El Salvador: Another Vietnam | |
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Directed by | Glenn Silber Tetê Vasconcellos |
Written by | Claudia Vianello |
Produced by | Glenn Silber Tetê Vasconcellos [1] Claudia Vianello |
Narrated by | Mike Farrell |
Cinematography | Newton Thomas Sigel |
Edited by | Deborah Shaffer Kate Taverna |
Distributed by | Icarus Films WNET [2] |
Release date |
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Running time | 53 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
El Salvador: Another Vietnam is a 1981 American documentary film directed by Glenn Silber.
This political documentary illustrates the turbulent history of El Salvador from the 1920s-1970s, and the role of the U.S. government in that history. [2] As the title suggests, the presence of U.S. military advisors in a country fighting against socialist guerrilla factions is highly reminiscent of the beginnings of the U.S. escalation of the war in Vietnam. [3]
It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. [4] [5]
El Salvador, officially the Republic of El Salvador, is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south by the Pacific Ocean. El Salvador's capital and largest city is San Salvador. The country's population in 2023 was estimated to be 6.5 million.
Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez was a prelate of the Catholic Church in El Salvador. He served as Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of San Salvador, the Titular Bishop of Tambeae, as Bishop of Santiago de María, and finally as the fourth Archbishop of San Salvador. As archbishop, Romero spoke out against social injustice and violence amid the escalating conflict between the military government and left-wing insurgents that led to the Salvadoran Civil War. In 1980, Romero was shot by an assassin while celebrating Mass. Though no one was ever convicted for the crime, investigations by the UN-created Truth Commission for El Salvador concluded that Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, a death squad leader and later founder of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) political party, had ordered the killing.
Kenneth Lauren Burns is an American filmmaker known for his documentary films and television series, many of which chronicle American history and culture. His work is often produced in association with WETA-TV and/or the National Endowment for the Humanities and distributed by PBS.
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The president of El Salvador, officially known as the President of the Republic of El Salvador, is the head of state and head of government of El Salvador. He is also, by Constitutional Law, the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of El Salvador. The office was created in the Constitution of 1841. From 1821 until 1841, the head of state of El Salvador was styled simply as Head of State.
Roberto D'Aubuisson Arrieta was a neo-fascist Salvadoran soldier, politician and death squad leader. In 1981, he co-founded and became the first leader of the far-right Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and served as President of El Salvador's Constituent Assembly from 1982 to 1983. He was a candidate for President in 1984, losing in the second round to former President of the Junta José Napoleón Duarte. After ARENA's loss in the 1985 legislative elections, he stepped down in favor of Alfredo Cristiani and was awarded the honorary post of party president for life. He was named by the UN-created Truth Commission for El Salvador as having ordered the assassination of then-Archbishop Óscar Romero in 1980.
Robert Edward White was an American career diplomat who served as US Ambassador to Paraguay (1977–1980) and to El Salvador (1980–1981). He then became president of the Center for International Policy.
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The Salvadoran Civil War was a twelve-year period of civil war in El Salvador that was fought between the government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition or "umbrella organization" of left-wing groups backed by the Cuban regime of Fidel Castro as well as the Soviet Union. A coup on 15 October 1979 followed by government killings of anti-coup protesters is widely seen as the start of civil war. The war did not formally end until 16 January 1992 with the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords in Mexico City.
Gregorio Rosa Chávez is a Salvadoran Latin Catholic prelate who was an Auxiliary Bishop of San Salvador from 1982 to 2022. He was a close collaborator of the slain Archbishop Saint Óscar Romero.
El Salvador is a country in Central America.
Morton Dean Dubitsky, better known as Morton Dean, is an American television and radio anchor, news correspondent and author.
William Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Stone won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay as writer of Midnight Express (1978), and wrote the gangster film remake Scarface (1983). Stone achieved prominence as writer and director of the war drama Platoon (1986), which won Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture. Platoon was the first in a trilogy of films based on the Vietnam War, in which Stone served as an infantry soldier. He continued the series with Born on the Fourth of July (1989)—for which Stone won his second Best Director Oscar—and Heaven & Earth (1993). Stone's other works include the Salvadoran Civil War-based drama Salvador (1986); the financial drama Wall Street (1987) and its sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010); the Jim Morrison biographical film The Doors (1991); the satirical black comedy crime film Natural Born Killers (1994); a trilogy of films based on the American Presidency: JFK (1991), Nixon (1995), and W. (2008); and Snowden (2016).
The Salvadoran military dictatorship was the period of time in Salvadoran history where the Salvadoran Armed Forces governed the country for almost 48 years from 2 December 1931 until 15 October 1979. The authoritarian military dictatorship limited political rights throughout the country and maintained its governance through rigged and fixed elections.
El Faro is an internationally acclaimed Central American digital news outlet founded in 1998 in El Salvador. In April 2023, El Faro moved its administrative and legal operations to San José, Costa Rica, registering the newsroom as the non-profit Fundación Periódica. The bulk of the newsroom is based in San Salvador, with reporters in Guatemala City and Washington, D.C.
On December 2, 1980, four Catholic missionaries from the United States working in El Salvador were raped and murdered by five members of the El Salvador National Guard. The murdered missionaries were Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, Ursuline Dorothy Kazel, and lay missionary Jean Donovan.
The 1979 Salvadoran coup d’état was a military coup d'état that occurred in El Salvador on 15 October 1979. The coup, led by young military officers, bloodlessly overthrew military President Carlos Humberto Romero and sent him into exile. The National Conciliation Party's firm grasp on power was cut, and in its place, the military established the Revolutionary Government Junta of El Salvador (JRG). The junta was composed of two military officers and three civilians.
Death squads in El Salvador were far-right paramilitary groups acting in opposition to Marxist–Leninist guerrilla forces, most notably of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), and their allies among the civilian population before, during, and after the Salvadoran Civil War. The death squads committed the vast majority of the murders and massacres during the civil war from 1979 to 1992 and were heavily aligned with the United States-backed government.
The Captain General Gerardo Barrios Military School, abbreviated as the EMCGGB, was a military academy in El Salvador. It was established in 1868 and is named after Captain General Gerardo Barrios who served as President of El Salvador from 1859 to 1863. It was located in Antiguo Cuscatlán, Santa Tecla, La Libertad. It was demolished in June 2022 to make way for the construction of the Estadio Nacional de El Salvador.