Early morning on September 15, El Salvador’s Independence Day, the community of Suchitoto was awakened by the roar of planes flying low and fast. “The people knew immediately they were the types flown during the war,” observed Sister Peggy O’Neill, a Sister of Charity who has done social work in El Salvador for many years. The deafening sound of A-37 bombers flying over Suchitoto is symptomatic of the growing militarization of peacetime El Salvador, which includes cooperation with U.S. forces. On July 6 the Salvadoran National Assembly approved the establishment of a U.S. anti-drug-trafficking base at the international airport in Comalapa. Shortly before that vote, U.S. military helicopters began transporting El Salvador’s police on their rounds in the countryside. Both measures are part of a growing involvement of the U.S. Defense Department with the Salvadoran military and police.
The party of the former guerrillas, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), with the largest contingent in the Assembly, voted against the anti-drug base. While the measure passed by a simple majority, the Salvadoran Constitution requires a three-fourths vote for agreements affecting national sovereignty. Two months after the vote, on September 4, the FMLN presented a formal complaint to the Salvadoran Supreme Court.
The Salvadoran and U.S. governments had signed the agreement on the base on March 31 without informing the National Assembly or the press. Later, maintaining that it is not a “treaty” and cedes no Salvadoran territory, both governments argued that a simple majority was sufficient for ratification. In fact, they refuse to call it a military base, preferring to label it a “monitoring center.” U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson personally lobbied the FMLN prior to the July 6 vote. The following week she left El Salvador to become ambassador to Colombia.
The agreement on the base entered into effect on August 23 with construction beginning soon after. It grants U.S. military and civilian personnel access to airport and government installations as well as exclusive entry into designated base areas. While the agreement is for ten years, the United States hopes to extend it to 20. The United States plans to spend $10.4 million dollars to build at Comalapa, and 60 U.S. military officers and their families will live on the base. The accord permits U.S. personnel to wear uniforms and carry arms. It places no limits on the amount or type of weapons, planes or military equipment. The Puerto Rico-based U.S. Naval South will run the installation. Since the U.S. Marines are under the Navy Department, land, sea and air operations will be possible.
Since the dismantling of its bases in Panama, the United States has been seeking alternative sites for what it calls “Forward Operating Locations” (FOLs). Both Panama and Costa Rica recently rejected a U.S. anti-narcotics base on their soil. However, the United States has already set up FOLs in Manta, Ecuador and in the Dutch dependencies Aruba and Curacao off the coast of Venezuela. El Salvador will now be the third corner of the triangle surrounding Colombia.
The Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute charges that the ultimate objective of the two original FOLs is to back U.S. military intervention in Colombia. According to the Colombian newspaper El Espectador, a State Department source stated that the FOLs are being used to monitor activities of the Colombian guerrillas.
While Washington says it wants to interdict drugs along the Pan-American highway and in Pacific coastal waters, the Salvadoran government defends the Comalapa base as necessary to combat drug-related local crime. On March 17 Mauricio Sandoval, head of the Civilian National Police (PNC), called on the National Assembly to request joint patrols and U.S. military help with logistics, equipment and air-and-sea operations as “indispensable” measures for fighting crime.
On the same day it authorized the FOL, the Assembly approved the “Healthy Youth” program, established to fight drug-related crime, which will permit 20 U.S. Defense Department operatives to train PNC officers. The program, involving U.S. ships and aircraft, will last until December 31. There are similar U.S.-run operations in Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras.
The current U.S. budget assigns $2.2 million for combating drug trafficking through El Salvador. Some of those funds support the new “Central Skies” program, in which U.S. helicopters transport the Salvadoran police around the countryside, for example in the Suchitoto region. One can only imagine the effect on communities in the area that were razed by helicopter attacks and aerial bombardment during the war.
On June 21, U.S. Embassy official Greg Phillips told a visiting group that the main purpose of these U.S. anti-drug efforts is to defend Salvadoran sovereignty. “We’re trying to help them decide what role the military should have in anti-crime or anti-narcotic activities,” said Phillips. The Salvadoran Constitution, amended as required by the 1992 Peace Accords, restricts the Salvadoran military to the defense of national sovereignty and excludes it from internal security functions. Soon after the war ended, however, the army began to patrol the countryside on the grounds that crime constituted a national emergency. Around the same time, U.S. armed forces began carrying out periodic joint humanitarian, and later military exercises with their Salvadoran counterparts. Both policies continue today. A U.S. Embassy official recently acknowledged that U.S. military advisors work directly with the Salvadoran military independently of the Embassy and its oversight.
The Salvadoran military is learning from this collaboration. After participating in joint exercises last spring, a contingent of soldiers showed up at the entrance to the town of Arcatao, an FMLN stronghold, offering to provide health services. The people of Arcatao met them with a bullhorn and demanded they turn back. They wanted health services, they said, but they wanted them from the Salvadoran Health Ministry.
Opponents of the FMLN accuse them of protesting the Comalapa base because they have links to drug traffickers and Colombian guerrillas. But although they oppose terms of the recent agreement, the FMLN has expressed openness to U.S. help in combating organized crime and corruption, and in training the PNC. Some critics consider the U.S. military a blunt instrument for combating crime and argue that recent initiatives violate the Peace Accords by re-militarizing police functions. Still others wonder whether a growing U.S. military presence is tied to significant advances by the FMLN in last March’s elections.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dean Brackley is a U.S.-born Jesuit who has been teaching theology and ethics at the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas (UCA) since 1990.
