An Exile's Return
Argueta, Manillo
In a certain way, those who died won this war, while those who survived still seem to be living a dream in which helicopters have become ambulances, and cannons and bombs have ceased to disturb...
...Of course, I have tried to hold back my feelings in order to reacquire a sixth sense of survival, for which I will need a force of character close to stoicism...
...And so the fissures appeared...
...As if the defense of lives can wait...
...Or out of sheer craziness...
...The FMLN explained that two of the five organizations that made up the former armed insurgency had negotiated a deal in which land for former guerrillas would be exchanged for forgiveness for certain military officers...
...President Cristiani threatened to fire them if they persisted with their demands...
...What is incomprehensible is that the government still talks of these crimes as if they were routine occurrences...
...How can we explain this gratuitous violence...
...The United States made one thing clear: it would not give any more money for the war...
...The front's vacillations and :ional Police with M-76 rifles stand guard ii Police march by carrying the national flag pragmatism as it maneuvers politically have created confusion among Salvadorans, some of whom now claim that despite the clearly recognizable fruits of the insurgency, the population may have paid too dearly for the rights and freedoms that the modern world has enjoyed since the French Revolution...
...Is the government calling in the army out of desperation, or are some sectors trying to feel less abandoned by their former patrons...
...Twenty-four hours before graduating, that first contingent of police officers marked its appearance with an act of rebellion...
...Civic security should not be postponed...
...How to achieve these objectives is the challenge facing those Salvadorans who are positioning themselves to head their country...
...The population, besieged by violence, had placed its hopes in this new police force-trained over long months with the support of the international community, and educated in a new philosophy of social security...
...It is the responsibility of those who taught war and legitimated violence to educate Salvadorans about how to live in peace...
...In a certain way, those who died won this war, while those who survived still seem to be living a dream in which helicopters have become ambulances, and cannons and bombs have ceased to disturb the silence of night...
...Once again, popular expectations were dashed...
...This was a war in which one side (the army and the government) raised the flag of national security and the defense of Western values, while the other (the FMLN) fought for social justice, as if these concepts were irreconcilable...
...If they are not satisfied with what we give them, they kill us...
...Yet it made its reappearance in the last 12 years, when men and women had to hide their pain in order not to be recognized as the friends and relatives of victims, and thus immediately become victims themselves...
...The popular organizations, allied political parties on the Left The old Nat and the Church-all National Civ of whom were a tremendous moral force during these 12 years of war-were surprised to learn that the FMLN and the government had entered into secret negotiations over the carrying out of the findings of the Truth and Ad-Hoc commissions...
...A recent news report told of an assault on a car in which the attackers brandished guns and hand grenades...
...It took place within a vortex of polarization and ideological dogmatism that led to the assassinations of the Archbishop of El Salvador, the North American nuns, the Jesuits, and the Dutch and North American journalists...
...Now the new circumstances demand pragmatism...
...The government claims it doesn't have the money...
...No kind of atrocity was foreign to this war which cost so many lives...
...The far Right has asked the army to patrol the streets-to control traffic and fight street crime...
...Those who before were spectators and victims of the war, who watched from their windows as tracer bullets flew by and prayed that a rocket would not fall on their roof tops, are now becoming actors in the reconstruction of their country...
...We don't know who they are, and we don't know what the rules of the game are...
...that it is no longer possible to maintain a despotic state which subjects people to the daily horrors of military impunity...
...Some sectors of the Right are now convinced that pluralism is a way to ensure their own survival...
...The permanently marginalized now assassinate those who have a little more...
...You know," said a taxi driver, one of those people with whom I often talk to take the pulse of the city, "before we knew there were two factions, and we knew how to deal with them...
...It remains to be seen, however, if the triumph of one of the opposing sides in the 1994 elections will be honorably accepted by the other...
...The new police force-made up of exmembers of the FMLN and of the disbanded police corps-fielded its first contingent of 500 men in the third week of February...
...Or grenades thrown through windows, for no other reason than to "joder," rough Salvadoran slang meaning "because I goddamn feel like it...
...They involve commando-style assaults in any side street on unwary drivers, or attacks on youths or school children to take away their school bags...
...President Alfredo Cristiani supports this military patrol, even though the peace accords explicitly A crir stipulate that the army limit ken b itself to defending sovereignty and responding to natural catastrophes...
...That conviction produced the impulse to find a negotiated solution to the conflict...
...My first reaction-after the difficult search for my documents in disordered files-has been emotional...
...After the holocaust of war, the nation's deserved tranquility has been broken by the crime of the post-war era...
...In truth, this date marks the beginning of a real civil society in El Salvador...
...It was also in that context that FMLN guerrilla and poet Roque Dalton was killed by his militarist compafieros...
...Now we are worse off than during the war...
...ital was the center of the great 1989 guerrilla offensive...
...Stoicism is hard to come by in a country of tumultuous activity like El Salvador whose people are known for the assertiveness with which they make and remake their plans...
...Even though necessary facilities had been requested many times over the past year, the new national police force was housed in provisional quarters...
...Before, many on the Right preferred to go on as the new fighting than lose g. their privileges...
...He is currently at work on a new novel, Night of the Children...
...On the one hand, these murders are psychological remnants of the war, and on the other, the consequence of dire economic necessities...
