EL SALVADOR 1984
THERE IS NO END IN SIGHT TO THE war that has ravaged El Salvador for the last four years. 45,000 people have died or disappeared. The Army has more than tripled in size while the best...
...Yet two years later, as the same parties dominate the presidential race, it appears that the practical differences between the two were exaggerated and profoundly misunderstood...
...The Army has more than tripled in size while the best estimates of guerrilla strength suggest a doubling of their ranks...
...It is also a view from El Salvador of our own government's actions and impact on events...
...The university's jour- nal, Estudios Centroamericanos (ECA), has meticulously documented the impact of the war on all levels of society and provided the most insightful analyses available of the social forces in conflict...
...In wartime, it has become an oasis for those who seek an objective understanding of events...
...For this reason, we have invited the ECA editorial board, a team of respected social scientists living and working in San Salvador, to share their thoughts on El Salvador's future with an American audience...
...They were seen as posing a clear choice between two options-the moderate center and the extremist Right...
...The content of "El Salvador 1984," is entirely the responsibility of the ECA editorial board...
...The voices of Salvadoreans themselves, which we now present, are all too rarely heard...
...The options for El Salvador in 1984 are steadily narrowing, with the door to dialogue still firmly shut and both sides pouring all their energies into a war that threatens the very survival of a nation...
...Two years ago, the massive voter turnout in El Salvador's Constituent Assembly elections was interpreted as a resounding repudiation of the Left...
...to pre-empt, in a sense, the many false conclusions that were drawn from the last elections in 1982...
...Over the last four years, we have written extensively on the crisis unfolding in El Salvador, attempting to add an historical dimension to the daily reporting in the press and the "bang-bang" coverage on television...
...American perceptions of El Salvador are necessarily filtered through the eyes of the American press and shaped by our government's claims...
...The elections were hailed as an exercise in pluralist democracy, save for the rebels' unwillingness or inability (depending on the interpretation) to participate...
...It is our hope, in publishing this special report on the eve of El Salvador's presidential elections, to shed light on the context of those elections...
...Virtually no attention was paid to the real and perceived consequences of not voting in a country terrorized by the armed forces and paramilitary death squads...
...It is their assessment of the political actors in El Salvador's drama, the war, the upcoming presidential elections, the prospects of peace...
...And if President Reagan's request for a quadrupling of military aid to El Salvador is approved by Congress this year, more weapons, more helicopters and more bullets will find their way to both sides in El Salvador's escalating conflict...
...In this issue of NACLA's Report on the Americas, we open our pages to the views of those who experience El Salvador's agony as their own...
...The Jesuit-run Central American University (UCA) has been a center of academic excellence since its founding in 1965...
Vol. 18 • March 1984 • No. 2
