Home Page
Announcements
Alternate Histories
International Edition
List of Updates
Want to join?
Join
Writer Development Section
Writer
Development
Member Section
Join Club ChangerS
Editorial
Chris Comments
Book Reviews
Blog
Letters To The Editor
FAQ
Links Page
Terms and Conditions
Resources
Donations
Alternate Histories
International Edition
Alison Brooks
Fiction
Essays
Other Stuff
Authors
If Baseball
Integrated Early
Counter-Factual.Net
Today in Alternate History
This
Day in Alternate History Blog
| |
All Along The
Watchtower:
A Memoir Of The 1970 Salvadoran Revolution
By Chris Oakley
Part 2
From Wikipedia’s entry on the Salvadoran Committee for
National Liberation:
The Salvadoran Committee for National Liberation(SCNL),
also known as Salvadoreno Comite de Liberacion Nacionale(SCLN), was the
main insurgent force during the 1970 Salvadoran Revolution. It fought
the Salvadoran regular army for more than two years and ultimately defeated it
in spite of sustaining some heavy casualties on the battlefield; after the
regime of Salvadoran president Julio Adalberto Rivera was overthrown in
November of 1972 the SCNL renamed itself the National Executive Committee(NEC)
and assumed full control of El Salvador’s government...
From the February 23rd, 1971 broadcast of
NBC Nightly News:
The Salvadoran defense ministry today issued a statement
denying rebel claims that the Salvadoran Committee for National Liberation has
captured the town of San Vicente. The remote town, located near the eastern
bank of the Lempo River, has been the subject of numerous rebel probing
attacks since mid-January and four days ago became the site of a fierce battle
between rebel and government troops; there has been no communication of any
kind between the town and San Salvador since 4:30 PM US Eastern Daylight Time
yesterday afternoon...
From an SCNL statement phoned in to the UPI office in Mexico
City on February 24th, 1971:
In the name of the forces of liberation in El Salvador we
hereby announce that the battle for San Vicente has ended. Our troops are now
in complete control of the town and the people are fully co-operating with the
Committee for National Liberation in its work to restore law and order there;
all agents of the counterrevolutionary regime have been neutralized and we are
strengthening the town’s defenses in order that we may repulse all attempts to
take it from us...
From a live address by El Salvadoran president Julio
Adalberto Rivera broadcast that same day from Rivera’s presidential palace:
By now you will have heard the rumor that we have lost San
Vicente, that it is in the hands of the rebel armies. Nothing could be further
from the truth- - in fact, we have crushed the rebel offensive and driven the
SCLN armies into full retreat. Within days, weeks at the most, we will end its
treasonous plot to overthrow the rightful government of this country; once the
SCLN’s rebellion has been defeated, we will duly punish the traitors who
instigated it...
From Ocho de Mayo:
The SCLN victory in the battle for San Vicente threw a
monkey wrench into the El Salvadoran government’s strategic plans for
containing the rebel forces. It had been hoped by the Salvadoran regular
army’s general staff that an SCLN defeat at San Vicente would stop the rebel
army in its tracks and grant the government forces breathing space in which to
marshal their troops for a new campaign against the SCLN guerrillas. After San
Vicente fell, however, the government army was on the defensive-- and would
remain so until mid-June of 1971.
It wasn’t until March 2nd, eight full days after
the last pockets of government army resistance near San Vicente had been
neutralized, that the Adalberto Rivera regime finally acknowledged the truth
about the rebel victory. And even then, it refused to concede the SCLN troops
might have simply outmaneuvered the government forces; the government army’s
defeat was blamed on so-called "deserters" who supposedly ran away at the peak
of the battle. Given that cases of desertion in the Salvadoran regular army
were hard to verify and that most such incidents at San Vicente had happened
before the main battle for the town even started, unbiased observers were
naturally skeptical about the Rivera regime’s claims-- but the Salvadoran
president stuck by his story nonetheless...
From the April 17th, 1971 broadcast of BBC’s
9 O’Clock News:
A spokesman for the defence attaché’s office at the
Salvadoran embassy in London refused today to confirm or deny reports that
mutinous elements of the Salvadoran air force have bombed pro-government troop
positions near the town of San Juan Nonualco....
From Firefights and Fruit Stands by Jim Rykers:
All throughout the spring I’d heard rumors that the regular
army was getting ready to make a push on the SCNL base at San Vicente, but I
only got solid confirmation of the attack about four days before it happened.
I was at the UPI bureau in San Salvador filing a story on a firefight between
government and rebel units near La Herradura when I got a call from one of my
regular contacts at the Salvadoran defense ministry saying that a big army
truck convoy was getting ready to ship out to Coatepeque1 in
forty-eight hours. When I got off the phone I hired a jeep to take me out to
the convoy so I could see the action from ringside, so to speak. And brother,
did I ever see plenty of that...
From the June 18th, 1971 broadcast of The
ABC Evening News:
After months on the defensive, the government forces in El
Salvador have once again gone over to the attack. The military attaché at the
Salvadoran embassy in Washington has confirmed that the Salvadoran regular
army is at this hour engaged in a two-pronged offensive against SCNL bases in
and around the town of San Vicente; San Vicente, which has been under SCNL
control since late February, is considered by both sides to be a crucial link
in the chain of forward outposts the rebel army has situated along the edge of
its so-called "liberated zone" in eastern El Salvador. The main thrust of the
assault on the rebels at San Vicente, according to an official source at the
Salvadoran defense ministry, was launched from the nearby village of
Coatepeque and supported by tanks and light attack aircraft...
