Word: hotel
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...while it seemed as if it would provoke direct U.S. military intervention in El Salvador's ugly, decade-old civil war. Twelve Green Berets from Fort Bragg, N.C., part of a U.S. advisory team in El Salvador, were holed up on the fourth floor of the Sheraton Hotel in San Salvador's wealthy Escalon district, while about 20 heavily armed young guerrillas, who had seemingly blundered into the hotel, roamed the floors above and below them...
...there was no shoot-out. Instead, as part of an agreement brokered by the Roman Catholic Church, the guerrillas slipped away, and the U.S. soldiers, using journalists as a shield, ran from the hotel to waiting military vehicles. But so alarming was the event that President George Bush, acutely mindful that he had been seen to be dithering during October's aborted coup in Panama, quickly convened a meeting of a National Security Council emergency group and ordered a small contingent of the supersecret Delta Force into San Salvador. At one point Bush even made the embarrassing claim that...
...that among the guests were the Green Berets and Joao Baena Soares, Secretary General of the Organization of American States, who was trying to work out a cease-fire. As the rebels took up residence in the Sheraton's VIP Tower, Salvadoran commandos hurriedly escorted Soares out of the hotel and drove him away in an armored car. The Green Berets were not so fortunate. Armed with M-16 rifles and grenade launchers, they barricaded themselves behind furniture and waited out the siege. "We're here against our will because we don't feel we can leave safely," growled...
Despite the tension, the scene became like something from a TV situation comedy, with the rebels enjoying a feast of hotel food and the U.S. soldiers resolutely glowering from behind their barricades. Neither side made an attempt to threaten the other. It was, said one of the advisers, a "Mexican standoff," during which they talked to the rebels periodically. "At times it was friendly, at times tense," said another American. Finally, the Auxiliary Bishop of San Salvador, Gregorio Rosa Chavez, mediated the release of the occupants of the hotel and the escape of the rebels. The U.S. soldiers, though, refused...
WORLD: Rebels in El Salvador besiege a hotel...