Fighting, with a Festive Interlude

The junta celebrates its land reform--as the skirmishes continue

One morning early last week, three members of El Salvador's ruling civilian-military junta were busy making surprisingly festive appearances at widely separated haciendas. At a rich estate in the San Isidro Valley, Jose Antonio Morales Ehrlich addressed a solemn crowd of peasants gathered on the soccer field. "In El Salvador, the exploitation of the peasants has definitely ended," he told them. "Today you work the land for your own benefit." Another junta member, Jose Ramon Avalos Navarrete, presided over ceremonies at a sugar and coffee plantation near the Guatemala border. At a cotton plantation near Usulatan, Junta President Jose Napoleon Duarte told his listeners to look forward to elections as early as next winter.

All three ceremonies were being held to celebrate the first anniversary, and the relative success so far, of the country's land-reform program. The haciendas visited by junta members were among the 283 estates that have been expropriated since last March and converted into cooperatives farmed by 40,000 peasants. The recent harvest has not been spectacular, but it was surprisingly satisfactory--especially in view of the disruptions caused by the land-reform process itself and the violence from both left and right.

The price of land reform in blood and repression has been cruelly high. Some expropriated landowners are believed to be supporting the right-wing death squads, whose killing and brutality are intended to bring back the old feudal days. The leftist guerrillas have also resorted to violence, since successful land reform deprives them of a major popular grievance.

Government forces, meanwhile, continued to attempt forays against the leftist insurgents holed up in remote areas. Last week skirmishes took place around the town of Suchitoto, where the guerrillas have cut off the water supply and isolated townspeople from a nearby reservoir. National Guard escorts now accompany water trucks to the town; one truck was blown up last week and its driver killed. Ironically, the guerrilla-induced water shortage has transformed the government forces in Suchitoto into local heroes--hardly the tactics recommended in the guerrilla warfare handbook.

Even as U.S. military advisers continued to arrive in El Salvador last week, including the first of 15 Special Forces Green Berets, along with weapons and equipment, the controversy over stepped-up U.S. aid continued in Washington. Former Ambassador Robert White, recently fired by the Reagan Administration, has repeatedly charged that the Salvadorans did not want or need, and could not absorb, such large amounts of new weaponry. He has also said that the Pentagon exerted considerable pressure on the Duarte regime mostly because the Reagan Administration wanted to make a big show of its opposition to Soviet and Cuban involvement in arming the guerrillas.

Salvadorans, indeed, have shown considerable reluctance to accept increased U.S. military aid. U.S. officials had to present their case several times before the Duarte government agreed to request it. Though Duarte has now stated that U.S. military aid is necessary, other moderate leaders still are known to fear that an increased U.S. military presence could be counterproductive and give the guerrillas a nationalist rallying cry. They are also concerned that the U.S. anti-Communist rhetoric accompanying the aid might encourage right-wing military officers to attempt a coup.

In the battlefields, however, Salvadoran officers fighting the guerrillas say they would welcome new military equipment, especially sophisticated communications gear and helicopters. The U.S. justifies the dispatch of instructors as necessary to help the Salvadorans make good use of the new equipment. Finally, Administration officials concede, the advisers comprise a "highly visible" sign of the Reagan Administration's determination to fight Communist "indirect armed aggression."

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