Optimism Amid Tragedy : Signs Positive but Reality Is Still Painful in Salvador

A T-shirt seen the other day at a local swimming pool displayed two tanks bristling with weapons and the upbeat admonition: “Let’s Make El Salvador Great Again.”

It said a good bit about the mood in El Salvador after five years of civil war: cheerful optimism amid continuing tragedy.

For the government of President Jose Napoleon Duarte, inaugurated a year ago on June 1, most trends look good. The military is holding its own in the field against leftist rebels. The officers seem to have adjusted to Duarte, who was once reviled as a communist.

Rightist death squads, the symbol of unbending repression, have been curbed. And politically, the extreme right wing is in disarray, defeated in recent elections and apparently abandoned by its allies in the military.

Duarte himself is riding a wave of international respect. Aid from the United States arrives unimpeded by embarrassing questions about human rights abuses.

Some Western diplomats believe the country will need $500 million in aid in each of the next few years.

Meanwhile, leftist rebels of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front are on the defensive, in battle and on the diplomatic front. Their present tactics, which emphasize sabotage and terrorism, have cast them increasingly in the role of villain. And Duarte’s image as a sincere reformer detracts from their quest for international respectability.

Still, the backdrop for all these positive signs is one of unrelenting hardship. Positive trends have not necessarily translated into well-being for El Salvador’s 5 million citizens. In many respects, the burden of war has only shifted.

Because of the continued suffering, proposals to reduce the violence of war will probably be a prime topic in long-delayed peace talks between the rebels and government--if and when the negotiations resume. The peace talks stalled after a second round in November.

Both sides speak of “humanizing” the war. The insurgents want an end to aerial bombing and a guarantee that their civilian followers will not be rounded up or executed by military bands. Duarte’s government desires an end to kidnaping, assassinations, sabotage and obstruction of highway traffic.

Visits to towns and villages across the country confirm the unbroken toll of combat. The northern town of La Palma, for example, was once a symbol of El Salvador’s hope for peace; it is now a center of combat.

The rebels and the government met there last October for the first round of peace talks. The mood was cheerful, with the town decked out in white, and it seemed auspicious.

Since then, the white has been replaced by the olive green of combat uniforms, along with the black of mourning. The army, driven from the town three years ago by the guerrillas, has returned to establish a base in La Palma.

Not All Good News

As trends go, this was considered a good one for the government. The army was bringing lawful authority back to town; roads could be repaired, waterworks patched up. However, the rebels were enraged at the loss of La Palma, which had been a sort of shopping center for them. They raked the area with mortar fire, and residents fled.

The rebels also entered the nearby village of San Ignacio and shot up the rural savings and loan office.

“We expected something like this to happen,” Father Rufino Bugitti, La Palma’s parish priest, said. “Once the soldiers came back, we knew we would pay the price.”

One of the more hopeful by-products of the La Palma talks was the construction of a bridge across the Torola River in eastern El Salvador. The hope was soon dashed.

The Torola divides a region of wild, rebel-held mountains from farmland and towns that are for the most part under government control. The bridge, a temporary but sturdy structure, was meant to ease the passage of refugees back to homes they had abandoned in the fighting.

A number of farmers, desperate to leave the squalid refugee camps where they had been living, returned to the town of Meanguera on the north bank of the Torola to renew their lives.

Then, the guerrillas blew up the bridge because the army had been using it to withdraw from their frequent forays into guerrilla-held territory. Now, Meanguera is abandoned again, except for small groups of sullen guerrillas on guard.

Plans Flounder

To the south, results of other resettlement plans continue to flounder. In San Vicente province, an ambitious plan to clear the region of guerrillas and repopulate abandoned towns is completing its second year.

The program, which was meant to be a national model, has at best slowed the guerrilla advance. Residents feel that they can return safely to their homes only if the town is garrisoned--but the army, even in its present expanded state, does not have enough soldiers to man every town.

“If the army goes, I go; otherwise, we can’t defend ourselves,” said Francisca Isabel Rodriguez, the newly elected mayor of San Esteban Catarina, just north of the provincial capital of San Vicente.

Mayors are the newest victims of guerrilla assaults. Since the first of the year, 20 have been kidnaped, one slain.

‘Well-Being for Usulutan’

If the plan in San Vicente is at a standstill, a similar scheme in Usulutan province is a total failure. Last February, the army opened an offensive called “Well-Being for Usulutan.” Like the San Vicente program, it was aimed at clearing the region of guerrillas and opening abandoned towns to resettlement. No abandoned town has been secured, however, and guerrillas continue to roam the coffee-rich hills.

At the beginning of the campaign, workers began repairing the roads in the town of San Agustin, and a few refugees from outlying villages living in San Agustin hoped that the fighting would stop. A recent visitor, though, found that only the road work had stopped. The refugees were in despair.

“It is the same as always,” said Joaquin Guayabal, a resident of Buenos Aires who had taken refuge in San Agustin. “The army comes and goes. The guerrillas come and go. We hide under our beds.”

Changes in tactics on both sides make life hazardous for civilians.

The army has resorted to bombing and strafing guerrillas from the air, and this has driven refugees to camps in San Salvador and other safe towns.

The guerrillas, meanwhile, have stepped up the mining of roads and trails to obstruct pursuit by the army. Painted signs on ruined farmhouses warn: “Careful, soldier. Mine field. Let your officers pass in front.”

Childhood’s End

The mining also interferes with the primitive farming practices of the peasants, who scrape the hills clean of weeds and plant corn for their meager livelihood.

“Before, my little boys at least could go kill birds with their slingshots,” said Manuel Romero, a farmer who lives near the town of Tejutepeque, on the edge of rebel territory. “Now I tell them, ‘No, it’s too dangerous.’ ”

Even the increase in the size of the army, a key to the government’s improved situation, works a hardship on the poor, who bear the brunt of the military draft. The sons of the rich and the middle class rarely go to war.

Sometimes, the injustice is poignant. In Sonsonate, a widow named Francesca Jimenez told how her husband, a peasant, was killed two years ago by soldiers of a certain brigade. Not long afterward, her eldest son was drafted--to serve in the same brigade.