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Luis Diaz and Geral Acevedo
Many people believe that civil wars are caused by one country, but in reality, other countries
often provoke a war to gain a profit. This is known as the military industrial complex and it
played a huge role during the cold war. The cold war conflict between socialists and capitalists
led waves of Central American refugees to seek asylum in the United States. For example, El
Salvador had a civil war between socialist rebels and a capitalist government. To prevent the
spread of communism and to feed the military industrial complex, the United States gave $4
billion in aid to El Salvador’s government. 70% of the aid was designated for military use. To
put this in perspective, this is $2.8 billion dollars used for soldiers who were also trained in
America to execute brutal violent repression against their own people. As a result, over 2 million
Salvadorans immigrated to the United States, seeking asylum.