Salvadoran Guerrillas Vow to Drive Out U.S. Military

Broadcasting on their clandestine radio station, leftist guerrillas vowed Sunday to drive U.S. servicemen out of El Salvador as a follow-up to their machine-gun attack last week on two sidewalk cafes in the heart of this capital that left 13 dead, four of them U.S. Marines.

Radio Venceremos, the station of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, the umbrella group for five rebel bands fighting the U.S.-backed government, said that the guerrillas intend to “expel” U.S. military men from the nation.

“Not even a single centimeter of the fatherland will be safe for the Yankee invaders,” the radio said.

In a later program, the rebels warned, “If they (U.S. military people) come here for war, they will leave in cans.”

The American Embassy ordered its diplomats and employees to be more cautious when traveling anywhere in San Salvador, and the Salvadoran government began to re-establish largely dormant security measures on the newly tense streets of city.

Among planned police actions are the conversion of military trucks into armored vehicles and the revival of a telephone hot line to take tips from informers on suspected guerrilla activity.

The four slain Marines were members of the embassy guard detachment. Marines guard U.S. diplomatic missions almost everywhere in the world. They had no connection to the U.S. military advisory group helping to train government troops in their 5 1/2-year-long battle in the countryside with the Farabundo Marti guerrillas. About 55 U.S. military trainers work in El Salvador, along with medical teams and other soldiers brought in for temporary duty.

The guerrillas believe that without millions of dollars in U.S. military aid, they would have won the battle long ago.

A small Farabundo Marti faction known as the Central American Workers Revolutionary Party claimed responsibility for the massacre here last Wednesday night, in which the four Marines, two American civilians and seven other people were killed. Rebel statements said the assault was carried out by one of the party’s urban commando units, named after Mardoqueo Cruz, a slain guerrilla combatant.

As part of an array of tactical changes this year, the rebels have stepped up terrorist attacks in Salvadoran cities, including assassinations.

Until last week, targets were usually right-wing politicians and Salvadoran military personnel. The only previous killing of a U.S. serviceman here occurred May 26, 1983, when Lt. Cmdr. Albert A. Schaufelberger III was slain. Schaufelberger was deputy commander of the U.S. military training group.

The goal of the recent outbreak of attacks, according to rebel broadcasts and insurgent civilian leaders, is to erode U.S. support for the government of President Jose Napoleon Duarte and try to show that Duarte cannot effectively govern.

In the wake of the Marines’ deaths, U.S. Embassy workers and military personnel have been instructed to avoid dining out of doors or lingering outside and to vary their meeting places and routes to and from work and other destinations.

“These are reiterations of past policies,” an embassy spokesman said.

Marine Hangout Area

Witnesses at Wednesday’s attack scene, a district of restaurants, discotheques and open-air cafes known as the Zona Rosa--the Pink Zone--said Marines had regularly frequented the establishments.

A restaurant security guard said that shortly before the shooting began, the Marines were approached by a youth who spoke with them briefly and then rode away on a bicycle. A pickup truck and van pulled up. About 10 gunmen dressed as police officers jumped out and opened fire on the unarmed and civilian-garbed Marines, who were waiting for pizza and hamburgers.

Although some witnesses initially said that the shooting was random, later police investigation showed that firing was directed first at the Marines and then at nearby restaurant patrons whose skin was whiter than that of most Salvadorans.

Two U.S. computer company employes, a Chilean and a Guatemalan were among the dead. The rest were Salvadorans.

The Duarte government reacted to the shootings with heightened police vigilance in the capital.

“We are implementing programs to attain more control on the streets,” said Col. Carlos R. Lopez Nuila, deputy minister of defense for public safety. “This implies some discomfort for the population at roadblocks and during searches.”

Some of the new measures took effect late Saturday. Truckloads of policemen, armed with G-3 rifles, pulled up to intersections. They randomly stopped cars and pedestrians, searching for guerrillas and guns.

Between frisks and inspection of identity papers, a young policeman said apologetically: “Excuse me, but this is a war zone now.”

Other planned steps including doubling of street patrols and armoring vehicles to enter neighborhoods that are under fire. Areas suspected of harboring guerrillas will be sealed off and searched.

The planned anti-terrorist telephone hot line is a revival of a tactic from the early 1980s. It was dropped in 1982 because of complaints that it led to the deaths of innocent people selected by informants for personal vengeance rather than guerrilla activity.

The armed forces has also trained a SWAT-style battalion for operations inside cities. The battalion was used for the first time recently when Duarte called in police to storm a social security hospital occupied by striking health workers.

Wednesday’s massacre and the government’s steps to try to prevent another one evoked some fears of warfare in the capital not unlike that occurring in the Middle East.

“Like a ghost behind many opinions, there gleams the temptation of violent measures,” Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas of San Salvador said in a Sunday homily. “Here is where we reach the theme of Lebanonization (of El Salvador).”

Rivera criticized the Reagan Administration for promising more military aid to meet the urban guerrilla threat.

“The reaction of Reagan to offer more decisive military support for the anti-terrorist war can be dangerous,” he said.

The potential for a face-off between the army and the rebels in cities also raises human rights questions for both sides.

The Duarte government is haunted by episodes of military violence in past urban anti-guerrilla campaigns. Death squad killings drove rebels out of the cities in the early 1980s, but they also caused thousands of deaths of civilians and helped popularize the guerrilla cause.

Officials in Duarte’s Cabinet say that no return to the repression of the past is contemplated.

“We’re not talking about repressive measures. We’re going to be more vigilant,” government spokesman Julio Rey Prendes said during an interview Sunday. “We will not fall for the temptation to crackdown unjustly. We will be firm, but firmness is not the same as repression,” he said.

Wednesday’s massacre brought opprobrium on the guerrillas because of the deaths of bystanders.