In a certain way, those who died won this war, while those who survived still
seem to be living a dream in which helicopters have become ambulances, and
cannons and bombs have ceased to disturb the silence of night.
After almost 20 years in exile, I have returned to my
country. My first reac-
tion-after the difficult search for
my documents in disordered
files-has been emotional. Of
course, I have tried to hold back
my feelings in order to reacquire a
sixth sense of survival, for which I
will need a force of character close
to stoicism. Stoicism is hard to
come by in a country of tumul-
tuous activity like El Salvador
whose people are known for the
assertiveness with which they
make and remake their plans. Yet
it made its reappearance in the last
12 years, when men and women
had to hide their pain in order not
to be recognized as the friends and
relatives of victims, and thus
immediately become victims them-
selves.
San Salvador is a city that still
moves desperately, although peo-
ple no longer fear dying in a cross-
fire of bullets or seeing an entire
family decapitated by death
squads. No kind of atrocity was
foreign to this war which cost so
many lives. The war has left few
signs of physical devastation in
San Salvador, even though the cap-
Manlio Argueta is the author of One Day In Life (Random House, 1983) and a col- lection of poems, La Guerra Florida (1992). He is currently at work on a new novel, Night of the Children.
ital was the center of the great
1989 guerrilla offensive. In a cer-
tain way, those who died won this
war, while those who survived still
seem to be living a dream in which
helicopters have become ambu-
lances, and cannons and bombs
have ceased to disturb the silence
of night.
A year after the end of the war,
Salvadorans want to return to nor-
malcy. The 1989 offensive left
many convinced that the country
was moving towards an extermina-
tion of senseless proportions. That
conviction produced the impulse to
find a negotiated solution to the
conflict. This was a war in which
one side (the army and the govern-
ment) raised the flag of national
security and the defense of
Western values, while the other
(the FMLN) fought for social jus-
tice, as if these concepts were
irreconcilable. In its essence, the
war was a struggle to conserve or
overturn historical privileges-to
defend or seize power. It took
place within a vortex of polariza-
tion and ideological dogmatism
that led to the assassinations of the
Archbishop of El Salvador, the
North American nuns, the Jesuits,
and the Dutch and North American
journalists. It was also in that con-
text that FMLN guerrilla and poet
Roque Dalton was killed by his
militarist compafieros.
Now, in 1993, the senseless insti-
tutional crimes so common in the
past have almost disappeared. An
optimism is putting down roots in
the civilian population. Those who
before were spectators and victims
of the war, who watched from their
windows as tracer bullets flew by
and prayed that a rocket would not
fall on their roof tops, are now
becoming actors in the reconstruc-
tion of their country.
However, like an oil spill in
the sea, a stain is darkening
these hopes. After the holo-
caust of war, the nation’s deserved
tranquility has been broken by the
crime of the post-war era. The per-
manently marginalized now assas-
sinate those who have a little more.
“You know,” said a taxi driver,
one of those people with whom I
often talk to take the pulse of the
city, “before we knew there were
two factions, and we knew how to
deal with them. Now we are worse
off than during the war. We don’t
know who they are, and we don’t
know what the rules of the game
are. They only want our money
and valuables. If they are not satis-
fied with what we give them, they
kill us. They have a light finger on
the trigger.”
The war has left a pifiata of mili-
tary weapons available for the tak-
ing. People are ready to fire M-16
4NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 4 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASUPDATE / EL SALVADOR
rifles or AK-47s, or throw a
grenade, in order to steal a watch
or avenge an unrequited love. Or
out of sheer craziness. Post-war El
Salvador is as lethal as the war
itself. And this unsettled situation
could last as long if there is no
spiritual disarmament. How can we
explain this gratuitous violence?
On the one hand, these murders are
psychological remnants of the war,
and on the other, the consequence
of dire economic necessities. What
is incomprehensible is that the
government still talks of these
crimes as if they were rou-
tine occurrences. Some sec-
tors of the FMLN charac-
terize them the same way,
perhaps in an attempt not to
disrupt the dynamic of the
peace process. As if the
defense of lives can wait.
The far Right has asked
the army to patrol the
streets-to control traffic
and fight street crime.
President Alfredo Cristiani
supports this military
patrol, even though the
peace accords explicitly A crir
stipulate that the army limit ken b
itself to defending sover-
eignty and responding to natural
catastrophes. Is the government
calling in the army out of despera-
tion, or are some sectors trying to
feel less abandoned by their former
patrons? No one knows, but popu-
lar opinion is divided over a
response that would militarize the
city and the countryside when the
footprints of war are still fresh.
Of course, compared to the
bloody standards of the recent
past, these incidents can appear
routine or irrelevant. They involve
commando-style assaults in any
side street on unwary drivers, or
attacks on youths or school chil-
dren to take away their school
bags. Or grenades thrown through
windows, for no other reason than
to “joder,” rough Salvadoran slang
meaning “because I goddamn feel
like it.”
But we dismiss the significance
of this crime at our peril. There
cannot be peace without respect for
life and the natural world. Civic
security should not be postponed.
It cannot be tossed to the side by
alleging other priorities. The great-
est priority is human existence. A
recent news report told of an
assault on a car in which the
attackers brandished guns and
hand grenades. After watching his
partner die, one of the assailants
exclaimed, “I have three children,
and I was fired from work. I do
ne scene. The nation’s tranquility has bee y the street crime of the post-war era.
this out of necessity.” This is the
school of cynicism. It is the
responsibility of those who taught
war and legitimated violence to
educate Salvadorans about how to
live in peace.
