Delivering Pleas From Salvadoran War Zone : Two Visitors Seek Support for Human Rights and an End to Central American Military Aid

“Is there anyone here who could give us a donation of $50?” Margi Clarke called out, starting out her pitch to the crowd of 200 that had packed the Hungarian Hall on Pico Boulevard and St. Andrew’s Place. The walls of the hall, a grand, drafty old structure with fine woodwork and pealing paint, were hung for the occasion with revolutionary posters all but obscuring a few folk art vestiges of Hungarian kitsch.

“In Arcatao, $50 can plant a corn field,” she said. From the back of the room came a $50 pledge. The crowd expressed its approval in a triumphant roar.

Support Group

The Saturday night fund-raiser was for NEST, a support group for rural Salvadorans, and most of the audience were Salvadorans themselves, along with a handful of North American supporters and die-hard movement people. They had paid $5 at the door, and got their hands stamped with indelible ink for re-entry, and milled around the tables where Che Guevera T-shirts, books on revolutionary movements past and present and Central American crafts were on sale.

The Salvadorans, many with babies in arms and strollers, were a study in contrasts--some so simply dressed they looked as if they had been uprooted from the Salvadoran countryside hours before. Others had the look of the city about them--young women with lots of makeup, dressed in skin-tight stone-washed denim jeans and spike heels; men in leather jackets.

A Peasant Organizer

All had come out to hear Mireya Lucero, a 25-year-old peasant organizer from war-torn Chalatenango province who was in this country on a NEST-sponsored 40-city tour. She had just finished describing the village of Arcatao, which people like herself have stubbornly repopulated in defiance of the government.

In all, the evening had cleared about $500, Clarke, 24, an interpreter for the San Francisco-based NEST who was traveling with Lucero, said later--the take to be split between NEST and the two local host groups, CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador) and the support committee for UNTS (Spanish acronym for the National Union of Salvadoran Workers). Considering the crowd, Clarke said, they had done pretty well.

Out of the war zone and into Los Angeles. The last two weeks have been full of rewarding and disappointing moments for two visitors from El Salvador: Lucero, and Oscar Hernandez, a member of the non-governmental Human Rights Commission of El Salvador. Both have ended extensive U.S. tours with stops in Los Angeles. Hernandez was hosted locally by El Rescate and CARECEN, two Central American support groups. Coincidentally, the two visits overlapped slightly, Hernandez’ ending last weekend, Lucero’s later this week.

Their exhausting experiences here have been less harrowing but arguably as surreal at times as they have found themselves dealing with another country, another culture, another world.

‘I Sleep Better’

At least here, Hernandez said, “I feel safe. The psychological pressure is less. I sleep better.”

They come out of different worlds in El Salvador. Lucero, 25, said she is a coordinator of village councils in the rural repopulated areas, traveling the countryside seeing to councils’ needs for books, medicines, seeds, often leaving her 3-year-old son in the care of others. Hernandez, 32, said he lives with his wife and two children in a suburb of San Salvador, and spends his time with the commission doing research and working with statistics.

For all their dissimilarities, on their tours they traveled the same world: formal dinners, wine-and-cheese living room parties, press interviews, hard-won introductions to members of Congress and other elected officials, private meetings with potential donors, closed meetings with the Salvadoran community and their supporters.

The level of information and ignorance about El Salvador can swing wildly, both Lucero and Hernandez said, with some people still confusing the country with Nicaragua, and others not wanting to hear the criticisms both had of the U.S.-backed regime of Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte. Both visitors, and the groups they represent, support the leftist guerrilla opposition, the FMLN, which, they stressed, did not mean they were members of any armed movement, a distinction, they both added, that is never made in El Salvador.

Fundamentally, both had the same purpose--to win the hearts and minds of Americans. Specifically they want to win them over to their work in opposition to the government and, to persuade them to pressure the American government to end economic and military aid.

“I am here to talk about human rights and make people aware of the situation in El Salvador so that they will stop economic and military aid to El Salvador. It is only causing death and destruction,” Hernandez told a dozen or so members of the National Lawyers Guild who had gathered in a Fairfax area living room to hear him.

