Far-right politician María Corina Machado (left) and Edmundo González holding a candle in a religious political rally before the Venezuelan presidential elections. Photo: Henry Chirinos/EFE.
By Saheli Chowdhury – Aug 4, 2024
The Venezuelan far-right former candidate for the presidential elections that were held on July 28, Edmundo González Urrutia, has declared himself the winner despite coming in second place. He has been recognized as the “president” of Venezuela by Washington and some of its vassal states as part of a plot reminiscent of the failed Guaidó project. In parallel, there is a broad campaign on mainstream media and social media to create an image of González as a “bird-loving old grandfather;” a career diplomat with a “democratic vocation” who is “fighting for democracy” against the “Maduro regime” in Venezuela. However, Salvadorans, especially ex-combatants of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) from the Salvadoran war era, remember him very differently.
During 1979-1985, Edmundo González served as the second-in-command of the Venezuelan Embassy in San Salvador, under ambassador Leopoldo Castillo. Both officials participated in the United States’ Plan Cóndor counterinsurgency project in El Salvador, the aim of the project being the destruction of the Salvadoran popular armed revolution.
According to former FMLN Commander Nidia Díaz, during the late 70s and early 80s, the conspiracies to capture, torture, disappear, and kill revolutionaries and their sympathizers were planned in the Venezuelan embassy in El Salvador and were directed by Leopoldo Castillo, whose closest collaborator was Edmundo González. “Castillo was named Matacuras [murderer of priests]—that is how he is known,” Díaz commented. “He was an agent of death and he persecuted Christians in the country. I do not doubt that he was involved in some way with the assassination of Saint Óscar Romero. We know that he was also involved with the assassination of the Maryknoll nuns in November 1982 as well as with the murders of many other priests.”
She added that while she was a prisoner of war, two officials from the Venezuelan embassy interrogated her. One of them was Castillo.
According to US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents declassified in February 2009, Castillo was mentioned as jointly responsible for the intelligence services that coordinated, financed, and gave the order for the execution of Operation Centauro, which consisted of a series of violent actions committed by the Salvadoran army and the Plan Cóndor death squads that were trained, armed, and financed by the US government led by Ronald Reagan to eliminate the Christian communities that were looking for a peaceful and negotiated solution to the war through the application of the principles of Liberation Theology.
During the period that Castillo and González were in charge of the Venezuelan embassy in El Salvador, the Salvadoran armed forces and the death squads killed 13,194 civilians, among them St. Óscar Arnulfo Romero, archbishop of the Catholic Church of El Salvador; four nuns of the Maryknoll order; and priests Rafael Palacios, Alirio Macias, Francisco Cosme, Jesús Cáceres, and Manuel Reyes.
Even after 1985, when Castillo no longer served as a diplomat, he still worked as an advisor to the US intelligence structure in El Salvador, called Pentagonito. It was during this period that he collaborated in the murders six Jesuit priests and two female household workers, namely, Ignacio Ellacuría, who was also the then rector of the University of Central America in San Salvador, Segundo Montes, Ignacio Martín-Baró, Juan Ramón Moreno, Amando López, Joaquin López, and Elba and Celina Ramos, in November 1989.
Another FMLN ex-combatant and former president of the Salvadoran Congress, Sigfrido Reyes, called Edmundo González “an accomplice of barbaric crimes.” “Edmundo González has this dark past,” said Reyes. “He is directly responsible for and a perpetrator of war crimes and crimes against humanity… Edmundo González’s hands are stained with blood.”
As for the reasons behind such involvement, Salvadoran historian Marvin Aguilar pointed out that it was not just those two diplomats but the entire Venezuelan State that collaborated with the United States’ Plan Cóndor to eliminate revolutions across Latin America. “The United States had its interests… and Carlos Andrés Pérez [then president of Venezuela] wanted international prestige, I think,” he remarked.
The historian added the Salvadoran and Venezuelan ultra-right forces collaborate to this day, albeit in a different form. “Today in El Salvador, there is a group of Venezuelans associated with the anti-Chavista right who work for the government of President Bukele,” he said, referring to a team of Venezuelans allied with the coup-plotter Juan Guaidó who serve as “advisors” to the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele. “It is a sort of shadow government. Thus, in one way or another, that connection exists.”
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In May of this year, Venezuelan National Assembly Deputy Diosdado Cabello referred in detail to Edmundo González’s dark past in an episode of his TV program Con El Mazo Dando. The PSUV leader said at that time that he got the information from a letter sent to him by a former official of the Colombian Foreign Affairs Ministry, named María Catalina Restrepo Pinzón de Londoño. However, after the program was aired, Venezuelan extreme-right-aligned journalists and social media personalities launched a media campaign claiming that no such Colombian official existed and that González was never involved in the massacres committed in El Salvador during the war era. However, Salvadoran ex-combatants from that same era, as well as documents from US federal agencies, dismantle that propaganda.
It may be mentioned here that in the aforementioned CIA documents, Castillo and González are named together with Luis Posada Carriles, the infamous Cuban counter-revolutionary terrorist and CIA asset who was the mastermind of the Cubana Flight 455 bombing and numerous other acts of terrorism against the Cuban Revolution, the people of Cuba, and other countries of the Caribbean.
In 2008, a case was opened in a Spanish court by the US-based Center for Justice and Accountability and the Spanish Pro-Human Rights Association to bring the Salvadoran assassins and their superiors to justice. The case contemplates the massacres committed in El Salvador as crimes against humanity, and as such, they have no statute of limitations. Therefore, although González and his superior Castillo, who currently resides in Miami, USA, deny their involvement, they may still be called someday to respond to justice.
SC/OT/JRE
Saheli Chowdhury
Saheli Chowdhury is from West Bengal, India, studying physics for a profession, but with a passion for writing. She is interested in history and popular movements around the world, especially in the Global South. She is a co-editor and contributor for Orinoco Tribune.
