By Jonathan Higuera

The news that Mitt Romney courted wealthy Latin American investors to start his investment firm Bain Capital in 1984 is in itself no reason to condemn him. U.S. businessman small and large raise capital from wherever they can get it to finance their dreams.

But the news, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, that some of the investors were from wealthy families from El Salvador with ties to right-wing death squads should be carefully vetted and analyzed by U.S. voters.

In fact, if reports are accurate, not only did he successfully court them, they became valued business associates as his company’s fortunes grew with their financial backing.

Mitt maintains he knew nothing of any connection to death squads, which terrorized the Salvadoran populous during the country’s 12-year civil war. Some 75,000 Salvadorans died in the conflict. Romney, however, appears more impressed with the resilience of his investors, several of whom had been kidnapped and tortured by leftist rebels, he explained.

Should we be appalled that a U.S. businessman agreed to accept money from persons with questionable morals to help finance his or her entrepreneurial dream. Probably not. Unfortunately, accepting blood money is a semi-acceptable practice among U.S. businessmen. One need look no further than Mexico to see where the guns and ammo come from that fuel the drug cartel violence occurring in that country.

Should we – and by that I mean U.S. voters — be concerned that a man who aspires to lead our great nation, which serves as a democratic beacon to the world, resorted to cultivating money from investors with a sordid history in dealing with a popular people’s movement known as the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). Absolutely.

During those dark days, right-wing death squads routinely rounded up and killed activist students, teachers, and unionists for no other reason than they were activist students, teachers and unionists. Perhaps they ran newspapers that didn’t toe the rightist rhetoric or attended a meeting of a student group, or in some way showed empathy with the poor. At that time, El Salvador was the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with only Haitians in greater poverty.

U.S. involvement in the Central American wars of the 70s, 80s and early 90s was a true blot on U.S. foreign policy history. Our obsession with preventing communism developed into a neurotic psychosis among Reagan Republicans as well as previous administrations that led to debacles such as the Iran-Contra scandal, supporting dictatorships such as Chile’s brutal Augusto Pinochet, and destabilizing any government deemed not friendly to U.S. policies.

Those strategies left the U.S. wide open to international criticism as a meddling bully with real and tragic consequences on the people of those nations.

The atrocities committed by Salvadoran death squads were not exactly a state secret, either. Major publications such as The Washington Post, The New York Times and many other hard-nosed journalist organizations reported on them. It reached martyr proportions when gunmen killed beloved Archbishop Oscar Romero as he was celebrating mass. Romero had spoken out on behalf of the poor.

As a reporter living in Washington, D.C., in the 1980s, I was amazed to see the number of Salvadorans who streamed into our nation’s capital fleeing the violence of their home country. That diaspora is a testament to El Salvador’s sad state of violence and poverty.

For Romney to maintain he wasn’t aware of the ties between the Latin American investors he courted and the violence they likely aided and abetted, rings hollow. Perhaps he just chose to empathize with those on the right. And if he did not know of the connection, that concerns me as well.

Jonathan Higuera is a media/communications strategist based in Phoenix, Arizona. As a longtime journalist, he has worked in newsrooms around the country, including The Arizona Republic, Arizona Daily Star, and The Washington Times. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, AARP, Hispanic Business, Latino Perspectives Magazine and other publications.

The views expressed in this article do not reflect the views of NewsTaco, or its management.

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