Unwelcome in El Salvador
Lindsay-Poland, John
Unwelcome in El Salvador BY JOHN LINDSAY-POLAND Two Canadian volunteers entered the Panchimilama resettlement in La Paz, El Salvador, last April to assist refugees from that country's civil war....
...For those who come to help, threats, deportation, even death The Salvadoran Army's press agency claimed that Weis was a doctor carrying firearms and medicine for the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN...
...Military officials have repeatedly turned back shipments of food and other supplies to resettled villages, claiming the provisions are destined for FMLN combatants...
...Colonel Benjamin Eliado Canjura, the commander for the zone, denies army responsibility...
...The military has increasingly required safe-conduct passes for any outsiders to visit zones it considers contested...
...The bishop was intervening in behalf of a North American nun who helps Salvadorans get their personal-identity documents so they can travel outside their villages without risking arrest...
...Then one of the immigration officials proceeded to tell me I was going to leave the country immediately...
...embassy has no power in Salvadoran government decisions...
...flag was burned...
...But this case was different...
...Cohen herself and one of the Canadians, Evan Fox-Decent, were both injured in a grenade explosion in January...
...The tag on his uniform read "Major Sena," but the adviser told the group his name was Major Blanco...
...U.S...
...embassy to help them get back to San Salvador as soon as possible...
...embassy has looked the other way...
...Anyway, "the Salvadoran government is on vacation," he said, and "the U.S...
...activists from the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) as they left a guerrilla-controlled area in Morazan, says Ruth Grabowski, a CISPES coordinator on the trip...
...Peggy O'Grady, a staff member of Catholic Charities in San Francisco, had been present during the August incident...
...But she didn't get past customs...
...Perhaps you can talk to somebody who can get this rescinded," they told him...
...Salvadorans as well as internationals have started adding, 'if I'm still alive then' to the end of their sentences...
...The embassy's vice consul, Ray Dillon, "got flustered a couple of times because the police were not doing what he wanted...
...embassy, volunteers continue their work...
...But instead of refugees, they met a Salvadoran corporal...
...I don't know why they let them in...
...The repatriates "have a certain level of awareness of how to organize," says Colonel Orlando Zepeda of the First Infantry Brigade...
...Peace Brigades is a Gandhi-inspired organization whose volunteers accompany nonviolent groups and visit communities threatened with violence...
...Embassy officials may find their criticisms increasingly ignored, in part because U.S...
...Ryan was not at that protest...
...When the refugees were finally allowed to enter their native country after eight years of exile in Honduras, a Salvadoran foot soldier said loudly: "Thirteen hundred more guerrillas...
...embassy officials in San Salvador have hardly been sympathetic to foreign visitors...
...In May 1988, the embassy listed as "leftist propaganda" articles by Chris Norton (a regular contributor to the Christian Science Monitor and other publications) and Holly Burkhalter, a representative of Americas Watch...
...Weis's death came only days after the repatriation of more than a thousand Salvadoran refugees from the Mesa Grande refugee camp in Honduras...
...In December, soldiers on the road to Chalatenango, where a number of resettlements are located, told the bishop of the province that they had orders not to allow any foreigners or religious workers into Chalatenango...
...Last November, Lindgren was captured and directed to leave El Salvador...
...When the military comes into Pan-chimilama," says Cohen, "they see us and they behave a little better because they know if they don't, we'll make a fuss...
...He said to them, 'My friend wants to see the blood of a gringo!' " Though the corporal did not follow through with his threat against the Canadians, his menacing remarks typify the welcome many volunteers receive when they come to El Salvador...
...The embassy refused to meet with the rest of the delegation...
...But how do we convince it to listen...
...After some thirty-six hours in custody, the group was released and deported...
...The nun had a safe-conduct pass and a letter from the Ministry of the Interior, but the soldiers did not budge...
...It is difficult to obtain these passes...
...He discovered that the military high command had barred all members of a July 1988 medical delegation to San Jose Las Flores, Cambridge's sister city...
...Some of the names belonged to persons who had tried to accompany the refugees in August, O'Grady says...
...They tried to separate the men and women in different cells...
...Following the attack, Colonel Dias, commander in Chalatenango, threatened to destroy the resettlements...
