Green light for terror:

...Clearly this is interventionism...

...The Catholic church, through its legal aid and refugee relief programs, must also be recognized as a de facto participant...

...But this coalition lasted only three months...

...In the hope of presenting the new administration with themselves firmly in power-a fait accompli that would be more acceptable than the brutal slaughter now being conducted to solidify their power-Salvadoran Security Forces and paramilitary .death squads are attempting to eliminate the leadership of the center-left opposition Democratic Revolutionary Front (F.D.R...

...and, despite the regrettable social cost, they will substantially increase military assistance and economic aid to the rightist Salvadoran junta...

...Although exact statistics are unavailable, reliable estimates establish the F.D.R...

...Political scientists call this the "social cost" of the Salvadoran government policy, which unintentionally made stability the hostage of repression: Sister Ita thought it was barbaric and inhuman-or more accurately, unChristian-and dedicated her life to alleviating the plight of her fellow Christians...

...The five-man civilian-military junta that initially took power was comprised of both progressive and conservative military officers, as well as three leaders from the Social Democratic party...

...is an indigenous, autonomous, and self-supporting Salvadoran opposition force...

...Simple straightforward trade restrictions, tied with pressure upon our allies to implement similar policies, exercising our influence in the international banking world to limit multilateral credits and loans, and, of course, eliminating all bilateral economic and military assistance, would quickly result in this new centrist government...

...But it is not unprecedented: what would be necessary is only a mini-program along the lines of United States policy toward the Salvador Allende regime in Chile during the early 1970s...

...Yet Ambassador White, his good,intentions notwithstanding, may have also been reacting to expectations regarding the coming Reagan administration...

...And just as it reflects the savagery of the Manchurian conquest, so does this atrocity depict the depths of of barbarism to which the reactionary politicians, businessmen, and soldiers are prepared to stoop in order to maintain their privileged positions in El Salvador's society...

...policy in El Salvador is a failure...

...Effectively, what has happened is that a cosmetic civilian head-of-state, a president that has no control over the nation's armed forces, now can be held up to the world as a figurehead of liberal reform...

...Liberal Col...

...Again, protesting the excesses of rightist violence, they took with them the vast majority of the Christian Democratic party members, most of whom have subsequently also joined the F.D.R...

...Indeed, by the political rapists' perverted logic, they have a point...

...Ever since, in expectation of the Reagan presidency, they have increasingly been firing their guns into people...

...Marines have been deployed to live in his mansion...

...Moreover, the F.D.R...

...Jaime Abdul Gutierrez, was appointed vice president, and, of most importance, commander-in-chief of the armed forces...

...Because of her work with the ever-increasing numbers of refugees, Sister Ita was branded a "subversive" by rightists, who took to sending death threats to her house...

...Among the hundreds of victims of the right-wing terrorism were three nuns and a Catholic lay worker, all from the United States, who were kidnapped, tortured, and raped before being executed and thrown into a common grave...

...Of great importance are the so-called "popular organizations," and first among them is the Popular Revolutionary Bloc (which claims 80,000 men-bers), itself in turn a coalition of the nation's two major peasant federations, workers, students, teachers, and slum dwellers...

...The foundation of El Salvador's export economy rests upon selling coffee and cotton, which comprise sixty percent of this commerce, in large part to United States markets...

...These refugees are the living victims of government rightwing terrorism, and to identify oneself with them necessarily meant sharing their fate...

...The series of civilian-military juntas that have come and gone since the coup overthrowing General Humberto Romero in October, 1979, has progressively moved to the right...

...And as if all this were not enough, a squad of battle-ready U.S...

...Replaced by other even more conservative, and manageable, leaders of the decimated Christian Democratic party, the hard liners conducted a purge of the armed forces, systematically relieving progressive officers of their combat commands...

...Little by little, rightist sectors of society have moved to recapture their previous power, so that now, once again, they dominate the government and the military...

...It is necessary to understand that the F.D.R...

...Although more dramatic than most, the death of Sister Ita is about the eight thousandth claimed by rightist terrorism this year alone...

...Following the coup of the young military officers, the Carter administration quickly recognized and began providing support to the new liberal-oriented government...

...ELECTION Green light for terror RICHARD ALAN WHITE WHEN ELECTION RETURNS on the night of November 4 showed that Ronald Reagan would soon be the president of the United States, El Salvador rightists celebrated "their victory" by firing guns into the air...

...Unleashing the dogs of war, the death squads were given free reign to indulge their blood lust against "subversives" like Sister Ita Ford, one of the slain Maryknoll missionaries...

...Reagan's election, they assumed, was the green light to sweep aside the last of progressive window dressing...

...High on the Reaganite "hit list" to be sacked because of his liberal philosophy and the social reform policies that he pushed in El Salvador, White seems to be taking his parting, and perhaps best, shot as he is forced out of his post...

...in January 1980 the three civilian members resigned, protesting the unwillingness of the military to purge the extremists from its own Security Forces and to curb the activities of the paramilitary death squads...

...Of course such a policy is ideologically unthinkable: Chile si, El Salvador no...

...Since his arrival in El Salvador last March, White has made few friends...

...In the wake of the furor over the recent wave of political assassinations, in mid-December the junta was formally abolished...

...Adolfo Majano, after being stripped of his troop command, was summarily dismissed from the junta early last month...

