Salvador Revisited - A Call for Dialogue
Shenk, Janet
They went places other delegations have never gone and got closer to the war than most members of the U.S. Embassy are ever able or willing to do. Washington Post Delegations come and go in El...
...A local Army commander told us, "Every released soldier is a soldier lost, not a soldier gained...
...It was wrenching to leave these men-fearing they may be punished for having spoken so frankly...
...The word "dialogue" was whispered six months ago...
...45% are urban workers, 21% are students and only 5% are peasants (people from the rural areas never make it alive to the prisons, we are told...
...We talk with fieldhands on a cotton plantation turned into a cooperative by the agrarian reform...
...Ramirez reads from a sheath of papers prepared by his committee: 35% of the political prisoners at Mariona are under 20 years of age...
...It is clear to everyone willing or able to admit it that the Army is not winning the war...
...El Salvador's prisons are its pride...
...But every truck carrying goods to market is a slow-moving target...
...Supposedly we have the right to legal counsel," says Ramfrez, "but no lawyer has access to our cases...
...One element of the FMLN's strategy is to prevent the government from reaping much-needed foreign exchange revenues from the cotton, coffee and cane crops...
...Today, it is echoed by the Catholic Church, major trade union federations and even a small minority within the Army...
...It's my second trip to El Salvador with the Commission on U.S.Central American Relations, and this time I'm one of the coordinators of "Risky Tours, Inc.," as we call these twice-yearly trips...
...prisoner...
...Mariona's 726 political prisoners are kept apart from the "common criminals...
...White towel flying from the antennae of our van, a PRENSA banner taped to its side, we proceed cautiously over a narrow, swaying railroad bridge to cross the Lempa River into Usulutdn...
...government likes to tout as El Salvador's "center," believe that only through dialogue can the war be ended...
...Poster captions read, from left: "Monsignor Romero, you live on in the struggles of our people...
...Another prisoner, a teacher, shows us what happened to him before he reached the jail...
...To translate General Garcia's lies into English with a straight face is no easy task...
...They threatened to burn out my eyes," he says, "unless I confessed to being a subversive...
...Mother, your imprisoned son will be liberated by the people...
...recreation...
...In fact, they are doing 44 both...
...Out of a sample of 550 prisoners, 379 have been there for more than six months-the period, according to the state of seige decrees, in which formal charges must be filed...
...they now say they were a hoax and that new elections must be preceded by a dialogue with the FDR-FMLN...
...cleanup...
...It's humiliating for us to admit it," said a university professor...
...It was blown up a year ago and now its remains reach into the river like two giant claws...
...Embassy official We arrive at Tocotin International Airport at dusk on January 18, an eclectic group of twenty Americans expecting to see machine gun-toting soldiers behind every pillar...
...Most of the men we spoke to at Mariona say they were tortured at NACLA staffer Janet Shenk translates during meeting in office of Political Prisoners' Committee inside Mariona men's prison...
...political education...
...No wonder the government arranged our visit...
...We are introduced to the Committee's directorate-a school teacher, a factory worker, a trade union leader, an economist and others...
...of M*A*S*H fame...
...This visit with people seeing it for the first time, would reopen old wounds...
...We'll be seeing her that afternoon at Ilopango, El Salvador's women's jail...
...But to convey a sense of some of what 43 Eupdate . update * update * update we experienced is far more difficult...
...For further information, write to the Com- mission at 1826 18th St...
...The Road to UauIautan The guerrillas' FM station, Radio Venceremos, had issued a travel advisory the night before, telling civilians to stay off the roads from dawn to dusk...
...It's easy to become numb to the horrors of El Salvador...
...Douglas Ramirez, a high school teacher and member of the teachers' union ANDES, is in charge of the prisoners' legal committee...
...But we are eager to escape the artificial calm of the capital and decide to travel with seasoned journalists to Usulutin, the capital of El Salvador's richest Mar/Apr 1983 agricultural province...
...We're just the tip of the iceberg-the part the government wants you to see...
...It is equally clear that the March 1982 elections did nothing to improve conditions or create a climate for peace...
...At the Camino Real hotel, we are greeted by the U.S...
...The call for direct talks between the government, the armed forces and the rebels was issued last October by the FDR-FMLN, El Salvador's united political and armed opposition...
...Their visits coincide with the twice-a-year certification of the Salvadorean government by the U.S...
...As they leave the fields to go home, the workers walk in a pack along the highway, carrying a big white flag...
...45update . update * update * update A Call for Dialogue If one thing had changed since my last trip to El Salvador, it was that more and more people in what the U.S...
...What about the disappeared...
...Although its members did meet with embassy and government officials, their conversations were unusually direct and often confrontational...
...administration for continued military and economic assistance...
...that its morale is low and slipping-partly as a result of the guerrillas' new policy of releasing captured soldiers to the International Red Cross...
...For the next four days, we shuttle between meetings with government leaders and generals, on the one hand, and those we come to perceive as their victims, on the other: refugees from the Army's "clean-up" operations in the countryside, political prisoners, mothers of the disappeared--and teen-age soldiers with only the vaguest idea of what they are fighting for or against...
...At least he was rich...
