Roberto D'Aubuisson Arrieta (dohb-wee-SOHN;[2] 23 August 1943 – 20 February 1992) was a Salvadoran military officer, neo-fascist[3][4][5] politician, and death squad leader.

[9] After ARENA's loss in the 1985 legislative elections, D'Aubuisson stepped down in favor of Alfredo Cristiani and was designated as the party's honorary president for life.

He is the descendant of Jacques, Marie, Germain, Gustave d'Aubuisson, who was born in Toulouse, France in 1822 and arrived in El Salvador at the age of 20, where he established himself as an ironmonger and salesman.

[11] D'Aubuisson enrolled in the Captain General Gerardo Barrios Military School in 1958 at the age of 15 and graduated in 1963, becoming a member of the National Guard.

[citation needed] In October 1979, after a group of progressive officers deposed the government of Carlos Humberto Romero in a bloodless coup d'état and established the Revolutionary Government Junta (JRG, 1979–1982), D'Aubuisson was forced out of military service for his death squad connections, although he continued working for senior military commanders secretly.

D'Aubuisson was regularly featured on Salvadoran television denouncing alleged traitors and communists, who were then murdered shortly afterwards by death squads.

The raiders found weapons and documents identifying D'Aubuisson and the civilians as death squad organizers and financiers, and of planning a coup d'état to depose the JRG.

In August 1981, The Washington Post reported that D'Aubuisson "openly talked of the need to kill 200,000 to 300,000 people to restore peace to El Salvador".

"[20] He also asked every Jesuit be murdered as instruments of Communism and threatened to kill James Richard Cheek, a State Department official under Carter.

The 12,000 documents revealed that the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush knew of the assassinations conducted by D'Aubuisson, including that of Oscar Romero, and still worked with him despite this.

Amid opposition debate, ARENA tried to name D'Aubuisson a "meritorious son of El Salvador", a national honor, but failed due to the efforts of protesting Church leaders and human rights workers.

[17] In April 2010, Alvaro Saravia, a former army captain who had admitted taking part in Romero's murder, testified in an interview with the Salvadoran newspaper El Faro that D'Aubuisson had given the order to proceed with the killing of the archbishop.

[citation needed] Tony Plana was cast as Maj. Maximiliano "Max" Casanova in the movie Salvador by Oliver Stone, a thinly disguised depiction of D'Aubuisson.