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The Civil War in El Salvador - Coggle Diagram
The Civil War in El Salvador
Article #3
Why Tens of Thousands of Kids from El Salvador Continue to
Flee to the United States
Mauricio decided he had to flee, but unlike the thousands of “unaccompanied minors” from Central America who braved the trek to the U.S. border in hopes of winning asylum, he applied for an Obama administration program that would allow him — just possibly — to join family in the United States.
Since 2003, the government has taken what it calls an “iron fist” approach to criminal groups, sending soldiers armed with automatic weapons and dressed in black balaclavas into gang-controlled areas.
Children as young as 9 are recruited for gang membership. Extortion is rampant, with gangs squeezing street vendors, restaurant owners and even grandmothers for cash.
The civil war, which pitted leftist guerrillas against the U.S.-backed right-wing government, raged for 12 years, killed 75,000 people and caused millions to flee.
An estimated 2 million people of Salvadoran origin now reside in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center, about 700,000 of them illegally.
A record 17,512 unaccompanied Salvadoran children were apprehended at the U.S. border in the fiscal year that ended in September, according to the Department of Homeland Security. It was an 87% increase over the year before.
More than 10,000 young people have applied for the program, which was designed to protect children from the risks of the migrant path and help stop the flow of unauthorized migrants north. Immigrant advocates have hailed the effort as a small but important step toward recognizing the violence in El Salvador and neighboring countries.
Article #1
Central Americans and Asylum Policy in the Reagan Era.
1980 - Large-scale migration to the US from El Salvador to flee from civil war, repression, and economic devastation.
In December 1980, four U.S. churchwomen were assassinated in El Salvador, an act of brutality that brought the violence "home" to the U.S. public.
The network of religious congregations that became known as the Sanctuary Movement started with a Presbyterian church and a Quaker meeting in Tucson, Arizona so then began legal and humanitarian assistance to Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees in 1980.
Through coordinated strategies in individual cases, these lawyers began to address detention conditions as well as develop the new case law of the Refugee Act.
The immigrants' rights lawyers, liberal members of Congress, religious activists, and the refugees invoked international human rights and humanitarian and religious principles, while the Reagan administration's arguments centered on national security and the global fight against Communism.
Citing the Nuremberg principles of personal accountability developed in the post-World War II Nazi tribunals, religious activists claimed a legal precedent to justify their violation of U.S. laws against alien smuggling.
In the case, known as American Baptist Churches v. Thornburgh, the federal courts had dismissed religious organizations' claims. However, in 1991 the U.S. District Court in San Francisco approved a settlement that allowed the reopening of denied political asylum claims and late applications by refugees who had been afraid to apply. The decision also granted class members work authorization and protection from deportation.
Government-supported assassins gunned down Archbishop Oscar Romero at the altar shortly after he had publicly ordered Salvadoran soldiers to stop killing civilians
The military and death squads were responsible for thousands of disappearances and murders of union leaders, community leaders, and suspected guerilla sympathizers, including priests and nuns.
Article #2
Yesenia's Story
Children wrote “USA” on the planes dropping bombs in their drawings because the United States provided large sums of money to the government of El Salvador during the civil war.
Between 1980 and 1992 the US sent more than $6 billion in military and economic aid, an average of over 1 million dollars per day.
