Fiesta, Fatigue, Fear, and Fascism
The elections of March 1982 were "la fiesta civica," as one journalist pointed out.' The ballyhoo and the festivities were a welcome relief to the war-torn country, particularly in the...
...But then a switch seems to turn on, and he is ice cold...
...Early estimates of coffee output for 1981-82 are 2.3 million quintals (1 quintal = 46 kgs...
...But intimidation played a part here, as well...
...New York Times, February 19, 1982...
...2 And of the statement by Robert White that D'Aubuisson is a "pathological killer," Mario Redaelli of ARENA says, "I can tell you that Roberto never killed anyone in times of peace...
...The War's Toll Cutting across class lines was the element of fatigue...
...ARENA itself has considerable support among the security forces, particularly those from the capital...
...12Voting instructions printed in newspapers and posted in polling places, Note panel indicating that cedula must be marked Elections--Salvador Style Intimidation has long been part of the electoral process in El Salvador, where voting is a legal obligation, not a right...
...One of the first acts of the new Constituent Assembly has been to take it off the books...
...1 7 On economic matters, ARENA is pro-private enterprise...
...9. Interview with Clark Kerr, David Brinkley Show, March 28, 1982...
...Some, of course, have joined the guerrillas...
...Diario de Hov (San Salvador), March 27, 1982, p. 26...
...Nancy Kassebaum, head of U.S...
...30 FIESTA, FATIGUE, FEAR AND FASCISM 1. Interview with Nelson Santana, May 1982...
...Listen at night to the mutterings of the workers and the poor...
...So for the March 28 election, each voter had to present his or her cedula...
...What would happen to me if I showed up at work and they checked my ID card and found that I didn't vote...
...Underground, what is left of them has a different, more secretive and less democratic relationship to its members, its sympathizers and the uncommitted...
...Wall Street]Journal, March 24, 1982...
...8. Alistair White, El Salvador, (Praeger Press: New York, 1973), p. 209...
...explains his sudden rise to power: "Just when we need it most, along comes this young guy on a white horse who loves his country more than anything else...
...Voting is an obligation," an accountant in Santa Tecla told two reporters from the Village Voice...
...As a political party, ARENA is wellorganized, well-financed, clear in its objectives, ideologically anticommunist and determined to win...
...there are the bombs, the dead bodies, the checkpoints...
...6. Marc Cooper and Ronnie Lovler, "A Bloody, Cynical Circus," Village Voice, April 6, 1982...
...When the Germans bombed London, they didn't tell civilians to get out of their way...
...Alistair White commented on the procedure in 1973: As the ballot papers are thin and the voter marks the party symbol with a thick black cross, another person can stand on the opposite side of the box from the voter...
...Mario Redaelli, secretary of ARENA, said, "Civilians will be killed, war has always been that way...
...Conversation with Nelson Santana, May 1982...
...His hands are clean...
...Or they have opted for the lesser of the evils, the Christian Democrats...
...It is not so long ago-only the last election-that members of the National Guard loaded campesinos into trucks with the promise of a few tortillas and a couple of tragos (drinks) "to vote them" for the official party...
...5 (San Salvador), January 1980, pp...
...In the countryside, there are military operations, battles, and then ominous silence...
...2 The presence on the law books of Phase II of the agrarian reform, which would nationalize the coffee holdings, has discouraged investment...
...The Situation in El Salvador," Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S...
...2 1 In February 1980, D'Aubuisson went on television to denounce various individuals as communists and subversives-among them Mario Zamora, a leader of the Christian Democrats...
...33-34, in CAMINO, El Salvador, p. 25...
...Soldier examining cedula during military search of bus...
...4. Nelson Santana, "Four Scenes from an Election," In These Times, April 14-20, 1982, p. 5 . 5. Junta Electoral Law, as cited in CAM4NO, El Salvador, p. 25...
