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John B. OakesJohn B. Oakes
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nuns were murdered in El Salvador -- and we just had, a couple days ago, a reprise of that story in the paper, when it turns out that the soldiers who were arrested for that are now admitting that they were acting under orders -- After that appalling incident, which, I guess, took place, when? In '88?

Q:

Was it that late?

Oakes:

Well, it may have been earlier. Oh, it was earlier. It was earlier. It certainly was earlier. But in any case, I was already very uncomfortable about the American policy of supporting these extremely repressive regimes in Central America, generally. We had already gone through the Guatemala business and we were supporting the Contras in Nicaragua. I think that had already started by that time. And we were backing the government in El Salvador, also, and I didn't like any of this business because I thought the United States -- and, of course -- and this was very much under Reagan's foreign policy -- if you can call it a foreign policy. When the murder of these four nuns took place -- three nuns, a sister, and I think a lay cleric -- I was really horrified by that and I began to do some telephoning and inquiry of my own, and I began to write stuff about this, about how awful it was that we -- the United States -- were supporting a government that was, in the last analysis, responsible for this kind of atrocity. And I wrote quite a bit in connection with the Nicaraguan problem, in which we -- “we” the U.S. government -- were very much supporting the Contras, as you know. I got so interested and concerned about it that I went down there -- with my son, in fact -- solely to see what I could learn firsthand about what was going on in these countries. We visited Honduras which was at that time virtually a United States territory because we were completely supportive of -- “we,” the U.S., this is all the Reagan period -- were completely supportive of the Honduran government, which





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