Oliver Stone’s Salvador is a movie about journalist Richard Boyle’s experiences covering El Salvador during 1980. The country was in the midst of a civil war and the scene of much violence and bloodshed. The government was controlled by right-wing paramilitaries whose brutality had driven many on the left to become disillusioned with the political system. An insurgency was formed in the hills to oppose the government. The movie Salvador accurately depicts relations between the United States and El Salvador by presenting the narrative created by the governments of El Salvador and the United States and contrasting this with a factual portrayal of the events that transpired.
The main backdrop and justification for US involvement in Latin America was the Cold War. The policymakers in Washington, both Democrats and Republicans, decided Latin America was being infiltrated by Communist subversives from the U.S.S.R. Moscow then directed local Communist bastions of Nicaragua and Cuba to infiltrate neighboring countries and overthrow their governments; leaving communism in their place. After securing a foothold in Latin America, the US argued, the communists’ ultimate goal was to destroy America.1
This thinking is manifested in Salvador, through the characters Colonel Bentley Hyde and Ambassador Tom Kelly. They continually stated that the insurgents were communists and part of the greater communist threat. Furthermore, both state these communists were being armed and supplied by Nicaragua and Cuba.2 This justified US support for the brutal ring wing Salvadorian military; a counter measure not only against the threat of a spread of Communism, but even worse in the eyes of the United States: a viable and successful alternative to Communism.
US officials continually stated the Salvadorian army was not responsible for the majority of the violence which was carried out. It was well known that the violence included the torture and massacres of numerous unarmed civilians. The ambassador even acknowledged that right-wing factions in El Salvador were led by “pathological killer”, Major Max. He justifies support of Max’s army because there is “god knows what on the left, and [the] gutless in the middle”.
The movie also showed the majority of the violence was carried out by the US-backed Salvadorian military and their associated paramilitaries. For example, a major event in the movie was the assassination of the Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero. The movie depicted the assassination as planned out by members of military. The stated reason for the killing was Archbishop Romero rallying support against those in power. The killing was carried out in cold blood while the Archbishop was giving mass. Shortly before he was assassinated, Romero gave a plea asking for troops to stop killings and other violence against civilians. As was typical throughout the movie, the violence was immediately blamed on the leftist insurgents and this was used to justify further crackdowns against them.
The movie portrays the assassination of the Archbishop as part of an overall campaign carried out by the military against anyone in opposition. Journalists as well human rights activists and church groups were targeted. One of the most disturbing scenes of the movie was the rape and murder of four Catholic nuns leaving El Salvador for Nicaragua. Interesting to note is that one of the last things that the nuns say is that there is no political persecution in Nicaragua, which is one of the reasons it is their destination.
Again the paramilitaries are shown being guilty of the crime and again the military justified the killings by saying that the nuns were first victims, then part of the insurgency. US officials continued to claim that insurgents were receiving outside assistance. The military claims that external interference is to blame for the rebel victories and this is used to pressure Kelly to reinstate US support. This comes in time for the Salvadorian army to deliver a devastating blow against the insurgents.
The violence in the movie was not exclusively credited to the military and paramilitary forces. During one scene, Boyle and Cassady witness the execution of several captured military prisoners by insurgents. Boyle is outraged that the insurgents have become no better than the military they are fighting, but the viewer cannot help but feel that the atrocities of the military drove the insurgents to carry out these actions in revenge.
In addition to the accurate portrayal of the governments’ narratives, Salvador shows the events that actually transpired in El Salvador. In many respects these contradict the claims of the governments, revealing them to be erroneous and misleading. Many of these portrayals in fact mirror how these events are covered in our readings.
Throughout the movie Boyle, Cassady and others plead to US officials to stop arming and training the Salvadorian military. For the most part these pleas go on deaf ears and the overall US policy towards the Salvadorian government goes largely unchanged throughout the movie. The lone exception was the brief suspension of military aid carried out by Ambassador Kelly.