...In April 1981 congressional testimony, former Ambassador Robert White accused wealthy landowners in Miami of giving financial aid to D'Aubuisson prior to his campaign, mentioning Alfredo Mena Lagos, Alfonso Salaverria, Ricardo Sol Meza and Guayo Yolanda de D'Aubuisson (left) with ARENA supporters...
...Of course, the presence of one or two members of these extended families does not implicate each family member personally, but as a university professor told the New York Times, ARENA "is the party that will legitimize the return of the oligarchy to El Salvador...
...These are not the politicos and hacks of the PCN...
...Some showed that courage...
...Gov't...
...At the ubiquitous military checkpoints, the cedula must be presented to identify oneself...
...Major Bob: Man on a White Horse At the head of this movement is Roberto D'Aubuisson, 38 years old, son of a salesman and civil servant...
...However, while the electoral council interpreted the election law to mean that the voter could choose either to detach the number or keep it on, there were efforts to confuse this point...
...their toehold on power and property is profoundly threatened by both the present crisis and a possible rebel victory...
...The ballot boxes in El Salvador have a certain unusual quality: they are transparent, clear lucite, used to make it difficult to stuff them...
...what it was and why it was not greater is discussed in the last article of this Report...
...Economic production is way down...
...Lemus.' 2 When D'Aubuisson and others were caught plotting a coup d'etat in 1980 at a hacienda owned by the Guirola family, among those arrested was a member of the Sagrera family...
...Cotten production is at half the 1978-79 level...
...defaced and contested ballots represented 12.2% of the total vote...
...El Salvador 1982 is a different, more scary and less hopeful place than it was three years ago...
...As one journalist noted, "she could be another Evita...
...Once at the polling place, a person had to present his or her cedula, a national identity card that every Salvadorean of voting age must carry...
...He was so close to Medrano that when Medrano was arrested in 1970 (on charges pressed by those who feared his power), D'Aubuisson was imprisoned and then exiled briefly...
...The war has levied a dreadful toll...
...He studied at private police academies in New York and Virginia and took courses on "communist infiltration" in Taiwan...
...Guerrilla activity has retarded production, especially in the eastern region and near Guazapa volcano, and processing facilities have 11NACLA Report been destroyed...
...It is the Escuadron de la Muerte...
...Voting, singing the National Anthem, carrying little flags, chanting "Fatherland, yes...
...Diario de Hoy, April 16, 1982...
...03 z 15NACLA Report Roberto D 'Aubuisson and Yolanda greeting Sen...
...He is a prot6g6 of ORDEN's founder, * Distrust of D'Aubuisson is not limited to representatives of the Carter Administration...
...In fact, in official instructions published in the two most widely read newspapers in El Salvador, it was explicitly explained -and unforgettably illustrated-that the cedula would be marked.NACLA Report Plastic Boxes, Paper Ballots Fear may have brought many to the polls, but those who went had a choice: Why did not more of them invalidate the ballot...
...18-19...
...Yolanda has no obvious ambitions of her own...
...Normal practice meant that the cedula would be stamped...
...Without it, one cannot get a paycheck, or hospital attention...
...In one conversation he praised a controversial land reform project proposed in 1976 and opposed by the oligarchy...
...The National Guard is stationed at checkposts throughout the cities...
...General Jos6 Alberto "Chele" Medrano, former head of the National Guard...
...And it is bankrolled well...
...For the landowners, large and medium sized, many small business people, much of the professional sectors and the oligarchy, the vote was for the old order: PCN or ARENA, with ARENA's larger vote in part coming from the charisma of its leader, the freshness of its style, and an effective campaign that invoked traditional values and promised una mano dura, an iron hand...
...Printing Office: Washington, D.C., 1981) p. 118...
...The elections of March 1982 were "la fiesta civica," as one journalist pointed out.' The ballyhoo and the festivities were a welcome relief to the war-torn country, particularly in the urban centers...
...Before the elections Mario Redaelli said of the U.S.-backed reforms of the Duarte junta, "Those reforms were carried out in a totalitarian way and forced on us...
