Guerrilla Actions in El Salvador

I hope that Times readers have not missed the recent reports coming out of El Salvador, and will ask themselves: Do the guerrillas behave like a group of people who are seriously concerned about the condition of poor people?

On May 11 The Times reported that the guerrillas have been threatening, kidnaping, and killing the mayors of El Salvador’s small towns and villages. On May 19 The Times reported that the guerrillas have been destroying El Salvador’s transmission lines and other infrastructure. And last month hundreds of guerrillas attacked the small town of Santa Cruz Loma, killing mostly unarmed civilians.

This has been going on for five years. What justification is there for it?

The guerrillas claim that there is great inequality of wealth and that El Salvador is run by a handful of “oligarchs.” Yet if the guerrillas truly care about the poor, why are they knocking out water purification plants and transmission lines and blowing up buses? Does that help the poor people who depend upon such utilities the most? And why are the guerrillas attacking small, defenseless villages instead of the alleged “oligarchs?”

The guerrillas claim that there is no opportunity for opposition groups to participate in El Salvador’s political process. If that is true, why was Jose Napoleon Duarte, an opposition candidate, elected to the presidency in the most recent elections? If “the military” is all-powerful in El Salvador, as the guerrillas claim, how does one explain why Duarte, who has a glass eye as a result of beatings he received at the hands of the military many years ago, is today El Salvador’s president?

President Duarte is right to refuse to give the guerrillas a share of power--why should they be rewarded for crippling the economy and killing defenseless people?

I urge those Americans who view the guerrillas as the representatives of El Salvador’s poor people to examine very carefully what the guerrillas are actually doing, rather than what they are saying.

DANIEL J. FRIEDMAN

Rancho Palo Verdes