Guerrillas, Army Agree to Stay Out : Refugees Try to Resurrect Salvadoran Ghost Town

For more than two years, Tenancingo has been a ghost town, a crossroads for guerrillas and government troops who scrawled their bellicose graffiti on the walls of abandoned houses as they passed through.

The people who lived here, most of them farmers and hat-makers, fled in 1983 after a government air raid caused about 50 deaths. Since then, most have been afraid to set foot in the town, where even the dead were not left in peace.

Now, though, some of them have grown tired of being refugees and have decided to come back, to try to revive Tenancingo and restore it to the thriving commercial center it once was.

Their plan, backed by the Roman Catholic Church and a Salvadoran private foundation, is unprecedented: Both the armed forces and the guerrillas have agreed, organizers of the project say, not to move back to Tenancingo when the refugees do. Each will be allowed to pass through but not to stay.

The guerrillas have purportedly promised not to engage in their usual sabotage of water, electric power and transportation systems, which are to be run independently once they are rebuilt. The army has purportedly said it will allow food to be brought in even though it could be sold to the guerrillas.

Model for Accommodation

The plan has taken on broader significance as efforts to negotiate peace in the six-year civil war have waned.

Manuel Sevilla, executive director of the sponsoring foundation, said he hopes the Tenancingo experiment will show both sides that there are ways to “politicize the conflict” and to move away from the attitude that “you are with me or you are against me.” He said it may be repeated elsewhere.

That optimism could well prove premature, however, and the project could easily come apart. Tenancingo, about 25 miles northeast of San Salvador, is in an area of frequent conflict, and nobody can guarantee that both sides will keep to the delicate agreement, that the fighting will not creep back.

However, the people say that is a risk they are willing to take. About 50 are planning to move their families back this month and they hope that eventually about 1,250 more families will return.

“People who hear I’m moving back tell me I’m crazy,” said Cecilia Enrique, 35. “In the last bombing, my older son lost his foot. They say, ‘Don’t be stupid,’ that if one was crippled last time, the next time one will be killed.”

Enrique, who had come to clear weeds from the central square of the century-old town, said she would rather return to “where your own people understand you” than continue living as a refugee.

No Rock to Wash On

“The other people look down on you because you are a refugee,” she said. “They won’t even give you a rock to wash your clothes on at the river. They say you are ruining their town. . . . The people who know their letters aren’t like that, but the majority are.”

She admitted that she is nervous about returning but said it felt good to work in the town after years away.

“The only fear we have is of the airplanes,” she went on. “It’s not so easy for bullets to come through the houses, but the airplanes drop bombs.”

Tenancingo, formerly a town of 12,000 people, was bombed in July, 1983, after guerrillas assaulted government troops there. The people fled, but returned when the army assured them the fighting was over.

Then, two months later, about 400 guerrillas attacked two infantry companies, and the infantry again called in air support. Six A-37 bombers and four rocket-equipped observation planes attacked guerrilla positions at the edge of town; about 50 civilians in the town were killed.

Maria Asuncion Romero, 43, the mother of seven children, lost her husband in the bombing. She said that as a refugee in nearby Santa Cruz Michapa she has nowhere to grow food or raise chickens to help support her family. She said she feels that life as a refugee can be dangerous among hostile townspeople.

“Sometimes they accuse us of being guerrillas,” she said as she used a machete to clear weeds from a cobblestone street. “If both sides keep their agreement, I think we can more or less live here well. I believe they will. If not, we’ll have to leave again, with nowhere to go.”

Bullet-Pocked Buildings

Many of Tenancingo’s buildings are bullet-pocked, with crumbled roofs from the bombing. The church is empty; the statues of saints that used to be there have been moved to a safe place nearby.

Since the people left, guerrillas and troops have moved in from time to time, leaving behind ration cans and graffiti. “Victory or Death,” a guerrilla has scrawled; someone on the other side has put up the words: “The Treasury Police Are the Best, Don’t Be a Jackass.”

Apparently, the two forces fought a battle of wills over the grave of a dead civilian. According to residents, a young victim of the bombing was buried behind his house and soldiers dug him up, expecting to find a guerrilla arms cache. The guerrillas are said to have reburied him, and the army to have dug him up again.

The process reportedly has been repeated over and over, and the dead man’s jawbone now rests forgotten on a table outside the house. Residents have buried the rest of his bones in a common grave.

Tenancingo cropped up in the conflict again last October, when the guerrillas chose this place as the point where President Jose Napoleon Duarte’s kidnaped daughter was returned in exchange for 25 political prisoners. Combat erupted shortly after the exchange.

As recently as a few weeks ago, Tenancingo was still vacant, its quiet broken by the low hum of insects, the distant whirring of helicopters and the banging of wooden doors in the wind. Today, it is alive with engineers, planners and dozens of residents chatting and slashing their way through overgrown weeds.

Unexploded Grenades

Moving back has not been without danger. Once, while clearing the road into town, workers came under fire. Another time, there was bombing about five miles away--far enough, the residents felt, that they could keep working. Several times they have uncovered unexploded grenades and mortar projectiles.

The return to Tenancingo is supported by Roman Catholic Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas and by the independent Salvadoran Foundation for Development and Minimum Housing, which is spending $1.8 million of its money and donations from European relief and religious agencies.

Sevilla, the foundation director, said the plan has been shown to U.S. Embassy officials, who indicated that the Agency for International Development might be interested in putting in some money. However, he said the project would reject any U.S. funds, which generally have been tied to a counterinsurgency strategy.

“We want support that will be the least controversial from left to right,” Sevilla said.

Initially, the foundation will run the utilities and pay the people for their work in rebuilding the community. Eventually, it is hoped that the utilities will be turned over to the residents and that work cooperatives in farming, hat-making and crafts will be established for those who return, as well as for those on the outskirts who never left.

Sevilla said he has commitments from the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front and the military high command to keep troops out of the town permanently. In the past, the guerrillas have considered Tenancingo part of their territory and the army has opposed any idea of a demilitarized zone in the country.

Word of Both Sides

Col. Oscar Amaya Perez, commander of the 5th Military Detachment, which is responsible for Tenancingo, said: “We agree with the project. . . . We will maintain control in the zone, but from a military point of view it is not logical for us to occupy the town.”

A Farabundo Marti front combatant who visited Tenancingo unarmed recently said he had orders from his commanders “not to do anything that would restrict the project.”

He said the fact that he was unarmed was a concession to the project, an effort to prevent the civilians from being caught in the cross-fire if guerrillas should be spotted from army helicopters.

“The key to this project is the commitment by both sides not to put troops permanently in Tenancingo,” Sevilla said.

He said that foreign diplomats, church officials and direct communication with both sides would help in dealing with any military problems. However, the project is based on what Archbishop Rivera y Damas calls “the thesis of neutrality,” which neither side until now has been willing to accept.

The people of Tenancingo say they simply want to go home.

“The place where you were born calls you,” Noe Recinos, 51, said.