El Salvador in Perspective

In response to the outrage expressed by many Americans and the daily horror stories emerging from El Salvador, Congress last year placed five conditions on U.S. military aid to El Salvador. On January 28, President Reagan, in what could only be termed a cynical move, certified that among other things, the Salvadoran government was making a concerted effort to protect the human rights of the Salvadoran people. Robert White, former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador under the Carter administration, put it best when he recently characterized the certification as the "[Reagan] Administration's whitewash of the brutal and corrupt Salvadoran military machine."

Examination of the Congressional conditions and the certification reveals the true state of affairs in El Salvador now and the futility of American policy there. We have all heard the figures before 2 percent of the population owns 60 percent of the land, 11,000 people died from political violence in 1981, a country with five million people has over 600,000 refugees In recent months, President Reagan has said that conditions in El Salvador are improving. The only substantiation offered for this claim is the Administration's pronouncement that only 6000 died in 1981 as opposed to more than double that number the year before These figures as the Administration has admitted are derived from Salvadoran newspaper reports Yet the Salvadoran military's policy of censorship through terror is well known. Among those who dared to defy this implicit censorship policy are the editor of La Cronica a Salvadoran daily and the Salvadoran correspondent for the Commission on Human Rights and the Salvadoran Catholic Church have produced fatality statistics for 1981 which exceed the body toll in 1980.

The second condition on military aid that President Reagan has certified as met is that the Salvadoran junta "is achieving substantial control over all elements of its own armed forces." This assertion came on the heels of a massacre of 700 women, children and elderly by the Atlcatl battalion and a New York Times report that American military advisers had witnessed the torture and murder of two Salvadoran teenagers by military officials. If the Salvadoran government is Mexican daily Uno Mas Uno Both are now dead, victims of military repression in contrast to the Reagan Administration's report the U.N. High maintaining control over these forces, we shudder to think what must be the policy of the junta.

An important tactic in justifying the increases in military aid has been the Reagan Administration's praise for the country's scheduled March elections. Thus the Administration gladly certified that the Salvadoran government "is committed to the holding of free elections... and to that end has demonstrated its good faith efforts to begin discussions with all major political factions in El Salvador." Indeed elections will take place, but without the discussions required by Congress. The opposition coalition of labor unions church groups and peasant organizations known as the FDR has refused to participate, fearing that they will suffer the same fate as hundreds of other moderate political leaders and popular activists who have been murdered in the past two years. This is not to say that President Duarte is unopposed The National Republican Alliance (ARENA) has put up a candidate who is running on a plank described by the Boston Globe as "direct military rule and unrestrained repression against anyone thought to sympathize with the left." Former ambassador White has called ARENA'S candidate, Maj. Roberto D' Abuisson a "psychopathic killer" because of D' Abuisson's purported role in the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero.

The fourth condition which President Reagan certified is that the Salvadoran junta is making continual progress in implementing essential economic and political reforms, including the land reform program This assertion has not been supported even by President Duarte In a report commissioned by the head of the Salvadoran junta the strictly anti Communist Union Communal Salvadoran (UCS) wrote that "the land reform program is failing, in part because of military-backed terror and murder." The significant portions of the land reform, the second and third phases, have been abandoned, so in effect the program does not exist.

Finally, the Reagan Administration certified that the Salvadoran government made "good faith efforts to investigate the murders of the six U.S. citizens"--four American religious women and two American agrarian advisors--who were killed in December 1980 and January 1981. The Salvadoran government has made progress in prosecuting five national guardsman accused of murdering three American nuns and a lay missionary with a sixth accomplice turning state's evidence The trial appears to be timed to influence American political and Congressional opinion but there is hope that some justice will be done in but one of the thousands of tragedies which have recently occurred in El Salvador in a statement that reveals the mentality of the Salvadoran military the army sergeant who ordered the killing of the four women justified their slaughter on the grounds that they were guerrillas and subversives." In contrast to the case of the religious workers the investigation into the murder of the two agrarian advisors appears to be all but non existent.

In spite of Congressional initiatives, an increasingly vocal opposition movement in the United States and a hopeless and spiraling escalation of violence in El Salvador, the Reagan Administration continues to support a military solution to the Salvadoran conflict. The Administration recently cent $55 million in emergency military assistance to the Salvadoran junta and has initiated a program in which the U.S. Army is training 1600 Salvadoran soldiers and officers in the United States. Military and to El Salvador could rise to over $100 million next year, accompanied by an increase in the number of military advisors.

That this policy is inappropriate is becoming increasingly obvious. The movement in opposition to U.S. military aid to El Salvador is growing not only in Congress, but also in the U.S. religious community, and among the American public as a whole. Bishop John E. McCarthy, speaking for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, stated that "we feel it is our duty to challenge the public policy of the American government, which is arming, training, and guiding military forces which are obviously oppressing its people."

This sentiment is shared by an increasingly large percentage of the American people, who have too recently lived through the agony of adventurous and tragic American foreign policy in Iran. When the Central American Solidarity Association (CASA) called a February 13 emergency demonstration in Boston against increases in military aid over 3000 people responded despite had weather and short notice Similar actions have occurred all over the country. That the Reagan Administration has misjudged the tolerance of the American people for murder and carriage in the name of anti Communism is clear.

President Reagan certification of military and amounts to a deliberate misrepresentation of the situation The significance of this policy goes beyond providing weapons to the El Salvadoran military On February 11 White stated in the Boston Globe that "the military and economic elites of El Salvador have developed their own rationale to justify their systematic extermination of political leaders, union members, clergy, journalists and campesinos They insist that the Reagan leader ship secretly agrees with their terrorist methods ... President Reagan breathed new life into this chilling theory when he certified that the Salvadoran military was making a concerted effort to protect rights." The Reagan Administration's statements legitimize the military's policies of brutality and murder.

At the same time a significant voice of dissent is emerging in Washington Rep. Gerry Studds (D-Mass) is sponsoring a bill declaring the certification null and void and requiring Congress to certify that the conditions have been met before military aid can be sent. This bill has over 70 co-sponsors in the House Sen Paul Tsongas (D-Mass) and Rep. Silvio Conte (R-Mass.) have co-sponsored a bill that would institute an official United States policy calling for political negotiations with the involvement of all parties. In addition to these legislative initiatives, members of Congress, including some traditional conservatives have begun voicing their opposition to U.S. military aid. For example, Rep. Millicent Fenwick (R-N.J.) has issued statements against the Reagan Administration policy in El Salvador Sen. Clairborne Pell (D-R.I.), after a four-day tour of Central America, stated that he is convinced that 70 percent of the killings in the nation have been committed by the Salvadoran military.

The increasingly outspoken opposition to the Reagan Administration's policy within Washington, has been accompanied by real attention to possible alternative roles for the United States. The variation in character of the different visions of a reasonable future role for the United States in El Salvador is encouraging because it reflects the wide spectrum of experience and political views that now constitute the anti-intervention movement. White has suggested serveral policies that would help speedily resolve the conflict. One possible course would be to ask Bishop Riverary Damas to renew his 1980 offer to mediate negotiations while encouraging Duarte to repeat his public acceptance of such mediation. Some groups believe that the United States and its allies should work out the provisions for an international peace force in El Salvador. Others contend that only complete nonintervention is acceptable. It is becoming increasingly evident from the effect of U.S. policies and from the response these policies are receiving at home that a new relationship between the United States and El Salvador will have to emerge, one that respects the rights of self-determination and is based on more humanitarian criteria and in doing so more accurately represents United States interests and the wishes and values of the American people.

Michael Adams and Rani Kronick are members of the Committee on Central America.