Let us not be disheartened, even when the horizon of history grows dim and closes in, as though human realities made impossible the accomplishment of God's plans. God makes use even of human errors, even of human sins, so as to make rise over the darkness what Isaiah spoke of. One day prophets will sing not only the return from Babylon but our full liberation. "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. They walk in shadows, but a light has shone forth."
--Archbishop Oscar Romero, December 25, 1977
YOU DON'T HAVE TO SPEND MUCH TIME IN EL SALVADOR TO realize this "model democracy," as U.S. officials like to describe it, is more a police state than a democracy. The structures of injustice and oppression, which have dominated El Salvador throughout its history and sparked the nine-year-old civil war that has ravaged this country, are still in place and appear stronger than ever.
The delegation of North American church people with whom I traveled to El Salvador in July had been warned that we might not even be allowed into the country. Anyone going to see this "model democracy" for themselves evidently is not welcome. And I found out that a journalist traveling with a religious delegation is especially suspect. But after the immigration officials at the airport questioned me extensively, and were satisfied that I was not with a television crew, I was allowed to enter the country.
I spent much of my time in El Salvador listening to stories of the suffering and death experienced by the Salvadoran people during the last decade. There is hardly a family that hasn't lost at least one of its members because of the violence, which has claimed more than 70,000 lives. In some cases whole communities have been massacred or forced to flee the country.
And it appears that more bloodshed is to come, as the horizon of history grows dim once again. The facade of civilian rule under President Jose Napoleon Duarte has crumbled, and the forces of death in this country have begun to tighten their grip on whatever power is in their reach. Any type of organized activity, including going to church, is considered subversive by the Salvadoran authorities and just cause for repression.
But besides being a period of social, economic, and political crisis, it is also a time of profound opportunity, as the voices for peace, justice, and life with dignity become bolder and more pronounced.
The Forces of Death
The death squads, which terrorized this country in the early 1980s when they killed as many as 800 people per month, have resurfaced. The mutilated bodies of civilians involved in opposition or popular groups are once again showing up along the roadsides of El Salvador.
A series of Washington Post investigative articles by Douglas Farah published in August documented the re-emergence of an elaborate death squad network whose purpose is to intensify repression against all who are perceived as guerrilla sympathizers. The articles, which drew on extended conversations with two former death squad members who had fled the country, also reported that members of the Far-Right ARENA party are seeking to use the legislature again as a base for death squad activity, as it was during the early 1980s.
Tutela Legal, the human rights office of the Catholic archdiocese of San Salvador, documented 24 death squad killings in all of 1987 but had documented 32 such killings after only six months in 1988. And these figures are conservative compared to those of other human rights observers inside El Salvador. FECMAFAM, a federation of three committees that represents and provides assistance to mothers and families of the disappeared, had documented 27 assassinations and 22 abductions in April alone. And for a single week in early July, they registered 36 assassinations, seven abductions, and six disappeared.
Another sign that the repression is escalating is that international humanitarian and religious workers are increasingly being detained, harassed, and threatened by Salvadoran authorities. The week before I arrived in El Salvador, Treasury Police detained and interrogated a delegation of U.S. educators, who were mistaken for a church delegation from Chicago. While I was there, two Canadian lay workers were taken off a bus and threatened.
And if there were any doubt as to the seriousness of such charges, they vanished after a Swiss physician was murdered August 21. Jurg Weis was detained, tortured, and killed by uniformed members of the National Police when he tried to reach a village that had reportedly been bombed.
THE DRAMATIC RISE in human rights abuses is an indication of the loss of what little authority the present government had over the actions of the military and death squads. Since President Duarte was diagnosed by U.S. doctors in June as having incurable stomach cancer, the situation in El Salvador has steadily deteriorated. But Duarte's illness only expedited the inevitable. He had failed to deliver on either of his 1984 campaign promises--an end to the war and economic recovery--and his administration had become riddled with corruption and lacked the power to implement structural reform.
The ARENA party took advantage of the political vacuum and routed the Christian Democratic Party in municipal elections in March, winning a majority of the 60-seat legislative assembly and 13 of 14 mayoral races (including the capital, San Salvador). And with the Christian Democratic Party still deeply divided between two different candidates, ARENA is widely expected to win the presidential election next March.