...They have natural allies in the countryside among the families of ORDEN, the principal paramilitary force...
...New York Times, March 28, 1982...
...These are the ones who do not have the money to flee to Miami, like the big oligarchs...
...The state of siege imposed in March 1980 had stifled political debate for two years and was maintained throughout the electoral campaign, although the contending parties were allowed to ignore its suspension of rights of free speech and assembly...
...A Salvadorean needs the cedula to survive...
...There was an FMLN presence in these elections...
...Election laws require that the transparent boxes be "placed near and within view of the precinct board members...
...Thus for some, the elections were a chance to say that the war had exhausted people's hopes as well as resources...
...Many have never participated in politics before...
...In 65 municipalities, no votes were cast because they were under FMLN control...
...The guerrillas' continued burning of buses has made transportation costly and unpredictable...
...The number could be detached by tearing along a perforated line before the ballot was placed in the box...
...the terror that stalks is not the guerillas...
...the wealthy few who have dominated Salvadorean political, economic and cultural life for 100 years...
...But ARENA's vote was not solely a consequence of these factors...
...D'Aubuisson is charming them just the way Ronald Reagan did in the United States...
...2 0 White, while ambassador to El Salvador, had D'Aubuisson's U.S...
...Communism, no...
...It is said of him that he can be pleasant, charming, even light-hearted...
...But beyond that, there is the psychological toll...
...These appeals were particularly effective with those classes which support the existing order: the oligarchy, large and medium-sized landowners, businesspeople, many professionals...
...Since May 1980, El Salvador has been a lawless land where officially sponsored or condoned terror is responsible for the deaths of over 20,000 persons...
...Fascists in Jordache Jeans The vote itself reflects the traditional voting patterns of the different sectors in El Salvador...
...Frederic Chapin, White's interim replacement, attributed machine-gun attacks on the U.S...
...ARENA is a movement...
...New York Times, February 19, 1982...
...visa suspended for threatening to kill a Carter Administration State Department official, James Cheek.* Conventional wisdom in El Salvador has it that Major Bob is the leader of the White Warrior Union, one of the most feared of the death squads...
...Because the Army wants the same thing as you, Salvadoreans have to kill one another when they could make the changes peacefully," D'Aubuisson reflected...
...16MarlApr 1982 Returning home, "Major Bob," as his associates call him, headed the intelligence section of the National Guard...
...The popular organizations of the 1970s-peasant and neighborhood groups as well as church and trade union organizations-were an extraordinary form of political organization, allowing people not only a means to protest, but the confidence to do so...
...p. 284...
...For the better off campesino, the urban working class and those among the professional classes that want reform, the Christian Democrats were the logical choice...
...The repression of the last two years has been particularly directed at these organizations and has driven them underground...
...Then, shortly after the coup of October 1979, he was forced out of the armed forces by Colonel Adolfo Majano-although D'Aubuisson claims he resigned to protest the calls for reforms...
...It is a big step from popular protest to armed struggle...
...It is the terror of the late-night knock on the door, of the daughter who never comes home from school, of the son found in a canyon with his throat cut, of a husband with his thumbs tied behind his back being led away forever by the National Guard, of the wife raped and her home ransacked, of the neighbor wh6se beheaded body is found on the front stoop...
...One of the things that the returns show, however, is a significantly lower voter turnout in areas where the FMLN maintains zones of control, especially in the eastern provinces of Usulutin, 14MarlApr 1982 Morazgn and San Vicente...
...i Further, ARENA has promised to eliminate Phase II of the agrarian reform--which in fact has never been implemented...
...unemployment is high...
...The second time, he was arrested and his papers were confiscated...
...Ibid...
...Most unfortunately, this scheme was not widely explained to Salvadorean voters...
...2 2 D'Aubuisson is a strange man...
...7. Junta Electoral Law, pp...
...But the most common reason to vote was fear, a fear structured deep in the institutions of Salvadorean society...
...Revista del Tercer Mundo, Nro...
