Darkness Before Dawn

By James Kelly

In his first 100 days, Duarte finds setbacks, success and promise

From the Casa Presidential in San Salvador, Jose Napoleon Duarte last week issued a decree creating a commission to investigate political killings committed by El Salvador's right-wing death squads. In a country where 50,000 people, 1 out of every 100 citizens, have died in political violence of one sort or another in the past five years, the news should have been greeted with sweeping enthusiasm. Instead, it was hardly greeted at all. The announcement was mentioned only briefly in the capital's three major newspapers and received no coverage on the country's three commercial television stations, all of which are owned by wealthy businessmen who oppose Duarte as being dangerously leftist.

The episode neatly illustrated both the power and the problems of the new President. Deprived of office by the military in 1972, then beaten by soldiers and banished to Venezuela for seven years, Duarte, 58, last June became El Salvador's first freely elected civilian President in more than 50 years. Since then, he has hurled himself into an agenda of nearly impossible tasks. He had to diminish the activities of the death squads, many of them linked to the military, in a country that lacked an effective judicial system to prosecute the murderers. He had to continue fighting a five-year-old civil war against leftist rebels and still assert his control over the sometimes recalcitrant armed forces. He had to rebuild the country's splintered economy and win the trust of businessmen, most of whom voted against him. As his five-year term began, the President seemed in imminent danger of being squeezed between left and right.

Considering the obstacles, Duarte has not done badly. As he completes his first 100 days in office this week, the consensus in both El Salvador and the U.S. is that he has taken positive steps on his country's long road to recovery. It is, of course, too early to tell whether he will ultimately succeed, but the initial judgment abroad and at home is that he has created the proper climate for democracy to bloom. "Duarte has picked up a great deal of support in Congress," says Democratic Congressman Dante Fascell of Florida, a frequent critic of U.S. aid to El Salvador. "People are anxious to give him a chance." Says Rolando Monterrosa Gutierrez, head of an export association in San Salvador: "People are optimistic." Duarte seems exhausted and exhilarated by his first months. "This is not a pleasant job," he told TIME, but then he added that it has brought him both "joy and frustration."

Duarte is especially proud of his success in curbing the death squads. In the three months since inauguration day, there have been about 450 killings, down from 630 during the previous three months. According to Roman Catholic Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas, fewer people "disappear" while in the custody of police and army officers, and relatives are being permitted to visit prisoners with increasing frequency.

The improving human rights record is partly the result of a shake-up in the country's security forces--the National Guard, National Police and Treasury Police--which have been considered the training ground for the death squads. After the chiefs of the three agencies were dismissed, Duarte ordered their successors to report to a newly named Vice Minister of Public Security. He also disbanded the Treasury Police's Section 2 patrols, which were supposed to gather intelligence but often moonlighted as murder crews.

The five-member commission Duarte established last week will review the procedures for finding and prosecuting death-squad suspects, then recommend changes. The President has sent the National Assembly a bill that would create an Institute for Criminal Investigation, composed of a detective unit and a forensic laboratory. He is eager to solve a number of especially offensive crimes, including the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero and the 1981 killings of two U.S. labor advisers. Though no deadlines have been set for the commission's report or the establishment of the institute, Duarte's actions should enhance his popularity with members of the U.S. Congress, who have sharply criticized the Salvadoran human rights record.

Duarte also deserves good grades for his handling of the military. He has taken his role as commander in chief seriously, visiting nearly all of the country's 18 major barracks and personally ordering the battalion attack that retook the Cerron Grande dam after it was overrun by guerrillas last June. On the other hand, he has dealt gingerly with a high command accustomed to calling the shots on and off the battlefield. The President retained General Eugenio Vides Casanova, 46, a career officer, as Defense Minister, but surrounded him with astute colonels led by Colonel Adolfo Blandon, 45, the easygoing, bespectacled chief of staff. In all, Duarte has retired or reassigned about 4,500 officers in the 45,000-man force.

The military's effectiveness has risen, although much of the improvement began before Duarte took office. Under pressure from U.S. advisers, the army has stopped fighting the war on a 9-to-5 schedule, making forays into the countryside and returning to the barracks at sundown. Instead, commanders increasingly keep their patrols in the field for days on end. Salvadoran officers admit that not many guerrillas have been captured or killed in recent months, but they say that by keeping the country's troops on the move they are keeping rebels scattered. The army is also trying harder to woo the campesinos to their side, mostly by supplying food and repairing war-damaged roads and electrical lines.

Though there has not been a sustained rebel assault since January, Salvadoran military officers concede that the leftists may only be conserving strength for the annual fall offensive. At the moment, however, the guerrillas are not faring as well as they were a year ago. Recent bank and store robberies indicate that they are hurting for cash. The rebels have apparently run short of recruits: according to U.S. officials, at least 1,500 villagers have been kidnaped over the past six months to serve in the 10,000-member Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.), the main guerrilla group.

