El Salvador's 'Negotiated Revolution'

The 4,600-foot Guazapa volcano, 15 miles from El Salvador's capital city, grew to be synonymous with military bombing of peasant populations during the 12-year civil war there. Fittingly, it was also the scene of a small but significant gesture of peace just before the agreement between El Salvador's government and the FMLN guerrillas was signed in Mexico City on January 16.

An FMLN commander, invited to that ceremony, emerged from his hideout near Guazapa on the first leg of his journey to Mexico and immediately ran into a National Guard patrol. The guerrilla and the troops faced each other for a long, uneasy moment. Then the officer called out: "I salute you in the name of the National Guard of El Salvador." The commander replied: "I salute you in the name of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front." Patrol and rebel then went on their separate ways.

These and many similar incidents, despite enormous doubt, fear, and skepticism, offer signs of hope that the Salvadoran peace agreement will accomplish its stated goal: "The government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front declare that they have reached definitive accords....[Their] execution will put a definitive end to the Salvadoran armed conflict" (from the preamble to the agreement).

In the wake of the accords, El Salvador now will be simply a Third World country instead of a Third World country at war. That is to say, the problems that ignited El Salvador's civil war in the first place largely remain: farmland mostly in the hands of a tightly knit oligarchy; one-fifth of the population controlling two-thirds of the country's wealth; 50 percent unemployment; foreign business reluctant to invest in this ravaged country.

Another very important fact is how misguided U.S. policy proved to be vis-a-vis El Salvador. Our government threw more than $4 billion into its attempt to solve militarily what was basically a problem of injustice. In the famous phrase of the Reagan administration, "We were not going to let the rebels shoot their way into power." In the end the Salvadorans, ably assisted by U.N. mediators, worked out their own agreement. Secretary of State James Baker, to his credit, observed in silence the signing of the peace accords.

Many of the estimated 200,000 Salvadorans in the United States, forced by the war to flee to this country, will surely return to their homeland. The Immigration and Naturalization Service should not forcibly return those others who wish to stay after the current amnesty period expires in June. The expatriates send back to their families much-needed monetary assistance--an estimated $1 billion yearly. In addition, it is doubtful that in terms of jobs, housing, schooling, and nutrition their country could reintegrate them immediately.

The United States owes El Salvador a huge material debt, having underwritten its devastation by backing its murderous armed forces with money, training, and materiel for more than a decade. Reconstruction in El Salvador will cost an estimated $1.8 billion. The United States should pay most of this bill after spending twice that amount on El Salvador's destruction.

Reconciliation in El Salvador, unfortunately, will not be achieved on the basis of simplistic slogans. As Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas has insisted, the healing process that the country faces must be based on justice, not on the vague rhetoric of forgive and forget. Too many wounds remain open and bleeding among the Salvadoran people for them to be treated superficially. It is to be hoped that any amnesty passed by the Salvadoran National Assembly excludes "war crimes" committed by either the army or the guerrillas, including the 1989 killing of the Jesuits and their co-workers.

ALMOST TOTALLY ABSENT in commentaries on El Salvador's dawning peace is the role of the churches in this 12-year drama. Even coverage in the religious press often fails to underscore the churches' part in it.

Yet from the very beginning it was church people both in El Salvador and abroad who pressed the peace alternative, at times with their very lives. Archbishop Oscar Romero; Ita Ford, Maura Clark, Jean Donovan, and Dorothy Kazel; hundreds of unknown catechists and leaders of basic Christian communities; thousands of U.S. people of faith who acted on behalf of peace in El Salvador; the martyrs of the Jesuit University--all these church people share credit for the hope-filled moment now dawning in that country.

Ignacio Ellacuria, the late rector of the Jesuit University, insisted to the guerrilla forces that President Alfredo Cristiani could be trusted to negotiate peace. Last December, Lutheran Bishop Medardo Gomez made a plea for peace to President Cristiani, the representatives of the FMLN, and the secretary general of the United Nations--a plea reminiscent of Archbishop Romero's earlier communication to then-President Jimmy Carter. The bishop said, in part, "In the name of your people, in the name of God, I beg you not to allow l991 to terminate without putting an end to the war so that l992 can be the beginning of peace building."

Church people will surely go down as significant contributors to this new day in El Salvador. They serve as models and examples for churches in other places seeking to fulfill their God-given vocation--the pastoral and prophetic search for peace based on justice.

It was Alvaro DeSoto, the U.N. mediator between the Salvadoran government and the FMLN, who spoke the most memorable word as the peace agreement went into effect. The accords, he said, were "the closest that any process has ever come to a negotiated revolution." Our prayer is that El Salvador will now experience the lasting peace so desired by its long-suffering population.

Joe Nangle, OFM, was outreach director of Sojourners when this article appeared.