Forty five years ago, on this day, December 2nd, 1980,
1980 Salvadoran Civil War: Four U.S. nuns and churchwomen, Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan, and Dorothy Kazel, are murdered by a military death squad.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 339ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that the US has been killing people for fun and profit for centuries. It started with the local populations foolish enough to be there when whitey wanted their land. It went on and on.
Here’s Smedley Butler –
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
The specific context was that the US government was supporting the 14 families with their death (squad) grip on El Salvador.
What I think we can learn from this – as per Chomsky, you can have a society that has a high degree of freedom that is also a bloodthirsty empire. The two are not mutually contradictory.
What happened next
As per Wikipedia –
As news of the murders was made public in the United States, public outrage forced the U.S. government to pressure the Salvadoran regime to investigate. U.S. President Jimmy Carter suspended aid to El Salvador. The earliest investigations were condemned as whitewash attempts by the later ones, and in time, a Commission on the Truth for El Salvador was appointed by the United Nations to investigate who gave the orders, who knew about it, and who covered it up. Several low-level guardsman were convicted, and two generals were sued by the women’s families in the U.S. federal courts for their command responsibility for the incident.
Unlike President Carter, succeeding U.S. President Ronald Reagan favored the Salvadoran military regime; he authorized increased military aid and sent more U.S. military advisers to the country to aid the government in quelling the civil/guerrilla war.
See also the 1989 murder of six Jesuit intellectuals, their housekeeper and her daughter.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day
December 2, 1964 – Mario Savio’s “bodies on the gears” speech at Berkeley..
December 2, 1981 – “Is the world getting warmer?” (YES)
December 2, 1991 – “Ecologically Sustainable Development” bites the dust…
December 2, 2023 – Exxon’s boss vs IEA, planet – All Our Yesterdays