As a presidential candidate, Duarte pledged to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the war. Since the election, however, he has stressed his longtime insistence that any talks be limited to the rebels' participation in future elections, thus precluding all discussion of "power sharing." The President has also demanded that the insurgents first give up their weapons. Aware that the guerrillas fear they will be massacred if they lay down their arms, Duarte hopes to gain enough control over the security forces so that he can guarantee safety. If the rebels are sincere about peace, Duarte says, then they should take part in the Assembly elections scheduled for next March. "The only thing they have to do is say, 'Yes, we want to participate,' " says Duarte. "Then we will say, 'All right, let's sit down and see what we have to do.' It's as simple as that."

Perhaps Duarte's most tangible successes have been abroad. During the President's tour of Western Europe in July, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl promised him nearly $18 million in aid for his country. During a stop in Washington after the European trip, Duarte proved so persuasive that Congress a few weeks later approved $70 million in military aid and $135 million in economic assistance for his country. By marshaling support from the U.S., Western Europe and democratic countries in Latin America, Duarte hopes to bolster his standing at home and to attract enough foreign aid to make his country's economy self-supporting by the end of his term in 1989.

That may be wishful thinking. By any measure El Salvador's economy is a shambles. Unemployment stands at 30%, inflation at 13%. Since 1978 the gross national product has fallen by 30%, retail sales by 44%. Meanwhile, the country's foreign debt more than doubled, from $334 million to $801 million by 1982. Faced with a shrinking tax base and a war that will consume approximately 23% of this year's $9.4 billion national budget, the government has resorted to printing more money, further weakening the battered colon. So far, however, Duarte has resisted devaluation, even though that step would help businessmen win higher prices for their exports. The reason: much of his electoral support comes from organized labor, which fears that a cheaper colon would drive up prices for the working class.

Nonetheless, Duarte seems to be winning the confidence of the business community. Once considered objectionably socialist on economic issues, the President has moved closer to the center. Planning Minister Fidel Chavez Mena has promised to consult business and labor in drawing up a recovery plan. In the atmosphere of stability produced by Duarte's election, entrepreneurs are opening new businesses again. Many businessmen still distrust Duarte, but others are willing to give him a chance. "The President today has the respect he didn't have before," says Eduardo Menendez, the head of a plastic-products company in the capital.

Duarte has been less successful in reaching an accommodation with the 60-member National Assembly, where his Christian Democrats, with 24 seats, lack a majority. To a certain extent, he has benefited from the low profile assumed by his archrival, Roberto d'Aubuisson, the cashiered army major whose Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) holds 19 seats. Since D'Aubuisson visited the U.S. in June, he has dropped out of sight, reportedly to enter the shrimp fishing business. Perhaps unwisely, Duarte has neglected to woo Francisco Jose ("Chachi") Guerrero, leader of the moderately conservative National Conciliation Party. Guerrero commands 14 seats and would be a key figure in any Assembly coalition.

Sometimes, at the end of a typical twelve-hour workday, Duarte looks a decade older than his years. He seems especially weary after dealing with the usual parade of favor seekers, this one hoping for a job, that one requesting reprieve from a parking ticket. So popular is Duarte among the people that a Sunday open house at the Casa Presidencial in June drew a crowd of 3,000. The President, characteristically, insisted on posing for photos with each guest. When that proved too time consuming, he posed with them in pairs, then groups of ten, then delegations of several hundred. The photo session still took four hours, and Duarte stayed until all the visitors had been snapped.

Neither a smoker nor a drinker, Duarte has had scant time for his favorite sport of basketball. For exercise, he often takes a stroll after lunch around the presidential compound accompanied by his omnipresent bodyguards. "Nappo," as friends call him, dabbles at landscape painting, but he seeks relaxation mainly in talking politics with cronies or with Ines, his wife of 35 years. Sometimes he seeks out one of his six grown children for political advice: Alejandro, 33, is mayor of San Salvador, a job the elder Duarte held for six years.

Given El Salvador's violent past and forbidding present, Duarte may seem to be embarked on a quixotic, even dangerous venture. Aware of the challenges--and the physical risks, should he push the armed forces or the conservative oligarchy too far--the engineer turned politician nonetheless remains optimistic that he can build democracy and stability in a land that has known little of either. "Give me a chance," he said to a group of visitors last month. "It won't be easy, but don't be impatient. We will get there."

--By James Kelly. Reported by Ricardo Chavira and J.T. Johnson/San Salvador

With reporting by Ricardo Chavira, J.T. Johnson, San Salvador