...And there has been no redress...
...A few days after, Zamora was shot to death in his bathroom by unidentified men...
...Two weeks before the election he issued a statement saying that anyone who did not vote was committing "an act of treason...
...28 Billy Murphy Jr...
...1 9 After that, D'Aubuisson twice conspired to overturn the junta...
...FAPU, Pueblo, Nro...
...The sugar harvest is up from last year but 63% less than pre-war levels...
...The 1982 election law declared that during the 10 days after the elections, "the authorities shall demand evidence from the people that they voted and reported anyone without such evidence to the town mayor...
...Senate, March 18 and April 9, 1981 (U.S...
...At the polls, fully armed National Guardsmen and the National Police were-present, charged "with protecting the voting process...
...Ibid...
...Wall Street.Journal, March 24, 1982...
...Lest anyone fail to take this obligation seriously, General Jos6 Guillermo Garcia, El Salvador's defense minister, spelled out the implications of failing to turn out...
...The style is matched by that of his wife, Yolanda...
...Ibid...
...Its principal cadres are of the middle class, a tiny percentage of Salvadorean society, but educated and vocal...
...Still, she has potential...
...observer team...
...7 The voter first goes behind the box to mark the ballot, with only a little built-up wall to hide his or her hands from view, then drops the paper into the transparent box...
...What If I Didn't Vote...
...ticipated, or who admired those who did, have been cowed into silence...
...He entered military school at the age of 15 and was assigned to the National Guard, historically the most feared of the security forces...
...2 Commenting on his participation in the war with Honduras, D'Aubuisson told the guerrilla leader: "In that war, I learned to kill...Once you've killed the first one, the second one isn't hard.' '"" Billy Murphy Jr., an American who has been growing coffee in El Salvador for 27 years, and has known D'Aubuisson since he was a child, says "He is a man who believes in democracy and doesn't believe in killing anyone unless he has to...
...a And a western diplomat sounds the right comparative note: "People here are looking for a strong personality to lead them out of all the chaos of the past years...
...For example, several days before the election, the Frente Femenino Salvadorefio, an ARENA women's organization, published a full-page ad in the morning papers declaring that to remove the number was a violation of the electoral law...
...Election officials, claiming that the guerrillas would persecute people who had stamped cedulas, decided to give each voter a stamped piece of paper instead...
...NACLA interview with Colonel Adolfo Majano, December, 1981...
...But regrettably, if thrown away, it could not then be shown to the National Guard-or to one's employer...
...We've got to get back to the ways that make this country great: private banks, no forced nationalization, and jobs for everyone...
...These are not the oligarchs...
...It is the Guardia...
...And for those unable to take it-for whatever reason-there are few avenues of resistance, few ways to make themselves heard...
...The media continually enumerated the measures designed to protect the voter from the guerrillas, without asking how the measures might seem to people who feared their government more than the guerrillas...
...Electrical blackouts-due to guerrilla sabotage-create all sort of difficulties, none of which can be anticipated...
...And about all of it, one can do little...
...In the cities, there are the nightly gun fights between the Army and the guerrillas...
...3. Junta Electoral Law, pp...
...he even had a cousin among the guerrillas...
...To have one's nation thrust into the arena of international attention at the same time that the good citizen is exhorted to patriotic action undoubtedly meant to many Salvadoreans that civic responsibility demanded that they vote...
...That phase would effectively nationalize the coffee estates-the heart of the Salvadorean economy and the basis of the oligarchy's wealth...
...2s U.S...
...In 1982, moreover, each ballot had a number on it, which corresponded to another number beside which voters had to put their names...
...Nevertheless, there is no doubting the man's popular appeal-based on a forthright style and easy manner...
...They have everything to lose in the triumph of the revolution, or so they fear...
...El Salvador was until recently virtually unknown internationally...
...whereas the 1978-79 pre-war harvest was 3.8 million...
...The campaigns were colorful and exciting -particularly that of D'Aubuisson-and constant appeals to civic duty touched patriotic impulses, especially with so much interested media attention...
