Today in Labor History June 19, 1985: Gunmen opened fire on an outdoor restaurant in San Salvador’s upscale Zona Rosa, killing 13, including four U.S. Marines and two U.S. businessmen. A broadcast by Radio Venceremos, the FMLN’s pirate radio station, said: "If U.S. Army members and CIA agents died in San Salvador, it was because they came to attack our people. No one had summoned them; they died as a result of the interventionist policy carried out by President Reagan, whose intervention grows day by day. Reagan will have to assume full responsibility for his deeds." I was in El Salvador in 1993 and some of the bullet holes were still visible from the Zona Rosa attack. And, even though peace had been officially declared at this point, there were still sporadic death squad murder occurring, even while I was there. I remember going to a peace march in San Salvador that was patrolled by armed United Nations monitors. Buses had driven in from every corner of the country, displaying banners of the department or town from where they came, as well as others demanding an end to governmental impunity and assassinations.
Mark Danner wrote a really horrifying, but excellent article in the New Yorker, 1993, about the dirty war the Salvadoran government had waged against its own people. It includes the story of how guerillas pretended to allow the Radio Venceremos transmitter to get captured by the ruthless Colonel Monterosa, when in reality they had packed it full of explosive to destroy the colonel. You can read it here: http://markdanner.com/1993/12/06/the-truth-of-el-mozote/
