Editorials
COMMONWEAL Awaiting resurrection n El Salvador, the Stations of the Cross will take place this Holy Week much as they did during twelve years of civil war. There will be outdoor processions in...
...But not all Salvadorans wish to go gently into the light...
...Attempts to organize working men and women, a life-anddeath undertaking for previous generations, remain a daunting task...
...Once again, under UN pressure a moratorium on such expulsions has been put in place...
...and $6 billion in wasted U.S...
...The Salvadoran government has requested an extension of TPS on the grounds that their return would increase the financial distress and endanger the peace process, so much so that the Bush administration should extend TPS for at least eighteen months...
...In Guatemala, brutal human rights abuses continue to mount and 80 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty...
...As its touchstone, this policy must stress accountability for human rights in the region and proceed from there to a long-overdue, mutual, multilateral effort for regional cooperation...
...and an international commission to investigate human rights violations committed by both sides during the war...
...are now covered by "temporary protected status" (TPS...
...Under the UN plan, the national police, the treasury police, and the national guard—all notorious vigilantes with strong ties to right-wing death squads and the army—were to be separated from the military, purged of human rights violators, and reconstituted under legislated civilian control...
...The 1990 election in neighboring Nicaragua stands as an example of the kind of political change that can be accomplished by ballots rather than bullets...
...military invasion...
...Peace in El Salvador, and in all of Central America, requires a dramatic shift in U.S...
...To assure that the process has a real chance, UN and U.S...
...This contemporary via crucis is just a stone's throw from the garden where six Jesuits and two other university employees, all murdered by the army in November 1989, lie buried...
...Military assistance to El Salvador and the region should be strictly nonlethal in nature and designed to reform and subordinate armies to democratic structures...
...Its two-track approach was inherently conflictual: reforming Salvadoran institutions while simultaneously underwriting a corrupt military which sought to impose order by means of brutal "pacification" campaigns...
...in Panama, corruption remains endemic, despite a U.S...
...in particular has a moral obligation to help...
...in Honduras and El Salvador, bloated militaries suck up substantive portions of the national budgets...
...The Salvadoran peace, therefore, has just begun...
...Nearly a million Salvadorans, out of a population of 5.5 million, fled the country during the conflict...
...These expatriates now send home $700 million a year, more than the country earns from exports for its chief products (coffee, cotton, sugar...
...Elation, exhilaration, and exhaustion followed this January's peace accord...
...ravished health, educational, and transportation systems...
...Yet the aim must be to foster regional solidarity and sufficiency rather than paternalism and continued dependency...
...Ongoing antagonisms are real and ominous...
...But the peace accord does not create a mechanism for transfer of the land to those who work it and does not obligate former owners to sell their land...
...On the eve of their disbanding, the army suddenly created two new military components, what it called the Frontier Guards and the Military Police, simply subsuming the former groups...
...assistance will be needed in heavy doses...
...Only vociferous protest from the UN observers forced the army to abandon this ruse...
...The cost: death that touched every Salvadoran family...
...With cholera spreading through the region, and with the effects of economic recession taking hold, more than free-trade rhetoric will be required from Washington...
...The new peace accord, for all the hope it has inspired, does not require more diversified ownership of the land or the means of production...
...The Salvadoran military attempted to short-circuit the peace plan's reform of the national police...
...Further ruses are to be expected, and further protests will be necessary...
...a military stalemate...
...The UN plan and its personnel will require international attention and support for a long time...
...Furthermore, the Salvadoran economy is in a shambles...
...Under the present ARENA government, the economic stranglehold exerted on most Salvadorans by the traditional oligarchy persists...
...A democratic opening of sorts has developed, with the FMLN ready to take part in electoral politics...
...As of June 30 that status will cease and many will be forced to return to their homeland...
...But the halfhearted land reform pursued by the governing Salvadoran Christian Commonweal 24 April 1992: 3 Democrats in the mid-1980s did not significantly alter landownership patterns in El Salvador...
...Only with such programs will Salvadorans and their neighbors be able to build the peace for which they have been longing and dying...
...Among other provisions, it includes reform of the Salvadoran military...
...At the University of Central America, the Jesuit university, people will pray in the chapel before the stark black and white drawings of Salvadorans being tortured by death squads...
...There will be catechetical gatherings of Christian base communities in the small chapels of rural resettlement villages...
...a strengthened, independent judiciary...
...Many Salvadorans in the U.S...
...policy (see J. Bryan Hehir, page 9...
...According to the Wall Street Journal (February 13), an economic rebound will depend heavily on continued international assistance and on whether expatriates, chiefly those in the United States, are allowed to remain abroad to send home a portion of their incomes...
...Already absentee landlords have returned to reclaim land distributed to campesinos and to drive them out...
...There will be outdoor processions in San Salvador, with throngs proceeding from one corner shrine to another...
...readmission of rebel partisans into civic life...
...The U.S...
...The twelve years of civil war that followed seem a penitential test of both fidelity and endurance...
...Financial assistance from abroad is essential for continued political and economic reform...
...long-term UN observer teams throughout the country to guarantee the accord's implementation...
...For twelve years we pursued the doctrine of low-intensity warfare, predicated on cold-war ideology...
...Even with the war now finally over, El Salvador still awaits its resurrection...
...Union organizers continue to be threatened, and one was brutally assassinated by a right-wing death squad following the treaty...
...a depleted economy...
...In February, hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans flooded the plazas of the capital to celebrate the end of the war...
...Nor will real peace come as long as the causes of the war remain at issue...
...4: 24 April 1992 Commonweal...
...Thirteen years ago, on another Good Friday, Archbishop Oscar Romero asked his congregation: "When are we going to understand that God not only gives happiness but also tests our faithfulness in moments of affliction...
...The remarkable peace plan brokered by the United Nations' special envoy, Alvaro De Soto, deserves the Nobel peace prize...
...A recent examination by the Rand Corporation concludes that the policy failed ("American Counterinsurgency Doctrine and El Salvador...
Vol. 119 • April 1992 • No. 8
