Reagan vs Maryknoll [View all]

[H2O Man]

“The story of sanctuary is hardly remembered and is therefore a missing piece of the Reagan puzzle.” -- James Carroll; House of War


Thirty years ago, the United States was faced with the question of what to do with hundreds of thousands of refugees from Central America. These people were fleeing their war-torn nations: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. It was part of an important era in the struggle for human rights, and involved significant changes in the manner in which “middle America” viewed the government.

For many decades, US policy towards Central America was shameful. US corporations such as United Fruit and Domino Sugar (and multinationals such as Gulf & Western) had installed oligarchs to insure that those nations’ natural resources were accessible. This created a huge economic imbalance between the 1% and the 99% in those countries, not unlike the direction our society is heading in today.

When the people rebelled, the oligarchs responded with horrible violence. If the “threat” continued, the US military was sent in. A pattern was set: anyone who opposed the oligarchs was called a “communist,” which justified the swift and repeated use of US military force.

In the mid-1970s, two dynamics changed: in Central America, the synergy of Native thought and Catholic practice resulted in “liberation theology”; and in the USA, the experience of the Vietnam war had opened the public’s mind to the reality that many of the civil wars around the globe had more to do with nationalism, than a centralized communist threat.

In 1979, a group known as the Sandinistas overthrew Somoza in Nicaragua. The eight-member leadership council included one Marxist, three Catholic priests, and four left-wing nationalists. President Carter, who was preoccupied with other domestic and international events, did not seem concerned by the Sandinistas coming to power.

However, in 1980, a failed, B-grade actor was elected president, and Ronald Reagan suffered from extremely concrete, paranoid thinking. He viewed Nicaragua as a “second Cuba” in the Western Hemisphere, and was intent upon destroying the red menace. Thus, US advisors and “contractors” began “assisting” the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras -- and the “Contras” in Nicaragua -- in warfare against those seeking liberation.

On March 23, 1980, archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador pleaded with the soldiers to refuse to kill citizens, and to end the repression in their nation. The next day, he was shot dead while saying mass. During his funeral, the military again attacked, killing 40 people. However, two US bishops were among the crowd, and when they returned home, they began addressing the US-backed violence.

Later that year, four American women (three nuns and a lay person) were kidnapped, raped, and murdered by the same group of thugs who murdered Romero. Their leader had been trained in the School of the Americas at Fort Benning. Reagan’s UN Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick told Congress that the women were “not real nuns.”

However, the Speaker of the House knew better. Tip O’Neill’s aunt was a Maryknoll nun, which taught and practiced liberation theology. He was also influenced by the Jesuits from Boston College. O’Neill, although he had a good personal relationship with Reagan, knew that the president lacked the intellectual ability to view Central America in anything but the starkest black-and-white context. And so he began lobbying others in the legislative branch to handcuff the Reagan administration’s drive to involve the US military in a regional conflict.

Another powerful force that was organizing in the US was the Democratic Left. In 1980, for example, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador was formed. Headquartered in Washington, DC, CISPES had chapters across the country. (CISPES still exists today: http://www.cispes.org/ )

The Reagan administration would target American citizens belonging to, or supportive of, CISPES. I could tell some stories. However, the Democratic Left had matured over the years, and was able to coordinate efforts with both liberal church groups, and several members of Congress. Perhaps the most significant focus, in my opinion, as it relates to today, would be the pressure to have refugees from the Central American countries to be recognized for exactly what they were.

The Reagan administration fought this tooth-and-nail. If these human beings were given political refugee status, it would put attention on the administration’s Central American war policies. Thus, the Reaganoids insisted upon labeling them “illegal aliens,” and attempting to deport them.

Churches across the nation would provide sanctuary to the refugees -- openly violating the law. Transporting the refugees could be risky, and hence much of this was done by members of the Democratic Left who had backgrounds with the “underground.” It was absolutely the modern version of the “Underground Railroad” from the pre-Civil War era. And there were several thousand depots across America.

Eventually, because of Tip O’Neill and others in Congress, the Boland Amendment was passed. This put the Reagan war effort in check, legally speaking. However, as we know, the Gipper and crew created a pipeline, which included selling weapons to Iran; funding the Contras; and, of course, dumping tons of cocaine onto the streets of American cities, primarily in minority neighborhoods.

The rule of law worked, to an extent, and ended much of the US government’s direct involvement in such schemes ….at least briefly. Reagan clearly faced impeachment, and VP Bush really should have faced criminal prosecution. It never got to that point, but that is a long story in and of itself. “Private” interests in the US would continue the drug and weapons trade -- it wasn’t high school and college students flying cocaine into the country. And the combination of gangs and military in Central America were their partners, at least for a time.

Between 1982 and ‘84, over half a million refugees from Central America fled to the USA. Our nation was not “harmed” by them. Quite the opposite, they added to the fabric of our culture. It was the Reagan-Bush forces that posed a threat to America.

I believe that the Sanctuary Movement of the early 1980s provides us with an important model. It illustrates the root causes of the crisis the refugees face today. And it provides us with lessons on how we, as human beings, need to organize and respond.

In closing, I want to stress one point: the citizens who struggled for social justice thirty years ago were not “supermen and women.” They were ordinary people, no different than you and I. And if “they” could do it then, we can do it now.

Peace,
H2O Man