‘High Level of Corruption’

Beyond death and destruction, he said, “there is a high level of corruption. A new class of rich people has grown from the aid.”

If the aid were cut off, he said, “the government would be more disposed to dismantle the army, or at least reduce it. What they need to do is look for a negotiated settlement of all sectors of the Salvadoran people.”

Hernandez backed his charges with evidence gathered by the commission. The commission has seen four of its members assassinated since its formation in 1978, the latest of them Herbert Anaya who was gunned down last Oct. 26 in front of his home. Another two had been “disappeared.” This year the commission interviewed 432 former political prisoners, and established that more than 40 methods of physical and psychological torture had been used on them.

The lawyers, a jeans-clad group who listened while sipping plastic glasses of wine and bottles of Corona beer, did not necessarily have to be convinced. One member, Sandra Pettit, described the guild later as an alternative to the American Bar Assn. for progressive lawyers.

Sympathetic Response

The following night, Hernandez received a similarly sympathetic response from a gathering of Hollywood types at a small house in Venice.

Both groups listened politely. No animated discussions followed, but they did want to know what he thought of recent developments. Of the amnesty decree he said, “Our concern is that political prisoners released in previous years have then been assassinated,” and that, due to the decree’s limitations “the prisons will soon be full again.”

Of the peace plan signed by five Central American presidents, including Duarte, last August, he acknowledged, “the hope of peace has awakened,” but called it “an illusion at this point.”

“The prospects for peace depend on the United States, and the United States favors a military solution. So, after seven years of war, we do not see the possibility of peace,” he said.

“We don’t like to speak of the personal lives of each of us,” he said in response to a personal question. “It’s other people that suffer the consequences of human rights violations. We work for them. Other members of the commission have suffered torture. I have not.” If some of his hosts and listeners were frustrated at times with his delivery, those in Venice stealing glances at their watches as he went past the scheduled time, they expressed respect for his position because he had come out of and has now returned to an uncertain and dangerous situation.

Why is he engaged in this dangerous life, he was asked privately one afternoon at El Refugio, a shelter for Central American refugees in the Pico/Union area where he was staying.

Reluctantly detouring into his personal experience for a moment, he recalled that as a student, he had done volunteer work, cutting out news clippings for an agency in the same office as the commission.

“People would come in,” he said, “crying over someone who was killed. They would give them the book of pictures of the bodies, and show them the section for that period of time. They would go through, trying to identify . . . . It was horrible watching that process.”

Beyond that, he added with a small smile, “It’s just a desire to do something at this particular moment in El Salvador’s history. I have been born during this epoch and we’re all a part of this history and have to do something.”

Mireya Lucero is a feminine young woman who dresses simply and wears no makeup. She has a relaxed, awesome composure about her that goes beyond her years. She conducts herself with an arresting blend of serenity, seriousness, sophistication and playful humor.

Originally, another member was scheduled to make the tour, Lucero said. When a visa was not forthcoming, Lucero replaced her--to some misgivings from her colleagues.

“Many people say I do not look like a peasant,” she said.

From 1981 until they decided to settle in Arcatao in 1985, she was on the road with peasants forced from their dwellings.

“We just went from one place to another, sometimes as many as 500 people, sleeping in the woods, getting to a place we thought was safe, putting up huts. And then the army would come again and force us out. We would even buy seed and plant sometimes, but the longest we were ever in one place was six months.” In order to resettle, she said, they knew it would take more than their own resolve. They had to enlist international help.

“After that when the first international delegation came into the area, we asked for two things, money and supplies to help us survive the first few months and also their help to prevent incursions by the army,”the latter help, she explained, a matter of moral and political pressure.

In all, they had succeeded in raising about $40,000 for repopulation, Clarke said, adding that the purpose of the tour had not just been fund raising. “We wanted to allow those who’ve been supporting the repopulation movement to see someone who’s experienced it.”

The overall success helped temper the disappointment of Sunday’s afternoon fund-raiser in Hancock Park, the type of event where they could have easily cleared $2,000, Clarke said.

Despite all the makings for a lovely party and a reasonable $20 donation requested on the invitations, only three people showed up.