1986_11 The Daily Collegian November 1986

              ■ Wednesday, Nov. S, 1986 .
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Take a tour of Hell
Dear Editor,
Joe Ruelas, in his Oct. 20 letter to
The Daily Collegian defending one of
the most murderous regimes in this
hemisphere, is not a person who has
bothered to aquaint himself with the
facts of life in El Salva'dor, even though
he claims to have lived there for four
years. Ruelas sounds more like an
employee of the U.S. Embassy in that
country (which has woven such an
incredible web of sclf-servi ng lies about
the situation that their credibility is
next to zero) than someone who cares
about how U.S. aid goes to directly
repress the Salvadoran people.
Every bit of the annual $500 million
in U.S. aid money to El Salvador is
spent in conjunction with one of the
most sophisticated and devious counter-
insurgency wars this country has ever
fought, and as ex-CIA officer John
Stockwell points out, we are on the
wrong side in El Salavador.
Ruelas even goes as far as to defend
the aerial bombing of civilians, mostly
women and children, because he sees
these people as the "enemy." They may
be Ruelas* enemy, but not mine.
The Salvadoran people have been
repressed for decades by a ruthless
military/ oligarchy alliance which runs
the country for its own economic bene¬
fit. While thc U.S.-backed wealthy Salva-
dorans export coffee and cotton and
pocket the bucks (as long as they share
enough with Corporate America), the
Salvadoran population has become one
of the world's worst-fed. If the people,
led by the FMLN/ FDR in the country¬
side and the mass organizations in the
cities, are willing to take up arms
against such an unjust system after all
peaceful means of change have been
met by government violence and U.S.-
supplied weapons, more power to them.
Not only does Ruelas place himself
squarely on the wrong side in the
struggle in El Salvador, he doesn 't even
do a very good job of it. Nothing in his
letter indicated that he has read very
much about.the country if anything,
and the sourceJpr his shallow argu¬
ments has clearly been the garbage that
is put out by the State Department.
Ruelas points toward the elections,
which were heJd both in 1982 and <n
1984. With/the help of $2.2 million
from the CIA (according to Sen. Jesse
Helms, who was pissed because he
wanted the CIA to back a candidate
with closer ties to the death squads),
Duarte was elected in 1984. According
to a U.S. Senate briefing on the elec¬
tions, it was revealed that the CIA did
"everything but stuff the ballot boxes."
Anyone who has done any serious
reading'about El Salvador (Ruelas
clearly has not) knows how meaningless
the elections are in a country where
government' troops drag opposition
leaders away" from press conferences I
like they did in 1982 and mutilate thc
bodies. Ballots are also numbered in El
Salvador, and people who don't have a
stamp indicating that they voted are
assumed to be "subversives."
A "subversive" is any Salvadoran
who wants a more just and democratic
society and is willing to work for it,
anus putting the "subversive" at odds
with the oligarchy and the U.S.
Embassy.
Ruelas' profound ignorance of the
situation is demonstrated when he ,
argues that the country is a "democracy"
because people were crowding to vote,
when it was well known (except in the
U.S.) that people were really crowding
to get the election stamp because they
feared for their lives. The elections
were an important part of the U.S.
counterinsurgency strategy designed to
make El Salvador appear to be a
democracy to make it easier to get aid
from Congress while the oligarchy/-
military alliance and the U.S. Embassy
went on rulinglhe country w'tp an iron
fist.
Another trubute to Ruelas'ignorance
is that he finds it "hard to believe" that
a Christian activist could be taken
away and killed by the current govern¬
ment. Oh really? Just where was Ruelas
in the last four years? Hiding out in the
U:S. Embassy? Literally thousands of
occurrences, like the ones Ruelas finds
hard to believe have occurred since the
THIS BUD'S
FOR you:
Donaghy Sales
i
ajifr
aggressive counterinsurgency plan of
the Reagan administration has gone
into effect. In one case four U.S. nuns .
were raped and murdered by death
squads in 1982, and according to an
ex-officer of the Salvadoran govern¬
ment, those responsible are still holding
high posts in the Duarte administration.
One of the officers explained the reason
they were murdered by saying, "they
were subversives."
The attrocities committed by Salva¬
doran security forces in order to disrupt
a legitimate and courageous mass oppo¬
sition to the status quo are well docu¬
mented, leading to over 50,000 deaths.
Ruelas dismisses this fact by claiming
that the opposition groups are also
guilty, and he believes that tbe FM LN/ -
FDR commits some of these actions to
give the army a bad reputation. It
doesn't even make sense. Are we sup¬
posed to believe that rebels kill their
potential supporters to get the rest of
the people on their side? Wake up,
Ruelas, Reagan's Nicaraguan Contras
are an example of how this simply
doesn't work, and there is absolutely
no evidence that thc FMLN/FDR is
doing it anyway (unless you believe the
State Department's professional liars
bureau).
Perhaps if Ruelas wants to go on
another four-year fantasy vacation, he
should give Hell a try. 1 am sure his
report wpuld be most favorable.
Steve Bruhn
MEETING
Continued from page 1
how the adviser spends time with the
committees is not subject to A.S. approval.
It's not possible for anyone from the
student program office to do what you
want me to do."
In other business, Senator-at-Large
Scott Vick opened discussion with a
resolution to dorm students' problem with
tree sap dripping on their cars. He said
spraying the trees for aphids should solve
the problem for this season.
Vick also read a formal apology to the
other senators for authorizing the A.S.
promotion poster that depicts pictures of
all the A.S. officers and senators.
The oversized poster violated size
requirements which must be met before
any announcement is placed on College
Union and Satellite College Union display
a boards and the campus kiosks which the
CU owns. Vick said he did it in protest
because the CU is violating its own rules
with posters depicting upcoming CU
events. He held up several movie posters
arid a Starship concert poster as examples.
College Union Program
Committee Presents:
soia
:    Nov. 5, 3:00 pm, SCU   :
• Admission $1.50      j
• Preview to Alice Walker Debate •