Jennifer Casolo

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Jennifer Jean Casolo was a young American woman who was arrested on November 26, 1989 by El Salvadoran government troops during the November 1989 "Final Offensive" of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in San Salvador.

[edit] Arrest

A 1983 graduate of Brandeis University, the 28-year old Casolo was in El Salvador, ostensibly under the sponsorship of Texas-based Christian Education Programs, and was arrested after a raid on her residence revealed a massive cache of weapons buried in her backyard, believed to be intended for use by the FMLN during their assault on the capital. The cache consisted of 213 blocks of TNT, more than a hundred 60-millimeter Soviet mortar rounds, 405 electrical detonators, and 20,000 rounds for Soviet AK-47 assault and Dragonov sniper rifles.

Casolo would later claim that the arms cache had been planted in her house by government agents. However, Casolo's house was surrounded by high walls in the front and back, with a solid metal gate in front. Access to the backyard of the house could only be achieved through the house itself. Additionally, videotape of the raid provided by the El Salvadoran police showed the arms and personal papers belonging to Casolo being excavated from her back yard.

[edit] World Reaction

The arrest of Casolo, an American citizen and self-professed pacifist, generated front-page coverage around the world and provoked instant efforts by U.S. members of Congress, congressional staffers, and religious and human rights leaders to obtain her release. Evidence would later emerge that Casolo was a member of CISPES (The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador), a US-based organization whose members offered moral and material support throughout the 1980s to a number of human rights organizations and proponents of democratization in El Salvador, including the FDR (Democratic Revolutionary Front), a grouping of legal Salvadoran mass organizations working more or less in sympathy with the armed resistance to the regime (and its associated right-wing paramilitaries) pursued by the FMLN.

The Salvadoran government of Alfredo Cristiani was pressed by both the Salvadoran military and outraged citizens, who demanded prosecution of a foreigner contributing to the violence in their country. Casolo was also supported by a wide number of friends and critics of the Salvadoran government, who demanded that she be released immediately. Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark flew in to represent Casolo, as did a number of religious leaders.

During this time period, many American and Europeans, often under the auspices of church organizations, were believed to be assisting the FMLN in what they believed was a liberation struggle against the Government of El Salvador. In another incident during the 1989 offensive, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was contacted by the FMLN and told that another American woman could be located at a specific location who was suffering from battle injuries. The ICRC picked up the woman, whose jaw had been destroyed by a bullet, and transported her to a San Salvador hospital. The evidence suggested that she had been moving with an FMLN unit when it clashed with a Salvadoran military patrol.

After days of pressure, President Cristiani ordered Casolo deported on December 13, 1989. Immediately upon her return to the U.S., Casolo undertook a nationwide public speaking tour to declare her innocence and denounce the Government of El Salvador and the United States' involvement in that country.

After her release, Casolo was asked to testify before a Congressional subcommittee on the conduct of U.S. Embassy officials in San Salvador during her detention. She later went to become a relatively well-known peace activist and attended the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley where she was a PhD candidate in Geography. On the Berkeley website, Consolo listed her research interests as "Gender, political ecology, development theory, Latin American indigenous cultures".