LINKS REPORTED AMONG LATIN DEATH SQUADS - 1984/01/12

• Document Type: SPECIALCOLLECTION
• Collection: Argentina Declassification Project - The "Dirty War" (1976-83)
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 05776271
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: April 3, 2019
• Document Release Date: April 12, 2019
• Publication Date: January 12, 1984

Approved for Release: 2018/10/01 C0677627
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE-J=44
Links Reported
Among Latin
Death Squads
Behind the violence in Latin
America are not only left-wing guer-
rillas but right-wing assassins who
belong to death squads. They have
cast a dark specter over the peace
process.
I have learned there's an interna-
tional league of death squads oper-
ating from Mexico to Argentina. Or-
dinarily, they maintain the strictest
secrecy about their operations. But,
through a contact in the Honduran
secret police, my associate Jon Lee
Anderson arranged a face-to-face
interview in Honduras with an out-
spoken leader and founder of the
Honduran death squad.
He is a thin, fair-haired man in
his 30s, whom I will call El Lobo
(The Wolf). By day he is a doctor at
the National Hospital in Teguci-
galpa. By night he is an assassin for
ELA, the Spanish initials for Anti-
Communist Combat Army.
The ELA is a relatively new death
squad, founded in 1979. Unlike its
counterparts in Guatemala, El Sal-
vador and Argentina, the ELA is not
made up primarily of paramilitary
security forces, according to El Lobo.
Perhaps it was his amateur status
WASHINGTON POST
12 January 1984
that made El Lobo indiscreet
enough to brag to a Yankee reporter:
"We are affiliated and in contact
with similar groups in other coun-
tries."
The ELA had close ties, he said,
with the Maximilian� Hernandez
Martinez Brigade in El Salvador.
This is the group that recently
slaughtered nine members of a peas-
ant cooperative, including two preg-
nant women, as part of a stepped-up
campaign of terror.
Human rights groups estimate
that 40,000 people have died in El
Salvador since 1980. About half of
those were civilians who were sus-
pected of leftist leanings and were
murdered by the death squads.
El Lobo expressed admiration for
the Salvadoran death squad and the
general whose name it took. Gen.
Hernandez was a Salvadoran dicta-
tor who ordered the massacre of an
estimated 30,000 Indians and peas-
ants after a communist-backed up-
rising in the 1930s.
"He handled communists the right
way," said El Lobo. "He killed every
one he caught."
El Lobo gave this account of the
international fraternity of death
squads: "We go to annual confer-
ences. I went to last year's. It was in
Buenos Aires. The Triple A put it
on."
He was not referring to an auto-
mobile association, but to the Argen-
tine Anti-Communist Alliance. This
is a clandestine confederation of po-
lice, military and paramilitary goons
responsible for thousands of murders
and other disappearances during the
"dirty war" of the 1970s.
The overall umbrella group for
the death squad network is CAL
(Latin American Anti-Communist
Confederation), based in Mexico.
"CAL is our political front," said El
Lobo. "We are all 'La Mano
Blanco.'"
La Mano Blanco (The White
Hand) is the name for the warning
white glove or hand print left on or
near a victim's body. According to a
former CIA "dirty tricks" specialist,
La Mano Blanco was set up by the
CIA in Guatemala in the 1950s after
the agency engineered the ouster of
leftist president Jacobo Arbenz.
Although now a member of La
Mano Blanco's network, the Hondu-
ran death squad organization was set
up independently, El Lobo said.
Footnote: The resurgence last au-
tumn of right-wing squads in El Sal-
vador led Congress to order a stop to
U.S. backing for the Salvadoran se-
curity forces that control the assas-
sins. But President Reagan vetoed
the measure, and suspected leftists
are still being murdered with impu-
nity by goons whose salaries are in-
directly paid by US. taxpayers. The
White House, however, is pressuring
the Salvadoran government to purge
police and military officials who are
known death squad members.
Approved for Release: 2018/10/01 C05776271