But while ARENA is clearly gaining political momentum, few people in El Salvador underestimate the role of the military, which will continue to hold much of the real power regardless of who wins the next election. In recent months the Salvadoran military has shown signs of impatience with the current government's total submission to U.S. interests, specifically the U.S.-preferred military strategy of "low-intensity conflict."
In the most sweeping reorganization since 1983, the Salvadoran army announced in early July changes in more than 30 high-level positions. The most significant consolidation of power involved the promotion of a group of officers known as the tandona, or "big class," who graduated from military school in 1966 and reportedly favor a more aggressive military approach. After the shake-up, The Miami Herald quoted one top tandona member as saying, "First we must win the war, then strengthen the democracy."
Many in El Salvador fear that these changes in key military positions, along with ARENA's increasing control of the government, foreshadow a new, more brutal period in which the military would dramatically intensify the war against the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) rebels, who are showing signs of renewed strength. This "total war" strategy would reportedly be marked by a return to the massive bombings of civilians of the early 1980s, and anyone perceived to be collaborating with or sympathetic to the FMLN would simply be assassinated. Groups traditionally viewed as political enemies of the government and military, such as those documenting human rights or working with the displaced, would become military targets.
The continuation and direction of the war, however, largely depends on the future of U.S. policy in El Salvador. The Reagan administration has pumped more than $1 million a day to fund the war, shown no interest in a peaceful settlement, and paid only lip service to the need for human rights in El Salvador. I was reminded of this reality almost every day I was there, as peasants would plead with me to tell my government to stop bombing their people.
The Voices for Life
While the forces of death in El Salvador threaten to steer the country down a path of continued war, suffering, and injustice, there is another reality in El Salvador. Workers, peasants, church leaders, and displaced refugees are demonstrating a desire for life with dignity and an end to the violence in their country. These voices for life in El Salvador are not always heard above the clamor of the war and the cries of the people's suffering, but their commitment and determination are unmistakable.
"Everything you hear [from the Salvadoran authorities] is a lie, but the truth is rising," said one Salvadoran campesino. "We are slowly getting the courage to speak up."
A national debate sponsored by the Catholic archdiocese of San Salvador recently gave Salvadorans an opportunity to discuss the current situation in their country and articulate their hopes and ideas for a peaceful settlement to the war. During the summer Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas invited more than 100 labor, church, professional, and grassroots groups to participate in the debate. And the results of the survey—75 percent of those who responded said a negotiated settlement to the war was the most viable alternative—were to be discussed at a public forum on the weekend of September 3-4.
The debate sparked a controversy in which several conservative groups accused the church of getting involved in politics and being duped by the FMLN. In a paid newspaper ad on July 7, a group of coffee growers said the Catholic Church was responding to insurgent plans to build a "popular forum" that would legitimize rebel positions.
The archdiocese was also criticized by some observers who said that the debate commission needed to be broader and that some grassroots groups with large constituencies had not been invited, including the Christian base communities, CRIPDES (the Christian Committee for the Displaced of El Salvador), and UNTS (National Unity of Salvadoran Workers).
But despite the controversy surrounding the debate, most observers agreed that it was a positive step. Even if it produces no immediate results, the process of the debate legitimized a discussion usually considered subversive by the Salvadoran authorities. The archbishop was more optimistic, expressing the hope that the debate will create enough momentum for an eventual settlement (the results of the debate are to be distributed to the Salvadoran military and government, the FMLN, and the different political parties).
A key participant in the debate was the Salvadoran labor movement, which is showing signs of life despite being targeted by a new wave of repression by Salvadoran authorities. More than 20,000 workers and students flooded the streets of San Salvador to protest the repression on May 1, the day after a bomb exploded in the headquarters of the UNTS. On July 25, 25,000 people marched in the capital to demand the release of an abducted trade unionist. They were met by police who opened fire with automatic weapons, injuring many marchers.
But perhaps the most significant movement for peace and justice in El Salvador is the return of Salvadoran refugees to their home-lands (see "History in the Hands of the People," November 1987). Salvadoran peasants who fled the countryside during the military bombings of the early 1980s and have been living in crowded Honduran refugee camps for the past several years are returning to their war-torn homelands to rebuild their homes and lives, and their country.
