Dr Charlie Clements – A Journey of Conscience: The Anniversary of Archbishop Romero Assassination, US enabled Death Squads and War Crimes Remembered
Dr Charlie Clements was radicalized into a peace justice activist through the lies he saw and was a part of in Viet Nam. On 3/7/1982 he entered FMLN controlled area on Guazapa Volcano El Salvador to provide medicine to peasant campesinos
For Charlie best example of war crimes was symbolized by Archbishop and our US nuns being raped and murdered. They like so many others were accused of being communist because they were working with the poor. US allied slogans included ‘Be Patriotic, kill a Priest!” Meanwhile fraudulent elections were put forth as proof of democracy to the US public by Dick Cheney and others.
To support unfairness most often requires repression. A thousand Salvadorans not military operatives but mainly civil society noncombatants per month were being disappeared, tortured and/or killed by US enabled death squads.
FMLN broadly supported by the people. That’s how they got food, intelligence & hid. Its very hard to defeat a movement supported by the majority population. During govt sweeps whole villages had to move often through government controlled areas. If they were caught worse than death awaited them.
Stories of a mother suffocating her child to keep from giving up positions and certain slaughter of all. Therefore, often that was the function of the FMLN to stall or distract army so civilians could flee government sweeps.
Imagine: a 1980 NYT picture of a peasant holding up a bolt action rifle from WWI, & shooting at an A-37 fighter jet with a gatling gun on board that is shooting a hundred thousand rounds per minute (the equivalent of putting a bullet in every square foot of a football field every 60 seconds).
And the question posed by our government & the MSM war promoting propagandists is:
“Where did that peasant get that rifle?”