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Description
An American advisor with sunglasses on sits on a bench at the air force base located on the eastern side of San Salvador, in the town on Ilopango. Soldiers from the El Salvador army, some of them reading from documents and many of them holding an assault rifle, sit behind him. A year earlier, on January 27th, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMNL) assaulted the Ilopango air base and destroyed seventy percent of the military air units. The air base, whose pilots were mostly trained in the United States, was run by Gen. Juan Rafael Bustillo (the general was charged in 2017 for the El Mozote massacre, when approximately 1,000 people were executed by the Salvadoran armed forces at the hands of the Atlacatl Battalion during “Operation Rescate” in December 1981. More than half of the victims were children and adolescents). Starting in Spring 1983, the Ilopango air base became the center of C.I.A. operations to supplying the Nicaraguan Contras. Un asesor estadounidense con gafas de sol se sienta en un banco en una base de la fuerza aérea ubicada al este de San Salvador, en la ciudad de Ilopango. Soldados del ejército de El Salvador, algunos de ellos leyendo documentos y muchos de ellos sosteniendo un rifle de asalto, se sientan detrás de él. Un año antes, el 27 de enero, el Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) asaltó la base aérea de Ilopango y destruyó el setenta por ciento de las unidades aéreas militares. La base aérea, cuyos pilotos han sido entrenados principalmente en los Estados Unidos, fue dirigida por el general Juan Rafael Bustillo (el general fue acusado en 2017 por la masacre de El Mozote, cuando aproximadamente 1.000 personas fueron ejecutadas por las fuerzas armadas salvadoreñas en diciembre de 1981 . Más de la mitad de las víctimas eran niños y adolescentes). A partir de la primavera de 1983, la base aérea de Ilopango se convirtió en el centro de operaciones de la CIA para abastecer a la contra nicaragüense.
Civil War El Salvador Documentary photographs Soldiers El Salvador. Ejército El Salvador--History--1979-1992 El Salvador--Politics and Government--1979-1992 Assault rifles Military uniforms Air bases Military assistance, American Military training camps
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