June 25, 2002

On Monday, June 24, the long-awaited civil trial of two Salvadoran generals for torture committed by their subordinates commenced in a West Palm Beach Florida courtroom. The trial is expected to last 3-4 weeks.

This report was written by Mary Beth Kaufman, student at Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley.

Trial Update, Day Two - Court resumed today for the second day of testimony in the historic case of Romagoza et al v. Garcia et al. Once again the plaintiffs and defendants sat only a few feet away from one another, the plaintiffs at a table facing the jury, the defendants facing the judge in the small federal courtroom in West Palm Beach. Each day, the parties arrive in the courtroom before the audience or jury. They spend the rest of the day in close proximity, passing one another in the corridors and coming and going from the room.

Inside the courtroom, Peter Stern, one of the plaintiffs lawyers, called to the witness stand former Ambassador Robert White who had served as United States Ambassador to El Salvador from 1980 to early 1981. Ambassador White, who testified much of the day, described a consistent pattern of human rights violations primarily attributed to the Salvadoran military and security forces. Painstakingly leading the jury through cable after cable sent by Ambassador White or others in the Embassy to U.S. counterparts Stern asked the Ambassador to explain the nature and meaning of this official, and now declassified, correspondence. Highlighted portions were enlarged on a video screen so that the jury and others could follow along.

In El Salvador the rich and powerful have systematically defrauded the poor and denied 80 percent of the people any voice in the affairs of their country, read a portion of the first cable: The Ambassador explained that those who tried to organize peasant or union groups were beaten, tortured, or worse. The pretext for these acts of official violence, he told the jury, were supposedly to oppose the guerrillas, but the majority of the people killed by the military were those legitimately and lawfully trying to change El Salvador from a dictatorship to a democracy. The commanders of the army and security forces, he wrote in one cable, "either tolerate or encourage this activity."

The Ambassador's cables told of numerous meetings with the defendants, General Garcia and then-director of the National Guard Vides Casanova, in which he urged them to curb the violations, recounted specific instances of abuses and named violators within the military who should be purged. At times when the Ambassador would refer to either of the defendants, Stern would ask whether it was the same man who was now seated in the courtroom. "Yes," the ambassador would say, "right over there." Stern later showed Ambassador White and the jury a portion of the generals' deposition transcripts. Both men denied that any U.S. officials had brought human rights abuses to their attention. Ambassador White responded to one of the statements: "I find it incredible. I can only imagine that he wishes he could take that answer back."

During his tenure in office, Ambassador White had seen a videotape of the gunning down of a group of young boys. He testified that afterwards he urged General Garcia to stop the violence. The way to stability, he explained, was not by killing and torturing people. He told Garcia that the only result of such action would be to radicalize the entire population. White recollected that Garcia's reaction was simply to shrug. When Stern asked the Ambassador again if the security forces had been responsible for the pattern of human rights abuses, the Ambassador answered, "not only in my opinion, but that of anyone. This is not debatable, it's a fact; you can read it in any text on El Salvador."

The Ambassador's testimony also focused on a letter sent by the Salvadoran Christian Democratic party to the top military and junta leaders on January 31, 1980, three months after the October 15 coup which brought a civilian-military coalition into power. The letter denounced 19 acts of violence and torture against members of the Christian Democratic Party. It implicated members of the military in these acts, particularly the National Guard, indicating that the incidents were not isolated events. It also called for the dismantling of the death squad, Orden, which had been disbanded in name only but was still carrying out acts of cruelty. Finally, it called for a public demonstration that these types of acts would not be tolerated. Specifically, the letter recommended issuing a general order from the military High Command with precise instructions as to how to treat the population, to clarify that people in custody should not be mistreated, to guarantee the right to peaceful assembly, and to insure the presence of uniformed officers for any legitimate arrests. Officers who mistreated detainees should be disciplined, the letter urged, listing by name ten of the officers known for their abuses.

"Do you think it would have been possible to implement these measures?" Stern asked Ambassador White. "Yes," he answered simply.

