Vaccinations of Children Bring Truce to Salvador

Six leftist guerrillas, some with weapons slung from their shoulders, lounged around Tejutepeque’s town square Sunday and watched approvingly as government health workers inoculated children in the shade of a nearby gallery.

The inoculation station was one of 3,200 set up across war-ravaged El Salvador for the opening day of an ambitious international campaign to immunize the country’s young children against five dangerous diseases--diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, measles and polio.

Anti-government guerrillas did not try to disrupt the campaign, health officials said Sunday afternoon. In a country torn by conflict, it was an unusual day of peaceful cooperation for a common cause.

“We’re all for it,” said one of the guerrillas in Tejutepeque, a wiry veteran with a sprinkling of gray in his brown mustache.

He gave his name as Mauricio and his age as 39. He wore black jeans, a blue-green shirt and a camouflage fatigue cap. A black M-16 automatic rifle, which he said was captured from government forces, hung on a canvas strap from his shoulder.

Mauricio said his unit of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front is based in the hills about four miles from Tejutepeque, which is only about 40 miles northeast of the national capital but is rarely reached by government military forces. The guerrillas visit the town frequently, buying provisions and talking casually with residents.

Sunday, Mauricio stood with two young companions in arms near some big trees in the Tejutepeque square. They looked across the cobbled street at the line of mothers bringing their children to be inoculated. A couple of kids wailed with fear or pain.

After a while, three more guerrillas arrived. They seemed relaxed, and townspeople paid them little mind. The main attraction of the day was the inoculation.

‘It is a Good Idea’

“As far as we’re concerned, it is a good idea,” Mauricio said, “although we know that what the government wants is to take away our social base, to gain support with the prick of a needle.”

The guerrilla argued that people in impoverished towns like Tejutepeque need more than inoculations.

“There is no vaccine for hunger, no vaccine for other problems,” he said.

Tejutepeque has grown poorer because of the war. When government soldiers were based here, guerrillas sometimes attacked the town. Many residents fled.

Now, most of Tejutepeque’s 2,000 residents are refugees from other areas. Since the army left town after a battle in late 1983, things have been more peaceful but have remained difficult.

Fighting in 1983 damaged the local electrical system, and the town has been without power ever since.

Searches by Police

Police at a checkpoint six miles away search vehicles coming into the town. The police allow only limited amounts of provisions, including medicine, to pass.

As a result, food and medicine are in short supply. When guerrillas like Mauricio come to town to buy provisions, they often do not find what they need.

“There is almost nothing in the stores,” said Mauricio. He said he came Sunday to buy batteries, sugar, soap, beans and rice but found only rice.

That is the purpose of the police checkpoint, “to stop contraband,” said a police sergeant there Sunday.

Father Roberto Castillo, Tejutepeque’s Roman Catholic priest, said the town suffers from the actions of both sides in the war.

‘We Are in the Middle’

“It is a sandwich,” Castillo said. “We are in the middle.”

On Sunday, for a change, something good was happening in Tejutepeque. By 1 p.m., 150 children had received inoculations and anti-polio drops.

The health officials will return to give second and third doses in March and April. The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, and other international agencies have helped organize and finance the $2-million campaign. The goal is to immunize 400,000 children between the ages of 2 months and 5 years.

The Catholic diocese of San Salvador acted as a go-between to seek guerrilla acquiescence for the project.

Msgr. Gregorio Rosa Chavez, auxiliary bishop of San Salvador, said Sunday that the guerrillas “decided to suspend all military action so that the vaccinators--the so-called peace squads--could carry out their beautiful mission.”

Although Health Ministry teams set up inoculation stations in towns frequented by guerrillas, such as Tejutepeque, they did not venture into guerrilla-controlled areas. International Red Cross teams are to inoculate children in those areas this week.

Mauricio, the guerrilla in Tejutepeque, said that families in the area controlled by his unit are expecting the Red Cross but that “we still don’t know the day or the place.”