New declassified documents about FENASTRAS case

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On the 35th anniversary of the bombing of the Salvadoran labor federation, UWCHR revisits the case.

Thirty-five years after the deadly October 31, 1989 bombing at the headquarters of the FENASTRAS union federation in San Salvador, researchers at the University of Washington Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) have continued their search for information pertaining to this attack, which has never been brought to justice. A review of dozens of recently released documents related to the case and its investigation helps situate the bombing in its historical context and offer important behind-the-scenes insights on US government responses at the time.[1]

In the 1970s and 1980s, FENASTRAS (Federación Nacional Sindical de Trabajadores Salvadoreños, or National Trade Union Federation of Salvadoran Workers) was known for its leftist positions critical of the government. Like members of other trade union organizations, FENASTRAS had long experienced repression, including torture and forced disappearance, in retaliation for their activism. The October 1989 attack on the organization’s headquarters followed months of escalating violence against civil society organizations critical of the government, none of which were investigated; but the scale of the blast, and its timing in the midst of fragile peace negotiations between the government and the FMLN, led to immediate outcry and calls for an investigation. Believing the government was responsible for the attack, FENASTRAS personnel initially denied police investigators access to the blast site. Citing this refusal to collaborate with the police, both US and Salvadoran government officials suggested that the bombing may have been a “false flag” operation by the FMLN. And thirty-five years later, the case still languishes in impunity, though a unit of the Salvadoran Public Prosecutor’s Office specializing in cases from the internal armed conflict is currently reviewing the case.

What the documents show about the bombing and its aftermath

The October 31, 1989 bombing at FENASTRAS came at a time of escalating tensions. The day before, the FMLN had launched a mortar attack on the headquarters of the military high command in San Salvador; according to the US State Department, this attack left one civilian bystander dead and several others injured. The same day as the FENASTRAS attack, an early morning bombing at the offices of victims’ organization COMADRES also caused injuries and property damage. But the midday attack on FENASTRAS seemed planned to achieve maximum lethality: it took place at lunchtime, and the bomb was detonated near the area where dozens were eating as part of FENASTRAS’ popular low-cost lunch program. As the CIA reported in the document shown below, the powerful explosion ripped through the building, hurling a parked pickup truck two meters into the street, and leaving scenes of terror in its wake, with dismembered bodies strewn about the rubble.

A declassified CIA document from November 1989 reviews damages from the FENASTRAS bombing.

In the hours after the attack, the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington DC notified various US intelligence agencies of the bombing; this document was released to UWCHR with substantial redactions. The Embassy sent members of its Political Section staff and a mobile military training team to the site of the bombing, where they spoke with police who reported it may have been an accidental explosion. Yet Embassy personnel—the name of the person writing this telegram is redacted, so it is unclear who exactly wrote it—seemed to immediately understand the political context, noting that FENASTRAS’ General Secretary Febe Elizabeth Velasquez, who was killed in the blast, had been featured in a series of television commercials as an “enemy” of the nation, and noting that “It is unclear who carried out the COMADRES and FENASTRAS attacks. Obviously we cannot rule out the possibility that extremist elements reacted to FMLN violence.” On November 2, in reaction to the bombing, the FMLN called off the peace talks scheduled for later that month. On November 3, US Embassy leaders were invited to the Presidential Palace to speak with President Cristiani, members of the Military High Command, the Presidential Press Secretary, and others, all of whom, according to a cable signed by US Ambassador Walker, believed the FMLN was responsible for the attack. President Cristiani expressed extreme frustration that FENASTRAS members had denied the police access to the scene of the crime, and asked for US assistance in the investigation.

A few days later, when Salvadoran President Cristiani reiterated his request for US expert assistance, Embassy officials eagerly cabled their superiors in Washington urging their support. They noted that Cristiani had been largely successful in “restraining the military” from publicly blaming the FMLN for the attack without evidence. An FBI expert, as well as Assistant Secretary of State Aronson from Washington DC and General Thurman, Commander in Chief of the US Southern command were dispatched to San Salvador, where they joined Embassy officials in a November 6 meeting with President Cristiani – and a separate meeting with members of the military high command. While Cristiani emphasized the importance of an independent investigation, according to Embassy reports of the meeting, the Salvadoran military leaders explained their conviction that the FMLN had carried out the attack on FENASTRAS in an effort to sow division between the military and Cristiani, and between the Americans and the Salvadorans.