A primary example of a false government claim would be the insurgents are communists, the main justification for US involvement. Boyle challenges Colonel Hyde on this point without success, ultimately declaring that Hyde cannot tell the difference between someone who is left-wing and communist because as far as Hyde is concerned there is no difference. As Peter H. Smith points out in Talons of the Eagle, during the Cold War, “Washington’s perceptions of ‘communist dangers’ and tendencies rested upon exceedingly broad, loose, and often irresponsible criteria(188)” and “Though the uprising[in El Salvador] had fully indigenous roots, Washington saw the conflict as a sign of alien communist agitation( 183)”.
Another example would be that the claim insurgents were receiving aid from external sources. This continued even after Boyle and fellow journalist John Cassady provided evidence disproving this. The filmmaker made it clear that US government involvement was already decided on by government officials and therefore its actins did not always have to be justified on hard facts. As The Massacre at El Mozote makes clear, most of the weapons used by the insurgents were either bought or captured from Salvadorian military and the flow of weapons from neighboring countries had little effect on the conflict.
Further contradicting government claims, The Massacre at El Mozote emphasizes that it was common knowledge who held responsibility for the majority of violence carried out in El Salvador. It wasn’t a secret from those carrying out the crimes. The victims knew, as they were the ones being raped, tortured and murdered. The US military knew because they were responsible for the training and arming of the death squads and because of first hand accounts the embassy was receiving from the likes of Boyle and others. For example, the killers of Archbishop Romero were members of death squads that trained at the CIA’s School of the Americas, as was reported by the UN Truth Commission report. The government chose to ignore the evidence that could damage its mission in El Salvador.
Overall, Stone’s film gives the viewer a very accurate portrayal of the events in 1980 El Salvador. By contrasting the official government line with the narrative presented by dissidents such as Boyle, Salvador is able to create an excellent overall picture of US-Salvadorian relations. The main point of the film is to expose the government’s willingness to mislead the American people. Equally important is the author’s attempt at exposing the reason for this.
A very important point that is only touched upon in the movie is the situation that was simultaneously unfolding in Nicaragua. In that country, the Sandinistas had carried out an effective coup against the US-backed Somoza regime. Instead of choosing Communism or embracing Western ideology, the Sandinista lead government had decided to take their country on an independent path. The United States’ government worst fears came into fruition as this new path lead the country lead to immediate economic growth and progress in the social sector. The elites in Washington didn’t want El Salvador to follow the Sandinista model for success, which would be inspiration for additional countries to join this movement. This would effectively take these countries out of the US’s sphere of influence, weakening the United States globally.
Throughout the movie, different characters keep making allusions to Vietnam and how it was lost because the US public lost the will to fight that war, that it couldn’t handle the military losses. I believe that Stone and Boyle do not buy this. They believe that the US military was forced to withdraw because public backlash against the massacres of innocent Vietnamese civilians became too strong.
This public backlash manifest in congressional action which took the forms of the
1975 Church Committee Report, the 1975 Harkin Amendment, and the 1978 Human Rights and Security Assistance Act. These forced the government stop its overt bombing of its enemies and instead forced it to resort to clandestine funding of paramilitaries and other secret activities.
The government had to lie about El Salvador because it knew it had another Vietnam on its hands, another nationalist insurgency determined to overthrow an oppressive, US-backed authoritarian regime. Despite a few instances, the governments’ policies remained unchallenged in the press as the media failed to inform the US public and hold the government responsible. Even when the media did report on the events, they gave credit to government numbers while they downplayed the statistics unfavorable to the government as these claims were authored by “blatantly biased journalists and overly credulous human-right zealots(90, Danner).”
Furthermore, reports by the FLMN and other resistance groups were correctly labeled as propaganda. As Danner points out, regardless of this fact the numbers these groups brought forth were based on truth, and should have been given some weight in the press(88, Danner). The end result was that the Salvadorian government’s human right record got certified by Congress and military aid was able to continue to flow freely. For this reason Salvador is a condemnation of the press’s failure as much as it is of the government’s actions.
1 Holden and Zolov, Saving the New World from Communism, pg. 289
2 Holden and Zolov, The Fear of Communism in Central America, pg 293
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