El Salvador: Riddled with Fear

By John Moody/San Salvador

When a Jeep Cherokee or a pickup truck with smoked windows approaches the main gate of the University of El Salvador, some students instinctively dart for cover. Though such vehicles are common in El Salvador's capital, they have gained notoriety as the favored conveyance of right-wing death squads, and occasionally spray the campus with anonymous gunfire. Two months ago the head of the university's employees' union was shoved into a black-windowed truck. He has not been seen since.

/ The residents of San Jose Guayabal, a town northeast of the capital, walk several blocks out of their way to avoid a National Guard checkpoint set up near the town plaza. Nearly everyone knows someone who has disappeared or died at the hands of the military, so why risk trouble? In Chalatenango province, near the border with Honduras, the locals stay away from the rutted dirt paths that wind through the green hills. Unwary travelers have lost feet or legs to land mines planted by rebel troops of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.

These are the realities of today's El Salvador, trapped like Nicaragua in a war against itself that has left people so terrorized and divided that it may be impossible ever to heal the rift. Ask anyone what the country needs most, and the answer comes quick as a rifle's report: peace. But peace has many last names. President Jose Napoleon Duarte and his U.S. supporters declare that they want peace with democracy. The armed forces vow to accept only peace with national security. And the Marxist-led F.M.L.N. says its goal is peace with freedom from U.S. interference. A former government official despairs of ending the war. "This is a country that is never going to be at peace with itself," he says. "In El Salvador, peace is a bastard child."

It all seemed so promising four years ago. The Notre Dame-educated Duarte had just defeated Roberto d'Aubuisson, an ex-army major who was widely linked with death-squad killings. Duarte opened talks with the F.M.L.N., promised to investigate alleged army massacres of civilians and create new jobs. "Imagine," says one of the country's religious educators, "if Abraham Lincoln came back and ran for President of the United States. That's the kind of expectation some people had of Duarte."

Today, more than halfway through his five-year term, Duarte is widely perceived as a failure. The war drags on, random killings continue, the government is pockmarked with corruption. Even Duarte's loyalty to the U.S., which this year will supply $700 million in military, economic and disaster aid, has become a political liability. During a visit to the White House last month, Duarte kissed the American flag. Salvadorans viewed the gesture as symbolic of their dependence on American largesse.

There is good reason to believe that the bulk of U.S. relief is not reaching those who need it most. Nowhere is the disparity in wealth more apparent than in the San Francisco neighborhood of the capital, where huge houses sit behind electrified barbed-wire fences. These are the homes of the wealthy landowners and businessmen who pulled most of the strings of power before the military coup of 1979. They shop at U.S.-style malls on the Boulevard de Los Heroes, favor the Mercedes-Benz SL and try to overlook the rat's nest of tin and cardboard huts that besmirches their view of a nearby hillside.

The shantytown, known as Fortaleza, teems with an ever growing population of abandoned women and children. Some are widows, like the one who two months ago, unable to provide enough food, poisoned her children, then herself. Others tell of husbands, brothers and fathers who offended a soldier or national guardsman. Sometimes the bodies were found; more often they were consigned to the black hole of statistics known as "the disappeared."

Critics of the army concede that its human rights record has improved, largely because of U.S. pressure. But, says a church worker in Morazan, "they don't have to kill as many people as they used to. The occasional body turns up, and everyone gets the message: 'We're still here, still watching you.' "

In the countryside the fear seems palpable. In Piedra Labrada, a village in Cuscatlan, guardsmen opposed a meeting to form an agricultural cooperative. The get-together took place anyway. The next morning, an 18-year-old boy who had attended was found dead. Only three people turned out for the next meeting. Human rights groups focus on atrocities by the armed forces, but the F.M.L.N. is also guilty of abuses. In April two men in the village of La Periquera were executed by the guerrillas for failing to pay a "war tax." In another town, the F.M.L.N. announced it would execute the mayor for supposed complicity with the army. The mayor could not be found, so his brother was killed instead.

For Duarte, the Guatemala peace accord represented a chance to repair his country. But even Duarte's friends now concede that he may not be up to the job. As the power brokers pursue their separate visions of peace, ordinary men and women look on helplessly. Meanwhile, the Jeeps and trucks with blackened glass cruise the streets, most carrying only motorists seeking respite from the glaring sun. But the people of El Salvador have learned to fear anything they cannot see.