The government of El Salvador and the Salvadoran revolutionary movement, known as the FMLN, have been meeting in Mexico City, moving haltingly toward an agreement on UN proposals that could lead to a cease-fire in that country’s eleven- year-old civil war. Once achieved, the cease-fire might provide the required environment for a definitive peace settlement. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cueltar, his designated negotiator, Alvaro de Soto, and the entire UN team deserve praise for their competence and painstaking work in the negotiations.
Historically, U.S. policy toward El Salvador has had as its cornerstone reliance on the coercive power of the Salvadoran military. In particular, over the last decade, we have locked ourselves into support for an army that routinely tortures and kills large numbers of citizens on the mere suspicion that they sympathize with change. The murders of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the four American churchwomen, and the six Jesuit priests and their co-workers are not exceptional. They serve to remind us of the tens of thousands of others who have died at the hands of the Salvadoran military.
Until very recently, the U.S. rationalized its policy toward Central America on the premise that however regrettable, institutionalized military violence must be tolerated because the turbulence that often accompanies profound change might serve as an opportunity for Soviet and Cuban imperialism. Now that neither the Soviet Union nor Cuba has either the will or the strength to project power into Central America, that thesis has lost whatever relevance it might once have had.
Democracy itself has now replaced the cold war as the rationale for our intervention in El Salvador. Legitimate and open U.S. support for democracy in Central America and elsewhere is necessary. Yet the crucial questions for Central America and its people are: Will the U.S. break with the past and encourage Central America to follow the example of Costa Rica and move toward democracy and demilitarization? Or will we use our enormous influence to again guide El Salvador down that blind alley which insists that for Central America democracy and militarism are compatible concepts? Unless the U.S. government supports both democracy and demilitarization, Salvadoran military intransigence, supported by the extreme right wing of the governing Arena party, will cause further negotiations to fail.
The U.S. bears a share of the responsibility for inflicting on the Salvadoran people a military that massacres its own citizens and enjoys total immunity for its outrages. In this country, we watched stunned and disbelieving as a defeated Saddam Hussein employed aircraft and helicopter gunships to bomb and strafe the Kurdish people. In E1 Salvador, however, we are not simply passive observers. There, it is our aircraft and our helicopter gunships, our ammunition and our bombs that rain death and destruction on the Salvadoran people. For the last eleven years, these modern engines of war have wiped out whole towns and villages in E1 Salvador. Still, the Salvadoran revolutionary movement has not only survived, it has grown stronger. This bears witness to the essential evil of the present system and the overpowering need for change.
The responsibility of the U.S. is not limited to supplying weapons. During the investigation of the murder of the Jesuits, the Washington Post and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights reported that a group of U.S. CIA officers share a building with the National Intelligence Directorate (DNI), the Salvadoran military intelligence agency. These CIA agents routinely attend DNI meetings. On November 16, 1989, a junior Salvadoran officer interrupted the DNI meeting to report the death of the Jesuits. Those in attendance “cheered and clapped.” When asked if CIA agents were present at the November 16 meeting, U.S. ambassador to El Salvador William G. Walker told a group of U.S. Jesuits, “I have asked the question and they tell me no.” The Jesuits had no trouble comprehending why Ambassador Walker phrased his response in such a careful manner.
For the CIA to participate in the intelligence deliberations of another government is a highly dubious practice, reminiscent of our Vietnam experience. In the first place, no truly sovereign government would tolerate the presence of foreign observers at such sensitive internal meetings. Secondly, our presence and participation in these meetings would appear to make our government an accessory to the policies and actions of the Salvadoran military, in somewhat the same manner that we were complicit in the policies and actions of another Central American military, that of Panama.
In Panama, the name of Gen. Manuel Noriega became synonymous with corruption and brutality. It was a secret from the American people that Gen. Noriega was an asset of the CIA, but it was not a secret from the officers of the Panamanian Defense Force (PDF). On the contrary, the power of Noriega to gain control of the PDF related directly to the perception of his fellow officers that Noriega was the chosen instrument of our intelligence community. Without the CIA connection, decent officers in the PDF might well have taken matters into their own hands early on and successfully ousted Noriega. The officers knew that Noriega was a drug trafficker, and they knew that the U.S. government knew. They concluded, therefore, that Noriega and his policies reflected the priorities of the U.S. government.
There is no exact parallel to Manuel Noriega in the Salvadoran armed forces. Yet if you seek a reason why the Salvadoran military has seldom taken U.S. congressional concerns about human rights violations seriously and has never tried or convicted any officer for any such crime, you might well query some Salvadoran captains and majors about the relationship which exists between the CIA and certain senior military officers whose reputation for cruelty and barbarism sets the worst possible example. It would seem unrealistic to expect the Salvadoran military to place themselves under the law when we have taught them that the rewards of a U.S. connection are for those who hold the law in total contempt.
A few weeks ago the former president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias, wrote that the leaders of the region
want to bury the pain and the bitterness of war in order to begin constructing a new Central America characterized by the democracy, freedom, and prosperity deserved by their people. I know this prosperity will not come about if we do not stop spending our scarce resources on weapons and soldiers’ salaries. To that end, since I left the presidency of the Republic of Costa Rica, I have been promoting the demilitarization of Central America.
As the citizen of a nation that has found that the best response to underdevelopment is the absence of weapons, I believe that it is time to recognize these men and women who have the vision and courage to disarm their countries in order to struggle for development in democracy and freedom.
Great nations do not change course lightly. When after due deliberation a new course is set, then it becomes the task of the administration to ensure that logical changes that flow from the new policy are put into effect. Most importantly, means which reflect old objectives but that are in conflict with new objectives must be rooted out. This is particularly difficult to accomplish because a new policy is seldom defined with the necessary precision and at the necessary level to overcome competing bureaucratic interests.
Only a clear commitment by the U.S. to democracy through demilitarization can overcome Salvadoran military intransigence. But it is not yet clear to the Salvadoran negotiators where the U.S. stands. We have, since 1948, given firm, unequivocal support to a demilitarized Costa Rica. More recently, we have supported a similar policy in Panama. What we need for ourselves, for Central America, and particularly for El Salvador is a diplomacy that emphasizes the rule of law. The president of El Salvador, like the president of the United States, has an obligation to see that the laws of his country are faithfully executed. At this writing, President Alfredo Cristiani is powerless to enforce the laws of his country, to arrest those who torture and murder, in good part because the U.S. continues to support a military establishment that insists that the law has no power over it. The U.S. should move resolutely to support the UN negotiating team by making clear our support for lasting peace based on a progressive and complete demilitarization with abolition of armies as the final goal. Unless we adopt this position, the Salvadoran people’s hopes for peace will prove illusory and the war will continue to drag on.