After the morning break, the judge explained to the jury that Ambassador White was testifying as both a fact and expert witness, so that he could testify to things he saw and heard as well as opinions he formed as a result of his expertise in the region. Ambassador White then testified that as far as he knew, the armed forces had not responded in any way to the Christian Democrats' letter. When asked if General Garcia had responded in some way, White answered, "I have never seen such a response and I'm positive I would have."

Another of the incidents highlighted in Ambassador White's cables was the capture and murder of the leaders of the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR), a political coalition, on November 27, 1980. In his cable about the murders, the Ambassador wrote that it was "inconceivable" that a large group of heavily armed men could surround the Jesuit high school where the men had been meeting, conduct a room by room search and then abduct the six men without official permission, if not the participation of the security forces. The Ambassador explained that Vides Casanova told him that the security forces were maintaining constant surveillance of the legal aid office of the Catholic Church, which was in the same location. "The killings last week of the FDR leadership were not an aberration;" White wrote in the cable, rather, he explained, the assassination of the FDR leaders was "but the latest and most spectacular example" of a campaign of quickening repression.

The testimony ended as Stern inquired whether General Garcia had ever solicited U.S. assistance in dealing with human rights abusers. "No," Ambassador White answered. When Stern then asked how he would have responded to such a request, the ambassador responded, "Joyfully, that was what I was waiting to hear. I never did hear it."

Under cross examination, Defendants' lawyer Kurt Klaus questioned Ambassador White at length about the historical roots of the oligarchy in El Salvador and the nature of various revolutionary groups in the region, including the groups in El Salvador that had formed the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) in 1980. At one point Klaus asked the Ambassador if the landowners and oligarchy, "in Marxist terms," controlled the means of production. "Yes," the Ambassador answered. He frequently asked whether the revolutionary groups in the region were communist and whether they had backing from Cuba. Many of his questions had unclear connections to the case. For example, he asked how many former Peace Corps volunteers went on to invest or become business owners in the countries where they had served. The Ambassador had never seen such a survey conducted.

At one point Klaus asked the Ambassador if it was his opinion that too much emphasis was placed on human rights, over political and economic interests of the United States. "I firmly believe," the ambassador answered, "that human rights policies in Latin America gave us an organizing principle enabling us to reject dictatorships and call for democracies." It was clear to any objective observer, he explained, that the days of dictatorship were over - the important point was to make a smooth transition to democracy. When asked whether it was also a concern of U.S. policy to stop the flow of communism, Ambassador White answered yes and explained that the U.S. goals of protecting human rights and fighting communism were connected. "You cannot beat something with nothing," he explained; "you can't beat communism by supporting a dictatorship, you have to move towards democracy.

Klaus also focused some of his questions on the governing junta, and asked whether the military was under the junta's command. Ambassador White rejected this characterization, affirming that the military controlled itself and was beyond the control of the junta.

On redirect, Peter Stern brought the jury's attention to a line in one of the previously shown cables in which the Ambassador pointed out that Cuba wasn't the main concern in terms of El Salvadors conflict. The Ambassador stated his opinion that the revolution in El Salvador was "homegrown" and "authentic" and "the result of the heaped up oppression of decades." Stern then asked the Ambassador if he felt that the defendants were advancing the end of the military dictatorship. "No," he answered, "they were hindering the march of democracy by not playing by the rules of a civilized society."

In the remaining hour and half, the plaintiffs' lawyers played portions of the video-taped depositions of the generals, in which they denied knowledge of human rights abuses. It was the first time the generals' voices were heard in the courtroom, other than when they introduced themselves at jury selection. "I never had any knowledge that torture was performed within the armed forces," General Garcia declared on the videotape, "because if it had been that way, necessary means would have been taken to control it." When questioned later about the command structure of the Salvadoran military, Garcia answered, "the military cannot function without a chain of command; it is that way throughout the world."

Tomorrow, June 26 2002, Roberto Alvarez, a lawyer and formerly of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, and Father Paul Schindler, who worked in El Salvador for 10 years, will testify.