...Ryan had led a sister-city delegation from Cambridge, Massachusetts, in June 1987, which had held two press conferences in front of the embassy...
...threats to cut off aid have so frequently been caught as bluffs...
...But for the army, the returned refugees represent the sea that sustains the guerrilla fish...
...On August 22, Weis was shot and killed by National Police agents in the province of Cabanas...
...A commission of the European Parliament concluded in September that Weis had been tortured before his death...
...The repopulations could be turned into covers for rebel cadres, logistical help, recruiting, and even intelligence in favor of the guerrillas...
...Once transferred to Treasury Police headquarters in the capital, Grabowski says, police "started threatening our translator, who is a U.S...
...Ryan demanded to speak with the embassy's consul general, Nick Ricciuti, who told her that Salvadorans are denied entry to the United States all the time and, this being no different, there was nothing he could do about it...
...This characterization was carried in the embassy's daily press packet, which was distributed to the media, diplomatic corps, and the Salvadoran High Command...
...Also, they wouldn't give us any food or water, and we were already pretty dehydrated...
...He spent two-and-a-half months in El Salvador last year as a volunteer for Peace Brigades International...
...In November 1987, for example, a delegation representing the U.S...
...He made them get in a gully and asked them if...
...Although the embassy knew everything that was going on, their control was definitely slipping," Grabowski says...
...Oh, you fucking gringo shit," one Salvadoran officer said to Haeberle...
...They questioned us until eleven at night...
...sanctuary movement flew to El Salvador to investigate the fate of a Salvadoran who, upon returning from the United States, had been arrested and reportedly tortured for four days...
...Sometimes the embassy is at a loss to control the Salvadoran military, even though the U.S...
...The day after the repatriation, Adolfo Blandon, then chief of staff of the army, reiterated the allegations against the religious delegation...
...It called on "the Duarte government to allow internationalists, international aid workers, and observers to visit El Salvador and to assure their safety...
...When he arrived with four other North Americans on February 12, he became the third Cambridge resident in four months to be refused entry at the Salvadoran airport...
...For the most part, the U.S...
...Nancy Ryan flew to El Salvador last October with a valid visa only to find that her name, too, was on the "lookout list" at the airport...
...They had gone there to link up with groups of terrorist delinquents," the high command said...
...policy in El Salvador is a quick way to get deported...
...Wheaton left the country while the others in his group stayed...
...In August and again in the days preceding another mass repatriation in November, the military did not even take applications for the passes, according to church volunteers...
...His face was disfigured in an apparent attempt to hide his identity...
...He told her that her visa only represented "permission to apply for entry into the country...
...Deborah Cohen stresses that Salvadorans face many harsher threats than the volunteers...
...You foreigners are the cause of all our problems here," a military officer told Mi-kael Lindgren, a Swedish volunteer for Peace Brigades International...
...Viewing them as meddlers or guerrilla sympathizers, the Salvadoran government treats them with extreme hostility...
...But the space for foreign volunteers in El Salvador is narrowing...
...embassy official...
...But he does not take kindly to the volunteers...
...The refugees asked that thirty-five clergy from around the world, including eight bishops and a cardinal, be allowed to accompany them on their brief journey across the border to their home towns...
...There were some weeks when the com-'munity didn't have any food," says Deborah Cohen, who worked in Panchimilama...
...Located in areas profoundly sympathetic to the FMLN, they draw a stream of North American delegations...
...Cohen says the role of the international volunteer is important for one other reason: It spreads the word to the international community about the actual situation in El Salvador...
...they'd ever felt pain before they came to El Salvador because they were going to feel it now," says Deborah Cohen, a lay worker with the Lutheran church in Panchimilama...
...The ultraright ARENA party is preparing to take over the presidency and has issued threats of "total war...
...Before she left, she saw a list with about a dozen names of persons the officials said "can't enter the country even if they have a valid visa...
...He ordered a detachment of Salvadoran soldiers to escort the activists to the provincial barracks "for their own safety...
...The foreign agitators-such as the bishops and other religious workers—would be expelled or brought to trial, he warned...
...John Lindsay-Poland is a free-lance writer and Central America activist in Northampton, Massachusetts...
