Soldiers Join Exodus : Salvadoran Loyalties Clash in L.A.

First as a soldier and then as a police officer in his native El Salvador, Jose Galdamez fought proudly to defend the U.S.-backed government against people he still calls “leftist subversives and delinquents.”

But when the 34-year-old army veteran arrived in Southern California in 1987, he found himself looking for work on a Glendale street corner alongside exiled Salvadoran revolutionaries and activists--the same “delinquents” he had once relentlessly pursued.

Some of the former revolutionaries even voted to make Galdamez their leader when they formed a committee to fight a proposed Glendale ordinance that would have made it illegal for them to solicit work on street corners.

Opposite Sides

For the most part, Galdamez avoided run-ins with the leftists. Only once did he show his loyalties, during a meeting where the workers were introduced to a former guerrilla leader.

“They called her la comandante, (the commander)” Galdamez said with disdain. “I told her, ‘Hey, I’m a national policeman. What do you think about that? If you want to mess with me, you can mess with me.’ But she didn’t say anything.”

Guerrillas and activists rarely exchange words with soldiers and policemen in El Salvador, where they are engaged in a civil war that has left an estimated 55,000 people dead in the last nine years. But emotion-charged encounters have become common in Los Angeles’ 350,000-strong Salvadoran community as increasing numbers of veterans of the army, national police, civil defense and other security forces come here to escape the fighting.

The arrival of these veterans into the nation’s largest Salvadoran community has also opened old wounds among some of the exiled trade union, student and peasant activists who flooded Los Angeles when the civil war began in the early 1980s.

Dreams Tempered

Trained by U.S. advisers and relatively well-paid in their native country, the former guardsmen and soldiers say they left their homeland for a variety of reasons. Some were exhausted by combat, while others could no longer face the brutality of war.

All hope to experience the affluence of Southern California living. Once here, however, most live the quiet, impoverished lives of undocumented immigrants. When he is lucky, Jose Galdamez will find work three days a week on the Glendale street corner. And those of his comrades who are able to find full-time employment end up with low-paying jobs in restaurants, car washes and garment factories.

Indeed, homeless Salvadoran army veterans can be found among the men who seek shelter at Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church in downtown Los Angeles, said Father Michael Kennedy, associate pastor.

“These are people who are alone, who have no relatives in this country. They come here to get something to eat and have a roof over their heads,” Kennedy said. “Obviously, we don’t discriminate against people who have fought on one side or another.”

Although veterans of various factions have been arriving at the church since the civil war in El Salvador began in 1980, Kennedy said their numbers have increased in the last six months.

The exodus may be related to the deteriorating political situation faced by the Salvadoran government and changing military tactics by the opposition. In the last year, the rebel Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front has begun operating aggressively in the capital for the first time and has staged a series of daring attacks on government bases in the countryside.

Military service is mandatory in El Salvador, and 145,000 men are under arms. Refugee groups estimate that there may be a few thousand veterans living in Southern California.

Most have settled in the apartment buildings and tenements of the Pico Union and Westlake areas, vibrant barrios where restaurants and stores catering to the immigrants bear the names of provincial towns and the neighborhoods of San Salvador, the capital.

At El Rescate, a refugee support agency where many activists escaping military persecution have found help, intake worker Haydee Sanchez said she has seen clients come to her office visibly shaken after having encountered a former soldier on the street.

Shock on the Street

One man, who said he is the only survivor of a massacre in a small town in eastern El Salvador, told Sanchez that he was walking through MacArthur Park when he saw a soldier who had killed members of his family.

“He told me, ‘I followed him and I know where he lives. My friends and I are going to get him,’ ” Sanchez said.

Sanchez said she eventually persuaded him not to do anything that would place his political asylum case in jeopardy.

Ironically, an increasing number of applications for political asylum received by El Rescate are from former soldiers and other members of the security forces. More than half of the 43 applications received during one recent week were from veterans of the fighting, Sanchez said.

One of those requests came from Mauro Orlando Alas, a 25-year-old former sergeant who settled last year with friends in a small house in South-Central Los Angeles.

In a photograph on the living room wall, Alas is shown dressed in a combat uniform, smiling as he holds his infant son. He takes an album from a dresser drawer and shows a visitor 18 diplomas and certificates he received during military training, as well as photos of his wife, who has remained in El Salvador with his son.

“I Need Protection’

“One has the right to run away from danger,” Alas said. “A lot of people come here because they want to be better off. I’m here because I need protection.”

Alas said he came to the United States because he was exhausted from combat. After he quit the army, he was pursued by “guerrilla agents,” he said.

