Salvadoran Guerrilla Leader Criticizes U.S. At Law School

A representative of the EI Salvadoran guerrillas and several prominent Harvard academics attacked the increasing militarization of the Administration's Central American policy at a Law School teach-in-yesterday.

The guerrilla representative, Arnoldo Ramos, told a crowd of just over 100 that the U.S. government is pursuing a purely military policy while failing to work toward a negotiated solution that would address the social problems at the root of the revolution.

He cited the quadrupling of U.S. military assistance in the last four months and claimed that U.S. military officers directed the recent air assault on Perquin in EI Salvador.

Ramos also said that the four CIA operatives who were killed last week in a plane crash in EI Salvador had been bombing Morazan province.

These charges have been denied by officials of the U.S. government and the U.S. Army.

Ramos said that the oligarchy, the army and the United States government still control the political, economic and social structures of El Salvador. He added that there can be no peace until the situation changes to allow for a true democracy that would include representatives of all groups within the society.

Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics John Womack told the rally that if U.S. soldiers were used in Central America, the war would probably spread to the rest of Central America, Mexico and perhaps, in the form of terrorism, to the United States.

Father Christopher Brinckley, a follow at the Institute of Politics who was a missionary in EI Salvador for 12 years, said that while he was in EI Salvador over the summer, he had heard of plots to assassinate President Jose Napoleon Duarte. If that happened U.S. troops would be used, he said.

The speaker who received the greatest audience reaction was not a professor but Sister Nancy Hansen, also a missionary in Central America and an IOP fellow.

Hansen read a letter from a missionary friend in Nicaragua to an audience sitting in rapt silence. The letter told stories of the destruction and killing caused by the Nicaraguan contras who are supported by the U.S. government.