...We had expected dungeons on our morning visit to Mariona men's prison, and instead we found spacious courtyards, crowded but clean cell blocks and an apparent atmosphere of freedom inside prison walls...
...The emotional acrobatics involved are draining...
...It is now the subject of sharp and open debate...
...Our trip to and from Usulutin was uneventful-except for when we paused briefly to wait for a small skirmish up ahead to end...
...Mar/Apr 1983 MASH's Mike Farrell visits refugee camp...
...There are none...
...Seated from left: Marge Tabankin, former head of Vista...
...Don't be taken in by these surroundings and by our existence," says Carlos Molina, an economist and member of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR), arrested in October 1982...
...From there, after a few days or weeks depending on the case, they were taken to the headquarters of one of El Salvador's three security forces for further questioningand physical abuse...
...Almost all the prisoners say they were "arrested" by armed men in civilian clothes, blindfolded and taken to secret interrogation centers...
...But less than a week after our trip, the rickety railroad bridge was no more...
...Only 76 prisoners have had charges brought against them...
...They've been brain-washed...
...The Director of the National Police, Colonel L6pez Nuila, is a member of the government's newly appointed Human Rights Commission...
...a disciplinary committee...
...Inexplicably, the Embassy has announced that they dropped out at the last minute...
...Ed Feighan (D-OH...
...To love in times of war...
...N W., Wash- ington, D.C...
...Now the banks won't give us credit and the cotton weighs less because we can't buy fertilizer...
...20009...
...The Commission on U.S.-Central American Relations caught reporters and many officials by surprise...
...press corps, eager to judge if our delegation is "a story...
...Showcase Prisons "I bet you've never seen a prison that nice in the United States," an Embassy officer told me that evening over cocktails...
...But what happens in Washington is more important than what happens here...
...The prisoners have created seven committees to cope with prison life: a cultural committee that has organized a chorus, poetry readings, theatrical skits...
...Bernab4 Recinos, a legendary figure in El Salvador's trade union movement, imprisoned since August 1980, asks us to hug his wife...
...to 6 p.m.to play soccer in the courtyard, run on a make-shift track or hold meetings in the office of the Political Prisoners' Committee...
...The planes," they say, referring to the U.S.-supplied A37s used regularly by the Army to bomb guerrilla strongholds...
...The Commission on U.S.-Central American Relations is a project of the Center for Development Policy...
...Ed Feighan, freshman congressman from Cleveland and member of our delegation, is met at the airport by Embassy staff and whisked away in a bullet-proof car...
...They begin their presentation with a warning...
...Elected officials and other distinguished visitors often seem to bring the answers with them, spend a day or so in whirlwind meetings with local dignitaries, and then catch the next plane to Washington for the obligatory press conference for or against U.S...
...Their members are among the 1.4 million said to have voted in the March elections...
...and so forth...
...He is told they can't guarantee his safety at our hotel, and the rest of us take bets on whether the Congressman will yield to Embassy pressures to stay elsewhere...
...Without Washington's pressure, there can never be dialogue-or peace...
...They seem surprised to see that our group includes singer Mary Travers and Mike Farrell, B.J...
...the hands of the National Police...
...Every town on the highway had been taken over, at least temporarily, by the FMLN, and Usulutbn was surrounded...
...He failed to appear at our meeting with that Commission...
...Most of their time was spent in prisons and refugee camps, and in conversation with peasants along the road outside the capital in dangerous war zones...
...They usually are called 'fact-finding missions' in the news and 'dog and pony shows' out of print because of their seeming superficiality...
...A hundred yards down river, the once graceful Puente de Oro, El Salvador's most modern suspension bridge, stands as a monument to the skills of the FMLN and the Army's lack of vigilance...
...NACLA Report Eupdate update update update E Folk singer Mary Travers sings for the inmates at Mariona men's prison at their request...
...Life was better when the old patr6n was around," they say...
...Our waylaid Congressman turns up later that night, having declined the Embassy's offers...
...Hideous scars cross his face, chest, and back, the product of hydrochloric acid...
...they are allowed to roam freely inside the compound from 6 a.m...
...On the long drive to the capital, we hide our nervousness by commenting on rock formations, while someone asks if this is the road where the nuns were killed...
...Dallas Times Herald You know, this was really a hardhitting group...
...The two-hour drive to UsulutAn takes us on a road lined with toppled power lines (the region has been without electricity for two years) and burned-out trucks...
...The stories vary only in the method of torture applied-electric shocks, hot metal bars, mock executions...
...Inside the office of the Political Prisoners' Committee, posters taped to cinderblock walls show the slain archbishop, Oscar Romero, Che Guevara, flowers blooming from the barrel of a gun...
...We are told the guerrillas rarely burn crops in the field, so that farmworkers won't lose their pay...
...Washington Post Delegations come and go in El Salvador...
...They want you to believe that now they are taking prisoners instead of killing people...
...We met with trade union leaders representing construction workers, public and municipal employees, rural cooperatives and professional associations...
...But what about the thousands that have been assassinated...
...What are you most afraid of...
...They made a lot of jaws drop around this town...
Vol. 17 • March 1983 • No. 2
