Supporting Repression: U.S. Policy and the Demise of Human Rights in El Salvador 1979-1981

Abstract

The U.S. government has been the source of a vast programme of bilateral and multilateral economic aid and various forms of military assistance to the ruling classes of El Salvador since the early 1950s. Between 1953 and 1979, executive branch agencies channelled $218.4 million in economic aid and $16.8 million in military loans and credits to bolster and sustain a state apparatus compatible with American policy goals in the region. During the same period, some $479.2 million flowed from the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and other U.S.-influenced multilateral financial institutions into the coffers of the dominant Salvadoran political and economic groups.' This long-term, large-scale involvement of the U.S. in El Salvador both economically and militarily, has been to a considerable degree responsible for sustaining in power repressive, autocratic regimes that refuse to deal with underlying social and economic problems that persist into the present period. External economic assistance has served to benefit an entrenched oligarchy and its penchant for speculative investments in pursuit of private capital accumulation