El Salvador's War
At night, in San Salvador, fire- fights 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 seem to last...
...45update update * update . update Sipping drinks by the side of his swimming pool, we listen to Deane Hinton's assessment of developments since the March elections...
...The guerrillas will be reduced to banditry within two to five years...
...There's light at the end of the tunnel...
...The children, in disturbingly calm voices, recall the vivid details of the day one young girl watched soldiers set fire to her house, or the day an 8-year-old boy found his father slain in the fields...
...What can be felt is the general despair...
...Some of the bones still have flesh clinging to them...
...White skulls stand poised on a bed of black lava that stretches from the road to the green hills in the distance...
...So begins our three-hour official briefing on human rights,theeconomy, political affairs and the war...
...Would the new government hold together...
...Ninety percent of his parishioners have had a family member killed or disappeared in the last two years...
...Just as we rose from the dinner table to put an end to an awkward evening for all, the room went dark...
...One tells about her younger brother, dragged from his bed in the middle of the night by uniformed soldiers, and never seen again...
...Despite the arrival of new A-37 bombers, they can't get them all up at once for lack of trained pilots...
...With nothing left to lose, these people speak freely of the military campaigns that forced them to flee their homes in the north, in Chalatenango, Morazan and Cabanas...
...We see it in the eyes of the Relatives of the Disappeared-young women in their late teens or early twenties who ring our rooms at the hotel and ask timidly if we can spare a moment to talk...
...But now the political danger is past and "it's time to get down to the business of making private enterprise work...
...They have no identity papers...
...Hinton has nothing but contempt for the "cowardice" of opposition leaders, who refused to run the same risks as everyone else and participate in the elections...
...counter his killer image abroad...
...The new government is moving in the right direction...
...These refugees, and those we visited in two other camps in San Salvador, are captives to the war...
...a fresh load of bodies had been dumped the day before...
...Are the guerrillas getting more generous support...
...100 million is zero," says Waghlestein...
...Aid to the guerrillas is "massive and unconditional"--in contrast to stingy U.S...
...The embassy's chief military officer, Colonel Waghlestein, is reputed to be one of five top counterinsurgency experts in the U.S...
...advisers in El Salvador today-and gives the impression of being in charge of tactics and strategy for the Salvadorean Army as well...
...My job is to teach them the gospel according to Mao and Che," the colonel explains...
...some even speak English with the touch of a Spanish accent...
...And because his barrio is poor, and because it is assumed that all poor people are subversives, it is the scene of house-tohouse searches and many more disappearances each week...
...He is in charge of 40-odd U.S...
...Not many soldiers are in sight...
...It's a lousy situation," says Bob Driscoll, political officer at the U.S...
...Our meeting with President Magana had left the impression of a tired man with little power independent of the Army...
...With remarkable discipline, they make the best of the time they must spend waiting for the war to end...
...It's certification time and the government is on its best behavior...
...Embassy...
...Hinton would not predict the future, except to say that the Army was well aware that another coup could pull the plug on U.S...
...But aside from these inconveniences, the war is barely felt in the capital, where the traffic snarls and the streets are bustling with activity...
...General SpG0Octl112 Garcia, again, vociferously disagrees...
...Host and guests could not even agree on that...
...Most of the discussion focuses on military matters, since the war is foremost in everyone's mind...
...44 Since the March elections, we are told, democracy has taken root here ("even Major D'Aubuisson is playing by the rules...
...Was it an electrical storm or another black-out by the FMLN...
...Garcia usually smiles amiably throughout his interviews with foreign visitors, attempting to Refugees cram a San Salvador schoolyard at a center run by Catholics...
...Army...
...Our meetings with Christian Democrats and right-wing party leaders suggested that they could agree on little besides the need to win the war against the Left...
...they did not vote in the March elections...
...Beneath their avowed optimism, the embassy people are worried that public opposition back home may keep them on a shoe-string budget to fight the war...
...they cannot leave the camps for fear of being picked up by the security forces...
...There is nothing to negotiate...
...All foreign trade has been state controlled since 1980, and the marketing of the last two coffee crops has been disastrous...
...Dinner conversation centers on the viability of the present government...
...The terrorists are to blame, they say, but the misguided policies of the Duarte government (and the Carter Administration) didn't help matters any...
...everyone works in the communal kitchens and talleres, where the refugees make fishing nets for sale or simple furnishings for their tents...
...60 large factories have closed in the last two years...
...To a man, they are despondent about the state of the economy: since 1978, industrial output has declined by 30...
...Later, we ask Minister of Defense General Guillermo Garcia about these competing military strategies...
...It was a blatantly political measure that made no economic sense, although some suggest that it was necessary at the time...
...Back in my room, I try to decipher what appears to be a map leading to a secret torture center in a government building-and a scribbled line saying "We know that Ramon is being held here...
...They happen nearly every night and seem to last longer each time...
...delegation in July...
...The guerrillas can blow up generators and powerlines much faster than the U.S...
...2) 0 U) NACLAReportuupdatupdte update update a, 0 C Army Chief of Staff Flores Lima and Defense Minister Guillermo Garcia meeting with the U.S...
...The embassy readily admits that new supplies to the FMLN are limited to small arms, medical supplies, ammunition and communications gear...
...But it used to be horrible...
...No one in the camp is idle...
...The Army is firmly backing the reforms...
...Waghlestein prefers "saturation patroling," "last-light insertions" and "night extractions...
...That's less than the traffic fines in New York City...
...These businessmen have spent 10 to 30 years in El Salvador...
...The "historic compromise" between the Christian Democrats and the likes of D'Aubuisson is proof that democracy can work...
...They make no secret of their dislike for Americans who stay a few days and leave with strong opinions...
...Another slips me a piece of paper folded many times...
...The ambassador is renowned for the cowboy style that colors his account of how he twisted arms to get rival parties to cooperate...
...aid dollars arrive to replace them...
...He doesn't hide his impatience with the Army's traditional reliance on low-risk, large-scale operations that the FMLN usually can elude with ease...
...18,000 jobs have been lost...
...Just outside the capital, handkerchiefs pressed to our faces, we visit a clandestine cemetery that everyone knows about: El Playon...
...The Cherokee vans parked outside, with blackened windows, attest to the personal danger these men live with as ideal targets for kidnappings or assault...
...Adults and children are learning to read and write...
...By far our most tension-filled meeting is with our fellow citizens at the America Chamber of Commerce...
...As for the agrarian reform, these men will shed no tears as it's dismantled by the new Constituent Assembly...
...He says that many young officers are coming around to his point of view...
...The city went black...
...Sadness, mixed with irrepressible hope, is in the eyes of a priest from a working-class barrio of the capital...
...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...
...Yet, for a moment, his face turns to stone: "You Americans lost the war in Vietnam, didn't you...
...Projected military aid for next year will include six more Huey choppers (bringing the total to 26)-but that barely lets them lift a company...
...supplies that come with the illusion that wars can be "pure...
Vol. 16 • September 1982 • No. 5
