They went places other delegations have never gone and got closer to the war than most members of the U.S. Embassy are ever able or willing to do. Washington Post
Delegations come and go in El Sal-
vador. Their visits coincide with the
twice-a-year certification of the Salva-
dorean government by the U.S. ad-
ministration for continued military and
economic assistance.
They usually are called ‘fact-finding
missions’ in the news and ‘dog and
pony shows’ out of print because of
their seeming superficiality. Elected
officials and other distinguished vis-
itors often seem to bring the answers
with them, spend a day or so in whirl-
wind meetings with local dignitaries,
and then catch the next plane to
Washington for the obligatory press
conference for or against U.S. aid.
The Commission on U.S.-Central
American Relations caught reporters
and many officials by surprise. Al-
though its members did meet with
embassy and government officials,
their conversations were unusually di-
rect and often confrontational. Most of
their time was spent in prisons and
refugee camps, and in conversation
with peasants along the road outside
the capital in dangerous war zones.
Dallas Times Herald
You know, this was really a hard-
hitting group. They made a lot of jaws
drop around this town.
U.S. Embassy official
We arrive at Tocotin Interna-
tional Airport at dusk on January
18, an eclectic group of twenty
Americans expecting to see ma-
chine gun-toting soldiers behind
every pillar. There are none. On
the long drive to the capital, we
hide our nervousness by com-
menting on rock formations, while
someone asks if this is the road
where the nuns were killed.
Mar/Apr 1983
MASH’s Mike Farrell visits refugee camp.
Ed Feighan, freshman con-
gressman from Cleveland and
member of our delegation, is met
at the airport by Embassy staff
and whisked away in a bullet-proof
car. He is told they can’t guaran-
tee his safety at our hotel, and the
rest of us take bets on whether the
Congressman will yield to Embas-
sy pressures to stay elsewhere.
It’s my second trip to El Salva-
dor with the Commission on U.S.-
Central American Relations, and
this time I’m one of the coordina-
tors of “Risky Tours, Inc.,” as we
call these twice-yearly trips. It’s
easy to become numb to the hor-
rors of El Salvador. This visit with
people seeing it for the first time,
would reopen old wounds.
At the Camino Real hotel, we
are greeted by the U.S. press
corps, eager to judge if our dele-
gation is “a story.” They seem
surprised to see that our group
includes singer Mary Travers and
Mike Farrell, B.J. of M*A*S*H fame.
Inexplicably, the Embassy has
announced that they dropped out
at the last minute. Our waylaid
Congressman turns up later that
night, having declined the Em-
bassy’s offers.
For the next four days, we shut-
tle between meetings with gov-
ernment leaders and generals, on
the one hand, and those we come
to perceive as their victims, on the
other: refugees from the Army’s
“clean-up” operations in the
countryside, political prisoners,
mothers of the disappeared–and
teen-age soldiers with only the
vaguest idea of what they are
fighting for or against. The emo-
tional acrobatics involved are
draining. To translate General
Garcia’s lies into English with a
straight face is no easy task. But
to convey a sense of some of what
43
Eupdate . update * update * update
we experienced is far more dif-
ficult.
Showcase Prisons
“I bet you’ve never seen a pri-
son that nice in the United States,”
an Embassy officer told me that
evening over cocktails.
We had expected dungeons on
our morning visit to Mariona men’s
prison, and instead we found spa-
cious courtyards, crowded but
clean cell blocks and an apparent
atmosphere of freedom inside pri-
son walls. Mariona’s 726 political
prisoners are kept apart from the
“common criminals”; they are al-
lowed to roam freely inside the
compound from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.-
to play soccer in the courtyard,
run on a make-shift track or hold
meetings in the office of the Politi-
cal Prisoners’ Committee. No
wonder the government arranged
our visit. El Salvador’s prisons are
its pride.
Inside the office of the Political
Prisoners’ Committee, posters
taped to cinderblock walls show
the slain archbishop, Oscar Ro-
mero, Che Guevara, flowers
blooming from the barrel of a gun.
We are introduced to the Commit-
tee’s directorate-a school teach-
er, a factory worker, a trade union
leader, an economist and others.
They begin their presentation with
a warning.
“Don’t be taken in by these sur-
roundings and by our existence,”
says Carlos Molina, an economist
and member of the Democratic
Revolutionary Front (FDR), arrest-
ed in October 1982. “We’re just
the tip of the iceberg-the part the
government wants you to see. But
what about the thousands that
have been assassinated? What
about the disappeared? They
want you to believe that now they
are taking prisoners instead of kil-
ling people. In fact, they are doing
44
both.”
The prisoners have created
seven committees to cope with
prison life: a cultural committee
that has organized a chorus, poe-
try readings, theatrical skits; a
disciplinary committee; recrea-
tion; political education; clean-
up; and so forth. Douglas Ramirez,
a high school teacher and mem-
ber of the teachers’ union ANDES,
is in charge of the prisoners’ legal
committee.
Ramirez reads from a sheath of
papers prepared by his commit-
tee: 35% of the political prisoners
at Mariona are under 20 years of
age; 45% are urban workers, 21%
are students and only 5% are
peasants (people from the rural
areas never make it alive to the
prisons, we are told). Out of a
sample of 550 prisoners, 379 have
been there for more than six
months-the period, according to
the state of seige decrees, in
which formal charges must be
filed. Only 76 prisoners have had
charges brought against them.
“Supposedly we have the right to
legal counsel,” says Ramfrez,
“but no lawyer has access to our
cases.”
