VIVA LA MIGRA!
Liberal outrage? Protests in the streets?
Not exactly.
He wasn’t hurting anyone. He was a humble janitor at a motel, but Gonzalo Guevara-Cerritos, 43, had been a Salvadoran army officer who was convicted of participating in the military's 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests.
Reuters provides this background:
Los Angeles is home to some 250,000 Salvadorans, many of whom fled to the United States during the Central American country's 12-year civil war in which the U.S. government supported the right-wing Salvadoran government and its army.
More than 75,000 people died in the 1980-92 conflict, including 17 priests, most murdered for their leftist political views.
Guevara had served his sentence in El Salvador but he must have wanted to ditch his reputation and start a new life in the U.S.
Guevara, who had been maintaining a low profile for fear of being identified by pissed off Salvadorans, was turned in to ICE by a member of the public, quite possibly a fellow illegal immigrant.
According to the story, former death-squader Guevara was not identified by any public agency. In California, inquiries by public employees about the immigration status of individuals is mostly forbidden.
My city, San Francisco, is a “sanctuary” for people like Guevara, so too, Los Angeles where Guevara was arrested.
Apparently Guevara had broken no U.S. laws except those involving his undocumented status. The only legal reason ICE had to arrest and deport the man was his illegal status.
Yet, who will protest his deportation? Who will tell me that I, acting in concert with my fellow U.S. citizens, do not have the right to kick this mass murderer out of my country?
Viva la Migra!
Click here to go to a School of the Americas Watch pdf showing SOA grads in the news.
My alma mater, St Ignatius High School, sends a contingent to the yearly protests at the now (more ominously) renamed School of the Americas (wikilink). Not only did Guevara and his fellow right wing death-squaders kill the six Jesuits, they killed the housekeeper and the housekeeper’s daughter. This really irked the Jesuits. If a Jebbie dropped the dime on Guevara, good for him!
2 comments:
Nice find.
Actually, Guevara didn't even "serve a sentence." He was held under house arrest by the right wing government in El Salvador from 1991-93. Then he was included in the general amnesty that was the condition of the near peace in contemporary El Salvdador.
This description derived, loosely, from this LA Times story.
You're right, Jan. I should have put the word "sentence" in quotes.
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