In a related story, US Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird
once again told the press that the White House has no plans at this time to
send combat troops into El Salvador. However, Secretary Laird did not rule out
the possibility of increasing American defense aid to the Salvadoran regular
armed force….
From an Associated Press dispatch dated June 22nd,
1971:
SAN SALVADOR(AP)--After four days of the most bitter
fighting El Salvador has seen to date in the civil war between SCLN guerrillas
and the government army commanded by Salvadoran president Julio Adalberto
Rivera, the town of San Vicente is once more under government control.
According to sources in the Salvadoran regular army, the last remaining
pockets of SCLN resistance in the San Vicente area were wiped out early this
morning by concentrated tank and mortar fire from government forces. It is not
known at this time how many casualties the rebel forces suffered during the
battle; the government army puts its own losses at 200 dead and another 358
wounded...
From Ocho de Mayo:
The Salvadoran
regular army’s victory at San Vicente put the initiative back in the
government’s hands during the summer and early autumn of 1971. With one of the
SCNL’s most critical bases gone, the rebels were put on the defensive
for months, forced to retreat as the government army pursued them deep into
the jungle. During this retreat the rebels lost one outpost after another; at
one point even the rebel headquarters at Gotera was under siege by government
troops.
Had it not been for overconfidence on the part of some of
the Salvadoran regular army’s field officers, the government forces could have
smashed the SCNL in one blow once they reached Gotera. In early October, two
infantry squads from the government side breached the outer perimeter of the
rebel defenses at SCNL headquarters; in an interview with a BBC correspondent
after the Salvadoran Revolution ended, a rebel sergeant admitted he’d been
afraid these breaches were just a prelude to the government forces’ final
assault on Gotera. But such an assault never came-- instead of immediately
mounting a killing thrust on the SCNL’s nerve center, the regular army chose
to sit and wait for the insurgents to come to them, convinced that the rebels
would eventually make a mistake the government side could exploit to its own
advantage.
As it turned out, it would be the government forces which
made the crucial mistake....
From the October 9th, 1971 New York Times,
page 3:
SALVADORAN GUERRILLAS STRIKE GOVT. LINES OUTSIDE GOTERA IN
PRE-DAWN SURPRISE ATTACK
Two Infantry Battalions Wiped Out; Regular Army Asserts
Rebel Offensive Will Be Defeated
From a BBC Radio newscast dated October 12th,
1971:
The Salvadoran Committee of National Liberation, which
merely a week ago appeared to be on the brink of a crushing final defeat at
the hands of the regular army, is instead showing signs of a new lease on life
as it wages a fierce attack on government troop positions outside the rebel
headquarters at the town of San Francisco Gotera. The rebel offensive, which
began under cover of near darkness four days ago, threatens to split the
government lines in two and put the Salvadoran regular army once more on the
defensive...
From a UPI dispatch dated October 15th, 1971:
SAN SALVADOR--Late this afternoon Salvadoran regular army
forces broke off their attack on the Salvadoran Committee for National
Liberation’s headquarters at the town of San Francisco Gotera...
From Firefights and Fruit Stands by Jim Rykers:
A lot of people say that the Salvadoran Revolution was
basically over after the SCNL beat the government army at the second battle of
Gotera. I don’t know if that’s necessarily true, but I will say this much: it
took a lot of starch out of the Rivera government’s sails. I must’ve
interviewed at least a hundred guys from the regular army after the government
pulled out of Gotera, and half of them were ready to quit the service right
then and there. The other half were talking about switching sides and joining
the SCNL...
From Ocho de Mayo:
The failure to capture the rebel headquarters at Gotera was
a sharp blow to the morale of the Salvadoran regular army. Immediately after
the SCNL victory at the Second Battle of Gotera, the desertion rate in the
regular army skyrocketed; there was also a major increase in the number of
suicides and court-martials for insubordination. A growing sense of futility
was starting to pervade the ranks of ordinary soldiers on the government side;
some of the Salvadoran regular army’s junior officers were also questioning
the wisdom of continuing the fight against the SCNL guerrillas.
By contrast, morale among the SCNL insurgents soared after
the Second Battle of Gotera. Many in El Salvador who had previously been on
the fence in regard to the Salvadoran revolution threw in their lot with the
rebels, and those who’d backed the uprising from the start felt vindicated;
even some Salvadorans who had previously sided with the Rivera government
defected to the rebel camp...
From an Associated Press dispatch dated January 16th,
1972:
WASHINGTON(AP)--The White House today announced that it
would ask Congress for an immediate 50 percent increase in military aid to the
embattled Rivera government in El Salvador...
From the January 21st, 1972 broadcast of NBC
Nightly News:
Independent sources at the headquarters for the chief of
staff to the El Salvadoran air force have told NBC tonight that there is
evidence a key fighter unit tasked to the air defense of San Vicente has gone
over to the rebel side. According to these sources, the unit leader
transmitted a brief radio message to an SCLN outpost on the eastern side of
the Lempa River three hours ago, then contacted his home airfield to inform
them that he and his wingmen would not be returning...
From the April 6th, 1972 Boston Globe,
page 3:
GALLUP POLL: 35 PERCENT OF AMERICANS BELIEVE U.S. WILL SEND
TROOPS TO EL SALVADOR
White House continues to deny any plans to deploy ground
forces in war-torn Central American country
To Be Continued
Footnotes
|