Planting Seeds for the Future
In what has been called the largest repatriation in Latin American history, more than 4,300 Salvadorans from Mesa Grande refugee camp in Honduras defied resistance by the Salvadoran military and government and returned last October to the bombed-out countryside that was once their home (see "Salvadoran Refugees Return Home," December 1987). This past August, 1,300 Salvadoran refugees living in Mesa Grande returned home, again despite the resistance of the Salvadoran authorities. And another estimated 2,000 refugees may make the trip sometime this fall.
In returning to their homelands, these refugees are directly challenging the Salvadoran military's strategy of depopulation, or "scorched earth," and are reclaiming the basic human rights--land, health, and education--that the majority of Salvadorans has only dreamed about. They have cleared and farmed the steep mountainsides by hand, trained "health promoters" for their communities, and rebuilt their houses and schools out of mud and sticks--all with the faith that God is with them in their struggle.
The Salvadoran military has responded to the repopulation movement with systematic intimidation, harassment, and outright repression at every level. Truckloads of food and other basic materials such as medicine, seeds, and fertilizer are delayed, blocked at military checkpoints, or confiscated from the communities themselves. Salvadoran troops often surround the repopulated communities and spray the outskirts with gunfire, burn crops, or lay mines in the fields to discourage the workers from harvesting their corn.
"One morning when we all woke up, they [the Salvadoran troops] were right around all the houses," said a peasant woman in one of the repopulated communities I visited. "We were all very frightened. The children couldn't go to school because they were so afraid."
The army often searches and ransacks the homes, sometimes choosing to abduct and interrogate people or forcibly recruit the young men in the community. And at other times community members are simply murdered on the spot. Just two weeks before the most recent repatriation in August, the Salvadoran army assassinated a 99-year-old man and his 45-year-old daughter near one of the repatriation sites, as a message that those who return will face the same kind of repression.
But the refugees keep coming. They would rather die on their own land than spend the rest of their lives confined in a refugee camp, where they feel like prisoners. They know the risks, and they realize they may not live to see the fruits of their work, but they are prepared to give their lives for a new El Salvador.
The Call for Accompaniment
These courageous Salvadorans will continue to try and rebuild their lives and communities, with or without the assistance of others. But they have invited the people of El Salvador and their brothers and sisters around the world to join them in their prophetic journey toward liberation and justice.
The kind of support, or accompaniment, we can give the Salvadoran people can take many forms. In the United States, a national interfaith campaign called Going Home is raising money to help pay for transportation of the refugees back to El Salvador, help them rebuild their homes, and provide initial seed money for subsistence farming. Going Home also organizes a number of delegations to physically accompany the refugees back to their homes, or to try to deliver food and supplies to communities that are already repopulated, and it monitors human rights abuses in the communities.
Accompaniment can also come at the most unexpected times. After visiting one of the repopulated communities and waiting for the day's rain to end, our small delegation and a few Salvadorans who were getting a ride with us got into the back of the truck that would take us on the eight-hour ride back to San Salvador. We were surprised to see about 15 more Salvadorans pile into the back of the truck with us. They explained that there was no way the truck would make it by itself up the steep, muddy road that leads out of their community. So they accompanied us for more than a mile, jumping out every time we got stuck and pulling us up the mountain with a long rope they attached to the truck.
We had traveled about four hours, singing much of the way despite the torrential downpour that was soaking us, when we stopped in a small town that also served as an outpost for the Salvadoran military. It was becoming dark, and the truck badly needed a repair, so we decided to stay overnight in a motel. Suddenly, things became very tense when we realized where we were and that we were being watched by Salvadoran military.
One of the Salvadorans who was traveling back to San Salvador with us, a man in his 60s who was a member of the directiva, or leadership, of the repopulated community we had just visited, whispered that he was afraid. He said he had been detained and tortured when he tried to pass through the same town just a few months earlier. We decided that a member of our delegation would sleep in the same room with him, because he was afraid of being abducted during the night. I spent most of the night laying awake, wondering what it would be like to live with that kind of fear.
Whatever kind of accompaniment we offer--physical, financial, or moral—we will receive far more than we could ever give. These Salvadorans who have refused to be paralyzed by fear, and whose faith has enabled them to continue their struggle for self-sufficiency, have so much to teach us--about community, about democracy, about our faith.
"We don't know where all this is going," said a woman active in the struggle for justice and liberation in El Salvador, "but we will go together, and we know that God is with us."
Brian Jaudon was editorial assistant of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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