...But at least let us shed some hypocrisy and openly acknowledge the moral contradiction of our present policy of giving succor to the rightist El Salvadoran regime: we have positioned ourselves to become the direct accomplices to the inevitable killing of many, many more Sister Itas., many more Sister Itas...

...opposition, as the reforms have proved ineffectual and the rightists increased the level of killings...

...Until recently there was a viable solution, a political reconciliation that would have brought the F.D.R...

...IF ONE assumes that there is a relationship between what the Reaganites have said they will do and the policies that the Reagan administration will actually follow, El Salvador's future looks bleak...

...At the grave site, as the bodies were being exhumed, he promised, ''This time they won't get away with it...

...In human terms, what this means, because the opposition forces are now militarily stronger than they have ever been, is an escalating civil war that will certainly drag on for months, perhaps years, and claim thousands more lives, produce a singular catalogue of atrocities, and create hundreds of thousands more refugees...

...The reactionary objective of returning the country to the "good old days," even with massive U.S...

...But the Thanksgiving Day kidnapping and torture execution of five of its six top leaders has ended any hope of such a political compromise...

...In a reshuffling of the stacked political deck, one of the junta's complacent civilian members, Jose Napoleon Duarte, was named president, and the hard-line military representative, Col...

...opposition front into the government...

...THERE CAN BE little denying that the entire U.S...

...If distributing food, medicine, and clothing to thousands of hungry, diseased, and barefooted people that despise the government is subversive, then Sister Ita was a subversive...

...They see him as the tool of Yankee imperialism...

...Its members consist of established Salvadoran political parties such as the Christian Democrats, formally the largest political party, and Social Democrats, who exercise considerably more influence by their sheer numbers than the smaller leftist parties, which include the National Democratic Union...

...But not since the invasion of Manchuria has the world witnessed such bestiality as the raping, torturing, and killing of nuns...

...membership at between 200,000 and 400,000 active members, with perhaps 20,000 armed guerrillas...

...He has been in a no-win position from the start...

...Even so, beginning in March and lasting through May, these new civilian members of the junta, and nearly all of the cabinet ministers, themselves resigned...

...In large part the fact that these people were American citizens accounts for the widespread press coverage in this country...

...In the course of her work she daily listened to the horror stories, numbly expressing sympathy as she was told about how the army or the National Guard had raided a village, running amok, raping, burning, stealing, disemboweling husbands and sons, and forcing their wives and mothers to watch as dogs gorged themselves on the entrails...

...Even the United States Ambassador, Robert E. White, a practicing Catholic, who has supported and defended the ruling junta, has been moved to take unprecedented action...

...The right has unequivoc-ably opted for the military solution, or as the Minister of Defense, Col...

...There is an alternative, but likely it will be less acceptable to a Reagan administration than the' 'social cost'' suffered by the Sister Itas and the people she died helping...

...De-emphasizing, or even abandoning, the reform effort, the Republicans can be expected to rely upon the traditional foreign policy of supporting strong military regimes in Latin America...

...The social reform program drove the rightists to stage demonstrations in front of Ambassador White's residence, denouncing him as a Communist...

...And just as cost-benefit-minded policy makers and diplomats find this commitment unfathomable, Sister Ita was equally at a loss to grasp how these good people at the U.S...

...It is not beyond the ability of the United States to bring the now powerless liberal politicians and military officers, together with the F.D.R., into a workable coalition government...

...The bulk of its membership comes from a variety of labor unions, student organizations and professional associations...

...backing, is fantasy...

...encompasses four guerrilla groups that are engaged in an armed conflict against the Salvadoran Armed Forces...

...His thankless job was to implement the "reform-and-repression" policy of the U.S.-backed civilian-military junta...

...into a true position of power in a new coalition government...

...They just won't.'' The next day all military and economic aid was suspended until an investigation by a high-ranking diplomatic team from Washington could determine the extent of government involvement...

...Guillermo Garcia, puts it, "a war of annihilation...

...This carrot-and-stick approach was meant to stave off revolutionary change by enacting reforms in land ownership, banking, and export commerce, at the same time as the mili tary and their paramilitary death squads increased brutal repression to smash the various opposition groups...

...is itself a coalition umbrella grouping of opponents of the government...

...The acting Archbishop of San Salvador, Arturo Rivera Dumas, immediately issued a press release denouncing this latest machination, for little has been done to change the basic structure of power, and nothing to stop those in the military and the rightist death squads that are responsible for the continuing slaughter...

...Liberal politicians and Army officers, who now are out of power, have long advocated bringing the opposition F.D.R...

...Regardless of the recurrent rumors claiming outside assistance to the guerrillas-specifically arms and advisers from Nicaragua and Cuba-no tangible evidence has surfaced to date that would support any other conclusion but that the F.D.R...

...Over the past fifteen months, in this way, the liberal reformists have been driven out of the government and the military, often to join the F.D.R...

...in fact, the mirror opposite of the interventionism that we are now exercising...

...One consequence of his support of the government repression was a rocket attack on his office by leftist guerrillas...

...Embassy and State Department could possibly give money and material support to the Salvadoran government and armed forces who are viciously slaughtering their own people...

...But for Sister Ita, there really was no choice...

...The Social Democrats, who joined the opposition F.D.R., were replaced by more conservative Christian Democrats, marking a distinct swing to the right...