El Salvador

By JOHN MOODY SAN SALVADOR

Marcelo Guerrero devotes part of each day to hustling lottery tickets in San Salvador. The rest of his time he whiles away in the sprawling shanty village of Zacamil on the edge of the capital, waiting for the government to build him a new house from a nearby pile of concrete blocks. While his two children splash through streams of urine and dirty water, Guerrero reflects on the prospects for his -- and his country's -- future. "Peace would be nice," he murmurs, "but it won't change my life much."

Many in El Salvador share Guerrero's gloomy assessment. People are delighted that for the first time since 1980, and after the loss of 75,000 lives, the government and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.) are at war no more. But they also realize that the long-term outlook for the country is dismal. The peace treaty signed last week in Mexico City, which goes into effect Feb. 1, is no guarantee that El Salvador's 5.4 million people can prevail in the other battle that they have been steadily losing -- the one against poverty and hopelessness.

Politicians and diplomats have already coined a phrase, "the crisis of peace," for the postwar dilemma. Aside from the obstacles posed by unrepentant zealots on both sides in the protracted political struggle, there is a legitimate question about whether the country will function any better united than it does when bloodily riven. Poverty, social inequality, overreliance on U.S. financial handouts, simmering disputes over land and ideology, and a choking residue of hatred from the war all conspire against success in rebuilding the shattered land. Says National Assembly Vice President Ruben Zamora, who is close to the insurgents: "Peace generates huge expectations among the people that cannot possibly be met. The war was always the excuse for everything: no water, no electricity, no jobs. But the fact is, peace won't fix these problems."

Salvadorans need look no further than Nicaragua. The 1990 election of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro was greeted with widespread relief for ending nearly 11 years of incompetent rule by the Sandinista National Liberation Front and almost a decade of warfare with the U.S.-backed contras. Chamorro's government moved quickly to end the fighting and rekindle relations with the U.S.

Yet the transition has had only mixed success. American aid is again flowing, but the country has a long way to go toward reconciliation. Discharged troops from the Sandinista army and the contras roam the country robbing civilians to feed themselves. The Sandinistas have caused trouble ; whenever they can, organizing public strikes and threatening violence and disorder in the streets. Chamorro has shown an unhealthy tendency to concentrate power among her inner circle of friends and relatives.

El Salvador faces similar perils. The pain and injustice etched by a dozen years of war, and the estimated $1.3 billion in related material damage, will not be erased by the stroke of a pen. The army, which bears responsibility for the majority of wartime human-rights abuses, and the F.M.L.N., which prolonged the fighting during the lengthy peace talks, cannot abandon innate suspicions of each other. As a result, though Salvadorans will be technically at peace, they will face tension and fear, if not outright hostility, for the foreseeable future.

Nor will the economic dislocation that has made life miserable for generations be altered overnight. The Center for Economic and Social Investigations, a private liberal think tank in San Salvador, estimates that one-fifth of the population controls two-thirds of the nation's wealth; the poor face meager prospects for finding jobs or improving their share. The government has earmarked $100 million to retrain ex-combatants, and foreign donors have pledged up to $1 billion in aid. But with unemployment at 50%, widespread illiteracy and a legacy of violence, El Salvador is unlikely to attract the kind of foreign investors flocking to more promising Latin American countries.

The country's leading source of income is remittances, the money sent home by Salvadorans living and working abroad, often illegally. Though impossible to quantify accurately, most economists agree that the expatriates send back somewhere between $750 million and $1 billion a year. The No. 2 source of income has been the $1 million a day in aid received -- until recently -- from the U.S. Coffee sales account for $250 million to $300 million a year, a figure not likely to change much -- unless it drops.

The one unalterable figure is the amount of land -- 8,124 sq. mi. -- that makes El Salvador the most densely populated country in Central America. Disputes over property have often led to bloodshed. A military coup in 1979 was sparked in part by a plan to redistribute farmland, most of which is still owned by a tightly knit oligarchy. Since then, land reform has come to signify justice to those without property and communist conspiracy to those who stand to lose theirs.

Hundreds of deed holders who fled the war's devastation are sure to return in coming months to reclaim their property. They will find, in most cases, that squatters who braved the fighting to cultivate the soil now consider themselves not claim jumpers but valiant pioneers. The Salvadoran government has a small reserve of land earmarked for redistribution, which may help a few. But not all the disputes can be solved that simply, and some are certain to lead to violence.

Blood may also flow after President Alfredo Cristiani carries out the peace treaty promise to reduce the armed forces by half in the next two years. Cutting the military from its current strength of 60,000 may appease critics of El Salvador's bloody past. But Cristiani will be turning out into the streets trained killers with little prospect of finding legitimate employment. Says Zamora: "There will be a huge increase in violence, much like there was in Nicaragua. Many people will die." Zamora's idea is to offer the soldiers public welfare jobs like reforestation and environmental protection. But who will pay their salaries?

That question is nearly always answered with the same casual assumption: the U.S., of course. Having dumped $4 billion into the country since 1980, the U.S. has become El Salvador's cash cow. A major cutback of funds from Washington was once as unthinkable as a slash in Soviet aid to Cuba; now it may also be just as inevitable. Ambassador William Walker tries to convince Salvadorans that American support for their country is unwavering. Yet he acknowledges, "I don't know any more than they do what's going to happen up on Capitol Hill." Given the economic climate in the U.S., foreign aid to a country no longer facing a communist insurgency seems a likely target for the budget ax, and many Salvadorans know it.

A second issue that worries Walker and other diplomats is the fratricidal political atmosphere. Cristiani's ruling ARENA party, founded in 1981 by right-wing extremists, has moved closer to the center since he took office in 1989. Unfortunately, the party has few leaders suited to take the President's place when his term expires in 1994. Vice President Francisco ("Chico") Merino has aligned himself with ex-Major Roberto d'Aubuisson, ARENA's infamous far-right patriarch. D'Aubuisson, 48, implicated in numerous human-rights abuses, has terminal cancer.

The Christian Democrats, the largest opposition party, have little choice but to form a coalition with emerging center-left parties. The strongest, the Democratic Convergence, received less than 15% of the vote in recent local elections. The Christian Democrats' best presidential hope is still former Foreign Minister Fidel Chavez Mena, whom Cristiani thrashed soundly in 1989. Says Chavez: "The left must think really hard about its proper role in the new El Salvador. We foresee an alliance of democratic forces that would permit a government of concertacion."

That often used word, roughly meaning "acting together," implies that all Salvadorans really want the same thing and are willing to put aside their bitter past to work for it. Mostly, however, the country seems to share the helpless attitude of Guerrero, who waits for something to spring from nothing. The blood shed during the past 12 years and the deep divisions that remain suggest that, hard as it is to envision, things may get worse in postwar El Salvador before they get better.