A Salvadoran Funeral March, With Memory of U.S. Policy

There will be a funeral march in the dry hills of western El Salvador this week. Wednesday marks the anniversary of the Las Hojas massacre. Las Hojas is a small Indian village far from the active war zone in this Central American country, with a distinctive folk culture descended from the Aztecs. On Feb. 22, 1983, an army battalion massacred 74 residents of the area around the village.

Both conservative policy-makers in the Reagan and Bush administrations, and liberals in the Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress avert their eyes from the Las Hojas massacre, preferring to argue about such more celebrated matters as the Nicaraguan Contras in El Salvador. But the massacre is a now-historic event that serves to strip away most of the deceptions that sustain U.S. policy toward El Salvador.

The conventional wisdom about El Salvador holds that there has been human-rights progress. Trained, armed and advised daily by U.S. military officers, the Salvadoran security forces have killed tens of thousands of unarmed civilians in the last eight years. Military death squads were assassinating up to 800 people a month in 1980 and 1981. Since 1983 and 1984, the number of killings has declined. The government of Christian Democrat Jose Napoleon Duarte, it was said, was demonstrating limited but real control over the country’s military. The Congress and the White House, in turn, provided El Salvador with billions of dollars in U.S. aid.

The bipartisan consensus in Washington about the future of El Salvador is now being tested. The Duarte government has all but vanished in a cloud of corruption and incompetence. Death-squad killings are again on the rise. Even Vice President Dan Quayle acknowledged as much on his recent visit. And the guerrillas’ proposal to delay elections, while they enter the electoral process for the first time, has thrown El Salvador’s political parties into disarray.

The massacre story reminds us that Salvadoran realities do not conform to U.S. rhetoric. In Las Hojas, all the common rationalizations of U.S. policy in El Salvador were exposed as untrue:

--Human rights abuses like the Las Hojas massacre are often difficult to prosecute for lack of evidence.

The State Department concluded within a few days that the local garrison commander, Col. Elmer Gonzalez Araujo was responsible for ordering the massacre. So did a top Salvadoran military commander.

According to a declassified State Department cable, the farmers of Las Hojas had won a legal dispute with a local wealthy landowner. The landowner then complained to Gonzalez, who ordered troops into action. The males of the area around Las Hojas, ages 11 to 73, were taken to a nearby riverbed with their hands tied behind their backs. All were shot in the head.

--Salvadoran military leaders do not condone abuses committed by lower-ranking officers.

Within weeks after the massacre, Gonzalez was promoted to head the procurement agency of the Salvadoran armed forces. Since then, the colonel has never been demoted or reprimanded by his superiors.

--The United States, while it cannot control the Salvadoran military, avoids dealing with the worst human - rights violators in its ranks.

In May, 1983, three months after the massacre, U.S. military advisers were helping Gonzalez purchase $4.7-million worth of ammunition with U.S. military aid from a firm in Virginia. Some U.S. advisers in El Salvador were concerned, not about dealing with a murderer, but about possible corruption in the ammunition deal. The deal went through anyway.

--When U.S. officials must deal with unsavory Salvadoran officers, they are extremely careful.

The fears of corruption were warranted. As was later revealed in U.S. federal court, Gonzalez and another colonel accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from the Virginia firm in return for overlooking the fact that the ammunition was falsely packaged. According to U.S. prosecutor Theodore Greenberg, Gonzalez himself pocketed at least $25,000 in U.S. military assistance.

--President Duarte wants to punish flagrant human-rights abusers.

Duarte personally approved Gonzalez’s appointment to head the country’s Port Authority, another job with lucrative kickback possibilities. Gonzalez was never charged with any crime by Salvadoran civilian officials, much less put on trial. Several low-ranking soldiers from the garrison near Las Hojas did face charges for the massacre but were acquitted. A distraught relative of the victims who dared to complain to local authorities was arrested for disorderly conduct.

--When the Salvadoran courts cannot act, the United States will use its influence to curb such abuses.

The phony ammunitions deal resulted in the indictment of three U.S. businessmen. The Justice Department had sufficient evidence to indict Gonzalez as well. High-level Justice Department officials, after consulting with the State Department and the Pentagon, decided not to.

--When “quiet diplomacy” fails, the United States will publicly criticize human - rights abuses.

In February, 1984, the State Department told Congress that the Las Hojas massacre had been carried out “apparently by elements of a Salvadoran army unit.” Yet U.S. diplomatic cables had already stated unequivocally that Gonzalez ordered the killings. The State Department’s annual human-rights reports have failed to mention the Las Hojas case ever since.

-- Whatever happened in the past, Salvadoran military leaders and U.S. officials today condemn the massacre of civilians.

In an interview on Salvadoran TV in October, 1986, Gonzalez defended the Las Hojas killings as a “legitimate military operation.” No Salvadoran or U.S. official publicly disputed his statement. The colonel now heads the Office of Military Repairs.

-- Whatever the details of the Las Hojas massacre, the current Salvadoran government is committed to making sure that such abuses do not happen again.

A Salvadoran court ruled last year that Gonzalez is now immune from prosecution under the amnesty provisions of the 1987 Central American peace plan. The Las Hojas massacre, the courts decided, was a “political” crime that should be forgiven in order to help bring the civil war to an end.

Still, the war goes on. So does Gonzalez. U.S. military analysts now state the obvious: The U.S.-backed war effort does not enjoy popular support. The Indians of Las Hojas will commemorate their loss by marching through the countryside, holding aloft large photos of the dead.