Another prisoner, a teacher,
shows us what happened to him
before he reached the jail. Hide-
ous scars cross his face, chest,
and back, the product of hydro-
chloric acid. “They threatened to
burn out my eyes,” he says, “un-
less I confessed to being a sub-
versive.”
The stories vary only in the
method of torture applied-elec-
tric shocks, hot metal bars, mock
executions. Almost all the prison-
ers say they were “arrested” by
armed men in civilian clothes,
blindfolded and taken to secret
interrogation centers. From there,
after a few days or weeks de-
pending on the case, they were
taken to the headquarters of one
of El Salvador’s three security
forces for further questioning-
and physical abuse.
(Most of the men we spoke to at
Mariona say they were tortured at
NACLA staffer Janet Shenk translates during meeting in office of Political Prisoners’ Committee inside Mariona men’s prison. Seated from left: Marge Tabankin, former head of Vista; prisoner; Rep. Ed Feighan (D-OH). Poster captions read, from left:
“Monsignor Romero, you live on in the struggles of our people”; “Mother, your
imprisoned son will be liberated by the people”; “To love in times of war.”
NACLA Report
Eupdate update update update
E
Folk singer Mary Travers sings for the inmates at Mariona men’s prison at their request.
the hands of the National Police.
The Director of the National Po-
lice, Colonel L6pez Nuila, is a
member of the government’s
newly appointed Human Rights
Commission. He failed to appear
at our meeting with that Commis-
sion.)
It was wrenching to leave these
men-fearing they may be pun-
ished for having spoken so frank-
ly. Bernab4 Recinos, a legendary
figure in El Salvador’s trade union
movement, imprisoned since Au-
gust 1980, asks us to hug his wife.
We’ll be seeing her that afternoon
at Ilopango, El Salvador’s wo-
men’s jail.
The Road to UauIautan
The guerrillas’ FM station, Radio
Venceremos, had issued a travel
advisory the night before, telling
civilians to stay off the roads from
dawn to dusk. But we are eager to
escape the artificial calm of the
capital and decide to travel with
seasoned journalists to Usulutin,
the capital of El Salvador’s richest
Mar/Apr 1983
agricultural province.
White towel flying from the an-
tennae of our van, a PRENSA ban-
ner taped to its side, we proceed
cautiously over a narrow, swaying
railroad bridge to cross the Lem-
pa River into Usulutdn. A hundred
yards down river, the once grace-
ful Puente de Oro, El Salvador’s
most modern suspension bridge,
stands as a monument to the skills
of the FMLN and the Army’s lack
of vigilance. It was blown up a
year ago and now its remains
reach into the river like two giant
claws.
The two-hour drive to UsulutAn
takes us on a road lined with top-
pled power lines (the region has
been without electricity for two
years) and burned-out trucks. One
element of the FMLN’s strategy is
to prevent the government from
reaping much-needed foreign
exchange revenues from the cot-
ton, coffee and cane crops. We
are told the guerrillas rarely burn
crops in the field, so that farm-
workers won’t lose their pay. But
every truck carrying goods to
market is a slow-moving target.
We talk with fieldhands on a
cotton plantation turned into a co-
operative by the agrarian reform.
“Life was better when the old
patr6n was around,” they say. “At
least he was rich. Now the banks
won’t give us credit and the cotton
weighs less because we can’t
buy fertilizer.” What are you most
afraid of? “The planes,” they say,
referring to the U.S.-supplied A-
37s used regularly by the Army to
bomb guerrilla strongholds. As
they leave the fields to go home,
the workers walk in a pack along
the highway, carrying a big white
flag.
Our trip to and from Usulutin
was uneventful-except for when
we paused briefly to wait for a
small skirmish up ahead to end.
But less than a week after our trip,
the rickety railroad bridge was no
more. Every town on the highway
had been taken over, at least tem-
porarily, by the FMLN, and Usulu-
tbn was surrounded.
45update . update * update * update
A Call for Dialogue
If one thing had changed since
my last trip to El Salvador, it was
that more and more people in
what the U.S. government likes to
tout as El Salvador’s “center,” be-
lieve that only through dialogue
can the war be ended.
The call for direct talks between
the government, the armed forces
and the rebels was issued last
October by the FDR-FMLN, El
Salvador’s united political and
armed opposition. Today, it is
echoed by the Catholic Church,
major trade union federations and
even a small minority within the
Army.
It is clear to everyone willing or
able to admit it that the Army is not
winning the war; that its morale is
low and slipping-partly as a re-
sult of the guerrillas’ new policy of
releasing captured soldiers to the
International Red Cross. (A local
Army commander told us, “Every
released soldier is a soldier lost,
not a soldier gained. They’ve been
brain-washed.”)
It is equally clear that the March
1982 elections did nothing to im-
prove conditions or create a cli-
mate for peace. We met with trade
union leaders representing con-
struction workers, public and
municipal employees, rural co-
operatives and professional as-
sociations. Their members are
among the 1.4 million said to have
voted in the March elections; they
now say they were a hoax and that
new elections must be preceded
by a dialogue with the FDR-FMLN.
The word “dialogue” was whis-
pered six months ago. It is now
the subject of sharp and open
debate. “It’s humiliating for us to
admit it,” said a university profes-
sor. “But what happens in Wash-
ington is more important than what
happens here. Without Washing-
ton’s pressure, there can never
be dialogue-or peace.”
The Commission on U.S.-Central American Relations is a project of the Center for Development Policy. For further information, write to the Com- mission at 1826 18th St. N W., Wash- ington, D.C. 20009.
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