AIDS in Brazil I was glad to see the article on the AIDS situation in Brazil in your Nov./ Dec. 1989 issue. Unfortunately, your author makes the peculiar statement, "but only one gay organization, lo- cated in the poor northwest suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, is openly attempting to address AIDS from a gay perspective." In fact, the Grupo Gay da Bahia, in the lower northeast part of Brazil, has been doing a lot of AIDS work since at least 1985. Perhaps the author depended on misinformed sources from the large southern cities. The Grupo Gay da Bahia is still doing AIDS education work and is going strong. Jeff Keith Philadelphia From San Salvador Here in San Salvador, Cristiani's announcement that four officers and five soldiers were arrested for the mur- ders of the Jesuits (clearly timed to precede the congressional debate over U.S. aid to El Salvador) was seen as a positive step, but it hardly resolves the case. Few think that Army Col. Guill- ermo Alfredo Benavides, currently charged with ordering the killings, would have taken such a decision on his own. Several people have told me they spoke to the Jesuits between the Mon- day evening search of their residence and their assassination Wednesday night, and urged them to stay else- where. The Jesuits insisted nothing would happen to them. Many have asked how someone as brilliant as Ignacio Ellacurfa could have thought it safe for the priests to remain in their residence. The national radio network, the only media permitted to function during the offensive, repeatedly broadcast viru- lent threats against Ellacurfa, as well as well-known figures identified with the Left. (All independent media coverage has been suppressed under the state of siege. Freedom of expression was and remains suspended.) Leaders of the popular movement and political lead- ers such as Rub6n Zamora and Guill- ermo Ungo went into hiding. Ironi- cally, the Jesuits may have been killed precisely because they did not think they were the most likely targets. The officers clearly felt that they could, as in the past, act with impunity. And why wouldn't they think so? To date no Salvadoran military officer has been tried and convicted for the politi- cal killing of civilians. No progress has been made in the investigation of the October 31 noontime bombing of the FENASTRAS labor federation office in downtown San Salvador, in which ten unionists died and dozens were in- jured. Nor has any progress been made in locating four leaders of the San Cay- etano El Rosario Cooperative, appar- ently detained more than a month ago by soldiers under the command of Col. Mauricio Staben, long linked to death squads. Nor is there any investigation of the hundreds of other cases of civil- ians killed, many in cold blood, during the offensive-not to mention the tens of thousands killed in the last ten years. The January 12 murder of social democratic leader Hector Oquelf Colindres in Guatemala sent a chilling message and also seems to provide hard evidence of coordination between the Salvadoran and Guatemalan ultra- Right. All this seems so obvious that it hardly bears saying. Unless steps are taken to bring a negotiated end to this war, to punish those responsible for past human rights violations and weed them out of the armed forces, these kinds of horrors will recur. But if the United States is again satisfied with cosmetic changes, with an "accept- able" level of human rights violations, El Salvador will continue to bleed. Looking out my window, knowing but not accepting that I will no longer see those familiar Jesuit faces, I can only hope that their deaths will become a turning point in U.S. policy. The writer is a North American residing in San Salvador who wishes to remain anonymous. CONTINUED ON PAGE 11 CONTINUED Read Our Lips A while ago a popular left publica- tion advertised that one should sub- scribe because if not "you might miss the revolution." I am afraid that NA- CLA is missing the revolution now taking place in Peru. In the issues on drugs and the homeless, Sendero Lumi- noso is either given short shrift or writ- ten off completely. The issue on home- lessness capsules an incident which makes Sendero look like an enemy of under the auspices of the army, have killed 8,000 grassroots activists since 1986. Harvest of Violence: The Maya Indi- ans and the Guatemalan Crisis ed. by Robert M. Carmack, University of Oklahoma Press, 1988, 288 pp., $21.95 (cloth). More than a dozen North and Latin American anthropologists document the consequences of the Guatemalan mili- tary's genocidal policies on everyday life in several indigenous communities. David Stoll's "Evangelicals, Guerril- las and the Army" is especially instruc- tive on the confluence of domestic and international sources of violence. Tour- ism, the conditions of refugees and the destruction of Indian culture also re- ceive careful examination. Language and Politics by Noam Chomsky, ed. by Carlos P. Otero, Black Rose Books, 1989, 779 pp., $44.95 (cloth), $24.95 (paper). In this series of previously unpub- lished interviews spanning 20 years, Chomsky expounds on the intersection of language and radical politics. For those who know him only as media analyst and critic of foreign policy, this wide-ranging book offers glimpses of his studies on language, anarchist the- ory and critiques of radical politics as practiced since the 1960s. In Nicaragua by Joel Kovel. Free Association Books, 1988, 183 pp., $35 (cloth). A reflective memoir that explores the texture of everyday realities in war- the people. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Sendero has, despite increasing military intervention, con- stantly gained power and spread across the country. Its ranks are not thinning but getting stronger over time. It has moved from the rural to the urban areas and is recruiting among students and labor as well as campesinos. Yet a NACLA reader would know none of this. Has NACLA become one of impe- rialism's running dogs? Robert Ames
