El Salvador: the new face of war
Shiras, Peter
EL SALVADOR: THE NEW FACE OF WAR STRATEGIES FOR CIVILIAN SUPPORT PETER SHIRAS ^H^^A dozen men are digging the foundation for a Anew school in the hot midday sun, while several young...
...Together, the people and the armed forces will make progress in El Barillo...
...All are seemingly oblivious to the blaring music coming from a powerful loudspeaker that penetrates every inch of space, even the most distant dwellings, in the rural settlement of El Barillo...
...The result is that the meson dwellers are still out in the street, but now they are organizing and starting to make demands on the government...
...In appropriating the language of "grassroots development" with phrases such as " meeting the felt needs of the population," the military is attempting to transform their image from that of a repressive force for internal security into that of the benefactor for the Salvadoran peasants...
...Nevertheless, it is clear that the economy's response capacity and the resources available are, in fact, inadequate to meet the major challenge facing the country...
...Suddenly, the music ends and a woman's voice comes over the system...
...Since the beginning of 1987, the pace of the war has quickened with a series of attacks by the FMLN...
...Finally, when the hunger of the children became unbearable, the people gave themselves up to the army...
...The loudspeakers in El Barillo are one example of this new thinking and strategy by the military...
...It also strengthened his hand politically by gaining him the support of the private sector and thereby neutralizing right-wing opposition...
...In his homily just days after the earthquake, Archbishop Rivera y Damas stated: "If we want to avoid future social catastrophes, the government should concern itself primarily with the reconstruction of the housing of the poorest, of the popular barrios, because if not, there will not be any real reconstruction...
...As the latest report on El Salvador by Americas Watch, a respected human rights monitory group, put it, "In El Salvador today, the abuse of human rights "has settled into routine...
...At a national level, the military's counterinsurgency "plan, "United to Reconstruct," is an effort to counteract the effectiveness of the FMLN in rural areas by integrating military actions with relief and development programs...
...In contrast to previous army attacks on the civilian population in Guazapa, this time the army did not leave after two or three days, but remained for up to two weeks...
...He worked for five years in Central America...
...The quake caused material damage estimated by a recent United Nations study at $900 million, representing 25 percent of El Salvador's gross domestic product...
...foreign aid, surpassed only by Israel, Egypt, and Turkey...
...The army is calling on all sectors of the population to participate in the program, and has even assigned to the church the role of providing "spiritual orientation to the inhabitants of the consolidated areas and to the camps of the displaced...
...The Duarte government moved quickly to set up a commission made up of private-sector leaders to coordinate emergency relief efforts after the earthquake...
...military advisors and Salvadoran officials alike that the FMLN is all but defeated...
...The political fallout from major disasters such as earthquakes has been important to the history of Central American countries...
...The human rights situation, though improved from the horrendous levels of years past, is still characterized by widespread abuses...
...If a supplementary request from the Reagan administration for $172.5 million is approved for 1987, it will make El Salvador the fourth largest recipient of U.S...
...The government faces an economic problem in the earthquake reconstruction which goes beyond enacting appropriate policies...
...Most of the women are slapping corn dough in the palms of their hands into thick, round tortillas...
...In El Barillo, there is life, but it is a life of occupation...
...I wondered now, as I did then, whether the people were able to flee their houses before the fighting started or whether they were buried beneath the rubble of what is left of Aguacayo...
...The army's actions, accompanied by heavy bombardment, forced the men, women, and children to hide in caves and shelters they had built to escape the army's attacks...
...Approximately one-fifth of the population of the capital was left homeless and the poorest barrios were the hardest hit...
...With the election of Duarte in place and a decline in (although not a dismantling of) death squad activity, the story can be safely buried in the mainstream media...
...Archbishop Arturo River y Damas attributed 1725 deaths to the war in 1986, while the guerrillas claim to have inflicted 6151 casualties on the armed forces, including killed and wounded...
...media about El Salvador, the war there continues to dominate virtually every aspect of life in that country...
...In the long run, however, Duarte's allegiance to the private sector could prove very costly...
...Duarte's government has not been helped by factors beyond his control such as the devastating earthquake which struck San Salvador on October 10, 1986...
...Depressed by the PETER SHIRAS is deputy of the Latin- America regional office of Catholic Relief Services stationed in Washington, D.C...
...In comparison, the September 1985 earthquake which struck Mexico City caused greater absolute damage, but had relatively a smaller impact on the country with the damage representing only 2 percent of GDP...
