Obstruction in El Salvador

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-elsalvador-massacre/el-salvadors-president-says-military-files-on-civil-war-massacre-were-destroyed-idUKKCN26G2J7

Pardon my cynicism but it's rather convenient that the files regarding one of the most notorious massacres in Salvadoran Civil War, one perpetuated by the US trained and backed Atlacatl Battalion have seemingly disappeared.

The Heritage Foundation all but drafted the Reagan era policy of Rollback – a strategy which fueled and funded these wars. The Pentagon and CIA used Phoenix Program-like tactics within Central America. In many respects it was like Vietnam all over again but this time the US scored many victories – the only real defeat coming in Nicaragua where the Sandinistas were able to retain power. The episode gave rise to some of America's most famous political scandals.

While US intelligence and the various death squads targeted Left-affiliated paramilitaries and villages influenced by Liberation Theology, El Mozote was mostly comprised of Pentecostal Evangelicals.

The US would like to sweep this episode under the rug especially as a probing of the larger story points to not just torture, rapes, and massacres but to drugs and the rise of gangs like MS-13. This is all the more true as Salvadoran president Bukele is currently caught up in a scandal related to MS-13.

It's not unusual to find the politicians who pledge to uncover past scandals are actually the very figures who work to mitigate the damage, cover-up the larger story and whitewash the information that's still out there. It's nothing new.

Bukele is a classic member of the pseudo-Left. He used the rhetoric to rise to power but as he has accumulated it and exercised it he has continued to move to the Right and thus closer to the Washington orbit. This cover-up will put him in good standing with the American Establishment.