At night, in San Salvador, fire- fights can be heard in the distance but they last only a few short rounds. The black-outs are more disconcerting. They happen nearly every night and seem to last longer each time. The guerrillas can blow up generators and powerlines much faster than the U.S. aid dollars arrive to replace them. But aside from these inconven- iences, the war is barely felt in the capital, where the traffic snarls and the streets are bustling with activity. Not many soldiers are in sight. It's certification time and the govern- ment is on its best behavior. What can be felt is the general despair. We see it in the eyes of the Relatives of the Disappeared-- young women in their late teens or early twenties who ring our rooms at the hotel and ask timidly if we can spare a moment to talk. One tells about her younger brother, dragged from his bed in the middle of the night by uniformed soldiers, and never seen again. Another slips me a piece of paper folded many times. Back in my room, I try to decipher what appears to be a map leading to a secret torture center in a govern- ment building-and a scribbled line saying "We know that Ramon is be- ing held here." Sadness, mixed with irrepressi- ble hope, is in the eyes of a priest from a working-class barrio of the capital. Ninety percent of his parish- ioners have had a family member killed or disappeared in the last two years. And because his barrio is poor, and because it is assumed that all poor people are subver- sives, it is the scene of house-to- house searches and many more disappearances each week. At a refugee camp run by the Catholic Church, two thousand women, children and elderly men are crammed into a schoolyard now filled with makeshift tents. With nothing left to lose, these people speak freely of the military cam- paigns that forced them to flee their homes in the north, in Chalaten- ango, Morazan and Cabanas. The children, in disturbingly calm voices, recall the vivid details of the day one young girl watched sol- diers set fire to her house, or the day an 8-year-old boy found his father slain in the fields. These refugees, and those we visited in two other camps in San Salvador, are captives to the war. They have no identity papers; they cannot leave the camps for fear of being picked up by the security forces; they did not vote in the March elections. With remarkable discipline, they make the best of the time they must spend waiting for the war to end. Adults and children are learning to read and write; everyone works in the communal kitchens and talleres, where the refugees make fishing nets for sale or simple furnishings for their tents. No one in the camp is idle. Just outside the capital, handker- chiefs pressed to our faces, we visit a clandestine cemetery that every- one knows about: El Playon. White skulls stand poised on a bed of black lava that stretches from the road to the green hills in the dis- tance. Some of the bones still have flesh clinging to them; a fresh load of bodies had been dumped the day before. "It's a lousy situation," says Bob Driscoll, political officer at the U.S. Embassy. "But it used to be hor- rible." So begins our three-hour offi- cial briefing on human rights,theeco- nomy, political affairs and the war. 44 Since the March elections, we are told, democracy has taken root here ("even Major D'Aubuisson is playing by the rules"). The Army is firmly backing the reforms. The guerrillas will be reduced to ban- ditry within two to five years. There is nothing to negotiate. Most of the discussion focuses on military matters, since the war is foremost in everyone's mind. The embassy's chief military officer, Colonel Waghlestein, is reputed to be one of five top counterinsurgen- cy experts in the U.S. Army. He is in charge of 40-odd U.S. advisers in El Salvador today-and gives the im- pression of being in charge of tac- tics and strategy for the Salvadorean Army as well. "My job is to teach them the gospel according to Mao and Che," the colonel explains. He doesn't hide his impatience with the Army's traditional reliance on low-risk, large-scale operations that the FMLN usually can elude with ease. Waghlestein prefers "saturation patroling," "last-light insertions" and "night extractions." He says that many young officers are com- ing around to his point of view. (Later, we ask Minister of Defense General Guillermo Garcia about these competing military strategies. Garcia usually smiles amiably throughout his interviews with foreign visitors, attempting to Refugees cram a San Salvador schoolyard at a center run by Catholics. 2) 0 U) NACLAReportuupdatupdte update update a, 0 C Army Chief of Staff Flores Lima and Defense Minister Guillermo Garcia meeting with the U.S. delegation in July. counter his killer image abroad. Yet, for a moment, his face turns to stone: "You Americans lost the war in Vietnam, didn't you?") Beneath their avowed optimism, the embassy people are worried that public opposition back home may keep them on a shoe-string budget to fight the war. Despite the arrival of new A-37 bombers, they can't get them all up at once for lack of trained pilots. Projected military aid for next year will include six more Huey choppers (bringing the total to 26)-but that barely lets them lift a company. "$100 million is zero," says Waghlestein. "That's less than the traffic fines in New York City." Are the guerrillas getting more generous support? The embassy readily admits that new supplies to the FMLN are limited to small arms, medical supplies, ammunition and communications gear. (General SpG0Octl112 Garcia, again, vociferously disagrees. Aid to the guerrillas is "massive and unconditional"--in contrast to stingy U.S. supplies that come with the illusion that wars can be "pure.") By far our most tension-filled meeting is with our fellow citizens at the America Chamber of Com- merce. These businessmen have spent 10 to 30 years in El Salvador; some even speak English with the touch of a Spanish accent. The Cherokee vans parked outside, with blackened windows, attest to the personal danger these men live with as ideal targets for kidnappings or assault. They make no secret of their dislike for Americans who stay a few days and leave with strong opinions. To a man, they are despondent about the state of the economy: since 1978, industrial output has declined by 30%; 60 large factories have closed in the last two years; 18,000 jobs have been lost. The ter- rorists are to blame, they say, but the misguided policies of the Duarte government (and the Carter Ad- ministration) didn't help matters any. All foreign trade has been state controlled since 1980, and the marketing of the last two coffee crops has been disastrous. As for the agrarian reform, these men will shed no tears as it's dismantled by the new Constituent Assembly. It was a blatantly political measure that made no economic sense, although some suggest that it was necessary at the time. But now the political danger is past and "it's time to get down to the business of making private enter- prise work." The new government is moving in the right direction. There's light at the end of the tunnel. 45update update * update . update Sipping drinks by the side of his swimming pool, we listen to Deane Hinton's assessment of develop- ments since the March elections. The ambassador is renowned for the cowboy style that colors his ac- count of how he twisted arms to get rival parties to cooperate. The "historic compromise" between the Christian Democrats and the likes of D'Aubuisson is proof that demo- cracy can work. Hinton has nothing but contempt for the "cowardice" of opposition leaders, who refused to run the same risks as everyone else and participate in the elections. Dinner conversation centers on the viability of the present govern- ment. Our meeting with President Magana had left the impression of a tired man with little power indepen- dent of the Army. Our meetings with Christian Democrats and right-wing party leaders suggested that they could agree on little besides the need to win the war against the Left. Would the new government hold together? Hinton would not predict the future, except to say that the Ar- my was well aware that another coup could pull the plug on U.S. aid. Just as we rose from the dinner table to put an end to an awkward evening for all, the room went dark. The city went black. Was it an elec- trical storm or another black-out by the FMLN? Host and guests could not even agree on that.