...Whether they have been ravaged by the man-made disaster of war or the natural disaster of the earthquake, the people refuse to give up or lose hope...
...If El Barillo is representative of the army's efforts, however, the program amounts to little more than the crudest form of propaganda, control, and coercion of the civilian population...
...What is at stake in "United to Reconstruct" are competing strategies for resettlement...
...The archbishop, Arturo Rivera y Damas, though still sympathetic to Duarte, responded that the time is always right for dialogue since it is the only way to end the conflict...
...embassy assessments now are that the war will drag on for another five to eight years...
...The church, on the other hand, views the problem in humanitarian terms, and has supported the people's right to return to their homes free from any form of control or coercion...
...Duarte's alliance with the private sector allowed him to insulate his government from charges of misuse of international assistance...
...Two centerpieces of Duarte's original program — the agrarian reforms and dialogue with the guerrillas — have now been all but forgotten...
...However, given Duarte's weak political position and the alliance with the private sector, no such policy is being followed in El Salvador...
...If there is hope to be found in El Salvador, it is with the people in places like El Barillo or in the squatter settlements of the earthquake victims...
...With over half a million persons internally displaced by the war, pressure is building both from the displaced themselves, and from the church and private voluntary organizations to look for means of facilitating the return of the displaced population to their places of origin...
...The record to date suggests that the Duarte government has opted to support the war effort, relegating dialogue and earthquake reconstruction to low priority status...
...Since the earthquake, the former residents of the mesones have been living in temporary shacks made 8 May 1987: 277 from plastic sheeting and scraps of wood and metal...
...military advisor was killed, offers the most convincing evidence to date of the continuing military capacity of the FMLN and refutes the contention of U.S...
...Beyond that, the government has raised expectations by its promises of large-scale international aid programs, but to date has been able to deliver practically nothing except meager amounts to clear rubble from damaged sites...
...continues to provide over $500 million a year to El Salvador and the most optimistic U.S...
...As the U.N...
...While the war is becoming increasingly politicized, political activity is becoming increasingly combative...
...With a bitter war still being fought in the countryside that threatens now to make its presence felt more strongly in the major cities, the prospects for El Salvador do not look bright...
...After a period of relative quiet following the victories of President Jose Napoleon Duarte in both the presidential and legislative elections, the right-wing parties are now vocally engaged in oppos276: Commonweal ing Duarte's political program...
...The resurgence of political activity by the right is matched by a similar revival of the political left in the form of trade union activism and popular organizations...
...Forcibly removed from their homes on the slopes of the Guazapa volcano in a major counter-insurgency sweep (code named "Operation Phoenix") in January of last year, these families had been living for six years in one of the most conflictive zones of the country, just twenty miles north of the capital, in territory controlled by the guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN...
...for military purposes...
...What is ironic is that the meson dwellers, who were among the least organized sectors in the city prior to the earthquake, are now being converted into an organized force due to the lack of response to their problems by the government...
...What started out as a simple demand for housing could easily be converted into a stronger, more politicized movement demanding urban reform...
...More simply stated, the government cannot pay for the war and finance reconstruction...
...The right used the curious argument in defeating this proposal that since the country is not officially at war (i.e., no declaration of war can be made against an internal enemy), it would be unconstitutional to levy a war tax...
...For the squatters in San Salvador, remaining on their land in defiance of an eviction notice may be the first step they have taken to lay claim to a sense of dignity and justice...
...To reach El Barillo, I had first to obtain military permission from the battalion headquarters in San Salvador...
...In an ironic reversal of roles, the rightist parties recently successfully opposed a war tax that Duarte proposed to increase the size of the armed forces and augment the funds provided by the U.S...
...Duarte's bitterness over guerrilla actions such as the kidnapping of his daughter has led him to declare recently that the time is not right for dialogue...
...The landlords have threatened to evict the former dwellers from the lands they are currently occupying, and in some cases have served eviction notices...
...I listen intently to the message and when my guide, one of the community leaders, sees my questioning gaze towards him, he says simply,'' We would prefer to live more quietly.'' The 470 people who live in El Barillo are in some ways symbolic of a new phase in the war in El Salvador...
...Current U.S...
...Although the intensity of the fighting is less than it was three or four years ago, casualties are still significant...
...In the case of Nicaragua, many historians link the beginning of the end of the Somoza dictatorship to the 1972 earthquake and the government's monopoly over and misuse of relief funds...