On November 8, as FBI documents show, FBI explosives experts carried out a forensic inspection at the site of the bombing. Unfortunately, however, later documents show that the FBI laboratory report was unable to identify the explosive material used in the bombing, and that the investigation lapsed due to a lack of human resources, given the extraordinary attention later required by the investigation of the November 16, 1989 massacre at the UCA.

In late December, La Prensa Gráfica and El Diario de Hoy reported that a captured FMLN leader, Salvador Cárcamo, was in custody and had confessed to the FENASTRAS bombing, among other crimes. Yet according to CIA sources, Cárcamo had been so closed-lipped that he refused even to reveal his name under interrogation, much less to confess to specific crimes. In other words, the media reports were entirely false.

The events in context

Declassified US government documents can also provide additional perspective on the context in which the bombing took place. First, an analysis of records from the period shows that labor organizations were systematically targeted for repression by government forces and right-wing death squads throughout the war; FENASTRAS, in particular, experienced escalating repression in the months immediately prior to the October 31 bombing. Second, the documents show that both the Salvadoran and American governments viewed FENASTRAS with particular suspicion, labeling the organization as a “front group” for the FMLN in ways that came close to identifying it as a legitimate military target. Each of these tendencies contributed to the investigative impasse reached in the case, from which impunity was a predictable result. We discuss each in turn below.

Patterns of systemic violence against labor activists

Multiple observers agree that the 1970s were a decade of unusual labor union activity in El Salvador. FENASTRAS, first legally constituted in 1972, was identified from its beginnings as a leftist vanguard within the labor movement. Beginning in the late 1970s, US Embassy officials described FENASTRAS as an associate of the opposition organizations BPR and FAPU. As the union movement grew, so too did right-wing efforts to repress it, originating in both the state security forces and death squads. The violence against unionists became so extreme and extensive in the late 1970s and early 1980s that, as US Embassy officials reported, “At the height of right wing death squad activity in 1981, El Salvador’s trade union movement was ravaged as a result of the killings and disappearances of hundreds of union leaders. Formerly the most powerful in Central America, El Salvador’s unions were forced to disband or became moribund because of right wing terror tactics.”

The unionists themselves opted for different language to describe their reaction to this violence: in 1981, they described their movement as forced underground, but hardly moribund. “The Salvadoran labor movement has had to become clandestine because it is the only manner that it can continue living since its union halls have been dynamited and its leaders jailed or executed. Here there are compañeros who have been burned with acid, tortured with electrical shocks… and then the persecution and execution of our family members who visit us in prison increases every day with the object of isolating us from the people.”[2] Just as with victims from other sectors of society, repression had the effect of encouraging them to redouble their commitment, even under extremely challenging circumstances.

By the mid-1980s, declassified US documents begin to note an apparent resurgence in union activity. The response, once again, was repression, but organizing continued. By 1984, for example, the CIA reported that although the FENASTRAS’ General Secretary Héctor Bernabé Recinos remained in prison, the organization had named an interim General Secretary. According to another document from the same month, Carlos Vásquez Someta served as Secretary of Operations for FENASTRAS; he, in turn, was detained in late March 1984 under suspicion of membership in the FARN, and according to an Embassy document, Colonel López Nuila, then-director of the National Police, showed an Embassy official a copy of his supposed confession. Shortly thereafter, another document describes an Embassy employee’s visit with Vásquez in prison, in which he reports that the confession was “wrested from him,” likely a euphemism for torture. Various parts of this document remain illegible.

In the year 1989 alone, many acts of repression against FENASTRAS prior to the October 31 attack are documented in US records:

While the fact that the FENASTRAS bombing occurred on the heels of so many acts of prior repression does not rule out the possibility of its having been a “false flag” attack by the FMLN, it does suggest why FENASTRAS personnel may have greeted police investigators with suspicion and declined to participate in their investigation.

