El Salvador: Attack from the Right

Businessmen launch a campaign to seize power from the junta

As automatic-rifle fire echoed in the cloud-draped mountains along the El Salvador-Honduras border, U.S.-supplied "Huey" transport helicopters banked low over steep, forested gorges, then deposited heavily armed troops at key locations on the forbidding terrain. According to eyewitnesses, the elite Atlacatl Brigade, some 800 to 1,000 strong, landed near the village of Valladolid, Honduras, violating Honduran airspace and territory as local soldiers looked on impassively. The invaders' mission: to engage leftist Salvadoran guerrilla forces entrenched in pockets along the demilitarized border zone established after El Salvador's four-day war in 1969...

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