Duarte: Reflection on a Nation

It is sadly symbolic that Jose Napoleon Duarte, former president of El Salvador, lingered so long and painfully before dying of cancer Friday at the age of 64. Although he had once been the most genuinely popular political leader in his homeland, Duarte faded into political oblivion two years ago, after his fatal illness became known.

Yet for most of the 1980s, Duarte was the best thing U.S. policy-makers had going for them in a long--and still unsuccessful--effort to help the Salvadoran military defeat some tough and persistent leftist guerrillas. As a graduate of Notre Dame, a former mayor of San Salvador and a populist Christian Democrat who was once jailed, tortured and exiled by troops loyal to the old Salvadoran oligarchy, Duarte was once El Salvador’s brightest star. His ascension to the presidency was taken as living proof that things could change for the better in El Salvador.

But by the same token, Duarte’s struggles in office were harsh evidence of just how much still needs to be changed in El Salvador. He held off the guerrillas but never beat them. He professionalized the military but failed to bring it under civilian control. He tried to reform a near-feudal system of land ownership but got barely halfway to his goal before the oligarchs dug in their heels and refused to budge any further. And he tried to build a legal system his people could believe in, but “justice” in El Salvador is still far too often administered with a club, machete or gun.

Even his many critics and political enemies would have to concede that Duarte’s suffering mirrored the agony of the small nation to which he wanted to bring both peace and justice--but which so far has failed to find either.