ROBERTO D'AUBUISSON ARRIETA (EL SALVADOR)

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 00028822
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: March 9, 2023
• Document Release Date: August 17, 2020
• Case Number: F-2019-00695
• Publication Date: August 19, 1983

Approved for Release: 2020/08/17 C00028822
Roberto D'AUBUISSON Arrieta EL SALVADOR
(Phonetic: dohbweeSOHN)
President, Cox:thereat Assembly
(since April 1982)
Addressed as:
Mr. President
A former Army and National Guard officer,
Maj. (Ret.) Roberto (Major Bob) D'Aubuisson
beads the National Republican Alliance (ARENA),
which in the last election for the Constituent
Assembly, in March 1982, polled more votes than
any other rightist party. He was elected to his
present position, the top post in the Assembly, by a
loose coalition of its rightist members. According to
press accounts, since the election D'Aubuisson has
sought to form a united rightist front, including
people in the private sector and the military. Press articles say that in the maneuvering that
surrounded the selection of the country's provisional president in April 1982�a position that
D'Aubuisson wanted himself�he and his followers tried unsuccessfully to block the election
of the military's candidate. Alvaro Magaba.
C
After his election as Assembly President, D'Aubuisson announced that human rights in
El Salvador would be guaranteed and that the social and economic reforms begun in
October 1979 would be continued but would be promoted in the future with "technique,
speed, and social dynamics." He has come out strongly against the efforts of Salvadoran
guerrillas to eliminate the country's political leaders. In a July 1983 press conference, be
particularly denounced the killing of labor leader Rene Barrios Arnaya, a former pillar of
ARENA.
D'Aubuisson was born into a middle-class family in Santa Tecla, a suburb of San
Salvador. He entered military school at the age of 15 and was assigned to the National
Guard after graduation. He has attended intelligence courses at private police academies in
New York and Virginia. He has also trained with police forces in Uruguay and Taiwan. In
the early 1970s he served briefly with the US Green Berets in Panama. In 1975
D'Aubuisson was transferred to the Armed Forces General Staff. -
Following the overthrow of the rightwing government of President Carlos Humberto
Romero in October 1979, D'Aubuisson was dismissed from the armed forces. He went into
exile in Guatemala, but be returned to his country in 1970 to announce a new rightwing
political party, the Broad National Front. Arrested in May of that year because of his
involvement in a coup attempt, D'Aubuisson was held less than a week and then returned to
Guatemala. His political comeback began in September 1981, when he formed ARENA
and announced its entry in the March 1982 elections. D'Aubuisson, who will be 40 on 23
August, is married and has four children.
311.111111.
19 August 1983
Date
Approved for Release: 2020/08/17 000028822