AIDS in Brazil
I was glad to see the article on the
AIDS situation in Brazil in your Nov./
Dec. 1989 issue. Unfortunately, your
author makes the peculiar statement,
“but only one gay organization, lo-
cated in the poor northwest suburbs of
Rio de Janeiro, is openly attempting to
address AIDS from a gay perspective.”
In fact, the Grupo Gay da Bahia, in the
lower northeast part of Brazil, has been
doing a lot of AIDS work since at least
1985. Perhaps the author depended on
misinformed sources from the large
southern cities. The Grupo Gay da Bahia
is still doing AIDS education work and
is going strong.
Jeff Keith
Philadelphia
From San Salvador
Here in San Salvador, Cristiani’s
announcement that four officers and
five soldiers were arrested for the mur-
ders of the Jesuits (clearly timed to
precede the congressional debate over
U.S. aid to El Salvador) was seen as a
positive step, but it hardly resolves the
case. Few think that Army Col. Guill-
ermo Alfredo Benavides, currently
charged with ordering the killings,
would have taken such a decision on his
own.
Several people have told me they
spoke to the Jesuits between the Mon-
day evening search of their residence
and their assassination Wednesday
night, and urged them to stay else-
where. The Jesuits insisted nothing
would happen to them. Many have asked
how someone as brilliant as Ignacio
Ellacurfa could have thought it safe for
the priests to remain in their residence.
The national radio network, the only
media permitted to function during the
offensive, repeatedly broadcast viru-
lent threats against Ellacurfa, as well as
well-known figures identified with the
Left. (All independent media coverage
has been suppressed under the state of
siege. Freedom of expression was and
remains suspended.) Leaders of the
popular movement and political lead-
ers such as Rub6n Zamora and Guill-
ermo Ungo went into hiding. Ironi-
cally, the Jesuits may have been killed
precisely because they did not think
they were the most likely targets.
The officers clearly felt that they
could, as in the past, act with impunity.
And why wouldn’t they think so? To
date no Salvadoran military officer has
been tried and convicted for the politi-
cal killing of civilians. No progress has
been made in the investigation of the
October 31 noontime bombing of the
FENASTRAS labor federation office
in downtown San Salvador, in which
ten unionists died and dozens were in-
jured. Nor has any progress been made
in locating four leaders of the San Cay-
etano El Rosario Cooperative, appar-
ently detained more than a month ago
by soldiers under the command of Col.
Mauricio Staben, long linked to death
squads. Nor is there any investigation
of the hundreds of other cases of civil-
ians killed, many in cold blood, during
the offensive-not to mention the tens
of thousands killed in the last ten years.
The January 12 murder of social
democratic leader Hector Oquelf
Colindres in Guatemala sent a chilling
message and also seems to provide hard
evidence of coordination between the
Salvadoran and Guatemalan ultra-
Right. All this seems so obvious that it
hardly bears saying. Unless steps are
taken to bring a negotiated end to this
war, to punish those responsible for
past human rights violations and weed
them out of the armed forces, these
kinds of horrors will recur. But if the
United States is again satisfied with
cosmetic changes, with an “accept-
able” level of human rights violations,
El Salvador will continue to bleed.
Looking out my window, knowing
but not accepting that I will no longer
see those familiar Jesuit faces, I can
only hope that their deaths will become
a turning point in U.S. policy.
The writer is a North American
residing in San Salvador who wishes to
remain anonymous.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 11
CONTINUED
Read Our Lips
A while ago a popular left publica-
tion advertised that one should sub-
scribe because if not “you might miss
the revolution.” I am afraid that NA-
CLA is missing the revolution now
taking place in Peru. In the issues on
drugs and the homeless, Sendero Lumi-
noso is either given short shrift or writ-
ten off completely. The issue on home-
lessness capsules an incident which
makes Sendero look like an enemy of
under the auspices of the army, have
killed 8,000 grassroots activists since
1986.
Harvest of Violence: The Maya Indi-
ans and the Guatemalan Crisis ed. by
Robert M. Carmack, University of
Oklahoma Press, 1988, 288 pp., $21.95
(cloth).
More than a dozen North and Latin
American anthropologists document the
consequences of the Guatemalan mili-
tary’s genocidal policies on everyday
life in several indigenous communities.
David Stoll’s “Evangelicals, Guerril-
las and the Army” is especially instruc-
tive on the confluence of domestic and
international sources of violence. Tour-
ism, the conditions of refugees and the
destruction of Indian culture also re-
ceive careful examination.
Language and Politics by Noam
Chomsky, ed. by Carlos P. Otero, Black
Rose Books, 1989, 779 pp., $44.95
(cloth), $24.95 (paper).
In this series of previously unpub-
lished interviews spanning 20 years,
Chomsky expounds on the intersection
of language and radical politics. For
those who know him only as media
analyst and critic of foreign policy, this
wide-ranging book offers glimpses of
his studies on language, anarchist the-
ory and critiques of radical politics as
practiced since the 1960s.
In Nicaragua by Joel Kovel. Free
Association Books, 1988, 183 pp., $35
(cloth).
A reflective memoir that explores
the texture of everyday realities in war-
the people. Yet nothing could be further
from the truth. Sendero has, despite
increasing military intervention, con-
stantly gained power and spread across
the country. Its ranks are not thinning
but getting stronger over time. It has
moved from the rural to the urban areas
and is recruiting among students and
labor as well as campesinos. Yet a
NACLA reader would know none of
this. Has NACLA become one of impe-
rialism’s running dogs?
Robert Ames
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