...It promises "total war" against the guerrillas...
...Ibid...
...2 3 Ana Guadalupe Martinez, now one of the comandantes of the FMLN, relates some of the more complex aspects of the man in her book, Secret Jails of El Salvador She recalls two visits from D'Aubuisson, then an intelligence officer, while she was in prison in 1976-77...
...Theoretically he or she could throw away the paper if stopped by the guerrillas...
...For one thing, it is not clear how many people considered this an option...
...For the average Salvadorean, prices are up dramatically...
...are superstitious rituals to exorcise their fear and bind their sense of class solidarity...
...New York Times, April 1, 1982...
...Miami Herald, May 10, 1980 and documents captured from conspirators and annotated by Embassy officials...
...Wall Street Journal, March 24, 1982...
...Ambassador Deane Hinton said that he knew D'Aubuisson's human rights reputation was "negative," but that he had conversed with him, and D'Aubuisson "had denied the rough stuff...
...The days of protest-the time of the popular organizations-are over...
...One of these, a diary entry describing an "Operation Pineapple," contains evidence that, in the words of Robert White, "is compelling, if not 100% conclusive, that D'Aubuisson and his group are responsible for the murder of Archbishop Romero...
...Others prepare for insurrection...
...He lamented that so many of the young were sympathetic to the guerrilla struggle...
...Napalm is indispensable," said Willi Aleman, D'Aubuisson's campaign spokesperson.'" (D'Aubuisson later denied that this was his position...
...there is harassment from the police and National Guard...
...watch his ballot come down through the slit into the transparent box, and see through the thin, once-folded paper which party he voted for.e Voting at clear plastic ballot box...
...1 0 To have spoiled one's ballot thus required a considerable act of courage, as not voting certainly did...
...38 (Mexico City), p. 28...
...They are profoundly Americanized, "fascists in Jordache jeans," as one journalist told NACLA...
...But many who parGrieving women with slain members of a popular organiza- tion...
...The opposition was divided on what to ask its sympathizers to do on the day of elections...
...4 Salaverria, Sol Meza, Regalado Duefias, Hill, Guirola and Sagrera, all are families of the oligarchy...
...For while reporters came to understand the climate of terror within which the election took place, few of them grasped the official aspect of that terror...
...And here is where the opposition forces demonstrate a continuing weakness: the FMLN is still not sufficiently strong militarily, sufficiently clear politically and sufficiently dominant ideologically that working people feel that they can risk defiance of the system...
...The Situation in El Salvador," Hearings, p. 117...
...But in the climate of terror that exists in El Salvador, much more mutual and collective support among those who oppose the government is still needed to overcome the fear...
...Flag reads: "Fatherland, Yes...
...Embassy in 1981 to his hand...
...the legal system, such as it was, has virtually ceased to exist...
...Ana Guadalupe Martinez, Las Carceles Clandestinas de El Salvador, (ERP: San Salvador, 1978) p. 234...
...47-48 as cited in CAMINO, El Salvador: Elections without Choice, (Camino: Boston, 1982) p. 24...
...It was she who reportedly led the demonstrations against then-Ambassador Robert White in May 1980, when chic women protesters blockaded his residence, chanting "White is Red," and "Send White to Cuba...
...She was a dynamic presence during the campaign, standing staunchly at her husband's side...
...the Army loots, kills and burns in its search-and-destroy missions in the countryside...
...1 3 And FAPU, one of the popular organizations of the FDR, has long charged that the forces of the extreme Right that D'Aubuisson represents are financed by Tomis Regalado Duefias and Roberto Hill...
...The system was designed to prevent unauthorized ballots from being placed in the boxes, but foreign observers complained that it was intimidating, since it allowed the government to check back and see how each individual voted...
...Communism, no...
...it is the Treasury Police...
...2. Latin America Contmodities Report, April 2, 1982...
...The military style prevails...
Vol. 16 • March 1982 • No. 2