But Alas, who evaded the guerrillas for eight years, discovered another adversary in California--the Immigration and Naturalization Service. In December, he was detained by agents, agreed to voluntary deportation and will leave the United States in April.

“I’ve decided to go back to my country,” Alas said. “But I’m coming back (to the United States) and I’m going to get my wife and son and bring them with me.”

While Alas said he is proud of serving his “fatherland,” some other veterans said they left the security forces because they could no longer commit the brutal acts of repression ordered by their commanders.

Among the repentant veterans is Pablo, a humble 23-year-old from a peasant family in central El Salvador who lives alone in a small trailer behind a Harbor City apartment building.

3 Years of Service

Pablo, whose last name is being withheld at his request, said he served more than three years in a civil defense unit, one of a number of quasi-military groups that patrol villages in the Salvadoran countryside.

Pablo said he deserted his unit after witnessing the beating death of a peasant accused of being a guerrilla. When Pablo refused to go on patrol after that incident, he was threatened by his commanding officer, he said.

“He told me that I had to go out on patrol and that if I didn’t do what he told me, he would kill me,” Pablo said. “I believed him because I knew he was capable of such a thing.”

Pablo said he plans to apply for political asylum so that he can live and work in the United States. Since arriving in Los Angeles in December, he has not worked, fearing that he would be caught by the immigration service.

“I pray to God that I get permission to work,” he said. “My mother and father are alone in El Salvador, and the least that I can do is to send them some money.”

Pablo’s chances of being granted asylum are not good: nationally, only 3% of Salvadorans who apply are granted political asylum.

Former Sergeant

Eulalio Tejada, 27, a former sergeant, does not have “permission” either, but he does have the support of his aunt, who has allowed him to occupy a converted storage room behind her East Los Angeles home.

“I don’t ever go hungry, because I have family here,” he said. “A lot of people here suffer because they don’t have any place to go.”

Tejada tells dramatic stories about his eight years in the army, tracing imaginary maps with a finger on the bed in his cramped quarters.

“When you serve the people, it makes you proud to be a soldier,” Tejada said. The wiry veteran proudly displayed a diploma he earned from U.S. military trainers at Ft. Gulick, a U.S. base in Panama.

Tejada said his troubles began when he left the army after getting married. The rebels singled him out for retribution, he said, and the army could no longer protect him. He decided to leave the country.

“The years go by and you meet someone you fall in love with,” Tejada said of his wife, who stayed behind. “And you want to be alive for her. You start thinking about the future and you want to be alive to love her.”

Earns $125 a Week

Tejada now works at a garment factory near downtown Los Angeles, where he earns $125 a week. He said he plans to apply for political asylum.

Unfortunately for Tejada, the asylum cases of former soldiers are especially difficult to win, said Michael Ortiz, who has helped Salvadoran army veterans at the Immigrants Rights Office of the Legal Aid Foundation.

“They talk about receiving anonymous threats from the guerrillas, but it’s close to impossible to get documentary evidence,” Ortiz said. “The only thing you have is some story or a witness. Sometimes you can’t even get that.”

In El Salvador, army personnel and police have been linked to “death squads” that have killed an estimated 30,000 people. Two years ago, reports surfaced that the death squads were operating in Los Angeles. A 24-year-old woman, active in the local Central American solidarity movement, was kidnaped and raped. Other activists, including Father Luis Olivares, pastor at Queen of Angels and a leader in the local sanctuary movement, received written death threats.

But FBI spokesman Jim Neilson said recently that an investigation into the attacks and threats had failed to uncover evidence that Salvadoran death squads are operating here.

Willing to Forgive

Still, despite the allegations and the occasional confrontations, people from all quarters of the Salvadoran community in Los Angeles say they are willing to forgive old enemies.

Father Kennedy said that most of the Salvadoran veterans he has met recently have no interest in politics and do not understand why they had to fight in a war that has claimed the lives of so many of their countrymen.

“They just want to get money and send it to their families in El Salvador. They don’t even have bad feelings for the FMLN,” he said, referring to guerrilla organization. “I feel sorry for them. They’re victims of a system that sucks them into it.”

Jose Dimos Pereira, 23, echoes the sentiments of many veterans who say they have kept a low profile since coming to Los Angeles.

Pereira, who arrived only weeks ago, is looking for work. He tells of a similar search for employment on the streets of San Salvador after leaving the army. The unemployment rate in El Salvador is about 40%, according to the University of El Salvador.

Pereira said he fought in search-and-destroy missions in Morazan province--scene of some of the most intense fighting of the civil war.

“When people ask me what I did over there, I tell them that I worked in the fields, that I had different jobs, but I don’t say anything about the army,” Pereira said. “Even when people come to the house, I don’t tell them.”