Refugees, AIDS activists mark funeral day with Reagan protest

SAN FRANCISCO -- As Ronald Reagan's body was carried back to California for burial, Central American activists staged a protest Friday of Reagan's foreign policies, linking them to thousands of deaths in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.

About 100 people, hoisting plywood crosses painted with the names of people thought to have been killed by military-backed death squads during the early 1980s, marched through San Francisco's heavily Hispanic Mission District in an angry answer to the accolades that accompanied the end of the 40th president's life.

"This man is a criminal. This man is a murderer and doesn't deserve any respect," said Zenaida Velasquez Rodriguez, a Honduran human rights activist whose brother hasn't been seen since 1981, when he was allegedly kidnapped by national security forces.

Participants faulted Reagan for supporting, arming and funding anti-communist dictators, military leaders or insurgents who used torture, kidnappings and murder to silence critics.

Participants said they saw nothing inappropriate about criticizing the late president on the day of his funeral, saying Reagan's record was being distorted amid the outpouring of posthumous honors.

"I have no problem criticizing the dead, especially when hundreds of thousands of Central Americans died without even a decent burial," said Sheila Tully, a San Francisco State University anthropologist who was a health-care worker in Nicaragua during the mid-1980s.

Gay-rights groups held their own official day of mourning -- for AIDS patients whose deaths they blame on Reagan's unwillingness to confront the disease during the first years of the epidemic. Some organizations, including the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, D.C. and Equality California, a statewide lobbying group, shut their offices in remembrance of those who died of AIDS.