...About one hundred soldiers lounge around what serves as the town square and the perimeter of the area, playing their loudspeaker and testing the effects of their new tactics...
...confinement and forced idleness of the camp, the people of El Barillo returned to a cooperative of which some of the families were members...
...The smallest acts become important symbols...
...These are privately owned tenement buildings with the families paying $30-$40 per month in rent...
...The enthusiasm for reforms has been dampened by the determined opposition of right-wing forces in the country and only lukewarm support from the United States...
...The army's plan calls for integrating the displaced into carefully selected sites based on strategic concerns of control and using the civilian population to form civil defense units and collect intelligence on guerrilla movements...
...The road passes through what is still a war zone along the edges of the Guazapa volcano and is flanked by abandoned towns and hamlets...
...Called "Psyops," short for "psychological operations," this is an important element in the U.S.-sponsored effort to defeat the guerrilla insurgency...
...The more serious problem is that no housing reconstruction program has been established for meson dwellers...
...After spending six months in a camp for displaced persons run by the Archdiocese of San Salvador, about four hundred people decided to return to their homes...
...From the time of the earthquake, the archdiocese has warned the government that policies must respond to the needs of the poor...
...Thus, they became part of a growing number of displaced persons who aspire to or who have actually been able to leave camps or settlements for the displaced and return to their places of origin...
...In a clear call for precisely the types of policies which the government has not implemented, the archbishop stated, "We are making a call to launch daring programs for the liberation of millions of people whose social or political repression is intolerable...
...Driving through Aguacayo, the last town before El Barillo, I was reminded of a similar scene I had witnessed years ago driving through deserted towns in the Sinai desert after the 1967 war...
...People of El Barillo: The armed forces of El Salvador are here to help you in the fight against Communist subversion...
...Of the half million people in the San Salvador metropolitan area whose homes were damaged or destroyed, over half lived in multi-family dwellings called mesones...
...When faced with the same problem in Mexico City after the earthquake, the Mexican government moved rapidly to expropriate damaged property to meet popular demands for low-cost housing...
...Despite the rhetoric of the loudspeaker 8 May 1987: 275 and the soft undertone of the woman soldier's voice, the residents of El Barillo remember that it was these same armed forces that bombed their homes, burned their crops, and forced them to flee during last year's "Operation Phoenix...
...policy towards El Salvador has remained largely outside the realm of public debate in this country as a result of the almost exclusive focus on Nicaragua and the contra, issue, and because both the Reagan administration and most members of Congress view El Salvador as a success story in Central America...
...For the people of El Barillo, to return to their lands and plant their crops becomes a way of saying that they are not defeated...
...Despite the fact that one reads or hears virtually nothing in the U.S...
...EL SALVADOR: THE NEW FACE OF WAR STRATEGIES FOR CIVILIAN SUPPORT PETER SHIRAS ^H^^A dozen men are digging the foundation for a Anew school in the hot midday sun, while several young girls carry water from the river at the bottom of the hill...
...A recent official military document states that the war "is 90 percent political, economic, social, and ideological and only 10 percent military...
...The terrorist forces only want to destroy the country, but the armed forces will help the people and together we will make the country move forward...
...These have taken place in Morazan and the Guazapa volcano area, traditional strongholds for the FMLN, as well as in and around San Salvador and Santa Anna, where only minor engagements have taken place in recent years...
...However, the government's response to the quake and the political compromises that Durate has made will have long-term consequences that could further weaken his credibility and effectiveness...
...It escaped nobody's attention, however, that the war tax was designed to make the rich shoulder a larger burden in paying the cost of the war...
...Those memories do not die easily...
...The landlords will not rebuild low-cost housing which is affordable for meson dwellers, and the government refuses to expropriate the land to build low-cost housing...
...278: Commonweal...
...The military aspects, however, are but one part of the overall war effort...
...The major FMLN attack on the army base in El Paraiso on March 31, in which one U.S...
...report of the Economic Commission for Latin America concluded, "Meeting the unpostponable needs of the earthquake victims and carrying out reconstruction tasks will require significant additional resources and substantial changes in the allocation of public resources...
...While Duarte points to this political activity as a sign of the new freedoms he has managed to provide for the country, the unions and popular sectors have genuine grievances which Duarte's program has been unable to meet...
...The earthquake that rocked San Salvador left twelve hundred dead and over ten thousand people injured...
...Nonetheless, the U.S...
Vol. 114 • May 1987 • No. 9
