El Salvador University Gets California Aid

Two California relief agencies, Medical Aid for El Salvador and Operation California, delivered $195,000 worth of donated medicines, medical textbooks and equipment to the University of El Salvador on Wednesday for its student-run health clinic and medical school laboratories.

At a festive, music-filled ceremony in front of the university’s administration building, Chancellor Miguel Angel Parada said the shipment of incubators, blankets, microscopes and other supplies were badly needed at the financially strapped campus.

He also took the opportunity to criticize U.S. policy in El Salvador.

“We greatly appreciate this cooperation from the North American citizens that contrasts with the North American government,” Parada said, apparently referring to U.S. military aid. “The (U.S.) government causes wounds and the people help us to cure them.” (In fiscal 1985, the U.S. government has provided El Salvador with $128 million in military aid and $326 million in economic assistance.)

Protest Over Money

The university, also called the National University, was closed by government troops in June, 1980, because it was considered to be a center of leftist political activism. It reopened in May, 1984, but the university administration and students have protested that the government is not giving it enough money to buy supplies or repair buildings damaged during the military takeover.

Dr. Jose Marinero, dean of the medical school, said the donated supplies will replace many items that were ruined or disappeared during the army’s occupation.

The two truckloads of supplies, tied up briefly at customs at the port of Acajutla, did not arrive until after the ceremony.

Medical Aid for El Salvador was founded in 1982 by actor Ed Asner to provide medical care to victims of El Salvador’s civil war. Earlier this month, the group brought a Los Angeles doctor, assisted by actor Mike Farrell, to this country to operate on a captured guerrilla commander.

Operation California sends relief shipments to various countries, including El Salvador and Nicaragua.