El Salvador: The Face of Revolution

314 Pages·1982·12.286 MB·English

by  Robert Armstrong, Janet Shenk

El Salvador
The Face ot
Revolution
Robert Armstrong
Janet Shenk

El Salvador
The Face of Revolution
Robert Armstrong
and
Janet Shenk
SOUTH END PRESS BOSTON
Copyright © 1982 by Robert Armstrong and Janet Shenk
Second Edition
Copyrights are still required for book production in the United
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South End Press.
Library of Congress Card Number: 82-80688
ISBN 0-89608-137-0 paper
ISBN 0-89608-138-9 cloth
Cover and photographic design by Liz Mestres
Design and layout were done by the collective at
South End Press
302 Columbus Ave.
Boston, MA 02116
Preface
San Salvador, July 1982. Handkerchiefs pressed to our
faces, we visit a clandestine cemetery that everyone knows
about, several miles from the capital at El Playon. White skulls
stand poised on a bed of black lava that stretches from the road
to the green hills in the distance. Some of the bones still have
flesh clinging to them; a fresh load of bodies had been dumped
the day before.
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. They describe the
military campaigns that forced them to flee the northern
provinces of Chalatenango, Cabanas and Morazan; they tell of
their young sons and daughters whose whereabouts are now
unknown; and some speak in soft tones about their hopes
vested in “los muchachos,” the guerrillas. Meanwhile, the
refugees learn to read and write for the first time, take turns in
the communal kitchens, and wait for the war to end.
At night, in the capital, firefights 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
iv EL SALVADOR
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; only the despair of
the mothers of the disappeared, who tell their stories over an
awkward cup of coffee at our hotel; or the priest from a
working-class barrio, where ninety percent of the parishioners
have had a family member killed or disappeared; or the
businessman whose factory has been idled for over a year and
whose family waits nervously in Miami for the signal to return.
There’s no end to the war in sight, they all agree, but differ on
where to place the blame.
Only at the American embassy is there a mood of cautious
optimism, but even there it is conditional. “Democracy can
take root here,” says the political officer, if only Congress is
patient, the right-wing parties behave, and the army takes our
advice and supports the reforms. “We can reduce the guerrillas
to banditry in five years,” says the military attache. And, again,
if only we can get the army to go out on night ambushes and
small-unit patrols; if only the aid keeps coming. Then a note of
uncertainty and resentment at the kind of support he can
expect from back home: “$100 million is zero. Less than the
traffic fines in New York City.” That’s no way to fight a war.
*###**
Washington D.C., July 1982. In unusually cautious
language, the State Department declares that El Salvador’s new
government is making “a significant and concerted effort” to
curb human rights abuses and promote economic reforms. The
civilian murder rate has declined “somewhat”—“according to
available statistics”; things could be worse and they are slowly
improving. This is the second time that the administration has
had to follow this disagreeable procedure—imposed by Con¬
gress—in order to “certify” El Salvador as a proper recipient of
U.S. aid. The storm of criticism that followed the first
certification has tempered the administration’s arrogance.
“It was a close call,” says Elliott Abrams, Assistant
Secretary of State for Human Rights, with a candor intended to
bolster his credibility in the eyes of Congress. But in reality,
certification was a foregone conclusion long before the State
Preface v
Department made its “findings” public. For only with this
stamp of approval can the President ask Congress for more
military and economic aid. And only with more military
hardware, advisers, training and millions in cold cash, can the
Salvadorean army expect to hold its own in a civil war raging
since 1980.
Ronald Reagan is not about to let the Salvadorean
government fall to forces that he insists are controlled by
foreign powers. He is not about to let the conditions imposed
by Congress stand in the way of aiding an ally in its battle
against “Communist subversion.” Hopes for a quick and easy
victory in El Salvador—a strong signal to the Russians—have
been dashed over the last two years. But El Salvador is still a
“place to draw the line,” in the words of ex-Secretary Haig, and
certification is just another battle in the war.
For its part, the Salvadorean government does its best to
look presentable. In the weeks preceding certification, peasants
that had been evicted from their newly acquired lands are
reinstated by soldiers swearing to uphold the agrarian reform.
For a time, the civilian death count drops sharply. And Roberto
D’Aubuisson, the president of El Salvador’s new Constituent
Assembly, keeps a low profile so as not to alarm those in
Washington who remember his days as leader of the death
squads.
But no sooner than certification is over and done, with a
few squawks from Congress, do the headless bodies reappear
on the streets of San Salvador, and the death count rises to
levels reminiscent of the worst periods of violence. New
civilian massacres are reported in the foreign press, and denied
by the Salvadorean High Command or chalked up to the dirty
business of war.
In the embassy and in Washington, officials begin to
worry about the next certification in early 1983: How to make
sure the body count drops in time to note a “significant
improvement” with respect to human rights; how to make it
plausible that things can improve and still remain so bad.
VI EL SALVADOR
Several years ago, when we first started writing on El
Salvador for the North American Congress on Latin America,
few people knew or cared about this tiny country—seventy
