At night, in San Salvador, fire- fights can be heard in the distance but they last only a few short rounds. The black-outs are more disconcerting. They happen nearly every night and seem to last longer
each time. The guerrillas can blow
up generators and powerlines
much faster than the U.S. aid dollars
arrive to replace them.
But aside from these inconven-
iences, the war is barely felt in the
capital, where the traffic snarls and
the streets are bustling with activity.
Not many soldiers are in sight. It’s
certification time and the govern-
ment is on its best behavior.
What can be felt is the general
despair. We see it in the eyes of the
Relatives of the Disappeared–
young women in their late teens or
early twenties who ring our rooms
at the hotel and ask timidly if we can
spare a moment to talk. One tells
about her younger brother, dragged
from his bed in the middle of the
night by uniformed soldiers, and
never seen again. Another slips me
a piece of paper folded many times.
Back in my room, I try to decipher
what appears to be a map leading to
a secret torture center in a govern-
ment building-and a scribbled line
saying “We know that Ramon is be-
ing held here.”
Sadness, mixed with irrepressi-
ble hope, is in the eyes of a priest
from a working-class barrio of the
capital. Ninety percent of his parish-
ioners have had a family member
killed or disappeared in the last two
years. And because his barrio is
poor, and because it is assumed
that all poor people are subver-
sives, it is the scene of house-to-
house searches and many more
disappearances each week.
At a refugee camp run by the
Catholic Church, two thousand
women, children and elderly men
are crammed into a schoolyard
now filled with makeshift tents. With
nothing left to lose, these people
speak freely of the military cam-
paigns that forced them to flee their
homes in the north, in Chalaten-
ango, Morazan and Cabanas. The
children, in disturbingly calm
voices, recall the vivid details of the
day one young girl watched sol-
diers set fire to her house, or the day
an 8-year-old boy found his father
slain in the fields.
These refugees, and those we
visited in two other camps in San
Salvador, are captives to the war.
They have no identity papers; they
cannot leave the camps for fear of
being picked up by the security
forces; they did not vote in the
March elections. With remarkable
discipline, they make the best of the
time they must spend waiting for the
war to end. Adults and children are
learning to read and write; everyone
works in the communal kitchens
and talleres, where the refugees
make fishing nets for sale or simple
furnishings for their tents. No one in
the camp is idle.
Just outside the capital, handker-
chiefs pressed to our faces, we visit
a clandestine cemetery that every-
one knows about: El Playon. White
skulls stand poised on a bed of
black lava that stretches from the
road to the green hills in the dis-
tance. Some of the bones still have
flesh clinging to them; a fresh load
of bodies had been dumped the day
before.
“It’s a lousy situation,” says Bob
Driscoll, political officer at the U.S.
Embassy. “But it used to be hor-
rible.” So begins our three-hour offi-
cial briefing on human rights,theeco-
nomy, political affairs and the war.
44
Since the March elections, we
are told, democracy has taken root
here (“even Major D’Aubuisson is
playing by the rules”). The Army is
firmly backing the reforms. The
guerrillas will be reduced to ban-
ditry within two to five years. There
is nothing to negotiate.
Most of the discussion focuses
on military matters, since the war is
foremost in everyone’s mind. The
embassy’s chief military officer,
Colonel Waghlestein, is reputed to
be one of five top counterinsurgen-
cy experts in the U.S. Army. He is in
charge of 40-odd U.S. advisers in El
Salvador today-and gives the im-
pression of being in charge of tac-
tics and strategy for the
Salvadorean Army as well.
“My job is to teach them the
gospel according to Mao and Che,”
the colonel explains. He doesn’t
hide his impatience with the Army’s
traditional reliance on low-risk,
large-scale operations that the
FMLN usually can elude with ease.
Waghlestein prefers “saturation
patroling,” “last-light insertions”
and “night extractions.” He says
that many young officers are com-
ing around to his point of view.
(Later, we ask Minister of
Defense General Guillermo Garcia
about these competing military
strategies. Garcia usually smiles
amiably throughout his interviews
with foreign visitors, attempting to
Refugees cram a San Salvador schoolyard at a center run by Catholics.
2)
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Army Chief of Staff Flores Lima and Defense Minister Guillermo Garcia meeting with the U.S. delegation in July.
counter his killer image abroad. Yet, for a moment, his face turns to
stone: “You Americans lost the war
in Vietnam, didn’t you?”)
Beneath their avowed optimism,
the embassy people are worried
that public opposition back home
may keep them on a shoe-string
budget to fight the war. Despite the
arrival of new A-37 bombers, they
can’t get them all up at once for lack
of trained pilots. Projected military
aid for next year will include six
more Huey choppers (bringing the
total to 26)-but that barely lets
them lift a company. “$100 million
is zero,” says Waghlestein. “That’s
less than the traffic fines in New
York City.”
Are the guerrillas getting more
generous support? The embassy
readily admits that new supplies to
the FMLN are limited to small arms,
medical supplies, ammunition and
communications gear. (General
SpG0Octl112
Garcia, again, vociferously
disagrees. Aid to the guerrillas is
“massive and unconditional”–in
contrast to stingy U.S. supplies that
come with the illusion that wars can
be “pure.”)
By far our most tension-filled
meeting is with our fellow citizens at
the America Chamber of Com-
merce. These businessmen have
spent 10 to 30 years in El Salvador;
some even speak English with the
touch of a Spanish accent. The
Cherokee vans parked outside,
with blackened windows, attest to
the personal danger these men live
with as ideal targets for kidnappings
or assault. They make no secret of
their dislike for Americans who stay
a few days and leave with strong
opinions.
To a man, they are despondent
about the state of the economy:
since 1978, industrial output has
declined by 30%; 60 large factories
have closed in the last two years;
18,000 jobs have been lost. The ter-
rorists are to blame, they say, but
the misguided policies of the Duarte
government (and the Carter Ad-
ministration) didn’t help matters
any. All foreign trade has been state
controlled since 1980, and the
marketing of the last two coffee
crops has been disastrous.
As for the agrarian reform, these
men will shed no tears as it’s
dismantled by the new Constituent
Assembly. It was a blatantly
political measure that made no
economic sense, although some
suggest that it was necessary at the
time. But now the political danger is
past and “it’s time to get down to the
business of making private enter-
prise work.” The new government
is moving in the right direction.
There’s light at the end of the tunnel.
45update update * update . update
Sipping drinks by the side of his
swimming pool, we listen to Deane
Hinton’s assessment of develop-
ments since the March elections.
The ambassador is renowned for
the cowboy style that colors his ac-
count of how he twisted arms to get
rival parties to cooperate. The
“historic compromise” between the
Christian Democrats and the likes of
D’Aubuisson is proof that demo-
cracy can work. Hinton has nothing
but contempt for the “cowardice” of
opposition leaders, who refused to
run the same risks as everyone else
and participate in the elections.
Dinner conversation centers on
the viability of the present govern-
ment. Our meeting with President
Magana had left the impression of a
tired man with little power indepen-
dent of the Army. Our meetings with
Christian Democrats and right-wing
party leaders suggested that they
could agree on little besides the
need to win the war against the Left.
Would the new government hold
together? Hinton would not predict
the future, except to say that the Ar-
my was well aware that another
coup could pull the plug on U.S. aid.
Just as we rose from the dinner
table to put an end to an awkward
evening for all, the room went dark.
The city went black. Was it an elec-
trical storm or another black-out by
the FMLN? Host and guests could
not even agree on that.
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