Many of the critics [of the School of the Americas] supported Marxism -- Liberation Theology -- in Latin America -- which was defeated with the assistance of the U.S. Army.
US Army - School of the Americas web site
"Frequently Asked Questions"
1999
Indeed.
I don't think the government (of El Salvador) was responsible. The nuns were not just nuns; the nuns were political activists. We ought to be a little more clear-cut about this than we usually are. They were political activists on behalf of the Frente (the guerrillas) and somebody who is using violence to oppose the Frente killed them.
Jeanne Kirkpatrick
December 1980
All I know is that D'Aubuisson is a free enterprise man and deeply religious.
Jesse Helms
Response to evidence that D'Aubuisson directed death squads that murdered thousands of civilians
More than a dozen conservative organizations last night honored Roberto D'Aubuisson, the leader of El Salvador's extreme right wing, with a plaque and a closed-door dinner for 120 people at the Capitol Hill Club.
The plaque expresses appreciation for D'Aubuisson's "continuing efforts for freedom in the face of communist aggression which is an inspiration to freedom-loving people everywhere."
Washington Post
5 December 1984
It is a subject we bring up every time we meet with somebody from the Soviet Union, and I suppose it is a subject that might be asked the churchmen who want to see Soviet influence in El Salvador improved.
George P. Shultz
Secretary of State under Reagan Administration
March 1983
In 1993, the United Nations Truth Commission on El Salvador named the army officers who had committed the worst atrocities of the civil war. Two-thirds of them had been trained at the School of the Americas. Among them were Roberto D’Aubuisson, the leader of El Salvador’s death squads; the men who killed Archbishop Oscar Romero; and 19 of the 26 soldiers who murdered the Jesuit priests in 1989.
George Monbiot
October 30, 2001
I'm posting this diary to remind people of what the international ruling classes are capable of when their power is threatened. Even by the most peaceful and non-violent movement imagineable.
Liberation theology was such a movement. With its emphasis on the "preferential option for the poor" and its condemnation of Marxism's often authoritarian tendencies and call for violent revolution, LT was a perfect movement for the Third World to embrace. It recognized that the desperation of the world's impoverished populations was leading it to embrace extremist movements such as Marxist-Leninism. LT sought a humane alternative to both capitalism and communism. It did not seek violent insurrection as a matter of policy, but did embrace the right of the poor to defend themselves.
LT sought only dignity for those living in the most wretched of conditions on the Earth and it was subsequently crushed by the landed gentry of Latin America through the use of its fascist militaries with "the assistance of the U.S. Army." The Vatican alone with its numerous condemnations could not silence this cry of the oppressed. As Archbishop Romero said: the Church is not the hierarchy, the Church is the people. Only the numerous oligarchies of Latin America and their armies, with much aid from the US, could defeat this popular movement.
What the future holds, no one can tell. But I have a feeling that LT is something the US and its numerous allies in the global ruling class will have to address in the future.