Published at: 13/03/2024 09:00 PM

• During the civil war in El Salvador, Leopoldo Castillo served as Venezuelan ambassador and agent of death, which is why he was nicknamed Matacuras in that country.
• Through a coup d'état of the extreme right military allied with reactionary sectors of Salvadoran Christian Democracy, carried out on October 15, 1979, a military dictatorship ensued that began a civil war, which lasted until January 16, 1992, leaving 75,000 dead, 550,000 internally displaced and 500,000 refugees in other countries.
• In declassified CIA documents, in February 2009, Leopoldo Castillo was mentioned as co-responsible for the intelligence services that coordinated, financed and gave the order for the execution of Operation Centauro.
• Operation Centauro is the name given to a series of violent actions by the Salvadoran army and “death squads” to physically eliminate religious communities gathered around the search for a peaceful and negotiated solution to the war.
• During the five years that Castillo was in charge of that diplomatic headquarters (1979-1984), the army and death squads killed 13,194 civilians, including Saint Oscar Arnulfo Romero, four nuns of the American religious congregation Maryknoll; and priests Rafael Palacios, Alirio Bonilla, Francisco Cosme, Jesús Cáceres and Manuel Reyes.
• Although Leopoldo Castillo was not an ambassador for the time when the six Jesuit priests were massacred along with the domestic worker and her daughter (16-11-89), he was still acting as an advisor in those dreadful extermination plans. These martyrs were managing an immediate ceasefire before international bodies.
• The crimes supported by the management of Leopoldo Castillo are considered “crimes against humanity”, and are therefore imprescriptible.
• Among other things, Leopoldo Castillo never explained:
  1. His links with the murderous mafia led by his friend and political partner Roberto D'Aubuisson.
  2. Why did you organize an anti-guerrilla death squad from the headquarters of the Venezuelan Embassy in El Salvador?
  3. Why did you turn that same diplomatic headquarters into a kind of fort, surrounded by sandbags and paramilitary groups guarding it?
  4. Where did all the assault rifles, ammunition and 6 million dollars that the then Director of the DISIP, Remberto Uzcátegui, sent you from Caracas via La Carlota go?

• The day will come when Leopoldo Castillo will be held to account before the Spanish and Salvadoran courts for his participation in the extermination of religious and peaceful communities who were on the side of peace during the war that hit that Central American country. The terrible consequences of their actions still survive.
• This occurred during the era of the Reagan administration in the United States and the Luis Herrera Campins administration in Venezuela. Although the big and powerful media corporations tried to cover up the truth of the facts, the New York Times photos were eloquent in terms of the cruelty deployed by the Salvadoran army and its “death squads” (paramilitary death squads).

Mazo News Team