...The embassy, however, did approve of El Salvador's use of a blacklist to block entry of "undesirable" foreigners, according to Salvadoran immigration director Daniel Vega Guerra...
...Embassy to make appointments...
...Despite the hostility from the Salvadoran government and the U.S...
...A few weeks later, helicopters strafed the repopulated village of Guarjila, damaging ten recently built homes...
...She looked me up in a big, black address book under 'O' and then slipped out of her cubicle...
...Demonstrating against U.S...
...religious women...
...The communities repopulated by refugees have been both a rallying point for international solidarity and a sore point for the Salvadoran military...
...citizen born in El Salvador, saying, Tell us where your family is.' She was really frightened...
...Shortly thereafter, an embassy officer had accused her of "playing a key role" in a demonstration in front of the embassy at which a U.S...
...military adviser...
...Villagers at Panchimilama blame the military for the attack...
...Three months later, she tried to return to El Salvador to commemorate the anniversary of the 1980 murder of four U.S...
...The army has announced psychological operations "to counteract the possible manipulation of the repatriated population by the guerrillas...
...They were just out of control...
...When the group arrived, delegation leader Phil Wheaton called the Treasury Police and the U.S...
...Though she had obtained her visa a week before, O'Grady was obliged to take the next flight to Guatemala...
...It's frightening," writes a friend of Cohen's...
...Clearly they were angry I was there...
...For a long time, I have been having discussions with foreigners who are convincing peasants to help the terrorist criminals," he says...
...I think the world has a great deal to learn from the Salvadorans...
...Every half hour during the night they banged the door and flicked the lights on us...
...The foreigners, "who said they were 'religious,'" had manipulated the refugees, made themselves coordinators, and placed the whole repatriation at risk, Blandon said...
...Sister cities" in the United States have sent housing, medication, and agricultural supplies to rebuild an economy obliterated by war...
...He was deported with nine others, including three German women who later said they'd been made to undress in front of police, who fondled them and threatened them with rape...
...One guy told us, 'I'm going to have to beat you until you separate,' and banged on the door with his club...
...The clerk didn't even look at my things," she said...
...The delegation, said the army, represented "professional agitators who come in the shadow of the refugees to provoke disturbances...
...Government is paying most of its bills...
...Susan Freireich's name was on the list, and when she was denied entry at the Salvadoran airport last December, she talked to a U.S...
...Churches, primarily Lutheran or Catholic, have placed long-term volunteers in the communities to offer pastoral care and development assistance...
...Unlike the others, however, Wallace camped out in the airport for the next five nights in a sustained attempt to determine who had put his name on the blacklist and why...
...O'Grady carried with her an official invitation from the Archdiocese of San Salvador...
...Jim Wallace of Cambridge, Massachusetts, headed an emergency delegation to Chalatenango in February in response to a request from the villagers of Guarjila...
...Austin Haeberle, an American college student visiting El Salvador, took part in a demonstration of staff and students from the University of El Salvador in September...
...She points out that the corporal who made the Canadians lie in a gully and threatened to beat them actually tortured three Salvadorans a few months later and was eventually transferred...
...They then met with a soldier in full combat gear whom embassy officials later identified as a U.S...
...The military also alleged that Weis was killed with two guerrillas in a fire fight, though no military confrontations had been reported in that area for the preceding three-and-a-half months...
...The Parliament issued a declaration condemning Weis's killing and other human-rights abuses by the Salvadoran government...
...But by the same token it's overwhelming and inspiring to realize that so many people here are willing to give up their lives in the struggle for justice...
...The Salvadoran army refused, despite the religious delegation's possession of valid visas...
...The next morning, two Treasury Police agents came to Wheaton's hotel with orders for his deportation...
...It was a not-so-subtle message to Norton and Burkhalter, who have reported extensively on human-rights abuse" In January, the military detained a group of eleven U.S...
...Jurg Dieter Weis, a forty-two-year-old Swiss theologian who worked for the Swiss Central American Secretariat, came to El Salvador last July to investigate the effects of government bombings on the civilian population...
...He told the group that he had contacted a friend at the U.S...
Vol. 53 • May 1989 • No. 5
