Abstract

Beat the Devil

The article focuses on several socio-political issues. About twice the number of people killed on October 3, 1993, in Mogadishu, Somalia were more methodically exterminated at El Mozote, El Salvador in 1981 by Salvadoran soldiers trained by the United States. This event was described at great length by author Mark Danner in a recent New Yorker. Politicians have now made haste to deplore the act, among them Robert Torricelli, Democratic Congressman from New Jersey, chairman of the House subcommittee with oversight responsibility for Central America. Torricelli and his colleagues spent years being informed in detail about human rights abuses in Central America. El Mozote was no secret. It was reported at the time. So were thousands of other killings. A 1984 Federal Bureau of Investigation report examining the death squads remains under lock at the U.S. Justice Department. The United States would not give it to the U.N. Truth Commission last year. Nor was it declassified a few weeks ago along with 12,000 other documents released by the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department.