No Reprieve in an Ugly War

No one is safe from the mindless spiral of violence

The seasonal rains have come to El Salvador, washing away the dust and grime of an unusually harsh dry season. But the ugly civil war that has racked the country for nearly a year goes on. The violence has already claimed 3,000 lives since January--more than four times the number killed in all of 1979. No one is safe. Some victims have been dragged from hospital beds and executed. Catholic priests have been brutally murdered. In March, Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero was assassinated while celebrating Mass. Earlier this month Father Cosme Spezzotto, an Italian priest who had worked with the poor in El Salvador for 30 years, was also gunned down as he was saying Mass.

More often than not, the victim's "crime" is merely suspected sympathy for the wrong political organization. Some of the most bitterly resented violence has been committed by the government's own security forces. Police in the city of Santa Ana last week attacked a hospital ostensibly used to treat injured leftists. They machine-gunned to death three doctors, four nurses and a baby. Later, military officials claimed the victims had resisted. Said a local lawyer, incredulously: "With what, their stethoscopes?" Peasants, in particular, are caught in a catch-22 dilemma. Leftist guerrilla organizations often give farmworkers the choice of cooperating with them--or abandoning their farms and crops. But if they go along with the guerrillas, the campesinos are targeted by national guardsmen as "subversives," lined up and shot.

Official violence has been compounded by the atrocities of self-appointed death squads. One day last week a right-wing hit squad walked into a San Salvador restaurant at breakfast time and gunned down three young men. Another day, it was the left's turn. Members of the Ejercito Popular de Liberacion Faribundo Marti, the most active guerrilla group, executed 17 former members of the notorious paramilitary organization ORDEN in the village of San Francisco Morazan. Said a San Salvador journalist: "If you are not on the leftists' death list, you are surely on the rightists' list. There is no middle ground in this country."

The ruling junta, composed of three military officers and two civilians, has initiated broad economic and land reforms to pave the way for eventual democratic rule. The reforms have been bitterly resisted by rightist groups, which have attempted two coups in recent months. The leftists, on the other hand, claim with some justification that the reforms are accompanied by continued repression. Last week leftists called a 48-hour general strike, which succeeded in shutting down the capital and major provincial cities.

The government's efforts to control subversion seem only to make matters worse. The day after the strike, the national police, backed by helicopters and armored cars, stormed the National University--which by tradition had been off-limits to security forces--and killed at least six students. In one especially ugly scene, soldiers marched up to a student hall, ordered fruit vendors to hit the sidewalk and then yelled for the youths to come downstairs. One boy, no more than 14 or 15, started down the steps and was sent sprawling with a shot in the arm. Lying on the floor, he pleaded: "I'm a Christian, I'm a Christian." In answer, a soldier stepped up and shot him in the head.

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