...After watching his partner die, one of the assailants exclaimed, "I have three children, and I was fired from work...
...After almost 20 years in exile, I have returned to my country...
...Post-war El Salvador is as lethal as the war itself...
...Now it's in the hands of the Left and the Right: a battlefield without arms or hierarchy for the FMLN and with humane methods for the Right...
...Culture, and perhaps ethics, will play an important educational role during this period of peace and democratization...
...They didn't lose the war, but they lost their role in society-which is as if they lost the war...
...Of course, compared to the bloody standards of the recent past, these incidents can appear routine or irrelevant...
...It's important to keep in mind that military officers became an important economic power, giving mortgage credits and loans to members of their own ranks...
...Despair has also gripped the FMLN...
...I do ne scene...
...Some sectors of the FMLN characterize them the same way, perhaps in an attempt not to disrupt the dynamic of the peace process...
...Nor have Salvadorans been told why there are so few trainees...
...But many FMLN sympathizers-members of the movement's "social base"-are not happy about these secret highlevel negotiations...
...And this unsettled situation could last as long if there is no spiritual disarmament...
...In its essence, the war was a struggle to conserve or overturn historical privileges-to defend or seize power...
...The 1989 offensive left many convinced that the country was moving towards an extermination of senseless proportions...
...One element of state formation is the National Civil Police, which is supposed to begin taking the place of the old Treasury Police and National Guard...
...The war has left few signs of physical devastation in San Salvador, even though the capManlio Argueta is the author of One Day In Life (Random House, 1983) and a col- lection of poems, La Guerra Florida (1992...
...The countries of Central America are modernizing their way of thinking...
...However, like an oil spill in the sea, a stain is darkening these hopes...
...The contradictions, though they appear strong, are not yet deep enough to threaten this process...
...It cannot be tossed to the side by alleging other priorities...
...I don't think the majority of the military any longer play the dirty role that was their lot...
...They have a light finger on the trigger...
...This is the school of cynicism...
...There cannot be peace without respect for life and the natural world...
...Although it has been compelled to participate in the peace initiatives, the Right is afraid of the unknown, of cutting loose from those who were its armed protectors...
...But we dismiss the significance of this crime at our peril...
...But given how desperately it resolved its disagreements over the immediate future, and given its failure to involve its natural allies in this resolution, the FMLN still runs the risk of losing its credibility...
...Now, in 1993, the senseless institutional crimes so common in the past have almost disappeared...
...The first task before us is the creation of a Salvadoran state with institutions, legal guarantees, and respect for life and civil rights (isn't this the raison d'8tre of the state...
...At the end of last year, when rumors circulated of a pending military coup, U.S...
...With all that said, there is a glimmer of a new history for El Salvador-an uncharted process of social recomposition that seems irreversible...
...The government has given no valid reasons for not granting the salaries it originally offered the police or, at the very least, providing them with the installations of the disbanded security corps...
...Although those named will not be brought to justice, they have been singled out by the finger of history...
...They threatened not to attend their graduation ceren bro- monies because of their low salaries which, to make things worse, the government had told them about only at the last minute...
...In a certain way, those who died won this war, while those who survived still seem to be living a dream in which helicopters have become ambulances, and cannons and bombs have ceased to disturb the silence of night...
...The nation's tranquility has bee y the street crime of the post-war era...
...ertainly, there is fear among the right...
...The war has left a pifiata of military weapons available for the taking...
...No one knows, but popular opinion is divided over a response that would militarize the city and the countryside when the footprints of war are still fresh...
...San Salvador is a city that still moves desperately, although people no longer fear dying in a crossfire of bullets or seeing an entire family decapitated by death squads...
...People are ready to fire M-16 4NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 4 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASUPDATE / EL SALVADOR rifles or AK-47s, or throw a grenade, in order to steal a watch or avenge an unrequited love...
...But they need time to Vol XXVI, No 5 May 1993 5UPDATE / EL SALVADOR readjust, especially with respect to their financial affairs...
...Without a doubt, the FMLN must have time to convert its military forces into a political party...
...Rhetoric about Western culture or about sacrifice and heroism does not have the resonance it once had...
...How can there be money in the national treasury to subsidize the export crops, the big importers and the private banks, all of which were awash in privileges in past administrations, but not a penny to safeguard the well-being of the Salvadoran people, or to provide adequate wages and social benefits...
...The military and the FMLN thus came to the conclusion that neither side could win a military victory...
...They only want our money and valuables...
...We are not dealing with two forces in conflict that weakened," says Iqbal Riza, the head of the United Nations human-rights monitoring agency ONUSAL, "but rather that recognized each other's might...
...Thanks to the power of democratic participation-one key outcome of the insurgency-the FMLN is beginning to recognize its mistakes...
...An optimism is putting down roots in the civilian population...
...Under-Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Bernard Aronson and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs-ofStaff Colin Powell hastily travelled to El Salvador to contain the remaining craziness that was frustrating the fulfillment of the peace accords...
...On March 15, the Truth Commission, made up of three independent investigators, released its report, naming those implicated in war crimes...
...The greatest priority is human existence...
...A year after the end of the war, Salvadorans want to return to normalcy...
...They are recognizing what their social needs are-schools, access to health care, and human rights...
...this out of necessity...
Vol. 26 • May 1993 • No. 5
