Response Essay on Pres Reagan & His Involvement in El Salvador during the 1980s
Margaret Caulkins Modern Latin America Professor Erik Ching April 4, 2011 Primary Source Portfolio Question #7 Choosing either the piece by Gomez Zimmerman or the speech by Reagan: Do you believe that the foundations upon which he defended his interpretation of the civil conflict in El Salvador and/or Nicaragua to be sound? If so, why? If not, on what grounds would you direct critique? Based on Reagan's "Address to the Nation on United States Policy in Central America," I do not believe that the foundations upon which he defended his interpretation of the civil conflict in El Salvador and/or Nicaragua to be sound. I believe this because I feel that the information that he is basing his interpretation on is wrong, and that it leaves out important areas of information. I believe that a lot of the information that Reagan throws at the American public in this speech to be inaccurate and based on hearsay and scared, Cold-War imaginings. Beyond that, Reagan uses emotional tactics to draw in his audience, and I find it quite
disgusting honestly. Reagan starts off his speech with an inaccuracy. Reagan says that the US has seen the "Soviet Union and its surrogates move to establish control over….Nicaragua and now El Salvador….it sends tons of weapons to foment revolution here in our hemisphere." [1] This is simply not true, according to our Chasteen reading in class. The Soviet Union did have involvement in Cuba, but rarely did it have any sort of involvement in other areas of Latin America. It was not sending tons of weapons into Central America-it couldn't. The Soviet Union was quite broke when all of this ...
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disgusting honestly. Reagan starts off his speech with an inaccuracy. Reagan says that the US has seen the "Soviet Union and its surrogates move to establish control over….Nicaragua and now El Salvador….it sends tons of weapons to foment revolution here in our hemisphere." [1] This is simply not true, according to our Chasteen reading in class. The Soviet Union did have involvement in Cuba, but rarely did it have any sort of involvement in other areas of Latin America. It was not sending tons of weapons into Central America-it couldn't. The Soviet Union was quite broke when all of this conflict was occurring in the mid 1980s. Another thing that I believe Reagan is wrong on is his praise of the Contras in Nicaragua, or the "freedom fighters," as Reagan says. I believe this to be a complete and utter falsehood. I do not believe that you can be referred to as a freedom fighter if you are systematically massacring and mutilating the common people of your country. In 1989, Human Rights Watch released a report on the situation stating that "[The] contras were major and systematic violators of the most basic standards of the laws of armed conflict, including by launching indiscriminate attacks on civilians, selectively murdering non-combatants, and mistreating prisoners." (Footnote 1) In 1987, the Catholic Institute for International Relations corroborated this by saying in their human rights report that "The record of the contras in the field, as opposed to their official professions of democratic faith, is one of consistent and bloody abuse of human rights, of murder, torture, mutilation, rape, arson, destruction and kidnapping."(Footnote 2) I fail to see how abusing human rights makes you a freedom fighter that deserves the aid of the United States, especially when Reagan's appeal is to the American public's moral code. Reagan tells the people that "it's in our national interest to do so, and morally, its the only right thing to do." [2] Another area that I would aim critique at is Reagan's criticism of the Sandinistas and Cuba for setting up "training camps for guerillas." [4] This seems highly hypocritical when you consider the US did the exact same thing with the School of the Americas. Once Reagan moves into speaking about El Salvador he does much of the same thing. He describes the authoritarian dictatorship as "struggling valiantly to achieve a workable democracy," which is inherently false as it was an authoritarian dictatorship [5]. Reagan refers to the guerillas "leading a campaign of violence against people." [5] But, now that the war is over the Truth Commission found that 85% of all human rights violations were committed by the military, with only 5% attributed to the FMLN. Not only that, but the government and its paramilitary forces and death squads massacred their people if they were even suspected of being in alliance with the guerilla forces. This hardly aligns with the picture that Reagan paints us of our "peace-loving friends" [6] 1. "Nicaragua" Publications. (c) 1989 Human Rights Watch, hrw.org 2. The Catholic Institute for International Relations (1987). "Right to Survive: Human Rights in Nicaragua" (print). The Catholic Institute for International Relations. Primary Source Portfolio Question #7 Response I believe that my original response to the question was mostly correct, though there were a few things I forgot to mention. One thing I forgot to address was Reagan's lack of citation of his sources. The American public had no idea where Reagan's information was coming from, and couldn't judge how reliable that information was due to this. Also, Reagan says that the American government was very hands-off in their approach to the Somoza regime, which we know to be a falsehood. This is even visibly represented within Nicaragua, with the US embassy and the Presidential Palace being next door to one another. Reagan fails to account for the US policies in Central America prior to the conflict, and its influence on the situation. He also fails to take into account the history of El Salvador and its influence on the current situation. Reagan doesn't mention the destruction of electoral events, death squads in the 1960s, or military governments before the 1980s. Reagan seems to believe that communists are the problem, not history. Reagan focuses more on communists, Cubans, Soviets and Nicaraguans more than anything else as a source of the problems in El Salvador. I still hold my opinion that the foundations upon which Reagan's speech are built are faulty and incorrect.
