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Fate 1
During your senior year the Daily Californian publishes an article on the15th anniversary
of the founding of the Peace Corps and even reproduces Kennedy's executive order.
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You begin to research volunteering in the Peace Corps as an option for your post-graduation plans; eventually you decide to join. What did you find out about it? Why did you make this decision? Why are you interested in going to a Central American country? What other opportunities did you have after college? Why go into the Peace Corps instead of into the work force?
It is November, 1978 and you have been in El Salvador for almost a year. You live and work in a small village in the Chalatenango Province in the northern part of the country near the border with Honduras. You are the only Peace Corp Volunteer in the area for 50 miles. Your mail arrives once every three weeks, and to use a phone you must wait in line in the center of town and hope that the phone works -- often times it does not. Fortunately, because of your Environmental Science degree the Peace Corps were able to process your application immediately and have put you to work studying soil erosion and sustainable agriculture in this village. What is your daily life like? Where do you live? How do you communicate? How do the people in the village treat you? What projects are you working on? Do you regret the decision you made to join the Peace Corps?
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Your work is going well and you are adjusting to life a universe away from Berkeley.
However, you continue to hear the locals becoming increasingly frustrated with the
Salvadorian government and the recent election of Carlos Humberto Romero. The political history of El Salvador is a long and complicated one. Just
nine years ago, in 1969, the country was at war with neighboring Honduras and has been
under military rule ever since. The country is filled with a various political groups
whose names and acronyms are difficult for you to keep track of. Fortunately, all of this
information was given to you during your Peace Corps training in
Mexico.
You have begun to hear rumors that the marginalized peasants are trying to organize themselves into one unified party called the FLMN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front). The Peace Corps has strongly advised you to remain neutral in regards to any political issues in the country. They remind you that you are there for humanitarian reasons only --nothing else.
On your way home one afternoon you pass this sight:
Who are the FLMN? What do you find out about them? How do you find this out? What propaganda is being spread about them by the government and by themselves? How do you react to the growing tensions? Do the Peace Corps warnings contradict the agricultural objectives of your assignment?
It is April of 1979 and you are five months into your recently extended term in El Salvador. Have you had any word from home? Your agricultural work continues, but the political situation, according to what you have head and seen is worsening. The villagers in your town tell stories of how the army led by President Romero have taken to abducting anyone who oppose his regime. You have also heard people talk about a growing opposition that is ready and willing to take matters into their own hand and fight the army.
Three weeks ago, on your way back
from your field work, you stop in the town of Santa Ana for something to eat. During your
meal you hear the familiar sounds of English being spoken at a table just out of your
sight. Your immediate thought is that these must be other Peace Corps Volunteers (who else
would be speaking English). As you listen to their conversation, you realize that they are
not who you originally thought they were. The bits of conversations that you can pick up
leads you to believe that they are somehow connected to the U. S. government... possibly
CIA. You leave unnoticed and head home to Chalatenango. What are
these Americans doing here? How can you find out? What are your suspicions?
The basic source of information in your area is the radio. Many of the villagers in the remote north control the radio and daily broadcasts rail against against the government and its policies of increased economic and political repression. You also hear reports of government atrocities -- it sounds like hundreds of people are now "missing" including Catholic priests. You have seen leaflets that have been dispersed throughout the country by government troops that read "Be A Patriot! Kill A Priest!" What else have you seen and heard?
May 1987
It has been seven years since the Peace Corps pulled you and all other PC Volunteers out of El Salvador. Since then you have relocated to Washington DC and devoted yourself to working for various human rights organizations. One of these organizations is the Human Rights Watch. From 1981-1985 what projects have you worked on? How have your experiences in El Salvador helped to shape your views on Human Rights in Central America and in the rest of the world?
In 1985 you left the Human Rights Watch to work for Democratic Senator Daniel k. Inouye from Hawaii. Why did you make this switch?
In November 1986 the tangled U.S. foreign-policy scandal known as the Iran-contra affair came to light when President Ronald Reagan confirmed reports that the United States had secretly sold arms to Iran. He stated that the goal was to improve relations with Iran, not to obtain release of U.S. hostages held in the Middle East by terrorists (although he later acknowledged that the arrangement had in fact turned into an arms-for-hostages swap). Outcry against dealings with a hostile Iran was widespread. Later in November, Att. Gen. Edwin Meese discovered that some of the arms profits had been diverted to aid the Nicaraguan "contra" rebels--at a time when Congress had prohibited such aid. An independent special prosecutor, former federal judge Lawrence E. Walsh, was appointed to probe the activities of persons involved in the arms sale or contra aid or both, including marine Lt. Col. Oliver North of the National Security Council (NSC) staff.
Reagan appointed a review board headed by former Republican senator John
Tower. The Tower Commission's report in February 1987 criticized the president's
passive management style. In a nationally televised address on March 4, Reagan
accepted that judgment without serious disagreement.
Select Congressional committees conducted joint televised hearings from May to August. Senator Inouye served as the chair of the Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition. As an Inouye aid you are allowed to attend these hearings. During these hearings what do you learn about the scandal?
On June 9th Oliver North's secretary, Fawn Hall, is called in to testify. In some of the most disturbing testimony of the hearing Hall admits to having shredded telephone records of her boss, Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, last Nov. 21 to prevent the Iran-contra initiatives from becoming "unraveled."
Occasionally flashing a temper that had been well-controlled in her first day
of testimony to the House and Senate panels investigating the scandal, Hall
refuses to accept any criticism of
Col. North and insisted that he was "walking a fine line in an effort to
do what was right" as a member of North's National Security Council "team."
Her greatest claim comes when she says, "I felt uneasy, but sometimes, like I said before, I believed in Col. North and there was a very solid and very valid reason that he must have been doing this. And sometimes you have to go above the written law, I believe."
Listening to Hall's testimony infuriates you. As her testimony concludes you navigate the courtroom in an effort to get close enough to speak to her. What do you say?
