On this day, 16 November 1989 six Jesuit scholars/priests, their housekeeper and her daughter were murdered by the US-backed military in El Salvador. The priests were considered "subversive". After the soldiers killed them, they tried to make the murders look like the work of left-wing guerrillas.
That same week, at least 28 other Salvadoran civilians were murdered, including the head of a major union, the leader of the organisation of university women, nine members of an Indian farming cooperative and ten university students.
The Jesuits were murdered by the Atlacatl Battalion, an elite unit created, trained and equipped by the United States. It was formed in March 1981, when fifteen specialists in counterinsurgency were sent to El Salvador from the US Army School of Special Forces. From the start, the Battalion was engaged in mass murder. A US trainer described its soldiers as "particularly ferocious....We've always had a hard time getting [them] to take prisoners instead of ears."
In December 1981, the Battalion took part in an operation in which over a thousand civilians were killed in an orgy of murder, rape and burning. Later it was involved in the bombing of villages and murder of hundreds of civilians by shooting, drowning and other methods. The vast majority of victims were women, children and the elderly.
The backing of these despotic regimes was meant to "protect" the USA , the greatest superpower from the "danger " of Communism on it's southern borders .