El Salvador: 1980s army hit list unearthed

[Judi Lynn]

El Salvador: 1980s army hit list unearthed
Submitted by Weekly News Update... on Tue, 10/21/2014 - 01:50

A secret July 1987 Salvadoran military document revealing the methods the army used during El Salvador's 1979-1992 civil war was made public for the first time on Sept. 28, International Right to Know Day. Entitled the "Yellow Book" ("Libro Amarillo&quot , the 270-page document is a compilation the Joint Staff of the Armed Forces' Intelligence Department (C-II) made of 1,915 entries about people the military considered "criminal terrorists." Of these, 1,857 individuals were identified by name, along with nicknames and photographs. The people named were members of unions, political parties, and groups of the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), including current Salvadoran president Salvador Sánchez Cerén.

According to an analysis by the DC-based National Security Archive, the University of Washington Center for Human Rights and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG), 273 of the names (15%,) matched people reportedly killed in El Salvador during the 1980-1992 period; 233 (13%) matched reported victims of forced disappearances; 274 (15%) matched reported torture victims; and 538 (29%) matched reported victims of detention or arrest. A total of at least 43% of the people listed in the Yellow Book were victims of human rights violations.

The Yellow Book was discovered by a person who remains unidentified. Its existence was revealed last year by Al Jazeera and the Mexican daily La Jornada, but the document itself was unavailable until now. It is the first secret military document made public from the time of the civil war; the Salvadoran military, which was then strongly backed by the US, has refused to release any documents. Miguel Montenegro, the director of the El Salvador Human Rights Commission (CDHES), expects the publication to have a great impact in El Salvador at a time when activists are pushing for the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) to declare unconstitutional a 1993 law providing amnesty for the military's crimes during the period.

The National Security Archive notes that the Yellow Book seems to incorporate advice from the US government. In 1981 US brigadier general Fred Woerner carried out an assessment of the Salvadoran military's strategy for the new administration of US president Ronald Reagan (1981-1989). One of Gen. Woerner's recommendations was that the Salvadorans should "publish and maintain blacklists with photos of all known insurgents and their aliases at ports of entry/exit, border crossing points, and internal checkpoints." (National Security Archive, Sept. 28; Adital, Brazil, Oct. 13)

http://www.ww4report.com/node/13643

(Short article, no more at link.)

(My emphasis.)

[Judi Lynn]

1. Inside El Salvador’s Military Blacklist

October 14, 2014

The Yellow Book

Inside El Salvador’s Military Blacklist

by EVELYN GALINDO-DOUCETTE


The Yellow Book (Libro amarillo) is a 270 page document from 1987 that the National Security Archive in Washington DC made public on September 28th, 2014. The Yellow Book includes 1,975 photographs that the Salvadoran Armed Forces and the State Department of Intelligence of El Salvador used to catalogue people as “terrorists” and “enemies” of the state. The Yellow Book is the only military document that has been made public to this day.

At first glance the document seems to reiterate many of the cases that were made public through the work of the Truth Commission in El Salvador in the early 1990s. However, upon closer inspection, important clues begin to emerge about the nature of military surveillance of Salvadoran citizens and how disappearances and deaths were covered up. For example, in the document, names are encoded with letters and the codes matched with photographs that strip citizens of the very identities that stitched them into Salvadoran society. In the first few pages the book lays out a system for referencing “terrorist delinquents” so that names would not be spoken by radio or telephone. In effect, this code facilitated the process of making detainees disappear without a trace. The pictures themselves provide further clues about state surveillance; some photographs look as though they were part of the state ID card photographs and yet other photographs show individuals in much more haggard condition. Were these photographs taken during a given moment of detainment? Yet other photographs look as though they were taken during moments shared between friends or families. Were these photographs stolen from people’s homes during raids? There are other photographs that seem to have been taken without the person knowing that they were being photographed. These types of photographs suggest the work of a secret police that was trailing marked individuals. Additionally, the fact that the book was a photo-album to be photocopied means that it was likely a work in progress. As photographs were obtained they were added and information could shift and change without displacing the logic of the entire text.

The code also reveals the nature of state surveillance of Salvadoran citizens in the 1980s. The document identifies Salvadorans as leaders of militant groups, militants, and union organizers and specifies which particular group or political party the person is associated with. Salvadoran state authorities also recorded additional information about individuals such as pseudonyms and noted any trips abroad to Nicaragua, Cuba, Russia or China. Dozens of individuals are marked as “collaborators,” which leads the viewer to wonder about the torture mechanisms that broke the will of militants. The fact that there were so many collaborators muddies the public memory of a clearly divided left and right. What was the nature of the collaboration? Does “collaboration” mean naming people during torture sessions or does it imply a much deeper involvement as in the Chilean cases of Luz Arce and Alejandra Merino? Does the title of “collaborator” mean that the individual survived their involvement with the Salvadoran Armed Forces? Other individuals are listed as “pardoned” and this category of individuals also leaves many questions.

On the cover page just above the title of the book, a penned note serves as a prologue: “That this may be used. Make photocopies of the photographs and print them in bulletins, so that their enemies will be known.” This is part of a secondary “code” at work in the document in which some photographs are starred in pen and other names are crossed out. The stars mark names that are well known today including El Salvador’s current President Salvador Sánchez Cerén.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/14/inside-el-salvadors-military-blacklist/