The first task before us is the
creation of a Salvadoran state with
institutions, legal guarantees, and
respect for life and civil rights
(isn’t this the raison d’8tre of the
state?). One element of state for-
mation is the National Civil Police,
which is supposed to begin taking
the place of the old Treasury
Police and National Guard. The
new police force-made up of ex-
members of the FMLN and of the
disbanded police corps-fielded its
first contingent of 500 men in the
third week of February. Even
though necessary facilities had
been requested many times over
the past year, the new national
police force was housed in provi-
sional quarters. The government
has given no valid reasons for not
granting the salaries it originally
offered the police or, at the very
least, providing them with the
installations of the disbanded secu-
rity corps. Nor have Salvadorans
been told why there are so few
trainees. The government claims it
doesn’t have the money. How can
there be money in the national
treasury to subsidize the export
crops, the big importers and the
private banks, all of which
were awash in privileges in
past administrations, but
not a penny to safeguard
the well-being of the Sal-
vadoran people, or to pro-
vide adequate wages and
social benefits?
Twenty-four hours before
graduating, that first con-
tingent of police officers
marked its appearance with
an act of rebellion. They
threatened not to attend
their graduation cere-
n bro- monies because of their
low salaries which, to
make things worse, the
government had told them about
only at the last minute. President
Cristiani threatened to fire them if
they persisted with their demands.
The population, besieged by vio-
lence, had placed its hopes in this
new police force-trained over
long months with the support of
the international community, and
educated in a new philosophy of
social security. Once again, popu-
lar expectations were dashed.
ertainly, there is fear among
the right. Although it has
been compelled to partici-
pate in the peace initiatives, the
Right is afraid of the unknown, of
cutting loose from those who were
its armed protectors. I don’t think
the majority of the military any
longer play the dirty role that was
their lot. But they need time to
Vol XXVI, No 5 May 1993 5UPDATE / EL SALVADOR
readjust, especially with respect to
their financial affairs. It’s important
to keep in mind that military offi-
cers became an important econom-
ic power, giving mortgage credits
and loans to members of their own
ranks. They didn’t lose the war,
but they lost their role in society–
which is as if they lost the war. At
the end of last year, when rumors
circulated of a pending military
coup, U.S. Under-Secretary of
State for Inter-American Affairs
Bernard Aronson and Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs-of-
Staff Colin Powell
hastily travelled to El
Salvador to contain
the remaining crazi-
ness that was frustrat-
ing the fulfillment of
the peace accords.
The United States
made one thing clear:
it would not give any
more money for the
war.
Despair has also
gripped the FMLN.
The popular organi-
zations, allied politi-
cal parties on the Left The old Nat and the Church-all National Civ
of whom were a
tremendous moral force during
these 12 years of war-were sur-
prised to learn that the FMLN and
the government had entered into
secret negotiations over the carry-
ing out of the findings of the Truth
and Ad-Hoc commissions. The
FMLN explained that two of the
five organizations that made up the
former armed insurgency had
negotiated a deal in which land for
former guerrillas would be
exchanged for forgiveness for cer-
tain military officers.
And so the fissures appeared.
Without a doubt, the FMLN must
have time to convert its military
forces into a political party. The
contradictions, though they appear
strong, are not yet deep enough to
threaten this process. But many
FMLN sympathizers-members of
the movement’s “social base”-are
not happy about these secret high-
level negotiations. Thanks to the
power of democratic participa-
tion-one key outcome of the
insurgency-the FMLN is begin-
ning to recognize its mistakes.
But given how desperately it
resolved its disagreements over the
immediate future, and given its
failure to involve its natural allies
in this resolution, the FMLN still
runs the risk of losing its credibili-
ty. The front’s vacillations and
:ional Police with M-76 rifles stand guard
ii Police march by carrying the national flag
pragmatism as it maneuvers politi-
cally have created confusion
among Salvadorans, some of
whom now claim that despite the
clearly recognizable fruits of the
insurgency, the population may
have paid too dearly for the rights
and freedoms that the modern
world has enjoyed since the French
Revolution.
With all that said, there is a
glimmer of a new history for El
Salvador-an uncharted process of
social recomposition that seems
irreversible. On March 15, the
Truth Commission, made up of
three independent investigators,
released its report, naming those
implicated in war crimes.
Although those named will not be
brought to justice, they have been
singled out by the finger of histo-
ry. In truth, this date marks the
beginning of a real civil society in
El Salvador.
“We are not dealing with two
forces in conflict that weakened,”
says Iqbal Riza, the head of the
United Nations human-rights mon-
itoring agency ONUSAL, “but
rather that recognized each other’s
might.” The military and the
FMLN thus came to the conclusion
that neither side could win a mili-
tary victory. It remains to be seen,
however, if the triumph of one of
the opposing sides in
the 1994 elections
will be honorably
accepted by the other.
Some sectors of the
Right are now con-
vinced that pluralism
is a way to ensure
their own survival;
that it is no longer
possible to maintain a
despotic state which
subjects people to the
daily horrors of mili-
tary impunity. Before,
many on the Right
preferred to go on
as the new fighting than lose
g. their privileges. Now
the new circum-
stances demand pragmatism.
Rhetoric about Western culture or
about sacrifice and heroism does
not have the resonance it once had.
The countries of Central
America are modernizing their
way of thinking. They are recog-
nizing what their social needs
are-schools, access to health care,
and human rights. Culture, and
perhaps ethics, will play an impor-
tant educational role during this
period of peace and democratiza-
tion. How to achieve these objec-
tives is the challenge facing those
Salvadorans who are positioning
themselves to head their country.
Now it’s in the hands of the Left
and the Right: a battlefield without
arms or hierarchy for the FMLN
and with humane methods for the
Right.
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