Salvador Enforcing Visa Law to Bar Americans Sympathetic to Rebels

The government of El Salvador has begun enforcing a 33-year-old law that requires Americans to carry visas to control entry of people sympathetic to leftist rebels, officials said Monday.

“(President Jose Napoleon) Duarte just got sick of all those people opposed to him coming in and protesting and decided visas was the best way to go to control their entrance,” a Western Europe diplomat said.

The Prensa Grafica newspaper said visas were made compulsory because “American citizens, including journalists, religious workers and vagabonds, arrive in El Salvador with only a driver’s license or something similar.”

“The measure was taken because there were groups arriving that supported, directly or otherwise, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, and the government no longer wants that to happen,” a government official said.

The front, known by its initials FMLN, is an umbrella group of five Marxist-led armies trying to topple the U.S.-backed government.

Until the measure went into effect Nov. 25, U.S. citizens only needed to get their passports stamped at the airport upon arrival. Now they must go to the Salvadoran consulate to request a visa before entering the country.

Armando Escobar, head of consular affairs at the Foreign Ministry, said the measure was taken because Washington requires Salvadorans to have visas to enter the United States.

“It is a reciprocal measure, nothing more,” he said, adding that the law has been on the books since 1953 but has not been enforced.