The Next Step in El Salvador
SIGMUND, PAUL E.
PRESSING FOR PEACE The Next Step in El Salvador BY PAUL E. SIGMUND IN WHAT APPEARS to have been the first clean national election in their history, the citizens of El Salvador went to the polls...
...largesse after Israel and Egypt...
...gave small amounts of economic aid to Betancourt, and it also sent incounterinsurgency advisers...
...Focusing to begin with on how to bring the Social Democrats and former Christian Democrats back into the mainstream of El Salvador's politics would be potentially more fruitful...
...Some of the guerrillas of the early '60s are today respected political leaders and members of the country's chief legislative body...
...PAUL E. SIGMUND, a previous contributor to the NL, is professor of politics and director of the Latin American Studies Program at Princeton...
...specialists from academe and the media have long underestimated the strength of the Right in many parts of Latin America, although analogous trends in the U.S...
...intervention in the form of diplomatic pressure for a broad National Unity government (the Rightists plus the Christian Democrats) and a continuation of basic reforms already seems to be having some effect on the Right-wing parties...
...The long-range objective would be to foster democratic processes open to everyone, including Ungo, the Communist-controlled Democratic National Union—the major member of the FDR—and Zamora's Revolutionary Christian Social Movement...
...What would the most sensible next step be...
...In addition, poll watchers from all six parties involved in the contest supervised the counting of ballots...
...3. The U.S...
...The Right did so well because they promised law and order and a quick end to the guerrilla insurgency...
...But early last month the House of Representatives, by a vote of 396-3, called for "unconditional talks" among rival political groups...
...Now in El Salvador, a U.S...
...Genuinely free Salvadoran elections could provide an example to Guatemala, reinforce the legitimacy of Honduras' fledgling elected government, and exert a positive influence for pluralism in the ongoing debate among the Sandinist leaders over Nicaragua's evolution...
...Getting all the Salvadoran factions to agree on an agenda for negotiations certainly will not be easy...
...In the case of El Salvador, the Right now claims that it achieved a resounding victory...
...Then a reformist military coup appointed a civilian-military junta to hold elections...
...It is a truism of Latin American elections that everybody wins: Each of the competing parties interprets the results in ways that are most favorable to it?and of course mutually contradictory...
...Of the other three parties on the Right, the Democratic Action Party won two seats, the Popular Salvadoran Party one, and the Popular Orientation Party none...
...President Jose Napoleon Duarte had indicated during the campaign that if the Christian Democrats received a majority in the 60-seat Constituent Assembly, he would take stronger measures to curb violations of human rights by the military and paramilitary organizations...
...So far this year, Congress has committed $105 million in economic relief to El Salvador...
...and others can use both carrots (overseas scholarships and attache posts to key Right-wing military men) and sticks (reductions in military aid...
...Recent polls have shown that a majority of Americans oppose any U.S...
...The bloodletting would then surely quicken...
...aid program could be part of the cushion, as well as the leverage, to promote reform...
...At least three U.S...
...While that may be true, the actual numbers do give the combined forces of four Rightist parties a solid majority...
...security...
...This could lead to such measures as the creation of an international peacekeeping force to inhibit the flow of arms and create an atmosphere of security for future elections...
...Substantial increases in this amount have been requested under President Reagan's Caribbean Basin Initiative, with $164 million scheduled for the next fiscal year...
...Venezuela's President Luis Herrera Campins has ties to his Christian Democratic counterpart in El Salvador, and (with Mexico) Venezuela provides substantial help to its strife-ridden neighbor in the form of a 30 per cent discount on the oil it exports there...
...The regional benefits of this third policy could prove enormous...
...The problem here is that there is little chanceof thegovernment defeating the guerrillas...
...Liberal U.S...
...The Salvadorans have demonstrated that they want a genuinely democratic country...
...An elated Reagan Administration saw the turnout of nearly 1.5 million voters as a massive rejection of the guerrilla and exile Left's claims to represent the real popular will...
...The object would be to convince the civilian politicians on both the Left and the Right that there is no possibility of an outright military victory by either the government or the guerrillas...
...Multiple voting was rendered difficult by the use of special identifying marks on voters' fingers and the six to eight hour waits at polling sites...
...during the early '70s should have made them realize that instability heightens the appeal of law and order candidates...
...The first elected President, Romulo Betancourt, was obliged to fight off military revolts on the Right and guerrillas supplied with arms from Cuba on the Left...
...Mexico's bolstering of the Leftist Salvadoran exiles in Mexico City puts Central America's largest nation in a strong position to coax them into entering discussions aimed at establishing a representative government...
...The question is whether the Reagan Administration will take this course, or go on being part of an interminable and costly military conflict that burdens the Salvadoran people with more suffering...
...The guerrillas would thereby be deprived of the respectability and broad sympathy that they derive from being allied with the exiled civilians in the FDR...
...LEST ANYONE think that working toward such a solution in El Salvador is wholly unrealistic, it should be pointed out that a precedent exists in the Hemisphere...