miles across at its widest point—where priests and peasants,
teachers and students, were being killed by an army in power
for fifty years. El Salvador was only one country among many
vying for the attention of human rights organizations, activists
and writers, in a hemisphere dominated by dictatorial regimes.
Even the Carter Administration, with its pronounced emphasis
on human rights, paid El Salvador little heed—until the
Sandinistas in Nicaragua awoke Washington to an isthmus on
fire.
How did El Salvador take center stage in a drama that
threatens to envelop all of Central America, and the United
States, in a long and bloody war? Who are the actors in this
drama, behind the facile labels of left, right and center? And
why is a country so long ignored by the United States now
considered “vital” to our national security? This book
is an attempt to contribute to an understanding of these
questions, by exploring the history of El Salvador, its relations
with the United States and its role in the region.
Our focus is El Salvador, not the East-West struggle that
dominates official rhetoric, because we believe that meaningful
debate must begin with an intimate knowledge of the facts, and
an acceptance of the uniqueness of each nation’s history and
culture.
Back in 1932, long before the world had heard of Fidel
Castro, El Salvador was the site of the first communist uprising
in the hemisphere, a rebellion that cost the lives of 30,000.
Unless we understand the roots of that rebellion, its lasting
impact on every sector of society, we can never understand the
war in El Salvador today.
In the 1960s, El Salvador was called the “showcase of
development” in Central America—the pride of Kennedy’s
Alliance for Progress and the proof that capitalism could work
for poor countries. Investors, both domestic and foreign,
praised the industriousness of the Savadorean worker: “Tell a
Salvadorean to plant rocks and harvest more rocks,” said a
Chamber of Commerce brochure, “and he’ll do it.” How, then,
Preface vn
and why, did that stubborn determination of a people turn
toward the task of revolution? And why did millions of dollars
in U.S. aid and investment fail to achieve their goal?
A new phenomenon appeared on the political scene in the
1970s. “Popular organizations,” as they called themselves,
mobilized tens of thousands of people in acts of civil dis¬
obedience and street demonstrations, demanding basic demo¬
cratic and economic rights. They eluded all labels by including
Marxists and Catholics, peasants and professionals, slum-
dwellers and market women. And in October 1979, their
strength prompted a military coup that sought to preempt
revolution by promising reforms. How did these organizations
arise beneath the boot of military rule? And why did each
successive junta fail to carry out its promises of reform?
These questions and many others illustrate the complexity
of the war that consumes the people of El Salvador today.
We are not impartial observers of this conflict. El Salvador is a
small country. Coming to know it means, inevitably, meeting
people who will eventually be tortured or killed by the security
forces: Enrique Alvarez, the first president of El Salvador’s
Democratic Revolutionary Front, a millionaire dairy farmer
who gave his life for the poor; Ernesto Barrera, a priest who
worked in the slum communities of Quinonez and La Chacra,
and who died in a gun battle with the police; Iride Beltran, a
graduate of Mt. Holyoke College, who was “disappeared” by
the security forces, along with her infant son. It is our hope that
by writing a history of El Salvador with them in mind, we will
have given human face to a conflict so coldly labeled the work
of shadow puppet-masters, by those who would have us forget
the stories of those involved.
######
This book builds on the efforts of the North American
Congress on Latin America, over the last fifteen years, to
explore the realities of Latin America and analyze the impact
of U.S. policy on the hemisphere. We owe a great debt to our
companeros at NACLA for their research assistance and
criticisms, and most of all for their patience and cooperation in
allowing us to write this book while they shouldered the extra
Vlll EL SALVADOR
responsibilities of NACLA’s ongoing work. Our thanks to
Americo Badillo-Veiga, Judy Butler, Martha Doggett, Eric
Feinberg, Paul Horowitz, Nathan Locks and Steven Volk of
the NACLA staff.
Long before El Salvador made headlines in the United
States, many people were researching and writing on the
subject, and struggling for greater public awareness of condi¬
tions there. They have been an essential community of
friendship, knowledge and support during the years of silent
indifference. There were also many people who listened
patiently to what at times must have seemed an obsession,
asked good questions and just were there when we needed
them. We thank them all, and especially Cindy Arnson, Phil¬
ippe Bourgois, Esmeralda Brown, Roger Burbach, Roberto
Cuellar, Elmo Doig, Heather Foote, Guillermo Galvan, Grid
Hall, Marc Herold, Bob Hilliard, Beverly Keene, Michael
Klare, Natasha Krinitzky, O. A. Magana, David Mancia, John
McAward, Marc Mihaly, German Montoya, Anne Nelson,
Gene Palumbo, Julia Preston, Arnoldo Ramos, A. G. Rodri¬
guez, Posie Roth, Orlando Sandoval, Mario Salgado, John
Scholefield, Helen Shapiro, George Shenk, Margaret Shenk,
Otto Shenk, Jon Snow, Heidi Tarver, Doug Walker, Phil
Wheaton, Bill Wipfler and Jody Zacharias.
Countless people in El Salvador shared their lives with us,
their memories and their hopes. They can only be thanked by
name once their struggle has been won.
Finally, our special thanks to Karen Judd, for her skill as
an editor and patience as an arbiter; to Liz Mestres for cover and
photographic design; and to John Schall of South End Press
for twisting our arms to undertake this project in the first
place, and for helping us see it through.