El Salvador

The U.S. Role in the El Mozote Massacre Echoes in Today’s Immigration

by Nelson Rauda and John Washington

Renewed efforts to prosecute the perpetrators of the 1981 El Mozote massacre of Salvadoran civilians during the civil war will further demonstrate American involvement in the perpetuation of inequality and violence in Central America and, the authors argue, the hypocrisy of US immigration policy. 

‘I’ve Lost Everything to the Beast’: Reviewing 4 Books on MS-13

by Rachel Nolan

While the specter of the MS-13 gang has been central to political panics about immigration, the group's origins are American. A Latin American historian reviews four new books. 

How Should the US Treat Migrants when American Policy Affected the Countries They Fled?

The Temporary Protected Status designation, which has allowed hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States, originated because of the massive human rights abuses of the US-supported dictatorship in El Salvador.

Joe Biden’s Harshest Critics are Likely to be Some of His Fellow Catholics

by Theresa Keeley

Abortion is the most divisive issue for liberal and conservative Catholics in America today, but reflects a decades-long division in beliefs about how the Church should engage with the world. It may be tricky for Joe Biden to navigate as a faithful Catholic.

Sanctuary Unmasked: The First Time Los Angeles (Sort of) Became a City of Refuge

by Paul A. Kramer

Los Angeles’s first sanctuary law grew out of the refugee wave that had brought Alicia Rivera to the city. By 1982, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 refugees from El Salvador — a country with fewer than 5,000,000 people — and tens of thousands of Guatemalans had fled to the United States to escape murder, poverty, and starvation.  

"GUILTY": Justice for the Jesuits in El Salvador

Applying the doctrine of Universal Jurisdiction for human rights abuses, a Spanish Court found former El Salvador Colonel Inocente Orlando Montano guilty in the assassination of six Jesuit priests and two Salvadoran women in 1989. The National Security Archive supplied hundreds of declassified documents as evidence. 

Trump Can Use MS-13 as a Prop Because the US Won't Acknowledge a Role in Creating It

by Roberto Lovato

Roberto Lovato's new book "Unforgetting: " examines how policing in the United States, including a combined crackdown on immigration and gang activity led by William Barr after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, helped create MS-13 as a transnational criminal gang and a political symbol of fear to be exploited in election years. 

Book Launch: Roberto Lovato's Unforgetting: Family, Migration, Gangs, Borders, and Revolution

Roberto Lovato discusses his new book "Unforgetting" with Mike Davis.   

A Salvadoran-American Assembles the Fragments of a Violent Cultural History (Review)

Carolyn Forché reviews Roberto Lovato's book "Unforgetting" on the transnational history of the Salvadoran people.

How Coffee Ruined a Country

by Lizabeth Cohen

Lizabeth Cohen reviews Augustine Sedgewick's book, which argues that coffee monoculture was disastrous to El Salvador.

Twenty-six Years Later There’s Still No Justice for the Murder of 6 Jesuit Priests in El Salvador

by Brian D'Haeseleer

There’s a lesson in this but we’ve seen fit not to learn it.

U.S. Deports Salvadoran General Accused in ’80s Killings

After a 16-year legal battle, a former defense minister of El Salvador once embraced by Washington as a close ally during the civil war there in the 1980s, was deported on Wednesday after immigration courts found that he had participated in torture and killings by troops under his command.

Mayan relics discovered at Salvadoran construction site

In most countries, construction workers uncover faulty pipes, old mason work and heaps of garbage when excavating a plot of land for a new building.In El Salvador, they find Mayan relics.Working on a housing project in Colón – about 15 miles from the capital of San Salvador – construction workers unearthed Mayan pots, ceramic fragments and other artifacts.Pieces of obsidian and part of a human skeleton, which may also be from the Mayan period, were found on the site after specialists arrived to survey the site. The area around Colón is believed to be one of the riches archeological areas of the Central American country, Julio Alvarado, a technician for El Salvador’s Culture Ministry told Agence France Presse....