...could engage other countries of the region in a search for a formula that might bring peace to El Salvador...
...The 762 correspondents from all over the world and the 200 official observers from the United States and many other countries agreed that the balloting was carried out with little or no evidence of fraud or corruption...
...On the other hand, El Salvador's having to turn to its neighbors for assistance could make it easier to put across, say, the notion of international control of the arms flow to both sides under a settlement...
...This combined U.S...
...Similarly, no more than 11 per cent of the voters heeded the call of other Leftists for the casting of blank or spoiled ballots (compared to rates as high as 50 per cent in earlier elections...
...El Salvador's Congress, particularly the Democratic-controlled House, has thus been responding to the expressed demands of constituents who fear a Vietnam-style escalation and are horrified by the prolonged violence in the tiny country, especially on the Right...
...In Costa Rica, National Liberation Party leader Luis Alberto Monge, a member of the Socialist International, will be inaugurated in May and can be expected to actively work for a settlement...
...in the end, the guerrillas would probably take over large sections of the country and, a la Pol Pot, systematically eliminate their enemies...
...The Christian Democratic Party, pointing to its plurality consisting of 42 per cent of the valid votes, maintains that the participation of the Center-Left and Left parties in the election would have provided the basis for a reformist coalition...
...He has stressed that with Administration aid requests for El Salvador mounting during a period of deep economic malaise in the United States, Congressional opposition is likely to mount if the killings go on and social reforms are nullified...
...2. Congress could cut off aid by refusing to accept the President's certification, along the lines of the bill proposed by Congressman Gerry Studds (D.-Mass...
...The extreme Right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (arena) took 19 and the National Conciliation Party (PCN) 14, enabling those two Rightist groups alone to control the Constituent Assembly...
...This makes an overall solution in El Salvador more elusive than ever...
...However, the Christian Democrats won only 24 seats...
...Meanwhile, using contingency funds amounting to $55 million, the Administration has recently increased current military transfers to $81 million and is requesting $61.3 million for fiscal '83...
...ONE LIMITATION on the Right's power is the Salvadoran government's dependence on sustained military and economic assistance from the United States...
...The U.S...
...Recognizing the mood of Congress and the country, Ambassador Hinton has been urging Right-wing parties to include the Christian Democrats in the new government to be chosen by the ROBERTO D'AUBUISSON Constituent Assembly, and to abandon campaign threats to reverse the agrarian reform that has already turned the 326 largest landholdings into peasant cooperatives...
...In the past, the Left has mentioned a "restructuring of the Armed Forces" as a condition of talks, but no coalition that emerges from the March 28 voting is likely to entertain a wholesale purge for openers...
...The U.S...
...PRESSING FOR PEACE The Next Step in El Salvador BY PAUL E. SIGMUND IN WHAT APPEARS to have been the first clean national election in their history, the citizens of El Salvador went to the polls in record numbers last March 28 to choose a Constituent Assembly...
...Less than 25 years ago, Venezuela was in a situation with many parallels to El Salvador's present predicament...
...Nor is the biannual Congressional battle over Presidential certification that this option entails politically appealing...
...A cutoff is likely to lead to the collapse of the San Salvador government...
...involvement" in El Salvador, yet at the same time acknowledge that Central America is important to U.S...
...Venezuela has oil, true, and did not need extensive outside help...
...Ambassador, Deane Hinton, has persistently reminded the victors that Congress has placed several stipulations on aid: Every six months the President must certify that the Salvadoran government is making " a concerted and significant effort" to end human rights violations, is implementing land reform, and is willing to begin discussions of "an equitable political solution" with all major factions that renounce the use of force...
...Let us assume, somewhat rashly, that a National Unity government is formed—probably without the most controversial figures of the Right and center, arena's Roberto d'Aubuisson and the Christian Democrats' Jose Napoleon Duarte...
...Ironically, both sides had a point...
...With a population of only 5 million, El Salvador is about to become the third largest recipient of U.S...
...Guerrilla efforts to intimidate the populace in the hope of keeping the vote down failed...
...The last seems to me to hold out the greatest promise, and three nations in particular have obvious roles to play...
...But the Socialist International, meeting in Bonn April 1-2, declared that the "so-called elections" provide "no solution to the terrible ravages of civil war...
...After the people overwhelmingly rejected the Left's attempt to disrupt the 1963 elections, the various Leftist groups were gradually reintegrated into Venezuelan public life through a series of amnesties...
...policies are possible: 1. The Administration could intensify its present approach by backing the Satvadoran government and military to the fullest extent Congress will permit...
...Toward that end, the U.S...
...He also suggested that talks would be initiated with the leaders of the exile opposition Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR), an umbrella group including Guillermo Ungo, Du-arte's running mate in the 1972 elections, and Ruben Zamora, a former Christian Democrat...
...Before 1958, no civilian government completed its term of office...
...They also played on the anti-Communist feelings of the lower classes, especially women, and the ingrained traditionalism of the rural areas...
Vol. 65 • April 1982 • No. 7
