U.S. support of the Salvadoran government. After the murders of six Jesuit priests, plus the priests’ housekeeper and her daughter, Speaker of the House Tom Foley opened a Congressional investigation. Rep. Joseph Moakley, D-Massachusetts, was appointed to lead the investigation. Enemies of War looks at the Salvadoran civil war, Moakley’s investigation, and the war’s aftermath.

As the video explains, El Salvador historically had been run by a handful of families that controlled land ownership and wealth in the country. The vast majority of Salvadorans led a hand-to-mouth existence, with their only chance of earning real money coming during the six to eight week period when the coffee groves were harvested. Then, they could earn the equivalent of 65 cents for each 25 pound bag they filled with coffee beans.

Protests grew over these living conditions, and the protests were supported by the Catholic Church in El Salvador, which had moved away from being an arm of the ruling oligarchy to actively supporting Salvadoran peasants in their fight for a better life. The assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 spurred the unification of five leftist groups into the FMLN. Fighting between the government and the FMLN became ferocious and civilians supporting the FMLN became the target of torture and death by government-backed troops. It was in the midst of an all-out attack by the FMLN in 1989 that the six Jesuits, along with their housekeeper and her daughter, were roused from their beds and murdered.

The trail in Rep. Moakley’s investigation of the deaths lead to a battalion of Salvadoran soldiers that had trained in Fort Benning, Georgia as part of the School of the Americas military training program. Moakley and his chief assistant charge in the video that the Bush administration knew more about the killings that it would admit to and that it was chiefly concerned with “damage control.” Although seven enlisted men and two officers in the Salvadoran army were indicted for the crimes, only two were found guilty at trials: a lieutenant, convicted of killing the housekeeper’s daughter, and a colonel, found guilty on eight charges. The others were all found not guilty, even ones who had confessed to pulling the trigger in the slayings.

The civil war finally ended with peace accords brokered by the United Nations in 1992. The UN also monitored voting in free elections held in 1994. The ARENA party, associated with the military and its death squads, won the national elections by a large majority, but the FMLN emerged as the second most powerful party and has continued to gain in subsequent elections. An independent Truth Commission in El Salvador presented findings in 1993 that army officers, death squads, and paramilitary groups had been responsible for 85% of the atrocities during the civil war.

Enemies of War, narrated by Martin Sheen, is clearly supportive of the FMLN and the rebel cause. The revelations made in the video about the El Salvadoran government’s actions make it easy to sympathize with them. Elliot Abrams, the undersecretary of state for Latin America during the Reagan administration, appears briefly to explain support for the Salvadoran government by the U.S., saying the need to defend an anti-communist government in El Salvador was in the United States’ best interests.

The video consists mostly of talking heads, but also includes some disturbing footage of wartime deaths. The approach is pedestrian, but this video is recommended as an overview of El Salvador’s politics and its relations with the U.S. over the past 20 years. It can stimulate discussion about if and when a concern for human rights should overrule strategic geopolitical concerns of the U.S.