Equation of criticism with subversion

US and Salvadoran officials had viewed FENASTRAS with suspicion since its inception. A CIA document identifies the organization as originating in a split from a pro-government union in 1972. Throughout the war, US documents consistently identify FENASTRAS as a “front group” and FMLN affiliate,[3] contrasting it to more centrist labor formations which the US viewed more favorably.[4] Such considerations became more prominent in documents from the latter half of the conflict, after the capture of FMLN documents in 1986 and 1988 revealed that the FMLN had identified leftist organizations who were critical of the government as a source of recruiting and potential coordination.[5] In this context, the US and Salvadoran authorities’ decision to regard those organizations as merely fronts for the guerrillas equates all criticism of the government with subversive activity. As shown below, Amb. Corr’s October 1, 1986 cable went so far as to denounce human rights correspondence as “another tool for the left,” decrying the fact that Americans frequently contacted the Embassy expressing concern about the arrest of government critics affiliated with organizations on the left. Earlier that year, a CIA document asserted that, “Most of the abuses reported by these organizations are fabricated.”

The first page of Ambassador Corr’s October 1, 1986 cable denouncing human rights correspondence as “another tool for the left.”

Yet while US officials came close to viewing all criticism as subversion, privately they harbored their own doubts. This is evident in gaps between public communications and internal memos, both of which have been declassified from this period. For example, in April 1988 a member of the US Congress, Don Pease, wrote to Ambassador Corr asking the Embassy to provide further information about the 13 cases of labor rights violations documented in a recent Americas Watch report. In his response, Amb. Corr offered a scathing critique of the organization, accusing it of ignoring the “tremendous progress” that the Salvadoran government had made in human rights and of ignoring the “real problem” that the country faced: the FMLN. Yet privately, he had written to Secretary of State Shultz the month before expressing concern that “human rights improvements may have leveled off, and …we may even be slipping backwards.” In June 1988, he wrote privately, “One thing is clear: for the first time in years, blindfolded bodies are again beginning to appear in San Salvador, with their hands tied behind their backs,” a fact which he attributed “possibly” to the Armed Forces, the security forces, or the death squads. “Furthermore,” he wrote, “the military and security forces appear to be unwilling to investigate those cases (El Tablón, Palitos Well, the La Laguna stabbings, Hernando Torres, Alas Gomez, Puerto del Diablo, Chavarría) where their personnel are involved.”

In this sense, a review of declassified US documents allows contemporary readers to observe that while the US officials publicly rebuffed the criticisms raised by labor and human rights organizations, even labeling the organizations who raised them as terrorist “front groups,” in private they sometimes shared grave concerns about the human rights records of the Salvadoran institutions they were defending.

Conclusion

While dozens of US government documents have been declassified regarding the FENASTRAS bombing of October 31, 1989, many are still substantially obscured by redactions and others remain withheld. UWCHR is continuing its efforts to ensure they are declassified in whole. Although the documents released to date offer few clues as to who carried out the deadly attack, they do shed light on the dangerous context in which it occurred—dangerous not only because of the rampant violence that characterized El Salvador in those days, but because of the way Salvadoran and US officials delegitimized all criticism of the Salvadoran state despite privately acknowledging its involvement in human rights abuses. In the context of counterinsurgency, labeling FENASTRAS as an “FMLN front” and its members as subversives effectively marked the organization as a legitimate target for repression; but when, after the bombing, FENASTRAS refused to participate in government investigations, its refusal was invoked as evidence of its complicity. While US documents released to date cannot establish who was behind the bombing, they can show us the danger of denying space for democratic dissent.

 

NOTES

[1] The declassified US government documents linked in this report originate from various sources. Documents currently hosted by the University of Washington Libraries were declassified pursuant to US Freedom of Information Act requests by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights. Other documents were first published on the FOIA reading rooms of the respective agencies responsible for their declassification, including the Department of State Virtual Reading Room and the Central Intelligence Agency Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room.

[2] Cited in Gould, 2015 (https://www.redalyc.org/journal/439/43942943004/), fn 68.

[3] See, for example, SAN SA 02632 which describes FENASTRAS as an antigovernment labor federation with ties to the militant BPR and FAPU; some ten years later, the Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy described FENASTRAS as “less a union than an FMLN political forum” in the immediate aftermath of the bombing.

[4] For examples, see the CIA’s “El Salvador’s Insurgents: Resurrecting an Urban Political Strategy” from 1986, which offers a detailed analysis of leftist influence within the labor sector; and SAN SA 15030, a cable written by Amb. Pickering in 1984 which devotes great detail to internal rivalries within the labor movement and FENASTRAS in particular, concluding, “We love to see ‘em squirm.”

[5] See, for example, SAN SA 03306 which describes a captured FMLN communication listing FENASTRAS among other organizations identified as possible sources of “recruits and organizational help.”