Witness to War: An American Doc-
tor in El Salvador by Charles Clements,
M.D. Bantam Books, 320 pp. $15.95
(cloth).
A good number of Report readers
will already have come across Charlie
Clements. He has spent much of the
last year, since his return from El Sal-
vador, crisscrossing the United States
on the lecture circuit and speaking on
radio and television talk shows.
For a year in 1982-83, Clements
was doctor to 9,000 civilians and 1,000
guerrillas in villages around the Gua-
zapa volcano, which lies just 20 miles
from the capital of San Salvador; the
city is visible from its slopes. Guazapa
(“about the area of Denver, Colorado”)
is a microcosm of El Salvador’s peasant-
based war; all five FMLN organizations
have forces there.
Clements describes that war in vivid
detail, drawing on the field diaries he
kept through aerial bombing raids, mass
evacuations of civilians, all-night house
calls and his own bouts with dysentery
and malaria. It is a setting that is at
times nightmarish, at times inspiration-
al, at times wearying and banal. And it
forms the backdrop for a gallery of
characters who in their separate ways
explain the origins of the revolution.
There is Nico, the 12-year-old correo,
or messenger; the other medics who
share Clements’ rough field clinics, like
the cantankerous Lupe and “the macho
caricature” Marco with his uncomfort-
able designer jeans and aviator glasses.
There is the shy comandante Raul Her-
cules, who came to the FMLN through
the pastoral work of priests like Rutilio
Grande. And most movingly, there is
Magdaleno, at 62 the oldest combatant
on Guazapa, who decided to “incorpo-
rate” after his first meeting with the
Christian peasant group FECCAS led
to three days of torture at the hands of
the Army ending in castration.
Clements is a Quaker, and has taken
seriously the Friends’ message to “speak
truth to power.” He arrived in El Salva-
dor from the unlikeliest of backgrounds.
Son of a military family, he was a dis-
tinguished graduate of the U.S. Air
Force Academy, and a C-130 pilot in
Southeast Asia in 1969-70. In his own
wry phrase, he was “an officer and a
gentleman.”
The key word in the book’s title is
“witness.” By consciously opting for
medical neutrality and pacificism, he is
able to write of the Salvadorean revolu-
tion with a sense of distance that sets
Witness to War apart from any other
behind-the-lines report. Even at the
end, the Salvadoreans fail to understand
how this strange gringo can refuse to
use a weapon, even when his experi-
ences on Guazapa have led him to talk
of “the enemy” rather than “the gov-
ernment.” He is never a full insider;
on one occasion, he half-jokingly com-
plains to a campesino about the lugu-
brious Salvadorean national anthem.
The reply is memorable: “We do not
sing the song for you, gringo.”
This is a remarkable and deeply
moving book. Most vital, it is a book
for the as yet uncommitted reader; its
sensibilities will be recognizable to al-
most any American eligible to vote in
November. That is why, ultimately, it
may be the most important book yet
written about the war in El Salvador.
Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy
and El Salvador by Raymond Bonner.
Times Books, 391 pp. $16.95 (cloth).
If Ray Bonner had written a book
based solely on his experiences as a
New York Times correspondent, that in
itself would have constituted a major
contribution to the literature on El Sal-
vador’s bloody civil war. Bonner’s
coverage of that nation, in a period
framed by the 1979 coup and the 1982
Constituent Assembly elections, was
the most thorough and compelling to ap-
pear in any U.S. newspaper. His re-
ports naturally sparked a considerable
amount of controversy. Coverage of’
the massacres at El Mozote in Decem-
ber 1981, in particular, provoked sev-
eral attacks from the editorial page of’
The Wall Street Journal, which bolstered
its viewpoint by misquoting Bonner’s
casualty figures.
But Bonner has produced more than
a memoir in this impressive book-he
has written a detailed indictment of
U.S. policy toward El Salvador under
both the Carter and Reagan Adminis-
trations.
Using hundreds of confidential cables
and classified documents-some ob-
tained under the Freedom of Informa-
tion Act and some by additional means-
contrasted with his own eyewitness ac-
14
REPORT
ON THE AMERICAS
counts and accounts of other journalists
in the field, Bonner convincingly ar-
gues the case that Washington has re-
peatedly misled and lied to the public to
justify its own ill-conceived policies.
Specifically, Bonner addresses the
myths of El Salvador’s much touted
land reform program, of a moderate
government beseiged by two extremes
and soon to be under the leadership of
the “centrist” Napoleon Duarte, and
the death squads that allegedly operate
outside of the highest levels of the
Salvadorean officer corps.
Bonner’s findings are complemented
by a range of in-depth interviews with
the revolution’s key personalities. These
illuminating personal encounters, togeth-
er with the careful scrutiny of the previ-
ously undisclosed documents, make
this book essential reading for all.
Fear and Hope: Toward Political
Democracy in Central America by
Penny Lernoux. Field Foundation, 46
pp. no charge on individual orders
(paper).
