El Salvador: Blood On All Our Hands

On April 29th, 1981 American journalist George Thurlow was shot by members of the El Salvador Treasury Police on a jungle road in San Salvador. His 29-year-old driver, Gilberto Moran, was killed and Associated Press photgrapher Joanquin Zuniga was seriously injured in the shooting. Thurlow left El Salvador two days later to receive medical treatment in the United States. In 2000, he began a more than two-decade search to find Gilberto Moran's grave and some form of personal redemption. El Salvador: Blood On All Our Hands details that search and introduces us to those who fought in the civil war, U.S. aid workers helping to rebuild the tiny country, as well as every day Salvadorans who suffered through a war that killed 70,000 of their fellow citizens.

Biography

George Thurlow has worked as a reporter, editor, univeristy lecturer, publisher, and writer since 1974. His coverage of Latin America has appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines across the United States. He has served as the president of the California Society of Newspaper Editors and the chair of the California Newspaper Publishers Foundation. He currently serves on the board of directors of the UC Press Foundation and is treasurer of the national Alternative Newsmedia Foundation.

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Powerful fact-filled history of heroic journalists speaking truth to power in this first person narrative about covering the turmoil during El Salvador's 12-year civil war that claimed 75,000 lives from 1979 through 1991. "War correspondents end up writing their colleagues' obituaries," observes George Thurlow in this insightful memoir that chronicles how United States, European and in-country journalists coverage differed when reporting on the same events. The book documents the military's "hatred for members of the media, both local and international" because the reporting often documented the ruling junta's cruelty and failings, and thus harmed their lobbying efforts for even more subsidies and armaments from Washington. The most touching sections are when Thurlow describes his efforts to atone for the death of his driver and interpreter, Gilberto Moran, who was gunned down when Thurlow along with an AP photographer were shot, intentionally, by government soldiers. Both Moran and Thurlow were born hours apart on November 10, 1951, a fact that Thurlow utilizes to compare and contrast their lives. Accessible and well-documented, the story highlights the U.S. intervention and then abandonment in El Salvador. Must reading for current and future war correspondents as well those interested in learning about the roots of the current situation in El Salvador and other Central American countries. A wonderful yarn. - John Weiss

With the approval of Ken Leake, publisher of the Woodland Daily Democrat, George Thurlow would take vacation time to report from one of the world's hotspots - El Salvador. He arrived there on April 26, 1981. Thurlow, editor of the Chico News & Review from 1981-1991, now living in Santa Barbara, spent only a few days in El Salvador during its civil war. Looking for the "bang bang," the only way to get attention from news outlets back home, Thurlow and his translator, Gilberto Moran, were ambushed by the ruthless Treasury Police. Thurlow was wounded but Moran was killed. The Salvadoran police, Thurlow writes, "shoot first and don't ask questions later." "El Salvador was in the throes of a civil war between the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, which fought to end government repression and for land reform, and an authoritarian government." Weeks after Ronald Reagan was elected U.S. president in 1980, four U.S. religious figures, including three nuns, were raped and killed by Salvadoran soldiers. Meanwhile, Thurlow notes, the U.S. increased support for the government in its proxy war against the Soviets. The story is told in Thurlow's riveting first-person account, "El Salvador: Blood On All Our Hands" ($19.99 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle). "Blood was streaming from numerous shrapnel wounds in my arm, and they turned the cameras toward me. I was becoming the news. I was the bang bang. That night, my image would flash across the U.S. on network TV, and I would be heralded, pitied, and pilloried." Much of the book recounts Thurlow's agonizing but fruitless search for Moran's grave and his family. "Like so many other Americans," he writes, "I had come to El Salvador to make a point, and I was leaving behind a trail of misery. I had stories to tell ... and a clear understanding of how the U.S. was behind so much of the terror. But it would take me 20 years to figure out my responsibility. My country never has." - Dan Barnett