The Field Foundation commissioned
Penny Lernoux, an investigative jour-
nalist widely respected for her work on
Latin America, to prepare a paper on
past and present U.S. policy toward
Central America, the seventh in a series
of papers on policy issues to be funded
by the foundation. Lernoux draws on
her intimacy with the region-she has
lived in Latin America for over 20
years-and her familiarity with its po-
litical relations with the United States
to provoke a framework for democratic
development.
In an outline of proposals for aiding
such development, Lernoux directs in-
dividuals and institutions to consciously
protest this Administration’s policies
and to provide concrete support, via
private Church channels, to the base
community groups working in the re-
gion. The author believes that working
with the democratic grassroots organi-
zations is an appropriate conduit for
direct support and democratization.
The Nation Thief by Robert Houston.
Pantheon Books, 241 pp. $13.95 (cloth).
In the Nicaragua of the 1850s, a
southern surgeon named William Walk-
er led a series of forays into Central
America that set a precedent for the
shape of things to come. Walker and
his “American Phalanx of Immortals,”
sailed to Nicaragua to fight for the Lib-
erals against the Conservatives. Once
victorious, Walker turned against the
Liberals, installed himself as president
and sought to annex Nicaragua as a
slave state. He also took the unique
step of confiscating Cornelius Vander-
bilt’s $2 million a year transit company.
In the end, he was defeated, but only by
the combined efforts of several Central
American countries, the British Navy
and Vanderbilt.
The Nation Thief is a novelization
of Walker’s exploits, told by key actors’
testimonies. This peculiar episode cer-
tainly lends itself well to fiction-and
Houston’s book is compelling reading,
yet something is lost.
All the by now traditional elements
are there: twisted justifications for in-
tervention, the eschewing of legality,
the power of the press, the cheapness of
native life compared even to that of
American mercenaries. But the charac-
ters do not convincingly pull this action
together. The women are too savvy,
the blacks too hip and the bigots too
blatant. And Vanderbilt becomes the
voice of reason. A clearer feeling for
the impact of this venture upon the
Nicaraguan people, is missing from
this otherwise enjoyable book.
The Rich and the Poor: Development,
Negotiations and Cooperation-An
Assessment edited by Altaf Gauhar.
The Third World Foundation for Social
and Economic Studies, 273 pp. $7
(paper).
In April 1983, the London-based
Third World Foundation and the Chi-
nese Academy of Social Sciences in-
vited 70 Third World scholars and states-
men to the first South-South conference
in Beijing to review strategies of de-
velopment adopted by Third World na-
tions over the past 30 years. Most of the
participants were Chinese and debate
centered on that nation’s development
history. But the predicaments of other
regions were presented by contributors
including Celso Furtado and Amartya
K. Sen.
Victor L. Urquidi, the president of
El Colegio de Mexico, addressed Latin
American case histories. He elaborated
on some standard recommendations in-
cluding: population control, autonomy,
decentralized planning and technologi-
cal development only with respect to
the non-industrial sectors, with a set of
interesting theses on Latin America’s
stunted and erratic economic growth.
Future South-South conferences will
expand on these themes.
Option for the Poor: A Hundred
Years of Vatican Social Teaching by
Donald Dorr. Orbis Books, 328 pp.
$11.95 (paper).
Father Dorr is an Irish missionary
priest who has done pastoral work
throughout Africa and in Brazil and has
studied at length the theology of devel-
opment-that is, the extent to which
the Roman Catholic Church is committed
to supporting the poor or oppressed.
“Option for the poor” is an ecclesiasti-
cal term which detractors define as the
unlikely combination of Marxism and
Latin American Catholicism, while ad-
vocates recognize the concept’s Bibli-
cal roots and advocate its application
throughout the developing world. Dorr
interprets the term as a personal choice
to address the structural injustices of
poverty.
This study analyzes specifically the
teachings of the Vatican, beginning
with the social encyclicals of Leo XIII,
and continuing through to the works of
John Paul II, providing a fascinating
look at internal Church disputes over
“theological dogmatism.”
Women in the Global Factory by An-
nette Fuentes and Barbara Ehrenreich.
Institute for New Communications/
South End Press, 64 pp. $3.75 (paper).
This society has made a cult of com-
puters-those Weimaresque boxes that
will one day elevate this civilization to
an unknown plateau, and help us get
the Russians. But the human compo-
nent in the high tech industry betrays its
inscrutable, futuristic facade.
Most circuit boards are assembled
by Third World women aged 17-25 who
peer through microscopes for nine hours
a day bonding chips to boards with fine
gold strands. They are continuously
exposed to carcinogenic acids, solvents
and toxic vapors. They suffer headaches,
eye strain, acid burns, chemical hyper-
sensitivity and a range of as yet un-
specified occupational illnesses. They
are non-union, manipulated by sexist
and racist stereotypes and often live in
cramped and restrictive company dorms.
They are forced to submit to sexual
harassment, while their relative “inde-
pendence” stigmatizes them at home.
In Third World nations, they earn per-
haps $1 a day.
Conditions are even worse in the
garment industry, where many women
turn to prostitution to supplement their
pitiful incomes. Every appalling aspect
of the “global factory” is explored
in this informative, simply stated and
devastating report.
